77 
 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON: 
 
 His LIFE, WRITINGS, AND PHILOSOPHY 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE WILLIS COOKE. 
 
 THE 
 
 NI7EHSITY 
 
 SECOND EDITION, 
 
 BOSTON: 
 JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY. 
 
 1882. 
 
Jfr 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1881, 
 BT GEORGE WILLIS COOKE. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 Stereotyped and Printed by Rand, Avery, <5r Co., 
 7/7 Franklin Street, Boston. 
 
PS 
 
 TO 
 
 DEMPSTER OSTRANDER, 
 & ftrue 
 
 AND A GENUINE LOVER OF BOOKS, IN WHOSE LIBRARY 
 
 I FIRST READ AND LEARNED TO LOVE 
 
 THE ESSAYS OF EMERSON, 
 
 &5)fe Uolume 10 Enact tfalu 
 
 IF IT MEET WITH HIS APPROVAL, I SHALL 
 BE CONTENT. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE following pages are intended as an introduction to 
 the study of the writings of Mr. Emerson. They are bio 
 graphical only because light may be thrown upon his books 
 by the events of his life. Little effort has been made to 
 open his personal history. As with all such minds, most 
 of what is truly biographical is in his letters and diaries. 
 Yet the life of Mr. Emerson has been in his thoughts, and 
 these are in his books. 
 
 Such has been his influence on the thought and life of our 
 time, some word ought to be said which will help the younger 
 generation to a fuller understanding of the debt we owe him. 
 With the hope of doing this service, and of helping many to 
 find the riches contained in his books, the following pages 
 were written. 
 
 The work attempted here has been solely one of interpre 
 tation, and not of defense or criticism. No effort has been 
 made to measure Mr. Emerson s philosophy from the stand 
 point of any other. While the author does not always accept 
 that philosophy as his own, he has ventured not to intrude 
 any hint of it into his interpretation. He has attempted to 
 enter into its spirit, to expound it from the stand-point of 
 
yi - PREFACE. 
 
 ardent sympathy, and to permit Mr. Emerson to speak for 
 himself as often as possible. He has written as a disciple 
 rather than as a critic, not because he sees nothing to criticise, 
 but because he feels that in this way alone can full justice be 
 done the subject. That he is sufficiently the disciple to have 
 made a correct delineation of the man and his teachings he 
 certainly hopes may be the case. 
 
 In the chapters devoted to Mr. Emerson s philosophical 
 and religious views, frequent reference has been made to 
 those who have held similar opinions. This is done for the 
 purpose of giving a clearer insight into the attitude and the 
 affinities of his thought. The quotations introduced are in 
 tended as helps towards a truer comprehension of the subject, 
 and not as containing opinions which Mr. Emerson would 
 himself always accept. Read with this qualification, it is 
 believed they will throw much light upon his speculations. 
 They should be read, too, as implying no doubt of the re 
 markably original character of Mr. Emerson s philosophy. 
 
 A chapter has been prepared on Mr. Emerson s reported 
 abandonment of his religious position of former years. Ma 
 ture consideration has led to its omission. Mr. Emerson 
 needs no such vindication. An attentive perusal of the fol 
 lowing pages, it is believed, will prove the falsity of that 
 report. The author has looked carefully into the subject, 
 and finds it to be entirely without confirmation. 
 
 The following brief statement of facts concerning the two 
 supposed proofs of the truth of this report is sufficient to 
 prove their falsity. The appeal to Mr. Emerson s recently 
 published essays is rendered nugatory by the fact that those 
 essays were all written many years ago, long before any one 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 I. 
 
 ANCESTRY. 
 
 THMERSON believes in heredity, that " people are 
 -Uj born with the moral or with the material bias." 
 He can well believe in it, for it has done much in his 
 behalf. , Broad and generous culture, a strong love_ of 
 moral excellence^ high ancTpuFe thoughts, he inherited 
 from his Torefathers. Burroughs "says l his culture is 
 ante-natal, and it is certain that his ancestry had in 
 it the promise of much which his life has fulfilled. 
 If heredity had no exceptions, his would be an admira 
 ble instance of its laws of operation. He is such a, 
 man as might be looked for in the case of such an 
 ancestry ; rather, his is such an ancestry as we would 
 look for in the case of such a man. 
 
 I Eight generations of cultured, conscientious, and ^ 
 practical ministers preceded him. jln each generation 
 tBey held tFTe most acfvanced positions in religious 
 thought ; and to write their history, especially in their 
 relations to the religious movements with which they 
 were connected, would be to write the history of New^ 
 England religion.) Emerson is no more physically the 
 child of Uis Puritan ancestors than he is intellectually 
 and spiritually. \ When the generations which preceded 
 him are remembered, we can better understand why - 
 there should be this fine bloom of thought in the ) 
 
 i Birds and Poets, p. 195. 
 
2 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 western world ; and we then find how native is the best 
 in his culture and thought. 
 
 The historian of Concord 1 has traced Emerson s 
 ancestry back to the beginning of the thirteenth cen 
 tury, when one of the English barons, who secured 
 Magna Charta of King John, was Lord Manor of 
 Bulkeley, in the county of Chester. His name was 
 Robert Bulkeley ; and Shattuck gives the names of his 
 descendants down to Edward Bulkeley, D.D., who was 
 rector at Woodhill, Bedfordshire, in the last quarter of 
 the sixteenth century, and who wrote a supplement to 
 Fox s Book of Martyrs. The family was one of some 
 importance ; a member of it having been a prominent 
 co-worker with Cromwell, and several others were en 
 nobled. Edward was a faithful pastor and preacher, 
 and seems to have been the first of the family to enter 
 this profession. One of his sons, Peter, was born at 
 Odell, Bedfordshire, Jan. 31, 1582. He was admitted 
 to St. John s College, Oxford, at the age of sixteen, 
 and, in due course of time, succeeded to his father s 
 pulpit and benefice. Like many of the other preachers 
 of the time, he was a Puritan in his tendencies, and did 
 not conform to the church service. His bishop con 
 nived at this, and permitted it for twenty-five years, 
 when the matter was brought to the attention of Arch 
 bishop Laud, who at once silenced him. In conse 
 quence, he decided to come to America ; and many 
 members of his congregation bore him company. He 
 was a man of prominence and ability, a capable leader 
 of men, and competent to guide in the enterprise of 
 forming a new town in the wilds of America. He 
 landed in Boston late in the year 1634, and remained 
 in Newtown, afterwards Cambridge, for nearly a year. 
 Of the reasons for coming to America, Emerson has 
 said, 
 
 " The best friend the Massachusetts colony had, though much 
 .i ;ain-t his will, was Archbishop Laud in England. "In conse 
 quence of his famous proclamation set tin;; up certain novelties in 
 the rites of public worship, fifty godly ministers were suspended 
 
 1 A History of tin; Town of Concord, by Lemuel Shattuck. 
 
ANCESTRY. 3 
 
 for contumacy in the course of two years and a half. Hindered 
 from speaking, some of these dared to print the reasons of their 
 dissent, and were punished with imprisonment or mutilation. 
 This severity brought some of the best men in England to over 
 come that natural repugnance to emigration which holds the serious 
 and moderate of every nation to their own soil. Among the 
 silenced clergymen was a distinguished minister of Woodhill in 
 Bedfordshire, Rev. Peter Bulkeley, descended 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 estate. Persecu 
 tion readily knits friendship between its victims. Mr. Bulkeley, 
 having turned his estate into money, and set his face towards New 
 England, was easily able to persuade a good number of planters to 
 join him. They arrived in Boston in 1634. Probably there had 
 been a previous correspondence with Gov. Winthrop, and an agree 
 ment that they should settle at Musketaquid. With them joined 
 Mr. Simon Willard, a merchant from Kent in England. They 
 petitioned the General Court for the grant of a township ; and on 
 the 2d of September, 1635, corresponding in new style to 12tb 
 September, leave to begin a plantation at Musketaquid was given to 
 Peter Bulkeley, Simon Willard, and about twelve families more. 
 A month later, Rev. John Jones and a large number of settlers 
 destined for the new town arrived in Boston." 1 
 
 The General Court granted the settlers important 
 privileges, as this was to be the first inland town above 
 tide-water ; adding, " and the name of the place is 
 changed, and hereafter to be called Concord." The 
 Indian name was Musketaquid. In the autumn of 
 1635 the settlement was begun. The perils were 
 many ; for Watertown and Cambridge were the nearest 
 towns, and all around was the wilderness. There were 
 discouragements and hardships many ; and there was a 
 division of the colony after a few years, Rev. John 
 Jones and many others going to Connecticut. Under 
 the skillful leadership of Bulkeley, who became the 
 pastor and teacher, the town was gradually settled, and 
 began to prosper. Bulkeley brought with him six thou 
 sand pounds ; but he exercised great benevolence, help 
 ing each of his servants to the possession of a farm. 
 He was greatly beloved arid respected by his people, 
 and was " addressed as father, prophet, or counselor by 
 
 1 A Historical Discourse delivered before the citizens of Concord, 
 12th September, 1835, on the second centennial anniversary of the incor 
 poration of the town. Reprinted in 1876. 
 
4 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 them and all the ministers of the country." He was of 
 a resolute purpose, a strong will, quick in temper and 
 sharp of tongue, courteous and kind in manner, a genu 
 ine Puritan, dressing with rigid plainness, wearing his 
 hair very short, and was devoutly faithful in the dis 
 charge of all the duties of his profession. He was an 
 earnest and eloquent preacher. Cotton Mather said 
 " he was a most exalted Christian, full of those devo 
 tions which accompany a conversation in heaven, and 
 conscientious even to a degree of scrupulosity." He 
 was one of the best scholars among the early colonists, 
 and is said by Mather to have had " a competently good 
 stroke at Latin poetry." l 
 
 The Concord church was organized in Cambridge, 
 July 15, 1G36 ; and in April of the next year Bulkeley 
 was installed as teacher, and Jones as pastor. The con 
 troversy raised by Mrs. Hutchinson was exciting atten 
 tion at this time ; so that " the governor, and Mr. Cotton, 
 and Mr. Wheelwright, and the two ruling elders of Bos 
 ton, and the rest of that church which were of any note, 
 did not come " to this installation, as Winthrop says. 
 The persons he names Averc the leaders of the Anti- 
 nomian party, mainly confined to the Boston church, 
 though to be found in most of the other churches ; and 
 they were the advocates of a covenant of grace, claim 
 ing that God performs all the work of regeneration, and 
 maintaining that the Holy Spirit becomes an actual 
 presence in the heart of the true believer. They called 
 the other party Legalists, accused them of recognizing 
 only a covenant of works, and of not having entered 
 into the true spirit of the gospel. This controversy 
 raged with such vehemence, and the tenets of the Bos 
 ton church became so repugnant to most of the other 
 churches, that a synod was called in the autumn. Ow 
 ing to his reputation for learning and moderation, and 
 t;> his high social standing, Bulkeley was chosen one of 
 the moderators. It suppressed Mrs. Hutchinson s her 
 esy, and drove her and her followers from the colony ; 
 
 1 Duycldnck gives a specimen of his verse in his Cyclopedia of 
 American Literature. 
 
ANCESTRY. 5 
 
 while Cotton acknowledged his error, and Vane went 
 back to England, to lose his life in the cause of liberty. 
 This controversy, however, continued for many years, 
 and led to the publication of a remarkable volume of 
 controversial theology by Peter Bulkeley, in 1646. It 
 bore the title of " The Gospel Covenant ; or, the Cove 
 nant of Grace opened, wherein are explained : 1. The 
 difference between the covenant of grace, and covenant 
 of works. 2. The different administration of the cov 
 enant before and since Christ. 3. The benefits and 
 blessings of it. 4. The conditions. 5. The properties 
 of it. Preached at Concord, in New England, by Peter 
 Bulkeley, some time fellow of Saint John s College 
 in Cambridge." It deals elaborately with these prob 
 lems, maintaining the superiority of the covenant of 
 grace, but claiming that the covenant of works is still 
 in force, that while we are saved by grace we must 
 show forth the effects of that grace by a life of good 
 works. He makes frequent mention of the controversy 
 of the time, and condemns with strong language of con 
 tempt those who maintain a constant indwelling of the 
 Holy Spirit, and an immediate sanctification by the 
 work of grace. Its strong reasoning, sound common 
 sense, and earnest piety must have made it acceptable 
 reading in those days ; and a new and enlarged edition 
 was published in 1651. Tyler says this book was " one 
 of those massive, exhaustive, ponderous treatises into 
 which the Puritan theologians put their enormous bib 
 lical learning, their acumen, their industry, the fervor, 
 pathos, and consecration of their lives. The style, 
 though angular, sharp-edged, carved into formal divis 
 ions, and stiff with the embroidery of scriptural texts, 
 is, upon the whole, direct and strong." 1 It is a very 
 good specimen of the thought and preaching of the 
 time, and no clearer statement can be found of the 
 main points of Puritan theology and church govern 
 ment. 
 
 Peter Bulkeley died March 9, 1659, and was suc- 
 
 1 History of American Literature, vol. i. p. 17. 
 
6 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 ceeded in the Concord pastorate by his son Edward, 
 who was born and educated in England. Edward was 
 a man of remarkable piety and devotion ; and, following 
 in the ways of his father, made poetry when occasion 
 demanded. In his time occurred King Philip s war; 
 but the Indians spared the town, because, they said, the 
 Great Spirit loved the Concord people, for Mr. Bulkeley 
 was a -great pray." A large settlement of Indians 
 had been formed within the limits of Concord, where 
 Eliot labored, and a thriving church had been gathered 
 among them. This terrible war, however, cooled the 
 missionary zeal of the Concord people ; while the Indian 
 settlement was nearly destroyed, and never flourished 
 again. Edward Bulkeley, though lame and of a feeble 
 constitution, was much respected for his talents, irre 
 proachable character, and piety. His daughter Eliza 
 beth became the second wife of the Rev. Joseph Emer 
 son of Mendon in 16G5. The Emerson family was a 
 very honorable one of Durham or York, a member of 
 it being knighted by Henry VIII. It had long been a 
 family of ministers. Thomas Emerson of Ipswich came 
 to America about the year 1635, and was the first of 
 the family in this country. His son Joseph preached 
 in Ipswich for a short time, then settled in Wells for 
 two or three years, and became the first minister in 
 Mendon in 1G67 ; when that town was destroyed, dur 
 ing King Philip s war, he went to Concord, and there 
 died Jan. 3, 1680. His son Edward, born in Concord 
 in 1670, married Rebecca Waldo of Chelmsford in 1697. 
 The Waldo family had been London merchants, and 
 were descended from a stock of the Waldenses. 
 
 Ed \vard Emerson had a son Joseph, who entered 
 Harvard College in his fourteenth year, graduated in 
 1717, and began to preach when he was eighteen, u to 
 general acceptance." He was ordained in Maiden Oct. 
 31, 1721, and preached there forty-five years, being out 
 of his pulpit only two Sundays in all that time. He 
 married Mary, daughter of the Rev. Samuel Moody of 
 Maine, and died in 1767. His son Joseph was the first 
 pastor of Pepperell ; while another son, William, was 
 
ANCESTRY. 7 
 
 the pastor of the Concord church at the outbreak of 
 the Revolutionary War. 
 
 Edward Bulkeley was succeeded by his colleague, 
 the Rev. Joseph Estabrook, who died in 1711. The 
 next Concord pastor was the Rev. John Whiting, who 
 was dismissed after twenty-one years service. He was 
 succeeded by Daniel Bliss, whose daughter married 
 the first William Emerson. Bliss is well described by 
 the epitaph in one of the Concord cemeteries, 
 
 " Of this beloved Disciple and Minister of Jesus Christ tis 
 justly observable, that, in addition to his natural and acquired 
 abilities, he was distinguishedly favoured with those eminent Graces 
 of the Holy Spirit (Meekness, Humility, and Zeal) which render 
 him peculiarly fit for and enabled him to go thro the great and 
 arduous work of the Gospel Ministry, upon which he entered in 
 the 25th year of his age. The Duties of the various Characters 
 he sustained in life were performed with great strictness and fidel 
 ity. As a private Christian, he was a bright Example of Holiness 
 in Life and Purity in Conversation. But in the execution of ye 
 ministerial office he shone with Peculiar Lustre ; a spirit of Devo 
 tion animated all his performances ; his Doctrine drop d as ye Rain, 
 and his lips distilled like the Dew ; his Preaching was powerful 
 and searching; and he who blessed him with an uncommon 
 Talent in a particular Application to ye Consciences of men, 
 crowned his skilful endeavor with great success. As ye work of 
 the Ministry was his great Delight, so he continued fervent and 
 diligent in ye Performance of it, till his Divine Lord called him 
 from his Service on Earth to the Glorious Recompense of Reward 
 in Heaven, where, as one who has turned many unto Righteous 
 ness, he shines as a star for ever and ever." 
 
 Another religious controversy came at this time, and 
 was heartily joined in by the Concord pastor. It was 
 caused by the great revival of 1740, arid the demand 
 of Jonathan Edwards that only converted persons 
 should be admitted to the churches. It was really a 
 renewal of that discussion in which Peter Bulkeley had 
 taken part, and which had constantly continued, in one 
 form or other, to agitate the New-England churches, 
 in spite of the banishment of Roger Williams, Ann 
 Hutcl. nson, the Quakers, and many others who depart 
 ed from the accepted forms of faith. Rigid as was the 
 Puritan theology, it had in it the elements of the wid- 
 
8 KALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 est liberality, as was shown by the many in each gener 
 ation who doubted one or more of its tenets, or who 
 sought for more liberal methods of church government. 
 This spirit of dissent and doubt, the tendency to ration 
 alize religion, and to express it in moral teachings, grew 
 to a considerable strength. In time there followed a 
 re-action, led by Jonathan Edwards; and the doctrine 
 of grace again asserted itself. A great religious awak 
 ening began in Edwards s church about the year 1735, 
 which swept through New England. It was aided by 
 Whitefield 8 efforts, and many of the pastors joined in 
 it. It revived the spirit of devotion, but caused much 
 religious controversy. Among those who joined most 
 ardently in its promotion was Daniel Bliss, who is said 
 to have introduced into the Concord church, with his 
 settlement there in 1738, "a new style of preaching, 
 bold, zealous, impassioned, and enthusiastic, forming a 
 striking contrast to that the church had previously 
 enjoyed." 1 Whitefield preached there in the autumn 
 of 1741 to a great crowd of people, and he came again 
 later. Religious meetings were held every day in the 
 week, many persons joined the church, and there was a 
 great excitement. Bliss went frequently to preach in 
 other churches, while strong opposition was made to 
 some of his doctrinal teachings. A council was soon 
 called to confer with dissatisfied brethren, but no result 
 was reached. Other councils followed in rapid succes 
 sion, in one of which twenty-two articles of grievance 
 were brought against Bliss by his opposers. He was 
 accused of preaching the doctrines of election and total 
 depravity, and of saying that " it was as great a sin for 
 a man to get an estate by honest labor, if he had not 
 a single aim at the glory of God, as to get it by gaming 
 at cards or dice." There were other charges, all of 
 them showing him to have been a decided Calvinist. 
 A clergyman who visited Concord in 1742, and con 
 versed with the opposers of Bliss, wrote in his journal, 
 "I find they are rank Arminians." 2 The result was 
 
 i Shattuck. 2 I\M., p. 173. . 
 
ANCESTRY. 9 
 
 that forty-seven members seceded and farmed another 
 church, which continued in existence about fourteen 
 years. Elsewhere throughout the country bitter con 
 troversies followed the revival, and resulted in the 
 development of a still greater amount of heresy. " The 
 genuine principles of religion," says the Concord histo 
 rian, " obtained little influence during the progress of 
 the controversies in town. Great apathy prevailed." 
 Even in Edwards s own church, so strong was the op 
 position to his Calvinism, that a serious division result 
 ed, and he was compelled to resign in 1750. The 
 revivalists claimed that Socinianism was at work in the 
 churches, and the party which opposed them was strong 
 and very influential. Books opposed to the doctrine 
 of the trinity soon began to be circulated, while the 
 spirit of free inquiry rapidly developed. 
 
 The tendencies of thought at this time, and the 
 strength of the liberal party, may be seen in the fact, 
 that, when Daniel Bliss died in 1764, he was succeeded 
 the next year by William Emerson, who was a very 
 moderate Calvinist. There was some opposition to 
 his settlement ; but his piety, zeal, and discretion soon 
 united the church, and made it strong and prosperous. 
 He was born in 1743, graduated at Harvard in 1761, 
 and married Phebe Bliss, daughter of the former pas 
 tor, Aug. 21, 1766. The house now known as the " Old 
 Manse " was built for him in 1767, and was occupied 
 by him a year after his marriage. Hawthorne says that 
 " in its near retirement and accessible seclusion it was 
 the very spot for the residence of a clergyman." Very 
 soon the difficulties with England began, and he was 
 zealously devoted to the cause of the colonists. He 
 was made the chaplain of the Continental Congress. 
 " The cause of the colonies was so much in his heart," 
 says his grandson, "that he did not cease to make it the 
 subject of his preaching and his prayers, and is said to 
 have deeply inspired many of his people with his own 
 enthusiasm." l He induced many of his people to enlist 
 
 i Centennial address of 1835. 
 
10 RALPH WALDO EMERSOX. 
 
 by his preaching ; and, on the occasion of a general re 
 view of the military, he aroused a great enthusiasm by 
 his sermon. On the Sunday before the British soldiers 
 marched into Concord, he preached earnestly on " Re 
 sistance to tyrants in obedience to God ; " and 011 the 
 morning of the fight he exhorted the people to resist 
 ance at all hazards. When the minute-men marched 
 by his house across the river to protect the stores in 
 that direction, and to await aid from the surrounding 
 towns, they compelled him to remain at home ; but he 
 witnessed the light at the bridge, which was only a 
 dozen rods from his own door. When the British had 
 retreated through the town, he sallied forth to care for 
 the wounded, and to cheer on the people. On the 16th 
 of August, 1776, he left Concord to join the army at 
 Ticonderoga ; but he was soon attacked with a fever in 
 cident to army life. He was advised to return home, but 
 only reached the neighborhood of Rutland, Vt., where 
 he died Oct. 20, 1776. His " personal appearance was 
 pleasing and prepossessing; his manners familiar and 
 gentlemanly ; his conversation communicative and face 
 tious, though not inconsistent with his ministerial 
 character ; in his preaching lie was popular, eloquent, 
 persuasive, and devotional, adapting himself with re 
 markable ease to all circumstances and occasions ; and 
 his doctrine was evangelical." l 
 
 In 1778 Ezra Ripley became the Concord pastor, and 
 two years later he married the widow of William Em 
 erson. He continued for sixty-three years his connec 
 tion with the Concord church, dying Sept. 21, 1841. 
 In his house Emerson spent many of his boyhood days, 
 while both he and his brothers were greatly loved by 
 Ripley. After his death Emerson described him in 
 these words : 
 
 " lie was a man so kind and sympathetic, his character was so 
 transparent, and his merits so intelligible to all observers, that he 
 was justly appreciated in this community. He was a natural 
 gentleman; courtly, hospitable, manly, and public spirited; his 
 nature social, his house open to all men. . . . His friends were his 
 
 1 Shattuck 
 
ANCESTRY. 11 
 
 study, and to see them loosened his talents and his tongue. In 
 his house dwelt order and prudence and plenty ; there was no 
 waste and no stint; he was open-handed and just and generous. 
 . . . He was never distinguished in the pulpit as a writer of ser 
 mons ; but, in his house, his speech was form and pertinence itself. 
 You felt in his presence that he belonged by nature to the clerical 
 class. ... With a very limited acquaintance with books, his 
 knowledge was an external experience, an Indian wisdom, the 
 observation of such facts as country life for nearly a century could 
 supply. ... He knew everybody s grandfather, and seemed to 
 talk with each person, rather as the representative of his house 
 and name than as an individual. In him has perished more local 
 tradition and personal anecdote of this village and vicinity than is 
 possessed by any survivor. This intimate knowledge of families, 
 and this skill of speech, and still more his sympathy, made him 
 incomparable in his parochial visits, and in his exhortations and 
 
 Erayers with sick and suffering persons. He gave himself up to 
 is feeling, and said on the instant the best things in the world. 
 Many and many a felicity he had in his prayer, now for ever lost, 
 which defied all the rules of all the rhetoricians. He did not know 
 when he was good in prayer or sermon, for he had no literature 
 and no art ; but he believed, and therefore spoke. He was emi 
 nently loyal in his nature, and not fond of adventure or innovation. 
 By education, and still more by temperament, he was engaged to 
 the old forms of the New-England church. Not speculative, but 
 affectionate, devout, with an extreme love of order, he adopted 
 heartily, though in its mildest forms, the creed and catechism of 
 the fathers, and appeared a modern Israelite in his attachment to 
 the Hebrew history and faith. Thus he seemed, in his constitu 
 tional leaning to their religion, one of the rear-guard of the great 
 camp and army of the Puritans ; and now, when all the platforms 
 and customs of the church were losing their hold in the affections 
 of men, it was fit that he should depart ; fit that, in the fall of laws, 
 a loyal man should die." l 
 
 In his earlier years Ripley leaned toward Arminian- 
 ism, and when this movement culminated in Unitarian- 
 ism he became identified with it. In that result the 
 Concord church found the logical outcome of all its 
 tendencies from the very first. 
 
 William Emerson had one son and four daughters, 
 who came under the fatherly care of Dr. Ripley, after 
 his marriage with their mother. The son, William, was 
 born May 6, 1769. He entered Harvard College in his 
 
 1 Concord Republican, Oct. 1, 1841; reprinted in connection with the 
 sermons at Dr. Elpley s funeral, and again as the substance of a letter 
 in Sprague s Annals of the American Unitarian Pulpit, p. 117. 
 
12 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 seventeenth year, and graduated in 1789, "with a high 
 reputation as a classical scholar, a close student, and a 
 man of good taste in composition and rhetoric." Dur 
 ing the year of his graduation he delivered an oration 
 before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, which was very 
 favorably received. He then spent two years in Rox- 
 bury as a teacher; when he went to Cambridge for a 
 few months, and devoted himself to the study of the 
 ology. In 1792 he received a call to settle in Harvard, 
 and was ordained there May 23, Dr. Riplcy preaching 
 the sermon. He was married to Ruth ILiskins of 
 Boston Oct. 25, 1796. Having given much atten 
 tion to elocution and oratory, u lris pulpit talents were 
 considered extraordinary." Being invited to Boston, 
 in 1799, to deliver the artillery election sermon, his 
 talents attracted so much attention as to secure him a 
 call to settle with the First Church there. He was 
 installed Oct. 16, 1799. Here he soon became known 
 as one of the most accomplished pulpit orators, and 
 as one of the best writers, of his time. He nearly 
 completed an interesting history of the First Church, 
 which was published after his death, with two of his 
 sermons. In all, about fifteen of his sermons were 
 printed, showing him to have been a clear, strong, and 
 tasteful writer. They were devout, earnest, and prac 
 tical, and popular in style. He also published a selec 
 tion of hymns and psalms for church use. He was one 
 of the most liberal of the Boston ministers of his time. 
 " Far from having any sympathy with Calvinism," says 
 Dr. Lowell; 1 but he never preached doctrines, even in 
 t^o mildest form. His son has said that he inclined 
 " obviously to what is ethical and universal in Chris 
 tianity ; very little to the personal and historical." "I 
 think I observe in his writings, as in the writings of the 
 Unitarians down to a recent date, a studied reserve on 
 the subject of the nature and offices of Jesus. They 
 had not made up their minds on it. It was a mystery 
 to them, and they let it remain so." 2 In his personal 
 
 1 Sprague s Annals. 
 
 2 Letter in Sprague s Annals of the Unitarian Pulpit, p. 244, under 
 date of Oct. 5, 1&49. 
 
ANCESTKY. 13 
 
 appearance he is said to have been " much more than 
 ordinarily attractive. He had a melodious voice, his 
 utterance was distinct, and his whole manner in the 
 pulpit was agreeable." Dr. Lowell says he was "a 
 handsome man, rather tall, with a fair complexion, his 
 cheeks slightly tinted, his motions easy, graceful, and 
 gentlemanlike, his manner bland and pleasant. He was 
 always an acceptable preacher ; and his delivery was 
 distinct and correct, and was evidently the result of 
 much care and discipline." l In 1808 he was seized 
 with a hemorrhage of the lungs, from which he never 
 fully recovered. In 1810 another disease took hold of 
 his already weakened body, from which he died May 
 12, 1811. 
 
 He was one of a company of remarkable preachers, 
 who gave a new character to the religious life of Boston, 
 who aroused a taste for classical learning, and who in 
 augurated the first literary period in New-England 
 history. Most prominent of these men were Buck- 
 minster, Kirkland, C hanning, Thacher, and Emerson. 
 They were all liberal in their theology, discarding Cal 
 vinism by silently ignoring it. They appealed to the 
 sentiments, sought to mold the moral and spiritual 
 nature in accordance with the spirit of Christianity, and 
 were literary in their tastes. That brilliant star of the 
 American pulpit, who shone for so short a time, Buck- 
 minster, collected a large library in Europe, had a 
 passionate love of classical learning, and quickened 
 many minds with his own tastes and aspirations. 
 
 In the year 1803 a periodical was talked of at Har 
 vard College, which should represent higher learning and 
 cultivate a more literary taste. After much opposition 
 from those who feared it might become too philosophical, 
 or an aid in the formation of secret societies, much feared 
 then, a quarterly was started, known as The Literary 
 Miscellany. John Quincy Adams, Andrews Norton, 
 and Buckminster were among its leading writers. After 
 a time, the name was changed to The Monthly Anthol 
 
 1 Sprague s Annals. 
 
14 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 ogy; and it was published in Boston. The first num 
 ber there bore date of November, 1803; arid David 
 Phineas Adams was the editor. In May. I-" 04. William 
 Emerson became its editor; and he continued in that 
 office for about one year and a half. Oct. 3, 1805. a 
 club was formed for the purpose of editing and publish 
 ing tins magazine, and took the name of The Anthology 
 Club. Its first members included the Rev. Dr. Gardiner, 
 Emerson, Buckminster, Tuckerman. S. C. Thacher, and 
 E. T. Dana. The Rev. J. S. J. Gardiner was made 
 the first president, the Rev. William Emerson vice- 
 president, and S. C. Thacher editor. Thacher was 
 afterwards librarian of Harvard College and pastor of 
 the New South Church in Boston. The club met on 
 Thursday evenings, and became one of the most notable 
 gatherings of the city. It discussed literary themes, and 
 edited the magazine. Much difficulty was found in 
 securing suitable articles, its members doing much gra 
 tuitous work in its behalf. It contained, however, many 
 valuable articles, and exercised a lasting influence on <- 
 the culture of Boston. Buckminster wrote much and 
 ably for it ; and Channing, Kirkland, Richard H. Dana, 
 Adams, and Norton were frequent contributors. In July, 
 1811, both M -mtJtly and club expired together, but not 
 until they had developed a new interest in literature, 
 and largely aided in the promotion of the liberal the 
 ology. On the motion of Emerson, the club established 
 a library of periodical literature, which grew into the 
 Boston Athenajum. 
 
 Alike in the history of his family, and in the history 
 of New-England thought, do we find the sources of 
 Emerson s culture. iThe Emerson family were intellec 
 tual, eloquent, with a strong individuality of character, 
 and robust and vigorous in their thinking.^) They were 
 pious and devout, but also practical and philanthropic. 
 Mure than fifty of the family have graduated at New- 
 England colleges, and twenty have been ministers.^ His 
 mother s family were noted for a remarkable spirituality 
 of temperament, for great religious zeal, and were 
 naturally mystics or pietists. The intellectuality and 
 
ANCESTRY. 15 
 
 moral vigor of the one family, and the devoutness and 
 mysticism of the other, were both inherited by Emerson. 
 He was nurtured in the most spiritual phases of the old 
 faith. Its doctrines had passed away, and left only its 
 spiritual life behind. 
 
 Such an ancestry, physical and spiritual, is a promise 
 of the richest culture, as it is of the finest natural powers. 
 Emerson has not only made good this promise, but 
 added to it a remarkable genius and a unique spiritual 
 insight. To his ancestry he owes much of the quality 
 and direction of that genius, as well as the fine flavor 
 and aroma of his character, and the rich spiritual grace 
 of his thought. We may well propound his own ques 
 tion, " How shall a man escape from his ancestors ? " 
 For we find in his books a confirmation of his declara 
 tion, that " in different hours a man represents each of 
 several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight 
 of us rolled up in each other s skin, seven or eight 
 ancestors at least, and they constitute the variety of 
 notes for that new piece of music which his life is." So 
 we find him summing up and repeating, with a master s 
 stroke of genius, the life and the thought of all his 
 Puritan ancestors ; which has been, in substance, the 
 life and the thought of New England. 
 
16 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 n. 
 
 EARLY LLFE. 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON was born in Boston, 
 May 25, 1803. His father died before he was 
 eight years old, leaving five sons, William, Ralph 
 Waldo, Edward Bliss, Peter Bulkeley, and Charles 
 C liauncy. The mother was a woman of great sen 
 sibility, modest, serene, and very devout. She was 
 possessed of a thoroughly sincere nature, devoid of all 
 sentimentalism, and of a temper the most even and 
 placid. One of her sons said, that, in his boyhood, when 
 she came from her room in the morning, it seemed to 
 him as if she always came from communion with God. 
 She has been described l as possessed of "great patience 
 and fortitude, of the serenest trust in God, of a dis 
 cerning spirit, and a most courteous bearing, one who 
 knew how to guide the affairs of her own house, as long 
 as she was responsible for that, with the sweetest au 
 thority, and knew how to give the least trouble and the 
 greatest happiness after that authority was resigned. 
 Both her mind and her character were of a superior 
 order, and they set their stamp upon manners of pecu 
 liar softness and natural gnice and quiet dignity. Ilei 
 sensible and kindly speech was always as goocf as the 
 best instruct ionyfner smile, though it was ever ready, 
 was a reward. /Her dark, liquid eyes, from which old 
 age could not fake away the expression, will be among 
 the remembrances of all on whom they ever rested." 
 t During the boyhood of her sons, Mrs. Emerson found 
 a faithful helper in her husband s sister, Miss Mary 
 Moody Emerson. This aunt was also a woman of many 
 
 i By the Rev. N". L. Frothinghara, in The Christian Examiner foi 
 January, 1854. 
 
EARLY LIFE. 17 
 
 remarkable qualities, high-toned in motive and conduct 
 to the largest degree, very conscientious, and with anj 
 unconventional disregard of social forms. Waldo was 
 greatly, indebted to her. He once declared her influence 
 upon his education to have been as great as that of 
 Greece or Rome, and he described her as a great 
 genius and a remarkable writer.) She was well read in 
 theology, and was a scholar 01 no mean abilities. In 
 her old age she was described by one of her intimate 
 friends l as still retaining " all the oddities and enthusi 
 asms of her youth, a person at war with society as to 
 all its decorums," who " enters into conversation with 
 everybody, and talks on every subject; is sharp as a 
 razor in her satire, and sees you through and through 
 in a moment." " She has read, all her life," this friend 
 said, "in the most miscellaneous way; and her appetite 
 for metaphysics is insatiable. Alas for the victim in 
 whose intellect she sees any promise ! Descartes and 
 his vortices, Leibnitz and his monads, Spinoza and his 
 unica substantia, will prove it to the very core. But, 
 notwithstanding all this, her power over the minds of 
 her young friends was almost despotic. She heard of 
 me, when I was sixteen years old, as a person devoted to 
 books and a sick mother, sought me out in my garret 
 without any introduction, and, though received at first 
 with sufficient coldness, she did not give me up till she 
 had enchained me entirely in her magic circle." 
 
 In this pious and conscientious household, where the 
 most careful economy had to be practised, Waldo 
 Emerson grew up to the strictest regard for all that is 
 good and true. The mother and the aunt exercised a 
 rare influence over him and his brothers. They were / 
 carefully and conscientiously trained at home, especially 
 in regard to every moral virtue. Honesty, probity, j 
 unselfishness these virtues they had deeply instilled 
 into them. In after years Waldo was once asked if he 
 had read a certain novel ; and he replied that he had 
 once, in his boyhood, taken it from a circulating library, 
 
 1 Mrs. Samuel Ripley: Worthy Women of our First Century, p. 174. 
 
18 RALPH WALDO EMEKSON. 
 
 paying six cents for the use of the first volume. His 
 aunt chided him for spending money in that way, when 
 it was so hard for his mother to obtain it. He was so 
 affected by this appeal he returned the volume, but did 
 not take out the other. His remembrance of this inci 
 dent had prevented his ever completing the book he 
 had so much enjoyed until this appeal was made to his 
 sense of duty. 
 
 At the age of eight years Waldo entered the public 
 grammar-school, and soon after the "Latin School. That 
 he made good progress there may be judged by a letter 
 written him when he was eleven by his aunt s intimate 
 friend, Miss Sarah Bradford : " You love to trifle in 
 rhyme a little now and then," she wrote ; " why will 
 you not complete this versification of the fifth bucolic?" 
 sending him a translation from Virgil. " You will 
 answer two ends, or, as the old proverb goes, kill two 
 birds with one stone, improve in your Latin, as well 
 as indulge a taste for poetry. Why can t you write me 
 a letter in Latin ? But Greek is your favorite lan 
 guage ; epistoia in lingua Grcecd would be still better. 
 All the honor will be on my part to correspond with a 
 young gentleman in Greek. Tell me what most in 
 terests you in Rollin ; in the wars of contending 
 princes under whose banner you enlist, to whose cause 
 you ardently wish success. Write me with what stories 
 in Virgil you are most delighted." In response to this 
 letter he returned a poetic version of the fifth bucolic, 
 from the nineteenth to the thirty-fifth line : 
 
 " MAY 6, 1814. 
 
 " Mop. Turn now, O youth ! from your long speech awayp 
 The bower we ve readied, recluse from sunny ray. 
 The nymphs v.ith pomp have mourned for Daphnis dead; 
 The lia/cls witnessed, and the rivers fled. 
 Tlu wretched mother clasped her lifeless child, 
 And gods and stars invoked in accents wild. 
 Daphnis 1 the cows are not now led to streams 
 Where the bright sun upon the water gleams ; 
 Neither do herds the cooling river drink, 
 Nor crop the grass upon the verdant brink. 
 O Duplmis ! both the mountains and the woods, 
 The Punic lions, and the raging floods, 
 
EAKLY LIFE. 19 
 
 All mourn for thee, for thee who first did hold 
 
 In chariot-reins the spotted tiger bold. 
 
 Daphnis the bacchanalian chorus led, 
 
 He placed himself at the mad dancers head. 
 
 Twas Daphnis who, with beauteous fingers, wove 
 
 The stems of heaves he gathered from the grove. 
 
 As the great beauty of a tree is seen 
 
 From vines intwining round its pleasant green, 
 
 As vines themselves in grapes their beauty find, 
 
 As the fair bull of all the lowing kind, 
 
 As standing corn doth grace the verdant fields, 
 
 So to thy beauty every rival yields." 
 
 ^He seems to have loved to write verses, often produ 
 cing them as school exercises ; and he was an eager 
 reader of books of history/ In one of his essays he drops 
 a bit of autobiography full of interest. 4 ^The regular 
 course of studies," he says, "the years of academical 
 and professional education, have not yielded me better 
 facts than some idle books under the bench at the Latin 
 School. What we do not call education is more pre 
 cious than that which we do call so." l ) 
 
 Speaking of the Boston of Emerson s boyhood, San- 
 born says, " He breathed in its atmosphere and its 
 traditions as a boy, while he drove his mother s cow to 
 pasture along what are now the finest streets. He 
 learned his first lessons of life in its schools and 
 churches ; listened to Webster and Story in its courts, 
 to Josiah Quincy and Harrison Gray Otis in its town- 
 meetings at Faneuil Hall ; heard sermons in the Old 
 South Meeting-house." 2 He has himself described his 
 indebtedness to the religious spirit of those - days. 
 " What a debt is ours," he says, " to that old religion, 
 winch, in the childhood of most of us, still dwelt like a 
 sabbath morning in the country of New England, teach 
 ing privation, self-denial, and sorrow." 3 One of his 
 schoolmates remembers him, at about the age of ten, 
 as a "spiritual-looking boy in blue nankeen," whose 
 image became deeply stamped on his companion s mind. 
 
 1 Spiritual Laws, in first series of Essays. 
 
 2 Scribner s Monthly, February, 1879. 
 8 The Method of Nature. 
 
20 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 This young friend thought him "so angelic and re 
 markable " that he felt " towards him more than a boy s 
 emotion, as if a new spring of brotherly affection had 
 suddenly broken loose in his heart." There was no in 
 dication of turbulence or disquiet about him even then, 
 but a happy combination of energy and gentleness that 
 truly made the boy father of the man. He has himself 
 described an incident of the war of 1812, when the 
 master of the school invited his boys to spend the next 
 day in helping to throw up earthen defenses against the 
 enemy. He remembers that a pleasant day Avas spent 
 on Noddle Island, but does not recollect any work done 
 by the boys. 
 
 He entered Harvard College in his fourteenth year. 
 Kirkland was then president, and Edward Everett 
 professor of Greek literature. Among the other pro 
 fessors were Edward Charming and Ticknor. Emerson 
 felt the inspiration which the latter brought to the 
 university throughout his course. Caleb Gushing was 
 among the tutors. In his class were Upham, author OP 
 the History of Salem Witchcraft, and Josiah Quincy, 
 afterwards Mayor of Boston. In the class before his 
 were Furness and Gannett. In the class succeeding 
 was Nathaniel Bowditch the younger, and in the next 
 George Ripley. Before they entered the College, began 
 a lasting friendship with Furness. 
 
 During his first year in college he was the "presi 
 dent s freshman," running on his errands and making 
 his announcements for him. He has been described as 
 being then "a slender, delicate youth, younger than 
 most of his classmates, and of a sensitive, retiring na 
 ture." ] He received, according to his own statement, 
 but little instruction or criticism from his professors that 
 was of value to him. His favorite study was Greek, 
 and his translations of the classical authors were neat 
 and happy. In mathematics he could make no head 
 way, and in philosophy he did not get on very well. 
 He was a great reader, and studied much outside of the 
 
 i Literary World, May 22, 1880. 
 
EARLY LIFE. 21 
 
 prescribed course. Even on entering college be was 
 well read. His special favorites were the old English 
 poets and dramatists, Montaigne and Shakspere. He 
 early discovered that Shakspere was full of interest, 
 and he became very familiar with the great poet. In 
 his sophomore year he was connected with a book-club, 
 the members of which read Scott s novels far into the 
 night. He had a taste for declamation, in which he 
 was excellent, and thus won a Boylston prize. He also 
 showed much ability in composition, and what he wrote 
 was of a marked excellence. The direction his genius 
 would take was early indicated. In his junior year 
 he wrote an essay on The Character of Socrates, for 
 which he gained a Bowdoin prize ; and in his senior 
 year his subject was The Present State of Ethical 
 Philosophy, for which he received the second prize. 
 He had much skill in making poetry, which he freely 
 employed for college purposes. On Class Day he was 
 the poet, and his verses were thought to be very fine. 
 He had one of the twenty-nine parts on Commencement 
 Day, and spoke on John Knox in a Conference on the 
 Character of John Knox, William Penn, and John Wes 
 ley. Josiah Quincy, his classmate, and the winner of 
 the first prize at the Bowdoin contest, made this entry 
 in his journal, under date of July 16, 1821 : " Attended 
 a dissertation of Emerson s in the morning, on the sub 
 ject of Ethical Philosophy. I found it long and dry." 
 The next day he went to the chapel, " where Barn well 
 and Emerson performed our valedictory exercises before 
 all the scholars and a number of ladies. They were 
 rather poor, and did but little honor to the cla^s." l In 
 these judgments must be read a little of the spirit of 
 college rivalry. 
 
 His mother moved to Cambridge in his sophomore 
 year ; and he boarded with her, though he had a room 
 on the college-yard. His brother William, who gradu 
 ated at the previous Commencement, opened a school 
 in the house, and was assisted by Waldo. Some of 
 
 1 Harvard Sixty Years Ago, by Josiau Quincy, in The Independent 
 of July 29, 1880. 
 
22 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 their students became members of the family, boarding 
 with their mother. Waldo was at this time quiet in 
 (manner, studious, little given to the ruder sports of his 
 "/ comrades. Yet he was of a genial disposition, fond 
 } of story-telling, and good at making a social meeting 
 \pass off pleasantly. "His mind was unusually mature 
 and independent. His letters and conversation already 
 displayed something of originality." He owed much 
 to his early developed, and assiduously followed, habit 
 of wide and careful reading ; and he " spent much of his 
 time in special courses of private work in the library." 
 He doubtless owed much here to the two remark 
 able women who exercised so much influence on his 
 early life, Mary Emerson and Sarah Bradford. The 
 latter was afterwards the wife of Samuel Ripley. Both 
 ~^ these women were great lovers of books, and they were 
 unusually well informed for the time. Under their lead 
 he early came to love Plato, and, after leaving college, 
 seems to have studied him very closely. At this period 
 Tillotson, Augustine, and Jeremy Taylor were among- 
 his favorite authors. One of the earliest of the serious 
 books he read was a translation of Pascal s PensSes, 
 which he carried to church with him, and read almost 
 constantly. He was also greatly attracted by Mon 
 taigne. When a boy, he found a volume of Montaigne s 
 essays among his father s books. After leaving college 
 it came again to his notice, and he procured the remain 
 ing volumes. " I remember the delight and wonder," he 
 says, " in which I lived with it. It seemed to me as if I 
 had myself written the book in some former life, so 
 sincerely it spoke to my thought and experience." l 
 \ Another important influence was the preaching and 
 lecturing of Edward Everett. He was in the habit of 
 going from one Boston church to another, on Sunday 
 mornings, inquiring for Everett, and so managed to hear 
 him nearly every week. This was in the days before 
 preachers and their subjects were advertised ; but the 
 young man felt himself amply repaid for his search, 
 
 1 Representative Men : essay on Montaigne. 
 
EARLY LIFE. 23 
 
 
 in the eloquence which won his admiration. So great 
 was his enthusiasm that it subjected him to the ridicule 
 of his schoolmates : but it also, a little later, won him 
 the friendship of Elizabeth Peabody, who had the same 
 admiration for Everett.^) 
 
 Before Waldo left college, his brother William had 
 opened a young ladies school in Federal Street, Boston ; 
 and, after his graduation, he went there to teach. His 
 main object seems to have been to assist his younger 
 brothers through college ; and the family soon after 
 moved to this location, near Dr. Channing s church. 
 He is said to have been mild and gentle as a teacher, 
 making an agreeable and lasting impression on the 
 minds of his pupils, though teaching was not at all to 
 his taste. He was in the habit, when needing to disci 
 pline his pupils, of sending them to his mother s room to 
 pursue their studies. 
 
 He began in 1823 the study of theology, but did 
 not enter the Harvard Theological School, though he 
 attended many of the lectures there. A considerable 
 influence at this time was Channing s conversation and 
 preaching. The outcome of that great preacher s most 
 cherished ideas was a fine practical reliance on the soul 
 of man as a medium of truth and goodness. Emerson 
 eagerly embraced the essential spirit of Channing s 
 teaching ; while the lovable spirit of this man, the high 
 character of his thought, the loftiness of his religious 
 purpose, made a deep impression on the young student. 
 To come into contact with such a man is worth far 
 more than all formal instruction. Charming valued 
 Christianity for what it had in common with reason 
 and nature, and he thought man is cognizant of the 
 /Absolute through his reason. In this he was largely in 
 sympathy with Wordsworth and Coleridge, to whom 
 he was greatly indebted. He said we know God only 
 by those moral laws we find in ourselves, because we 
 are of like nature with him. He saw in the cosmic 
 forces of nature unconscious manifestations of the cli- 
 } vine mind. } |^p^ino__the^Jiighest motive of life was 
 "the full enjoyment of ouTTspiritual being, when the 
 
24 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 sense of duty was lost in great impulses of love, which 
 is the full communion with the spirit of the Lord, which 
 is liberty." l He found in Coleridge and Wordsworth 
 a higher form of thought than either the Trinitarian or 
 Unitarian. (Emerson also heard Professor Norton s lec 
 tures in the Divinity School with much profit and inter- 
 "est. Having studied too assiduously, his eyes failed him 
 at this time ; and he was unable to take notes of these 
 lectures. He was, consequently, excused from exami 
 nation. Of this fact he has since said, " If they had 
 examined me, they probably would not have let me 
 preach at all." This remark refers to doubts which he 
 entertained even at this time, doubts concerning the 
 form and not the substance of religion. \ William had 
 gone to Germany to study theology, after the school 
 was given up, and found himself entangled in skepti 
 cism as the result of his studies there. So perplexed 
 was he as to what was his duty, he went to Goethe, 
 and laid his case before the great poet, stating his 
 doubts, the expectations of his mother and friends, and 
 the pain he knew it would cause them should he 
 abandon his chosen profession. Goethe gave him his 
 sympathy, advised him to go home and preach, what 
 ever his doubts, and not to overthrow the hopes of his 
 family. William could not, however, so deal with his 
 doubts, and returned home to study law. On his re 
 turn Waldo was living in Chelmsford, and William 
 went there to talk over the situation with him. De 
 scribing this interview years afterward, Emerson said, 
 " I was very sad, for I knew how much it would grieve 
 my mother ; and it did." 
 
 His health became very poor at this time, owing to hi* 
 hard work. He was in 1826 "approbated to preach" 
 by the Middlesex Association of Ministers, but was 
 obliged to spend the following winter in Florida and 
 South Carolina. He preached in Charleston several 
 times, and in other places, during his sojourn there. 
 On his return, in the spring of 1827, he began to seek 
 
 1 Reminiscences of William E. Channing, by E. P. Peabody. 
 
EARLY LIFE. 25 
 
 for a p\il pit. He was at New Bedford, in Dr. Dewey s 
 pulpit, for three Sundays, and was, doubtless, drawn 
 heartily to the Quakers of that town. In the spring 
 of 1828, for a short time he supplied the place of Dr. 
 Ripley at Concord. 
 
 He continued to write poetry through all these early 
 years ; though, with a few exceptions, it has not been 
 given to the public. One poem of this period, however, 
 has attracted much attention, and is one of the most 
 popular of his productions. It was while in Newton, 
 for a short time, that he wrote the well-known lines, 
 
 " Good-by, proud world I I m going home." 
 
 This poem has been referred to the period after his 
 leaving the pulpit, but this is a mistake. It indicates 
 the spirit and purpose of the young man, his genius, 
 his high ideals, his love of a life of meditation, and his 
 scorn for all the shams and shows of the world. Writ 
 ten before entering the ministry, instead of after leav 
 ing it, it indicates the nobility of his motives and the 
 loftiness of his aims. It shows his intense love of 
 nature, and the devoutness of his mind. 
 
 " When I am stretched beneath the pines, 
 Where the evening star so holy shines, 
 I laugh at the lore and the pride of man, 
 At the sophist schools and the learned clan ; 
 For what are they all, in their high conceit, 
 When man in the bush with God may meet ? " 
 
26 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 m. 
 
 MINISTRY. 
 
 ON" the llth of January, 1829, Emerson received an 
 invitation from the Second Church in Boston, 
 to become the colleague of Henry Ware, jun. Ware s 
 health had broken down, and he was unable to con 
 tinue his ministerial labors. On the llth of March, 
 Emerson was ordained. The sermon was preached by 
 the Rev. Samuel Ripley, and the address to the candi 
 date was given by the Rev. Dr. Ripley. Parkman 
 gave the ordaining prayer, N. L. Frothingham the fel 
 lowship of the churches, and Gannett the address to 
 the society. In his address, Dr. Ripley appealed to the 
 memories of the young man s distinguished ancestors, 
 and said, " We cheerfully express our joy at the ordina 
 tion of one whose moral, religious, and literary charac 
 ter is so fair and promising." The pastoral work, and 
 especially the care of the young, he said, would be 
 easier to the candidate than to most ministers, both 
 from natural disposition and habit. His relations to 
 Emerson were mentioned in a happy manner, in speak 
 ing of the reasons for his being invited to join in the 
 ceremonies of ordination. 
 
 " Why is this service assigned to one so aged," he asked, " and 
 so little conversant in this metropolis ? Because I was the friend 
 and successor of your excellent grandfather, and became the legal 
 parent and guardian of his orphan children ; because I guided the 
 youthful days, directed the early studies, introduced into the min 
 istry, witnessed the celebrity, and deeply lamented the early death 
 of your beloved father; and because no clergyman present can 
 feel a livelier interest or deeper joy on seeing you rise up in his 
 stead, and taking part with us in this ministry in your native city, 
 where his eloquent voice is still remembered, and his memory 
 affectionately cherished." 
 
MINISTRY. 27 
 
 Almost at once Ware was compelled to go to Europe, 
 whence he returned only to resign his charge. Upon 
 Emerson must almost at once have fallen the whole 
 burden of preaching and pastoral work, taking the 
 place of a learned and eloquent preacher, in a large 
 and popular church. He entered upon his work under 
 the most favorable auspices, so far as concerned the 
 impression he had made, and the confidence felt in him. 
 In March, Ware wrote to his brother, " My colleague 
 has begun his work in the best possible manner, and 
 with just the promise I like/ When, after eighteen 
 months absence, Ware returned from Europe and 
 resigned his connection with the church, he said in his 
 farewell sermon, in speaking of his previous withdraw 
 al from the pulpit on account of, his health, " Provi 
 dence presented to you at once a man on whom your 
 hearts could rest." l 
 
 Emerson s preaching is said to have been eloquent, 
 simple, and effective. Sanborn gives these incidents of 
 his ministerial experience : 2 
 
 " Plis pulpit eloquence was singularly attractive, though by no 
 means equally so to all persons. In 1829, before the two friends 
 had met, Bronson Alcott heard him preach in Dr. Channing s 
 church on The Universality of the Moral Sentiment/ and \vas 
 struck, as he said, with the youth of the preacher, the beauty of 
 his elocution, and the direct and sincere manner in which he ad 
 dressed his hearers. This particular sermon was probably one 
 that he had written in July, 1829, concerning which he had said to 
 a friend, while writing it, I am striving hard to-day to establish 
 the sovereignty and self -existent excellence of the moral law in 
 popular argument, and slay the utility swine. It is possible, 
 therefore, that he may have taken a tone towards the utilitarians 
 which gave some ground for a remark made, not long after, by 
 the wife of a Boston minister with whom Emerson exchanged. 
 Waldo Emerson came last Sunday, said this lady, and preached 
 a sermon, with his chin in the air, in scorn of the whole human 
 race. But the usual tone of his discourses could never justify 
 this peevish criticism." 
 
 He has been described " as noted for the amiability 
 of his disposition, the strictness of his morals, and for 
 
 1 Ware s Biography. 
 
 2 Scribner s Magazine, February, 1879. 
 
28 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 his attention to his duties." 1 One who heard him 2 at 
 this time, has spoken of the 
 
 " Solemnity of his manner, and the earnest thought pervading 
 the discourse. The text was, What is a man profited it he gain 
 the whole world, and lose his own soul ? The main emphasis was 
 on the word own ; and the general theme was, that to every man 
 the great end of existence was the preservation and culture of his 
 individual mind and character. Each man must be saved by his 
 own inward redeemer; and the whole world was for each but a 
 plastic material through which the individual spirit was to realise 
 li.self. Aspiration and thought became clear and real, only by 
 action and life. If knowledge led not to action, it passed away." 
 
 During his ministry Emerson took a considerable 
 share in the public affairs of the city, and a deep in 
 terest in all philanthropic movements. He was on the 
 school committee, chaplain of the State Senate, and, on 
 the first Sunday in June, 1832, preached the charity 
 sermon at the " Old South " church. When Father 
 Taylor was sent to Boston to preach to the sailors, 
 though a Methodist, he went to Dr. Charming for aid 
 in building a house of worship. The second person he 
 visited on the same mission was Emerson, who gave 
 him money, and aided him in securing the assistance 
 of many rich Boston merchants. Even at this early 
 day, when all the pulpits were silent on the subject of 
 slavery, he opened his church to the anti-slavery agita 
 tors. On Sunda}^ evening, May 29, 1831, Samuel J. 
 May delivered an anti-slavery lecture in his church; 
 and Arnold Buffum spoke there, in favor of emancipa 
 tion, Dec. 16, 1832. 
 
 During his ministry he seems to have written nothing 
 on literary themes, at least nothing was published from 
 his pen. The only exception is a short notice of a new 
 collection of hymns printed in The Christian Examiner 
 of 1831. He praises the Hebrew Psalms for "the 
 greatest perfection to which religious poetry has yet 
 been carried." Of church hymns he characteristically 
 says, 
 
 1 Gallery of Literary Portraits, series first, by George Gilfillan. 
 
 2 Eraser s Magazine, July, 1868. 
 
MINISTRY. 29 
 
 "It is not fit that men of common powers should write oui 
 hymns. If every hymn to be sung in our churches could have 
 come from the powerful and hallowed minds that have thought for 
 the human race, and, instead of being regarded as an occasional 
 and inferior exercise, had been the vent of their best and deepest 
 contemplations upon God and nature, these minds would have 
 enjoyed an influence which will never be granted to their epics, 
 and books of philosphy or criticism." 
 
 In 1830 he took part in the ordination of the Rev. 
 H. B. Goodwin as the colleague of Dr. Ripley in the 
 Concord church. On this occasion he gave the right 
 hand of fellowship, and it is the only discourse or 
 address of his printed during his ministry. It indicates 
 a general acceptance of the customs of the church, and 
 a genuine reception of its most cherished ideas. He 
 said, 
 
 "Christianity aims to teach the perfection of human nature; 
 and eminently, therefore, does it teach the unity of the spirit. It 
 is not only in its special precepts, but by all its operations, a law of 
 love. It does, by its revelation of God, and of the true purposes and 
 the true rules of life, operate to bind up, to join together, and not 
 to distinguish and separate. It proclaimed peace. But it speaks 
 first to its own disciples, Be of one mind ; else, with what counte 
 nance could the church say, Love one another? 
 
 " And thousands of hearts have heard the commandment, and 
 anon with joy receive it. All men on whose souls the light of 
 God s revelation truly shineth, with whatever apparent differences, 
 are substantially of one mind, work together, whether consciously 
 or not, for one and the same good. Faces that never beheld each 
 other are lighted up by it with the same expression. Hands that 
 Were never clasped toil unceasingly at the same work. This it is 
 which makes the omnipotence of truth in the keeping of feeble 
 men, this fellowship in all its servants, this swift consenting 
 acknowledgment with which they hail it when it appears God s 
 truth ; it is that electric spark which flies instantaneously through 
 the countless bands that compose the chain. Truth, not like each 
 form of error, depending for its repute on the powers and influence 
 of here and there a solitary mind that espouses it, combines hosts 
 for its support, and makes them co-operate across mountains, yea, 
 and ages of time." 
 
 In personally addressing his friend, he said, 
 
 " It is with sincere pleasure that I speak for the church on this 
 occasion, and on the spot hallowed to all by so many patriotic, 
 and y to me, by so many affectionate, recollections. I feel a peculiar, 
 
30 KALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 a personal right to welcome you hither to the home and the tem 
 ple of my fathers. I believe the church whose pastor you are will 
 forgive me the allusion, if I express the extreme interest which 
 every man feels in the scene of the trials and labors of his ances 
 tors. Five out of seven of your predecessors are my kindred. 
 They are in the dust, who bind my attachment to this place ; but 
 not all. I cannot help congratulating you that one survives, to be 
 to you the true friend and venerable counselor he has ever been 
 to me." 
 
 Though every thing seemed to indicate that Emerson 
 would lead a useful and a successful career in the 
 pulpit, yet in the autumn of 1832 he resigned his place, 
 ii nd gradually withdrew from his ministerial labors. 
 He had early accepted a form of thought which was 
 not popular, which more or less put him outside the 
 traditions of the church ; so that the cause which led to 
 this action may be found in his adoption of an ideal 
 philosophy and a purely spiritual interpretation of 
 religion. The immediate cause was his disinclination 
 to conduct the usual "communion service." The true 
 communion was to his mind purely spiritual, while that 
 commonly observed he felt had no sanction in the New 
 Testament. Yet he offered to continue it if the service 
 could be made one merely of commemoration, and if 
 he should not himself be required to partake of the 
 bread and wine. His congregation was anxious to 
 retain him, and proposed that he should put his con 
 struction on the Lord s Supper while they retained 
 theirs ; but he could not consent to such a compromise. 
 While his congregation valued his services, they were 
 zealous of the Unitarian name, and did not wish any 
 reproach of heresy to be cast upon it. As they would 
 not consent to his innovations, he resigned. l On the 
 9th of September, 1882, he preached a singularly clear 
 and noble-minded sermon on the subject, setting forth 
 his reasons for rejecting this rite. It justifies all the 
 praise accorded to his pulpit abilities. It is dispassion 
 ate, tru ] y religious; and it is very charming in its &uiet 
 and yet earnest style. It indicates no break with the 
 
 1 See Bartol s account of this affair in Radical Problems, p. 65. 
 
MINISTRY. 31 
 
 spiritual truths of Christianity, but a desire for a loftier 
 spirit of devotion; for the forms - of the church are 
 challenged in the name of that inward spirit of truth 
 in which alone true religion consists. ! To him all true 
 worship had come to be inward, arid it could only be | 
 hindered and corrupted by outward forms. The spirit 
 v can return to its own, and in interior vision behold the 
 Nameless One in union with itself. Prayer must be 
 spontaneous to be of any worth. It must be natural ; 
 the soul s impulses must be obeyed. Holding such 
 ideas, the rite of " communion" seemed a repudiation 
 of that spiritual worship Jesus taught, and a return to 
 the forms from which he sought to liberate men. In 
 urging this fact, he states very clearly the chief thought 
 of his sermon on the Lord s Supper. 
 
 " The whole world was full of idols and ordinances. The Jew 
 ish was a religion of forms. The Pagan was a religion of forms : 
 it was all body, it had no life, and the Almighty God was 
 pleased to qualify and send forth a man to teach men that they 
 must serve him with the heart ; that only that life was religious 
 which was thoroughly good ; that sacrifice was smoke, and forms 
 were shadows. This man lived and died true to this purpose ; and 
 now, with his blessed word and life before us, Christians must con 
 tend that it is a matter of vital importance really a duty to 
 commemorate him by a certain form, whether that form be agree 
 able to their understandings or not. 
 
 " Is not this to make vain the gift of God ? Is not this to turn 
 back the hand on the dial ? Is not this to make men to make 
 ourselves forget that not forms, but duties not names, but 
 righteousness and love are enjoined ? and that, in the eye of God, 
 there is no other measure of the value of any one form than the 
 measure of its use ? " 
 
 After his resignation his health broke down, and in 
 December he was advised to take a sea-voyage. He 
 was not able to appear again in the pulpit, but on the 
 22d sent his congregation an affectionate letter of fare 
 well. It shows very clearly that he abandoned none of 
 the essential ideas of his former faith. 1 
 
 1 Both this letter and the sermon are printed in full in Frothingham s 
 History of New England Transcendentalism, and should be carefully 
 read by those who would correctly understand the causes of Emerson s 
 separation from the church. 
 
32 KALPH WALDO EMERSOX. 
 
 It has been thought Emerson left the pulpit with a 
 feeling of disappointment: and the poem, Good-by, 
 Proud World, has been quoted to this effect; but 
 there is no evidence of it. At the hour when his con 
 tinuance as pastor of the church was being discu- 
 by its members, he sat quietly conversing with a friend. 
 When he aro.-e to depart, he said, " This is probably the 
 last time we shall ever meet as brethren in the same 
 calling." He explained the cause of the remark, but 
 was perfectly calm, and apparently contented with that 
 rf-ult. His real feelings towards the church may prob 
 ably be best seen in a hymn he wrote for the ordination 
 of Chandler Bobbins, who became the next year his 
 successor in the Second Church. 
 
 " We lore the venerable house 
 Our fathers built to God; 
 In heaven are kept their grateful TOWS, 
 Their dust endears the sod. 
 
 " Here holy thoughts a light have shed 
 
 From many a radiant face, 
 And prayers of tender hope have spread 
 A perfume through the place. 
 
 a And anxious hearts have pondered here 
 
 The mystery of life, 
 And prayed the Eternal Spirit clear 
 Their doubts and aid tneir strife. 
 
 u From humble tenements around 
 
 Came up the pensive train, 
 And in the church a blessing found, 
 Which filled their homes again. 
 
 " They live with God, their homes are dust ; 
 
 But here their children pray, 
 And, in this fleeting lifetime, "trust 
 To find the narrow way." 
 
 Though his separation from the church seems to ha\e 
 
 \>(-(-n so small, and though in mo>t things he continued 
 
 yrnpathize so strongly with its purpo.-(.->, yet he was 
 
MINISTRY. 3 
 
 subjected to much of misconception and criticism. 1 
 This is shown in one of the letters of Mrs. Samuel 
 Ripley to Miss Mary Emerson, dated " Waltham, Sept. 
 4, 1833." 2 
 
 " We have had a delightful visit of two days," she says, " from 
 Waldo. We feel about him as you no doubt do. While we 
 regard him still more than ever as the apostle of the eternal reason, 
 we do not like to hear the crows, as Pindar says, caw at the bird 
 of Jove ; nevertheless, he has some stout advocates. A lady was 
 mourning the other day to Mr. Francis 3 about Mr. Emerson s in 
 sanity. Madam, I wish I were half as sane, he answered, and 
 with warm indignation." 
 
 His health not being improved during the winter, he 
 sailed early in the spring of 1833 for Europe. He first 
 visited Sicily and Italy, and, returning through France, 
 spent some weeks in England. He met Greenough in 
 Florence, who secured him an invitation to visit Lan- 
 dor ; and he was greatly interested by that fine writer. 
 His impressions of Landor, as they were many years 
 afterwards published in English Traits, did not please 
 the subject of them ; and Forster gives Landor s correc 
 tions. 4 It is more than probable, however, that Landor 
 did not remember all he said in these conversations, 
 
 , l In the Life of Father Taylor is a letter from Mrs. Horace Mann 
 to his daughter, in which she has this to say of Taylor s relations to 
 Emerson: "Ralph Waldo Emerson was settled over the North society; 
 and all through that experience of his, which ended in his leaving the 
 parish and the settled ministry, your father understood him when so 
 many maligned him. Some one used the expression that Mr. Emerson 
 was insane. Your father did not agree with his views of the Lord s 
 Supper, that it \vas a thing of the past, and no longer appropriate; for 
 he gave a great significance and value to it; but he would not let that 
 suggestion pass. He said, Mr. Emerson might think this or that, but he 
 was more like Jesus Christ than any one he had ever known. He Imd 
 seen him when his religion was tested, and it bore the test. Surely 
 there could be no better proof of Christian liberality than his apprecia 
 tion of one who differed so entirely from himself in doctrine." Writing 
 of a subsequent period, that of Emerson s Divinity-School address, Mrs. 
 Mann says, " He and Ralph Waldo Emerson did a great work together 
 in those days, each working in his own sphere, often encountering each 
 other in souls as well as in charities. Each understood each other 
 better for the work of each." 
 
 - Memoir of Mrs. Samuel Ripley, by Miss Elizabeth Hoar, in Worthy 
 
 omen of our First Century. 
 
 a Rev. Convers Francis. 
 
 4 Walter Savage Landor: a biography, by John Forster, vol. ii. pp. 
 473, 474. 
 
34 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 and that his corrections represented his later opinions, 
 not those he entertained in 1833. 
 
 In England Emerson visited Coleridge, Wordsworth, 
 and Carlyle. His visit to the latter, and their "quiet 
 night of clear, fine talk." l was the beginning of a warm 
 friendship and a strong mutual admiration. Carlyle 
 afterwards spoke with enthusiasm of the time u when 
 that supernal vision, Waldo Emerson, dawned on him." 
 When Longfellow went to see him in 1S35. with a letter 
 of introduction from Emerson. Carlyle said Emerson s 
 coming to Craigenputtoeh was like the visit of an 
 angel," so helpful did he find the warm sympathy and 
 generous appreciation of this young American. Emer 
 son preached a few times in London and elsewhere 
 during his brief stay in England. 
 
 In September, 1829. Emerson married Ellen Louisa 
 Tucker, to whom he addressed, while wooing her, that 
 exquisite poem entitled To Ellen at the South. In 
 these verses he compares her with the flowers ; and she 
 seems to have been as delicate as they, tor she died of 
 consumption in February, Ib _. 
 
 i Carlyle s Reminiscences. In Harper s Monthly for May, 18*1. M. 
 D. Comv ay gives Carlyle s account of Emerson s visit, as related the 
 night of the Edinburgh University address. Other incidents, with a 
 letter of Emerson s written in 1833, describing his visits to Carlyle and 
 Wordsworth, are giveii in Couway s book on Thomas Carlyle. 
 
THE NEW CABEEB. 35 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE NEW CAREER. 
 
 AFTER an absence of several months, Emerson 
 returned to Boston, fully restored to health. He 
 gave several lectures there during the winter, which 
 were well attended, and were well received by those 
 who heard them. One of these lectures was on Water, 
 and was given before the Mechanics Institute. Another 
 subject was The Relations of Man to the Globe. He 
 also gave two lectures on his visit to Italy. He preached 
 only once in the pulpit of the Second Church after his 
 return. This was on the occasion of the death of a 
 Boston merchant of great integrity. He discoursed of 
 the means by which the ideal, the truly saintly, life, may 
 be lived in the midst of daily business. 
 
