THE LIFE OF EMERSON 
 
 SNIDER 
 
1. 
 
 EMERSON JUNIOR. 
 
 Day, thou hast two faces, 
 Making one place two places! 
 O, Sun! I curse thy cruel ray: 
 Back, back, to Chaos, harlot day: 
 "Complaint. 
 
 2. 
 EMERSON SENIOR. 
 
 An Energy that searches thorough 
 
 From Chaos till the da-wing morrow 
 
 Into all our human plight, 
 
 The soul s pilgrimage and flight; 
 
 In city or in solitude, 
 
 Step by step, lifts. Bad to Good. 
 
 "May-Day. 
 
A BIOGRAPHY 
 OF 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 SET FORTH AS HIS LIFE ESSAY 
 
 DENTON J. SNIDER 
 It 
 
 M DCCC CXX I 
 
 THE WILLIAM HARVEY M I N E. R CO .. INC 
 SAINT LOUIS 
 
Copyright 1921 by 
 DENTON J. SNIDER 
 
 All right* reserved, including that ot 
 translation into foreign languages in 
 cluding the Scandinavian 
 
Dedicated to 
 
 FRANK B SANBORN 
 
 of Concord 
 
 in memory of his many kindnesses 
 
 470019 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction 5 
 
 Part First (Emerson s Apprenticeship) 19 
 
 Chap. I. Traditional Schooling 26 
 
 I. Ancestry 29 
 
 II. The Parental Home 34 
 
 III. Mary Moody Emerson ! 37 
 
 IV. Emerson at College ..... . 45 
 
 V. The Schoolmaster Emerson 50 
 
 VI. The Itinerant Emerson 57 
 
 Chap. II. The Explosion 65 
 
 I. Pastor Emerson 68 
 
 II. Marriage 73 
 
 III. The Breaking Point 78 
 
 IV. What Next : 84 
 
 Chap. III. The Recovery 89 
 
 I. Health Recovered . 91 
 
 II. Back Through the Antique 95 
 
 III. Back Through the Modern 104 
 
 IV. Emerson and Carlyle Ill 
 
 V. The Visit 115 
 
 VI. Home Again 121 
 
 VII. Retrospect ,..,.127 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Part Second (The Revolutionary Emerson) 134 
 
 Chap. IV. The Creative Decennium 145 
 
 Sect. A. Productivity 151 
 
 I. Transcendentalism ...152 
 
 II. Transcendental Nature 168 
 
 III. Transcendental Men 172 
 
 IV. The Transcendental Masterpiece 188 
 
 V. The Transcendental Crisis 202 
 
 VI. Aftermath of Essays 215 
 
 VII. The Dawning Reaction 223 
 
 VIII. Summary 236 
 
 Sect. B. Propagation 240 
 
 I. The Transcendental Circle 244 
 
 II. The Transcendental Academy 251 
 
 III. The Transcendental Magazine 258 
 
 IV: The Transcendental Community 265 
 
 Sect. C. Origination 272 
 
 I. Emerson s Journals 276 
 
 II. Emerson s Correspondence 286 
 
 III. Emerson s Poetry 294 
 
 Retr o s pect 299 
 
 Chap. V. Reactionary Decennium 303 
 
 I. Representative Men 323 
 
 II. The Representative Woman 331 
 
 III. The Representative Nation 334 
 
 IV. The Representative American 338 
 
 Chap. VI. The Practical Decennium : 344 
 
 I. The Regressive Emerson . 360 
 
 II. The Progressive Emerson 262 
 
 III. The Institutional Emerson 367 
 
 Part Third (The Reconciled Emerson) .374 
 
Ralph Waldo Emerson 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Emerson s total round of years does not quite run 
 up to four score (1803-1882). A superficial view 
 will trace in it many turns, tortuosities, even shrill 
 ing contradictions ; so the first biographic problem 
 emerges : how is this involved refractory mass to 
 be set forth in some kind of transparent order, and 
 its chaotic dispersion unified? A mere chronologic 
 record of successive events in human life is not 
 light-bringing, even if needful as the prime mate 
 rial foundation. Some way or other we must be 
 led to see and to express the man s ultimate proc 
 ess as revealed in his character and stamped upon 
 the whole of it and the parts. A very intricate 
 piece of humanity is our Emerson, labyrinthine, 
 and somewhat gnarled in spots perchance; but 
 when seen and felt in the entirety of his existence, 
 he integrates all its recalcitrant fragments, and 
 attunes to one key-note its varied discords. His 
 wholeness makes him whole in all his seeming de 
 flections and his differences. Can a biography 
 show this his order in its order? 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 Several lives of Emerson have appeared along 
 the line of years since his passing; as we write to 
 day the last account of him is hardly a year old. 
 A valuation of these works lies not in our purview ; 
 but we may make the general and colorless remark 
 that they all have their special excellences in ar 
 ranging their details after the ordinary way of 
 biographical composition. But our purpose is to 
 emphasize the process of the man s total achieve 
 ment, and still further to behold in the one biog 
 raphy the inner movement of all biography. Such 
 a process must be at last psychical, and thereby 
 reveal the ultimate fact of human existence. The 
 life of the one person, especially if he be repre 
 sentative, is to be shown bearing the impress of 
 supreme personality. To use an Emersonian con 
 ception, man s biography is an efflux of God s biog 
 raphy; the finite Self, in its most intimate unitary 
 act as well as in its diversified individual career 
 must be seen reflecting the image of the universal 
 Self-. The events, doctrines, deeds of a man s life 
 are a chaos till the biographer voicing the Supreme 
 Orderer, turns them into, a cosmos. 
 
 Accordingly, the first task of the life-writer is 
 to catch the primordial stages of this highest activ 
 ity, which thereby becomes creative of his theme, 
 and clothes itself in the special details of a human 
 career. That is, we seek at the start to mark the 
 great sweeps, the pivotal turns, the grand crises of 
 a life, which we shall here call its Periods. Tn other 
 words, our first attempt is to periodize Emerson. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 These larger arcs of his biographical cycle are, 
 therefore, the beginning, middle, and end of our 
 book, revealing the basic organization and mean 
 ing of his completed achievement. 
 
 Let it be emphasized, then, that the most deeply 
 significant node of Emerson s career hovers about 
 the years 1834-5 when he was passing through his 
 thirty-second year. After a good deal of drifting, 
 both inner and outer, he finally established his 
 home at Concord, home spiritual as well as do 
 mestic. He had won his fundamental conception, 
 he had thought out his world-view, and was ready, 
 yea eager to set it down in writing and to promul 
 gate it to the time despite all neglect and calumny. 
 He was assured of his economic independence, the 
 primal postulate of the other kinds of indepen 
 dence. He had both the leisure and the solitude to 
 yield himself freely to the immediate impress of 
 nature and deity, and to report the same as the 
 true content of his life s work. In his own house 
 at Concord, where he settled, he had taken a lofty 
 position, from which he could swoop down upon the 
 outlying earth, and especially upon adjacent unre- 
 ceptive Boston, capital of Philistia, as we may in 
 fer from repeated allusions as well as assaults. 
 Then he would return to his isolated perch for 
 fresh meditation and writing. His abode becomes 
 for him a Castle of Defiance, also a Fortress of Lib 
 erty, quite impregnable by any sort of hostile gun 
 nery or hunger. 
 
 Thus we set down the chief landmark in Emer- 
 
8 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 son s biography, the transition of the young man 
 info his middle life, into the time of his originality 
 and main achievement his Second Period, as w<3 
 shall name it, embracing quite three decades of his 
 activity. Antecedent to this landmark and leading 
 up to it rise Emerson s years of education at home 
 and at college, his training to his transmitted voca 
 tion till his falling out with it and flight abroad. 
 In general, this stage stresses his appropriation of 
 the traditional Past, against which, however, there 
 runs in him an ever-increasing protest all the way 
 up to downright revolt. At the same time through 
 this negative schooling he is slowly evolving into 
 his positive world-view or ultimate Idea, which he 
 is to proclaim to the ages from his perch of lofty 
 independence on his Castle of Defiance. 
 
 There remains the final or Third Period of Emer 
 son s life which he himself has indicated decisively 
 in his poem named Terminus. Under this title the 
 God of Metes and Bounds appears to him, com 
 manding "No more! No farther shoot thy ambi 
 tious branches and root." This was read to his 
 son in 1866; already the poet had felt he had 
 reached the last great turn of his career and cried 
 out 
 
 lit is time to be old, 
 To take in sail. 
 Economize the failing river, 
 Mature the unfallen fruit- 
 
 In such words Emerson takes a survey of his 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 time of life and declares what in general he is 
 henceforth to perform during his remaining days. 
 He states the character and content of his Third 
 Period, or that of his old-age, as distinct from his 
 middle or Second Period. Ho is to go back and 
 gather up what of his. harvest still lies scattered. 
 The time of creative power is past: "Fancy de 
 parts, no more invent. Let there now be a return 
 upon my former self, an era of collection and recol 
 lection, such as befits the graying hair of the sage. 
 
 Thus we glimpse the complete round of Emer 
 son s youth, manhood, and age, the compartments 
 of his life-cycle, with their corresponding pivotal 
 activities. Remember that it is the man himself 
 looking backward and feeling deeply the turning 
 nodes of his spirit, who thus draws his own life 
 lines and marks his Periods. Herein we may well 
 hear him giving a hint for his futtfre biography. 
 Moreover these three stages are to be seen finally as 
 one process of Emerson s soul imprinted on his 
 total achievement. Thus we may take up his last 
 meaning into our own existence, which in its spe 
 cial way is passing through the same spiritual 
 stages we too are to have our measured and ful 
 filled allotment of days and their works. 
 
 And now before advancing to details, we shall 
 seek to forecast in some general terms the pith of 
 Emerson s total accomplishment, up rearing a kind 
 of beacon to illumine our road to the end. Unto 
 what did he aspire, and how much did he fulfill? 
 If we catch the somewhat hidden but most intense 
 
10 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 and persistent throb passing through all of Emer 
 son s works, we cannot help feeling that the deep 
 est, strongest, indestructible aspiration of his heart 
 is to be poet, yea just the American poet, the singer 
 of the new-born Occident, the bard of a rising 
 world, which he glimpsed here in the seething West. 
 In his most intimate confessions which we hear in 
 an undertone through his earlier Journals and 
 Poems, he breathes forth his hopes, doubts, and de 
 spairs. And when in his Essays he turns to tell of 
 the high function of the poet and of poetry, to 
 which he is often inclined to make a digression, he 
 swells with an uplift and exuberance, which be 
 speak his keenest personal interest. As Homer 
 was the herald intoning the outset of the Euro 
 pean tide of the World s History, so Emerson 
 longed to be the voice singing the advent of a new 
 order and its aeon on this side of the globe. 
 
 But this his supreme aspiration was destined 
 not to be fulfilled, though we hearken sweet echoes 
 of it tingling in shreds of music all along his life s 
 meandering journey. Emerson was not architec 
 tonic in verse or in prose ; many beautifully carved 
 marbles were his, but somehow he never could build 
 them into a temple. Herein his God of Metes and 
 Bounds put upon him an impassable limit which 
 diverted the flow of Genius into another channel 
 whose manifold tortuosities are to be traced and 
 mapped in this life-essay of his, outlining the man 
 realized. 
 
 And yet the poetic fountain in Emerson s soul 
 
INTRODUCTION. H 
 
 was perennial, ever jetting its rainbowed .spray in 
 the /sunshine of his days till their close, and token 
 ing the many -h ued moods of his spirit s wrestling 1 
 in defeat and triumph. His poems are his most inti 
 mate commentary on himself; to us their chief 
 worth is that they show Emerson at his confes 
 sional. 
 
 Undoubtedly this lofty poetic ambition was Em 
 erson s profoundest response to his time and to his 
 people. Such a strong- spiritual aspiration of the 
 Western Continent for a universal singer lay deep 
 not only in him but in the New "World, and espe 
 cially in what may be deemed its most advanced 
 part at that time, New England. The hidden push 
 of the Time-spirit is what produced the brilliant 
 outbursts of poetic melodies, which during the mid 
 dle of the nineteenth century seemed to hover 
 around Boston. It is true that this literary output 
 was dispersed both in its creation and its creators ; 
 it could not concentrate itself into one overtower- 
 ing personality, or into a single great world-poem. 
 It never brought forth one of Time s eternally sing 
 ing Bibles, of which Europe acclaims at least four. 
 Still that scattered body of song both in its parts 
 and as a whole is the best poetic utterance we Amer 
 icans have had : so let not gratitude be stinted. 
 
 Here we may digress to note that Emerson has 
 still another ambition of great authorship which 
 streams through his whole life as a kind of ever- 
 present undercurrent, and which often bubbles up 
 suddenlv to the surface, esneeiallv in the secret self- 
 
12 IfALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 comnmiiings of, his Journal. Tie strove all his 
 days at intervals to write out his Prima Philoso- 
 phia/a philosophic scheme of the Universe. But 
 this plan never came to fruition, for the same 
 general reason that his poetic plan failed of ful 
 fillment. He lacked the structural gift; he could 
 gather and trim to beauty the separate native 
 materials, but could never erect their edifice. So 
 he became a great philosopher who never organ 
 ized his philosophy, as he is a great poet without 
 any complete poetic structure. How shall we 
 designate him? The poet-philosopher he has 
 been baptized, unique of kind and original in 
 speech and spirit at his highest only like unto 
 himself. 
 
 So we have to confine his genius to being 
 the seer, not the systematizer, discursively in 
 tuitional, not massively architectonic. His inborn 
 aloofness has often been noted and censured; he 
 was aware of it and made many a good resolu 
 tion to overcome it ; but he could not in nature 
 associate either his thoughts or himself. Hence 
 his literary as well as social manner, both of 
 which he aspired to transcend. Greatest native 
 glimpser of the eternal verities, but the least 
 organizer thereof he has often called up the 
 question which is the best way of their imparta- 
 tion. Each way has its fervent discipleship, but 
 both belong to the complete expression. Do not 
 disparage the unitary philosopher Hegel because 
 you lik? the sentential philosopher Emerson, as the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 latter sometimes unfortunately did ; in the last 
 synthesis both belong together, each is a side 
 or a half of a greater whole than either by him 
 self, which whole is or ought to be yours or in 
 deed you. Far-outstretching suggestions, intima 
 tions, prophecies are sown all over the Emerson 
 ian seedfield ; but the crop belongs to the future. 
 "Who will see it mature and gather it? Such is 
 the splendid gift of our author, enduringly crea 
 tive ; but such are also his confining limits, 
 against which we behold him chafing and break 
 ing till we read his life s postscript. 
 
 If then this supreme national, we might say 
 continental aspiration for a worthy utterance in 
 poetry and philosophy was not fulfilled by Emer 
 son, despite his intense longing and labor, and 
 not by any other of our metering and metaphy 
 sical artificers, nor by all of them together, what 
 then is his positive accomplishment in its essence ? 
 Can we turn our eye upon the very marrow of 
 his achievement? We soon are brought not only 
 to feel but to see that Emerson lived an all per 
 vasive unity both of thought and purpose a 
 unity which he reproduces and reiterates hun 
 dredfold through every phasis of his career: the 
 immediate efflux of the deity into the soul of 
 man, which it imbreathes with its one God-sent 
 spirit, endowing the same with a vast creative 
 multiformity. Emerson would withdraw from 
 the world of action and its struggles to his lonely 
 perch in his Concord abode, which was his 
 
14 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 Hermitage of Solitude as well as his Castle of 
 Defiance. There he would watch and nourish 
 the descent of the God into himself, carefully 
 noting in words the direct inspirations from 
 above. Then he would sheave and shock the 
 choicest spears of his supernal harvest into some 
 form of the Essay as his supreme utterance. 
 
 So Ve conceive Emerson, when he had gath 
 ered his divine crop of inspirations and wrought 
 them into a shape which could be handled and 
 imparted, to have descended into the world, and 
 especially into Boston, somewhat as the Upper 
 Power had descended into him with its sacred 
 evangel. For to his mind Boston remained till 
 the close of his days the chief looming fortress 
 to be captured, the grand citadel of the hosts of 
 the deniers who had first cast him off, and then 
 had harried and outraged him, upbraiding his 
 new Heaven-inspired message with a haughty 
 malediction. Especially its learned University 
 put him under ban, his Alma Mater thrust from 
 her spiritual embrace for nearly a generation her 
 greatest son. With time however there came 
 about an approach from both sides, ending in a 
 mutual reconciliation and acceptance one of the 
 healings of his remedial old-age, or Third Period. 
 
 Accordingly the genetic pulse-beat of Emer 
 son s career is religious, and throbs itself out 
 into two main lines: a militant negative strand, 
 and an affirmative doctrinal principle. He as 
 sailed all forms, dogmas, institutions, which lay 
 
INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 between the soul universal (sometimes called by 
 Mm the Oversoul) and the soul particular and 
 human. A dislike he showed for any mediating 
 influence, even for the Mediator himself, but 
 laid all stress upon the immediate, spontaneous, 
 inspirational activity. Such, then, is the unit of 
 his thought, the central sun of his spirit, out of 
 which radiate his chief distinctive writings. He 
 would bring us back to man s original, intui 
 tional, unobstructed communion with the divine 
 fountain-head. The variations upon this theme 
 wind through his entire career and mark the 
 stages of its development. And let it be added 
 that such a message was most needful for his 
 time and people, and it is by no means yet super 
 annuated. 
 
 At this point, then, it is in place to restate 
 somewhat more explicitly the three salient Peri 
 ods of Emerson s Biography putting stress 
 upon the Emersonian unit of thought as it un 
 folds through these different phases. 
 
 The First Period is his young manhood, during 
 which the religious chiefly, but also in part the 
 secular, tradition of his time is appropriated and 
 accepted, yet with an ever-increasing protest and 
 reaction against it till he breaks with it and as 
 serts his independence of form while affirming 
 the spirit. This w r e call the Apprenticeship of 
 Emerson. 
 
 The Second Period is his middle-age when he 
 becomes anti-traditional in religion with a strong 
 
16 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 polemic tendency, and is borne forward to an 
 tagonism against all institutional forms polit 
 ical, social, economic, even domestic. Thus he 
 universalizes his negative attitude to the relig 
 ious institution ; but he emphasizes still the posi 
 tive side of his doctrine inspiration, spontane 
 ity, the immediate God. This is the time of his 
 productive Genius, crowning him with his perma 
 nent literary worth and imparting his remedial 
 power the tonic Emerson, whose grand stimu 
 lating energy now lies in his anti-traditional 
 spirit. 
 
 The Third. Period is old-age (somewhat early 
 with Emerson) during which he shows signs of 
 reconciliation with tradition and its established 
 institutions, even if this new harmony of his be 
 not complete. Still he comes to think that the 
 transmitted form, especially that of the State, 
 may be the conduit of the down-flowing God, as 
 well as the individual. But his creativity is at 
 an end, he becomes largely a return upon his 
 once productive self, a reminiscence of his former 
 originality. So we may call him the reconciled 
 Emerson, as he rounds out his life s drama. 
 
 Such we prefigure to be the evolutionary 
 sweep of Emerson s innermost life-unit in its 
 triple round, the soul cf his soul in its ultimate 
 form and fulfillment. It is getting to be gener 
 ally conceded that Emerson is our greatest 
 scribe, our literary Great Man, who as his dis 
 tinctive vocation wrought the v/ritten word ere- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 17 
 
 atively, in truth our supreme Occidental pen-- 
 wielder. As such he is not only a worthy, but a 
 necessary object of study. 
 
 Emerson has often been designated not in 
 aptly as the modern or American seer. He isj in 
 accord with his deepest spiritual attribute, a 
 prophet ; and his prophecy at last turns back 
 upon himself, and prophesies just him, becoming 
 thus autobiographic at the very source of his 
 Genius. Plainly the prophetic limit is drawn 
 upon him, and he remains a forecast rather than 
 a fulfillment. In his highest vision he scatters 
 intimations of something beyond him, of a con 
 summation greater than he is. The oracle he 
 proclaims, not the performance ; hence he is nec 
 essarily somewhat ^matic, especially to those 
 who do not know beforehand what he means. 
 Not without a subtle self-foretelling did he poet 
 ize the Egyptian Sphinx, and place his riddle- 
 some poem as the prelude to his first book of 
 verse. Modern editors have removed the Orien 
 tal mojister, half man, half beast, from the door 
 way of his temple of song, and tucked it off 
 ^emewhere to one side. Still it is there in front, 
 /* and will not "away ; not removable by a mere 
 translocation. 
 
 Often we shall seek to raise to the light this 
 dark subterranean treasure of presage and pre 
 sentiment in Emerson, and even to suggest at 
 times some outline or perchance order of what 
 his dispersed vision is trying to foreshow. He 
 
18 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 frequently hints that he is more prescience than 
 science, more anticipation than realization, more 
 the precursor than the accomplisher, more har 
 binger than harvester in fine a John the Bap 
 tist, whom who is to come after? 
 
 Into one kind or form of writ he evolves at 
 his culmination, the Essay, which is not merely 
 Emersonian but Emerson, yea the sublimated, 
 quintessential Emerson, distilled and concen 
 trated from the less ripened or more diluted 
 drops trickling from the writer s brain-pan 
 along a line of many years. The Essay grew to 
 be the most intimate and purest expression of 
 Emerson s soul-world, acclaiming the supreme 
 marriage of his Poetry and Philosophy in one 
 happy household. 
 
 Emerson is, accordingly, in his spiritual sov 
 ereignty the Essayist; indeed we might call him 
 as a whole the Essay, which thus rises the all- 
 irradiating luminary over his entire Biography. 
 So it comes that we have given to our book the 
 name of Essay, after Emerson s cardinal work 
 and excellence, which name may also hint his 
 discursive and even his prophetic character, as 
 he foreshortens in quick sketchy dashes things 
 yet to be consummated. Moreover this attempt 
 of ours seeks to embrace his whole career from 
 start to finish, hence the added title Emerson s 
 Life-Essay. 
 
Emerson s Apprenticeship. 
 
 (1803-1835.) 
 
 Apprenticeship we designate the First Period 
 of Emerson, whose function is now to get ac 
 quainted with the prescribed world into which he 
 was born, and with which he is to build the fore 
 court of his life s temple. Apprenticed he now is 
 to acquire the transmitted means of the culture 
 of his time ; he has to be reared and educated 
 after the pattern handed down, and to be trained 
 to an ancestral vocation ; thus the present Period 
 is essentially his Apprenticeship to Tradition. He 
 must at first get hold of the educative instrumen 
 talities of his own and his age s evolution, in or 
 der to transcend them and to rise into his unique 
 individual fulfillment. 
 
 Somewhere about thirty-two years does this 
 preliminary task occupy him, from his birth till 
 
 19 
 
20 RALPH WALDO EMERSONPART FIRST. 
 
 his second marriage, and settlement at Concord. 
 Manifestly this is a time of outer preparation and 
 inner discipline for his supreme work, which is 
 to follow. Moreover he wins through this expe 
 rience his distinctive world-view which he will 
 afterwards apply to many subjects. It is also a 
 movement from dependence on the past to inde 
 pendence in thought and conduct ; from prescrip 
 tive observance he slowly stiffens to individual 
 self-reliance, his favorite category. In general he 
 unfolds from an outer commanded soul to an in 
 ner liberated spirit, and starts to express this 
 new-won liberty both in its positive and negative 
 aspect. And let us not forget for he never for 
 got it that God-sent gift of economic liber ty, 
 that primal enfranchisement from life s first 
 needs, the free gift of freedom s very condition, 
 which he received gratis at the close of his Ap 
 prenticeship. A reward of the past we may value 
 it, and still more an earnest of the future. 
 
 We are, however, to note with due care that 
 Avhile he is traveling through this realm of pre 
 scription, there runs alongside it or rather under 
 neath it an ever-increasing stream of protest and 
 of denial quite parallel. Still this opposition is 
 never boisterous, but rather secretive, at least in 
 its earlier stages ; such dissent seems a steady 
 quiet growth of an original seed-corn, till it finally 
 bursts its bud into the full flower. A deeply 
 negative germ lurks in Emerson quite from the 
 beginning ; he was a born skeptic in certain di- 
 
EMERSON S APPRENTICESHIP. 21 
 
 rections, hence his youthful love of Montaigne, 
 who fed an inner native hunger. The challenger 
 of the inherited beliefs must not be left out of 
 his boyhood. Still Emerson never gets to be a 
 fire-breathing world-stormer in frantic revolt, 
 never a human volcano in his destructive erup 
 tion against the established order, never a mad 
 dened Byron, never a youthful Goethe or Marlow 
 in mighty upheaval. 
 
 It is a peculiar trait of Emerson that he leaves 
 the impression of classic placidity on the surface, 
 even of a restful imperturbability when his agi 
 tation is most furious underneath. So it comes 
 that he appears a rather smooth young Titan, 
 venting his Titanic mood of rebellion against the 
 old Gods in classic ease. Emerson was endowed 
 by nature with a reposeful exterior and serenity 
 in the midst of hottest battle. In his mother s 
 household he seems never to have been subjected 
 to any violent repression of his youthful effer 
 vescences, which often rouses the boy s out 
 break; domestic tyranny was apparently quite 
 absent from the home s authority. Perhaps the 
 deeper and more internal was fermenting his op 
 position, which finally broke forth into the voice 
 of denial and turned to a far-sounding clarion of 
 war. "A trip-hammer with an Eolian attach 
 ment" has become one of his proverbs; still, in 
 his case it was hardly the hammer which struck 
 the strings of the harp, but the soft breath of 
 the breeze. External manners remained to the 
 
22 RALPH WALDO EMERSONPART FIRST. 
 
 last a kind of sedative for the interior heat of a 
 soul set on fire. Emerson s lawlessness was won 
 derfully placid, even lawful ; the sweetest-tem 
 pered Anarch he would appear as his defiant 
 words fell hissing-hot from his lips. But all this 
 is the ripened frurt of his Second Period, into 
 which his Apprenticeship is to unfold. 
 
 A life of drifting was this First Period for 
 Emerson; the family moved a number of times, 
 the home and its inmates changed frequently, 
 the young man s employments varied consider 
 ably, finally he took a trip abroad. To these 
 outer shiftings there corresponded inner fluctua 
 tions, and he found no anchorage till his Ap 
 prenticeship was over, when he settled at Con 
 cord, and his indenture to Tradition expired. 
 But through all these mutations the cultural 
 strand was never broken, he clung to his ideal, 
 so often called by him through life "the Scholar," 
 the creative master of the printed page and its 
 manifold contents. He never sank himself into 
 business or any special profession, though he 
 tried several; even his traditional vocation he 
 threw up after a brief experience. A tentative 
 life this Period seems, circling over the earth till 
 he settles down upon his perch at Concord. 
 
 Still this unanchored time, lasting quite a gen 
 eration of years and overflowing with a diversity 
 of experiences, has its salient crises constituting 
 subordinate groups of events, which we shall call 
 by the special name of Epochs. Accordingly we 
 
EMERSON S APPRENTICESHIP. 3 
 
 intend to mark with decision the epochal turns in 
 Emerson s career, as well as their large inclusive 
 sweeps already entitled Periods. Thus we strive 
 to keep before the reader s mind the capital joints 
 in the organism of Emerson s life, which is verily 
 universal, as is the human framework, and which, 
 therefore, bears the impress of all biography, reveal 
 ing the common structure of the same in its unitary 
 process. Let us repeat this integrating -thought : in 
 the biographic revelation of the Emersonian one 
 self we are to see the image and the movement of 
 the All-Self ; thus is man approved the child of the 
 Universe, bearing in his spirit its seal of creation. 
 
 In pursuance of such a plan we shall mark down 
 in advance the three lesser turns or links of the 
 chain which interlocks the First Period into one 
 complete round of Emerson s evolution: these are 
 its three Epochs. 
 
 I. His Traditional Schooling, which follows the 
 scholastic precedents of the time ; he runs in the old 
 academic groove, and so passes his educational and 
 professional novitiate which concludes with his 
 ordination into a prescribed ministry. (1803-1829.) 
 
 IT. His first grand Breach, which takes place 
 against his transmitted calling; its sweep moves 
 from his acceptance of to his alienation from his 
 traditional world a tremendous spiritual Explo 
 sion reverberating through his whole life. (1829- 
 1832.) 
 
 III. His Flight and Return his voyage of self- 
 overcoming arid the finrlinsr of h s true vocation 
 
24 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 all of which may be summed up as his Recovery, in 
 which he is also schooled to Tradition by his trip to 
 the European Past, (1832-1835.) 
 
 Thus rounds out his Apprenticeship with the ces 
 sation of his drifting 1 , with the stability of a home, 
 and with the winning of his world-view. These 
 decisive nodes of his First Period we shall empha 
 size in the three following Chapters. 
 
 I am well aware that this somewhat minute and 
 purposed ordering of such a spontaneous and seem 
 ingly irregular growth as is a human life, will be 
 regarded in certain quarters as too schematic and 
 artificial, perchance as forced and fantastic. And 
 Emerson following his native push for sudden sep 
 arate glimpses, and putting chief stress upon imme 
 diate atomic inspirations, can be cited for many a 
 fling at organized thought. Still in his deeper mo 
 ments he was well aware of his own life s essential 
 turning-points, and we shall take occasion to quote 
 Emerson himself censuring his native lack of a 
 pervasive order, and even suggesting his own 
 stages. The more superficial conscious Emerson 
 could be quite an ardent wooer of chaos, while the 
 deeper unconscious Emerson was indwelt of the cos 
 mos w r hose far-flashing imagery he often wields, and 
 whose universal harmony was his constant longing. 
 
 As already indicated, for nearly a generation of 
 years he was serving his Apprenticeship during 
 which his task was to assimilate "the old carcass 
 of tradition", as he afterward called it with a 
 somewhat upturned nose at its ageing decay. Still 
 
EMERSON S APPRENTICESHIP. 25 
 
 it was his germinal time oi planting and nursing 
 the seeds and indeed sprouts of all the fruit which 
 the full-grown tree afterward bore. It was his 
 baptism in the fount of past experience, the long 
 testful search to find his true vocation, the win 
 ning of his basic viewpoint which he is to realize in 
 word and deed, during the coming Second Period. 
 Prospective, potential, acquisitional but let us 
 forward. 
 
CHAPTER FIRST 
 
 Traditional Schooling- 
 Emerson s prescriptive training may be con 
 ceived to last till the close of his academic and 
 theological course; that is, till he was ordained 
 with due ceremony as the regular minister of the 
 Second Unitarian Church of Boston in 1829. 
 This rather long First Epoch of Emerson s 
 career, lasting as it does some twenty-six years, 
 indicates the steadiness if not the slowness of his 
 mental growth. Pie obtained the customary ad 
 vantages of a Boston education, though his fam 
 ily was poor, even at times poverty-cursed to the 
 point of lacking food and raiment. Probably no 
 boy of his day had a better chance at learning, 
 and it was no cause of harm that he had to give 
 some effort of his own to his mind s garden, and 
 to endure some privation. 
 
 Ralph "Waldo Emerson was born on the 25th 
 of May, 1803 in the old parish-house of the First 
 Unitarian Church of Boston, of which his father 
 had been minister at that date some four years. 
 The latter, the Reverend William Emerson, was 
 in turn the son of a minister also called William, 
 who was located at Concord where he built the 
 Old Manse, world-famous in letters and in war, 
 for beside housing distinguished writers, it had 
 
 26 
 
TRADITIONAL SCHOOLING. 27 
 
 overlooked the battle-field of Concord on the 
 memorable nineteenth day of April, 1775. And 
 on the same day it saw the flash of that verily 
 time-defying super-natural shot from an old 
 squirrel gun which was " heard round the 
 world," and has been shooting ever since, par 
 ticularly in Yankeeland. The same Reverend 
 William Emerson, the grandfather, was a per- 
 fervid rebel in the cause of the American Revo 
 lution; so consuming was his revolt that he quit 
 his pastorate at Concord the very next month 
 after the Declaration of Independence seemingly 
 almost as soon as the news had arrived from Phila 
 delphia and hastened to join the army at Ticon- 
 deroga as chaplain, where he died shortly after 
 ward of camp-fever. No wonder that young 
 Waldo Emerson, after a good deal of wandering, 
 will at last gravitate to that ancestral atmosphere 
 of Concord for his abiding inspiration. It is 
 sometimes said that the child inherits more from 
 the grandfather than from his immediate par 
 ents ; if so, Emerson was born a preacher, a 
 scholar, and a revolutionist. 
 
 Nor must we forget another item in the mental 
 outfit of this notable grandfather. He was a man 
 of literary cultivation and creation; he not only 
 read other people s poetry, but made some of 
 his own, of which he failed not to have a good 
 opinion. On his way to the battle-front he broke 
 naturally into verse in which he saw "the out 
 lines of a fine rhymester," possibly a foreshow in 
 
28 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 himself of his distinguished grandson. He even 
 indicates in a letter the fatal circumstance (not 
 very clear to us now) but for which "I m not 
 sure I should have been a considerable poet." 
 Such is the distant gleam of him preservd to 
 the future by Mr. Cabot, Emerson s biographer. 
 Accordingly in the early Schooling of Emerson 
 we are not to leave out the tradition of kinship 
 which he breathed from his infancy. His Fam 
 ily, present and past, was his soul s first environ 
 ment, and remained his most influential institu 
 tion, though he often, revolter that he was, reacted 
 against its influence, and could even deny its 
 validity in extreme moments. Still the domestic 
 tradition with its line of semi-heroic forbears 
 kept the deepest hold upon him, when every other 
 sort of tradition, religious, political, economic, 
 social, educational, had been battered at in 
 thought, and by him largely trampled underfoot. 
 However, there was always left a loop-hole 
 through which the institution might be at last 
 rescued : that universal safety-valve variously 
 called by him the Moral Sentiment, the Divine 
 Efflux, the Soul s Inspiration, the Supernal Judge 
 within, to whose dictatorship alone Emerson con 
 fessed obedience. No other autocracy or even 
 authority he in his doctrine allowed. 
 
ANCESTRY. 29 
 
 I. 
 
 ANCESTRY 
 
 It is the theme which the students of Emerson 
 must first grapple with : he is swathed round and 
 round with ancestral memories reaching back six 
 generations and confined practically to the one 
 spot where the first progenitor settled. This was 
 the Reverend Peter Bulkeley, of ancient family 
 and considerable property in England, who was 
 educated at the University of Cambridge, and, be 
 coming a clergyman, was silenced for refusing to 
 conform to the Anglican Church. Whereupon he 
 quit the old country for New England in 1634 
 (hence he was not on board of the Mayflower) 
 and pushed from the seacoast through the woods 
 to Musketaquid, which savage rollicking Indian 
 name he turned into docile Concord. There he, 
 the first and greatest non-conformist of his blood, 
 preached the primitive gospel unde filed by his 
 toric rites and dogmas, preluding the key-note of 
 his illustrious descendant, Ralph Waldo, some two 
 centuries later. Moreover he too employed the 
 printed page, and wrote one of the earliest books 
 of New England. A strong figure, gigantic 
 though hazy of outline, he uprears in the dawn 
 of a new civilization. 
 
 Such, then, was the family s first great ances 
 tral break from native land and established re 
 ligion, which indeed may be taken as a type of 
 the time s movement, The life of the Puritan has 
 
30 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 percolated through history in a line of daring con 
 flicts with England, with the Ocean, with the 
 Indian, with the French, with the climate; at the 
 same time especially raged the collision w T ith him 
 self and with his neighbor of a different con 
 science. But most deeply in him thrilled his 
 political revolt from the mother-country with its 
 consequent letting of kindred blood during the 
 American Revolution. All this separative, rebel 
 lious history lay in the Emerson breed, was a part 
 of the. Emerson household, a strain of the Emer 
 son consciousness. The boy Waldo from his in 
 fancy must have been suckled on the ancestral 
 spirit of his family revealed at the recurring 
 crises of its soul-testing experiences. The women 
 of the house knew its story as well as the men, 
 and told it more sympathetically to the listening 
 youths who were chiefly under their care at home. 
 Particularly his aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, ex 
 pert to the last atom on genealogical lore, Waldo 
 Emerson has crowned with an evergreen garland 
 of his fame-giving speech. 
 
 The attention to the ancestral past is character 
 istic of New England, and herein Emerson is tlv> 
 true child of his section. To be sure, all the old 
 colonial territory, Northern as well Southern, i ( ; 
 addicted to the same tendency. Th.e family-tree is 
 still the most highly cultivated vegetable in Yankee- 
 land, and the Emersonian specimen of it is no ex 
 ception. Doubtless offshoots .have migrated to the 
 and thereby have relaxed if not lost their con- 
 
ANCESTRY. 3} 
 
 nection with the old stock. But the main trunk of 
 Emerson s family remained rooted in the soil of 
 Concord and its environs for more than two hun 
 dred years, just while the vast stream of migration 
 was swirling over the Alleghanies into the Missis 
 sippi Valley. But neither Emerson nor any of his 
 direct forbears ever took part in that most consid 
 erable nation-evolving movement of American his 
 tory. That one primordial deed of old Peter Bulk- 
 eley in quitting his native sod and in grappling 
 with the pioneer s life and its stalwart training, 
 seems to have been enough for all his descendants in 
 the line down to our Emerson, for they could not be 
 brought to repeat it in spite of the tense allure 
 ment of an adventure similar to the heroic pattern, 
 but not equal. Thus on the one traditional spot 
 they kept up the long tradition of the family defi 
 ant of Tradition. For this reason we have to think 
 that Emerson, though of course a born American, 
 was never completely Americanized ; he never went 
 through the most characteristic and formative ex 
 perience of his native country not he, nor his 
 father nor his father s fathers up to their apostle 
 Peter, also bearing Heaven s keys, who was their 
 first, and in truth their only pioneer, as well as 
 their most daring denier of prescription. The re 
 sult was Emerson never shared in the town-build 
 ing and the state-making, which formed the su 
 preme institutional discipline of the men who 
 moved to the West. He received his nation, state, 
 and distinctively his community as gifts from his 
 
32 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 ancestors; he never had to create nor yet to re 
 create the social order around him and .above him. 
 Possibly it was for this reason that he felt some 
 what averse to it, and hardly appreciated its sig 
 nificance in the new world s training. His social 
 istic and at times even anarchic bent was in part 
 his reaction against political and economic as well 
 as religious forms which had been imposed upon 
 him from without by a centuried inheritance. To 
 be sure he protested against Tradition, but he never 
 would quit his traditional world. 
 
 It may be also added that Emerson during his 
 entire life till the Civil War showed a singular 
 aloofness from the governing powers and the de 
 velopment of the total country. He has nothing 
 distinctive to say of the Constitution and the 
 Union and their founders, nothing of the great Vir 
 ginians who administered the republic in its in 
 fancy and made it a marching success. George 
 Washington even is not one of his Representative 
 Men, for all of whom he goes to Europe in his 
 book. In fact New England, especially Emerson s 
 Boston, was more active and whole-hearted in the 
 destruction of the old order than in the construc 
 tion of the new. She threw the tea overboard as her 
 typical deed, good as far as it went, but not cre 
 ative. She sulked after the Revolution over the 
 Southern dominance and talked of another separa 
 tion, with perchance a new cargo of tea thrown 
 overboard. Herein Emerson was sympathetic with 
 his section. Tn his Diary he has little but sneers 
 
ANCESTRY. 33 
 
 for the rulers of the land, seeing their weaknesses, 
 but hardly appreciating their great positive work, 
 its difficulties and its successes. 
 
 Hence we have to confess that Emerson, our 
 greatest literary man, has not given expression to 
 the Nation as such in its entirety ; provincial he re 
 mained during his best years, a New Englander in 
 his highest utterance, and it is from this view-point 
 that we have to consider him in his supremacy, yea, 
 in his universality, for he in his way has raised to 
 universal import his limited New England. Still 
 it should not be forgotten that Emerson was nation 
 alized by the mighty upheaval of 1860, though he 
 was then past his creative period, and was slowly 
 sinking into the eclipse of his noontide powers. 
 Hence he has left no adequate expression of this 
 stage of his development ; he no longer could bring 
 to bloom the original flower of his Genius. To use 
 his own image, the God Terminus had cailed his 
 limit. 
 
 Thus Emerson has a deep ever-flowing undercur 
 rent, not exactly of ancestral worship, but of an 
 cestral over-lordship, and perchance somewhat of 
 the prejudice of the clan very human and not un 
 lovely in his case. He, the foremost foe of tradi 
 tion, still remains traditional in his town-life and 
 in his kin-life, to both of which we shall find him 
 recurring with proud celebration at intervals all his 
 days. One of his deeper life-lines is this, distinctly 
 to be limned, but not to be blackened. 
 
34 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 THE PARENTAL HOME 
 
 It is recorded that "William Emerson, the son of 
 the Revolutionary William Emerson of Concord, 
 already mentioned, and also minister, was married 
 "to the pious and amiable Ruth Haskins" of Bos 
 ton, in 1796. The young clergyman was trans 
 ferred three years later from a poor living in the 
 country to a wealthier church in Boston, where he 
 remained till his death in 1811. It would seem 
 that he was a man of good but not distinguished 
 parts, doing his work acceptably to a somew r hat 
 critical constituency, hardly rising above the trans 
 mitted level, and not sinking below it. His name is 
 dug up from the oblivion of old records and is 
 spoken to-day, because he was father to an undy 
 ing son, who reflected upon his parents a gleam of 
 his own immortality. 
 
 Still for the sake of that son, the most striking 
 fact in the father s life should be set down. He 
 has left in writing that he intended to quit the 
 rather close Boston life and move to "Washington 
 where he would establish what may be called a Free 
 Church "in which there was to be no written ex 
 pression of faith," quite without dogma, "and no 
 subscription to articles"; then in such an enfran 
 chised atmosphere he would "administer the ritu 
 als of Christianity to all who would observe them 
 without any profession except such observance." 
 A daring leap, which he did not and could not take 
 
THE PARENTAL HOME. 35 
 
 at that time and iu that place; but later his son 
 Waldo will take it even in Boston ; with what 
 epoch-turning consequences will hereafter be told. 
 Just now we shall simply mark the prophetic 
 thought of the young preacher William Emerson 
 forecasting in purpose the deed which his heir, 
 natural and spiritual, will realize. 
 
 The father in the midst of his ripest activity 
 passed away at the age of forty-two, leaving to the 
 mother the care and education as well as the phys 
 ical maintenance of five boys, the eldest of whom 
 was hardly ten years old. Friends gave help, still 
 she had to keep boarders and largely did her own 
 work, with the aid of her children. Thus Waldo 
 Emerson as a boy had his training in kitchen prac 
 tice, even in washing dishes. It is handed down 
 that the family was sometimes actually without 
 food, when Aunt Mary Moody Emerson would 
 nerve up the boys by "stories of heroic endurance." 
 Raiment too fell short, when Waldo and his brother 
 Edward had but one great-coat between them for 
 protection against the fierce New England winter. 
 Still all the children went to school and gained a 
 Bosto n education, probably then the best of the 
 kind anywhere. This severe discipline of early pov 
 erty wove a telling strain of experience into Emer 
 son s subsequent life. He knew the value of eco 
 nomic freedom to the man who wishes to follow his 
 own supreme call. Precious frugality at the start 
 taught him the lesson of true independence. When 
 later he established his fortress at Concord, it could 
 
36 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 never be starved into capitulation by any adverse 
 stroke of fate. 
 
 Thus Emerson s early schooling was bravely 
 fought for, and had to be won against the grip of 
 hunger upon his throat. That furious wrestle with 
 spare diet during his growing years would seem to 
 have left its permanent mark upon his physical sys 
 tem. Did he not always have, like the thinker Cas- 
 sius, a lean and hungry look? Whatever be the 
 cause, all the rest of the children drooped gradually 
 graveward, except Waldo and an elder brother. 
 And Waldo during his young-manhood appears 
 more or less of an invalid, who was at last forced 
 to take an ocean voyage which not only rescued him 
 to health but indurated him to exposure and labor, 
 till at last all-releasing old-age covered him over 
 with its No More. 
 
 When he had reached ten years, Waldo entered 
 the Boston Latin School with a boy s eager look 
 forward to Harvard College. But in 1814 Hunger s 
 clutch pressed still tighter, the cause being the war 
 with Great Britain whose cruisers cut off supplies 
 by sea. Flour rose to seventeen dollars a barrel, 
 and other provisions in proportion. The result was 
 that the family had to flee to the country and was 
 domiciled at Concord for a year with the kindred 
 there. That straitened household produces in the 
 reader an uncanny feeling of an ever-present short 
 coming of life s necessaries, which is planting the 
 seeds of the family s looming tragedy. From such 
 a fate, however, young Waldo, after much suffering 
 
MARY MOODY EMERSON. 37 
 
 and anxiety through a good many clouded years, is 
 happily ransomed. But amid the stress and dis 
 tress of this strenuous life-battle rises the form of 
 a stalwart woman, Aunt Mary, already mentioned, 
 who brings much inspiration and some cash to those 
 sinking hearts. To her let an appreciative word be 
 consecrated. 
 
 III. 
 MARY MOODY EMERSON 
 
 The aunt of Waldo Emerson, sister of his father, 
 born in 1775, deserves to have her features chiseled 
 and her bust set up in a prominent niche of her 
 nephew s biography. Through his life-long diary, 
 besown everywhere with his soul s seeds, he often 
 bids us glimpse the. all-coercive form of his aunt 
 Mary, and hear her moulding thoughts as well as 
 her pounding words. Out of dozens of similar sen 
 tences, let the following one from his later life be 
 selected, as typical : She must always occupy a 
 saint s place in my household ; and I have no hour 
 of poetry or philosophy, since I knew these things, 
 into which she does not enter as a genius." Thus 
 his chief spiritual realms are originally hers. . 
 
 She is, accordingly, acclaimed the Muse of that 
 peculiar Emersonian composite of religion, poetry 
 and philosophy the three interfused elements of 
 his nature and of his achievement. To him she was 
 the towering personality of the family present and 
 past for two centuries. To be sure, the competition 
 
38 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 before he came was not great ; no ancestor ever rose 
 much above the average level of local fame; a na 
 tional reputation cannot be found uprearing along 
 the line of worthy and learned ministers. She was 
 the one genius of the entire kinship old and new. 
 Thus the supremely inspired one of the -blood, the 
 best representative of the creative effluence from 
 above was a woman. 
 
 She stood in close formative relation to Emerson 
 and his brothers, when they all were young and in 
 the process cf being educated. Into their tradi 
 tional schooling she injected an original strain, an 
 elemental power of her own. She even wrote the 
 boys prayers, and these * still sound in my ear with 
 their prophetic and apocalyptic ejaculations," con 
 fessed the prophet Emerson many years later. And 
 the young preacher Emerson emphasizes that 
 "when I came to write sermons for my church," 
 the chief source drawn upon was "my remembrance 
 of her conversation and letters." He had but to 
 repeat the lofty dictations cf her spirit. In 1837 he 
 wrote of her : " The depth of the religious senti 
 ment which I knew in my Aunt Mary, imbuing all 
 her genius . . . was itself a culture, an educa 
 tion." Decidedly docs he ascribe to her first dis 
 cipline the divine descent and overflow permeating 
 all his writings. 
 
 Still Emerson did not accept her doctrine in full. 
 She was for him but an outlet tapping strait-coated 
 ancient Puritanism and letting it flow into loose- 
 zoned modern Liberalism. An intermediary he de- 
 
MARY MOODY EMERSON. 39 
 
 scribes her (1837) : "The genius of that woman, 
 the key to her life is in the conflict of the old and 
 new ideas in New England." She clung to both 
 sides, overarching them, and conjoining them even 
 in their strife, and thus she became a bridge for her 
 nephew, undoubtedly her spiritual son, who could 
 thereby pass over into his appointed heritage. That 
 turned out for the man also God s bridge from 
 Heaven to Earth, across which he travels hundreds 
 of times, telling then of his journey. Ultimately it 
 is just this trip which he describes in his writings, 
 and he first heard it told at Aunt Mary s knee in 
 all the rapture of a poetic imagination. 
 
 However, the divine seeress had her devil, as 
 usual. Hear again her reporter s record : She was 
 "the heir cf whatever was rich and profound in 
 the old religion, yet with her passionate piety was 
 coupled "the fatal gift cf penetration," which 
 landed her into denial, "and she was thus a reli 
 gious skeptic a combination which we shall often 
 note in her soul s child, "Waldo. Listen to another 
 of his repetitions: "She held on with both hands 
 to the faith cf the past generation . . . yet all 
 the time she doubted and denied it" she too being 
 dragged hellward by the fiend Mephistopheles. 
 Hence there runs an infernal streak through her 
 diary, -as when she cries out in despair: "I have 
 given up, the last year cr two, the hope of dying" 
 verily an echo of the thunder-borne Dantesque 
 ejaculation of the doomed : Leave ye all hope be 
 hind. She persisted for years in having her bed 
 
40 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 made in the form of a coffin, which haunted her 
 also in daytime, since she would see its image cast 
 on the sidewalk before her from a neighboring 
 church steeple. Unique Calvanistic power of that 
 religious structure, was it not? Even her shroud 
 she made which grisly old Death refused to use, and 
 so she took it for a night-gown or a day-gown or 
 even a riding-gown on horseback, until it was worn 
 out. "Then she had another made up," lectures 
 her spirit s fosterling, Emerson, about her in his 
 late life, and further caps his eulogy : "I believe 
 she wore out a great many." In ghoulish glee for 
 the grave s imagery she puts Heine to flight, invok 
 ing her. own. rotten corpse : . " dear worms, how 
 : they will some sure time take down this tedious 
 tabernacle, most valuable companions, by gnawing 
 :~away the meshes which have chained "my" mind ! 
 .No. wonder-Emerson thought of Dante s Inferno in 
 -i^eaxiing some of her grewsome outbursts, And we 
 "may here note a difference in manner and power of 
 expression. Emerson never wrote in such a vol- 
 "cania style, he was too measured and classic ; but 
 Aunt Mary often overflowed into a lava-stream of 
 Carlylese before Carlyle. She could in the mood 
 dam-ii all creation, -impartially - including herself : 
 -"-Folly follows me as/the shadow does. the. form.-" 
 - . v:Yery unexpected : is the reader s meeting with 
 such a Titanic character in the Emersonian kinship. 
 A more original elemental thrust of Nature lay in 
 her than in Emerson himself. But it seems she 
 could not brinsr into shape the outpour of her rule- 
 
MARY MOODY EMERSON. 41 
 
 less energies; she began and ended with a sort of 
 germinal chaos in writ and speech, void of any 
 plastic gift. But such primordial manna appears 
 to have been the best aliment for the growing talent 
 of Emerson; indeed we may judge from his state 
 ments that he often went back to take fresh creative 
 draughts from this first fountain of his Genius. She 
 too kept a Diary, out of which he records himself 
 sipping with Bacchic exaltation. 
 
 In spite of her courtship of Death s horrors 
 the only courtship she ever indulged in, for the woo 
 ing of a living man she would not tolerate, and so 
 she remained a peripatetic nun of Puritanism 
 she persisted in clinging to hated life some eighty- 
 eight years. But age could not wither her or stale 
 her flamboyant powers, and hence Thoreau s exal 
 tation : Miss Mary Emerson is here, the youngest 
 person in Concord, though about eighty." Albeit 
 Emerson calls Death "the Muse of her genius," 
 with whom was yoked an inspired Poverty, still both 
 these friends knew how to slip from her eager 
 clutch, and escaped for long from her loving hug. 
 A female Prometheus affined to the old order yet 
 defiant of it she would allow nobody to - abuse 
 her dear New England Galvanism but herself. She 
 quarreled with her budding nephew Waldo for his 
 Transcendentalism, yet she was transcendental be 
 fore him and really taught him. Most fantastical 
 of human specimens, she would burn up in her 
 scoffs Emerson s fantasticalities, "his high airy 
 speculations," which were her own, though a good 
 
i2 RALPH WALDO ^-PERSONPART FTRST. 
 
 deal trimmed. And so she roamed boarding around 
 and falling out with her board over a good part of 
 New England. 
 
 As her much-wooed suitor Death did not marry 
 her and with her take the wedding-trip to dusky 
 Dis, till 1863, she must have seen the rise and the 
 culmination of her illustrious nephew s greatness. 
 He has ennobled her with many lofty, even if in 
 consistent titles Muse, Genius, Sybil, Saint, 
 Prophetess, and the bodeful Cassandra. She was 
 like him an insatiable Diarist, scribbling "endless 
 diaries whose central theme is her relation to the 
 Divine Being" which is not far away from his 
 central theme also. Moreover she was the deposi 
 tory of the f amity s sacred folk-lore, the store of 
 "hoarded traditions," transmitted orally and 
 piously recounting "so many godly lives and godly 
 deaths of sainted kindred from the earliest settle 
 ment of the savage land the unprinted Lives of the 
 Saints, a Book of Puritan Martyrology recalling 
 with sympathy the miraculous interventions of 
 Providence and the raptures of the expiring breath 
 of the Blessed. All this sacred material of family 
 tradition was hers she being its special custodian 
 and dispenser. 
 
 And here it should be added that Aunt Mary was 
 a furious believer in war s fury, proclaiming her 
 self Death s very Muse and disdaining the senti 
 mental mushiness of the Lord s pacificism. Mili 
 tant she was in her own right ; her life seemed one 
 long campaign of many pitched battles mid much 
 
MARY MOODY EMERSON. 43 
 
 marching and counter-marching, while war s alar 
 ums resounded about her wherever she camped. 
 
 More than in any other personality was Emer 
 son inclined to see in her his distinctive selfhood 
 foreshowing his doctrine like a female John the 
 Baptist. Rather gingerly he lets out his secret con 
 viction, inasmuch as "I sometimes fancy I detect 
 in her writings . . . her organic dislike to any 
 interference, any mediation between her and the 
 Author of her being" she really rejects the divine 
 Mediator, though she pays "courtly and polite 
 homage to the name and dignity of Jesus. Verily 
 she, though madly denying it,, was the herald of 
 Emersonianism in advance of Emerson, whom we 
 shall find to the last the disliker, yea the antagonist 
 of the Christian idea of Mediation on this side a 
 kind of Christian Antichrist. Her solitary indi 
 vidual life he celebrated as if quite like his own ;.as 
 hers, so is his supreme relation that of "the alone 
 to the Alone." 
 
 Emerson it would seem by his passing allusions, 
 must have read a good deal in his Aunt. Mary s 
 Diary, of which he absorbed not a little into his 
 own. A vast creative protoplasm it appears, quite 
 formless but perchance formable; -he took it and 
 wrought it over after his own impress. .. We surmise 
 that his Journals likewise were influenced by hers, 
 not imitated, but prompted. For his too are 
 protoplasmic, showing the first gushes of his cre 
 ative work, these being afterwards elaborated into 
 
44 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 his higher literary forms, such as the Essay and the 
 Address. 
 
 A demonic character we have to conceive her, 
 with a strain of Promethean revolt ever seeking to 
 burst her transmitted Puritanic fetters; yet ever 
 finding herself chained to the adamant of the New 
 England Caucasus. The most influential figure in 
 Emerson s early environment we may regard her, 
 and the most colossal in native power, if we dare 
 look at her through his eyes. As I read him, he 
 deemed her genius mightier than his own, though 
 quite unbalanced, deeply disordered, and hence im 
 possible of corresponding fruition. More Titanic. 
 more elemental in cosmic energy than he could be, 
 but he was gifted with order, with industry, with 
 Yankee common-sense to sober his God-coercing 
 idealism. But she was in her very magnitude an 
 enormous grotesque really a comic character. 
 Hence Emerson with all his admiration could say 
 of her end : And when at last her release arrived, 
 the event of her death had really such a comic 
 tinge in the eyes of every one who knew her that her 
 friends feared, they might at her funeral" do 
 what laugh. 
 
 -Emerson s Aunt Mary seems for a time to .have 
 been, supplanted by another. woman-character quite 
 as overtowering. but more efficacious rMargaret 
 Fuller, also a right Titaness in revolt against Zeus 
 and the established Olympian order. She became 
 closely interwrought with Emerson s most creative 
 Epoch (1835-1845). as he narrates the fact, and 
 
EMER80X AT COLLEGE. 45 
 
 did much, probably the most, for the propagation 
 of his message. "We are inclinded to believe that 
 the strongest personalities in Emerson s nearer en 
 vironment were these two women. Name the man 
 of his circle who was the equal of either in the gift 
 of original, elemental genius. But both lacked the 
 gift of formative expression, perchance through 
 their revolt against transmitted form. Emerson 
 has written biographies of both. 
 
 IV. 
 
 EMERSON AT COLLEGE 
 
 In those critically educative years of adoles 
 cence, between fourteen and eighteen, Emerson 
 passed through his collegiate course a time of 
 life s changes physical and mental. It was a 
 break from home with its dominant feminine in 
 fluence into a purely masculine world, some 
 what monastic, with its own goal and spirit. 
 The object was to acquire the accepted training 
 in the humanities languages ancient and mod 
 ern, including some science, literature and phi 
 losophy. Thus the youth was ushered into a 
 strange communal life which he also had to 
 learn about and to work in, this being by no 
 means a negligible part of the curriculum. From 
 1817 till 1821 Emerson was a student of Harvard 
 College, already venerable with nearly two hun 
 dred years of existence. 
 
 This institution of learning was not only hoary, 
 
46 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 but somewhat mossy ; it still clung largely to tra 
 dition in education, being chiefly patterned after 
 the English High School of the Renascence. Ex 
 cellence it had, as far as it went. But already in 
 Emerson s time new ideas and new methods had 
 been slowly percolating through the old body, 
 being introduced by two or three professors who 
 had studied in German Universities. Emerson 
 especially mentions Edward Everett as a coming 
 light-bearer from abroad as well as a beacon in 
 himself, through his native gift of expression. 
 But the College as a whole plodded along in the 
 ancient routine. Men of talent and erudition 
 were certainly among his instructors, fulfilling 
 well their prescribed duty, perchance overfilling 
 it at times; but the young aspirer seems to have 
 met in that faculty no man of over-mastering 
 genius, no profoundly original character. I ven 
 ture to think that Emerson on his graduation 
 day, receiving his diploma and glancing down 
 the line of professors, could not help musing to 
 himself : Not one of you in creative poteiice, and 
 in mind-building influence over me is. the equal 
 of my Aunt Mary. 
 
 Still the social and educational dominance of 
 Harvard streams pro and con through Emerson s 
 entire life, stimulating him. especially to antag 
 onism. Not a little of his best discipline lay in 
 overcoming the economic difficulties on his path. 
 He largely earned his way by hiring as messenger 
 boy to the President, bv tntorir.gr backward stu- 
 
EMERSON 17 COLLEGE. 47 
 
 dents, and even by waiting on the table at the 
 College Commons. Later he taught school in va 
 cation. He gained some money by prices in com 
 position and in declamation. Significant are the 
 repeated donations of money which his mother 
 received for his education and that of his broth 
 ers, showing the universal interest in schooling. 
 Thus his college-course was also a battle with pov 
 erty, which left its marks, if not its scars upon 
 him ever afterward. His main ambition at this 
 time seems to lie in the direction of eloquence : 
 like the majority of American boys he would be 
 come an orator. He had already apparently come 
 under the spell of Daniel "Webster, greatest of his 
 kind in New England. Everett s rhetoric was 
 honey to him, which he chased after at every op 
 portunity. Very sweet, too, must have been the 
 triumph felt in receiving the Boylston prize for 
 declamation, thirty bright dollars, which, how 
 ever, had to pay for, not his mother s new shawl 
 as intended, but the. family s bread already eatenV 
 He had a hand in forming a club whose main 
 object was to practice in extemporaneous speak 
 ing. "Whether this oratory was to fulminate from 
 the pulpit or the hustings, he probably did not 
 then determine even to himself. The training 
 made good later in the Emersonian Lyceum. 
 
 Naturally reminscences were eagerly sought in 
 his aged days of greatness from his still living fel 
 low-students concerning the most influential man 
 of thought that Harvard ever produced. The re- 
 
48 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 suit on the whole indicates that Emerson was 
 hardly up to the average of studentship. A fa 
 mous classmate of his, Josiah Quincy, declared 
 that to him Emerson gave "no sign of the power 
 that was fashioning itself for leadership in a new 
 time." In a class of 59 he stood 30, hitting the 
 middle as near as possible ; but his son intimates 
 that his scholarship by itself would have put him 
 still lower, since he received ranking credit for 
 his unblemished deportment. A good boy but a 
 poor scholar he quite failed in Mathematics, but 
 did take a fancy to Greek, seemingly not with 
 much violence, liking the teacher, Professor Ever 
 ett, better than the subject. Still Emerson shows 
 a strain of Greek serenity in writ and deed, na 
 tive to him seemingly rather than acquired from 
 deep study of the Hellenic spirit. 
 
 "We see by his Journal that he was already 
 choice of word and phrase, selecting the best ex 
 amples of both from his desultory browsing of 
 books. Poetical expressions he jotted down, 
 striking passages were paraphrased and probably 
 memorized ; his sense of style was distinctly culti 
 vated. In especial he copied often the idiomatic 
 turns from the letters of his Aunt Mary, who must 
 have been his ideal of lofty utterance. It is said 
 that he knew Shakespeare almost by heart when 
 he entered College, evidently attracted by the 
 poet s w r ord-power and grandiose expression. 
 Really Montaigne gave his most palatable mental 
 pabulum at this time, and he never got over his 
 
AT COLLEGE. 49 
 
 dear skeptic. He neglected Locke and Paley in 
 the prescribed course, and feasted on Plato and 
 Plutarch outside of the oppressive routine. Re 
 served, isolated, introverted he seemed, said an 
 observer, "to dwell apart as if in a tower," very 
 like the later man ensconced in his Castle of 
 Defiance at Concord, his defensive and offensive 
 rampart. 
 
 So not only Harvard, but the world asks, how 
 did this great man of ours get to be? Just now 
 we probe into that transitional time which is com 
 ing to be known as the adolescent stage. In out 
 ward appearance he is following the transmitted 
 curriculum of study, but inwardly he is starting 
 his own way. Placid on the surface but in a pro 
 test underneath, he takes two courses, the pre 
 scribed and the self -chosen a real regularity but 
 an ideal vagabondage. The dullard was on top, 
 but the genius was secretly at work. 
 
 The great national event of this time was the 
 Missouri Compromise of 1820. But Emerson was 
 not stirred by it nor was his environment. It con 
 cerned mainly the West, to whose hope there was 
 little response in Boston; for the West was then 
 looked upon with doubt if not dislike by New 
 England. And the College was apathetic about 
 the Nation, while in religion it led a more nega 
 tive than constructive life, whereof Emerson is to 
 cull no small experience for his future task. 
 
 So the ancestral youth goes to the ancestral 
 College and acquires a fair modicum of ancestral 
 
50 RALPH WALDO EMERSOXPART FIRST. 
 
 lore a pretty heavy dose of Tradition. Still we 
 can feel that Emerson already in his teens was 
 secretly bent 011 being something more than the 
 son of his fathers, than the offshoot of a pedigree. 
 It would seem that his main push during collegiate 
 years was toward public-speaking, and the ex 
 ternal incentive thereto was very strong, for this 
 time saw the supreme efflorescence in Massachu 
 setts of American oratory culminating in Web 
 ster, who, as central was encircled by numerous 
 brilliant, though lesser luminaries. Eloquence 
 was then the most original, beautiful, and coveted 
 utterance of human spirit, cultivated by the or 
 ator, preacher, lecturer, even by the professor. 
 Herein Emerson at College partook of the special 
 aspiration of the time : he would be a speaker, 
 and such was he to the close of his active days. 
 But ere this ambition could be fulfilled, he had to 
 stem the ever-returning pressure of poverty by a 
 more handy vocation school-teaching. 
 
 V. 
 THE SCHOOLMASTER EMERSON 
 
 The graduate Emerson, stepping out of his aca 
 demic hall into the world, finds himself and his next 
 of kin hungry, or at least threatened with lack of 
 bread. He seizes the first possible opening to make 
 a few dollars by a kind of work in which he had ar- 
 ready had some experience that of teaching. Thus 
 for nearly a quadrenmum (1821-1825) Emerson 
 
THE SCHOOLMASTER EMER80X. 51 
 
 turns schoolmaster, with considerable financial 
 profit, but with little pedagogical success, as he 
 reports on his case. 
 
 During his entire college course Emerson had 
 felt himself compelled at intervals to interrupt his 
 regular task and to teach school. In the Freshman 
 year we find by a letter that he is doing work of 
 that kind at Waltham ; already he looks forward to 
 the day "when he, having graduated, will study 
 divinity and keep school at the same time. Such 
 were the two vocations which he had then in mind 
 one the underling of the other. And in his 
 Senior year he again had to quit Cambridge and to 
 ply his schoolcraft "in my log-house on the moun 
 tains" whose locality he kept so concealed that his 
 intimate friend and biographer, Mr. Cabot, failed 
 to identify it. But his Journal (dated December 
 15, 1820, and hence a few months before his gradu 
 ation) speaks of his presence in "a hot, stinking, 
 dirty A B spelling-school" out of which he has to 
 run into the fresh air, with gratitude to God. 
 
 But when he had graduated, his elder brother 
 William, who had built up a successful school for 
 young ladies which occupied his mother s house in 
 Boston, took him as assistant, In this work he re 
 mained somewhat less than four years. He cele 
 brates his release under date of January 25, 1825 : 
 "I have locked up my school, and affect the scholar 
 at home." He no longer needed to teach in order 
 to fend off want : ( Ambitious hopes have been en 
 gendered by the increase of value of the old prop- 
 
52 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 erty on Main Street. " Then we hear of this height 
 of pedogogical good-luck: "I have earned two or 
 three thousand dollars, which have paid my debts" 
 and brought other blessings of freedom. Some of 
 the school s funds were applied to sending his 
 brother William to Germany for study. The grip 
 of poverty no longer clutches the Emerson house 
 hold, and Ralph Waldo can now start to take the 
 next step in his career preparation for his ances 
 tral calling, the ministry. 
 