 Not long after his return from Europe he began 
 preaching in the Unitarian church in New Bedford, 
 and remained there for several months. In 1834 he 
 received a call to settle there, but he declined to accept 
 it.. He became greatly attached to that congregation, 
 however, and especially to the Quaker portion of it. 
 During the controversy among the Friends, in 1825 and 
 later, growing out of the preaching of Elias Hicks, 
 those who separated from the Orthodox body con 
 nected themselves with the Unitarian church. They 
 felt that the Friends had fallen away from their early 
 simplicity and spirituality, and had made forms and 
 dogmas out of their own methods, instead of following 
 the spirit in the life of each new day. They were at 
 first known as " New Lights," and attracted the deeply 
 interested attention of Dr. Channing. Emerson s pro 
 test against the formality of the communion service 
 drew them to him, while his own lofty spirituality satis- 
 
36 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 fied their ideas of the religious life. He was specially 
 drawn to a remarkable woman among these people, 
 Mary Rotch, one of their preachers, who was noted as 
 much for her sound sense as for a saintly life and a rich 
 power of spiritual expression. Emerson saw much of 
 her, and afterwards expressed his great indebtedness to 
 her life and teachings. One who heard him at this time 
 in New Bedford has given the following account of the 
 impression he made : 
 
 " One day there came into our pulpit the most gracious of mor 
 tals, with a face all benignity, who gave out the first hymn and 
 made the first prayer as an ano-el might have read and pra>cd. 
 Our choir was a pretty good one, but itsl>est was coarse; and discord 
 ant after Emerson s voice. I remember of the sermon only that it 
 had an indefinite charm of simplicity and wisdom, with occasional 
 illustrations from nature, which were about the most delicate and 
 dainty things of the kind which I had ever heard. I could under 
 stand them, if not the fresh philosophical novelty of the discourse. 
 Mr. Emerson preached for us for a good many Sundays, lodging in 
 the house of a Quaker lady, just below ours. Seated at my own 
 door, I saw him often go by ; and once, in the exuberance of my 
 childish admiration, I ventured to nod to him, and to say Good- 
 morning. To my astonishment he also nodded, and smilingly 
 said Good-morning ; and that is all the conversation I ever had 
 with the sage of Concord. He gave us afterwards two lectures 
 based upon his travels abroad, and was at a great deal of trouble 
 to hang up prints, by way of illustration. There was a picture 
 of the tribune in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, painted by one of 
 our townsmen ; and I recall Mr. Emerson s great anxiety that it 
 should have a good light, and his lamentation when a good light 
 was found to be impossible. The lectures 1 themselves were so fine 
 enchanting, we found them that I have hungered to see them 
 in print, and have thought of the evenings on which they were 
 delivered as true Arabian Nights. " 2 
 
 In the summer of 1834 he went to Concord, and 
 found a home in the " Old Manse " with Dr. Ripley. He 
 was probably drawn there for study and meditation; 
 and perhaps the purpose was already forming of find 
 ing there a home, and devoting himself to a literary 
 career. He was also moved by his love of nature to 
 
 1 Probably the two he gave in Boston immediately after his return 
 from Europe. 
 
 2 Reminiscences of a Journalist, by Charles T. Congdon, p 33 
 Printed originally in the New York Tribune for Dec. 23, 1879. 
 
THE NEW CAREER. 37 
 
 select Concord as a home. " I am a poet by nature," 
 he said at this time, u and therefore must live in the 
 country." 
 
 In February, 1835, he began a course of biographical 
 lectures in Boston. The first was an introductory one, 
 on the advantages of biography ; and it was followed by 
 others on Luther, Milton, Burke, Michael Angelo, and 
 George Fox. These lectures were well attended, and 
 won him many friends and admirers, among them 
 Alcott. In the lecture on Milton, there is a word 
 about Milton s religious opinions which may give a hint 
 of the tendencies of his own thinking at this time : 
 
 " The most devout man of his time, he says, frequented no 
 church ; probably from a disgust at the fierce spirit of the pulpits. 
 And so, throughout all his actions and opinions, is he a consistent 
 spiritualist, or believer in the omnipotence of spiritual laws." 
 
 This lecture and that on Michael Angelo were soon 
 after published ; ! and they show maturity of thought, 
 familiarity with the subject, and a rare philosophical 
 insight. The same thought and spirit were carried into 
 a lecture before the American Institute of Instruction, 
 in August of this year, when he spoke of The Means 
 of Inspiring a Taste for English Literature. 
 
 On the 12th of September he gave an historical 
 address in Concord, it being the second centennial 
 anniversary of the incorporation of the town. The de 
 sire to commemorate the planting of the town, he says, 
 is just and wise. 
 
 " And yet, in the eternity of nature, how recent our antiquities 
 appear 1 The imagination is impatient of a cycle so short. Who 
 can tell how many thousand years, every day, the clouds have 
 shaded these fields with their purple awning ? The river, by whose 
 banks most of us were born, every winter for ages has spread its 
 crust of ice over the great meadows which in ages it had formed. 
 But the little society of men who now, for a few years, fish in this 
 river, plow the fields it washes, mow the grass, and reap the corn, 
 shortly shall hurry from its banks as did their forefathers. Man s 
 life, said the Druid to the Saxon king, is the sparrow that enters 
 
 1 That on Milton in North American Review for July, 1838, and ihat 
 on Angelo in the same Review, in January, 18o7. 
 
38 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 at a window, flutters round the house, and flies out at another, and 
 none knoweth whence he came, or whither he goes. The more 
 reason that we should give to our being what permanence we can ; 
 that we should recall the past, and expect the future." 
 
 Alluding to the permanence of the Concord names, 
 he said there still remained " the lineal descendants ot 
 the first settlers of this town." " If the name of Bulke- 
 ley is wanting-, the honor you have done me this day in 
 making me your organ testifies your persevering kind 
 ness to his blood." He then sketches the history of 
 Concord through its two centuries with great care, and 
 in a graphic manner. Near the close of his address he 
 gives this picture of the town : 
 
 "I find our annals marked with uniform good sense. I find 
 no ridiculous laws, no eavesdropping legislators, no hanging of 
 witches, no ghosts, no whipping of Quakers, no unnatural crimes. 
 The tone of the records rises with the dignity of the event. These 
 soiled and musty books are luminous and electric within. The old 
 town-clerks did not spell very correctly, but they contrive to make 
 pretty intelligible the will of a free and just community. Frugal 
 our fathers were, very frugal, though, for the most part, they 
 deal generously by their minister, and provide well for the schools 
 and the poor. If, at any time, in common with most of our towns, 
 they have carried this economy to the verge of vice, it is to be 
 remembered that a town is, in many respects, a financial corpora 
 tion. They economize, that they may sacrifice. They stint and 
 higgle on the price of a pew, that they may send two hundred 
 soldiers to Gen. Washington to keep Great Britain at bay. For 
 splendor, there must be somewhere rigid economy. That the head 
 of the house may go brave, the members must be plainly clad ; and 
 the town must save that the State may spend." l 
 
 In September of this year he married Lydia Jackson, 
 daughter of Charles Jackson of Plymouth. 2 Immedi 
 ately after their marriage Emerson occupied the house 
 where he has lived ever since. It is at the eastern 
 
 1 This address was at once printed by request, with a page of his 
 grandfather s journal giving an account of the Concord fight. A new 
 edition was printed in 1875. Bancroft made use of it iii writing his 
 account of the Concord fight in his history. 
 
 2 Her family is descended from Rev. John Cotton, and from some 
 of the earliest of the Plymouth settlers. Dr. C. T. Jackson, the dis 
 coverer of anesthetics, one of the ablest of American scientists, was 
 her brother. 
 
THE NEW CAREER. 39 
 
 edge of the village, on the Cambridge turnpike, op 
 posite the point where it divides from the Lexington 
 road ; was built in 1828, and is a plain, unpretentious 
 house of goodly size. His mother soon became a mem 
 ber of his family, and remained with him until her 
 death in 1853. 
 
 In December he began a course of ten lectures in 
 Boston on English literature. The first two were on 
 the earliest writers ; and there were others on Chaucer, 
 Bacon, Shakspere, and all the great English literary 
 masters. In the last lecture he spoke of Byron, Scott, 
 Dugald Stewart, Mackintosh, and Coleridge. He placed 
 Coleridge among the sages of the world ; but expressed 
 himself as little in sympathy with the literary spirit of 
 the time, though he did not despair of reform. 
 
 On the 19th of April, 1825, the corner-stone of a 
 monument was laid in Concord, to commemorate the 
 Concord fight. Edward Everett gave the oration. 
 Emerson offered this toast : " The little bush that 
 marks the spot where Capt. Davis fell, tis the burning 
 bush where God spoke for his people." April 19, 1836, 
 a meeting was held on the completion of this monu 
 ment, when a hymn written for the occasion by Emer 
 son was read by Dr. Ripley, and sung to the tune of 
 Old Hundred. It was that containing the immortal 
 lines, 
 
 " Here once the embattled farmers stood, 
 And fired the shot heard round the world." 
 
 He wrote other poems at this period, some of his very 
 best, many of which were afterwards printed in The 
 Dial. 
 
 He returned now to studies out of which grew his 
 idealism. Plato was read more diligently than ever. 
 While teaching in Boston, he had made himself famil 
 iar with Plutarch. In 1835 he began to study Ploti- 
 nus, and other writers of the same class. The German 
 mystics attracted his attention, as did the English ideal 
 ists. The same year he was reading, with the keenest 
 relish and enthusiasm, the poems of George Herbert, 
 
40 BALPH WALDO EMEBSOX. 
 
 and the prose writings of Cudworth, Henry More. Mil 
 ton, Coleridge, and Jeremy Taylor. As the result of 
 these studies, while living in "the " Old Manse " he 
 wrote a little book on Nature, in which he gave 
 expression to his philosophical opinions. It was pub 
 lished in September, 1836. The author s name was not 
 given. The title-page bore these words from Plotinus, 
 Mature is but an image or imitation of wisdom, the 
 last thing of the soul ; nature being a thing which doth 
 only do, but not know. I > leading thought is that 
 contained in its original mono. 
 
 " A subtle chain of countless rings 
 The next unto the farthest brings; 
 The eye reads omens where it goes, 
 And speaks all languages the rose ; 
 And, striving to be man, the worm 
 Mounts through all the spires of form." 
 
 I*, .s pure idealism which he teaches throughout this 
 little book of less than one hundred pages, an ideal 
 ism rare, subtle, and noble. The univer.se exists, he says, 
 to the end of discipline ; and it may be doubted " wheth 
 er nature outwardly exists." Nature always speaks of 
 spirit, and exists only for the unfolding of a spiritual 
 being. This Is the thought of the book, and it Is writ 
 ten to vindicate this philosophy. The soul needs to be 
 developed, and to that end should be all our living, 
 tead, man applies to nature but half his force, and 
 live.- a. low commercial life, a life of the senses. 
 
 II . .-loped his ideas in X j.tu.ra more systemat 
 ically than elsewhere ; and he has given there a very 
 
 ..pie. and yet a e tent, -tern of philo-ophy. A 
 glance at what he attempts there to do will open the 
 way to an understanding of all his subsequent teach 
 ing II : PTltes v.-ith the jrreate-4 enthusiasm of the 
 attractions of nature, and finds the source of that at 
 traction in the harmony which <:. i ween man and 
 the outward world. The fir.-t u-e nature has for ma;, 
 that it ministers to the wants of the I vers, 
 however, to a higher want still, th love- of beas.ty. Its 
 
THE NEW CAREER. 41 
 
 beautiful forms delight him, but the heroic actions of 
 men add to it a higher charm. It becomes also a teach 
 er of the intellect, re-forming itself in the harmonious 
 action of the mind. Nature rises higher than beaut}% 
 and becomes an instrument of language, the vehicle of 
 thought. The use of the outer creation is to give us 
 language for the beings and changes of the inward 
 creation, and nature becomes an aid in understanding 
 the supernatural. Natural facts give us words as their 
 signs, and in a yet more perfect manner nature is itself 
 emblematic of the spiritual facts on which it rests. 
 " Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. 
 Every appearance in nature corresponds to some, state 
 of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be 
 described by presenting that natural appearance as its 
 picture." Nature becomes a means of expression for 
 those spiritual truths and experiences which could not 
 otherwise be interpreted. Its laws, also, are moral 
 laws when applicable to man ; and so they become to 
 man the language of the divine will. 
 
 Because the physical laws become moral laws the 
 moment they are related to human conduct, nature has 
 a much higher purpose than that of beauty or language, 
 in that it is a discipline. At first it is a disciple to the 
 understanding in intellectual truths; it trains reason, 
 and it develops the intellect. Nature is the great moral 
 teacher, its every fact and law a means of ethical cul 
 ture. All parts of nature conspire to this one end of 
 discipline. 
 
 "All things are moral, and in their boundless changes have an 
 unceasing reference to spiritual nature. Every animal function, 
 from the sponge up to Hercules, shall hint or thunder to man the 
 laws of right and wrong, and echo the trn commandments. This 
 ethical character so penetrates the bone and marrow of nature, as 
 to secure the end for which it. was made. Mvery natural process is 
 a version of a moral sentence. The moral law lies at the center of 
 nature ;md radiates to the circumference. It is the pith and marrow 
 of every siihslance, every relation, and every process. All things 
 with which we deal preach to US." 
 
 So thoroughly does nature answer to this end of dis 
 cipline, we begin to question if this is not its only use, 
 
42 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 and if nature outwardly exists. "It is a sufficient 
 account of that appearance we call the world, that God 
 will teach a human mind, and so makes it the receiver of 
 a certain number of congruent sensations, which we call 
 sun and moon, man and woman, house and trade." It 
 is here we see Emerson s resemblance to Swedenborg, in 
 that he cares for nature only as a symbol and revelation 
 of spiritual realities. Because we are led to doubt the 
 reality of outward nature, we are led on to idealism. 
 The first work of the ideal philosophy is to emancipate 
 us from the dominion of the senses, opening to us a 
 larger life. It teaches us that the laws of the natural 
 world are the ideas of the spiritual. We cease to believe 
 in matter as final; and our attention is fastened "upon 
 immortal necessary uncreated natures, that is, upon 
 ideas; and in their presence we feel that the outward is a 
 dream and a shade." Then nature becomes " an appen 
 dix of the soul." So looking upon nature we apprehend 
 the absolute ; and, as it were, for the first time we exist. 
 Religion and ethics constantly teach us that nature 
 depends on spirit ; that the seen and outward world is 
 temporal, while the unseen and spiritual is eternal. 
 Idealism gives consistency to this teaching, sees the 
 world in God, so that it is at each moment his direct 
 revelation. Then we find that nature Always speaks 
 of spirit, suggests the absolute, is a perpetual effect of 
 divine causes, is a great shadow pointing to the sun 
 behind it. The aspect of nature is devout, teaches the 
 lesson of worship, to stand before God with bended 
 head ; but when we try to describe him, both language 
 and thought desert us. and then we find that nature is 
 but the apparition of God. 
 
 Idealism teaches us that in consciousness is the only 
 source of knowledge ; the world is a dream, a shadow, 
 but " the mind is a part of the nature of things." God 
 is directly revealed to the soul of man ; and we learn 
 that " the t Universal Essenoo, which is not wisdom or 
 love or beauty or power, but all in one and each 
 entirely, is that for which all things exist, and that by 
 which they are ; that spirit creates ; that behind nature, 
 
THE NEW CAREER. 43 
 
 throughout nature, spirit is present ; one, and not com 
 pound, it does not act upon us from without, that is, 
 in space and time, but spiritually, or through ourselves." 
 The world is a remoter and inferior incarnation of God, 
 a projection of God in the unconscious ; but it is of the 
 same spirit with the body of man. It is a present and 
 a fixed expositor of the divine mind, and serves always 
 to show man his nearness to, or remoteness from, the 
 truth. 
 
 This little book met with but a small sale, five hun 
 dred copies being sold only after twelve years ; yet it 
 attracted the attention and the warmest enthusiasm of 
 a few persons. In England it met with an even heartier 
 reception than here ; one writer praising it in the most 
 cordial terms, attributing its authorship to Alcott, who 
 was better known than Emerson. Francis Bowen 
 devoted an article to it in The Christian Examiner, 1 
 criticising severely the transcendental philosophy. 
 
 " We find beautiful writing and sound philosophy in this little 
 work, he says; but the effect is injured by occasional vagueness 
 of expression, and by a vein of mysticism that pervades the writer s 
 whole course of thought. The highest praise that can be accorded 
 to it, is, that it is a suggestive book ; for no one can read it without 
 tasking his faculties to the utmost, and relapsing into fits of severe 
 meditation. But the effort of perusal is often painful, the thoughts 
 excited are frequently bewildering, and the results to which they 
 lead us uncertain and obscure. The reader feels as in a distracted 
 dream, in which shows of surpassing beauty are around him, and 
 he is conversant with disembodied spirits ; yet all the time he is 
 harassed by an uneasy sort of consciousness that the whole com 
 bination of phenomena is fantastic and unreal." 
 
 On the other hand, a writer in The Democratic 
 Review was very enthusiastic in his praise, and said 
 that "the highest intellectual culture and the simplest 
 instinctive innocence have received it, and felt it to be 
 a divine thought, borne on a stream of English undefiled, 
 such as we had almost despaired could flow in this our 
 world of grist and saw mills." He finds evidence of 
 " the highest imaginative power " in it, while " it 
 proves to iis that the only true and perfect mind is the 
 poetic." 
 
 i January, 1837. 
 
44 RALPH WALDO EMERSON". 
 
 During the summer of 1836 the Rev. H. B. Goodwin, 
 pastor of the Unitarian church in Concord, owing to ill 
 health was not able to occupy his pulpit. Emerson 
 supplied it for him for three months. He had continued 
 to preach from time to time, after declining the invita 
 tion to New Bedford, as opportunity offered. In the 
 autumn of 1836 he began to preach in East Lexington 
 to a small society recently formed there, which wor 
 shipped in a hall. 
 
 One of his sermons preached in Boston was on the 
 judgment-seat of Christ, which he said was always set 
 up in the world, and that it consisted in the deep, inte 
 rior truths of Christianity, which were always judging 
 men by their high ideals. Another sermon was on 
 wonder, and was full of devoutness. He was in these, 
 as in his later sermons at Concord and East Lexington, 
 engaged in presenting those ideas he has made so famil 
 iar since. His conception of compensation, of the 
 analogies of nature and the moral life, of the absolute 
 unity of the universe, and many others, about which he 
 has written so much, were all stated in these sermons. 
 In an exceedingly simple and suggestive manner he 
 illustrated the greatest spiritual truths, and with a 
 charm and a magnetism which attracted and held the 
 admiration of alLj^ tn one of these sermons he spoke 
 of the unity of God as being the cause and explana 
 tion of all fixed laws ; and said, that because he is one 
 we see harmony and order in all created things. As a 
 result, the inner and outer man correspond to each 
 other ; every truth is related to every other ; while every 
 atom of matter is connected with every other, and ruled 
 by the same laws. He then dwelt upon the idea that 
 each thing has in it the laws, conditions, and possibil 
 ities of all things. In morals, also, this is true, he said ; 
 for all circumstances reach the same truths. One vir 
 tue opens the way to all virtue, for virtue is one in 
 essence. One truth will bring a knowledge of all 
 truth ; for truth is always the same, a united whole. 
 The spirit of virtue or knowledge in one thing is the 
 key to all virtue and knowledge. 
 
THE NEW CAKEEK. 45 
 
 At another time he took for his text the words, " Do 
 Ttiyself no harm." He said that every man within him 
 self is capable of infinite happiness or misery. There 
 is no power which can harm us if we do our duty, and 
 do not harm ourselves. There is an everlasting superi 
 ority in virtue to all evil. No one but himself can hurt 
 .any man. He is his own worst enemy or friend, so 
 there is great danger from self. The law at the foun 
 dation of all things is retribution, he said. This makes 
 every act important, because it is inevitably followed 
 by its necessary consequences, bears fruit in its kind. 
 If an atom be moved, all things in the universe are 
 affected by it ; and this law is no less true in moral 
 action. Every act re-acts on the actor, and we receive 
 precisely according to our deeds. In our success we 
 see the connection of cause and effect, and attribute it 
 to our own efforts ; but in misfortune we attribute the 
 consequences of our conduct to our fellow-men, to luck, 
 or to providence. Men forget that vices draw blanks, 
 as surely as virtues draw prizes, in what they are 
 pleased to call the lottery of life. The industrious man 
 seeks wealth, and finds it. Let not the intellectual 
 man murmur at the ills of fortune, for he did not seek 
 wealth. /Tit was not the consequence jof his pursuit ; 
 but he sought knowledge, and found it^J If we do self 
 110 harm, no real evil can happen to us. We should 
 not fear that which kills the body, and can do no more ; 
 for that is not an absolute evil. The loss of purity, 
 the loss of simplicity, the loss of honesty, are real 
 losses ; but they befall us only by our own consent. 
 By industry we receive riches, but by goodness and up 
 rightness the eternal riches of virtue. No one- can gain 
 by a vicious action. The gain is apparent, outward; 
 but the loss is lasting, permanent. It is parting with a 
 part of our soul. Happy he who brings this truth 
 home to his mind, that whatsoever wrong he does his 
 conscience, he does himself^more harm than can be 
 done by all the outward worhD The consequences may 
 not be believed, for they are not sudden ; yet they are 
 sure. Who would not forego a temptation, an animal 
 
46 RALPH WALDO EMEESOX. 
 
 delight, a sinful pleasure, for the reward of a peaceful 
 conscience, an ascending character, and in preparation 
 of an endless future? No one can remember a good 
 act or thought which he regrets ; nor was there ever a 
 good act in the world, in history, or among those we 
 know, which we can regret. 
 
 His religious convictions had now taken on a dis 
 tinctly spiritual form, but they were vigorous and pro 
 found. In August of 1836 Alcott made him a visit, 
 and found him remarkably given to the highest expres 
 sion of the religious spirit. In the morning he read 
 from the Bible in the simplest and most impressive 
 manner, making the words he read natural with life ; 
 and he made a prayer as if he were communing face to 
 face with God, in a spirit as trustful as a child s. In 
 like manner his "blessing" at the table was utterly 
 void of all cant, was. not in the least artificial, but the 
 expression of a sincerely thankful heart, full of rever 
 ence and faith in the constant presence of the wondrous 
 miracle of life. Alcott also attended a wedding with " 
 him, which was conducted in a manner so simple, and 
 followed by a few words of advice to the young couple 
 so pertinent, as to make the whole ceremony one long 
 to remember. With Emerson, through these years as 
 ever after, religion meant perfect sincerity, utter loy 
 alty to every conviction. Because he followed no con 
 ventional forms, he gave a newness of life to every 
 expression of his own beliefs. Simplicity, candor, trust 
 fulness, courage, marked all his words on spiritual 
 themes, and gave them a noble beauty and impres- 
 siveness. 
 
 During the year 1836 Emerson edited Carlyle s Sar 
 tor Resartus, from the pages of Fraser s Magazine, be 
 fore it appeared in book-form in England. It is worthy 
 of remembrance that this, as well as the other earlier 
 books of Carlyle, met with a success here far greater 
 than that they obtained in England. XVhile attracting 
 little attention there, they were eagerly read by many 
 persons here. Emerson received one hundred and fifty 
 pounds from the sale of the American edition of this 
 
THE NEW CAREER. . 47 
 
 volume (according to Carlyle s Reminiscences), which 
 proved quite an encouragement to the author at the 
 beginning of his career in London. Emerson wrote 
 a preface for the book, in which he said, 
 
 " The foreign dress and aspect of the work are quite superfi 
 cial, and cover a genuine Saxon heart. We believe no book has 
 been published, for many years, written in a more sincere style of 
 idiomatic English, or which discovers an equal mastery over all 
 the riches of language. The author makes ample amends for the 
 occasional eccentricity of his genius, not only by frequent bursts of 
 pure splendor, but by the wit and sense which never fail him." Ha 
 has " an insight into the manifold wants and tendencies of human 
 nature, which is very rare among our popular authors. The philos 
 ophy and the purity of moral sentiment, which inspire the work, 
 will find their way to the heart of every lover of virtue." 
 
 In 1838 Emerson collected Carlyle s miscellaneous 
 writings, from the pages of the English reviews, and 
 published them in three volumes, as his Critical and 
 Miscellaneous Essays. This was done also before they 
 were put into a book in England. In the brief preface 
 he speaks of the influence they had exerted in New 
 England, and how they spoke to many youthful minds, 
 "with an emphasis that hindered them from sleep." 
 These essays had early attracted Emerson s attention, 
 and had a decided influence on his thinking. They in 
 troduced him to the world of German thought, and, 
 with Sartor Resartus, helped to shape his career. His 
 mind had been already prepared by his reading for an 
 immediate acceptance of these teachings. Hence the 
 eagerness with which he read these essays as they 
 appeared,- and his satisfaction in that new world of 
 thought to which they opened the way. 
 
 In December, 1836, he began a course of lectures in 
 Masonic Hall, Boston. It was his habit to advertise 
 his subjects, leave his tickets for sale at some central 
 place, and, when enough were sold to pay the hall-rent, 
 begin his course. This year the general subject was 
 The Nature and Ends of History. There were ten 
 lectures ; and the special subjects were The Univer 
 sality of Spirit, Art, Politics, Religion, Society, Trades 
 
48 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 and Professions, Manners, Ethics, with two lectures on 
 The Present Age. James Freeman Clarke has given 
 the following account of the impression made by his 
 lectures at this period : 
 
 "The majority of the sensible, practical community regarded 
 him as mystical, as crazy or affected, as an imitator of Carlyle, as 
 racked and revolutionary, as a fool, as one who did not himself 
 know what he meant. A small but determined minority, chiefly 
 composed of young- men and women, admired him and believed in 
 him, took him for their guide, teacher, and master. I, and most of 
 my friends, belonged to this class. Without accepting all his 
 opinions, or indeed knowing what they were, we felt that he did 
 us more good than any other writer or speaker among us, and 
 chiefly in two ways, first, by encouraging self-reliance ; and, 
 secondly, by encouraging God-reliance." 1 
 
 The majority of the sensible, practical people were 
 well represented by John Quincy Adams, who wrote in 
 his journal that Emerson, "after failing in the every-day 
 vocations of a Unitarian preacher and schoolmaster, 
 starts a new doctrine of transcendentalism, declares all 
 the old revelations superannuated and worn out, and 
 announces the approach of new revelations." 2 He did 
 not believe that the old revelations had worn out, or 
 that the church had gone to colored cobweb, as Carlyle 
 suggested ; 3 but he did believe in the mighty truths of 
 a spiritual religion, and he taught those truths as living 
 realities. His own conviction that religion is to be 
 realized in the present, and amidst its conditions, was 
 so strong, his spirit of enthusiastic affirmation was so 
 contagious, his eloquence was so persuasive, and his 
 thought so inspiring, he won the admiration of some 
 of the best minds of the time. Among those he 
 influenced, and inspired with a larger sense of the pur 
 poses of life, were several persons since become famous 
 in literature, education, or reform. One of these was 
 Horace Mann. In a letter dated Boston, Dec. 9, 1836, 
 he says, 4 
 
 1 Lecture delivered in his church Jan. 8, 1865, on The Religious 
 Philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 2 Memoirs of J. Q. Adsuns, vol. i. p. 345, under date of Aug. 2, 1840. 
 8 In the chapter entitled Horoscope, in Past and Present. 
 
 4 Life of Mann v v his wife. 
 
THE NEW CAREER. 49 
 
 " Mr. Emerson, I am sure, must be perpetually discovering richer 
 worlds than those of Columbus or Herschel. He explores, t<x>, not 
 in the scanty and barren region of our physical firmament, but in a 
 spiritual firmament of illimitable extent, and compacted of treas 
 ures. I heard his lecture last evening. It wars to human life what 
 Newton s Principia was to mathematics, lie showed me what I 
 have long thought of so much, how much more can be accom 
 plished by taking a true view than by great intellectual energy. 
 Had Mr. Emerson been set down in a wrong place, it may be 
 doubted whether he would have found his way to the right point 
 oi. view ; but that he now certainly has done. As a man stationed 
 in the sun would see all the planets moving round it in one direc 
 tion and in perfect harmony, while to an eye on the earth their 
 motions are full of crossings and retrogradations ; so he, from his 
 central position in the spiritual world, discovers harmony and order 
 where others can discover only confusion and irregularity. His 
 lecture last evening was one of the most splendid manifestations of 
 a truth-seeking and truth-compelling mind I ever heard. Dr. Wal 
 ter Channing, who sat beside me, said it made his head ache. 
 Though his language was transparent, yet it was almost impossible 
 to catch the great beauty and proportions of one truth before 
 another was presented." 
 
 Another side of his influence may be seen in a letter 
 which Margaret Fuller wrote to a friend in answer to a 
 question as to the nature of the benefits Emerson con 
 ferred upon her. 
 
 "This influence, she writes, has been more beneficial to me 
 than that of any American ; and from him I first learned what is 
 meant by an inward life. Many other springs have since fed the 
 stream of living waters, but he first opened the fountain. That 
 the mind is its own place, was a dead phrase to me, till he cast 
 light upon my mind. Several of his sermons stand apart in my 
 memory, like landmarks of my spiritual history. It would take a 
 volume to tell what this one influence did for me." 
 
 The magnetism alike of his manner and of his thought 
 was an inspiration to many minds, rousing, stimulating, 
 full of invigoration, quickening to the intellect and to 
 the moral nature in equal degree. Those who accepted 
 his influence were kindled with an ardent desire to im 
 prove their own natures, and with a zealous purpose to 
 improve the world about them. 
 
 During, this period two of his brothers died, to whom 
 he had been strongly attached. Edward Bliss Emerson 
 was a man of great brilliancy and promise, of a sturdy 
 
50 HALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 and robust moral nature, severe and high-toned in his 
 ideas of duty, and incapable, as Waldo said, of self- 
 indulgence. He began the study of law with Daniel 
 Webster, worked too hard, denied himself sufficient 
 food and exercise, broke down in health, and became 
 insane. He recovered his reason after a time. Return 
 ing to his studies, he soon found his health inadequate 
 for continuing them permanently. In 1832 he went to 
 Porto Rico, and took a clerkship there. He strongly 
 attached himself to the people about him, became rec 
 onciled to the abandonment of his cherished plans of 
 life ; but he succumbed to the influences of the climate, 
 and died in 1834. 
 
 Charles Chauncy Emerson graduated at Harvard in 
 1828, studied law with Samuel Hoar of Concord, and 
 became engaged in marriage to his daughter Elizabeth. 
 Waldo said he never moved save in the curve of 
 beauty ; but he had a varied capacity, and could turn 
 his attention to every subject and occupation. He died 
 of consumption May 9, 1806. In his metrical essay on 
 Poetry, O. W. Holmes, his companion in the univer 
 sity, wrote this tribute to his memory : 
 
 " Thou calm, chaste scholar ! I can see thee now, 
 The first young laurels on thy pallid brow, 
 O er thy slight figure floating lightly down 
 In graceful folds the academic gown, 
 On thy curled lip the classic lines, that taught 
 How nice the mind that sculptured them with thought ; 
 And triumph glistening in the clear blue eye 
 Too bright to live, but oh, too fair to die ! " 
 
 Both these young men gave great promise for the 
 future, and the little they did of literary work was of 
 the very best. Rockwood Hoar, writing of the history 
 of the Concord Lyceum, says, 
 
 " They gave us loftier truths from sweeter lips than this genera 
 tion knows. The only time I ever heard Edward Bliss Emerson 
 speak in public was before the Concord Lyceum, when he delivered 
 a lecture on the Geography of Asia, a subject which, to the 
 school-boy, sounded dry. lie stood up in the hall over the old 
 academy, with a large map with a painted outline of Asia upon it, 
 with a wand in liis hand, and entranced the attention of the audi- 
 
THE NEW CAREER. 51 
 
 ence. I remember now but one line of that lecture. I remember 
 that from hearing it fifty years ago, the last line of a poetical 
 quotation with which he closed, 
 
 And seek no other resting-place but heaven. 
 
 Charles Chauncy Emerson s lecture on Socrates was the most stir 
 ring appeal to the young men which, at that tune, they had ever 
 heard, closing with the line, 
 
 God for thee has done his part, do thine. " 
 
 Many notes from the journal of Charles were after 
 wards printed in The Dial, which justify all the praises 
 of his friends. Waldo had the most perfect faith in 
 these two brothers. His Dirge expresses his sense of 
 their loss. 
 
 In May-Day and Other Pieces he writes of Edward 
 as the 
 
 "Brother of the brief but blazing star," 
 
 in one of the most memorable poems of its kind, and 
 in a strain of the purest eloquence. They looked to 
 him as to a prophet and an oracle, such was their confi 
 dence in his wisdom; while he trusted them in all 
 matters of practical import. After their death he took 
 a much greater interest in public matters, feeling his 
 duties were increased, and that he must fill more 
 perfectly his place as a citizen. Their loss was a great 
 one to him, which he felt most keenly ; for he was very 
 tenderly attached to them both. He missed everywhere 
 the presence of these 
 
 " Strong, star-bright companions ; " 
 and in the Dirge his consoler says, 
 
 " They loved thee from their birth ; 
 Their hands were pure, and pure their faith. 
 
 There are no such hearts on earth. 
 Ye drew one mother s milk, 
 
 One chamber held ye all ; 
 A very tender history 
 
 Did in your childhood fall." 
 
52 BALPH WALDO EilEESON. 
 
 V. 
 
 THE ERA OF TRANSCENDENTALISM. 
 
 THE first twenty-five years of the present century 
 were marked, in Boston, by a revived interest in 
 classical literature. The way was opened thereby to a 
 new appreciation of the idealistic philosophy, creating 
 a taste for the English transcendentalists, as in the case 
 of Charming ; and then, a little later, for those of Ger 
 many, as in the case of Emerson. Emerson began to 
 read Carlyle about the year 1828, and soon after he 
 read Wilhelm Meister in Carlyle s translation. 
 
 Previous to the introduction of German thought into 
 England by Coleridge and others, the influence of 
 Locke and Bentham had been predominant. All innate 
 ideas were denied, and morality was based on custom 
 or utility. To this school of thought most of the 
 English Unitarians adhered. They were materialists, 
 and believed in a purely mechanical revelation. The 
 like philosophy had prevailed in this country, and it 
 had been a partial cause of the Unitarian protest. The 
 new thought was everywhere a re-action against it, an 
 attempt of the human mind to recover a natural and 
 assured faith in moral things. It declared that man has 
 innate ideas, ancL a faculty transcendingjbhe senses and 
 the understanding. It identified^morSfftv"5nd religion, 
 and made intuition jtheir source^ ColerldgglcallS this 
 transce 1 p f l pn t,facultj "fe^5Qn^ and regarded it as an im 
 mediate beholding of supersensible things. He says it 
 can not be called a faculty, and much less a personal 
 property of any human mind. We do not possess it, 
 but partake ofitjit isidgntical with the Universal 
 Iieason, a spnTkTrpm wVimTT^ftnt^r^ fhf> human mind, 
 lie says then- is but one reason, which all intelligent 
 
TRANSCENDENT 
 
 THE ERA OF TRANSCENDENTALISM. 53 
 
 beings share in ; and it is identical in them all. This 
 idea became most fruitful in Emerson s mind, thejsource- 
 of his doctrine of the Over-Soul. N In Coleridge he found 
 much eTsFTo"tmrCrrart^-him. Wordsworth gave him the 
 conception of nature as alive with the Universal Spirit, 
 and as being the Universal Reason embodied and out 
 wardly expressed as law and order. These ideas were 
 confirmed by the German thinkers. Herder regarded 
 all religion as an intuition, and looked upon genius in 
 the great man as the world s chief progressive force, as 
 the source of all rightful activity. Goej^ie-^even more 
 than Wnrf1ft\ynrjj^t,n.off^ and enthusiastic 
 
 love of nature, and brought men to look on it as. an 
 intimate ancT confidential friend. By__idL_tha_ great 
 Germans individuality was constantly preached, for 
 they regarded each -^iLfliL/* Tlfl w p-ypTftssirm <^p Univer 
 sal Reason. ~!ts"the real source of truth is_ intuition, we 
 must look inwardly, rely oh reason as it speaks in us ; 
 and not outwardly, to history and social customs. 
 
 Such are some of the ideas and influences which 
 affected Emerson and his friends at this time. The 
 conventional and historical came to be less important ; 
 and the natural, the common, acquired a new interest. 
 Nature wore a new face, and science was found to 
 have a new and richer attraction. In Nature may be 
 seen the influence of Plato, the Neo-Platonists, the Ger 
 man mystics and English idealists. Under_their lead 
 he elaborates his doctrine of the one mind common to 
 all men, which reveals through us its living word. This 
 idea expands into his conception of self-reliance, intui 
 tion, compensation, and the influence of the great man. 
 He was more than ever repelled from the" materialistic 
 philosophy, and from all those religious ideas which 
 seemed in any way to be attached to it. His own 
 account of^ the rise of Transcendentalism in New 
 England will give the best idea of it which can be 
 presented. 
 
 There are always two parties, the party of the past and that 
 of the future, or that of the establishment and that of movement. 
 It is not easy to date the eras of activity which, from time to time, 
 
54 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 are manifest, with any thing like precision ; but the period begin 
 ning about the year 1820, and ending twenty years later, is to be 
 regarded as such an one. It may be characterized as a war be 
 tween institutions and nature, and which caused a split in every 
 church, as of Calvinists and Quakers, into old and new schools ; 
 and there were new divisions upon questions of politics, temper 
 ance, and slavery. The general mind had become aware of itself. 
 Men grew conscious and intellectual. The swart earth-spirit which 
 had made the strength of past ages was all gone, and another hour 
 had struck. In literature there appeared a decided tendency to 
 criticism, and young men seemed to have been born with knives in 
 their brains. The popular religion of our fathers received many 
 shocks during this time ; but much is to be attributed to the slow 
 but extraordinary influence of Swedenborg, a man of prodigious 
 mind, tainted, as I think, with a certain suspicion of insanity, but 
 exerting a powerful effect upon an influential class. 
 
 Among the more immediate causes of this intellectual and 
 reformatory activity was the impression made by Edw r ard Everett, 
 who returned from Europe about the year 1820, after a live years 
 residence, and who presented with natural grace and splendid 
 rhetoric some of the phases of contemporary German thought. 
 Frothingham and Xorton also contributed in making familiar the 
 latest results of German thinking, and gave a new impetus to the 
 study of theology. But more potent than any of these influences, 
 as a permanent source of the religious revolution of the period, was 
 modern science, especially the science of astronomy. It came to 
 be apprehended, that, as the earth is not the center of the universe, 
 so it is not the special scene or stage on which the drama of divine 
 justice is played before the assembled angels of heaven ; the planet 
 being but a speck in the created universe too minute to be seen at 
 tin- distance of many of the fixed stars which are plainly visible to 
 us. These new perceptions required of men .an extension and 
 uplifting of their views as to the dealings of the Creator, and they 
 received a confirmation in the then new science of geology. The 
 writings of Dr. Channii% especially his papers on Milton and Xa- 
 poleon, had an immense influence on current literature, setting the 
 c\;iiii})le and laying the foundation for a broader and deeper school 
 of criticism than had appeared before among us. 
 
 Among other influences was the work of the great innovators, 
 Lavater, Gall, Spurzheim, who dragged down every secret and 
 mysterious thing of our nature to the level of a street-show. 
 Goethe also had a great influence, revolutionizing philosophy and 
 science. And the peculiarity of all this period was its return to 
 law, to what was normal, natural, and human. And this could 
 be seen in the character of the works and authors which then 
 became popular, such as Combe s Constitution of Alan, Mrs. Somer- 
 ville s scientific works, and many other writings on science and 
 philosophy; and in Dickens, so human and genial, in the world 
 of fiction. 
 
THE ERA OF TRANSCENDENTALISM. 55 
 
 The tendencies of thought thus created took a de 
 cided form, and came to full expression in the year 
 1836. Beside Emerson s Nature, there appeared a lit 
 tle book on The Gospels, by W. H. Furness, Alcott s 
 first volume of Conversations on the Gospels, Brown- 
 son s New Views of Christianity, Society, and the Church, 
 and Sampson Reed s Growth of the Mind. These 
 books were all based on the new spiritual philos- 
 / ophy, and were full of criticism of the old religious 
 / thought and life. So strong had the new tendency 
 LJbecome, that its friends began to gather together and 
 to seek for some ampler methods of expression, which 
 would bring them into closer sympathy with each other. 
 Channing was the real leader of this movement, as he 
 had been twenty years earlier of the Unitarian advance. 
 He took counsel with George Ripley, then one of the 
 most prominent of the Unitarian clergymen in Boston, 
 towards the organization of a society for mutual 
 inquiry. 
 
 He invited a party of ladies and gentlemen, says Emerson, and 
 I had the honor to be present. No important consequences of the 
 attempt followed. Margaret Fuller, Ripley, Brownson, and Hedge, 
 and many others, gradually came together, but only in the way of 
 students. But I think there prevailed at that time a belief that 
 this was some concert of doctrinaires to establish certain opinions, 
 or to inaugurate some movement in literature, philosophy, or 
 religion, but of which these conspirators were quite innocent. It 
 was no concert, but only two or three men and women, who read 
 alone with some vivacity. Perhaps all of these were surprised at 
 the rumor that they were a school or sect, but more especially at the 
 name of "Transcendentalism." Nobody knows who first applied 
 the name. These persons became, in the common chance of society, 
 acquainted with each other ; and the result was a strong friend 
 ship, exclusive in proportion to its heat. Meetings were held for 
 conversation, with very little form, from house to house. Yet the 
 intelligent character and varied ability of the company gave it 
 some notoriety, and perhaps awakened some curiosity as to its aims 
 and results. But nothing more serious came of it for a long time. 
 
 This gathering was at first known as " The Sympo 
 sium," and afterwards as " The Transcendental Club." 
 It was not so much a club as a gathering of a handful 
 of friends who entertained the same ideas, and had com- 
 
56 * RALPH WAXDO EMERSON. 
 
 mon hopes of a new era of truth and religion. Those 
 ideas were such as to make them talkers, and could be 
 better expressed in conversation among friends than in 
 any other manner. One of the company, Bronson 
 Alcott, in one of his "Conversations," has given a 
 very good account of these meetings ; and, as it is 
 almost wholly made up from the pages of his journal, 
 is accurate as to dates and persons : 
 
 " The first meeting of the Transcendental Club was in Boston, 
 at the house of Mr. George Ripley, on the l!)th of September, 183G. 
 The persons present were George Ripley, R. W. Emerson, F. H. 
 Hedge, Convers Francis, J. F. Clarke, and the present writer. It 
 was a preliminary meeting, to see how far it would be possible for 
 earnest minds to meet, and with the least possible formality com 
 municate their views. They dispensed with any election of a chair 
 man ; if there was to be any precedency, it naturally belonged to 
 the oldest. At that time the oldest of that company was Mr. 
 Francis. They gave invitations to Dr. Channing, to Jonathan 
 Phillips, to Rev. James Walker, Rev. N. L. Frothingham, Rev. J. 
 S. Dwight, Rev. W. H. Channing, and Rev. C. A. Bartol, to join 
 them, if they chose to do so. The three last named appeared after 
 wards, and met the club frequently. They adjourned to meet at 
 Mr. Alcott s house in Beach Street, on the afternoon of Oct. 3, 1836, 
 at three o clock. 
 
 " On that occasion the subject of discussion was this : American 
 .Genius, the causes which hinder its growth giving us no first-rate 
 
 S -eductions. There were present at that second meeting, Emerson, 
 edge, Francis, Ripley, O. A. Brownson, Clarke, Bartol, and the 
 host. Subsequent meetings took place in Boston the following 
 whiter and spring, and at Concord and Watertown, then the home 
 of Mr. Francis, during the summer of 1837. So far as there was 
 any show of order in these meetings, it was something like this : 
 The senior member, Mr. Francis, the company being seated, 
 would invite the members, as they sat, to make remarks, which they 
 did. I believe there was seldom an inclination on the part of any 
 to be silent. Always, or nearly always, every person present con 
 tributed something to the conversation. At that time theology 
 was the theme of general discussion. Dr. Beecher had come to 
 Boston a few years before, to put down Unitarianism, as he fondly 
 fancied, by preaching his Puritan views, the views of Calvin. 
 These, however, had passed away, in good measure ; and the views 
 of Professor Norton of the Divinity School were then in the 
 it. Dr. Channing had published his essays in The Ex- 
 nnn i<r: he was also preaching when he was able There were 
 a 1 != 1 to the club, or symposium, in 1837, Rev. Caleb Stetson, 
 Theodore Parker, Margaret Fuller, ami Miss Elizabeth Peabody. 
 
THE ERA OF TRANSCENDENTALISM. 57 
 
 Rev. Thomas T. Stone afterwards joined it. Mr. Brownson com 
 menced his Quarterly Review in 1837. 
 
 " At the meetings of the club, Mr. Emerson was almost always 
 present. On not more than two or three occasions during the three 
 or four years that the club met four or five times a year, probably 
 
 was lie absent. Indeed, the members looked forward with great 
 delight to the opportunity of meeting him. They were presently 
 scattered abroad. Mr. Hedge had gone as far as Bangor, and 
 others had gone to some distance ; but it was arranged that during 
 the season of recreation, when these persons came to the city, the 
 meetings should be held quite often. They were held at Watertown, 
 at Newton, Concord, Milton, Chelsea (where Mr. Brownson was 
 then living), frequently in Boston, and perhaps elsewhere. I re 
 member the doctrine of Personality early came up for discussion. 
 It was the fashion to speak against personality, the orthodox 
 view of it ; and the favorite phrase was impersonality. In 
 attempting to liberate the true view from the superstitions which 
 had gathered about it in coming down through Calvinism, through 
 Puritanism, some made the mistake of conceiving individuality to 
 be the central thought ; and at these meetings that subject was dis 
 cussed. Impersonality, Law, Right, Justice, Truth, these were 
 the central ideas ; but" where the Power was in which they inhered, 
 how they were related to one another, what was to give them vitality, 
 
 these questions were almost neglected, and left out of sight. I 
 think that was the deficiency of the Transcendental school ; is its 
 deficiency still ; is the reason why it has not incorporated itself into 
 a church, and been found equal to compete with .orthodoxy. The 
 old Puritanism, whatsoever may have been its blunders, whatso 
 ever superstitions may have been mingled with its doctrines, did 
 believe in a Person, and did not allow itself to discriminate person 
 ality away into laws and ideas. 
 
 " To show how the topics about which I have been speaking 
 interested the club, in May, 1838, the same company again met 
 Rev. N. L. Frothingham being present, for the first time, and the 
 only time that I ever saw him at Medf ord ; and we discussed this 
 question, Is Mysticism an Element of Christianity? That ques 
 tion touched the seat and root of things. Jones Very s Poems and 
 Essays were published in September, 1839 : very significant they 
 were, too ; as if, in answer to the inquiry whether Mysticism was 
 an element of Christianity, here was an illustration of it in a living 
 person, himself present at the club. They are very remarkable 
 poems and essays. There had been nothing printed until Nature, 
 unless it may have been Mr. Sampson Reed s little book called 
 The Growth of the Mind, which had intimated genius of the like 
 subtle, chaste, and simple quality." 
 
 In 1838, at a meeting held at Bartol s house, in 
 Chestnut Street, Pantheism was the topic ; and there 
 were present Emerson, Alcott, Follan, Francis, Parker, 
 
58 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 Stetson, William Russell, Clarke, and D wight. At the 
 house of Dr. Francis, September, 1839, there were also 
 present Margaret Fuller, W. H. Channing, Robert 
 Bartlett, and Samuel J. May. In December, at Ripley s, 
 there came Dr. Channing, George Bancroft, the sculptor 
 Clevenger, Cranch, and Samuel G. Ward, beside the 
 regular attendants. 
 
 Alcott opened his " Temple School " in Boston in 
 1834, and applied the new philosophy in the educa 
 tion of young children. Among his assistants were 
 Elizabeth and Sophia Peabody and Margaret Fuller. 
 Elizabeth Peabody prepared for publication a volume of 
 his conversations on the Gospels with the children of his 
 school. This volume was severely criticised, and the 
 school was condemned as an outrageous innovation on 
 the usual methods. While Alcott was being severely 
 attacked in the newspapers, Emerson wrote a defense of 
 the book, which was declined by one of the leading 
 daily journals, but was published in The Courier. 
 
 "Mr. Alcott, he said, has given proof in the beautiful intro 
 duction to this work, as all who have read it know, of a strong 
 mind and a pure heart. A practical teacher, he lias dedicated, for 
 years, his rare gifts to the science of education. These conversa 
 tions contain abundant evidence of extraordinary power of thought, 
 either in the teacher or in the pupils, or in both. He aims to make 
 children think, and, in every question of a moral nature, to send 
 them back on themselves for an answer. He aims to show chil 
 dren something holy in their own consciousness ; thereby to make 
 them really reverent, and to make the New Testament a living 
 book to them. 
 
 " Mr. Alcott s methods can not be said to have had a fair trial ; 
 but he is making an experiment in which all the friends of educa 
 tion are interested. And I ask whether it be wise or just to add to 
 the anxieties of this enterprise a public clamor Against some de 
 tached sentences of a book, which, as a whole, is pervaded with 
 original thought and sincere piety." 
 
 Soon after the publication of this letter, Emerson 
 wrote, March 24, 1837, a most cordial and sympathetic 
 letter to Alcott in regard to the school, and urged him 
 to come away from it, as the people of Boston were un 
 worthy of his genius. 
 
 The effect oi: this agitation on Emerson is indicated 
 
THE ERA OF TRANSCENDENTALISM. 59 
 
 in his relations to the church in East Lexington. This 
 church was very anxious to settle him as their pastor, 
 but he did not wish to enter again fully upon the duties 
 of a clergyman ; so he urged upon the people there the 
 calling to their pulpit one of his friends. When a lady 
 of the society was asked why they did not settle this 
 person, the reply was, " We are a very simple people, and 
 can understand no one but Mr. Emerson." When a 
 friend advised him to accept the East-Lexington pulpit, 
 he modestly declared his inability to interest all the 
 people ; and when further urged to throw himself into 
 the work, he quietly replied, " My pulpit is the lyceum 
 platform." He continued to preach there until the 
 autumn of 1838, driving to and from the village on 
 Sunday, and preaching two sermons. He continued, 
 indeed, until he began to be troubled with doubts as to 
 public prayer and the rightfulness of offering prayers 
 for others, and then he ceased. His ideas gradually 
 changed until he doubted the rightfulness of any reli 
 gious forms. He found true religion alone in the com 
 munions of the individual soul. 
 
 Aug. 81, 1837, he gave the address before the Phi 
 Beta Kappa Society at Harvard. 1 It attracted much 
 attention, and was one more distinct statement of the 
 purposes and hopes of the new movement. The subject 
 was The 4^ ne irican Scholar; and its idea was " that 
 therejg One^Man, rjresent in all parjjjnlnr men only 
 partially, or through one^fax3ult^;~.aiid~tkat you must 
 take thejoyhole society tn find the whole man." At 
 present man s functions a.rft r^yided and separated ; to 
 each function is a special class. The scholar is "the 
 delegated intellect," for " the true scholar is the only 
 true master." Then the sources from whence the 
 scholar receives his main influences were considered. 
 These are nature, the past, and earnest activity. Nearly 
 all his leading ideas found expression in this address. 
 He dwelt upon the law of the mind and upon its iden 
 tity witji nature. The Man Thinking, of whom he 
 
 i Miscellanies, p. 77. 
 
60 RALPH WALDO EMERSOX. 
 
 spoke, is the man of intuition : and he insists upon a 
 rejection 15T HSoois fur an immediate inquiry into the 
 truth. The mind is more than the instruments it has 
 ! created, more than its own products. Tho^rgsiilts of 
 1 this truer method of inquiry Jn&tJtlie truth embody 
 tli- - in action. The end of all truth is character 
 
 and a more perfect moral nature. % * A great soul will 
 be strong to live as well as strong to think." As the 
 source of truth is not books, but mental activity, we are 
 to pulHvatp gp.li-triKt. Help can come :ly from 
 
 our own bosom* ; and in OJ" ^]YP< WP find the law of 
 alljiature._so that the world is nothing. We are to be 
 unitsTwalE on our own ieetpthink our own thoughts, 
 and speak our own minds. Growing out of this atti 
 tude is faith in the common, so that all things become 
 revelations of truth. Man is related to all nature, finds 
 in each and all things the same laws, wliile even the 
 smallest embodies all truth. 
 
 Alcott has said of this address a sincere word of 
 praise, which it fully deserves. I believe," he said, 
 - that was the first adequate statement of the new 
 views that really attracted general attention. I had 
 the good fortune* to hear that address ; and I shall not 
 forget the delight with which I heard it, nor the mixed 
 confusion, consternation, surprise, and wonder with 
 which the audience listened to it." 1 Lowell saysj.he 
 delivery of this lecture -was an event without any 
 former parallel in our literary annals, a scene to be 
 always treasured in the memory for its picturesqueness 
 and its inspiration. What crowded and breathless 
 ai?les, what windows clustering with eager heads, what 
 enthusiasm of approval, what grim silence of foregone 
 dissent ! " 2 
 
 In December he began a course of lectures on Human 
 Life. There was an introductory and a concluding lec 
 ture ; while the main topics were the hand, the head, 
 the eye and ear. the heart, simplicity, prudence, heroism, 
 and holiness . In March he delivered a remarkable lec- 
 
 1 In his Conversations on the Transcendental Movement. 
 
 2 My Study Windows; essay on Tboreau. 
 
THE ERA OF TRANSCENDENTALISM. 61 
 
 ture in Boston on War. l He said that war could 
 not be avoided in savage times, for religion leads to it. 
 It does actually forward the culture of man, but is a 
 temporary and preparatory state. It "educates the 
 senses, calls into action the will, perfects the physical 
 constitution, brings men into such swift and close colli 
 sion in critical moments that man measures man." It is 
 the subject of all history, has been the principal employ 
 ment of the most conspicuous men, the delight of half 
 the world. So wide is its range, it is manifest it leads 
 to the great and beneficent principle of self-help. " Na 
 ture implants with life the instinct of self-help, perpet 
 ual struggle to be, to resist opposition, to attain to 
 freedom, to attain to mastery, and the security of a 
 permanent, self-dependent being ; and to each creature 
 these objects are made so dear that it risks it? life con 
 tinually in the struggle for these ends." Yet war goes 
 with coarse forms of life, and is a juvenile and tempo 
 rary state. " Not only the moral sentiment, but trade, 
 learning, and whatever makes intercourse, conspire to 
 put it down." Trade is one of its chief antagonists. 
 Nearly all its good has now been exhausted, and it 
 must soon have an end. 
 
 " The eternal germination of the better has unfolded new pow 
 ers, new instincts, which were really concealed under this rough 
 and base rind. The sublime question has startled one and another 
 happy soul in different quarters of the globe, Can not love be, as 
 well as hate 1 w r ould not love answer the same end, or even a bet 
 ter? Can not peace be as well as war? " 
 
 This thought is no man s invention ; but it will only 
 grow slowly, and will surely win. If man changes, his 
 circumstances will change ; and more of kindness in him 
 will put away the implements of war. 
 
 " AVar and peace thus resolve themselves into a mercury of the 
 state of cultivation. At a certain stage of his progress the man 
 fights, if he be of a sound body and mind. At a certain high stage 
 he makes no offensive demonstration, but is alert to repel injury, 
 and of an unconquerable heart. At a still higher stage he comes 
 
 1 Printed in 1849, iu Miss Peabody s ^Esthetic Papers, 
 
62 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 into the region of holiness ; passion has passed away from him ; his 
 warlike nature is all converted into an active medicinal principle ; 
 he sacrifices himself, and accepts with alacrity wearisome tasks of 
 denial and charity ; but, being attacked, he bears it, and turns the 
 other cheek, as one engaged, throughout his being, no longer to 
 the service of an individual, but to the common good of all men." 
 
 The peace policy is to gain by private conviction, by 
 earnest love, and by increased insight. 
 
 " The cause of peace is not the cause of cowardice. If peace is 
 sought to be defended or preserved for the safety of the luxurious 
 and the timid, it is a sham, and the peace will be bad. War is 
 better, and the peace will be broken. If peace is to be maintained, 
 it must be by brave men who have come up to the same height as 
 the hero ; namely, the will to carry their hand, and stake it at any 
 instant for their principle, but who have gone one step beyond the 
 hero, and will not seek another man s life : men who have by their 
 intellectual insight, or else by their moral elevation, attained such 
 a perception of their own intrinsic worth that they do not think 
 property or their own body a sufficient good to be saved by such 
 dereliction of principle as treating a man like a sheep." 
 
 " If the universal cry for reform of so many inveterate abuses with 
 which society rings ; if the desire of a larger class of young men 
 for a faith and hope, intellectual and religious, such as they have 
 not yet found, be an omen to be trusted ; if the disposition to rely 
 -more, in study and in action, on the unexplored riches of the 
 human constitution ; if the search of the sublime laws of morals 
 and the sources of hope and trust in man, and not in books, in 
 the present and not in the past, proceed ; if the rising generation 
 can be provoked to think it unworthy to nestle into every abomi 
 nation of the past, and shall feel the generous doings of austerity 
 and virtue, then war has a short day, and human blood will cease 
 to flow." 
 
 "It is of little consequence in what manner, through what 
 organs, this purpose of mercy and holiness is affected. The propo 
 sition of the Congress of Nations is undoubtedly that at which the 
 present fabric of our society and the present course of events do 
 point. But the mind, once prepared for the reign of principles, 
 will easily find modes of expressing its will. There is the highest 
 fitness in the place and time in which this enterprise is begun. 
 Not in an obscure corner, not in a feudal Europe, not in an anti 
 quated appanage where no onward step can be taken without 
 rebellion, is this seed of benevolence laid in the furrow with tears 
 of hope ; but in this broad America of God and man, where the 
 forest is only now falling or yet to fall, and the green earth opened 
 to the inundation of emigrant men from all quarters of oppression 
 and guilt, here, where not a family, not a few men, but mankind, 
 
THE ERA F TRANSCENDENTALISM. 63 
 
 shall say what shall be ; here, we ask, Shall it be war, or shall it 
 be peace ? " 
 
 This lecture is characterized by a singular clearness 
 of historic insight and by a genuine spirit of humanity. 
 Emerson does rare justice to the importance of war as 
 an element of progress, and he clearly appreciates the 
 causes which are working its abandonment. More than 
 all, his sense of brotherhood comes ouk_and his faith in 
 the capacitieToTeve^ry soul. " His faith in man and his 
 lofty sense of justice were displayed in a protest against 
 the treatment received by the Cherokee Indians during 
 the year 1838. These Indians were compelled to move 
 to the Indian Territory, a treaty having been made to that 
 effect between the United States Government and a num 
 ber of the Indians. The Cherokee nation did not con 
 sent to this treaty, and claimed it was not made by their 
 authority. Nevertheless their removal was ordered. 
 Great indignation was expressed in the Northern States 
 at this act of injustice. A meeting was held in Con 
 cord, April 22, to take action against the outrage. 
 Emerson stated the case to the audience, and addresses 
 were made by the leading citizens. A memorial was 
 largely signed, and sent to Congress. The next day 
 Emerson addressed a letter to President Van Buren in 
 behalf of himself and some of his friends. 1 After a 
 statement of the facts, as they had been eagerly dis 
 cussed in the newspapers, he asks if they can be true, 
 if the public has not been misinformed in regard to 
 them. Then he proceeds to protest against the exe 
 cution of the outrage as it had been planned and 
 ordered. 
 
 " The piety, the principle that is left in these United States, 
 if only its coarsest form, a regard to the speech of men, forbid us to 
 entertain it as a fact. Such a dereliction of all faith and virtue, 
 such a denial of justice, and such a deafness to screams for mercy, 
 were never heard of in times of peace, and in the dealing of a 
 nation with its own allies and wards, since the earth was made. 
 Sir, does this government think the people of the United States are 
 
 i Printed in the Yeoman s Gazette of Concord, May 19, 1838, and 
 copied into many crlher papers. 
 
64 EALPH WALDO EMEKSOX. 
 
 become savage and mad? From their mind are the sentiments of 
 love and of a good nature wiped clear out ? The soul of man, the 
 justice, the mercy that is the heart s heart in all men from Maine 
 to Georgia, does abhor this business. 
 
 " In speaking thus the sentiments of my neighbors and my own, 
 perhaps I overstep the bounds of decorum. But would it not be a 
 higher indecorum coldly to argue a matter like this ? We only state 
 the fact, that a crime is projected that confounds our understand 
 ings by its magnitude, a crime that really deprives us, as well as 
 the Cherokees, of a country ; for how could we call the conspiracy 
 that should crush these poor Indians, our government, or the land 
 that was cursed by their parting and dying imprecations, our coun 
 try, any more ? You, sir, will bring down that renowned chair in 
 which you sit into infamy if your seal is set to this instrument 
 of perfidy ; and the name of this nation, hitherto the sweet omen of 
 religion and liberty, will stink to the world." 
 
 When a friend afterwards urged him to print this 
 letter among his miscellanies, he said it was only a 
 "shriek" of indignation. It ought now to be re 
 membered, however, when so much is trying to be 
 done to secure Justice to the Indians, who have had 
 so little of it in any of the years since this letter was 
 written. 
 
 In July he lectured before the literary societies of 
 Dartmouth College on Literary Ethics, 1 and asserted 
 that self-trust is the whole value to us of biography and 
 history. He said we must ask the truth of the "en 
 veloping Now," thqj^ we must cherish solitude and 
 meditation, and that we "should. .opaiTThe breast to all 
 honest inquiry. He said the scholar is of importance 
 in the world in proportion to his confidence in the 
 attributes of the intellect. This is true because man is 
 the measure of the world, because his soul can interpret 
 all things, and because every human sentiment finds 
 somewhere in nature its expression. All history, bi 
 ography, and nature are of value only as they show 
 forth to the soul what it can be and do. He then 
 declares that all things are new, that every lesson is to be 
 new-learned, (hut. all truth yot awaits adequate utter 
 ance. The scholar must not wait on the past, but look 
 into the world of the immediate present, and see what it 
 
 1 Miscellanies, p. 149. 
 
THE ERA OF TRANSCENDENTALISM. 65 
 
 declares. He will not live a life of utility, but give 
 himself to know truth and beauty, wed these, and gladly 
 accept the sensual deprivations they impose. Solitude 
 he must accept, also, and every deep and true human 
 experience, if he would learn the best wisdom. The 
 strain of upper music is heard only in action, in bearing 
 the common burdens of life ; so that " out of love and 
 hatred, out of earnings and borrowings and lendings 
 and losses, out of sickness and pain, out of wooing and 
 worshiping, out of traveling and voting and watch 
 ing and caring, out of disgrace and contempt, comes 
 our tuition in the serene and beautiful laws." He 
 rejects the dry and scholastic aim for the student, urges 
 him to be a toiler and a learner amidst all that passes 
 daily in the world, yet living above every lust of praise 
 and frivolity, devoted to the things of the soul. In this 
 address he set forth his own ideal, the purpose which 
 has animated his own life, and which has made it so 
 worthy of attention. Its closing paragraphs are a 
 notable instance of pure and inspiring eloquence. It 
 was listened to with profound attention, and was 
 "greatly admired," said a local journal, " as the pro 
 duction of a rare and highly gifted mind. Seldom, if 
 ever before, has the occasion been distinguished for so 
 rich an intellectual treat." 
 
 His course of lectures in Boston the following winter 
 was on the Resources of the Present Age. There were 
 two on literature ; while some of the other subjects were 
 Private Life, Reformers, Religion, Ethics, Education. 
 The winter of 1839-40 brought a course on Human 
 Life. He spoke of the Laws of Love, Home, The 
 School, Genius, The Protest, Tragedy, Comedy, Duty, 
 Demonology. 
 
RALPH WA^DO EMERSON. 
 
 VI 
 
 STATING THE NEW FAITH. 
 
 T HE new views had the effect to make men distrust 
 ful of the old religious forms and doctrines. 
 iiie more important than bibles or great 
 teachers. When God speaks directly to each soul, why 
 look backward to. tliu p-aat-iiiixiLiliaiis? The so ideas 
 made Furness regard the life of Je.uis as perfectly 
 natural, all his acts the expressions of a truly loyal nature. 
 To Alcott they gave the conviction that the uncorrupt 
 mind of the child has all truth in it, ready to be de 
 veloped. Brownson was led to see in Christianity the 
 natural religion of the soul. Like tendencies of thought 
 induced Emerson to severely criticise all institutional 
 religion, and to abandon every religious rite. He came 
 to regard religion as a universal sentiment, which re 
 veals ajl truth to each individual soul. This sentiment 
 is awakened by perceiving the universal order of nature 
 and by experience of its invariable laws. It leads to 
 a sublime self-trust, and to a repudiation of all com 
 mands laid 011 us from the teachings of other men, unless 
 their thought is verified in our own natures. Thisjsenti- 
 ment is an intuition, and not to be received at second 
 hand. 
 
 When an opportunity offered he gave full expres 
 sion to his views. In June, 1838, he was invited to 
 deliver the customary address before the graduating 
 class in the Divinity School of Harvard University. It 
 was given on Sunday evening, July 15. Emerson made 
 the prayer of the occasion ; and Bartol speaks of it as 
 " the short breathings of the gentle prayer, which had 
 in it no pronouns." 1 The address stated the new 
 
 1 Radical Problems. 
 
STATING THE NEW FAITH. 67 
 
 thought in the most explicit words, showing clearly 
 its relations to the doctrines of theology. It came 
 nearer to the "center and core of things," as Alcott 
 has said, than almost any other word which has been 
 uttered on the subject. 
 
 It wasJihe first full statement of Emerson s faith in 
 moral power, and in an untrammeled religion of the 
 spirit. "Virtue," he says, " is a sentiment and delight 
 , in the presence of certain divine laws." Those laws are 
 mot external revelations, nor are they conventionalities ; 
 they are the ordered pulse-beats of the Living All. 
 (Obedience % to these laws makes the health and integrity 
 lof the soul. What we call good comes of obedience to 
 /them; and evil flows out of disobedience. The idea of 
 / law is full of power ; "it is the beatitude of man." The 
 / truth can always be had by those who desire it, but 
 each one must seek it for himself. God acts through all 
 souls, and no one is the measure of his truth. Jesus 
 was a great prophet, but his power has been sadly 
 degraded by actor afion of him. Christianity found a 
 man wiiK an intuition, and^eIe_y^JiLthLjQ)an, forgetting 
 the universal power of that truth he taught. The per 
 sonal has been dwelt on to an obnoxious extent, and 
 the universal capacities of man have consequently been 
 ignored. We need to trust ourselves, to hear the voice 
 within. In the growth of true sentiments is to be found 
 the only genuine conversion, not in any faith in a person. 
 (God is in every man, and he should be heard there. 
 "The old revelation is loved in lack of faith in the living 
 truth, and the priest is elevated _ to power thereby. 
 The v-^ffice of the preacher is a great one, but only 
 the spirit can teach. fc -Xot any profane man, not 
 any sensual, not any liar, not any slave can teach, but 
 only he can give who has ; he only can create who is. 
 The mau on whom the sou! descends, thraugh whom 
 the soul speaks, alone can teach." This office is the 
 first in the world. " It is of that reality, that it can not 
 suffer the; deduction of any falsehood. And it is my 
 duty to say to you, that the need was never greater of 
 a new revelation than now." Yet the offiee of the 
 
68 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 preacher is dying, and the church is tottering to its fall. 
 The real work of the pulpit is not discharged; it 
 neglects "the expression of the moral sentiment in 
 application to the duties of life." Man is not made to 
 feel he is an infinite soul ; the life of to-day is not 
 touched ; actual experience brings no lessons. The 
 redemption is to be sought in the soul. There is, how 
 ever, too much faith in great names, too great an ex 
 aggeration of the occasional. The true preacher must 
 " dare to love God without mediator or veil." To him 
 fashion, custom, authority, pleasure, and money must be 
 nothing; and he must "live with the privilege of im 
 measurable mind." In the midst bf the defects of the 
 church, we need more faith ; but it must make its own 
 forms, ritual, and cultus. No system can be contrived 
 for it. The old forms are good enough, if " the breath 
 of new life " is in them. The evils of the church are 
 many, and need much to be put away. " The remedy 
 to their deformity is, first, soul ; and second, soul ; and 
 evermore, soul." A new life and a new faith is to be 
 expected, that will bring fullness and power. 
 
 This discourse at once brought all to realize what the 
 new faith was, whither it tended, what it proposed. It 
 was warmly criticised; it was as warmly defended. 
 The agitation it caused reached such a height that in 
 November The Christian Examiner thought it neces 
 sary to make this formal renunciation of it, in behalf 
 of the Unitarians and the Divinity School : 
 
 , ! 
 
 "We believe we have the best authority, for saying that those 
 notions, so far as they are intelligible, are utterly distasteful to the 
 instructors of the school, and to Unitarian ministers generally, by 
 whom they are esteemed to be neither good divinity nor good sense. 
 . . . We are well convinced that the instructors of the school 
 should hereafter guard themselves, by a right of veto on the nomi 
 nation of the students, against the probability of hearing sentiments 
 on a public and most interesting occasion, and -within their own 
 walls, altogether repugnant to their feelings, and opposed to the 
 whole tenor of their own teachings." 
 
 On the evening of the address, Henry Ware, jun., 
 then the most prominent professor in the school, ex- 
 
STATING THE NEW FAITH. 69 
 
 pressed himself, in a conversation with Emerson, as 
 favorable to what had been said ; but the next day he 
 wrote, 
 
 " It has occurred to me, that, since I said to you last evening, I 
 should probably assent to your unqualified statements if I could 
 take your qualifications with them, I am bound in fairness to add, 
 that this applies only to a portion, and not to all. With regard to 
 some, I must confess that they appear to me more than doubtful, 
 and their prevalence would tend to overthrow the authority and 
 influence of Christianity. On this account I look with anxiety 
 and no little sorrow to the course .wjiich your mind has been taking. 
 You will excuse my saying this, which I probably never should 
 have troubled you with, if, as I said, a proper frankness did not 
 seem at this moment to require it. That I appreciate and rejoice 
 in the lofty ideas and beautiful images of spiritual life which you 
 throw out, and which stir so many souls, is what gives me a great 
 deal more pleasure to say. I do not believe that any one has had 
 more enjoyment from them. If I could have helped it, I would 
 not have let you know how much I feel the abatement from -the 
 cause I referred to." 1 
 
 Iii reply to this truly manly letter, so expressive of 
 the noblest spirit, albeit showing an unnecessary fear lest 
 the old truths should be ignored, Emerson returned this 
 answer : 
 
 " CONCORD, July 28, 1838. 
 
 " What you say about the discourse at Divinity College is just 
 what I might expect from your truth and charity, combined with 
 your known opinions. I am not a rock or a ston e, as one said in 
 the old time, and could not feel but pain in saying some things in 
 that place and presence which I supposed would meet with dissent, 
 and the dissent, I may say, of dear friends and benefactors of mine. 
 Yet, as my conviction is perfect in the substantial truth of the doc 
 trines of this discourse, and is not very new, you will see at once 
 that it must appear very important that it be spoken ; and I 
 thought I could not pay the nobleness of my friends so mean a 
 compliment as to suppress my opposition to their supposed views 
 out of fear of offense. I would rather say to them, These things 
 look thus to me ; to you, otherwise. Let us say out our uttermost 
 word; and be the all-pervading truth, as it surely will, judge 
 between us. Meantime, I shall be admonished, by this expression 
 of your thought, to revise with greater care the address before 
 
 1 This and the subsequent letters are pubjished in the Life of Ware, 
 vol. ii. p. 183, where his biographer indicates ho\v strong was Ware s 
 distrust of Emerson s new views, and how much evil he thought they 
 would do. 
 
70 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 it is printed (for the use of the class) ; and I heartily thank you foi 
 this renewed expression of your tried toleration and love. 
 " Kespectfully and affectionately yours, 
 
 R. W. E." 
 
 In the delivery of his address, Emerson left out a 
 passage cautioning those who would follow the new 
 method against looking on the past with contempt, and 
 against setting up their own souls as higher standards 
 of truth than that of Jesus ! Miss Peabody relates that 
 she was at his house when he was preparing it for the 
 press, and read the address. When she came to this pas 
 sage which had been omitted, she begged him to insert 
 it. He reflected, and said, " No : these gentlemen have 
 committed themselves against what I did read ; and it 
 would not be courteous or fair to spring upon them this 
 passage now, which w6uld convict them of an unwar- 
 rerited inference." In relating this deeply interesting 
 incident, 1 Miss Peabody adds, " I thought this an ex 
 treme of gentlemanliness, but saw that Mr. Emerson s 
 aim was nothing less than to induce others to look for 
 the truth for themselves, and not to prove that he had 
 found it. He was not writing for victory for himself, 
 but for truth s sake. If he kept to the truth in what 
 he did publish, that must draw the whole truth after it, 
 as he said, and in due time refute all false inferences." 
 It is greatly to be regretted now that this omitted pas 
 sage was not inserted ; but not because, as Miss Peabody 
 supposes, it would have prevented an excess of indi 
 vidualism. Even Emerson s name could not have stayed 
 the tendencies of thought. It would have been shown, 
 however, that he appreciated the historic side of reli 
 gion, and the social nature of all true worship. That he 
 fully realized the folly of making concessions in regard 
 to a great principle, is shown in another incident re 
 lated by Miss Peabody. While correcting the proof- 
 sheets of the address, he read to Mrs. Emerson and Miss 
 Peabody the paragraph in vvhich he speaks of the first 
 defect of historical Christianity, that of dwelling " with 
 
 i Reminiscences of William Ellery Channing, by Miss E. P. Pea- 
 body ; a very interesting book. 
 
STATING THE NEW FAITH. 71 
 
 noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus," and 
 by which "the friend of man is made the injurer of 
 man." He said to them, " How does that strike your 
 Hebrew souls? " Miss Peabody replied, "I like it ; but 
 put a large F to designate Jesus as the Friend of souls." 
 After a moment s thought, he replied, " No : directly I 
 put that large F in they will all go to sleep." 
 
 Sept. 23 Ware preached a sermon before the Divinity 
 School on The Personality of God, which was at 
 once printed. It was regarded as a reply to Emerson, 
 and offers six objections to the positions supposed to 
 be maintained by him : that conscious being is the 
 greatest fact known to us ; that the views the preacher 
 is combating amount to ajirtual denial of God; that to 
 exclude personality is to destroy the object of worship ; 
 that the. sense of responsibility is removed by loss oi 
 faith in personality ; that these new notions are opposed 
 to the Bible, and that they destroy the possibility of a 
 revelation. He pleads for a Father to love and cure foi 
 us, and says, " The idea of personality must be added to 
 that of natural and moral perfection, in order to the full 
 definition of Christianity." The full meaning of hia 
 sermon comes out in these words : 
 
 " If the material universe rests on the laws of attraction, affinity, 
 heat, motion, still all of them together are no Deity ; if the moral 
 universe is founded on the principles of righteousness, truth, love, 
 neither are these the Deity. There must be some Being to put in 
 action these principles, to exercise these attributes. To call the 
 principles and the attributes God, is to violate the established use 
 of language, and to confound the common apprehensions of man 
 kind. It is in vain to hope by so doing to escape the charge of 
 atheism. There is no other atheism conceivable. There is a per 
 sonal God, or there is none." 
 
 That this sermon was understood to be aimed at 
 Emerson is distinctly stated in The Christian Examiner, 
 where the address is again spoken of as " the lucubra 
 tions of an individual who has no connection with the 
 school whatever." The sermon, it is stated, " will tend 
 to disabuse the minds of many respecting the true 
 character and tendency of a set of newly broached 
 
72 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 fancies, which, deceived by the high-sounding preten 
 sions of their proclahners, they may have thought were 
 about to quicken and reform the world." 
 
 Ware sent a copy of his sermon to Emerson, accom 
 panied with this letter : 
 
 " CAMBRIDGE, Oct. 3, 1838. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, By this mail you will probably receive a copy 
 of a sermon which I have just printed, and which I am unwilling 
 should fall into your hands without a word from myself accompany 
 ing it. It has been regarded as controverting some positions taken 
 by you at various times, and was, indeed, written partly with a view 
 to them. But I am anxious to have it understood, that, as I am 
 not perfectly aware of the precise nature of your opinions on the 
 subject of the discourse, nor upon exactly what speculations they 
 are grounded, I do not, therefore, pretend especially to enter the lists 
 with them, but rather to give my own views of an important subject, 
 and of the evils which seem to be attendant on a rejection of the 
 established opinions. I hope that I have not argued unfairly ; and 
 if I assail positions, or reply to arguments which are none Of yours, 
 I am solicitous that nobody should persuade you that I suppose 
 them to be yours ; since I do not know by what arguments the 
 doctrine that the soul knows no persons is justified to your 
 mind. 
 
 " To say this, is the chief purpose of my writing ; and I wish to 
 add, that it is a long time since I have been earnestly persuaded that 
 men are suffering from want of sufficiently realizing the fact of the 
 Divine Person. I used .to perceive it, as I thought, when I was a 
 minister in Boston, in talking with my people, and to refer to this 
 cause much of the lifelessness of the religious character. I have seen 
 evils from the same cause among young men, since I have been 
 where I am, and have been prompted to think much of the question 
 how they should be removed. When, therefore, I was called to 
 discourse at length on the Divine Being in a series of college 
 sermons, it naturally occurred to me to give prominence to this 
 point, the rather as it was one of those to which attention had been 
 recently drawn, and about which a strong interest was felt. 
 
 "I confess that I esteem it particularly unhappy to be thus 
 brought into a sort of public opposition to you, for I have a thousand 
 feelings which draw me toward you ; but my situation, and the cir 
 cumstances of the times, render it unavoidable ; and both you and I 
 understand that we are to act on the maxim, Amicus Plato, ami- 
 cus Socrates, sed may is arnica Verilas. (I believe I quote right.) 
 We would gladly agree with all our friends; but that being impos 
 sible, and it being impossible also to choose which of them we will 
 differ from, we must submit to the common lot of thinkers, and 
 make up in love of heart what we want in unity of judgment. 
 But I am growing prosy, so I break off. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 H. WARE, Jim." 
 
STATING THE NEW FAITH. 73 
 
 To this admirable letter Emerson returned the follow 
 ing characteristic reply : 
 
 " CONCORD, Oct. 8, 1838. 
 
 "MY DEAR SIR, I ought sooner to have acknowledged your 
 kind letter of last week, and the sermon it accompanied. The letter 
 was right manly and noble. The sermon, too, I have read with 
 attention. If it assails any doctrine of mine, perhaps I am not 
 so quick to see it as writers generally, certainly I did not feel any 
 disposition to depart from my habitual contentment, that you should 
 say your thought, whilst I say mine. I believe I must tell you what 
 I think of my new position. It strikes me very oddly that good and 
 wise men at Cambridge and Boston should think of raising me 
 into an object of criticism. I have always been from my very 
 incapacity of methodical writing " a chartered libertine," free to 
 worship and free to rail, lucky when 1 could make myself under 
 stood, but never esteemed near enough to the institutions and mind 
 of society to deserve the notice of the masters of literature and 
 religion. I have appreciated fully the advantages of my position, 
 for I well know that there is no scholar less willing or less able to 
 be a polemic. I could not give account of myself if challenged. I 
 could not possibly give you cne of the arguments you cruelly 
 hint at, on which any doctrine of mine stands ; for I do not know 
 what arguments mean in reference to any expression of a thought. 
 I delight in telling what I think ; but if you ask me how I dare" say 
 so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of mortal men. I do not 
 even se.e that either of these questions admits of an answer. So 
 that, in the present droll posture of my affairs, when I see myself 
 suddenly raised into the importance of a heretic, I am very uneasy 
 when I advert to the supposed duties of such a personage, who is to 
 make good his thesis against all comers. 
 
 " I certainly shall do no such thing. I shall read what you and 
 other good men write; as I have always done, glad when you 
 speak my thoughts, and skipping the page which has nothing for 
 me. I shall go on just as before, seeing whatever I can, and telling 
 what I see, and, I suppose, with the same fortune that has hitherto 
 attended me, the joy of finding that my abler and better brothers 
 who work with the sympathy of society, loving and beloved, do 
 now and then unexpectedly confirm my perceptions, and find my 
 nonsense is only their own thought in motley. 
 
 " And so I am, your affectionate servant, 
 
 " 11. W. EMERSON." 
 
 This letter is full of interest, as showing Emerson s 
 methods, how his mind acts, and the striking modesty 
 of the man. Its perfect candor gives it a great charm ; 
 for few writers would reveal, as he does, all the secrets 
 of their thought. To his critic he opens confidentially 
 
74 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 all his own weak places, and himself reveals the most 
 serious argument which could be raised against his 
 opinions. His entire willingness to let the truth vindi 
 cate itself is most admirable. With such themes as his, 
 there is little likely to be gained by mere debate ; for 
 each mind can only give expression to what appears in 
 its own mental experience. Dogmatic arguments do no 
 good here : only the simple search for truth. It may 
 well be questioned whether Emerson s method best 
 answers in securing that truth for "which we seek ; but 
 his spirit is, beyond all criticism, earnest, faithful, and 
 single-eyed. 
 
 The controversy started by Emerson s address did 
 not soon subside. The next year, July 19, Andrews 
 Norton gave an address before the alumni of the Di 
 vinity School, on The Latest Form of Infidelity. He 
 said the eighteenth-century disbelief has lost its power, 
 but infidelity has assumed another and a more subtle 
 form. It follows "the celebrated atheist Spinoza, and, 
 while claiming to be Christian, denies Christianity in a 
 denial of its miracles." He then entered into a long 
 defense of miracles, claiming that the whole life of 
 Christ must be regarded as miraculous. That he had a 
 divine commission can only be proved by " miraculous 
 displays of God s power," while there is nothing left if 
 this is denied. To the demand of the transcendentalists 
 for some more positive evidence for the truths of reli 
 gion than those afforded by history, he says there can 
 be no intuition, no direct perception, no metaphysical 
 certainty, outside of historical evidences. There is u no 
 absolute certainty beyond the limit of momentary con 
 sciousness, a certainty that vanishes the moment it 
 exists, and is lost in the region of metaphysical doubt." 
 Two lengthy notes were appended to this address, when 
 published, directed against German thought. The 
 whole transcendental movement was sharply attacked, 
 and in the most decisive manner. Replies to this 
 address appeared from George Ripley, Brownson, The- 
 ophilus Parsons, and J. F. Clarke. . Emerson s address 
 became the subject of frequent sermons, and the air 
 
STATING THE NEW FAITH. 75 
 
 was full of pamphlets and newspaper articles. The 
 Unitarian ministers debated whether Emerson was a 
 Christian ; some said he was not ; some that he was an 
 atheist ; while others earnestly defended him. By some 
 of the- " Friends of Progress," when his attitude was 
 discussed, he was pronounced a pantheist, denying the 
 personality of God ; while his views were regarded as 
 dangerous. 
 
 Emerson did not stand alone at this time. He had 
 many zealous friends and fellow-believers. Parker 
 heard his address, was roused by it to enthusiasm, and 
 recorded in his diary his purpose of writing at once 
 " the long meditated sermons on the state of the church 
 and the duties of these times." " So beautiful, so just, 
 so true, and terribly sublime," says Parker, "was his pic 
 ture of the faults of the church in its present condition." 
 In writing to a friend, he said, 
 
 "It was the noblest of all his performances ; a little exaggerated, 
 with some philosophical untruths, it seemed to me ; but the noblest, 
 the most inspiring strain I ever listened to." 
 
 Miss Elizabeth Peabody was present also, and thought 
 44 there never before had been a discourse there that so 
 justified the foundation principle of the Divinity School, 
 as it was stated by Dr. Charming in his dedication ser 
 mon ; " and Charming could himself discover no differ 
 ence between his sermon and Emerson s address. Chan- 
 ning said that Ware, in his sermon on the personality 
 of God, was "fighting a shadow; for Mr. Emerson ex 
 pressly says, and makes a great point of it, that God is 
 alive, not dead; and would have the gospel narrative left 
 to make its own impression of an indwelling life, like 
 the growing grass." l The impression Emerson made 
 upon his friends may be seen from these words, written 
 in September, by Convers Francis : 
 
 " Spent the night at Mr. Emerson s. When we were alone he 
 talked of his discourse at the Divinity School, and of the obloquy 
 it had drawn upon him. He is perfectly quiet amid the storm. 
 
 1 Miss E. P. Peabody s Reminiscences of William Ellery Channing, 
 p. 379. 
 
76 RALPH WALDO* EMERSON. 
 
 To my objections and remarks he gave the most cordial replies, 
 though we could not agree on some points. The more I see of this 
 beautiful spirit, the more I revere and love him. Such a calm, 
 steady, simple soul, always looking for truth, and living in wisdom 
 and in love for man and goodness, I have never met. Mr. Emer 
 son is not one whose vocation it is to state processes of argument ; 
 he is a seer who reports in sweet and significant words what he 
 sees. He looks into the infinite of truth, and reveals what there 
 passes before his vision. If you see it as he does, you will recog 
 nise him as a gifted teacher ; "if not, there is little or nothing to be 
 said about it. But do not brand him with the names of visionary, 
 or fanatic, or pretender ; he is no such thing. He is a true, godl ul 
 man ; though in his love for the ideal he disregards too much the 
 actual." 
 
 In the midst of all this agitation Emerson remained 
 perfectly self-possessed, quietly pursuing his studies, and 
 making no reply to those who opposed his opinions. 
 What he had to say he did not hesitate to utter with all 
 necessary emphasis, but he sought in no manner what 
 ever to defend his own ideas. He left them to make 
 their own way, to enforce their own worth and impor 
 tance. His letter to Ware amply indicates his accept 
 ance of intuition as the only genuine method of truth. 
 His attitude was, that the truth is communicated to the 
 mind from its unity with the Universal Mind, and can 
 not be argued about or added to by reasoning. This 
 oneness of the individual mind with Universal Mind, as 
 he stated it, gave rise to the conception that he was a 
 pantheist. It is evident, however, that such names did 
 not occur to him, and that he followed out sincerely 
 the conclusions of a truly spiritual conception of life 
 md nature. 
 
 The controversy which followed his address had the 
 effect of finally separating him from the Unitarians and 
 of causing him to abandon the pulpit. He saw how 
 strongly the Unitarians were wedded to the old forms, 
 and he found himself more and more alienated from 
 them. He could not continue to preach amidst contro 
 versy and objection ; so he quietly withdrew, to do his 
 work in a manner of his own. 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE DIAL. 
 
 IN his Historical Notes of American Life and Letter^ 
 Emerson says "the only result" of the club organ 
 ized by Dr. Channing " was to initiate the little quar 
 terly called The Dial" Concerning that journal he 
 says, " A modest quarterly journal called The Dial, 
 under the editorship of Margaret Fuller, enjoyed its 
 obscurity for four years, when it ended. Its papers 
 were the contribution and work of friendship among a 
 narrow circle of writers. Perhaps its writers were also 
 its chief readers. But it had some noble papers; per 
 haps the best of Margaret Fuller s. It had some num 
 bers highly important, because they contained papers 
 by Theodore Parker." The Dial grew out of a desire 
 for a medium of communication among those inter 
 ested in the ideas expressed in the Transcendental 
 Club. To afford a means of expression to these thinkers 
 was its main object. It was conducted in a spirit of 
 friendship and sympathy far more than of critical re 
 gard for the literary value of what it published. In one 
 number the editor said it had been "almost as much 
 a journal of friendship as of literature and morals." 
 Fresh, aspiring minds were invited to its pages rather 
 than those learned and critical. Every page was 
 fragrant with idealism, and echoed the hopes of the 
 time. 
 
 The establishment of such a journal was first dis 
 cussed in a meeting of the club held in the house of 
 Rev. C. A. Bartol, in 1839. At that meeting Parker, 
 Bartol, Hedge, Margaret Fuller, Ripley, Alcott, and 
 W. H. Channing were present ; and these persons, with 
 Emerson, constituted the movers in the new project. 
 
78 KALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 At this or a subsequent meeting, when the name was 
 discussed, Alcott mentioned some extracts from his 
 diary he had just made, and to which he had given 
 the title of The Dial. He suggested this name for the 
 new journal, and it was unanimously accepted as ex 
 pressive of its purpose and spirit. 
 
 The Dial was discussed for many months at the 
 meetings of the club, no one being Avilling to assume 
 the editorship of the projected periodical. After much 
 solicitation, Margaret Fuller consented to undertake 
 what Emerson calls this " private and friendly service." 
 In March, 1840, she writes very doubtingly about the 
 new enterprise, declaring that she herself, while she 
 had a great deal written, had " scarce a word pertinent 
 to the place or time." She writes thus of the plans to 
 be followed : 
 
 " A perfectly free organ is to be offered for the expression of 
 individual thought and character. There are no party measures to 
 be carried, no particular standard to be set up. A fair, calm tone, 
 a recognition of universal principles, will, T hope, pervade the essays 
 in every form. I trust there will be a spirit neither of dogmatism 
 nor of compromise, and that this journal will aim, not at leading 
 public opinion, but at stimulating each man to judge for himself, 
 and to think more deeply and more nobly, by letting him see how 
 some minds are kept alive by a wise self-trust. We must not be 
 sanguine as to the amount of talent which will be brought to bear 
 on this publication. All concerned are rather indifferent, and there 
 is no great promise for the present. We can not show high culture, 
 and I doubt about vigorous thought. But we shall manifest free 
 action as far as it goes, and a high aim. It were much if a peri 
 odical could be kept open, not to accomplish any outward object, 
 but merely to afford an avenue for what of liberal and calm 
 thought might be originated among us by the wants of individual 
 minds." 
 
 Perhaps no journal was ever undertaken more diffi 
 dently than was The Dial by those interested in it. 
 In April Margaret Fuller again wrote that the project 
 went on " pretty well, but doubtless people will be dis 
 appointed." She proposed herself only to "hazard a 
 few critical remarks, or an unpretending chalk-sketch 
 now and then." The first number came out in July, 
 
THE DIAL. 79 
 
 1840, as a quarterly Magazine for Literature, Philoso 
 phy, and Religion. The " prospectus " thus set forth 
 its aims : 
 
 " The purpose of this work is to furnish a medium for the freest 
 expression of thought on the questions which interest earnest minds 
 in every community. 
 
 " It aims at the discussion of principles rather than at the pro 
 motion of measures ; and, while it will not fail to examine the ideas 
 which impel the loading movements of the present day, it will main 
 tain an independent position in regard to them. 
 
 " The pages of this journal will be filled by contributors who 
 possess little in common but the love of intellectual freedom and 
 the hope of social progress ; who are united by sympathy of spirit, 
 not by agreement in speculation ; whose faith is in Divine Provi 
 dence rather than in human prescription ; whose hearts are more in 
 the future than in the past, and who trust the living soul rather 
 than the dead letter. It will endeavor to promote the constant 
 evolution of truth, not the petrifaction of opinion. 
 
 " Its contents will embrace a wide and varied range of subjects ; 
 and, combining the characteristics of a magazine and review, it may 
 present something, both for those who read for instruction and 
 those who search for amusement. 
 
 " The general design and character of the work may be under 
 stood from the above brief statement. It may be proper to add, 
 that in literature it will strive to exercise a just and catholic criti 
 cism, and to recognize every sincere production of genius. In phi 
 losophy it will attempt the reconciliation of the universal instincts 
 of humanity with the largest conclusions of reason ; and in religion 
 it will reverently seek to discern the presence of God in nature, in 
 history, and in the soul of man." 
 
 Each number contained one hundred and thirty-six 
 octavo pages ; and, after the first number, there was a 
 "record of the months," and "literary intelligence." 1 
 As a fair specimen of the whole work, the table of 
 contents of the first number may be given, with the 
 names of the authors, so far as ascertained. 
 
 1 The Dial was at first published by Weeks, Jordan, & Co., 121 
 "Washington Street, at three dollars a year. It seems to have been so 
 poorly patronized as to cause a frequent change of publishers; for the 
 names of W. H. S. Jordan, Jordan & Co., E. P. Peabody, and James 
 Munroe & Co., successively appear in that capacity. 
 
80 
 
 KALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 No. I. 
 
 The Editors to the Reader .... 
 
 A Short Essay on Critics .... 
 
 To the Aurora Borealis (poem) 
 
 Notes from the Journal of a Scholar 
 
 The Religion of Beauty .... 
 
 Brownson s Writings ..... 
 
 The Last Farewell 
 
 Ernest the Seeker (chapter first) . 
 
 The Divine Presence in Nature and in the Soul 
 
 Sympathy (poem) ...... 
 
 Lines ........ 
 
 Exhibition of Allston s Pictures . 
 
 Song 
 
 To (poem) . . . . 
 
 Orphic Sayings 
 
 Stanzas ........ 
 
 Channing s Translation of Jouffroy 
 
 Aulus Persius Flaccus ..... 
 
 The Shield (poem) 
 
 The Problem 
 
 Come Morir ? (poem) 
 
 Lines (1 slept, and dreamed that life was 
 
 Beauty) 
 
 The Concerts of the Past Winter . 
 
 A Dialogue (poem) ..... 
 
 Richter (two poems) 
 
 Dante (poem) 
 
 Two Short Poems . 
 
 R. W. Emerson. 
 Margaret Fuller. 
 C. P. C ranch. 
 Charles Emerson. 
 John S. Dii ight. 
 George Ripley. 
 Edward Emerson. 
 W. H. Channing. 
 Theodore Parker. 
 Henry D. Thoreau. 
 
 Margaret Fuller. 
 
 R. W. Emerson. 
 A. Branson Alcott. 
 C. P. Cranch. 
 Wilson. 
 
 R. W. Emerson. 
 
 Mrs. Ellen Hooper. 
 John S. Dwight. 
 Margaret Fuller. 
 Margaret Fuller. 
 Sarah Clarke. 
 
 The spirit and purpose of The Dial is best shown 
 in the introductory article by Emerson. It is here 
 reprinted in full, as indicating the hopes which the new 
 thought had created : 
 
 "THE EDITORS TO THE READER. 
 
 " We invite the attention of our countrymen to a new design. 
 Probably not quite unexpected or unannounced will our journal 
 appear, though small pains have been taken to secure its welcome. 
 Those who have immediately acted in editing the present number 
 can not accuse themselves of any unbecoming forwardness in their 
 undertaking, but rather of a backwardness, when they remember 
 how often in many private circles the work was projected, how 
 eagerly desired, and only postponed because no individual volun 
 teered to combine and concentrate the free-will offerings of many 
 co-operators. With some reluctance the present conductors of this 
 
r THE DIAL. 81 
 
 work have yielded themselves to the wishes of their friends, finding 
 something sacred and not to be withstood in the importunity which 
 urged the production of a journal in a new spirit. 
 
 " As they have not proposed themselves to the work, neither can 
 they lay any the least claim to an option or determination of the 
 spirit in which it is conceived, or to what is peculiar in the design. 
 In that respect, they have obeyed, though with great joy, the strong 
 current of thought and feeling, which, for a few years past, has led 
 many sincere persons in New England to make new demands on 
 literature, and to reprobate that rigor of our conventions of reli 
 gion and education which is turning us to stone, which renounces 
 hope, which looks only backward, which asks only such a future as 
 the past, which suspects improvement, and holds nothing so much 
 in horror as new views and the dreams of youth. 
 
 " With these terrors, the conductors of the present journal have 
 nothing to do, not even so much as a word of reproach to waste. 
 They know that there is a portion of the youth and of the adult 
 population of this country who have not snared them ; who have, 
 in secret or in public, paid their vows to truth and freedom ; who 
 love reality too well to care for names ; and who live by a faith too 
 earnest and profound to suffer them to doubt the eternity of its 
 object, or to shake themselves free from its authority. Under the 
 fictions and customs which occupied others, these have explored the 
 Necessary, the Plain, the True, the Human, and so gain a vantage- 
 ground which commands the history of the past and present. 
 
 " No one can converse much with different classes of society in 
 New England without remarking the progress of a revolution. 
 Those who share in it have no external organization, no badge, no 
 creed, no name. They do not vote, or print, or even meet together. 
 They do not know each other s faces or names. They are united 
 only in a common love of truth, and love of its work. They are 
 of all conditions and constitutions. Of these acolytes, if some are 
 happily born and well bred, many are, no doubt, ill dressed, ill 
 placed, ill made, with as many scars of hereditary vice as other 
 men. Without pomp, without trumpet, in lonely and obscure 
 places, in solitude, in servitude, in compunctions and privations, 
 trudging beside the team in the dusty road, or drudging a hireling 
 in other men s cornfields, schoolmasters who teach a few children 
 rudiments for a pittance, ministers of small parishes of the 
 obscurer sects, lone women in dependent condition, matrons and 
 young maidens, rich and poor, beautiful and hard-favored, without 
 concert or proclamation of any kind, they have silently given in their 
 several adherence to a new hope, and in all companies do signify a 
 greater trust in the nature and resources of man than the laws or 
 the popular opinions will well allow. 
 
 " This spirit of the time is felt by every individual with some 
 difference, to each one casting its light upon the objects nearest 
 to his temper and habits of thought : to one, coining in the form of 
 special reforms in the state; to another, in modifications of the 
 
82 BALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 various callings of men, and the customs of business ; to a third, 
 opening a new scope for literature and art; to a fourth, in philo 
 sophical insight ; to a fifth, in the vast solitudes of prayer. It is in 
 evjry form a protest against usage, and a search for .principles. In 
 all its movements it is peaceable, and in the very lowest marked 
 with a triumphant success. Of course it rouses the opposition of 
 all which it judges and condemns ; but it is too confident in its tone 
 to comprehend an objection, and so builds no outworks for possible 
 defense against contingent enemies. It has the step of Fate, and 
 goes on existing like an oak or a river, because it must. 
 
 " In literature this influence appears not yet in new books so 
 much as in the higher tone of criticism. The antidote to all nar 
 rowness is the comparison of the record with nature, which at once 
 shames the record, and stimulates to new attempts. Whilst we 
 look at this, we wonder how any book has been thought worthy to 
 be preserved. There is somewhat in all life untranslatable into 
 language. lie who keeps his eye on that will write better than 
 others, and think less of his writing and of all writing. Every 
 thought has a certain imprisoning, as well as uplifting quality, and, 
 in proportion to its energy on the will, refuses to become an object 
 of intellectual contemplation. Thus, what is great usually slips 
 through our fingers ; and it seems wonderful how a lifelike word 
 ever comes to be written. If our journal share the impulses of the 
 time, it can not now prescribe its own course. It can not foretell 
 in orderly propositions what it shall attempt. All criticism should 
 be poetic, unpredictable ; superseding, as every new thought does, 
 all foregone thoughts, and making a new light on the whole world. 
 Its brow is not wrinkled with circumspection, but serene, cheerful, 
 adoring. It has all things to say, and no less than all the world 
 for its final audience. 
 
 " Our plan embraces much more than criticism ; were it not so, 
 our criticism would be naught. Every thing noble is directed on 
 life, and this is. We do not wish to say pretty or curious things, 
 or to reiterate a few propositions in varied forms, but, if we can, 
 to give expression to that spirit which lifts men to a higher plat 
 form, restores to them the religious sentiment, brings them worthy 
 aims and pure pleasures, purges the inward eye, makes life less 
 desultory, and, through raising man to the level of nature, takes 
 away its melancholy from the landscape, and reconciles the practi 
 cal with the speculative powers. 
 
 " But perhaps we are telling our little story too gravely. There 
 are always great arguments at hand for a true action, even for the 
 writing of a few pages. There is nothing but seems near it, and 
 prompts it, the sphere in the ecliptic, the sap in the apple-tree, 
 every fact, every appearance, seem to persuade to it. 
 
 " Our means correspond with the ends we have indicated. As 
 we wish, not to multiply books, but to report life, our resources are 
 not so much the pens of practiced writers, as the discourse of the 
 living, and the portfolios which friendship has opened to us. From 
 
THE DIAL. 83 
 
 the beautiful recesses of private thought ; from the experience and 
 hope of spirits which are withdrawing from all old forms, and 
 seeking in all that is new somewhat to meet their inappeasable 
 longings ; from the secret confession of genius afraid to trust itself 
 to aught but sympathy ; from the conversation of fervid and 
 mystical pietists ; from tear-stained diaries of sorrow and passion ; 
 from the manuscripts of young poets ; and from the records of 
 youthful taste commenting on old works of art, we hope to draw 
 thoughts and feelings which, being alive, can impart life. 
 
 " And so with diligent hands and good intent we set down our 
 Dial on the earth. We wish it may resemble that instrument in 
 its celebrated happiness, that of measuring no hours but those of 
 sunshine. Let it be one cheerful rational voice amidst the din of 
 mourners and polemics. Or, to abide by our chosen image, let it be 
 such a dial, not as the dead face of a clock, hardly, even, such as 
 the gnomon in a garden, but rather such a Dial as is the Garden 
 itself in whose leaves and flowers and fruits the suddenly awakened 
 sleeper is instantly apprised, not what part of dead time, but what 
 state of life and growth, is now arrived and arriving.* 
 
 As Emerson suggests, The Dial originated in the 
 hopes of the young. Alcott was the only one of its 
 projectors and contributors who had reached the age of 
 forty when the first number appeared. Ripley was 
 thirty-eight ; Emerson, thirty-seven ; and Hedge, thirty 
 five. Margaret Fuller, Parker, W. H. Charming, and 
 Clarke were thirty ; Bartol, Cranch, and D wight, 
 twenty-seven ; while Thoreau was but twenty-three, 
 and W. E. Channing twenty -two. 
 
 A chief contributor to The Dial, especially during the 
 first two years, was Margaret Fuller, who furnished 
 papers on Critics, Goethe, the Great Composers, Klop- 
 stock and Meta, Festus, and a few other sketches. In 
 Parker s contributions is to be found some of his best 
 work. He wrote on German Literature, the Pharisees, 
 Primitive Christianity, and Dr. Follen. Other subjects 
 were, Truth against the World, Thoughts on Theology, 
 Sermon for the Day, Thoughts on Labor, the Hollis- 
 street Council. Ripley reviewed Brownson, and fur 
 nished the " records of the months." D wight gave 
 accounts^ of concerts, and wrote on the Religion of 
 Beauty, and Ideals of E very-Day Life. Cranch helped 
 to crowd all the numbers with poetry, and added a few 
 
84 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 prose contributions. Hedge contributed a valuable 
 paper on the Art cf Life the Scholar s Calling, and 
 a fine poem, Questionings. Clarke sent a poem on 
 crossing the Alleghanies, and a letter about George 
 Keats. Alcott furnished some Orphic Sayings, and Days 
 from a Diary. Thoreau wrote about the Natural His 
 tory of Massachusetts, and translated Pindar, as well as 
 the Prometheus Bound of ^schylus. In the first vol 
 ume were three of his poems, in the second two, in the 
 third sixteen, and in the fourth five. In one number 
 appeared three sonnets by Lowell, and Charles A. Dana 
 was a frequent poetical contributor. Henry Tuckerman 
 furnished a paper on Music, Mrs. George Rij ley one on 
 Woman, and Elizabeth Peabody two on Christ s Idea of 
 Society. Beside these, there were several other writers, 
 but perhaps none known to fame. 
 
 The Dial was the means of introducing Thoreau to 
 the public. He furnished a poem to the first number, 
 and scarcely a number followed that did not contain 
 one or more contributions from his pen. His first prose 
 production given to the public, reprinted as -the first 
 paper of the Excursions, was in the third volume ; and 
 in the fourth volume appeared his Walk in Winter. 
 Thoreau owed to Emerson his introduction to literature, 
 who seems to have given him every encouragement. In 
 the last volume appeared a remarkable article by Mar 
 garet Fuller, entitled The Great Lawsuit ; Man versus 
 Men Woman versus Women. It was afterwards re 
 vised and enlarged, and issued in book-form as Woman 
 in the Nineteenth Century. It is one of the best works 
 yet printed on the opportunities and duties of women. 
 The Notes from the Journal of a Scholar were by 
 Charles Emerson. These were printed in the first vol 
 ume and in the last. They are full of subtle power, 
 and gave great promise of better things. In the first 
 number also appeared a poem by Edward Bliss Emerson. 
 It was written while going put of Boston Harbor, on 
 the voyage fn in which the a uthor never returned. It 
 is called The Last Farewell, and was reprinted in Emer 
 son s May-Day. 
 
THE DIAL. 85 
 
 During the two years Margaret Fuller edited The 
 Dial she was assisted by George Ripley and R. W. Em 
 erson. Owing to the state of her health, she withdrew 
 from it at the end rf the second year ; and Emerson 
 became the sole editor. Under his management its 
 character changed considerably, becoming less literary 
 and more reformatory. He wrote 011 Fouiierism and 
 the Socialists, showing a hearty sympathy with their 
 efforts. In this first number, edited by him, is a very 
 interesting account of the Chardon-street and Bible 
 Conventions ; and in the second number he writes with 
 enthusiasm of an English reformer, Greaves, a sort of 
 second Alcott. The first number of the third volume 
 also begins a series of selections from the great bibles 
 of the world, made by Emerson, Thoreau, and others. 
 Probably this was the first effort to bring to the notice 
 of Americans the wisdom and the beauties of other 
 scriptures than those cf the Hebrews and Christians. 
 It was a most notable indication of the spirit and temper 
 of Emerson s thought. The first selection is introduced 
 with these words : 
 
 " Each nation has its bible, more or less pure : none has yet been 
 willing or able in a wise and devout spirit to collate its own with 
 those of other nations, and, sinking the civil-historical and the ritual 
 portions, to bring together the grand expressions of the moral senti 
 ment in different ages and races, the rules for the guidance of life, 
 the bursts of piety and of abandonment to the Invisible and Eter 
 nal, a work inevitable sooner or later, and which, we hope, is to 
 be done by religion and not by literature." 
 
 Likewise in this number is an article on Prayers, 
 consisting mainly of several remarkable specimens of 
 this kind of literature. It was written by Emerson, 1 
 
 1 This article was found among Thoreau s papers after his death, in 
 his o>vn handwriting, and was printed by his sister in his Anti-Slavery 
 and Reform Papers. Thoreau was the author of the poetical prayer in 
 this article, beginning with the words, 
 
 " Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf 
 Than that I may not disappoint myself." 
 
 It may also- be noted here, on the authority of Mr. Alcott, that Thoreau, 
 in Emerson s absence, was the editor of No. 3 of the third volume of 
 The Dial. 
 
86 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 and gives broad hint of his deep sympathy with every 
 true form of the spirit of devotion and faith. He intro 
 duces the selections he makes with these words : 
 
 " Pythagoras said that the time when men are honestest, is when 
 they present themselves before the gods. If we can overhear the 
 prayer, we shall know the man. But prayers are not made to be 
 overheard, or to be printed ; so that we seldom have tbo prayer 
 otherwise than it can be inferred from the man and his fortunes, 
 which are the answer to the prayer, and always accord with it. Yet 
 there are scattered about in the earth a few records of these devout 
 hours, which it would edify us to read, could they be collected in a 
 more catholic spirit than the wretched and repulsive volumes which 
 usurp that name. Let us not have the prayers of one sect, nor of 
 the Christian church, but of men in all ages and religions, who 
 have prayed well. The prayer of Jesus is, as it deserves, become a 
 form for the human race." 
 
 Emerson s three Lectures on the Times, and those 
 on Man the Reformer, and the Young American, were 
 republished from The Dial in his Miscellanies. The 
 Thoughts on Art, in the third number of the first vol 
 ume, is the essay on Art in Society and Solitude. An 
 essay on The Comic, in the fourth volume, appears in 
 Letters and Social Aims, after more than thirty years. 
 In the same volume is an essay on The Tragic, which 
 is probably from his pen ; while the short piece, bearing 
 the title of Tantalus, was incorporated into the essay 
 on Nature, in the second series of Essays. The poem 
 in the second volume, The Future is Better than the 
 Past, has often been reprinted as Emerson s, and has 
 found its way into several hymn-books ; but it was 
 written by one of his brothers. Papers on Walter Sav 
 age Landor, Thought* on Modern Literature, The Senses 
 and the Soul, Europe and European Books, have never 
 been reprinted. Some of his very best words about 
 books are contained in the essay on modern literature. 
 He regards life as of the main importance, however, 
 and books only as secondary. A. true literature will 
 do no more than to record necessary laws ; but when 
 we trust to the books, and not to that from whence 
 they come, they do us injury. "We must learn to 
 judge books by absolute standards. When we are 
 
THE DIAL. 87 
 
 aroused to a life in ourselves, these traditional splendors 
 of letters grow very pale and cold." He says that 
 "over every true poem lingers a certain wild beauty, 
 immeasurable ; a happiness lightsome and delicious fills 
 the heart and brain, as they say, every man walks 
 environed by his proper atmosphere, extending to some 
 distance around him." The closing paragraphs of this 
 essay are among the most eloquent he has ever written : 
 
 " The Doctrine of the Life of Man established after the truth 
 through all his faculties, this is the thought which the literature 
 of this hour meditates and labors to say. This is that which tunes 
 the tongue and fires the eye and sits in the silence of the youth. 
 Verily, it will not long want articulate and melodious expression. 
 There is nothing in the heart but comes presently to the lips. The 
 very depth of the sentiment, which is the author of all the cutane 
 ous life we see, is guaranty for the riches of science and of song in 
 the age to come. He who doubts whether this age or this country 
 can yield any contribution to the literature of the world, only 
 betrays his own blindness to the necessities of the human soul. 
 Has the power of poetry ceased, or the need? Have the eyes 
 ceased to see that which they would have, and which they have 
 not ? Have they ceased to see other eyes ? Are there no lonely, 
 anxious, wondering children who must tell their tale? Are we 
 not evermore whipped by thoughts? The heart beats in this age 
 as of old, and the passions are busy as ever. Nature has not lost 
 one ringlet of her beauty, one impulse of resistance and valor. 
 From the necessity of loving, none are exempt ; and he that loves 
 must utter his desires. A charm as radiant as beauty ever beamed, 
 a love that fainteth at the sight of its object, is new to-day. 
 
 " Man is not so far lost but that he suffers ever the great dis 
 content, which is the elegy of his loss and the prediction of his 
 recovery; In the gay saloon he laments that these figures are not 
 what Raphael and Guercino painted. Withered though he stand, 
 and trifler though he be, the august spirit of the world looks out 
 from his eyes. In his heart he knows the ache of spiritual pain, 
 and his thought can animate the sea and land. What, then, shall 
 hinder the genius of the time from speaking its thought ? It can 
 not be silent if it would. It will write in a higher spirit, and a 
 wider knowledge, and with a grander practical aim, than ever yet 
 guided the pen of poet. It will write the annals of a changed 
 world, and record the descent of - principles into practice, of love 
 into government, of love into trade. It will describe the new 
 heroic life of man, the now unbelieved possibility of simple living, 
 and of clean and noble relations with men. Religion will bind 
 again these that were sometimes frivolous, customary, enemies, 
 skeptics, self-seekers, into a joyous reverence for the circumambi 
 ent Whole, and that which was ecstasy shall became daily bread." 
 
88 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 In the fourth volume he wrote of Carlyle s Past and 
 Present, and says it is a political tract with which we 
 have nothing to compare since Milton and Burke. 
 " Obviously, lie says, it is the book of a powerful and 
 accomplished thinker ; " and " it is such an appeal to the 
 conscience and honor of England as can not be forgotten, 
 or be feigned to be forgotten." 
 
 " When the political aspects are so calamitous that the sympa 
 thies of the man overpower the habits of the poet, a higher than 
 literary inspiration may succor him. It is a costly proof of charac 
 ter, that the most renowned scholar of England should take his 
 reputation in his hand, and should descend into the ring ; and he 
 has added to his love whatever honor his opinions may forfeit. 
 To atone for this departure from the vows of the scholar and his 
 eternal duties, to this secular charity, we have at least this gain, 
 that here is a message which those to whom it was addressed can 
 not choose but hear." 
 
 He says that " Carlyle is the first domestication of 
 the modern system with its infinity of details into 
 style." All the vast and multifarious movements of 
 our present civilization are best represented in Carlyle ; 
 for " London and Europe tunneled, graded, corn-lawed, 
 with trade-nobility, and East and West Indies for de 
 pendencies ; and America, with the Rocky Hills in the 
 horizon, have never before been conquered in litera 
 ture." Of the faults in the book he writes these 
 words : 
 
 " We may easily fail in expressing the general objection which 
 we feel. It appears to us as a certain disproportion in the picture, 
 caused by the obtrusion of the whims of the painter. In this work, 
 as in his former labors, Mr. Carlyle reminds us of a sick giant. 
 His humors are expressed with so much force of constitution that 
 his fancies are more attractive and more credible than the sanity 
 of duller men. Uut the habitual exaggeration of the tone wearies 
 whilst it stimulates. It is felt to be so much deduction from the 
 universality of the picture. It is not serene sunshine, but cvory 
 thing is seen in lurid stormlights. Every object attitudinizes, to 
 the very mountains, and stars almost, under the refractions of this 
 wonderful humorist; and instead of the common earth and sky, we 
 have a Martin s Creation or Judgment Day." 
 
 Emerson was also a frequent contributor of poetry to 
 The Dial. Many of his very best pieces first appeared 
 
THE DIAL. 89 
 
 in its pages. He there printed The Problem, Wood- 
 notes, The Sphinx, Saadi, To Rhea, Ode to Beauty, and 
 The Visit. His other poetical contributions were Paint 
 ing and Sculpture, Fate, Fact, Holidays, Eros, The 
 Times, Forbearance, The Amulet, To Eva, Suum 
 Cuique, and The Park. 
 
 The Dial put forth a good deal of vaporing and senti- 
 mentalism. Much that was crnde went into its pages ; 
 and some of its writers lacked solid regard for facts 
 and realities. Yet it was a most notable effort toward a 
 truer life and a fresher expression of thought. Its pages 
 betray a purpose and a hope no other American review 
 has yet shown, and its influence has doubtless been 
 very great. Emerson has written of it with sound 
 sense, 1 giving interesting hints of its purpose. He says 
 that " when it began, it concentrated a good deal of hope 
 and affection." 
 
 " It had its origin in a club of speculative students, who found 
 the air in America getting a little too close and stagnant ; and the 
 agitation had, perhaps, the fault of being too secondary and bookish 
 in its origin, or caught, not from primary instincts, but from Eng 
 lish, and still more from German, books. Tho journal was com 
 menced with much hope, and liberal promises of many co-operators. 
 But the workmen of sufficient culture for a poetical and philo 
 sophical magazine were too few ; and as the pages were filled by 
 unpaid contributors, each of whom had, according to the usage and 
 necessity of this country, some paying employment, the journal did 
 not get his best work, but his second best. Its scattered writers 
 had not digested their theories into a distinct dogma, still less into 
 a practical measure which the public could grasp ; and the maga 
 zine was so eclectic and miscellaneous that each of its readers and 
 writers valued only a small portion of it. For these reasons it 
 never had a large circulation, and it was discontinued after four 
 years. But The Dial betrayed, through all its juvenility, timidity, 
 and conventional rubbish, some sparks of the true love and hope, 
 and of the piety to spiritual law, which had moved its friends and 
 founders ; and it was received by its early subscribers with almost 
 a religious welcome. Many years after it was brought to a close, 
 Margaret was surprised in England by very warm testimony to its 
 merits ; and in 1848 the writer of these pages found it holding the 
 same affectionate place in many a private book-shelf in England 
 and Scotland which it had secured at home. Good or bad, it cost 
 a good deal of precious labor from those who served it, and from 
 
 1 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller. 
 
90 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 Margaret most of all. As editor, she received a compensation for 
 the first years, which was intended to be two hundred dollars per 
 annum, but which, I fear, never reached that amount. 
 
 " But it made no difference to her exertion. She put so much 
 heart into it that she bravely undertook to open, in The Dial, the 
 subjects which most attracted her ; and she treated, in turn, Goethe 
 and Beethoven, the Rhine and the Romaic Ballads, the Poems of 
 John Sterling, and several pieces of sentiment, with a spirit which 
 spared no labor; and when the hard conditions of journalism held 
 her to an inevitable -day, she submitted to jeopardizing a long- 
 cherished subject by treating it in the crude and forced article for 
 the month. I remember, after she had been compelled by ill-health 
 to relinquish the journal into my hands, my grateful wonder at the 
 facility with which she assumed the preparation of laborious arti 
 cles that might have daunted the most practiced scribe." 
 
 He has always spoken of it in the same modest man 
 ner, giving to others whatever honor and fame the 
 quarterly has produced. In fact, he was its chief con 
 tributor, its trusted adviser, from the first ; and he did 
 far more than any other to give it whatever of value and 
 influence it had. With all its vaporing, it was fresh, 
 earnest, and original in purpose. It was the first 
 American periodical to assume a character and aim of 
 its own. However many its deficiencies, spite of all the 
 sport it gave the critics, its influence was wholesome 
 and vigorous. It quickened thought, gave its writers 
 freedom of expression, and greatly stimulated origi 
 nality. The school of writers which it formed and 
 brought before the public has been the most productive 
 and helpful we have yet seen in this country. Such 
 has been the value of this short-lived quarterly, it 
 already has a fame and honor quite its own, which are 
 likely to increase in the future. 
 
BROOK FARM AND OTHER REFORMS. 91 
 
 VIII. 
 
 BROOK FARM AND OTHER REFORMS. 
 
 ! Ij^MERSON was greatly interested by the reforma- 
 vJuJ tory movements of this period. It was a time of 
 many projects for the reformation of the world. Be 
 side the agitation caused by the transcendental move 
 ment, there was a wide*ferment of thought concerning 
 the social and educational reformation of mankind. 
 Horace Mann was putting the common-school system 
 into active operation, and normal schools were being 
 established for the first time. The temperance reform 
 was attracting attention, and Pierpont went out of the 
 pulpit because the people were not ready to become 
 total abstainers. Abner Kneeland was preaching mate 
 rialism, while Bipley and Parker were teaching natural 
 ism in religion. Conventions of all kinds were being 
 held, newspapers advocating all sorts of reforms and 
 new ideas appeared. Among these was the Non-Resist - 
 ant, begun in Boston in 1839, and edited by Garrison, 
 Edmund Quincy, and Mrs. Chapman. In 1838 George 
 Combe came to this country, and unbounded expec 
 tations were entertained in regard to phrenology. At 
 about the same time spiritualism began to claim atten 
 tion ; and the keenest interest was taken in mesmerism, 
 clairvoyance, and all kindred subjects. Homoeopathy, 
 hydropathy, the Graham diet, and the Thompsonian 
 cure, all came up for their share in the regeneration of 
 the race. \ The first national temperance convention 
 was held in 1833, and in 1838 a prohibitory law was 
 passed in Massachusetts. In 1840 the American Anti- 
 slavery Society split in two, because women demanded 
 an opportunity to speak on its platform. Soon after, a 
 woman s convention was called. The New- York Trib- 
 
92 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 une became the open door for the entrance of all these 
 new ideas to the public. In the midst of these refor 
 mations and dreams appeared, in 1839, a prophet to 
 declare the end of all things, in the person of William 
 Miller. 
 
 Nearly every one of Emerson s intimate friends was 
 connected with these reforms. Parker was just begin 
 ning to agitate the theological waters. Thoreau pro 
 tested against taxes, and was lodged in jail. A little 
 later he went to live by the side of Walden Pond. 
 Margaret Fuller began her wonderful conversations in 
 Boston ; Francis, Hedge, Clarke, were reading German 
 theology, and giving expression to a more living re 
 ligious faith. Alcott had left Ris Temple School, gone 
 to Concord at Emerson s request, and was living by 
 manual labor. Such was Emerson s interest in the 
 work of reform, that, almost immediately after the death 
 of his oldest son, he filled a lecture engagement in New 
 York, that he might aid Alcott in going to England, 
 there to assist in establishing a school which should 
 fulfil the idea begun in Boston. Alcott returned with 
 Charles Lane, went to Harvard, established " Fruit- 
 lands," and aolded one more to the attempts to redeem 
 life from its evils. To all these movements Emerson 
 gave his sympathy, in so far as they expressed a genuine 
 purpose, and showed a candid desire to make life richer 
 with truth. 
 
 One of the movements of this time, that favoring the 
 revitalizing of the old church forms and doctrines, was 
 well represented by the Chardon-street conventions in 
 Boston, called by " The Friends of Universal Progress," 
 early in 1840. Emerson attended these meetings, was 
 appointed on the committees, but did not speak. They 
 were called to discuss the institutions of the sabbath, 
 church, and ministry. Edmund Quincy was the mod 
 erator, and the first meeting continued for three days. 
 Another was held in March, and a third in the follow 
 ing November, a whole session being given up to each 
 of the topics. Alcott found himself at home there, and 
 Brownson was one of the chief speakers. Emerson 
 
BBOOK FAKM AND OTHER EEFOEMS. 93 
 
 printed in TJie Dial what he regarded as the best speech 
 made, by Nathaniel H. Whiting, a mechanic. His 
 account of these meetings is now full of interest : 
 
 " The composition of the assembly was rich and various. The 
 singularity and latitude of the summons drew together, from all 
 parts of New England, and also from the Middle States, men of 
 every shade of opinion, from the straightest orthodoxy to the wildest 
 heresy, and many persons whose church was a church of one member 
 only. A great variety of dialect and of costume was noticed ; a 
 great deal of confusion, eccentricity, and freak appeared, as well as 
 of zeal and enthusiasm. If the assembly was disorderly, it was 
 picturesque. Madmen, madwomen, men with beards, Drinkers, 
 Muggletonians, Gome-outers, Groaners, Agrarians, Seventh-day- 
 Baptists, Quakers, Abolitionists, Calviiiists, Unitarians, and philos 
 ophers, all came successively to the top, and seized their moment, 
 if not their hour, wherein to chide or pray or preach or protest. 
 The faces were a study. The most daring innovators, and the 
 champions-until-death of the old cause, sat side by side. The still 
 living merit of the oldest New-England families, glowing yet after 
 several generations, encountered the founders. of families, fresh 
 merit emerging and expanding the brows to a new breadth, and 
 lighting a clownish face with sacred fire. The assembly was char 
 acterized by the predominance of a certain plain, sylvan strength 
 and earnestness ; whilst many of the most intellectual and cultivated 
 persons attended its councils. Dr. Channing, Edward Taylor, 
 Bronson Alcott, Mr. Garrison, Mr. May, Theodore Parker, II. C. 
 Wright, Dr. Osgood. William Adams, Edward Palmer, Jones Very, 
 Maria W. Chapman, and many other persons of a mystical or 
 sectarian or philanthropic renown, were present, and some of them 
 participant. And there was no want of female speakers ; Mrs. 
 Little and Mrs. Lucy Sessions took a pleasing and memorable part 
 in the debate ; and that flea of conventions, Mrs. Abigail Folsom, 
 was but too ready with her interminable scroll. If there was not 
 parliamentary order, there was life, and the assurance of that con 
 stitutional love for religion and religious liberty which, in all 
 periods, characterizes the inhabitants of this part of America. 
 
 " There was a great deal of wearisome speaking in each of those 
 three-days sessions, but relieved by signal passages of pure elo 
 quence, by much vigor of thought, and especially by the exhibition 
 of character, and by the victories of character. These men and 
 women were in search of something better and more satisfying 
 than a vote or a definition ; and they found w T hat they sought, or the 
 pledge of it, in the attitude taken by individuals of their number, 
 of resistance to the insane routine of parliamentary usage, in the 
 lofty reliance on principles, and the prophetic dignity and trans 
 figuration which accompanies, even amidst opposition and ridicule, 
 a man whose mind is made up to obey the great inward Com 
 mander, and who does not anticipate his own action, but awaits 
 confidently the new emergency for the new counsel." 
 
94 RALPH WALDO EMERSOX. 
 
 These meetings were but one of many movements of 
 the time, all looking towards a new order of things. 
 The Brook-Farm community was established in 1841, 
 Hopedale in the same year, Northampton in 1842. 
 Communities were formed all over the country. Owen 
 started New Harmony, and the world was soon to be 
 redeemed. Emerson has said that the meetings of the 
 Transcendental Club resulted in the society at Brook 
 Farm, as well as in the publishing of The Dial. 
 
 Its founders and leaders were among Emerson s inti 
 mate friends. He jjfteii visited the iarui, but he did 
 .not sympathize fully with its purptfses. It accepted 
 the doctrines of Fourier in 1844, and in 1845 the teach 
 ings of Swedenborg were eagerly studied by nearly all 
 its members. With the last phase of this movement 
 Emerson sympathized largely, but not so much with 
 the first. He afterwards spoke well of Owen and Fou 
 rier, and said their conceptions should be gratefully 
 appreciated ; for they who think and hope well for man 
 kind, he said, put the human race under obligation. 
 They are the unconscious prophets of the true order of 
 society, men who believe that in the world God s jus 
 tice will be done. Yet he protested against pha.la.nstg- 
 lies, in favor of the separate house, and declared it was 
 individualism men needed, rather than having all things 
 in common. 1 
 
 Li his lecture on Man the Reformer, in 1S41. lie spoke 
 eloquently of manual labor ; but in this, as in the open 
 ing lecture on The Times, the same year, it was indi 
 vidual regeneration he taught, saying that " the reform 
 of reforms must be accomplished without means." In 
 1844, lecturing on the New-England Reformers, lie 
 inculcates, as he had constantly, the very opposite doc 
 trine to that of Fourier. The true union of men with 
 each other, 4w says, "must be inward, and not one of 
 covenants." 
 
 "I have failed, and you have failed, but perhaps together we 
 shall not fail. Our housekeeping is not satisfactory to us ; but per 
 haps a phalanx, a community, might be. . . . This concert was 
 
 1 Jn his London lecture on Politics and Socialism in 1848. 
 
BROOK FARM AND OTHER REFORMS. 95 
 
 the specific in all cases. But concert is neither better nor worse, 
 neither more nor less potent, than individual force. All the men 
 in the world can not make a statue walk and speak, can not make a 
 drop of blood or a blade of grass, any more than one man can. 
 But let there be one man, let there be truth in two men, in ten 
 men, then is concert for the first time possible ; because the force 
 which moves the world is a new quality, and can never be furnished 
 by adding whatever quantities of a different kind. What is the 
 use of the concert of the false and the disunited ? There can be no 
 concert in two, where there is no concert in one. When the indi 
 vidual is not individual, but is dual ; when his thoughts look one 
 way and his actions another ; when his faith is traversed by his 
 habits; when his will, enlightened by reason, is warped by his 
 sense ; when with one hand he rows, and with the other backs 
 water, what concert can be ? " 1 
 
 In another lecture he spoke strongly against bringing 
 all to the lowest level, as communism must do. As 
 soon as the equality was made, he said, it would unmake 
 itself. " Spoons and skimmers you can lie undistin- 
 guishably together, but -vases and statues require each 
 a pedestal for itself." 2 It w&s not, however, because he 
 believed in_mdividualism, and in the providential mis 
 sion of greatmen. that he objected to the Brook-Farm 
 method of reforming the world. It was an. illumination 
 he felt menjneeded^ an inward seeing of the truth, a 
 wholeness of. the spiritual life. Reform must commence, 
 not wifli communities, but with the individual soul, in 
 its harmony with itself and God. While he saw much 
 that was good in each of these reforms, gave to them 
 his sympathy, fully entered into the spirit of the pro 
 test against old abuses and institutions that narrow 
 and hinder, yet to him they were deficient and wrong. 
 His demand was, that men should trust in themselves, 
 sit alone, and read the laws of their own natures. His 
 method was the method of Jesus, making clean the in 
 ward life, seeking interior strength and renewal. He 
 said it is of little moment that one or two or twenty 
 social errors be corrected, but of much importance that 
 man be in his senses ; and the criticism of institutions, 
 he thought, had made it plain that society gains noth- 
 
 1 Essays, second series, p. 256. 
 
 2 Willis s Hurry-graphs; in lecture on The Times. 
 
96 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 ing whilst a man, not himself renovated, attempts to 
 renovate things around him. 1 If each individual is 
 faithful to his own duties, keeps inviolate all the laws 
 of the world, all is well. -We must learn to do right, 
 not because some one else does, but from our own in 
 ward sympathies for the truth. " Every reform.- was 
 once a private opinion ; ancLwJicn it shall be a private 
 opinion again, it will solve the .problem of the age." 2 It 
 must be a personal motive, a personal sense of truth, 
 whickJeads usjtojlo right T and not an act .of conform 
 ity. "Whilst, Tie saysTT desire to express the respect 
 and joy I feel before this sublime connection of reforms, 
 now in their infancy around us, I urge the more ear 
 nestly the paramount duties of self-reliance. I can not 
 find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense 
 of the sacredness of private integrity." 3 He_wo-uld not 
 deal >yj^i^ienjis_^mn,ssns T " lmii.^ia...suauL^^Ls persons. 
 The rude, unkempt masses he would separate into pure 
 and faithful individuals, cadi capable of an opinion, 
 r . and equal to his own destiny. I lo would not have men 
 < herd together so much as to make them the foolish fol- 
 j lowers of a blind, common impulse, but would have 
 I each person capable of surrendering all to the call of 
 \ personal duty. In the spirit of the greatest moral 
 \ teachers, he says, " I shun father and mother and brother 
 land wife, when my genius calls me." He would have 
 lall men capable of like devotion and sacrifice, capable 
 |of perfect consecration to truth and duty. 
 
 Tlie_trnt? prinoiplo of reform is to learn what nature 
 re^iuiTes,to obey her laws. " What we call our root- 
 and-Lranch "reforms of slavery, war, gambling, intemper 
 ance, is only medicating the symptoms. \Vc must begin 
 highexjip, naiiiely, in education." 4 The ~wH~TJf God 
 expressed in the invariable order and laws of nature, 
 that we are to learn, that we are to obey. This is the 
 only true reform, the only possible reform. In a most 
 eloquent paragraph he has set forth this idea, and it 
 reveals to us his conception of the whole subject. 
 
 1 Kssavs, second series, p. 252. 2 Essays, srrcnd scries, p. 4. 
 
 3 Miscellanies, p. 270. 4 Conduct of Life, p. 121. 
 
BROOK FARM AND OTHER REFORMS. 97 
 
 "_That serene Power interposes the check upon the caprices and 
 pfficiousness of our wills. Its charity is not our charity. One of 
 its agents is our will, but that which expresses itself in our will is 
 stronger than oar will. We are very forward to help it, but it will 
 not be accelerated. It resists our meddling, eleemosynary con 
 trivances. We desire sumptuary and relief laws ; but the principle 
 of population is always reducing wages to the lowest pittance on 
 which human life can subsist, We legislate against forestalling 
 and monopoly ; we would have a common granary for the poor ; but 
 the selfishness which hoards the corn for high prices is the preven 
 tive of famine, and the law of self-preservation is surer policy than 
 any legislation can be. We concoct eleemosynary systems, and it 
 turns out that our charity increases pauperism. We inflate our 
 paper currency, we repair commerce with unlimited credit, and are 
 presently visited with unlimited bankruptcy." 1 
 
 He saw very clearly, also, that rude energy and mus 
 cle and^ competition are yet necessary -in the world. 
 His criticism of such attempts as Brook Farm, in this 
 regard, was marked by practical wisdom. The law of 
 competition is important. ran, not aTiywWftTrp-TTiirl 
 aside. "^Philanthropic and religious bodies do not 
 cjmimonly make their executive officers out of saints. 
 The communities hitherto founded by Socialists are only 
 possible by installing Judas as steward." 2 We have 
 learned this lesson so well we no longer think that 
 we are to be charitable to whoever asks, giving with 
 unstinted hand of our substance ; but we hold that 
 self-help, self-reliance, manhood, are to be the ends of 
 our charitable intent. This was what Emerson preached 
 from the very first ; it is the very core of his conception 
 of reform. 
 
 There is another side, however, to Emerson s position 
 on this subject. Though he says he is bound to help 
 only those for whom he has an affinity, 3 yet he also 
 maintains " that none is accomplished so long as any 
 are incomplete ; that the happiness of one can not consist 
 with the misery of any other." 4 He repeats again the 
 same sentiment, "No one is accomplished whilst any 
 one is incomplete. Weal does not exist for one with 
 the woe of any other." 5 
 
 1 Miscellanies, p. 362. 2 Conduct of Life, p. 56. 
 
 Essays, first series, p. 45. 4 Conduct of Life, p. 201. 
 
 6 Character, North American Review, April, 1866, p. 358. 
 
98 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 His distrust of j?very other method of reform except 
 that of awakening the soul to a sense of its possibilities, 
 has caused him to be sharply criticised for hatred of the 
 masses and contempt of good institutions. But all such 
 criticism betrays ignorance of his real position, and an 
 inability to comprehend a method so genuine as his. 
 He could only follow the method of Jesus, Socrates, 
 and Buddha, appealing to the individual, seeking to 
 voiise^lh ensoul to a knowledge of a higher life. Any 
 movement, therefore, which had any limited and tem 
 porary end in view, could not win his heartiest admira 
 tion. To redeem the life of men, to establish character, 
 to bring men into genuine relations with nature, them 
 selves, and God, was his aim. 
 
 He could not give his heart to the temperance cause, 
 because it only temporized with those conditions which 
 make sin and misery in the world. If men were made 
 temperate, they yet remained selfish and licentious. So 
 he would aim at the very center of all vice and defect, 
 dry up that fountain, and then all the lesser evils would 
 cease. His method may be wrong, but it is the method 
 of every great moral and religious teacher through the 
 ages. It made Jesus overlook the special sins of per 
 sons, because he touched the seat of moral action, and 
 quickened life with new purposes. When Emerson 
 speaks harshly against the masses, it should be remem 
 bered he has no dislike of the poor and weak, none 
 whatever ; and that his contempt is only for those paltry 
 methods by which the reform of the world is sought 
 through an exterior assent to opinions or customs. 
 So it was in regard to his criticism of Sunday schools 
 and other good methods of education. Does he object 
 to the Sunday school? No; but to that perfunctory 
 morality and religion which aims only at the surface, 
 and does not transform the life with character nor fill 
 the soul with divineness. lie early said the reforms 
 which aim only at some special object, and attempt to 
 cure some particular vice, " fair and generous as each 
 appears, are poor, bitter things, when prosecuted for 
 themselves as an end." 1 
 
 i Miscellanies, p. 206. 
 
BROOK FARM AND OTHER REFORMS. 99 
 
 Several of the reforms of recent years have attracted 
 his attention and admiration, and he has expressed great 
 faith in them. He sees in them signs of that new 
 religious era when life and ethical power will rule the 
 world in the place of creed and ritual. He signed, with 
 his wife, the call for the first woman s-suffrage conven 
 tion, and attended its meetings. With this movement 
 he has sympathized heartily. His intense interest in 
 the new philanthropic spirit, from which he hopes so 
 much, and which he lieralds as the sign of a new and 
 wonderful development of human culture, he has 
 expressed in this paragraph from his address on the 
 Progress of Culture : 
 
 " Observe the marked ethical quality of the innovations urged or 
 adopted. The new claim of woman to a political status 13 itself 
 an honorable testimony to the civilization which has given her a 
 civil status new in history. Now that, by the increased humanity 
 of law, she controls property, she inevitably takes the next step 
 to her share in power. The war gave us the abolition of slavery, 
 the success of the Sanitary Commission and of iho Freedman s 
 Bureau. Add to these the new scope of social science; the aboli 
 tion of capital punishment and of imprisonment for debt ; the 
 improvement of prisons ; the efforts for the .suppression of intem 
 perance ; the search for just rules affecting labor ; the co-operative 
 societies; the insurance of life arid limb; the free-trade league; 
 the improved almshouse ; the enlarged ccale of charities to relieve 
 local famine, or burned towns, or the suffering Greeks ; the incipi 
 ent series of International Congresses, all, one may say, in a high 
 degree revolutionary, teaching nations the taking of government 
 into their own hands, and superseding kings." 
 
 > Emerson s sense of humor has always been a restrain- 
 /Ung and sanitary influence in his character. He saw the 
 ridiculous, the incongruous, side of Brook Farm ; and 
 his humor, his rare perception of the fitness of things, 
 led him to see that finely conceived reform in its real 
 light. He loved the ineji_-aB4 women who lived at 
 Brook Farm; ho thoroughly sympathized with their 
 anxious desire to make life better ; but he saw the folly 
 of their experiment, its weaknesses, and he quickly dis 
 covered the"evils which it fostered in place of those it 
 attempted to escape. In the second number of the 
 fourth volume of The Dial, he printed a letter in 
 
100 EALPII AVALDO EMEESOX. 
 
 answer to several correspondents. One of these hud 
 questioned him concerning the common defects in cul 
 ture and life ; and his answer is marked by that closely- 
 veiled humor and that strong common sense so notable 
 in his character. 
 
 " Regrets and Bohemian air-castles and aesthetic villages, he say?, 
 are not a very s [[ -helping ela.-s of productions, but are the voices 
 ol debility, Lspeeialiy to an importunate correspondent we mu. t 
 say that there is no chance tor the resihetic village. Lvery r.;ie of 
 the villagers has committed his several blunder: his genii: wafl 
 good, his stars consenting, but lie was a marplot. And tiicugh tl.e 
 recuperative force iu every man may be relied on infinitely, ir must 
 be relied on before it will exert itself. As long as he B~I<: 
 the shade of the present error, the after-nature does not betray i<s 
 resources. YThilst he dwells in the old sin, he will pay the" old 
 fine." 
 
 In December, 1847, appeared the first number of The 
 Massachusetts Quarterly Itcrietr. with Emeiv -on s name 
 as one of the editors. Parker was its originator, as he 
 was its real editor for the three years of it .; exL-tem e. 
 Emerson wrote nothing for it beyond its address To 
 the Public in the first number. Alter speaking of the 
 great material improvements in the country, lie says the 
 spiritual powers of man have 1 not pivgiv.-:-ed equally 
 far. and that the new world offers no new thought. 
 
 " Conceding these unfavorable appearances. IK> proceed.; to say. it 
 \vould yet be a poor pedantry to read the fates of this, country m :u 
 these uaiTow data. On the contrary , we are persuaded that moral 
 and material values are always commensurate. Lverv material 
 organization exists to a moral end, which makes the reason of its 
 existence. Here are no books; but who can see the continei.t, 
 with its inland and surrounding waters, hs temperate elinu; 
 vpesi v. ird breathing vigor throughout all the year, its conlluence of 
 races BO favorable to the hLL .v, and the iulinite glut -..i 
 
 their production, without putting new queries to Destiny, as to the 
 purpose for which this muster of nations and this sudden creation 
 Tiiious values is made? 
 
 "This is equally the view of science and of patriotism. We 
 h.-sitate to employ a word so much abused as nu riotiiwi, wlu 
 sense is almost the reverse of it< popular >eu-e. \\ e have no 
 sympathy with that boyish egotism, hoarse with cheering for rur 
 side, for our state, for our town; the right patriotism consists in 
 the delight which springs from contributing our peculiar and legiti- 
 
BROOK FARM AND OTHER .REFORMS,,, 101 
 
 mate advantages to the benefit of humanity. Every foot of soil 
 has its proper quality ; the grape on two sides of the same fence 
 has new flavors; and so every acre on the globe, -every family 
 of men, every point of climate, has its distinguishing virtues. 
 Certainly, then, this country does not lie here in the sun causeless ; 
 and though it may not be easy to define its influence, men feel 
 already its emancipating quality in the careless self-reliance of the 
 manners, in the freedom of thought, in the direct roads by which 
 grievances are reached and redressed, and even in the reckless and 
 sinister politics, not less than in purer expressions. Bad as it is, 
 this freedom leads onward and upward to a Columbia of thought 
 and art which is the last and endless end of Columbus s adven 
 ture." 
 
 After a severe criticism of the political affairs of the nation, he 
 
 Eroceeds, " The state, like the individual, should rest on an ideal 
 asis. Xot only man, but nature, is injured by the imputation 
 that man exists only to be fattened with bread ; but he lives in 
 such connection with Thought and Fact that his bread is surely 
 involved as one element thereof, but is not its end and ainu So 
 the insight which commands the laws and conditions of the true 
 polity precludes for ever all interest in the squabbles of parties. 
 As soon as men have the enjoyments of learning, friendship, and 
 virtue, for which the state exists, the prizes of office appear pol 
 luted, and their followers outcasts. 
 
 " A journal that would meet the real wants of this time must 
 have a courage and power sufficient to solve the problems which 
 the great groping society around us, stupid with perplexity, is 
 dumbly exploring. Let us not show its astuteness by dodging 
 each difficult question, and arguing diffusely every point on which 
 men are long ago unanimous. Can it front this matter of social 
 ism, to which the names of Owen and Fourier have attached, and 
 dispose of that question ? Will it cope with the allied questions of 
 government, non-resistance, and all that belongs under that category ? 
 Will it measure itself with the chapter of slavery, in some sort the 
 special enigma of the time, as it has provoked against it a sort of 
 inspiration and enthusiasm singular in modern history? There 
 are literary and philosophical reputations to settle. The name of 
 Swedenborg has in this very time acquired new honors ; and the 
 current year has witnessed the appearance, in their first English 
 translation, of his manuscripts. Here is an unsettled account in 
 the book of fame ; a nebula to dun eyes, but which great tele 
 scopes may yet resolve into a magnificent system. Here is the 
 standing problem of Xatural Science, and the merits of her great 
 interpreters, to be determined ; the encyclopedical Humboldt, and 
 the intrepid generalizations collected by the author of the Vextiges 
 of Creation. 
 