 Thus young Emerson will travel a new signifi 
 cant arc of his life s round, undergoing nearly an 
 other quadrennial discipline, which now takes the 
 form of imparting the traditional instruction he 
 has received. From a wholly masculine environ 
 ment at College, he is suddenly whelmed again into 
 a purely feminine association, but very different 
 from that of his home. At first he was the assist 
 ant, but during the last year in the absence of his 
 brother he was the principal. That school gave 
 him a new experience beside the pedagogical; in 
 the presence of the other half of humanity, he 
 could hardly help feeling his own halfness. Long 
 afterwards when a"n old man, he dared broach a 
 little of his ancient emotion: "I was nineteen, 
 had grown up without sisters, and in my solitary 
 and secluded way of living, had no acquaintance 
 with girls," and hence not much with himself. 
 But listen: "I still recall my terrors at entering 
 the school, my timidities at French, the infirmities 
 of my cheek, and my occasional admiration of 
 
THE SCHOOLMASTER EMERSON. ~>8 
 
 some of my pupils * Emerson, go on, do not 
 stop there, betray us not in such a wrench of 
 expectancy ! But at the psychologic moment he 
 breaks into Latin, very ambiguous Latin too 
 and quits the confessional of love for something 
 indifferent, never again to pick up the lost thread 
 in any direct confidential communication to his 
 eager biographers. His writings give hardly 
 more than an amatory lisp, now and then audible 
 to an eavesdropping posterity. 
 
 Still we may find some remote hint of his feel 
 ings at this time in the lines headed Grood-bye 
 which at present stand in front of his poetical 
 works as a kind of overture to the musical Emer 
 son, if there be such. He has himself dated them 
 as written while he kept "school in Boston," but 
 had taken flight from the city, and was living in 
 a rural suburb called Canterbury. He acknowl 
 edged in them his juvenile melancholy, but is 
 silent as to its cause : 
 
 Good-bye, proud world ! I m going home ! 
 Thou art not my friend and I m not thine. . . . 
 Long have I -been tossed like the driven foam : 
 But now proud world! I m going home. 
 
 What tossed him so stormily in that peaceful 
 girls -school, the reader queries. But such is his 
 present attitude toward the world in general, and 
 specially toward that cloistered abode, which con 
 tained a number of the well-conditioned young 
 
54 RALPH WA jDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 ladies of the city, who strangely have inspired 
 their youthful teacher with this awful fit of dis 
 gust at all mankind. The brief poem, however, 
 has a universal worth as Emerson s preluding 
 challenge to society, and forecasts the man who 
 about a dozen years later will erect his fortress 
 of world-defiance at Concord where he, taking his 
 Walden ramble, "in the bush with God may 
 meet." 
 
 Moreover Emerson was probably not the com 
 plete teacher. In school-work he compares him 
 self with his brother Edward, whose "mind was 
 method, his constitution was order, and the tap 
 of his pencil could easily enforce silence and at 
 tention. I confess to an utter want of this same 
 virtue." Not wholly unjust self-disparagement 
 is this; Emerson by nature could not drill, but 
 would stimulate the pupil, who thus was likely to 
 fall short in examination. Already when he was 
 tutoring in his Freshman year, the President of 
 Harvard relieved him, evidently because he talked 
 too much poetry and too little paradigm. Repeti 
 tion and routine, very needful for the average 
 learner, were his horror, and he would spring to 
 spontaneity and immediate overflow, also impor 
 tant for the class-room. Thus Emerson was but 
 half of a teacher, doubtless the better half. The 
 part of the drill-sergeant was left out, whose 
 "duties were never congenial to my disposition." 
 Hence he pathetically exclaims- "I am a hope 
 less schoolmaster. 
 
THE SCHOOLMASTER EMERSON. 55 
 
 Yet the strange fact recurs often that Emerson 
 longed to be a teacher of the higher order, prefer 
 ring this to any other vocation. And teach what 
 specialty, think ye? Not philosophy, not poetry 
 directly; Emerson s supreme ambition was to be 
 Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard. Oratory was 
 his first love in the practical, and when that could 
 not be, in the pedagogical, domain, and this de 
 sire for a Professorship seems to have persisted 
 quite to the end of his career. He said late in 
 life that there never was a time in which he would 
 not have accepted a chair of rhetoric at Cam 
 bridge. Speech-making Daniel Webster towered 
 up before him the grand oratorical demigod, quite 
 as this statesman did to the rapt vision of Carlyle, 
 who, imaging him as the statuesque Parliamen 
 tary Hercules, has hewn out his mountainous fea 
 tures in craggy but memorable outlines (see one 
 of Carlyle s letters to Emerson, I, p. 260.) Next 
 to "Webster followed Edward Everett in Emer 
 son s admiration of the ideal speaker. But Nature 
 denied to Emerson s word-organ the primal 
 thunder of the transcendent orator, as it denied 
 to him the ultimate native energy and construc 
 tive power of the poet. Still he made verses and 
 spoke orations to the last, which have not failed 
 to assert their place in the World s Literature. 
 On the whole, the younger Emerson seemed to 
 take Webster s form and utterance as the incar 
 nation of the loftiest human presence. Time 
 slowly disillusioned the youthful idealist, and at 
 
56 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 last turned him to an opposite excess of deprecia 
 tion. 
 
 Thus our verdant graduate, girl-shy Waldo 
 Emerson, faced quite a new experience of life, 
 his own as well as that of others, and took up the 
 same into himself during these years. Women he 
 had known chiefly in his mother and Aunt Mary, 
 both over him in age and authority. But now he, 
 the bashful young fellow, seated upon his chair 
 of commanding perch, gets to see gay young fem 
 ininity in a very testing way for him and them. 
 This knowledge of Eve s Paradise will trace itself 
 fitfully and secretively in his writ and in his ac 
 tion. But the trial has ended; schoolmastering 
 was but a makeshift in his case as in that of his 
 father and grandfather, both of whom taught on 
 their way to the ministry. Emerson herein has 
 followed the ancestral example; and now he is 
 ready to take the next step, still keeping to the 
 old highway. 
 
 Well may he be thankful as he crosses over the 
 bound of his twenty-second year; from the door 
 step of home he has driven the ever-present wolf 
 so long snapping its hungry jaws at him and his 
 dear ones even round the dinner table. But dis 
 ease still lurks in his bodily frame ; a sense of 
 personal evanishment haunts and probably colors 
 his spirit permanently. It is certain that a strain 
 of physical insufficency runs through his present 
 writing, as if he forefelt that existence with him 
 was already on the ebb. And now follows a spell 
 
TV/A; ]TJNER.\XT EMERSON. 57 
 
 of wandering spatially and spiritually, during 
 which he appears to be dissolving into his ele- 
 .ments a time of will-less vagrancy, which at 
 least has its training in letting him experience 
 quite fully the perilous state from which he must 
 recover himself, not only now but forever. 
 
 VI 
 
 THE ITINERANT EMERSON 
 
 Still another and a new quadrennial course 
 (1825-1829) of discipline in life s university must 
 next be outlined in Emerson s biography. This 
 phase of him we might designate as his spell of 
 vagabondage, outer and inner; a kind of drifting 
 adversity it is which he has to endure and to over 
 come in order to reach his permanent fastness. 
 
 Thus the most straggling, broken, shredded 
 portion of Emerson s career was strewn up and 
 dowoi the next four years. He had just passed 
 through a steady, rather monotonous quadren- 
 nium, for his school anchored him practically to 
 one spot and to regular duties, as well as to a 
 continuous flow of human experience. But now 
 the taut line seems to snap, and he begins to drift, 
 the sport of fortune and of caprice. It is true that 
 one purpose threads waveringly this entire time : 
 he was preparing for his ancestral vocation 
 though not without some throbs of hesitancy. 
 Early in 1825 he entered the Divinity School at 
 Cambridge. lie records: "I o to my College 
 
58 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 chamber to-morrow (February 9, 1825) a little 
 better or worse since I left it in 1821." He looks 
 back over his pedagogical intervals rather down- 
 heartedly, reproaching himself for the samll re 
 sult, especially for "my cardinal vice of intellec 
 tual dissipation." Still the schoolmaster has 
 learned more than any of his pupils, being the 
 most capable one (as time has shown) of the en 
 tire lot. But within a month ill-luck began to 
 hound him, his health broke down, especially his 
 eyes weakened so that he had to quit his studies 
 and do hard work out of doors on his uncle s 
 farm. Then he tutored for a while, yet soon 
 found Himself a peripatetic schoolmaster again 
 drifting rapidly through three schools. Where 
 upon he quit the business, but only escaped into 
 a new ailment, rheumatism, to which was added 
 the menace of lung-disease. Still on October 10, 
 1826, he succeeded in getting "approbrated to 
 preach," and soon thereafter he delivered his first 
 sermon. Now he has reached the apex of his fam 
 ily s tradition, he is an ordained minister. Of 
 theological lore not much is his; he said after 
 wards if he had been examined, the license would 
 have been refused him, so fragile was his under 
 pinning of scholarship. But in the eyes of that 
 committee of Middlesex ministers to whom he ap 
 plied, his long ministerial ancestry was an apos 
 tolic descent irrefragable. 
 
 But just on this sunlit mountain top of happy 
 fortune beerins to lower the dark frown of fate ; 
 
THE i: IN E RANT EMERSON. 59 
 
 his triple malady of eyes, joints and lungs over 
 whelm him completely, and he is compelled to 
 quit the stern New England winter for a softer 
 climate. Accordingly he sails for Charleston, 
 South Carolina, and reaches that city. But it is 
 still too chill for his sensitive frame, and so he 
 ships again for the more southern St. Augustine, 
 Florida, in which old Spanish town he stays till 
 spring. Then he sets face Northward; passing 
 through Charleston and "Washington, he reaches 
 home in June, after an absence of a little more 
 than six months. 
 
 Emerson has left some pretty full notes of this 
 journey. It is strange how little the political 
 trend of the time attracts the young American 
 of twenty-three years. He has some passing ob 
 servations on St. Augustine, but the deeper histo 
 ric meaning of the acquisition of Florida he did 
 not probe for. In the midst of new semi-tropical 
 scenery and a strange society, he chiefly occupied 
 himself with his own internal problems, throwing 
 off. some snatches of verse by the way. At Charles 
 ton he does not seem to have felt the rising tide 
 towards secession in South Carolina, Already it 
 was more pronounced there in 1827, than any 
 where else in the United States (with the possible 
 exception of his own section), and it became 
 married with slavery especially through the Mis 
 souri Compromise of 1820. Perhaps Emerson did 
 not feel disunion strongly, since he during his boy 
 hood had heard it often threatened in his own 
 
60 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 New England, where the war of 1812 and the em 
 bargo were very unpopular. But through the per 
 suasive eloquence of the new protective tariff, she 
 banished the doctrine of secession, which thence 
 migrated to the South in which it took up its 
 permanent abode, till slain by the Civil War. 
 Quite isolated he goes his Avay;-he seems to have 
 found only one man for deeper converse, Achille 
 Murat, nephew of the great Napoleon and son of 
 one of his Marshals, now a planter in Florida. 
 And not a woman, no love ! So he exclaims in his 
 Journal: "Wo is me! I pass in cold selfishness 
 from Maine to Florida, and tremble less I be 
 destined to be a monk." It would seem, then, 
 that Emerson was already considering his life of 
 celibacy with a sort of terror, and resolving to quit 
 it on the first good chance, which, we may prem 
 ise, will in time drop on his" path, and bring to an 
 end this misery of solitary vagabondage. 
 
 Emerson, however, kept up his migratory habit 
 after his return home ; he refused to settle down 
 in one spot, but scattered his sermons through 
 various towns not too far from Boston. Some 
 times his excuse was his weak lungs, but again 
 he would write : "I have lost all sense of the 
 mouse in my chest, am at ease. But he could not 
 yet bring himself to accept a fixed place: "I 
 have just refused an invitation to preach as can 
 didate at Brighton. It is the third No to which 
 I have treated the Church applicant or vacant." 
 He could not renounce his preaching itinerancy, 
 
THE ITTXERAXT KMER8O\. fi} 
 
 as if his ideal were the oJd Methodist circuit-rider. 
 He records in his Journal (July 10, 1828) "It is 
 a peculiarity of humor in me, my strong propen 
 sity for strolling." Delightful is his "feeling of 
 freedom from any anchorage in space and time, 
 and, too, in spirit. What is to become of the 
 shoreless drifter, the centrifugal scatterling? 
 
 So he seems to have pushed on to the extreme 
 point of his wayward vagabondism. But destiny 
 has him in hand, and one of his preaching excur 
 sions carries him to Concord, New Hampshire 
 (New Concord), where he beholds a youthful 
 maiden of radiant form whose glance seems to 
 have given a strong shock to his unsettled nature, 
 from whose bewitching memory he cannot so 
 easily recover. At any rate we find that he is 
 again going to that same Concord with the pur 
 pose of sermonizing for three Sundays in succes 
 sion a long stay for him in one place. But what 
 turn his most effective discourse has taken may be 
 inferred from the following letter dated Decem 
 ber 24, 1828: "I have the happiness to inform 
 you that I have been now for one week engaged 
 to Ellen Louisa Tucker who is the fairest and 
 best of her kind. . . seventeen years old, and 
 very beautiful by universal consent." And the 
 next thing we hear is that the ever-flitting min 
 ister is getting ready to settle down to a steady 
 charge, and stands gazing into the last sunset of 
 his itinerant bachelorhood. 
 
 Thus his uncertain ministerial wandering has 
 
62 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 concluded. Moreover he has passed through his 
 long preparatory training, through school, col 
 lege, church seminary, till now he has landed in 
 his traditional vocation, with an outlook upon 
 its prescribed course lasting the rest of his life. 
 
 Still we must not forget the secret protest, the 
 countercurrent opposite to the surface stream. 
 The intimacies of his Journal have often pro 
 claimed his independence of tradition. "I love 
 to be my own master when my spirits are prompt 
 Then he cannot follow in the old routine. 
 And hear this sigh: "If I were richer, I should 
 lead a better life than I do ; " that is, he would 
 somehow break loose. He longs for money, not 
 for what it is but for what it buys. "The chief 
 advantage I should propose myself in wealth 
 would be the independence of manner and con 
 versation it would bestow, and which I eagerly 
 covet" (Journal, July 10, 1828). Economic in 
 dependence is his heart s desire that thereby he 
 win his spirit s liberty. Shrewd Yankee that 
 he is, he has his eye upon a comfortable hoard of 
 cash, not as end but as means. 
 
 Here we conclude the First Epoch of Emerson s 
 Life-Essay that prolonged stretch of time 
 which we have called his Traditional Schooling 
 the sown seedfield which is to grow and bear 
 its crop in the future. The germs of the coming 
 man we have sought to trace hereafter some 
 of them to ripen, but some of them to lie dor 
 mant, remaining mere unfulfilled aspirations. 
 
THE ITINERANT EJMER8O& 63 
 
 Through all the turns of this Epoch can be 
 heard the one dominant key-note : the struggle 
 to appropriate the environing world of pre 
 scription in character, in learning, and in voca 
 tion. His educational and professional novitiate 
 he has passed, not without inner protest, let it 
 be added for the sake of what is preparing. 
 
 In this place we should not forget to mention 
 that the future great writer has begun to write 
 small to give wee prophetic gleams of his chief 
 impending evolution. Deeper than his minister- 
 ship starts to throb his mightier call, his master 
 ship in writ. The three primordial rudiments of 
 his literary fulfillment are already astir and 
 show their first push for utterance. He breaks 
 forth into verse, he writes letters, and starts to 
 keep a Journal which, as now printed begins 
 with the year 1820, though "it had predeces 
 sors" which are at present lost, as we are told 
 by its editors. Thus we may behold the micro 
 scopic atoms, or better, the original cells of Em 
 erson the scribe in three quite distinct forms 
 the poetical, the epistolary, and the diarial. All 
 three shapes, minute, separate, but elemental, 
 keep bubbling up to the surface from his deep 
 est underself till the cessation of his creative 
 power. In this First Epoch they are tinged with 
 its character of tradition and imitation; he has 
 to learn to handle the weapons of his pencraft 
 before attaining his own distinctive expression. 
 From this point of view it may be said that the 
 
$4 RALPH WALDO BJIBR80NPART FTRST. 
 
 spiritually molecular Emerson, his Genius in its 
 protoplasmic formation, is better documented 
 than any other great author, not excepting 
 Goethe. And it would seem that all the Emer 
 sonian Archives are not yet in print. 
 
 Taking one more retrospect of this First Epoch, 
 the last one for the present, we may look at it 
 as a kind of Chinese wall of prescription which 
 the aspiring youth has to build in and around 
 his spirit, and then to surmount, leaving it be 
 hind as material transcended though ever pres 
 ent. From appropriation he is to rise to crea 
 tion, re-making his own pre-suppositions, break 
 ing with his own foregoneness. Thus we see that 
 Emerson at his pastoral ordination faces a new 
 turn of an Epoch with its new problem running 
 thus : which is to be master of this pulpit, I or 
 Tradition? Am I to prescribe to Prescription, 
 or is Prescription to prescribe to me? Mounting 
 to the sacred desk, he opens the battle which 
 soon passes from within to without. 
 
CHAPTER SECOND 
 
 THE EXPLOSION 
 
 Not too emphatic seems this titular word to des 
 ignate the next Epoch of Emerson s life: the 
 Explosion. He was established in the vocation 
 to which during all the long time of toil and pov 
 erty he had looked forward as his chief goal a 
 vocation which appeared his not only by per 
 sonal choice but by hereditary transmission. No 
 longer a piece of driftwood he floated down the 
 years; but firmly moored in one haven with its 
 fixed round of duties, he might well cast a 
 peaceful outlook upon the future. But it would 
 seem that this stability was holding down the 
 volcano within, condensing the fires which were 
 at last to break forth into an epochal eruption. 
 It looks as if his long and rather tristful wan 
 dering till he was twenty-six years old had been 
 a safety-valve which allowed his hidden protests 
 to blow off with little noise and no serious danger. 
 
 Significant of this Epoch in its brevity, since 
 it lasts only a little more than three years (1829- 
 1832), and culminates in the decisive and sur 
 prisingly sudden outburst which lands him over 
 the border into a new stage. It thus stands in 
 emphatic contrast to the preceding Epoch both 
 in duration and character. It marks time with 
 
 65 
 
56 RALPH WALDO EMKI?$OXPART FIRST. 
 
 a thunder-clap, and breaks loose from the long 
 ministerial tradition, defying the prescribed fam 
 ily succession for six generations. To be sure, 
 Emerson, as usual, showed few outer signs of 
 violence in word or deed; he maintained his 
 placid, stormless behavior, uiiwrathful and un- 
 vengeful. Still the earthquake shook him spir 
 itually to the center of his being, and turned the 
 stream of life into a new direction. Hence it 
 was for him a grand act of separation, or at least 
 the starting-point thereof his first deliverance 
 from the chilling hoar-frost of aged prescription. 
 
 Still we must not forget that Emerson during 
 the greater part of this triennium, remained 
 quiescent, fulfilling its prescribed duties, though 
 slowly evolving and at times rumbling inwardly. 
 He was fastened to his stake at the start, and 
 only strayed within the length of his tether. 
 Then he soon became tied even more firmly to 
 another institution, the Family, through his mar 
 riage with Miss Tucker, though this bond was 
 soon cleft by death. Thus the settled fixity of 
 his environment continued to tighten about him 
 for a couple of years till he felt ready to start 
 the break for freedom. But when his new- 
 formed tie of love had been shivered by a strong 
 er hand than his own, he became more deeply 
 moved to grapple with the transmitted fetters of 
 his church. 
 
 We may note that this spontaneous overflow 
 of a new idea and purpose into Emerson s soul 
 
THE EXPLOSION. 67 
 
 has its analogy to his fundamental doctrine, as 
 he uttered it in many turns during his whole life. 
 The present vibrant eruption becoming resistless 
 in outpour, testifies its resemblance to the divine 
 effluence which darted forth immediately from 
 God and swept away all traditional landmarks 
 from the spirit receiving its evangel. Such was 
 now his coercive experience, which for him re 
 mained typical ever afterward. It illustrates the 
 function of the Emersonian Oversoul streaming 
 from upper unknown sources down into the in 
 dividual soul and there inscribing its message. 
 
 Of the present Explosion we have already re 
 marked low mutterings in Emerson s youth, pre 
 monitory, prophetic of what is coming. And here 
 after we shall find many reverberations of this 
 early spiritual shock echoing through his words 
 spoken and written till old-age falters his voice. 
 "We should carefully note the recorded experi 
 ences of such an epochal overturn as the deepest 
 heart-searching confessions of Emerson the auto- 
 biographer. 
 
 First is to be emphasized that the present breach 
 has its source in religion, and continues to show 
 itself religious as to feeling and garb. His pro 
 test against tradition is still traditional, being 
 uttered by the traditional sermon. He preached 
 against the transmitted content of preaching, 
 after the transmitted form of the preacher. At 
 present he is not able to create a new literary ex 
 pression responsive to his subject-matter. That 
 
68 RALPH WALDO EMKR8OXPART FIRST. 
 
 will come later after a fuller and deeper experi 
 ence, culminant especially in the Essay, of which 
 both manner and content are defiant of the ac 
 cepted way of writing, being wont-breaking in 
 form as well as duly anti-prescriptive. This is 
 the seal of the author s originality, which does 
 not fully ripen till the Second Period, hereafter 
 to be unfolded. Moreover the religious protest 
 of the present Epoch is to widen out over many 
 spiritual fields such as art, institutions, and 
 specially literature. The religious breach is cen 
 tral in Emerson, as becomes the scion of the 
 theocratic Puritan, and from the center spreads 
 forth towards universality. 
 
 Such, then, is the purport and limit of this 
 Second Epoch, still traditional in its declared 
 war upon tradition, and thus belonging to Em 
 erson s First Period, since it unfolds a fresh 
 stage in the total sweep of his Traditional 
 Schooling. A mighty convulsion of spirit, it is 
 but half done as yet. The first transformation, 
 that of fact, is now wrought; the second trans 
 formation, that of expression is to come, resulting 
 from a still larger experience. 
 
 I. 
 
 PASTOR EMERSON 
 
 It is recorded that on the llth of March, 1829, 
 our peripatetic schoolmaster and student of the 
 ology brought his long novitiate of studying and 
 
PASTOR EMERSON. 59 
 
 teaching and wandering to a close, and was or 
 dained as colleague of the Reverend Henry 
 Ware, minister of the Second Church (Unitarian) 
 in Boston. This would seem to be the most 
 deeply traditional act of his life, voluntary too ; 
 he drops into the ancestral line of Puritan clergy 
 men, descended from hoary Peter Bulkley, and 
 hovering about one spot since their first advent 
 on American soil. Surely the young pastor may 
 well deem himself now anchored safely in the 
 old harbor. The forelock of duty is apparently 
 one with the backlook of tradition : he will lead 
 the level unambitious life of the cleric, accepta 
 bly moving in the ever-recurrent routine of 
 preaching, praying, visiting the sick, burying the 
 dead, and otherwise performing the transmitted 
 rites of his church. He has, at least on the out 
 side, found his calling, attained his goal. Also 
 material abundance has banned his former 
 penury. He writes to his Aunt Mary : You 
 know in poverty and many troubles the seeds 
 of our prosperity were sown. Now all these 
 troubles appeared a fair counterbalance to the 
 flatteries of fortune." No more hunger, plenty 
 of clothes and good too ; let the Giver be praised. 
 Still Emerson has his strange foreboding 
 which he cannot quite put down. His luck makes 
 him glimpse the Goddess Nemesis, who of old 
 kept watch to overthrow the high," and leveled 
 them earthward. Nor is he quite in tune with 
 the prescribed limits of his profession: "Our 
 usage of preaching is too straitened it walks in 
 
70 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 a narrow round, it harps on a few and ancient 
 strings, it holds en to phrases when the lapse of 
 time has changed their meaning." All of which 
 would hint a reform if not a revolution meditated 
 by him in the establishd order of sermonizing. 
 He intends at the start to be rid of the old sanc 
 timonious style and the scriptural speech of good 
 venerable Ecclesiasticus. Even in the pulpit he 
 threatens to employ for illustration "the facts of 
 this age, the printing press and the loom, the 
 phenomena of steam and gas" alongside of the 
 ancient Hebrew environment, and even not 
 wholly to eschew our "free institutions" in favor 
 of the Mosaic theocracy, so dear to the older 
 Puritanic consciousness, And there is abound 
 ing evidence that he put far more stress upon 
 the efficacy of the moral sentiment than he did 
 upon ceremonial and dogma, and showed more 
 faith in direct personal inspiration than in that 
 of the Scriptures. Really, however, he is the 
 true outcome of Puritanism, whose general move 
 ment has been toward minimizing if not quite 
 eliminating the act of divine mediation from the 
 Christ. 
 
 Emerson was at first ordained as the colleague 
 to the regular pastor, who, being taken ill, soon 
 resigned, when his young associate became the 
 sole incumbent after a few weeks. It is told how 
 he helped local charities of all sorts, and favored 
 the good works of other denominations. But 
 there is evidence that he must have put the main 
 
PASTOR EMERSON. 71 
 
 stress of his mind as well as spent his best 
 moments upon the written word, which was also 
 spoken from the pulpit, and so took the form of 
 the sermon. May we not see herein Emerson the 
 writer working through a stage of his Appren 
 ticeship ? Such would seem to have been his own 
 opinion of it as he looked backward. 
 
 "We learn that one hundred and seventy-one of 
 his sermons still lie in manuscript, "and he ex 
 pressed his desire that they should so remain," 
 says Mr. Cabot, his trusted literary adviser and 
 biographer, who evidently was so generous of 
 patience and other faculty as to read this por 
 tentous mass of theology condemned, but not 
 burned by its author. The total will average 
 about one written discourse a week during the 
 entire pastorate of Emerson, a large output even 
 in its mechanical labor for a man frail physically 
 and infirm of health, even if it contains also the 
 gathered stores of his previous preaching. Be 
 sides those above mentioned, only two of Emer 
 son s sermons have been printed, of which one is 
 found in hjs Collected "Works, unless some have 
 been dragged from their grave in recent years. 
 Evidently the author himself did not esteem them 
 characteristic of his best. So many discourses 
 could hardly have been composed in the full 
 overflow of genius which always chooses its time 
 and levies its tax. Largely they must have been 
 scribbled off in a mechanical way from remem 
 bered doctrine and from Aunt Mary s theolog- 
 
72 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 ical disquisitions. Mr. Cabot affirms of them that 
 "in general all is within the conventions of the 
 Unitarian pulpit," and more surprising is his 
 dictum, that they "are presented in scriptural 
 language, as if they belonged to the body of ac 
 cepted doctrine." Emerson, however, seems to 
 hint something different when he apologizes for 
 "their want of sanctity in style," and in par 
 ticular he reprobates "this straining to say what 
 is unutterable, and vain retching with the imbe 
 cile use of great words," all of which "is nause 
 ous to sound sense and good taste." Already 
 Emerson was a classicist in his literary bent, and 
 at present would seem to be the last man to take 
 any liking for Carlylese. If we consider his for 
 bears and his surroundings, the chief miracle is 
 :-that he succeeded so completely in erasing the 
 Hebraic grain from his writings which appeared 
 later than the time of these sermons. 
 Still under this equable, doubtless lukewarm 
 AQW of outer conformity, the spirit was getting 
 hot, yea had begun to boil. For listen to his 
 Journal: "I hate goodness that preaches good 
 ness that preaches undoes itself. Goodies make 
 .us.. very bad. "We will almost sin to spite them." 
 ;"Such: speech sparkles scintillant of some personal 
 "friction;_with pietistic .tradition. Then it reaches 
 the point of downright defiance in the assertion: 
 "I have sometimes thought that in order to be a 
 good minister, it was necessary to leave the min 
 istry. The profession is antiqrated. In an al- 
 
MARRIAGE. 73 
 
 tered age we worship in the dead forms of our 
 forefathers." Truly the ancestral fetters are 
 chafing our pastor to the quick even in that very 
 mild Unitarian prison, nearly but not yet quite 
 untrammeled of creed and ritual. What is he 
 going to do about it? 
 
 But before we can regard him at the final turn 
 of this problem, we have to contemplate him held 
 fast in another bond, the deepest and the strong 
 est during his earlier pastorate, out of which 
 bond Providence delivers him while smiting him 
 to the heart in an agony of release. We allude 
 to his first marriage, whence sprang circum 
 stances which took a very formative part in 
 shaping his coming career. 
 
 II. 
 
 MARRIAGE 
 
 The more inquisitive, open-eyed reader may 
 have observed in scanning Emerson s Diary, that 
 the young minister chanced to visit Concord, New 
 Hampshire, December 1827, on one of his preach 
 ing peregrinations. There it was his good luck 
 to look into the love-glinting eyes of a : young 
 lady, seeing her for the first time with a. result 
 destined to bear memorable fruit. At the start 
 he evidently tried to hold aloof in accord with 
 his doctrinal bachelorhood; still after a year s 
 delay he went back to the same place, having a 
 good excuse, nay having two or three good ex 
 cuses for his return, but one best of all. He 
 
74 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 wished to sermonize again in that appreciative 
 locality "for three Sundays," and at the same 
 time to give his convalescent brother a little out 
 ing. Still the real but then unspoken motive is 
 probably unbosomed in the following extract 
 from a letter which was written after the deed 
 was done, and the joyful heart could no longer 
 hide the clamoring secret. Date is December 21, 
 1828. 
 
 "I have now been engaged four days to Ellen 
 Louisa Tucker, a young lady, who, if you will 
 trust me, is the fairest and best of her kind. She 
 is the youngest daughter of the late Beza Tucker, 
 a merchant of Boston," who has left to this 
 daughter, it may here be whispered in confidence, 
 a considerable inheritance, which by the way is 
 to perform a very substantial part in this Em 
 ersonian Life-Essay. The mother was then liv 
 ing at Concord with the second husband. But 
 harken to the new confession of the lover: "It 
 is now just a year since I became acquainted 
 with Ellen. . . . but I thought I had got over 
 my blushes and my wishes when now I deter 
 mined to go into that dangerous neighborhood 
 on Edward s account." So young Waldo claims, 
 dancing before his fancy a brotherly pretext, and 
 then he bashfully drops the first person of his 
 story: "But the presumptuous man was over 
 thrown by the eye and ear, and surrendered at 
 discretion. He is now as happy as it is safe in 
 life to be. She is seventeen years old, and very 
 
MARRIAGE. 75 
 
 beautiful by universal consent," with which 
 popular judgment he in the present instance 
 )oisterously coincides to the dot. 
 
 But Emerson was still a wanderer without a 
 fixed charge. He had been offered a steady po 
 sition, yet he hovered in doubt, till a right turn 
 of the tide might float him into port. His be 
 trothal seems to have settled him, for we read 
 that some three months after his engagement, he 
 received the ordination already mentiond in the 
 preceding section. Six months later he was mar 
 ried and brought his wife to Boston, establishing 
 a home for himself and for his mother s family, 
 the members of which were still in a very dis 
 persed and distressed condition both as to health 
 and finance. It is evident that the newly wedded 
 young minister has won a fresh outlook upon the 
 future ; the economic cloud which kept lowering 
 over him all his days, has begun to break away 
 into a golden luminority. 
 
 Of Emerson s love-life there is not much rec 
 ord. It was not his theme except in a very lim 
 ited and shrinking way. Though he it was who 
 said that all the world loves a lover, he was him 
 self no ardent loyer. of love; indeed just that 
 character was what he shunned. He would, be 
 no Phileros, like Goethe and many another poet. 
 Therein he seems to have been true to the Puri 
 tanic element in all New England poetry, which 
 has been reproached with never having produced 
 a genuine love-song. This is doubtless an exces- 
 
76 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 sive statement, still it hints a tendency and a lim 
 itation. Unquestionably Emerson often treats of 
 love, but it is apt to etherialize into his ideal re 
 lation to the divine Oversoul. His love of God 
 was so strong, so exclusive, possibly so jealous, 
 that he had only a limited toleration of the love 
 of woman. 
 
 Still it cannot be said that the humanly ama 
 tory theme is wholly absent from Emerson s 
 writings. In certain Essays there are passages 
 breathing the heart s passionate exuberances, 
 though disguised and made impersonal by some 
 abstract setting or symbol. Also several of his 
 lyrics are instinct with individual emotion, but 
 his tendency is to dream it away into its uni 
 versal counterpart. In some lines of this time 
 he implies that Miss Tucker was his first love, 
 that he as teacher passed through the fiery ordeal 
 of that Boston girls -school without any serious 
 singeing : 
 
 "Then eagerly I searched each circle round, 
 I panted for my mate, but no mate found; 
 I saw bright eyes, fair forms, complexions fine, 
 But not a single soul that spoke to mine; 
 At last the star broke through the hiding cloud, 
 At last I found thee in the silken crowd. 
 I found thee, Ellen" 
 
 Happy man! We shall have to take the poet 
 izing lover at his word, and respond with a fel 
 low-feeling to his ardent imagery. At the same 
 
MARRIAGE. 77 
 
 time we must note the abiding significance of this 
 matrimonial step throughout his whole career, 
 bringing with it the greatest stroke of good-luck 
 that ever befel him or any other poor penwright. 
 For she is an heiress, and her considerable for 
 tune drops or will drop into Emerson s lap, se 
 curing to him for life economic freedom, enfran 
 chisement from the hamstringing worry about a 
 livelihood, the freedom which bases every other- 
 kind of freedom not only of speech but of spirit. 
 We dare question if foresightful Emerson had 
 ventured to break* the galling fetters of his min 
 isterial vocation (as he will shortly do) unless he 
 had felt himself financially independent, and thus 
 defiant of those first fates of human existence- 
 food, raiment, and shelter. 
 
 We must recall that actual want, even gaunt 
 hunger threatened Emerson in his younger days. 
 All through his novitiate, as heretofore described, 
 he was in a desperate wrestle with poverty. But 
 now the windfall descends upon him by gift of 
 the Godsj munificent especially when tested by the 
 Emerson household. Never did Providence do a 
 better deed, divinely benignant, far-overlooking 
 the future. It is hardly too much to say that the 
 free, the great Emerson now becomes more than a 
 possibility, even a certainty, with time. Often, in 
 the course of our narrative, we shall have to take 
 a glance back at this lasting foundation of his 
 life s temple. 
 
 Pastor Emerson, henceforth economically inde- 
 
78 RALPH WALD&-BM&R8ONPART FIRST. 
 
 pendent, has set his face toward making himself 
 spiritually independent, whereof the first decisive 
 step with its lasting outlook is .next to be 
 recorded. 
 
 III. 
 
 THE BREAKING POINT 
 
 The soul stands alone with God, and Jesus is no 
 more present to your mind than your brother or 
 your child. Many passages to the same purport 
 can be culled from Emerson l s writings during 
 these pivotal years. He has come to question all 
 forms of mediation between man and God, between, 
 the soul individual and the soul universal, chal 
 lenging the position of the Mediator himself as 
 centered in the heart of Christianity. The his 
 toric Church with its dogmas and rites has be 
 come to him a spiritual obstruction, yea an offense 
 which he deems himself called upon to assail and 
 to eradicate. 
 
 Perhaps if Ave had access to the mountainous 
 mass of the unpublished sermons of his clerical 
 triennium, we would find this neAV protest eA^er 
 rising higher, increasing in strength and defining 
 itself with greater clearness and resolution. His 
 vocation in its transmitted form is continuously 
 getting to be more distasteful to him, and indeed 
 he as clergyman has undone himself by his doc 
 trine. His Journal breaks out: "When people 
 imagine that others can be their priests, they may 
 
THE BREAKING POINT. 79 
 
 well fear hypocrisy." What then becomes of the 
 minister Emerson? He is certainly not far from 
 professional suicide. This jotting in his Diary is 
 dated September 5th, 1832, and bears in it a se 
 cret tlirust against himself as the shepherd of his 
 nock. He is not far from calling himself a hypo 
 crite, and we may hear the preluding resolve to 
 free his soul from such a stinging stain of self- 
 reproach. 
 
 Accordingly it is not surprising to learn that 
 four days later he preached his last ministerial 
 sermon, whose theme was the Lord s Supper, and 
 enforced kindly but decisively his scruples about 
 administering that rite. He states his belief that 
 it was not a permanent institution, but a form 
 which, had been outgrown, and had become alien 
 to the Spirit of Christ himself, whose true exam 
 ple is not that of an intermediary between me and 
 my God, but that of an immediate communicant 
 with the Divine Spirit quite like myself and 
 yourself. Very significant is this not only of Em 
 erson s present religious attitude, but of his uni 
 versal world-view throughout his entire life. 
 
 Already in the preceding June (1832) he had 
 proposed to his congregation that the use of the 
 elements in the Lord s Supper be dropped, and 
 also that the rite be made merely one of com 
 memoration, and not regarded as a sacrament or 
 dained by Christ to be kept up by his Church for 
 all time. The committee to whom the proposi 
 tion was referred reported against any change, 
 
80 RALPH WALDO EMBR8ONPART FTR8T. 
 
 but wished to retain their pastor. Thus Emerson 
 had to face the question alone : Shall I break 
 with mine own? He flees to the White Moun 
 tains to interrogate his unfailing oracle, Nature s 
 divine suggestion, ere he take the final step. We 
 possess a brief diary of his spirit s ups and downs 
 in this storm. After some days of mental seesaw- 
 ings, he returns resolved: he could not yield his 
 conviction ; he had already stigmatized himself 
 as a hypocrite, if he dared administer that sacra 
 ment. He comes back to his congregation and 
 preaches the before-mentioned last sermon of 
 angelic defiance, sealing his emphatic words with 
 his deed of resignation. Repeated attemps were 
 made to compromise the scission, but Emerson 
 could not be shaken from his main purpose. By 
 a vote of thirty to twenty-four his resignation 
 was accepted, and Emerson s one pastorate had 
 evolved its own tragedy. 
 
 To this day the question is debated : Was his 
 act justifiable? Could he not have trained his 
 congregation to take his views without such a 
 tie-tearing convulsion? And then that heart- 
 touching Communion Service could it not be in 
 terpreted as a symbol by the symbolizing Emer 
 son f We are told by himself that these and sim 
 ilar questionings haunted the fugitive in his 
 mountainous retreat. Impartially keen is his self- 
 probing: "I know very well that it is a bad sign 
 in a man to be too conscientious," especially a 
 New Englander. He is aware that "the most 
 
THE BREAKING POINT. gl 
 
 desperate scoundrels have been the over-refin 
 ers," sharpening the point of the argument till it 
 gets pointless, and hence without any prick to 
 the conscience. 
 
 It is evident that Emerson has pushed to that 
 pass where he is fully aware that he must force 
 the separation. Better now than later, for it is 
 bound to come. This little particular rent might 
 be patched up, but Emerson sees that he is 011 the 
 march toward universality, that his new doctrine 
 or world-vieAV is going to embrace all religion, 
 and then, transcending the religious sphere, to 
 grapple with the whole spiritual dominion of the 
 ages. Probably too he feels himself in the best sit 
 uation just now to take up the coming conflict. 
 An untrammeled free individual he beholds him 
 self in life s mirror once more ; fate without his 
 consent has smitten the tender conjugal bond and 
 given him a real even if unwilling release ; also 
 the fierce restraint of poverty has relaxed its grip 
 upon his future so that he can rest unanxious in 
 the sweet composure of economic liberty. 
 
 Emerson s young Avife had died early in the 
 same year, February, 1832. There can be little 
 doubt that while she lived, she acted as an anchor 
 to hold him fast to his calling. Alreaclr before 
 their marriage, consumption had threatened her, 
 but she rallied so as to seem out of danger. Yet 
 the insidious disease returned, and Emerson for 
 nearly two years was occupied and pre-occupied 
 with an ever-welling worry over her gradual 
 
82 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 evanishment before his eyes. The first winter 
 after marriage he took her to the mild South out 
 of the raw climate of New England, and was pre 
 paring for a similar journey the following year 
 when she quite suddenly passed away. 
 
 Her character he designates "a bright revela 
 tion of the best nature of woman." During this 
 time many a throe of his heart s anguish pulses 
 out to utterance in prose and verse, most of which 
 he confided to the intimacy of his Journal. Says 
 a relative : l He was in the habit of walking out 
 early in the morning to visit her new-made 
 grave." 
 
 Thus Emerson has in early life to pass through 
 the discipline of death in just about its most 
 crushing infliction. The young wife s deeply 
 loved presence is torn out of his bleeding heart, 
 and he moves about dazed at this fresh problem 
 of the mysterious Providential ordeal. Can he 
 transform such suffering into a new insight and 
 a higher reconciliation? But that is not all. His 
 two brothers, of unusual talent and of the best 
 education, are both stricken by a deep-seated 
 malady which is slowly but inexorably bearing 
 them toward dissolution. Then Emerson himself 
 begins to droop in health and to sink utterly dis 
 heartened before what seems to him the impend 
 ing doom of his family. In fact the whole Em 
 ersonian household appears during these days to 
 have been haunted with a gloomy foreboding of 
 its approaching disappearance. And the two 
 
THE BREAKING POINT. g 3 
 
 brothers of Emerson will at no long interval fol 
 low his wife to the grave. To be sure this sad 
 presentiment , of Lis tragic lot does hardly more 
 than palpitate in a brief underbreath through cer 
 tain fugitive words fleeting from their prison. 
 But Emerson by an herculean act of resolution 
 will escape from what he at times deems his pre 
 judged domestic appointment with death. 
 
 We feel Emerson s dark struggle against the 
 hidden powers over life repeatedly in his Journal. 
 He writes: "When I consider the constitutional 
 calamity of my family, ... I have little appre 
 hension of my own liability to the same evil." 
 Yet his soul is wrestling with this same evil, this 
 direful menace hanging over his nearest and dear 
 est kindred and himself. Long, gloomy, and des 
 perate is the battle for his mastery over Fate, but 
 he wins it at last. Though his be the doomed 
 house of Tantalus, as he in view of its fatalities 
 would seem at dreadful moments to believe, he 
 rallies and coerces his own very doom in the 
 pinch of its victory. Thus Emerson rises to be 
 ing a Fate-compeller. 
 
 Not otherwise can it be than that such a vital 
 experience has written its fiery discipline into 
 his character, and left its lasting imprint upon 
 his mental constitution. Emerson has witnessed 
 with a -tragic interest and the warmest participa-. 
 tion the evanescence of the Person, whereby such 
 evanescence will be traced on his soul, and be 
 come a portion of his doctrine. Verily, he has 
 
84 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 served his apprenticeship to Destiny, and has 
 learned the lasting lesson. We shall find that 
 Personality itself, in the universe of man and 
 God, turns ethereal, fragile, moribund to his vis 
 ion, quite uncertain of its own existence. Ke- 
 peatedly hereafter we shall have to note how 
 oscillatingly Emerson hovered about the doctrine 
 of the persistence of the individual self. One can 
 hardly help thinking that such a condition sprang 
 from the deepest and most formative experience 
 of life, and thus became integrated with his whole 
 spiritual existence. He accepted his mortal lot 
 of finitude, and then transcended it by living im 
 mortally. 
 
 But the Breaking Point is passed, though it 
 leaves Emerson broken. Owns he the remedial 
 power of self -recovery ? That is the question the 
 reader must now ask of this Biography, also the 
 question which Emerson must ask of himself. 
 
 IV. 
 
 WHAT NEXT? 
 
 Such, then, was the separative, devastating 
 Explosion of the inner expansive forces which 
 had long been gathering in Emerson s soul, really 
 during all his previous years quite back to boy 
 hood. And now he, still a young man under 
 thirty, is suddenly and violently hurled out of 
 his inherited calling and creed which the cen 
 turies have handed down to him through his own 
 
WHAT NEXT? 35 
 
 blood. We may see him rise up from the stun 
 ning shock and look around with a thin pallid 
 look of anxiety, sorrow, and disease, questioning 
 with whispering lips his life s oracle: "What next? 
 
 The startling concussion was preceded if not 
 caused by a sermon which turned out to be his 
 last in the prescribed course. It will be well to 
 glance back and scan this final utterance of his 
 separation. We can find it in the discourse 
 already mentioned which he delivered to his con 
 gregation shortly after his return from his flight 
 to the mountains (September 9th, 1832). Let us 
 also remember that this is the only one of his 
 parish sermons which, on account of its catastro 
 phic import, has been deemed worthy of publica 
 tion in his Works (Centenary Edition, Vol XI). 
 It bears in its construction the double character 
 of the present separative Epoch, with its two 
 opposing parts. Then there is a decided cleavage, 
 even antagonism between its form and content, 
 between its ancient setting and its modern spirit. 
 The bottle is old, but the wine is new and effer 
 vescent to the point of bursting its confine. An 
 unconscious image of the present dualistic Emer 
 son we may trace in its architecture. 
 
 First to be noted is the external division into 
 its two colliding portions: for the authority and 
 against the authority of the transmitted rite of 
 the Lord s Supper. Thus the central word au 
 thority, in affirmation and in negation, is the axis 
 of the discourse. The affirming 1 first portion is 
 
86 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 historical, scriptural, argumentative 1 , with prece 
 dents bolstered by a mass of citations. It should 
 b observed that Emerson is here formally logical 
 and theological as never again afterwards ; in fact 
 the whole drift both in manner and meaning is 
 decidedly anti-Emersonian, being contrary to his 
 view of the soul s own direct inspiration above all 
 authority, even biblical. So he concludes this 
 portion with the admonition "against taking 
 even the best ascertained opinions and practices 
 of the primitive Church for our own. How he 
 slams the door in the face of all ecclesiastical 
 tradition, as it were turning upon himself as an 
 ecclesiastic with denial, yea with a polite self - 
 undoing contempt ! 
 
 But the second part of the sermon flows with 
 far greater congeniality ; the theme no longer 
 toils painfully up the steep, but turns and runs 
 of itself down-hill. For the discourse now does 
 away with the rite, though long established and 
 hallowed by memory, and therein calls forth the 
 coming Emerson, anti-traditional, anti-conven 
 tional, even anti-institutional. To him this rite 
 or indeed any rite disturbs or rather perverts the 
 immediate relation of the soul to God; what is 
 due to the deity is not to be given to the inter 
 mediary. Moreover such a mediating ceremony 
 and .even the mediating person may suit the Ori 
 ental mind which originated them, but they be- 
 longMiot here, we have. transcended that old alien 
 world "full of forms, idols, and ordinances." 
 
WHAT NEXT? 87 
 
 Thus the preacher in his own pulpit unfrocks him 
 self into freedom, or what he deems such. lie has 
 advanced to the point of denying the rite of rites, 
 the Eucharist of the Christian Communion, and 
 the pun hits home : this rite is not a right but a 
 wrong, even the highest, to God Himself. To be 
 sure, Emerson does not use such language, his 
 words carefully shy around within the traditional 
 bounds of propriety, though their thought be rev 
 olutionary and Heaven-scaling. The clerical vest 
 ment he still wears though in the role of the de 
 stroyer of clericism. Significant in the same di 
 rect-on is the fact that Emerson composing this 
 sermon retains the old rather beworii sermonic 
 ordering into headings and sub-headings a form 
 alism which he will hotly fling away hereafter, 
 even if he cools off in rare places. He still re 
 tains the shattered egg-shell on his wing, though 
 he pecks at it till it drops down, and he springs 
 forth free, soaring in untrammeled flight. 
 
 We must, however, keep in mind that Emerson 
 by no means gets rid of all forms and formulas 
 forever. Particularly he stops at the one great 
 stepping-off place of his folk, he never breaks 
 with the transmitted Puritanic moralism. In 
 deed he makes for clutching just that as the one 
 secure anchorage in the drifting ocean of doubt. 
 And there is still an authority very autocratic in 
 his creed, that of the Oversoul s divine descent 
 into man with its omnipotent behest. Even cer 
 tain recognizable features of tb3 traditional ser- 
 
88 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 mon will peep out to the last, though transmuted 
 from the pulpit through the lyceum to the ulti 
 mate form of the independent Essay. Nor will 
 Emerson quit the church s rostrum, though he re 
 fuses its regular routine ; he becomes a kind of 
 sermonizing privateer, preaching his own gospel 
 from any tribune sacred or profane; thus he 
 shows himself the shifty sermoneer, if such a 
 term, rather undignified but certainly not un 
 friendly, can be withstood by the shocked reader. 
 The foregoing tells Emerson s present experi 
 ence, sudden, cataclysmic, evoking a new stage of 
 his Apprenticeship. Quite broken and prostrate 
 he comes before us, with a f orefeeling of doom in 
 1-is blood, and a Tantalian suspense at the recur 
 ring menace of Fate, one of whose mortal blows 
 has already shattered his heart. So we may hear 
 him anxiously querying: What next? Which 
 way turn? Unconsciously he pulls himself up 
 and starts a new Epoch. 
 
CHAPTER THIRD 
 
 THE RECOVERY 
 
 Another decided turn in Emerson s career now 
 takes place, distinct in character from the pre 
 ceding one, indeed quite the opposite as to the 
 essential matter. From a breaking away it curves 
 about toward a getting back, from a separation it 
 rounds to a return; so we have to call this a time 
 of recovery and restoration out of a deep spir 
 itual convulsion. Thus it is the stressful counter- 
 stroke to what has just occurred, and drives for 
 ward to a new Epoch in the present Biography. 
 The man is subjected to a fresh discipline in 
 preparation for his life s great work ; the old 
 transmitted landmark being swept away, he must 
 build another of his own more adequate, more 
 characteristic of himself. 
 
 If the previous volcanic Epoch lasted three 
 years in gathering secretly its explosive forces 
 for the final upheaval and dissolution, the present 
 Epoch will endure about the same length of time 
 the restoration rising through several stages 
 till the patient is sound and himself again. In 
 such fashion the current of life bends around, 
 making toward a new and grander goal after a 
 darksome passage through a fragment of Erebos. 
 Accordingly Emerson we see undergoing another 
 
 89 
 
90 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 triennial course of training, the last of this First 
 Period, which is verily his Apprenticeship in 
 preparation for his supreme coming vocation. 
 The explosion which we have just recorded was 
 the young revolt, the deeply separative stage of 
 his first grand experience, which he is now to 
 surmount, but only to take a still deeper, more 
 universal plunge in opposition to his time and its 
 institutional order. We are to see -him rising 
 fr,om a whirl in one of the lesser eddies of life 
 to his grand baptism in the ocean of his entire 
 existence. 
 
 Let us then glimpse Emerson as he sets sail 
 Christmas day, 1832, having not yet passed his 
 third decade of years, on the small trading-brig 
 Jasper from Boston, and as he looks out smil 
 ingly eastward over the indefinite Atlantic ; then 
 let us note him in December, 1835, three years 
 afterward, as he sits before the fire in his own 
 home at Concord. He has recovered health and 
 family, both of which had been broken up in the 
 previous upheaval ; he has also regained vocation 
 and community, though in new forms. But more 
 significantly he has won his life s stronghold 
 within and without, spiritually and physically, 
 from which he can sally forth against the hosts 
 of dark-ness, and to which he can return for re 
 cuperation and fresh plans of attack. He has 
 taken position in his Castle of Defiance for the 
 rest of his days. 
 
 Accordingly this triennial experience, having 
 
HEALTH RECOVERED. 91 
 
 in itself a flight from home and a return may be 
 deemed one of his life s lesser yet well-marked 
 nodes, and is therefore worthy of its own special 
 exposition. This will portray his going forth 
 and coming back to the same spot of earth, but 
 will also, in such a spatial and temporal cycle, 
 show him enacting a considerable phase of his 
 spirit s evolution. He quits his city, country, and 
 continent, and takes a trip to the World s back 
 ground and also his own. A voyage of discovery, 
 yea of self-discovery it is, but its main fact must 
 be seized that it seeks and wins the Recovery 
 both of body and mind, which has become the 
 prime condition not only of advancing further 
 but of living longer. 
 
 Note, then, again and keep the fact before the 
 mind that in the organism of Emerson s total 
 Life-Essay, that this is the third and concluding 
 Epoch of his Apprenticeship to Tradition, during 
 which he goes- abroad to the great school of the 
 Past, to Europe, from whence he is to bring home 
 lasting spoils, really for his mastery of Tradition. 
 
 I. 
 
 HEALTH RECOVERED 
 
 The stress of Emerson s spiritual collision found 
 its echo in his body never very robust; the result 
 was he became a victim of recurrent illness and mel 
 ancholy. He writes: "My malady has proved so 
 obstinate and comes back as often as it goes away ; 
 
92 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 so under advice he will seek to "prevent these 
 ruinous relapses by a sea voyage. Another record 
 from, a different source sadly declares: Waldo r; 
 sick ; his spirits droop, I never saw him so disheart 
 ened." We catch fitfully a strange undertone that 
 there lay in him a forecast of family fate, for thus 
 we have to interpret a stray note in a letter of his 
 brother Charles: "One does not like to feel that 
 there is any doom upon him or his race; it seems 
 to quench the fire and freedom of his hopes and 
 purposes." So writes this brother to the family s 
 seeress Aunt Mary, forefeeling some lurking fatal 
 ity in the kinship, and doubtless in himself, who 
 will glide over life s bourne in a few years. 
 
 But Waldo Emerson, hounded by malady and 
 melancholy, is now inhaling the remedial breath of 
 the salt sea, and at once starts the uplift toward 
 health and mind s recovery. The overture of the 
 voyage was a terrific storm, which consigned the five 
 passengers to the stateroom "where was nausea, 
 darkness, unrest," yet with "harpy appetite and 
 harpy feeding." Discomfort enough, not except 
 ing filth and even vomit: "yet I thank the sea and 
 rough weather for a truckman s health and stomach 
 how connected with celestial gifts!" Thus the 
 physical renovation of the voyage is getting mani 
 fest. Then the many new objects of vision call him 
 out of himself,. and the daring struggle of his ship 
 and its crew with the mighty and often furious ele 
 ments draws his attention away from his petty in 
 ner see-saw, ^s we mav note in his Journal. He 
 
HEALTH RECOVERED. 93 
 
 reads a little, philosophizes quite a bit, and even 
 poetizes somewhat. One rather liquid effusion of 
 his sea-muse he has preserved under date of Janu 
 ary 6, 1833, and strangely it runs to the tune of the 
 Free Verse of 1918. 
 
 Finally on February 2, 1833, his staunch vessel 
 has overpassed the Ocean, crept through the straits 
 of Gibraltar, and reached Malta, striking "from 
 Boston across three thousand miles of stormy water 
 into a little gut of inland sea, nine miles wide." 
 The art in the churches stirs his interest and he 
 hopes "they will paint and carve and inscribe the 
 walls" of similar edifices in New England not a 
 very Puritanic expectancy. Moreover he is "learn 
 ing two languages," evidently pounding their 
 idioms into his brain, that they drop fluently from 
 his tongue when he gets to Italy and France, for he 
 is looking backwards already, not forwards. 
 
 And just that halts us in a pause of surprise. 
 Why did not Emerson push on to new-born Hellas, 
 in whose independence America and specially his 
 own Boston had taken such an interest only a few 
 years since? He must have well remembered the 
 whole excitement, and particularly the speech of 
 his favorite orator Daniel Webster upon this theme. 
 But somehow he took no pleasure in making the 
 native words of his dearest Plato flow from his 
 tongue in living speech or in seeing the vesture of 
 nature for the body of the finest poetry in the world. 
 Then not far off reposes the God-visioning Orient 
 with whose spirit the genius of Emerson stood in 
 
94 RALPH WALDO EMERSONPART FIRST. 
 
 deep, even if as yet unconscious affinity. Yonder 
 lies Palestine, Egypt is easily accessible but no, he 
 
 faces the other way. 
 
 Still- we must put due stress upon the great ad 
 vantage of this voyage. Emerson doubtless felt 
 the reconstruction of his hitherto fragile organism, 
 and longed to get back to work in realizing his ur 
 gent idea. He, the invalid, had bravely taken his 
 long dose of sea-medicine, at a single, gulp as it 
 were, lasting about six weeks, and never. once touch 
 ing land: a swallow thousands of miles long, as if 
 he were going down the throat of the old Hell-clog 
 Cerberus. But he has come out the infernal voy 
 age not only safe but renovated; thus he has cir 
 cumvented that "doom of his family" which he 
 sometimes gloomed to be impending over him. For 
 mark ! he lives till near fourscore ; he endures all 
 sorts of food, of bed, of conveyance, in many annual 
 campaigns of lecturing over the raw country of the 
 West surely a tough-sided, much enduring Ulys 
 ses. Disease never again seriously caught him in 
 the vitals till the last time, which always comes. 
 Indeed his body was of sterner stuff than his mind. 
 and outlasted it for years. But now Emerson sails 
 through the sea, as, it were from frail invalidism 
 to rugged recuperation, having been apprenticed 
 to ill-health also during his young-manhood. So 
 he wins his first great prize -his health s Recovery. 
 
BACK THROUGH THE ANTTQUE. 95 
 II. 
 
 BACK THROUGH THE ANTIQUE 
 
 Emerson, suddenly facing about, will float down 
 the westward-flowing stream of old Time, and throw 
 a hasty glance at some of the antiquities scattered 
 along its bank. Still for him this is the back track 
 a return, not an advance ; nevertheless he will 
 move on the line of man s progress from the old 
 Europe to the new, taking a short dip meanwhile 
 into his race s cultural antecedents. 
 
 So it comes that our traveler, having gone for 
 ward to the border-land of the great Past, refuses 
 to push further to the East, fcut wheels around and 
 starts for the West, casting brief glimpses at things 
 and men by the way, but not seriously stopping till 
 he returns to his new Occident. Still we have to 
 query why he shrank from a gaze into the two 
 primeval sources, the Greek and the /Semitic, of the 
 supreme world-civilization, which we may call the 
 Mediterranean, and which was the basis of his own 
 culture, both secular and religious. The Hellenic 
 and the Hebrew consciousness had been the original 
 storehouse from which his spirit ard that of his 
 age had been fed, but he shows no desire to see the 
 old homestead cf the one or of the other, though 
 both have the interest cf antique historic ruins. 
 This action, seemingly unconscious, indicates to our 
 mind, Emerson s dominant mood: he is in decided 
 reaction against the old, the transmitted, the tran 
 scended, and so his spirit calls a halt to penetrating 
 
96 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 further into its own antiquity. Was not this very 
 voyage caused by his breach with tradition ? What 
 he could not endure in Boston, he will not accept 
 here ; so, having won his prime Recovery, that of 
 health, he turns about for home, where he is to find 
 another form of Recovery, perchance two or three. 
 
 Accordingly on Februar3 r 21, 1833, "we em 
 barked for Syracuse in a Sicilian brigantine," and 
 in sixteen unhasting hours the ancient city, which 
 has such a famous place in classical history, was 
 sighted and entered. Memories of antique poetry 
 bubbled up as "I drank the waters of the fountain 
 of Arethusa" and breakfasted on "the very fra 
 grant Hybla?an honey. " Especially the orator 
 Cicero seems to have been the liveliest figure here 
 present to his imagination, which was doubtless 
 prompted by hints from his guide-book. From 
 Syracuse he rapidly circles around to other Sicilian 
 cities, flinging down by the way an observation 
 here and there, and sometimes a criticism. But he 
 has no word for the great historic phenomena before 
 him in that unique island, around which the conflict 
 of the Mediterranean races swirled for thousands 
 of years the Greek, the Carthaginian, the Latin, 
 the Saracen till from the North the Teuton also 
 interwove himself into its history. Really Emer 
 son stands in a kind of secret opposition to the op 
 pressive Past, and suffers not its authority. 
 
 Soon Emerson finds himself sailing into the Bay 
 of Naples and feels overawed at first by the scene 
 of beauty and of ancient glory The very names he 
 
BACK THROUGH THE ANTIQUE. 97 
 
 hears make it "hard to keep one s judgment up 
 right and be pleased only after your own way." 
 This deluge of greatness from the olden time causes 
 him to show fight on the spot, and so he brandishes 
 his pen with a shout: "I won t be imposed upon 
 by a name." Yet the deluging cataract of some 
 2000 years and more of Naples, as he looks out over 
 the city, pours down upon him, and he can hardly 
 maintain himself upright t( against what seems the 
 human race." But if Waldo Emerson has one res 
 olution, it is this: he will not let his selfhood be 
 submerged in this maelstrom of the Past. So he 
 exclaims defiantly to himself: "Who cares? Here s 
 for the plain old Adam, the simple genuine Self 
 against the whole world." Such is the armed soul 
 which now wanders through Naples, recording 
 sights and impressions here quite omissible. But 
 again we have to remark that the grandest phenom 
 enon, the deepest-searching symbol of the World s 
 History in this locality the great symbolizer Emer 
 son shuffles by with one meaningless sentence 
 Pompeii, which proclaims in death s awful presence 
 the resurrection through destruction. 
 
 Let Naples pass, with its Greek substrate of 
 speech and spirit which one can detect in it to-day. 
 Next Emerson reaches a very different city, one 
 which has wielded the greatest and most lasting 
 urban influence on our globe. What will he do with 
 the overwhelming appearance past and present of 
 Rome? He is thirty years old, a highlv educated 
 man with classical trairivo-. and has read all his 
 
98 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 life. What we have called his Apprenticeship is 
 drawing to a close. Here is a marvelous opportu 
 nity for experiencing the past at its greatest and 
 also in its limitation, for realizing its supreme 
 achievement as well as the fate which lurks gnaw 
 ing in its grandeur. Emerson still saw Papal Rome 
 in all outer gorgeous ceremony and inner organ 
 ized hold on the hearts, heads, and consciences of 
 hundreds of millions. Then the Fine Arts, those 
 sovereign forms of expression which in splendor re 
 veal the spirit of bygone ages sculpture, painting, 
 architecture, music were all concentrated in the 
 Eternal City to make it beautiful and to keep it 
 eternal. 
 
 Hardly more than a stupendous stare does he 
 give to this mass of spiritual wealth; certainly he 
 dares no serious mental grapple. He goes around 
 dutifully and looks at all set down in the pro 
 gramme ; external admiration he lisps ritually, but 
 we can often feel the muffled protest. He is step 
 ping now in the transmitted treadmill, and he can 
 not well turn back. Still once in a while a mutter 
 breaks out, as when he sees the Pope washing the 
 feet of thirteen pilgrims (one was from Kentucky) : 
 "Why should not he (His Holiness) leave one mo 
 ment this service of fifty generations and speak out 
 of his own Heart though it were but a single 
 word?" This Emerson at Rome cannot help recall 
 ing his own conflict with a transmitted church cere 
 mony at Boston really the key-note of his present 
 mood. Strange! v for him the phi of charm of old 
 
BACK THROUGH THE ANTIQUE. 99 
 
 Rome "is the name of Cicero," its greatest talker 
 while its greatest doer, Caesar, is rather contemptu 
 ously unpedestaled : i A soul as great as his or any 
 other s is your own." Verily the World s History 
 lies not in the purview of Emerson right here at its 
 chief center, nor does he recognize the supreme 
 world-historical character in Rome s evolution. 
 When he jbeholds the famous Torso of Hercules it 
 recalls some old revolutionary cripple," sight fa 
 miliar to Emerson from boyhood as he was born only 
 some twenty years after the war of Independence. 
 Such does the ideal Greek statue famed -by Winkel- 
 mann and Goethe become to the Yankee tourist. His 
 crass Philistinism quite equals that of another 
 American innocent, Mark Twain, on a similar jour 
 ney. 
 
 So after a shortened month, hardly time enough 
 to look around in such a wilderness of mighty things 
 handed down, Emerson turns his back on Rome. 
 Yet, as we shall see in his later works, he stored 
 up much in these few days, not forgetting his dis 
 gust. From the very presence of Antiquity in her 
 most beautiful and venerable shape he averts his 
 face wearing one of his Sardonic smiles, which he 
 will hereafter repeat more than once in his prose. 
 
 Winding out of Rome, through vales and round 
 hill-sides, Emerson arrives at the second greatest of 
 Italy s past cities Florence, which belongs not to 
 the Roman- world, but to the distinctively Italian 
 era. The community most creative of genius, not 
 political or military, but poetic and artistic, in the 
 
100 KALPH WALDO BMBR8ONPART FIRST. 
 
 whole Peninsula; why should just that be? Two 
 sons it brought forth, mightiest of their kind, Dante 
 and Michael Angelo, .both of whom, however, had to 
 quit their native soil in order to produce their su 
 preme works, not to speak of the man of science, 
 Galileo. Emerson passes through the Florentine 
 Gallery of Sculpture, Painting, and Architecture, 
 but its most original structures, the Palazzos, seem 
 hardly to have caught his attention. Michael An 
 gelo overwhelms him, but Dante is a more hazy 
 problem, never hereafter to become quite visible in 
 spite many allusions. He sees the English poet 
 Landor, evidently with no great reward. Far more 
 suggestive is the fact of his little flirtation with the 
 Florentine flower-girl: "I met the fair Erminia 
 to-day." A unique record in Mr. Emerson s ex 
 perience ; never again will that happen to him in 
 this life. He reads Goethe here, and has been read 
 ing him from Malta I wonder what book of the 
 master ? 
 
 But mark the change creeping over him in the 
 following: "We come out to Europe to learn what 
 is the uttermost which social man has yet done." 
 Does not that prognosticate a new attitude toward 
 the Past ? And then again as if talking with him 
 self in a kind of reproof: "To make sincere good 
 use of what he sees, he needs to put a double and 
 treble guard upon the independence of his judg 
 ment." Who is he? None other than the diarist 
 himself, now taking stock of himself. But it is a 
 rather late repentance, for on the next page of the 
 
BACK THROUGH TH-L .\ V 77 gif //*; . tf*\ 
 
 Journal we read : Sad I leave Florence, the pleas 
 ant city. I have not even seen it all and so with 
 a feeling of just having started he has to quit, cr 
 thinks he has, after a stay of only one month. It 
 would appear that the Tuscan city with its world- 
 art was nearer to him than ancient Rome with its 
 world-history. He seems to have gotten something 
 very real at Florence nothing less than a new con 
 sciousness of his limitation, a most valuable kind of 
 knowledge, which every Westerner gets or ought to 
 get in rambling over beautiful Italy. 
 
 Passing through a number of the lesser cities of 
 Northern Italy and tagging a brief note on each, 
 he enters the third Italian sovereign city, Venice, 
 the bride of the sea. But in contrast with Florence, 
 Venice repels him, disgusts him even with its mag 
 nificence born of so much cruelty. He swallows an 
 overdose of its splendors with great haste, and 
 greater disgust; the result is the following stom 
 achic outburst: "I am speedily satisfied with Ven 
 ice a city for beavers, a most disagreeable resi 
 dence. You feel always in prison, solitary." So 
 after two days he turns to flight from this unique 
 sea-shell of a world, which the English-speaking 
 man easily loves, if not through itself, at least 
 through Shakespeare, who must have seen it, we 
 think, in order to build those two poetic cities 
 after its model, such as we behold in Othello and in 
 Merchant of Venice. 
 
 From Venice the overfull traveler skims doz 
 ingly along North Italy to the next great Italian 
 city Milan. Here he centers upon the Cathedral 
 
1.02 R4.&PH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 with its hundreds of pinnacles and thousands of 
 statues, all of white marble glistening like icicled 
 frost work. Thence again follows a brain-dizzying 
 whirl through churches and galleries of art, and 
 soon he whizzes past the grand mined master-piece 
 of Leonardo, the Last Supper, jotting tritely down, 
 "The face of Christ is still very remarkable." Well, 
 how could he like that picture, which must have viv 
 idly recalled his own last intended Eucharist at 
 Boston, from which burst up the most furious explo 
 sion of his life? He, as Christian clergyman, had 
 been reproached with betraying his Master, assur 
 edly not according to justice; still the uncanny 
 grimace of Leonardo s Judas knocking over the 
 salt may have echoed an unpleasant whisper to him, 
 though of course he records nothing of the kind. 
 
 But what he does set down with some vehemence 
 is his deep disgust at Milan with its industry in 
 copying rather than in creating. On this superb 
 architectural spot his impatience bubbles out 
 against all architecture, in which he can see only 
 an imitation. No spontaneous upburst in this art, 
 he thinks ; forever and ever repetition on repetition 
 repeated is this cathedral "with its 5000 marble 
 people all over its towers." So the great : churches 
 of Italy- "are poor far-behind imitations" of- the 
 soul s creative architecture. We feel like crying to 
 him across -the years: Emerson, high time it is 
 that thou quit this Italian world of art, against 
 which thou hast in thy spirit reacted with such in 
 tensity. 
 
 Accordingly we read that after three days stay 
 
BACK THROUGH THE ANTIQUE. 1Q3 
 
 in the Lombard capital, he is pushing rapidly for 
 the border, intent upon crossing the Alps into 
 France. Evidently he has had a surfeit of art, the 
 treasures of Venice and Milan have produced a 
 satiety which puts him to flight. About three 
 months and a half he has been trying to swallow all 
 Italy past and present, in its artistic manifesta 
 tion; the result is for the nonce a kind of mental 
 dyspepsia. From dead Syracuse in the South to 
 living Milan in the North he had raced through the 
 six greatest, most typical Italian cities, with a 
 good deal of the hurry-worry of the restless rover 
 who will see everything in no time, but really sees 
 nothing in all time. 
 
 What did Emerson get out of this journey for 
 permanent use ? He had seen the supreme modern 
 art-world in its three . . visible manifestations 
 Sculpture, Painting, Architecture. ; He had looked 
 his eye-sight and soul-sight blunt, and needed rest. 
 Moreover his mood was not altogether sympathetic. 
 Italy was a past world, it dominated in art as well 
 as in religion through tradition, which was just now 
 the Emersonian devil. We have to think that he 
 was not in temper to grapple with the grandeur of 
 the Italian phenomenon. Hence there was little or, 
 no spiritual appropriation of this art-world. Still 
 he had seen much and gathered many facts, which 
 we shall often see rise in his later works. And he 
 will frequently recur to the problem of art, .meditat 
 ing and writing on it, with many a keen suggestion 
 but with no fundamental mastery. 
 
 Still his Italian experience must be set down as 
 
104 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 a noteworthy stage of what we call his Recovery 
 inner and outer. The mild climate, his bodily activ 
 ity, his turn outward to the object, his change from 
 introspection to extrospection helped to restore his 
 health, both mental and physical. It was also a 
 voyage of discovery, and chiefly he discovered a 
 good deal about himself. Antiquated Italy con 
 firmed his protest against the antiquated forms of 
 the new world. This transmitted art was but an 
 other example of the ill of tradition, and taught 
 the same lesson as the transmitted religion of New 
 England, against which he still stood in battle line. 
 His relation to the Antique has been at least 
 brought home by the Italian trip, and he turns his 
 face toward his next European experience. 
 
 ra. 
 
 BACK THROUGH THE MODERN 
 
 "The whole of the day (June 12, 1833) was 
 spent in crossing the mountain by the celebrated 
 road of the Simplon, cut and built by Buono- 
 parte," Thus our symbol-seeing Emerson is sur 
 mounting the grand barrier between the old and 
 the new through the passage made "by the great 
 Hand of 6ur age," as he calls the mighty shape 
 who towers the human Colossus striding from 
 Italy to France both in his deed and his origin. 
 The mountainous work impresses the coming 
 writer with the huge outline of one .of his { Rep 
 resentative Men." Arriving at Geneva he ex- 
 
BACK THROUGH THE MODERN. 1Q5 
 
 claims: "Here I am in the stern old town, the 
 resort of such various minds of Calvin," the 
 great believer, who is put first on the list by the 
 Puritan, and who is then followed by those fa 
 mous unbelievers Rousseau, Gibbon, Voltaire. 
 Emerson might well have queried: To which 
 class will Fate assign me ? Who will decide that 
 for him to-day? But let us turn with him down 
 the road for Paris. 
 
 Emerson, accordingly, flees across the Alps 
 from the Past to the Present, from the Ancient 
 to the Modern, from Italy to France, and at once 
 all seems changed "the cities, the language, the 
 faces, the manners." After a continuous ride of 
 ten days from Milan he arrived at Paris, June 20, 
 1833. Mid the whirl of the stage-coach he has 
 had time to reflect on, what he has passed through. 
 After all he misses antique Italy: "I have seen 
 so much in five months that the magnificence of 
 Paris will not take my eye to-day." Melancholy 
 is the transition: "I was sorry to find that in 
 leaving Italy I had left forever that air of an 
 tiquity and history which her towns possess, and 
 in coming hither had come to a loud, modern New 
 York of a place" (Chicago having not yet at 
 tained its world-wide glory of being the unap- 
 proached example of vulgar modernity in Eastern 
 eyes). 
 
 About a month Emerson loiters around Paris in 
 much desultory sightseeing, for which the oppor 
 tunity is enticing. Very little he says concern- 
 
106 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 ing its art, having been sated with that subject 
 in the South. His chief interest seems to have 
 dropped back to Nature, as he found it gathered, 
 ordered, and labeled in the famous Parisian gar 
 den of Plants. His delight is now "in the inex 
 haustible riches of Nature." We hear anticipa 
 tions of his coming work. "I feel the centipede 
 in me," and all life. "I am moved by strange 
 sympathies ; I say continually : I will be a nat 
 uralist." And we catch not a word about litera 
 ture, of which a great new upburst was just then 
 taking place in Paris, centering around Victor 
 Hugo and the Romantic School. Rather does he 
 brood in a curious presentiment of the rising ani 
 mal evolution: "Not a form so grotesque, so sav 
 age, but is an expression of some property in man 
 the observer an occult relation, between the very 
 scorpions and man." Such is the Emersonian 
 foreglow. of Darwin s sunburst, a quarter of a 
 century later. Here, then, our traveler has run 
 upon a very significant item of his own selfhood 
 he must have become what he is, glimpsing 
 dimly and from afar his own evolution. To Em 
 erson Nature was always very natural, while Art 
 was more or less artificial. 
 
 . Remarkable, .then, it seems_ that in scribbling 
 Paris, .more literary than any other city on our 
 globe, literature hardly gets a glance from Em 
 erson, the coming man of letters. The language 
 could not have stood in his way; at least with a 
 little effort the obstacle was removable, as he had 
 
BACK THROUGH THE MODERN. 1Q7 
 
 already some knowledge of French. Was he too 
 much of a classicist to like the new movement? 
 Nor does he seem to give any response to the in 
 tense political throbbings of France which at this 
 time was still in the throes of the dynastic turn from 
 Legitimist to Orleanist. Once indeed he does cry 
 out in disgust : * Fie ! Louis Philippe ! and 
 flings a single sneer at "the whirligig politics of 
 the city. Well, he was gifted with about the 
 same political lukewarmth in his own country, 
 as his Diary shows for many years. Still he had 
 the taste for one little Parisian escapade which 
 he records: "I went this evening to Frascati s, 
 long the most noted of the gambling houses or 
 hells of Paris, but he invested only one franc, 
 and that went to the hat keeper. The rest he does 
 not tell. 
 
 But more surprising still is the fact that Em 
 erson turned entirely aside from Germany, the 
 spiritual fountain head of Transcendentalism 
 which was to play such an important part in his 
 career. Goethe indeed had just died, but the in 
 fluence of the modern German Eenascence was in 
 full swing. Moreover Boston had already for 
 some years- -been tapping the Teutonic movement; 
 already -at Harvard Emerson had met it r : - in some 
 of his teachers ; he speaks especially of Edward 
 Everett, the orator. Here undoubtedly the lan 
 guage confronted him terribly, but that obstacle 
 too could have been surmounted. Already he was 
 aware that Carlyle, th6 man whom he chiefly 
 
108 RALPH WALDO EMERSONPART FIRST. 
 
 wished to see in Europe, drew his chief inspira 
 tion from Teutonia. But somehow Emerson did 
 not care to quench his thirst at first sources ; in 
 this at least he favored the mediator, even the 
 translator. 
 
 Enough then of this continental confusion of 
 tongues ! Emerson feels the extreme pleasure to 
 hear English spoken in the streets, to understand 
 all the children at play," when he gets put down 
 in London (July 20, 1833). For some six weeks 
 he spreads himself over England and Scotland 
 rather superficially he sees the poets Coleridge 
 and Wordsworth, and other celebrities, with a 
 soon satisfied curiosity. But as the chief object 
 of his journey he has to hunt up at the last mo 
 ment, Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 Thus the New Englander realizes that he has 
 come back to his remote anc&stral home, to the 
 fountain-head of his transmitted speech, educa 
 tion, manners, institutions, blood and belief. One 
 may well think that the ghost of old Peter Bulk- 
 ley, the pioneer of his stock and its greatest char 
 acter hitherto, haunted often his footsteps, and 
 even whispered him: "This is the land, this the 
 folk from which you get your essential soul- 
 how can you ever be rid of that?" The whole 
 visit must have been a stunning lesson in tradi 
 tion to the anti-traditional Emerson; from all 
 sides flowed in upon him the antecedents cultural 
 and even physical, which went to his making. 
 Very different was his experience in Latin 
 
BACK THROUGH THE MODERN. 1Q9 
 
 antique Italy, where everything was so strange, 
 and where his advent seemed to him * like that of 
 a being of another planet w r ho invisibly visits the 
 earth. " But here he now finds his own, though 
 hundreds of years old, and immemorially trick 
 ling down to him in his own blood. 
 
 Still I, for one, take it ill of him that he did not 
 make a pious pilgrimage to the ancestral shrine of 
 "a distinguished minister of Woodhill in Bed 
 fordshire descended from a noble family," Peter 
 Bulkley, forefather of Musketaquid nearly two 
 centuries before this journey, but now world- 
 famous as the heroic progenitor of Ralph Waldo 
 Emerson. Or did he perform this act of tradi 
 tional piety, and keep quiet about it? But there 
 was a living prophet in the land to whose seques 
 tered retreat he was seeking the way. 
 
 It would seem no great cause for wonder in the 
 reader that Emerson s Diary becomes quite par 
 alyzed during this English trip, being meagre to 
 the last thinness both in quantity and quality, 
 where we would expect it to be the most exuber 
 ant. At Home he plays with the boys, seemingly 
 for a little society ; at Paris he l lives alone and 
 seldom speaks." But in England he can talk his 
 dialect, and feel quite at home. Whence comes 
 it all? The inheritance of ages which he had re 
 sented and was intending to cast off, now plumps 
 down upon him and stuns him to a kind of speech- 
 lessness. Quite a discipline was this English trip 
 in Emerson s Apprenticeship verily a new train- 
 
HO RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 ing into the old and hoarily transmitted Past. 
 What will he do with it hereafter? 
 
 Let the answer pass for the present, for he will 
 yet tell us. But listen to that note of longing 
 heard back yonder in Paris already: "if he do 
 not see Carlyle in Edinburgh" . And who is this 
 Carlyle whom inquiry shows to be almost un 
 known even among the literary world in London? 
 What bond of sympathy so deep has he in com 
 mon with Transatlantic Emerson? A voice very 
 small, though not quite still is Carlyle s at pres 
 ent, but it has uttered its protest against the ac 
 cepted, the transmitted, the ossified in religion, 
 politics, and literature. Emerson has heard, the 
 wee note already in his home far across the ocean, 
 and he must hunt up and see his prophet, whose 
 living word he will hearken and carry back in 
 his heart else his journey will have no right 
 ending, will in fact leave the last ripe fruit of it 
 unplucked. 
 
 Still the ancestral land and folk have left a 
 deep impression upon Emerson s unconscious life, 
 which will keep welling up to the surface here 
 after by way of praise and blame. Then some 
 fourteen years later (in 1847) he will return 
 thither in a kind of flight from his own New Eng 
 land back to the old, of which visit he will leave 
 a full and enduring record. But behold ! he has 
 at last found his sequestered prophet. 
 
EMERSON AND CARLYLE. HI 
 
 IV. 
 
 EMERSON AND CARLYLE 
 
 That peculiar presentimental strain in Emerson 
 which we shall often note hereafter, has felt out 
 beforehand the man of all Europe whom he 
 wishes to see face to face and to hear intone the 
 living word. When Emerson first began to 
 glimpse the auroral gleam of the as yet unrisen 
 literary genius who was to be his spiritual yoke 
 fellow during life, we do not know. But it is , 
 possible to indicate what seems his earliest dis 
 tinctive recognition in a joyous jotting of his 
 Journal dated October 1, 1832: "I am cheered 
 and instructed by this paper on Corn Law 
 Rhymes in the Edinburgh (Review) by my Ger- 
 manick new-light writer whoever he be. He gives 
 us confidence in our principles. He assures the 
 truth-lover every where of sympathy. Blessed 
 art that makes books, and so joins me to this 
 stranger by that perfect railroad." Said paper 
 was by anonymous Carlyle. 
 
 Thus the forecasting Emerson with a sort of 
 prayerful gratitude hails the new luminary of 
 writ whose name even he does not yet know. The 
 evangel drops suddenly upon him from the un 
 seen Beyond, imparting to him fresh confidence 
 in his principles, which have just been sorely put 
 to the proof. At the same time Emerson detects 
 that this writer draws from a source outside him 
 self, designated here as Germanick, though the 
 
112 RALPH WALDJ EMERSOXPART FIRST. 
 
 subject be English and concerning an English 
 man. The rhymer reviewed attracts our poet, 
 but still more the reviewer. 
 
 In such words Emerson communes with himself 
 not quite three months before he starts for Eu 
 rope, and not quite eleven months before he 
 tracks Carlyle to the latter s lair at Craigenput- 
 tock. It should also be emphasized that the fore 
 going insertion was written only a few days after 
 Emerson s withdrawal from his pulpit, while the 
 1 afterstrokes of that trying struggle were still 
 pounding in his bosom, and when he most needed 
 to be "cheered and instructed" by this strong- 
 worded paper of Carlyle. In fact it just hits his 
 mood by celebrating the courage and the defiance 
 of the Corn Law Rhymer, who in all his poverty 
 both of food and poetry "has abjured Hypocrisy 
 and Servility," and refused to "bow the knee to 
 Baal." Emerson, rejected and dejected, having 
 read himself into the unknown writer as well as 
 into the humble hero of that article, rose out of 
 his blue despondency, to himself saying : I must 
 know more of that nameless rescuer of mine who 
 has thus descended into my life just at the Provi 
 dential moment with his new Gospel. 
 
 Accordingly we have to think that Emerson 
 started on the hunt through the British Reviews 
 for other works of his benefactor. Soon he indi 
 cates in his Journal (October 19, 1832) that he 
 has dug up back numbers of Eraser s Magazine 
 and has read Carlyle s notice of Schiller, now 
 
EMERSON AND CARLYLK. ]\% 
 
 mure than eighteen months old. Here too we find 
 this fervent apostrophe which shows that he has- 
 by this time uncovered the name of his deliverer : 
 "If Carlyle knew what an interest I have in his. 
 persistent goodness, would it not be worth one 
 effort more, one prayer, one meditation!" Still 
 Emerson betraj^s a throb of fear for the constancy 
 of his new-found leader: ""Will he resist the de 
 luge of bad example in England ? And the con 
 vert almost beseeches his ghostly mediator "not 
 to betray the love and trust which he has awak 
 ened. Does this note of anxiety spring from his 
 recent experience of disappointment? 
 
 So we have to conceive Emerson at this time 
 occupied for dear life with one supreme fate- 
 coercing task : he must delve for and devour the 
 writings of Thomas Carlyle not yet collected, but 
 scattered at random through various English pe 
 riodicals. He also tells where he wrought: "I 
 go to the Atheneum (Boston) and read," setting 
 doubtless the librarians on the scent after more 
 articles. We may infer that he had pretty well 
 finished in about six weeks the most if not all of 
 the Essays of Thomas Carlyle up to date, possi 
 bly from the first one printed in 1827 on Richter. 
 For we find this indication in his Journal seem 
 ingly about mid November, 1832: "I read that 
 man is not a clothes-horse, and come out and meet 
 my young friend. . . . who little imagines that 
 he points a paragraph for Thomas Carlyle." Here 
 Emerson appears to have somehow gotten the 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 clew of Sartor quite a year before its first publi 
 cation in Fraser (November, 1833). Of course 
 the idea delighted him immensely, since he had 
 just thrown up his vocation, that he might not be 
 a clothes-horse, the depository of Time s old gar 
 ments, especially of the clerical pattern. 
 
 However this may be, it is certain that Emer 
 son up to the end of 1832 when he starts for Eu 
 rope, could have found access to some two dozen 
 or more of Carlyle s magazine articles which had 
 been written during the five preceding years, 
 from 1827. Moreover these productions form the 
 most influential and universally readable portion 
 of Carlyle s works. To-day they are perused by 
 many who will accept none of his later writings. 
 In his life s history they likewise reveal a very 
 characteristic stage of his development. But 
 especially did they appeal to Emerson whom they 
 picked up just at this nodal psychologic crisis. 
 It may be doubted if Carlyle ever wrote anything 
 afterwards which so decisively took hold of his 
 present disciple. In the coming years Emerson 
 will show his gratitude for his rescue by rescuing 
 in turn Carlyle from downright hunger, and prob 
 ably saving him to literature. Nevertheless the 
 pupil will later strike into his own independent 
 road, refusing to wear any other man s ready- 
 made clothes, even his aforetime master s, 
 
THE VISIT. H5 
 
 V. 
 
 THE VISIT 
 
 Accordingly Emerson with all the zeal of young 
 discipleship sets out to find the master, obscure and 
 almost hidden in his lonely lair, and after consider 
 able enterprise succeeds in reaching the shrine of 
 his present devotion. Small and fortuitous though 
 it seems, it was a germinal deed of Emerson s life, 
 done with his prophetic instinct of some future ful 
 filment. Thus the two sons of Zeus are brought to 
 gether to start their spirit s flight, and they begin 
 to circle about each other for their own time, and 
 we may think, for all time. Moreover their bond 
 will leave to the future a new beautiful image of lit 
 erary friendship, perhaps the most enduring and in 
 spiring of its kind. 
 
 Emerson, hastening northward from London and 
 bearing letters of introduction to Carlyle at Edin 
 burgh, failed to find him there, and nobody could 
 quite tell where he was, so complete had been his / 
 social withdrawal from the Scottish capital. 
 Finally the secretary at the University of Edin 
 burgh dug up his address Craigenputtock on the 
 moors, fifteen miles from Dumfries, accessible only 
 by private conveyance, a farm in Nithdale. Hardly 
 a beaten track -to that eagle s eyrie; but Emerson, 
 the spirit s hunter, was not to be deterred by such 
 obstacles, for Carlyle was just then the supreme 
 goal of his European Journey. Says he : "I found 
 the house amid desolate heatherv hills where the 
 
116 RALPH WALDO EMERSONPART FIRST. 
 
 lonely scholar nourished his mighty heart, though 
 "unknown and exiled on that hill-farm, and not a 
 person to speak to within sixteen miles except the 
 minister of Dunscore, who also got shy of him at 
 last, doubtless on account of his heresies. 
 
 What was the attraction ? "We have already noted 
 how Emerson s attention for some time had been 
 drawn to the series of articles in the Edinburgh and 
 other British Reviews, wherein he saw a new star 
 blaze across the literary firmament. So unique 
 were they in style and matter that he began to seek 
 after the author. The result is he has reached the 
 solitary farmhouse from which these Essays were 
 sent forth, and is knocking at the door, where he is 
 received with warm hospitality by Thomas and 
 Jane Carlyle. 
 
 But let us first premise that the author s main ob 
 ject in these Essays was to tap the new German 
 Literature and make it flow over into English. It 
 was manifest that Carlyle deemed himself an inter 
 preter of the supreme literary phenomenon of the 
 time. Now the curious fact has already turned up 
 that Emerson did not care to sip of this original 
 fountain at first hand, but partook of. it through 
 Carlyle. He had previously called his author Ger- 
 manick, indicating manner and thought. We have 
 noted the item that already in Boston this influ 
 ence had been transplanted from Germany. Emer 
 son has indeed said that the primordial source of 
 his own world-view lay in Teutonic philosophy, 
 though he at times discounted the statement. 
 
VfHE VISIT. 117 
 
 It is of import to mark that Emerson was now 
 thirty years old and had not yet begun his literary 
 career; in fact, he was just passing out of his Ap 
 prenticeship. Carlyle was seven years older and 
 more, and had nearly completed one stage of his 
 total authorship ; he was beginning to transcend 
 his purely German epoch, and was getting ready to 
 flee from his solitary farm-house to its opposite, 
 densely peopled London. On the other hand Emer 
 son was meditating the reverse way in his new life, 
 intending to escape from a populous city to his own 
 farm-house near a small town. Hence he questions 
 the step of Carlyle. Indeed the two have already 
 started to go apart in tendency ; as before said, no 
 future work of Carlyle will ever mean as much to 
 Emerson as did the Essays, including Sartor Re- 
 sartus, which in composition and spirit belongs to 
 the author s Craigenputtock era. 
 
 The common element twinning most deeply these 
 Dioscuri of letters, Emerson has declared to be the 
 moral Sentiment, the immediate effluence of the 
 spirit, which each of them sometim.es but not always 
 identified with God. But as to the recipient of this 
 power, Emerson believed it might overflow quite 
 any human being, and thus show a democratic 
 equality; but Carlyle believed or came to believe 
 that it descended upon the hero only, who was thus 
 the divinely gifted ruler, the inspired autocrat 
 over the uninspired masses. Hence Emerson ex 
 pressed his rew friend s deficiency : "My own feel 
 ing was that I had met with men of far less power 
 
11$ RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 who had got greater insight into religious truth," 
 namely into "its universality as belonging to all men. 
 In this remark we may also observe a passing flash 
 of the real attraction which Carlyle exerted over 
 Emerson : Power. That was the unique gift of the 
 Scotchman : the elemental energy which poured 
 itself out into his English word. No writer has 
 given utterance to more absurdities, trivialities, 
 common-places, but the demonic Power of the man ! 
 Hopelessly wrong in thought, the soul of self-con 
 tradiction, where can we find his equal in cosmic 
 energy of speech? No such mighty hurler of the 
 thunderous w r ord since Shakespeare but he simply 
 lacks Shakespeare s all-piercing, all-ordering intel 
 lect. Here lay Carlyle s chief fascination for Em 
 erson, as the latter has repeatedly hinted. And this 
 was and still remains Carlyle s hold on literature, 
 certainly not his doctrine. With the same meaning 
 Emerson declares : the greater power of Carlyle 
 lies in his form, not in his content. 
 
 Emerson, leaving Carlyle. is impressed that the 
 latter can give nothing to him of creative thought, 
 of positive constructive import, But the fascina 
 tion remained. So he exclaims, ruminating a few 
 days later at Liverpool while tediously awaiting 
 good weather for sailing : l Ah me ! Mr. Thomas 
 Carlyle, I would give a gold pound for your wise 
 company this gloomy evening!" He had felt that 
 demonic Power in the talk of the man and Carlyle 
 manifested his peculiar force quite as much in con 
 versation as in waiting. His elemental character 
 
THE VISIT. H9 
 
 showed itself in more ways than speech in look, 
 grimace, in roar of passion, in explosive horse 
 laughs. Emerson had his own style, his own unique 
 color and rhythm of the word, but not this power. 
 Still he loved it, hence his delight in rude but force 
 ful Whitman, which has caused surprise to many 
 of his admirers. 
 
 While delaying at Liverpool for his vessel, Em 
 erson takes a glance backward "through this Eu 
 ropean scene, this last schoolroom," so he calls it, 
 of his Apprenticeship. While he is getting ready 
 to step on "the ship that steers westward," not to 
 Italy does he recur or to the famous lands and 
 works ; but to the eminent men he has seen espe 
 cially Landor, Coleridge, Carlyle, Wordsworth. 
 With what result? I have been "thereby com 
 forted and confirmed in my convictions." A 
 stronger, deeper assurance of his world-view he has 
 received. More certain of himself than -before he 
 stands on his own footing; indeed that "much- 
 stressed virtue of his, called self-reliance, obtains 
 now, if not birth, at least baptism and consecration. 
 He summons the great ones before his tribunal : 
 "Not one of these is a mind of the first class." No, 
 not one, not even my favorite Carlyle ; so saith the 
 Emersonian world-judge now adjudicating their 
 claims. This final test they do not stand: "espe 
 cially are they all deficient all these four in dif 
 ferent degrees, but all deficient in insight into re 
 ligious truth. Such is the decision on retrospect : 
 "they have no idea of that species of moral truth 
 
120 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 which I call the first philosophy." Note the last 
 two words for the future, since they let us glimpse 
 a life-long aspiration of Emerson. Still further, he 
 here feels and plainly utters that this journey is 
 for him the closing of an Epoch. "I am very glad 
 my traveling is done too old to -be a vagabond," 
 though certainly not yet aged. So he forecasts that 
 he must now settle down, and take position for the 
 coming fight. Is it not evident that he has won his 
 viewpoint, has recovered himself and knows where 
 he stands? "This is my charge, plain and clear, 
 to act faithfully upon my own faith, to live by it, 
 let come what may. Thus he has internally won his 
 citadel of freedom ; can he next make it an external 
 reality ? 
 
 Again hear the strong stress of his self-reliance : 
 a man contains all that is needful to his govern 
 ment within himself, " he is his own final and abso 
 lute lawgiver, "he is made a law unto himself." 
 The outward order, the world of institutions, the 
 associated life of man has quite sunk out of his 
 vision. Such is the limit now placed upon him, the 
 final fruit of his Apprenticeship. Still it is just 
 this limit which gives him his message and makes 
 him the supreme apostle of the moral spirit to his 
 time and country, both of which have need of it. 
 Still it is not the whole of thought or of conduct ; it 
 must be transcended, Emerson will transcend it at 
 last, though the task will take him a life-time and 
 stir him to his grandest achievement, 
 
 But for the nonce let us ponder that divinely 
 
HOME AGAIN. 121 
 
 freighted aphorism of his, struck off at sea (Jour 
 nal, September 9, 1833) as the present utterance of 
 his permanent world-view: "The highest revela 
 tion is that God is in everyman;" thus even deity 
 he now democratizes. 
 
 VI. 
 
 HOME AGAIN 
 
 In October 1833 Emerson reached New York, 
 and soon was in Boston, his native locality, from 
 which he had started forth nearly ten months agone. 
 With great rapidity he has skipped over seas and 
 lands, and has drawn a circle upon the earth and 
 upon his life, into which he has crammed much out 
 ward experience whereon he can henceforth rumi 
 nate and write at leisure. Restored in health, con 
 firmed in his basic world-view, renovated in spirit, 
 he is ready to take a fres,h plunge into his life s 
 work. 
 
 But after such a dizzying whirl of external activ 
 ities, he must pull himself together inwardly. The 
 next two years he will occupy in kneading over his 
 gathered materials, and in recovering at home what 
 had been broken up and in part lost by his previous 
 convulsion, and then by his sudden departure. 
 Thus the present triennial Epoch, which is essenti 
 ally that of Recovery within and without, will be 
 completed, healing over the breach made by the 
 previous time of volcanic eruption. 
 
 The first matter of importance is that his voca- 
 
122 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 tion be restored. When he arrived and looked over 
 the field, he found that he had no fixed hold any 
 where, he had nothing to do, his place was filled. 
 He could not go back to his old position and be 
 again a traditional minister in some church.. Still 
 he loved the speaker s art and deemed it his way 
 of delivering his message. Accordingly we find him 
 giving lectures, wherever he can get a chance, on 
 the most diverse topics. He starts at Boston with 
 a course on Natural Science, since just now he is 
 thinking out and writing out a work on Nature. 
 But he speaks also on literature, on poetry, on his 
 trip abroad, and shows much interest in the biog 
 raphies of Great Men, a future theme. He will 
 even preach a sermon of his sort if called upon. In 
 such a scattered way Emerson is trying to pick up 
 and co-ordinate his hitherto dispersed knowledge. 
 Still further, he is practicing himself in his future 
 calling, he is establishing the Emersonian Lyceum 
 which he will perpetuate during his active life. Or 
 we may say he is establishing the University Emer 
 son, with himself as President and Head-Professor 
 in every department. Evidently this new vocation 
 grows out of his pulpiteering, and is specially nour 
 ished by his love of oratory. 
 
 In the second place Emerson feels that he must 
 win his community, and thus be restored to a com 
 munal life, which he will share and develop with 
 its other members. He has hitherto lived a kind of 
 vagrant existence in Boston and in various places 
 about the citv. Many have been the movings, his 
 
HOME AGAIN. 123 
 
 own as well as those of his mother s family from 
 spot to spot. But all that must now be stopped. 
 Sometimes he thinks of flight to the Maine Woods, 
 or to the Berkshire Hills. But at last he settles 
 down in his Indian Musketaquid or civilized Con 
 cord, his ancestral community dating back to old 
 Peter Bulkley, his forbear of two centuries, whom 
 he eulogizes in an address of this time as "a dis 
 tinguished minister of Woodhill, Bedfordshire, de 
 scended from a noble family, honored for his own 
 virtues, his learning and gifts as a preacher, and 
 adding to his influence the weight of a large es 
 tate." 
 
 Thus the anti-traditional Emerson resolves to 
 take a dip backward into the stream of domestic 
 and communal tradition. We have just seen how 
 inclined he was to belittle Europe s past, but Con 
 cord s past is a theme for his superb glorification. 
 Sea-born Venice became for him "a most disagree 
 able residence," being to his sight "a city for 
 beavers," though he seems to delight in the musk- 
 rats of the Musketaquid. Very suggestive of his 
 present mood is his "Historical Discourse on the 
 second centennial anniversary of Concord," the 
 somewhat exuberant laudation of the wee town on 
 its birthday, September 12, 1835, when it had 
 reached the reverend age of two hundred years, 
 after much tough fighting of its people with Nature, 
 with the Indians, with the British, and somewhat 
 with one another. Of this little Yankee Iliad, Em 
 erson is the Homer, and his ancestor, heroic Peter 
 
124 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 Bulkley is the divine Achilles. And it makes an 
 interesting, heart-uplifting epic of the community. 
 Still we can not help thinking, Is this the same Em 
 erson who not long since found so little in antique 
 Italy, and now finds so much in antique Concord? 
 Do not both belong to that transmitted world of the 
 past against which lay his revolt ? To be sure, Em 
 erson never pretended to consistency, except per 
 chance to be consistent in his inconsistency. An 
 tiquity abroad is one thing; antiquity at home, es 
 pecially in the House of Emerson, is surely another. 
 Very delightful it is to see him heroize forefatherly 
 Reverend Peter Bulkley, after having pulled down 
 the colossal statue of Julius Caesar and leveled 
 Rome s mightiest man with us the masses, proclaim 
 ing "A soul as great as his is your own." So Em 
 erson makes us all tingle with our new-famed 
 grandeur, and celebrates our heroic equality with 
 the supreme world-historical characters of the ages. 
 Never to be forgotten, among his other more ex- 
 hiliarating freedoms is that underlying economic 
 freedom which he bears with him into his home s 
 renewal. More than a year before his marriage he 
 writes in a letter to his brother : The Tucker es 
 tate is so far settled that I am sure of an income of 
 about twelve hundred dollars," which considerable 
 treasure "will enable me to buy a hearth some 
 where." Hence it comes that we read the gratify 
 ing news less than a month before the new wed 
 ding day: "I have dodged the doom of building 
 and have bought the Coolidge house in Concord, 
 
HOME AGAIN. 125 
 
 with the expectation of entering it next September" 
 for the marriage festival. Will the reader s heart 
 not be quickened that Emerson has now the solid 
 cash to meet this considerable expense, amounting 
 to some four thousand dollars according to his fig 
 ures ? Thus he has gained his permanent home, his 
 Castle of Defiance, where he will stay the rest of 
 his life. The Coolidge House is destined to an im 
 mortality imparted by its occupant and has become 
 the shrine of a great pilgrimage, unique in its va 
 riety of pilgrims and of their mental idiosyncrasies. 
 Thus Emerson gets settled against his life s drift 
 ing which has indeed lasted a good while, almost 
 his first third of a century. He will no longer 
 stray at random, more or less the sport of chance, 
 but he will henceforth radiate in all directions 
 from a fixed center. Nor must we forget the pe-. 
 culiar community to which he has come back as be 
 ing indigenous to its soil and character. It is in 
 deed a significant return both of body and soul 
 from a long separation, inasmuch as Concord is not 
 far from being the most traditional town in the 
 United States, having consciously cultivated just 
 that faculty to an unusual degree of excellence. The 
 reader will now glance with fresh interest over the 
 leaves of the previously mentioned * Historical Dis 
 course" of the returned indigenous Emerson, in 
 which he so glorifies his fellow-autochthons of the 
 venerable community, surely to their well-merited 
 happiness. Still the real aborigines, the Indians, 
 are absent, except possibly Thoreau. 
 
126 KALPH WALDO EMERSONPART FIRST. 
 
 But mark the consequence, or at least the se 
 quence of this happy communal lovef east. The ora 
 tor having made -to his festal Concordites such a 
 concordant speech, sets out at once to do another 
 traditional deed of even deeper harmony. Two 
 days after the foregoing celebration we read in his 
 Journal (September 14, 1835) with blank unex- 
 pectancy: "I was married to Lydia Jackson "- 
 where, when, by whom, not a word. Not one custo 
 mary or traditional gust of love this must be 
 again the anti-traditional Emerson. A very un- 
 glowing statement of a glowing fact, as old memory 
 runs ; so we search in his Journal after a few warm 
 words, but it keeps utterly dumb for a fortnight 
 and two days when it seems faintly to whisper: 
 The woods are all in a glow which short breath 
 we may take as an Emersonian symbol of the 
 spirit doubtless of his own spirit. 
 
 Seemingly not much outer ceremony or celebra 
 tion can be charged against that wedding. The 
 most alert reader has hardly expected such an out 
 come to the rather colorless insertion of the preced 
 ing January 23rd : Home again from Plymouth 
 with most agreeable recollections." No hint as to 
 what caused so much pleasure. Quite neutral still 
 is the tint of January 30th, which day "I spent at 
 Plymouth with Lydia Jackson," though here we 
 catch a place and a person. No poetizing by the 
 poet breathes in the intimacy of his Journal, no 
 lover of love seems this lover. All of which bears 
 profoundly upon the character of Emerson and of 
 
RETROSPECT. 127 
 
 his literary tendency, which we are seeking to un 
 derstand. 
 
 But the main fact is that Emerson has now re 
 turned to his own after a deep and stormy estrange 
 ment. He has won his Recovery, as we name this 
 Epoch, having been restored or rather having re 
 stored himself to vocation, community, and family, 
 though he has put these old social relations upon a 
 new and independent basis. How profound and 
 strong runs his ancestral feeling as he shouts: 
 "Hail to the quiet fields of my fathers!" But at 
 the same time in this transmitted environment we 
 hear his emphatic affirmation of spiritual liberty: 
 "Henceforth I design not to utter any poem, 
 speech, or book that is not entirely and peculiarly 
 my work." Does not this unsworn oath to his 
 Genius indicate that his Apprenticeship is drawing 
 to a close the long term of years which he has de 
 voted to the appropriation of the transmitted Past ? 
 Evidently not a new Epoch merely but a new Period 
 is knocking at the door of his coming career. 
 
 VII. 
 
 RETROSPECT 
 
 Our best reader at this turning-point of a long 
 Period, will of himself face about and glance back 
 ward over the entire stretch of life through which 
 he has just traveled with Mr. Emerson. Under all 
 its draftings, fortunes, and misfortunes, it reveals 
 an inner order, indeed a certain unity of purpose 
 
128 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 secretly winding through it from first to last, and 
 organizing its diverse and often mutually repellent 
 masses. Moreover the intimation has more than 
 once been heard that this particular Period of one 
 life has its universal aspect belonging to all lives, 
 that Emerson s biography, rightly conceived and 
 set forth, not only mirrors human biography as such 
 but contains the very process thereof as its pro- 
 foundest moving-principle. Here too we are to 
 vision all in the one. 
 
 Thus we have reached a point at which we are led 
 to look backward, but we must stop with that. We 
 eagerly inquire, can we catch Emerson also looking 
 backward from this same point and about this same 
 time? A little hint brings forth the fact that on 
 January 9, 1834, he is deeply pondering over the 
 present subject, since we hear his searching inquiry 
 of himself: "What is it that interests us in Biog 
 raphy?" His answer in its essence runs "that, in 
 the writer s opinion, in some one respect this par 
 ticular man represented the idea of Man." So 
 there are representative men shown in biography : 
 a theme which he will carry with him and work out 
 many years later. But let us here behold Emerson 
 viewing human life, his own included, and declar 
 ing that the particular form of it must have a uni 
 versal significance, or represent the idea of Man. 
 Let us not forget that about this date we see Emer 
 son passing a grand node of his own life, from his 
 First to his Second Period, as we designate the 
 transition. 
 
RETROSPECT. 129 
 
 But this is not all of his self-communing just 
 now on the present subject. His record goes on: 
 "And as far as we accord with his (the biogra 
 pher s) judgment, we take the picture for a Stand 
 ard Man, and so let every line accuse or approve our 
 own ways of thinking and living by comparison." 
 (Journals III, p. 249.) Two points are here noted, 
 both of them deeply significant for Emerson s fu 
 ture. In the first place he announces his conception 
 of the Standard Man, underlying, imbreathing, yea 
 creating all right Biography. A wonderful glimpse 
 is that, nothing less than a forecast of a science of 
 Biography, with its genetic principle, the Standard 
 Man, incarnating himself in the individual man. 
 But it is as yet only a glimpse, a prophecy, a far- 
 off foreview of the new kind of life-writing. Just 
 about the most needed thing in to-day s literature 
 is this conception of the Standard Man, but his in 
 ner process should also be shown, the very move 
 ment and law of his soul as it embodies itself in the 
 events of the particular person, through which as 
 its transparent medium it is to shine self-revealing. 
 Will Emerson ever make real his grand prevision, 
 will he ever organize chaotic Biography ? He is now 
 entering a new stage of his career, just the creative 
 one above all others. Let the reader watch him 
 with keen discrimination, but also with generous 
 hope. 
 
 There is likewise a second noteworthy thought in 
 the above cited passage. Emerson implies that in 
 every written life which we read, we are to look for 
 
130 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 "the picture of the Standard Man," and after such 
 a standard (hence the name) gage ourselves "by 
 comparison," accusing or approving our own lives 
 past and present according to the judgment. Thus 
 we spy Emerson looking backward from this moun 
 tain peak of existence, and seeking to get the trend 
 and the purport of what he has passed through, 
 since he feels that it must be a determining factor 
 of what he is to become, really an integrating arc of 
 the total cycle of his years. 
 
 So we discover at this transitional line the retro 
 spective Emerson, and we are doing what he does, 
 yea we are trying to be w r hat he is. We also find 
 him making deep studies in Biography both for his 
 lectures and for himself. The next year (1835) we 
 come upon him still ruminating over "the great 
 value of Biography," which shows, regardless of 
 those mighty separators, Space and Time, "the per 
 fect sympathy between like minds," which Emer 
 son finds especially in ancient Plutarch. He adds : 
 "We recognize with delight a strict likeness between 
 their noblest impulses and our own. We are tried 
 in their trials, conquer in their victory." Thus 
 Emerson relives the lives of heroes, traces in their 
 deeds his own very soul, discerning and identify 
 ing both in them and in himself the Standard Man, 
 the Universal Person who individuates his oneness 
 into the Many. Still we have to beg: Give us, 
 seer, the creative process of your .Super-Man, reveal 
 to us the very soul of your Over-Soul in its psych 
 ical found as it manifests itself in Mind and in 
 
RKTKOSPRCT. ^g^ 
 
 Nature. Some such "First Philosophy" Emerson 
 is working at now, and has been, and will continue 
 to be, as we often observe while we stroll through 
 the jottings of his Diary. But at present we must 
 wait for its fulfilment. 
 
 As we are eager to peer in advance whither Em 
 erson is tending, we shall skip a good many years 
 and take an extract from his Journal for Septem 
 ber, 1847, which is in lino with our present theme: 
 "All biography is autobiography." So he under 
 scores this pithy aphorism which has its special 
 pertinence to Emerson himself, as we may observe 
 in what follows: "I notice that the biography of 
 each noted individual is really at b.st communicated 
 by himself." Good! for here Emerson hints that 
 Emerson s life must be finally construed out of 
 Emerson s own writings and sayings. All the 
 author s works are ultimately his confessions, or his 
 self-revelations, whatever be their guise or disguise. 
 But listen again : i The lively traits of criticism 
 on his works are all confessions, made by him from 
 time to time among his friends and remembered 
 and printed. Not only his criticism on his works, 
 but the w r orks themselves are confessions, as Emer 
 son declares repeatedly elsewhere. 
 
 Hence it comes that we try to find in Emerson s 
 own writings the various stages of his biographic 
 evolution. He is always telling on himself, but we 
 have to catch him at it, and be able to peep under 
 his masks of which he possesses quite a variety. Un 
 doubtedly Emerson the author, with all his literary 
 
132 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART FIRST. 
 
 fertility, never wrote directly his autobiography, 
 as did Goethe and Rousseau; but indirectly he 
 wrote nothing else. What he has written must, 
 therefore, be reconstrued, condensed, and organized 
 into a new biographic "Whole, which reveals as its 
 generative source the soul of the Standard Man, as 
 Emerson names him, in the very process of his 
 life s unfolding. 
 
 And now the reader, for his final edification, we 
 hope, is himself to look backward, and to trace in 
 this First Period and its three Epochs not merely 
 some external divisions foisted on the subject from 
 the outside, but the essential movement of the Man 
 himself, the Standard Man, here individualized, in 
 his Emersonian wrappage of time and place. Not 
 for the sake of convenience or even clarity, or any 
 other rhetorical artifice are these chapters and sec 
 tions set down and even numbered so emphatically ; 
 they indicate the inner stages of the soul s very ac 
 tivity which thus makes its own divisions or takes 
 its own steps in the forward sweep of its native de 
 velopment. Hence there is to be seen and spiritu 
 ally appropriated in the three Epochs of the present 
 Period a necessary soul-growth from within, not an 
 arbitrary classification from without. Emerson s 
 life-problem we may generalize as his conflict with 
 Tradition in its manifold forms, which evolves of 
 its own inherent nature through the three stages in 
 dicated in the : foregoing Epoch. Let us recall them 
 in? simple but transparent outline: (1) Emerson 
 acquiring Tradition through education which cul- 
 
RETROSPECT. 133 
 
 minates in his traditional vocation; (2) Emerson 
 breaking with Tradition in the form of his tradi 
 tional vocation (the ministry) ; (3) Emerson restor 
 ing himself to Tradition (community, family, voca 
 tion) yet under changed and for him new forms. 
 In these three Epochs we are to see active and cre 
 ative the soul s own movement, or Psyche s ultimate 
 round self -generating and generative (called else- 
 where the Psychosis). Glimpses of this basic psy 
 chical process we shall often find in Emerson, 
 though he remains the glimpser, not the organizer. 
 But enough of retrospect for the present; let us 
 turn to prospect. A new and far greater Period of 
 Emerson s career has dawned and awaits survey, 
 which must also give ultimately its creative psych 
 ical process. Now we may affirm that Emerson s 
 Apprenticeship to Tradition within the limits here 
 tofore laid down is closed, and we advance to his 
 Second Period with its round of Epochs which re 
 veals a still deeper estrangement from Tradition, 
 and its corresponding warfare of speech and action. 
 In fact, Emerson now proceeds to universalize that 
 first breach of his with his church ; he drives toward 
 an all-embracing negation of the past which has 
 hitherto trained him in its routine of formalism and 
 faith. Still he has his exceptions, he does not quite 
 reach the point of an absolute nihilism. But let us 
 step over. 
 
The Revolutionary Emerson 
 
 1835-1865 
 
 The Middle Period of Emerson s life is one long 
 protest and assault, under multitudinous forms, 
 against the world prescribed and handed down to 
 him from the past, especially at those points which 
 limit and chafe his free individuality. He takes 
 pleasure in calling himself a non-conformist, a dis 
 senter from all things established, a protester even 
 against the transmitted Protestantism ; once at least, 
 perchance at an extreme moment, he lauds anarchy 
 by name. He also designates himself as revolu 
 tionary, and this word we have chosen from a goodly 
 anthology of similar self-applied epithets, as his 
 characteristic title for the present Period, which 
 subtly .connects him with Concord s famous revolu 
 tionary deed, as she "fired the shot heard round 
 the world." So did he, but his were word-bullets, 
 
 When he was an old man and looked back at his 
 era and himself in it, he cited the well-known apo- 
 
 134 
 
THE REVOLUTIONARY EMERSON. 135 
 
 thegm: "Revolutions begin in the best heads and 
 run steadily down to the populace." In this gen 
 eral statement he implied his own revolution, whose 
 spirit had percolated far and wise. To be sure, it 
 was not at the start a bloody revolution, though it 
 began to take a sanguinary streak in John Brown, 
 whom Emerson defended and hallowed in name and 
 deed. Still we are not to forget that Emerson 
 silently recalled this utterance of his concerning 
 Brown when, after the Civil War, he had passed out 
 of his Revolutionary Period into a new attitude 
 toward the existent political order. 
 
 The preceding Period was designated as Emer 
 son s Apprenticeship to Tradition, with which he 
 had a considerable experience, theoretical and prac 
 tical. The result was for him a deep and persistent 
 hostility passing over into and underlying this en 
 tire Second Period, whose main theme will be his 
 battle with Tradition in all its forms and every 
 where, so far as he is conscious of them. In religion, 
 in literature, in social order, he became an incisive 
 critic of the transmitted dogmas and methods. 
 
 Particularly he arraigns man s associated life 
 coming down from the past in the shape of institu 
 tions Church, State, Economic Order, and even 
 the Family. He seems to have fallen out with total 
 society, and seeks in some way to get back to the 
 purely individual existence, wherein lies for him the 
 only freedom and the only civilization. The insti 
 tuted world, he holds, is but an obstacle to the 
 soul s highest relation, an interruption of the free 
 

 136 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 communion between man and God. To be sure 
 Emerson does not claim to be always consistent in 
 his views, in fact he claims to be inconsistent 
 every moment has the right of a different inspira 
 tion from above. Any restraint upon that primal 
 divine right, as prescribed dogma, ceremonial, sys 
 tem, calls for the instant challenge to battle. 
 
 It is evident that here lies a great estrangement 
 of the individual from his environing world of or 
 der, and from the presuppositions of his own exist 
 ence. In this sense Emerson is a revolutionist, and 
 his attitude will last through the present Period. 
 His writing will be a critique of human association, 
 which he puts to the question in all its manifesta 
 tions. During three decades he is passing through 
 his purgatorial journey which is one long spiritual 
 denial of accepted doctrine and society, till he 
 . works himself free of his negation. 
 
 I. This Period can be conceived to lie between 
 two different Emersons, or between two supreme 
 ideas of the same evolving man, the one starting 
 and the other closing what may be called his thirty 
 years war. The first Emerson asserts the individ- 
 .ual-man as the true and sole vehicle of the divine 
 .-.effluence ; the second grants this power also to asso- 
 _ ; ciated man, to the people, to the masses, with whom 
 .; he finally becomes reconciled. Between these two 
 conceptions move three decades of spiritual strug 
 gle really this whole Revolutionary Period. "Rm- 
 erson at the beginning of it disliked and distrusted 
 popular government with its ballot and crass mill- 
 
THE REVOLUTIONARY EMERSON. 137 
 
 titude; but the experience of the Civil War made 
 him a strong believer in the divine "perception that 
 passes through thousands as well as through one." 
 Thereby he becomes not only pacified externally 
 with his institutional environment, but internally 
 harmonized and unified with the same in his convic 
 tion. Thus we behold the Revolutionary Emerson 
 passing into the Reconciled Emerson, or we may 
 say, the Institutional Emerson. 
 
 This was indeed a deep-searching human experi 
 ence, and it calls forth the excellence of Emerson 
 both in his writ and his life. Moreover such an ex 
 perience belonged to his people and to his age, and 
 is still a thing not transcended. To-day the social 
 fight continues with greater intensity than ever, 
 and all the forms of associated Man are challenged 
 afresh in new ways and with new weapons. So we 
 may see that Emerson s literary and biographic 
 value persists and even increases. Verily his career 
 is remedial, showing how he got well of the time s 
 deepest malady ; his life, like every great and com 
 plete life, bears in it a vicarious strain, we may 
 deem it in a sense mediatorial, though he disliked 
 the word and its thought as something transmitted 
 in religion. 
 
 II. This Second Period, accordingly, we con 
 ceive in its general outline, as the time of Emer 
 son s supreme achievement, of the fulfilment of his 
 life s essential task. He makes his vocation a real 
 ity and a permanence, so that it becomes an endur 
 ing fact in the world. Looking back at and weigh- 
 
138 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 ing his First Period, in which he was substantially 
 but a limited individual with his viewpoint and out 
 fit, we may say that he in his Second Period uni 
 versalizes himself ; that is, his own idea he seeks to 
 make universal, applying it to many subjects. He 
 seeks also to impart his spiritual view, bringing it, 
 as far as possible, into general circulation. 
 
 Now, to compass achievement, he must first have 
 the thing to achieve. Possessing his germinal 
 thought, he is to think it out fully, for which work 
 his quiet Concord Castle offers a good opportunity. 
 Elaboration must be his first watchword. But even 
 then must follow propagation of his idea, which 
 drives the retired thinker forth from his Castle into 
 the busy world. He will lecture, write, form clubs, 
 help start magazines, and especially he will publish 
 books, if need be at his own expense. Yea, he will 
 establish the new University, the traveling Insti 
 tute which he will call the Lyceum, of which he is 
 Head Professor, going from town to town at call. 
 In fact, he opened his home as a kind of school for 
 all comers who were asking for light. The result 
 was that alongside the sane seekers all the crazy 
 reformers of New England flocked to his entertain 
 ment cranks, bores, monomaniacs, who at last dis 
 gusted him and drove him to flight (see his lecture 
 on New England Reformers). 
 
 Thus he elaborates and propagates the Emer 
 sonian Idea, making it actual an objective, exist 
 ent fact of the time. But then something better 
 and higher he does he lives his principle, yea bet- 
 
THE REVOLUTIONARY EMERSON. 139 
 
 ters it in his living so that his life seems greater and 
 worthier than his word spoken or printed or prop 
 agated more ideal than all his formulated ideal 
 ism, more transcendent than his doctrinal Tran 
 scendentalism, greater than anyone of his works, or 
 than all his works put together. In fact the life of 
 the man is what has preserved and eternized his 
 writings, interpreting and re-creating them ever 
 afresh to coming generations. 
 
 More poetical was his life than his poetry, though 
 I am of those who believe that Emerson was a poet 
 within his range. Loftily he lived an epic, even if 
 he never wrote one, and seemingly could not. Em 
 erson indited Essays, literally tentatives frag 
 ments of life, never the totality of it ; he possessed 
 no all-encompassing literary form, the novel which 
 is such at its best, or the drama, or the epic. His 
 writings are therefore but parts or a part of him; 
 his supreme realization is his life, and can only be 
 found in his biography, which is, therefore, poet 
 ical and might be a poem. 
 
 III. Emerson s Middle Period we call it also, as 
 it runs through the middle years of his career to 
 the borderland of old-age. Thus we seek to empha 
 size at the start the periodicity of Emerson s life 
 taken in its entirety, of whose cycle we are now en 
 tering the second grand arc, or Period, as we name 
 it distinctively. For this portion of his career 
 though it be but a stage of the total man, has a 
 unity, a meaning, and a process of its own, all of 
 which must be seen if we wish to grasp aright his 
 
140 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 life s wholeness. Moreover the forward-peering, 
 limit-transcending reader should not fail to glimpse 
 that this Second Period belongs not merely to the 
 individual Emerson, but to all men s complete pres 
 entation ; it is at last to be visioned as a chapter 
 not of this particular biography alone, but of Uni 
 versal Biography. 
 
 Already it has been set forth that when Emerson 
 was about thirty-two or thirty-three years old, a 
 great new turn had gradually insinuated itself into 
 the sweep of his existence. "When he goes back to 
 Concord and becomes permanently settled in his 
 domestic and communal life, and forever* fixed in 
 his world- view or basic principle of the Divine Or 
 der, he starts on a fresh stage of his journey, which, 
 according to our estimate, will last fully three 
 decades, and include quite the whole range of his 
 productive years. Such is the general measure of 
 the present Period, whose bounds fore and aft need 
 not be clamped down to the exact year, but which 
 become spiritually distinct to the searching eye of 
 the soul s deeper contemplation. In such outline 
 we seek to overspan the activity of the fully rip 
 ened middle-aged man, up to the brink of senes 
 cence, on which we shall behold him. standing and 
 peering forward and backward, with the look of 
 having finished his task. 
 
 The first question, then, to be asked here, is this : 
 What is the thought or general idea of this Period 
 as a whole ? Can its meaning be summarized in a 
 term or statement out of which all its particulars 
 
THE REVOLUTIONARY EMERSON. \l 
 
 may be seen unfolding? If it were possible we 
 would like to set down in a word or two its germinal 
 conception, its genetic secret which is to reveal 
 itself in what follows. Already we have given 
 some indications on this line; we may add one or 
 two more. 
 
 IV. The protest which we have noticed hitherto 
 in Emerson s career (First Period), as active, but 
 more or less implicit, is now to be made fully ex 
 plicit ; the potential of his Apprenticeship is to ex 
 pand into the real. The as yet unexpressed denial 
 in his soul has to find expression, adequate expres 
 sion both in deed and in word. The transmitted 
 heritage of conventions, social beliefs, religious 
 dogmas he refuses to accept and will cast out as the 
 time s and his own very devil. "We have already 
 noted how deep is his alienation from the realm of 
 tradition, especially as regards religion which is 
 truly the starting-point of his Heaven-defying re 
 cusancy. That former explosion of his which cast 
 him out of his inherited vocation and hurled him 
 across the ocean to Europe for recovery, has still 
 left its scars, if not its wounds; the volcano will 
 abate its sudden fitful violence, but continues its 
 steady more massive eruption, over a wider and 
 wider territory till it finally embraces quite the 
 whole constituted order of man. With his own con 
 sent we name this Period the Revolutionary Emer 
 son, for it is one of his own designations, and be 
 longs to his ancestral environment. 
 
 Deeply separative it is, really the deepest sepa- 
 
142 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 ration and estrangement of his career, just the sep 
 arative stage of the man s spiritual existence. He 
 is now in thought the negation of all associated life, 
 which, he deems, must be sacrificed for the salva 
 tion of the moral individual life. He rather likes 
 at times to assume the daring names of heresiarch, 
 revolutionist, even anarchist. His separative tend 
 ency often turned him to a separation from the con 
 crete in favor of the abstract in word and in spirit 
 such as Virtue (see his Essays and their titles). 
 From the personal he would turn to the impersonal, 
 as in the case of Love. "To go without" was one 
 of his favorite mottoes; he praised and practiced 
 aloofness and solitariness. His body looked an ab 
 straction; later in life his face became almost im 
 personal, and even his mind. 
 
 Y. "We have said a good deal about the dissent 
 ing, militant, negative Emerson, the thinker of the 
 time s protest and the campaigner for its propaga 
 tion. Undoubtedly this is the phase of his activity 
 which determines his present Period. Hence its or 
 ganization must reveal itself after its strongest, 
 most decisive principle. This we have sought al 
 ready to present. 
 
 But we are not to neglect the fact that there runs 
 a pervasive resisting countercurrent in Emerson, 
 which may be called his affirmative strain, in oppo 
 sition to his more commanding negative part. The 
 attentive reader can always hear his Yes, though 
 it be not so loud nor so shocking as his No. Thus 
 he has his constructive task which indeed underlies 
 
THE RE VOLUTIONARY EMERSON. 143 
 
 all his opposition. This is seen in the stress which 
 he puts upon the direct downflow of divinity into 
 the recipient human soul; inspiration from above 
 is ever his central creative urge. Herein he was 
 positive, doctrinal, yea, even dogmatic, though the 
 quick antagonist of every other kind of dogmatism. 
 He proscribes all prescription, and such proscrip 
 tion becomes his own ever-recurring prescription. 
 He is the preacher from the one ultimate text, 
 which is his own ; of other texts he is the iconoclast. 
 It has been already suggested that this long 
 Period cf thirty years can be divided into three 
 decennial Epochs without forcing it into any for 
 eign foregone scheme of arrangement. Of course 
 such a division is not to be vindicated in advance ; 
 its validity must be proved at the close, when all 
 the evidence has come in and is surveyable. The 
 subject must divide and arrange itself in these three 
 parts after its own natural evolution. Here, then, 
 are the three Epochs of this Second Period set 
 down beforehand in a brief abstract summary. 
 
 I. The Creative Decennium. Emerson the 
 Transcendentalist in his primal originality, which 
 is in the main a critique of the established or the 
 institutional world. Negative chiefly, yet with a 
 positive substrate. 
 
 II. The Re-actionary Decennium. Emerson in 
 a state of self -scission which criticises his critique; 
 having fallen out with himself and his own, he 
 seeks to transcend his former limits. His flight 
 
144 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 both spatial and spiritual, marked specially by his 
 second trip to Europe. 
 
 III. The Practical Decennium. Emerson re 
 turns, and passes from his theoretical negation, par 
 ticularly of the State, to his active or practical nega 
 tion thereof, which, however, he finally overcomes 
 through the time s school of the Civil War. 
 
 Very meagre is such an outline, no more than a 
 sign-board of direction ; still it may indicate the 
 process of a great soul during the central and 
 active portion of a life-time. It glimpses Emerson 
 in his long discipline of denial, which gainsays the 
 universal order of things as transmitted, till he tri 
 umphs over his denial. This Second Period is not 
 laid down in any one or two books of his ; its mean 
 ing and movement must be caught from all his 
 writings and doings, in fine from his life as a 
 whole. Moreover what he achieved by his career is 
 contained essentially in the present Period, which 
 is his time of self-realization, though it has a before 
 and an after. He now thinks himself out and pub 
 lishes himself in print and speech ; he elaborates 
 and delivers his message. 
 
 But thirty years make a long stretch and cannot 
 all be of equal importance ; their concentration and 
 genetic energy are fused into one Epoch which is 
 next to be considered. 
 
CHAPTER FOURTH 
 
 THE CREATIVE DECENNIUM (1835-1845) 
 
 Let it be emphasized that this is the most creat 
 ive Epoch of Emerson s most creative Period. It 
 embraces his supremely original works, or, in the 
 highest sense of the word, his only original works, 
 from which to a greater or less degree, the later 
 ones are derivative. Also his outer activities of the 
 present Epoch are the most creative of his entire 
 life ; his deeds show a genetic energy which draws 
 the main practical lines on which hereafter will 
 unfold his career. Both his Intellect and his Will 
 now drive at the topmost speed and excellence of 
 their creative power, so that we stand amazed at the 
 quantity as well as the quality of his performance. 
 If the epic of Emerson could be written, this would 
 be the heroic portion of his life, which we might 
 call the Emersoniad. 
 
 Thus we seek to stress and to mark off the ten 
 years which drive mightily between 1835 and 1845, 
 designating the whole as the Creative Decennium 
 of the author. It lies just about in the middle of 
 the sum total of his years, as he lived SQmewhat 
 more than seven decades, this decade being the 
 fourth. Of course there is no intention of making 
 these annual bounds absolutely rigid, for they are 
 not; they are designed to suggest the soul-limit 
 
 145 
 
146 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 rather than the time-limit of the man s stages. So 
 let their margins >way liither and thither in a kind 
 of elastic resilience responsive to the spirit s epochal 
 movement. Still they trace iii their wavering out 
 lines a determinate and characteristic phase of Em 
 erson s total life-work, and are necesesary to mark 
 the joints of its organism. During this time he 
 elaborates, expresses in writing, and publishes to 
 the world his most distinctive message, both as to 
 its form and its content. Moreover this Epoch finds 
 him at the highest maturity of his middle-age, say 
 from his thirty-third to his forty-third year. 
 
 A special name has been given to this time and 
 its peculiar doctrine Transcendentalism. So this 
 is Emerson s distinctive Transcendental Epoch in 
 its rise, flowering, and decline ; and from him as the 
 fountain this movement overflowed into the rest of 
 the world and into the future. The creative source 
 of the new illumination lay in the present decen 
 nial Epoch of Emerson. It may be deemed the cen 
 tral luminary which irradiates his entire biography, 
 somewhat after the manner of his doctrine of the 
 divine effluence. 
 
 On the whole, the time favored the meditation of 
 the retired student or the scholar, as Emerson often 
 names his own personality. The anti-slavery excite 
 ment over the enactment of the Missouri Compro 
 mise had subsided, while that of the Annexation of 
 Texas had not yet begun. The Nation was in a 
 state of quiescence, if not somnolence; no really 
 pivotal question agitated deeply the people, and the 
 
THE CREATIVE DECENNTUM. 147 
 
 personal character of the two Presidents during 
 these years, Van Buren and Tyler, was not of the 
 strongest. No great historical issues arose to call 
 Emerson out of himself ; even Europe lay quiet be 
 calmed between the revolutionary outbursts of 1830 
 and of 1848. Also the religious upheaval of New 
 England had rather spent itself. A good time for 
 introversion and undisturbed self-communion was 
 this Transcendental Decennium. But we shall find 
 that some years after this Epoch Emerson will be 
 deflected into the pressing practical interests of his 
 country and of his age, passing out of his present 
 dominantly theoretical attitude. 
 
 Moreover, the time was getting ready to hear 
 Emerson s evangel for another reason. The estab 
 lished order in Church and State had fallen stag 
 nant and even malodorous, was becoming demoral 
 ized, yea immoralized, the clog instead of the sup 
 port of human development. Upon such a cancer 
 ous carcass of prescription was drawn Emerson s 
 keen dissecting blade to let the gathered poison 
 out. This, to be sure, was only a negative service, 
 but surgically necessary for renovation. "We shall 
 often take note of Emerson s sharp critique of in 
 stitutions, temporarily needful but eternally one 
 sided, and hence itself needing a critique. But it 
 should never be forgotten that Emerson in the end, 
 with the aid of a new order, rescued himself from 
 the backstroke of his own negation a great feat in 
 any mortal, and for his readers the highest ex 
 ample. 
 