 " What will easily seem to many a far higher question than any 
 other is that which respects the embodying of the conscience of the 
 period. Is the age we live in unfriendly to the highest powers, to 
 that blending of the affections with the poetic faculty which has dis- 
 
102 EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 tinguished the religious ages ? We have a better opinion of the 
 economy of nature than to fear that those varying phases which 
 humanity presents ever leave out any of the grand springs of 
 human action. Mankind, for the moment, seem to be in search of 
 a religion. The Jewish cult us is declining; the divine, or, as some 
 will say, the truly human, hovers, now seen, now unseen, before us. 
 This period of peace, this hour when the jangle of contending 
 churches is hushing or hushed, v.ill seem only the more propitious 
 to those who believe that man need not .fear the want of religion, 
 because they know his religious constitution, that he must rest 
 on the moral and religious sentiments, as the motion of bodies rests 
 on geometry. In the rapid decay of what was called religion, timid 
 and unthinking people fancy a decay of the hope of man. But 
 the moral and religious sentiments meet us everywhere, alike in 
 markets as in churches. A God starts up behind cotton-bales also. 
 The conscience of man is regenerated as is the atmosphere, so that 
 society can not be debauched. That health which we call Virtue 
 is an equipoise which easily redresses itself, and resembles those 
 rocking-s tones which a child s finger can move and a weight of 
 many hundred tons can not overthrow." 
 
 This address is of importance as showing his sympa 
 thies, his interest in socialism, in Swedenborg, and in 
 the future of America. It gives a very clear idea of 
 the tendencies of his mind, and, better than any thing 
 else, indicates his attitude towards the reforms of the 
 time. In a closing paragraph, he says the Review is to 
 be open especially to those "inspired pages" which come 
 of "inevitable utterance;" while the editors rely on the 
 "magnetism of truth" to fill its pages. He closes with 
 this expressive sentence : " We rely on the truth for and 
 against ourselves" 
 
 During these years of social and reformatory agita 
 tion, his trust was in the soul, its purification and 
 elevation ; and through its culture only did he hope to 
 regenerate the world. In 1837 Mann reports that Em 
 erson summed up the commandments into "Sit aloof" 
 and " Keep a diary." He hoped little from great social 
 agitations ; he believed all things would result when the 
 individual soul came into harmony with God. In his 
 essays and in his poems he frequently justifies this atti 
 tude, and says he is not called but to meditate and to 
 keep silence by himself. His real influence came out, 
 however, in his personal relations with many of the 
 
.BROOK FARM AND OTHER REFORMS. 103 
 
 finest minds of the time. The impression he made may 
 be seen in what Harriet Martineau wrote of him in her 
 Retrospect of Western Travel. She saw much of him 
 during her visit to the United States in 1835-36, and 
 gamed a fine insight into his character. 
 
 "There is a remarkable man in the United States, she said, 
 without knowing whom it is not too much to say that the United 
 States can not be fully kno\vn. I mean by this, not only that he 
 has powers and worth \vhich constitute him an element in the 
 estimate to be formed of hi:3 country, but that his intellect and 
 his character are the opposite of those which the influences of his 
 country and his time are supposed almost necessarily to form. I 
 speak of Mr. Emerson. He is yet in the prime of life. Great 
 thing s are expected from him ; and great things, it seems, he can 
 not but do if he have life and health to prosecute his course. He 
 is a thinker and scholar. 
 
 " He has modestly and silently withdrawn himself from the per 
 turbations and conflicts of the crowd of men, without declining 
 any of the business of life, or repressing any of his human sympa 
 thies. He is a thinker, without being solitary, abstracted, and 
 unfitted for the time. He is a scholar, without being narrow^ book 
 ish, and prone to occupy himself only with other men s thoughts. 
 He is remarkable for the steadiness and fortitude with which he 
 makes those objects which are frequently considered the highest in 
 their own department subordinate to something higher still, whose 
 connection with their department he has clearly discovered. There 
 are not a few riien, I hope, in America who decline the pursuit of 
 wealth ; not a few who refrain from ambition ; and some few who 
 devote themselves to thought and study from a pure love of an 
 intellectual life. But the case before us is a higher one than this. 
 The intellectual life is nourished from a love of the diviner life, of 
 which it is an clement. Consequently the thinker is ever present 
 to the duty, and the scholar to tho active business, of the hour ; and 
 his home is the scene of his greatest acts. lie is ready at every 
 call of action. He lectures to the factory people at Lowell when 
 they ask. He preaches when the opportunity is presented. He is 
 known at every house along the road ho travels to and from home 
 by the words he has dropped and tho deeds he has done. The little 
 boy who carries wood for his household has been enlightened by 
 him, and his most transient guccts owe to him their experience of 
 what the highest grace of domestic manners may be. He neglects 
 no political duty, and is unmindful of nothing in the march of 
 events which can affect the virtue and poace of men. While he 
 is far above fretting himself because of evil-doers, he has ever ready 
 his verdict for the right and his right hand for its champions. 
 While apart from the passions of all controversies, he is ever pres 
 ent with their principles, declaring himself, and taking his stand, 
 
104 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 while appearing to be incapable of contempt of persons, however 
 uncompromising may be his indignation against what is dishonest 
 and harsh. Earnest as is the tone of his mind, and placidly strenu 
 ous as is his life, an exquisite spirit of humor pervades his inter 
 course. A quiet gayety breaihes out of his conversation ; and his 
 observation, as keen as it is benevolent, furnishes him with per 
 petual material for the exercise of, his humor. In such a man it 
 is difficult to point out any one characteristic ; but if, out of such 
 a harmony, one leading quality is to be distinguished, it is in him 
 modest independence. A more entire and modest independence I 
 am not aware of having ever witnessed, though in America I saw 
 two or three approaches to it. It is an independence equally of 
 thought, of speech, of demeanor, of occupation, and of objects in 
 life, yet without a trace of contempt in its temper, or of encroach 
 ment in its action." 
 
 This noble picture by one who was as ready to set 
 forth faults as to see them is a fine testimonial to the 
 pure and rich impression which Emerson has made upon 
 all who have come into personal contact with him, or 
 into a sympathetic appreciation of his books. The pure 
 humanity of the man stands out everywhere, full, rich, 
 penetrating, infused through all his words and conduct. 
 It has made him a permanent and inspiring power in 
 the life of his time. What Harriet Martineau saw in 
 him was amply fulfilled. Still later Frederika Bremer 
 felt the magic charm of his influence, and wrote of it 
 in her Homes of the New World, describing her visit to 
 the United States in 1849. 
 
 " He is in a high degree pure, noble, and severe, demanding as 
 much from himself as he demands from others. His words are 
 severe, his judgments often keen and merciless ; but his demeanor is 
 alike noble and pleasing, and his voice beautiful. One may quarrel 
 with Emerson s thoughts, with his judgment, but not with himself. 
 That which struck me most, as distinguishing him from most other 
 human beings, is nobility. lie is a born gentleman." 
 
 " The writings of this scorner of imperfection, of the mean and the 
 paltry, this bold exacter of perfection in man, have for me a fasci 
 nation which amounts almost to magic! I often object to him, 
 quarrel with him. I see that his stoicism is one-sidedness, his 
 pantheism an imperfection; and I know that which is greater and 
 i !!oi" perfect; but I am under the influence of his magical power. 
 I believe myself to -have become greater through his greatness, 
 I- through his strength; and I breathe the air of a higher 
 sphere in this world, which is indescribably refreshing to me." 
 
BROOK FARM AND OTHER REFORMS. 105 
 
 He had much the same influence on Margaret Fuller, 
 at first appearing cold and intellectually distant, to have 
 faith "in the universal but not in the individual man." 
 As she knew him better, his influence upon her life 
 became greater ; and at last she could say, 
 
 " My inmost heart blesses the fate that gave me birth in the 
 same clime and time, and that has drawn me into such a close bond 
 with him as, it is my hopeful faith, will never be broken, but from 
 sphere to sphere ever be hallowed." 
 
 " When I look forward to eternal growth, I am always aware 
 that I am far larger and deeper for him. His influence has been to 
 me that of lofty assurance and sweet serenity. I present to him 
 the many forms of nature, and solicit with music ; he melts them 
 all into spirit, and reproves performance with prayer. With most 
 men I bring words of now past life, and do actions suggested by 
 the wants of these natures rather than my own. But he stops me 
 from doing any thing, and makes me think." 
 
 In 1852 dough found Emerson "the only profound 
 man in the country," and came into very close relations 
 of sympathy with him. Other minds were affected by 
 his power, and saw in him as much. Hawthorne said 
 his mind acted upon other minds "with wonderful 
 magnetism." 
 
 " It was good, said his neighbor at the Old Manse, to meet 
 him in the wood-paths, or sometimes in our avenue, with that 
 pure intellectual gleam diffusing about his presence like the gar 
 ment of a shining one ; and he, so quiet, so simple, so without 
 pretension, encountering each man alive as if expecting to receive 
 more than he w r ould impart. And, in truth, the heart of many an 
 ordinary man had, perchance, inscriptions which he could not read. 
 But it was impossible to dwell in his vicinity without inhaling 
 more or less the mountain atmosphere of his lofty thought." 1 
 
 Emerson s personal influence was wide-reaching, very 
 great, through the charm of his character, the depth 
 and purity of his moral convictions, and the sublime 
 strength of his personal faith. This influence has been 
 described by Alcott : 2 
 
 " Fortunate the visitor who is admitted of a morning for the 
 high discourse, or permitted to join the poet in his afternoon walks 
 to Walden, the Cliffs, or elsewhere, hours to be remembered as 
 
 1 Mosses from an OVd Manse. 2 Concord Days. 
 
106 EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 unlike any others in the calendar of experiences. Shall I describe 
 them as sallies oftenest into cloudlands, into scenes and intimacies 
 ever new, none the less novel nor remote than when first experi 
 enced ? interviews, however, bringing their own trail of perplexing 
 thoughts, costing some days , several nights , sleep, oftentimes, to 
 restore one to his place and poise. Certainly safer not to venture 
 without the sure credentials, unless one will have his pretensions 
 pricked, his conceits reduced in their vague dimensions. But to 
 the modest, the ingenuous, the gifted, welcome! Nor can any 
 bearing be more poetic and polite to all such, to youth and accom 
 plished women especially. His is a faith approaching to supersti 
 tion concerning admirable persons ; the rumor of excellence of any 
 sort being like the arrival of a new gift to mankind, and he the 
 first to proffer his recognition and hope. He, if any, must have 
 taken the census of the admirable people of his time, numbering as 
 many among his friends as most living Americans ; while he is 
 already recognized as the representative mind of his country, to 
 whom distinguished foreigners are especially commended when 
 visiting America." 
 
 Among his associates, Emerson was the leader, the 
 most highly honored of a company of brilliant men 
 and women. Margaret Fuller spent weeks and months 
 in his home. Thoreau found a home with him for a 
 long time, and was an intimate companion always. 
 When Alcott moved to Concord, in 1839, their friend 
 ship became most intimate ; while Elizabeth Peabody 
 was another of those with whose generous humanity 
 arid wide philanthropic aims he strongly sympathized. 
 Parker was wont to visit him often, and always returned 
 to his work quickened and inspired. A brilliant com 
 pany of these minds often gathered in his study ; and 
 the conversations held there were of a remarkable 
 character for their high thought, their lofty aims, and 
 their inspiration. He knew, and often met, all the best 
 minds in Massachusetts, in all professions ; and his influ 
 ence among them was great. His purity, the nobility of 
 his life, his powers of conversation, carried weight every 
 where ; and he became one of the most marked of all 
 the influences of the times. It was thus he did his 
 work of reform, quickening other minds, giving a 
 higher sense of the value of life, and inspiring a pro- 
 founder faith in the soul and its possibilities. 
 
LEOTUttES AND ESSAYS. 107 
 
 IX. 
 
 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 WHEN Emerson settled down at Concord, he con 
 tinued in his own way to be a conscientious stu 
 dent. He read with diligence and care, not widely, but 
 with profit. The poets were thoroughly studied, as 
 were the great imaginative and moral writers of all 
 times and lands. The early English idealists received 
 his studious attention ; and he continued to read Col 
 eridge, Wordsworth, Landor, and Carlyle, with Goethe, 
 Schiller, and others among the Germans. With Kant, 
 Fichte, and Schelling he became somewhat familiar, 
 but not largely. What he owes to these men, he owes 
 to them at second-hand mostly, through their admirers 
 and interpreters. Swedenborg he read diligently, as 
 he did the profoundest religious writers of the Christian 
 ages. Cud worth held his attention, as well as the mod 
 ern interpreters of the old idealists. Plato, Plotmus, 
 Pythagoras, and the ancient thinkers were thoroughly 
 studied. He was early interested in the oriental reli 
 gions, and secured the works then published concerning; 
 them. Boehme and the other German mystics were 
 read with the keenest interest. His readings in these 
 directions gave color to his poetry. Much of it can bo 
 understood only by reference to his enthusiastic studies 
 in the field of oriental mystic thought. In science and 
 social economy he also found much to interest, and his 
 essays bear testimony to the fact that his studies in 
 these directions were profitable. 
 
 He has been so much the student and the poet, that 
 his outward life gives few events to record. The growth 
 of his Meas, and of his influence, furnish nearly all the 
 facts there are to his biography. ) By no extraneous 
 
108 RALPH WALDO EMEKSOX. 
 
 methods whatever has he sought to influence the 
 thought of his time. He has quietly followed the lead 
 ings of his own genius, coming into close contact with 
 a few strong minds, and saying in a quiet way, with no 
 demonstration or noise, what there was in his heart to 
 say. Yet there was something so genuine in the 
 thought and the influence he brought to bear on his 
 time, that steadily his reputation gained, and his circle 
 of listeners widened. The period from 1840 to 1860 
 was the one in. which this process went on most effec 
 tively. It is the period of his greatest power, when his 
 best essays were produced. Before this, he had achieved 
 recognition as a new thinker; but he was. regarded- as 
 an erratic and unbalanced genius. The distrust with 
 which his novel opinions were at first received, however, 
 gradually melted away before the healthful vigor of his 
 influence. 
 
 ^ During this period The Dial had its existence, Brook 
 Farm was founded and failed, he made his second visit 
 to Europe, he began to lecture beyond New England, 
 and he took part in the anti-slavery agitation as it rose 
 and culminated. It was a remarkable period, brilliant 
 with great names in politics and literature ; and during 
 it American literature first came to have a name and 
 to be worthy of recognition. Emerson lectured each 
 winter in Boston ; but slowly he went farther and far 
 ther away from that center on his lecturing tours, and 
 his name came to be an influence throughout the land. 
 
 In 18-11 his first volume of Essays was published, con 
 taining lectures he had delivered a year or two previous 
 ly. Some of his very best essays are in this volume, 
 nearly every one of them rising to the highest level of 
 his ability as a thinker and writer. They are filled with 
 the subtle power of his thought, and give full expres 
 sion to those ideas which are the sources of his philoso 
 phy. He was here more truly himself than in any other 
 book he has published, though single essays in the 
 other volumes reach the height almost constantly main 
 tained in this. But it did not escape the criiies. most 
 of whom did not understand it. One of them found it 
 
LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 109 
 
 mere devc^--.JCaJLjliaiiiiig-4-feaii-any other book which 
 ever fell into his hands; and he thought such essays 
 could be produced during a lifetime, as rapidly as a 
 human pen could be made to move. 1 Felton said they 
 contained single thoughts of dazzling brilliancy, with a 
 copious vein of practical illustration ; but he found them 
 full of extravagance of opinion, overweening self-confi 
 dence, and setting all authority at defiance./^ The ideas 
 set forth were called ancient errors, mistaken for new 
 truths, and disguised in the drapery of a misty rhetoric. 
 His theory of the instincts, Felton declared, would over 
 turn society, and resolve the world into chaos. 2 
 
 This volume was the same year reprinted in England 
 W Twelve Eways, and with a preface by Carlyle. The 
 editor indulged in his usual style of vehement expres 
 sion, but he also wrote with great appreciation of his 
 American friend. 
 
 " The name of Ralph Waldo Emerson, he said, is not entirely 
 new in England ; distinguished travelers bring us tidings of such 
 a man ; fractions of his writings have found their way into the 
 hands of the curious here ; fitful hints that there is in New England 
 some spiritual notability called Emerson glide through reviews and 
 magazines. AVhether these hints were true or not true, readers are 
 now to judge for themselves a little better. 
 
 " Emerson s writings and speakings amount to something ; and 
 yet hitherto, as it seems to me, this Emerson is far less notable for 
 what he has spoken or done than for the many things he has not 
 spoken and has forborne to do. With uncommon interest I have 
 learned that this, and in such a never-resting locomotive country too, 
 is one of those rare men who have withal the invaluable talent of 
 sitting still. "-That an educated man of good gifts and opportuni 
 ties, after looking at the public arena, and even trying not with 
 ill success what its tasks and its prizes might amount to, should 
 retire for long years into rustic obscurity, and, amid the all-pervad 
 ing jingle of dollars and loud chaffering of ambitions and promo 
 tions, should quietly, with cheerful deliberateness, sit down to spend 
 his life, not in Mammon-worship, or the hunt for reputation, influ 
 ence, place, or any outward advantage whatsoever ; this, when we 
 get notice of it, is a thing really worth noting. . . . 
 
 " For myself, T have looked over with no common feeling to this 
 brave Emerson, seated by his rustic hearth on the other side of the 
 ocean (yet not altogether parted from me either), silently commun 
 ing with his own soul and with the God s World it finds itself alive 
 
 1 Princeton Review, Otober, 1841. 2 Christian Examiner, May, 1841. 
 
110 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 in yonder. Pleasures of Virtue, Progress of the Species, Black 
 Emancipation, New Tariff, Eclecticism, Locofocoism, Ghost of Im 
 proved Socinianism ; these, with many other ghosts and substances, 
 are squeaking, jabbering, according to their capabilities, round this 
 man. To one man among the sixteen millions their jabber is all 
 unmusical. The silent voices of the stars above and of the green 
 earth beneath are profitable to him, tell him gradually that these 
 others are but ghosts, which will shortly have to vanish ; that the 
 Life-Fountain these proceed out of does not vanish. The words of 
 such a man what words he finds good to speak are worth 
 attending to. By degrees a small circle of living souls eager to 
 hear is gathered. The silence of this man has to become speech. 
 May this too, in its due season, prosper for him 1 Emerson has 
 gone to lecture various times to special audiences in Boston, and 
 occasionally elsewhere. Three of these lectures, already printed, 
 are known to some here, as is the little pamphlet called Nature, of 
 somewhat earlier date. It may be said, a great meaning lies in 
 these pieces, which as yet finds no adequate expression for itself. 
 A noteworthy though very unattractive work, moreover, is that new 
 periodical they c&ll~The Dial, in which he occasionally writes ; Avhich 
 appears, indeed, generally to be imbued with his way of thinking, 
 and to proceed from the circle that learns of him. This present 
 little volume of Essays, printed in Boston a few months ago, is 
 Emerson s first book, an unpretending little book, composed, 
 probably, in good part from mere lectures which already lay written. 
 It affords us, on several sides, in such manner as it can, a direct 
 glimpse into the man and that spiritual world of his. 
 
 " Emerson, I understand, was bred to theology ; of which pri 
 mary bent, his latest way of thought still bears traces, In a very 
 enigmatic way we hear much of the universal soul of the, etc. : 
 flickering like bright bodiless northern streamers, notions and 
 half-notions of a metaphysic, theosophic kind, are seldom long 
 wanting in these Essays. I do not advise the British public to 
 trouble itself much with all that; still less to take offense at it. 
 Whether this Emerson be a Pantheist/ or what kind of theist or 
 ist he may be, can perhaps as well remain undecided. If he prove 
 a devout-minded, veritable, and original man, this for the present 
 will suffice. I sis and isms arc rather gi owing a weariness, Such a 
 man does not readily range himself under isms. A man to tvhom 
 the open secret of the universe is no longer a closed one, what 
 can his speech of it be in these days ? All" human speech in the 
 best days, all human thought that can or could articulate itself in 
 reference to such things, what is it but the eager stammering and 
 struggling as of a wondering infant, in view of the Unnamable? 
 That this little book has no system/ and points or stretches far 
 beyond all systems, is one of its merits. We will call it the solil 
 oquy of a true soul, alone under the stars, in this day. . . . 
 
 " For the rest, what degree of mere literary talent lies in these 
 utterances is but a secondary question which every reader may 
 gradually answer for himself. W T hat Emerson s talent is, we will 
 
LECTURES AND ESSAYS. Ill 
 
 not altogether estimate by this book. The utterance is abrupt, 
 fitful; the great idea, not yet embodied, struggles towards an em 
 bodiment. Yet everywhere there is the true heart of a man, which 
 is the parent of all talent, which without much talent can not 
 exist. A breath as from the green country, all the w T elcomer that 
 it is TVew-England country, meets us wholesomely everywhere in 
 these Essays : the authentic green earth is there, with her moun 
 tains, rivers ; with her mills and farms. Sharp gleams of insight 
 arrest us by their pure intellectuality ; here and there, in heroic 
 rusticity, a tone of mpdest manfulness, of mild invincibility, low- 
 voiced but lion-strong, makes us, too, thrill with a noble pride. 
 Talent ? Such ideas as dwell in this man, how can they ever speak 
 themselves with enough of talent? The talent is not the chief 
 question here. The idea, that is the chief question." 
 
 In a French journal, 1 "Daniel Stern " says the book 
 first received mention in Paris by Philarete Chasles in 
 an article on the literary tendencies of America ; and 
 later it was cited in the lecture-room by a foreign poet, 
 Micklewicz. When she inquired for it she was obliged 
 to send to London ; and, after reading it, says, " It be 
 comes difficult to explain so total an ignorance in respect 
 to so wonderful an intellect, so attractive a moralist, as 
 Emerson ; but it is understood upon reflecting that he 
 lives careless of glory, far from the world." She says 
 he is better than a philosopher or moralist, " a man of a 
 superior nature, who has the courage and wisdom to [ 
 think and act in conformity with his nature." His 
 writings "bear the undeniable impress of a virile and 
 natural greatness." " The singular charm of the essays 
 is, that we hold him accountable for nothing, because 
 he pretends to nothing. He draws you after him with 
 irresistible bonhomie. There is no difficulty in following 
 him, for we breathe a salubrious atmosphere in his work. 
 Nothing offends, not even the discords, because all is 
 resolved and harmonized in the sentiment of a superior 
 truth. The eccentricities do not shock us ; they are 
 not affected eccentricities, but natural, as unsought for, 
 as homogeneous to the mind of Emerson, as certain 
 graceful freaks of vegetation." 
 
 1 Revue Indcpendante for July 25, 1846. Daniel Stern is the pseudo 
 nym for tlio Countess d Agoult, a novelist and historian, whose chief 
 work is a History of the Revolution of 1848 
 
112 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 In 1845 Edgar Quinet published a volume of lectures 
 on Christianity and the French Revolution. One of these 
 was devoted to America and the Reformation, in which 
 he expressed this opinion of Emerson : 
 
 " In this North America, which is pictured to us as so material 
 istic, I find the most ideal writer of our times. Contrast the 
 formulas of German philosophy (too often copied from Alexandria) 
 with the inspiration, the initiative, the moral dan of Emerson. A 
 new philosophy might be expected to come forth from those virgin 
 forests sooner or later; ancl already it begins to raise its head. 
 The author I have just named is proof enough that bold pioneers 
 are at work in America pursuing the quest of truth in the moral 
 w 7 orld. What we announce in Europe from the summit of a ruined 
 past he also announces in the germinating solitude of a world 
 absolutely new. What mean these voices, these spiritual presences, 
 which meet us, by surprise, across the ocean ? Although we have 
 abandoned the past, neither here nor there have we lost ourselves 
 in the labyrinth of a desert island. On the" virgin soil of the new 
 world behold the footsteps of a man, and a man who is moving 
 toward the future by the same road that we are going." 
 
 In the spring of 1842 Emerson suffered a great domes 
 tic loss in the death of his son Waldo, who had already 
 given great promise for the future. This loss he has 
 most expressively described in his " Threnody," one of 
 the most remarkable of all his poems. The first part 
 of this poem, to the line, 
 
 " Born for the future, to the future lost," 
 
 was written immediately after Waldo s death. The 
 remainder was written two years later. Thoreau wrote 
 that "he died as the mist lises from the brook/ He 
 had not even taken root here. Thoreau says, " I was 
 not startled to hear that he was dead ; it seemed 
 thje most, natural event that could happen. His line 
 ( rganization demanded it, and nature yielded its re 
 quest." 1 Margaret Fuller was warmly attached tn the 
 boy, expressing her grief at his 1< ss in one ( f her 
 letters. 
 
 " I am deeply sad at the loss of little Waldo, she wrote, from 
 whom I hoped more than from almost any living being. I can not 
 
 1 letters, under date of March 2, 1842. 
 
LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 113 
 
 yet reconcile myself to the thought that the sun shines upon the 
 grave of the beautiful blue-eyed boy, and I shall see him no more. 
 
 " Five years he was an angel to us, and I know not that any 
 person was ever more the theme of thought to me. As I \valk the 
 streets they swarm with apparently worthless lives ; and the ques 
 tion will rise, why he, why just he, who bore within himself the 
 golden future/ must be torn away ? His father will meet him again : 
 but to me he seems lost, and yet that is weakness. I must meet 
 that which he represented, since I so. truly loved it. He was the 
 .only child I ever saw that I sometimes wished I could have called 
 mine. 
 
 " I loved him more than any child I ever knew, as he was of 
 nature more fair and noble. You would be surprised to know how 
 dear he was to my imagination. I saw him but little, and it was 
 well ; for it is unwise to bind the heart where there is 110 claim. 
 But it is all gone, and is another of the lessons brought by each 
 year, that we are to expect suggestions only, and not fulfillments, 
 from each form of beauty, and to regard them merely as Angels of 
 The Beauty." l 
 
 In 1843 Emerson edited Carlyle s Past and Present. 
 Aug. 1, 1844, he gave an address, in Concord, on the 
 anniversary of West-India Emancipation. On this 
 occasion Thoreau rang the church-bell to call the peo 
 ple together, having previously gone to the houses to 
 notify them of the address. The same year the second 
 series of Essays appeared, and was at once reprinted 
 in England, with a short preface by Carlyle. This 
 volume was better received than the first one. Hedge 
 praised it in The Christian Examiner, and saw little in 
 the essays to condemn, though not satisfied with their 
 attitude towards Christ. They " are destined," he said, 
 " to carry far into coming time their lofty cheer and 
 spirit-stirring notes of courage and of hope. We dare 
 to predict for them a devotion coetaiieous with the lan 
 guage in which they are composed. So long as there 
 are lovers of fine discourse and generous sentiment in 
 the world, they will find their own." In The Democratic 
 Review they were written of with great enthusiasm, and 
 with a full appreciation of Emerson s ideas. The critic 
 could not find in the whole range of literature another 
 mind that overlooks the world from a point of view so 
 high and commanding ; that arrives so surely, by an 
 
 1 Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 62. 
 
114 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 induction so rapid and unerring, at the last results 
 from the speculative reason. In. the first volume Emer 
 son gave expression to his philosophical views on the 
 highest themes of history, life, and religion ; indeed, it is 
 the book of his philosophy. The second series deals 
 with the themes suggested by morals, art, politics, and 
 poetry, applying to them the same philosophical spirit 
 and ideas. 
 
 His Poems were published in 1847, including many 
 which had appeared in The Dial. They gave a still 
 ampler expression to his philosophy, many of them 
 being saturated with his spiritual ideas. They seemed 
 obscure to the public, however, because so filled with 
 the results of his oriental studies. Bowen declared 
 "this volume of professed poetry contained the most 
 prosaic and unintelligible stuff that it had ever been 
 his fortune to encounter." 1 Bartol criticised very 
 sharply his religious views, especially concerning Christ, 
 in a notice of the Poems, but said he knew of no 
 poetic compositions "that surpass his in their charac 
 teristic excellence." " We know," he said, " of nothing 
 in the whole range of modern writers superior in origi 
 nal merit to his productions." Here was more religious 
 inspiration than had entered into more than a very few 
 modern volumes of poetry, with the fervor and power 
 of the old prophets. There was, also, that rich fullness 
 of the best of the mystics, when they most truly rise into 
 the height of spiritual attainment. These two tenden 
 cies were wonderfully combined in some of the poems, 
 making them unique in modern poetry. Such a volume, 
 however, could not soon grow into popular favor, arid 
 perhaps can never have more than a limited circle of 
 admirers. It is a book for poets and thinkers more 
 than for the people ; yet some of these poems will ever 
 remain the admiration of all lovers of nature and of 
 moral inspiration. Their tone is pure, their purpose 
 of the highest. The muses spoke in these poems ; they 
 were never courted, or used for secondary purposes. 
 They came in answer to some personal experience or 
 
 1 North American Review, April, 1847. 
 
LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 115 
 
 burning thought, and hence they are full of the life of 
 the writer. 
 
 Steadily as Emerson s reputation grew at home during 
 this period, it had even a wider expression in England, 
 and grew more rapidly. The way had been prepared 
 there by others ; and he entered into the labors of Col 
 eridge, Wordsworth, and Carlyle. At home he was 
 compelled to create an audience, and to educate his 
 readers to the appreciation of his thought. Few here 
 cared for philosophy ; and but a limited circle had been 
 led, either by English or German books, beyond the old 
 lines of religious thought. 
 
 The fame of his lectures having reached England, and 
 his essays having been widely read through cheap edi 
 tions, a demand was made for hearing him face to face. 
 A series of mechanics institutes invited him to -read 
 lectures before them. There came also a promise of a 
 wide hearing elsewhere ; and so he went to England in 
 October, 1847. 
 
 He gave in many places a course of lectures on 
 Representative Men. In London he delivered a special 
 course on The Mind and Manners of the Nineteenth 
 Century. Other subjects of his lectures were, The 
 Superlative in Manners and Literature, Domestic Life, 
 and Reading. Those on the nineteenth century were 
 delivered in the Portman-square Literary and Scientific 
 Institution. The subjects were, The Powers and Laws 
 of Thought, The Relations of Intellect to Natural Sci 
 ence, Tendencies and Duties of Men of Thought, 
 Politics and Socialism, Poetry and Eloquence, Natural 
 Aristocracy. Before the delivery of this course he spent 
 some weeks in Paris in their preparation. Among his 
 hearers were Carlyle, Lady Byron, Forster, Mrs. Cowden 
 Clarke, and numerous men of letters, critics, members 
 of Parliament, and noblemen. In Jerrold s Newspaper 
 was printed the following account of these lectures : 
 
 " Precisely at four o clock the lecturer glided in, and suddenly 
 appeared^ at the reading-desk. Tall, thin, his features aquiline, 
 his eye piercing and fixed ; the effect, as he stood quietly before 
 his audience, was at first somewhat startling, and then nobly ini 
 
116 EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 pressive. Having placed his manuscript on the desk with nervous 
 rapidity, and paused, the lecturer then quickly, and, as it were, with 
 a flash of action, turned over the first leaf, whispering at the same 
 time, "Gentlemen and ladies" The initial sentences were next 
 pronounced in a low tone, a few words at a time, hesitatingly, as if 
 then extemporaneously meditated, and not, as they really were, 
 premeditated and fore written. Time was thus given for the audi 
 ence to meditate them too. Meanwhile the meaning, as it were, 
 was dragged from under the veil and covering of the expression, 
 and ever and anon a particular phrase wa ; so emphatically italici/ed 
 as to command attention. There was, however, nothing like ac 
 quired elocution, no regular intonation, in fact, none of the usual 
 oratorical artifices, but for the most part a shapeless delivery (only 
 varied bv certain nervous twitches and angular movements of the 
 hand aad arms, curious to see and even smile at), and calling for 
 much co-operation on the part of the auditor to help out its short 
 comings. Along with all this, there was an eminent bonhomie, ear 
 nestness, and sincerity, which bespoke sympathy and respect, nay, 
 more, secured veneration." 
 
 He lectured many times in Scotland, where he was 
 received as cordially as in England. His lecturing there 
 was described as follows by one who heard him many 
 times : l 
 
 " A lecturer, in the common sense of the term, he is not : call 
 him rather a public monologist, talking rather to himself than to 
 his audience ; and what a quiet, cairn, commanding conversation it 
 is ! It is not the seraph or burning one you see ; it is the naked 
 cherubic reason thinking aloud before you. lie reads his lectures 
 without excitement, without energy, scarcely even with emphasis, 
 as if to try what can be affected by the pure, unaided momen 
 tum of thought. It is a soul totally unsheathed that you have to 
 do with; and you ask, Is this a spirit s tongue sounding on its 
 way ? so solitary and severe seems its harmony. There is no betrayal 
 of emotion except now and then when a slight tremble in his voice 
 proclaims that ho has arrived at some spot of thought to him pecu 
 liarly sacred or dear. There is 110 emphasis often but what is given 
 by the eye, and this is felt only by those who see him on the side- 
 view. Neither standing behind him nor before, can we form any 
 conception of the rapt, living flash which breaks forth athwart the 
 spectator. IIis_elojpiiicfiJsJJuis_ol that .high kind which produces 
 great effects at small expenditure of means, and without any effort 
 or turbulence ; still and strong as gravitation, it fixes, subdues, and 
 turns us round." 
 
 At the lectures in Manchester he spoke to large audi 
 ences. In London he had a thousand hearers to his 
 
 1 George Gilfillan, first Gallery of Literary Portraits. 
 
LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 117 
 
 lecture on Montaigne, and was greeted with loud ap 
 plause on entering the lecture-room. He was every 
 where received in the same manner, with enthusiasm, 
 full houses, and an awakened interest in culture. His 
 lectures proved to be attractive and popular, and his 
 trip was in every way a successful one. He spent some 
 time with Carlyle 1 in his own house ; and he saw Rogers, 
 Hallam, Macaulay, Milman, Barry Cornwall, Dickens, 
 Thackeray, Tennyson, Leigh Hunt, Helps, Clough, 
 Arnold, Faraday, Lyell, Carpenter, Mrs. Jameson, and 
 Mrs. Somerville. He was welcomed in many private 
 houses, and had a good opportunity of becoming ac 
 quainted with the English people. Pie also visited 
 Wordsworth and Miss Martineau at Rydal Mount. In 
 a letter written previous to his visit to her, Miss Mar 
 tineau said, " Emerson is engaged (lecturing) deep at 
 present, but hopes to come by and by. He is free, if 
 any man is." After his visit a few months later, she 
 wrote, " Mr. Emerson did come. He spent a few days 
 in February with me ; and, unfavorable as the weather 
 was for seeing the district, the fells and meadows 
 being in their dullest hay-color instead of green, he 
 saw, in rides with a neighbor and myself, some of the 
 most striking features in the nearer scenery. I remem 
 ber bringing him, one early morning, the first green 
 spray of the wild currant, from a warm nook. It was 
 a great pleasure to me to have for my guest one of the 
 most honored of my American hosts, and to find him 
 as full as ever of the sincerity and serenity which had 
 inspired me with so cordial a reverence twelve years 
 before." 2 He met Arthur Hugh Clough at Oxford 
 and in Paris, and became much interested in that sin 
 gularly original genius. Mrs. Clough, in her biography 
 of her husband, says his friendship with Emerson " was 
 then and afterwards very valuable to him." Crabbe 
 
 1 His impressions of Carlyle at this time, as expressed in his letters 
 written home, were embodied in a paper read before the Massachusetts 
 Historical Society in February, 1881, and printed in the Transactions of 
 that society. It was also printed in Scribner s Monthly for May, 18S1, 
 p. 89. 
 
 2 Autobiography, vol. i. p. 549. 
 
118 EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 Robinson heard Emerson s lecture on the Laws of 
 Thought, which he says was " one of those rhapsodical 
 exercises, like Coleridge s in his Table Talk, and Car- 
 lyle in his Lectures, winch leave a dreamy sense of 
 pleasure not easy to analyze or render any account of." 
 The first time Robinson met him, he became very much 
 interested. In bis Diary he says, 
 
 " It was with a feeling of predetermined dislike that I had the 
 curiosity to look at Emerson at Lord Northampton s, a fortnight 
 ago ; when, in an instant, all my dislike vanished. lie has one of 
 the most interesting countenances I ever beheld, a combination 
 of intelligence and sweetness that quite disarmed me." 
 
 He heard Emerson s lecture on Domestic Life, and 
 says "his picture of childhood was one of his most 
 successful sketches. I enjoyed the lecture, he says, 
 which was, I dare say, the most liberal ever heard in 
 Exeter Hall." 1 
 
 After his return from Europe, Emerson lectured on 
 the characteristics of the English people ; and these 
 lectures were received with marked interest and ap 
 proval. In 1849 his miscellaneous addresses and lec 
 tures, together with Nature, were collected into a vol 
 ume, under the title of Miscellanies. The lectures he 
 had delivered extensively in England, as well as at home, 
 were in 1850 published as Representative Men. The 
 Literary !ForZc^expressed of this volume a very common 
 opinion entertained by those who read it at first, when 
 it said this was less visionary and metaphysical than 
 his other books, with more of common sense, and pos 
 sessed of a kind of dramatic power. He is an adept at 
 intellectual characterization, this reviewer said, but not 
 able rightly to determine the ethical value of human 
 characters. His optimistic doctrine, it is predicted, will 
 cause moral torpidity. A writer in the New Englander 
 found it " purely ridiculous for any one to laboriously 
 write out, and gravely read to large assemblies, such 
 gratuitous absurdities." A large part of what he had 
 written, according to this critic, "must be little else 
 
 1 Diary of Henry Crabbe Robinson, vol. ii. pp. 371. 372. 
 
LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 119 
 
 than a caricature of himself ; " while "it is to be regretted 
 that one so little given to grossness and the reckless 
 malignity of vulgar skepticism, should yet be led by 
 mere caprice to affirm at times many of its most mon 
 strous and pernicious maxims." His theory of history 
 and of the influence of the great man was developed in 
 this volume. The Representative men selected, and the 
 manner of portraying their influence on mankind, shows 
 the strong individuality of Emerson s character. He 
 writes in a calmer, less passionate manner than Carlyle 
 had done in his portraitures of the world s heroes. He 
 selects a higher range of men for his subjects, and he is 
 less devoted to their praises. Emerson sees the faults 
 of the men of whom he writes, analyzes patiently their 
 characters, and shows wherein their influence was hurt 
 ful. His unqualified, acceptance of Plato and Shaks- 
 pere is as marked as is his criticism of Goethe, Napoleon, 
 and Swedenborg. His, personal interest in Swedenborg 
 and Montaigne led him to select them as the representa 
 tive mystic and skeptic. His debt to the Swedish seer 
 may well be noted, but his points of wide divergence 
 should not be overlooked. Swedenborg knew too much 
 of science and theology, and was too much dominated 
 by them in his thinking, to be a genuine mystic. His 
 artificiality turned Emerson away from him, and made 
 men of inferior genius more acceptable, because more 
 natural and inspiring. 
 
 In the Revue des Deux Mondes Emile Montegut wrote 
 of Emerson as an old acquaintance, who had been 
 studied with love for his hatred of the vulgar and his 
 affection for individual greatness ; while the new book 
 received a very full and just criticism. He is said to 
 have a tendency both to mysticism arid skepticism ; but 
 his mysticism gives faith in the moral law, and trust 
 that it is only the forms of things which change. 
 
 "It is this confidence in the supreme ideal, in the eternal order 
 of the world, and faith in the stability and duration of the invisi 
 ble, which i^ predominant in Emerson s new book. Emerson is 
 full of calmness and tranquillity ; he is almost naif in his indiffer 
 ence, and expresses his ideas in 1848 as he would have expressed 
 
120 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 them in 1846, with the same imperturbable confidence. Revolu" IOT-S 
 and re-actions intimidate him not at all, and do not draw him in 
 the least from his convictions. In nothing- does he oiler sacrifice 
 to the spirit of the moment. He speaks of Swedenborg and PJato 
 at the moment. when the whole universe has ears only for Proudhon 
 and Louis Blanc. Ho prr.i. e,; the skepticism of Montaigne as if he 
 did not live in a century v/hich boasts of having the most absolute 
 philosophies. He praise ; I iontaraie for his prudence and reserve 
 in the midst of the most headstrong ceulury. \\ IK-JI the minds of 
 men are more stultified by a:i cxcasj c/i philosophic systems than 
 *- -everjbeforc. All seems ailbj indiiTcrent to\him. However, from 
 time a vein of gentle irony shows beneath these metaphysi 
 cal dissertations, and a tolerant and polished skepticism warns the 
 reader not to accept the author too implicitly." Montegut prefers 
 Carlyle as a teacher of hero worship. lie says the great man, as 
 Emerson depicts him, is the great man in the antique sense, and is 
 the man of genius in the modern sense. He is the " pagan par excel 
 lence, the man who holds his grace from nature. For CarJyle, the 
 great man is he who has received his mission from heaven, who must 
 express it to others with difficulty, and obtain its triumph at his 
 own peril." 
 
 " Emerson devotes himself especially to men of genius, and loves 
 to contemplate in them the different and the eminent types of 
 humanity, the men who represent most powerfully the different 
 intellectual forces of the human mind. He admires the skeptic 
 Montaigne not less than the mystic Swedenborg. He leans to the 
 side neither of the first nor of the latter. For him the eminent 
 and diverse faculties of these men are the weights which keep in 
 equilibrium the balance of the mind. He loves to .seek for the 
 secret point of affinity in which these different gifts would combine 
 to form the unity of the human mind ; he loves to reflect on the 
 actions and re-actions of thought, which, nevertheless, do not alter 
 at all the original identity of the soul and of life." x 
 
 In 1852 Kossuth made a tour through the United 
 States, and was everywhere warmly welcomed. May 
 11 he visited Concord. Emerson made an address of 
 welcome, in which lie said, 
 
 " Sir, we have watched with attention your progress through the 
 land, the varying feeling with which you have been received, and 
 the unvarying tone and countenance which you have maintained. 
 We wish to discriminate in our regard. We wish to reserve our 
 honor for actions of the. noblest strain. We please ourselves that 
 in you we meet one whose temper was long since tried in the fire, 
 and made equal to all events ; a man so truly in love with the 
 greatest future that he can not be diverted to any less. 
 
 1 In an article on Hero Worship. Carlyle ami Emerson, Aug. 15, 
 1850. 
 
LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 121 
 
 "It is our republican doctrine, too, that the wide variety of 
 opinions is an advantage. I believe I may say of the people of 
 this country, at large, that their sympathy is more worth, because 
 it stands the test of party. It is not a blind wave ; it is the living 
 soul contending with living souls. It is, in every expression, an 
 tagonized. No opinion will pass, "but must stand the tug of war. 
 As you see, the love you win is worth something ; for it has been 
 argued through ; its foundation searched ; it has proved sound and 
 whole ; it may be avowed ; it will last ; and it will draw all opinion 
 to itself. 
 
 " We have seen, with great pleasure, that there is nothing acci 
 dental in your attitude. We have seen that you are organically in 
 that cause you plead: The man of freedom, you are also the man 
 of fate. You do not elect, but you are elected by God and your 
 genius to your task. We do not, therefore, affect to thank you. 
 We only see in you the angel of freedom, crossing sea and land ; 
 crossing parties, nationalities, private interests, and self-esteems ; 
 dividing populations where you go, and drawing to your part only 
 the good. We are afraid you are growing popular, sir ; you may 
 be called to the dangers of prosperity. But hitherto you have had, 
 in all countries and in all parties, only the men of heart. I do 
 not know but you will have the million yet. Then, may your 
 strength be equal to your day! But remember, sir, that every 
 thing great and excellent in the world is in minorities. 
 
 " Far be from us, sir, any tone of patronage ; we ought rather 
 to ask yours. We know the austere condition of liberty, that it 
 must be re-conquered over and over again ; yea, day by day ; that it 
 is a state of war ; that it is always slipping from those who boast 
 it, to those who fight for it, and you, the foremost soldier of free 
 dom in this age, it is for us to crave your judgment. Who are we 
 that we should dictate to you? 
 
 " You have won your own. We only affirm it. This country of 
 workingrnen greets in you a worker. This republic greets in you 
 a republican. You may well sit a doctor in the college of liberty. 
 You have achieved your right to interpret our Washington. And 
 I speak the sense, not only of every generous American, but the 
 law of mind, when I say, that it is not those who live idly in the 
 city called after his name, but those who, all over the world, think 
 and act like him, who can claim to explain the sentiment of Wash 
 ington." 
 
 Kossuth was welcomed in Concord with many dem 
 onstrations, a dinner, speeches in the town-hall, and a 
 procession. In the long reply he made to Emerson s 
 address were these words : 
 
 " Your honored name is Emerson ; and Emerson was the name 
 c -1 the man who, in a minister of the gospel, turned out with his 
 people on the 19th of April of eternal memory, when the alarm- 
 
122 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 bell was first rung. The words of an Emerson administered coun 
 sel and the comfort of religion to the distressed then, and the words 
 of an Emerson now speak the comfort of philosophy to the cause 
 of oppressed liberty. I take hold of that augury. Religion and 
 philosophy, you blessed twins, upon you I rely with my hopes of 
 America. Religion, the philosophy of the heart, will make the 
 Americans generous ; and philosophy, the religion of the mind, 
 will make the Americans wise ; and all I claim is a generous wis 
 dom and a wise generosity." 
 
 Emerson joined with W. H. Channing and J. F. Clarke 
 in writing the Memoirs of Margaret Fuller, which ap 
 peared in 1852. He had very reluctantly made her 
 acquaintance, distrusting her sharp personality, and 
 having a horror of those " intense times " she was re 
 ported to have occasionally. "I remember," he says, 
 " that she made me laugh more than I liked ; for I was 
 at that time an eager student of ethics, and had tasted 
 the sweets of solitude and stoicism, and I found some 
 thing profane in the hours of -amusing gossip into which 
 she drew me ; and when I returned to my library had 
 much to think of the crackling of thorns under a pot." 
 He is writing of their first visit, in July, 1836 ; but they 
 soon became friends, though they never found full sym 
 pathy in each other. She writes that he was not fully 
 responsive to her outbursts of sentiment, was cold and 
 unapproachable ; while he found in her too much of the 
 sibyl, and did not enjoy " the presence of a rather moun 
 tainous me." "She soon became," he says, "an estab 
 lished friend and frequent inmate of our house, and 
 continued thenceforward for years to come once in three 
 or four months to spend a week or a fortnight with us. 
 She adopted all the people and all the interests she found 
 here. l Your people shall be my people, and yonder 
 darling boy I shall cherish as my own. Her ready sym 
 pathies endeared her to my wile and my mother, each 
 of whom highly esteemed her good sense and sincerity. 
 She suited each and all." HJ introduced her to the 
 old English writers, and made her "acquainted with 
 Chaucer, with Ben Jonson, with Herbert, Chapman, 
 Ford, Beaumont and Fletcher, with Bacon, and Sir 
 Thomas Browne. I was seven years her senior," he says, 
 
LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 123 
 
 " and had the habit of idle reading in old English books ; 
 and, though not much versed, yet quite enough to give 
 me the right to lead her." Of her peculiar gifts he 
 says, 
 
 " She was an active, inspiring companion and correspondent ; 
 and all the, art, the thought, and the nobleness in New England 
 seemed at that moment related to her, and she to it. She was 
 everywhere a welcome guest. The houses of her friends in town 
 and country were open to her, and every hospitable attention eagerly 
 offered. Her arrival was a holiday, and so was her abode. She 
 stayed a few days, often a week, more seldom a month ; and all 
 tasks that could be suspended were put aside to catch the favorable 
 hour, in walking, riding, or boating, to talk with this joyful guest, 
 who brought wit, anecdotes, love-stories, tragedies, oracles with her, 
 and, with her broad web of relations to so many friends, seemed 
 like the queen of some parliament of love, who carried the key to 
 all confidences, and to whom every question had been finally re 
 ferred." 
 
 Emerson prepared that portion of the Memoirs relat 
 ing to Margaret s conversations in Boston, one of the 
 most unique passages in the history of American thought 
 and literature. He also wrote of her life in Concord 
 and Boston, which was the most interesting and sug 
 gestive period of her career. He wrote with enthusiasm, 
 adding much to the value of one of the most interesting 
 of biographies. In her aspirations after a higher life 
 for woman he fully shared, entering earnestly into sym 
 pathy with all enterprises having that object in view. 
 In 1856, in an address before the Woman s Rights Con 
 vention, though criticising the efLrt for mere political 
 influence, he yet said that it is for wrmen, not men, to 
 determine if women wish an equal share in affairs. " If 
 we refuse them a vote," lie said, u we should refuse to 
 tax them." He found this uprising of new opinion on 
 the subject of Avornan s duties and privileges a wonder 
 ful fact, as showing the spontaneous sense of the hour ; 
 for the aspiration of this century, he yaid, will be the 
 code of the next. A little later, i:i 1802, when a woman s 
 journal was proposed to be published in Boston, he wrote 
 for it a short essay, 1 that fully defines his position on this 
 subject. 
 
 1 As the proposed journal was not started, the essay remained unpub 
 lished until it appeared in the Woman s Journal of March 26, 1881. 
 
124 RALPH WALDO EMERSOX. 
 
 " It is very cheap wit, he says, that finds it so droll that a 
 woman should vote. Educate and refine society to the highest 
 point, bring together a cultivated society of both sexes in a draw 
 ing-room to consult and decide by voices in a question of taste or 
 a question of right, and is there any absurdity or any practical 
 difficulty in obtaining 1 their authentic opinions? If not, there need 
 be none in a hundred companies if you educate them and accustom 
 them to judge. And for the elTect of it, I can say for one, that 
 certainly all my points would be sooner carried in the state if women 
 voted. 
 
 " On the questions that are important : whether the government 
 shall be in one person, or whether representative, or whether demo 
 cratic ; whether men shall be holden in bondage, or shall be roasted 
 alive and eaten as in Typee, or hunted with bloodhounds as in this 
 country, shall be hanged for stealing, or hanged at all ; whether the 
 unlimited sale of cheap liquors shall be allowed ; they would give, 
 I suppose, as intelligent a vote as the Irish voters of Boston, New 
 York, and Philadelphia. . . . 
 
 " Here are two or three objections : first, want of practical wis 
 dom ; second, a too purely ideal view; third, danger of contamina 
 tion. 
 
 " For their want of intimate knowledge of affairs, I do not think 
 this should disqualify them from voting at any town-meeting which 
 I have ever attended. I could heartily wish the objection were 
 sound. But if any man Will take the trouble to see how our people 
 vote, how many gentlemen are willing to take on themselves the 
 trouble of thinking and determining for you, and, standing at the 
 doors of the polls, give every innocent citizen his ticket as he comes 
 in, informing him that this is the vote of his party ; and the inno 
 cent citizen, without further demur, carries it to the ballot-box ; I 
 can not but think that most women might vote as wisely." 
 
 " For the other point, of their not knowing the world, and aim 
 ing at abstract right without allowance for circumstances, that is 
 not a disqualification, but a qualification. Human society is made 
 up of partialities. Each citizen has an interest and view of his 
 own, which, if followed out to the extreme, would leave no room 
 for any other citizen. One man is timid, and another rash; one 
 would change nothing, and the other is pleased with nothing; one 
 wishes schools, another, armies; one, gunboats, another, public 
 gardens. Bring all these biases together, and something is done in 
 favor of them all. Every one i;j a hali-vota ; but the next elector 
 behind him brings the other or corresponding half in his hand. A 
 reasonable result is had. Xow, there is no lack, I am sure, of the 
 expediency, or of the interest of trade, or of imperative class 
 interests being neglected. There is no lack of votes representing 
 the physical wants ; and if in your city the uneducated emigrant- 
 vote numbers thousands, representing a brutal ignorance ai d mere 
 physical wants, it is to be corrected by an educated and religious 
 vote representing the desires of honest and refined persons. Jf the 
 wants, the passions, the vices, are allowed a full vote, through the 
 
LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 125 
 
 hands of a half-brutal, intemperate population, I think it but fair 
 that the virtues, the aspirations, should be allowed a full vote as an 
 offset, through the purest of the people. As for the unsexing and 
 contamination, that only accuses our existing politics, shows how 
 barbarous we are, that our policies are so crooked, made up of 
 things not to be spoken, to be understood only by wink and nudge ; 
 this man is to be coaxed, and that man to be bought, and that 
 other to be duped. . . . 
 
 " I do not think it yet appears that women wish this equal share 
 in public affairs. But it is they, and not we, that are to determine 
 it. Let the laws be purged of every barbarous remainder, every 
 barbarous impediment to women. Let the public donations for 
 education be equally shared by them. Let them enter a school as 
 freely as a church. Let them have and hold and give their prop 
 erty as men do theirs, and in a few years, it will easily appear 
 whether they wish a voice in making the laws that are to govern 
 them. If you do refuse them a vote, you will also refuse to tax 
 them, according to our Teutonic principles, no representation, 
 no tax. . . . 
 
 " The new movement is a tide shared by the spirits of men and 
 women. You may proceed on the faith that whatever the woman s 
 heart is prompted to desire, the man s mind is simultaneously 
 prompted to accomplish." 
 
 In 1856 his English Traits was published, and was 
 well received on both sides of the Atlantic. It is a fine 
 analysis of the leading characteristics of a great nation, 
 remarkable for its subtle discriminations and for its 
 clear insight into national tendencies. Hawthorne and 
 Taine have written valuable and interesting books 
 about England ; but they are descriptive and sketchy, 
 not to be compared with English Traits as studies of 
 the nation itself. They describe locations and phases 
 of society; they do not enter upon an analysis of 
 the national life, or describe the qualities which have 
 made that nation one of the greatest in modern times. 
 Tocqueville s Democracy in America is a discussion of 
 the Constitution of the United States and its workings ; 
 English Traits describes a people. Miss Martineau s 
 first book about the United States comes nearer than 
 any other to Emerson s, and yet it partakes much more 
 of the natuTe of a book of travels. She wrote with a 
 much more limited purpose, and she gave greater at 
 tention to special phases of national character. The 
 
126 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 merits of English Traits have obtained it the recogni 
 tion of translation into several of the leading European 
 languages. 
 
 In March, 1856, he gave a course of lectures in Free 
 man-place Chapel, Boston. The subjects were English 
 Civilization, France, Signs of the Times, Beauty, The 
 Poet, The Scholar. The lecture on France was greatly 
 admired by those who heard it, and was thought to be 
 quite equal to English Traits. He has always refused 
 to print it, and has not repeated it of late years. 
 Another lecture of this period was one on the Anglo- 
 American Race, delivered in New York in 1855. It 
 was a subtle analysis of the American character, similar 
 to those of the English and French made at the same 
 time. 
 
 Every thing in America, he said, proceeds at a rapid rate ; the 
 next moment eats the last. Whatever we do, suffer, or propose, is 
 for the immediate entertainment of the company. We have a 
 newspaper published every hour through the day, and our whole 
 existence and performance slides into it. The leading features of 
 the Americans are best seen at the West, where the people have 
 free play. If you would see the American, it is said you must 
 cross the Alleghanies. Rashness marks every thing there. The 
 men can not be depended on there, nor their works. Every thing 
 wears a new aspect. The men have not shed their canine teeth. 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon race has always been distinguished for its 
 devotion to politics. In this country a prodigious stride has been 
 taken through universal suffrage. The fact that everybody is eli 
 gible exasperates the discussion. Practically, the result has been 
 that men of the middle class have been elected, and by no means 
 men of the first class ; and this practice has gained much of late. 
 It is certainly desirable that the best and wisest men should be 
 trusted with the helm of power. 
 
 The American is more intellectual than the Englishman ; he has 
 chambers opened in his mind which the Englishman has not. The 
 American is a pushing, versatile, victorious race, with a wonderful 
 power of absorption. Here is a grave interest, the fortune of a 
 quarter of the world, and of a race as important as any in it. 
 Everybody here works every day and night, and nobody knows 
 whither we are drifting, or can chant the destiny of America. 
 But two facts appear ; first, in the activity of the people up to this 
 time there is a certain fatalism. The people being associated with 
 pine, chestnut, iron, coal, and ice, they have wrought in these, 
 and they have done the best they could. In short, they have been 
 the river-hand and the sea-hand. On the coast they have fol- 
 
LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 127 
 
 lowed the sea; in the West they have followed the river. But 
 the verdict of history is, that they have not kept the promise of 
 their founders. They have shown no enlarged policy. A liberal 
 measure has no chance. On education, temperance, copyright, and 
 on the claims of injured parties, the Anglo- American usually gives 
 a selfish verdict. What can be worse than our legislation on 
 slavery ? If there be any worse, be sure we shall find it out, and 
 make that law. The tone of the press is not lower on slavery than 
 on every other subject. Criminal on that, it is ready to be crimi 
 nal on every other. 
 
 Our statesmen are not men of ideas. They represent property 
 rather than principle. They follow the sea or the river. But we 
 have much individualism ; and in this fact, as well as that we have 
 a highly intellectual organization, and can see and feel moral dis 
 tinctions, and that on such an organization sooner or later truth 
 must tell, and to such ears speak, is our hope. And as we have 
 been subject to fate in corn and cotton, yet there is fate in thought 
 also ; so that the largest thought and widest love is born with vic 
 tory on its head, and must prevail. 1 
 
 The lecture on the Natural Method of Intellectual 
 Philosophy, delivered at this time, contained a very fully 
 developed account of his own philosophical views. In 
 1852 he lectured on Natural Aristocracy. The essay on 
 Poetry in Letters and Social Aims was read at Cambridge 
 in 1854. A number of the university students went in 
 sleighs to Concord, where he was announced to lecture. 
 From some local cause the lecture was postponed. 
 Emerson was worried that they should have had their 
 fifteen miles ride end in a disappointment, took them 
 to his home, entertained them through the evening, and 
 promised to go to Cambridge and lecture for them. He 
 went, and spoke on poetry, having Lowell, Longfellow, 
 and other poets in his audience. The lecture was given 
 in one of the university rooms, and its " effect was elec 
 trical." 2 In 1859 he lectured on Morals, Conversation, 
 Culture, Domestic Life, and Natural Religion. He gave 
 a course in Freeman-place Chapel, Boston, on the Law 
 of Success, Originality, Criticism, Clubs, Manners, and 
 Morals. He attended a Burns festival in Boston this 
 year, Jan. 25, it being the one hundredth anniversary 
 of the poet s birth. Lowell was present, and has said, 
 
 1 From a newspaper report. 2 M. D. Conway ii? Fraser s Magazine. 
 
128 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 that, in the " closely filled speech of his at the Burns 
 centenary dinner, every word seemed to have just dropped 
 down to him from the clouds. He looked far away over 
 the heads of his hearers with a vague kind of expecta 
 tion, as into some private heaven of invention, and the 
 winged period came at last to obey the spell. 4 My 
 dainty Ariel ! he seemed murmuring to himself as he 
 cast down his eyes as if Li deprecation of the frenzy of 
 applause, ai:d caught another sentence from the sibyline 
 leaves that lay befi.re Lira ambushed behind a dish of 
 fruit, and seen only by nearest neighbors. Every sen 
 tence brought down the house as I never saw one brought 
 down before ; and it is not so easy to hit Scotsmen with 
 a sentiment that has no hint of native brogue in it. I 
 watched for it was an interesting study how the 
 quick sympathy ran flashing from face to face down the 
 long tables like an electric spark, thrilling as it went, 
 and then exploded in a thunder of plaudits. I watched 
 till tables and faces vanished ; for I, too, found myself 
 caught up in the common enthusiasm, and my excited 
 fancy set me .under the bema listening to him who ful- 
 mined over Greece." This eloquent and magnetic speech 
 was closed with this testimony to the power of Burns s 
 poetry and the expansiveness of his fame : 
 
 " The memory of Burns, I am afraid heaven and earth have 
 taken too good care of it to leave us any thing to say. The west 
 winds are murmuring it. Open the windows behind you, and 
 hearken for the incoming tide, what the waves say of it. The 
 doves perching always on the eaves of the stone chapel opposite 
 may know something about it. I" very name in broad Scotland 
 keeps his fame bright. The memory of Burns, every man s and 
 boy s and girl s head carry snatches of his .song s, and can say them 
 by heart ; and, what is strangest of all, never learned them from a 
 book, but from mouth to mouth. The wind whispers them, the 
 birds whistle them, the corn, barley, and bulrushes hoarsely rustle 
 them ; nay, the music-boxes at Geneva are framed and toothed to 
 play them, the hand-organs of the Savoyards in all cities repeat 
 them, and the chimes of bells ring them^in the spires. They are 
 the property and the solace of mankind." 
 
 In 1860 The Conduct of Life was published. Its 
 essays, as usual, had been delivered as lectures during 
 
LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 129 
 
 the previous half-dozen years. It contains some of his 
 most practical, as well as some of his most philosophical, 
 essays. It is, as a whole, less mystical than his previous 
 books, and consequently loses some of the finest flavor 
 of his thought. The essays on Fate, Worship, Illusions, 
 and Considerations by the Way are among his very best, 
 however, giving important additions to his philosophic 
 thought. As usual this book received the most unmer 
 ciful treatment from some of the critics. Noah Porter 
 said, in The New Englander, that the writer did not know 
 enough of religion to speak upon it with authority ; and 
 wrote of "the utter shallowness and flippancy of the 
 judgments Emerson expresses concerning Christianity." 
 " Of all the descriptions," this critic says, " we have ever 
 read of the merciless and remorseless absolutism of a 
 universe of impersonal law, this strikes us as the most 
 horrible." The English Saturday Review was even more 
 severe, for it said, 
 
 " He manages to write what the crowds which throng American 
 lecture-rooms appear, for some strange reason, to relish; and he 
 continues to put it in an unintelligible form. By these two feats 
 he secures a popularity which there is no other way of explaining. 
 That an American audience likes to hear the dreariest of all dreary 
 platitudes when they are strung together in what is called an oration, 
 is a fact attested by credible proof, and must be believed like any 
 other strange "circumstance which rests on that authority. That, 
 being in that state of mind, mystical language should please them 
 is what experience would suggest, if, indeed, experience applies to 
 people who like orations. It is inconceivable that Mr. Emerson 
 should have any claims to any higher reputation than this." He 
 is also described as " so commonplace a writer," who " intersperses 
 his dreary platitudes with downright nonsense." 
 
 His previous books had sold very slowly, but twenty- 
 five hundred copies of The Conduct of Life were disposed 
 of in two days after its publication. There were many 
 other tokens of his growing favor. His books were 
 received, both at home and abrcad, with many new signs 
 of approval ; while the circle of his admirers constantly 
 increased! In 1850 Parker wrote of him as "the most 
 original thinker we have produced in America ; a man 
 of wonderful gifts." In 1857 he says in one of his 
 
130 EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 letters, " Emerson has touched the deepest strings on 
 the human heart, and, ten centuries after he is immor 
 tal, will wake the music which he first waked." 
 
 In a carefully discriminating article, which does not 
 spare Emerson s faults, and yet is full of sympathetic 
 admiration, Parker says, 
 
 " He has not uttered a word that irs false to his own mind or con 
 science ; has not suppressed a vrord because he thought it too high 
 for man s comprehension, and therefore dangerous for the repose 
 of men. He never compromises. lie sees the chasm between the 
 ideas which come of man s nature and the institutions which rep 
 resent only his history ; he does not seek to cover up the chasm, 
 which daily grows wider between truth and public opinion, between 
 justice and the state, between Christianity and the church ; he does 
 not seek to fill it up, but he asks men to step over and build insti 
 tutions commensurate with their ideas. He trusts himself, trusts 
 man, and trusts God. He has confidence in all the attributes of 
 Infinity. Hence he is serene ; nothing disturbs the even poise of 
 his character, and he walks erect. Nothing impedes him in his 
 search for the true, the lovely and the good ; 110 private hope, no 
 private fear, no love of wife or child or gold or ease or fame. He 
 never seeks his own reputation; he takes care of his being, and 
 leaves his seeming to take care of itself. Fame may seek him ; he 
 never goes out of his way a single inch for her. 
 
 " He has not written a line which is not conceived in the inter 
 est of mankind. He never writes in the interest of a section, of 
 a party, of a church, of a man, always in the interest of mankind. 
 Hence comes the ennobling influence of his works. Emerson 
 belongs to the "exceptional literature of the times ; and, while his 
 culture joins him to the history of man, his ideas and his whole 
 life enable him to represent also the nature of man, and so tr write 
 for the future. He is one of the rare exceptions amongst our edu 
 cated men, and helps redeem American literature from the charge 
 of imitation, conformity, meanness of aim, and hostility to the 
 powers of mankind. No faithful man is too low for his approval 
 and encouragement ; no faithless man too high and popular for his 
 rebuke." 
 
 This is one of Parker s best critical articles, 1 as well 
 as one of the best papers ever written about Emerson. 
 Parker is especially fascinated with the original and 
 American cast of Emerson s mind; and calls him " the 
 most republican of republicans, the most protestant of 
 
 1 Massachusetts Quarterly Review for 1849, reprinted in Miss Cobbe s 
 edition of his collected works, vol. x. p. 190. 
 
LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 131 
 
 the dissenters." His culture is cosmopolitan, has no 
 varnish about it ; but it has penetrated deep into his 
 consciousness Parker finds he belongs to a very high 
 rank in literature. " He is a very extraordinary man. 
 To no English writer since Milton, can be assigned so 
 high a place ; even Milton himself, great genius though 
 he was, and great architect of beauty, has not added so 
 many thoughts to the treasury of the race ; no, nor been 
 the author of so much loveliness. Emerson is a man of 
 genius such as does not often appear ; such as has never 
 appeared before in America, and but seldom in the 
 world. He learns from all sorts of men ; but no Eng 
 lish writer, we think, is so original." These opinions 
 of Parker s have lost none of their force since they were 
 written, and are far truer now than then ; while they 
 would be accepted by a much larger number of persons. 
 The years since they were written have fully confirmed 
 his high estimate of the genius of Emerson. 
 
132 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 X. 
 
 THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT. 
 
 MERSON early gave his sympathies to the move- 
 Lja&iit against slavery. When no oilier church in 
 Boston was open to the friends of liberty, May and 
 others spoke in his ; and he was even ready to welcome 
 Garrison there. In the Transcendental Club, when 
 others held aloof from sympathy with this movement, 
 he deiended it, and expressed his faith in Garrison. 
 Though i:ot himself inclined to adopt the methods of 
 the radical agitators, he could but feel they were in the 
 right i:i tlici: 1 aims, and that they represented the high 
 est moral sense of the community. HL; tendencies of 
 thought led him in another direction to secure the same 
 ends, but to this great reform he gave such help as he 
 could ; and Ins influence on his times, the real spirit 
 and purpose of the man, are not likely to be understood 
 without a knowledge of his relations to this agitation. 
 He Iiad but little faith in external methods of reform, 
 ai-d dwl iioX-^LiiaJ^nrjLuJb.JlQllld_be done by legislation. 
 Hisjjiith wa.; i-j_the mol>a l an( j spiritual influences which 
 lead Hen out"" of p^oirnjind selfishness,, hut hfi o.onld 
 not feel tlint selfish lie...; was to be opposed with hatred. 
 It wasoecause the life of the American people was low, 
 vulgar, mean, that slavery was possible ; and he thought 
 slavery could or.ly be gotten rid of by raising the moral 
 standard, a::d by a larger appreciation of the human 
 soul. Though little inclined to the ordinary methods 
 of reform, Harriet Martin eau testifies to his early es 
 pousal of the caitoC of the slave, when almost no one in 
 B<;.(o:i wu.; icady to plead in behalf of justice and 
 humanity. In speaking of how prone public men were 
 to shrink from the defense of a new and hated cause, 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT. 1C3 
 
 she says all were not so, but some were eager and glad 
 in this good work. 
 