148 RALPH WALDO EMER80K--PART SECOND. 
 
 As this Epoch is the most original of Emerson s 
 life, it is also the most prolific, as well as most di 
 versified in its kinds of work. Never again will his 
 activity show itself so colossal and varied, never 
 again will he do so great things and so many great 
 things together. He lectures, edits, publishes, cor 
 responds, takes notes, poetizes, writes much prose 
 and manifold, entertains what does he not do? 
 And on the whole everything done- is at his highest. 
 The result is the contemplation of the man becomes 
 a mind-stretching as well as a heart-exalting em 
 ployment. His personality rises to its culmination, 
 as distinct from his works ; we gaze and wonder at 
 him in his epochal sunburst, as he scatters his radi 
 ance over the ways in all directions. His whole life 
 can be regarded as one continuous emanation of 
 light, which has its luminous concentration in the 
 present Epoch. We may well conceive Emerson s 
 career to have this intense point of- effulgence, which 
 fitly illustrates his cardinal doctrine of the spirit s 
 effluence from above into the soul. Thus his world- 
 view determines even the form of his biography. 
 
 Emanative we may, accordingly, deem Emerson 
 in character as well as in production. Without 
 question this native bent of him will assist in ex 
 plaining his decided drift toward the Orient and 
 its poetry, though he belongs to the Occident also. 
 Hardly could he help being moulded by his own 
 deepest faith; all life and expressly his own life 
 was an outflow of the one central energy, which 
 ultimate fact of it must be made manifest in its 
 
THE CREATIVE DECENNWM. 149 
 
 record. One other consequence should be noted: 
 the power of the luminary grows less and less the 
 farther it is emanated from its burning center 
 towards the bounds of its existence. We shall in 
 like manner have to observe concerning Emerson 
 a continual dimunition in creative energy till it 
 becomes quite extinct while he yet lives. His sun- 
 like originality seems to stream out from this cen 
 tral Epoch, ever-dimming on its way deathward. 
 Hereafter we shall find him largely repeating or 
 varying or recreating this his primal Creative Ep 
 och in its spiritual essence as well as in its literary 
 form. Accordingly all his future career is to get 
 its light from this solar Decennium. 
 
 Finally we have to speak of the difficulty of or 
 dering this Epoch with its enormous diversity and 
 subtlety. Its very diffusion makes it seem confusion, 
 which is increased by its frequent sudden leaps 
 from topic to topic. Here then lies the hardest test 
 for the writer as well as for the reader : how shall 
 we put into tractable shape this huge refractory 
 mass of material, a very mixed conglomerate at 
 first sight to the outer eye and inner reason. A 
 chronological itemizing will certainly not bring the 
 light we want. Somehow we must so construe it 
 that the soul will shine through the body, or the 
 organization be made transparent to its spirit. 
 
 A carefully measured outlook over the total field 
 will bring to vision three lines running parallel as 
 it were, and dividing the Decennium into three dis 
 tinct strips or tracts each of which is ten years 
 
150 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 long. A division lengthwise by topics rather than 
 crosswise by times we are to conceive, which we shall 
 letter and label as follows, for better clarity we 
 hope. 
 
 Section A. Productivity. The Idea, Transcen 
 dentalism, shaped into completed utterance ; the 
 literary product of Emerson at its best. The tri 
 umph of his Intellect. 
 
 Section B. Propagation. The Idea promulgated 
 through various instrumentalities which have their 
 center in Emerson. The triumph of his Will. 
 
 Section C. Origination. The Idea in its earliest, 
 most immediate forms of utterance the literary 
 embryology of Emerson, his protoplasmic forms of 
 expression. 
 
 Such are the three main themes of this the most 
 important Epoch of Emerson s life, which Epoch, 
 we must keep in mind, is the starter of his Second 
 Period embracing the inner germinal substance of 
 his achievement. Thus we seek in advance to indi 
 cate the chief joints or sections of this intricate and 
 peculiar organism of a life, well knowing that such 
 anatomy is repellent to some readers, though indis 
 pensable to any final knowledge of the subject. And 
 we may be permitted again to enforce the point that 
 the content of the present Epoch is vaster, more 
 complicated and more creative than all the rest of 
 Emerson s career put together. Let it be empha 
 sized in short that this is the most creative Epoch 
 of the most creative Period of Emerson s entire life. 
 
Section A. Productivity 
 
 Under this head is included the Emersonian lit 
 erature of the present Epoch in its finished and 
 more permanent forms. These are principally the 
 Essay and the Address or Oration, not to speak of 
 articles, reviews, and other temporary efforts. His 
 poetry we shall place under a different category, as 
 well as certain other important but more primary 
 and embryonic writings. 
 
 Here we are to find and to appropriate the eter 
 nal Emerson, the part of him most excellent, which 
 has lasted and is going to last Emerson as he 
 supremely was, is, and will continue to be. Today 
 we commune with his spirit through his written 
 word which won its sovereign character in this cre 
 ative Decennium of all his years, and which has 
 been handed down to us with a new increment of in 
 fluence long after he has passed away. In the pres 
 ent section we are to come into participation not 
 only with the immortal but the immortalizing por 
 tion of the man. This one enduring part of him is 
 what makes him endure in every part, inbuing the 
 same with its own regenerative energy. 
 
 In the considerable list of his works now to be 
 considered, we are to trace the stages of his world- 
 view, to mark his spiritual evolution, in fine to write 
 his psychical biography. These ten years are by no 
 means all alike, nor are their productions alike; 
 
 151 
 
152 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 they show a gradual transformation in thought, 
 mood, and manner a budding, blooming and 
 drooping of zeal the rise, culmination and decline 
 of the original idea in its originator. 
 
 Repeatedly this Idea has been mentioned in a 
 passing way, though it be the as yet unseen Prime- 
 Mover of the whole undertaking. The justly inquis 
 itive reader must have queried over the same : what 
 is it whose whence ? And the specific name of 
 this Prime-Mover has been already announced sev 
 eral times in a desultory fashion Transcendental 
 ism. This somewhat elusive and shifty, yet cen 
 tral vocable is first to be considered in its origin, 
 meaning, and influence. 
 
 I. 
 
 TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 The cardinal word of Emerson and of Emerson s 
 doctrine, and of Emerson s followers for this 
 Epoch : it rises up the initial mountainous difficulty 
 with which his thought-searching student has to 
 grapple. First let it be said that it is doubtless 
 Emerson s own designation of his own idea, even if 
 he found, as he says, the term already in German 
 Philosophy. "We catch an early glimpse of its ex 
 istence hinted in a letter to Carlyle, dated March 
 12, 1835, in which Emerson speaks of The Tran 
 scendent alist, the name of a new journal about to 
 be started, in which he has evidently a good deal of 
 interest. Moreover a kind of Transcendental Club 
 
TRANSCENDENTALISM. 
 
 composed of a group of young men, of whom he 
 seems to be the disguised motive-power, peeps out 
 modestly in the same letter. 
 
 Thus we may infer that Emerson already in the 
 
 beginning of this his Creative Epoch had found the 
 
 suggestive name, or the distinctive category which 
 
 was to cleave to his work as well as to his person 
 
 ality in the time to come. The name has turned out 
 
 a hitting one and of happy fortune which has never 
 
 lapsed in spite of some opposition and even obloquy. 
 
 It is Emerson s word for Emersonianism, for the 
 
 new Idea which he had conceived and which he 
 
 would now set forth to the world in deed and 
 
 speech. To be sure Emerson was never quite ready 
 
 to acknowledge the paternity of the label, even to 
 
 his nearest friends and followers. One of the earli 
 
 est of these is Dr. F. H. Hedge who writes : t ( How 
 
 the name Transcendental originated, I cannot say. 
 
 It certainly was never assumed by the persons so 
 
 called." Yet Emerson seems to have used it before 
 
 anybody else, and to have been quite familiar with 
 
 it, since it rises to the surface in another early let 
 
 ter of his to Carlyle (April 30, 1835) which alludes 
 
 again to a projected Journal, or perchance "a book 
 
 to be called The Transcendentalist. " Its editor is 
 
 to be this same Doctor Hedge, who says of himself : 
 
 "I was the only one (of the group) who had any 
 
 first-hand acquaintance with German Transcenden 
 
 tal Philosophy r.t the start." Still he disclaims 
 
 authorship of the name or any knowledge of the au 
 
 thor. That must have 1 been Emerson s closely 
 
154 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 guarded secret a wise precaution on his part, we 
 may well reflect. 
 
 Nevertheless the term itself was not original with 
 Emerson, who has given himself unusual trouble to 
 tell us whence it was derived: The Idealism of 
 the present day acquired the name of Transcenden 
 tal from the use of that term by Immanuel Kant, 
 of Koenigsberg, who replied to the skeptical philos 
 ophy of Locke." This states the source as well as 
 the ground of its adoption. The same passage runs 
 on: "The extraordinary profoundness and pre 
 cision of that man s (Kant s) thinking have given 
 vogue to his nomenclature, in Europe and America, 
 to that extent that whatever belongs to intuitive 
 thought is popularly called at the present day Tran 
 scendental" (Emerson s lecture on The Transcen 
 dent alist read in January, 18-12, hence some seven 
 years after the movement had started) . 
 
 Thus Emerson, looking backward to the origin 
 and scope of his fertile idea when it had gathered 
 great force, connects it with the German philosoph 
 ical thought of the Eighteenth Century in its reac 
 tion against the sensism of Locke and his followers. 
 Moreover in this same lecture the new doctrine is 
 explained as "the tendency to respect intuitions 
 and to give them, at least in our creed, all authority 
 over our experience." Furthermore in the first 
 sentence it is emphasized that this new doctrine is 
 "not new but the very oldest of thoughts cast into 
 the mould of these new times, being really the old 
 Idealism reaching back to Plato, yet "Idealism as 
 
TRANSCF1NDKNTALISM. 
 
 it appears in 1842 at Boston. So Emerson, in a 
 prescriptive mcod not always his, seeks to connect 
 his spiritual child with the past and to make it a 
 development out of foregone philosophies, espe 
 cially the German. Still it is by no means a mere 
 repetition or imitation, but an evolution, which in 
 deed underlies the unconscious Emerson every 
 where, and at times breaks up into conscious utter 
 ance, whereof a well known instance peeps out pro 
 phetically in the lines: 
 
 And, striving to be man, the worm 
 Mounts through all the spires of form. 
 
 It is, however, our opinion that Emerson in the 
 foregoing account, which is historically true 
 enough, though not wholly flawless, has not re 
 vealed the source whence he himself derived the 
 w r ord and the idea of Transcendentalism, for which 
 he was indeed ready and even groping. He doubt 
 less heard the doctrine and its name for the first 
 time from Carlyle when he paid the latter his visit 
 already recounted, though ho remained silent about 
 this fact. And we shall often find out that Emer 
 son had his peculiar reticences on pivotal matters, 
 for reasons which he kept very private. But as this 
 point relates to the spiritual genesis of Emerson s 
 work, it may be a little further expanded. 
 
 In an early passage of Sartor Resartus (Book I, 
 Ch. 4), Carlyle, in describing Teuf elsdrockh s many 
 startling spontaneities, regards them as possibly 
 having their "second source in his Transcendental 
 
156 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 Philosophies," with which is also connected his 
 humor of looking at all Matter and material things 
 as Spirit " ; in which citations may be found the 
 word as well as a hint of its Emersonian meaning. 
 In fact Teufelsdrockh can well be taken as the first 
 and germinal Transcendentalist. Sartor Resartus 
 was printed by instalments in Eraser s Magazine, 
 starting November, 1833, with the first four chap 
 ters. It must have been read to Emerson during 
 the latter s visit with Carlyle at Craigenputtock in 
 August, 1833, for it had already been written and 
 made into a book rejected of publishers. Really 
 Carlyle could hardly help reading to his appreci 
 ative guest salient extracts from his greatest crea 
 tion, and talking about its idea, as he thumbed the 
 precious manuscript. And Jane Carlyle at his side 
 would surely have prompted him if he had neg 
 lected aught, for this she declared to be her dar 
 ling s work of genius, dear. What else had they 
 to talk about during that long stretch of a day and 
 more ? And what but the new idea could have made 
 such a lasting and creative impression upon Emer 
 son? -Still he has not recorded this truly genetic 
 impartation in either of his two printed accounts 
 of the visit. 
 
 Let us here take note that Emerson did not fail 
 to signify, usually in his placid manner, that there 
 was a negative, defiant, fighting side to his Tran 
 scendentalism, which he would stress in his martial 
 mood. The enemy whom it everywhere scented with 
 a blood-hound s keenness, and whom it would dial- 
 
TRANSCENDENTALISM. ^57 
 
 lenge on the spot was Tradition, anathema to its 
 infernality. Characteristically opposite to the pre 
 ceding German derivation of his idea is Emerson s 
 
 reply to an inquirer: "I told Mr. that he 
 
 need not consult the Germans but if he wished at 
 any time to know what the Transcendentalists be 
 lieved, he might simply omit what in his own mind 
 he added from Tradition, and the rest would be 
 Transcendentalism." To be sure, Emerson never 
 carried out his doctrine to the extreme intimated in 
 his statement; there remained in his nature, after 
 all his eliminations of what had been transmitted 
 to him, a deep substrate of traditional beliefs, mostly 
 unconscious, but often identified and even vaunted. 
 He gloried in his inherited Puritanic conscious 
 ness, especially as regards its morality, though 
 he rejected its dogmatic element. And in the unlit 
 underworld of his soul were stored volumes of 
 ancient prescription whose pages he seemed not to 
 read aloud or at least not to express in writ. That 
 Concord community, so dear to him, was largely a 
 transmitted thing, inside him and outside. Such 
 in fact was the substructure of his whole activity, 
 whose superstructure, however, was a strongly for 
 tified citadel reared against the instituted order as 
 handed down from the fathers. The Transcen- 
 dentalist would exclude everything externally trans 
 mitted or prescribed ; no outer mediate descent into 
 the soul is allowed, only the inner immediate efflu 
 ence, that of deity himself. 
 
 Though Emerson denies and defies the principle 
 
158 RALPH WALDO EMERSONPART 
 
 of authority, he hardly gets rid of it in his doctrine 
 but transfers it, that is v he shifts the seat of au 
 thority from Tradition to Intuition, and stresses th-* 
 individual more, than the institution. Thus the re-" 
 calcitrant has his place of submission, if not of ser 
 vility. The iconoclast of induction, he turns idola 
 ter of instinct, through which alone God reveals 
 himself. The soul is to be obedient, receptive, sub 
 ject to the divine effluence, whose dictation is final 
 and without question. Thus Emerson turns back 
 to the Oriental consciousness, and becomes the mod 
 ern theocrat, born of Puritanism on our Western 
 Continent. No wonder that he reverts so much to 
 Persia and India for his spiritual comfort and in 
 spiration. There runs through him a line of return 
 from the Occident to the Orient, even from democ 
 racy to absolutism. Emerson was not in harmony 
 with the American polity during his Creative 
 Epoch, though in later years he became more rec 
 onciled. To be sure he affirmed strongly the side 
 of individual judgment and initiative, but he shied 
 at individual association in the form of the State 
 and other Institutions. The atom he uplifted and 
 glorified, but the organized body composed of atoms 
 lay not in his interest, perchance not distinctly in 
 his vision, at least not during his Creative Epoch. 
 Moses and the Prophets in old Judea received God s 
 message directly ; why should not I, Emerson, now 
 do the same in New England without their words 
 interposition, but imitating them just in their su 
 preme act? Commune not with their evangel as 
 
TRANSCENDENTALISM. 159 
 
 final, but reach back to the source of it and tap that 
 in thine own right for slaking thy soul s thirst. 
 Here lies the reason in part why Emerson was influ 
 enced to such a small degree ostensibly by the 
 Hebrew Scriptures, though in doctrine at his deep 
 est he was their offspring. 
 
 This sovereign Spirit Emerson postulates : he did 
 not undertake to say, how it came down into the 
 human soul, nor when, nor where. Nor did he try 
 to elaborate the conditions under which the soul 
 received the divine message ; it seemed rather pas 
 sively to register the upper decree. Indeed we can 
 not always tell whether he deemed this original 
 Energy as coming from without or from within 
 is it his own Ego or another Power impinging up 
 on the same ? The Transcendentalist is inclined to 
 see the facts you call the world as flowing perpet 
 ually outward from an invisible unsounded center 
 in himself, center alike of him and of them," and 
 hence as having "a subjective existence." Thus he 
 would seem at times to make deity essentially in 
 ternal, yet not always; his idealism takes often a 
 dart toward Fichte or Berkeley, and then stops or 
 turns back. Emerson, while eschewing all system 
 or dogma in the matter, appears to hover between a 
 distinct subjective and an indistinct objective God. 
 
 Hence it comes that Transcendentalism can have 
 no organized form, its record being that of the 
 day s direct inspiration. It is the soul s diary of 
 the moment s downflow from deity, whereof the ex 
 ample may be noted in Emerson s Journal, .the mo- 
 
160 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 mentary emanations of his Ego, which are the ele 
 mental ever-jetting fountain of all his writings, 
 whose ultimate drops never quite coalesce or grow 
 organic even in the finished product. Accordingly, 
 Transcendentalism is not a philosophy, though it 
 philosophizes, not a religion, though it religionizes, 
 not a psychology, though it psychologizes. It dis 
 dains all system, or rather its system drives forward 
 to be unsystematic. From this angle it shows a de 
 cidedly negative bent, and bespeaks itself a child of 
 the revolutionary Eighteenth Century, whose push 
 was also to assail and to overturn the ordered world 
 as transmitted to it from the past. Thus Emerson 
 brought a phase of the French Revolution, as well 
 as of the American, into quiet New England, and 
 whelmed the Puritan against Puritanism. The rig 
 orous faith of the fathers (or faithers) is under 
 mined, the other-worldliness is transmuted to a 
 this-worldly outlook, and even the transcendent 
 God becomes immanent, if not wholly subjective, 
 being made the vehicle of the individual s worth, 
 but hardly now its sole supreme end, as of yore. 
 
 Such is the decisive, we may say, genetic principle 
 in Emerson s world- view the unobstructed efflux 
 of the Divine Spirit into man, the descent of the 
 Over-Soul into the human soul. This central con 
 ception is the primal source as well as impulse of 
 his creativity, which will push him to a thousand 
 fold application and utterance of itself in speech, 
 writ, and in life. 
 
 Still it would not be out of place to call Emer- 
 
TRANSCENDENTALISM. KJ-J 
 
 son in his religious aspect a theocrat, who partakes 
 of and is governed by the direct inspiration of God 
 from above against all human law and institution, 
 as well as against all doctrine of every kind trans 
 mitted from the past. On this side we have to 
 think of him, with that whole Puritanic inheritance . 
 of his consciousness seething through him, as an 
 evolution of the original Hebrew God-conscious 
 ness so deeply indwelling the spirit of his long cler 
 ical ancestry. He could be inspired as well as Isa 
 iah, for it is the inspiration in itself purely, which 
 is divine and universal, not so much the particular 
 word or thing. Moreover Emerson s own verbal 
 message, which he has to impart, will also undergo 
 the fate of the old prophet, and become a prescrip 
 tion to his faithful apostolate, who in turn will 
 have to learn through Emerson to transcend Emer 
 son, just as he transcended his spirit s origin, and 
 is to be imitated with his own imitation by his .fol 
 lowers at their best. Thus Emerson s doctrine of 
 Transcendentalism bears in itself the push to be 
 come self-transcending if not self-undoing an un 
 conscious irony lurks in his writ, which time will 
 make aware. 
 
 But the lasting fact about Transcendentalism was 
 its pervasive and persistent impress upon its time, 
 especially its power over the New England 
 mind. Dizzily rapid was its sweep from effluence 
 to influence, from the inner overflow to the outer, 
 and just therewith unprescribed Transcendental 
 ism became a prescription, its very denial of tradi- 
 
162 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 tion turned traditional in a kind of self -opposition, 
 which in time Emerson himself will feel and humor 
 ously lament, But at the start it wrought as a 
 mighty but subtle force, leavening the minds even 
 of its enemies. To be \sure, it spread out to mat- 
 .ters and assertions far beyond the intention of its 
 founder ; Emerson himself drew sharp lines against 
 some of its interpretations. But even when misun 
 derstood or rather the more ft was misunderstood, 
 the more it produced a ferment. We can trace its 
 effects even on those who were least willing to ac 
 knowledge its power and on many who knew not 
 what had hold of themselves. Some of its more 
 manifest results we may set down. 
 
 The most striking as well as the most permanent 
 result of Transcendentalism is seen in Literature. 
 It dominates Emerson s supremely distinctive Pe 
 riod, as well as his supremely distinctive work his 
 Essays. From him as a center it overflowed in 
 many directions and permeated the Epoch s spirit 
 ual utterance. His style was imitated, his manner 
 as well as his mannerism struck root and grew. The 
 New England preacher would clothe his orthodoxy 
 in an Emersonian vestment. Especially it culti 
 vated the ideal or poetic side of life. Still it pro 
 duced no poem of supreme rank, primarily because 
 it did not furnish the theme for such a work which 
 must be national first and thence rise to be univer 
 sal. But Transcendentalism was essentially pro 
 vincial, not even national ; it had the New England, 
 limit upon it, wherever it might pass. If not wholly 
 
TRANKCENDENTA LTXM. -| (53 
 
 denying it minimized the part of mediation in the 
 universal order; but every world-poem, or sover 
 eign work of art, is mediatorial, we may say, even 
 vicarious. 
 
 Another wide-spread result of Transcendental 
 ism was what we may emphasize as the Flight tin- 
 estrangement of the individual from his social en 
 vironment and his escape to the woods or to primi 
 tive life. A profound dissatisfaction with the es 
 tablished order seized the Yankee heart, which was 
 an original deep-seated trait of the Puritan and 
 caused his primal flight to America from England, 
 and then to the wilds of the West, The political 
 situation of the time both in the State and the Na 
 tion intensified the feeling. Emerson began his 
 career by such a flight to Concord, and held his 
 Castle of Defiance to the end. The Puritanic con 
 sciousness has an original taint of fault-finding 
 with the world and its ordering, and herein Emer 
 son does not fail to voice his people. Still he never 
 quite broke and fled to the woods, though he threat 
 ened it several times and lived on the edge of Wai- 
 den, and not so very far from P>rook Farm. But 
 the great exponent and literary protagonist of the 
 Transcendental Flight was Thoreau, Emerson s 
 friend, and to a degree imitator, though with a 
 stout character of his own. 
 
 Another far-famed and significant result was the 
 new Transcendental Community, which was its de 
 termined practical endeavor. For the Flight was 
 after all only a protest, a denial, a negation ; but to 
 
164 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 build up the social order afresh from the bottom 
 was a decided affirmation. Thus it was acknowl 
 edged that man must associate and construct out 
 of himself a social system ; but the old way of hu 
 man association, largely left to chance and instinct, 
 must be remodeled by rational foresight. Here the 
 pattern was mainly the premeditated structure of 
 the Frenchman Fourier. Emerson held aloof 
 from this last consequence of his doctrine, indicat 
 ing a trait in him otherwise notable. He left this 
 part of the program to be carried out chiefly by an 
 other friend of his, A. Bronson Alcott, a man al 
 ways ready to march to the last ditch, but never 
 quite ready to die there, whose ideal community 
 went to pieces several times, though he always es 
 caped with his life to tell the story. Moreover, Em 
 erson s real flight was to Concord, perchance the 
 germinal model, from which spot he would not stir 
 after his first homing. It must be confessed that 
 Alcott had more of the hero in him than Emerson, 
 who was a great darer in word but not so much in 
 deed. 
 
 Another characteristic of Transcendentalism has 
 been its genetic energy in producting new forms of 
 itself, different indeed yet with salient strains of 
 its parentage. The so-called Christian Science 
 with its wild-fire propagation from the chief Tran 
 scendental center, Boston, despite denials of Mother 
 Eddy, shows no superficial likeness to Father Em 
 erson, one of whose most smiting spiritual charac 
 teristics was the undervaluation, if riot quite elim- 
 
TRANSCENDENTALISM. 165 
 
 ination of the Negative in man and even in God. 
 Evil, ill, and the world generally is the grand illu 
 sion, which is to be cured by the new knowledge. 
 As we read in its book, or listen to its exposition 
 from adepts, we cannot help muttering low to our 
 selves: Yes, in this household Emerson is the un 
 obtrusive, perchance unacknowledged father, while 
 Madam is. the trumpet-voiced mother prolific be 
 yond computation, and gifted with a marvelous 
 talent for organizing her globe-girt crusade alto 
 gether the greatest popularisation of the more eso 
 teric Transcendental doctrine. 
 
 Nor must we forget the second considerable shoot 
 of Transcendentalism, budding from the same orig 
 inal center and ramifying far and wide over the 
 world. This is known as Pragmatism, whose puta 
 tive founder was C. S. Peirce of Harvard, but 
 whose chief and world-famous promulgator was 
 Professor William James of the same seat of learn 
 ing. The Pragmatic germ with its full contradic 
 tion may be noted already in the original Transcen 
 dental Club, which was declared to be a Club of the 
 like-minded, as no two of them were minded alike. 
 Only today a skillful exponent declared he knew of 
 twenty different kinds of Pragmatism; he might 
 have raised his figure to twenty hundred, one for 
 every Pragmatist, as it is not Pragmatic to follow 
 any formula of Pragmatism. Emerson himself in 
 his first book shows the budding doctrine in his ex 
 hortation: "Build, therefore, your own world. As 
 fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in 
 
166 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 your mind, that will unfold its grand proportions. 9 
 This and similar things, we find in Emerson s earli 
 est book, that on Nature, and like sermonic exhor 
 tations were vigorously preached along his whole 
 active career. Such pointed sentential stimulation 
 to self -construction undoubtedly has its tonic value 
 for every person ; but it also contains the bud which 
 flowers into doctrinal Pragmatism, though this 
 seems to deny all doctrine, and then to deny its de 
 nial. All of which can find its suggestion in Emer 
 son. 
 
 And now we are to watch Transcendentalism ad 
 vancing to the spiritual mastery of the world outer 
 and inner through the work of its founder, who 
 starts with Nature as the first of the triple round 
 of the Universe, which is composed of Nature, 
 Man, and God. 
 
 IL 
 
 NATURE is TRANSCENDENTAL 
 
 Such is the pithy aphorism which utters a very 
 deep and lasting phasis of the Emersonian con 
 sciousness: Nature is transcendental. Already 
 we have noted repeatedly Emerson s bent toward 
 Nature; at Paris we saw how he turned away from 
 a great literary revolution, in a push of instinct 
 toward the incoming scientific evolution. His per 
 manent trend may be caught in the following decla 
 ration : From whatver side we look at Nature we 
 seem to be exploring the figure of a disguised man." 
 
NATURE IS TRANSCENDENTAL. 167 
 
 Thus the First Mind is revealed in its outer visible 
 form, descending primarily from above into the 
 Human Mind which beholds itself in Nature as the 
 "disguised Man" or Ego. Nor should we fail to 
 note that Emerson, the thinker, here has a kind of 
 background to his thought, namely the great trin 
 ity of the universe God, Nature, Man with a 
 faint intimation of their mutual relationship or 
 perchance of their process with one another. It is 
 indeed but a glimpse, and that is Emerson the 
 glimpser. 
 
 But now we must advance to Emerson s first 
 book, that on Nature, published in 1836 his first 
 spiritual child, and the earliest offspring of Tran 
 scendentalism, unless we reckon Carlyle s Sartor in 
 the genetic line. The starting-point of Emerson is, 
 then, the -disguised Man, primal efflux of deity, 
 and hence for him * the apparition of God. 
 
 "Nature is transcendental," exclaims Emerson 
 setting forth in a, lecture the doctrine of himself as 
 Transcendentalist. It would seem that Nature was 
 the first avenue of approach to his new philosophy. 
 Thus it is the subject of his opening literary per 
 formance, of his first book. "Nature is transcen 
 dental, exists primarily, necessarily, ever works 
 and advances, yet takes no thought for tomorrow." 
 It acts immediately and instinctively, without 
 "thought for tomorrow." Man, too, at his highest 
 has wrought in the same way ; genius and virtue 
 predict in man the same absence of private ends, 
 and of condescension to circumstances 
 
168 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 in the process of Nature. Here Emerson shows his 
 aversion to the mediated, reflective, purposed, and 
 reveals his bent toward the unconscious, immediate, 
 spontaneous, as is seen in the natural world. 
 
 The motto to the first edition of his book was 
 taken from Plotinus, and contained the following 
 abrupt jet: "Nature being a thing which doth 
 only do, but not know" wherein lies Emerson s 
 deepest tie of sympathy with her in this earlier 
 stage of his thought. But thirteen years later 
 (1849) in his second edition of Nature, he substi 
 tuted a second motto in verse which contains the 
 famous evolutionary image of the worm "striving 
 to be man," and in the effort rising "through all 
 the spires of form. 7 Wherein we may see Emer 
 son himself evolving into Evolution some ten years 
 before the publication of Darwin s Origin of Spe 
 cies. Still he had already felt Evolution in a stroll 
 at Paris through the Jardin des Plant es : "I feel 
 the Centipede in me cayman, casp, eagle and fox. 
 He finds in every form of Nature, however gro 
 tesque or savage, a secret affinity with himself an 
 occult relation between the very scorpions and 
 man." Thus he forecasts the Darwinian Descent 
 of Man, and in his enthusiasm of vision he shouts : 
 "I am moved by strange sympathies" with all cre 
 ation, "I say continually, I will be a naturalist," 
 which, however, he could not. (See the striking 
 upburst in his Diary, under date of July 13. 1833.) 
 
 In this presentimental gleam Emerson was a kind 
 of Darwinist before Darwin, echoing indeed a 
 
NATURE 18 TRANSCENDENTAL. -jgg 
 
 mighty propulsion of the time. Herein he bears an 
 analogy to the poet Goethe, who reveals many evo 
 lutionary pulsations both in prose and verse; in 
 deed his Faust may be deemed the great poem of 
 Evolution, which especially takes form in the nu 
 merous transmutations of Mephistopheles. Tenny 
 son also showed an occasional push from this spirit 
 of the time, in spite of his Anglican conservatism. 
 Emerson may have derived his idea from the 
 Frenchman Lamarck whose doctrine held more to 
 the inner appetency of lower organisms striving 
 to be man," than to the Darwinian Natural Selec 
 tion, or the pure struggle for existence. Emerson s 
 kind of evolution was more the intuitive, hardly 
 the inductive or scientific, nor yet the more recent 
 creative evolution of Bergson. 
 
 But that which chiefly drew Emerson s eye to 
 Nature was his seeing in it the downflow * of that 
 ineffable Essence which we call Spirit," whereby 
 we can commune with "God in the coarse and dis 
 tant phenomena of matter." Hence the true de 
 scription of Nature is the poetic, for this manifests 
 "the great shadow pointing always to the sun be 
 hind us." To be sure the doubt will enter whether 
 there is any reality to this shadowy appearance be 
 fore us; still the hopeful philosopher cries out: 
 "the world is a divine dream from which we may 
 presently awake to the glories and certainties of 
 day." For Nature is to Emerson the grandest of 
 all ghosts, being just "the apparition of God." 
 
 Nature s ever-flowing creative spontaneity capti- 
 
170 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 vated Emerson, being so like himself in his germi 
 nal faith, and resembling the genetic downpour of 
 his genius from its divine fountain-head. He quite 
 personified Nature as the original Transcendental- 
 ist, who brings forth in rich productivity her mar 
 velous works of power and beauty. He would fall 
 into her generative mood by taking a walk through 
 his field and wood-lot, and receive her inspiration 
 to "efflux" his prose and verse. For her sake he 
 became a farmer, not to feed his body but his spirit. 
 Thus he tapped Nature in her genesis, and thrilled 
 with her ecstacy of creation. Nature was the inter 
 mediary of his genius with divinity, even if he was 
 in other respects inclined to look askance at all 
 forms of mediation with the Highest. 
 
 The chief interest of this first creative book of 
 Emerson is that it shows his earliest attempt to 
 formulate his world-view, what he often calls his 
 Prima Philosophia, making Nature the reveal er, or 
 .the artist picturing to man the upper ideal realm of 
 the universe. In the book lurks also that peculiar 
 struggle or dualism of the Emersonial Genius be 
 tween poetry and philosophy, both being equally 
 aspired for, but often getting mutually entangled. 
 On the other hand it is certain that with him philos 
 ophy had a push or appetency for something be 
 yond itself, so that he is " looking for the new 
 Teacher" who will be able to make present limits 
 "come full circle" that circular form being to his 
 vision the final one. Moreover such new Teacher 
 "shall see the world to be the mirror of the soul," 
 
NATURE IS TRANSCENDENTAL. 171 
 
 that is, shall behold it as ultimately psychical 
 which indicates another aspiration, and perchance 
 ambition of the Emersonian spirit, often expressed 
 but unfulfilled. What haunts the poet-philosopher 
 everywhere is that the laws of our moral or spiritual 
 nature "answer the laws of matter as face to face 
 in a glass." But this belief remains with him an 
 insight, an intuition, an immediate downburst of 
 the primal creative energy, and never unfolds into 
 a reasoned, interrelated order. 
 
 Nature is, accordingly, the figure of a disguised 
 Man" on the one hand, and on the other, "the 
 noblest ministry of Nature is to stand as the appa 
 rition of God." Thus the primary constituents of 
 the Universe Nature, Man, God are sought to be 
 united in a common thought or process, embracing 
 the All. It is Emerson s vastest reach, or indeed 
 the vastest outstretch of the Human Mind, as this 
 seeks to discover and formulate its place in. the 
 Supreme Order. From the same paragraph (See 
 Nature, Section VIII) an additional citation should 
 multiply the light: "It (Nature) is the organ 
 through which the universal spirit (God) speaks to 
 the individual (Man) and strives to leal back the 
 individual to it," that is, to the universal spirit. 
 Again we note the same triple rov^id of the. Uni 
 verse (God, Nature, -Man), with tlie added purpose 
 of Nature in the same: it is t\e remedial, restora 
 tive, we may say, mediatorial element of all Crea 
 tion whose function or striving is to lead estranged 
 Man back to his Create?. In such a view, we have 
 
172 RALPH WALDO EMERSONPART SECOND. 
 
 > 
 
 to see that Nature for Emerson has largely taken 
 the place of the Christ in the Christian conception 
 of the Divine Order. 
 
 So Emerson starts his career of creative author 
 ship with the idea that Nature is transcendental, 
 elevating it from its former state of damnation in 
 the religious view of the world, to being a medium 
 of salvation for man, through revealing to him the 
 image of his deity. That this trinity of God, Na 
 ture, and Man is itself a psychical process, is indeed 
 just the Psyche of the Universe, or the Soul of the 
 All (Pampsychosis) lies not explicitly in Emer 
 son s vision, even if he glimpsed it intuitively, as 
 was his way. 
 
 III. 
 
 MAN is TRANSCENDENTAL 
 
 Thus we may mark with some emphasis the next 
 significant stage in Emerson s evolution, as he has 
 set it down in writing. He now mounts up to the 
 vision as well as to the utterance of Man s tran 
 scendental portion, as distinct from that of Nature 
 which has just preceded. The new doctrine is con 
 tained in three Orations or Addresses given to Aca 
 demic audiences within, the same year (1837-8). 
 hence not very long after the publication of his 
 book on Nature. These compositions show the au 
 thor taking a fresh step in his career, and together 
 they are seen at bottom to have a common meaning, 
 as hinted in the foregoing caption. They may be 
 
MAN IS TRANSCENDENTAL. 173 
 
 specially designated as Emerson s First Oratorical 
 Triad, for there will be a second. 
 
 The three Addresses, all of of them phases or 
 parts of one supreme subject or mental experience, 
 are found in Emerson s Works with these designa 
 tions : 
 
 1st The -American Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa 
 Oration, Cambridge, August 31, 1837. Emerson s 
 own sub-title is Man Thinking (of course transcen- 
 dentally). 
 
 2nd The Divinity Class Address. Cambridge, 
 July 15, 1838. The emphasis is upon Man Preach 
 ing (of course transcendentally). 
 
 3rd Literary Ethics. Oration before the Liter 
 ary Societies of Dartmouth College, July 24, 1838. 
 It deals especially with the writer, or Man Writing 
 (of course transcendentally). 
 
 Here, then, we are to listen to Emerson discours 
 ing upon three different intellectual types of men, 
 more deeply upon himself, however, in this three 
 fold phasis of his spiritual development. These 
 types are Thinker, Preacher, Writer; or, in more 
 exalted Emersonian phraseology we may call them 
 the Philosopher, the Priest, the Poet, all of them 
 distinct embodiments of Emerson s own intellec 
 tual activities. Hence these Addresses belong to his 
 biography; or, i:i their ultimate purport, they are 
 documents autobiographical. Emerson was now 
 hovering toward and around thirty-five years old; 
 so he announces in the last Address: "I have 
 reached the middle age of man:" or as Dante puts 
 
174 RALPH WALDO EMERSONPART SECOND. 
 
 it, "in the middle of -the journey of our life," which 
 at this point turns down the road toward three score 
 and ten. 
 
 The common theme underlying all these Orations, 
 accordingly, is Man as transcendental, since he 
 must tap the divine source himself and in himself 
 for his thought, for his sermon, for his writ re 
 jecting tradition and following inspiration. Inter 
 woven with the fundamental idea are numerous ap 
 plications, allusions, eloquent excursions, which give 
 variety and also power to these discourses. This 
 common theme Emerson repeats under many forms ; 
 let us take the following for the nonce : ( The con 
 dition of our incarnation in a private Self seems to 
 be a perpetual tendency to prefer the private law, 
 to obey the impulse, to the exclusion of the law of 
 universal Being. " Here Emerson summons before 
 himself the primordial thought of individuation, 
 our incarnation in a prevate Self, as opposed to, 
 yet derived from "universal Being," to which man 
 is to return for participation or indeed re-creation. 
 This is what makes him truly mighty and worthy, 
 for "the hero is great by means of the predomi 
 nance of the universal nature ; he has only to open 
 his mouth and it speaks; he has only to be forced 
 to act and it acts." Thus the universal spirit ac 
 tive is to be tapped and sluiced down into the in 
 dividual spirit passive, which thence obtains its 
 heroship, its transcendental power and fulfilment. 
 
 Accordingly, it becomes of supreme importance to 
 the man thinking, preaching, writing, that he brings 
 
MAN TS TRANSCENDENTAL. 175 
 
 himself into close communion with this supernal 
 creative source, and let its genetic energy stream 
 over into his individual productivity. These three 
 Addresses are guiding lines to such an end. And 
 the first question asked here by the prying reader 
 is this: does our human speaker Emerson now in 
 these discourses draw from the eternal fountain- 
 head in telling how to do it ? Our decided opinion 
 is that he meets the requirement. Emerson, giving 
 instruction to be heroic, becomes in the act the 
 hero himself, and exemplifies his own doctrine. We 
 may fairly say that he shows himself to be philoso 
 pher, priest, poet in describing what they are, and 
 how they get to be. 
 
 So much by way of preface to this oratorical sun 
 rise of the sky-mounting Emerson, with hints of 
 its general purport and place in his Life-Essay. It 
 may well be deemed a forecast of himself in the main 
 currents of his career. "While the Addresses have 
 a common idea and also structure, each of them has 
 its own distinct theme and character, as well as 
 style and mood. Their separate points are worthy 
 of a brief examination. 
 
 I. The American Scholar. This was a New Eng 
 land favorite, as indicated by the praises of Lowell 
 and others. It has a touch of Yankee vanity, not 
 obtrusive, and certainly not disagreeable. Dr. 
 Holmes, in his life of Emerson has called it "our 
 intellectual Declaration of Independence/ which 
 term hits off one of its traits. In fact some fifty 
 years and more after the political Revolution, Em- 
 
176 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 erson heralds the spiritual Revolution of America, 
 and herein becomes the new Thomas Jefferson, 
 though he had fore-runners. In the first paragraph 
 Emerson proclaims: "Our day of dependence, our 
 long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, 
 draws to a close. We cannot always be fed on the 
 sere remains of foreign harvests." Thus the title 
 of the oration, The American S&kolar, as liberated 
 from the European, is already a challenge. 
 
 Still this is but its polemical or negative side, 
 and it has a decidedly positive strain, in fact sev 
 eral of them.* The basic theme is the return of the 
 individual from "the divided or social state" in 
 which he now finds himself, to "the original unit, 
 the fountain of power" from which he sprang, that 
 he may drink again of his first creative energy. 
 This original "One Man," primordial father of all 
 particular men, Emerson calls up before us in im 
 age and fable, to indicate that to which "the indi 
 vidual must sometimes return from his own labor, 
 that he replenish and renew his divinely creative 
 spirit. 
 
 But how is this return to be made by "the vic 
 tim of society," and its traditions? Here lies the 
 function of the Scholar as Emerson conceives him, 
 or Man Thinking. In the first place this Thinker 
 must look deep into Nature and see in her "the 
 circular power always returning into itself." More 
 over just herein Nature "resembles his own spirit," 
 and so it comes that "its laws are the laws of his 
 own mind. Surely this is the cry for a Psychology 
 
MAN 18 TRANSCENDENTAL. 177 
 
 of Nature, in which is to be shown the imprint of 
 mind upon every physical phenomenon, great and 
 small. We feel like shouting to the aspiring Em 
 erson, with his active life still before him : Do that; 
 Thinker, organize Nature and all her facts and 
 laws psychically, and you will create a new science 
 quite unknown to Europe. Did he do it? Not to 
 our knowledge ; in this field too he remains Emer 
 son the glimpser, the stimulator, the prophet, not 
 a world-organizer, though he proclaims everywhere 
 the vision of the same. But within his limits he is 
 of the worthiest and greatest. 
 
 The second great influence which comes pouring 
 into the mind of the Scholar from the outside is the 
 Past in the form of "literature, art, institutions." 
 Great is the Book, but it has a very insidious peril: 
 "the sacredness which attaches to the act of crea 
 tion the act of thought is transferred to the rec 
 ord." Hence the letter killeth: the danger of 
 script is prescription. The function of genius is 
 to create : * if the man create not, the pure efflux 
 of the Deity is not his." Use your own creative 
 moments creatively; when you "can read God di 
 rectly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other 
 men s transcripts." A peep we may deem this into 
 Emerson s sanctum where he seizes first his Diary 
 to transcribe God directly. He also emphasizes the 
 supreme way of reading: "One must be an in 
 ventor to read well. There is creative reading as 
 well as writing." Thus Emerson in many a poig 
 nant thrust slashes Academicism before those Har- 
 
178 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 vard Academics, very learned and industrious, but 
 not true American Scholars, because uncreative, 
 sterilely traditional, hence contemptibly un-Emer- 
 sonian. 
 
 In the third place, Emerson s Scholar is not to 
 be a mere recluse, an unpractical dreamer. A per 
 sonal warmth we feel here in his words : * Only so 
 much do I know as I have lived." Moreover here 
 lies the source of all true language : Instantly 
 we know whose words are loaded with life, and 
 whose not." Then hark to this fine apothegm: 
 "Life is our dictionary," is our final word-maker, 
 the creative compiler of our vocabulary. So even 
 our dictionary is not to be blindly accepted, but 
 has to be re-made if it is to be worth anything. 
 "The new deed is yet a part of life," and is still to 
 be born into the word and writ, which must be filled 
 and re-filled with action. 
 
 Here Emerson rises to a throbbing glimpse of life 
 in its totality, even of his own: "Living is the 
 functionary this is a total act ; " on the other hand 
 "Thinking is a partial act," is only a limited "func 
 tion." Very significant is this for Emerson s biog 
 raphy, which he is primarily to live as a whole. The 
 books, the speeches, the works are but parts of the 
 total life which is to unfold according to the uni 
 versal spirit. There is the round of distinct and 
 separate achievements, then there is the round of 
 the total achievement just the life which he has 
 lived. This is to be felt penetrating and holding 
 together all the details, whatever be the form or 
 
MAN IS TRANSCENDENTAL. ] y<) 
 
 stage of the man s earthly career. He must at last 
 reveal the whole of himself in each and all that he 
 has won, must be radiant with the entirety of life 
 in every part of it. 
 
 Another gleam from Emerson s spiritual work 
 shop we may catch in the picture of himself as a 
 kind of astronomer in his private observatory cat 
 aloguing obscure and nebulous stars of the human 
 mind. Such a catalogue we may see and read in 
 the Diary of Emerson, who often daily swept with 
 his keen, telescopic vision his inner heaven, and set 
 down its fresh experiences as they bubbled out one 
 by one immediately from "the efflux of the Deity " 
 he being the soul s astronomer itemizing all the 
 stars of his psychical firmament. These, then, he 
 would cluster into a constellation and label it with 
 some outward analogy this Address, for instance, 
 appears such a constellation of bright particular 
 stars ; many such also are seen shining through his 
 later Essays. In it he embraces stars of every mag 
 nitude, from the first down to the faintest twinkler 
 and not a few nebulas, which only the most powerful 
 magnifier can resolve, and it not always. The infi 
 nite within is his field of discovery, whose outer an 
 alogue is the planetary or cosmical image, in which 
 Emerson often expressed himself. 
 
 II. Divinity Class Address. It is a speech made 
 to the young oncoming preachers, and gives many 
 a side thrust at the old crystallized gospellers of 
 New England, with whom Emerson had already 
 had his first epochal conflict, which threw him out 
 
180 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 of his ancestral vocation. The result is a keenness 
 which is intended not only to prick the nerve, but 
 to draw a gush of red blood. The outsider, to whom 
 the controversy is foreign and impersonal, can dis 
 tinctly see that Emerson has his war-paint on ? and 
 proposes battle; rather more fiercely does he slash 
 about him than in any production of his known to 
 us. His parting sermon to his congregation is of 
 Christian gentleness compared to this outburst. 
 The foe caught up the gage and hurled it back 
 flaming ; hence the present Address has the name of 
 being Emerson s mightiest noise-producer among 
 his writings. The din is laid now, though a little 
 echo of it may still be heard on occasion. Following 
 Emerson s analogy in the preceding address, we 
 may name the theme here Man Preaching, or the 
 Transcendentalist as Preacher. Both the positive 
 and the negative sides are given in the present case, 
 the latter being now and then somewhat vitriolic. 
 
 The preceding Address took a secular theme, but 
 now Emerson passes to the religious field which is 
 peculiarly his own by inheritance, character, and 
 vocation. Hence the increased personal touch is 
 felt in it : " the true preacher can be known in this, 
 that he deals out to his people his life life passed 
 through the fire of thought." Every sermon is to 
 be biographical. The moral sentiment, the senti 
 ment of virtue as realized in his own daily walk is 
 the sermonizer s right theme. When this sentiment 
 is lost or ascribed to another whose authority you 
 follow that is degeneracy. 
 
MAN 18 TRANSCENDENTAL. ig-j 
 
 Very startling to his hearers was the stress which 
 Emerson put upon the noxious exaggeration about 
 the person of Jesus. The soul knows no persons/ 
 Such utterances raised a storm of protest even from 
 the Unitarians. In fact, Emerson s chief assault 
 is upon the transmitted mediation of man with God 
 through Christ. "This Eastern monarchy of Chris 
 tianity" he will batter down. Emerson will not 
 abolish Christ, but interprets him transcendent ally, 
 in fact Christ was the prime transcendentalist, go 
 ing directly to the divine fountain-head wherein 
 alone the Man Preaching is to follow him, being 
 also the son of God. But let him not make Jesus 
 an autocrat over souls, a kind of Oriental despot in 
 the religious realm. 
 
 Still deeper into the accepted religion is the nega 
 tion of Emerson driving. He seems to dislike the 
 Person as such, and his daring reaches up to a 
 grapple with the Personality of God, whose rule 
 was also an " Eastern Monarchy," since the West 
 "has always owed to Oriental genius its divine im 
 pulses." In his Journals of the present time we 
 find Emerson passing through a great deal of 
 doubt and even of denial upon this subject. "Per 
 sonal life is faint and cold to the energy of God," 
 and there is "some profanation in saying that He 
 is personal." Does this mean merely that God is 
 not an ordinary individual, as some (especially Mr 
 Cabot) have construed it, and that Emerson does 
 not deny divine self-consciousness ? But Emerson 
 emphatically declares : * * We cannot say God is 
 
182 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 self-conscious, or not self -conscious. "We have to 
 think that Universal Personality, or the All-Self 
 was a very hazy conception for Emerson when the 
 oretically or explicitly formulated. -Still we shall 
 often find it lurking unconsciously in many a far- 
 reaching glimpse of his, and shall uncover it as 
 the ultimate underlying substrate of his profound 
 but quite unordered Psychology. 
 
 In the previous Address Emerson emphasized 
 more what the Scholar should do; in the present 
 Address he emphasized more what the Preacher 
 should not do whereby runs through it a prevail 
 ing negative strain. From this angle we may re 
 gard it is Emerson s grand assault upon Person 
 ality, including God, Christ, and Man, for the doc 
 trine has its decided relation to Emerson himself, 
 and is deeply tinged with the experiences of his 
 own life and of that of his family, through which 
 runs an emphasizing, oft-repeated evanishment of 
 persons. Hence it has a searching biographic im 
 port. Undoubtedly, too, it is a confession of his 
 new faith, which denies the transmitted mediato 
 rial principle of the Church. Its positive side is 
 that it puts strong stress upon the self -mediation of 
 Man with his God, and foreshows the trend of the 
 author s future work. "We see it to be a re-enact 
 ment of his old pastoral fight against one congrega 
 tion, but now elevated and generalized into a uni 
 versal fight against the whole Church as then con 
 stituted. It has the ring of defiance trumpeted 
 from his new Concord fortress, amply victualed for 
 
MAN IS TRANSCENDENTAL. 
 
 any siege, whence no foe can dislodge him, no con 
 gregation dismiss him, now quite the overtowering 
 heresiarch of Christendom. 
 
 The close of the Address is for us its sovereign 
 part, in which he utters his aspiration, perchance 
 his ambition. He looks for the hour when lips 
 which "spoke oracles to all time, shall speak in the 
 "West also, in our unoracled America. But listen 
 to this complaint of Emerson: "The Hebrew and 
 Greek Scriptures contain immortal sentences, but 
 they have no epical integrity, are fragmentary, are 
 not shown in their order to the intellect." Each of 
 these criticisms, for they are such, reveals an under 
 lying hope of Emerson; he will write a poem of 
 "epical integrity," he will organize a philosophy 
 whose sentences "are shown in their order to the 
 intellect." Such is his aspiration oft repeated in 
 these earlier years ; will it ever be realized ? Still 
 more concrete is his hope: "I look for the new 
 Teacher that shall follow so far those shining 
 laws that he shall see them come full circle," for 
 they are at last cyclical. This, however, must be 
 shown; but whence? That new Teacher "shall 
 see the world to be the mirror of the soul," which 
 verily furnishes the creative archetype. But who 
 is that coming Teacher if not Emerson himself, 
 here voicing his heart s desire to be not only 
 Priest, but also Poet, and even Philosopher? 
 
 III. Literary Ethics. This Address, although 
 the least famous of the three here conjoined, seems 
 to us their culmination, and in some respects the 
 
184 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 greatest of them all, because the most universal. 
 The first two betray more of the feeling of personal 
 attack and of local conflict ; The American Scholar 
 tilts against the Harvard Academicism, The Divin 
 ity Class Address very incisively assails Harvard 
 Theology both being addressed to Harvard au 
 diences, against which especally Emerson leveled 
 his guns. Harvard understood this well, and 
 practically banned its slashing critic from its 
 precincts for about a generation. But the present 
 Address was given at Dartmouth College then dis 
 tant a two days journey by stage, and withal 
 rather anti-Bostonian. The polemical tang is 
 quite dropped, or has only a very general bearing 
 which has its advantages. 
 
 Emerson again speaks of the American Scholar 
 as the ideal whom he wished to develop. Hence 
 this third Address is a kind of return in speech 
 and thought to the first. Still its theme is dis 
 tinctively the Writer, or Man Writing, who is 
 verily the outcome and the fulfillment* of the two 
 preceding Men the Thinker and the Preacher 
 (or Speaker). And this is true of Emerson him 
 self. His eternal portion is what he has written, 
 not simply what he has thought in his study or 
 what he has spoken in his lectures. To be sure, 
 these two his thinking and his speaking were 
 the necessary disciplines for his literary work. 
 But they vanish with his individual e vanishment, 
 while his writ does not disappear but remains and 
 even grows in influence with time, after his per- 
 
MAN IS TRANSCENDENTAL. 185 
 
 sonal disappearance. In the opening paragraph 
 of his Address he celebrates the Writer, though he 
 still calls the latter the Scholar, "as the favorite 
 of heaven and earth, the excellency of his coun 
 try and the happiest of men." And this is be 
 cause he "extends his dominion into the general 
 mind of the country, he is not one but many" 
 which little touch of indirect self-gratulation is 
 welcome in the somewhat reserved Emerson. 
 
 What is the first, the original act of the Scholar 
 (or Literary Man) ? He must at the start see and 
 commune with "the soul which made the world," 
 and must find "that it is all accessible to him;" 
 then he must know himself as its minister. All 
 the events of history are "sprung from the soul 
 of man," which must be, therefore, the grand in 
 terpreter of all deeds and facts. The chief use of 
 the biography of Great Men "is to increase my 
 self -trust by demonstrating what man can be and 
 do. " I am to imitate not their particular acts but 
 their universal creative power. "Seeing that 
 Plato was and Shakespeare and Milton then I 
 dare ; I also will essay to be." Here lies probably 
 the original suggestion and meaning of Emerson s 
 Essay soon to be his supreme Jiterary form : I 
 essay to be, as well as Plato and other great 
 writers. 
 
 ; Very significant are these early indications of 
 Emerson on the subject of Biography. The youth 
 is to _seein his-beloved hero, "that it is only a pro 
 jection of his own soul that he admires." Enter- 
 
186 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 son asserts the common underlying principle in 
 all great men: "I am tasting t!?e self -same life; 
 the difference of circumstances is merely cos 
 tume. And if you know one supreme biography 
 well, "you master the biography of this hero and 
 of that and of every hero." Excellent glimpse is 
 this of the true science of Biography, still so 
 chaotic in these days. But we have to ask, will 
 Emerson himself realize this conception? Very 
 famous is his book on Representative Men; will he 
 unfold the unity working in and through the lives 
 of all these great characters? The answer lies in 
 the future ; but let not the reader forget the ques 
 tion, for he is or should be much interested in see 
 ing whether the glimpser Emerson can rise to be 
 the organizer. 
 
 The instructions of Emerson to the Writer (or 
 Scholar) are repeated with new emphasis for they 
 are drawn from his most intimate personal expe 
 rience. The first command is, "embrace solitude 
 as a bride." Renounce the bribe of money and all 
 forms of self-indulgence ; you are great only by 
 being passive to the super-incumbent spirit." He 
 cries out: "Go cherish your soul, expel compan 
 ions, set your habits to life of solitude." Still we 
 have to remark that Emerson in his own case did 
 not make himself a hermit. He showed a decid 
 edly practical side not only in money matters but 
 also in the propagation of his doctrine. Still this 
 side of himself he did not need to stress in Yan- 
 keeland. 
 
MAN IS TRANSCENDENTAL. 187 
 
 Nor must we o:nit to mention Emerson s em 
 phasis upon life as a whole. The true writer "will 
 feel that the richest romance, the noblest fiction 
 that was ever woven, lies enclosed in human life. 
 Itself of surpassing value, it is also the richest 
 material for his creations." Eecollect that when 
 this Address was given, Emerson was only thirty- 
 five years old, quite at the early push of his active 
 literary life. The underlying trend of it is the 
 outlook of a man of letters upon his forthcoming- 
 career. What principles is he to follow? So we 
 may catch here certain anticipations or prophetic 
 gleams of his own life, and some guiding lines for 
 biography, especially for his own. He already 
 forefeels "that the richest romance, the noblest fic 
 tion that was ever woven" is going to lie just in 
 his own life. Can the biographer show that, with 
 out resorting to the form of the rove], which Em 
 erson did not employ, and really did not like, 
 though of course he read a little in such litera 
 ture ? Let it be noted again that the grand total 
 ity of his life he seeks dimly to visualize in ad 
 vance. 
 
 Thus we put together this first" Oratorical Triad, 
 significant in itself, but especially significant of 
 Emerson s evolution. AVe may grasp it as a kind 
 of trinity, having three men in one, and one in 
 three ; or the Man as thinking, speaking, writing, 
 which three are in essence the one Man as tran 
 scendental. So we shall behold them interlinked 
 in a single basic process which is finally psychical. 
 
188 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 The ultimate theme in these productions is the re 
 lation between Gk)d and Man, or between the sov 
 ereign Self of the Universe and this individual 
 Self of ours, here and now, whereof the transcen 
 dental form is for Emerson the immediate descent 
 of the Divine into the Human. The doctrine is as 
 yet indirect and more or less implicit in this Triad 
 of Addresses, which plays, accordingly, a sort of 
 overture to the coming Emersonian symphony. 
 
 Still, the polemical note in St is very pro 
 nounced, and it must be deemed Emerson s open 
 ing attack upon the fortress of Philistinism, 
 which he rightly espied to be located in the Aca 
 demic institutions of the land. Harvard College 
 will fight back, and practically ban him from its 
 halls till time brings his acceptance with its re 
 conciliation. But he cannot be suppressed, he has 
 his own Castle of Defiance in which he is not to be 
 starved or captured, and from which he will make 
 a new assault. 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE TRANSCENDENTAL MASTERPIECE 
 
 Time has fairly settled what kind of work is 
 Emerson s best, and especially what work of his 
 stands at the top of his achievement. His Essays, 
 First Series (Boston, 1841) may well be acclaimed 
 his central and most influential book. He was 
 thirty-eight years old when it was published, and 
 stood vnot far from the middle year of his life s 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL MASTERPIECE. 189 
 
 total tally. Moreover this was his most creative 
 Epoch, and the present work has shown itself the 
 most creative of all his writings, the most capable 
 of self -reproduction in the minds of others. Hence 
 we may call it the Transcendental Masterpiece, or 
 the Bible of Transcendentalism, if such an anti- 
 prescriptive movement can have any prescribed 
 writ, or Bible. 
 
 The evolutionary Emerson shoAvs a new stage 
 of his evolution in this new book. His previous 
 form of literary utterance was the Oration or 
 Address, specimens of which we have just been 
 considering. But now he has advanced to the 
 Essay, which is the right artistic expression of the 
 Emersonian spirit, in fact is the Transcendental 
 acme or ideal of human composition. It is a lit 
 erary form which still preserves the original 
 efflux or the spontaneous intuitions of the God- 
 inspired scribe, even if its contents are put into 
 a confined holder and labeled. Its direct ante 
 cedent is the discourse, lecture, even sermon, in 
 which line Emerson has already wrought a great 
 deal and for a long time, as well as uttered him 
 self upon a startling variety of subjects. But Em 
 erson is bound to react against any traditional 
 method, even his own. Hence we find him giving 
 many little impatient kicks against the business 
 of lecturing, though lie keeps it up during his ac 
 tive life. The fact is, he has been training in this 
 way his audience which after hearing him will go 
 to his printed page for further light. Thus he 
 
190 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 establishes popularly his Lyceum or the Emerson 
 ian University, a great communal Institute of 
 Learning, unique in its Professor and in his teach 
 ing. This brought to" his constituency his per 
 sonal presence with voice and manner an un- 
 negligible item of his power. 
 
 Still he cannot limit himself to his oral dis 
 course; it is too particular, temporal, finite. When 
 spoken his word belongs only to this speck of time 
 and to this spot of space ; but when printed, it be 
 longs to all time and. to all space. Hence Emer 
 son must push forward toward universalizing 
 himself in his work. But even this more universal 
 stage has to take some sort of shape- what? 
 Emerson s choice, doubtless after much experi 
 menting and reading and self-questioning, is the 
 Essay, whose original meaning is the tentative or 
 the testing, perchance with a covert denial of 
 finality. Still the Essay in word and meaning is 
 old; here again the untraditional Emerson fol 
 lowed tradition instead of coining his own rubric 
 and scheme. We are told that the Essays of Mon 
 taigne, skeptical, dubitative, yet hintful, fasci 
 nated his boyhood already. Bacon s Essays also 
 had their influence, especially in their English 
 style, of whose turns and glints we may trace not 
 a few reminders in Emerson. He also must 
 have known the later English Essayists of distinc 
 tion, from Addison down to his friend Carl vie, 
 whose Essays, however, are built on a very differ- 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL MASTERPIECE. 191 
 
 ent principle from the one which dominates Em 
 erson. 
 
 Still Emerson s Essay is decidedly his own, and 
 of his own evolution, of which we can trace three 
 different stages in his writing the Journal, the 
 Lecture, the Essay. The first records the most 
 immediate form of Emersonian thinking, the mo 
 mentary descent or flash of insight from the su 
 pernal source, or the Oversold; it shows the re 
 porter Emerson interviewing God Almighty and 
 jotting down the result in his Diary. The second 
 stage (the Address) exhibits the speaker Emer 
 son imparting to his limited group within his lim 
 ited hour a loosely connected chapter of these 
 communications he being now the medium be 
 tween the divine agent and the human recipient, 
 which act of supreme mediation, he claims to lie 
 in the power of every man, not merely of one 
 Mediator. The third stage is the mentioned form 
 of the Essay the fixation of the fleeting spoken 
 word into its eternal impress, into Literature. 
 This is what we chiefly read of Emerson today in 
 order that we may commune with his most inti 
 mate creative energy; for him the Essay is not 
 merely a literary vehicle adopted from the out 
 side, but the very soul-form of his Genius, the 
 inner plastic demiurge of his spirit. He undoubt 
 edly received hints from the past but he recre 
 ated them after his own spiritual image. And 
 here we may repeat the pervasive idea of this 
 Biography: Emerson s entire life, both in its 
 
192 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 works and in its behaviors, is an Essay, and is 
 also the ultimate creative source of these distinc 
 tive, particular Essays, which are composed from 
 the view of the whole man not only surveying 
 .he past but glimpsing the future. From the 
 highest point of outlook his Biography must be 
 the Essay of all his Essays, his one Life-Essay, 
 which again has its own literary form, distinc 
 tive and characteristic. 
 
 The present literary form still shows its origin 
 from the quick sporadic jets of the Diary, its 
 primal atomic protoplasm. Emerson we have 
 called the glimpser; he suddenly flashes a bright 
 streak of truth upon the darkness and then van 
 ishes; his words often incandesce like the -links in 
 a chain of lightning, with that surprise which he 
 loved so much and cultivated. He did not and 
 probably could not develop and organize his in 
 stantaneous downbursts of thunder-claps from 
 above; his intuitive sentences in the Essay still 
 preserve the sudden elemental character of their 
 origin. They still strike fire in the utterance as 
 when first forged in the transcendental smithy. 
 
 The result follows that he is often obscure, put 
 ting spells of fog or intervals of night between his 
 brightest flashes, which moreover dazzle the vis 
 ion to a kind of blindness. This peculiar alterna 
 tion between light and darkness has its well- 
 known counterpart in nature, and aiso in art. 
 Emerson s literary heaven is starlit rather than 
 sunlit which tact has a shimng worth of its own. 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL MASTERPIECE. }<):] 
 
 So it happens that he often becomes cryptic, 
 oracular, mystifying, and we cannot catch the full 
 sense of his pithy sententiality. In a degree he 
 has to overmake the reading-faculty in every 
 strong-hearted student, who gets to understand 
 him better by repeated perusual so as to know 
 before hand what he means and whither he is go 
 ing. Emerson often speaks of prophecy, and he 
 hints of himself as prophet, for he knows himself 
 as a grand reservoir of intimations, aspirations, 
 pregnant futurities. To many his seership is his 
 strongest appeal. Then with him we feel his 
 mighty and persistent longing to become what 
 he is not and never can be; most human is his 
 short-falling ambition of aspiring to be something 
 he never gets to be. And still he becomes, and 
 realizes his true self just in that aspiration. 
 
 Twelve Essays are listed in this First Series, 
 and it is to be observed thac each has what may 
 be called an abstract concept for a title* They 
 seek universal themes, laying aside local and tem 
 poral relations, and rising to the general. In this 
 abstraction they show the present tendency of 
 Emerson, who strives to be impersonal and soli 
 tary; each Essaj?- is in its way a kind of Emerson 
 ian flight from the concrete reality to the Con 
 cord Hermitage of pure contemplation Still into 
 this abstract form or vase he pours the past indi 
 vidual experiences of his life, many of them very 
 intimate and personal. Consequently these Es 
 says are at last to be read as a disguised autobiog- 
 
194 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 raphy a fact which he himself intimates more 
 than ojice. To be sure, he will eternize the transi 
 tory of himself ; he seeks to make universal the par-^ 
 ticular element of his existence. Hence his stress 
 upon universality in many turns of speech. His 
 confession is one of the self revealing names which 
 he has applied to these productions. 
 
 Noteworthy is the fact that the form of the Es 
 say remains with him to the end of his writing 
 days, even if he may give to the collection a some 
 what fanciful title, as Society and Solitude, which 
 is but another book of Essays. Manifestly he has 
 now won his supreme literary structure, evolved 
 his best organic utterance. He will at times show 
 signs of reaction against the limits of the Essay, he 
 being by nature the limit-breaker; still he will al 
 ways go back to it as his own right structural form 
 of expression. He continues to exercise his pen in 
 numerous other kinds of writing, as the Address, 
 the Poem, the Letter, the Diary ; but his completer 
 utterance remains the Essay. "We believe this lit 
 erary form to be deeply consonant with his spirit s 
 own form, and the study of it is the study of Em 
 erson himself, who is not merely the Essayist but 
 the Essay in person with all its striving to be im 
 personal. 
 
 Moreover the note of defiance is heard every 
 where ringing through this book, the will not to 
 be determined by anything outside of himself es 
 pecially not by the past, not by society and its 
 transmitted institutions. The grand Emersonian 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL MASTERPIECE. 195 
 
 protest is woven into the living texture of this 
 work. Such is one ground of its popularity a per 
 manent ground for it voices the spirit of non-con 
 formity with the existent order, which spirit is per 
 ennial and is likely to grow, or at least to recur in 
 periodic outbursts. It is a challenge of the world 
 as handed down from the fathers. Thus we may 
 well deem the book a much needed tonic for the 
 time which was getting ossified in its own organism. 
 Boston and all America had become too crystallized 
 in the old traditions, and needed to be broken up 
 and remade or reformed. Such was the negative 
 side, often excessive doubtless; but there was also 
 the positive side to Emerson s doctrine, else it would 
 hardly have lasted. This was the urgency of drink 
 ing directly from the eternal source for all right 
 inspiration of the word or the deed. 
 
 But to our mind the most affirmative and hence 
 the most enduring thing in Emerson s Essays is 
 his longing for and prophecy of a new world-dis 
 cipline different from . the transmitted European 
 philosophy, and from the prescribed Oriental re 
 ligion. A new synthesis of the thought of the Uni 
 verse for America he hoped for, and indeed sought 
 to create as his supreme achievement. 
 
 Which of these twelve Essays is the best? Opin 
 ions differ, according to the point of view, as well 
 as cultural preparation; let each reader answer 
 from his own angle. The Essays show consider 
 able diversity in depth, power, and intelligibility. 
 On the whole the central one, and probably the most 
 
196 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 famous is The Over-Soul, which contains more of 
 Emerson s abstract philosophy than any other 
 single production of his, and hence its distinction. 
 It puts stress upon the universal, while another 
 Essay of this Series, Self-reliance, emphasizes the 
 individual by way of contrast. Between these op- 
 posites we may place a third Essay Circles, as sug 
 gesting a form or way of mediating these extremes. 
 To our mind the fore-mentioned three Essays con 
 stitute the heart of the Emersonian Masterpiece 
 and hint indirectly its process, even if the author 
 intended no such inter-connection. From this view 
 point we shall take a brief look at each separately 
 then at all of them rounded together. 
 
 I. The Over-Soul. Emerson has thus given his 
 own designation to "that Unity, that Over-Soul 
 within which every man s particular being is con 
 tained and made one with all other." But this is 
 not the only name Emerson gives to his transcend 
 ent principle; at least a dozen other titles he ap 
 plies to it in his struggles to categorize it, or to 
 define "the indefinable," to limit "the illimitable." 
 It is for him "the eternal One" above all separa 
 tion, wherein "the act of seeing and the thing seen, 
 the subject and object, are one." Thus Emerson 
 gets quite metaphysical, in spite of his dislike for 
 Metaphysics often expressed, especially in his later 
 less potent years. 
 
 But another class of terms he employs for his 
 first principle, terms which involve in one way or 
 other the conception of the Soul as already indi- 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL MASTERPIECE. 197 
 
 cated in the title Over-Soul. Hence lie exclaims 
 "the Soul circumscribeth all things," yea is really 
 all things; not only Man but Nature is the Soul, 
 however much estranged. Thus Emerson shifts 
 from his philosophical nomenclature to his psy 
 chical, and shows therein the stress of his mind. 
 He also uses the word Self for his cardinal term 
 Over-Soul, which he calls "this better and univer 
 sal Self" which is above all "separated Selves," as 
 he labels individual men in contrast with the Over- 
 Soul. So he gets the conception of the All-Self, 
 universal Selfhood, the absolute Ego or Person. But 
 this brings Emerson up against his supreme and 
 lasting ^difficulty : he explicitly and with some in 
 tensity refuses personality to this "universal Self," 
 declaring "it is impersonal, it is God. 
 
 But how about the human Self or the individual 
 Soul ? It is the recipient of the efflux from above, 
 and when "it abandons itself to the Supreme Mind 
 (Over-Soul) finds itself related to all its works, 
 and will travel a royal road to particular knowl- 
 elges and powers." Here we may glimpse with 
 Emerson his highest vision : he catches the outline 
 of a Psychology of the Universe, in place of the old 
 Philosophy. Still he does not unfold the far off 
 gleam. Indeed he seems aware that the pivotal 
 matter he has not told : "The action of the soul is 
 of tener in that which is felt and left unsaid than in 
 that which is said." Thus Emerson repeatedly in 
 dicates that there is something beyond Emerson, 
 namely his own complete fulfilment. 
 
198 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 II. Self -Reliance. The most inspiring of Emer 
 son s Essays for the majority of readers it has in 
 its style as well as in its contents an uplift and ex 
 uberance which stamp it as unique and doubtless 
 the most personal of these productions. Its very 
 title is an appeal an appeal to the individual to 
 fight his own battle. The first brief explosion of the 
 Motto hoists the heart : Man is his own star. We 
 may almost hear the author whetting his sabre for 
 an onslaught : Trust thyself : every heart vibrates 
 to that iron string." So we are now to have pug 
 nacious Emerson asserting defiantly his individu 
 ality: "Whoso would be a man must be a non 
 conformist," what I am. Who is the enemy thus 
 challenged? Quite everything established in his 
 environment; especially "societies and dead institu 
 tions." All the past, even his own he defies, for 
 he ridicules his own "foolish consistency" with 
 what he has been. Public opinion is scorned : "To 
 be great is to be misunderstood. Even the Great 
 Man, the Hero, he now fillips to one side as not 
 compatible with true self-reliance. Hereafter he 
 will modify most of these antagonisms, but now he 
 has poised his spear for a deadly hurl, verily an all- 
 sided defiance. 
 
 At once the reader will observe how antithetic 
 this Essay is to that on "The Over-Soul," which is 
 dominated by a calm universality in due accord 
 with its theme. It meant, if not the absorption, at 
 least the resignation of the individual, who is to 
 make himself the unobstructed vehicle of the divine 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL MASTERPIECE. i<)9 
 
 downflow irom the Supernal One. To be sure Em 
 erson mentions here this upper Self, but rather by 
 the way, for it has not now the stress or the writ 
 er s personal interest. Somewhat tame seems those 
 "pious aspirants to be noble clay under the Al 
 mighty" in presence of his self-reliant world-de- 
 fiers. 
 
 This Essay is largely an echo of Emerson s con 
 flict with his people and his time, especially with his 
 church. One may hear in it reverberations of that 
 primal explosion which hurled him out of his first 
 pulpit. Indeed he intimates that it is a confession 
 which he lashes his sides daringly to express, shout 
 ing to his disguised self : Bravely let him speak 
 the utmost syllable of his confession. And cer 
 tainly he lays about himself in all directions with 
 a vehemence, yea with a vengeance, which betrays 
 at its deepest the negation brooding in his soul. 
 Who would have thought that our gentle optimistic 
 Emerson could show so much -world-storming pug 
 nacity ? 
 
 III. Circles. The strong opposition between the 
 Over-Soul and the Under-Soul, or between the Uni 
 versal and the Individual, Emerson tries to recon 
 cile, rather externally by his doctrine of Circles. 
 .For this reason we put it here, though it is set forth 
 separately in one of his weakest, most disconnected 
 and external Essays. Emerson sees the circle only 
 as an outside suggestion, calling it "the primary 
 figure," "this first of forms," "the highest em- 
 blem," which he finds "repeated without end." 
 
200 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 But he makes no attempt to inter-relate these cir 
 cles, or to put them into any genetic order; still 
 less does he endow them with their psychical sig 
 nificance. Hence his treatment seems like a capri 
 cious sport of fancy. 
 
 Still he often hints of something deeper and more 
 essential. He says the life of man is a self-evolv 
 ing circle which, from a ring imperceptibly small, 
 rushes on all sides outward to new and larger cir 
 cles 7 this statement if interpreted aright, may be 
 taken as the method of Biography, which, however, 
 he never applied. Uncertainly suggestive it is 
 but so is man himself, who is not so much a work 
 man in the world as he is a suggestion of that he 
 should be." Very biographic is all this. "Men 
 walk as prophecies of the next age" another in 
 stance of Emerson s self -definition. 
 
 The author also attempts to get back to the cre 
 ative source of this circular universality: "Whilst 
 the eternal generation of circles proceeds, the eter 
 nal generator abides ; " but he is not himself circular 
 in his own process, but is "superior to creation and 
 contains all its circles," which are, therefore, wholly 
 external to it, and not an integral element of God- 
 hood. From this point of view Emerson has not in 
 ternally mediated the Over-Soul and the Under- 
 Soul, or the Creator and the Created, in one com 
 mon principle. The dualism remains, as far as this 
 r ssay is concerned. 
 
 But deeper insight we shall find in the author s 
 Essays on Compensation which essentially treats 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL MASTERPIECE. 201 
 
 also of the doctrine of Circles. More particularly 
 in human conduct does the deed come back to the 
 doer, thus circling round to its starting-point. But 
 now this "moral circle" is carried up to its source 
 as a manifestation of * the in-working of the All, 
 of which it is the very essence. Also we hear the 
 declaration that "the universe is represented in 
 each one of its particles. Very lofty and true, as 
 far as it goes ; still we have to ask, show how ? Once 
 more we hearken eagerly: "everything is made of 
 one hidden stuff;" but again we have to cry : What 
 is that universal stuff? Still better is this: "We 
 put our life into every act, that is, our whole life 
 animates every detail another hint for our biog 
 raphy. Then listen to something yet higher in the 
 maxim that every man "is an entire emblem of hu 
 man life," which means, if we understand this 
 "emblem," that every individual life reflects the 
 universal life. An inference would be, that every 
 single biography which is not permeated with this 
 universal creative element, is insofar a failure, 
 whatever be the interest of its details. But the high 
 est point of his vision he touches in the following : 
 "God re-appears with all his parts in every moss 
 and cobweb. In fact just this is the supreme gen 
 erative act of the Creator, who puts himself "with 
 all his parts," that is, with his threefold process, 
 into every atom. Here the before-mentioned dual 
 ism between Over-Soul and Under-Soul, is har 
 monized. But did he see this ? At any rate he has 
 not stated this ultimate insight of his in the unify- 
 
202 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 ing terms of the soul (or Psyche). He adds: "the 
 value of the universe contrives to throw itself into 
 every point." Good again, but he is still meta 
 physical in spite of himself, he has not quite broken 
 through to the psychical, which ultimately is not 
 only circular, but the creator of circles and of itself 
 too as circular. Such is verily the process of the 
 All-Self, creatively projecting its own circle or 
 process (the psychosis) into every creative individ 
 ual, thing or person. 
 
 This height we may well deem the culmination of 
 Emerson s pure thought in the present Transcen 
 dental Epoch. It is not wrought out or organized ; 
 it still remains an intimation, suggestion, prophecy, 
 as he himself often declares. Amid his furious nega 
 tive critique of Tradition, he intersperses these far 
 away disconnected glimpses, yet grandly positive, 
 of the All-Self who "re-appears with all his parts 
 in every moss and cobweb," and thus is the basic 
 ever-pervasive principle of Universal Psychology. 
 This is, in our opinion, what he visions in his First 
 Philosophy, which haunted him as an unfulfilled as 
 piration quite to his last sunset. 
 
 V 
 
 THE TRANSCENDENTAL CRISIS 
 
 We now are to consider a phase of Emerson s 
 activity quite distinct from that which we- have just 
 set forth, which was the phase of the Essay. In 
 this he was looking upward, toward the height, to- 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL CRISIS. 203 
 
 ward the Universal; but now his eye has turned 
 downward, toward the Particular, yea toward the 
 People. We may take the following sentences 
 which belong to this time, as hintful of his present 
 spirit : * Transcendentalism does not mean sloth, 
 nor does it mean withdrawal to our castle; "the 
 good and the wise must learn to act, and carry sal 
 vation to the combatants in the dusty arena below. 
 So Emerson descends from his lofty perch and pro 
 poses to make his appeal directly to the people. 
 This change involves what we may call the Tran 
 scendental Crisis in Emerson s life. 
 
 Under the above heading, which indicates a new 
 turn or tendency in the author s evolution, we 
 place, four Addresses; let us name them specially 
 the Oratorical Quaternion, with the following titles 
 all of them having been delivered in the same 
 year: 
 
 1. Man the Reformer. Boston, January, 1841. 
 
 2. The Conservative. Boston, December, 1841. 
 
 3. The Times. Boston, December, 1841. 
 
 4. The Transcendent alist. Boston, January, 1842. 
 The first contrast to be emphasized is between 
 
 these four Addresses delivered at the high tide of 
 Emerson s Creative Decennium, and the three Ad 
 dresses made some three or four years earlier, and 
 forming the preliminary attack of the Transcen 
 dental Epoch. Then the appeal was to an academic 
 audience at Colleges ; now the appeal is to a popular 
 audience on the several occasions at Boston. Herein 
 we see a significant change in Emerson s field of 
 
204 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 propagation ; he has turned away from the learned 
 professoriate, and it has more decidedly turned 
 away from him, especially in the ease of Harvard, 
 after that defiant Divinity Class Address. Emer 
 son now sets his face to win the folk, and he will 
 keep it set in that direction during the rest of his 
 active life. He finds that he must mould his con 
 stituency afresh out of the original popular proto 
 plasm, quitting the world of educated tradition. 
 This more popular appeal is stamped, we think, up 
 on the style, the treatment, and the choice of the 
 subjects of these Addresses. We feel the adjust 
 ment of the new idea to the new audience. 
 
 Significant is the fact that this oratorical Quater 
 nion falls within the same year (1841) which wit 
 nessed the appearance of the Essays. Let us note 
 the striking contrast between these two Emersonian 
 works, though they were contemporaneous in publi 
 cation but probably not wholly in composition. 
 Mark how different the attitude, even if the thought 
 remains the same. From the summits of contem 
 plation in the Essays, we now behold Emerson in 
 these Addresses coming down into the plain below, 
 as it were passing from Concord, to Boston, there to 
 do battle for his cause. In this same pivotal year 
 (1841) the magazine called the Dial is started, 
 chiefly by him, so that the printed page in its peri 
 odical form is made to do the work of propagation 
 and also of onslaught. 
 
 Thus we may notice Emerson evolving a line of 
 literary products which start with his book on Na- 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL CRISIS. 205 
 
 tare whose character is not that of the Essay or of 
 the Address, but that of the Treatise, or bundle -of 
 little Treatises, gathered about one common theme. 
 We now imagine the author turning the middle year 
 of his Creative Decennium with two different, in 
 deed quite opposite sets of works, and advancing to 
 a new stage of his career. But just at present it 
 falls to us to give a few details concerning each of 
 these four Addresses, which we have put together 
 under one name as his Oratorical Quaternion, in 
 contrast with his previous Oratorical Triad. 
 
 I. Man the Reformer. His audience was mainly 
 composed of .Mechanics Apprentices, before whose 
 Library Association he gave his lecture. Hence he 
 puts stress upon the claims of manual labor, as a 
 part of the education of every young man. So it 
 comes that there runs a socialistic thread through 
 the entire discourse : * We are to revise the whole 
 of our social structure, the state, the school, religion, 
 marriage, trade, science;" indeed the whole insti 
 tutional world is to be thrown into the furnace and 
 to be moulded anew. Such is really Emerson the 
 Reformer at this time, whom he defines as the Re- 
 maker of what is made;" he will take nothing 
 transmitted from the Past, without a thorough over 
 hauling and reconstruction. Man, now rendered 
 artificial by society, must go back to his natural 
 task of physical labor. Well might those young 
 fellows, Mechanics Apprentices, have applauded 
 such a passage as this: "the manual labor of soci 
 ety ought to be shared among all its members;" or 
 
206 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 this: "A man should have a farm or mechanical 
 craft for his culture. " So Emerson is here ad 
 dressing the pupils of the New University he him 
 self being now Head Professor in the Department 
 of Labor. 
 
 The time indeed overflowed with all sorts of 
 schemes for social amelioration, as the speaker em 
 phasizes : "In the history of the world the doctrine 
 of Reform had never such scope as at the present 
 hour," and he proceeds to tabulate the grand up- 
 burst of isms which has shaken to the center every 
 thing established: "not a kingdom, town, statute, 
 rite, calling, man or woman, but is threatened by 
 the new spirit." Especially Emerson himself is 
 surrounded and "threatened by this new spirit." 
 Theoretically he holds on and onward, but prac 
 tically he holds back. This very year (1841) his 
 friends start their grand overture of human regen 
 eration known as Brook Farm, but he does not start. 
 Still he remains their greatest exponent, itemizing 
 in this Address an ominous list of social abuses. 
 
 To our mind the most interesting as well as most 
 positive and biographic part of the lecture is his 
 description of the self-sufficing man, independent 
 of all social relations, lodged high and inexpugnable 
 in his Castle of Defiance where he can devote him 
 self to Poetry and Philosophy, and other things 
 "incompatible with good husbandry." Let him be 
 "a pauper, eat his meals standing, relish the taste 
 of fair water and black bread." So must the 
 Genius live "who can create works of art," no self- 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL CRISIS. 207 
 
 indulgence, no taste for luxury in that little back 
 room of his. But it should be repeated that Emer 
 son the writer was never reduced to any such tussle 
 with the dragon Poverty, having that nice little 
 nest-egg of one hundred dollars a month, which was 
 always being laid afresh in his Concord nest. Let 
 us rejoice that he is not in the condition which he 
 describes: "This is the tragedy of Genius at 
 tempting to drive along the ecliptic with one horse 
 of the heavens and one horse of the earth there is 
 only discord and ruin and downfall to chariot and 
 charioteer." Thus Emerson appreciates his eco 
 nomic independence and uses it for the highest end. 
 Still many a Genius has done his work anyhow, 
 though compelled to yoke in one team, heaven-scal 
 ing Pegasus and earth-plodding Old-Sorrel. 
 
 TT. Tlie Conservative. Here we behold Emerson 
 turning right over to his own opposite in less than 
 a year, passing from the Innovator to the Conserva 
 tor of man s Social Order. Doubtless a consider 
 able personal and somewhat sudden experience lies 
 behind this change ; also the audience is now differ 
 ent, the lecture having been held at the Masonic 
 Temple. Probably a gathering of middle-class busi 
 ness-folk, hardly of Mechanic s Apprentices; we 
 hear little of the return to manual labor, and of the 
 immediate satisfaction of our wants by our own di 
 rect toil. And the Economic Institution with its in 
 tricate mediation of demand and supply is not abol 
 ished, but actually defended; the system of Prop 
 erty is old and seemingly ind^pensible. Strangely 
 
208 RALPH WA LDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 we now hear Emerson crying out to his Qwn Re 
 formers: "Yon also are conservatives. However 
 men please to style themselves, I see no other than 
 a conservative party. " He has really gotten into 
 a tiff with his own people : "You quarrel with my 
 conservatism, bnt it is to build up one of your 
 own." You, too, wish to make your doctrine pre 
 scriptive, and so you berate "the seced^r from the 
 seceder," who is none other than myself just as 
 present. 
 
 "With surprise do we see Emerson sallying forth 
 from his fortress to excuse and even to defend in 
 stitutions : "they do answer their end, they are 
 really friendly to the good, and unfriendly to the 
 bad they foster genius." Even greater is their 
 merit: "they afford your talent and character the 
 same chance of demonstration and success, which 
 they might have if there was no law and no prop 
 erty." "What a change inside of one year what 
 caused it ? Or was it simply that love of inconsis 
 tency and of self-contradiction which he not only 
 defends but flourishes. 
 
 Still we are to mark the exception. Amid all his 
 new propagandism, Emerson declares: "Existing 
 institutions are not the best ; they are not just, and 
 in respect to you personally they cannot be justi 
 fied." When Emerson regarded the absolute au 
 thority of the divine efflux, law and institution were 
 swept away before it : "A strong person makes the 
 law and custom null before his will." Such is the 
 supreme struggle of Emerson at this time, "bal- 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL CRISIS. 209 
 
 ancing reasons for and against the establishment, 
 tetering between the two parties ; so he declares that 
 " there is no pure Reformer," and equally on the 
 other hand * there is no pure Conservative. Thus 
 he fluctuates from side to side caught in the time s 
 dualism : Innovation vs. Conservation. 
 
 Emerson holds that Institutions are expedient but 
 not just ideally; he says, "I gladly avail myself of 
 their convenience, but to truth they cannot be vin 
 dicated from the standpoint of the Over-Soul whose 
 message to me personally must be absolute in com 
 mand. Thus his religion made him anarchic, while 
 his experience or his Yankee Common Sense helped 
 Irim to be somewhat institutional. What caused 
 this breach in his spirit? His friends propose to 
 realize his doctrine, but he stands aghast at the real 
 ity; Brook Farm cleaves in him a deep chasm of 
 soul between the theoretical and the practical, be 
 tween Man the Reformer and Man the Preserver, 
 between the new experiment and his old Concord 
 home. We feel specially in this Address that he is 
 mostly addressing himself, that his speech at its 
 deepest is self-expression, and thus is biographic. 
 
 There is no doubt that Emerson herein has tack 
 led the profoundest and most enduring problem of 
 his life. At bottom his evolution hovers about Insti 
 tutions, for and against, passing through a number 
 of phases up to his last Period, when the see-saw 
 lets up. 
 
 III. The Times. The title of this lecture indi 
 cates that it might be a kind of synthesis or co-ordi- 
 
210 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 nation of the two preceding lectures, thus seeking 
 to reconcile their contradiction. The opposites, the 
 Reformer and the Conservative, play through it, 
 under a variety of designations, as we may note in 
 the sentence: "The two omnipresent parties of 
 History, the party of the Past and the party of the 
 Future, divide society today as of old." But also 
 there is the search for the mediating principle : 
 < The main interest which any aspects of the Times 
 can have for us, is the Great Spirit gazing through 
 them." Is not this a glimpse of the World-Spirit 
 which is sovereign over all the conflicts of parties, 
 and uses them for its end ? So all the events of the 
 time and the experiences of the individual have the 
 one purpose : * the information they yield of this 
 supreme nature which lurks within all." Or we 
 may in his words call it the Law which enters us, 
 becomes us," making us "immortal with the im 
 mortality of the Law." Emerson calls it also the 
 Moral Sentiment, vainly wrestling to categorize it 
 to his satisfaction. 
 
 It is evident that Emerson is struggling to catch 
 and formulate, and also to name, the pervasive and 
 eternal element in this storm of daily occurrences, 
 in this- dualism of existence. "The Times are the 
 masquerade of the Eternities ;" thus he opens in the 
 first paragraph, condensing his theme into a sen 
 tence; the Idea underlying and creating all these 
 ebullient appearances of Time is what he will clutch 
 and express. 
 
 This lecture, though delivered a week before the 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL CRISIS. 211 
 
 previous one on the Conservative, contains properly 
 the universal thought overarching and unifying all 
 these lecture s. It is, therefore, one of his supreme 
 efforts, though strangely neglected by the biogra 
 phers and commentators. The composition, how 
 ever, is unequal, with a certain aridity in parts, and 
 with too much repetition for the reader who has just 
 perused the preceding Addresses. For the original 
 listeners this was probably not a fault but a help. 
 The best portions are Emerson s attempts* to grasp 
 the World-Spirit lurking "underneath all these ap 
 pearances " and generating them. Very subtle and 
 elusive is this ever-renewing generation of appear 
 ances," still we are to take note that it "rests on 
 reality, and reality that is alive," yea, it is verily 
 "the Life of our life." So Emerson wrestles with 
 the conception, certainly a great one, and flings 
 down along the path of his struggles many a desig 
 nation of it : Life, Cause, Being, Reality, Moral Sen 
 timent, the Great Spirit. Still he seems somehow 
 unable to grasp this Prime Mover as psychical in 
 spite of his suggestive term Over-Soul (not used in 
 these Addresses). Still less does he organize his 
 subject with an all-pervading, consistent nomencla 
 ture. Well, if he did, that would doubtless jeopard 
 the popular appeal of his speech, for his wriggling 
 is what makes his audience wriggle, and so keep 
 awake. 
 
 A glimpse of what constitutes the Great Man, 
 Emerson gives us fleetingly : The elemental Real 
 ity, which ever and anon comes to the surface forms 
 
212 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 the grand men," the supreme leaders who are 
 sharers in this supernal energy. We cry out : apply 
 the doctrine, show it, Emerson, in your biogra 
 phies. But can we find it, for instance in Repre 
 sentative Men, where it ought overwhelmingly to 
 appear? Still a great and fertile thought is here 
 uttered, even if f ragmentarily ; nothing less than 
 the hint of the Great Man and of what makes him 
 great; so that this Address at its highest may be 
 deemed Emerson s treatise on the "World-Spirit. 
 
 IV. The Transcendentalist. And now Emerson 
 proposes to give to his audience at the Masonic 
 Temple (Boston, January, 1842), a direct, undis 
 guised account of that doctrine which has been 
 close to his heart, but has remained unspoken in 
 the three foregoing lectures. Only once or twice 
 have we heard the word dropped passingly in the 
 course of their delivery. But now the thing must 
 out, and so the father tells of his child and its his 
 tory, from which record we have already taken sig 
 nificant extracts and need not repeat them here. "We 
 behold Emerson reviewing and re-affirming Tran 
 scendentalism after six or seven years trial of it, 
 if we count from the beginning of the present Cre 
 ative Epoch of his life. There is an apolegetic note, 
 an undercurrent of defense in the lecture ; mani 
 festly the new doctrine is not popular in Boston. 
 Many are the accusations against the Transcenden 
 talist, especially "the charge of antinomianism/ 
 for he claims that "he has the Lawgiver" in him 
 self, and can make his own Law, and hence, "may 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL CRISIS. 213 
 
 with safety not only neglect but even contravene 
 every written commandment." He carries about 
 with himself his own Legislature, and enacts, ac 
 cording to need his Higher Law. 
 
 It is evident that Society will not look with favor 
 upon such a man, who of his inner necessity betakes 
 himself to flight from the social system "to a cer 
 tain solitary and critical way of living, from which 
 no solid fruit has yet appeared to justify the sepa 
 ration. " It is at this point that Emerson becomes 
 critical of his own people and shrinks from these 
 consequences of his own doctrine. He does not en 
 dorse the act of Thoreau, nor approve of Brook 
 Farm. But is not his own theory thus made prac 
 tical, and are not his own flight and isolation re 
 peated by his followers? Emerson, however, pro 
 tests against this outcome of Emerson, as he looks 
 at such a distorted image of himself. With re 
 proaches he couples advice. But it is plain that 
 Transcendentalism has developed certain repulsive 
 phases to its founder. 
 
 Thus he feels strongly and confesses with no lit 
 tle disappointment the negative side of his work, 
 which he calls in one passage "this Iceland of ne 
 gations." Still he does not give up, but cries : "Pa 
 tience and still patience." A streak of depression 
 runs through this lecture, and a vein of fault-find 
 ing; he is disillusioned as he scans some of the re 
 sults of Transcendentalism. He criticises his fol 
 lowers, but he cannot help feeling that his words 
 are somewhat of a boomerang. Here, too. we find 
 
214 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 one of his moods of self-confession, which keeps 
 flashing guide-lights over his biography. 
 
 In the midst of his lecture without much connec 
 tion with the rest, Emerson throws out this brief 
 gleam: "I this thought which is called I is the 
 mould into which the world is poured like melted 
 wax. The mould is invisible, but the world be 
 trays the shape of the mould." That is, the shape 
 of the I or Ego is what we are to behold everywhere 
 in the world in Nature and Mind. This, if car 
 ried out into its details, would give the world-sci 
 ence, revealing in all its shapes the ultimate cre 
 ative shape of the I or the Self. Here, then, sud 
 denly darts upon the reader another glimpse of Psy 
 chology as the universal science. But it remains a 
 disconnected sentence, a germinal thought, not an 
 evolution ; a prophecy, not a fulfilment. Still amid 
 his present discouragements it gleams up his great 
 positive hope, which will stay with him to the end. 
 We might almost regard this supreme psychical in 
 sight, or perchance outlook as the chief anchor of 
 his life. Already we have noted it, and we shall 
 note it again as it repeatedly rises to the surface, 
 
 Such, then, is that work of Emerson which we 
 here call his Oratorical Quaternion, largely a crit 
 ique of man s social Institutions, somewhat in con 
 trast with the previous Oratorical Triad which is 
 more a critique of Doctrines as embodied in the 
 three types of intellectual men, the thinker, the 
 .preacher, and the writer. Both sets of Addresses 
 reveal as their common animus Emerson s hostility 
 
AFTERMATH OF ESSAYS. 215 
 
 to Tradition, doubtless with exceptions and fluctu 
 ations. Such is more or less the negative, critical 
 Emerson, but over, around and through these nega 
 tions the affirmative Emerson shoots his sun-gleams 
 of optimism and prophecy. 
 
 We cannot quit this year (1841) without remark 
 ing its almost superhuman activity on the part of 
 Emerson. His mightiest year it seems, his annus 
 mirabilis, the very perihelion of his life s orbit. 
 His Essays (First Series), this Oratorical Quater 
 nion, the Dial, Letters, Journals, Poems burst forth 
 to light with a kind of cosmic energy in these 
 months. Never again but we have not come to that 
 yet. 
 
 VI. 
 
 AFTERMATH OF ESSAYS 
 
 Three years after the appearance of the First 
 Series of Essays, Emerson published the book 
 known as his Second Series of Essays (1844). The 
 two sets belong together, being designated by the 
 same general title, .and constructed after a like pat 
 tern and out of similar original materials, as his 
 Journals and Lectures. Such pell-mell protoplasmic 
 stuff had to be formed anew, and the Essay is that 
 form, undoubtedly Emerson s most distinctive and 
 permanent art-form, which has its own literary 
 character apart from its content, being the best na 
 tive garb of the author s thought. That is, the Es 
 say is the most adequate verbal Incarnation of Em 
 erson s soul. 
 
216 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PAKT SECOND. 
 
 Still there is felt to be a considerable difference 
 between the two Series. The first has twelve Es 
 says, and the latter eight, and the number of pages 
 in each Series is in about the same proportion. And 
 we cannot help thinking that this quantitative dif 
 ference holds true of the qualitative ; this Second 
 Series falls off quite one-third in any spiritual val 
 uation which fact by no means signifies that it 
 is worthless. On the contrary there are many sin 
 gle pithy sentences and passages, which no student 
 of Emerson could afford to miss. Still on the whole, 
 the present Series is a repetition, undoubtedly with 
 many new illustrations and suggestions, yea with 
 new points of view, even if subordinate. 
 
 It bears more the character of a retrospect than 
 the First Series ; the author is decidedly in the mood 
 of returning upon his past and taking a look at his 
 former self, and at the ground over which he has 
 passed. In this regard the Essay on Experience is 
 central, for it tells Mr. Emerson s cardinal expe 
 riences, sometimes disguised but sometimes in the 
 first person : 1 1 1 am not the novice I was fourteen, 
 nor yet seven years ago. "Well may he say so, for 
 it is now going on seven years since Jie delivered his 
 Divinity Class Address, whose afterclap almost 
 hoisted him out of New England; indeed it would 
 have done so, but for his Concord Castle of Defiance. 
 And nearly fourteen years have passed since that 
 earlier overturn which whirled him from his pulpit 
 and from his ministerial vocation forever. Thus 
 Emerson can look back upon several epochal expe- 
 
AFTERMATH OF ESSAYS. 217 
 
 riences in his retrospective mood, if we date them 
 from the year 1844, the time of the publication of 
 the present work. Perhaps we may find some 
 ground for this bent toward reminiscence in the 
 growing* crisis of Transcendentalism, which we have 
 already noted. 
 
 The Essay on Experience is pivotal in the life of 
 Emerson for still another and deeper reason: it 
 hints the grand node of his transition from a purely 
 negative to a more positive spirit, his rise from the 
 everlasting No to the everlasting Yea, as Carlyle 
 puts it in his Sartor, which Emerson knew well, 
 probably from the time of his visit to the author at 
 Craigenputtock. Here then he indicates his per 
 sonal history in the evolution of Transcendentalism. 
 
 Emerson was indeed fully conscious of this auto 
 biographic essence in his own writing, and for that 
 matter in all worthy writing. More than once he 
 has declared that his works are confessions, as were 
 those of Goethe extracts drawn from the salient 
 pages of his life s own book. He also saw that this 
 inner revelation was the chief purpose and excel 
 lence of all great poetry. In his Essay on the Poet, 
 contained in this Series, he lifts this thought into 
 a lofty sentence : "Dante s praise is that he dared 
 to write his autobiography in colossal cipher, or into 
 universality." Here Emerson is again telling on 
 himself; his particular life he elevates through his 
 writ into an universal worth and import. And so 
 this entire Second Series shows a distinctive strain 
 
218 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND* 
 
 in its composition by its more frequent and direct 
 glances into the author s life. 
 
 If the Essay on Experience has for its centra! 
 topic the new birth of Emerson into his world- view, 
 being a record of his palingenesis, the first Essay 
 of the Series, named The Poet, contains the confes 
 sion of his life s highest aspiration, which was to 
 be the epic singer of the New "World, the Homer of 
 the Occident. This is evident by his several allu 
 sions, direct and indirect, to the Chian bard. More 
 over, the theme must lie here in the West. Repeat 
 edly we catch the underbreath of secret ambition, 
 as in this : "We have yet had no genius in America, 
 with tyrannous eye, which knew the value of our 
 incomparable materials, unless this genius is to be 
 Emerson s own a genius which "saw another car 
 nival of the same gods whose picture it so much ad 
 mires in Homer. Did he meditate some great epic 
 modeled after the Iliad with its Hellenic deities 
 whose scene, however, was to be in our West ? He 
 exclaims: "Oregon and Texas are yet unsung/ 
 though the heroes of this most recent Trojan War 
 are on hand and in battle, so that "America is a 
 poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the 
 imagination, and it will not wait long for metres." 
 Since Emerson s time, it has done^much metering 
 and story-telling, but has not yet evolved its one 
 all-concentrating genius like Homer. Possibly it is 
 too democratic for any such autocracy of talent. In 
 the line of literary self-expression is not its best 
 product the superlative clown of the great Amer- 
 
AFTERMATH OF ESSAYS. 219 
 
 lean Circus, Mark Twain, certainly the sovereign 
 of his kind? Very suggestive is the fact that Em 
 erson, our supreme forecaster and prophet, should 
 at least have dreamed of an Occidental Homer 
 singing the overture of the vast New "World, and 
 holding another poetic ( carnival of the same gods, 
 those antique Olympians who came down from their 
 height and mingled with the heroes in the conflict. 
 But how strange sounds even such a dream from 
 our untraditional Emerson. How could he use 
 again those old gods, who are worn out with much 
 usage ! 
 
 Still he does not fail to connect the poet with the 
 most recent Emersonian doctrine, the divine efflux 
 which is the direct inspiration of all high poetic 
 achievement. Not only the ideas but also the words 
 at their best flow down from above and seal the 
 poet s expression as God-given. And the poet is 
 designated as the sayer, the namer, the inventor 
 of the word, and hence it comes that "Homer s 
 words are as costly and admirable to Homer, as 
 Agamemnon s victories are to Agamemnon." In 
 fact Homer with his song is the eternal, Agamem 
 non and the other heroes with their deeds are the 
 transitory, unless made immortal by the poet s im 
 mortality. 
 
 Another phase of the Emersonian downflow of 
 the Over-Soul into the individual man is found in 
 the Essay on Character of the present Series. This 
 he identifies with that power or personal sover 
 eignty in the mar above his works or words, a latent 
 
220 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 energy or a reserved force which acts directly by 
 its presence. Such a Power is often called myth 
 ically a Familiar or Genius or even Demon, which 
 has the gift to guide its possessor beyond his reason 
 or even his consciousness. Thus he dips from the 
 source of all happenings, and " appears to share in 
 the life of things, and to be an expression of the 
 same laws which control the tides and the sun," 
 drinking, as it were, from the first fountain of cre 
 ation. Hence Character in Emerson s view is con 
 nected with the divine efflux which now takes the 
 form of a mere human Presence radiating the Over- 
 Soul, without saying a word or doing a deed. So 
 we catch a glimpse of the spirit which holds com 
 munion with the genesis of events, and sees what is 
 moving them within from above. 
 
 Herein we may behold Emerson grappling with 
 the conception of the Great Man, who is a revela 
 tion of the Divine in the one individual, who is 
 thus supernally endowed, and obedient only to his 
 own law, which for him is God s very law. Em 
 erson tears a leaflet from his intimate book of life 
 when he tells what constitutes the sanctity and 
 charm of great characters; non-conformity they 
 show, to the existent order, for they all shout: "I 
 never listened to your people s law, or to what they 
 call their Gospel." Truly his own defiant yell 
 from his Concord Fortress, such as we have heard 
 before. Character for him is the born aristocrat, 
 being divinely given, and not to be acquired by any 
 training, not even, we suppose, by reading Emer- 
 
AFTERMATH OF ESSAYS. 221 
 
 son s books. We plight ask, what then is the good 
 of writing them? Full daringly he draws the in 
 ference from his view of Great Men : " Nature ad 
 vertises me that in democratic America she will not 
 be democratized. " The true ruler is the "Wise Man, 
 who takes communications direct from the Over- 
 Soul, the absolute Monarch of the Universe. For 
 such men are "divine persons, character-born," and 
 receive authority straight from the Lord s Head 
 quarters. 
 
 Such is one stage of the ever-evolving Emerson, 
 the undemocratic, the anti-institutional stage, ut 
 tered with the war-trump of challenge. In this 
 same Series is the Essay headed Politics, in which 
 we hear the same note of defiance even shriller and 
 more bellicose. The State as an organization he the 
 oretically knocks to pieces, though practically we 
 may have to tolerate it for a while yet, till the Wise 
 Man can get hold why not Emerson himself, the 
 prime vehicle of the Over-Soul? Listen to this: 
 "the Wise Man is the State," for he has Character, 
 and "the appearance of Character makes the State 
 unnecessary. Still we have to swallow a little dose 
 of the State, since it exists "to educate the Wise 
 Man, and with the appearance of the Wise Man, the 
 State expires." Thus Emerson the Platonist be 
 comes more Platonic than Plato himself, whose Wise 
 Man (or Overseer) still kept warriors, but the Em 
 ersonian "needs no army, fort or navy he loves 
 men too well. 
 
 The interest will culminate when the Civil War 
 
222 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 breaks out and Emerson s "Wise Man will be sub 
 jected to the severest discipline of the age. In fact 
 just this institutional development of the man 
 through the experience of the Nation s History, 
 may well be deemed the central thread of his biog 
 raphy. His statement now runs : Good men. must 
 not obey the laws too well," which leaves a loop 
 hole to crawl through, and he will use it more than 
 once hereafter. 
 
 Such is the world-defiant, transcendental Emer 
 son on his lofty perch truly one of his own Great 
 Characters. But he has another humbler side the 
 individual aspect of him over against the universal 
 in contrast with the Great Emerson we may here 
 call him without disrespect the Small Emerson. 
 This phase of himself he also discloses in the pres 
 ent Series see the Essay entitled Manners. Emer 
 son now pays not only attention but deference to 
 the compliments and ceremonies of our breeding 
 which have been of course transmitted from the past 
 and accepted by this rebel against tradition. Thus 
 we behold the other side of the defiant Emerson ; his 
 submission to the ways and even fashions of formal 
 society, so that some have held him snobbish: "I 
 prefer a tendency to stateliness to an excess of fel 
 lowship." The great protester adopts without pro 
 test the ritual of the traditional gentleman. The 
 transmitted institutions of society he fought desper 
 ately, the transmitted manners of society he ac 
 cepted submissibly. To be sure, his native bent 
 was to cloak himself in the external proprieties ; 
 
THE DAWNING REACTION. 223 
 
 very natural to him was his courteous aloofness, his 
 dignified isolation : In all things I would have the 
 island of a man inviolate." The external Emer 
 son is this, quite orthodox ; but the internal, spirit 
 ual Emerson is furiously heretical. In the last 
 Essay of the Series, called Nominalist and Realist 
 he seems to be conscious of this dualism in himself 
 and identifies it with some old philosophic concep 
 tions reaching back to the Middle Ages. 
 
 This is the last work of Emerson which bears the 
 title of Essays, though his other books were hardly 
 more than similar collections. But he gave them 
 new names, as if he wished to intimate that his 
 work, though still in appearance a series of Essays, 
 had in it a principle of unity. For instance, his last 
 publication, entitled Letters and Social Aims may 
 just as well be called his sixth (or more) series of 
 Essays. 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE DAWNING REACTION 
 
 The same year (1844) which saw the publication 
 of the preceding Second Series of Essays, witnessed 
 also another event which sets a milestone in Emer 
 son s life history not a Period or Epoch, but a 
 lesser turning-point in his spirit s evolution. This 
 is marked by Three Addresses which bear the fol 
 lowing titles, and constitute Emerson s second Ora 
 torical Triad. 
 
 I. The Young American, before the Mercantile 
 
224 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 Library Association, Boston, February 7, 1844. 
 With look turned to the Future, to the West. 
 
 II. New England Reformers, a Sunday lecture 
 before the society in Amory Hall, Boston, March 
 3, 1844. With look turned to the Present, to Bos 
 ton. 
 
 III. West India Emancipation, in the Court 
 House at Concord, Mass., August 1, 1844. With look 
 turned to the Past, to Old England. 
 
 The three audiences are non-academic, but other 
 wise differ from* one another, and the three Ad 
 dresses show marks of a separate adjustment on 
 part of the speaker. The first audience is a gen 
 eral one, and hence calls forth in him a more gen 
 eral and affirmative appeal. The second audience 
 seems rather a special one, and evokes Emerson s 
 pungently critical, damnatory mood. In the first 
 lecture he is more the optimist, in the second more 
 the pessimist. The third audience is the popular 
 one, of the country side, and is addressed under the 
 name of Fellow-citizens. 
 
 Still in spite of such opposition in matter and 
 manner, the three lectures are at bottom one in 
 spirit and character. For they all show his inner 
 reaction against his decennial achievement ; he man 
 ifests a deep disappointment with his locality, with 
 his work, and with his followers. It would seem 
 that he thinks or at least fears that he has failed ; 
 for time, as usual, turns on him her sourest face 
 before ratifying his deed as immortal. Then he lets 
 us glance into that deepest scission of his soul : his 
 
THE DAWNING REACTION. 225 
 
 estrangement from the whole institutional world, 
 from the pre-suppositions of his own spiritual ex 
 istence, that is, from the social order in which he 
 was born, reared and educated. 
 
 On the whole the first speech turns outward, the 
 second inward ; the one travels forward to the new 
 world, the other stays at home in old Massachusetts 
 with uplift in the one case, with downcast in the 
 other facing there toward hope, facing here to 
 ward despondency, if not despair. The third 
 speech sems to indicate the way of escape back over 
 the Ocean. Still let us not forget that all three are 
 sprung of a common source and represent one phase" 
 of this decennial development of Emerson. Thus 
 they are trined in one thought; call it his second 
 Oratorical Triad, in striking contrast with his first, 
 which preluded the sunrise of his Creative Epoch, 
 while this Triad epilogues the sunset thereof. Each 
 lecture deserves a brief special notice. 
 
 I. The Young American. This lecture seems to 
 have been composed in the first enthusiasm after a 
 trip to the "West. It is a series of sympathetic 
 glances into the future of the country, which Emer 
 son now seems proud to consider his own, calling it 
 "our fortunate home," the land which "is to repair 
 the errors of a scholastic and traditional educa 
 tion. The latter is Emerson s great enemy in New 
 England ; he beholds in the West the mightiest co 
 adjutor of his own work against tradition. No won 
 der he praises this new disciple of his, considering 
 his disgust at his old Apcstolate. Witness the 
 
226 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SEOOND. 
 
 bound-bursting spirit everywhere, especially in the 
 enormous extension of territory to the Pacific, in 
 the overflowing migration and in the space-over 
 coming railroad. He seems to say in his heart, 
 though not in his speech : The West is the true 
 Transcendentalist, the right-down Emersonian. 
 
 One thinks at times that he is almost ready to mi 
 grate to the Promised Land, which he has discov 
 ered toward the setting-sun. He daringly prognos 
 ticates : The nervous, rocky West is intruding a 
 new and continental element into the national mind, 
 and we shall yet have an American genius." He 
 dwells on this contrast: "We in the Atlantic 
 States, have been commercial, and have easily im 
 bibed an European culture." He sees and says re 
 peatedly that the original primary genius of 
 America is to get away from that Eastern seaboard, 
 which is dominated by old-world prescription. 
 Here we may ask, will Emerson practically realize 
 this insight ? Will he migrate to his new world of 
 freedom, as did his Puritan ancestor, Peter Bulk- 
 ley, from Old to New England, some two centuries 
 since? Not at all; that is not Waldo Emerson. On 
 the contrary, he will soon go the other way, East 
 ward toward the traditional, not Westward toward 
 the untraditional. Whereof something is to be said 
 hereafter. 
 
 The lecturer, however, continues on the ascent till 
 he reaches his highest point of view, where he visions 
 the "sublime and friendly Destiny by which the 
 human race is guided," which he also calls the 
 
THE DAWNING REACTION. 227 
 
 friendly Genius or the serene Power which has in 
 hand the direction of the great movement of the 
 Occident. In other words Emerson now glimpses 
 the World-Spirit in the West. It is not a very ex 
 tended or a very clear glimpse. Still he catches the 
 ironic method of it, " which infatuates the most 
 selfish men to act against their private interest for 
 the public welfare." It is that Spirit which has 
 made us "build railroads, we know not for what 
 or for whom," yet at our own expense with the 
 motive of gain. The man, pursuing his individual 
 end is used by this Supernal Power to bring forth 
 the opposite of what he intended, namely its own 
 universal end. If Emerson had hearkened about 
 him the very hour he was delivering this lecture in 
 1844, he would have heard something of the annex 
 ation of Texas, intended by the then rulers as a vast 
 accession to the slave territory of the nation, but 
 intended by the other Ruler, the World-Spirit, as 
 a vast accession to the free territory of the nation 
 in due season. Now it is a great merit of Emerson 
 that he in the West caught a flash of that sovereign 
 secret Genius of the Age, and noted the ironic na 
 ture which veils its procedure. 
 
 The lecturer proceeds to find the positive and 
 praiseworthy side in the communistic experiments 
 which his friends were then* trying in New Eng 
 land. Still he gives some gentle shakings of the 
 head at the business. Soon, however, his condem 
 nation will be more incisive. Now, too, with patri 
 otic Americanism he turns away from England, 
 
228 RJLPH W.4LDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 but it will not be long before lie will wheel about 
 and seek her out. Let the reader not forget the 
 present problem of Emerson: "Will he move for 
 ward to the American West or backward to the Eu 
 ropean East? Let the future settle it. But just 
 now we have to plunge from this lofty, buoyant, 
 optimistic mood into quite the opposite. 
 
 II. New England Reformers. This lecture 
 brings before us Emerson composing and deliver 
 ing a denunciatory philippic to his own people, in 
 which he pitilessly exposes before their eyes their 
 own shortcomings. "We must take into account the 
 audience in order to understand the bearing of the 
 address. It was a free religious society, known as 
 the Church of the Disciples, whose pastor was the 
 transcendental Rev. James Freeman Clarke. The 
 listeners were in the main the new reformers, with 
 whose conduct Emerson had become disgusted, 
 even if he sympathized with their object. Yet they 
 were largely products of his own movement. Thus 
 he, the original Transcendentalist, shows a pro 
 nounced reaction against the Transcendentalists 
 against the people more than against their doctrine. 
 But even the latter is not without some questioning 
 on his part, since it has led to such results. 
 
 The lecturer gives at the start a vivid account of 
 his own seething epoch, in which "the spirit of pro 
 test and detachment," of dissent and discontent 
 dominated New England. In general, it was a time 
 of universal separation from every thing trans 
 mitted and established in the shape of institutions, 
 
THE DAWNING REACTION. 229 
 
 beliefs, manners, and even foods. And we hear the 
 arch protester himself starting to protest just 
 against his own protest. He begins to hedge in re 
 gard to his darling doctrine, declaring that "the 
 criticism and attack on institutions which we have 
 witnessed, has made one thing plain, that society 
 gains nothing whilst a man, not himself renovated, 
 attempts to renovate things about him he has be 
 come tediously good in some particular, but negli 
 gent and narrow in the rest. That is, a hobbyist, 
 faddist, crank, in today s lingo. Such is the keen 
 thrust against the new horde of world-improvers; 
 but the lecturer s speech gets actually venomous 
 when he arraigns them for "hypocrisy and van 
 ity ;" the world-improvers turn world-imposters. 
 So Emerson has come to see that the reformers 
 themselves need reforming first of all, and he starts 
 with himself. They do not go to the root of the 
 trouble, but "spend all their energy on some acci 
 dental evil ; slaying insects they are only insect- 
 slayers. 
 
 Manifestly Emerson has reached the stage of pro 
 testing against Emerson, and the original seceder 
 is inclined to secede from his own primal secession. 
 But we are not -to think that Emerson has become 
 reconciled with the institutional world. He empha 
 sizes : " the wave of evil washes all our institutions 
 alike/ not merely one little corner of them. "I 
 find nothing healthful or exalting in the smooth 
 conventions of society;" yet Emerson had his de 
 cided social conventions, in which at times he stayed 
 
230 RALPH WALDO EMERSONPART SECOND. 
 
 or even stuck, rather hidebound. And he will com 
 promise : ( it is handsomer to remain in the estab 
 lishment better than the establishment, though he 
 goes on to condemn Property, State, Society, even 
 Family; everything established is damned and 
 damnable by the simple fact of being established 
 and transmitted. Practically he accepts, though 
 theoretically he anathematizes. "Remember," he 
 almost vociferates, "that no society can be as large 
 as one man. And he warns seemingly the govern 
 ing powers: "Hands off! let there be no control 
 and no interference in the administration of the 
 affairs of this kingdom of Me. Yet- he did pay hte 
 taxes instead of going to jail with Alcott and Tho- 
 reau, who would thus practically live up to their 
 doctrine and his. 
 
 Hence he notes with disapprobation the new; re 
 formed societies established by his friends during 
 the past years. "Three communities have been al- 
 ready formed in Massachusetts" he says, probably 
 referring to Brook Farm, Fruitlands, and Hope- 
 dale, poetic names redolent of the pasture, the or 
 chards, and idealism. In Emerson s eyes their 
 chief "defect was their reliance on Association." 
 The" very e idea, of union has become -repugnant io 
 him } the separated -dissociated individual is.the true 
 universal, -yea, the universe itself. He dares affirm 
 the extreme consequence : Government will be ad-, 
 amantine without any governor." Listen to this: 
 The union is only perfect when the uniters are iso 
 lated." Emerson seems to have reached the stage 
 
THE DAWNING REACTION. 231 
 
 when he falls into a fit of horrors at the thought of 
 instituted society. He rejects all forms of associ 
 ated Man, and spurns the conception of human as 
 sociation as realized in institutions. 
 
 So much as to his intellectual view. To be sure 
 when it comes to the will, Emerson plays truant to 
 his hot-worded theory. This malfeasance in him 
 self he recognizes and seems to defend, for he speaks 
 of himself when he says that every man has at in 
 tervals the grace to scorn his performances, in com 
 paring them with his belief of what he should do ; " 
 yea, he will even go so far as to side "with his en 
 emies" against himself in their reproaches, "gladly 
 listening and accusing himself of the same thing. 
 Thus the breach between conviction and fulfilment, 
 between his theory and practice, between duty and 
 deed, he not only knows, but glorifies. However, is 
 not such an inner scission the pure melancholy of 
 .existence, when a man has realized himself in a 
 deed and then scorns it as unworthy of his best 
 self? Would it not be better to stop doing or even 
 living ? From this source we are inclined to derive 
 that strain of disillusion, and at times of downright 
 pessimism, which rises to the surface in the present 
 lecture. F,QT it must be acknowledged that Emer 
 son, the far-famed op tin^ist, was not always optim 
 istic. ..:.::_.:.-_-:: ; 
 
 But toward the close the lecturer falls back upon 
 his positive and happy-making doctrine of the di 
 vine descent into him of the Over-Soul, declaring 
 for the hundredth time that "this open channel to 
 
232 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 the highest life is the first and last reality, though 
 he may not be able to give it any adequate utter 
 ance. He reproves himself for writing such a nega - 
 tive lecture and bids his mood: "Suppress for a 
 few days your criticism on the insufficiency of this 
 or that teacher or experimenter/ and he will undo 
 himself. Glad you did not follow your own advice, 
 Mr. Emerson, else we had never had this very char 
 acteristic document of your spiritual history. Hear 
 him exhort himself to the better life : "let a man fall 
 into the divine circuits and he is enlarged." Then 
 again: "Obedience to his genius is the only liber 
 ating influence. " He has resolved after his way his 
 pessimistic discords into the grand harmonizing 
 solace: "There is a Power over us and behind us, 
 and we are the channels of its communications." 
 
 "Worthily conceived is such a view as far as it 
 reaches ; but just this Supernal Power, as he holds 
 it, is the origin of Emerson s limitation and hence 
 of his negation. He grants it lovingly to individ 
 ual Man, specially to Emerson ; but he denies it un 
 conditionally and even passionately to associated 
 Man in all transmitted social organization. Such 
 is the grand Emersonian denial, a negation as great 
 as that of Faust; in fact in this aspect we might 
 call him the New England Faust in spite of his dis 
 like of Goethe. This reminds me of an impression 
 which has often come to mind in reading Emerson s 
 Journals: he felt some deep, very dim, yet repug 
 nant affinity with the poet of Faust, whom he 
 
THE DAWNING REACTION. 233 
 
 tackles again and again, but either gets thrown or 
 rebounds violently from his grip. 
 
 As we look back somewhat surprisedly at the man 
 giving this lecture, we have to think that Emerson 
 is quite at sea theoretically and practically, almost 
 in a condition of inner dissolution. He has had a 
 fateful experience with his doctrine, with his peo 
 ple, with himself. He appears at times to revel in a 
 love of self-contradiction which shows a kind of 
 demonic defiance of reason : The union is only per 
 fect when the nniters are isolated" which seems 
 to say that the essence of union is just disunion. 
 We hear his repeated declarations that he is for the 
 law, but against its execution, in favor of a govern 
 ment without any governing or governor, support 
 ing theory but refusing practice. Discordant soul, 
 What is he to do with himself ? For a strong reme 
 dial turn he must take soon, with a dip into some 
 restorative influence. The next lecture gives a fresh 
 whirl to his present kaleidoscopic soul-changes. 
 
 III. Emancipation of the Negro in British West 
 Indies. In this Address Emerson makes us feel 
 that the act of black enfranchisement was still more 
 deeply an act of white enfranchisement, by no 
 means excluding the speaker himself, even if done 
 by a foreign nation on foreign territory. Yonder 
 in England at least rays forth the sun of hope, 
 though quite eclipsed everywhere here at home in 
 Boston, in Massachusetts, in the United States. 
 Such is Emerson s self-lacerating estrangement 
 from his own native place, which he must somehow 
 
234 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 overcome or sink. But in the distance overseas he 
 glimpses rescue. 
 
 The Address was delivered in Emerson s home 
 town, which had taken into its head to celebrate the 
 tenth anniversary of the emancipation of the West 
 India slaves by British act of Parliament. A pecu 
 liar temper of the time and place such a celebration 
 shows ; doubtless it sprang from the antagonism to 
 the Annexation of Texas, and to the election of 
 Polk, which took place this year (1844). The pro- 
 slavery movement seemed triumphant in the free 
 new United States the unfree, hence lying, dis 
 graceful country ; behold in contrast the true love of 
 liberty and the magnanimity of old monarchic 
 Great Britain! Some such feeling must have in 
 spired the occasion, and also Emerson s speech, 
 which echoes it, at times with a good deal of pas- 
 don for him, usually the- dispassionate. Moreover 
 he .will now avert his look from the West, which al 
 most unanimously favors that vast increase of Tex 
 an territory, and which is filled with its truly Occi 
 dental aspiration known as "manifest destiny. 
 Yes,, Emerson will not now turn even for hope to 
 ward the youngest States but toward .the oldest, 
 ; even across the Atlantic. 
 
 The speech first gives a lengthy historic recital of 
 -the act of Emancipation, .when it suddenly leaps up 
 with the cry : Fellow-citizens ! " The orator then 
 begins spinning a warm personal thread : While 
 working up this history, "I have not been able to 
 read a page of it without the most painful compar- 
 
THE DAWNING REACTION. 235 
 
 isons" with what? With the whole political 
 world of America, from largest to smallest the 
 Nation, the State, the Community. " Whilst I have 
 read of England I have thought of New England," 
 much to the discredit of the latter. The truth is, 
 that once vigorous Puritan spirit has sunk into the 
 slough of servility to slavery, while the old English 
 stock has improved to the point of moral sublimity, 
 not simply spoken but acted: "The great-hearted 
 Puritans have left no posterity" is one peal of the 
 speaker s agony; another bitter reproach runs: 
 "There is a disastrous want of men from New Eng 
 land." Piercing is the present note of alienation 
 from his own ancestral world. 
 
 But what comfort I "I point you to the bright 
 example which England set you on this day ten 
 years ago." Moreover Emerson is decidedly facing 
 himself toward that country, and seems getting 
 ready 4n mind to start on his way- thither. He 
 tl feels that a great heart and soul are behind 
 there," which brought about this grand event and 
 made it "a moral revolution, having no bloody 
 war," inasmuch as it had the power to draw to it 
 every particle of talent and of worth in England. 
 But how is it in this country ? It must be confessed 
 that from th~e~ President downward - all the seats 
 of power are filled by underlings, ignorant, timid, 
 selfish," from which evidently Emerson must soon 
 take his flight. The Governor of Massachusetts is 
 a trifler, the State-House in Boston is a plaything ; 
 what is left to the honest man but to get out of the 
 
236 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 reach of such a moral cesspool ? He will have to go 
 and commune with "the great-heart and soul of 
 England" for his own restoration. Emerson does 
 not directly say this, but the reader has to feel that 
 some such design is fermenting in his brain. 
 
 Let us in a brief backlook again put together the 
 three speeches of this second Oratorical Triad which 
 now is closing the present Decennium. They form 
 a significant whole with its triple process made up 
 of the three Addresses, and give stress to a weighty 
 turning-point in Emerson s experience. They round 
 a little arc of Future, Present and Past, moving 
 from the young West through New England, to 
 ward Old England verily a reversion from Amer 
 ica to Europe. Thus we begin to glimpse the re 
 actionary spirit, very different from that aggressive 
 forward-driving Emerson whom, we heard at the 
 beginning of this mightily upheaving Decennium 
 when he uttered his opening shout of defiance and 
 battle in his first Oratorical Triad. A new Emer 
 sonian Epoch is dawning. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 SUMMARY 
 
 Herewith is concluded the most creative pirt of 
 Emerson s most creative Epoch, which we have un 
 folded under the name of Productivity. It contains 
 his greatest writings, ever productive and repro 
 ductive: his Treatise on Nature, his two Series of 
 Essays, and his three sets of Addresses. 
 
SUMMARY. 237 
 
 Moreover there runs through all the works one 
 central thought known as Transcendentalism, a 
 spiritual energy, multiform and elusive, but ever- 
 present and active. Not a system of philosophy, 
 but a subtly penetrating influence capable of thou 
 sandfold metamorphosis, it was the Proteus of the 
 soul of New r England, the One amid all her changes. 
 The last transformation may be seen in today s (or 
 yesterday s) doctrine of Pragmatism. 
 
 In the printed page of this decennial Epoch lives 
 the eternal Emerson, that part of him which has al 
 ready shown itself time-proof, that part which 
 stamps him as our greatest American man of let 
 ters. Here lurks his genetic thought ; we may deem 
 it the brain of his whole life, the rest of him being 
 more the outward limbs and flourishes. This, then, 
 should be the chief quarry of the student Emerson, 
 who will here get hold of the key to the master s 
 entire w r rit and also to his total career. 
 
 The sympathetic reader must have already felt a 
 certain completeness in the present round of Emer 
 son s Productivity, an inner process of beginning, 
 middle, and end, a cycle of the author s creative 
 power and that his most original cycle. This is the 
 truly genetic stage of the Transcendental spirit 
 whose central affirmative doctrine is the immediate 
 efflux of the Divine into the Human, recurrent with 
 each original act of the mind. 
 
 But the negative or critical phase of this literary 
 Productivity is in our opinion, the more fully de 
 veloped, the more stoutly emphasized, yea the more 
 
238 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 tonic for the author s time, and for our time, and 
 perchance for all time. The critique of Tradition 
 of every form gleams in sword-flashes through Em 
 erson s writings, whatever be their label. Espe 
 cially does he wield his tongue s keen slash against 
 the traditional social forms. And it must be rec 
 ognized that in this negative vein Emerson has a 
 perennial work to do ; for man s institutions Fam 
 ily, State, the Economic Order, the Church are 
 going more and more to be put to the question for 
 their right of existence. The result is we have to 
 preserve and rebuild and reform them consciously, 
 through knowing what they are. Emerson, there 
 fore, and just this negative Emerson, is ever re 
 newed and renewable, for he compels us to think 
 our institutional world which we as a people have 
 never done, except in little patches not only in 
 order to defend it adequately, but to construct it 
 aright. 
 
 To be sure, such a work, though always needful 
 and hence immortal, is not of the greatest, is not 
 grandly constructive either in its own literary char 
 acter or in the social structure which it manifests. 
 Not originally constructive, hardly reconstructive 
 is it, though the preparation indispensable for all 
 right reform and reconstruction. 
 
 We have above intimated that there is an inner 
 process running through and holding together the 
 varied literary productions of the present creative 
 Decennium. The outline of this process we shall 
 
SUMMARY. 239 
 
 set down in a brief characterization, showing its 
 three stages. 
 
 - I. Nature, a poetico-philosophical treatise : it at-. 
 firms Nature to be "the disguised Man . .on the one 
 hand, yet "the apparition of God" on the other. 
 Emerson s opening book potential, presenti- 
 mental, prophetic of his future on a number of 
 lines. 
 
 IT. The Essays in two Series; they pass from 
 concrete Nature to abstract Conception; Emerson 
 reaches his highest thought in the Over-Soul (uni 
 versal)- with its contrast to the Under-Soul (or indi 
 vidual) , whose dualistic interaction is the central 
 theme of the whole. 
 
 TIT. The Addresses in three sets, making ten all 
 together. The appeal is more popular, less esoteric 
 than that of the Essays. And also the critical ele 
 ment dominates, showing the short-comings of the 
 time in doctrines and social arrangements. The Ad 
 dresses give the most complete evolution of Emer 
 son during this Epoch his first aggressive attack, 
 then the fluctuating struggle in him between the 
 anti-traditional and traditional man, finally the re 
 action from his earlier self, especially toward tra 
 ditional Europe. 
 
 It must be remembered that the three foregoing 
 stages represent chiefly methods of presentation, or 
 the three Emersonian art-forms, which in one way 
 or other he will continue to retain hereafter. 
 
 So much for this first line of Emerson s great 
 ness, that of Productivity, running through the 
 
240 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 present Epoch. In accord with our plan, we are 
 next to take up a new and parallel line of Emer 
 son s activity, cotemporaneous with what we have 
 just seen, but very different. 
 
 Section B. Propagation 
 
 "We have now come to the second great fact or 
 chain of facts, belonging to this creative Decen- 
 nium, namely the Propagation of the Transcenden 
 tal Idea which has been born and baptized into lit 
 erary form all of which is supremely the work of 
 Emerson. He is the central conduit through whom 
 this Over-Soul or World-Spirit or Genius of the Age 
 has streamed down into the time, making it truly 
 the turn of an Epoch. Transcendentalism has now 
 written itself out in ink at the quiet Concord Cas 
 tle, asserting triumphantly its own freedom, its own 
 way of thinking, and its own style of utterance. A 
 creative body of literature it has created, whose 
 echoes are with us yet witness this book, for in 
 stance and evidently are destined to be heard roll 
 ing still a long distance down the deeenniums. We 
 may well repeat that here has arisen, according to 
 present indications, the most persistent and influ 
 ential writing of the literary sort that America has 
 yet produced not the most popular, but the most 
 persistent and deeply influential. 
 
 It should be re-stated that Emerson looked upon 
 this movement as essentially religious, a kind of 
 new Reformation, a return to the true and unde- 
 filed, that is, unprescribed Christianity. Or it was 
 
PROPAGATION. 241 
 
 the second great Protestantism, a revolt from the 
 existing transmitted dogma, ritual, forms; a fresh 
 ascent to the primordial sources of all faith. Thus 
 it bore the character of a revival of religion, with 
 its enthusiasms and excesses, at whose wilder mani 
 festations Emerson will soon show disapproval, if 
 not disgust; thus he will begin to protest against 
 his own Protestantism. 
 
 Accordingly, we shall next pass to consider how 
 this remarkable binful of seed was sown broadcast 
 through the land and made to sprout. Creation, 
 otherwise might have been smothered in its cradle, 
 without propagation. There is no donbt the soil was 
 ready and the means at hand. Boston lay near and 
 shot its roots of publication not only throughout 
 New England, but the whole country. Indeed, it 
 was a book-producing town, and a book-loving com 
 munity, more famous for its tomes then than now ; 
 print-hungry was the town even if critical and 
 querulous. This fact must not be forgotten : Em 
 erson found at his door a ready-made and efficient 
 means of distributing his printed page, and of push 
 ing the same to the full periphery of his audience, 
 however small and scattered. "What he could do in 
 this line was seen in the success with which he ex 
 ploited Carlyle s early works from Boston, a thing 
 impossible in London or anywhere else. So let it 
 be emphasized that the golden opportunity for dis 
 tributing his brain-products was at hand and work 
 ing; the psychological con juncture for propaga 
 tion was never quite so happy before or since. 
 