 " The Emersons, for instance (for the adored Charles Emerson 
 was living then), they were not men to join an association for any 
 object, and least of all for any moral one ; nor were they likely to 
 quit their abstract meditations for a concrete employment on belialf 
 of the negroes. Yet they did that which made me feel that I knew 
 them, through the very cause in which they did not implicate them 
 selves. At the time of the hubbub against me in Boston, Charles 
 Emerson stood alone in a large company in defense of the right 
 of free thought and speech, and declared that he had rather see 
 Boston in ashes than that I or anybody should be debarred in ar;y 
 way from perfectly free speech. His brother Waldo invited me to be 
 his guest in the midst of my unpopularity, and during my virit told 
 me his course about this matter of slavery. He did not see that 
 there was any particular thing for him to do in it then ; but when, in 
 coaches or steamboats or anywhere else, he saw people of co^or ill- 
 used, or heard bad doctrine or sentiment propounded, he did what 
 he could and said what ho thought. Since that elate he has spoken 
 more abundantly and boldly the more critical the times became ; 
 and he is now, and has long been, completely identified with the 
 abolitionists in conviction and sentiment, though it is out of his 
 w T ay to join himself to their organization." 1 
 
 This was in 1835, and ho continued to maintain the 
 same position for many years, His address at Concord 
 in 1844, however, on the anniversary of emancipation 
 in the West Indies, distinctly put him in the c: mpany " 
 of the abolitionists. It was an eloquent and forcible 
 history of the agitation against slavery in England, and 
 of the results of its abolition in the colonies, with a 
 plea, drawn from these facts, for abolition at home. " I 
 might well hesitate," he says at the outset, " coming from 
 other studies, and without the smallest claim to be a 
 special laborer in this work of humanity, to undertake 
 to set this matter before you ; but I shall not apologize 
 for my weakness." u I am heart-sick," he goes 0*1 to 
 say, " when I read how the slaves came into slavery, and 
 how they are kept there ; for language must be raked, 
 the secrets of slaughter-houses and infamous holes that 
 can not front the day must be ransacked, to tell what 
 negro slavery has been." He pictured in glowing and 
 
 1 Autobiography of Harriet Martineau, vol. i. p. 375. 
 
134 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 indignant words the evils of slavery, and held up to 
 scorn the cowardice of the men of Massachusetts and 
 New England in their betrayal of the interests of lib 
 erty ; and he did not spare the senators and representa 
 tives who had submitted to the slave-power. His atti 
 tude toward this cause may be best seen in the closing 
 paragraphs of the address : 
 
 " I have said that this event interests us because it came mainly 
 from the concession of the whites. I add, that in part it is the 
 earning of the blacks. They won the pity and respect which they 
 have received by their powers and native endowments. I think 
 this a circumstance of the highest import. Their whole future is 
 in it. Our planet, before the age of written history, had its races 
 of savages, like the generations of so*ur paste, or the animalcules 
 that wriggle and bite in a drop of putrid water. Who cares for 
 these or for their wars ? We do not wish a w r orld of bugs or of 
 birds; neither afterward of Scythians, Caribs, or Feejees. The 
 grand style of nature, her great periods, is all we observe in them. 
 Who cares for oppressing whites or oppressed blacks twenty centu 
 ries ago, more than for bad dreams ? Eaters and food are in the 
 harmony of nature ; and there, too, is the germ for ever protected, 
 unfolding gigantic leaf after leaf, a newer flower, a richer fruit, in 
 every period, yet its next product is never to be guessed. It will 
 only save what is worth saving; and it saves, not by compassion, but 
 by power. It appoints no police to guard the lion but his teeth and 
 claws, no fort or city for the bird but his wings, no rescue for flies 
 and mites but their spawning numbers, which no ravages can over 
 come. It deals with men after the same manner. If they are rude 
 and foolish, down they must go. When at last in a race a new prin 
 ciple appears, an idea, that conserves it ; ideas onl^ save races. 
 If the black man is feeble, and not important to the existing races, 
 not on a parity with the best race, the black man must serve, and be 
 exterminated. But if the black man carries in his bosom an indis 
 pensable element of a new and coming civilization, for the sake of 
 that element no wrong nor strength nor circumstance can hurt him ; 
 he will survive, and play his part. So now the arrival in the world 
 of such men as Toussaint and the Haytian heroes, or of the leaders 
 of their race in Barbadoes and Jamaica, outweighs in good omen 
 all the English and American humanity. The anti-slavery of the 
 whole world is dust in the balance before this, is a poor squeam- 
 ishness and nervousness ; and might and the right are here. Here 
 is the anti-slave ; here is man ; and if you have man, black or white 
 is an insignificance. The intellect, that is miraculous I Who has 
 it has the talisman. His skin and bones, though they were of the 
 color of night, are transparent; and the everlasting stars shine 
 through with attractive beams. But a compassion for that which 
 is not and can not be useful and lovely is degrading and futile. All 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT. 135 
 
 the songs and newspapers and money subscriptions and vituperation 
 of such as do not think with us will avail nothing against a fact. 
 I say to you, you must save yourself, black or white, man or woman ; 
 other help is none. I esteem the occasion of this jubilee to be the 
 proud discovery that the black race can contend with the white 
 race ; that, in the great anthem we call history, a piece of many 
 parts and vast compass, after playing a long time a very low and 
 subdued accompaniment, they perceive the time arrived when they 
 can strike in with effect, and take a master s part in the music. 
 The civility of the world has reached that pitch that then" more 
 moral genius is becoming indispensable, and the quality of this 
 race is to be, honored for itself. For this they have been preserved 
 in sandy deserts, in rice-swamps, in kitchens and shoe-shops, so 
 long ; now let them emerge, clothed and in their own form. 
 
 " There remains the very elevated consideration which the sub 
 ject opens, but which belongs to more abstract views than we are 
 now taking ; this, namely, that the civility of no race can be per 
 fect wiiilst another race is degraded. It is a doctrine alike of the 
 oldest and of the newest philosophy, that man is one, and that you 
 can not injure any member without a sympathetic injury to all the 
 members. America is not civil whilst Africa is barbarous. 
 
 " These considerations seem to leave no choice for the action of 
 the intellect and the conscience of the country. There have been 
 moments in this, as well as in every piece of moral history, when 
 there seemed room for the infusions of a skeptical philosophy; 
 when it seemed doubtful whether brute force would not triumph in 
 the eternal struggle. I doubt not that sometimes a despairing 
 negro, when jumping over a ship s sides to escape from the white 
 devils who surrounded him, has believed there was no vindication 
 of right; it is horrible to think of, but it seemed so. I doubt 
 not that sometimes the negro s friend, in the face of scornful and 
 brutal hundreds of traders and drivers, has felt his heart sink. 
 Especially, it seems to me, some degree of despondency is pardon 
 able when he observes the men of conscience and intellect, his own 
 natural allies and champions, those whose attention should be 
 nailed to the grand objects of this cause, so hotly offended by 
 whatever incidental petulances or infirmities of indiscreet defenders 
 of the negro as to permit themselves to be ranged with the enemies 
 of the human race ; and names which should be the alarums of 
 liberty and the watchwords of truth are mixed up with all the 
 rotten rabble of selfishness and tyranny. I assure myself that this 
 coldness and blindness will pass away. A single noble wind of 
 sentiment will scatter them for ever. I am sure that the good and 
 wise elders, the ardent and generous youth, will not permit what is 
 incidental and exceptional to withdraw their devotion from the 
 essential and permanent characters of the question. There have 
 been momfents, I said, when men might be forgiven who doubted. 
 Those moments are past. Seen in masses, it can not be disputed, 
 there is progress in human society. There is a blessed necessity 
 by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right ; 
 
136 RALPH WALDO EMERSOX. 
 
 and, again, making all crime mean and ugly. The genius of the 
 Saxon race, friendly to liberty ; the enterprise, the very muscular 
 vigor of this nation, are inconsistent with slavery. The intellect, 
 with blazing eye, looking through history from the beginning 
 onward, gazes on this blot, and it disappears. The sentiment of 
 light, once very low and indistinct, but ever more articulate because 
 it is the voice of the universe, pronounces freedom. The Power 
 that built this fabric of things ainrms it in the heart, and in the 
 history of the first of August has made a sign to the ages of his 
 will." 
 
 In the heated discussions of slavery, which followed 
 during the next dozen years, Emerson found himself in 
 sympathy with the Free-Soil_pa^rty. In 1852, when 
 Clough visited Concord, he wrote, " I had Abolition 
 well out with Emerson, with whom one can talk with 
 pleasure on the subject. His view is in the direction 
 of purchasing emancipation." Still later in the year, 
 Clough wrote that " Emerson is a Free-Soiler." The 
 year before, when John Gorham Palfrey, having op 
 posed slavery very strongly in Congress, and been 
 defeated for re-election, was nominated for governor on 
 the Free-Soil ticket, Emerson spoke in numerous places 
 in his behalf. In his address in Cambridge he expressed 
 regret that the scholar should be called away from his 
 tasks to take part in affairs ; but, instead of principles 
 ruling in the affairs of the nation, he found a power in 
 favor of slavery, which sadly lowered the* spirit in which 
 the country was founded. He portrayed the evils of 
 slavery, how it dragged every thing down into its cor 
 ruption and debasement. Webster had just before, in 
 a spirit of compromise, consented to what was regarded 
 by the anti-slavery party as a base betrayal of trust. 
 Emerson described slavery as having captured the best 
 forces of the country. He pictured the car of slavery 
 with all its attendant abominations, and Webster as a 
 leading horse straining to drag on this car. Without 
 naming Webster, he pointed to him as a last instance 
 of how this evil corrupted all it touched. 
 
 In January, 1855, he gave one of a course of anti- 
 slavery lectures in Tremont Temple, Boston. It was a 
 strong and forcible address, full of fire, alive with mag- 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT. 187 
 
 netic power, plain and simple in style ; a most powerful 
 speech, and was frequently applauded. He was listened 
 to throughout with breathless interest. He charged 
 the prevalent indifference to the wrongs of the slave to 
 skepticism concerning great human duties and concerns. 
 " In 1850 men in republican America passed a statute 
 which made justice and mercy subject to fine and im 
 prisonment, and multitudes were found to declare that 
 there existed no higher law in the universe than this 
 paper statute which uprooted the foundations of recti 
 tude." He spoke of the low condition of politics, and, 
 referring to the action of Webster and others, said, 
 " Those who have gone to Congress from us were hon 
 est, well-meaning men. I heard congratulations from 
 good men, their friends, when they went to Washing 
 ton, that they were honest and thoroughly reliable, yes, 
 obstinately honest ; yet they voted for this criminal 
 measure with the basest of the populace. I hate and 
 saw not the sneer of the bullies that duped them with 
 alleged state necessity, because they had no hope, no 
 burning splendor of awe within their own breasts. 
 Well, while a refuge was left, they had honor enough 
 to feel degraded, and might have left the place instead 
 of having become indifferentists." 
 
 The same year, in an address before the Anti-slavery 
 Society of New York, he declared that " an immoral law 
 is void," arid stated his own favorite method for abolish 
 ing slavery. 
 
 " Every wise American will say, in the collision of statutes, in 
 their doubtful interpretation, that liberty is the great order which 
 all over the world we are to promote. This is the right meaning 
 of the statute which exterminates crime, and extends to every man 
 the largest liberty compatible with the liberty of every other man. 
 No citizen will go wrong, who, upon every question, leans to the 
 side of general liberty. Men inspire each other. It is so delicious 
 to act with great masses to great aims ; for instance, one would 
 say, the summary or gradual abolition of slavery. Why, in the 
 name of common sense and the peace of mankind, is not this made 
 the subjecl^ of instant negotiation and settlement? What are the 
 great brains for, the great administrative faculties, that abound 
 here, if they are not jointly, seriously, and immediately to propose 
 some scheme which shall peaceably settle this question, in accord- 
 
138 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 ance at once with the interests of the South, and with the settled 
 conscience of the North ? It is not really a great task, a great 
 fight, for this country to accomplish, to buy that property of the 
 planter, as the British nation bought the West-Indian slaves. I 
 say buy ! never conceding the right of the planter to own, but ac 
 knowledging the calamity of his position, and willing to bear a 
 countryman s share in relieving him, and because it is the only 
 practical course, and is innocent. Well, here is the right public 
 or social function, which one man can not do, and which all men 
 must do. We shall one day bring the states shoulder to shoulder, 
 and the citizens man to man, to exterminate slavery. It was said 
 a little while ago that it would cost a thousand or twelve hundred 
 millions, now it is said it would cost two thousand millions; such 
 is the enhancement of property. Well, was there ever any contri 
 bution that was so enthusiastically paid as this will be? The 
 United States will be brought to give every inch of their public 
 lands for a purpose like this. Every state will contribute its sur 
 plus revenue. Every man will bear his part. We will have a 
 chimney-tax. We will give up our coaches and wine and watches. 
 The church will melt her plate. The father of his country shall 
 wait, well pleased, a little longer for his monument. Franklin will 
 wait for his ; the Pilgrim Fathers for theirs ; and the patient Colum 
 bus, who waited all his mortality for justice, shall wait a part of 
 immortality also. We will call upon the rich beneficiaries who 
 found asylums, hospitals, Lowell Institutions, and Astor libraries ; 
 upon wealthy bachelors and wealthy maidens, to make the state 
 their heirs, as they were wont to do in Rome. The rich shall give 
 of their riches ; the merchants of their commerce ; the mechanics 
 of their strength ; the needle-women will give, and children can 
 have a Cent Society. If, really, the thing could come to a nego 
 tiation, and a price were named, I do not think that any price, 
 founded upon an estimate that figures could fairly represent, would 
 be unmanageable. Every man in this land would give a week s 
 work to dig away this accursed mountain of slavery, and force it 
 for ever out of the world." 
 
 When S umner was caned by Brooks, May 22, 1856, 
 a meeting of sympathy was held in Concord on the 2Gth, 
 and Emerson spoke with great appreciation of the ser 
 vices of that noble senator. 
 
 " The events of the last few years and months and days have 
 taught us the lessons of centuries. I do not see how a barbarous 
 community and a civilized community can constitute one state. I 
 think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom. 
 Life has no parity of value in the free state and in the slave state. 
 In one, it is adorned with education, \vith skilled labor, with arts, 
 with long prospective interests, with social family ties, with honor 
 and justice. In the other, life is a fever, man is an animal, given 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT. 139 
 
 to pleasure, frivolous, irritable, spending his days in hunting, and 
 practicing with deadly weapons to defend himself against his slaves 
 and against his companions brought up in the same idle and dan 
 gerous way. . . . 
 
 " The whole state of South Carolina does not now offer any one, 
 or any number of persons, who are to be weighed for a moment 
 in the scale with such a person as the meanest of them all has now 
 struck down. . . . The outrage is the more shocking from the singu 
 larly pure character of its victim. Mr. Simmer s position is excep 
 tional in its honor. He has not taken his degrees in the caucus 
 and in hack politics. . . . His friends, I remember, were told that 
 they would find Sumner a man of the world like the rest ; tis quite 
 impossible to be at Washington and not bend ; he will bend as the 
 rest have done. Well, he did not bend. He took his position and 
 kept it. He meekly bore the cold shoulder from some of his New- 
 England colleagues, the hatred of his enemies, the pity of the 
 indifferent, cheered by the love and respect of good men with whom 
 he acted, and has stood for the North, a little in advance of all the 
 North, and therefore without adequate support. He has never fal 
 tered in his maintenance of justice and freedom. He has gone 
 beyond the large expectation of his friends in his increasing ability 
 and his manlier tone. 
 
 " I have heard that some of his political friends tax him with 
 indolence or negligence in refusing to make electioneering speeches, 
 or otherwise to bear his part in the labor which party organization 
 requires. I say it to his honor. But more to his honor are the 
 faults which his enemies lay to his charge. I think if Mr. Sumner 
 had any vices we should be likely to hear of them. They have 
 fastened their eyes, like microscopes, now for five years, on every 
 act, word, manner, and movement, to find a flaw ; and M ith what 
 result? His opponents accuse him neither of drunkenness, nor 
 debauchery, nor job, nor peculation, nor rapacity, nor personal aims 
 of any kind. No ; but of what ? Why, beyond this charge, which 
 it is impossible was ever sincerely made, that he broke over the 
 proprieties of debate, I find him accused of publishing his opinion 
 of the Nebra c ka conspiracy in a letter to the people of the United 
 States, with discourtesy. Then, that he is an abolitionist ; as if 
 every sane man were not an abolitionist, or a believer that all men 
 should be free. And the third crime he stands charged with is, 
 that his speeches were written before they were spoken ; which 
 must of course be true in Simmer s case, as it was true of Webster, 
 of Adams, of Calhoun, of Burke, of Chatham, of Demosthenes, of 
 every first-rate speaker that ever lived. It is the high compliment 
 he pays to the intelligence of the Senate and of the country. . . . 
 
 " When I think of these most small faults as the worst which 
 party hatred could allege, T think I may borrow the language which 
 Bishop Ihmiet applied to Sir Isaac Newton, and say that Charles 
 Sunnier has the \vhitest soul I ever knew. . . . I wish that he 
 may know the shudder of terror that ran through all this commu 
 nity on the first tidings of the brutal attack. "Let him hear that 
 
140 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 every man of worth in New England loves his virtues ; that every 
 mother thinks of him as the protector of families ; that every friend 
 of freedom thinks him the friend of freedom. And if our arms at 
 this distance can not defend him from assassins, we confide the 
 defense of a life so precious to all honorable men and true patriots, 
 and to the Almighty Maker of men." 
 
 Emerson admired the sturdy qualities of John Brown 
 and his indomitable faith. Brown was several times in 
 Concord, and found a hearty welcome at Emerson s 
 house. When the raid was made at Harper s Ferry, 
 Emerson still found himself in sympathy with the old 
 hero, though reluctant to regard such means as the best 
 to secure freedom. He heard Thoreau s address on 
 Brown with great delight, and said that he had found 
 the truth of the matter. There soon came an opportu 
 nity for him to speak; and in a lecture delivered in 
 Tremont Temple, for the Parker Fraternity, Nov. 8, 
 1859, he gave a decided expression to his sympathies. 
 The subject was Courage, and portions -of the lecture 
 have since been published in Society and Solitude under 
 the same title. Speaking of the courage which has 
 characterized the world s heroes, he said, that, " as soon 
 as they are born they take a bee-line to the rack of the 
 inquisition or the ax of the tyrant." He then made 
 the subject of the hour, the man all men were discuss 
 ing, the illustration of this truth. 
 
 " Look nearer, at the ungathered records of those who have gone 
 to languish in prison or to die in rescuing others, or in rescuing 
 themselves from chains of the slave ; or look at that new saint, 
 than whom none purer or more brave was ever led by love of man 
 into conflict and death, a new saint, waiting yet his martyrdom, 
 and who, if he shall suffer, will majte the gallows glorious, like the 
 cross." 
 
 This was all he said on that subject, but it was 
 enough, as they are immortal words ; and they were 
 received by prolonged and enthusiastic applause. He 
 was reported as saying that Brown would make the 
 gallows as glorious as the cross, and his few emphatic 
 words were the cause of much excitement. The Courier 
 spoke of his "blasphemous comparison," and said that 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT. 141 
 
 those who consented to this wickedness denied the Lord 
 who bought them. A meeting of sympathy with 
 Brown s family, and to raise money for their support, 
 was held in Tremont Temple Nov. 18. John A. Andrew 
 presided ; while Emerson, Phillips, and Dr. Manning 
 made addresses. Emerson gave an account of Brown s 
 life, and showed the wickedness of the laws for the 
 protection of the slaveholders. Concerning Brown, he 
 said, 
 
 " This commanding event, the sequel of which has brought us 
 together, eclipses all others which have occurred for a long time in 
 our history ; and I am very glad to see this sudden interest in the 
 hero of Harper s Ferry has provoked an extreme curiosity in all 
 parts of the Republic in regard to the details of his history. He 
 is so transparent that all men see him through. He is a man to 
 make friends wherever on earth courage and integrity are esteemed ; 
 the rarest of heroes, a pure idealist, with no by-ends of his own. 
 Every one who has heard him speak has been impressed alike by 
 his simple, artless goodness, joined with his sublime courage. He 
 joins that perfect Puritan faith which brought his fifth ancestor to 
 Plymouth Hock, with his grandfather s ardor in the Revolution. 
 He believes in two articles, two instruments, shall I say ? the 
 Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence. 
 
 " It is easy to see what a favorite he will be with history, which 
 plays such pranks with temporary reputations. Nothing can resist 
 the sympathy which all elevated minds must feel with Brown, and 
 through them the whole civilized world ; and if he must suffer, he 
 must drag official gentlemen into an immortality most undesirable, 
 and of which they have already some disagreeable forebodings. 
 Indeed, it is the reduclio ad absurdum of slavery when the governor 
 of Virginia is forced to hang a man whom he declares to be a man 
 of the most integrity, truthfulness, and courage he has ever met. 
 Is that the kind of man the gallows was built for ? It were bold 
 to affirm that there is within that broad Commonwealth at this 
 moment another citizen as worthy to live, and as deserving of all 
 public and private honor, as this poor prisoner." 
 
 Emerson took part in a meeting of sympathy with 
 Brown held in Concord Dec. 2. On the next Sunday, 
 Dec. 4, he lectured for Theodore Parker s society in 
 Boston on Morals. He spoke of the desire of giving 
 freedom to those who are in bondage, of establishing a 
 moral, intellectual, governmental equality such as had 
 lifted an obscure Connecticut farmer into the regions of 
 the great men, and made all others appear as inferior 
 
142 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 men. It is hard, he said, to find in all history so noble 
 a man as this, who has dared to sacrifice life to principle. 
 A few such men have done more for the world than all 
 the merely intellectual men mankind has ever seen. At 
 Salem, Jan. 6, he again spoke at a Brown meeting, de 
 claring that " every thing which is said of Brown leaves 
 people a little dissatisfied ; but as soon as they read his 
 own speeches and letters, they are heartily contented ; 
 such is the singleness of purpose which justifies him to 
 the head and heart of all." He calls Brown s "a ro 
 mantic character, absolutely without any vulgar trait, 
 living to ideal ends, without any mixture of self-indul 
 gence or compromise." In closing his address, he said, 
 " The sentiment of mercy is the natural recoil which 
 the laws of the universe provide to protect mankind 
 from destruction by savage passions. And our blind 
 statesmen go up and down with committees of vigilance 
 and safety, hunting for the origin of this new heresy. 
 They will need a very vigilant committee, indeed, to 
 find its birthplace, and a very strong force to root it out. 
 For the arch-abolitionist, older than Brown and older 
 than the Shenandoah Mountains, is Love, whose other 
 name is Justice, which was before Alfred, before Lycur- 
 gus, before slavery, and will be after it." 
 
 Emerson was neither a zealous agitator nor an enthu 
 siastic worker in this great controversy ; for he was 
 unfitted for it, both by nature and by reason of his views 
 of human progress. His part in it shows that he did 
 not hold aloof when there was any work he .could do, 
 and that his heart was in it from first to last. In his 
 Ode, inscribed to W. H. Channing, he replies to a 
 demand that he should do more in this cause, and defends 
 his right to refuse to leave his study for the arena of 
 reform. He complains that 
 
 Virtue palters, right is hence, 
 Freedom praised, but hid ; " 
 
 and though 
 
 " loath to grieve 
 The evil time s sole patriot, 1 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT. 143 
 
 he can not consent to leave his tasks for the work in 
 which his zealous friend would engage him. He says 
 that even Boston would serve the things of daily life, 
 and forget all but the material ends of existence ; and 
 declares that ___>, 
 
 " Things are of the snake." 
 
 So long as the spirit of reform was low, there was no 
 hope ; and he must rest his faith in the divine fires within 
 the souls of men, which can not be quenched. Seeing 
 the evils and corruptions of the time, he lost faith in the 
 state and in all outward methods of growth and moral 
 power. His own method, his own faith, was this : 
 
 " Let man serve law for man, 
 
 Live for friendship, live for love, 
 For truth s and harmony s behoof ; 
 The state may follow how it can, 
 As Olympus follows Jove." 
 
 As the agitation proceeded, and brave men took- part 
 in it, and it rose to a spirit of moral grandeur, he gave 
 a heartier assent to the outward methods adopted. His 
 faith in Brown, his immediate insight into the rare 
 qualities of that true hero, gave him a greater zeal and 
 a larger confidence in the spirit and purposes of the 
 North. Few literary men, with natures so meditative 
 and withdrawn from all material pursuits, have given so 
 much thought and effort to such a cause. A student, a 
 poet, a seer, the spiritual interpreter of our times, with 
 no capacity for joining in the conflicts of men, he yet 
 looked with eager eyes upon every phase cf this great 
 movement, watched it with growing hope, had faith in 
 the tiiumph of freedom and love, gave such aid as he 
 could and all his sympathies, to those seeking the eman- 
 cipati m of the poor and oppressed. 
 
144 RALPH WALDO EMEKSOX. 
 
 XL 
 
 IN WAR-TIME. 
 
 hour of peril to great truths is the hour that 
 _ tries men s souls. The peril to liberty Emerson 
 plainly saw as slavery gained in power, and as compro 
 mise after compromise was made to it. He was no 
 leader in the actual strife, but his spoken and printed 
 word became plainer and more pertinent to the hour as 
 the years went on and the peril deepened. 1 He took part 
 in January, 1861, at the annual meeting of the Massa 
 chusetts Anti-slavery Society, in Boston. The speakers 
 were often disturbed by a mob, and it was with great 
 difficulty they could be heard. Emerson was frequently 
 interrupted by hisses and other demonstrations of dis 
 approval. He said that slavery is based on a crime of 
 that fatal character that it decomposes men. "The 
 barbarism which has lately appeared wherever that 
 question has been touched, and in the action of the 
 states where it prevails, seems to stupefy the moral 
 sense. Thejnoral injury of slavery is infinitely greater 
 than its pecuntary^qgh^eatical injury^ I really do not 
 think the pecuniary mischief of slavery, which is always 
 shown by statistics, worthy to be named in comparison 
 with this power to subvert the reason of men; so that 
 those who speak of it," who" UeT^nTTTETw ho act in its 
 behalf, seem to have lost the moral sense." In speak 
 ing of the threatened secession, he used these emphatic 
 words, appropriate for the hour arid occasion : 
 
 " In the great action now pending, all the forbearance, all the 
 discretion possible, and yet all the firmness will be used by the rep- 
 
 1 In Harper s Monthly for May, 1881, M D. Conway describes a visit 
 to rnrlylo, ami the reading of a letter " the Chelsea sa#e " had just 
 received from Emerson, who took him to task for his criticisms of the 
 American people. 
 
IN WAR-TIME. 145 
 
 resentatives of the North, and by the people at home. No man of 
 patriotism, no man of natural sentiment, can undervalue the sacred 
 Union which we possess ; but if it is sundered, it will be because it 
 had already ceased to have a vital tension. The action of to-day 
 is only the ultimatum of what had already occurred. The bonds 
 had ceased to exist, because of this vital defect of slavery at the 
 South, actually separating them in sympathy, in thought, in char 
 acter, from the people of the North ; and then, if the separation 
 had^gone thus far, what is the use of a pretended tie ? As to con 
 cessions, we have none to make. The monstrous concession made 
 at the formation of the Constitution is all that ever can be asked ; 
 it has blocked the civilization and humanity of the times to this 
 day." 
 
 The war made a great impression on him, and gave 
 him a stronger faith in mankind. lie found the people 
 truer than he had expected, and was alike astonished and 
 gladdened by the uprising at the North. It gave him 
 a new idea of the relations of men to each other, of the 
 value of the state, and of the solidarity of the race. 
 During the earlier part of the war he spoke often on 
 Sundays for Theodore Parker s society. After the 
 battle of Bull Run, in a lecture delivered there, he said 
 the judgment of God had come upon the people for their 
 sins ; but he said the struggle for freedom was develop 
 ing a heroism and a moral grandeur noble to see. He 
 had despaired of the nation before ; but now he saw a 
 purpose and devotion real and sublime, the promise of 
 a better time to come. He said the people must be 
 reverent and considerate and humble, under the cir 
 cumstances of this judgment, and spoke with great 
 confidence of Mr. Lincoln and his ability. In other 
 lectures, at this time, he expressed his confidence in the 
 idea of the Union and his new hope for the principles 
 of the Republic. He was touched by tin; eagerness and 
 discretiarT of the young men, the pure patriotism and 
 consecration which was shown in so many instances, 
 and the moral devotion of the people. As neveijjefore, 
 he came to have faith jnjiis country, to believe in her 
 ideas, and to trusTTierTuture. Hejsajty__a_jiew promise 
 for morality and ideas in the heroic spirit of the North, 
 r.nd foun^iirnseif injbhe jfallcst sympathy with the 
 purposes of ilie liour. " 
 
146 KALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 In February, 1862, he was invited to Washington to 
 give an anti-slavery lecture. He spoke in the Smithso 
 nian-Institution building, on American Civilization, to 
 a very large audience. Lincoln and his cabinet, and 
 most of the other official persons in the capital, attended. 
 Lincoln was much impressed by the lecture ; and the 
 next day Seward introduced him to Emerson. They 
 had a long conference on the subject of slavery. The 
 impression this lecture made was thus described by a 
 local newspaper: "The audience received it, as they have 
 the other anti-slavery lectures of the course, with un 
 bounded enthusiasm. It was in many respects a won- 
 erful lecture ; and those who have often heard Mr. 
 Emerson said it was one of his very best efforts, and 
 that he seemed inspired through nearly the whole of it, 
 especially the part referring to slavery and the war." 
 
 In this lecture 1 Emerson gave a sketch of the influ 
 ences that go to the production of civilization, and said 
 it "implies a facility of association, power to compare, 
 the ceasing from fixed ideas." It is always the result 
 of growth caused by some " novelty that astounds the 
 mind, and provokes it to dare to change." Of the aids 
 to development have been proximity to the sea-shore, 
 climate, position of woman, and diffusion of knowledge. 
 He pointed out the influence of material causes, even 
 though so often dwelling upon the power of ideas. He 
 says " the effect of a framed or stone house is immense 
 on the tranquillity, power, and refinement of the build 
 er." The road is a benefactor, missionary, wealth- 
 bringer, maker of markets, and a vent for industry. 
 We must all the time depend on the elements, use their 
 power, and get the aid of their strength. When we 
 learn to use the elements, to secure their aid in doing 
 our work, propelling our ships, and in sending our mes 
 sages, then civilization has been made fully possible. 
 Complexity of organization, making a close dependence 
 of all parts of society 011 all others, produces civilization. 
 There can, however, be no high civility without a deep 
 morality ; and on that civilization depends. As our 
 
 1 Printed in the Atlantic Monthly for April, 1862. 
 
IN WAR-TIME. 147 
 
 physical success depends on our implicit acceptance of 
 the laws of nature, so our moral success depends on our 
 acceptance of principles. We must hitch our wagon to 
 a star, and work for those interests which the divinities 
 honor and promote, justice, love, freedom, knowledge, 
 utility. 
 
 The true test of civilization is the kind of man the 
 country turns out. There is an immense material ad 
 vantage and prosperity possessed by this country ; but 
 the industry, skill, sobriety, and morality of the people 
 are a better promise. The appearance of great men, 
 the movement of great ideas, overtops in importance all 
 mechanical advancement. The country where knowl 
 edge can not be diffused, where liberty is attacked and 
 woman not respected, is not civil, but barbarous ; and 
 no advantages of soil, climate, or coast can resist these 
 suicidal mischiefs. 
 
 He then turned to the Southern States, showed that 
 they had trampled on morality, in denying a man s 
 right to labor. The power and advantages of labor 
 were shown, and its importance as an element of civili 
 zation. Two states of civilization, the one respecting 
 labor, and the other based on slavery, we have tried to 
 hold together. They do not agree, and all are anxious 
 over the aspects of the war. America means oppor 
 tunity, the last effort of Divine Providence in behalf 
 of the human race ; and a slavish following of prece 
 dents should not guide its destinies. The evil con 
 tended against has taken alarming proportions, and we 
 must strike directly at the cause. The dangers have 
 been clearly shown, there have been warnings enough. 
 Slavery concealed nothing, and we knew where it 
 would lead. 
 
 " In this national crisis, it is not argument that we want, but 
 that rare courage which dares commit itself to a principle, believ 
 ing that nature is its ally, and will create the instruments it re 
 quires, and more than make good any petty and injurious profit 
 which it may- disturb. There never was such a combination as 
 this of ours, and the rules to meet it are not set down in any his 
 tory. We want men of original perception and original action, 
 A ho can open their eyes wider than to a nationality, namely, to a 
 
148 EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 consideration of benefit to the human race, can act in the interest 
 of civilization. Government must not be a parish-clerk, a justice 
 of the peace. It has, of necessity, in any crisis of the state, the 
 absolute powers of a dictator. The existing administration is 
 entitled to the utmost candor. It is to be thanked for its angelic 
 virtue, compared with any executive experiences with which we 
 have been familiar. But the times will not allow us to indulge in 
 compliment. I wish I saw in the people that inspiration, which, if 
 government would not obey the same, it would leave the govern 
 ment behind, and create on the moment the means and executors 
 it wanted. Better the war should more dangerously threaten us, 
 should threaten fracture in what is still whole, and punish us 
 with burned capitals and slaughtered regiments, and so exasperate 
 the people to energy, exasperate our nationality. There are scrip 
 tures written invisibly on men s hearts, whose letters do not come 
 out until they are enraged. They can be read by war-fires and by 
 eyes in the last peril." 
 
 In other days of our history slavery could have been 
 removed, if the free states had done their duty. They 
 yielded ; but a new opportunity is now given. " It 
 looks as if we held the fate of the fairest possession of 
 mankind in our hands, to be saved by our firmness, or 
 to be lost by hesitation." 
 
 " The one power that has legs long enough and strong enough 
 to cross the Potomac offers itself at this hour, the one strong 
 enough to bring all the civility up to the height of that which is 
 best prays now at the door of Congress for leave to move. Eman 
 cipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle ; every 
 thing else is intrigue. This is a progressive policy, puts the whole 
 people in healthy, productive, amiable position, puts every man in 
 the South in just and natural relations with every man in the 
 North, laborer with laborer." 
 
 The Southerners love war, have just reached the 
 civilization that craves it. They are fit for conflict, but 
 we are laborers. They will dread forfeiture of the con 
 ditions that make war to them a profit, but we must 
 abolish slavery or always hold them in subjection. The 
 one weapon of real power for us is abolition. We have 
 had compromises enough, and must now secure the 
 doing of what we believe to be right. This will secure 
 for the South a new atomic social composition which 
 will lead to peace and prosperity. 
 
IN WAR-TIME. 149 
 
 " Now, in the name of all that is simple and generous, why 
 should not this great right be clone ? Why should not America be 
 capable of a second stroke for the well-being 1 of the human race, as 
 eighty or ninety years ago she was for the first ? an affirmative 
 step in the interests of human civility, urged on her, too, not by 
 any romance of sentiment, but by her own extreme perils ? It is 
 very certain that the statesman who shall break through the cob 
 webs of doubt, fear, and petty cavil that lie in the way, will be 
 greeted by the unanimous thanks of mankind. Men reconcile 
 themselves very fast to a bold and good measure, when once it is 
 taken, though they condemned it in advance. And this action which 
 costs so little rids the world, at one stroke, of this degrading 
 nuisance, the cause of war and ruin of nations. This measure at 
 once puts all parties right. This is borrowing, as I said, the 
 omnipotence of a principle. What is so foolish as the terror lest 
 the blacks should be made furious by freedom and wages ? It is 
 denying these that is the outrage, and makes the danger from the 
 blacks. But justice satisfies everybody, white man, red man, 
 yellow man, and black man. All like wages, and the appetite 
 grows by feeding." 
 
 This measure needs to be adopted at once, for this 
 weapon is slipping from our hands. The victory will 
 at last come, however, when it deserves ; and it can 
 only come through Nature s appointed elements. 
 
 " I hope it is not a fatal objection to this policy, that it is simple 
 and beneficent thoroughly, which is the attribute of a moral action. 
 An unprecedented material prosperity has not tended to make us 
 stoics or Christians. But the laws by which the universe is organ 
 ized re-appear at every point, and will rule it. The end of all 
 political struggle is to establish morality as the basis of all legisla 
 tion. It is not free institutions, tis not a republic, tis not a 
 democracy, that is the end, no, but only the means. Morality is 
 the object of government. We want a state of things in which 
 crime shall not pay. This is the consolation on which we rest in 
 the darkness of the future and the aulictions of to-day, that the 
 government of the world is moral, and does for ever destroy what 
 is not." 
 
 As before, Emerson favored paying for the slaves. 
 When trTe~iec~trrre was published, he added a paragraph 
 approving of the president s message looking to a 
 gradual abolition of slavery. " In the recent series of 
 national successes, he says, this message is the best. 
 It marks the happiest day in the political year." When 
 the proclamation of Sept. 22 -came out, providing for 
 
150 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 emancipation on the first of January, a meeting was 
 held in Boston, at which Emerson spoke. He began 
 his address l by saying, 
 
 " In so many arid forms which states incrust themselves with, 
 once in a century, if so often, a poetic act and record occur. These 
 are the jets of thought into affairs, when, roused by danger or 
 inspired by genius, the political leaders of the day break the else 
 insurmountable routine of class and local legislation, and take a 
 step forward in the direction of catholic and universal interests. 
 Every step in the history of political liberty is a sally of the human 
 mind into the untried future, and has the interest of genius, and 
 is fruitful in heroic anecdotes. Liberty is a slow fruit. It comes, 
 like religion, for short periods and in rare conditions, as if awaiting 
 a culture of the race which shall make it organic and permanent." 
 
 He then cites some acts and movements of this kind, 
 giving prominence to Lincoln s proclamation. Such 
 acts are of great scope, working on a long future. 
 They make little noise, and yet they work untold 
 benefits. Of Lincoln s wisdom he then says, 
 
 " The extreme moderation with which the president advanced 
 to his design ; his long-avowed, expectant policy, as if he chose 
 to be strictly the executive of the best public sentiment of the 
 country, waiting only till it should be unmistakably pronounced ; 
 so fair a mind that none ever listened so patiently to such extreme 
 varieties of opinion; so reticent that his decision has taken all 
 parties by surprise, whilst yet it is the just sequel of his prior acts ; 
 the firm tone in which he announces it, without inflation or sur 
 plusage, all these have bespoken such favor to the act, that, great 
 as the popularity of the president has been, we are beginning to 
 think that w r e have underestimated the capacity and virtue which 
 the Divine Providence has made an .instrument of benefit so vast. 
 lie has been permitted to do more for America than any other 
 American man. lie is well entitled to the most indulgent con 
 struction. Forget all that we thought shortcomings, every mis 
 take, every delay. In the extreme embarrassments of his part, 
 call these endurance, wisdom, magnanimity, illuminated as they 
 now are by his dazzling success." 
 
 He then calls attention to the difficulties Lincoln has 
 had to overcome, and \ hat soon the hour will strike of 
 this glad emancipation. Once done it can not be un 
 done. Slavery can not be introduced anew in the nine 
 teenth century, for the moral sentiment is now against it. 
 
 i Atlantic Monthly, November, 18G2. 
 
[N WAR-TIME. 151 
 
 " This act makes that the lives of our heroes have not been sac 
 rificed in vain. It makes a victory of our defeats. Our hurts are 
 healed ; the health of the nation is repaired. With a victory like 
 this we can stand many disasters. It does not promise the redemp 
 tion of the black race ; that lies not with us ; but it relieves it of 
 our opposition. The president by this act has paroled all the slaves 
 in America ; they will no more fight against us ; and it relieves our 
 race once for all of its crime and false position. The first condi 
 tion of success is secured in putting ourselves right. We have 
 recovered ourselves from our false position, and planted ourselves 
 on a law of Nature. 
 
 If that fail, 
 
 The pillared firmament is rottenness, 
 And earth s base built on stubble. 
 
 The government has assured itself of the best constituency in 
 the world ; every spark of intellect, every virtuous feeling, every 
 religious heart, every man of honor, every poet, every philosopher, 
 the generosity of the cities, the health of the country, the strong 
 arms of the mechanics, the endurance of farmers, the passionate 
 conscience of women, the sympathy of distant nations, all rally to 
 its support." 
 
 All the people need to give their help in maintaining 
 this movement. When this blot is removed we can 
 show our faces, and be no longer hypocrites and pre 
 tenders. Public distress seems to be removed by it, 
 land becomes of more substantial value, and the whole 
 country seems to be redeemed and renewed. This 
 movement, however, was inevitable and imperative. 
 The war existed long before Sumter, and could only be 
 ended in this manner. 
 
 After showing how we have been misunderstood by 
 other nations, and the effect on the South, he bursts 
 forth with these eloquent words : 
 
 " It was well to delay the steamers at the wharves until this 
 edict could be put on board. It will be an insurance to the ship 
 as it goes plunging through the sea with glad tidings to all peo 
 ple. Happy are the young who find the pestilence cleansed out of 
 the earth, leaving open to them an honest career. Happy the old, 
 who see Xature purified before they depart. Do not let the dying 
 die ; hold them back to this world until you have charged their 
 ear and heart with this message to other spiritual societies, an 
 nouncing the melioration of our planet." 
 
 He closes with a kind word for that " ill-fated, much- 
 injured race which the proclamation respects." It was 
 
152 RALPH WALDO EMERSOX. 
 
 a clear, strong, earnest address, full of sympathy for 
 the blacks, and grandly true to the highest moral con 
 victions. There were no conceits of language in it, but 
 a plain directness and a simple power that were full 
 of charm. It is well to recall these addresses, that we 
 may so much the more clearly understand how practi 
 cal and human is Emerson s genius. On these occasions 
 he came directly to the subject in hand, uttered not a 
 word but of the highest wisdom, and proclaimed in 
 majestic words that moral law which is written in the 
 nature of things. 
 
 When the proclamation was carried into effect on the 
 1st of January, 18(33, and emancipation was made a 
 reality, a meeting of rejoicing was held in Boston. On 
 this occasion Emerson read his Boston Hymn. Later 
 in the year he published his Voluntaries, in which he 
 celebrates the victories of liberty. Jubilantly he sings, 
 " I see the wreath, I hear the songs 
 Lauding the Eternal Rights." 
 
 His steady faith in liberty finds expression in these 
 words : 
 
 " Stainless soldier on the walls, 
 
 Knowing this, and knows no more, 
 Whoever fights, whoever falls, 
 
 Justice conquers evermore, 
 Justice after as before ; 
 
 And he who battles on her side, 
 God, though he were ten times slain, 
 
 Crowns him victor glorified 
 Victor over death and pain 
 
 For ever." 
 
 On the 19th of April, 1865, a meeting was held in 
 Concord to give expression to the grief felt on account 
 of Lincoln s death. Emerson had watched the presi 
 dent s course during the war with the greatest interest 
 iind satisfaction, and felt his loss most keenly. On this 
 occasion he delivered the following address, in which he 
 gave full expression to his thought about the war, the 
 victory of the North, and his great love of Lincoln. 
 
 We meet under the gloom of a calamity which darkens down 
 over the minds of good men iu all civil society, as the fearful tid- 
 
IN WAR-TIME, 
 
 ings travel over sea, over land, from country to country, like the 
 shadow of an uncalculated eclipse over the planet. Old as history 
 is, and manifold as are its tragedies, I doubt if any death has 
 caused so much pain to mankind as this has caused, or will cause, 
 on its announcement; and this, not so much because nations are 
 by modern arts brought so closely together, as because of the mys 
 terious hopes and fears which, in the present day, are connected 
 with the name and institutions of America. 
 
 " In this country, on Saturday, every one was struck dumb, and 
 saw at first only deep below deep, as he meditated on the ghastly 
 blow. And perhaps at this hour, when the coifin which contains 
 the dust of the president sets forward on its long march through 
 mourning states on its way to his home in Illinois, we might well 
 be silent, and suffer the awful voices of the time to thunder to us. 
 Yes, but that first despair was brief ; the man was not so to be 
 mourned, lie was the most active and hopeful of men, and his 
 work had not perished ; but acclamation of praise for the task lie 
 had accomplished burst out into a song of triumph, which even 
 tears for his death can not keep down. 
 
 "The president stood before us as a man of the people. He 
 was thoroughly American, had never crossed the sea, had never 
 been spoiled by English insularity or French dissipation ; a quite 
 native, aboriginal man, as an acorn from the oak; no aping of 
 foreigners, no frivolous accomplishments. Kentuckian born, work 
 ing on a farm, a flat-boatman, a captain in the Blackhawk war, a 
 country lawyer, a representative in the rural legislature of Illinois, 
 on such modest foundations the hard structure of his fame was 
 laid. How slowly, and yet by happily prepared steps, he came to 
 his place. All of us remember (it is only a history of five or six 
 years) the surprise and the disappointment of the country at his 
 first nomination by the convention at Chicago. Mr. Seward, then 
 in the culmination of his good fame, was the favorite of the East 
 ern states. And when the new and comparatively unknown name 
 of Lincoln was announced (notwithstanding the report of the ac 
 clamations of that convention), we heard the result coldly and sadly. 
 It seemed too rash, on a purely local reputation, to build so grave 
 a trust in such anxious times; and men naturally talked of the 
 chances of politics as incalculable. But it turned out not to be 
 chance. The profound good opinion which the people of Illinois 
 and of the West had conceived of him, and which they had im- 
 pai ted to their colleagues, that they also might justify themselves 
 to their constituents at home, was not rash, though they did not 
 begin to know the riches of his worth. 
 
 " A plain man of the people, an extraordinary fortune attended 
 him. Lord Bacon says, Manifest virtues procure reputation ; 
 occult onejs, fortune. He offered no shining qualities at the first 
 encounter ; he did not offend by superiority. He had a face and 
 manner which disarmed suspicion, which inspired confidence, which 
 confirmed good-will. He was a man without vices. He had a 
 strong sense of duty, which it was very easy for him to obey. Then, 
 
154 EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 he had what farmers call a long- head ; was excellent in working 
 out the sum for himself ; in arguing his case, and convincing you 
 fairly and firmly. Then, it turned out that he was a great worker ; 
 had prodigious faculty of performance ; worked easily. A good 
 worker is so rare ; everybody has some disabling quality. In a 
 host of young men that start together, and promise so many bril 
 liant leaders for the next age, each fails on trial ; one by bad health, 
 one by conceit, or by love of pleasure, or lethargy, or an ugly temper, 
 each has some disqualifying fault that throws him out of the 
 career. But this man was sound to the core, cheerful, persistent, 
 all right for labor, and liked nothing so well. 
 
 " Then, he had a vast good-nature which made him tolerant and 
 accessible to all ; fair-minded, leaning to the claim of the petitioner ; 
 affable, and not sensible to the affliction which the innumerable 
 visits paid to him when president would have brought to any one 
 else. And how this good nature became a noble humanity, in 
 many a tragic case which the events of the war brought to him, 
 every one will remember ; and with what increasing tenderness he 
 dealt, when a whole race was thrown on his compassion. The poor 
 negro said of him, on an impressive occasion, * Massa Linkum am 
 ebery where. 
 
 " Then, his broad good-humor, running easily into jocular talk, 
 in which we delighted and in which he excelled, was a rich gift to 
 this wise man. It enabled him to keep his secret, to meet every 
 kind of man and every rank in society, to take off the edge of 
 the severest decisions, to mask his own purpose and sound his 
 companion, and to catch with true instinct the temper of every 
 company he addressed. And, more than all, it is to a man of 
 severe labor, in anxious and exhausting crises, the natural restora 
 tion, good as sleep, and in the protection of the over-driven brain 
 against rancor and insanity. 
 
 " He is the author of a multitude of good sayings, so disguised 
 as pleasantries that it is certain they had no reputation at first 
 but as jests ; and onl\ *ter, by the very acceptance and adoption 
 they find in the mouths of millions, turn out to be the wisdom of 
 the hour. I am sure if this man had ruled in a period of less 
 facility of printing, he would have become mythological in a few 
 years, like ^Esop or Pilpay, or one of the Seven Wise Masters, by 
 his fables and proverbs. But the weight and penetration of many 
 passages in his letters, messages, and speeches, hidden now by the 
 very closeness of their application to the moment, are destined 
 hereafter to a wide fame. What pregnant definitions 1 what un 
 erring common senso ! what foresight ! and, on great occasion, 
 what lofty, and, more than national, what human tone ! liis brief 
 speech at Gettysburg will net easily be surpassed by words on any 
 recorded occasion. This, and one other recorded American speech, 
 that of John Brown, to the court that tried him, and a part of 
 Kossuth s speech at Birmingham, can only be compared with each 
 other, and with no fourth. 
 
 " His occupying the chair of state was a "mmph of the good 
 
IN WAR-TIME. 155 
 
 sense of mankind, and of the public conscience. This middle-class 
 country had got a middle-class president at last. Yes, in man 
 ners and sympathies, but not in powers ; for his power was superior. 
 This man grew according to the need. His mind mastered the 
 problem of the day ; and as the problem grew, so did his compre 
 hension of it. Rarely was man so fitted to the event. In the 
 midst of fears and jealousies, in the babel of counsels and parties, 
 this man wrought incessantly with all his might and all his hon 
 esty, laboring to find what the people wanted, and how to obtain 
 that. It can not be said there is any exaggeration of his worth. 
 If ever a -man was fairly tested he was. There was no lack of 
 resistance,* nor of slander, nor of ridicule. The times have allowed 
 no state secrets ; the nation has been in such ferment, such multi 
 tudes had to be trusted, that no secret could be kept. Every door 
 was ajar, and we know all that befel. 
 
 " Then, what an occasion was the whirlwind of war ! Here was 
 place for no holiday magistrate, no fair-weather sailor ; the new 
 pilot was hurried to the helm in a tornado. In four years, four 
 years of battle-days, his endurance, his fertility of resources, his 
 magnanimity, were sorely tried, and never found wanting. Then, 
 by his courage, his justice, his even temper, his fertile counsel, his 
 humanity, he stood a heroic figure in the center of a heroic epoch. 
 He is the true history of the American people in his time. Step 
 by step he walked before them, slow with their slowness, quicken 
 ing his march with theirs ; the true representative o his continent ; 
 an entirely public man ; father of his country, the pulse of twenty 
 millions throbbing in his heart, the thought of their minds artic u- 
 lated by his tongue. 
 
 " Adam Smith remarks that the ax, which, in Houbraken s por 
 traits of British kings and worthies, is engraved under those who 
 suffered on the block, adds a certain lofty charm to the picture. 
 4^nd who does not see, even in this tragedy so recent, how fast the 
 terror and ruin of the massacre are already burning around the 
 victim ? Far happier his fate than to have lived to be wished 
 away, to have watched the decay of his own faculties, to have 
 seen perhaps even he the proverbial ingratitude of statesmen, 
 to have seen mean men preferred. Had he not lived long enough 
 to keep the greatest promise that ever man made to his fellow-men, 
 the practical abolition of slavery? He had seen Tennessee, 
 Missouri, and Maryland emancipate their slaves. He had seen 
 Savannah, Charleston, and Richmond surrendered ; had seen the 
 main army of the rebellion lay down its arms. He had conquered 
 the public opinion of Canada, England, and France. Only Wash 
 ington can compare with him in fortune. 
 
 " And what if it should turn out, in the unfolding of the web, 
 that he had reached the term ; that this heroic deliverer could not 
 longer serve us ; that th rebellion had touched its natural conclu 
 sion, and what remained to be done required new and uncommit 
 ted hands, a new spirit born out of the ashes of war; and that 
 Heaven, wishing to show the world a completed benefactor, shall 
 
156 EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 make him serve his country even more by his death than by his 
 life? Nations, like kings, are not good by facility and complai 
 sance. The kindness 01 kings consists in justice and strength. 
 Easy good-nature has been the dangerous foible of the Republic ; 
 and it was a new essay that its enemies should outrage it, and 
 drive us to unwonted firmness to secure the salvation of this coun 
 try in the next ages. 
 
 " The ancients believed in a serene and beautiful Genius which 
 ruled in the affairs of nations, which, with a slow but stern justice, 
 carried forward the fortunes of certain chosen houses, weeding out 
 sinful offenders or offending families, and securing at last the firm 
 prosperity of the favorites of heaven. It was too narrow a view of 
 the eternal Nemesis. There is a serene providence which rules 
 the fate of nations, which makes little account of time, little of one 
 generation or race, makes no account of disasters, conquers alike 
 by what is called deieat, or what is called victory, thrusts aside 
 enemy and obstruction, crushes every thing immoral as inhuman, 
 and obtains the ultimate triumph of the best race by the sacrifice 
 of eveiy thing which resists the moral laws of the world. It makes 
 its own instruments, creates the man of the time, trains him in 
 poverty, inspires his genius, and arms him for his task. It has 
 given every race its own talent, and ordains that only that race 
 which combines perfectly with the virtues of all shall endure." 
 
 In his lecture on Education delivered at the Melo- 
 deon in Boston, in the autumn of 1864, Emerson gave 
 expression to his opinions regarding the results of the 
 recent election. At the beginning of this lecture, in 
 opening his course on American Life, he said, " The 
 people have this autumn expressed their decision that 
 the nation shall be a nation, not a mere meeting and 
 parting , as of passengers on the street-corner. The 
 unity of our country must be sustained by force ; such 
 is the decision by the people sobered by the calamities 
 of war, the immense loss of life, the heavy burdens of 
 laxation." Speaking of the educating power of war, 
 lie said that, "every citizen understands the issues at 
 stake, is ready to debate them, considers them a per 
 sonal matter. All know that America means freedom, 
 opportunity, power." The next year, speaking at the 
 Harvard Commencement festival, he said "the war 
 gave back integrity to this erring and immcral nation. 
 It charged with power, peaceful, amiable men, to whose 
 life war and discord were abhorrent." And in his Phi 
 
IN WAR-TIME. 157 
 
 Beta Kappa address of 1867, he gave an even more 
 decided expression to his joy at the success of the war, 
 and his confidence in the great destiny of the American 
 people. " No good citizen, he says, but shares the won 
 derful prosperity of the Federal Union. The heart still 
 beats with the public pulse < f jo}^, that the country has 
 withstood the rude trial which threatened its existence, 
 and thrills with the vast augmentation of strength which 
 it draws frc m this proof. The storm which has been 
 resisted is a crown cf honor, and a pledge of strength 
 to the ship. We may be well contented with our fair 
 inheritance." 
 
 Emerson has always been a sturdy critic of our 
 national vices and crimes, and a just one. He has 
 spared no faults, he has overlooked no defects. The 
 real spirit of the Republic has always appeared in him 
 in a prominent degree ; and, more than almost any other 
 American, he has realized the destiny of the country. 
 "No American thicker or writer has taken so accurate 
 a parallax of the true character of America and Ameri 
 cans as Emerson. He has caught in the camera of his 
 swift intuitions all their features, good and bad, and 
 has given them the grand setting of his prophetic and 
 optimistic genius. ISo American has believed more 
 heartily in America than Emerson, in her opportu 
 nity, her power, her destiny." 1 Because he has be 
 lieved in the American idea with a supreme faith, he 
 has ever pointed out our departures from it, and been 
 as much a gadfly to Boston and New England as Soc 
 rates was to Athens, calling men and the state alike to 
 judgment for their evil deeds. Through all his earlier 
 addresses he asserts the need of " creating an American 
 sentiment," and declares the error of having our "intel 
 lectual culture from one country, and our duties from 
 another." In one of these he says, " I find no expres 
 sion in our state papers or legislative debate, in our 
 lyceums or churches, specially in our newspapers, of a 
 high national feeling, no lofty counsels that rightfully 
 stir the blood." In 1878, however, in his Fortune of 
 
 i Francis E. Abbott, in The Index for Aug. 8, 1878. 
 
158 BALPH WALDO EMERSOX. 
 
 the Republic, his tone is that of confidence and trust, 
 though he spares not our faults. He finds that our 
 Republic "represents the sentiment and the future of 
 mankind," though he is still obliged to tell us that 
 " our political economy is low and degrading," while 
 we " consider nothing less than the sacredness of man." 
 Faults enough he is yet able to find, and he tells us 
 of them in the plainest words ; but the higher ends of 
 national existence he as sincerely declares. 
 
 As a critic faithful in pointing out the conditions 
 and methods of social and moral progress, we owe him 
 a debt we can never repay but by acceptance of his 
 teachings. He has been a true critic, because recog 
 nizing the absolute foundations on which all truth of 
 conduct must rest. He has tried to lift us to " the ways 
 and manners of the sky," infusing into our life, our 
 thought, and our literature a pure and a lofty sense of 
 human responsibility. 
 
THE PROPHET RECEIVED. 159 
 
 XII. 
 
 THE PROPHET RECEIVED. 
 
 period from 1860 to 1870 is that in which 
 Emerson secures the widest hearing, has the strong 
 est personal influence in molding the thought of his 
 time, and when his character shines out in the most 
 emphatic manner. He is less the critic, more thor 
 oughly than at any other time in sympathy with the 
 purpose and spirit of his country. His words had^ 
 taken root, and began to produce their fruit. He had 
 become a prophet to be heard gladly, while those who 
 differed from him began to think less of his errors than 
 of his truths. Fame had taken hold of his name ; his 
 countrymen found they could rejoice in his reputation,- 
 and, from being the admired of a party, he became an 
 accepted power in American thought and literature. 
 During this period he re-affirms in some of his most 
 original essays the great ideas to which his life had 
 been devoted, and- finds for these ideas an acceptance 
 they had not before received. 
 
 At the beginning of this period he lost two of his 
 most valued friends ; Parker dying in 1860, and Tho- 
 reau in 1862. He spoke at the meeting held by Parker s-^ 
 society in Music Hall, in his commemoration, and paid 
 an admiring and noble tribute to his friend. He closed 
 by saying that " the sudden and singular eminence of 
 Mr. Parker, the importance of his name and influence, 
 are the verdict of his country to his virtues. We have 
 few such men to lose, he said ; amiable and blameless at 
 home ; feared abroad as the standard-bearer of liberty ; 
 taking all the duties he could grasp ; and, more, refusing 
 to spare himself. He has gone down in early glory to 
 his grave, to be a living and enlarging power, wherever 
 
1GO RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 learning, wit, honest valor, and independence are hon 
 ored." * He spoke also at Thoreau s funeral, doing fine 
 justice to the genius of that rare soul. Thoreau, he said, 
 " was made for the noblest society ; he had in a short 
 life exhausted the capabilities of this world ; wherever 
 there is knowledge, wherever there is virtue, wherever 
 there is beauty, he will find a home." This address 
 was published in the Atlantic Monthly for August, 1862, 
 and in 1866 was reprinted as an introduction to Tho 
 reau s writings, appearing in the Excursions. He helped 
 to edit Thoreau s Letters, which came out in 1865, and 
 to prepare several other volumes from his manuscripts. 
 After Parker s death his society desired Emerson, 
 the next autumn, to give the first sermon for them in 
 Music Hall. The treatment Parker had received made 
 a strong impression on his mind, had alienated him 
 more than ever from the Unitarians, and had made him 
 think the church cared mainly for the external things 
 of religion. At this time he had reached the extreme 
 of his alienation from the church, had wholly given up 
 prayer, and discontinued nearly all outward acts of wor 
 ship. He was reluctant to enter Parker s pulpit, as he 
 could no longer give a sermon in the ordinary sense, 
 and as he had long before abandoned all thought of 
 ever preaching again. He was urged so strongly, how 
 ever, that at last he consented; and on the first Sun 
 day said he was glad Parker had made the place one 
 of freedom, that he had valued religion more than its 
 forms. During several years he frequently appeared 
 before the society, often on Sundays, while ho gave a 
 great number of lectures for the Parker Fraternity. 
 One of his sermons 2 in Music Hall has been reported 
 by M. D. Con way, who says it was the most "impres 
 sive utterance " he ever heard from Emerson. 
 
 " There was not one, but many themes and texts, and all related. 
 He began by calling attention to the tendency to simplification. 
 The inventor knows that a machine is new and improvable when it 
 
 1 The remainder of this address is printed in Frothiugham s Life of 
 Parker. 
 
 * Fraser s Magazine, May, 1807. 
 
THE PROPHET RECEIVED. 161 
 
 has a great many parts. The cliemists already find the infinite 
 variety of things contained in sixty-six elements; and physicists 
 promise that this number shall be reduced to twenty, ten, five. 
 Faraday declares his belief that all things \* iJJ, in the end, be re 
 duced to one element with two polarities. Religious progress has 
 similarly been in the direction of simplification. Every great re 
 ligion has in its ultimate development told its w T hole secret, con 
 centrated its force, in some simple maxims. In our youth we tails: 
 of the various virtues, the many dangers and trials, of life ; as we 
 grow older, we find ourselves returning to the proverbs of the 
 nursery. In religion one book serves many lands, ages, and varieties 
 of character ; nay, one or two golden rules out of the book are 
 enough. The many teachers and scriptures are at last but various 
 routes by which we always come to the simple law of obedience to 
 the light in the soul. * Seek nothing outside of thyself, says one, 
 Believe nothing against thy own spirit, echoes another part of the 
 word. Jesus said, Be lowly ; hunger and thirst after justice ; of your 
 own minds judge what is right. Swedenborg teaches that heaven 
 and hell are the loves of the soul. George Fox removes the bushel 
 from the light within. The substance of all morals is, that a man 
 should adhere to the path which the inner light has marked out 
 for him. The great waste in the world comes of the misapplication 
 of energy. The great tragedies of the soul are strung on those 
 threads not spun out of our own hearts. One records of Michael 
 Angelo that he found him working on his statue with a lamp stuck 
 in his cap, and it might almost symbolize the holier light of patient 
 devotion to his art. No matter what" your work is, let it be yours ; 
 no matter if you are tinker or preacher, blacksmith or president, 
 let what you are doing be organic, let it be in your bones, and 
 you open the door by which the affluence of heaven and earth shall 
 stream into you. You shall have the hidden joy, and shall carry 
 success with you. Look to yourself rather than to materials ; 
 nothing is unmanageable to a good hand ; no place slippery to a 
 good foot ; all things are clear to a good head. The sin of dogma 
 tism, of creeds and catechisms, is that they destroy mental character. 
 The youth says that he believes when he is only brow-beaten ; lie 
 says he thinks so and so, when that so and so are the denial of any 
 right to think. Simplicity and grandeur are thus lost, and with 
 them the sentiment of obligation to a principle of life and honor, 
 hi the legends of the Round Table it is told, that a witch, wishing 
 to make her child supremely wise, prepared certain herbs, and put 
 them in a pot to boil, intending to bathe the child s eyes with the 
 decoction. She set a shepherd-boy to stir the pot whilst she went 
 away. Whilst he stirred it, a raven dropped a twig into the pot, 
 which spattered three drops of the liquid into the shepherd s eyes. 
 Immediately all the future became as if passing before his eyes ; 
 and, seeing that when the witch returned she meant to kill him, he 
 left the pot, and fled to the woods. Now, if three drops of that 
 all-revealing decoction should suddenly get into the eyes of every 
 human being crowding along Broadway some day, how many of 
 
EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 them would still go on with the affair they are pursuing on the 
 street? Probably they would nearly all come to a dead stand. 
 But there would, let us hope, be here and there a happy child of 
 the Most High, who had taken hold of her or his life s thread by 
 sacred appointment. These would move on without even a pause. 
 The unveiled future would show the fatality of many schemes, the 
 idleness of many labors ; but every genial aim would only be ex 
 alted, and shown in their eternal and necessary relations. Finally, 
 humility was, the speaker declared, the one element to which all 
 virtues are reducible. It was revealed unto me, said the old 
 Quaker, that what other men trample on must be thy food. It 
 is the spirit that accepts our trust, and is thus the creator of char 
 acter and the guide to power. 
 
 " In closing this discourse, the speaker read at length the story 
 of the proposed humiliation, and the victory through humility, of 
 Fra Christoforo, in Manzoni s Promessi Sposi. I regret that I can 
 not give a report verbatim of this extraordinary discourse, which 
 produced an effect on those who heard it beyond any thing that I 
 ever witnessed, many being moved at times to tears. I went with 
 pencil and paper, intending to take down as much as I could ; but 
 at the end of the hour occupied by it, the paper remained blank, 
 and the pencil had been forgotten. I can therefore only produce 
 the record of my impressions of it, as they were written down the 
 same day." 
 
 In July, 1861, he gave an address before one of the 
 societies of Tufts College. He said, that while the 
 brute cannon was being heard, and though it found a 
 poetic echo in the hearts of those who regarded it as an 
 instrument of freedom, it should not be allowed to in 
 trude upon the sanctity of a truly intellectual occasion. 
 He urged the students in a time of conflict to rely upon 
 those better weapons of the mind; for the institution 
 of learning is in all times the ark of deliverance, and 
 many feet should constantly turn towards it. A great 
 natLmal failure would be due solely to a lack of duty 
 on the part of the college, using that word in its very 
 broadest sense. If the college-bred man leaves his 
 altar and his library, and plays the sycophant, then the 
 institution is nothing more than a suicidal hospital of 
 decayed tutors or a musty shop < f old books. Here 
 you are to become thinkers, to learn the art of com 
 mand. The thought secured is higher than its instru 
 ment, as the general is greater than the park of artil 
 lery. Many have written of a new revival of religion 
 
THE PROPHET RECEIVED. 163 
 
 and letters ; but the true revival is that of the human 
 mind, so that man s duty may extend to the proper 
 use of his intellectual powers. This change must be 
 brought about by a revival of the popular science of 
 mind. Every man who looks sincerely and with thought 
 will find a power within him which knows more than 
 he does. Simple wisdom is beyond all acquirements. 
 It is felt in its presence only, like the ubiquitous rays 
 of the sun. This inner knowledge, when it flows forth 
 under happy circumstances, is called genius. In the 
 time of youth, minds become skeptical unless this 
 declaration is made that truth exists. Youth should 
 keep the intellectual position sacred, and wait long and 
 patiently. Go sit with that hermit within you, he said, 
 who knows more than you do, and learn of him. You 
 are all to stand before an examining committee of the 
 world, and must be true to yourselves. 
 
 In November, 1864, he began a course of lectures 
 on American Life before the I 3 arker Fraternity. They 
 were given on Sunday evenings ; and the subjects were, 
 Public and Private Education, Social Aims, Resources, 
 Table-talk, Books, Character. The lecture on Books 
 has since appeared in his Society and Solitude, and those 
 on Social Aims and Resources in Letters and Social 
 Aims; while that on Character was printed in the 
 North American Review for 1866. 
 
 This course of lectures was well attended. The lec 
 ture on Table-talk was a fine discussion of the advan 
 tages of conversation ; and it " swarmed with bright 
 sayings, appropriate illustrations, interesting literary 
 anecdotes, and incisive comments on social character." 
 In 1865 he spoke at the Commencement festival at 
 Harvard, and gave a lecture on Literature before one 
 of the Amherst societies. In January, 1866, he gave 
 a course of lectures in Chickering Hall, Boston, Satur 
 days at noon, on Philosophy for the People. He spoke 
 of the Seven Meters of Intellect ; Instinct, Perception, 
 Talent ; Grenius, Imagination, Taste ; Laws of the Mied ; 
 Conduct of the Intellect; Relation cf Intellect to Mcr- 
 als. Other lectures of this winter were, the Man of the 
 
1G4 EALPII WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 World, Eloquence, Immortality, the Rule of Life, and an 
 address on the reception of the Chinese embassy. In 
 the lecture on Eloquence, he said John Brown gave at 
 Charlestown " the best speech made in the nineteenth 
 century." In his lecture on Genius, Imagination, and 
 Taste, however, he said Daniel Webster and Father 
 Taylor were the only two men who had reached his 
 ideal of oratory. 
 
 He took much interest in the Free Religious Associa 
 tion, and attended the meeting for its organization held 
 in Horticultural Hall, May 30, 1867. The men who 
 led in this movement had been largely influenced by 
 him, owing to him their main thought and purpose. 
 They had nearly all been connected with the Unitari 
 ans, and left them for much the same reasons he did. 
 To study religion as a universal sentiment, to find the 
 sources of its world-wide manifestation in man, to re 
 gard all its forms as expressions of the same funda 
 mental principles, these objects of the new association 
 had been for many years among his most cherished 
 ideas. At a subsequent meeting, Alcott declared that 
 Emerson was the father of the movement. 1 His ear 
 nest sympathy with the original purpose and spirit of 
 the association is clearly shown in his address on this 
 occasion. 
 
 " I think the necessity very great that invites all classes, all reli 
 gious men, whatever their connections, whatever their specialties, 
 in whatever relation they stand to Christianity, to unite in a move 
 ment; of benefit to men, under the sanction of religion. We are 
 all very sensible it is forced on us every day of the feeling 
 that the churches are outgrown, that the creeds are outgrown, that 
 a technical theology no longer suits us. It is not the ill-will of 
 people, no, indeed! but the incapacity for confirming themselves 
 there. 
 
 " The church is not large enough for the man; it can not inspire 
 thf> enthusiasm which is the parent of every good in history, which 
 makes the romance of history. For that enthusiasm you must 
 have something greater than yourselves, and not less. 
 
 " The child, the young student, finds scope in his mathematics 
 and chemistry, or natural history, because he finds a truth larger 
 than he is, finds himself continually instructed. But, in the 
 
 1 Freedom and Fellowship in Religion, p. 408. 
 
THE PFtOPHET RECEIVED. 
 
 churches, every healthy and thoughtful mind finds itself in some 
 thing less ; it is checked, cribbed, confined ; and the statistics of 
 the American, the English, and the German cities, showing that 
 the mass of the population is leaving off going to church, indi 
 cate the necessity which should have been foreseen, that the church 
 should always be new and extemporized, because it is eternal, and 
 springs from the sentiment of men, or it does not exist. One 
 Wonders, sometimes, that the churches retain so many votaries 
 ^ hen he reads the histories of the church. There is an element 
 of childish infatuation in them which does not exalt our respect 
 for man. Read in Michelet, that in Europe, for twelve or fourteen 
 centuries, God the Father had no temple and no altar. The Holy 
 Ghost and the son of Mary- were worshiped; and in the fourteenth 
 century the First Person began to appear at the side of his son in 
 pictures and in sculpture, for worship, but only through favor of 
 his son. These mortifying puerilities abound in religious history. 
 But as soon as every man is apprised of the divine presence within 
 his own mind, is apprised that the perfect law of duty corre 
 sponds with the laws of chemistry, of vegetation, of astronomy, as 
 face to face in a glass, that the basis of duty, the order of society, 
 the power of character, the wealth of culture, the perfection of 
 taste, all draw their essence from this moral sentiment, then wr 
 have a religion that exalts, that commands all the social and ail 
 the private action. 
 
 " What strikes me in the sudden movement which brings to 
 gether to-day so many separated friends, separated but sympa 
 thetic, and what I expected to find here was, some practical 
 suggestions by which we were to re-animate and re-organize for our 
 selves the true church, the pure worship. Pure doctrine always 
 bears fruit in pure benefits. It is only by good works, it is only 
 on the basis of active duty, that worship finds expression. What 
 is best in the ancient religions was the sacred friendships between 
 heroes, the sacred bands, and the relations of the Pythagorean dis 
 ciples. 
 
 " The close association which bound the first disciples of Jesus 
 is another example, and it were easy to find more. The soul of 
 our late war, which will always be remembered as dignifying it, 
 was, first, the desire to abolish slavery in this country ; and secondly, 
 to abolish the mischief of the war itself, by healing and saving the 
 sick and wounded soldiers, and this by the sacred bands of the 
 Sanitary Commission. I wish that the various beneficent institu 
 tions, which are springing up like joyful plants of wholesomeness 
 all over this country, shoiild all be remembered as within the sphere 
 of this committee, almost all of them are represented here, and 
 that within, this little band which has gathered to-day, should grow 
 friendship.. ^ The interests that grow out of a meeting like this, 
 should bind us with new strength to the old eternal duties." 
 
166 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 Emerson was made an Overseer of Harvard Univer 
 sity July 17, 1867; and at the commencement of that 
 year the honorary degree of LL.D. was conferred upon 
 him. It was at this time, also, he gave his Phi Beta 
 Kappa address on the Progress of Culture, since pub 
 lished in Letters and Social Aims. Harvard was for 
 many years strongly opposed to him, and from its pro 
 fessors came many of the severest criticisms he received. 
 His heresies, his Divinity-School address of 1838, his 
 criticism of Everett and Webster, his sympathy with 
 the anti-slavery cause, had made him long obnoxious to 
 the conservative tendencies of Harvard. He had gone 
 steadily on his way, however, until public opinion had 
 come round to his side ; and then Harvard did herself 
 the honor to forget all and show him just recognition. 
 It was a triumph on his part, nobly won and richly 
 deserved. His critics had become his admirers, his 
 heresies were forgotten ; and his genius, his rare merits, 
 his pure life, only were remembered. His address was 
 full of hope and courage, richly suggestive with those 
 great ideas he had preached for so many years. It was 
 a strong plea for the truest culture, as the best promise 
 of the American people. The words with which he 
 brought his address to an end, so earnest with faith in 
 the future are they, show with what hope he now con 
 templates the Republic : 
 
 " Brothers, I draw new hope from the atmosphere we breathe 
 to-day, from the healthy sentiment of the American people, and 
 from the avowed aims and tendencies of the educated class. The 
 age has new convictions. We know that in certain historic periods 
 there have been times of negation, a decay of thought, and a 
 consequent national decline ; that in France, at one time, there 
 was almost a repudiation of the moral sentiment, in what is called, 
 by distinction, society, not a believer within the church, and 
 almost not a theist out of it. In England the like spiritual dis 
 ease affected the upper class in the time of Charles II., and down 
 into the reign of the Georges. But it honorably distinguishes the 
 educated class here, that they believe in the succor which the heart 
 yields to the intellect, and draw greatness from its aspirations. 
 And when I say the educated class, I know what a benignant 
 breadth that word has, new in the world, reaching millions 
 instead of hundreds. And more, when I look around me, and 
 
THE PKOPHET RECEIVED. 167 
 
 consider the sound material of which the cultivated class here is 
 made up, what high personal worth, what love of men, what 
 hope, is joined with rich information and practical power, and 
 that the most distinguished by genius and culture are in this class 
 of benefactors, I can not distrust this great knighthood of virtue, 
 or doubt that the interests of science, of letters, of politics and 
 humanity, are safe. I think their hands are strong enough, to hold 
 up the Republic. I read the promise of better times and of greater 
 men." 
 
 In 1867 May-Day was published. Of the minor 
 pieces joined with it, many had previously appeared in 
 The Atlantic Monthly. It was received with general 
 approbation. In The North American Review Charles 
 Eliot Norton said, that " his poems are for the most 
 part more fitted to invigorate the moral sense than to 
 delight the artistic. At times, indeed, he is singularly 
 felicitous in expression ; and some of his verses both 
 charm and elevate the soul. These rare verses will 
 live in the memories of men. No poet is surer of 
 immortality than Mr. Emerson ; but the greater part 
 of his poetry will be read, not so much for its artistic 
 as for its moral worth." This is discriminating and 
 just: but W. D. Ho wells, in The Atlantic Monthly, is 
 even more enthusiastic in his praise of the genius and 
 originality of Emerson s poetry. Everywhere the 
 poet s felicity of expression appears, he says ; a for 
 tunate touch transfuses some dark enigma with color ; 
 the riddles are made to shine when most impenetrable ; 
 the puzzles are all constructed of gold and ivory arid 
 precious stones." In a discerning essay l on Emerson s 
 poems, E. P. Whipple said, v ; 
 
 " As an artist, Mr. Emerson exhibits the same fidelity to his 
 own ideas which he has always taken for his guide in the pursuit 
 of truth. The construction of his verse is as unique as his mental 
 idiosyncrasy. It certainly betrays incidentally the proof of a rare 
 poetic culture. His masterly command of English shows a careful 
 study of the best sources of the language ; but not a sign of 
 imitation can be found in his writings, not even the use of the 
 imagery whidh has been consecrated by the habit of ages, llis 
 lines are often abrupt, sometimes a little uncouth, but never 
 
 1 In the New York Independent, 
 
168 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 deficient in masculine strength. With no pretension to the finish 
 and smoothness which give grace to the poems of Tennyson, they 
 present frequent surprises of dainty melody, and charm as much 
 by the sweetness of their flow as by the grandeur of their thought." 
 
 In October and November, 1868, he gave a course of 
 lectures in the Meionaon. His subjects were, Art, Poe 
 try and Criticism, Historical Notes of American Life 
 and Letters, Hospitality and How to Make Homes At 
 tractive, Greatness, Leasts and Mosts. He was greeted 
 with large and enthusiastic audiences. Among his 
 hearers were Fields, Phillips, Lowell, Pierce, Wasson, 
 Hunt, and many professional and literary people. In 
 January, 1869, he gave in Chickering Hall a course of 
 ten readings from his favorite authors. The attend 
 ance was limited to one hundred. He read from the 
 whole ^ range of English poetry, interspersed with con 
 versation and criticism. One of the readings was 
 wholly from Milton; and he also occasionally intro 
 duced specimens from the poetry of other countries. 
 This year he read a paper before the Woman s Club, 
 devoted to personal recollections, and with many bio 
 graphical extracts from his diaries.. He spoke in the 
 Sunday-evening lecture-course of the Free Religious 
 Association, and in May gave an address at its annual 
 meeting. In April and May, 1870, he gave fourteen 
 lectures in the philosophical courses in Harvard Uni 
 versity. These lectures were given three in each week, 
 but were attended by only a very small number of per 
 sons, as they were outside the usual studies of the 
 University. They were based on lectures given in 
 previous years, with such additional observations as 
 seemed pertinent to the subjects. The general title was 
 The Natural History of the Intellect. In the first 
 lecture, given April 26, he said he should follow no 
 system, and that his lectures would be only the dotting 
 of a little curve of personal experience. He would 
 give merely the results of observation, and his course 
 would not be the laying bare of new truths necessarily. 
 lie would attempt to give a few anecdotes of the intel 
 lect, a mere jotting down of observed facts, a farmer s 
 
THE PROPHET RECEIVED. 169 
 
 almanac of mental moods. The strict analysis of the 
 intellect he would leave to others, for the reason that 
 system-makers are but gnats attempting to grasp the 
 universe. He said that metaphysics must alternate 
 with life, and to be truthful must come from a live 
 mind in a practical life. The outsiders have done the 
 most for philosophy, he said, not those who have been 
 analyzers by profession. He quoted this sentence from 
 Augustine, as expressing the spirit of his lectures : " Let 
 others wrangle ; I will wonder." The second lecture 
 was devoted to the general subject of the mind, the 
 third to instinct, the fourth to perception, and the fifth 
 to memory. Then followed a discussion of the value 
 of imagination, in two lectures. After that, inspiration 
 became the topic, the essay on that subject in Letters 
 and Social Aims being given. It was also continued 
 through two lectures, branching out into a defense of 
 genius. In the tenth lecture, common sense and genius 
 were contrasted. In the remaining lectures, the laws of 
 the mind were dealt with. An attempt seems to have 
 been made in these lectures to give a somewhat more 
 systematic presentation of his theories than he had 
 clone before. They contained nothing new, and which 
 he had not before said in his books ; but he dwelt some 
 what more distinctly on the main features of his phi 
 losophy. 
 
 In 1870 Society and Solitude was published. Many 
 of its essays had long before been given to the public 
 as lectures ; that on Art was printed in The Dial, and 
 the one on Farming was delivered in Concord in 1858. 
 That on Books was given as a lecture in England in 
 1848, those on Society and Solitude and Old Age 
 appeared in the first volumes of The Atlantic Monthly, 
 while the one on Civilization was a portion of the 
 Washington address of 1862. Higginson saw in these 
 essays a" greater variety and a more distinct organic life 
 than in tha. earlier ones, while they are no less finished 
 and scarcely less concentrated. " It is not enough to 
 r.-vy that such papers as these constitute the high-water 
 mark of American literature ; it is not too much to say 
 
170 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 that they are unequalled in the literature of the age. 
 Name, if you can, the Englishman or the Frenchman, 
 who, on themes like these, must not own himself second 
 to Emerson." 
 
 In April and May, 1871, he spent six weeks in Cali 
 fornia with a party of intimate friends ; and he delivered 
 a few lectures while there. In August he gave an 
 address at a meeting of the Massachusetts Historical 
 Society on the one hundredth anniversary of the birth 
 of Walter Scott. It was eloquent with thought, and in 
 dicated a discriminating and hearty appreciation of 
 Scott s genius. In April he gave six lectures and read 
 ings in Mechanics Hall, at three o clock Monday after 
 noons. His first lecture was on literature ; and he read 
 from Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson, Ben Jonson, David 
 Lewis, Henry Thoreau, and one or two others. In one 
 of his lectures he spoke of Byron, who was called the 
 most skillful poet of his time in the use of the English 
 language. In the last one he spoke of the effects of 
 culture on the soul, and its influence in the formation 
 of ideas about life and destiny. The Boston Journal 
 gave the following account of the impression made by 
 these lectures : 
 
 " The same consummate magnetism lingers around and upon 
 every phrase ; there is the same thrilling earnestness of antithesis, 
 the same delight and brooding over poetry and excellence of ex 
 pression, as of old. There is no other man in America who can, 
 by the mere force of what he says, enthrall and dominate an 
 audience. Breathless attention is given, although now and then 
 his voice falls away so that those seated farthest oif have to strain 
 every nerve to catch the words. The grand condensation, the 
 unfaltering and almost cynical brevity of expression, are at first 
 startling and vexatious ; but presently one yields to the charm, and 
 finds his mind in the proper assenting mood. The loving tender 
 ness with w r hich Emerson lingers over a fine and thoroughly 
 expressive phrase is beyond description. It thrills the whole audi 
 ence; arrests universal attention. The sacredness of the printed 
 page is interpreted in a new and universal light. There is the 
 same passionate adoration displayed over a fine line from a sonnet, 
 or lavished upon one of Thoreau s quaint conceits, which Ingres 
 bestowed upon a specimen of pure drawing. The innate and 
 inexhaustible love of beauty, softening and permeating every utter 
 ance, infusing its delicate glow and its delicious harmony into each 
 
THE PROPHET RECEIVED. 171 
 
 idea, and investing abstractions with the charms ol real auu. vivid 
 beings, triumphs. over age and diffidence, gives to the austere and 
 unworldly philosopher the bloom and enthusiasm of the lover and 
 the poet." 
 
 In 1864 he contributed a preface to an American 
 edition of the G-ulistdn, or Rose Garden, of Saadi. 1 He 
 had greatly admired this poet, and his account is full 
 of praise. It brings out very clearly the Oriental side 
 of Emerson s mind, and shows his acquaintance with 
 Eastern literature. " When once the works of these 
 poets, he says, are made accessible, they must draw 
 the curiosity of good readers. It is provincial to ignore 
 them. The monotones we accuse, he goes on to say, 
 accuse our own. We pass into a new landscape, new 
 costume, new religion, new manners and customs, un 
 der which humanity nestles very comfortably at Shiraz 
 and Mecca, with good appetite, and with moral and 
 intellectual results that correspond point for point with 
 ours at New York and London." 
 
 To Professor Goodwin s edition of Plutarch s Morals, 
 published in 1870, he wrote a preface. He gave a very 
 interesting account of the literary history of Plutarch 
 since the Middle Ages and the restoration of Greek lit 
 erature. Some of the lesser works attributed to Plutarch 
 he believes unworthy of him, being either the notes of 
 his pupils, or matter accidentally added to his writings. 
 Having spoken of the claim that Plutarch was a Chris 
 tian in his teaching, he says, " His thoughts are excel 
 lent, if only he had a right to say them." In the com 
 pany of the world s heroes Plutarch will "sit as the 
 bestower of the crown of noble knighthood, and laure 
 ate of the ancient world." He says, at the end of his 
 essay, 
 
 " It is a service to our Republic to publish a book that can force 
 ambitious young men, before they mount the platform of the 
 county conventions, to read the Apothegms of Great Command 
 ers. If we could keep the secret and communicate it only to a 
 few chosen aspirants, we might confide, that, by this noble infiltra 
 tion, they would easily carry the victory over all competitors. 
 
 1 Printed in The Atlantic Monthly for July, 1864. 
 
172 EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 But as it was the desire of these old patriots to fill, with their 
 majestic spirit, all Sparta and Rome, and not a few leaders only, 
 we hasten to offer them to the American public." 
 
 In January, 1872, being in Washington, he was in 
 vited to visit Howard University, which he did. While 
 there he was called on to speak to the students. In an 
 entirely extemporaneous manner he expressed his great 
 regard for books as a means of education, said that each 
 mind has a specialty of its own which must guide the 
 person in selecting his profession, and, apologizing for 
 not being prepared to speak, suggested that a topic 
 would help him to say something to the purpose. His 
 opinions of books being asked for, he spoke of Gibbon, 
 Boswell s Johnson, Shakspere, Burke, and Goethe, with 
 high praise of each. Concerning the selection of a pro 
 fession, he said, 
 
 " I am of the opinion that every mind that comes into the world 
 has its own specialty ; it is different from every other mind ; that 
 each of you brings into the world a certain bias, a disposition to 
 attempt something of its own, something your own, an aim a 
 little different from that of your companions ; and that every young 
 man and woman is a failure so long as each does not find what is 
 his or her own bias ; that just so long as you are influenced by 
 those around you, so long as you are doing those things you see 
 others do well instead of doing that thing which you can do well, 
 you are so far wrong, so far failing of your own right mark. . . . 
 I conceive that success is in finding what it is that you yourself 
 really want, and pursuing it ; freeing yourself from all importuni 
 ties of your friends to do something which they like, and insisting 
 upon that thing which you like and can do. ... 
 
 " The multitude of professions is endless, and in a right state of 
 society the objects and aims will be much more numerous. For 
 instance, in the German universities now, instead of having five or 
 six or ten professorships, they have sixty or one hundred, the 
 division of the sciences, the division of the parts of great classes 
 of knowledge, requiring so many instructors. Well, I think that 
 with the progress of society, the divisions of employments will not 
 be sixty or one hundred, but thousands ; and finally, if one should 
 say it, as many as there are men, as many as there are women, 
 that the aims will be as many as there are individual souls. There 
 fore I wish that each young person should learn that secret, that 
 he only can tell himself what it is that he is to do. It is revealed 
 to him in the progress of his mind, always becoming revealed more 
 distinctly, what that object is. He did not know it when he was 
 
THE PEOPHET RECEIVED. 173 
 
 a child ; he did not know it when he was a boy ; but, as his mind 
 expands, all is slowly revealed to him ; revealed to him by every 
 effort he makes in this direction or against it. For, when he is labor 
 ing against his proper calling, he finds himself met with obstacles 
 that increase as he goes. When he is following his proper mission, 
 the leading of his inward guide, he is assisted by every step which 
 he takes. The purpose for which he is made is always becoming 
 more clear to him. I believe that for every active mind, in its own 
 direction, there is a thought waking every morning, a new thought ; 
 that every day brings now instruction and facility; that even in 
 the dreams of the night we are helped forward. There is a great 
 difference in our activity of mind. Sometimes we have heavy 
 periods, when we don t think for days or weeks or months ; then, 
 periods of activity. I think these depend very much upon our 
 selves, upon our good behavior. If we use our opportunities, op 
 portunities are multiplied. If we neglect them, if we give up to 
 idle pleasures and amusements, they are withdrawn. The idle 
 person ceases to have thoughts. The active person is always 
 assisted. There are a great many mysterious facts in our history, 
 which the mind, attentive to itself, will always discover, and the 
 admonitions that come thence." 
 
 The interest manifested in his conversational address 
 to this company of colored students was one of many 
 indications that the prophet was at last accepted by his 
 countrymen. Yet his own modesty forbade his assum 
 ing any honors to himself; and he said to these stu 
 dents, " I am not in the habit of speaking with classes 
 of young persons very much. And I myself, I ought to 
 say, am a solitary man, living in the country, and seeing 
 few people. Now and then I go to Boston or elsewhere 
 and read a paper to a class, but seldom speak in any 
 other manner." Had he been less modest, less retiring 
 and reticent, he would have made a greater outward 
 impression upon his country ; but his real power and 
 influence have been more subtly felt and more deeply 
 exerted, because he has sought no applause and desired 
 no praise. He has persistently refused to believe that 
 his influence has been great upon American thought, 
 modestly shrinking from the praises of his co-workers, 
 and saying that his success was owing to the time in 
 which he has lived. 
 
 The experiences of these ten years, including the 
 period of the great Rebellion and the work of recon- 
 
174 EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 struction of the Republic, made Emerson more than 
 ever the prophet of good and the inspirer of hope. 
 Age brought with it an even warmer glow of interest 
 in his fellow-men ; and the new life of the Republic 
 brought to him an enlarged perception of the organic 
 life of the race in its relations to morals and religion. 
 He came to see a new value in a united religious life 
 for the people, though abating no jot of his soul-trust. 
 As much as ever he rejected religion as a piece of his 
 tory, as a repetition of what had been said of old time ; 
 but he realized more than before how it is that great 
 deeds can be accomplished by the common faith and 
 intuitions of a people. He came more and more to live 
 in an atmosphere of calm and abiding faith, to believe 
 with an even more pronounced conviction that all 
 things work together for good. 
 
THE VOICE AT EVE. 175 
 
 XIII. 
 
 THE VOICE AT EVE*. 
 
 T^ARLY in the morning of July 24, 1872, Emerson 
 J--^ discovered that his house was on fire. The roof 
 and the upper rooms were much burned; but every 
 thing was speedily removed by his neighbors, including 
 his library and manuscripts. The family found refuge 
 in the " Old Manse." 
 
 Oct. 15 he attended a complimentary dinner in New 
 York in honor of James Anthony Froude, and made a 
 brief address.. He said that. Froude "has shown at least 
 two eminent faculties in his histories, the faculty 
 of seeing wholes, and the" faculty of seeing and saying 
 particulars s The one makes history valuable ; the other 
 makes it readable, interesting." He also said that " the 
 language, the style of his books, draws very much of 
 its excellence from the habit of giving the very lan 
 guage of the times." During this month he set out for 
 Europe with his daughter. He went to Egypt, and, 
 returning, spent several weeks in Paris. In England 
 he was cordially received by his friends. He spent a 
 month in London, then visited Oxford, and made trips 
 into Wales and Scotland. At Oxford he was invited 
 to deliver a course of lectures, at the suggestion of 
 Max Miiller, but did not do so. He spoke at Thomas 
 Hughes s Workingmen s College in London. He made 
 a visit to Lord Amberley, and he found new delight in 
 his friendship for Carlyle. His old friends were not 
 forgotten, and his visit was made by them a festival. 
 " I know jio American, indeed there can be no oth 
 er," wrote" one of riis admirers at this time, "who has 
 in England a company of such friends and disciples as 
 those who gather about Mr. Emerson ; no one for 
 
176 RALPH WALDO EMEKSOX. 
 
 whom so many rare men and women have a reverence 
 so affectionate ; no one who holds to the best section of 
 English students, arid of her most religious and culti 
 vated minds, a relation so delightful to both. The 
 incomparable charm of his manner and of his conversa 
 tion remains what it always was, and marked always 
 by the same sweetness, the same delicacy, mingled with 
 the same penetration and force." 1 This interest was 
 shown in the organization in England, in 1869, of an 
 association devoted to the publication and diffusion of 
 the works of Carlyle and Emerson. Its kindred objects 
 were the diffusion of education, relief of pauperism, 
 elevation of woman, securing of international peace, 
 the broadening of the national church to include all 
 thinkers, and the diffusion of art and culture. 
 
 During his absence his house was rebuilt in exactly 
 the old form. On his return, in May, 1873, he was 
 received with music and a procession by his neighbors, 
 who most cordially welcomed him home. This recep 
 tion was as surprising to him as it was gratifying. 
 The fine new Free-Library building in Concord, built 
 by William Munroe, a citizen of the town, was dedi 
 cated Oct. 1 ; and Emerson delivered the address. He 
 gave an interesting account of the value and uses of 
 books and libraries. 
 
 " I think it not easy, he said, to exaggerate the utility of the 
 beneficence which takes this form. If you consider what has 
 befallen you when reading a poem, or a history, or a tragedy, or a 
 novel even, that deeply interested you, how you forgot the time 
 of day, the persons sitting in the room, and the engagements for the 
 evening, you will easily admit the wonderful property of books 
 to make all towns equal; that Concord library makes Concord as 
 good as Rome, Paris, or London, for the hour, has the best of 
 each of those cities in itself. Robinson Crusoe, could he have had 
 a shelf of our books, could almost have done without his man 
 Friday, or even the arriving ship. 
 
 " The chairman of Mr. Munroe s trustees has told you how old 
 is the foundation of our village library ; and we think we can trace 
 in pur modest records a correspondent effect of culture amidst our 
 citizens. A deep religious sentiment is in all times an inspirer of 
 the intellect, and that was not wanting here. The town was set- 
 
 1 George W. Sraally, in The New York Tribune. 
 
THE VOICE AT EVE. 17 7 
 
 tied by a pious company of nonconformists from England; and 
 the printed books of their pastor and leader, Rev. Peter Bulkeley, 
 testify the ardent sentiment which they shared. The religious 
 bias of our founders had its usual effect, to secure an education to 
 read their Bible and hymn-book ; and thence the step was easy for 
 active minds to an acquaintance with history and with poetry. 
 Peter Bulkeley sent his son John to the first class that gTaduated in 
 Harvard College, in 1642, and two sons to later classes. Major 
 Simon Willard s son Samuel graduated at Harvard in 1650, and 
 was for six years, from 1701 to 1707, vice-president of the col 
 lege ; and his son Joseph was president of the college from 1781 
 to 1804 ; and Concord counted fourteen graduates of Harvard in 
 its first century, and its representation there increased with its 
 gross population." 
 
 After speaking of Thoreau and Hawthorne, and their 
 interest in boo.ks, he passes on to say, 
 
 " Literature is the record of the best thoughts. Every attain 
 ment and discipline which increases a man s acquaintance with the 
 invisible world, lifts his being. Every thing that gives him a new 
 perception of beauty, multiplies his pure enjoyments. A river of 
 thought is always miming out of the invisible world into the 
 mind of man. Shall not they who received the largest streams 
 spread abroad the healing waters ? 
 
 " Homer and Plato and Pindar and Shakspere serve many 
 more than have heard their names. Thought is the most volatile 
 of all things. It can not be contained in any cup, though you shut 
 the lid never so tight. Once brought into the world, it runs over 
 the vessel which received it into all minds that love it. The very 
 language we speak thinks for us by the subtle distinctions which 
 already are marked for us by its words, and every one of them is 
 the contribution of the wit of one and another sagacious man in 
 all the centuries of time. Consider that it is our own state of 
 mind at any time that makes our estimate of life and the world. 
 If you sprain your foot, you w T ill presently come to think that 
 Xature has sprained hers. Every thing begins to look so slow and 
 inaccessible. And when you sprain your mind, by gloomy reflec 
 tions on your failures and vexations, you come to have a bad 
 opinion of life. Think how indigent Mature must appear to the 
 blind, the deaf, and the idiot. Now, if you can kindle the imagi 
 nation by a new thought, by heroic histories, by uplifting poetry, 
 instantly you expand, are cheered, inspired, and become wise, 
 and even prophetic. Music works this miracle for those who have 
 a good ear ; what omniscience has music ! so absolutely imper 
 sonal, and yet every sufferer feels his secret sorrow reached. Yet 
 to a scholar *khe book is as good or better. There is no hour of 
 vexation which, on a IKtle reflection, will not find diversion and 
 relief in the libra: y. Eir, companions arc few ; at the moment he 
 
178 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 has none ; but, year by year, these silent friends supply their place. 
 Many times the reading of a book has made the fortune of the man., 
 has decided his way of life. It makes friends. Tis the tie 
 between men to have been delighted with the same book. Every 
 one of us is always in search of his friend ; and when, unexpectedly, 
 he finds a stranger enjoying the rare poet or thinker who is dear to 
 his own solitude, it is like rinding a brother. 
 
 " In books I have the history or the energy of the past. Angels 
 they are to us of entertainment, sympathy, and provocation. With 
 them many of us spend the most of our life, these silent guides, 
 these tractable prophets, historians, and singers, whose embalmed 
 life is the highest feat of art ; who now cast their moonlight 
 illumination over -solitude, weariness, and fallen fortunes. You 
 say tis a languid pleasure. Yes; but its tractableness, coming 
 and going like a dog at your bidding, compensate the quietness, 
 and contrast with the slowness of fortune, and the inaccessibleness 
 of persons. You meet with a man of science, a good thinker or 
 good wit ; but you do not know how to draw out of him that which 
 he knows. But the book is a sure friend, always ready at your 
 first leisure, opens to the very page you desire, and shuts at your 
 first fatigue, as possibly, your professor might not. 
 
 " It is a tie between men to have read the same book ; and it is a 
 disadvantage not to have read the book your mates have read, or 
 not to have read it at the same time, so that it may take the place 
 in your culture it does in theirs, and you shall understand their 
 allusions to it, and not give it more or less emphasis than they 
 do. Yet the strong character does not need this sameness of cul 
 ture. The imagination knows its own food in every pasture ; and 
 if it has not had the Arabian Nights, Prince Lee Boo, or Homer, 
 or Scott, has drawn equal delight and terror from haunts and 
 passages which you will hear of with envy. 
 
 " In saying these things for books, I do not for a moment forget 
 that they are secondary, mere means, and only used in the off- 
 hours, only in the pause, and, as it were, the sleep, or passive state, 
 of the mind. The intellect reserves all its rights. Instantly, when 
 the mind itself wakes, all books, all past acts are forgotten, hud 
 dled aside as impertinent in the august presence of the creator. 
 Their costliest benefit is that they set us free from ourselves ; for 
 they wake the imagination and the sentiment, and in their inspira 
 tions we dispense with books. Let rne add, then, read proudly, 
 put the duty of being read invariably on the author. If he is not 
 read, whose fault is it? I am quite ready to be charmed, but I 
 shall not make believe I am charmed." 
 
 He read a poem in Faneuil Hall Dec. 16, on the cen 
 tennial anniversary of the destruction of tea in Boston 
 Harbor, which has since been published in his /Select 
 Poems. On the last day of the year he read this poem 
 
THE VOICE AT EVE. 179 
 
 again, this time before the Radical Club, at Mrs. Sar 
 gent s. At this meeting a reception was given him; 
 Whittier, Longfellow, Hedge, Phillips, Wilson, Henry 
 James, and many others being present. Charles Brad- 
 laugh was also a guest of the club, and in a feeling 
 manner expressed his debt to Emerson, by saying, "1 
 ascribe to Mr. Emerson s essay on Self-Reliance my first 
 step in the career I have adopted. Twenty-six years 
 ago, when too poor to buy a book, I copied parts of that 
 famous lecture." In writing to an English journal, he 
 described Emerson s manner as "so gentle that he 
 seemed only reading to one person, and yet his voice 
 was so distinct that it filled the room in its lowest 
 tones." l 
 
 In 1874 Emerson was put in nomination by the inde 
 pendent party among the students of Glasgow Univer 
 sity, for the office of Lord-Rector. The other candi 
 dates were Disraeli and Forster. The usual exciting 
 canvass preceded the election. Emerson received five 
 hundred votes against seven hundred for Disraeli, who 
 was elected. To the committee of the Independent 
 Club, who wrote asking permission to put him in nomi 
 nation, he sent the following letter : 
 
 " CONCORD, MASS., March 18, 1874. 
 
 " GENTLEMEN, I received a few days since your letter of the 
 17th of February, inviting me to allow my name to be proposed as 
 one of the candidates for the Lord-rectorship of the University of 
 Glasgow. I confess to a surprise that reached almost to incredulity, 
 which the careful reading of your letter changed into a respect and 
 gratitude to the kind and noble feeling with which you, and the 
 young gentlemen whom you represent, have honored me. Dr. Stir 
 ling s letter, which came to me with yours, added its confirmation 
 and the friendliest details to your own. 
 
 " At first I thought the proposition so novel, and so unlikely to be 
 sustained by the whole body of the matriculated students, that I 
 must not think of it as other than a kindest compliment of a few 
 friends, and very precious to me as such, but only to be respectfully 
 declined. On thinking it over, I find it is for you, and not for me, 
 to judge of the probabilities of the election ; and that you, and not 
 I, must decide whether these are such as to justify you in actually 
 proposing my name to the electors. If you persist, you are at lib- 
 
 1 Sketches and Reminiscences of the Radical Club, p. 293. 
 
180 RALPH WALDO EMERSOX. 
 
 erty to propose my name ; and, if elected, I shall certainly endeavor 
 to meet your wishes, and those of the university, as to the time 
 and duties which the ofiice shall require. With this letter I shall 
 send to Boston my affirmative reply by the ocean telegraph, as re 
 quested by Dr. Stirling. 
 
 " Yours with very kind regards, 
 
 " R. W. EMERSON." 
 
 There could have been no greater evidence of the 
 esteem in which he is held in England than this nomi 
 nation and the very large vote he received. No other 
 foreigner, probably, had ever received the nomination ; 
 and the contest showed a thorough appreciation of his 
 genius on the part of his friends among the students. 
 After the contest was over, he wrote the following 
 letter to the honorary president of the Independent 
 Club : 
 
 " CONCORD, 5th January, 1875. 
 
 "My DEAR DR. STIRLING, I esan not forgive myself for my 
 tardiness in telling you how deeply 1 have felt your interest and 
 care in my behalf at Glasgow. Yet I was and am deeply sensible 
 of your heroic generosity in the care of my interest in the late elec 
 tion. I could never, from the first to the last act in the aii air, bring 
 myself to believe that the brave nomination of the independents 
 would succeed, and could hardly trust the truth of the telegrams, 
 which at last brought me so dignified a result as five hundred votes 
 in our behalf. I count that vote as quite the fairest laurel that has 
 ever fallen on me ; and I can not but feel deeply grateful to my 
 young friends in the university, and to yourself, who have been 
 their counselor and my too partial advocate. Of course such an 
 approach to success gave me lively thoughts of what could have 
 been attempted and at least approached in meeting and dealing 
 with the university, if my friends had succeeded ; but I hope the 
 stimulus they have given me will not be wholly lost. Probably I 
 have never seen one of these five hundred young men ; and thus 
 they show us that our recorded thoughts give the means of reaching 
 those who think with us in other countries, and make closer alli 
 ances sometimes than life-long neighborhood. To be sure, the truth 
 is hackneyed, but it never came to me in so palpable a form. It is 
 easy to me to gather from your letters, and from those of Mr. Herk- 
 less, and from the printed papers, Jiow generously you have espoused 
 and aided my champions ; and it only adds one more to the many 
 deep debts which I owe to you. I never lose the hope that you will 
 come to us at no distant day, and be our king in philosophy. 
 " With affectionate regards, 
 
 " R. WALDO EMERSON." 
 "MR. J. HUTCHISON STIRLING, LL D." 
 
THE VOICE AT EVE. 181 
 
 In 1874 he published a collection of his favorite 
 poems, under the title of Parnassus. It was the result 
 of his habit, pursued for many years, of copying into his 
 commonplace book any poem which specially pleased 
 him. Many of these favorites had been read to illus 
 trate his lectures on the English poets. The book has 
 no worthless selections, almost every thing it contains 
 bearing the stamp of genius and worth. Yet Emer 
 son s personality is seen in its many intellectual and 
 serious poems, and in the small number of its purely 
 religious selections. With two or three exceptions he 
 copies none of those devotional poems which have 
 attracted devout souls. He makes three selections 
 from Jones Very, but gives none of the exquisite reli 
 gious pieces of that little-known poet. He gives no one 
 of the poems in which is embodied the religious spirit 
 of transcendentalism, as it has been expressed by 
 Samuel Longfellow, Samuel Johnson, and others. His 
 poetical sympathies are shown in the fact that one-third 
 of the selections are from the seventeenth century. 
 Shakspere is drawn on more largely than any other, 
 no less than eighty-eight selections being made from 
 him. The names of George Herbert, Herrick, Ben 
 Jonson, and Milton frequently appear. Wordsworth 
 appears forty-three times, and stands next to Shak 
 spere ; while Burns, Byron, Scott, Tennyson, and 
 Chaucer make up the liot of favorites. Man} 7 little- 
 known pieces are included, and some whose merit is 
 other than poetical. W. E. Chaining, Thoreau, and 
 Sanborn are drawn upon as often as Longfellow, 
 Holmes, or Lowell. Many pieces seem to be included 
 for their historic or personal interest, and some because 
 they describe persons, scenes, or human passions. 
 Burns, Bret Harte, and Holmes are the favorites among 
 humorous poets. Shakspere and Byron furnish nearly 
 all the selections under the head of " Poetry of Terror ; " 
 while Shakspere and other Elizabethan poets give him, 
 with a few exceptions, those in the section of " Oracles 
 and Counsels." There is a fine collection of songs, 
 marked by their intellectual and moral qualities, and 
 
182 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 as being of the highest poetic merit. The section of 
 moral and religious poems is nearly one-half of it taken 
 from the Elizabethan poets, showing how strong is 
 Emerson s affinity for the thought of that period. Even 
 here Shakspere retains the priority, but Wordsworth 
 only falls behind him by one selection. The large 
 number of heroic, narrative, and ballad poems given, 
 as well as those containing personal portraits, show the 
 depth of Emerson s human interest. This selection of 
 poems is eminently that of a poet of keen intellectual 
 tastes. It is not popular in character, omitting many 
 public favorites, and introducing very much which can 
 never be acceptable to the general reader. The preface 
 is full of interest for its comments on many of the 
 poems and poets appearing in these selections. 
 
 The hundredth anniversary of the Concord fight was 
 observed on the 19th of April, 1875. On that day the 
 " Minute Man " of young French was unveiled. This 
 fine piece of work was erected on the west shore of the 
 Concord River, at the place where the militia stood 
 when they 
 
 " Fired the shot heard round the world." 
 
 The first monument was erected where the British 
 soldiers stood. In the brief address which Emerson 
 gave on this occasion he tells the story of the Concord 
 farmer who first suggested the new monument. His 
 whole address was in these words : 
 
 " Ebenezer Hubbard, a farmer who inherited the land in the vil 
 lage in which troops committed depredations, and who had a deep 
 interest in the history of the raid, erected many years ago a flag 
 staff on his land, and never neglected to hoist the stars and stripes 
 on the 19th of April and the 4th of July. It grieved him deeply 
 that yonder monument, erected by the town in 1836, should be 
 built on the ground on which the enemy stood, instead of that 
 which the Americans occupied in the Concord fight n and he 
 bequeathed in his will a sum of money to the town of Concord, 
 on condition that a monument should be built on the identical 
 spot occupied by our minute-men and militia on that day ; and 
 another sum of money, on the condition that the town should build 
 a foot-bridge across the river, where the old bridge stood in 1775. 
 The town accepted the legacy, built the bridge, and employed 
 
THE VOICE AT EVE. 183 
 
 Daniel French to prepare a statue to be erected on the specified 
 spot. Meanwhile Congress, at Washington, gave to the town 
 bronze cannons, to furnish the artist with materials to complete his 
 work. His statue is before you ; it was approved by the town, 
 and to-day it speaks for itself. The sculptor has rightly conceived 
 the proper emblems of the patriot farmer, who at the morning 
 alarm left the plow to grasp his gun. He has built no dome 
 over his work, believing that the blue sky makes the best back 
 ground. The statue is the first serious work of our young towns 
 man, who is now in Italy to pursue his profession. 
 
 " We had many enemies arid many friends in England, but oui 
 one benefactor was King George the Third. The time had arrived 
 for the political severance of America, that it might play its part 
 in the history of this globe ; and the way of Divine Providence to 
 do it was to give an insane king to England. In the resistance of 
 the colonies he alone was immovable on the question of force. Eng 
 land was so dear to us, that the colonies could only be absolutely 
 united by violence from England ; and only one irian could compel 
 resort to violence. The king became insane ; parliament wavered ; 
 all the ministers wavered ; Lord North wavered ; but the king had 
 the insanity of one idea. He was immovable ; he insisted on the 
 impossible ; so the army was sent. America was instantly united, 
 and the nation born. On the 19th of April, eight hundred soldiers, 
 with hostile intent, were sent hither from Boston. Nature itself 
 put on a new face on that day. You see the nude fields of this 
 morning ; but on the same day of the year 1775 a rare forwardness 
 of spring is recorded. It appears the patriotism of the people was 
 so hot that it melted the snow, and the rye waved on the 19th of 
 April. 
 
 " In all noble actions we say tis only the first step that costs. 
 Who would carry out the rule of right must take his life in his hand. 
 We have no need to magnify the facts. Only three of our men 
 were killed at this bridge, and a few others were wounded ; but 
 here the British army was first fronted and driven back ; and if 
 only three men, or only one man was slain, it was the first victory. 
 The thunderbolt falls on an inch of ground, but the light of it fills 
 the horizon. The British instantly retreated. We had no electric 
 telegraph ; but the news of this triumph over the king s troops sped 
 through the country to New York, to Philadelphia, to Kentucky, to 
 the Carolinas, with speed unknown before, and ripened the colonies 
 to inevitable decision. 
 
 " This sharp beginning of real war was followed sixty days 
 later by the battle of Bunker Hill, then by Gen. Washington s 
 arrival in Cambridge, arid his redoubts on Dorchester Heights. In 
 one year and twelve days from the death of Isaac Davis and Abner 
 Ilosmer, one hundred and twenty vessels, loaded with Gen. Howe 
 and his army, eight thousand men, and all their effects, sailed out 
 of Boston 1 1 arbor, never to return. Tis a proud and tender story. 
 I chullci i< ;<> jiny lover of Massachusetts to read the sixteenth chapter 
 oi Bancroft s history without tears of joy. 
 
184 RALPH WALDO EMEU SOX. 
 
 His Letters and Social Aims was published in 1875. 
 It contains the essay on The Comic, which appeared 
 in The Dial, and a paper on Persian Poetry, from 
 The Atlantic Monthly. Its first essay is a long and 
 carefully elaborated presentation of his theory of 
 poetry, and is his only piece of writing since Nature 
 which did not assume the lecture-form. His theory 
 that the poet is the true interpreter of nature and life 
 is presented, while the doctrine of identity again 
 becomes the basis of his thought. Nature and mind 
 exactly correspond with each other, so that nature is a 
 perfect symbol of spirit; and the poet, through his 
 imagination and intuition, acts as the interpreter of this 
 correspondence, this is the point of view of the essay. 
 The essays in this volume are simpler in style and 
 thought than some of his earlier ones, because he is 
 dealing with the affairs of daily life. In a few of them, 
 however, he reaches the highest mark of his power as 
 a writer. This is the case in the address on the Prog 
 ress of Culture, and it is also true of the essay on 
 Immortality. Nearly all the other essays had been 
 given as lectures in Boston, between 1860 and 1870. 
 Tins volume was received with a more general approval 
 and with more of praise by the critics than any of his 
 previous books. A few of them, however, persisted in 
 misjudging as much as ever, as in the case of The 
 Athenaeum, which said, 
 
 " In his latest production Mr. Emerson is as crabbed as enter 
 taining, and as cock-sure as when he first startled the Phi Beta 
 1 Cuppa Society with his parodoxes on the relations of man to the 
 universe. One advantage, however, he still possesses over most of 
 the /weWo-philosophers at whose head he stands. He is slow in 
 utterance and patient in labor. His method of work is that of 
 great thinkers. Gradually he absorbs and assimilates whatever 
 s< i-;jce or history can furnish, and slowly and reflectively ho gives 
 us the result of his thoughts. So patiently does he brood OV.T his 
 eggs, iliat if they are sometimes addled the fault is scarcely his. 
 Already, however, his influence is on the wane. He wants that 
 last and most useful gift of genius, the power to keep young in 
 soul, and to advance with advancing years." * 
 
 1 Athemeuin, Jan. 15, 1876. Perhaps the worst, instance of misrepre 
 sentation was shown in tho Catholic World for April, loTS, whero Emer- 
 
THE VOICE AT EVE. 18o 
 
 A collection of his Select Poems appeared in 187G, 
 containing the best of the poems in the two previcus 
 volumes. It also embraced two or three hitherto 
 unpublished. From this time on his lectures became 
 less frequent, but for that reason all the more notable 
 to those who had listened to him for many years. He 
 read one of the best of his moral and political essays 
 to a brilliant audience in the Old South Church, during 
 the year 1872. It was The Fortune of the Republic, 
 and was immediately put into, a volume. The same 
 year he spoke in the same place on The Superlative. 
 In 1879 he gave a lecture on Memory before the Con 
 cord School of Philosophy, a lecture in Cambridge on 
 Eloquence, and one before the Harvard Divinity School 
 on The Preacher. In 1880 he gave his hundredth lec 
 ture before the Concord Lyceum, on New-England Life 
 and Letters; while before the School of Philosophy his 
 subject was Natural Aristocracy. In the autumn he 
 read an essay before the members of the Divinity 
 School, and early in 1881 he gave a paper on Carlyle 
 before the Massachusetts Historical Society. 
 
 During these years there has been a constantly 
 increasing interest in Emerson s books, and a deeper 
 appreciation of his influence. This is shown by the 
 eagerness there has been, to hear him, by the discussion 
 of his religious attitude, and hy the testimonies to his 
 influence from those affected by his thought. Alger 
 has called him an acute observer and a fearless thinker ; 
 while, " by his audacious and sensitive genius, he is a 
 contemporary of the primal minds of all ages." ] It is 
 this fearless vigor and depth of his thought which has 
 
 son is said to borrow all his good things from Montaigne, and to be a mere 
 imitator of Swedenborg. We are told " it is about time to expose this 
 wily old philosopher who has been throwing rhetorical dust into the 
 eyes of several generations." Another instance of petty criticism is to 
 be found in Hain Friswell s Modern Men of Letters, where he says, 
 " there is a certain amount of honest work in Emerson s books, but 
 there is also a good deal of gilt gingerbread and flash jewelry." He is 
 said to corrupt the youth of" our time, and that he has done ins besc to 
 rill them wiek "an unutterable longing," " with a wide, windy, and dis 
 persed ambition," and with " a curious pantheistic reverence lor some 
 thing what it is, it is not known." 
 1 Christian Examiner, May, 1868. 
 
186 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 attracted to him some of the acutest minds among his 
 contemporaries. At a meeting of the Radical Club, in 
 1873, TyndaU said, " The first time I ever knew Waldo 
 Emerson was when, years ago, I picked up on a stall a 
 copy of his Nature. I read it with such delight, and I 
 have never ceased to read it; and if any one can be 
 said to have given the impulse to my mind, it is Emer 
 son. Whatever I have done, the world owes to him." l 
 Equally ardent has been Carlyle s praise of his friend. 
 He early said, " I hear but one voice, and that comes 
 from Concord." Later he said that Emerson was " the 
 cleanest mind now living," and that he had not his 
 equal on earth for perception. In 1866 Carlyle said, 
 " Now and then a letter comes from him, and amid all 
 the smoke and mist of this world it is always*as a 
 window flung open to the azure. During all this last 
 weary work of mine, his words have been nearly the 
 only ones about the thing done to which I have 
 inwardly responded." 2 Another Englishman, a worker 
 in the fields of humanitarian reform, George Jacob 
 Holyoake, visited him in 1880, and has written out his 
 impressions in these words : 
 
 " Though tall, Mr. Emerson is still erect, and has the bright eye 
 and calm grace of manner we knew when he was in England long 
 years ago.^ In European eyes, his position among men of letters in 
 America is as that of Carlyle among English writers; with the 
 added quality, as I think, of greater braveness of thought and 
 clearness of sympathy. The impression among many to whom I 
 spoke in America, I found to be, that, while Caiiyle inspires you to 
 do something not clearly denned, when you have read Emerson you 
 know what you have to do. However, Mr. Emerson would admit 
 nothing that would challenge the complete! merits of his illustrious 
 friend at Chelsea. He showed me the later and earlier portraits of 
 Carlyle, which he most cherished ; made affectionate inquiries con 
 cerning him personally, and as to whether I knew of any thing that 
 1 ad proceeded from his pen which he had not in his library. 
 
 " Friends had told me that age seemed now a little to impair Mr. 
 Emerson s memory, but I found his recollection of England accu 
 rate and full of detail. A fine portrait of him, which Mr. Wen 
 dell Phillips presented to me, has been generally thought by those 
 who have not seen Emerson to be a portrait of Mr. Gladstone, 
 
 1 Kerainiscences of the Radical Club, p. 300. 
 
 2 Harper s Monthly, May, 1881, p. 899. 
 
THE VOICE AT EVE. 187 
 
 whom he certainly very much resembles now. Englishmen told me 
 with pride, that in the dark days of the war, when American audi 
 ences were indignant at England, Emerson would put, in his lec 
 tures, some generous passage concerning this country, and, raising 
 himself erect, pronounce it in a defiant tone, as though he threw 
 the words at his audience. More than any other writer, Emerson 
 gives me the impression of one who sees facts alive and knows their 
 ways, and who writes nothing that is mean or poor." 1 
 
 While such men as Bradlaugli, Holyoake, and Tyn- 
 dall have been attracted to Emerson by his sturdy advo 
 cacy of self-reliance, or because of his eloquent interpre 
 tations of nature, others have been drawn to him because 
 of the spirituality of his thought, and for his hopeful 
 outlook upon life. If Bradlaugli has found in his essays 
 stimulus to his radicalism, even more legitimately have 
 they influenced the sermons of Stopford Brooke and 
 Heber Newton. An English writer, who has accepted 
 and defends Emerson s religious stand-point, 2 has this 
 word to say of his influence, 
 
 " There is, perhaps, no writer of the nineteenth century who will 
 better repay a careful and prolonged perusal than Emerson. He 
 enjoys the rare distinction of having ascended to the highest point 
 to which the human mind can climb, to the point where, as he 
 says of Plato, the poles of thought are on a line with the axis on 
 which the frame of things revolves. . . . He stations himself at the 
 point where the ascending lines of Law pass into Unity. Once 
 attain to that position, and every sentence becomes luminous. The 
 connection of ideas becomes apparent ; the illustrations are seen to 
 be pertinent and exact ; and the subject to be laid open on all sides 
 by direct and penetrating insight. We can then turn to him, with 
 the same delight, for the philosophical expression of the deep laws 
 of human life, as we do to Shakspere for their dramatic representa 
 tion. For he is one of the profoundest of thinkers, and has that 
 universality, serenity, and cosmopolitan breadth of comprehension, 
 that place him among the great of all ages. He has swallowed all 
 his predecessors, and converted them into nutriment for himself. 
 He is as subtle and delicate, too, as he is .broad and massive, and 
 possesses a practical wisdom and keenness of observation that hold 
 his feet fast to the solid earth when his head is striking the stars. 
 His scientific accuracy and freedom of speculation mark him out 
 as one of ttie representative men of the nineteenth century." 
 
 1 Co-operative News of Manchester. 
 
 2 The Religion of the Future, John Beattie Crozier, p. 107. 
 
188 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 Herman Grimm has borne testimony to Emerson s 
 literary power, in his New Essays. When he first saw 
 one of Emerson s books lie was greatly attracted to it, 
 as he found that some of its sentences were full of new 
 and vigorous thought. He found there a sense of ijoy 
 and beauty such as is given by the greatest books./ In 
 reading him, he felt as if he had met the simple strand 
 most genuine person, \and as if he were listening to that 
 person s conversation. \ He found himself made captive! 
 by thoughts which it seemed as if he were learning for 
 the first time. " lie has his faults and his doubtful vir 
 tues, and is very likely capricious and capable of flattery. 
 Yet when I again read his sentences, the enchanting 
 breezes of hc.pe and spiritual joy filled my soul anew. 
 The old worn-out machinery of the world was re-created, 
 and I felt as if I had never breathed so pure an atmos- / 
 phcre. I recently heard an American, who had been | 
 present at some of Emerson s lectures, say that nothing I 
 was moref captivating than to listen to this man. I be- V 
 lieve it. ( Nothing will surpass the voice of a man who \ 
 speaks from the depths of his soul what he considers 
 true.j In a note to the translator of his Life of Goethe, 
 Grimm has also said, " I can indeed say that no author, 
 with whose writings I have lately become acquainted, 
 has had such an influence upon me as Emerson. The 
 manner of writing of this man, whom I hold to be the 
 greatest of all living uuili: rs, has revealed to me a new 
 way of expressing thought." If a new way of express 
 ing thought, even more truly has he given a new way 
 of believing and living. This has been hinted at by 
 Professor C. C. Everett, when he says, 
 
 " We think of no writer who is so typically American as he. His 
 Yankee shrewdness is carried into the most profound of mystical 
 utterances, ylis mind is always sane. Xever unbalanced, never 
 running to extremes, he keeps on his even course. If he unites 
 with his practical insight the intuitions of the eastern seer, to Yan 
 kee common sense the transcendentalism of Germany, to the homely 
 wisdom of every-day life the inspiration of genius, these opposing 
 lines never conflict with one another. If he is mystical, ho is never 
 misty. The reason is, that he is so much at home in regions that 
 to many seem far off and dim, that, with no change in modes of 
 
THE VOICE AT EVE. 189 
 
 thought and expression, he can describe them as they are. He can 
 utter the loftiest truth as soon as the humblest. This sanity with 
 which tl^e highest themes are approached by him, has done much 
 to make them seem real and practical to many who would other 
 wise, have regarded them as belonging to the life of dreams." 
 
 Emerson has never quite recovered from the nervous 
 shock received at the burning of his house. Yet hh 
 health has been almost uniformly good, though suffer 
 ing sadly from the loss of his memory. The recent 
 years have been quietly spent in the midst of his 
 friends, and in the preparation of his remaining manu 
 scripts for future publication. Gossip has been busy 
 with his name, making him much feebler than he ever 
 has been, and attributing to him a change in his reli 
 gious convictions. He is yet vigorous, however, and 
 retains something of that youthful look which ^has 
 always characterized him. His family and his neigh 
 bors know nothing whatever of any change in his reli 
 gious ideas. 
 
 He has truly obeyed the voice at eve obeyed at 
 prime, and swerved not from his trust in the soul, his 
 confidence in the progress of man, or his reliance on 
 those spiritual truths which have been the joy of all 
 great souls. His friends have drawn closer to him ^ as 
 the years have gone on, and a greater number with 
 each year have come to see in him a friend to be trusted 
 and a teacher to be followed. Those who once criticised 
 him find new faith in him as a poet, thinker, and critic. 
 What O4ice seemed faults are forgotten in an admiring 
 recognition of his genius. The voice at eve is the 
 voice o.f a pure and lofty soul, that will be heard more 
 and more gladly through the coming years, as the music 
 of his rich thought floats down the ages that are to 
 follow. 
 
 
190 EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 THE MAN AND THE LIFE. 
 
 Tj^MERSON is eminently domestic in his tastes, lov- 
 J-^ ing plain, simple things, and has lived in the most 
 quiet, modest manner possible. His essay on Domestic 
 Life indicates the high esteem in which he holds the 
 home, the regard he has for children, and the culture 
 he would have grow out of the home-life. The home, 
 he thinks, should be for plain living and high thinking; 
 and the house should in its economy bear witness that 
 human culture is the end to which it is built and gar 
 nished. Alcott has given the following account of his 
 domestic tastes and habits : 
 
 " All men love the country who love mankind with a wholesome 
 love, and have poetry and company in them. Our essayist makes 
 good this preference. If city bred, he has been for the best part of 
 his life a villager and countryman. Only a traveler at times pro 
 fessionally, he prefers home-keeping ; is a student of the landscape, 
 of mankind, of rugged strength wherever found ; liking plain per 
 sons, plain ways, plain clothes ; prefers earnest people ; shuns 
 egotists, publicity ; likes solitude, and knows its uses. Courting 
 society as a spectacle not less than as a pleasure, he carries off the 
 spoils. Delighting in the broadest views of men and things, he 
 seeks all accessible displays of both for draping his thoughts and 
 works." l 
 
 He has been most fortunate in all his domestic rela 
 tions ; 2 while tbe surroundings of his life have been such 
 as he could desire, and they have been helpful to the 
 life he has sought to live. His house has been well 
 adapted to a scholar s wants, both as to its location and 
 
 1 In his little book on Emerson, partly reprinted in Concord Days. 
 
 2 Emerson has had four children, two sons and two daughters. One 
 son died early, and the other is n, much-respected physician in Concord. 
 The older daughter is unmarried, and is the main-stay of the home. 
 The other is married. 
 
THE MAN AND THE LIFE. 191 
 
 construction. About the house is a little farm; and he 
 owns a wood-lot on the west shore of Walden Pond, 
 where Thoreau s hut once stood. His home has been 
 described in these words : 
 
 " A roomy barn stands near the house, and behind lies a little 
 farm of nearly a dozen acres. The whole external appearance of 
 the place suggests old-fashioned comfort and hospitality. Within 
 the house the flavor of antiquity is still more noticeable. Old pic 
 tures look down from the walls ; quaint blue-and-white china holds 
 the simple dinner ; old furniture brings to mind the generations of 
 the past. Just at the right, as you enter, is Mr. Emerson s library, 
 a large, square room, plainly furnished, but made pleasant by pictures 
 and sunshine. The homely shelves which line the walls are well 
 filled with books. There is a lack of showy covers or rich bind 
 ings, and each volume seems to have soberly grown old in constant 
 service. Mr. Emerson s study is a quiet room up stairs, and there 
 each day he is steadily at work, despite advancing years." l 
 
 When Frederika Bremer called one day at his house, 
 she did not find him at home. Going into his library, 
 she thus describes it : 2 
 
 " I went for a moment into Emerson s study, a large room, in 
 which every thing was simple, orderly, unstudied, comfortable. 
 No refined feeling of beauty has converted the room into a temple, 
 in which stand the forms of the heroes of science and literature. 
 Ornament is banished from the sanctuary of the stoic philosopher ; 
 the furniture is comfortable, but of a grave character, merely as 
 implements of usefulness ; one large picture only is in the room, 
 but this hangs there with a commanding power ; it is a large oil- 
 painting, a copy of Michael Angelo s glorious Parcae, the goddess 
 of fate." 
 
 She says there stood a large table in the center of 
 the room, at which Emerson wrote. On it were a num 
 ber of papers, but all in perfect order. Some years later 
 M. D. Conway called on Emerson, and describes his 
 visit, giving us a further glimpse of his study. 3 
 
 " My note of introduction was presented, and my welcome was 
 cordial. Emerson was, apparently, yet young ; he was tall, slender, 
 of light complexion ; his step was elastic, his manner easy and sim- 
 
 1 Literary World, 1877. 
 
 2 The Homes of the New World, vol. ii. p. 562. 
 
 3 Fraser s Magazine, August, 1864=. 
 
192 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 pie ; and his voice at once relieved me of the trembling with which 
 I stood before him, the first great man I had ever seen. He pro 
 posed to take me on a walk ; and whilst he was preparing, I had 
 the opportunity of looking about the library. Over the mantel 
 hung an excellent copy of Michael Angelo s Parcse ; on it there 
 were two statuettes of Goethe, of whom also there were engraved 
 copies on the walls. Afterwards Emerson showed me eight or ten 
 portraits of Goethe which he had collected. The next in favor 
 was Dante, of whom he had all the known likenesses, including 
 various photographs of the mask of Dante, made at Ravenna. Be 
 sides portraits of Shakspere, Montaigne, and Swedenborg, I re 
 member nothing else on the walls of the library. The book-shelves 
 were well filled with select works ; amongst which I was only struck 
 with the many.curious Oriental productions, some in" Sanscrit. He 
 had, too, many editions in Greek and English, of Plato, which had 
 been carefully read and marked. The furniture of the room was 
 antique and simple. There were, on one side of the room, four con 
 siderable shelves, completely occupied by his MSS. ; of which there 
 were enough, one might suppose, to have furnished a hundred vol 
 umes instead of the seven which he has given to the world, though 
 under perpetual pressure for more from the publishers and the 
 public." 
 
 Emerson s house is of the old New-England sort, 
 large, and hospitable in its very construction. A long 
 hall divides it through the middle. By the side of the 
 entry stands a table, over which is a picture of Diana. 
 His book-shelves are very plain, and reach to the ceiling. 
 A fireplace fills one end of the study, and has high brass 
 andirons ; while on the antique mantel over it may now 
 .be found, among other articles, a small idol from the 
 Nile. On the other end us a bronze lamp of antique 
 pattern, such as is often pictured to represent the light 
 of science. Back of this room is the large parlor, in 
 which visitors are received, and where many a conversa 
 tional party has been held. 
 
 The gate always remains open. The path from the 
 house to the road is lined with tall chestnut-trees. 
 Back of the house is ^a garden of half an acre, where 
 bo tli Emerson and his wife are wont to labor. She is 
 passionately fond of. flowers, and grows them in pro 
 lusion. Great numbers of roses are in bloom here in 
 June, while there is a bed of hollyhocks of many 
 varieties. A small brook runs across his land, and 
 pours into the ri-ver. 
 
THE MAN AND THE LIFE. 193 
 
 Emerson has a pronounced and an emphatic face, not 
 at all remarkable at the first glance, but striking for its 
 reserved power of expression. His head is high and 
 well-formed, his nose very large, his chin strong, his 
 eye gentle and searching. He is of a slender figure, 
 more than medium height, head small, and shoulders 
 remarkably sloping. " His manner, though dignified, 
 is very retiring and singularly refined and gentlemanly. 
 His face has a thoughtful and somewhat pre-occupied 
 expression, with keen eyes and aquiline nose. His 
 countenance lights up with a rare appreciation of 
 humor, of which he has the keenest sense ; but his 
 chief characteristics are beneficence and courtesy, 
 which never fail, whether addressing the humblest 
 pauper or the most distinguished scholar." l In man 
 ner he is reticent, in general conversation he is not 
 brilliant, and in ordinary intercourse with men he 
 does not appear as a genius. Yet there is a reserved 
 personality, that is commanding, powerful, and charm 
 ing. It is a personality that carries immense force, 
 that molds and sways others, less by a dazzling bril 
 liancy and the tremendousness of intellect, than by the 
 persuasive might of a pure, unadulterated, and per 
 fectly loyal nature, which never swerves, which goes 
 steadily on to the goal it seeks. 
 
 Hawthorne and Miss Bremer used in their diaries 
 almost the same expression about Emerson, an ex 
 pression showing the luminous and attracting power 
 of his nature. In speaking of those who called on 
 her in Boston, Miss Bremer says, " Emerson came 
 also, with a sunbeam in his countenance." This was in 
 December, 1850. In April, 1843, Hawthorne made this 
 record in his journal : " Mr. Emerson came, with a sun 
 beam in his face ; and we had as good a talk as I ever 
 remember to have had with him." Curtis has likewise 
 spoken of the " smile that breaks over his face like day 
 over the sky ; " and once said, that at Emerson s house 
 it seemed always morning. This sunbeam in his face 
 must be an attractive one to fascinate three such people, 
 
 1 Poets Homes. 
 
104 IiALPI-1 WALDO EMERSOX. 
 
 causing them to notice it as a striking characteristic. 
 Miss Bremer, however, could not understand him ; and 
 she persisted in thinking him not just right, in conse 
 quence of his religious opinions ; but she was strongly 
 attracted to him, charmed by his personality, and fasci 
 nated by his nobility of character. After being four 
 days in ^his home, she writes, " I enjoyed the contem 
 plation of him, in his demeanor, his expression, his 
 mode of talking, and his e very-day life, as I enjoy the 
 calm flow of a river bearing along, and between flowery 
 shores, large and small vessels, as I love to see the 
 eagle circling in the clouds, resting upon them and its 
 pinions. In this calm elevation Emerson allows nothing 
 to reach him, neither great nor small, neither prosperity 
 nor adversity." Again she says, u Pantheistic as Emer 
 son is in his philosophy, in the moral view in which he 
 regards the world and life he is in a high degree pure, 
 noble, and severe, demanding as much from himself as 
 he demands from others. His wcrds are severe, his 
 judgments often keen and merciless, but his demeanor 
 is alike noble arid pleasing, and his voice beautiful. 
 One may quarrel with Emerson s thoughts, with his 
 judgment, but not with himself. That which struck 
 me most, as distinguishing him from most other human 
 beings, is nobility. He is a born gentleman." As the 
 result of her visit to him, she exclaims, " Lovable he 
 is as one sees him in his home and amid his domestic 
 relations." 
 
 "Every thing about a man like Emerson is important, says 
 John Burroughs. 1 I find his phrenology and physiognomy more 
 than ordinarily typical and suggestive. Look at his picture 
 there, large, strong features on a small face and head, no 
 blank spaces ; all given up to expression ; a high, predaceous nose, 
 a sinewy brow, a massive, benevolent chin. In most men there is 
 more face than feature ; but here is vast deal more feature than 
 face, and a corresponding alertness and emphasis of character. 
 Indeed, the man is made after this fashion. He is all type; his 
 expression is transcendent. His mind has the hand s pronounced 
 anatomy, its cords and sinews and multiform articulations ^ and 
 processes, its opposing and co-ordinating power. If his brain ia 
 
 1 Birds and Poets, p. 190. 
 
THE MAN AND THE LIFE. 195 
 
 small, its texture is fine, and its convolutions deep. There have 
 been broader and more catholic natures, but few so towering and 
 audacious in expression, and so rich in characteristic traits. Every 
 scrap and shred of him is important and related. Like the strongly 
 aromatic herbs and simples, sage, mint, wintergreen, sassafras, 
 the least part carries the flavor of the whole. Is there one indif 
 ferent or equivocal or unsympathizing drop of blood in him? 
 Where he is at all he is entirely, nothing extemporaneous ; his 
 most casual word seems to have laid in pickle for a Jong time, and 
 is saturated through and through with the Emersonian brine. 
 Indeed, so pungent and penetrating is this quality, that his quota 
 tions seem more than half his own." 
 
 If the range of his mind is narrow, it is with that nar 
 rowness characteristic of all supremely ethical minds. 
 Lowell well remarks that " the artistic range of Emer 
 son is narrow ; and so is that of JEschylus, so is that 
 of Dante, so is that of Montaigne, so is that of Schiller, 
 so is that of nearly every one but Shakspere ; but there 
 is a gauge of height no less than of breadth ; of individ 
 uality as well as of comprehensiveness ; and, above all, 
 there is the standard of genetic power, the test of the 
 masculine as distinguished from the receptive natures." 1 
 His is the concentrated mind of the original thinker, 
 and no truly original mind can see in all directions with 
 equal clearness. Yet he is broad in his sympathies, 
 world-wide in his love of truth and in his faith in man. 
 His is a masculine, an inquiring nature. He is a men 
 tal pioneer ; and he has great power to grasp new lead 
 ings of thought, to comprehend the results of modern 
 research in their application to the spiritual nature. 
 This is characteristically shown in his sacred regard for 
 the body, in his giving to its laws ethical sanctions, and 
 in his looking upon all sickness as a sin. He fore-reaches 
 the future in these, as in so many other opinions, and 
 becomes a prophet of that higher faith the world is yet 
 to attain. It has been said, that the thing he most hates 
 is sickness, while disease he regards as a sin. He has 
 himself said he was never confined to a bed for a single 
 day. To him virtue is health ; and he quotes Dr. John 
 son s saying, that every man is a rascal when he is sick. 
 
 1 My Study Windows, essay on Thoreau. 
 
196 RALPH WALDO EMERSOX. 
 
 He believes the outward complaint originates in some 
 inward complaint, and sees that if we were perfectly 
 obedient to the laws of the soul and of nature, there 
 would be no sickness or disease. His views on this sub 
 ject, as on so many others, have been misunderstood. 
 Miss Bremer interpreted them by supposing him " too 
 strong and healthy himself to understand other people s 
 weaknesses and sufferings ; for he even despises suffer 
 ing, as a weakness unworthy of higher natures. This 
 singularity of character leads one to suppose that he 
 lias never been ill." His philosophy led him to despise 
 suffering, and to distrust feeling, as it led Plotinus and 
 his successors to despise the body, and to wish to be rid 
 of it. He believed the pure and holy soul should so 
 control the material form it has put forth from itself as 
 its sensual dwelling-place, that it may always be strong 
 and healthy ; so he despised suffering and condemned 
 sickness as a sign of the soul s discord with itself. He 
 believed that human suffering arises from disobedience 
 to laws that may and ought to be obeyed. When obeyed, 
 the sickness \vill cease, and the weakness will be gone. 
 
 In the same way, he has regarded mere feeling as a 
 sign of weakness. He has carefully suppressed it in 
 himself and distrusted it in others. Vigorous as has 
 been his belief in intuition and ecstasy, prone as he has 
 been to accept theories which culminate in religious 
 enthusiasm and feeling, yet he has himself always de 
 spised emotion and undue excitement of the affectional 
 nature. - Accepting a philosophy which ignores the 
 methods of logic ;ni<l cool argumentation, which rejects 
 the slow and toilsome processes of the understanding, 
 .yet he has himself been remarkably critical and exact 
 ing in his judgments. lie has, consequently, never 
 fallen into those excesses of opinion and conduct which 
 have characterized some of the believers in intuition. 
 Whatever the follies of the transcendental period, its 
 wild excesses of feeling, of judgment, and of opinion, 
 none of these appear in the sayings and doings of Emer 
 son. Maintaining a philosophy which has more than 
 any other given rise to wild extravagances, and him- 
 
THE MAST AND THE LIFE. 197 
 
 self teaching as truth doctrines that are saturated with 
 the elements of religious fanaticism, yet he has always 
 spoken in a calm, rational, self-poised spirit. What was 
 feeling in others and excess of emotion, giving rise to 
 strange outbursts of imaginative power, has been in 
 him a dispassionate rational process of calm inquiry 
 after the truth. The emotional excesses of Margaret 
 Fuller, her regarding feeling as a signal of great truths 
 revealed to the soul, he distrusted and even held in con 
 tempt. She suspected his coldness and critical temper 
 of mind, and he was more than annoyed by her fervent 
 heat of thought and excess of feeling. His poetic tem 
 perament brought him into sympathy with a philosophy 
 which the strongly intellectual bent of his nature would 
 otherwise have led him to reject. Hence he has accepted 
 in a dispassionate spirit philosophic opinions, the nature 
 of which in most minds is to excite to feeling and en 
 thusiasm. This fact has had a marked influence on his 
 career, and is shown forth in that calm, self-poised spirit 
 all his words and acts indicate. 
 
 Hospitality is another of Emerson s characteristics. 
 His house has been open to friendship and generous en 
 tertainment, and made free to those desirous of sharing 
 in its hospitality. He receives with cordiality all who 
 bring to him any generous word or earnest purpose, and 
 in a spirit that is simple, unaffected, and generous. Yet 
 he never obtrudes himself, does not regard his own per 
 sonal .preferences as of interest to others. There is no 
 egotism in his nature, no self-intrusion. He has been 
 wanting in personal ambitions, in endeavors to bring 
 himself before the public. The common and the great, 
 the wise and the ignorant, have alike come to his door, 
 and been welcomed with equal generosity ; whoever 
 had a pure, brave, or true thought to give, has been 
 received with delight. 
 
 As-Sanborn well suggests, 1 he has a genius for friend 
 ship. His intimate relations with Alcott, Parker, Hedge, 
 Bartol, Margaret Fuller, Lowell, W. E. Charming, Tho- 
 reau, Sanboru, Miss Peabody, Henry James, Caiiyle, and 
 
 i Literary World, May, 1880. 
 
198 HALPH WALDO EMTTftSOX. 
 
 
 
 several others, show the attracting power of his person 
 ality. To some of these he has been a friend in the 
 largest sense possible, a confidant in difficulties, a helper 
 in times of need. They bear most ardent testimony to 
 the strength of his sympathies and the largeness of his 
 generosity. His fine devotion to his brothers, and his 
 faithful service to many other members of his family, 
 show the largeness of his heart and the loyalty of his 
 nature. He has written much of the sacred joys of 
 friendship, but he has written nothing equal to his own 
 exemplification of its qualities. In this, as in all things 
 else, he has been what he preached; preaching only what 
 he found to be real in his own rich and many-sided ex 
 perience of the highest things which life can give. 
 
 Of a retiring and diffident nature, he has kept aloof 
 from a public life. Yet all the more strongly has he 
 therefore been drawn to the circle of friends with whom 
 he has been in sympathy. Among these persons was 
 the friend of his youth, Sarah Bradford, who became 
 the wife of the Rev. Samuel Ripley. In her old "age 
 she went to live in Concord, and was wont to pass 
 each Sunday evening at Emerson s house. With other 
 friends such as this one, long trusted and admired, he 
 was accustomed for many years to spend that evening 
 in conversation on subjects dear to them all. Perhaps 
 he valued no friend more than Mrs. Ripley, and none 
 ever influenced him so long and deeply. After her 
 death, in July, 1867, he said of her, 
 
 "At a time when perhaps no other woman read Greek, she ac 
 quired the language with ease, and read Plato, adding soon the 
 advantage of German commentators. After her marriage, when her 
 husband, the well-known clergyman of Waltham, received boys in 
 his house to be fitted for college, she assumed the advanced instruc 
 tion in Greek and Latin, and did not fail to turn it to account by 
 extending her studies in the literature of both languages. . . . She 
 became one of the best Greek scholars in the country, and continued, 
 in her latest years, the habit of reading Homer, the tragedians, and 
 Plato. But her studies took a wide range in mathematics, in nat 
 ural philosophy, in psychology, in theology, as well as in ancient 
 and modern literature. She had always a keen ear open to what 
 ever new facts astronomy, chemistry, or the theories of light or 
 heat haxl to furnish. Any knowledge, all knowledge, was welcome. 
 
THE MAN AND THE LIFE. 199 
 
 Her stores increased day by day. She was absolutely without ped 
 antry. Nobody ever heard of her learning until a necessity came 
 for its use, and then nothing could be more simple than her solu 
 tion of the problem proposed to her. The most intellectual gladly 
 conversed with one whose knowledge, however rich and varied, was 
 always with her only the means of new acquaintance. . . . She 
 was not only the most amiable, but the tenderest of women, wholly 
 sincere, thoughtful for others. . . . She was absolutely without 
 appetite for luxury or display or praise or influence, with entire in 
 difference to trifles." 
 