242 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 Still print alone would not suffice unless workers, 
 diligent and apostolic, were ready to prepare the 
 field for the planting and the harvest. This brings 
 us .to another peculiar gift of Emerson: he had the 
 power to gather about himself a devoted and able 
 apostleship. His Castle was the home of an ardent 
 band of missionaries who could defy personal ad 
 vantage for the sake of the cause, though Emerson 
 himself never let the economic Devil catch him by 
 the throat. Thus he kept a fortress, and to a cer 
 tain extent a free lunch for the hard-pressed and 
 thriftless comrade in arms. In this respect also 
 Emerson was the luminous center from which radi 
 ated many light-giving minds, zealous expositors of 
 the new Idea and of themselves. 
 
 So it comes that we must give some account of 
 that branch of our hero s biography which pertains 
 to the Emersonian Apostolate, wherewith he was 
 able to surround himself. Herein we may note a 
 striking difference from the previous strand, from 
 his Productivity, in which he had to be solitary and 
 to commune with himself, receiving the dictates of 
 the Over-Soul into his own single soul the message 
 "from the Alone to the alone." But now the out 
 side begins to play in, associates join him to carry 
 forward his gospel. Hence this activity we call 
 Propagation as distinct from Productivity. Char 
 acters now enter, unique of their kind; they join 
 in the conflict of the time, and produce an action 
 which has its beginning, middle and end, or rise, 
 bloom and decline, with Emerson as the central fig- 
 
PROPAGATION. 
 
 243 
 
 tire or hero. We may deem it a sort of Epic, the 
 Concord Iliad, with its heroic Achilles surrounded 
 and supported by other heroes, whose Troy is the 
 anti-transcendental Boston, against which chiefly 
 is the grand battle. Further, we may regard it a 
 Ten Years War, at least as far as Emerson the 
 hero is concerned, whose work in this line is cre 
 atively finished during the present Decennium. 
 Here then lies an acted Epic, whose poetic character 
 is what gives to it an abiding interest ; still though 
 all its actors were poets, the action was never sung 
 together, but has reached us only in many bright 
 shreds of verse and prose. 
 
 These characters which now appear on the scene, 
 and become denizens of Emersonopolis, are all in 
 themselves originals, even if satellites in the last 
 instance; each has his or her heroic part in this 
 grand conflict, while revolving around the central 
 luminary. Both the people and their deed have be 
 come famous : I am not certain but that they form 
 the most fascinating, suggestive, and truly poetic ep 
 isode of the entire Emersoniad. I personally enjoy 
 them as a whole in action better than their verses. 
 though these are by no means to be left out. 
 
 We may group this work of Propagation under 
 four heads or classes, each of which forms a dis 
 tinctive branch of the Emersonian Apostolate. 
 
 1. The Transcendental Circle. 
 
 2. The Transcendental Academy. 
 
 3. The Transcendental Periodical. 
 
 4. The Transcendental Community. 
 
244 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 All these forms of Propagation were born and 
 fostered during this wonderfully Creative Epoch, 
 requiring an enormous outlay of energy, quite equal 
 to the intellect displayed by the Master s writings 
 in the line of his Productivity, of course with less 
 lasting results. Such is indeed Emerson s grand 
 push outwards from within, the sweep from his 
 Thought to his "Will, from Meditation to Action. 
 Let the reader not forget that these two streams run 
 alongside of each other in time through the entire 
 Decennium, and that they keep mutually intertwin 
 ing, re-acting one upon the other all the way. Fi 
 nally, however, they must be brought together and 
 be seen as one Whole in the rounded Biography of 
 Emerson. 
 
 Moreover, we should note that Propagation in 
 volves some form of man organized, and herein Em 
 erson, brings to light a gift not seen prominently in 
 his writings. Productivity is the work of the Mind 
 individual, Propagation is the work of the Mind 
 associated, so that in it the lone author must give 
 up his splendid isolation, and unite in some kind 
 of fellowship with his staff of propagandists. 
 
 I. 
 
 % 
 
 THE TRANSCENDENTAL CIRCLE 
 
 Centered around Emerson was a group of friends 
 and fellow-workers of pronounced ability and indi 
 viduality. Indeed it was his good-fortune and that 
 of his cause to attract people of talent from the 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL CIRCLE. 245 
 
 first. There was at the start a Transcendental Club 
 of no small ability and devotion. We already hear 
 of "some young men" in 1835 (see letter to Car- 
 lyle, March 12), who, Emerson says, are intending 
 to found a Journal to be called the Transcendental- 
 ist. Next year Dr. Hedge dates the earliest origin 
 "we four," then "some dozen of us," then "a 
 large number assembled." Such were the first of 
 a series of meetings "held from time to time as oc 
 casion prompted for seven or eight years." So these 
 gatherings quite overarch the present Decennium, 
 and seemingly measure its growth, culmination, and 
 decline. 
 
 From these people of the Club, were gradually 
 sifted out three who may be said to form the inner 
 most Circle around Emerson, who on his side deeply 
 influenced them, not so much by way of doctrine as 
 of stimulation ; while they on the other hand, being 
 original themselves, reacted on him in a number of 
 important ways. Thus the fascination was mutual : 
 Emerson took not a little from them as well as they 
 from him, with reciprocal appreciation and enrich 
 ment. But he owned a power which they did not. 
 that of expression they all wrote and spoke and 
 have left books, but he is their supreme voice 
 their glory is largely, though not wholly, a reflec 
 tion from his sun. These three are Alcott, Tho- 
 reau, and Miss Fuller. 
 
 Perhaps we ought to say Circles, instead of Cir 
 cle, for there were more than one several if not 
 many, according to the fineness of the lines of di- 
 
246 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 vision. But here we can only take the record of one 
 Circle, the nearest to the Center, and most deeply 
 inwound in the heart and mind of its creator ; also 
 its members were the most talented and most fa 
 mous of the Apostolate, truly sharing in the immor 
 tality of the work and its prime artificer. Hence 
 only three of them as designated we interlink in 
 this chain of a Circle. 
 
 Be it said that while all three receive radiance 
 from the central luminary, which eternizes them in 
 its deathless sheen, each of them shines also by own 
 light, and with a peculiar lustre. Stars they are, 
 lesser suns, not merely lunar; in fact they have 
 their own moons, often invisible except under the 
 telescope. This phenomenon of the Transcendental 
 Heaven is worth its scrutiny. 
 
 It becomes us, therefore, to send our best glance 
 after these three persons, asking the triple ques 
 tion : What did he (she included) get from Emer 
 son, What did he give to Emerson, .What did he 
 have in his own individual right, as distinct from 
 Emerson and the rest of the group. 
 
 I. A. Bronson Alcott. We are somewhat aston 
 ished at the amount and the height of praise which 
 Emerson bestows upon Alcott in his Diary. To be 
 sure he gives many a sharp counterstroke to his 
 laudation; he perhaps undervalued Alcott as a 
 writer, but overvalued him as a thinker, or as a 
 thinking talker. There was, accordingly, a peculiar 
 personal appeal in Alcott s doctrine for Emerson. 
 This doctrine was distictively the lapse, the descent 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL CIRCLE. 247 
 
 of all Creation down to its negative extreme just 
 through creation. It would seem that Alcott, more 
 than any other person represented to Emerson the 
 living embodiment of the Oversoul with its down- 
 flow into speech, for he always spoke of Alcott s 
 talk as directly inspired from the supernal sources, 
 denying to him at the same time the ability to 
 write the Oversoul could not push through the 
 pen-point in his case. Emanation lay at the basis 
 of Alcott s world-view, and thus he became in him 
 self a striking illustration of the grand Lapse of 
 Man a Lapse of the Alcottian mind to the Orient, 
 where Emanation is properly at home. In this ret 
 rograde movement Alcott carried Emerson with 
 him, though by no means completely ; for the latter 
 still clung to evolution, or the ascent of man versus 
 his descent which is essentially an Occidental 
 thought and practice. 
 
 This. Oriental stream was, however, decidedly col 
 ored and in part transformed on its way to Concord 
 by the Hellenic Neo-Platonists who started at Alex 
 andria in the Third Century A. D. We hear Emer 
 son call Alcott a living Plato ; did he not mean a 
 living Plotinus ? At any rate we have the right to 
 see the influence of Alcott in that very Plotinian 
 Essay of Emerson, which we have already consid 
 ered the Oversoul, and doubtless in some other 
 productions. 
 
 II. Henry David Thoreau. Of all the members 
 of the Circle, Thoreau has won this special distinc 
 tion: his work has shown itself after his death to 
 
248 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 possess the greatest growing power. His writings, 
 quite unsaleable and unappreciated during his life 
 time, are now printed in edition after edition, while 
 his manuscripts have been given to the public by 
 publishers volume on volume. A cult of Thoreau 
 with a special propagandism seems to have arisen. 
 While he had breath in his body, he deemed himself 
 a failure as a writer ; still he wrote on with an all- 
 coercive need of self-expression which has been 
 strangely found to be universal and immortal. To 
 some minds he has even grown to be the rival of 
 Emerson himself. 
 
 Thoreau s tendency was on the whole opposite to 
 that of Alcott, to whom Nature was the lowest ema 
 nation, or the real degradation of God s creative 
 power. The contrary was the movement and indeed 
 the world- view of Thoreau : Nature was for him the 
 divine appearance itself, with which he incessantly 
 held communion. 
 
 The most famous deed of Thoreau is coupled with 
 this doctrine : his flight back to Nature, with whom 
 he would live in immediate embrace, distant from 
 artificial society. So he betook himself to his hut 
 and potato-hole on the shore of Walden Pond, even 
 away from the free household of Emerson. Alcott, 
 however, proposed to associate the individual man 
 in a new society. Thoreau, be it said, returned to 
 home and to Emerson after his daring experiment. 
 
 Emerson was deeply sympathetic with Thoreau s 
 bent, as we may see in his first printed book, called 
 Nature. In him the Oversoul (Alcott) and the Un- 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL CIRCLE. 
 
 249 
 
 dersoul (Thoreau) lay alongside of each other, out 
 wardly in peace, if not inwardly reconciled. We 
 may easily point out the two strands in separate 
 Essays of Emerson, perhaps here and there in the 
 same Essay. 
 
 III. Margaret Fuller (Ossoli). Here enters the 
 woman of the Concord Epic, and a mighty figure 
 she towers. Indeed she seems to us the strongest 
 personality of the Circle, with the greatest native 
 power, verily a Titanic character. She remained in 
 close companionship with Emerson during this 
 whole Creative Decennium, and, as he recognized, 
 she stimulated enormously his productivity. Also 
 she aided him practically in the work of propaga 
 tion; for instance she edited the Dial for two years 
 without remuneration. However she herself could 
 not write in proportion to her ability ; the Titaness 
 was unable to erupt her full native energy into her 
 written word. She confesses : "I shall never be an 
 artist, I have no patient love of execution." She, 
 too, lacked the power of organization. 
 
 With her, then, enters into the Transcendental 
 Circle that deepest underlying motive-power of 
 Human Nature,, namely sex, which thus has both 
 its phases (or its dualism) represented in this move 
 ment. With all her intellect Margaret Fuller was 
 at last an emotional being dominated by love in 
 some of its subtle shapes. Here lies in our judg 
 ment the ground of her profound appreciation of 
 Goethe, whom Emerson never could quite under 
 stand, still less accept. 
 
250 RALPH WALDO EMERSONPART SECOND. 
 
 Certain lines or tendencies in Emerson s Essays 
 one may identify with Miss Fuller s influence. On 
 the other hand she was trained by the Master and 
 the time into her original power. Still she fell out 
 with Transcendentalism, and shared in the reaction 
 against it, which we have also noticed in Emerson. 
 The result was a flight from Boston to New York 
 and then to Europe, which has its parallel in the 
 career of Thoreau and also of Emerson, for the lat 
 ter likewise went back to Europe about this same 
 time or a little later (1847). 
 
 But Margaret Fuller never returned out of her 
 separation from her city and country. She per 
 ished of shipwreck in New York harbor, at forty 
 years of age, just in the act of getting back. Thus 
 her round of life never had its completion such as 
 we see in Emerson. She is truly the tragic charac 
 ter of the set, the woman of the dark fate which we 
 are inclined to trace in her very self all her living 
 days. She never came to fulfilment, yet Emerson 
 has devoted to her his longest and most loving biog 
 raphy, which likewise has a pronounced undercur 
 rent of autobiography, whereby it becomes doubly 
 suggestive. 
 
 Such is the Transcendental Circle of three strong 
 characters all of them possessing genius in their 
 own special lines they revolve about Emerson at 
 Concord in their highest radiance during his pres 
 ent creative Epoch. All three were very different, 
 yet seem in one process moving together ; in doc 
 trine Alcott dwelt upon the divine, Thoreau upon 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL ACADEMY. 251 
 
 the physical, Miss Fuller upon the human. Thus 
 Emerson had in his presence beaming into his coun 
 tenance personal representatives of God, Nature, 
 and Man, the three prime constituents of the Uni 
 verse. 
 
 II. 
 
 THE TRANSCENDENTAL ACADEMY 
 
 All three members of the foregoing Circle had 
 been school-teachers Alcott, Thoreau, Miss Fuller 
 and Emerson himself had gone through a consid 
 erable pedagogical experience, some of it reaching 
 down to the bottom of the ladder. It was, there 
 fore, quite natural that these teachers should think 
 of a school for their doctrine as one means of its 
 Propagation. And as they were all studying and 
 dreaming over old Plato, they could not help fan- 
 tasying an educative instituion like the Platonic 
 Academe, to be re-constituted in Concord or some 
 where in its neighborhood. Moreover, had not 
 something similar been done in Florence during the 
 Italian Renascence ? Some such scheme hovered en 
 ticingly before the Transcendental mind, especially 
 during the present Decennium, so prodigiously 
 prolific and eruptive in every direction. 
 
 As an additional incentive for Emerson, we are 
 reminded that he was at this time practically ex 
 cluded from all the schools of Education in and 
 around Boston, headed by Harvard College, his own 
 alma mater, not now in a very maternal mood to- 
 
252 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 ward her greatest son on account of his affection 
 ate trouncing of her theologians in his Divinity 
 Class Address. So he was ready to found his own 
 University, and direct it from his Castle of Defi 
 ance. Alcott s school in Boston, in which the latter 
 had attempted to start a new pedagogy, had sunk 
 under a load of public obloquy, and for some years 
 he had taken up his residence at Concord just 
 across the street from Emerson. So it comes that 
 we hear of the following scheme in a letter of Em 
 erson under the date of August 16, 1840. 
 
 " Alcott and I projected the other day a whole 
 University out of our straws. Do you not wish that 
 I should advertise it in The Dial? 9 This period 
 ical was just then under way with Margaret Fuller 
 as editor, to whom the foregoing letter was ad 
 dressed. The locality was to be "some country 
 town, say Concord or Hyannis," not in any large 
 city, above all, not in Boston; "we will hold a se 
 mester for the instruction of young men, say from 
 October to April" a winter school of Philosophy 
 in which each professor "shall announce his own 
 subject and topics, with what detail he pleases, and 
 hold, say two lectures or conversations therein each 
 week. A very free curriculum both for instructor 
 and pupil each is to learn and to teach quite what 
 and as he chooses. Even the fee is not rigidly fixed, 
 but left to the conscience of the student who is to 
 pay according to his sense of benefit received and 
 his means." This was to be the new enfranchised 
 University, built to * * front the world without char- 
 
THK TRANSCENDENTAL .\CADRMY. 253 
 
 ter, diploma, corporation or steward." Such was 
 the defiant liberty of the coming education, which 
 here seeks to establish an institution quite hostile 
 to the transmitted institution. Emerson urges Miss 
 Puller who now seems a part of his every plan : " Do 
 you not wish to come here and join in such a 
 work?" For it would "anticipate by years the ed 
 ucation of New England." He does not expect a 
 large attendance: "some twenty or thirty stu 
 dents at first." (Cabot s Emerson, II, p. 409.) 
 
 Such a plan we may wonder at as another prod 
 uct of the furious fertility of Emerson s brain dur 
 ing this wildly feracious Epoch. Moreover such a 
 scheme has a social trend like all his thoughts and 
 actions of the present time. He closes his letter 
 with an outburst of social hope: "We shall sleep 
 no more, and we shall concert better houses, eco 
 nomics, and social modes than any we have seen." 
 Prophetic of the Now, if nothing else. 
 
 Emerson is, of course, to be one of the Professors, 
 and it is suggestive to see what department of in 
 struction he prefers. This he sets down as his self- 
 chosen curriculum: "Beaumont and Fletcher, 
 Percy s Reliques, Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. " 
 Not Philosophy but Rhetoric with Poetry is his fa 
 vorite branch a peculiar choice; yet he has said 
 more than once that a professorship of Rhetoric 
 would be his preferred vocation for life. More 
 strange still seems his selection of the Elizabethan 
 Dramatists, Beaumont and Fletcher, over the far 
 greater William Shakespeare. Indeed we have to 
 
254 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 think from this and other indications scattered 
 through his writings, that Emerson in his heart 
 loved and appreciated Beaumont and Fletcher bet 
 ter than (Shakespeare. Some reasons for this sin 
 gular preference might be hunted up, but they 
 would carry us too far to one side. 
 
 The plan for such an Academy was never real 
 ized, but the idea remained, and has become exceed 
 ingly fruitful, being at work still today. Here in 
 deed rises a view of Education which has not yet 
 been overtaken, the idea of the free, or as we may 
 call it, the new Communal University as distinct 
 from the old transmitted, essentially European 
 University, which still dominates our American ed 
 ucational world. A free faculty, free courses of 
 study, free students, a free society; then such an 
 University should be everywhere, in every commu 
 nity which will take the trouble to establish it and 
 pursue universal studies in an universal way, mak 
 ing a University which is truly universal. That 
 Emersonian plan had its shortcomings and serious 
 omissions ; still we may think of Alcott, Miss Fuller, 
 and especially of Emerson as teachers in such a 
 school, with lectures, readings and conversations 
 which were the instruments for inserting a spile 
 into that upper original Energy and making it 
 flow down at first hand to the participants. The 
 old traditional humdrum of drill, recitation, and 
 mechanical device would be supplemented by the 
 direct downflow from the primal fountain of cre 
 ative power. Some such idea was now rife and 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL ACADEMY. 255 
 
 throbbing in the time ; Emerson and his Circle re 
 sponded to it in this scheme, truly the ideal school 
 of idealism, which has never quite lapsed, though 
 it has never quite succeeded in getting itself born. 
 Alcott especially would not give up the idea; in 
 deed he first started it after an infantile fashion in 
 Boston, whereof we may still read in his somewhat 
 forgotten book called the Record of a School, though 
 its germinal suggestion remains and is unfolded in 
 the recent flowering of child-welfare and child-edu 
 cation. The Kindergarden, in the history of its 
 American evolution, cannot leave out Alcott s pro 
 phetic experiment. In fact, Alcott was more the 
 teacher than the writer; his Genius would pour 
 forth freely from the tip of his tongue, but hesi 
 tated to flow through his quill into ink. 
 
 How persistent this idea of a Transcendental 
 Academy continued, may be seen in the Concord 
 School of Philosophy, which came to fruitage many 
 years later. Emerson was still alive at the begin 
 ning of it, but quite out of harness; Alcott, how 
 ever, remained, though very old, and retained a 
 good fragment of his pristine vigor. Younger men, 
 Sanborn, Harris, Emery, took hold of the plan and 
 realized it in spite of a storm of Yankee ridicule like 
 to that which Emerson had to weather some forty 
 years before. But this school also went through its 
 rise, bloom, and evanishment. 
 
 But altogether the most important and influential 
 phase of the Transcendental Academy was when it 
 broke loose from its fixed locality in the East and 
 
256 RALPH WALDO EMERSONPART SECOND. 
 
 began to wander Westward, especially in the per 
 sons of its two chief protagonists, Emerson and Al- 
 cott. In the first place both of the Apostles have 
 declared that these trips to the new America away 
 from the old colonial States gave them fresh hope 
 and strength for their cause. Indeed it seems that 
 without this renewed effluence from the younger 
 part of the nation, the movement might have wilted 
 in the bud. Both were to a degree recreated in 
 mind as well as replenished with cash from that 
 new-born spirit in the Great Valley. So they have 
 indicated from their side. On the other hand, their 
 doctrines were sown far and wide over the recep 
 tive and fertile prairies. 
 
 The Emersonian Lyceum, as it came to be often 
 called, was in space as well as in spirit a kind of 
 universal University, overflowing the Alleghenies 
 to the Mississippi, and then sweeping across that 
 turbid boundary-line toward the Rockies. In most 
 towns of importance, the cultivated people had 
 heard Emerson lecture, had felt the presence of the 
 man even when they did not fully understand him, 
 and had caught some little whiff of that downflow 
 which he not only indoctrinated but incarnated. So 
 he continued his trips for many years such was 
 probably his most significant work after his Crea 
 tive Decennium till finally old age retired him full 
 of honors. Then his books picked up his task, and 
 became his best propagandists, with an ever-multi 
 plying harvest to this day. 
 " Alcott followed his friend to the West but 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL ACADEMY. 257 
 
 wrought on somewhat different lines. His prelec 
 tions he called conversations, which were usually 
 held in private parlors, and took a wide range from 
 the philosophy of the Lapse to Thoreau s shack on 
 Walden Pond. A tall impressive figure he would 
 stride across the room and take his seat in the large 
 philosophic chair, with reverend gray locks fall 
 ing to his shoulders, and with ashen features, out 
 of which at times he would roll his eyes upward as 
 if in a kind of worship. Somehow he looked his 
 own doctrine of emanation, and this you might also 
 hear in his rather sepulchral voice which had an 
 unearthly note, yet cannily shot through with jets 
 of Yankee humor and even laughter. Alcott had 
 always his elect who found their best reflection in 
 his manner and method. He loved to linger and 
 talk with you a genuine conversationist ; he would 
 often stay a week in one place, and see everybody 
 who paid a contribution. Alcott was much more 
 democratic in manner than Emerson, who could 
 not quite let down the bars even when he tried 
 hardest which was not always. 
 
 Such, then, was this phase of the grand Propaga 
 tion, probably the most wide-spread and lasting of 
 all. Moreover it gives some hint, even if remote, of 
 the distinctive American University which is to be, 
 in contrast with the European model now thriving 
 upon our soil, yet with strong inner questionings 
 and even loud protests within its own rarks of 
 teachers and taught. 
 
258 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 III. 
 
 THE TRANSCENDENTAL MAGAZINE 
 
 Needed a periodical, a review, a storehouse for 
 gathering all the more characteristic products of 
 the new Energy and dispersing them among the 
 great public at regular intervals such a plan had 
 hovered before Emerson from the first year of this 
 Epoch, yet had never come to fruition. But finally 
 appears in July, 1840, the first number of The Dial, 
 a name somewhat ambiguous, especially if we com 
 pare it with the first-proposed title. The Transcen 
 dent alist, of which Emerson had spoken some five 
 years before. This change of label has its signifi 
 cance, the new movement is no longer so fiery in its 
 challenge as it was, but seems inclined to mask 
 its battery. 
 
 Still the conception remains and is carried out : 
 namely a continuous bombardment by Transcen 
 dental guns against the walls of Philistinism. It is 
 to be an armory for every kind of literary weapon 
 minute and mighty from Alcott s little bird-shot 
 of Orphic sayings (usually falling short of any dis 
 cernible game) to Emerson s far-sounding can- 
 nonry, which scores on the whole the best hits and 
 certainly the most lasting, of the Magazine. Be 
 sides these two were other contributors little known 
 and well-known ; among whom Emerson introduces 
 a new name with one of his prophetic glimpses: 
 "My Henry Thoreau will be a great poet for such 
 a company, and some day for all companies. This 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL MAGAZINE. 259 
 
 from a letter of 1839 when Thoreau was hardly of 
 age. 
 
 So another grand scheme of Propagation is 
 launched just about in the middle and the bloom of 
 this specially Transcendental Decennium. Emer 
 son was the chief source of the plan and its main 
 supporter; he was its natural editor on account of 
 his ability, prominence, leisure, and detachment; 
 moreover the movement of which it was to be the 
 mouthpiece, was his creatively, and it openly called 
 him father. But he strongly declares: "I never 
 will be editor"- whereof he will later repent. It 
 was seen from the start to be a hardy, if not fool 
 hardy enterprise ; so he and the other brave Tran 
 scendental male fighters shifted the charge to the 
 shoulders of a woman, Margaret Fuller, who was 
 appointed editor arid courageously clung to the 
 drifting craft for two years, being paid not in 
 money but abundantly in defamation. Nobody 
 liked it, the newspapers jeered at it, even Emerson 
 criticized it, and the subscriptions kept falling off. 
 After two years Miss Fuller threw up the job, both 
 moneyless and thankless, and started her famous 
 talks in Boston, which at least gave her some bread. 
 Herein as elsewhere she shows herself the most dar 
 ing mortal of the lot, most emancipated, most defi 
 ant, verily the Transcendental Titaness, but never 
 in this life destined to transcend her Titanism, with 
 which she sank in New York Harbor. 
 
 But what is now to become of the orphaned Dial? 
 It has made itself alreadv a distinct landmark in 
 
260 RALPH \\ \U><) EMERSON PAR f SECOND. 
 
 the Propagation of the cause, and its work seems 
 hardly yet done. Naturally the abandoned child 
 falls back upon its original parent, and calls for his 
 saving help. His Diary shows him balancing : the 
 Dial is to be sustained or ended ; and I must settle 
 the question, it seems, of its life or death. I wish 
 it to live, but do not wish to be its life" which 
 means, that he would like to escape its editorship. 
 But not another man or woman can now be found 
 to handle the thing, so Emerson with great reluc 
 tance takes hold, and keeps the Magazine alive two 
 years longer. Then in 1844 he lets go the rudder, 
 and makes for land in his life-boat, expecting the 
 sea-worthless wreck to sink to the bottom at once. 
 But no ! it .floats, and keeps floating down the 
 stream of time, with a strangely increasing vitality ; 
 the phenomenon is that the old corpse of the de 
 funct Dial has more life today than when it was 
 alive (shown by citation and reprint). 
 
 To us the most significant fact about the Dial is 
 that here is a magazine which simply denies and 
 defies the very principle of all Magazinism. It was 
 in itself an Emersonian Castle of Defiance realized 
 in a periodical, and quite disregarding every sort 
 of public, even its own, without any consideration 
 of money, influence or fame. This character makes 
 it probably the unique magazine of the world a 
 popular journal scouting all popularity for the 
 sake of the Idea. That is why it is more alive today, 
 more read, cited, and republished than at its birth 
 or during its very precarious existence. And not 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL MAGAZINE. 261 
 
 its matter has preserved it; what it says is not of 
 the newest or of the best, and can be found better 
 elsewhere ; on the whole, its articles taken by them 
 selves are not of the time-defying sort, not even 
 Emerson s, and still they have defied time with an 
 ever-increasing triumph. Its spirit, its presiding 
 Genius, though in a very fragile yea slowly dying 
 body, has not only embalmed it, but has given to it 
 a new and vigorous resurrection. 
 
 Some such prophetic glimpse Emerson must have 
 caught of his consumptive bantling after its two 
 years life-trial. Hence he felt that he dared not 
 let this triumph of his Oversoul (for such he may 
 well have regarded it) perish through lack of sus 
 tenance, though so frail of external life. Possibly 
 it was just this contrast between body and spirit 
 which fascinated him as a picture of his own deep 
 est human experience. At any rate with a coercive 
 sympathy he picks up the dear little starved weak 
 ling and nurses it two years longer out of his own 
 brain and purse, so as to secure to it immortal life 
 even after its natural death. Hence it comes that 
 you and I today are thumbing this old Dial of 
 nearly four score years, not so much for any single 
 article (which we do in the case of other magazines) 
 as for the whole of it : we seek to know and to com 
 mune with the soul of the total work. 
 
 It is a noteworthy fact that the only success re 
 corded in the life of the Magazine was Theodore 
 Parker s lecture on a local church squabble, which 
 
262 RALPH WALDO EMERSONPART SECOND. 
 
 sold the entire issue, and created calls for more 
 copies. Very ephemeral and Bostonian was the cir 
 cumstance, and that number was probably the most 
 magazinish of the whole sixteen ; but who cares for 
 it now except to sharpen the contrast of its own in 
 significance? It is said that Emerson at first de 
 clined this article, feeling doubtless its vigorous 
 mortality but its very frail immortality. 
 
 Thus into the world is born a periodical which 
 proposes to take its standpoint in the thing to be 
 done and not in the public to be pleased. Emer 
 son hoists the motive : " It does not seem worth our 
 while to work with any other than sovereign aims 
 a purpose contradictory to the nature of the mag 
 azine, newspaper or periodical in general. The man 
 who dares write books may take such a high stand, 
 hardly the article-maker who scribbles for bread in 
 the Review. And even Emerson would come down 
 a little : "It should be a degree nearer to the hodi 
 ernal facts than my writings are" in book-form. 
 
 Tell us which of the hundreds of Magazines shoot 
 ing up around us at present, will survive such an or 
 deal of edacious Time ? If there be one, it is prob 
 ably the least known and the least food-winning 
 just now. The Periodical is constitutionally the 
 ephemeral record of the Ephemeral, and lives its 
 own character just by dying on time. But the Dial, 
 by defiantly running into the clutches of death, 
 wins immortal life. This was, however, Emerson s 
 eternizing Epoch; just during the Dial s gestation 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL MAGAZINE. 263 
 
 and birth (1839-184.1) he was producing his great 
 est book, the First Series of Essays, none of which 
 appeared in the Dial, though its early numbers 
 must have been forged in the same cotemporaneous 
 smithy. It would seem that he then regarded his 
 book as his immortal portion, not the magazine. 
 Still he could not help himself; every work which 
 he produced during this Creative Decennium bears 
 the same eternal stamp of his genius. 
 
 When the Dial started in 1840, the new doctrine 
 had been already proclaiming itself with no little 
 noise and self-assertion on the part of the new dis 
 ciples. Then Emerson s Divinity Class Address 
 had roiled all New England Clericalism, orthodox 
 and heterodox, against the master. The result was 
 that Transcendentalism was getting a little timid 
 about -itself, especially about its name. The down 
 right truth-telling headline for the new periodical 
 would have been The Transcenelentalist ; "but such 
 a label would now have damned the whole enter 
 prise from its birth. Alcott, otherwise the uncom 
 promising, has the credit of having suggested the 
 rather Orphic title, The Dial/which has been vari 
 ously repeated. 
 
 The cessation, of the Periodical (1844) marks also 
 a change in Emerson, especially in his attitude to 
 ward his own movement. Already we have noted 
 how disgusted he has become with many of his dis 
 ciples and their excesses or what he deemed such. 
 The magician is in a state of pronounced reaction 
 
264 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 against the flood which he has let in, but cannot 
 now turn off. And he thinks of flight, quitting the 
 scene of his own disillusion. Transcendentalism 
 had become comic to the public, and even to itself ; 
 we learn that some of its most fervent disciples took 
 pastime in jollying one another about their own fol 
 lies, and in burlesquing the burlesque of the thing. 
 Yea, Emerson himself failed not to let gush his 
 numerous sap, which would show a satirical flavor, 
 such as we detect in his Address on New England 
 Reformers, which belongs to this time (1844). Evi 
 dently the Creative Decennium is decidedly ebbing 
 after its mighty overflow. 
 
 Thus the Transcendental Magazine concludes its 
 annual life, and unexpectedly becomes perennial, 
 even after sinking under the deluge of Yankee 
 fault-finding, an unparalleled gift in that part of 
 our diversely endowed country. Significant is the 
 criticism of Carlyle :-"for me it is too ethereal, spec 
 ulative, theoretic (Letter to Emerson, 1840) ; still 
 another: "the Dial, too, it is all spirit-like, aeri 
 form, aurora boreal is-like." "Which tells somewhat 
 of Emerson, but more of Carlyle the writer, who 
 now shows himself very different from the Sartor 
 of some "ten years before at Craigenputtock. He 
 also has turned a new Epoch in London. 
 
 Carlyle vociferates : Come down from your cas 
 tellated defiant heights, descend into the world, into 
 life, and make it over, Emerson. Just that in 
 deed is the next scene in the Transcendental drama. 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL COMMUNITY. 265 
 IV. 
 
 THE TRANSCENDENTAL COMMUNITY 
 
 Somewhere in that all-prolific time around and 
 between the two dates 1840-1841, rises to view an 
 other scheme, or even series of schemes, which in 
 general we name the Transcendental Community 
 the attempt to reconstruct the entire social fabric 
 of man in accord with the new Idea. For this plan 
 was, in its present shape, a genuine offshoot of the 
 central movement, which it proposed to realize in 
 a living and lasting communal organism the high 
 est form which the work could take. 
 
 Nor should we fail to note that this upburst is 
 contemporaneous with so many other original en 
 terprises of the time ; it runs almost even with the 
 appearance of the Academy, of the Magazine, of the 
 Essays, of the Four Addresses. A colossal erup 
 tion of the Transcendental volcano burst forth with 
 a furious energy of world-making we may call this 
 the most creative year of Emerson s most creative 
 Epoch. Still Emerson himself shrank in action 
 from this last outcome of Emersonianism. Practi 
 cally he refused to take the step, though theoret 
 ically he clung to the Idea and applauded the doers, 
 even while he refuses to do. 
 
 The work, then, of Transcendental Propagation 
 shows both its causative power and its resulting ef 
 fect at the highest in its grandiose scheme of re 
 forming the entire Institutional World. Family, 
 Society, State, Church, School, were all to be over- 
 
266 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 hauled and transformed in accord with the new doc 
 trine. Such was the last outcome of the complete 
 break with tradition. 
 
 This movement was thus a part of a great fer 
 ment of the time which was making a radical social 
 protest against the old transmitted order. America 
 long before the rise of Transcendentalism had been 
 the free field for communistic experiments on ac 
 count of the abundance of land, for the Community 
 goes back primarily to the soil. Mr. Nordhoff some 
 years ago counted more than a hundred such com 
 munities in America, having mainly a religious ori 
 gin, but cutting loose from Church, State, and Fam 
 ily, in general a revolt from the regular social es 
 tablishment. Indeed we have a communistic ex 
 periment in Plato s Republic, and in the earliest 
 Christian community of the New Testament. 
 
 Thus the Transcendental Brook Farm has a very 
 ancient pedigree with many cognate branches 
 shooting down the ages. .Still it had its distinctive 
 character even as a community. For the commu 
 nistic scheme is an autocracy, however mild this may 
 be. Mr. Nordhoff, making a wide generalization 
 from many instances emphatically declares that 
 "the fundamental principle of communal life is the 
 subordination of the individual will to the general 
 interest Or the general will, which is vested in the 
 arbitrary power of one head. Hence communal 
 government takes the shape of unquestioning obe 
 dience of the members toward the elders or chiefs 
 of their societv." So it comes that this communal 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL COMMUNITY. 267 
 
 consciousness was an American as sertion of or re 
 version to the absolutism of Europe, perchance of 
 the Orient. A little theocratic oligarchy or mon 
 archy was witnessed sprouting up sporadically over 
 our Occidental world of freedom in many rural 
 spots, and living its atomic isolated life. 
 
 Now the Yankee Transcendental Community, 
 Brook Farm, proposed to run directly counter to 
 this transmitted communistic character. It was go 
 ing to be democratic, yea individualistic, quite to 
 the point of anarchy, for the first warning given to 
 its people was against, that insidious danger, organ 
 ization, "which begins by being an instrument and 
 ends by being a master" and a master the Brook 
 Farmers would not tolerate, even such an abstract 
 bloodless boss as organization. "Nor shall any au 
 thority be assumed over individual freedom of opin 
 ion by the Association, nor by one member over an 
 other. Surely a new Community on our planet. 
 
 But herewith mark the counter stroke. This band 
 calls itself an Association, hinting a form of asso 
 ciated man, namely an Institution, from which was 
 the grand reaction. Then we read quite an elab 
 orate Constitution with a prescribed form of Gov 
 ernment, which we have to call organized authority 
 over some dozens of people associated. Can this 
 be our free society? Moreover there is "a general 
 Directory, which shall be chosen annually by a vote 
 of majority of the members of the Association. 
 Verily we are falling back into the thing from 
 which we thought to escape : organized government. 
 
268 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 Thus the very" scheme was contradictory, self -an 
 nulling, a colossal masterpiece of unconscious 
 humor, a piece of irony in action. It went its round : 
 after the first four years it was declared a success ; 
 after a second four years it acknowledged itself a 
 failure and wound up. Never numerous, it aver 
 aged about seventy with only four married pairs. 
 But it won a great name which has endured to the 
 present. Perhaps the best remembered thing 
 about it is the number of people it housed who after 
 wards became distinguished. One masterpiece of 
 literature it called forth: Hawthorne s Blithdale 
 Romance. 
 
 The attitude of Emerson toward the Brook Farm 
 was on the whole Emersonian. Out of his Concord 
 Castle, safe from the economic fiend, he looked down 
 and applauded, but did not quit his. vantage-coign. 
 So he writes in a letter when the uncertain craft or 
 raft put put to sea : "What a brave thing Mr. Rip- 
 ley has done!" the starter and chief helmsman of 
 the. scheme. "He stands now at the head of the 
 Church Militant," and is calling loudly for help 
 from Mr. Emerson, the Transcendental High Priest, 
 who refuses very appreciatively, and thus writes 
 himself down.; "At the name of a society all my re 
 pulsions play, all my quills rise and: sharpen," .evi 
 dently getting ready to stick somebody, or to shoot. 
 One may hear Emerson s inaudible cachination at 
 the whole comedy for it is against his principle to 
 laugh outright: you ask me, who am anti-social, 
 to join a society, which while opposed to all society 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL COMMUNITY. 269 
 
 becomes a society ; you pray me to join an organi 
 zation which denies organization, and thus is self- 
 damned from the start. No, I cannot play the head- 
 clown in that circus. 
 
 At the same time Mr. Emerson has a better rea 
 son, though "I approve of every wild action of the 
 experimenters." He knows that if he quits his 
 lofty but solitary Belvedere he breaks up his voca 
 tion, which is that of the independent writer. In 
 the bustle of that hustling if not stormy community 
 the grand Hierophant would certainly be kept busy 
 with delivering oracles to the consulting multitudes. 
 Right he was to his Genius and to the future when 
 he says : "I have a work of my own which I know 
 I can do with some success. It would leave that un 
 done if I should undertake " this hits the nail 
 
 on the head. Personal honor and perchance hon 
 eyed flattery he would be served with at the head 
 of the table of Brook Farm, but it would be at the 
 cost of his deepest call. During the present time 
 (1840) he must have been spending his best hours 
 upon his Masterpiece (Essays, First Series, pub 
 lished in 1841) , and so he ejaculates in sweetest Em 
 ersonian accent : No time for that side-show now. 
 
 There is no doubt that Brook Farm called up in 
 Mr. Emerson a very real and serious conflict the 
 inner warfare of two strong, yet opposing convic 
 tions. For he was at this time completely estranged 
 from the entire institutional order of man, and 
 writes: "I have the habitual feeling that the whole 
 of our social structure State, School, Religion, 
 
270 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 Marriage, Trade, Science, has ben cut off from its 
 root in the soul," has become merely a prescribed 
 habitude and traditional belief. Hence he would 
 like to restore these fruits to their original source, 
 "to accept no church, school, state or society which 
 did not found itself in my own nature." Now Em 
 erson would like to shake off these inherited fetters 
 and show himself a free man, but "I allow the old 
 circumstance of mother, wife, children, and brother 
 to overpower my wish verily an old and entang 
 ling and enslaving circumstance, just that ancient 
 institution called the Family, in which he has got 
 ten himself badly embroiled and cannot pull out. 
 So he dares not be tempted to come down from his 
 impregnable Castle of Defiance, which insures his 
 domestic and his vocational future, despite the en 
 chantment, despite even his conviction. "So I stay 
 where I am, he rather resignedly sighs, even with 
 the degradation of owning bankstock, " which, how 
 ever, has the power of putting to flight the wide- 
 mouthed Dragon of Hunger, otherwise gaping and 
 snapping to gulp down even the Castle of Defiance. 
 He openly refuses to make the sacrifice though he 
 hears how "the Universal Genius apprises me of 
 this disgrace" of making the time s great refusal, 
 and "beckons me to the martyr s and redeemer s 
 office. But he does not propose to be nailed to that 
 cross. 
 
 Of another community called Fruitlands, found 
 ed a year or so later by Mr. Alcott and some Eng 
 lish friends in the town Harvard, not far from Con- 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTAL COMMUNITY. >2T\ 
 
 cord, he had to decline membership. It seems that 
 it was easier for him to refuse this second invita 
 tion, though it brought on a word-battle with his 
 God-inspired oracle, Mr. Alcott, whom he deemed 
 a little wild in practical, earthly matters. So Em 
 erson could not be induced to quit his Fortress of 
 Freedom, with its domesticities. Still his conscience 
 was ill at ease, he felt that he was sacrificing convic 
 tion to convenience. He proposed a kind of com 
 promise : he would take dreamful, impecunious Mr. 
 Alcott and family under his own roof, and we hear 
 his belief that Alcott " is a man who should be main 
 tained at public cost." But how about the two 
 wives, the real sovereigns in one household? Mrs. 
 Emerson consented though seemingly with reluc 
 tance; but Mrs. Alcott set her foot down squarely 
 against the scheme of two queens in one little realm 
 of authority. Still Emerson had to make some 
 peace-offering to his violated conviction. So he re 
 solved to begin at home, and to establish social re 
 form at his own dinner-table. Accordingly he in 
 vited his two serving-women to eat at the same 
 table with the family. "But Lydia the cook firmly 
 refused, saying that was not her place. Thus Em 
 erson tosses somewhat restlessly in his <Castle of De 
 fiance : he feels that he is living in deep contradic 
 tion with his doctrine; the Transcendental Com 
 munity has challenged him and he dares not accept 
 the challenge, but skulks to the rear of his owi} bat 
 tle-line. 
 
272 RALPH WALDO EMERSONPART SECOND. 
 
 Section C. Origination 
 
 In the case of Emerson perhaps more than in 
 that of any other great writer do we need to reach 
 back to the first beginnings of his literary compo 
 sition, so that we may trace the words of his spirit s 
 evolution. Fortunately sufficient material has been 
 printed to give some outline of the embryonic 
 shapes of his writing, though such material may be 
 expected to increase in the future. No author is so 
 atomic even in his finished work a trait which is 
 deeply consonant with his doctrine as well as with 
 his mental character. His stress is upon the indi 
 vidual even in the structure of sentence and para 
 graph. 
 
 Hence we shall here take note of a third line of 
 Emersonian activity, running parallel with the two 
 lines already set forth, namely, his Productivity and 
 his Propagation. This third line moves through 
 his whole Creative Decennium (1835-1845) and 
 shows its elemental substrate, its protoplasmic 
 forms at their first birth leaping from the author s 
 brain. Here then we are to assist at the actual par 
 turition of Transcendentalism, and. see its primal 
 or infantile shapes, at their earliest efflux from 
 their divine fountain. "We must recollect that it 
 was just this efflux upon which Emerson puts such 
 oft-repeated emphasis, as the very genesis and 
 birth-point of his Transcendental world-view. 
 Hence the importance of the present series of writ 
 ings for the comprehension of the man and his 
 work. 
 
ORIGINATION. L >7;; 
 
 But the name of this strand of his Creative De- 
 cennium that has given us some trouble, not yet 
 altogether relieved. If it would help, we might coin 
 a term and call our author in this phasis of his 
 creative power the protomorphic Emerson, produc 
 ing the first forms of his mentality and of his writ, 
 which forms are to evolve and coalesce into his fin 
 ished works. But as we are here dealing specially 
 with the original and originative source of the 
 man s greatness, we may name the present subject 
 Origination, dwelling upon the embryonic, the 
 atomic, the elementary in his life s achievement 
 verily the embryology of the writer Emerson. 
 
 Thus we pass from his practical outer activity of 
 Propagation to his inner self-communion and first 
 conception, such as we see in the most intimate form 
 throughout his Diary. It is a return to Productiv 
 ity, not now in its rounded and finished shape, as 
 we have already noted in the Essays and Ad 
 dresses, but in its primitive germination the bud 
 ding of the Emersonian tree of knowledge. It is cre 
 ation, not the formful, but the unformed, or rather 
 the pre-formed as yet; hence this stage is a very 
 suggestive portion of the present Creative Decen- 
 nium. In some respects it is the truly Emersonian 
 part of all Emerson, showing his genius in its most 
 immediate, directly inspired outbreaks. Often 
 crude, disconnected, capricious, the present stage 
 of primal Origination may well be deemed the sub 
 structure of the Emersonian temple. 
 
 What shall we include in this department of his 
 
274 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 work? Without setting up too definite limits we 
 shall take into it three leading kinds of his writ 
 ing. 
 
 First, we shall class here his Journals or Diary, 
 printed a few years ago in ten good volumes. The 
 most rudimentary utterance of his brain-work, yet 
 often the freshest; we put it at the base of his 
 building. 
 
 Second, we arrange here the Letters of Emerson 
 which have their special value in his biography and 
 also in a literary estimate. Much of his corre 
 spondence still lies unprinted, possibly some fu 
 ture Emerson Society will take up its publication. 
 
 Third, we embrace in this section the poems of 
 Emerson, which taken separately, are lyrical jets 
 often of beauty and power, but taken together, are 
 fragments of one great poetic structure never com 
 pleted, perhaps never fully conceived, but certainly 
 aspired for and wrought at in this creative part of 
 his life. There will doubtless be some question about 
 such a co-ordination of Emerson s verse ; but it also 
 has its spontaneous embryonic phase, like the prose 
 Journals; then, too, it reaches its height of com 
 pleteness in certain lyrics. Still as a whole it is 
 diarial, a succession of separate moods and thoughts 
 running through the days of his life unconcen- 
 trated anywhere into one great organic work. 
 
 Such are the three main groups, as we conceive, 
 of Emeijson s germinal, atomic writ, as -distinct 
 from his more finished compositions. This part of 
 his work has its peculiar interest and importance 
 
ORIGINATION. 075 
 
 in his psychical biography; he was the man of im 
 mediate intuition and inspiration, not so much of 
 mediate reflection and organization. He disliked 
 all system, he had indeed no deep sense of its sig 
 nificance in the mind or in the world. The mo 
 ment s suggestion was the divine thing, or most 
 likely to be such ; hence its word was what was to be 
 written down on the spot as the God s own oracle. 
 
 So it comes that these three kinds of Emersonian 
 authorship the Journal, the Letter, and the Poem 
 have the common characteristic : they are diarial, 
 being a record of the successive upbursts of Emer 
 son s inner life-experience. As such they are ulti 
 mately to be read and construed, becoming thereby 
 an essential constituent of his biography. Indeed 
 all of his works are directly or indirectly biograph 
 ical; they form a kind of universal Diary of the 
 Great Man, of which his Journals are the most im 
 mediate and spontaneous overflow. 
 
 It seems to us that Emerson had a presentiment 
 of the significance of this somewhat submerged or 
 subliminal part of his labors. Very little of it came 
 to light during his life-time ; still he carefully pre 
 served the manuscripts of it in the Emerson Arch 
 ives, of which there must be still a good deal remain 
 ing unpublished. Not till this be accessible, can a 
 full biography of Emerson be written. Thought- 
 worthy at this point is it to see Emerson (like Goe 
 the) as the sedulous archivist of Emersoniana, so 
 that he still, long after death, keeps publishing 
 books. 
 
276 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 I. 
 
 EMERSON S JOURNALS 
 
 All Transcendentalists should be diligent diar 
 ists, if they would keep the faith; for their profes 
 sion is that of God s reporters, ever alert to pick 
 up an item from the supernal downflow into the hu 
 man soul. Thoreau kept a daily record which has 
 been published, and reveals the man more inti 
 mately than his regular books. Alcott is reported 
 to have left the hugest Diary of all, overflowing into 
 many volumes, from which only a few extracts have 
 yet been printed. Possibly its turn will come. To 
 be sure, many other people besides Transcendental- 
 its have kept Journals. Nearly every person who 
 likes to write and has needed self-expression has 
 had his diarial period in life, especially in youth, 
 when the moment s grand effluence into writ 
 through the pen-point seems quite intoxicating, if 
 not miraculous. In this regard Transcendentalism 
 was a kind of life-long adolescence, which kept 
 gushing from above down into a human Diary. 
 And that has turned out one of the best and most 
 lasting qualities, for which we at least are thank 
 ful, since it adds a fresh chapter to the value and 
 meaning of psychical Biography. 
 
 "When it was resolved to celebrate the centennial 
 of Emerson by a new edition of his works, there 
 rose a natural inquiry about his unpublished Jour 
 nals, some notion of which had already reached 
 
EMERSON 8 JOURNALS. 277 
 
 the public. The importance of Emerson had con 
 tinued to loom larger in universal literature since 
 his death, and the outlook indicated a still greater 
 rise in his significance. Accordingly between the 
 years 1909 and 1914, ten volumes of the book called 
 Emerson s Journals were made accessible to the 
 students of Emerson, who had been longing for 
 some such fresh apparition of the master in print. 
 These Journals extend through fifty-two years of 
 the author s life, from 1820 to 1872, from adoles 
 cence till old-age, and thus form a kind of proto 
 plasmic substrate to his whole career. It should be 
 added these Journals have been edited and expur 
 gated under certain scruples; they are "not the 
 whole but selections as the editor tells us, even if 
 "the greater part of the contents" has been in 
 cluded in the present edition. Still too much sen 
 sitiveness about Boston and its old patriciate ; after 
 another fifty or hundred years, the world may hope 
 for an uncensored Emerson, who, purest of classics, 
 still needs some purification for Yankeeland. 
 
 On inspection of the ten volumes we find that the 
 record of the Creative Decennium, which we are at 
 present specially considering, may be deemed the 
 culmination both as to quantity and quality. For 
 instance, the years 1834-5 to 1844-5 have practically 
 four volumes out of the ten, though it embraces not 
 one-fifth of the time of the whole Diary. This is 
 only another example of the enormous productive 
 energy of Emerson during this his distinctively 
 
278 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 genetic Epoch. He seems the mighty demiurge of 
 creation on all sides. Whatever he takes hold of, 
 there is something gigantic in the outcome, And 
 this is true not only as regards amount, the excel 
 lence is of a higher order. Unless I deceive myself, 
 this decennial Diary is the best of the whole most 
 interesting, most original, most deeply biographic 
 and poetic. It corresponds with his present crea 
 tivity, and reflects in hundreds of little facets his 
 dawning world-view, which have all the freshness 
 of first discovery. 
 
 Here, then, lies the embryology of Emerson s 
 Genius more distinctively, more primordially man 
 ifested than anywhere else, than even in the rest of 
 his Journals, which have records before this Epoch 
 as well as after it. That is, we behold here his dia- 
 rial mountain-top, to which there is quite a long 
 ascent (say the first three volumes) and then quite 
 a long descent toward the close (say the last three 
 volumes). Still the entire work is essentially the 
 extemporaneous Emerson welling up (or perchance 
 down) into his first gushes of inspiration, the prime 
 intimate revelation of the sovereign efflux to him 
 self. From this point of view the Journals make the 
 most transcendental part of Transcendentalism, giv 
 ing not only the doctrine or content, but the very 
 form and personal experience of it at first hand in 
 the soul. Among the Emersonian apostolate one 
 may look for a special study and perchance cult of 
 this last book of the Emersonian Bible indeed it .is 
 
EMERSON S JOURNALS. 
 
 279 
 
 in its way a Book of Revelations. And whatever 
 one may think of its divine acclaim, it is a very 
 human, soul-illustrating document, deeply sugges 
 tive in its psychical import. 
 
 But to return to the mentioned decennial portion 
 of the Diary. We are to note that it is not all alike, 
 it too has its differences of mood, of doctrine, yea of 
 evolution. "We may observe separate stages in these 
 ten years of diarial records. During this Epoch 
 Emerson had his most intense, most varied, his 
 truly Titanic experiences. In the loss of his boy 
 Waldo the discipline of death struck him a more 
 poignant blow than he had ever before experienced, 
 more than even in the passing of his dearly loved 
 wife and brothers. That child he deemed the heir 
 of his Genius and greater the very proof and pres 
 ence of the divine descent into human being. Thus 
 young Waldo may be called his father s transcen 
 dental son and gave to the latter a living evidence 
 of the truth of his doctrine before his eyes. More 
 over in this crushing stroke Emerson again was 
 made to feel the transitoriness of personality, which 
 deep experience wrote itself into his conviction, 
 whence it passed to his outer writing. Another pos 
 sible influence of this evanishment may be noted: 
 Emerson began to feel more acutely the decline of 
 Transcendentalism itself with the passing of his 
 promising child in January, 1842. We recollect 
 that in this same month he gave a lecture called the 
 Transcendentalist which shows more than one in 
 dication of the eclipse of his doctrine. We may 
 
280 RALPH WALDO EMERSONPART SECOND. 
 
 read also in the Diary of this time the tokens of a 
 great hope shattered, which throws its shadow upon 
 his speech and belief, even upon futurity. 
 
 Accordingly in these four diarial volumes of the 
 present decennial Epoch we may trace a movement 
 like that which we have already noted in his other 
 writings of this time : a rise, a culmination, and a 
 decline, especially as regards his doctrine of Tran 
 scendentalism. He shows himself critical of it, es 
 pecially of its promulgators whose extravagances 
 he satirizes with vigor and sometimes with venom. 
 These private records also indicate his first stage of 
 apostolic zeal and combat for the new idea ; then lie 
 feels its crisis in himself, with many a little note of 
 disillusion about reform and the reformers. The 
 outcome of this Epoch was a profound contradiction 
 and discord in his soul, to which he often gives 
 brief sighs of utterance in his Journals. Sometimes 
 he called it the inherent dualism between the Theo 
 retical and the Practical ; he could not harmonize 
 his inner conviction with his outer conduct. He de 
 clares : "I approve every wild action of the experi 
 menters ; still he refused to follow them and even 
 assailed them. Note this: "I say what they say 
 concerning celibacy, or money, or community of 
 goods;" he did not believe in the family, or eco 
 nomic society, or property ; but he never proposed 
 to carry out his belief in the deed. "What excuse ? 
 "My only apology for not doing their work is pre 
 occupation of mind. That is : I have other fish 
 to fry besides obeying my principles. Emerson also 
 
EMERSON S JOURNALS. 281 
 
 names this dualism as the conflict between Belief 
 and Unbelief: "the believer is poet, saint, idealist," 
 the foe of tradition ; "the unbeliever supports the 
 church, education," and institutions generally, is 
 the friend of tradition. But which of the two is 
 Emerson? Hear him define himself: "I am nom 
 inally a believer ; yet I hold on to property, and eat 
 my bread with unbelief. To such deepest discord 
 has Emerson come seemingly through the inner evo 
 lution of his Transcendentalism. (See the confes 
 sion in Journals, Vol. V, p. 482. The same note of 
 unhappy inner struggle is heard in many another 
 jotting of this time, 1843-5.) 
 
 What is he to do with himself? Emerson was 
 famous for his outer calm on his quiet impassive 
 Sphinx-like face, as well as for his reposeful speech 
 even in describing his own unrepose. His words 
 remain in equilibrium, though he has on hand quite 
 the mightiest seesaw of the human soul : that of con 
 science, which was in his case the direct command 
 of deity, against the whole institutional world. 
 Which is he to obey ? Here is one of his statements : 
 "My Genius (individual) loudly calls me to stay 
 where I am, even with the degradation of owning 
 bank stock and seeing poor men suffer" bids me 
 dwell in and uphold the established order. On the 
 other hand, "the Universal Genius (here Con 
 science) apprises me of this disgrace and beckons 
 me to the martyr s and redeemer s office. " Thus 
 he lets conscience slide, here sr me what disguised 
 under the name of Uni versa 1 Genius. But what is 
 
282 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 to become of all those homilies on the worth and 
 supremacy of the Moral Sentiment, in which Emer 
 son particularly revels? And where is now our 
 New England sovereign, the boasted Puritanic con 
 science? Seemingly eclipsed, if not dethroned for 
 the nonce ; still Emerson has some hope of his lost 
 selfhood, and whispers for his own edification: 
 "Obedience to a man s Genius is the particular of 
 Faith, which is his case just in the present crisis ; 
 but "by and by I shall come to the universal of 
 Faith" (Journals V. p. 483) . Did he ever? 
 
 Thus Emerson does not despair of some future 
 reconciliation of the present furious scission in his 
 soul between his conviction and his conduct, or be 
 tween his Theory and his Practice. And let it here 
 be said that this presentiment or prophecy concern 
 ing himself will turn out tru-e, but not till after 
 many years when he has passed through the fiery 
 furnace of the Civil War. Two decades must 
 elapse with many intense, savage experiences ere he 
 becomes reconciled with that world of institutions, 
 especially with the highest, the State, which now 
 strike such a blasting dissonance both into his 
 thought and into his life. Of this later change we 
 shall take note in its place. 
 
 Still this present dualism belongs not only to Em 
 erson, but to his time and country. The contradic 
 tion between the established order and the individ 
 ual s sense of right was getting acute in a number 
 of directions, and was really driving forward to a 
 violent rupture. Especially over the political field 
 
EMERSON S JOURNALS. 283 
 
 Concience and the Constitution were having a death 
 grapple in many earnest spirits; the expression of 
 this conflict as the battle between the two Laws, be 
 tween the Higher Law and the Enacted Law, or be 
 tween God s command and Man s ordinance was 
 heard everywhere as the utterance of the deepest 
 scission in the folk-soul of the time. Beneath this 
 same spiritual collision Emerson was writhing at 
 the present conjuncture, whereof he gives many a 
 glimpse in his Journals. 
 
 Such is perhaps the profoundest note in these 
 records, but they tell of many other things of vary 
 ing import. Still it is of interest to watch these 
 manifold stimulations or titillations of his under- 
 self, as they bubble up from within through moods, 
 caprices, intimations or from without through 
 events, experiences, talks with a very promiscuous 
 lot of people. He is at best a kind of reporter to 
 the Oversoul, gathering items for his spirit s news 
 paper. Thus he is here primarily a journalist, and 
 his work is rightly named a Journal. Verily such 
 momentary jets of his individuality are not all of 
 them momentous, hence he will in time make a selec 
 tion. The richest spears of grain he takes and binds 
 into a sheaf or paragraph, and then stacks these 
 sheaves together into the Essay. Still in this last 
 shape we can pick out the original wheat-stalk 
 which first gushed up singly from the mother-soil. 
 
 Moreover this Diary shows Emerson s inborn de 
 light in writing, his absolute need of self-expression. 
 He is his own best listener: he has received his re- 
 
284 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 ward, though not a soul ever hears what he has 
 said. Keally this is the primary test of the writer, 
 whereby he finds out whether he is truly so called. 
 Emerson declares that he would get sick unless he 
 could create, of course through his pen-point. Then 
 also he would be disobedient to the God who was the 
 direct source of his creativity, according to his 
 doctrine. Such was surely the Transcendental in 
 junction. 
 
 In these Journals we may trace his life-long aspi 
 ration to finish what to him was the unfinishable. 
 "I endeavor to announce the laws of the First Phi 
 losophy" (III, 489). Such is one of many little 
 pulsations of hope which throb his great ambition. 
 But he never could quite realize that work of his 
 Life-Essay, though he kept chipping at it to the 
 last. And the many turns of his poetic longing we 
 may follow with touches of interest and perchance 
 of sympathy. One of the deepest and strongest 
 heart-beats of Emerson, heard all through this 
 Diary was for unity, organization. Looking back 
 ward long after the present Decennium he cries out 
 almost in anguish: "I am tired of scraps. I do 
 not wish to be a literary or intellectual chiffonier. 
 Mark this violent wish in the same passage : "Away 
 with this Jew s rag-bag of ends and tufts of bro 
 cade, velvet and cloth-of-gold ; let me spin a cord to 
 bind wholesome and belonging facts" (VIII, 463, 
 in May, 1854) . We may well hear in this passion 
 ate eruption a note of retrospect and self-dissatis- 
 
EMERSON S JOURNALS. 285 
 
 faction. And he ends his review with a prayer often 
 uttered before : 
 
 The Asmodean feat be mine 
 
 To spin my sand-heaps into twine. 
 
 But the most pervasive drive of the Emersonian 
 spirit in this record of self-communion is the re 
 ligious. The problem is : How shall I win my true 
 relation to God ? That is the positive aim ; but with 
 it is connected a bitter and long-continued negative 
 critique, which has to shear away the many intri 
 cate theological entanglements. Daringly he sets 
 about the task; not through Socrates, St. Paul, 
 Plato, or even Christ, not through any departed 
 wisdom and virtue, are you to find deity, but 
 through yourself immediately; you are the one to 
 deal directly with "the Inconceivable Intellect, 
 which kindles all and overwhelms all." Thus Em 
 erson will in person "walk with God" in his prom 
 enades through his wood-lot and around Walden. 
 Here is Emerson s germinal doctrine, reaching 
 quite back to adolescent experience of religion the 
 early hint of his "World-view and of his God-view, 
 which will remain imbedded in his very being, to 
 fructify his life and writ, as well as to pass through 
 various grades of evolution. 
 
 Nor must we quit this topic without noting the 
 many glimpses of the underlying Psychology which 
 is to transcend and yet reconstruct both the old 
 Metaphysics and the old Theology in a new uni- 
 
286 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 versal ...science, or science of all sciences. This is 
 properly Emerson s much-bedreamt - Philosophic 
 Prima, which he hopes still to realize. 
 
 II. 
 
 EMERSON S CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 Another important strand of Emersonian Litera 
 ture is his epistolary product. A good deal of this 
 has not yet been published, but the future will 
 probably see more of it brought to light. As the 
 size of the man grows with time and the significance 
 of his environment increases, there will be a call for 
 every shred of his writing. Herein again his case 
 suggests that of Goethe, whose extant letters have 
 been estimated at 10,000, a stream of which has been 
 pouring into print ever since the poet s death (see 
 especially the Goethe Jahrbuch, which easily sug 
 gests the idea of an Emerson Yearbook or Annual, 
 whose chief object would be to collect all these stray 
 items of the man and his time). 
 
 Emerson s letters are necessarily more reserved 
 and often more studied than his Diary; still they 
 are to be placed among his more elemental and ex 
 temporaneous writings. They belong mainly to the 
 occasion, and follow the moment, hence they reveal 
 more or less distinctly the author s stages of evolu 
 tion, as well as give glimpses of the age. So it comes 
 that his Correspondence takes a diarial character, 
 and must be classed alongside of his Journals by 
 virtue of both style and contents. I imagine that 
 
EMERSON S CORRESPONDENCE. ogy 
 
 Emerson enjoyed his Letter-writing, quite as much 
 as his Diary; indeed they are closely akin, and 
 easily pass into each other. We find him sometimes 
 transferring a letter bodily to his Journal ; but the 
 reverse probably took place oftener. A letter natur 
 ally permits or even calls for a more purposed and 
 organized form than the moment s jotting. Still 
 it lies near the primary and original sources of Em 
 erson s writ ; so we place it here under the head of 
 Origination. 
 
 One work of the author s epistolary activity 
 stands out in supreme value and distinction : this is 
 his Correspondence with Carlyle, which alone we 
 shall consider in the present connection. It has 
 been long before the public and was published 
 shortly after Emerson s death. It has also the 
 merit of being a kind of parallel biography or rather 
 autobiography of two men of genius in their reac 
 tion on one another and on the time. Thus it is a 
 work unique of its kind in literature. It is much 
 more vital, more original and far-reaching than 
 any of old Plutarch s rather external parallels. It 
 is self-unfolding and self -written, yea self -parallel 
 ing, and evolves through the active life of each of 
 the mutually attracting and repelling personalities. 
 The Correspondence between Goethe and Schiller 
 has been likened to it, and undoubtedly has resem 
 blances; but the spirit as well as the scope of the 
 two works are very different, and highly character 
 istic of their respective authors and nations. 
 
 The first letter comes from Emerson and is dated 
 
288 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 May, 1834 ; the last one is Carlyle s with the date of 
 April, 1872. Thus the Correspondence lasted some 
 thirty-eight years, from ripe manhood in both cases 
 till old-age. Which of the two is the better man ? 
 In worth of character Emerson is certainly the su 
 perior; in literary power Carlyle takes the prize; 
 in permanent influence, Emerson ; in immediate ef 
 fect, Carlyle. 
 
 It will be observed that the Correspondence be 
 gins just about with that most important Epoch of 
 Emerson s life which we have called his Creative 
 Decennium (1834-5). He has taken lodgment at 
 Concord in his Castle of Defiance to which he is 
 soon to bring a wife. This date tells also the time 
 of a very significant change in Carlyle s career: he 
 has left his isolated hermitage of Scotch Craigen- 
 puttock, and has betaken himself to the most popu 
 lous center on the globe: the city of London, of 
 which huge wen (as he calls it) he is henceforth to 
 be a sprightly corpuscle. Thus in the same year 
 about, and at the turn of a pivotal Epoch in both 
 their lives, they take a local sweep (which is also 
 spiritual) in opposite directions. It may be said 
 that Carlyle quits his Castle of Defiance in the coun 
 try, where he lived and wrote some six or seven 
 years, and directs his flight to the city, for bread 
 and work," he says. But Emerson moves the other 
 way, from city to country, where he will remain and 
 do his task in freedom, for by an almost miraculous 
 intervention he finds his bread already given him in 
 advance for his whole life. 
 