 Emerson has taken a keen interest in all which con 
 cerned the culture and advancement of his townsmen. 
 He was long a zealous friend of the Concord Lyceum, 
 devoting to it much of his time and thought. When 
 its fiftieth anniversary was celebrated, E. R. Hoar bore 
 testimony as follows to Emerson s influence throughout 
 the town : 
 
 " It was the felicity of the Lyceum, as it was the good fortune of 
 the town, that Mr. Emerson came to live among us. He has deliv 
 ered before the Concord Lyceum in the last fifty years ninety-eight 
 lectures. Distant be the day when this community shall be free to 
 give full expression to its gratitude to him, and to the love and 
 honor which his townsmen bear to him ! But our ceremony would 
 be incomplete if I did not ask you to pause for a moment, and to 
 think what the simple statement of those ninety-eight lectures 
 means. What a wealth of intellectual treasure has been spread 
 out before this people 1 What keenness of analysis, what treasures 
 of wit and wisdom, what lofty and inspiring thought, what results 
 of a noble life, are contained in those manuscript pages which he 
 has read to us! The presence of Mr. Emerson in Concord has 
 been the education of the town. It has given it its principal dis 
 tinction in our generation." 
 
 He has for many years been a member of the Social 
 Circle, a Concord club organized in 1782, growing out 
 of the revolutionary committee of safety. Societies of 
 a wider character have honored themselves by making 
 him a member. He is connected with the Massachu 
 setts Historical Society and various other American 
 institutions. The French Academy has made him a 
 member ^f its section of Moral and Political Sciences. 
 He has belonged to several clubs succeeding that organ 
 ized by the traiuscendeiitaiists. In 1849 the Transcen- 
 
200 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 dental Club was succeeded by the Town and Country 
 Club, mainly organized by the efforts of Alcott. Emer 
 son gave it its name ; and he read before it the first 
 essay to which it listened, on Books and Reading. This 
 was on May 2, 1849. Among its members were Garri 
 son, Parker, W. H. Charming, W. E. Charming, Alcott, 
 Phillips, Hedge, Howe, King, Lowell, Weiss, Wh.ipi.le, 
 Higginson, Very, Pillsbury, and Thoreau. Subse 
 quently he frequently attended the meetings of the 
 contributors to The Atlantic Monthly, where his apt and 
 pointed words were listened to gladly. He was not 
 there or elsewhere a frequent talker, being always 
 reticent, and not easy to come into free intercourse with 
 other minds ; but when he did speak, it was out of a full 
 and exact mind. He has been an occasional attendant 
 at the Radical Club and other similar gatherings. 
 Strongly inclined to shun society and publicity, he has 
 not for many years taken an active part in the social 
 and literary efforts of this kind. 
 
 Emerson is characterized for modesty and simplicity, 
 for guilelessness of character, and for a remarkable 
 loyalty of nature. He has a loyal Jove for truth, and is 
 eager in the search for it. Fame has not affected, nor 
 has criticism hurt him. Whatever the praise or blame, 
 he has kept steadily 011 his way, in the same child-like, 
 sincere, and trustful manner. His life has been above 
 reproach ; and he has been constantly devoted to human 
 good, steadily loyal to his own ideals. Withdrawn from 
 the strifes and the passions of a public career, living 
 the quiet, peaceful life of , the scholar, he has yet been 
 faithful to the great human interests of his time. His 
 life has been as moral, as ethically true, as his teaching 
 has been ; he has practiced his own precepts, exempli 
 fied his own doctrines. " Beyond almost all literary 
 men on record, Higginson ays, his life has been worthy 
 of his words." 
 
 He is a Puritan, with all that is harsh, repulsive, and 
 uncomfortable in Puritanism removed ; but quite as 
 loyal to moral purposes^ as uncompromising in his devo 
 tion to the right and the true, as unconcerned for the 
 
THE MAN AND THE LIFE. 201 
 
 beauty and the culture and the ease that are not 
 moral. As earnest a lover of culture as Goethe, he yet 
 has none of Goethe s culture for its own sake. As 
 severe a critic as Carlyle, he has none of Carlyle s 
 despair, He has been kind, tender, and sympathetic in 
 his criticisms, though earnest in his condemnation of 
 evil. As a moral teacher, none can refuse to admire 
 him more than Goethe or Carlyle, for the humanness of 
 his manner, method, and aim. By his neighbors, those 
 who have known him longest and most intimately, he 
 is regarded with reverence and devotion. They see in 
 him what constantly reminds them of the saint. He 
 has been, called a sage, but he has more than wisdom ; 
 he has that loftiness and wholeness of character, that 
 loyalty and self-forgetfulness, that simplicity and wide- 
 ness of sympathy, and especially that high sense of 
 human faithfulness to the Divine, which characterizes 
 the saintly life* 
 
202 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 XV. 
 
 LITERARY METHODS. 
 
 IT has been Emerson s habit to spend the forenoon in 
 his study, with constant regularity. He has not 
 waited for moods, but caught them as they came, and 
 used their results in each day s work. He has been 
 a diligent though a slow and painstaking worker. It 
 has been his wont to jot down his thoughts at all hours 
 and places. The suggestions which result from his 
 readings, conversations, and meditations are transferred 
 to the note-book he carries with him. In his walks 
 many a gem of thought is thus preserved ; and his 
 mind is always alert, quick to see, his powers of obser 
 vation being perpetually awake. The results of his 
 thinking are thus stored up, to be made use of when 
 required. The story is told, that his wife suddenly 
 wakened in the night, before she knew his habits, and 
 heard him moving about the room. She anxiously 
 inquired if he were ill. " Only an idea," was his reply, 
 and proceeded to jot it down. Curtis humorously says, 
 the villagers "relate that he has a huge manuscript 
 book, in which he incessantly records the ends of 
 thoughts, bits of observation and experience, the facts 
 of all kinds, a kind of intellectual and scientific 
 scrap-bag, into which all shreds and remnants of con 
 versation and reminiscences of wayside reveries are 
 incontinently thrust." l 
 
 After his note-books are filled, he transcribes their con 
 tents to a larger commonplace book. He then writes 
 at the bottom, or in the margin, the subject of each 
 paragraph. When he desires to write an essay, he 
 turns to his note-books, transcribes all his paragraphs 
 
 1 Homes of American Authors 
 
LITERARY METHODS. . 203 
 
 on that subject, drawing a perpendicular line through 
 whatever he has thus copied. These separate jottings, 
 perhaps written years apart, and in widely different cir 
 cumstances and moods, are brought together, arranged 
 in such order as is possible, and are welded together by 
 such matter as is suggested at the time. Alcott relates 
 going once to his study, to find him with many sheets 
 of manuscript scattered about on the floor, which he 
 was anxiously endeavoring to arrange in something like 
 a systematic treatment of the subject in hand at the 
 time. The essay thus prepared is read before an audi 
 ence to test its quality and construction. Its parts are 
 frequently re-arranged. Perhaps in its construction 
 portions of previously used lectures are made to do 
 new service. Should the lecture come at last to be put 
 into one of his books, it is pruned of all but the telling 
 sentences. His lectures which are rapidly composed, 
 for special occasions, have a continuity and flow of 
 thought quite different from the essays in his books. 
 The address on Lincoln, written in one evening, shows 
 this. The published essays are often the results of 
 many lectures, the most pregnant sentences and para 
 graphs alone being retained. His apples are sorted 
 over and over again, until only the very rarest, fhe 
 most perfect, are left. It does not matter that those 
 thrown away are very good, and help to make clear the 
 possibilities of the orchard ; they are unmercifully cast 
 aside. His essays are, consequently, very slowly 
 elaborated, wrought out through days and months, and 
 even years, of patient thought. 
 
 A curious evidence of this method of constructing his 
 essays may be found, by the attentive reader, in the 
 repetition of the same phrases in different essays ; show 
 ing a lapse of memory sometimes permits him to draw 
 out the same sentences and ideas more than once. Some 
 of his favorite expressions, such as, " Hitch your wagon 
 to a star," are several times repeated. In Society and 
 Solitude he twice quotes, in different essays, Welling 
 ton s saying, that " uniforms are often masks ; " as he 
 does Mrs. Hutchinson s remark, " that the best and high- 
 
204 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 est courages are beams of the Almighty." One of the 
 most striking instances of repetition is to be found in 
 the essays on Farming and Perpetual Forces. The 
 analogies from the convertibility of forces run almost 
 precisely parallel in these essays, showing the same 
 materials were used in their composition. The para 
 graph on p. 128 of the essay on Farming, beginning, 
 " Who are the farmer s servants ? " is almost verbatim 
 repeated in the other essay, in the paragraph beginning 
 at the bottom of the first page. 1 In Perpetual Forces, 
 the paragraphs at the bottom of p. 272 and at the top 
 of p. 273 contain the same matter with the paragraph 
 in the essay on Farming beginning at the bottom of 
 p. 129, but arranged in a quite different order. By 
 comparing these with each other, it will be seen how 
 he re-works the materials of his commonplace books. 
 In this way he preserves the best materials of the fresh 
 est hours of thought, to be slowly recast and put into 
 form in the quiet of his study. Every mood is thus 
 chronicled, but the results produced from his medita 
 tions depend on persistent labor. 
 
 " Is it imaginable, Alcott asks, that he conceives his piece as a 
 whole, and then sits down to execute his task at a heat? Is not 
 this imaginable rather, and the key to the construction of his 
 works ? Living for composition as few authors can, and holding 
 company, studies, sleep, exercise, affairs, subservient to thoughts, 
 his products are gathered as they ripen, stored in his common 
 places ; their contents transcribed at intervals, and classified. It 
 is the order of ideas, of imagination observed in the arrangement, 
 not of logical sequence. You may begin at the last paragraph and 
 read backwards. Each period is self -poised ; there may be a chasm 
 of years between the opening passage and the last written, and 
 there is endless time in the composition. These good things have 
 been talked and slept over, meditated standing and sitting, read 
 and polished in the utterance; and so accepted they pass into 
 print." 2 
 
 His essays are all carefully revised again and again, 
 corrected, wrought over, portions dropped, and new 
 matter added. He is unsparing in his corrections, strik- 
 
 1 North American Review, September, 1877, p. 271. 
 
 2 Concord Days, Essay on Emerson. 
 
LITERARY METHODS. 205 
 
 ing out sentence after sentence ; and paragraphs disap 
 pear from time to time. His manuscript is everywhere 
 crowded with erasures and corrections ; scarcely a page 
 appears that is not covered with these evidences of his 
 diligent revision. An illustration of his corrections may 
 be found in the essay on Plato, in Representative Men, 
 which began, when read as a lecture, in this wise : 
 
 " The work of Plato is that writing, which, in the history of civ 
 ilization, is entitled to Omar s account of the Koran, when "he said, 
 Burn the libraries ; for, if they contain any thing good, it is con 
 tained in this book ! These sentences contain the culture of na 
 tions ; these are the corner-stone of schools ; these are the fountain- 
 head of literatures. Nothing but God can give invention. Every 
 thing else, one would say, the study of Plato would give. A disci 
 pline it is in logic, arithmetic, taste, symmetry, poetry, language, 
 rhetoric, ontology, morals, or practical wisdom. There never was 
 such range of speculation. Buonaparte was nicknamed centmille. 
 Plato, by his breadth, deserves the name, and much more. Out of 
 him came all things that are still written and debated among men 
 of thought." 
 
 Comparing this wLh the essay as printed, a very clear 
 idea is obtained of his. patient habit of close and dili 
 gent correction, polishing, making stronger his state 
 ments, lopping off all superfluous words and sentences, 
 and refining from all that does not appear to be per 
 fectly relevant and appropriate. The second paragraph 
 of this essay originally stood in his manuscript, in its 
 opening sentences, as follows : 
 
 " Plato is philosophy, and philosophy Plato. Plato is the glory 
 and the shame of mankind. Vain are the laurels of Rome ; vain 
 the pride of England in her Newton, Milton, and Shakspere ; w T hilst 
 neither Saxon nor Roman have availed to add any idea to the cata- 
 gories of Plato. What a posterity is his ! No wife, no children had 
 he ; and the thinkers of all civilized nations are his children, and 
 are tinged with his mind." 
 
 Tn the essay on the Uses of Great Men, the paragraph 
 on p. 15^ ended with the word u shape," near the bottom 
 of the- printed page. A new paragraph began cLere in 
 the manuscript, which has been omitted. It shows his 
 meaning move clearly than any thing retained, and illus- 
 
206 RALPH WALDO EMEESOX. 
 
 trates his habit of merciless pruning. These sentences, 
 it may be conjectured, were omitted because liable to 
 the charge of extravagance or from fear of their misin 
 terpretation, and because in substance repeated on p. 17. 
 He is speaking of the possibility of interpreting every 
 thing in nature. 
 
 "The possibility of interpretation lies in the identity of the 
 observer with the observed. The genius that has done what the 
 world desired, say, to find his way between ozote and oxygen, to 
 detect the new rock superposition, to find the law of the" curves, 
 can do it, because he has jtiat come out ot nature, or from being a 
 part of that thing. lie knows the way of ozote, because he is ozote. 
 Man is a piece of the universe made alive." 
 
 In the essay on Shakspere a portion of the paragraph 
 ending at the top of p. 211 has been omitted. Though 
 a most striking and eloquent passage, it is not difficult 
 to guess why it was dropped. Was it from his desire 
 to keep within the strict limits of truth, and not to 
 appear extravagant in his praise ? 
 
 " There is nothing in literature comparable to Shakspere s 
 expression, for strength and for delivery. Men have existed who 
 affirmed that they heard the language of celestial angels talked 
 with them ; but that, when they returned into the natural World, 
 though they preserved the memory of these conversations, they 
 found it impossible to transmute the things that had been said into 
 human thoughts and words. But Shakspere is like one who had 
 been rapt into some purer state of sensation and existence, had 
 learned the secret of a finer diction, and, when he returned to this 
 World, retained the fine organ which had been opened above." 
 
 His printed essays show many changes after their 
 first delivery as lectures. The essay on Courage, in 
 Society and Solitude, contains some matter on the same 
 subject, used in a lecture delivered in Tremont Temple, 
 "Boston, in November, 1859. Yet the whole structure 
 of it has been changed ; and all the local matter, appli 
 cable to the stormy time of John Brown s imprisonment 
 arid death, is omitted. The essay on Farming, in the 
 same volume, was given as an address before the Mid 
 dlesex County Kaij-, at Concord, in 1858. The opening 
 and closing portions of the address are omitted, and 
 
LITERARY METHODS, 207 
 
 about two pages of new matter added at the end of the 
 essay. 
 
 The changes indicated by these examples remind us 
 that almost every thing Emerson has written was pre 
 pared for the lecture-platform. Even English Traits, 
 apparently an exception, is not entirely so ; for he gave 
 several lectures on that subject before his book was 
 published. He has always been mindful of his audi 
 ence, though no man could accept its dictation less. 
 He has not usually taken the best methods to bring a 
 popular audience to his ways of thinking, but he has 
 never forgotten the faces before him. Some hint of 
 the lecture is in all his essays, though the numberless 
 corrections remove many more traces of it. The liter 
 ary form he has adopted has been determined by the 
 fact of his being for a half-century a great peripatetic 
 preacher, who has treasured every means his geniu;; 
 could use for the moral instruction and reformation of 
 his countrymen. He has not been primarily a book 
 maker, as Carlyle has been, but an unsettled preacher, 
 or a university lecturer on morals without occupying a 
 professor s chair. The books have been an after 
 thought, lectures printed after the exigencies of the 
 platform demanded new topics. 
 
 This method of composition has led to a wonderful 
 power of condensation, and to a marvelous compact 
 ness of expression. His concentrated sentences are 
 doubtless wrought out, one by one, in his lonely walks, 
 or in the quiet of his study, and worked over in his mind 
 until the words perfectly fit the thought. His words are 
 thus packed and crammed with thought. Such a 
 method has filled his pages with quotable sentences and 
 proverbial expressions, that jam all we know about a 
 subject into a dozen words. In no other writer are 
 there so many sentences which complete the subject, 
 and which will stand, unsupported and alone, as vindi 
 cations of the author s thought. An essay packed full 
 of such sentences is hard reading ; for each reader must 
 join sentence to sentence, and supply the connections 
 himself. His essays are remarkable for their quick, 
 
208 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 sharp, intense sentences, found everywhere through 
 his writings. There is an abruptness abotit his method, 
 that partly comes of his habits of composition, and 
 partly from his manner of exhausting an idea in a few 
 intensely condensed expressions, and then passing imme 
 diately to the next subject which occurs. From the 
 center of one idea he passes, without pause, to the very 
 core of the next ; and no attempt is made to show their 
 relations. This is a marked characteristic of his writ 
 ings. John Burroughs says, 1 he k4 is an essence, a con 
 densation ; more so, perhaps, than any other man who 
 has appeared in literature. Nowhere else is there such 
 a preponderance of pure statement, of the very attar of 
 thought over the bulkier, circumstantial, qualifying, or 
 secondary elements." In this way the water is all 
 "boiled out, and the condensed meat alone left behind. 
 While few intellectual stomachs can digest such food 
 without dilution, the condensation insures long preser 
 vation, and use on all times and occasions, even when 
 bulkier food is not desirable. As a result, " a pinch of 
 hirn is equivalent to a page or two of Johnson; and he 
 is pitched many degrees higher as an essayist than even 
 Bacon." His books have a wonderful amount of the 
 testing power of all such writings, capacity to stimulate 
 thought, to quicken motives, and to roiise fresh pur 
 poses. Every page, each paragraph, suggests so many 
 trains of wholesome and ennobling thought, that it is 
 almost impossible to sit down and read one of his 
 essays through without pause. To obtain the full 
 strength of these writings, they should lie close at hand 
 day and night, to be caught up at every interval, and a 
 few lines carefully conned, to serve as the seed-corn of 
 the day s impulses and of the night s meditations. It 
 does not matter which book one opens, or to which 
 page ; all is good, every one has an answering word of 
 life tit to solve one s destiny. Many moods of the 
 human mind find an answering response, while fact and 
 experience may be found set down here in their proper 
 place in relation to the health and sanity of life. Con- 
 
 1 Birds and Poets, p. isii. 
 
LITEEABY METHODS., 09 
 
 cerning this universality of wisdom in these pages. Bur 
 roughs thus discourses : 
 
 " I know of no other writing that yields the reader so many 
 strongly stamped medallion-like sayings and distinctions. There 
 is a perpetual refining and recoiiiing of the current wisdom of life 
 and conversation. It is the old gold or silver or copper, but how 
 bright and new it looks in his pages. Emerson loves facts, things, 
 objects, as the workman his tools. He makes every thing serve. 
 Tlie stress of expression is so great that he bends the most obdu 
 rate element to his purpose ; as the bird, under her keen necessity, 
 weaves the most contrary and diverse materials into her nest. lie 
 has a wonderful hardiness and push. Where else in literature is 
 there a mind, moving in so rare a medium, that gives one such a 
 sense of tangible resistance and force ? He is a man who occupies 
 every inch of his rightful territory ; he is there in proper person to 
 the farthest bound." 
 
 His pages are full of apothegms, ready to be quoted 
 on all occasions ; and few writers have so many that are 
 so good. Rich and suggestive antitheses appear every 
 where, resulting from his faith in nature as the outward 
 expression of spirit. For the same reason the metaphor 
 and simile everywhere abound. These figures of speech 
 are usually true to nature, the result of his close study 
 of her every mood and expression. His style is intense 
 ly individual, because it is not imitative, but caught 
 from his own meditations and observations. He deals 
 with the real world without and within, directly, face 
 to face ; not primarily with the world pictured in litera 
 ture. He writes down his own thoughts ; and he illus 
 trates his ideas from the pines, meadows, violets, and 
 robins about his own house. He is always original, and 
 many times, as E. P. Whipple has suggested, 1 even 
 more, " aboriginal," going back to the very first con 
 ditions of essential nature. There is " a flavor of the 
 wild strawberry, a fragrance of the wild rose," in his 
 pages, a true picturing of the nature of things. The 
 conventionalities have departed from this spot of earth ; 
 and here is a soul that dauntlessly judges of what is, 
 never for one moment hesitating to report what he finds 
 to exist. He has a keen and ready wit, that is never 
 
 1 Notice of his Complete Works, in The Independent. 
 
210 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 used for its own sake, but only to flash a clearer light 
 upon some truth he would illustrate. He delights in 
 surprises, in sharp-drawn analogies, and in quick succes 
 sions of opposite statements. By these methods he pours 
 a flood of light upon many subjects, and perpetually 
 arouses and quickens the mind of his reader. Whoever 
 would read his essays understandingly must be com 
 pletely awake in all his faculties. Emerson s imagina 
 tion is brilliant and far-traveled. It illustrates, but 
 seldom confounds or puzzles. He gathers truth by the 
 intuitive method, by absorption, and by the keenness of 
 his insight into every moral and spiritual problem. 
 
 His essays are in many ways open to criticism, and 
 some of the critics have made free with them. His illus 
 trations are returned to again and again, as that from the 
 convertibility of forces. Certain types of character and 
 thought he constantly praises, and forces upon the read 
 er s attention. His lack of system, his disregard of the 
 logical order of thought, do not need to be pointed out. 
 His apparent love of contradictions and surprises has 
 puzzled some of the critics, and they have written as if 
 he ought to be a Macaulay or an Irving. He frequently 
 coins new forms of words, or uses words with new mean 
 ings. He violates rhetoric, and grammar as well, in 
 some of his sentences, and loves extravagant metaphors, 
 as well as extravagant statements of facts. Concerning 
 such defects as these much could be said, for much has 
 been said, as well as on many other topics of interest to 
 those whose business it is to point out an author s faults. 
 The genuine reader of Emerson will not long find any 
 of these defects standing in his way, or allow them t> 
 hinder his admiration. What can be said on the sub 
 ject of these literary defects has been strongly presented 
 by an English writer. 1 
 
 " As regards form, this critic says Emerson is the most unsyste 
 matic of writers. The concentration of his style resembles that of 
 a classic, but he everywhere sacrifices unity to richness of detail. 
 . . . He delights in proverbs and quotations, which are in general 
 marvelously apt; but his accuracy is often at fault, and in bin 
 
 i Professor Nichols, in the North British Review for 18(57. 
 
LITERARY METHODS. 211 
 
 tendency to exaggeration he is an American of the Americans. He 
 loves a contradiction for its own sake, and always prefers a surprise 
 to an argument. His epigrams are a series of electric shocks ; and 
 though no one is more prevailingly sincere, it is sometimes hard to 
 say whether or not he is wholly in earnest ; for a vein of soft irony, 
 his only manifestation of humor, seems to underlie many of his 
 most prononce passages." 
 
 "Emerson s most elaborate criticisms are mainly composed of 
 the same mosaic work, and, in the long-run, we get tired of these 
 perpetual jerks. His style, all armed with points and antitheses, 
 lacks that repose which even our modern impatience of rotundity 
 still desiderates. His allusions are sometimes far fetched, and his 
 general naturalness does not save him from occasional affectations 
 and displays of pedantry. In coining words, as, Adamhood, fore- 
 looking, spicier, specular, plumule/ uncontinented, * metope, 
 intimater, a.ntipode, partialist, he is far from felicitous. Mi 
 nute critics will find that this disdain of rule extends to a contempt 
 of some of the rules of grammar, as in his employment of such a 
 form as shined, and his continual use of shall for will. More 
 serious defects are his misapplication of terms, as when he speaks 
 of the strong sdf-complacent Luther, and the want of taste, dignity, 
 or moderation in such expressions as the following: ^Gruth is 
 such a fly-away, such an untransportable and unbarrelable a com 
 modity, that it is as bad to catch as light. The beauty that shim 
 mers in the yellow afternoon of October, who could ever clutch it ? 
 It seems as if Deity dressed each soul, which he sent into nature, 
 in certain virtues and powers not communicable, and wrote not 
 transferable, and good for this trip only, on these garments of the 
 soul. All those are more or less objectionable as violences done 
 to good sense or decorum. They are emphatically smart, and 
 unworthy of the author who is the keenest to perceive and the 
 foremost to censure the flippancy of his countrymen." 
 
 Parker complained that there is a want of organic 
 completeness and orderly distribution in Emerson s 
 essays ; but, if he had possessed this capacity, much of 
 the present charm and abandon of his composition 
 would be gone. The logical order is certainly wanting ; 
 but Parker thought the subtle psychological method, by 
 which the wholeness and the relations of truth are dis 
 cerned, was also wanting. On the other hand, Alcott 
 has said, in his conversations about Emerson, that there 
 is a very fine subtle thread running through each of his 
 essays, and they are not accidentally put together. 
 This may be said in favor of his method, that it is his 
 own, adapted to his genius ; and that his most powerful 
 
212 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 and convincing essays are those with the least apparent 
 method. The essays on Courage and Inspiration are 
 orderly enough ; but they lack the subtle, majestic 
 power of those on Worship and Sovereignty of Ethics, 
 which may be complained of as utterly lacking in logi 
 cal arrangement. " His style is one of the rarest beauty," 
 as Parker recognized ; because it is perfectly adapted to 
 his mental processes, and to the ends he has sought to 
 accomplish. It is simple, without imitation, unique and 
 robust. It is manly, pure, direct, and thoroughly nat 
 ural. There is no mistiness about his writings, very 
 seldom more than an apparent obscurity ;" for he has a 
 remarkable power of saying precisely the thing he 
 means. One of his severest critics can not help recog 
 nizing that "he is original, natural, attractive, and 
 direct, limpid in phrase, and pure in fancy." 1 He is 
 even more remarkable for the intense moraFpower with 
 which iis essays are surcharged ; for the clear, deep in 
 tuitions of interior truths they contain; and for their 
 bold, master s grasp of the fact, that beauty, truth, and 
 goodness are glimpses only of the same shining reality. 
 Each of his books, as Alcott suggests, is filled with vig 
 orous thoughts and a sprightly wit. " They abound in 
 strong sense, happy humor, keen criticisms, subtile in 
 sights, noble morals, clothed in a chaste and manly dic 
 tion, fresh with the breath of health and progress." 
 
LITERARY JUDGMENTS. 213 
 
 XVI. 
 
 LITERARY JUDGMENTS. 
 
 WHILE Emerson has been a zealous believer in the 
 inward method of knowing, he has also been a 
 great lover of* books. If he has prized intuition as 
 man s highest possession, he has prized literature as its 
 chief means of expression. Books, he tells us, u proceed 
 out of the silent living mind to be heard again by the 
 living mind." His recognition of both these means of 
 receiving and communicating truth has been expressed 
 in these words : 
 
 " Always the oracular soul is the source of thought, but always 
 the occasion is administered by the low mediation of circumstances. 
 Nature mixes facts with thoughts, to yield a poem. In the spirit 
 in which they are written is the date of their duration, and never 
 in the magnitude of the facts. Every thing lasts in proportion to 
 its beauty. In proportion as it was not polluted by any willfulness 
 of the writer, but flowed from his mind after the divine order of 
 cause and effect, it w T as not his, but Nature s, and shared the sub 
 limity of sea and sky." 1 
 
 He maintains that knowledge originates with "the 
 oracular soul ; " it is an intuition ; and all writing is by 
 the grace of God. The knowing soul is the one which 
 sees into the spiritual nature of things, the one that is 
 in harmony with the universe. To such a soul light is 
 given byjvirtue of this harmony. Hence all true writ- 
 Li g is a revelation, a direct gift from God to the intui 
 tive soul. The greatest of all writings are therefore 
 those which express the highest intuitions, which con 
 tain direct perceptions of spiritual realities, and reveal 
 the imiiiediate laws of the moral nature. As the intui 
 tive nature relies much on the imagination, Emerson 
 
 1 The Dial, October, 1840; Thoughts on Modern Literature. 
 
214 KALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 values highly all purely imaginative works. Next to 
 direct intuition he values that power of the imagination 
 which flashes light upon so many realities, giving to the 
 poet his penetrating insight into the world without and 
 within. In his own writings he has made a large and 
 a noble use of this gift, especially in his poems. They 
 are constantly beautified and made stronger by his wise 
 and healthful use of the imagination. His pictures of 
 Nature are penetrated with the effects of this power. 
 He sees face to face ; but, more than that, he reads the 
 inmost meaning of nature with this richjy endowed im 
 agination of his. And next he prizes any book of 
 facts which gives just expression to the realities of na 
 ture. He wishes Nature to speak, he believes in facts, 
 and prizes all books which tell us what any genuine ob 
 server has seen. " The highest class of books, he says, 
 are those which express the moral element ; the next, 
 works of the imagination ; and the next, works of 
 science, all deal in realities, what ought to be, 
 what is, and what appears." And he finds that all 
 books are ultimately measured by their depth of thought. 
 So he sees in literature one of the best illustrations of 
 the laws by which the world is governed, in that there 
 is no luck in its final judgments, .which proceed as if 
 fated to measure out due rewards to those who write. 
 He distrusts all repetition of other men s judgments and 
 all theorizing, but would have us prize the truth which 
 blooms afresh in each individual mind. If all minds 
 were purely and truly intuitional, reading nature and 
 life with open eyes, there would be no need of books ; 
 for each soul would then know all tilings ; but as only 
 a few persons are thus intuitional, books have a value of 
 the greatest importance. They store up the intuitions 
 of the past, bringing down to us only the words of the 
 most rarely gifted minds ; and by their aid our own 
 minds are awakened to a knowing of the truth for our 
 selves. In the following paragraphs he brings out the 
 comparative value of intuition and books, in accordance 
 with his theory of knowledge : 
 
LITER AKY JUDGMENTS. 215 
 
 " All just criticism will not only behold in literature the action 
 of necessary laws, but must also oversee literature itself. The 
 erect mind disparages all books. What are books? it saith ; they 
 can have no permanent value. How obviously initial they are to 
 their authors. The books of the nations, the universal books, are 
 long ago forgotten by those who wrote them ; and one day we shall 
 forget this primer learning. Literature is made up of a few 
 ideas and a few fables. It is a heap of nouns and verbs enclosing 
 an intuition or two. We must learn to judge books by absolute 
 standards. 
 
 ""When we are aroused to a life in ourselves, these traditional 
 splendors of letters grow very pale and cold. Men seem to forget 
 that all literature is ephemeral, and unwillingly entertain the sup 
 position of its utter disappearance. They deem, not only letters in 
 general, bat the best books in particular, parts of a pre-established 
 harmony, fatal, unalterable, and do not go behind Virgil and Dante, 
 much less behind Moses, Ezekiel, and St. John. But no man can 
 be a good critic of any book, who does not read in it a wisdom 
 which transcends the wisdom of any book, and treats the whole 
 extant product of the human intellect as only one age revisable 
 and reversible by him. 
 
 " In our fidelity to the higher truth, we need not disown our 
 debt in our actual state of culture, in the twilights of experience, 
 to these rude helpers. They keep alive the memory and the hope 
 of a better day. When we flout all particular books as initial 
 merely, we truly express the privilege of spiritual nature ; but alas ! 
 not the fact and fortune of this low Massachusetts and Boston, of 
 these humble Junes .and Decembers of mortal life. Our souls are 
 not self-fed, but do eat and drink of chemical water and wheat. 
 Let us not forget the genial miraculous force we have known to 
 proceed from a book. We go musing into the vault of day and 
 night; no constellation shines, no muse descends, the stars are 
 white points, the roses brick-colored dust, the frogs pipe, mice 
 peep, and wagons creak along the road. We return to the house 
 and take up Plutarch or Augustine, and read a few sentences or 
 pages, and lo ! the air swims with life ; the front of heaven is full 
 of fiery shapes ; secrets of magnanimity and grandeur invite us on 
 every hand ; life is made up of them. Such is our debt to a book. 
 Observe, moreover, that we ought to credit literature with much 
 more than the bare word it gives us." l 
 
 In another essay, 2 in accordance with this last 
 thought, he says the great man must be a great reader, 
 and possess great assimilating power. He must depend 
 upon others, because intuition is not constant ; while we 
 must try our own intuitions by those of other minds 
 
 1 The Dial, October, 1840; Thoughts on Modern Literature. 
 
 2 Quotation and Originality, in Letters and Social Aims. 
 
216 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 In his address to the students of Howard University, 
 he expressed even more emphatically his appreciation 
 of the value of books. 
 
 " Whenever I have to do with young men and women, he said, 
 I always wish to know what their books are ; I wish to defend 
 them from bad ; I wish to introduce them to good ; I wish to speak 
 of the immense benefit which a good mind derives from reading, 
 probably much more to a good mind from reading than from con 
 versation. It is of first importance, of course, to select a friend ; 
 for a young man should find a friend a little older than himself, or 
 whose mind is a little older than his own, in order to wake up his 
 genius. That service is performed oftener for us by books. I 
 think, if a very active mind, if a young man of ability, should give 
 you his honest experience, you would find that he owed more 
 impulse to books than to living minds. The great masters of 
 thought, the Platos, not only those that we call sacred writers, 
 but those that we call profane, have acted on tlie mind with more 
 energy than any companions. I think that every remarkable per 
 son whom you meet will testify to something like that, that the 
 fast-opening mind has found more inspiration in his book than in 
 his friend. We take the book under great advantages. We read 
 it when we are alone. We read it with an attention not distracted. 
 And, perhaps, we find there our own thought, a little better, a 
 little maturer, than it is in ourselves." 
 
 Great as is his praise of books, he says " the divine 
 never quotes, but is, and creates." Genius he regards, 
 after all acknowledgments of the value of books, as 
 surer of its own faintest presentiments than of all his 
 tory. His theory of knowing, as well as his standard 
 of judgment in literature, is in these words defining 
 originality : " It is being, being one s self, and reporting 
 accurately what we see and are." When we are true 
 to ourselves, in being true to Nature and the Over-soul, 
 our thought becomes an accurate reporter and measurer 
 of all things; and this direct perception of truth is an 
 intuition, a gift of the grace of God. Those who have 
 had this intuitive power most truly have written the 
 great moral, religious, and personal books of the world, 
 which Emerson prizes above all others. He specially 
 values the bibles of the race, the writers of the great 
 religious books, and such authors as Epictetus, Saadi, 
 Thomas a Kempis, Pascal, and Boehme. These books, 
 
LITERARY JUDGMENTS. 217 
 
 he says, are to be read on the bended knee ; and they 
 are life to all who diligently peruse them. They come 
 home to our hearts, because they contain the secrets 
 which all nature, experience, and intuition teach us. 
 " I read them," he says, " on lichens and bark ; I watch 
 them on waves on the beach ; they fly in birds, they 
 creep in worms; I detect them in laughter and eye- 
 sparkles of men and women. These are scriptures 
 which the missionary might well carry over prairie, 
 desert, and ocean, to Siberia, Japan, and Timbuctoo. 
 Yet he will find that the spirit which is in them jour 
 neys faster than he, and greets him on his arrival, 
 was there already long before him. The missionary 
 must be carried by it, and find it there, or he goes in 
 vain." 
 
 This sense of spiritual reality, the feeling of the 
 infinite, which is the source of all religions and litera 
 tures, he finds to be a marked peculiarity of modern 
 literature, and increasingly so. It is shown in one of 
 its characteristic traits, in the modern tendency to 
 accept all books of all ages and times, thus recognizing 
 the universal workings of the Over-soul The curious 
 study into every phase of human history is an outcome 
 of it, and it leads to a bold and systematic criticism of 
 the past. Along with this tendency, which is largely 
 skeptical, goes a subjectiveness which restores the 
 organic unity of the universe to the conceptions of 
 men. It "leads us to nature, and to the invisible awful 
 facts, to moral abstractions, which are not less nature 
 than is a river or a coal-mine ; nay, they are far more 
 nature, but its essence and soul." This feeling of the 
 Infinite grows deeper and stronger, pervades all litera 
 ture, gives form to moral purposes, makes men bold to 
 fight old evils. It is producing a great literature of its 
 own. Concerning this tendency, Emerson wrote these 
 words in The Dial : 
 
 X. 
 
 " Of the perception, now fast becoming a conscious fact, that 
 there is One Mind, and that all powers and privileges which lie in 
 any, lie in all ; that I, as a man, may claim and appropriate what 
 ever of true and fair or good or strong has anywhere been ex- 
 
218 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 
 
 hibited ; that Moses, Confucius, Montaigne, and Leibnitz are not so 
 much individuals as they are parts of man and parts of me, and 
 my intelligence proves them my own, literature is far the best 
 expression. All over the modern world the educated and suscep 
 tible have betrayed their discontent with the limits of municipal 
 life, and with the poverty of our dogmas of religion a,nd .philos 
 ophy. They betray this impatience by fleeing for resource to a 
 conversation with nature. A wild striving to express a more 
 inward and infinite sense characterizes the works of every art. 
 The music of Beethoven is said by those who understand it, to 
 labor with vaster conceptions and aspirations than music has 
 attempted before. This feeling of the Infinite has deeply colored 
 the poetry of the period. This new love of the vast, always native 
 in Germany, \vas imported into France by De Stae l, appeared in 
 England in Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Felicia Hemans, 
 and finds a most congenial climate in the American mind." 
 
 This sense of the real and spiritual, of the Infinite 
 and Eternal, will continue to. increase. As it does so, 
 
 fejnius " will write in a higher spirit, and a wider 
 nowledge, and with a greater practical aim, than ever 
 yet guided the pen of poet. It. will write the annals of 
 a changed world, describe the new heroic life of man, 
 and bind all into a joyful reverence for the circumam 
 bient whole." By this power of spiritual truth are al] 
 books to be judged. All that have it Emerson loves, 
 all that do not have it he finds to be worthless. This 
 power he regards as a pioneer, a discoverer ; and it con 
 tinually overturns past judgments. He early com 
 plained that we take it for granted a great deal is 
 known and for ever settled, and to be read out of 
 books. 1 " But in truth all is now to be begun ; and 
 every new mind ought to take the attitude of Columbus, 
 launch out from the gaping loiterers on the shore, and 
 sail west for a new world." A larger share of the 
 books written are worthless ; " a few thoughts are all we 
 glean from the best inspection of the paper pile, all the 
 rest is combination and confectionery." He thinks the 
 stock-writers outnumber the thinking men ; the larger 
 share of our authors are merely men of talent, who 
 have some feat to perform with w r ords. " Talent 
 amuses ; wisdom instructs. Talent shows what another 
 
 i The Senses and the Soul, in The Dial for January, 1842. 
 
LITERARY JUDGMENTS. 219 
 
 man can do ; genius acquaints me with the spacious 
 circuits of the common nature. The one is carpentry ; 
 the other is growth." Our senses are yet too strong 
 for us, usurp our attention from the ideal world; so that 
 we lead lives of routine, instead of those of constant 
 moral inspiration. In books Emerson finds the record 
 of the great inspirations of the past, but they are to 
 be used only as aids to new ones of our own. The 
 moment any book, even the greatest, takes the place to 
 us of insight and inward seeing of the truth, that 
 moment it becomes an injury. Rightly used, books 
 serve us a great purpose as educators, guides, and 
 inspirers. They show us the way other men have gone, 
 help us towards the truth we ourselves wish to reach ; 
 but they are the helps, not the source or the end, of 
 culture. Books can not take the place of the soul, and 
 when we have nothing more we are but poorly fur 
 nished. To sit in silence with God, in the temple of a 
 free mind, or to wander with him along any of the 
 ways of Nature, is worth all the books in the world. 
 Whatever the world of books may contain, we are to 
 set sail, with our own thoughts, for that land of divine 
 truth which ever awaits those who have the seeing 
 eye and the hearing ear. 
 
 Emerson seems not to have been affected very largely 
 by any one writer in the formation of his literary style. 
 The names of Carlyle, Goethe, Coleridge, and Landor 
 have been mentioned as among his masters ; but the 
 marks of the literary influence of either in his books 
 are but slight. To all of them he may be indebted, 
 but only to a very limited extent has he been affected 
 by either. He has not been an imitator ; has said what 
 he had to say in the manner best suiting his own pur 
 pose in saying it. He has fully accepted the theory of 
 Carlyle and Fichte, that the writer is the true interpret 
 er of the divine idea of the world. With the spirit and 
 purpose of those who represent this thought, he has 
 
220 KALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 been largely in sympathy ; but he has carried out this 
 idea in his own manner. 
 
 It has been suggested that he was influenced by Lan- 
 dor in his literary style. He was early an ardent reader 
 and a hearty admirer of Landor; and, as he has him 
 self described that writer, there may be seen to be some 
 superficial resemblances. In 1841 1 he said of Landor, 
 " We do not recollect an example of more complete in 
 dependence in literary history. He has no clanship, no 
 friendships, that warp him." He then pronounced the 
 Imaginary Conversations original in form and matter, 
 and said that Landor s books are full of free and sus 
 tained thought, keen and precise understanding, indus 
 trious observation in every department of life, an expe 
 rience to which nothing has occurred in vain, and honor 
 for every just and generous sentiment. " His acquaint 
 ance with the English tongue is unsurpassed." He is 
 pronounced a master of condensation and suppression. 
 Almost alone among the authors of that time did Emer 
 son find in Landor a perception of the moral power of 
 character. " Whosoever writes, he said, for the love of 
 truth and beauty, and not with ulterior ends, belongs 
 to the sacred class of inspirers ; and among these, few 
 of the present age have a better claim to be numbered 
 than Landor." \ r et he found some things in Landor he 
 could not approve, much less imitate. He describes 
 him as " a sharp dogmatic man with a great deal of 
 knowledge, a great deal of worth, and a great deal of 
 pride, with a profound contempt for all that he does 
 not understand, a master of all elegant learning, and 
 capable of the utmost delicacy of sentiment, and yet 
 prone to indulge in a sort of coarse imagery and lan 
 guage." He speaks of Landor as having a coarsely 
 defiant nature, as one who, " before a well-dressed com 
 pany, plunges his fingers in a cesspool, as if to expose 
 the whiteness of his hands and the jewels of his rings." 
 Before his first journey to Europe, Emerson had read 
 the Imaginary Conversations with diligence and profit, 
 
 1 In the Dial for October. 
 
LITERARY JUDGMENTS. 221 
 
 his copy showing evidence of constant perusal ; yet he 
 said in The Dial that Landor had written no good book. 
 In his. life of Landor, Forster says, 
 
 " When the American writer Emerson had made the book his 
 companion for more than twenty years, he publicly expressed to 
 the writer his gratitude for having given him a resource that had 
 never failed him in solitude. He had but to recur to its rich and 
 ample page, whereon he was always sure to find free and sustained 
 thought, a keen and precise understanding, an affluent and ready 
 memory familiar with all chosen books, an industrious observation 
 in every department of life, an experience to which it might seem 
 that nothing had occurred in vain, honor for every just and gener 
 ous sentiment, and a scourge like that of Furies for every oppressor, 
 whether public or private, to feel how dignified was that perpetuid 
 censor in his curule chair, and to wish to thank so great a bene 
 factor." 1 
 
 Goethe was a great favorite with the members of the 
 Transcendental Club, and Emerson shared in that ad 
 miration. In a conversation, in more recent years, he 
 pronounced Goethe the leading mind of the present 
 century. When Grimm writes of Goethe, he acknowl 
 edges his debt to Emerson for the point of view from 
 whence to correctly judge him. 2 A writer 3 of some dis 
 crimination has said that the mantle of Goethe has fall 
 en on Emerson. Without doubt Emerson has been 
 affected by the commanding genius and personality of 
 Goethe ; but the great German was too realistic, too 
 little a Puritan, to fully receive Emerson s sympathy. 
 His criticisms show the wide space between them. He 
 accuses 4 Goethe of differing from all great minds in 
 " the total want of frankness." " No man was permit 
 ted to call Goethe brother. He hid himself, and worked 
 always to astonish ; which is an egotism, and therefore 
 little." He characterizes Goethe "as the poet of the 
 actual, not of the ideal ; the poet of limitation, not of 
 possibility ; of this world, and not of religion and hope ; 
 in short, the poet of prose, and not of poetry." Pie 
 says Goethe s moral perception was not proportionate 
 to his ot her powers, and so he left the world as he 
 
 1 \Valter Savage Landor: a biography, by John Forster, p. 3G3. 
 
 2 Life and Times of Goethe, preface to American translation. 
 
 3 The Rev. Dr Osgood. 4 j_ n tue 
 
222 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 found it. The German was so great he can not forgive 
 him for not being greater, and thus becoming the one 
 sublime revealer of divine wisdom, redeeming us from 
 idolatries and their legendary luster. Charmed as he 
 is by Goethe s genius, he yet constantly bemoans that 
 incapacity which kept him from the central facts, and 
 from becoming the great poet of the ideal. He can not 
 endure Goethe s realistic mode of thought, and this is 
 the source of all his criticisms. So he says, 
 
 "If we try Goethe by the ordinary canons of criticism, we 
 should say that his thinking is of great altitude, and all level, 
 not a succession of summits, but a high Asiatic table-land. He 
 has an eye constant to the fact of life, and that never pauses in its 
 advance. But the great felicities, the miracles of poetry, he has 
 never. It is all design with him, just thought and instructed 
 expression, analogies, allusion, illustration, which knowledge and 
 correct thinking supply; but of Shakspere and the transcendent 
 muse, no syllable. He is the king of all scholars ; let him have 
 the praise of the love of truth. We think, when we contemplate 
 the stupendous glory of the world, that it were life enough for one 
 man merely to lift his hands and cry with St. Augustine, Wrangle 
 who pleases, I will wonder. Well, this he did. Here was a man, 
 who, in the feeling that the thing itself was so admirable as to 
 leave all comment behind, went up and down from object to 
 object, lifting the veil from every one, and did no more. 1 1 is are 
 the bright and terrible eyes, which meet the modern student in 
 every sacred chapel of thought, in every public enclosure." 
 
 Emerson does not think it a mere accident, a case of 
 color-blindness, that Goethe had not a moral perception 
 proportionate to his other powers. It was " a cardinal 
 fact of health or disease ; since, lacking this, he failed 
 in the high sense to be a creator, and with divine en 
 dowments drops by irreversible decree into the com 
 mon history of genius. He was content to fall into the 
 track of vulgar poets, and spend on common aims his 
 splendid endowments, and has declined the office prof 
 fered to now and then a man in many centuries in the 
 power of his genius, of a redeemer of the human 
 mind. He has written better than other poets, only as 
 his talent was subtler; but the ambition of creation he 
 refused. Life for him is prettier, easier, wiser, decenter, 
 
LITERARY JUDGMENTS. 223 
 
 has a gem or two more on its robe ; but its old eternal 
 burden is not relieved; no drop of healthier blood 
 flows yet in its veins. Let him pass. Humanity must 
 wait for its physician still at the side of the road, and 
 confess, as this man goes out, that they have served it 
 better, who assured it, out of the innocent hope in their 
 hearts, that a physician will come, than this majestic 
 artist, with all the treasuries of wit, of science, and of 
 power to command." 
 
 In his extemporaneous address to the students of 
 Howard University, he said of Goethe : 
 
 " Since Shakspere, there has been no mind of equal compass to 
 his. There is the wise man. He has the largest range of thought, 
 the most catholic mind ; a person who has spoken in every science, 
 and has added to the scientific lore of other students, and who 
 represents better than any other individual the progressive mind 
 of the present age. He is the oracle of all the leading students in 
 every nation at this time." He said Faust is the book by which 
 Goethe is best known. " It is one of the most disagreeable books 
 that I can read. While I consider Shakspere s Hamlet a great and 
 noble work, Goethe s Faust is to me a very painful w r ork. And 
 yet that stands with society generally as his leading work. It 
 represents the modern mind, and that is what he aimed at ; but it 
 doss not represent the Eternal Mind." The maxims and rules of 
 life written for Schiller s Horen " are now gathered into a book 
 that I think is one of the most important we possess." 
 
 An intimate friendship and sympathy with Carlyle 
 has probably drawn him closer to that writer than to 
 any other. Here, as before, however, the charge of 
 imitation is utterly unmeaning and beside the mark. 
 Such a charge might have had a general meaning in 
 the early days of Emerson s career ; but he has proven 
 himself too much a master, too much inclined to do his 
 own thinking, to redeem such a statement now from 
 being entirely valueless. He has found the chief 
 characteristic of Carlyle in his broad humanity and in 
 the altitude of his thought. 
 
 " He has the dignity of a man of letters who knows what 
 belongs to him, and never deviates from his sphere; a continuer 
 of the great line of scholars, and sustains their office in the highest 
 credit and honor. If the good Heaven have any word to impart to 
 
224 EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 this unworthy generation, here is one scribe qualified arid clothed 
 for its occasion. One excellence he has in an age of mammon 
 and criticism, that he never suffers the eye of his wonder to close. 
 Let who will be the dupe of trifles ; he can not keep his eyes oil 
 from the gracious Infinite which embosoms us. As a literary artist 
 he has great merits, beginning with the main one, that tie never 
 wrote a dull line." l 
 
 Emerson has also Ipeen an ardent admirer of Words 
 worth, early read his poems with the keenest interest, 
 imbibed his ideas of nature and the soul, and has drunk 
 deep at the fountain of his thought. As in the case of 
 Carlyle, he has accepted Wordsworth s philosophy, and 
 made many of its ideas vital elements in his own. In 
 the pages of The Dial he says of Wordsworth, " More 
 than any poet his success has been not his own, but 
 that of the idea he shared with his coevals, and which 
 lie has rarely succeeded in expressing. The Excursion 
 awakened in every lover of nature the right feeling. 
 We saw stars shine, we felt the awe of mountains, we 
 heard the rustle of the wind in the grass, and knew 
 again the ineffable secret of solitude. It was a great 
 joy. It was nearer to nature than any thing we had 
 before." Yet it was not a great poem ; and, excepting 
 a few strains, it was dull. " It was the human soul in 
 these last ages striving jfor a just publication of itself. 
 Add to this, however, the great praise of Wordsworth, 
 that more than any other contemporary bard he is per 
 vaded with a reverence of somewhat higher than con 
 scious thought. There is in him that property common 
 to all great poets, a wisdom of humanity, which is 
 superior to any talents they exert." Again, he says 
 Wordsworth " has the merit of just moral perception, 
 but not that of deft poetic execution." 2 Milton would 
 " curl his lip at such- slipshod newspaper style," and 
 many of his poems might all be improvised. 
 
 "Yet Wordsworth, though satisfied if he can suggest to a 
 sympathetic mind his own mood, and though setting a private and 
 exaggerated value on his compositions, though confounding ula 
 
 i The Dial. 
 
 - Europe and European Books, in The Dial for April, 1843. 
 
LITERARY JUDGMENTS. 225 
 
 accidental with the universal consciousness, and taking the public 
 to task for not admiring his poetry, is really a master of the 
 English language ; and his poems evince a power of diction that is 
 no more rivaled by his contemporaries, than is his poetic insight. 
 But the capital merit of Wordsworth is, that he has done mo^e 
 for the sanity of this generation than any other writer. Early in 
 life, at a crisis in his private affairs, he made his election between 
 wealth and a position in the world, and the inward promptings of 
 his heavenly genius ; he took his part ; he accepted the call to be a 
 poet, and sat down, far from cities, with coarse clothing and plain 
 fare, to obey the heavenly vision. The choice he had made in his 
 will, manifested itself in every line to be real." 
 
 To Landor Emerson is slightly indebted for his style, 
 sharp, compacted, energetic, for so much of it as is 
 not fully and characteristically his own. Yet he has 
 none of Lander s coarseness, none of his drowsiness, 
 and none of his dullness of tone. Carlyle has an 
 impetus and an incessant storm of power, sweeping, 
 imperious, awful, that Emerson has not. The style of 
 Carlyle is that of a great body of cavalry rushing 
 impetuous across an open field to crush down an 
 enemy, or that of an incessant roar of reverberating 
 thunder across the heavens. On the other hand, 
 Emerson s may be compared to quick flash after flash 
 of lightning, to constant sharp electric discharges. 
 Carlyle may be regarded as somewhat his inspirer in 
 the field of ethics, in hatred of every modern sin, in 
 the application of the ethical test to every fact of life 
 and nature, and of his faith in the infinite. To Goethe 
 he owes a debt for his appreciation of aesthetic power, 
 and for his ingrafting the sense of beauty on the Puri 
 tan austerity. Appreciation of poetic form he may 
 be also in debt for to the German, as well as for his 
 eager: sympathy with nature, and his quick, susceptible 
 sympathy with all the forms of human existence. In 
 thus being tutored of literary masters, in many ways 
 greatly unlike each other, he has gathered a wider 
 range of^power than he would otherwise have pos 
 sessed, and he has chosen from each what was most 
 excellent. He has not the poetic power of Goethe, or 
 Carlyle s stormy inspiration ; but there is a poise and a 
 
226 EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 mental balance about his writings not to be found in 
 either of the others. Their excesses he lacks, is more 
 of a Puritan, mere of a prophet. He has not Goethe s 
 excessive appreciation of life and beauty, and sensitive 
 ness to their presence ; but he has a moral power, a 
 self-mastery, a sublime ethical expression, Goethe could 
 not possibly have attained. He has not Carlyle s inspir 
 ing power ; he does not sweep up the heart of the reader 
 into invisible realms of truth, so that he forgets . earth 
 and time ; but he walks the solid earth, mindful ever of 
 its commonest duties; yet with his head in the high 
 heavens, communing with celestial wonders. He sur 
 passes all the others in his power to read the common 
 daily life of men, and the facts of this material world, in 
 the language of the celestial regions, finding but one 
 fact and one law through all worlds. So fine a judge 
 of literary qualities as Lowell l finds that Emerson has 
 improved, on his masters. 
 
 "Both Carlyle and Emerson were disciples of Goethe, but 
 Emerson in a far truer sense ; and while the one, from his bias 
 towards the eccentric, has degenerated more and more into man 
 nerism, the other has clarified steadily towards perfection of style, 
 exquisite fineness of material, unobtrusive lowness of tone and 
 simplicity of fashion, the most high-bred garb of expression. 
 Whatever may be said of his thought, nothing can be finer than 
 the delicious limpidness of his phrase. If it was ever questionable 
 whether democracy could develop a gentleman, the problem has 
 been affirmatively solved at last. Carlyle, in his cynicism and 
 admiration of force in and for itself, has become at last positively 
 inhuman ; Emerson, reverencing strength, seeking the highest out 
 come of the individual, has found that society and politics are also 
 main elements in the attainment of the desired end, and has drawn 
 steadily man ward and worklward." 
 
 In Goethe the sense of beauty was supreme, in 
 Carlyle the love of strength has been predominant , 
 but in Emerson all powers and faculties have been held 
 in reverence only as aids to character. His writings 
 have been conceived and executed, only as helps to 
 human life and aids to moral excellence. In this ligln 
 every page of his must be regarded. He looks on 
 
 i Essay ou Thoreau, in My Study Windows. 
 
LITERARY JUDGMENTS. 227 
 
 events, he reads nature, be judges books, as belps to 
 human development. To him a book is great and 
 precious, only in proportion to its ethical, inspiring, and 
 human po.wer, its capacity to touch and mold man to 
 finer issues of conduct and feeling. 
 
 Emerson judges of books by the meas-ure of their 
 spiritual qualities. He does not possess a critical or a 
 purely literary judgment, and this standard he does not 
 apply to the authors he admires. He loves a book be 
 cause of its affinity to his own mind ; for its imagina 
 tive, intuitional, and transcendental qualities. He often 
 judges of books very much as we would expect Bunyan, 
 Fox, or Woolman to judge of them, by certain religious 
 affinities to his own mind. Yet he has been almost 
 always correct in his judgments, finding the best books 
 in all literatures, and admiring them for their most gen 
 uine qualities. He has had a better, a more correct, 
 taste for books of the past, however, than for those of 
 his own day. While seldom erring about an old book, 
 his generous appreciation, his earnest sympathy, has led 
 him sometimes to find in contemporary books merits 
 they do not really contain. This is shown in his extrav 
 agant praise, in English Traits, of that very dull writer 
 Wilkinson, in whose mind, he says, is " a long Atlantic 
 roll not known except in deepest waters." This praise 
 
 frew entirely out of his sympathy with the ideas Wil- 
 inson attempted to present. When Landor praised 
 that friend he loved so well, Emerson was " pestered" 
 by it, and exclaimed, " But who is Southey ? " 1 He has 
 called Herbert Spencer a stock-writer, does not like 
 
 1 The professional critics, however, are not always an improvement 
 on Emerson; as witness this from Swinburne s Study of Shakspere, p. 
 15 L J: " A democracy such as yours in America is my abhorrence, wrote 
 Landor onee to an impudent and foul-mouthed Yankee philosophaster 
 who had intruded himself on that great man s privacy in order to have 
 the privilege of informing the readers of a pitiful pamphlet on England 
 that Landor had pestered him with Southey; an impertinence, I may 
 add, which Mr. Landor at once rebuked with the sharpest contempt, 
 and chastised with the haughtiest courtesy." 
 
228 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 Charles Kingsley, but has a great admiration for Readers 
 Christie Johnstone. He highly appreciates the writings 
 of Ruskin, regards Lowell s Biglow Papers as his best 
 work, and calls Bacon s Essays " a little bible of earthly 
 wisd; m." These opinions are quite sufficient to show 
 that Emerson does not value a book for its literary mer 
 its, but for its attitude toward nature, or for its reli 
 gious and philosophical conceptions. He tests books by 
 his poetical and moral sensibility, rather than by the 
 ordinary canons of criticism. He loves the idealists, and 
 will not think the best of any others. Indeed, an ad 
 mixture of mysticism suits him well; while the author 
 who can read every material fact as a law of the spirit 
 ual world is sure of his praise. Yet he is not merely a 
 mystic himself, far from it, for lie thinks u the re 
 straining grace of common sense is the mark of all valid 
 minds. 1 He finds in the imagination a real guide to 
 the secrets of life, and he prizes no writer from whom 
 this gift is absent ; but he would have sense and reason 
 accompany even the imagination. 
 
 His literary judgments are full of interest as interpret 
 ing his own mind and character, as showing his steady 
 faith in the ideal element in literature. He is quick to 
 detect the least swerving from the spiritual basis of 
 thought, and without a moment s hesitation rejects the 
 least utilitarianism of purpose. The fame of Words 
 worth lie regards as a leading fact in modern literature. 
 He sees in Byron a perverted will ; while he thinks 
 Shelley is never a poet, lacking in the original fire of 
 the bard. 
 
 He early discerned the genius of Tennyson, and in 
 1843 wrote of "the elegance, the wit, and subtlety <f 
 this writer, his fancy, his power of language, his metri 
 cal skill, his independence on any living masters, his 
 peculiar topics, his taste for the costly and gorgeous." 2 
 He "wants rude truth, however; he is tco fine;" but 
 " it is long since we have had as good a lyrist ; it will 
 be long before we have his superior." Speaking of the 
 
 1 Letters and Social Aims. 2 The Dial for April. 
 
LITERARY JUDGMENTS. 229 
 
 delicacies and splendors of Tennyson s style, lie says, 
 " The best songs in English poetry are by that heavy, 
 hard, pedantic poet, Ben Jonson. Jonson is rude, and 
 only on rare occasions gay. Tennyson is always fine, 
 but Jon son s beauty is more grateful than Tennyson s. 
 It is the natural, manly grace of a robust workman." 
 
 He says that Scott, more than any other modern 
 writer, "has inspired his readers with affection to his 
 own personality ; " l that, in the number and variety of 
 his characters, he approaches Shakspere. All his char 
 acters are portrayed with equal skill ; and there is re 
 markable strength and success in every figure of his 
 crowded company. 
 
 Outside of the world s religious teachers he places 
 Shakspere as the one unparalleled mind, and says that of 
 works depending purely upon their intrinsic excellence, 
 his are first. 2 
 
 " No nation has produced any thirty like his equal. There is no 
 quality in the human mind, there is no class of topics, there is 
 no region of thought, in which he has not soared or descended, 
 and none in which he has not said the commanding word. All 
 men are impressed, in proportion to their own advancement in 
 thought, by the genius of Shakspere ; and the greatest mind values 
 him the most. It is wonderful that ib lui.; taken ages to esteem 
 him. We find with wonder that he was not appreciated in his 
 own time ; that you can hardly find any contemporary who did 
 him any justice. Still, his fame and the influence of his genius 
 have risen with the progress of time. As there has been oppor 
 tunity to compare him with other poets and writers, his superiority 
 has been felt, and never so much as at this day. In reading Shak 
 spere you will find yourself armed for the law, the divinity, and for 
 commerce with men." 
 
 One of his earliest biographical lectures was on Mil 
 ton, of whom he wrote with discrimination, and with 
 strong admiration of his prose. 3 He calls Comus "the 
 loftiest song in the praise of chastity that is in any 
 language." Of Milton s genius he said, 
 
 1 Address "before the Massachusetts Historical Society on the cen 
 tennial anniversary of Scott s birthday, Aug. 15, 1871, printed in the 
 Transactions of the society for that year. 
 
 2 Address at Howard University. 
 
 a Printed in the North American Review for JiTly, 1838, and reprinted 
 in Essays from the North American Review, 1879. 
 
230 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 " It is the prerogative of this great man to stand at this hour 
 foremost of all men in literary history, and so (shall we not say ?) 
 of all men, in the power to inspire. Virtue goes out of him into 
 others. Leaving out of view the pretensions of our contemporaries 
 (always an incalculable influence), we think no man can be named 
 whose mind still acts on the cultivated intellect of England and 
 America with an energy comparable to that of Milton. As a poet, 
 Shakspere undoubtedly transcends and far surpasses . him in his 
 popularity with foreign nations ; but Shakspere is a voice merely ; 
 who and what he was that sang, that sings, we know not. Milton 
 stands erect, commanding, still visible as a man among men, and 
 reads the laws of the moral sentiment to the new-born race. 
 There is something pleasing in the affection with which we can 
 regard a man who died a hundred and sixty years ago in the other 
 hemisphere, who, in respect to personal relations, is to us as the 
 wind, yet by an influence purely personal makes us jealous for his 
 fame as for that of a near friend. He is identified in the mind 
 with all select and holy images, with the supreme interests of the 
 human race. If hereby we attain any more precision, we proceed 
 to say that we think no man in these later ages, and few men ever, 
 possessed so great a conception of the manly character. Better 
 than any other l>e has discharged the office ef every great man, 
 namely, to raise the idea of man in the minds, of his contem 
 poraries and of posterity, to draw after nature a life of man, 
 exhibiting such a composition of grace, of strength, and of virtue, 
 as poet had not described nor hero lived. Human nature in these 
 ages is indebted to him- for its best portrait. Many philosophers 
 in England, France, and Germany have formally dedicated their 
 study to this problem ; and we think it impossible to recall one in 
 those countries who communicates the same vibration of hope, of 
 self-reverence, of piety, of delight, in beauty, which the name of 
 Milton awakens. The idea of a purer existence than any he saw 
 around him, to be realized in the life and conversation of men, 
 ijispired every act and every writing of John Milton." 
 
 He has spoken of Burns with enthusiasm, and with 
 a fine appreciation of the genuine merits of this poet 
 of common life. He regards Burns .as the poet of the 
 middle class, and of that great progressive, modern 
 movement, which, "not in governments, so much as in 
 education and in social order, has changed the face of 
 the world." 
 
 " Not Latimer, not Luther, struck more telling blows against 
 false theology than did this brave singer. The Confession of 
 Augsberg, the Declaration of Independence, the French Rights of 
 Man, and the Marseillaise, are not more weighty documents, in the 
 history of freedom, than the songs of Burns. His satire has lost 
 
LTTERAEY JUDGMENTS. 23! 
 
 none of its edge. His musical arrows yet sing through the air. 
 He is so substantially a reformer, that I find his great plain sense 
 in close chain with the greatest masters, llabelais, Shakspere in 
 comedy, Cervantes, Butler, and Burns. 
 
 " Yet how true a poet he is ! And the poet, too, of poor men, 
 of gray hodden, and the guernsey coat, and the blouse. He has 
 given voice to all the experiences of common life ; he has endeared 
 the farmhouse and cottage, patches and poverty, beans and barley; 
 ale, the poor man s wine ; hardship, the fear of debt, the dear 
 society of weans and wife, of brothers and sisters, proud of each 
 other, knowing so few, and finding amends for want and obscurity 
 in books and thought. And as he was thus the poet of the poor, 
 anxious, cheerful, working humanity, he had the language of low 
 life. He grew up in a rural district, speaking a patois unintel 
 ligible to all but natives ; and he has made that lowland Scotch a 
 Doric dialect of fame. It is the only example in history of a lan 
 guage made classic by the genius of a single man. He had that 
 secret of genius to draw from the bottom of society the strength 
 of its speech, and astonish the ears of the polite with these artless 
 words, better than art, and filtered of all offense by his beauty." l 
 
 No man could have dealt more generously with his 
 co-workers in the fields of American literature than 
 Emerson has done. His own ideals have been high ; 
 but he has been very tender of genius, very generous 
 with merit, and kindly sympathetic with all who have 
 followed the same paths with himself. This generosity 
 has sometimes blinded him to the real merits of those 
 who claimed his attention, but it has also helped him to 
 do much for American literature. As Lessing raised 
 his voice against imitation of the French, and called for 
 a genuine German literature, founded on national senti 
 ment, so has Emerson protested against foreign models 
 and in favor of an American literature. His influence 
 has been as healthful and powerful as was Lessing s, 
 creating in this way, as Lessing did, a national litera 
 ture. If Emerson s influence has not sufficed to create 
 a literature as great as that which followed the example 
 set by Lessing, it may be said that not nearly so many 
 years have elapsed since it began to be felt. If not so 
 
 1 Address at the BUTDS Festival in Boston, Jan. 25, 1859, on Burns s 
 one hundredth birthday. 
 
232 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 great in its effects, the influence has been of the same 
 nature, and founded on the same ideas about the im 
 portance of original and independent writing. 
 
 His sympathy with genius ma} be seen in the case of 
 Thoreau, who has been valued by him at his full height, 
 and praised with unstinted appreciation. Not only in 
 the address immediately following Thsreau s death, but 
 elsewhere, he has expressed his love of that rare spirit. 
 In his address at the dedication of the Concord Free 
 Library he protested that Thoreau had not yet been 
 highly enough appreciated by the public. He then 
 said, 
 
 " Henry Thoreau we all remember as a man of genius, and of 
 marked character, known to our farmers as the most skillful of sur 
 veyors, and indeed better acquainted with their forests and 
 meadows than themselves, but more widely known as the writer of 
 some of the best books which have been written in this country, 
 and which, I am persuaded, have not yet gathered half their fame. 
 He, too, was an excellent reader. No man could have rejoiced 
 more than he in the event of this day." 
 
 In 1852 Theodore Parker dedicated his Ten Sermons 
 of Religion to Emerson, " with admiration for his genius, 
 and with kindly affection for what in him is far nobler 
 than genius." On receipt of the book, Emerson wrote 
 the author this appreciative letter : 
 
 I I read the largest part of it with good heed. I find in it all the 
 traits which are making your discourses material to the history of 
 Massachusetts, the realism, the power of local and homely illustra 
 tion, the courage and vigor of treat: rient, arid the masterly sarcasm, 
 now naked, now veiled, and I think with a marked growth in 
 power and coacervation shall I say? of statement. To be 
 sure, f am in this moment thinking of speeches out of this book 
 a.- well as those in it. Well, you may give the times to come the 
 means of knowing how the lamp was fed, which they are to thank 
 you that they find burning. And though I see you are too good- 
 11 ;i lured by half in your praise of your contemporaries, you will 
 iieilher deceive us nor posterity, nor forgive me yourself, any 
 more in this graceful air of laying on others your own untransfer 
 able laurels. 
 
 " We shall all thank the right soldier, whom God gave strength 
 and will to fight for him the battle of the day." * 
 
 1 Weiss s Life of Parker, vol. ii. p. 45. 
 
LITERARY JUDGMENTS. 233 
 
 When Parker s society paid tribute to his memory 
 after his death, Emerson gave an address full of love 
 and sympathy for his heroic friend. " It is plain to 
 me, he said, that he has achieved an historic immor 
 tality here ; that he has so woven himself in these few 
 years into the history of Boston, that he can never be 
 left out of your annals." " His commanding merit as a 
 reformer is this, that he insisted beyond all men in pul 
 pits, I can not think of one rival, that the essence 
 of Christianity is its practical morals." In this opinion 
 Emerson entirely sympathized with him ; and he must 
 have been drawn to Parker on this very account, and 
 charmed with his perfect loyalty to manhood and right. 
 
 Emerson s generous appreciation of Walt Whitman 
 has been the cause of much comment ; and it is under 
 stood he has somewhat retreated from his first ardent 
 praise, and been mortified that that praise should have 
 been made public. In 1855 he wrote Whitman the 
 following letter : 
 
 " I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of Leaves of 
 Grass. I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom 
 that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, 
 as great power makes us happy. It meets the demand I am always 
 making of what seemed the sterile and stingy nature, as if too much 
 handiwork, or too much lymph in the temperament, were making 
 our Western wits fat and mean. 
 
 " I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great 
 joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as 
 they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights 
 us, and which large perception only can inspire. 
 
 " I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must 
 have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start. I rubbed 
 my eyes a little, to see if this sunbeam were no illusion ; but the 
 solid sense of the book is a sober certainty. It has the best merits, 
 namely, of fortifying and encouraging. 
 
 " I did not know until I last night saw the book advertised in a 
 newspaper that I could trust the name as real and available for 
 a post-office. I wish to see my benefactor, and have felt much like 
 striking my tasks and visiting New York to pay you my respects." 
 
 On receipt of this letter Whitman put these words 
 on the cover of his Leaves of Grass: "I greet you at 
 the beginning of a great career." This use of a private 
 
234 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 letter, and parading of his own praise, together with 
 Whitman s excessive sensuousness of expression, un 
 doubtedly abated Emerson s admiration. He has said 
 that Whitman s first poems were much better than the 
 later. The truth of this opinion may be doubted, how 
 ever; for there is none of that coarse sensuality in the 
 later poems which characterized the ea: lier, and there 
 is an immense gain in depth of spiritual power. Some 
 of these more recent poems have a remarkable power, 
 and are unsurpassed in the intensity and sweep of their 
 expression. But he is very unequal, and has printed in 
 his books a great amount of rubbish. There is much 
 in Whitman which Emerson must admire, and much 
 which must be repugnant to his correct and puritanic 
 taste, as well as to his exacting moral perceptions. 
 Though there is not a line in Whitman which is neces 
 sarily immoral, there is a quite unnecessary plainness 
 of speech, and an open fleshliness, that have made him 
 repugnant to many. Doubtless Emerson s praise was 
 sincere, but the new poetry was not of that kind with 
 which he finds himself in fullest sympathy. 
 