EMERSON S CORRESPONDENCE. *>89 
 
 First is to be observed that altogether the larg 
 est, and to our mind the best and most zestful por 
 tion of this Correspondence is found in the present 
 Creative Decennium. Of the two equal volumes con 
 taining these letters, the first embraces about eight 
 years of this Epoch, the second stretches through 
 thirty years. A significant difference in quantity is 
 this, and there is also a difference in quality though 
 by no means proportionate. A similar distinction 
 we noticed in Emerson s Journals, whose bloom of 
 excellence and productivity takes place in the pres 
 ent Decennium. The two men were now at the 
 height of their powers together, though Carlyle was 
 toward seven years older than Emerson, who ma 
 tured at an earlier age than his friend, and declined 
 sooner. Thus we may watch, in this Correspon 
 dence the two geniuses at their best in the best time 
 of life. Significant is it that both of them write 
 and publish their respective masterpieces not very 
 far apart during this prolific Decennium ; Carlyle s 
 French Revohition was completed in 1837, while 
 Emerson s Essays, First Series appeared in 1841, 
 though mostly written several years before, since it 
 was edited in the main from his Journals and his 
 Lectures. 
 
 And now upon what fact, statement, passage in 
 these Letters can we put our finger, and say : That 
 is the most important item in this book, yea the 
 very turning-point and determining event of these 
 two mighty lives? We shall cite it, for it has re 
 mained vividly stamped upon our memory, since 
 
290 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 we read it more than a generation ago when this 
 Correspondence first appeared in print (1883, we 
 believe). Emerson is writing to Carlyle, who is in 
 a furious struggle with poverty, from whose last 
 pinch he has already been rescued by his Ameri 
 can friend. The latter offers to share hearth and 
 heart with him under the following inducement? : 
 "My house is a very good one for comfort ar.d 
 abounding in room. Besides my house, I have 22,- 
 000 dollars whose income in ordinary years is six 
 per cent." This was the divinely sent inheritance 
 through his first wife no wonder that Emerson 
 believed in that incalculable efflux from above 
 is not here the actual visible proof of it, truly life- 
 encompassing 1 To this mass of Heaven-dropped 
 manna is to be added the product of personal activ 
 ity, "the income of my winter lectures, which was 
 last winter 800 dollars." All this in a little coun 
 try-town before the Civil War; well may he ex 
 claim: ""With this income here at home I am a 
 rich man. I stay at home and go abroad at my own 
 instance." Thus Emerson celebrates his freedom 
 with no little triumph, if we catch his mood; eco 
 nomic freedom it is, the primal basis of all other 
 freedoms, especially of literary freedom. Surely 
 here is abundance for the two families not large ; 
 so Emerson shouts across the ocean to his hunger- 
 dreading comrade : Come over hither, eat your fill 
 and ban that infernal spectre of your stomach; 
 then mount with me to the topmost of my Castle of 
 Defiance, and without any fear of the three first 
 
EMER8O \ $ CO If K KSIPO ND KNCE. 291 
 
 Pates food, raiment, shelter we can .do battle 
 with the hosts of darkness. 
 
 Carlyle did not see his way to accept the gener 
 ous invitation which was doubtless in his case a 
 wise conclusion. Still Emerson continued his finan 
 cial favors, looked after the publication of Car 
 lyle s books in America, and gave himself untold 
 trouble in soliciting readers. Carlyle s first pay 
 and first appreciation must be credited to Emerson 
 backed by his Transcendental disciples, who found 
 in Carlyle much aliment for their faith and per 
 chance the first source of their movement, especially 
 in Sartor. One gets decidedly the impression from 
 these letters that Carlyle would have been lost to 
 Literature if it had not been for the timely and per 
 sistent aid of Emerson. No other rescue seems any 
 where in sight, And Emerson could not have lent 
 this help, unless he had been economically indepen 
 dent, and al)le to fling his challenge to any fortune. 
 This bonanza of 22,000 dollars dropping into Em 
 erson s lap may well be deemed the most profitable 
 investment of money ever made in America ; no 
 mine, bank, railroad ever produced any such return, 
 for its six per cent rendered possible the careers of 
 both Emerson and Carlyle, as far as foresight in 
 vouchsafed to us in such matters. 
 
 In the same letter (Emerson to Carlyle, number 
 XXIII) is a passage which we shall insert here, 
 since Emerson indicates by it rather more distinctly 
 than anywhere else in our recollection, the spiritual 
 relation of his wife to himself and to his doctrinal 
 
292 KALPH WALDO EMERSONPART SECOND. 
 
 tendencies: "My wife Lidian is an incarnation of 
 Christianity I call her Asia and keeps my phi 
 losophy from Antinomianism. From this and 
 some other hints we infer that the wife was the in 
 stitutional anchor in that theoretically unstable 
 household of which the husband was inclined to fly 
 off into many social vagaries. "We fancy that Lidian 
 Emerson set her foot down with some energy 
 against Brook Farm and many other wild schemes 
 of the time floating rainbow-like everywhere and 
 very seductive to "Waldo Emerson. I have often 
 tried to fancy why he called his wife Asia I do 
 not know that he ever explained the term himself 
 she was perchance to his mind the embodiment of 
 that oldest, most conservative and traditional part 
 of our globe, and also a primordial Puritan from 
 the original fountain at Plymouth rock itself, 
 whence he took her in marriage. On the whole she 
 stands somewhat in the background of Emerson s 
 life, yet with decision ; she plays no such outspoken 
 part in her husband s history as does Jane Carlyle 
 in that of her darling Scotch tyrant : nor has she so 
 much cause to make herself famous. Note too the 
 light- throwing expression : she keeps my philos 
 ophy from Antinomianism, in general from revolt 
 against law and institution. Practically she did 
 this doubtless, but surely not in theory, as many of 
 Emerson s Essays and Addresses prove. Perhaps 
 too his pet name of her, Queenie, hints some sort of 
 sovereignty. Thus she appears the ever-steadying 
 
EMERSON S CORRESPONDENCE. 293 
 
 though noiseless balance-wheel in that somewhat 
 centrifugal household. 
 
 The prime fact in these early Letters is the per 
 vasive, even if somewhat muffled cry of Carlyle: 
 Help me, Cassius, or I sink. Then follows the gen 
 erous and continued succor given by Emerson to 
 his submerging friend. The turning-point toward 
 final deliverance seems to be indicated in a letter of 
 Carlyle (1839) : "I am no longer poor, but have 
 a reasonable prospect of existing. Not for these 
 twelve years, never since I had a house to maintain, 
 have I had as much money in my possession as even 
 now." All of which is due to friend Emerson 
 verily the greatest of all gifts, that of economic 
 freedom, for the future. Carlyle confesses: "at 
 bottom this money was all yours, not a penny of it 
 belonged to me." But he has it, and with it the 
 choicest object money can buy that thunder-bolted 
 Castle of Defiance located in London on Cheyne 
 Bow. 
 
 From a purely literary point of view probably 
 the best part of this Correspondence is Carlyle s 
 portrait-painting of men whom he had seen 
 sketches memorable not for their justice, but for 
 their smiting off-hand vividness and vindictiveness. 
 Suggestive too is the criticism made by each on the 
 other s books. Says Carlyle of Emerson s Essays: 
 the sentences are very brief, and did not always 
 entirely cohere for me ... the paragraph not 
 as a beaten ingot, but as a beautiful square bag of 
 duck-shot held together by rs,nvas." So he gently 
 
294: RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 touches up the Emersonian lack of organization. 
 Then this: "I object that you are still a solilo 
 quizer on the eternal mountain-tops." 
 
 More emphatic in its thrust is this urgent appeal : 
 u< You tell us with piercing emphasis that man s soul 
 is great; show us a great soul of a man, in some 
 work symbolic of such . . . I long to see some 
 concrete Thing well Emersonized, depictured by 
 Emerson, filled with the life of Emerson." Carlyle 
 here and in other places .exhorts Emerson to quit 
 his abstractions and to take up realities to be a 
 Carlyle, for instance. But that cannot and ought 
 not to happen. Each has validity in his own field ; 
 let him express himself in his own way. Still one 
 may be permitted to think that there is a sphere 
 higher than either s, a synthesis over both yet in 
 cluding both. Each is a one-sided utterance of a 
 greater Whole which still awaits its adequate voice. 
 
 III. 
 
 EMERSON S POETRY 
 
 .The most questioned and questionable part of 
 Emerson s 1 total achievement : Is his verse really 
 poetry? Indeed is he a poet at all? Such inter 
 rogations were often propounded during the au 
 thor s life, and they -have not wholly ceased yet. 
 But it is now generally felt that any definition of 
 poetry which excludes Emerson, would cut the po 
 etic world in two and throw away a good half. 
 
 Then, having accepted these poems, how shall we 
 
EMERSON S POETRY, 295 
 
 classify them, or it may be, organize them in the 
 totality of Emerson Vj life-work, so that we may see 
 them in place as an integral part of his biography ? 
 It would seem that the deepest, most persistent long 
 ing of Emerson was to be poet. He had other life- 
 lasting aspirations, but probably the poetic aspira 
 tion was his strongest, though he painfully felt his 
 shortcomings. When he was thirty-six years old, 
 hence about the middle of his Creative Decennium, 
 after he had often tested his wings, he expresses in 
 a letter both his ambition and his disappointment. 
 "I cannot believe but one day I shall attain to that 
 splendid dialect, so ardent is my wish . . . But 
 up to this hour I have never had a true success in 
 such attempts." He planned a long organic poem 
 about this time, but it flew into fragments, which 
 we may now read in the last edition of his Works. 
 The same old trouble : he could not organize his 
 atoms in a living Whole, though that is just what 
 he would. Still he kept thinking and saying: "I 
 am more of a poet than anything else ; and one of 
 his best appreciators has declared that he never 
 wrote anything else but poetry, even in his co-called 
 prose. Doubtless Emerson conceived his primal act 
 of writing, the efflux from above, as the common 
 inspiration of all his good work, metered or un- 
 metered. Still on the whole there was a difference, 
 internally as well as externally, between his prose 
 and his verse. 
 
 Back in his boyhood we learn that Emerson read, 
 memorized, recited, and wrote poetry. Through 
 
296 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 his Journal snatches of verse keep rising to the sur 
 face and are recorded ; they begin early in the first 
 volume when he was seventeen years old, and push 
 up still in the last. Thus a stream of poetry flows 
 through Emerson s entire life welling forth spon 
 taneously from the primordial sources. Hence we 
 may classify it fundamentally as diarial, outbursts 
 of the moment strown along all his years. Accord 
 ingly we set it down under the head of Origination, 
 along with Emerson s Journals and Epistles all 
 of them showing the primary original forms of his 
 composition. 
 
 In fact, the impression of the total volume of Em 
 erson s verse, which has now been carefully collect 
 ed, collated, and annotated, persists that it is a frag 
 ment and made up of fragments. It seems a part 
 of a great totality never realized and ordered into 
 a self -consistent unity. Yet all through it may be 
 felt the aspiration for some such fulfilment of his 
 poetic hope. "We have noticed the same desire 
 throbbing up in his Diary and in his Essays, and 
 especially in the Essay on the Poet (Second Se 
 ries). Undoubtedly some of Emerson s lyrics are 
 complete as lyrics, which, however, are by their 
 very nature momentary pulsations of something 
 greater and deeper. Some such limitation Emerson 
 himself felt and often confessed. 
 
 StiH the advantage of just this atomic and in 
 complete character of his poetry, must not be for 
 gotten. It is far easier taken in these homeopathic 
 doses, often difficult to swallow as they are. Then 
 
EMERSON S POETRY. 297 
 
 SucE a form accorded with the spirit of the time, 
 which did not want and probably could not com 
 prehend great poetic entireties. Only a little spurt 
 of verse off in a corner would be tolerated by those 
 grand vehicles of literature, the newspaper and the 
 magazine. As the case stood, the appreciation of 
 Emerson s poetry was slow, and -has hardly yet 
 fully arrived. 
 
 As before stated, Emerson versified through his 
 entire life, pretty much in the same fashion and 
 after traditional patterns, though of course he has 
 his own peculiar note or timbre in singing the old 
 meters. His ear was not very keen for rhythm; 
 moreover his metrical range was quite limited, be 
 ing mainly slight variations on the doggerel or iam 
 bic tetrameter, probably the easiest and most pop 
 ular form in England, and in Teutonic poetry gen 
 erally. His dissonances both of meter and of 
 rhyme have been much censured, in my judgment 
 over-censured ; right discords have their place even 
 in most musical Beethoven. Such a high-strung, 
 perchance neuropathic ear for verse-tones, as that 
 of Swinburne, to take an extreme instance, is not 
 simply an affectation, rather it is a disease sense 
 quite dying away into sounding nonsense, intelli 
 gence vanishing into a jingling rigmarole of words. 
 The same tendency is often heard in today s lyrical 
 effusions. For such unhealthiness Emerson s verse 
 is a good tonic, with his stress upon the thought 
 and his neglect (often too great) of the measure. 
 
 But at present we are chiefly concerned, not with 
 
298 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 Emerson s total output of verse, but with that of 
 this Epoch, his Creative Decennium. There is no 
 doubt of his poetical activity at this time, though 
 it is not always easy to date his poems, as they 
 stand in his Works. His Editor seems often puz 
 zled. On the whole he appears somewhat secretive 
 and hesitating about this phase of his productivity, 
 though it lay nearest to his heart. One of his chief 
 interests in the Dial was that he might have a way 
 of trying his versicles, little by little on the public, 
 for we have already heard him utter his doubt, yet 
 his hope concerning this his dearest field of en 
 deavor. The result was, as he records, that he re 
 ceived encouragement, and he resolved with some 
 hesitancy, to publish an edition of his Poems. Al 
 ready in 1843 he states that he received two re 
 quests from publishers. But such was his doubt of 
 himself or his timidity that the first appearance of 
 the little volume was deferred till 1847. Still it 
 belongs in the main to the present Decennium 
 (1835-1845), and it continues to form the basis of 
 Emerson s poetical reputation. It is stamped with 
 the original creative power of this Epoch, and in it 
 can be often traced the Transcendental doctrine, 
 and still more Emerson s personal states of mind 
 and confessions. 
 
 Here, then, concludes that line of Emerson s ac 
 tivity which seeks to put together the more rudi 
 mentary forms of his genius his Journals, his Let 
 ters, and his Poems. Each of them runs through 
 his whole life, but t"Hey all culminate both as to 
 
RETROSPECT OF THE EPOCH. 299 
 
 quantity and quality in the present Decennium. 
 But now we have touched the point in Emerson s 
 advance where we are to recall that these three em 
 bryonic forms, as we may name them relatively, 
 constitute but one part or phase of this Creative 
 Epoch s total accomplishment. Accordingly it is 
 here in place to throw a short sweeping glance 
 backward at the ground passed over. 
 
 RETROSPECT OF THE EPOCH 
 
 Emerson has at present reached the central sum 
 mit of his career, to which he has been hitherto as 
 cending, and from which he is henceforth to de 
 scend. Never again will he have such another Cre 
 ative Epoch as that which he has just completed. 
 When we look back at it, we are lost in wonder at so 
 much and so great excellence in so brief a time. 
 
 "Without repeating the details, we may well recall 
 its three parallel lines of effort, each of which in 
 itself seems more than one very busy man s work: 
 Productivity, Propagation, Origination. It is truly 
 the Great Deed of Emerson taken by itself and re 
 garded singly as a human achievement. So it 
 should be contemplated by the discriminating 
 reader, being the author s greatest monument, 
 erected by himself at the heart of his total life- 
 work. We may call it his epical act, heroic in its 
 proportions, the poet s own personal Iliad, not 
 sung indeed, but done. 
 
 Emerson is forty-two years old at the close of 
 
300 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 this Epoch ; nearly half of his days remain to him, 
 but they are quite different from those which he has 
 just gone through with such abounding genetic en 
 ergy. Having done the colossal deed at its topmost, 
 he henceforth seems slowly going down hill into the 
 dark valley, his creative light gradually spending 
 itself to the limit. Emerson still continues to write 
 Essays, Journals, Letters, Poems; he keeps propa 
 gating his ideas, especially by lectures; but such 
 work is largely, though not wholly, that of repeti 
 tion, illustration, amplification. In the deepest 
 sense his literary creation is now complete, though 
 by no means concluded. 
 
 And yet a very important original element is 
 still to be added to Emerson s full achievement. If 
 he had died at the close of his overfull creative De- 
 cennium, he would have missed the better portion 
 of his destiny. He would never have left us his 
 finished life, which is his greatest work, greater 
 than his literary production which is indeed but a 
 phase or part thereof. He would never have real 
 ized his ideal Biography, which, of course, he was 
 not to write but to live. 
 
 Accordingly, Emerson is to round out the rest of 
 his years not simply with a creative doing, but with 
 a creative living which is the man s true whole 
 ness. For life is larger than the deed, underlying 
 it, directing it, fulfilling it. That is, Emerson has 
 now to complete his Biography, so that it will re 
 veal the full process of his individual life, and 
 therein mirror the movement of all Biography. 
 
or THE tf/ OC//. \\\ 
 
 Such was, indeed, Emerson s own conception, for 
 he has told us that the interest of Biography lies in 
 the fact that in it "this particular man represents 
 the idea of Man." Hence this particular Emerson 
 must be so portrayed in his life as to show it to b<- 
 universal, representing "the idea of Man." Emer 
 son has likewise declared that "the picture of the 
 Standard Man" is what must be seen in a right Bi 
 ography. These were some of his sudden but very 
 suggestive divinations upon this subject. Such is 
 his prophecy or instinct, which he often stresses, 
 whereof we may set down one of his latest exam 
 ples : We have all of us a certain divination and 
 parturient vaticination in our minds of some higher 
 good and perfection" lying beyond our power of 
 achievement and even our knowledge. Wherein he 
 takes another little peep at his biographic soul. 
 
 Henceforth the original Emerson is not to be 
 found in his literary activity, which becomes at bot 
 tom chiefly a re-affirmation and repetition, often 
 with new Emersonian sentences and metaphors, but 
 he is to be grasped in the entire compass of his life. 
 His doing sinks away into his living, of which it 
 turns to one phase or strand, important, but not 
 the whole man, whose creative power now is to ex 
 press his fully rounded Self, as it moves forward 
 to the close. 
 
 So much for the general outlook over his entire 
 future Biography. But just at present we are to 
 take a smaller step to the next stage, or Epoch, 
 which we have already designated as showing a de- 
 
302 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 cided reaction against the Epoch which we have 
 just been considering.. Moreover this stage is to 
 reveal Emerson moving in the regular order of his 
 psychical evolution. Accordingly, now follows the 
 second stage of the great middle Period of his ca 
 reer, the revolutionary, whose special character 
 istics we shall set forth in a new chapter which will 
 show no small contrast with the one just gone be 
 fore. 
 
CHAPTER FIFTH 
 
 THE RE- ACTION ARY DECENNIUM (1845-1855) 
 
 To mark off and to condense in a word, as well as 
 we can, a new ten years of the grand Emersonian 
 discipline, is our present effort. In what other way 
 can we take up and appropriate the man in his 
 truth and final wholeness? "We have already ob 
 served Emerson turning aside from his distinctive 
 Transcendental bent and its expression to some 
 thing different, if not opposite. He has also be 
 come estranged from his doctrinal disciples, being 
 repelled by what he deems their puerilities, their 
 antics, their extravagances. Emerson disgusted 
 with Emersonianism is his present self -dissolving 
 condition. So he deflects from abstract doctrine to 
 concrete life, especially as it is represented in 
 Great Men whom he now calls representative. 
 Hence a dominating biographic impulse seizes him 
 (doubtless with considerable influence from Car- 
 lyle), and drives him to write biographies typical 
 or representative. Thus he shows himself in reac 
 tion against his preceding Epoch, and will build in 
 his temple of life a new apartment which we name 
 the Re-actionary Decennium. That is, he will re 
 act against the immediate Transcendental efflux, 
 seeking now to mediate it through a second or rep 
 resentative mind, or the Great Man. 
 
 303 
 
304 RALPH WALD j EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 <Such, then, is the best adjective which we have 
 been able to find, after some search and several 
 changes, in order to designate the pervasive char 
 acter as well as the place of this coming ten years 1 
 Epoch in Emerson s Life-Essay. It is on the 
 whole re-actionary, the counter-stroke in a number 
 of ways to the foregoing -Creative Decennium, even 
 if the great total river of the man s activity still 
 sweeps onward to its goal. So we are to see that 
 this Epoch now at hand is but a part or stage of a 
 larger movement, which we have named the Pe 
 riod. And this latter again is one of the great arcs 
 which make the entire round of his career. 
 
 Moreover we shall find that this Epoch falls 
 pretty well within a given framework of time from 
 its start till its close the ten years lying between 
 1845-6 and 1855-6, undoubtedly with strands reach 
 ing out before and after these dates, which may be 
 stretched here and there, though not broken. For 
 they suggest the temporal bounds of a great spirit 
 ual experience in the total Emersonian evolution, 
 and thus indicate essential landmarks of his biog 
 raphy. 
 
 In general, then, the forthcoming Epoch has in 
 it a separative, reactionary cast; Emerson turns 
 away, within limits, from what he has thought, 
 done, and been; he reveals in his spirit a decided 
 breach with his immediate Past, which, he feels, 
 must at least be overhauled, even if not altogether 
 rejected. The culmination of this reaction may be 
 deemed his flight to England during the greater 
 
THE REACTIONARY DECENNIUM. 3Q5 
 
 r 
 
 part of a year. Moreover, the present Decennium 
 is a time of subsidence for Emerson s genius, which 
 declines both in the quantity and quality of its cre 
 ative power. Is such a cessation merely a breath 
 ing-spell for rest and recuperation, or is the lapse 
 permanent ? Will he ever regain his former genetic 
 energy after the present submergence ? So we may 
 with interest ask ourselves, casting an outlook upon 
 the man s future. 
 
 Yes, he will come back, but he can never be again 
 the same Emerson. So much we may premise. As 
 already indicated, he has creatively delivered his 
 message, and it is printed, planted, propagated. 
 Still Emerson has much to carry out and finish in 
 the coming time. He is only forty-two years old 
 at the start of the new Epoch, just a little beyond 
 the middle year of his entire life. And now he 
 seems to be put under some dark discipline as if 
 for another and later task. - Of the change he is 
 himself aware ; we have already noted in his writ 
 ings certain indications of its presence to his 
 mind. But does he give any hint of what he aspires 
 to make out of himself next ? Here is a look back 
 ward and forward belonging to 1847: "I think I 
 have material enough to serve my countrymen with 
 thought and music, if only it was not in scraps. 
 Fragments of philosophy and poetry (thought and 
 music) he has in abundance, if he could only en 
 dow them with some inner order. But he feels: 
 "Men do not want handfuls of gold-dust but in 
 gots. This last word recalls the criticism of Car- 
 
306 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND, 
 
 lyle, which seems to have struck home : the para 
 graph not as a beaten ingot but as a bag of duck- 
 shot held together by the canvas" is what Emer 
 son gives us in his best work, the Essays, according 
 to his Scotch friend. Hence we find him lashing 
 himself in his Diary (1846) : "The one good in 
 life is concentration, the one evil is dissipation." 
 Then we hear him praising continuity, and hinting 
 his own lack of it in life and work. These words 
 we can hardly interpret as momentary fits of de 
 spondency, which creep at times upon all human 
 kind; rather do they signify a stern self-criticism, 
 with resolution to overcome the limitation. Of this 
 he has now become completely, even painfully 
 aware, for the criticism has reached him from 
 friend and foe, as well as from himself. 
 
 But he will seek henceforth not only to organize, he 
 will study also to systematize a word which seems 
 strange in the mouth of Emerson, who so often, 
 especially in later life, scouted all system in think 
 ing. Listen to him in his present stage : The 
 scholar s courage may be measured by his power 
 to give an opinion on Aristotle, Bacon ... If 
 he has nothing to say to these systems, let him not 
 pretend to skill in reading." Emerson often in 
 directly calls himself the scholar, it was his name 
 for his present vocation. I believe that he here 
 touches upon his secret ambition for the coming 
 years. In the next sentence he turns to himself with 
 a sort of self-reproach : But here I am with so 
 much all ready to be revealed to me, as to others, 
 
THE REACTIONARY DECENNIUM. 
 
 if only I could be set aglow." Which seems to 
 mean : if I only could fuse my scattered, amorphous 
 material in the fires of concentration. But what is 
 he to do? "I have wished for a professorship," to 
 focus my distracted mind and diffuse labors ; but no 
 College in New England would take Emerson even 
 as tutor after that iconoclastic Divinity School Ad 
 dress. And the Transcendental Academy appears 
 to have dreamed itself into non-entity, with so many 
 other things Transcendental of the recent glorious 
 Decennium. 
 
 Certainly Emerson is in a searching crisis with 
 himself at this conjuncture. He shows his deep in 
 ner breach, his complete estrangement from his 
 past self as well as from his past work. He hardly 
 knows which way to turn, and we may hearken him 
 ruminating to himself in his Diary: "In this 
 emergency, one advises Europe, and especially Eng 
 land." There is little doubt that this adviser is 
 Emerson himself, and he will soon take his own 
 advice, as the only feasible plan. Still he at first 
 revolts, and will flee, not to the more civilized but 
 to the less civilized: "If I followed my own ad 
 vices, if I were master of a liberty to do so, I should 
 sooner go towards Canada." So he thinks of flight 
 to the woods of the North-West, but alas ! he has not 
 liberty; the institutions of society fetter him: "I 
 should withdraw myself for a time from all domes 
 tic and accustomed relations, and command an ab 
 solute leisure with books for a time. Thus Em 
 erson reveals himself tossing feverishly in life s bed 
 
308 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 from this side to that, fantasying what to do with 
 himself in this new stage of his existence which has 
 indeed dawned, but which keeps tarrying dimly in 
 the twilight. 
 
 However, we can catch out of these unsettled 
 shif tings what Emerson longs to do: he. will smelt 
 to unity his hitherto fragmentary life and work, 
 which he is inclined to deem a failure; or at least a 
 verdant and elementary stage of his discipline. 
 This is what must now be transcended as soon as 
 possible. Such is verily the bitter irony of imme 
 diate fame; really Emerson has won his eternal 
 laurels in the past Decennium, but time only can 
 place them on his brow. Still the deficiency which 
 he feels in himself is none the less genuine, and we 
 may well admire his resolution to overcome it by 
 new studies, new self-discipline, even by flight, if 
 that may be. 
 
 So we construe Emerson at the beginning of the 
 present re-actionary Decennium, where we may 
 trace not only his estrangement from the past but 
 his aspiration for the future. (See his Journals, 
 Vol. VII, passim, but especially pp. 252-3.) But 
 how will he look at himself toward the close of this 
 Epoch, say some eight or ten years later? Here is 
 a very striking paragraph jotted down under the 
 date of May, 1854 : "If Minerva offered a gift and 
 option, I would say give me continuity. I am tired 
 of scraps. I do not wish to be a literary or intel 
 lectual chiffonier." Evidently another thrust 
 homewards ; with a kind of disgiist he deems him- 
 
THE REACTIONARY DECENNWM. 399 
 
 self but a spiritual rag-picker. Fragmentary he 
 still regards his worl;, in this decennial retrospect, 
 for such it seems. Then follows the hot contemptu 
 ous address to somebody : Away with this Jew s 
 rag-bag of ends and tufts of brocade, velvet, and 
 cloth-of gold!" Is not that an allusion to the 
 bright, detached sentences of Emerson s prose, and 
 also of his verse? His longing even if somewhat 
 despairful, is still for unity, which he expresses in 
 the biographic couplet : 
 
 The Asmodean feat be mine 
 
 To spin my sand-heaps into twine. 
 
 So he states the grand Emersonian problem of 
 authorship, as it came home to the author himself. 
 Those separated grains of sand (or gold), can he 
 not forge them into some shape of unity ? It would 
 seem, by his own confession, that he has not suc 
 ceeded after this fresh trial of ten years, and the 
 productive forties of life have all sped away into the 
 sunken abysm of the past without the fulfilment of 
 his heart s deepest desire. 
 
 It is true that Emerson often takes an opposite 
 turn and expresses his disapproval of all organiza 
 tion and system. In another mood he will declare : 
 "In writing my thoughts I seek no order, harmony, 
 or result." And this sort of composition he some 
 times defends as the highest. Hence the question 
 oomes up : Which method was Emerson s deeper, 
 more fundamental conviction? He had a right to 
 
310 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 esteem well and to uphold what he had done ; there 
 in the world has approved his achievement. Still 
 he had begun to feel the impassable limit to his 
 grander ambition. Perhaps for this reason, along 
 with others thinkable, he puts so much stress upon 
 Fate. 
 
 Such, however, we may deem the sweep of the 
 present Epoch: it tells Emerson s desperate strug 
 gle with the limits developed by his previous life, 
 of which limits he has become conscious. It was a 
 kind of subsidence, a purgatorial discipline, which 
 partially hamstrung his power both in writ and 
 action. After a time of extraordinary productivity 
 the Powers sent him back into himself, there in se 
 cret to reconstruct his Genius for a new original 
 work, if this be possible. What thwarted him? 
 Something internal doubtless, but also something 
 external, something in the time and its interfering 
 events. But all that belongs beyond the present 
 Epoch, to which we must specially return and 
 mark some of its distinctive characteristics. 
 
 I. The first peculiarity noticeable during this 
 Decennium is the partial paralysis of Emerson s 
 creative power, when compared with his previous 
 affluence. His zest for writing droops, though it 
 does not cease. We mark the diminution at the 
 fountain-head ; his Diary, measured by the printed 
 volumes before us, falls away one-half, the spon 
 taneous gush from the Over-Soul is by no means so 
 copious as it was, nor is it so ebullient and racy, to 
 our mind. What is the cause of this break, not sud- 
 
THE REACTIONARY DECENNWM. 3H 
 
 den but gradually creeping over the man s brain- 
 work? That is the matter which we have already 
 tried to elucidate. 
 
 Still further, we may note the same shrinkage in 
 his published letters ; in fact, the Carlyle-Emerson 
 Correspondence now shrivels to nearly one-third of 
 its size during the previous Epoch. And there is 
 certainly a decline in its interest and value as well 
 as style ; it is staler, having lost its first fresh pulsa 
 tion, and it has no longer its earlier mutual warmth 
 of personality. The truth is, Emerson has com 
 pleted his task for Carlyle, having practically lifted 
 him into economic freedom. Moreover the two 
 friends are growing asunder in their views of life 
 and of the times. Their friendship remains and 
 will remain, but it slows up a good deal and for 
 good reasons. Raying hot from their first incan 
 descent center, their life-lines diverge more and 
 more to cooler zones. 
 
 In Emerson s literary production during this 
 Epoch, there is no such original work as the Es 
 says. Here again we observe a falling-off both in 
 amount and excellence. I think, too, that the careful 
 reader will now observe a re-action against the lit 
 erary form which he had been employing, namely 
 the Essay. Nothing under that title will be writ 
 ten during this Epoch, he seems trying to unify 
 himself and what he calls his scraps. Still he can 
 not well change his skin; the Essay is his most 
 natural art-form, or the proper body to the soul of 
 
312 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 Transcendentalism. It will persist under diverse 
 outer masks to his last printed book. 
 
 And in regard to the new doctrine, Emerson 
 drops into a state of relative quiescence ; the prop- 
 agandism wanes, though he by no means abjures 
 the faith. Already we have seen how he shrinks 
 from the cohorts of fanatical reformers, who at least 
 belong to the same movement, and are classed with 
 him by the great public in spite of his protests, of 
 ten satirical. Nor could his writings be called suc 
 cessful; the fate of the Dial with its unpaid bills 
 which he had to meet from his own purse, was a 
 poignant lesson of disillusion. 
 
 II. Accompanying this paralysis, and in part 
 causing it, rises the next fact : with his total Amer 
 ican environment Emerson is now at odds. His dis 
 gust we might almost call continental he berates 
 his city Boston, his State Massachusetts, and his 
 whole Nation along with its government. We are 
 to remember that in this Epoch took place the an 
 nexation of Texas, the Mexican "War, the passage 
 of the Fugitive Slave Law, the Repeal of the Mis 
 souri Compromise. To the entire national trend of 
 the time Emerson, the anti-slavery man, was op 
 posed, though nature gave him little political bent ; 
 indeed he disliked specially the State as such as well 
 as other institutions, which it secured by its law. 
 This had never been Emerson s world in heart or 
 head, though he acquiesced in it from the outside. 
 But now he begins to hate it, to antagonize it, and 
 will flee from its baleful presence. 
 
THE REACTIONARY DECENNIUM. 3,13 
 
 One of the hardest strokes for him was that the 
 most famous Bostonians had fallen from their ped 
 estals through an inglorious betrayal of principle. 
 Daniel Webster, once his ideal, sank to the very 
 bottom, in Emerson s view, during these ten years. 
 Edward Everett, whom Emerson as a boy studying 
 oratory had followed from place to place in admi 
 ration, went the same downward way. Thus the 
 home heroes of his youth had failed at the supreme 
 test. If we may trust certain expressions in his 
 Diary, he begins to think that America can pro 
 duce no worthy manhood, as it has produced no 
 worthy writ. He affirms: "As far as the purpose 
 and genius of America is yet reported, it is a 
 sterility and no genius. (Editor s Address, 1847. ) 
 
 Still Waldo Emerson is ever the surpriser, who 
 delights to take a sudden whirl counter to what he 
 has just said and done. The following insertion in 
 his Journals (1845) gives one of his farthest-reach 
 ing glimpses not only into the future of his own 
 time, but into the historical process of all time: 
 "the annexation of Texas looks like one of those 
 events which retard or retrograde the civilization 
 of the ages. But the World-Spirit is a good swim 
 mer, and storms and waves cannot drown him. He 
 snaps his finger at laws. This flash from the High 
 est abruptly darts down upon the reader, and then 
 quits him for good, while the author runs off into 
 his carpings, though he knows and says that "criti 
 cism misleads, especially the critic. But where did 
 he pick up that word and conception, World-Spirit ? 
 
314 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 It is not one of his terms, and we hear little or noth- 
 ing of it again. Possibly some student of German 
 Philosophy, even of Hegel, had flung it at him in a 
 discussion. 
 
 III. Accordingly we are not surprised when we 
 learn that Emerson starts for Europe after ponder 
 ing over the matter for some two or three years. 
 Indeed we have to hold that in such decision he fol 
 lowed at last his basic trend, which turned him 
 away from migration to the West. This latter he 
 entertained only in theory, while he would not or 
 could not realize it practically. His ancestors had 
 not seriously stirred from the one locality for quite 
 two centuries, forefather Peter Bulkeley seems to 
 have exhausted the migratory spirit in the Emer 
 sonian line of descent. Rather the movement will 
 be now backward, to the earliest fountains of his 
 people s tradition. Again we have to ruminate : a 
 singular turn in the anti-traditional Emerson. But 
 we have never faile.d to find a deep strong under 
 current of prescription beneath his furious torrent 
 of defiance of all transmitted social order. 
 
 On October 5, 1847, Emerson sailed from Boston, 
 and in a little over a fortnight landed at Liverpool, 
 and thence proceeded soon to London, where he at 
 once betook himself to the Carlyle house. It was 
 ten o clock at night when "the door was opened to 
 me by Jane Carlyle, and the man himself was be 
 hind her with a lamp in the entry. They were very 
 little changed from their old selves of fourteen 
 
THE REACTIONARY DECENNIUM. 315 
 
 years ago, when Emerson had left them at Craig- 
 enputtock in Scotland. 
 
 Thus the traveler had reached the first goal of his 
 voyage. He sees the man who gave him the primal 
 push toward Transcendentalism, even if the seed fell 
 upon fertile and well-prepared soil. Since that 
 early visit in 1833 Emerson has passed through his 
 Creative Epoch, with memorable result ; also he has 
 distinctly moved out of that Epoch and has entered 
 upon another : what is it to be ? He was well aware 
 of his partial paralysis in creative power, or let it 
 be called his quiescence ; can he not receive per 
 chance a fresh impetus from that old Carlylean 
 source ? Some such hope doubtless hovered faintly 
 in the mind of Emerson ; certainly a strong, if not 
 the strongest wish of his journey was to see Car- 
 lyle again. 
 
 It is true that each must have known of the 
 other s divergence from that first stage. The fact 
 had been privately written and publicly printed; 
 Emerson had criticized Carlyle and Carlyle had 
 criticized Emerson, gently but penetratingly in both 
 cases. Still each remembered of the other some 
 thing greater than their books; for each was en 
 dowed with a unique compelling personality. Could 
 not that be tapped for a renewed creative efluence ? 
 Let the result be stated after the test of months of 
 intercourse : both were disappointed, the former act 
 of inspiration could not be repeated, only once was 
 it possible. Indeed what else could be expected 
 after so many years? Each is reported as saying 
 
316 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 of the other: I looked for greater things of him, 
 my hopes he has not realized. They called each 
 other names, not venomous indeed, but pointed : you 
 are a fatalist, says one ; you are a gymnosophist says 
 the other. Still they remained friends and wound 
 up by taking a trip together to Stonehenge, of 
 which pre-historic monument both knew nothing, 
 and so could agree. 
 
 Such was the event of main biographic interest in 
 this visit of Emerson. The other things were not 
 without import, but seem relatively external. He 
 saw many literary people of distinction, ate numer 
 ous English dinners, was gratified to find himself 
 famous in old ancestral England, caught some 
 glimpses of its society, especially of its ancient aris 
 tocracy ; in general he drank with relish of the time- 
 honored traditions of the most traditional people in 
 Europe he the anti-traditionalist. Such was his 
 new experience which he will tell in a book. But 
 how different from what he had been and done hith 
 erto ! Surely a dip into the past was just what he 
 must have needed most. 
 
 In the foregoing account we have given what was 
 the inner propulsion of Emerson back to England, 
 as we regard the event. He, however, states the 
 matter somewhat differently: "The occasion of my 
 second visit to England was an invitation . . . 
 to read a series of lectures" in certain of its cities. 
 Thus the Emersonian Lyceum had been called back 
 ward to Europe. His success was good in some 
 places, less good in other places. The last course 
 
THE REACTIONARY DECEXNIUM. 317 
 
 in London he deemed disappointing, and he was 
 quite ready to start for home. 
 
 Still he failed not to touch upon the strong am 
 bition of his life : to organize a First Philosophy, 
 which would be an enumeration of the laws of the 
 world " laws common to both Nature and Mind. 
 For in physical science he seeks a universal cipher 
 in which we read the rules of the Intellect as well 
 as of the Will or "moral practice." Again we cry 
 out in eagerness : Give us that universal cipher, 
 Emerson, which runs through all things spiritual 
 and physical, and unifies them into one universal 
 science, verily the science of all science. Let that 
 be the grand new departure for the present Epoch, 
 which will then overtop thy Creative Decennium, 
 great as it is. In thy human brain lies the universe 
 "with all its opulence of relations;" eject it into 
 form for us, that we may know it too. 
 
 Will he do it can he? That is probably the 
 most insistent present problem of Emerson s evo 
 lution. We have already seen it rise to the surface 
 years ago, and it will again come up in the future 
 when the final answer can be given. But greater, 
 more convincing is his personality than anything 
 he writes or says. Miss Martineau alludes to this 
 very elusive but quite all-subduing element in the 
 presence of the man who cannot be truly "appre 
 hended till he is seen. He conquers minds as well 
 as hearts wherever he goes. Yet he does not seem 
 to convert anybody to his doctrine ; it is the man, 
 the whole of him, that captivates. Wherein we may 
 
318 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 catch a hint for his biography. The total career of 
 Emerson must be seen and felt irradiating every 
 separate work of his; the round of his entire life 
 must integrate every arc of it, even the smallest: 
 thus we may still restore in thought and feeling the 
 magic of his vanished personality. Such is the true 
 function of biography : it reproduces the total man 
 as he is in his allness and truth ; it may bring him 
 back more completely, if not more vividly than he 
 could be seen in actual life strung along the slow- 
 stepping years. 
 
 IV. Emerson took a returning ship at Liverpool 
 July 15, 1848, and reached home near the close of 
 the same month after a whirling panorama of rapid 
 experiences for some nine months. As we read 
 him, he was glad to get back in spite of all his love 
 for England. At once he starts with his traveling 
 University, which he now sees to be his chief prac 
 tical vocation for the future. He was, however, still 
 internally occupied, laboring at his destiny, while 
 writing books. He had by no means yet wrought 
 himself free of his reactionary Epoch. His trip 
 abroad may have brought him respite, but not re 
 covery. Through all his admiration, he shows signs 
 of re-action against England, for re-action was his 
 pervasive mood underneath all his optimism. 
 
 The wandering lecturer with his Lyceum keeps 
 moving westward, imparting his message both by 
 his speech and by his presence. "Well may we stop 
 and meditate over the following record dated, 
 Springfield, Illinois, January 11, 1853. "Here I 
 
THE REACTIONARY DECENNIVM. 319 
 
 am in the mud of the prairies. My chamber is a 
 cabin, my fellow-boarders are legislators. Two or 
 three governors or ex-governors live in the house. 
 So Emerson has given a lecture about this date at 
 the mud-burg where then lived the supreme coming 
 man of destiny, Abraham Lincoln, as yet a fameless 
 country lawyer. One queries : Did the latter go to 
 hear Emerson s discourse, which must have been 
 something of an event in the little town? Very 
 likely. In mid winter the Illinois mire was deepest, 
 and Lincoln at this time was probably at home from 
 the circuit. Of course the matter is not vouched 
 for by any document, as far as we know. But so 
 much can be affirmed : Here for some hours on the 
 same spot Fate has filliped together the two most 
 representative men of America, even if they belong 
 to wholly different spheres of human endeavor. One 
 is sprung of the old North-East, the greatest man 
 of thought; the other belongs to the new North- 
 West, the greatest man of action ; the first finds his 
 ultimate in Morals, the second rests upon the bed 
 rock of Institutions. Time will show that they both 
 have a supreme gift in common : to write down the 
 eternal word for their people. Looking back 
 through more than half a century, they may be ac 
 claimed the two sovereign wielders of the pen, the 
 greatest that America has produced each of them 
 being highly characteristic of his own section of the 
 country. 
 
 Now comes to light a significant fact which also 
 belongs to both of them at this date : each is in his 
 
320 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 own way struggling through a peculiar purgatorial 
 discipline, each is living in a breach with himself 
 and his country and his time, each has sunk down 
 from a previous higher activity into what we have 
 called a state of subsidence an Epoch of outer re 
 action but also of inner self-criticism and of conse 
 quent self-reconstruction. Lincoln has been in Con 
 gress for one term, then through his course on the 
 Mexican War he has been practically set aside by 
 his constituency ; he has returned from the National 
 Capital to his little town, and resumed his little 
 practice of the law, in a mood of deep spiritual 
 scission and humiliation. He reflects the double 
 Nation in his own doubleness, and through a sex 
 ennial labor he must knead anew himself into unity, 
 till he can proclaim out of his own oneness : this Na 
 tion cannot remain half -slave half-free. Let it here 
 be said that this part of Lincoln s life is apt to be 
 neglected, since it receives almost no notice from 
 our popular Lincoln biographers; but rightly it 
 forms a great spiritual turning-point of his career. 
 Such is the surprising co-incidence in the evolu 
 tion of the two supreme American contemporaries. 
 And now let us cast our glance forward to the fact 
 that these two men, so far apart in space, vocation, 
 and culture, make the same turn at the same time 
 through the same national events the recovery 
 from their re-action and subsidence through the 
 Repeal of the Missouri Compromise and its conse 
 quences (1854-5). This is the striking parallelism 
 which now begins between their lives, indicating 
 
THE HKACTlOXMfY 
 
 that a common supernal current, that of the Spirit 
 of the Age, is pouring through both and determin 
 ing their biography, be the outer circumstances as 
 diverse as can be in their totally different spheres 
 of action. 
 
 Accordingly somewhere about 1855 we shall be 
 hold Emerson moving across old limits into a new 
 Epoch after a decennial experience in a kind of 
 underworld. To be sure, this change has already 
 shown many signs of its coming. He will rise from 
 his submergence, re-act against his re-action, and 
 start over again with a fresh outlook. 
 
 But at present our task is to consider a few of 
 the more important works of this Decennmm, and 
 to let some kind of order gleam through them and 
 thereby illustrate the entire Epoch. It was pe 
 culiarly a Plutarchian biographic time with Emer 
 son; his mind was turned to writing the concrete 
 lives of Great Men instead of the abstractions of the 
 Essays. That is, he would now take Plato himself 
 instead of Plato s virtues. There is no doubt that 
 the influence of Carlyle upon his present direction 
 was important and helped him enter upon this new 
 stage of his life s evolution. Hence it is less orig 
 inal, being determined more from the outside than 
 his previous Epoch, being indeed a re-action against 
 his own transcendental creation as directly effluent 
 to him from above. 
 
 It has been already noted that Emerson s cre 
 ative power undergoes a great lessening during the 
 present Epoch verily a kind of writer s paralysis. 
 
322 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 This was in part a physical backstroke from the 
 prodigious outpour of the preceding ten years; 
 surely Emerson deserves a rest. But of course the 
 deeper fact of it was the spiritual re-action. Still 
 Emerson continued to write, and to write in a some 
 what changed vein. For reasons already given he 
 sought a new art-form for his writ. Four signifi 
 cant works (leaving out minor compositions) we set 
 down here. 
 
 I. Representative Men All European. 
 
 IT. The Representative Woman American, Mar 
 garet Fuller. 
 
 III. The Representative Nation the book known 
 as English Traits. 
 
 IV. The Representative Man American, Daniel 
 "Webster, who is held up not as an examplar but as 
 a warning, or rather as the Great American Failure, 
 verily the New England Judas or Ichabod. 
 
 The reader will notice running through all these 
 four pieces the term representative, which is used 
 by Emerson himself in each case, though only once 
 in the actual title. Evidently his interest during 
 this entire Decennium is in persons who represent 
 something, and he is going to tell what. Such a 
 theme, we may re-insist, is different, both in its 
 general scope as well as in its literary presentation, 
 from what the author has written in the foregoing 
 Epoch, even if the style, the mannerisms as well as 
 the soul, be still Emersonian. -Through his work he 
 becomes himself representative, no longer so vari 
 ously and spontaneously generative as before ; we 
 
REPRESENTATIVE MEN. ;]9:] 
 
 may well think him a speaking representative who 
 represents in his work these different representa 
 tive characters. 
 
 REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 Such is the printed caption of the new book, 
 which may be taken as a kind of overture to the 
 new Epoch, with its key-note struck in the word 
 representative. We are to make clear to ourselves 
 that such a subject and such a title indicate in Em 
 erson a re-action from his antecedent time and 
 work, even if long ago in his Diary the word and 
 thought may be found along with his conception of 
 the biographic Standard Man. 
 
 We behold here, accordingly, a collection of the 
 biographies of Great Men w^ho are representative ; 
 thus Emerson suggests in advance his task. Repre 
 sentative of what ? Of important eras in thought 
 and action ; these men have to bring down t i from 
 the supersensible regions" things otherwise not ac 
 cessible to us here below, and thereby "acquaint us 
 with new fields of activity." Almost in spite of 
 himself Emerson here describes the Representative 
 Man as the mediator between the two worlds, super 
 sensible and sensible. But what does he say is the 
 object of such supernal impartation ? This is what 
 he adds: such knowledge is not for its own worth, 
 but "it cools our affection for the old," for the 
 transmitted, for tradition, being an antidote against 
 
324 UALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 the Emersonian devil. Such is the chief use of the 
 Great Man, as we read it in Emerson s introduc 
 tion on the Uses of Great Men. 
 
 Here we observe that this book with its theme in 
 dicates a re-action against the previous Epoch of 
 Emerson and its doctrine. For if Transcenden 
 talism insisted upon anything, it was the immediate 
 transmission of the Upper Power or the Over-Soul 
 to the communing individual, of the Alone to the 
 alone, without any intermediary, however great. 
 But now Emerson writes a work which implies some 
 such intermediary, even if he pares him down as 
 much as he can. Though he employs the term 
 Great Men, he re-acts against his own usage with 
 a protest, crying: "But Great Men! the word is 
 injurious!" Then he proceeds to point out its 
 dangers which are summed up in that infernal 
 power, the insidious influence of the Past, Hear 
 him admonish : True genius seeks to defend us 
 against itself . . . will, not impoverish but will 
 liberate and add new senses." So he shouts a 
 danger-signal, but in that note of warning lies 
 subtly ensconced the very mediation of G-enius 
 against which he warns us, since through its inter 
 position we win us a new liberty. What more does 
 any person want of Genius, of a Shakespeare, of a 
 Goethe, yea of an Emerson whose whole influence 
 has now become also traditional, that of a mediator 
 through his writings ? 
 
 Again we see him raise his finger: "There is a 
 speedy limit to heroes," which seems to be a -hit at 
 
REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 325 
 
 Carlyle s Heroes and Hero-worship, against which 
 this book of Emerson strikes often an antagonistic 
 undertone. * All men are at last of a size ; there 
 are no common men. True enough in a sense, all 
 men are selves, Egos, yet they are likewise very di 
 verse, and Emerson is wrestling with that diversity 
 in its supreme manifestation, called Genius. The 
 fact is, he hardly knows what to do with it, since it 
 has the power of transmitting itself through time, 
 whereby it becomes a mighty tradition, Emerson s 
 Satanic evil-worker. He can even cite profanity: 
 "Damn George Washington," for the fame of his 
 tyrannical virtues. So Emerson with a curse 
 leaves him out of his Representative Men as well as 
 every other well-known American. If we must have 
 a hero, we shall take him from afar. 
 
 Thus Emerson makes a wry face at individual 
 Genius, even while writing about it, for it is a bulky 
 fact in the race s record. However he takes a pe 
 culiar refuge in "the Genius of Humanity," and 
 he claims this to be what he intends to discourse 
 upon, "the real subject whose biography is written 
 in our annals." So he will wing his flight "to an 
 elemental region where the individual is lost, or 
 wherein all touch by their summits. In such way 
 he will get rid of that troublesome individual Ge 
 nius, source of so much evil, especially in the mat 
 ter of tradition. Still we have to note that in the 
 execution of his work he adheres very closely to said 
 individual Genius, using the latter s name and 
 deeds. It is, accordingly somewhat surprising that 
 
326 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 we do not hear more of the universal Genius, the 
 presiding Spirit of History, or the World-Spirit, to 
 which he has proclaimed his allegiance. 
 
 Hardly does Emerson appear at one with himself 
 in this book. The theme in its essence runs counter 
 to his most cherished doctrine of the immediate ef 
 flux of the divine into the human soul, which act 
 allows as we have already often marked, no media 
 tion, not even the Mediator Himself. The Great 
 Man may be toned down into the Representative 
 Man, but the difficulty inheres. Still there are 
 glimpses of the highest worth in this book, and Em 
 erson remains grandly Emersonian. The individ 
 ual Genius appears as the exponent of a vaster 
 mind and will." So far, so good; but the reader 
 asks, exponent to whom of this lofty sovereignty? 
 No distinct answer. Then follows another flaming 
 sentence to the same purport: "The opaque Self 
 becomes transparent with the light of the First- 
 Cause." Nobly conceived and worded; but again 
 we beg : transparent to whom ? The response is not 
 heard, though the implication probably is: to the 
 people who have no such light, to the folk without 
 genius. But alack! that would also imply the ac 
 ceptance of authority, of a mediating principle, yea 
 of that diabolic tradition, which must not be uttered. 
 
 So Emerson, do what he may, cannot get rid of 
 the intermediary between the Over-Soul and his 
 Under-Soul. Indeed just this intermediary is the 
 Great Man at his best; his supreme function is to 
 mediate the universal Spirit with the individual 
 
REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 327 
 
 man who otherwise may not have the gift to partic 
 ipate. Many hints and implications of such a po 
 tency of the Great Man we may find in Emerson, 
 but they remain partial Emersonian glimpses, in 
 timations, prophecies. 
 
 When we come to look at his six Representative 
 Men, they all represent Europe, not one from his 
 own country or from the Orient. No Washington 
 or Franklin for him, though they are of the least 
 tradition; such a fact we have to take as one sign 
 of his re-action. He had also spoken of a common 
 principle running through and integrating all Bi 
 ography ; but it is certainly not explicit in these ex 
 amples, of which each goes pretty much its own 
 way. Still they are all Emersonian, not only in 
 style but also in the author s own soul-portraiture. 
 Holmes has put this with insight : "Emerson holds 
 the mirror up to them at just such an angle that we 
 see his own face as well as that of his hero" we 
 might say, in that of his hero. Thus the present 
 book is ultimately biographical a fact known and 
 even formulated by Emerson. He says tersely that 
 "Shakespeare is the only biographer of Shakes 
 peare," which means also that Emerson is the only 
 biographer of Emerson. 
 
 The first three of his heroes Plato, Swedenborg, 
 Montaigne are his favorites by inner choice ; the 
 second three seem rather external to him Shakes 
 peare, Napoleon, Goethe he took these more from 
 tradition than from himself. Goethe he accepted 
 largely on Carlyle s word ; Shakespeare really 
 
328 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 meant less to him than Beaumont and Fletcher, or 
 perhaps than Ben Jonson ; Napoleon s military and 
 political sphere lay quite outside of Emerson s 
 world. Still he weaves around these names many 
 suggestive and beautiful sentences, almost as if 
 each might be a moral theme or abstract title of an 
 Emersonian essay. Still not altogether so ; for Em 
 erson is trying here to change his previous method 
 of expression and to employ a new art-form. 
 
 Regular biographies they are not, but decidedly 
 irregular the immediate and often capricious 
 downflow of the writer s inspiration stimulated by 
 certain events of the hero s life. We get no concep 
 tion of Plato s work as an ordered whole ; it is the 
 Emersonian Plato, or rather the Platonic Emerson, 
 whom by the way it is well worth while to know 
 if not so much for Plato s sake, at least for Emer 
 son s. Farthest-reaching is the glimpse which 
 makes Plato "the germ of that Europe we know 
 so well, in its long history of arts and arms . . . 
 already discernible in the mind of Plato." Equally 
 profound and subtle is his distinction of "free, 
 active, creative Europe" from Asia, which is an 
 "immense fate;" moreover, "if the East loved in 
 finity, the West (Europe) delighted in boundaries," 
 whereof the start is in sculptured Hellas the beau 
 tiful, divinely bounded in Art. 
 
 Thus we ride on flashes of lightning through this 
 book, often with dizzying, intoxicating headiness. 
 Then the luminous line leaps into darkness and 
 drops us querying: Where are we now? What 
 
REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 329 
 
 next? For instance, after reading and digesting 
 that last thought about Orient and Europe, we beg : 
 Tell us now, dear Emerson, somewhat of that third 
 stage in the sweep of the World s History, the 
 American or Occidental, as different from Europe 
 as the latter is from Asia, which new offspring of 
 Time was long ago prophesied by Bishop Berkeley, 
 and of which you have given many a gleam in the 
 Dial and elsewhere during your former Creative 
 Epoch. But no such turn seems now possible with 
 Emerson, it is his time of re-action against the 
 West and his new sweep toward the Eastern and 
 the old. 
 
 The book in its present form and trend was first 
 published in 1850, somewhere about the middle of 
 his Re-actionary Epoch. But Emerson had for 
 many years been lecturing on the lives of eminent 
 men in various places ; during 1845 he reports him 
 self to -Carlyle as giving at Boston a course on this 
 same group of Representative Men, with the ex 
 ception of Goethe, who was afterward added, and 
 remains in the book a somewhat questionable tail 
 piece, for which Emerson himself shows lack of 
 sympathy, and we think, of right appreciation. But 
 in this case Carlyle and also Margaret Fuller doubt 
 less overwhelmed his self-determination. The whole 
 work, however, was the product of a long evolution, 
 probably colored variously at different times, but 
 finally taking-on its present peculiar tone of re 
 action as its true fulfilment. Since he gave this 
 course also in England (1847), that antique land 
 
330 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 may have helped to ingrain its tinct of recoil from 
 West to East, from progress to regress indicated 
 primarily in the choice of subject as well in its 
 treatment. 
 
 So we construe this representative book of the 
 representative Man, Emerson, in which he may be 
 said to represent specially his representative Epoch 
 in his own life-work. That is, he now becomes 
 aware of himself on this side, in this phase of his 
 career, and writes the same out into other Great 
 Men s biographies. He is himself representative in 
 the present book. Moreover, all these Great Men are 
 distant from him, on a different continent, yea in 
 quite another world from his own. Such is his pres 
 ent grand act of self-estrangement, needed, in fact 
 imperative as the course of life itself, though he has 
 been much blamed for his choice by critics, even by 
 Carlyle, who wished him to portray some American 
 frontiersman or Indian. But Emerson was no 
 Fennimore Cooper. He mildly says: "I wanted a 
 change and a. tonic;" Europe was his right medi 
 cine, where he could take a far plunge into the first 
 fountains of that Tradition, against whose barriers 
 he finds himself breaking his head here in Amer 
 ica. And so he represents not only a stage of him 
 self, but of you and me, yea also of this American 
 people, who sorely need to take some such cultural 
 dip into Europe s and even the Orient s past, in 
 order to find out something eternally worth while 
 about their immediate present selves. 
 
THE REPRESENTATIVE WOMAN. 33} 
 
 II. 
 
 THE REPRESENTATIVE WOMAN 
 
 Scarcely had Emerson finished and was publish 
 ing his Representative Men (1850), when Fate 
 bore down on him with a new yet correlative task: 
 the biography of the Representative "Woman, an 
 American now, Margaret Fuller Ossoli. She had 
 been a central figure in the Emersonian Renascence ; 
 but she, too, had fled to Europe at the end of its 
 Creative Epoch, a year or so before Emerson set sail 
 thither. On her return as soon as she struck the 
 American sea-coast, she perished by shipwreck. 
 
 Her peculiar tragic lot made a strong impression 
 upon Emerson, so that he resolved to tell of her 
 story what he knew. Accordingly he has devoted 
 to her memory what we may call a book in the col 
 lection known as the Memoirs of Margaret Fuller 
 Ossoli. It is longer than an Essay, more detailed 
 than an Address, such as he wrote in honor of his 
 friend Thoreau or of his Aunt Mary. Miss Fuller, 
 for the unmarried maiden it was whom Emerson 
 knew and dealt with, appeared to him the supreme 
 Representative Woman. He says, Margaret (so he 
 familiarly calls her) "seemed to represent them 
 all," all her friends and all her environment. The 
 super-woman of his world he deems her, "all the 
 art, the thought, and the nobleness of New Eng 
 land seemed at that moment related to her, and she 
 to it." The central shining figure everywhere she 
 could make herself, "who brought wit, anecdotes. 
 
332 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 love-stories, tragedies, oracles with her the queen 
 of some parliament of love, who carried the key to 
 all confidences, and to whom every question had 
 been finally ref erred. " A demonic personality she 
 regarded herself, somewhat after the pattern of her 
 highest literary oracle, Goethe, whom she knew bet 
 ter than did any other New Englander, better, we 
 think, than did Carlyle, for she actually lived on 
 deeper lines that poet s genius. 
 
 Significant is the fact that she circled around 
 Emerson during his entire Creative Decennium, 
 shooting a radiance in which he basked with every 
 power alert, and of which he absorbed how much 
 who can tell? He states: "I knew her intimately 
 from July, 1836, till August, 1846, when she sailed 
 for Europe." In many warm grateful sentences 
 he celebrates her transcendent ability: "The day 
 was never long enough to exhaust her opulent mem 
 ory I never saw her without surprise at her 
 new powers. Moreover she was well aware of her 
 supremacy, from her infancy "she idealized her 
 self as sovereign." Overwhelming loads of egotism 
 she would dump even upon friends, saying to them 
 coolly: "I now know all the people worth know 
 ing in America, and I find no intellect comparable 
 to my own." So Emerson records of her with a 
 smile playing in his words. Thus she ranged great 
 Emerson beneath herself to his face with all the 
 other great New Englanders of her time, not a few 
 of whom have repaid her with many a stinging sar 
 casm. And as a rule women were her quarry, not 
 
THE REPRESENTATIVE WOMAN. 333 
 
 men; she was the representative woman among 
 women, not a little defiant of tyrant man despite 
 her Oceanic love-swells, for undoubtedly she had 
 these too. 
 
 The fact is that Emerson was somewhat afraid 
 of her when those cyclonic upheavals of emotion 
 which always lay seething in the dark recesses of 
 her underworld, would break up and overflow and 
 even threaten, as we may judge from some of his 
 intimations. He fully recognized that hers was a 
 stronger personality than his own, against which 
 he had always to fortify himself, and from which 
 at times his familiar warned him to take flight. 
 Thus he confesses : "I foreboded rash and painful 
 crises, and had a feeling as if a voice cried : Stand 
 from under I 77 In such manner Emerson distinctly 
 intimates his peril, and once says openly that he 
 knows much more than he will tell. So he com 
 pels his reader to suspect according to ability. 
 
 As the female Prometheus (so she construes her 
 self in a certain mood) of Emerson s life, she ap 
 pears to have been the successor of his Titanic 
 Aunt Mary Moody Emerson. But her power over 
 him faded not by absence; he seems to have cher 
 ished some plan for her activity after her return. 
 The news of her death drew from him this sad note : 
 "I have lost in her my audience, and I hurry now 
 to my work admonished that I have a few days 
 left." So interwound was his soul with hers that 
 he appeared for a while to feel that her tragic fate 
 prefigured his own. 
 
334 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 Margaret Fuller remained long the ideal of the 
 more aspiring and talented women of Yankeeland, 
 and her influence has by no means vanished today. 
 To many she i& still the Representative Woman, as 
 pedestaled by Emerson. 
 
 III. 
 
 THE REPRESENTATIVE NATION 
 
 Such may be taken as the deeper underlying des 
 ignation of the book whose title-page reads English 
 Traits. This Representative Nation, however, is 
 not his own America, but his ancestral home-folk, 
 the English. Herein we are to mark another stage 
 of his re-action, the national ; he drops back with ad 
 miration and love to his original stock. Moreover 
 we should note him turning away from the Present, 
 which he had so strongly emphasized in the forego 
 ing Epoch, to the Past, to Tradition incorporate in 
 a whole people in their outer customs as well as 
 their inner consciousness. 
 
 England, then, is the lofty theme, her spiritual 
 portrait is what he proposes to paint ; or, since he is 
 in the biographic mood during this Decennium, he 
 will top it out by writing the biography of the Great 
 Nation, the greatest on the globe as he declares. 
 Hitherto he has given us only the lives of Great 
 Individuals, now he will rise to the portrayal of the 
 total life of a people, and that the most excellent. 
 For he sums up tersely the result in his last section : 
 "England is the best of nations." Such is the con- 
 
THE REPRESENTATIVE NATION. 335 
 
 centrated essence of his two visits as well as of life 
 long intimate studies. He fails not to make the con 
 trast with his own country: "The American sys 
 tem is more democratic, more humane; yet the 
 American people do not yield better or -more able 
 men, or more inventions, or books or benefits than 
 the English" yea, it is really behindhand just in 
 these excellences as well as otherwise, says Emer 
 son often pointedly. "We prefer one Shakespeare 
 to a million foolish democrats, affirms the literary 
 aristocrat, re-directing a famous thunderbolt of his 
 friend, hero-worshiping Carlyle. 
 
 Surely, then, England is this Earth s Repre 
 sentative Nation, the best producer of the best, 
 verily the greatest creator of Representative Men, 
 whom we have considered apart and singly hitherto. 
 But now we must get back to their source; hence 
 Emerson proclaims : "No one man and no few men 
 can represent them it is a people of myriad per 
 sonalities." So Emerson comes home impressed 
 with the Great Nation supereminent over and in 
 deed productive of Great Individuals,- to whom 
 singly his eye hitherto has been limited. It is for 
 him a great new outreach, which will have its effect 
 upon him when he gets back to his own Nation, 
 rather neglected in his view heretofore. 
 
 This book, English Traits, was published in 1856, 
 and thus concludes the present Decennium, through 
 the whole of which it is fermenting. and maturing. 
 Indeed it goes back farther according to Emerson s 
 retrospective statements: "I have been twice in 
 
336 RALPH WAL DO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 England/ first in 1833, whereof he gives here some 
 account; then he takes up his "second visit to Eng 
 land in 1847," which furnishes the main content of 
 the book. Thus the first germ of the work is thrown 
 back some- twenty-three years from the date of pub 
 lication. Strictly, however, it belongs to this Re 
 actionary Epoch of the author s life. It shows de 
 cisively his estrangement from his own people and 
 the backflow to his ancestral land. Undoubtedly 
 there is often sharp criticism of the English, but 
 they always come out on top. Their power of su 
 perb man-building is what he justly celebrates. 
 And the Nation does it which view is an impor 
 tant point in the evolution of Emerson, since. he is 
 now getting to see associated Man in the institution, 
 not merely the individual man. We may forecast 
 that he will yet come round to his own Nation. 
 
 A very appreciative book is the English Traits, 
 written with much epigrammatic point, and fre 
 quent meteoric sentences blazing across its sky. 
 Still we cannot help noting that the author betray 
 ing his own- limitation, has left out England s great 
 est, most universal trait : she has been the chief in 
 stitution-maker to the world in these recent cen 
 turies. Especially of the State, of the political in 
 stitution she has furnished the working model to 
 all striving, freedom-pursuing peoples. The Eng 
 lish method of governing men, English Law and 
 Constitution, are still going the round of the Earth, 
 and have pushed far beyond her territorial sover 
 eignty, vast as it is. This to our mind, is the grea* 
 
THE REPRESENTATIVE NATION. 337 
 
 cst thing that England has done. But Emerson, 
 bonded to his thought s institutional limit, has lit 
 tle sense for such a national characteristic. It is 
 true that he knows of Runny mede and Magna 
 Charta ; but fully to realize them and their place in 
 the World s History is another matter. Emerson, 
 indeed, remembers Britain " as an island famous for 
 immortal laws, for the announcements of original 
 right, which make the stone tables of liberty" (Ch. 
 XVIII). But this remains to him rather an ex 
 ternal fact than a profoundly assimilated convic 
 tion. The Representative Nation is to prove itself 
 not only the builder of men, but the builder of in 
 stitutions, which associate men for the supreme goal 
 of humanity, especially associate men unto the end 
 of freedom. 
 
 Here, then, lies for us the missing part of this 
 book, yea the missing part of Emerson himself a 
 fact which we have elsewhere often noticed. The 
 American political fabric is quite as alien to him as 
 is the English. Indeed the whole institutional 
 world is or has been not only a stranger to Emerson 
 but a downright goblin, which he has sought to ban 
 from himself and indeed from existence. Still we 
 believe that he is now beginning to get a glimpse of 
 a new aspect of this subject. There are hints of a 
 re-action in this otherwise Re-actionary Epoch 
 against his former anti-social trend. But they are 
 as yet largely unconscious, we have to dig for them ; 
 just as at present in his separative title, English 
 Traits, we seek out the connecting under-current 
 
338 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 which not only unifies his book within itself, but 
 also with all his other works of the present Decen- 
 nium. 
 
 Having thus set forth in writ three positive forms 
 of Representation, he turns to the negative Repre 
 sentative Man and People, finding them in one of 
 his countrymen and in his country. 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE REPRESENTATIVE AMERICAN 
 
 Daniel Webster more than any other American 
 was Emerson s ideal of the Great Man, during 
 youth and also middle age. It is true that the rad 
 ical Transcendentalist became aware of the chasm 
 between his consciousness and that of the conserva 
 tive Statesman; still across the ever widening and 
 deepening rift which parted them, he gazed with 
 admiration at the grandiose form of the greatest 
 New Englander of the time. Through the whole 
 line of Emerson s Journals from the first volume 
 rises at intervals Webster s imposing figure be writ 
 with rapturous comments. As an instance, we may 
 cite his description of Webster entering incident 
 ally the audience at Cambridge while Edward Ev 
 erett was making an address: "The house shook 
 with new and prolonged applause, and Everett sat 
 down, and the old Titanic Earth-Son was alone 
 seen." (Journals, Vol. VII, p. 167.) Such was 
 the overawing effect upon Emerson at least. Later 
 when he was wholly estranged from his hero, he 
 
THE REPRENSENTATIVE AMERICAN. ;}39 
 
 says: "I remember his appearance at Bunker Hill. 
 There was the Monument and here was Webster 
 and the whole occasion was answered by his pres 
 ence. His splendid wrath when his eyes became 
 lamps, was the wrath of the fact and the cause he 
 stood for." 
 
 But in the course of years came the Compromise 
 of 1850 enacting its Fugitive Slave Law, which Em 
 erson deemed the quintessential sin of the ages. Al 
 though the measure was introduced by Clay and 
 bears his name, still Webster was held accountable 
 for it by New England, and especially by Emerson. 
 Hence we read this scathing insertion (Journals, 
 VIII, p. 216) : "Webster truly represents the 
 American people just as they are, with their vast 
 material interests, materialized intellect and low 
 morals. Heretofore their Great Men who have led 
 them have been better than they, as Washington, 
 Hamilton, Madison. But Webster s absence of 
 moral faculty is degrading to the country. Of this 
 fatal defect, of course, Webster himself has no per 
 ception." Really he must be worse than his coun 
 try if he can so degrade it from what it was. Em 
 erson strongly echoed the mighty damnation of 
 Whittier s Ichdbod, which catches the trumpet- 
 voice of the avenging angel as it proclaims the Last 
 Judgment to the guilty sinner. 
 
 Here, then, is declared Emerson s supreme es 
 trangement from his Hero and from his Nation. 
 Both he damns to eternal infamy. This may well 
 be regarded the extreme point of his reaction 
 
340 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 against his environing world, his turn from- its 
 leading man and its leading institution. Previously 
 he had reacted against Transcendentalism and took 
 flight to Europe ; also he communed with her Rep 
 resentative Men, and wrote about them his repre 
 sentative book. But he has returned to America, 
 and what does he find? His Representative Man 
 has become the universal curse of mankind, having 
 authorized "the most detestable law that was ever 
 enacted by a civilized state. 
 
 Two documents we may select for this peculiar 
 Emersonian turn, which brings to a close the pres 
 ent Reactionary Decennium. These are the two 
 speeches on The Fugitive Slave Law which are quite 
 different in style from his former addresses. Less 
 discursively sentential, more unified, they radiate 
 more warmth but less metaphor; not so much the 
 speaker s intellectual as his emotional nature now 
 wells up to the surface and overflows his discourse. 
 
 1. Address at Concord, May, 1851. He notices 
 the great change brought about by the Compromise 
 of 1850. The last year has forced us all into pol 
 itics, and made it a paramount duty to seek what 
 it is often a duty to shun." That marks the Emer 
 son of the past, his aloofness from political activ 
 ity. The State as an institution he never liked, 
 never really believed in, but now it makes itself felt 
 with a new, yea vengeful power. No wonder he 
 cries out : "I have a new experience. What is it ? 
 That world which he has always tossed aside with 
 some contempt theoretically and practically, the 
 
THE REPRENSENTATIVE AMERICAN. 341 
 
 regnant social order of man, is now brought home 
 to him with a retributive violence. "I wake in the 
 morning with a painful sensation, which I carry 
 about all day," caused by the conduct of his own 
 commonwealth Massachusetts as well as of the Na 
 tion. " There is infamy in the air," an altogether 
 novel sensation for him. So he describes a kind of 
 world-pain which creeps snakily through all his 
 hours. The Higher Law, which he has hitherto so 
 easily taken for granted, has indeed met its supreme 
 challenge, and has now to fight for its very exist 
 ence. So he turns over the whole problem anew, 
 and even cites legal authorities a very unusual 
 thing in his prelections. 
 
 But the bitterest pill, the most heart-wrenching 
 fact is the part of Daniel Webster in the ignomini 
 ous business. Emerson writhes at the reminiscence : 
 "The fairest American fame ends in this filthy 
 law. He looks backward and tells with sorrowful 
 fervor how much he has enjoyed Webster s "fame 
 in the past." He was the one eminent American 
 of our time whom we could produce "as a finished 
 work of Nature. Truly our hero, our Represent 
 ative Man; his was the best head in Congress, yea 
 in the land, as well as the most eloquent tongue. 
 Still Emerson sets sharply this limit upon him : 
 * Mr. Webster is a man who lives by his memory, a 
 man of the past." That is it, the Emersonian 
 curse, tradition; such is the all-corrupting Web- 
 sterian malady. "He praises a past Adams and 
 
342 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 Jefferson, but a present Adams and Jefferson he 
 would denounce. 
 
 Moreover dim notes of prophecy drop from the 
 speaker s lips. He darkly forecasts: "The Neme 
 sis works underneath again, and draws us on to 
 our undoing;" so will it be with Daniel Webster; 
 just wait. Accordingly we look out for the fulfil 
 ment in the second discourse delivered nearly three 
 years later. 
 
 2. Address at New York City, March 7, 1854. 
 The date is ominous, being the fourth anniversary 
 of Webster s Compromise Speech of March 7, 1850. 
 In the meantime the great orator, "the Titanic 
 Earth-son," has passed off the stage of life, the 
 most colossally tragic American character of his 
 age. He had been rejected by his city, by his sec 
 tion, by his party both in the North and in the 
 South. The final stroke of Fate was the utter de 
 feat of his last Presidential hope by the Whig Con 
 vention at Baltimore in 1852. Not long afterwards 
 death smote him, it may be said, with the whole 
 American people looking on his fall at the end of 
 a grand drama of Nemesis, as Emerson would in 
 terpret it. And what has happened to Webster, the 
 fallen mightiest, is certain to happen to slavery 
 itself: "slowly, slowly the Avenger comes, but he 
 comes surely. " 
 
 This address of Emerson marks an epochal transi 
 tion in his life, the movement out of his Re-action- 
 ary Decennium into a new stage. He mentions 
 this change at the opening of his speech; he has 
 
THE REPRENSENTATIVE AMERICAN. 34.3 
 
 hitherto shunned public questions, as no proper 
 part of his task, which has been confined "to the 
 well-being of students or scholars. " But such 
 aloofness must give way in the present crisis. Till 
 the passage of this Fugitive Slave Act, he was not 
 aware of suffering any inconvenience from Amer 
 ican Slavery;" but now it intrudes through his 
 very door, and thrusts itself even into his con 
 science whose dictates it challenges in his soul s own 
 home. Thus a new and intense conflict has burst 
 forth right in his Holy of Holies : that between the 
 enacted Law and Constitution on the one hand 
 and on the other the divine efflux from above into 
 his conviction. It will not be hard to foretell which 
 side in this battle Emerson will take, if we may now 
 judge of him by his past. 
 
 Not only will he henceforth obey the Higher God- 
 born Law against the Lower man-made Law, but he 
 will proclaim it, and propagate it as his prime 
 duty. Thus that former Propagation of doctrinal 
 Transcendentalism, which was so marked in the 
 former Creative Epoch, and then lapsed so strik 
 ingly in the present Re-actionary Epoch, is next 
 to be taken up in a new shape and to become one of 
 Emerson s main activities. From theory to prac 
 tice will be the dominant sweep, and Emerson will 
 stress the doer more than the writer, whose literary 
 productivity now falls decidedly into the back 
 ground. 
 
CHAPTER SIXTH 
 
 THE PRACTICAL DECENNIUM (1855-1865) 
 
 Let it be said again with increased stress, that 
 Emerson now passes from theory to practice, 
 from an activity chiefly intellectual to his direct 
 grapple with the real world at present driving in 
 upon him and challenging him to open public com 
 bat. The change was not agreeable to him, as he 
 intimates; still he had to compass it, since it was 
 in fact the next great stage in his life s unfolding, 
 which he could not shun without losing his career. 
 Thus he moves into what we may label his Prac 
 tical Decennium, a new Epoch, and the concluding 
 one, of his long Second Period which shows all 
 through its course a deep continued estrangement 
 from his environing world, especially from its in 
 stitutional element. 
 
 Still, as compared with the preceding Epoch, 
 the present one marks a stage of recovery a res 
 toration out of his re-actionary time through pub 
 lic activity, which continues to broaden and 
 deepen till its close. Hitherto, as he declares, he 
 has held aloof from "public questions," and has 
 clung to the intellectual tasks of "the scholar." 
 However he is still in a mood of protest especially 
 against the political order, out of which protest 
 he is slowly to evolve during the present Decen- 
 
 344 
 
THE PRACTICAL DECENNIUM. 345 
 
 nium, along with the painful but healing evolu 
 tion of the Nation itself. Accordingly the pres 
 ent Epoch sweeps toward an institutional recovery 
 within the man and outside him in the State. 
 From this point of view, which is fundamental, his 
 chief interest now circles about the American Na 
 tion ; though at first he turns bitterly negative and 
 hostile, he unfolds out of that attitude, mainly 
 through the all-testing experiences of the Civil 
 War, into a positive, reconciled relation to his peo 
 ple and their fulfilment. That is, from being 
 strongly anti-national at the start of this Epoch, 
 he becomes strongly pro-national at its close. 
 
 I. Here at the beginning let us make a brief 
 survey of the time-boundaries of this Epoch, which 
 we again confine to ten years. But they now lie 
 between the dates 1855 and 1865. To be sure the 
 present Decennium has tentacles pushing forth be 
 fore and after these dates, it has lines of prelude 
 as well as of epilogue. 
 
 Already we have noted Emerson marking em 
 phatically his time of transition in his speech of 
 March 7, 1854. But we hear of him starting his 
 active anti-slavery crusade in 1855. He had long 
 been theoretically an opponent of slavery, flinging 
 down an occasional word and deed from his Hermi 
 tage. But we have observed how he got to disliking 
 and even satirizing the whole horde of New Eng 
 land reformers, including the abolitionists. Now, 
 however, he is resolved to act in the great practical 
 movement of the time, yea to devote his life chiefly, 
 
346 RALPH WAI DO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 though not wholly, to action, to war, instead of 
 peaceful contemplation. We hold that here lies his 
 grand work of self-redemption from his previous 
 partial paralysis both of intellect and will. We may 
 well recall what was doing in the Nation about this 
 time : Enforcements of the Fugitive Slave Law, 
 the Repeal of the Missouri .Compromise and the uni 
 versal uproar in consequence, the Kansas conflict, 
 which started in 1855 and kept stirring up bojh the 
 North and the South Massachusetts being specially 
 active through her Emigrant Aid Society. Cer 
 tainly the political hubbub was enough to drive Em 
 erson and every other scholar out of his seclusion 
 into the fighting ranks. The great national align 
 ment for the coming struggle was taking place, and 
 Emerson volunteered. 
 
 But how long did this Emersonian war last ? It 
 closed with Appomattox, with 1865, the year of na 
 tional victory and restored supremacy of the Union. 
 Through this outcome Emerson felt himself also re 
 stored to his Nation as never before in his whole 
 life, during which he quite from his youth had been 
 indifferent, if not hostile, to the central government, 
 constructed and dominated as it was by Southern 
 ers. In fact we shall find that his reconciliation 
 runs deeper, and will include not the State alone, 
 but the whole institutional world against which has 
 been launched his deep and abiding protest, This 
 protest, we recollect, reaches back to his early 
 church-conflict, and furnishes the spur and the 
 
THE PRACTICAL DECENNIUM. 347 
 
 ground-work of his supreme literary achievement 
 during his Creative Decennium. 
 
 II. Thus about the year 1855 Emerson changes 
 or has changed from his hitherto passive, local, 
 theoretical resistance ending in final practical sub 
 mission, and now he turns his theory into an active 
 hostility against national authority. He will em 
 ploy both word and deed. To be sure, he can not 
 wholly abandon his former literary and speculative 
 interests, but they will become subordinate, yea, 
 largely a repetition of his former stages, often of 
 his former sentences as set down in his Diary. The 
 Fugitive Slave Law, for instance, he will not only 
 nullify passively, but he will challenge it directly 
 in actual combat with executive officials. It was 
 indeed a "nasty law," though upheld by Webster 
 and the great constitutional lawyers of the Senate. 
 But Emerson goes further, a good deal further: he 
 assails the Judiciary for not taking the law into 
 their hands and making it what it ought to be. 
 Thus Emerson would have the judge of the law to 
 be its maker, and to usurp the place of the legis 
 lator. In this way the judge would be an absolute 
 monarch, exercising legislative, judicial, and exec 
 utive functions. Nothing could be mere un-Amer 
 ican, if we hold by the Constitution of the United 
 States. 
 
 Let us listen to him making a speech January 26, 
 1855. He declares that "Justice is poisoned at the 
 fountain," since the Judge insists upon enforcing 
 not the Moral Law of his own conscience but the En- 
 
348 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 acted Law of the Nation. Undoubtedly here is 
 called up the great spiritual collision of the Epoch, 
 that between the Moral and the Institutional, of 
 which two sides Emerson at present chooses uncon 
 ditionally the first, in accord with his long cherished 
 doctrine of the final authority of the Moral Senti 
 ment in every individual conscience. But let us not 
 forget that heretofore this doctrine was held by him 
 simply in theory ; if a clash came through it in prac 
 tical life, he shunned the fight, paid his taxes legal 
 but immoral, kept his bankstock with its interest of 
 some twelve hundred dollars and more a year a 
 great social wrong in his conviction, but an indis 
 pensable help for uttering that conviction. Thus 
 he fought sin by means of his own sinning. Acqui 
 esce in his own guilt he might formerly, but he will 
 do it no longer. Such is his present new resolu 
 tion starting another Epoch, and a new Emerson. 
 
 In the same speech he amplifies the national sit 
 uation as regards the Judiciary : In our Northern 
 States no judge appeared of sufficient character 
 and intellect to ask, not whether the slave law was 
 constitutional but whether it was right." Again 
 in this sentence we hear the furiously battling dual 
 ism of the time evoked by the Fugitive Slave Act : 
 Shall we obey Conscience or the Constitution ? And 
 which shall the judicial tribunal follow? Emerson 
 gives his decisive answer to the otherwise crushing 
 problem: "The first duty of a judge was to read 
 the. law. in accordance with equity, and if it jarred 
 with equity, to disoAvn the law. " (Cited in Cabot s 
 
THE PRACTICAL DECENNIUM. 349 
 
 Emerson II, p. 598.) In the most literal practical 
 sense, he now becomes a real Antinomian, to which 
 doctrine he always had a tendency, by his own con 
 fession. 
 
 Such is the Emersonian solution of the might} 
 national conflict ever getting more intense during 
 this Epoch till it finally breaks out into open war. 
 Many were the provocations on both sides during 
 these tumultuous years; we find Emerson echoing 
 them in speech and act. He, with the whole coun 
 try and especially New England, was deeply stirred 
 by the assault on Senator Sumner in the Federal 
 Senate chamber (May, 1856). Upon this subject 
 he makes a warm speech to his fellow-citizens of 
 Concord, and states in fresh form the conflict : "I 
 do not see how a barbarous community and a civil 
 ized community can form one State. Here is Lin 
 coln s famous "House divided against itself" the 
 present ever-rasping dualism of our two-principled 
 Nation. But Emerson adds : "I think we must get 
 rid of slavery or get rid of freedom." This again 
 recalls Lincoln s utterance : This Union cannot en 
 dure half-slave half-free, it will become all one thing 
 or all the other." Thus we behold Emerson pro 
 foundly sharing-in and expressing the scission of 
 the Nation. 
 
 The outcries of bleeding Kansas also drove him 
 to a sympathetic speech (September, 1856) in 
 which he proclaims with emphasis that "every im 
 moral statute is void." But who is to decide? 
 Then he asks: "What are the results of Law and 
 
350 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 Union ? His answer runs that there is no Union 
 and no Law/ 7 both have become self -destroying. 
 That would seem to be a condition approaching so 
 cial dissolution ; but it is what he seems to long for, 
 saying "I am glad that the terror at disunion and 
 anarchy is disappearing," and he claims history 
 to be on his side: " Massachusetts in its heroic day 
 had no government, was an anarchy," in which 
 every man was his own governor. That is, when 
 the tea was thrown overboard and the Concord shot 
 was fired. Thus he dissolves all society back into 
 its constituent atoms without association. It would 
 appear that the anti-institutional Emerson is about 
 to see his long-agone dream realized in "the New 
 Revolution of the Nineteenth Century," which is 
 destined to be far vaster and more glorious than the 
 old American Revolution. Nor does he propose to 
 stop with mere glorifying words, for his peroration 
 advises quick, strong deeds in a flaming appeal 
 which certainly sounds revolutionary: "Fellow 
 citizens, in these times full of the fate of the Re 
 public, I think the towns should hold town meet 
 ings, and resolve themselves into Committees of 
 Safety, go into permanent sessions 
 stop every American about to leave the coun 
 try." Thus we seem to behold Emerson turning 
 Jacobin orator and addressing his Club of Revolu 
 tionaries, as if he were re-enacting some vivid 
 Parisian scene out of his friend Carlyle s French 
 History, which must have become very real to him 
 during these passionate months. 
 
THE PRACTICAL DECENNIUM. .351 
 
 Rapidly, fiercely our mild-mannered, excess- 
 shunning Emerson appears to be turning about to 
 a practical revolutionist, of course as yet unbloody. 
 Still he brushes the sanguinary side of the move 
 ment. In 1857 John Brown, most famous and gori 
 est of tke million John Browns, came to Concord 
 and gave a lecture which urged the sending of men 
 and arms to settlers in Kansas, where already the 
 battle-line of the opening Ten Years War had been 
 drawn in human crimson. Emerson records that 
 John Brown in said speech t gave a good account of 
 himself to a meeting of citizens," and we are em 
 phatically told that "one of his best points was the 
 folly of the peace party in Kansas, who believed 
 that their strength lay in the greatness of their 
 wrongs, and so discountenanced resistance." Our 
 interest is not that John Brown uttered this war 
 like note such we would expect from him but 
 that Emerson selects it and emphasizes it, indicat 
 ing his present militant practical tendency. Brown 
 later complained of the elegant rhetorical Aboli 
 tionists of Boston that they were all talk and no 
 action. But Emerson seems advancing toward the 
 deed; so is the Nation, could he but see the inner 
 working of its spirit; thus he is representative of 
 his time even if unconscious of the fact. For the 
 American people, during these Kansas years were 
 on both sides steadily making up their minds to 
 fight, but the thing must be done in the right way 
 in the fullness of time. 
 
 It is declared that Emerson knew nothing of 
 
352- RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 John Brown s raid into Virginia, which took place 
 two years later. Still he had met in the old Puri 
 tan the heroic soul of his present tendency the 
 man who was ready to assail in open fight the In 
 stitutional, and die for the Moral, if need be. In a 
 lecture delivered at Boston (November, 1859), 
 while Brown was in a Virginia jail, having been 
 condemned to death for his deed, Emerson wreathes 
 one of his golden crowns and sets it triumphantly 
 on his hero s brow, canonizing him as "that new 
 saint than whom none purer or more brave was 
 ever led by love of man into conflict and death 
 the new saint awaiting his martyrdom, and who if 
 he shall suffer, will make the gallows glorious like 
 the cross. Thus Brown is hallowed and more : 
 his suffering and death will make him the modern 
 Christ, and alongside the cross of Christendom will 
 be borne the new holy symbol, the gallows of a uni 
 versal John-Browndom. 
 
 Such we may take as the extreme of Emerson s 
 anarchic moralism, certainly destructive of Law 
 and Constitution. These, we may grant, are seri 
 ously defective, and ought to be changed ; but is 
 this the right way to change them the way of 
 John Brown? Decisively the American People 
 the party most deeply concerned said No a few 
 years later. But the interesting biographic fact 
 for us is that Emerson now shouting Yes, also said 
 No a few years later said it in a number of ways, 
 whereof the reckoning will be made hereafter when 
 the time arrives. But it is proper at present to set 
 
THE PRACTICAL DECENNIUM, 
 
 down this one significant point: Emerson publish 
 ing the present Address after the Civil War in his 
 book called Society and Solitude (see Essay en 
 titled Courage) omitted the foregoing apotheosis of 
 John Brown, and pruned the daring passage down 
 to a very conciliatory allusion, in which he appears 
 to praise Governor Wise and the Virginians quite 
 as he once did his former hero. What has brought 
 about such a decisive change of speech in Emerson 
 indicative of a fresh spiritual transformation ? Be 
 tween the dates of these two utterances, say between 
 1860 and 1870, he has indeed undergone a great 
 new experience, we believe, the greatest of his life. 
 He has made the turn from his anti-institutional to 
 his pro-institutional stage, and therewith has quite 
 reversed the trend of his whole previous career. 
 Now, if we were to select the two individuals who 
 may be taken as the best representatives of this 
 change not only in Emerson but in the time, we 
 would name John Brown and Abraham Lincoln. 
 We shall see Emerson passing from Brown to Lin 
 coln during this Decennium. 
 
 III. Emerson seems to have given little or no 
 attention to Lincoln till the latter was nominated 
 for the Presidency in 1860, and then he was dis 
 trustful and somewhat contemptuous of the un 
 gainly Western sucker for having beaten cultured 
 Eastern Seward in the Republican Convention, the 
 man of the Higher Law and of the Irrepressible 
 Conflict. Really, therefore, Lincoln had triumphed 
 over the Emersonian attitude in the present crisis. 
 
354 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 For Lincoln, though he morally condemned and 
 hated slavery, was still an intensely national man, 
 and stood at his deepest and best for the Union, 
 about which Emerson at this time had grown very 
 shaky. Lincoln did not let his moralism under 
 mine his nationalism, as did John Brown, in whose 
 boat Emerson has now taken passage. "While 
 Brown was preparing his first raid into Virginia, 
 Lincoln was having his epochal debate with Doug 
 las on the Illinois prairies, proposing to limit the 
 growth of slavery, and thereby, as he says opening 
 the way to its ultimate peaceful extinction, which 
 he then believed, would slowly come to pass. 
 
 Accordingly Lincoln is already to be seen as the 
 reconciler of the chief conflict of the time, the con 
 flict between the Moral and Institutional, as far as 
 it could be then reconciled. He has moralized the 
 issue with slavery in contrast with Douglas who 
 said he did not care whether it were voted up or- 
 down in Kansas. On the other hand he has insti 
 tutionalized this same issue in contrast with Sew- 
 ard of the Higher Law, besides whom we have here 
 to place Emerson, who may now be deemed at his 
 anti-national apogee in his idolatry of John Brown. 
 We can thus see why Lincoln is the chosen leader 
 of the future, who is destined in his career to save 
 both morality and nationality from their furious, 
 mutually destroying dualism, and reconcile them 
 in new unity which is just the restored Union with 
 its purified Constitution. Such was the great prob 
 lem not only in the Nation, but in the World s His- 
 
THE PRACTICAL DECENNIUM. 355 
 
 tory which he successfully solved, and hence he has 
 become a supreme exemplar not only to his own but 
 to all peoples. 
 
 And now we are to premise that Emerson, having 
 touched the extreme point of his estrangement will 
 begin, through the discipline of the time, to turn 
 back toward the Nation. To use his own words in 
 another connection, his eentrifugence having 
 reached its last limit, begins to pass over into his 
 centripetence. We may well hold that Lincoln 
 through his leadership performed a great act of 
 spiritual liberation for Emerson. Though the lat 
 ter may have deemed himself adequately emanci 
 pated, he really needed a new emancipation in his 
 present condition as well as the slave, even if he 
 were the white man and New Englander. Well, 
 who did not then need to be enfranchised"? The 
 whole North, we believe, as well as the South, 
 though in a different way. But it is curiously in 
 structive; the Proclamation of Emancipation ap 
 pears to have struck the limits from Emerson as it 
 did the fetters from the slave. For that act seems 
 to have been just the luminous node at which he 
 wheeled about from his anti-national to his pro- 
 national faith. In one sense Emerson may say that 
 his work is done, his long protest has borne fruit in 
 the correction of a great institutional wrong. But 
 in a deeper sense he has discovered his own spir 
 itual obstruction, yea his own wrong, and begins to 
 transcend it to a new order. 
 
 IV. Hence this Epoch witnesses the greatest 
 
356 KALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 transition of Emerson s life, we might name it also 
 his transitional Decennium, since it shows him 
 moving to his farthest extreme of social negation, 
 and then bending around in his return sunwards. 
 But it also concludes his creative energy, which 
 was primarily inspired by his denial of established 
 authority as transmitted from the aforetime. Spir 
 itually he deemed himself an Antinomian, if not 
 practically; non-conformity made him dance witli 
 delight, while all forms of association soured his 
 stomach. So we have often noted him hitherto in 
 the course of this biography. But now behold his 
 grand orbital circumgyration ! 
 
 Moreover the present Epoch was one of conflict 
 ever increasing till it came to the point of down 
 right battle ; and it lasted inwardly in the man and 
 outwardly in the Nation for ten years (not four), 
 beginning with first hostile invasion of Kansas 
 (1855) and continuing till the surrender at Appo- 
 mattox (1865). From this point of view it may be 
 called Emerson s warring Decennium, since in his 
 way he was enlisted in the long fight. The Ameri 
 can Ten Years "War it was, and also the Emer 
 sonian, with final victory for both the man and the 
 Nation. In this mighty movement Emerson sweeps 
 and is swept along with the multitude, and thereby 
 becomes unified and reconciled with the people, 
 from whom he had always stood aloof with a kind 
 of distrust and even disgust, Thus he gets truly 
 democratized for the first time, and his political 
 note undergoes a corresponding change. 
 
THE PRACTICAL DECENNIUM. 357 
 
 Another result is that he turns his approving 
 look away from England and Europe back to Amer 
 ica. Hence he is now a different man from the one 
 who wrote English Traits and Representative Men ; 
 at least he is in a different stage of his career, hav 
 ing reacted from his Re-actionary Epoch to his 
 native land and its institutions, in regard to which 
 he had previously shown such a deep alienation. 
 He can give a smart rap to his friend Carlyle (Cor 
 respondence 1864) for the latter s hostility to Amer 
 ican freedom. "Ten days residence in this coun 
 try would have made you the organ of the sanity 
 of England and Europe to us and to them, and have 
 shown you the necessities and aspirations which 
 struggle up in our Free States." This indicates 
 Emerson s new attitude, but it also implies his mis 
 conception of England and Europe as well as of 
 Carlyle. The truth is, the European consciousness 
 was very diverse from the American, indeed quit>. 
 the opposite politically; it would not arid perhaps 
 could not understand the real moving principle of 
 our Civil War. We see today that there was re 
 quired another great war to teach England and 
 Europe the deeper meaning of that national strug 
 gle of ours and of its victory. They have come to 
 know that we in our Civil War were fighting for 
 them and for their future quite as much as for our 
 selves. If the Union had been dissolved, we would 
 probably have had our own wars, and certainly our 
 own national jealousies, which would have given us 
 enough to do at home, with little ability or inclina- 
 
358 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 tioii to send help abroad. In fact we would have 
 dropped back into Europe s separative, ever-clash 
 ing State-system (the so-called European Poly- 
 archy), instead of advancing to the self -harmoniz 
 ing American Federation. 
 
 Already in the preceding Epoch Emerson found 
 during his trip to Europe that Carlyle, however 
 stimulating, could no longer be his spiritual father, 
 such as he met in the early visit of 1833. Both 
 were disappointed with each other and mutually 
 critical. Says Carlyle of Emerson: "I think his 
 talent is not quite so high as I anticipated/ for it 
 has evidently gone its own way, different from Car- 
 lyleism. Emerson says of Carlyle: "How much 
 more he might do than he ever has done so you 
 think when you see him." A reciprocal indiffer 
 ence took place then, which now has been intensi 
 fied to reciprocal opposition. The crude, immedi 
 ate, tyrannic power of the strongest blow has be 
 come Carlyle s gospel of the Great Man, from 
 which Emerson revolts. He will not write any more 
 representative lives during this Epoch; he seems 
 rather disgusted with Biography, which was the 
 favorite subject of his previous Re-actionary De- 
 cennium, influenced not a little by Carlyle s Heroes 
 and Hero Worship and Cromwell. On the contrary 
 he is inclined to return to the Transcendental time 
 of his Essays; to his supremely creative era. The 
 only important book which he prints during the 
 present Epoch (1855-1865) is his Conduct of Life 
 which is no connected organic work, but a collec- 
 
THE PRACTICAL DECENNIUM. 359 
 
 tion of separate Essays, nine in number, each with 
 its own abstract title as in his first series of Essays. 
 And for the matter he recurs largely to the inser 
 tions in his earlier Diary. We note that a thread 
 of his present activity both in writing and lectur 
 ing turns back to his first Epoch of the present 
 Period. This thread or strand runs quite opposite 
 to what we have emphasized as the practical or 
 national tendency of this Decennium the latter 
 sweeping forward to the new goal of his life, the 
 former turning backward and reiterating with 
 fresh force and illustration his earlier achievement. 
 Accordingly we are to see first in this Epoch two 
 streams of Emersonian activity, in a kind of coun 
 ter movement, sometimes intermingling yet mostly 
 separate, which we may name after him the two 
 Emersons, the regressive and the progressive, or the 
 returning and the advancing currents of the man s 
 existence. Of course the latter is the distinctive 
 work of this time, and to it the main stress must be 
 given. Still both are to be noted as organic parts 
 of this Practical Epoch, rounding out the whole of 
 it to one complete cycle of the author s Life-Essay. 
 Each part we shall sum up in a brief statement, 
 adding, however, a third resultant complementary 
 portion which gives the final outcome and fulfil 
 ment of Emerson in his reconciliation with the in 
 stitutions of his country. Which three phases we 
 shall entitle Emerson the Regressive (1), the Pro 
 gressive (2), the Institutional (3). 
 
360 RALPH WALKO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE REGRESSIVE EMERSON 
 
 "We are not to forget, then, that the mighty over- - 
 flow of the new Emerson into his National interest, 
 did not supplant, though it subordinated, his old 
 Transcendental interest. This he still kept alive by 
 a continuous propagandism, even during the dis 
 tracting times of the anti-slavery agitation in which 
 he also took part. We even hear of lectures on 
 "The Natural Method of Mental Philosophy" in 
 1858, and similar ones in the later years of this 
 Epoch (See Cabot s Memoir, p. 763-791). Thus it 
 is manifest that Emerson amid all his political ex 
 citements and activities never dropped his plan of 
 writing a Prima Philosophia, which was to be his 
 great organic system of thought. 
 
 He journeyed far and wide giving lectures which 
 scattered the Emersonian spirit and doctrine in 
 many a mental seedfield where they have not failed 
 to sprout and to bear fruit. He remained the chief 
 and for a time almost the only Professor in the 
 traveling Emersonian University, which to our 
 mind is a great educational prophecy as yet unful 
 filled. So Emerson keeps propagating his world- 
 view, and what is better, his personality through his 
 presence, which was to many more convincing than 
 his words. 
 
 His purely literary creativity during the pres 
 ent Epoch fell off more than ever, if wo measure it 
 by the shrinkage in his Journals, Letters, and 
 
THE REGRESSIVE EMERSON. 361 
 
 Books. Still he was not idle ; as already indicated, 
 his activity turned outward, his speeches for occa 
 sions increased both in number and in warmth, and 
 expressly in inner Coherence. One literary book 
 only he printed during these ten years, and it has 
 altogether more of the past Emerson in it than of 
 the present Emerson, more of the regressive than of 
 the progressive man. This is the book above desig 
 nated, The Conduct of Life, which strikes the 
 reader as something of a reminiscence, in spite of 
 its new points and illustrations. Carlyle gives it 
 the highest praise, i ( reckoning it the best of all your 
 books." Certainly not the most original; we hear 
 in it the echo of the Essays both as to form and 
 matter. 
 
 The Regressive Emerson, therefore, turns back to 
 his previous creative Self and keeps it alive by the 
 written and spoken word. He rightly felt it to be 
 the best and most lasting part of his achievement, 
 and so Time has decreed. But mark the difference : 
 the former anti-traditional Emerson has become a 
 tradition, yea a tradition to himself. His old doc 
 trine shouted : No prescription, no adoption of the 
 old, away with the past ; but now the ageing Em 
 erson has lived to be his own past, to which he re 
 gresses and which he repeats, re-inforces, and re- 
 propagates. But this phase is not his only or his 
 best Self ; he also sweeps forward in a distinctively 
 new path, or better, in a new arc of his total orbit 
 of life. 
 
362 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 II. 
 
 THE PROGRESSIVE EMERSON 
 
 Such he is essentially during the present Decen- 
 nium, progressive, moving with the largest and even 
 startling stride, performing the world-encompass 
 ing somersault from hostility against all instituted 
 order to reconciliation with the same as the last 
 spiritual fruition of a long life. This change was 
 wrought in him lay a great national experience 
 which also became personal. The Emersonian Civil 
 War runs parallel to the National Civil War, and 
 has quite the same outcome at about the same time. 
 
 The progressive Emerson we have already seen 
 moving in his national experience from emphatic 
 hostility to the Nation through an intermediate 
 time of inner and outer discipline doubtless some 
 what penitential, to his final reconcilement with 
 and loyalty to the Nation. In his Diary and 
 Speeches and also in his Poems there are many 
 flashes of a spiritual change taking place within 
 him as regards the political and indeed the whole 
 institutional order. One of the salient examples is 
 the following citation : "We can see that the Con 
 stitution and Law in the United States must be 
 written on ethical principles so that the entire 
 power of the spiritual world can be enlisted to hold 
 the loyalty of the citizens/ This passage, written 
 in Emerson s Journal toward the end of 1863, im 
 plies that the moral conviction of the time must be 
 embodied in Law and Constitution if the American 
 
THE PROGRESSIVE EMERSON. 353 
 
 State is to be upheld and perpetuated by its citi 
 zens. Here lies also a great node in the evolution 
 of Emerson brought about by the movement of the 
 Nation. Already the necessity of an amendment to 
 the Constitution abolishing slavery had been de 
 clared by Lincoln after his decree of Emancipation, 
 which must become a part of the organic Law of 
 the land, ere the old feud between Conscience and 
 the Constitution can be pacified. The Moral taken 
 by itself is not only insufficient but self-undoing 
 till it is institutionalized. Emerson now sees and 
 hints the method of freeing himself from his life 
 long dualism, that between the Moral and the In 
 stitutional which has so tormented him in the past, 
 but jilst thereby has been the mainspring of his lit 
 erary utterance. Still he will occasionally lapse, 
 and again we shall find him asserting the absolut 
 ism of the moral or subjective viewpoint. 
 
 Already in the first year of the Civil War (Au 
 gust, 1861) he declares: "The "War goes on edu 
 cating us to see the bankruptcy of all narrow 
 views," which we may well take as a personal con 
 fession. Then the following sentence also describes 
 himself : l War for the Union is broader than any 
 State policy, so that we are forced still to grope 
 deeper for something catholic and universal, whole 
 some for all. Is he not questioning his former 
 narrowness? What an overhauling of the past ! So 
 he imagines : The war is a new glass to see all our 
 old things through, how they look. Verily our en 
 tire life is being thrown into this melting-pot of 
 
364 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 battle to be poured afresh. Listen to the new note 
 of reconciliation: "We will not again disparage 
 America, now that we have seen what men it will 
 bear." A repentant touch also may be felt in this 
 confession, for has not Emerson often slighted and 
 even abused his -country and its people with its in 
 stitutions? Surely he is getting over his furious 
 anti-nationalism, and even his scholarly indiffer 
 ence. 
 
 That is certainly the progressive Emerson. Still 
 he is not yet fully evolved. He has become indeed 
 a strong Unionist, but the Union is not first with 
 him, not the end but the means. The abolition of 
 slavery has the primacy to his mind. So he at the 
 start gets very impatient with Lincoln, whom he 
 has yet to understand, crying out: "Happily we 
 are under better guidance than that of statesmen. 
 We are drifting in currents, and the currents know 
 the way." But Lincoln is just the statesman who 
 communes with this supernal guidance, and gets 
 to know its way a fact which Emerson has yet to 
 find out and to acknowledge. Hence he can still 
 flame up: "See to it, not that the Republic re 
 ceives no detriment, but that liberty receives no det 
 riment." But without the Republic how can lib 
 erty (or emancipation) be won and then secured ? 
 Union exists for Emancipation, says Emerson; 
 Emancipation exists for Union, says Lincoln, espe 
 cially in his famous letter to Greeley, one of the 
 most telling victories of the War, though political 
 and not military. But Emerson keeps snarling his 
 
THE PROGRESSIVE EMERSON. 365 
 
 disapproval at the delay of Emancipation. (See 
 his Journals for 1861-2, in numerous passages.) 
 
 So we construe, in general, our progressive Emer 
 son in the early years of the war, deviously advanc 
 ing, but not yet arrived. Still after the Proclama 
 tion of Emancipation, which went into effect Janu 
 ary 1, 1863, we note a forward movement with some 
 fluctuations. Toward the close of this year (1863) 
 he is looking back: "Fremont was superseded in 
 1861 for what his superseders are achieving in 
 1862," when the time is ripe. And Napoleon is 
 cited as an example, saying : " If I had attempted 
 in 1806 what I had performed in 1807, I had been 
 lost." Lincoln s name is not mentioned, but the 
 example can only mean him as if he were declaring : 
 "If 1 had done in 1861 what I did in 1862, not only 
 I but the country would have been lost." Thus 
 Emerson begins to comprehend Lincoln s delay of 
 which he himself had so often complained. And he 
 is not far from reproaching himself when he ex 
 claims: "Not an abolitionist, not an idealist, can 
 say without effrontery, I did it. " To be sure, Em 
 erson affirms that "this Revolution is the work of 
 no man, but an effervescence of Nature, a surprise 
 to the leaders," something elemental, truly a Su 
 pernal Energy. Still that Energy required some 
 man to know it and to fetch it down to the people 
 and to the occasion, and that man was Lincoln, 
 whom Emerson did not yet fully recognize as the 
 time s supreme mediator between that Supernal 
 Energy and the formable but as yet protoplasmic 
 People.- 
 
366 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 Such are the ups and downs of the soul recording 
 itself in Emerson s Diary during this testful time. 
 Perhaps the most distinctive statement about him 
 self in relation to Lincoln is contained in his Ad 
 dress on the Emancipation Proclamation, Septem 
 ber, 1862 : We begin to think that we have under 
 estimated him in his work hitherto as "an instru 
 ment" which "the Divine Providence" has em 
 ployed. Let us "forget all that we thought his 
 shortcomings, every mistake, every delay." A 
 mellowed Emerson is this, expressing his own peni 
 tence. Moreover Lincoln "had the courage to seize 
 the moment," the right psychologic moment, as it 
 is now called, "and such was the felicity attending 
 the action that he has replaced Government in the 
 good graces of mankind" that is, specially in the 
 good graces of the once anarchic Waldo Emerson. 
 A pivotal confession Emerson converted by Lin 
 coln to Government, to a faith in the Nation, or at 
 least to the beginning of such a faith. Then he pro 
 ceeds to a kind of defense of the institution of the 
 State. Very gentle and somewhat veiled is the con 
 fession, for Emerson cannot help feeling that he is 
 here unsaying the drift of his whole past life or 
 at least moving out of it to a great new conception 
 of the Social Order. Here then we may stress the 
 axial point at which Emerson turns away from his 
 anti-institutional attitude to the beginning of his 
 pro-institutional creed, yet not without some ques 
 tionings and relapses. 
 
THE INSTITUTIONAL EMERSON. 357 
 
 III. 
 
 THE INSTITUTIONAL EMERSON 
 
 With such new title, representing the great spir 
 itual change of his life, we may at this point crown 
 Emerson, who has now gone through the school of 
 the Civil "War under Lincoln as head master and 
 chief expositor both in word and work. We may 
 say that Emerson has here arrived at a kind of com 
 mencement-day, when he receives a living diploma 
 for a vast task done, which is nothing less than a 
 long and busy Period of his entire career completed 
 and indeed transcended. The time of such gradu 
 ation may be set down in a general way at the close 
 of the War and therewith of Lincoln himself, 
 through whose sudden tragic e vanishment Emer 
 son felt uplifted to an insight which we would not 
 be far from wrong in calling the sovereign of all 
 his prophetic intuitions. 
 
 Some two years and a half after the last-men 
 tioned address on Emancipation, Emerson makes 
 another speech about Lincoln who had just been 
 assassinated (April, 1865). Thus to the speaker 
 a good stretch of time had been given for a new 
 growth. And certainly he is now looking from his 
 highest height. He calls Lincoln "the true history 
 of the American people of his time, their very em 
 bodiment; "step by step he walked before them, 
 slow with their slowness, quickening his march by 
 theirs, the true representative of this Continent." 
 Verily the Occidental Great Man was he, "the pulse 
 
368 RALPH WALDO EMERSON- PART SECOND. 
 
 of twenty millions throbbing in his heart, the 
 thought of their minds articulated by his tongue. 
 Thus Emerson sees that Lincoln speaks to the Folk- 
 Soul as none other, and voices its unworded aspira 
 tion. But what is tne supreme thing which he im 
 parts and whence? Hereupon Emerson has his 
 word: "There is a serene Providence which rules 
 the fate of Nations, makes little account of time, no 
 account of disasters, conquers alike by what is 
 called defeat or by what is called victory in this 
 way Emerson seeks to construe the "serene Provi 
 dence, ? r which is the Supernal Power over History, 
 often called in this book the World- Spirit ; he names 
 it passingly here the Eternal Nemesis. How does it 
 function? "It creates the man for the time, trains 
 him in poverty, inspires his genius, and arms him 
 for his task." It has called forth and educated 
 Lincoln, who is therefore its human vicegerent, who 
 connects this upper Sovereignty with the People. 
 Such is indeed the supremely Great Man Emerson, 
 the seer, being at his greatest in seeing him. 
 
 It is true that Emerson does not distinctly inter 
 connect these three supreme elements of Universal 
 History his "serene Providence," his "Man for 
 the time," and his "twenty millions of People." 
 They are all three stated, but they lie quite discon 
 nected in his statement, at least not psychically in 
 terrelated. This is indeed still the dominantly sen 
 tential, discursive Emerson, who does not yet fully 
 see and realize the Great Man, as the incarnate Me 
 diator between the World-Spirit and the Folk-Soul, 
 
THE INSTITUTIONAL EMERSON. 369 
 
 such as Lincoln was both in word and deed. Still 
 we are not to forget that glimpses of all three are 
 given in this uplifting, far glancing Address. Nor 
 can we help thinking that Emerson, if he had it to 
 do over again, would write a very different book on 
 Representative Men after this tuition of Lincoln s 
 career. Surely he has come to a new insight into 
 the function of the Great Man. But his productive 
 time is past, he is no longer able to re-construct his 
 world. 
 
 This last thought calls up the fact that Emerson 
 himself during the present Decennium seems to have 
 become aware that his creative power was on the 
 decline. In this speech he pensively exclaims while 
 contemplating Lincoln s early death : Far better 
 this fate than to have lived to be wished away to 
 have watched the decay of his own faculties." A 
 personal feeling seems to trickle out here, Emerson 
 being now sixty-two. Covert allusions to his ad 
 vancing eclipse we find in his Diary,, for example 
 this (1863) : "Let not the old thinker flatter him 
 self. You may have your hour at thirty (says 
 Jove), and lay for a moment your hand on the 
 helm, but not at sixty." Emerson was sixty when 
 he wrote this, and evidently was looking backward 
 at his thirties when he started his revolution known 
 as Transcendentalism, and wrote then his most orig 
 inal productions. So he recurs retrospectively to 
 his Creative Decennium which, he is aware, has gone 
 from him forever ; he feels that he is passing into 
 old-age out of his Middle or Second Period. Still 
 
370 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 Emerson knows that there are some old men who 
 never lost their elemental energy, or relax their na 
 tive grip on life till Death in person seems com 
 pelled to step in and cut them down still on the 
 battle-line. Emerson finds an example of this sort 
 in John Quincy Adams who can "lay an iron hand 
 on the helm at seventy-five" (Journal IX, p. 573). 
 Other faculties survive and can still work in Emer 
 son, but genius has departed. We have to think 
 that if Emerson could have adequately set forth 
 this last supreme experience of himself and his time 
 in a book, it would have been his greatest, having 
 the greatest theme. Still he lived it if he did not 
 write it, hence it is not lost, but remains a shining 
 part of what is, in our opinion, his best work his 
 life. 
 
 Thus Emerson closes probably the most wrench 
 ing Epoch of all his years, which we designate his 
 Practical Decennium, in which he has as it were to 
 reverse the whole trend of his previous career, hav 
 ing to make a sharp turn from his more theoretical 
 and contemplative habit of mind long ingrained, to 
 an active participation in public affairs, especially 
 in the politcal sphere, from whch he has heretofore 
 largely held aloof. This is truly his militant Epoch, 
 showing quite a speck of actual belligerency in the 
 hitherto pacific Emerson. Undoubtedly he has 
 waged some hot word-battles in times past ; defiant 
 he has shown himself and revolutionary in theory, 
 but he has rather shunned the consequent deeds, as 
 has been repeatedly noticed. But now we are at 
 
THE INSTITUTIONAL EMERSON. 371 
 
 last to behold him in practice, obeying the call of 
 the time to take his place on the fighting line of the 
 Nation s conflict. As we reckon the Epoch, it may 
 be deemed his Ten Years "War, running quite par 
 allel to the soul-determining national struggle from 
 1855 to 1865, a fact already emphasized. This syn 
 chronism has, we believe, -its deep and indeed uni 
 versal significance, indicating how the great historic 
 event of the time mirrors itself and unfolds in the 
 great soul of the time, and disciplines the same to 
 its highest vision and fulfilment. 
 
 But now we would beseech our order-seeking 
 reader to recall that just here we are closing not 
 only an Epoch, but a Period also, a much larger 
 sweep, in fact one of the three great arcs which make 
 the round of Emerson s life-work. We have named 
 it his Revolutionary Period, with its keenly critical, 
 we may say, negative attitude toward all those 
 forms of associated Man which we call Institutions, 
 and which have persisted from the human starting- 
 point in remaining the most potent and enduring 
 inheritance of the ages. Because of this their tra 
 ditional character, Emerson, the fortressed foe of 
 Tradition during the present Period, put them dar 
 ingly to the question, summoning them before the 
 tribunal of his thought, interrogating their truth, 
 and even denying their validity for human advance 
 ment, though he personally might have to accept 
 them under present conditions of living. 
 
 "Such is the pervasive leading theme of Emer 
 son s writing, which, as a unique expression in 
 
372 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART SECOND. 
 
 human dialect, or as mere literature, has proved 
 itself to have an abiding value. But surely the 
 main thing in Emerson is not his literary form, but 
 his spiritual content, his message, which grapples 
 \vith the deepest interest of humanity, past, pres 
 ent, and future, namely its Institutions, or Forms 
 of Association, in which -it is more and more exten 
 sively to be gathered and protected, to the goal of 
 a greater freedom of thought and action. If we 
 are able to dive down to the solid bottom of the 
 time s ocean of lather and blather in newspaper, 
 magazine, and other passing record, we shall find 
 that the grand aspiration of the whole race is at 
 present institutional, seeking new and better ways 
 of association in Family, State, Economics, Church, 
 and School. The earth-folk s push is now to be asso 
 ciated universally, with a far-off glimpse of its com 
 ing State universal. 
 
 It is to the lasting credit of Emerson that he has 
 seized this theme and made it the underlying sub 
 strate of his profoundest spiritual activity. This 
 is chiefly what has eternized. him, both in his writ 
 and in his life. The Middle Period just closing has 
 shown him battling with the transmitted social or 
 der, deeply estranged from his own institutional 
 world, almost ready at times to take flight from civ 
 ilization, as evolved and handed down from the past. 
 Purgatorial we may call such a discipline of life, 
 really preparatory for the ascent to Paradise, to 
 use a medieval Dantean conception. Or we may 
 take a more modern turn of the same thought f amil- 
 
THE INSTITUTIONAL EMERSON. 1)73 
 
 iar to the readers of the last great world-poem, Goe 
 the s Faust, which, also hints the final redemption 
 of its ever-aspiring hero : 
 
 "Wer immer strebend sich bemiiht, 
 Den konnen wir erlosen. 
 
 So the present Period may be said to show the 
 striving Emerson who therein represents the mighty 
 spiritual wrestle not merely of himself but of his 
 people and of his age, till his final deliverance and 
 redemption by that Upper Power, which rules in 
 the movement of History, and which Emerson the 
 thinker has at least once christened as the World- 
 Spirit, glimpsing it now as a redeemer. 
 
 And the poet Emerson in his later verse has re 
 peatedly touched upon this last and deepest trans 
 formation of himself, imaging it to be a return and 
 renascence like that of Nature s Spring-tide, a kind 
 rejuvenescence in feeling and consciousness if not 
 in creative intellect. The poem called May-Bay 
 (published 1867) is full of such exultant even if 
 veiled suggestions, of which we may here catch up 
 one which hints the return of the exiled Adam to 
 his Eden after long separation and estrangement: 
 
 And so perchance in Adam s race, 
 
 Of Eden s bower some dream-like trace 
 
 Survived the Flight and swam the Flood 
 
 And wakes the wish in youngest blood 
 
 To tread the forfeit Paradise 
 
 And feed once more the exile s eyes. 
 
The Reconciled Emerson 
 
 1865-1882 
 
 Such is the cheer-bringing title with which we 
 may now laurel Emerson for the rest of his life. As 
 already indicated, the close of the Civil War can 
 well be taken as the node of his great new transi 
 tion from his middle to his third and final Period. 
 Or more definitely, we may consider his address on 
 the Assassination of Lincoln as a kind of milestone 
 at which he shows himself rounding out his former 
 stage and pushing forward into a new phase of his 
 total career. Of course the change was somewhat 
 
 374 
 
THE RECONCILED EMERSON. 375 
 
 gradual, and moved along upon the supreme na 
 tional experience of the time, with which Emerson 
 had the gift to identify himself in his own personal 
 evolution. 
 
 Very delightful to us and soul-uplifting is the 
 thought that Emerson passed over into his old-age 
 reconciled with his country and its institutions, and 
 more deeply with History and the World s Order. 
 Thus his life in its whole circuit becomes an object 
 of healing contemplation. In fact just this transi 
 tion is one of Emerson s great works, if not his 
 greatest, even if it be recorded only in his living 
 and not in his writing. Again we have to think 
 that his life in its completeness is better than his 
 books, though these are by no means to be neglected, 
 being necessary constituents of his total biography. 
 Emerson s example, so worthy on many sides, seems 
 to us at its loftiest in the present deed. 
 
 So we are now to leave behind us the unreconciled 
 Emerson, with his long protest against the existent 
 constitution of things, . especially against the social 
 order or the realm of associated Man. To voice 
 this protest has been indeed his main creative task, 
 as we have often noted. Many fine and many wise 
 things he has flung us by the way, with gleams of 
 many spiritual provinces; still the main line 
 through all his -variety, we may again reiterate,, is 
 his critique of Institutions, which, however, is now 
 brought to a close. His career hitherto we have 
 likened to a long purgatorial discipline for the es 
 tranged soul which finally reaches its haven of 
 
376 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART THIRD. 
 
 peace and reconciliation. As an American Purga 
 tory for the denier of Institutions, I see no reason 
 why it should not have a lasting place in literature, 
 as well as Dante s. 
 
 I. The present Period is, accordingly, a great 
 stride forward; but we are also to see that it is an 
 even greater sweep backward, as it were, to Emer 
 son s very starting-point. We are, accordingly, to 
 behold him here returning upon himself from the 
 beginning; for this reconciliation with the institu 
 tional order is a reconciliation with the prime con- 
 ditons of his existence, with the very postulates of 
 human being. He was born into the Family, State, 
 Society, even Church, which are thus the pre-sup- 
 positions of his life as a rational or civilized man. 
 It has already been narrated how this established 
 world of Institutions took him up quite as an in 
 fant, reared him, educated him and gave him a vo 
 cation. 
 
 But it lay deep in Emerson s individuality as 
 well as in his time and place, as he grew up, to ques 
 tion these transmitted forms of the social order, 
 even to deny them, and to rebel against them, theo 
 retically at least. This he did in the name of free 
 dom : he had no hand in making them, why should 
 they make him ? Such was his deepest note of dis 
 content ; and in his supreme defiance he challenged 
 the very genesis of his social being, demanding what 
 right have you to determine me even to be ? 
 
 So we have followed the long career of the pro 
 testing, unreconciled Emerson, from his first explo- 
 
THE RECONCILED EMERSON. 377 
 
 sive breach with his traditional calling to his ex 
 treme negation, when he is met by the new regener 
 ating experience of the Civil War. The point which 
 we would now emphasize is that Emerson in this 
 last phase moves forward into what may be called 
 his Return, and interlinks with the first stage of his 
 nascent self as the creature of the established order, 
 and so justifies its existence in his own. Thus we 
 behold his life s cycle rounded full and completed, 
 and the man made harmonious out of his original 
 discord of being born, especially born into a tradi 
 tional world of institutions. 
 
 As we conceive it, this final Return is what makes 
 Emerson s life in its basic movement concordant 
 with itself, and most worthy of study and spiritual 
 appropriation. Whatever may be said of his books, 
 his achievement of a completely rounded existence 
 is his final crown, and that is the right goal of all 
 living for the individual man. Not only reconciled 
 in himself, but reconciled in his nearly four score 
 years of living that is for us the Reconciled Emer 
 son at his deepest and best. 
 
 II. Emerson has himself indicated this change 
 from his Second to his Third Period in a number of 
 passages, showing that he was well aware of it. 
 Perhaps it is most directly expressed in his poem 
 called Terminus which he read to his son (as the 
 latter reports) in 1866, and which is a confession 
 of his vanished creative power; he must now "econ 
 omize the failing river," and also "mature the un- 
 fallen fruit." And just that is what Emerson did: 
 
378 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART THIRD. 
 
 he went back to his old stores and put them in or 
 der, "fault of novel germs." Here he recognizes 
 himself as the regressive Emerson, in the matter of 
 writing. The poem was probably written about 
 1865-6, and helps us date the present Period, the 
 first line striking its key-note : it is time to be old, 
 to take in sail. " So he hears the decree of Termi 
 nus : i the God of bounds came to me and said, No 
 more." Invention is gone, and " fancy departs." 
 So we may see the old Emerson looking at himself 
 and versifying his look. 
 
 Moreover there is in the same poem a peculiar 
 acknowledgment, or rather a kind of lament on the 
 part of Emerson that his powers have gone into de 
 cline too early in life, for which he seems to blame 
 with some vehemence his ancestors : 
 
 Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires 
 Who when they gave thee breath 
 Failed to bequeath 
 The needful sinew starlr at once, 
 But left a legacy of ebbing veins. 
 
 III. This melancholy retrospect of waning senes 
 cence let us counter with the opposite mood of joy 
 ous rejuvenescence which also sings from the ageing 
 poet, especially in his May Day, showing sharp con 
 trast with the preceding Terminus. The two pieces 
 mirror to us Emerson first gazing gloomily into the 
 sunset of a past life and then scintillating in the 
 sunrise of a new creative hope called up by the ver- 
 iial glories before his eyes. 
 
THE RECONCILED EMERSON. 379 
 
 The exuberant and for curt Emerson somewhat 
 lengthy downpour of verse called May Day was 
 published as a whole in 1867, though it is a collec 
 tion of poetic ecstasies on Spring s appearance 
 reaching back through many years of the author s 
 life. His son and editor, in the last edition of his 
 Works, says that some lines of this poem are found 
 in the Journals of 1845. In fact there are intima 
 tions in it which are traceable much earlier, for in 
 stance those on evolution. Thus it may be regarded 
 as a string of beautiful pearls taken probably from 
 all three of Emerson s Periods. It is an anthology 
 of rapturous outbursts on the return of Spring 
 seemingly during a poet s life- time splashing up 
 more or less separately, being not welded together 
 into anything like unity. Still we hear the one key 
 note sounding through it : 
 
 The world rolls round mistrust it not 
 Befalls again what once befell; 
 All things return, both sphere and mote, 
 And I shall hear my bluebird s note. 
 
 As we construe the poem, the last page has spe 
 cial reference to this Third Period of Emerson, who 
 now addresses Spring with a kind of personal ap 
 peal for renewal : 
 
 For thou, Spring, canst renovate 
 All that high God did first create. 
 Be still his arm and architect, 
 Ik-build the ruin, mend the defect. 
 
380 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART THIRD. 
 
 Such is the affecting prayer of the old and deca 
 dent Emerson to the creative season of Nature s 
 renascence, as he recalls the productive energy 
 which Spring once "brought him in younger days : 
 Not less renew the heart and brain, 
 Scatter the sloth, wash out the stain, 
 Make the aged eye sun-clear, 
 To parting soul bring grandeur near. 
 Emerson was sixty-four years of age when this 
 poem appeared in print. It has many hints of 
 life s renewal symbolized in the Spring; even the 
 renewed Nation after the Civil War seems to be al 
 luded to. But Emerson feels most deeply Spring s 
 reproach to him personally : 
 
 Who can like thee our rags upbraid 
 Or taunt us with our hope decayed ? 
 IV. What may we set down as the first and most 
 suggestive instance of the Reconciled Emerson 1 As 
 We interpret his words and actions, he would prob 
 ably be most gratified over his reconciliation with 
 Boston which had been during his creative years 
 the chief fortress of his adversary. Undoubtedly he 
 had always had friends and a following in that com 
 munity ; but the spirit of Boston, he had hardly won 
 till this last Period. In his middle time he repeat 
 edly denounces the great city of the Puritans as un 
 worthy of its ancestors, and he declares that his 
 verse shuns to name the noble sires because of un 
 worthy sons." He can bitterly stigmatize its peo 
 ple: 
 
THE RECONCILED EMERSON. 3flf 
 
 Your town is full of gentle names, 
 By patriots once were watchwords made ; 
 Those war-cry names are muffled shames 
 On recreant sons mislaid. 
 
 Still Emerson was a Bostonian, born, reared, and 
 educated in Boston. Underneath all his reproaches, 
 all his hate, there was a still deeper love. He re 
 minds us of the banished Dante whose dearest Flor 
 ence is the object the poet s furious curses shot 
 through with caresses. So Emerson calls the Bos- 
 tonians slaves wearing freedom s names, really de 
 generates of the old Puritanic stock. The ancient 
 courage has disappeared in modern formalism, and 
 he scoffs at "thy bane, respectability" which mis 
 take our Emerson will not commit though a Bos 
 tonian. Still we shall find that he too has a formal 
 side of life, by no means eschewing respectability. 
 
 What is the ground of this falling-out with his 
 city, we may say, with his world? The reader of 
 the foregoing narrative has already the essential 
 facts. It was the conservative rock-ribbed Boston 
 spirit shown in his first conflict with his church, 
 which threw the young minister out of his ancestral 
 vocation. "We may trace the after-throes of this 
 early battle through his whole middle Period. And 
 the soul of Boston did not take kindly to Transcen 
 dentalism. We have already considered how- Har 
 vard College, the spiritual center of the community, 
 requited the audacities of Emerson s Divinity Class 
 Address. The fact is that Emerson was banished 
 from Boston, not politically, as Dante was from 
 
382 RALPH WALDO EMERSON PART THIRD. 
 
 Florence, but spiritually. And just that drew his 
 battle-line. The whole middle Period, as already 
 set forth, was first of all a struggle between Emer 
 son and Boston. 
 
 So it came about that he would not go back to his 
 native city for his permanent residence when he set 
 tled down to his life s task. Still he did not locate 
 too far away from his antagonist, but built his Cas 
 tle of Defiance at Concord whence he launched his 
 ever-renewed Declaration of Independence, and 
 flung down his gage of battle. So he put himself in 
 line with the famous bellicose deed of the little 
 town, in whose glory his forefathers had part. Con 
 cord was, therefore, his ancestral seat, to which he 
 returned in spite of the advantage of having been 
 born in Boston. Traditional Concord became the 
 home and life-long fortress of the anti-traditional 
 Emerson in his attack upon the traditions of Bos 
 ton in Church, State, Society. 
 
 But now unto the world-reconciled Emerson 
 reconciliation has also come with his native city. 
 And Harvard has invited her most distinguished 
 son after long estrangement to deliver the harmo 
 nious counterpart to his much decried and decrying 
 Divinity Class Address of epoch-creating memory. 
 And now we may hear the once anti-traditional Em 
 erson, often repeating Boston s Motto, well pre 
 served in antique crystallized Latin: Sicut patri- 
 bus, sit Deus nobis! May that ancient Puritanic 
 God of the fathers be ours still : such is his fervent 
 new prayer of reconciliation. Finally in one of his 
 
THE RECONCILED EMERSON. 333 
 
 latest poems celebrating past fames of liis city, the 
 usually placid seer suddenly overflows into a seeth 
 ing gush of benediction, and you may almost hear 
 him give a red-hot kiss to his darling Boston : 
 
 A blessing through the ages thus 
 Shield all thy roofs and towers ! 
 God with the Fathers, so with us, 
 Thou darling town of ours ! 
 
 V. Some seventeen years may be assigned to 
 this last Period a long, beautiful sunset, slowly 
 waning indeed yet shining to the close. He kept up 
 his literary activity, though with mental grip con 
 tinually relaxing, till finally he could no longer ar 
 range his own papers but had to call in for help an 
 editor. Several works of his appeared during this 
 time ; here we need mention only his Natural His 
 tory of the Intellect as the sad expiring effort of his 
 ambition to organize into writ his youthful Philo- 
 sophia Prima a pathetic failure. Thus his powers 
 gradually ebbed away to the close, involving not 
 only his productivity, but also his memory and to a 
 certain extent his speech. 
 
 Still he had his reward. Honors flowed in upon 
 him from many quarters, even from foreign lands, 
 during this last Period. As he had become recon 
 ciled with the world, so the world had in its turn 
 become reconciled with him, and gave him at last 
 his due recognition. Two long journeys of grace 
 he took one to the far East, the other to the far 
 West, to the Pyramids and to California, but they 
 
384 TtALPH WALDO EMERSON PART THIRD. 
 
 left no record like those earlier trips to the old 
 home. Still they were triumphal in their way. 
 
 Early one morning in July, 1872, his house took 
 fire and Emerson was for the first time put to flight 
 from his Castle of Defiance in his old-age. Friends 
 and neighbors rebuilt it for him while he went 
 abroad; when he returned he was welcomed with 
 procession, band of music, arch of triumph, and 
 speeches an affecting tribute to Emerson the con 
 queror, having won a supreme victory in Life s long 
 desperate battle, whereof the record is this Biog 
 raphy. 
 
 At home in his resurrected mansion, still the 
 outer abode but therewith the strangely foreshow 
 ing symbol of his spirit s last transition, he passed 
 away on the 27th day of April, 1882 and yet lives, 
 even with a more fully consummated existence than 
 ever, for he now rises before us in his entire man 
 hood and fulfilment, over time as it were, and no 
 longer eddying fitfully in the strown succession of 
 his years and their scattered labors. Now he lives 
 for us his whole life in its wholeness, and therein 
 has won his immortal portion. 
 
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