 In the first volume of The Dial, Emerson introduced 
 to the public the poetry of William Ellery Channing, 
 with words of sympathetic praise. 1 Channing had not 
 yet printed any thing, Emerson s numerous selections 
 from his manuscripts being the first to appear. He 
 said of these poems, 
 
 " Our first feeling on reading them was a lively joy. So, then, 
 the Muse is .neither dead nor dumb, but has found a voice in these 
 cold Cisatlantic states. Here is poetry which asks no aid of mag 
 nitude or number, of blood or crime, but finds theater enough in 
 the first field or brookside, breadth and depth enough in the flow 
 of its own thought. Here is self-repose, which to our mind is 
 stabler than the Pyramids ; here is self-respect, which leads a man 
 to date from his heart more proudly than from Home. Here is 
 love which sees through surface, and adores the gentle nature and 
 not costume. Here is religion, which is not of the church of 
 England, nor of the church of Boston. Here is the good, wise 
 heart, which sees that the end of culture is strength and cheerful 
 ness. In an age, too, which tends with so strong an inclination to 
 
 1 New Poetry, in the second number. 
 
LITERARY JUDGMENTS. 235 
 
 the philosophical muse, here is poetry more intellectual than any 
 American verses we have yet seen, distinguished from all compe 
 tition by two merits, the fineness of perception ; and the poet s 
 trust in his own genius to that degree, that there is an absence of 
 all conventional imagery, and a bold use of that which the 
 moment s mood had made sacred to him, quite careless that it 
 might be sacred to no other, and might even be slightly ludicrous 
 to the first reader." 
 
 His name also served to bring before the public 
 Channing s Wanderer, a poem mainly characterized 
 by its appreciation of nature and by its biographic 
 accounts of Emerson and Thoreau. In the preface to 
 that poem he says, " there is new matter and new spirit 
 in this writing." " These poems are genuinely original, 
 with a simplicity of plan which allows the writer to 
 leave out all the prose of artificial transitions." " His 
 poems have to me and others an exceptional value for 
 this reason, we have not been considered in their 
 composition, but either defied or forgotten, and there 
 fore consult them securely as photographs." 
 
236 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 POETKY. 
 
 HPHEODORE PARKER once said that Emerson is 
 -L a poet lacking the accomplishment of verse. His 
 poems lack in that smooth, polished, well-trimmed, and 
 proportioned flow of words which characterizes so much 
 of the poetry of the present time. As a poet he is simple, 
 natural, and original ; but giving less heed to form than 
 to substance, caring more for the inward beauty than 
 for the clothing of his muse. He has been too original, 
 too true and just to his own genius, to copy from any 
 of the poetical models in fashion during the century. 
 They are too diffuse, gorgeous, and strained, too much 
 concerned for outward beauty and mere melody of form, 
 to please him ; and the real place he occupies is with 
 Milton, Herbert, Mar veil, and the Elizabethan poets. 
 His love for those pcets shows his natural affiliation 
 with them; there he has found his models; and his 
 stoic economy of words, purity of style, and simplicity 
 of thought, all remind us of those noble singers. His 
 moral tone, so lofty, so pure, recalls their puritanic 
 sympathies. He is thoroughly a moral poet ; never loves 
 beauty merely for its own sake. He has the quiet and 
 earnest manner of all great moral poets, the steady sense 
 of the value of life, and the constant regard to its well- 
 ordering, which the word-flourish, and lively color, and 
 dilletanteism, of much of the present poetry make im 
 possible. 
 
 He is an introspective poet, with great power of giving 
 expression to some of the moods and tendencies of the 
 human mind. He deals with the riddles <;f being in a 
 lofty spiiit. The dark problems of life which concern 
 every soul, and the solution of which forms the eras of 
 
POETRY. 237 
 
 human thought, he brings into his poems with rare 
 power, and with a skill few possess. He thus becomes 
 a true interpreter of human motives. His muse turns 
 wholly inward in some of his poems ; and the great out 
 ward world, at other times so dear, is quite forgotten. 
 He treats of mental experiences, moral purposes, spirit 
 ual aspirations, in a happy manner. Yet he speaks 
 \ rather through the imagination than the heart, is an in 
 tellectual more than a sentimental poet. Emotion and 
 passion do not enter largely into his poetry. He has 
 feeling, and great depth of it ; but it is not directly ex 
 pressed. There is much of the Puritan about him, an 
 austere distrust of emoticn. He is usually calm, repose 
 ful, earnest with faith, and without the rushes and 
 surges of emotion or the ecstasies of passion. 
 
 " His feeling has the quality of depth and earnestness, sometimes 
 hinting at a certain Hebrew solemnity rather than of ardent sym 
 pathy. He is not apt to take his readers into friendly counsel ; 
 rarely does he draw them near his heart ; but rather speaks to them 
 in his grand, austere tones from some lofty height of isolation. 
 Not a trace of effeminacy, of the weak indulgence of even the 
 purest passion, ever impairs the conscious serenity of his spirit. 
 His inspiration flows from the intellect, or rather from the supreme 
 poetic faculty, to a far greater degree than from the affections. 
 Still, he is not without frequent touches of the tenderest pathos." 1 
 
 Emerson has a theory of poetry, and in accordance 
 with it most of his poems have been written. It is, that 
 mind is central, the source of an infinite unity ; that the 
 outward world is symbolical of the spirit expressed 
 through it, and that every fact in nature carries the 
 whole sense of nature. He sees a deep and subtle rela 
 tion between the physical universe and the soul of man. 
 The world is a symbol, an expression to the senses, of 
 spirit ; and every outward fact must be interpreted in 
 terms of the inward life. This idea powerfully appeals 
 to his imagination, sets his mind aglow with analogies, 
 and stimulates to the subtlest spiritual interpretations 
 of nature. v " It gives a mystic character to his poetry, 
 and makes many of his poems seem as obscure at first 
 
 i Article by E. P. Whipple m The Independent for 1867. 
 
238 EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 as they are found to be deep with the profoundest 
 meaning when tjae analogy is penetrated, and they are 
 comprehended. ( No poet beholds spirit so universally 
 present as he does, or finds God so truly an indwell 
 ing life in all things. ) No poetry is more thoroughly 
 religious, though it has none of the conventional forms 
 of religion. God and the soul speak to him every 
 where ; every bush is ablaze with the glory of God. 
 Nature is the word of God, the living epistle of truth, 
 the ever-open book wherein we may read the wondrous 
 law of the Over-soul. In him this analogy between 
 nature and spirit " has assumed a new shape, and given 
 birth to a fresh variety of spiritual creation." 
 
 " The religious sense with which prophets and holy men have 
 consecrated certain spots by the presence of Deity is carried by 
 him into the universal domain of Nature. To his mystic vision 
 every mountain is a Sinai, every tree of the wood is a burning 
 bush, every breeze is vocal with the still, small voice. In the 
 growth of plants, the flow of streams, the flight of birds, he 
 recognizes the mysterious power which gives vitality to the soul, 
 if it be not indeed, according to his Oriental fancy, the outward 
 projection of the soul itself." 1 
 
 He applies the same ideas in the interpretation of art, 
 a subject on which he has not written so -wisely or with 
 so much inspiration as he has concerning poetry. The 
 essence of beauty, he says, is in the mind. In nature it 
 results from the presence of the universal spirit, the 
 unity of all things, and the striving of every natural 
 thing to realize itself in higher forms. It is "a certain 
 cosmical quality or power to suggest relation to the 
 whole world," and always betrays the presence of 
 u somewhat immeasurable and divine." 2 Art is com 
 plementary to nature, and must strictly follow its laws. 3 
 Here, as in poetry, moral power is always present, and 
 must <] >minate the work. Art must follow the neces 
 sary ; and hence true art, as well as true poetry, is un 
 conscious in its origin. The artist does not create so 
 much as report. The soul works through him, he is its 
 
 1 Ibid. 
 
 2 Conduct of Life, pp. 267, 268. 
 
 8 Society and Solitude, essay on Art. 
 
POETRY. 239 
 
 unconscious instrument. " The artist does not feel him 
 self to be the parent of his work, and is as much sur 
 prised at the effect as we." Carlyle has made much 
 of this idea, maintaining that all great performances of 
 whatever kind are not consciously done, that they are 
 not creations, but reportings of what we have seen in 
 the realms of spirit. That is, all highest truth is an 
 intuition, and comes from a source above the under 
 standing. 
 
 To Emerson poetry is the only verity, contains the 
 only reality..^ The birth of a poet is the principal human 
 event, for he stands among partial men for the com 
 plete man. " He is the healthy, the wise, the funda 
 mental, the manly man, seer of the secret ; against all 
 appearances he sees and reports the truth, namely, that 
 the soul generates matter." Each poetic mind perceives 
 the world in a way that is its own, thus puts forth out 
 of its own being a world after its own nature. As a 
 manifestation of the Over-soul, from which the out 
 ward world proceeds, as a lessened- expression of itself, 
 does each individual soul reign supreme over matter. 
 Nature, however, is responsive to the spirit it expresses ; 
 and as it is the same spirit everywhere manifest, all the 
 manifold phases of nature answer to each other, like to 
 like. It is this identity of manifestation which gives 
 to poetry its imaginative power. 
 
 The poet is the world s speaker, giving expression to 
 the meanings of things ; for he reads and interprets the 
 spiritual -truth which the outward fact means. " He 
 stands one step nearer to things, and sees the flowing or 
 metamorphosis; perceives that thought is multiform; 
 that within the form of every creature is a force im 
 pelling it to ascend into a higher form ; and, following 
 with his eyes the life, uses the forms which express that 
 Life, and so his speech flows with the flowing of nature. 
 All the facts of the animal economy sex, nutriment, 
 gestation, birth, growth are symbols of the passage of 
 the worlcHnto the soul of man, to suffer there a change, 
 and re-appear a new and higher fact." So the chief 
 value of whatever new fact is brought forth by the poet, 
 
240 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 is, that it shall enhance " the great and constant fact of 
 Life." This sublime vision of a higher life comes only 
 u to the pure and simple soul in a clean and chaste 
 body." To some it comes so as to lead to heroic deeds 
 and living, to others in power to sing ravishing songs of 
 love and truth ; but " words and deeds are quite in 
 different modes of the divine energy." The poetic 
 power does not reside in meters, but in the " meter- 
 rnaking argument," in "a thought so passionate and 
 alive, that it has an architecture of its own, and adorns 
 nature with a new thing. The thought and the form 
 are equal in the order of time, but in the order of gen 
 esis the thought is prior to the form." Emerson is 
 somewhat indifferent to the studied forms of poetry, 
 caring more for the thought than the meter. This he 
 justifies in Merlin, where he says, 
 
 " Great is the art, 
 Great be the manners, of the bard, 
 lie shall not his brain encumber 
 With the coil of rhythm and number ; 
 But leaving rule and pale forethought, 
 He shall aye climb 
 For his rhyme, 
 And mount to paradise 
 By the stairway of surprise." 
 
 As the first condition of poetic power, the poet must 
 believe in his poetry ; and all the great poets have been 
 enamored of their sweet thoughts. They know that 
 the " correspondence of things to thoughts is far deeper 
 than they can penetrate, defying adequate expres 
 sion ; that it is elemental, or in the core of things." It 
 being so much more than can be fully expressed, it is 
 an absolute condition of true poetry, that the poet shall 
 have no theories of what the Infinite ought to reveal to 
 /him ; but he must exactly report whatever he learns. 
 vThe poet is a revealer, repeating to men what the Over- 
 soul gives him to know; " for poetry was all written 
 before time was; and whenever we are so finely organ 
 ized that we can penetrate into that region where the 
 air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and 
 
POETRY. 241 
 
 attempt to write them down."/ The greater the vera 
 city and faithfulness of the poet, the more he keeps out 
 his own fancies, and speaks the living word nature 
 reveals, the more truly is he a poet. Too often the 
 poets can " only hint the matter, or allude to it, being 
 unable to fuse and mold their words and images to 
 fluid obedience." In order to reach the most perfect 
 receptivity, the poet s " cheerfulness should be the gift 
 of the sunlight ; the air should suffice for his inspira 
 tion, and he should be tipsy with water." If he wishes 
 to fill his brain with fashion and covetousness, and to 
 stimulate his jaded senses with wine and coffee, he will 
 find " no radiance of wisdom in the lonely waste of the 
 pine-woods." As poetry consists in finding the attach 
 ments of things to the Infinite, and their consequent 
 relations to each other, so the poet finds truth every 
 where ; and could he but read the secrets of the 
 simplest thing, he could disclose all truth. He is to 
 read nature with " a sensibility so keen that the scent 
 of an elder-blow, or the timber-yard and corporation 
 works of a nest of pismires, is event enough for him, 
 all emblems and personal appeals to him." Reading 
 not simply the external beauty, but the spiritual sig 
 nificance, the poet sees "the factory- village and rail 
 way fall within the great order not less than the bee 
 hive, or the spider s geometrical web." The poet must 
 also be a builder and affirmer, building the world anew, 
 and after a more perfect fashion. " The poet says 
 nothing but what helps somebody," lifts the veil from 
 the hard and cold formalities of life ; " gives men 
 glimpses of the laws of the universe ; shows them the 
 circumstance as illusion; shows that nature is only a 
 language to express the laws, which are grand and 
 beautiful; and lets them, by his songs, into some of 
 the realities." 
 
 A higher office of the poet still is the power of 
 creation,. &y which he shapes the imperfect towards the 
 perfect. Here we find "that there is a mental power 
 and creation more excellent than any thing which is 
 <;ommouly called philosophy and literal are," and that 
 
242 RALPH WALDO EMEKSON. 
 
 the high poets, as Homer, Milton, and Shakspere "do 
 not fully content us." They do not offer us heavenly 
 bread , and the true poetry is to be found in Zoroaster 
 and Plato, St. John and Menu, "with their moral 
 burdens." Real poetry should bring us back to nature, 
 and make life more harmonious. In gaining this result 
 " it is net style or rhymes, or a new image more or 
 less, that imports, but sanity ; that life should not be 
 mean ; that life should be an image in every part beau 
 tiful ; that the old forgotten splendors of the universe 
 should glow again for us, that we should lose our wit, 
 but gain our reason. And when life is true to the poles 
 of nature, the streams of truth will roll through us in 
 song." It is the inspiring and spiritually-minded poets 
 Emerson loves, those who speak out of the depths of a 
 great faith, and who paint the moral vision of a har 
 monious world. The bard, he says in Loss and Gain, 
 must yield himself entirely to virtue ; 
 
 " Must throw away his pen and paint, 
 
 Kneel with worshipers. 
 Then, perchance, a sunny ray 
 
 From the heaven of fire, 
 His lost tools may overpay, 
 
 And better his desire." 
 
 The real poets have been those capable of " marry 
 ing nature and mind, undoing the old divorce in which 
 poetry has been famished and false, and nature been 
 suspected and pagan." When the life that is to be 
 lived after the perfect order of nature, " shall be organ 
 ized and appear on earth, the Iliad will be reckoned a 
 poor ballad-grinding ; for sooner or later that which is 
 now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait 
 shall add a richer strain to the song." Emerson thinks 
 that Swedenborg and Wordsworth have been the agents 
 of this reform, by which poetry is to be regarded for its 
 moral and natural interpretations of the world and of 
 life. He sees, however, the artificial position of these 
 men, that they have not arrived at the full reality, 
 though on the right read ; for he regards it as " boyish 
 in Swedenborg to cumber himself with the dead scurf 
 
TOETEY. 243 
 
 of Hebrew antiquity, as if the divine creative energy 
 had fainted in his own century." The poet should 
 
 " not seek to weave, 
 In weak, unhappy times, 
 Efficacious rhymes." 
 
 He is not to mingle in the base purposes of the world. 
 
 " God, who gave to him the lyre, 
 Of all mortals the desire, 
 For all breathing men s behoof, 
 Straitly charged him, Sit aloof." 
 
 Yet he is to love the race of men, nor immure himself 
 in a den ; for the people must hear him, and find inspira 
 tion in his words. He must meditate long and much, 
 that his themes may be great and his inspiration sure. 
 The chords of his harp 
 
 " should ring as blows the breeze, 
 Free, peremptory, clear. 
 No jingling serenader s art, 
 Nor tinkle of piano-strings, 
 Can make the wild blood start 
 In its mystic springs. 
 The kingly bard 
 
 Must smite the chords rudely and hard, 
 As with hammer or with mace ; 
 That they may render back 
 Artful thunder, which conveys 
 Secrets of the solar track, 
 Sparks of the supersolar blaze." 
 
 In this same poem of Merlin he tells us what it is that 
 makes the song of the true poet so masterful, when he 
 says that his 
 
 " blows are strokes of fate 
 
 Chiming with the forest tone, 
 
 When boughs buffet boughs in the wood ; 
 
 Chiming with the gasp and moan 
 
 Of the ice-imprisoned flood ; 
 
 With the pulse of manly hearts ; 
 
 With the voice of orators ; 
 
 With the din of city arts ; 
 
 With the cannonade of wars ; 
 
 With the inarches of the brave ; 
 
 And prayers of might from martyr s cave." 
 
EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 The sympathies of the poet, too, must be as wide as 
 the experiences of men, so that he can enter into appre 
 ciation of all their hopes and motives. This sympathy 
 he has expressed in an allegorical poem, such as he 
 often delights in writing : 
 
 " There are beggars in Iran and Araby : 
 Said was hungrier than all. 
 Men said he was a fly, 
 That came to every festival ; 
 Also he came to the mosque 
 In trail of camel and caravan, 
 Out from Mecca or Ispahan ; 
 Northward he went to the snowy hills ; 
 At court he sat in grave divan. 
 His music was the south wind s sigh, 
 His lamp the maiden s downcast eye ; 
 And ever the spell of beauty came, 
 And turned the drowsy world to flame. 
 By lake and stream and gleaming hall, 
 And modest copse, and the forest tall, 
 Where er he went, the magic guide 
 Kept its place by the poet s side. 
 Tell me the world is a talisman ; 
 To read it must be the art of man. 
 Said melted the days in cups like pearl ; 
 Served high and low, the lord and the churl ; 
 Loved harebells nodding on a rock, 
 A cabin hung with curling smoke, 
 And huts and tents, nor loved the less 
 Stately lords in palaces, 
 Fenced by form and ceremony." 1 
 
 The most popular of Emerson s poems are those de 
 voted to nature and its manifestations. Some of these 
 have a richness of expression, a wealth of meaning, a 
 simplicity of style, and a depth of insight, seldom sur 
 passed. They seem to be almost perfect, so exquisitely 
 true are they, and so grandly fine are their interpreta 
 tions. They indicate the most intimate acquaintance 
 with nature in all her moods, a close and a sympathetic 
 study of her objects and creatures. Their power con 
 sists, not simply in their picturing for us, in the most 
 
 i These lines have not appeared as from Emerson s pen, but are 
 printed in Channing s Thoreau, p. 161. 
 
POETRY. 245 
 
 faithful manner, the phenomena of the outward world, 
 but much more in that overflowing faith which reads in 
 them the moral and spiritual truths of a Cosmos. He 
 says that ^Nature is the representative of the univer 
 sal mind," and this idea penetrates and absorbs all his 
 poetry .J Yet it never stifles and oppresses us with its 
 religiousness ; because, in the dogmatic and ordinary 
 sense, it never is religious. It rises to a height far 
 above all formal religion, to a calm, serene, and majes 
 tic faith in the Life that throbs in matchless wonder 
 and ceaseless beauty all around, touching all things 
 with its glory. The poet gives the true meaning of 
 nature, only when he becomes its servant, and lets it 
 sing through him the song of unceasing creation. The 
 true poet finds his verse brought to him by the muse ; 
 and it is great and true when it sings through him, even 
 against his will, rising far over his judgment into the 
 unseen and awful heights where his weary feet can not 
 follow. Yet Emerson is not merely a mystic, he does 
 not deal in rhapsody, nor does he picture nature only 
 from his imagination. He has studied nature in a care 
 ful manner, not, it is true, as a man of science, but as a 
 poet. He has watched the various phases of nature, 
 even in their details. His picture of " the forest seer," 
 in Wood-notes, so often falsely regarded as a portrait 
 of Thoreau, is an exact account of his own habits and 
 experiences. Few poets havej^rasped nature as ajyJiQle 
 so completely, ~"6T~caught so cleaHyT^irid expressed so 
 finely, that total effect it produces on the mind of man. 
 In one of the most suggestive of his poems, Each and 
 All, he has succeeded in stating the spiritual effect 
 which nature produces, and the relations of objects 
 to each other in the total impression. In that poem he 
 suggests the failure of science to understand nature as 
 it is, when it sees only the dissected detail. Tyndall 
 has admirably stated the same fact in these deeply im 
 portant words : 
 
 " The ultimate problem of physics is to reduce matter by analy 
 sis to its lowest conditions of divisibility, and force to its simplest 
 manifestations, and then by synthesis to construct from these ele- 
 
246 EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 ments the world as it stands. We are still a long way from the 
 final solution of this problem ; and when the solution comes, it will 
 be one more of spiritual insight than of actual observation." x 
 
 Emerson has been an observer, a patient student; 
 and he has described Nature with rare accuracy. Her 
 humble forms he knows, and can make them the imple 
 ments of his poetic skill. His poetry is inspired by the 
 objects and scenes within sight of his own house. 
 
 " In his delineations of Nature, even in her slightest hints of 
 color and texture, of form and order, there is a marvelous accuracy 
 of expression, showing, a singularly acute and truthful eye, no less 
 than a radiant imagination. In the grand procession of the seasons, 
 no delicate phase escapes his notice. The wonderful processes of 
 seedtime and harvest are watched with the severity of scientific re 
 search. He loves the secret haunts of Nature, and is never weary 
 of spying into her mysteries. His acquaintance with her ways has 
 been gained by face-to-face intercourse. He meets her disclosures 
 with the love of an ancient, familiar friend." 2 
 
 The very health of spring is in May-Day. It is 
 fragrant with the budding May. Equally perfect to 
 nature are The Rhodora, The Humble-bee, The Tit 
 mouse, The Snow-storm, Wood-notes, and some others. 
 The characteristics of these poems are shown in one 
 of the shortest, Rhodora. There is an exquisite de 
 light in nature itself, a quiet and yet an intense rejoi 
 cing in its sights, sounds, colors, and forms ; a delicate 
 sympathy with it. The flower, 
 
 " Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook," 
 
 is an object of keen interest. It is an interest, not 
 merely worldly or inquisitive, but spiritual, and longing 
 to know the secrets of things ; that finds the solemn 
 song of nature chanted beside a stagnant pool, in the 
 fresh flower of the woods, which, budding anew into 
 life, reads here afresh the perpetual marvel of the 
 world. One may turn through the pages of many 
 poets before finding again any lines so simple, appar 
 ently so trite in their theme, yet possessing so steady a 
 
 1 Fragments of Science, p. 100, An Address to Students. 
 
 2 W hippie. 
 
POETRY. 247 
 
 faith, and a sympathy with nature so intimate and 
 noble, as these that close this little poem : 
 
 " Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why 
 This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, 
 Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, 
 Then Beauty is its own excuse for being : 
 Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose ! 
 I never thought to ask, I nsver knew ; 
 But, in my simple ignorance, suppose 
 The self-same Power that brought me there brought you." 
 
 The Humble-bee is a gem, true in its descriptions 
 and rich in its suggestions. Some of the lines are 
 fine bits of word-painting, as these : 
 
 " Burly, dozing humble-bee,^ 
 
 " Thou animated torrid zotfe," ., 
 
 " Zigzag steerer, desert che^rW/lN 1 V \t d i A 
 
 " Insect lover of the sun," 
 
 " Rover of the underwoods. 
 
 And this ideal picture of the " epicurean of June " is 
 delightful in its familiarity with the scenes the humble- 
 bee loves, and in its delicate sense of the healthfulr.ess 
 of nature : 
 
 " Aught unsavory or unclean 
 Hath my insect never seen ; 
 But violets and bilberry bells, 
 Maple-sap and daffodils, 
 Grass with green flag half-mast high, 
 Succory to match the sky, 
 Columbine with horn of honey, 
 Scented fern and agrimony, 
 Clover, catchfly, adder s-tongue, 
 And brier-roses, dwelt among ; 
 All beside was unknown waste, 
 All was picture as he passed." 
 
 That faithful description of the Snow-storm, printed 
 long ago in The Dial, has already become a classic in 
 our language. The lover of true poetry knows it well. 
 In the Wood-notes of the same period is a sketch of 
 the poet s work, showing why Emerson is attracted, as a 
 poet, to nature. The knowledge which the poet 
 
248 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 " prizes best 
 
 Seems fantastic to the rest : 
 Pondering shadows, colors, clouds, 
 Grass -buds, and caterpillar-shrouds, 
 Boughs on which the wild bees settle, 
 Tints that spot the violet s petal, 
 Why Nature loves the number five, 
 And why the star-form she repeats ; 
 Lover of all things alive, 
 Wonderer at all he meets, 
 Wonderer chiefly at himself, 
 Who can tell him what he is ? " 
 
 One of the most perfect of his poems in form, as 
 it is magnetic in effect and correct in description, is 
 the Sea-shore. It admirably shows his capacity of 
 blending correct description and pure coloring with 
 lofty spiritual suggestion. What finer account of the 
 sea, and its relations to man, than that contained in 
 these lines? 
 
 " Behold the sea, 
 
 The opaline, the plentiful and strong, 
 Yet beautiful as is the rose in June, 
 Fresh as the trickling rainbow of July ; 
 Sea full of food, the nourisher of kinds, 
 Purger of earth, and medicine of men ; 
 Creating a sweet climate by rny breath, 
 Washing out harms and griefs from memory, 
 And, in my mathematic ebb and flow, 
 Giving a hint of that which changes not." 
 
 The uses of the sea are pictured in this stanza : - 
 
 " I with my hammer pounding evermore 
 The rocky coast, smite Andes into dust, 
 Strewing my bed, and, in another age, 
 llebuild a continent of better men. 
 Then I unbar the doors ; my paths lead out 
 The exodus of nations ; I disperse 
 Men to all shores that front tie hoary main." 
 
 The effect of the sea on the imagination of man is set 
 forth in these lines : 
 
 " Leave me to deal 
 
 With credulous and imaginative man ; 
 For, though he scoop my water in his palm, 
 
POETRY. 249 
 
 A few rods off he deems it gems and clouds. 
 Planting strange fruits and sunshine on the shore, 
 I make some coast alluring, some lone isle, 
 To distant men, who must go there, or die." 
 
 It is this love of all living things, however common 
 or unclean, and this wonder and awe at the mystery 
 and the life all things express, that largely characterize 
 the poetry of Emerson, and give to it much of its 
 subtle power. It is rough and uncouth in appear 
 ance and sound, as most poetry is not; but the more 
 it is studied, the more it attracts, and the plainer be 
 comes its harmony, which is more penetrating in its 
 effect than any surface form. It is the poetry of 
 thought, and not of rhythm or color ; of an attracting 
 and winning power in nature to sooth and harmonize 
 and make true the soul of man. This is shown in the 
 Wood-notes : 
 
 " Whoso walketh in solitude, 
 Arid inhabiteth the wood, 
 Choosing light, wave, rock, and bird;,, 
 Before the money-loving herd, 
 Into that forester shall pass, 
 From these companions, power and grace ; 
 Clean shall he be, without, within, 
 From the old adhering sin." 
 
 The mysticism of his thought is more delightful in his 
 poetry than in his prose, and is suggestive of the flow 
 ing and receding of all visible forms before the power 
 of the spirit, which alone is alive and stable. Nature 
 chants to him ever a mystic song, 
 
 " To the open ear it sings 
 Sweet the genesis of things, 
 Of tendency through endless ages, 
 Of star-dust, and star-pilgrimages, 
 Of rounded worlds, of space and time, 
 Of the old flood s subsiding slime, 
 Of chemic matter, force and form, 
 Of poles and powers, cold, wet, and warm ; 
 *- The rushing metamorphosis, 
 Dissolving all that fixture is, 
 Melts things that be to things that seem, 
 And solid nature to a dream." 
 
250 KALPH WALDO EMEKSON. 
 
 The attraction of man to nature, and sympathy with 
 it, which comes out through all these poems, the sub 
 jects of which are natural objects, is an attraction and 
 sympathy growing out of their oneness of origin. This 
 affinity is full of alluring interest. In many others it 
 finds expression as the power of love to win the heart 
 and hold it pure. The higher the forms of being, the 
 stronger the bonds and fascinations of this love. This 
 harmony and unity is the return of nature and man to 
 the Infinite Love, from whence they came. To return 
 into this harmony is the secret aim and the source of 
 the longing and attraction of all things, which impels 
 them out of the present, " poor and bare," towards the 
 full melody and perfectness of the future. 
 
 " The sense of the world is short, 
 Long and various the report, 
 To love and be beloved." 
 
 There is nothing denied to this subtle affinity and 
 attraction . 
 
 " The solid, solid universe 
 
 Is pervious to love," 
 and it 
 
 " reconciles 
 By mystic wiles 
 The evil and the good." 
 
 It is the affinity of man to all things, which is the 
 height of love ; and it is a power essential to the poet. 
 The real poet must " give all to love," must love every 
 thing that is, must feel all attractions, and come into 
 secret sympathy with all things. The soul that would 
 know the celestial love, and pierce the deeps of things, 
 must rise into the highest regions, above every passion 
 and low desire, 
 
 " Into vision where all form 
 In one only form dissolves ; " 
 
 and it is only 
 
 ( " There the holy essence rolls 
 / One through separated souls." 
 
POETRY. 251 
 
 His philosophical poems, though least appreciated, 
 because not understood, are perhaps his best. They 
 are full of power, often entering into the profoundest 
 questions with a wisdom and clearness of vision seldom 
 found. The Sphinx deals with some of the questions 
 discussed in his best essays, and gives a solution even 
 better stated than any he has furnished in prose. The 
 riddle of existence lies in the possibility of man s end 
 less growth, so that ever new heights will open before 
 him, and in his own kinship to every other existence. 
 The Infinite dwells in man as in all things else ; the 
 key to one existence being furnished, all being can be 
 known. But man must not seek in time and its forms 
 the- answer ; he must rise to harmony with the things 
 of the spirit; for he is a "clothed eternity," and in 
 love must find the Infinite which fades not away. In 
 one of his essays he has also interpreted the myth of 
 the Sphinx, and it will throw much light on the poem. 
 All these myths he believes embody some great idea, as 
 Proteus symbolizes the doctrine of identity. 
 
 " As near and proper to us is also that old fable of the Sphinx, 
 who was said to sit in the road-side and put riddles to every pas 
 senger. If the man could not answer, she swallowed him alive. If 
 he could solve the riddle, the Sphinx was slain. What is our life 
 but an endless flight of winged facts or events? In splendid 
 variety these changes come, all putting questions to the human 
 spirit. Those men who can not answer by a superior wisdom these 
 facts or questions of time, serve them. Facts encumber them, 
 tyrannize over them, and make the men of routine the men of sense, 
 in whom a literal obedience to facts has extinguished every spark 
 of that light by which man is truly man. But if the man is true 
 to his better instincts or sentiments, and refuses the dominion of 
 facts, as one that comes of a higher race, remains fast by the soul 
 and sees the principle, then the facts fall aptly and supple into 
 their places ; they know their master, and the meanest of them 
 glorifies him." 1 
 
 One of the most striking of these poems is Brahma, 
 which sums up the "Yoga" doctrine of the ancient 
 Hindoos in a few perfect words. The very name given 
 the little poem indicates that it was suggested by his 
 
 1 Essays, first series, p. 29. 
 
252 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 studies among these Oriental thinkers. It teaches that 
 subtle ever-present Sprit is the absolute life in all 
 things. The soul can not be slain, nothing can destroy 
 it; for it is one with the Over-soul. To the Infinite, 
 moreover, all forms are alike ; and all which men see 
 and know, as human creatures, is phenomenal. The 
 spirit abides alone ; in that is life. If we seek its truth 
 and its harmony, turning our backs on the heaven that 
 promises only happiness, we shall find the "abode" of 
 the Infinite. In this poem it is the infinite, absolute, 
 unchanging Deity who speaks; and He is alike the 
 cause of good and evil, light and darkness, faith and 
 doubt. It may be better understood by a quotation or 
 two from the Bhagavad Grit a. " He who believes that 
 spirit can kill, and he who thinks that it can be killed, 
 both are wrong in judgment. It neither kills, nor is 
 killed. It is not born, nor dies at any time." The soul 
 is " unborn, changeless, eternal both as to future and 
 past time; it is not slain when the body is killed." 
 The last lines of Emerson s poem find their counterpart 
 in the words of the Deity in the Bhagavad G-ita, who 
 says, " Abandoning all religious duties, seek me as thy 
 refuge." In this book the Infinite Spirit, Brahma, 
 says, " They who serve other gods with a firm belief, 
 in doing so, involuntarily worship me. I am he who 
 partaketh of all worship, and I am their reward. I am 
 the soul which standeth in the bodies of all beings." It 
 also teaches that the souls of men "proceed unbewil- 
 dered to that imperishable place which is not illumined 
 by the sun or moon, to that primeval "Spirit whence the 
 spirit of life for ever flows." Of the same philosophic;) 1 
 character are The Visit, Uriel, The World-Soul, and 
 some others. Each summarizes in a few lyrical lines 
 one of his great thoughts ; and for those who penetrate 
 the idea which is sung, it is given an added grace and 
 beauty in this poetic form. Of a less philosophical 
 character, but even more profound and suggestive, are 
 a number of such poems as Each and All, The Problem, 
 Letters, and Days. These are among the most inspiring 
 of meditative poems. They are as rigidly simple as 
 
POETRY. 253 
 
 they are wondrously suggestive and thought-provoking. 
 Each and All teaches one of the most needed of all 
 lessons we can learn, and in lines of exquisite beauty. 
 Hedge truly characterizes The Problem as "wholly 
 unique, and transcending all contemporary verse in 
 grandeur of style." Such a poem as Letters is but a 
 mere hint ; and yet, hint as it is, the depths and heights 
 of religious devotion are all suggested in its half-dozen 
 lines. One of its beauties is, this rigid economy of 
 suggestion ; and another, the absolute trust hinted at, 
 but sufficiently disclosed. 
 
 Emerson s poetry is personal, touched always with his 
 own emotions, and made living with the spontaneous 
 sympathies of his own ideas. His poetry is to a large 
 extent biographical, far more so than his prose, and 
 throws much light on his personal experiences and mo 
 tives. The key to many of his poems can be found 
 only in his life, and in his intercourse with his intimate 
 friends. Whoever would understand him, must know 
 his poetry thoroughly ; "for there alone has he expressed 
 the fullness of his nature, and the innermost of his own 
 mind and heart. His poetry is individual, human, alive ; 
 hence it is stimulating in its influence on other poets. 
 In spite of his want "of poetic art; though his verses 
 often halt, while the conclusion flags ; and though the 
 metrical propriety is recklessly violated, yet "this 
 defect is closely connected with the characteristic merit 
 of the poet, and springs from the same root, his utter 
 spontaneity. And this spontaneity is perhaps but a 
 mode of that , sincerity which may be noted in his prose. 
 More than those of any of his contemporaries, his poems 
 fur the most part are inspirations. They are not made, 
 but given; they come of themselves. They are not 
 meditated, but burst from the soul with an irrepressible 
 necessity of utterance, sometimes with a rush which 
 defies the shaping intellect." 1 This lyrical power was 
 also noticed by Frederika Bremer, when she says the 
 other American poets speak to society, but Emerson 
 
 i F. II . Hedge, in Literary World for May 22, 1880. 
 
254 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 always merely to the individual. 1 She said of his 
 poems, " They are all to me as a breeze from the life 
 of the New World, in a certain illimitable vastness of 
 life, in expectation, in demand, in faith, in hope, a 
 something which makes me draw a deeper breath, and, 
 as it were, in a larger, freer world." This inspiring 
 power so fresh, original, and individual has been 
 noticed by another critic, himself a poet of no mean 
 ability. Howells says that Emerson, "perhaps more 
 than any other modern poet, gives the notion of in 
 spiration ; so that one doubts, in reading him, how 
 much to praise or blame. The most exquisite effects 
 seem not to have been invited, but to have sought 
 production from his unconsciousness ; graces alike of 
 thought and of touch seem the unsolicited gifts of the 
 gods." As Howells suggests, however, "it is probable 
 that no utterance is more considered than this poet s, 
 and that no one is more immediately responsible than 
 he " for what he writes. Hedge can not be correct 
 in the supposition that his poems are purely sponta 
 neous, written at fever heat, dashed off in a moment, 
 and without revision. We must suppose them to be 
 wrought out carefully, undergoing the most exacting 
 revision, but retaining all the power of spontaneity 
 and inspiration. His exquisite poem, The Test, in 
 which the muse is supposed to be speaking, correctly 
 represents his own methods. 
 
 " I hung my verses in the wind, 
 Time and tide their faults may find. 
 All were winnowed through and through, 
 Five lines lasted sound and true." 
 
 Thoroughly winnowed are all his poems, as are his 
 essays ; but in the same "way they are inspirations, 
 gathered in the hours of richest thought. For the 
 same reasons they are full of quotable sentences, 
 strong, apt, wise, and exquisitely expressed. His 
 felicity of expression is remarkable, and his p ainting 
 of nature and human motives perfect. Especially 
 
 1 Homes of the New World, p. 41. 
 
POETRY. 255 
 
 must his poetry be valued for its vigorous moral tone, 
 its pure sense of human relations, and its invincible 
 faith in moral consequences. He is one of the great 
 moral poets, standing, indeed, in the front rank of 
 those who have dealt with human duties. He sees 
 clearly the moral and spiritual relations of men, to 
 each other, to nature, arid to God ; and the great 
 spiritual laws, typified in nature, by which all human 
 motives and conduct are surrounded. 
 
 Steadily has he followed the great ideas and motives 
 which have been the inspiration of his life. His poetry 
 has not descended from its pure heights, or forgotten 
 the truths it had to speak. In his Terminus, which 
 Howells says "has a wonderful didactic charm, and 
 must be valued as one of the noblest introspective 
 poems in the language," he has, in a tender manner, 
 spoken of the old age that has come upon him, and the 
 need to 
 
 " Economize the failing river," 
 
 though he would 
 
 " Not the less revere the Giver." 
 
 He has been faithful, he will be faithful still, and 
 fulfill, true to himself, the duties which come with old 
 age. In a perfect line he has sung this faith and trust. 
 It is a worthy last word of a poet so true, faithful, and 
 pure as he. 
 
 " As the bird trims her to the gale, 
 
 I trim myself to the storm of time, 
 
 I man the rudder, reef, and sail, 
 
 Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime : 
 
 1 Lowly faithful, banish fear, 
 
 Right onward drive unharmed ; 
 
 The port, well worth the cruise, is near, 
 
 And every wave is charmed. " 
 
256 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 AS A LECTURER. 
 
 TN this country Emerson was among those who first 
 J- made popular the lecture as a means of ^general 
 culture. He helped make it a moral and intellectual 
 power, a means of quickening influence on life and 
 thought. He may also be said to have founded the 
 Lyceum ; for he shaped its character, and made it an 
 efficient instrument of popular instruction. It was in 
 existence when he began to lecture, as a means of dif 
 fusing scientific knowledge ; but he gave it a literary, 
 nioral, and reformatory character, and shaped its destiny. 
 The first Lyceum was founded by Josiah Holbrook, 
 in 1826. Holbrook was born at Derby, Conn., in 1788, 
 and graduated at Yale. He heard Silliman s lectures, 
 and became deeply interested in chemistry, miner 
 alogy, and geology. In 1824 he opened an agricultural 
 school on his farm in Derby, in which he gave much 
 attention to scientific subjects ; but it was continued 
 only a little more than a year. In October, 1826, he 
 published a paper in the American Journal of .Education 
 on Associations of Adults for the Purpose of Mutual 
 Education. Delivering a course of lectures on scien 
 tific subjects in Millbury, Mass., soon after, he induced 
 about forty persons to unite in organizing such a 
 society. At his request it was called the Millbury 
 Lyceum. This was the first organization of the kind 
 in the country. Holbrook had in view the establish 
 ment of such societies throughout the country, and a 
 union of them under some general organization. A 
 convention was held in Boston, Nov. 7, 1828, to pro 
 mote the interests of the Lyceums, and to further their 
 
AS A LECTURER. 257 
 
 wide-spread organization. Among those who took part 
 in this meeting were Webster, Everett, Dr. Lowell, and 
 George B. Emerson. The American Lyceum, to repre 
 sent the local societies, was organized at this time 
 probably. Holbrook s idea was mainly scientific ; and 
 the Lyceum was to be a means of disseminating scien 
 tific knowledge through classes, lectures, and the col 
 lection and exchange of scientific specimens. The 
 lectures were on scientific and hygienic subjects 
 exclusively. In 1830 Holbrcok began the publication 
 of a series of scientific tracts, and in 1882 he started a 
 journal called The Family Lyceum. At this time there 
 were seventy-eight Lyceums in Massachusetts, with a 
 state and county organizations. In 1834 he went to 
 Pennsylvania, and devoted several years in that state to 
 lecturing and the organization of Lyceums. One of his 
 projects at this time was a Universal Lyceum, which 
 should unite the national organizations. He also pro 
 jected a number of lyceum villages. In 1837, at Berea, 
 O., such a village was actually begun, but soon expired. 
 Holbrook s project was an admirable one, and he devoted 
 Jiimself to it with great zeal. 
 
 "When Emerson returned from Europe in 1833, he at 
 once took advantage of the interest in this mode of 
 popular instruction, created by Holbrook. Gradually 
 his influence, working with many others, served to 
 mold the Lyceum into a means of general culture ; 
 and its special purpose was forgotten in the more gen 
 eral aim. 1 He drew to hear him the eager enthusiasm 
 of that day in Boston, and he inspired his hearers with 
 a genuine desire for culture.. - His influence and manner 
 during these earlier years" have been better described 
 by Margaret Fuller than by any other. 2 In reviewing 
 one of his earlier volumes of essays for The Tribune, 
 she said, 
 
 " The audience that waited for years upon the lectures was never 
 large ; bitt it was select, and it was constant. . . . The charm of the 
 
 1 A very few of the Lyceums are yet in existence. The Essex Insti 
 tute at Salem carried out Holbrook s idea, and is a worthy testimonial 
 of his i >urpose. Emerson has given no less than forty lectures before it. 
 
 2 Life Without and Within, p. 194. 
 
258 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 elocution was great. His general manner was that of the reader > 
 occasionally rising into direct address or invocation in passages 
 where tenderness or majesty demanded more energy. . . . The tone 
 of the voice was a grave body-tone, full and sweet rather than sono 
 rous, yet flexible, and haunted by many modulations, as even instru 
 ments of wood and brass seem to become after they have been long- 
 played on with skill and taste ; how much more so the human voice ! 
 In the more expressive passages it uttered notes of silvery clearness, 
 winning, yet still more commanding. The words uttered in these 
 tones floated awhile above us, then took root in the memory like 
 winged seed. 
 
 " In the union of an even rustic plainness with lyric inspirations, 
 religious dignity with philosophical calmness, keen sagacity in de 
 tails with boldness of view, we saw what brought to mind the early 
 poets and legislators of Greece, men who taught their fellows to 
 plow, and avoid moral evil, sing hymns to the gods, and watch the 
 metamorphoses of nature. Ilere in civic Boston w r as such a man, 
 one who could see man in his original grandeur and his original 
 childishness, rooted in simple nature, raising to the heavens the 
 brow and eyes of a poet. . . . 
 
 " Such was the attitude in which the speaker appeared to that 
 portion of the audience who have remained permanently attached to 
 him. They value his words as the signets of reality; receive his 
 influence as a help and incentive to a nobler discipline than the age, 
 in its general aspect, appears to require ; and do not fear to antici 
 pate the verdict of posterity in claiming for him the honors of 
 greatness, and, in some respects, of a master." 
 
 His manner in his earlier years has also been well de 
 scribed by another 1 of his hearers and admirers : 
 
 " The modulation of his voice in delivering his sentences was 
 wonderfully effective, and I used to think he was one of the best 
 readers I ever heard. Commencing on a key, he would continue 
 on the same up to the last word or two, and then drop into a deep 
 musical tone which was very impressive. Occasionally at the end 
 of a sentence he would suddenly stop, for what seemed a long time, 
 and, with his eyes uplifted upon his audience, looking like one in 
 spired. Every one in the audience seemed to stop breathing, as if 
 afraid to mar the solemn impression produced. Then another sen 
 tence would be commenced on another key ; and, rising higher and 
 higher, his voice would again drop to lower tones, like the solemn 
 peals of an organ." 
 
 / On the lecture-platform Emerson seems to be uncon 
 scious of his audience, is not disturbed by interruptions 
 of any kind, by hisses, or by the departure of disap- 
 
 1 In a series of letters published in The Gazette of Stapleton, N.Y. 
 
AS A LECTURER. 259 
 
 pointed listeners. He usually reads his lectures, though 
 he is not always confined to his manuscript ; while he 
 often misplaces his sheets, and stumbles over the chirog- 
 raphy. He usually begins in a slow and spiritless man 
 ner, in a low tone ; and he is not fluent of speech, or 
 passionate in manner. As he proceeds, he becomes ear 
 nest and magnetic ; while the thrilling intensity of his 
 voice deeply affects and rivets the attention of his audi 
 ence. He is full of mannerisms in expression and in 
 bodily attitude, seldom makes a gesture, and has little 
 variation of voice. He secures the interest of his 
 hearers by the simple grandeur of his thought, the in 
 spiration of his moral genius, the conviction and manli 
 ness which his words express, and by the silvery en 
 chantment of his voice. The glow of his face, the mobile 
 expressiveness of his features, the charm of his smile, 
 add to the interest created by his thought. It is the 
 quality of his ideas, however, which attracts his hearers. 
 His thought often rises to the heights of the purest elo 
 quence. Such passages are sure to command the closest 
 attention. It is the glowing faith and the moral inten 
 sity of the seer which gives them their power. 
 /As a lecturer, Emerson makes a large use of surprise, 
 giving a meaning to his words riot observed in reading 
 them. He flashes wit into sentences which seem to be 
 sober enough when read in his books. The essayist 
 needs to be interpreted by the lecturer; for his voice 
 and manner become a fine commentary on his written 
 thought, giving to it new and unexpected meanings, 
 and a rich suggestiveness not otherwise to be had. He 
 often gives a wholly unexpected turn to his thought, 
 which surprises and delights the listener, fastening an 
 idea for ever in the memory. Or he suddenly, as if it 
 were a new thought, flashed suddenly upon his mind, 
 after apparently having exhausted a subject, adds in a 
 lower tone some sentence which comes as a revelation, 
 arid opens new meanings to the listener. He adds a 
 constantly fresh interest to his topics by such methods 
 as these, which are peculiar to himself. They are so 
 spontaneously used, with such an air of utter uncon- 
 
260 RALPH WALDO EMERSOX. 
 
 sciousness, that they never appear otherwise than as the 
 marks of a genuine simplicity and sincerity.^ 
 
 The deep and lasting impression he has made upon 
 his hearers can best be conveyed in their own words. 
 "It is a peculiar pleasure, said Frederika Bremer, to 
 hear that deep, sonorous voice uttering words which 
 give the impression of jewels and real pearls as they fall 
 from his lips." l All his admirers have, in the same way, 
 been enthusiasts concerning the inspiring power of his 
 thought and the magnetic impulse of his voice. This 
 power to engage the sympathies, to arrest the attention, 
 to mold purposes, to quicken with great aspirations, 
 has been well described by Lowell : 
 
 " I have heard some great speakers, and some accomplished ora 
 tors, but never any that so moved and persuaded men as he. 
 There is a kind of undertone in that rich baritone of his that sweeps 
 our minds from their foothold into deep waters with a drift we can 
 not and would not resist. And how artfully (for Emerson is a 
 long-studied artist in these things) does the deliberate utterance, 
 that seems waiting for the first word, seem to admit us partners in 
 the labor of thought, and make us feel as if the glance of humor 
 were a sudden suggestion ; as if the perfect phrase lying written 
 there on the desk were as unexpected to him as to us ! " 2 
 
 One of his townsmen, 3 long familiar with him as a 
 lecturer, says, "the secret of his profound influence on 
 the minds of his hearers and the literature of the time 
 lies in his creative and inspiring genius, combined as it 
 is with a rectitude and simplicity of the moral sense 
 which makes his criticism as decisive as it is searching." 
 The same writer also says, 
 
 " Except the tones of his voice (nor are these greatly varied), he 
 has few of the graces of an orator. He is neither fluent, nor ex 
 cellent in action. It is the quality of what he says, not its volume, 
 or its manner of expression, which fascinates or is remembered. 
 His style is admirable. The purity of his English, the salt of his 
 wit, the simple grandeur of his periods, are agreeable accidents of 
 his oratory; but they are only accidents. Its substance is the 
 moral rectitude which it expresses, the immediate flight which it 
 
 1 Homes of the New World, vol. i. p. 254. 
 
 2 My Study Windows, first printed in The Nation. 
 
 3 P. B. Sanborn, in The Boston Commonwealth of Dec. 10, 18G4. 
 
AS A LECTURER. 261 
 
 makes to the listener s spirit, like an unseen arrow cleaving the 
 white of the target." 
 
 His peculiarities on the platform have been well de 
 scribed by another of his admirers, who writes of him 
 at the very zenith of his power as a lecturer : 
 
 "The slight depression at the corners of the mouth, with a 
 touch of sternness ; the one arm extended from his side farther and 
 farther as he becomes more animated by his theme ; the two or 
 three fingers of the other hand pressed to his palm as if holding 
 tightly some reservation, all these, and other undefinable charac 
 teristics that are photographed on the mind of one who has atten 
 tively listened to Emerson, are admirably reproduced in the picture 
 of one of his friends and admirers. But there are some traits 
 which are but faintly, if at all, suggested in the picture referred 
 to, that have been developed in the years that intervened, or which 
 perhaps could not have been even hinted on canvas. In his more 
 recent life, Emerson s American hearers have recognized a less 
 literary style and tone, and a stronger desire to have his views 
 adopted. His paradoxes are stated with more determination. He 
 oftener turns aside from the constructive and affirmative method 
 natural to him to strike some false or sordid standard raised on his 
 path ; and one now sometimes sees his lip quiver, his eyes flash, 
 and even a certain wrath expressed in the dilation of his nostril." l 
 
 Moses Coit Tyler has written with enthusiasm of 
 Emerson as a teacher of eloquence, and claims that 
 both with his voice and his pen his influence has been 
 very great in this direction. He has done a great ser 
 vice in teaching us how to speak English, and how to 
 write strongly and to the point. 
 
 " In his own unique way, Tyler says, he is really a marvelous 
 speaker. Let him the fit audience find, though few, and he will 
 illustrate what it is to speak golden words in that natural style 
 of perfect sincerity, tenderness, and thoughtfulness by which 
 every syllable is conducted straight home to the faculty it was 
 meant for. For the enunciation of his own sentences we call him 
 simply a perfect speaker. The manner fits the matter as if cut 
 out for it from eternity. We would not alter it in one particular. 
 Even those qualities which some call faults in his speaking, seem to 
 us merits, the hesitation, the awkwardness, the peculiar prim 
 
 1 M. DrConway, in Eraser s Magazine for May, 1869. The picture 
 mentioned was painted while Mr. Emerson was in England in 1S48, by 
 David Scott. Some years ago it was sent over to this country for sale. 
 It was bought in Concord, and presented to the Public Library, in the 
 reading-room of which it now hangs. 
 
262 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 intonation ; they endear him to us all the more, as tokens of the 
 absorption and homespun simplicity of the speaker." J 
 
 Emerson s inspiring qualities have already been men 
 tioned, and they have been a marked characteristic of 
 his most impressive lectures. In his Concord Days, 
 Alcott has admirably described his attitude as that of 
 one repeating words which descend to him from a 
 higher atmosphere. 
 
 "See our Ion standing there, his audience, his manuscript, 
 before him, himself also an auditor, as he reads, of the Genius 
 sitting behind him, and to whom he defers, eagerly catching the 
 words, the words, as if the accents were first reaching his 
 ears, too, and entrancing alike oracle and auditor. We admire 
 the stately sense, the splendor of diction, and are charmed as we 
 listen. Even his hesitancy between the delivery of his periods, his 
 perilous passages from paragraph to paragraph of manuscript, we 
 have almost learned to like." 
 
 This characteristic of extemporaneousness has been 
 a marked one, even in the delivery of his addresses 
 which were read word for word. His seeming attempt 
 to catch fit words to express his thought has given a 
 singular charm to his manner. In his earlier years he 
 tried speaking without a manuscript ; but he found he 
 could not do it well, and afterwards attempted it but 
 seldom. His most casual addresses have usually been 
 carefully prepared. That on Lincoln, apparently writ 
 ten with the greatest care, so just and discriminating is 
 it, was prepared between ten o clock and one of the 
 night before its delivery. He has been too exacting of 
 himself to go before an audience with any other than 
 his best thought, carefully wrought into the best form 
 he could give it. J He once read a poem before the Phi 
 Beta Kappa Society on Washington, and suddenly sat 
 down in the midst of it. A friend afterwards inquired 
 the cause, and was told the poem was not what he 
 thought it was. As he read, he became dissatisfieu 
 with it, and could not go on. It has been this demand 
 for perfection of expression which has made him so 
 rigidly exacting with his essays, arid caused him to 
 
 1 Mr. Emerson as a Teacher of Eloquence, in the Independent. 
 
AS A LECTURER. 263 
 
 write them over again and again. ^Not only has he 
 been patient in his literary elaboration, but he has been 
 mindful of the character of his audiences, and has 
 sought to give each that which it could best assimilate. 
 /Though anxious to reach the needs of those to whom 
 he spoke, he has been even more desirous of giving his 
 hearers only that which was worth their attention. He 
 has insisted he could afford to give his hearers only the 
 very best of which he was capable, and that he ought 
 to give them as much as possible in each lecture./ This 
 has been another reason for his habit of rigid condensa 
 tion. 
 
 /Emerson has always continued a preacher. He has 
 never lectured to amuse, or to interest, or for money 
 alone. Nor has he lectured simply to instruct, but to 
 improve, inspire, and reform. His aim has always been 
 that of the preacher, differing only in manner of treat 
 ment and in range of matter. He has been a preacher 
 of religion, not of any outward form of it, but especially 
 of religion as expressed in the garb of the purest mo 
 rality. A preacher without a pulpit, he surely has been ; 
 but all the more influence has he wielded, because 
 perfectly free to obey his own conscience and to speak 
 what has seemed to him the truth. His preaching 
 has consequently been direct, unsparing in its denun 
 ciations of evil, and pungent with a strong sense of the 
 follies of modern society. His subjects have nearly 
 always had the strongest moral bearing, and his treat 
 ment of them expresses the purpose to purify and 
 elevate the standards of conduct. His marked in 
 fluence as a lecturer, the secret of his power over so 
 many minds, is to be found in the ethical and prophetic 
 nature of - his utterances. He has been more than a 
 lecturer, preacher, or critic; he has been an inspirer, 
 a seer, a moral illuminator. 
 
 He has never been a popular lecturer, but he has 
 steadily gained the increasing interest of the cultured 
 and intelligent^) Lowell says he " always draws," and 
 it is from this class. " A lecturer now for something 
 like a third of a century, one of the pioneers of the 
 
204 BALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 lecturing system, the charm of his voice, his manner, 
 and his matter has never lost its power over his earlier 
 hearers, and continually winds new ones in its enchant 
 ing meshes." Alcott says that " such is the charm of 
 his manner, that wherever he appears, the cultivated 
 cla -111 delight in his utterances." It is the culti 
 vated who will best appreciate his lectures, those who 
 have read and thought much. Many amusing anecdotes 
 have been told of the people who have gone to hear him, 
 drawn thither by his reputation. A well-known literary 
 lady once watched with great amusement one of these 
 persons. It was a lady from the fashionable circles, 
 who supposed it to be quite proper and desirable to 
 hear Emerson, the famous lecturer. Her face was a 
 study, as she listened with surprise, then with blank 
 amazement, and as she finally gave up all attempt to 
 comprehend the lecture. Emerson recognizes the fact, 
 that many people do not enjoy his lectures. Some years 
 ago, when invited to Arm Arbor, lie inquired, " Are there 
 any people there who have thoughts ? " 
 
 In conversation Emerson is somewhat reticent, not 
 always expressing himself with freedom and fullness. 
 He hesitates for words, and seems to find it difficult to 
 secure the precise expression he desires. He speaks on 
 the lecture-platform much as he converses. Those who 
 have ascribed to him an artificial and studied manner 
 as a lecturer, are probably not aware of how perfectly 
 natural to the man are all his movements and words. 
 Indeed, his oddity of expression is not, as has so often 
 been said, cultivated, but the natural manner of the 
 man. He talks as he writes. In his conversation there 
 is the same antithesis and abrupt transition to be found 
 as in his books. He does not think continuously; he 
 does not in conversation follow a subject through, but 
 hesitates, skips intervening ideas, is unable, apparently, 
 to hold his mind to all the links of thought. It is not 
 natural to him to do so. He does not think logically, 
 but intuitively, sees and seizes at a glance, in bold 
 generalizations, but is unable to follow and arrange the 
 intervening step^ from premise to conclution His con- 
 
AS A LECTURER. 265 
 
 versational powers", however, have been great; and his 
 conversation is rapt, fascinating,- and attractive. In de 
 scribing a visit to Emerson, 1 as a young man, Conway 
 has given an account of it. Emerson took him to Wal- 
 den Pond, where they rowed, bathed, and talked. 
 
 " Having bathed, we sat down on the shore ; and then Walden 
 and her beautiful woods began to utter their paeans through his 
 lips. Emerson s conversation was different from that of any 
 person I have ever met with, and unequalled by that of any one, 
 unless it be that of Thomas Caiiyle. Of course there is no com 
 parison of the two possible, but the contrasts between them are very 
 striking and significant. In speaking of that which he conceives to 
 be ignorant error, Mr. Caiiyle is vehement ; and when he suspects 
 an admixture of falsehood and hypocrisy, his tone is that of rage ; 
 and although his indignation is noble and the utterances always 
 thrilling, yet when one recurs to the little man or thing at which 
 they are often leveled, it seems to be like the bombardment of a 
 sparrow s nest with shot and shell. On such Emerson merely darts 
 a spare beam of his wit, beneath which a lie is sure to shrivel ; but 
 if he breaks any one on his wheel, it must be some one who has 
 been admitted at the banquet of the gods, and violated their laws. 
 Every one who has witnessed the imperial dignity, or felt the 
 weight of authentic knowledge, which characterize" Mr. Carlyle s 
 conversation, to such an extent that even his light utterances seem 
 to stand out like the pillars of Hercules, must also have felt the 
 earth tremble before the thunders and lightnings of his wrath ; 
 but with Emerson, though the same falsehood is fatally smitten, it 
 is by the invisible, inaudible sun-stroke, which has left the sky as 
 bright and blue as before. For the rest, and when abstract truths 
 and principles are discussed, whilst Caiiyle astonishes us by the 
 range of his sifted knowledge, he does not convey an equal impres 
 don of having originally thought out the various problems in other 
 departments than those which are plainly his own; but there is 
 scarcely a realm of science or art in whiciTEmerson could not be to 
 some extent the instructor of the Academies. Agassiz, as I have 
 heard Lira say, prefers his conversation on scientific questions to thai 
 of any other. I remember him on that day at Walden as Bunyan s 
 Pilgrim might have remembered the Interpreter. The growths 
 around, the arrow-head, and the orchis, were intimations of that 
 mystic unity in nature, which is the fountain of poetry to him ; 
 either of these, or of many others of the remarkably rich fauna of 
 that region, excited emotions much more solemn than the aesthetic 
 in him. Ilg fully felt that if we only knew how to look around, we 
 would not have need to look above. 
 
 1 Fraser s Magazine for August, 1874. 
 
266 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 He is one of the best of listeners, whoever may be 
 speaking, seeming to drink in all that is said, and giving 
 the approval of his gracious smile to whatever attracts 
 his attention. He is even more ready to listen than to 
 speak. What he says is to the point, clearly stated, and 
 in a serious, earnest tone ; but his conversation is not 
 brilliant in those ways which gave to Margaret Fuller s 
 marvelous conversational powers a place of their own. 
 It is not his to fascinate and attract by the ceaseless 
 monologue of a versatile talker; for he would make 
 conversation an act of friendship, and finds its charm 
 broken by the presence of more than two. Yet he al 
 ways speaks wisely, and with a charm and interest all 
 his own. He does not talk easily or much, and needs 
 the stimulus of a sympathetic and vigorous mind to 
 draw out his best treasures of thought. In the midst of 
 a company of bright minds, he is not exuberant, never 
 bubbles over ; but what he says is marked by a keen wit 
 and a full wisdom, rich, appropriate, and remarkable. 
 His conversation, when his mind is stimulated by a 
 great theme and a sympathetic friend, is inspiring even 
 beyond his lectures ; and then he pours forth his thought 
 in the purest strain of noble words. In this way, his in 
 fluence over his friends has been very great ; and to 
 many a mind his conversation has been an inspiration. 
 " I enjoyed Emerson s conversation, says Miss Bremer, 
 which flowed as calmly and easily as a deep and placid 
 river. It was animating to me, both when I agreed, and 
 when I dissented ; there is always a something impor 
 tant in what he says ; and he listens well, and compre 
 hends and replies well also." Animating and rich and 
 suggestive his conversation surely has been, and the 
 source, doubtless, of much of his subtle influence over 
 tho^se minds which have come nearest to his own. 
 
 /What an influence his lectures have been! Great 
 teachers have in all ages gathered crowds of students 
 about them. Great preachers have held sway over the 
 lives of admiring multitudes. In our own time some of 
 the best thinkers and writers have consented to address 
 the people on their favorite themes. Reformers have 
 
AS A LECTURER. 267 
 
 devoted their Jives to the spoken advocacy of some 
 great reform. / Popular oratory has developed the pro 
 fessional lecturer, who amuses and interests^ Political 
 eloquence has ever had- its great names, its fascinating 
 orators and debaters. /The place of Emerson, however, 
 is unique. He has not been a clergyman, professor, 
 popular lecturer, or a statesman^ He has not been a 
 Socrates, Abelard, Savonarola, Whitefield, Webster, or 
 a Phillips. He has not spoken, either from the vantage- 
 ground of a pulpit, professor s chair, or senate chamber ; 
 yet how great has been his influence, how magnetic his 
 power, how commanding his position, and how likely to 
 be enduring ! No pulpit has cramped him, no profes 
 sor s chair has narrowed his thought, no party has stul 
 tified his influence. (He has been a teacher of the peo 
 ple, an inspirer of students, a friend of every great cause. 
 There are few other examples of a man giving his life 
 to teaching his countrymen the highest lessons of reli 
 gion, culture, and morals, untrammeled by party, sect, 
 or place. He has created a new vocation, opened a new 
 road for the moralist and preacher, hinted at new possi 
 bilities of reform, suggested that oratory can be used 
 for a larger purpose. His career as a lecturer may be 
 regarded as one of the most remarkable chapters in lit 
 erary history, and his devotion to this self-chosen and 
 self-created vocation has been as singular as it has been 
 inspiring. It is as yet impossible rightly to estimate 
 the importance of his influence, or to see how subtle arid 
 intrinsic has been the effect of his lectures. The future 
 of religion, morals, and literature in the Republic, 
 alone can rightly decide how important his word, and 
 how penetrating his thought ! ) What he has already ac 
 complished, however, is guaranty of what will follow. 
 
268 BALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 PLACE AMONG THINKERS. 
 
 Tj^MERSON belongs in the succession of the Idealists. 
 -A ^ That company he loves wherever its members are 
 found, whether among Buddhists or Christian mystics, 
 whether Transcendentalist or Sufi^ whether Saadi, 
 Boehme, Fichte, or Carlyle. These are the writers he 
 studies, these the men he quotes, these the thinkers who 
 come nearest his own thought. He is in the succession 
 of minds who have followed in the wake of Plato, who is 
 regarded by him as the world s greatest thinker. More 
 directly still, Emerson is in that succession of thinkers 
 represented by Plotinus, Eckhart, and Schelling, who 
 have interpreted idealism in the form of mysticism. 
 
 The person who lays a stress ,^011 the worth of ideas, 
 who regards the mind as existing before the body, and 
 as giving form to it, is an idealist. Idealism looks 
 upon the world of ideas or of mind as original and 
 causative ; it beholds the world of matter as proceed 
 ing from mind and as shaped by it. Spirit creates, it 
 says ; mind is primal. Matter is but a garment of 
 spirit, the material world is phenomenal. As a true 
 idealist, Emerson said, " Mind is the only reality, of 
 which men and all other natures are better or worse 
 reflectors." 1 " Our soul," says Bartol, Emerson s friend 
 and an enthusiastic believer in idealism, " is older than 
 our organism. It precedes its clothing. It is the cause, 
 not the consequence." Idealism says there is a Univer 
 sal Spirit, of which nature and man are alike manifes 
 tations, a Spirit which is not only the original, but 
 the immanent and sustaining cause of all things. Man 
 is a spark from the Universal Spirit, a torch lighted at 
 
 1 Lecture on Transcendentalism, Miscellanies, p. 323. 
 
AS A THINKER. 269 
 
 tliis altar, and manifests in miniature all the character 
 istics of his original. Nature proceeds from the same 
 source, and embodies on a lower plane the thoughts of 
 God ; its laws are his ideas. All that nature contains 
 was first in God as types, ideas, thoughts ; and its sole 
 purpose is to serve as an outward expression of these. 
 Idealism asserts the unity and perfect correspondence y 
 of thought and being or of ideas and things, that the 
 material world is the image or symbol of the ideal or 
 spiritual world. Emerson states this doctrine in sayiug 
 that " every sensible object subsists not for itself, nor 
 finally to a, material end, but as a picture-language to 
 tell another story, of beings and duties." 
 
 Strictly speaking, Emerson is not a philosopher. 
 Several philosophic problems have deeply interested 
 him, and he has found for them a solution. His writ 
 ings constantly touch upon these problems, while these 
 solutions of them are the occasion for many of his best 
 essays and poems. Yet he does not see life and its 
 questions from the purely philosophic outlook, ancThiris 
 not ajreasoner or a dialectician. IIetr 
 more than~tcTreason, is in sympathy with the moral and 
 theosophic rather than with the metaphysical writers. 
 He prefers Boehme, Schelling, and Coleridge to 
 Descartes, Kant, and Hegel. He is more a seer than a 
 thinker, less a philosopher than a poet. With specu 
 lative philosophy, in the strict sense of the word, he 
 has had nothing to do, has probably never made him 
 self familiar with it, and has had little interest in its 
 methods. Its great teachers, with the exception of 
 Plato, he has not studied. . 
 
 " His intellect is intuitive, says Whipple, contemplative, but 
 not reflective. It contains no considerable portion of the element 
 which is essential to the philosopher. His ideas proceed from the 
 light of genius and from wise observation of N ature ; they come 
 in flashes of inspiration and ecstasy ; his pure gold is found in 
 places near the surface, not brought out laboriously from the 
 depths of the mine in the bowels of the earth. He has no taste 
 for the apparently arid abstractions of philosophy. His mind is 
 not organized for the comprehension of its sharp distinctions. Its 
 acuto reasonings present no charm to his fancy, and its lucid 
 
270 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 deductions are to him as destitute of fruit as an empty nest of 
 boxes. In the sphere of pure reflection he has shown neither 
 originality nor depth. He has thrown no light on the great topics 
 of speculation. He has never fairly grappled with the metaphys 
 ical problems which have called forth the- noblest efforts of the 
 mind in every age, and which, not yet reduced to positive science, 
 have not ceased to enlist the clearest and strongest intellects in the 
 work of their solution. On all questions of this kind the writings 
 of Emerson are wholly unsatisfactory. lie looks at them only in 
 the light of the imagination. lie frequently offers bravo hints, 
 pregnant suggestions, cheering encouragements, but no exposition 
 of abstract truth has ever fallen from his keen pen." l 
 
 With a few qualifications this opinion may be accepted 
 as substantially correct. Emerson btrlongo to that class 
 of literary geniuses, such as Rousseau, Herder, Lessing, 
 and Coleridge, who are the intellectual awakeners and 
 stimulators of their age ; not the thinkers of a genera 
 tion, but its inspirers. They are mnyod by frrlin^i 
 jjYingiiia.finn r n.nd intuition ; Jbut th ey open the way to 
 new possibilities of life, action, and thought. Each of 
 fhftgfl rnon Iv.ig Vn f7TVp,paria^fftiiTnm^y(^su)n on the suc- 
 which is not at all to be meas- 
 
 ured by his clearness of thought or by the permanent 
 character of his writings. These men have been the 
 re-constructors of the modern world, the re-builders of 
 life, art, literature, and religion. Emerson belongs to 
 that company of illuminated souls who have done for 
 the modern world what the sages, prophets, and seers 
 did for the ancient world. The revival of Greek 
 literature, science, philosophy, the French Revolution, 
 Voltaire, destroyed the world of the Middle Ages, and 
 left men amidst the ruins in doubt and darkness. 
 From amid the ruins thus produced, these men have 
 been the creators of the modern world, in which man, 
 nature, and progress are the words which represent its 
 leading characteristics. 
 
 >f the intuitionalschool ; but 
 as he has not been a system-builder, so -he has ranged 
 widely for the materials of his thought, finds every 
 where aids to the elaboration of his ideas. Emile 
 
 1 The Independent. 18G7. 
 
AS A THINKER. 271 
 
 Montegut says he has the traits of the modern sage, 
 absence of the dogmatic spirit, and a tendency to 
 criticism of principles. The sage follows his own 
 nature, trusts to spontaneity. 
 
 " Emerson belongs to this class of philosophers, says Montegut. , 
 He has all the qualities of the sage, originality, spontaneity, 
 sagacious observation, delicate analysis, criticism, absence of dog 
 matism. He collects all the materials of a philosophy, without 
 reducing it to a system ; he thinks a little at random, and often t 
 meditates without finding definite limits at which this meditation 
 ceases. His books are^. very remarkable, not only for the philosophy 
 which they contain, but also for the criticism of our times. He is 
 full of justice towards the doctrines and the society he criticises ; 
 he finds that the conservatives have legitimate principles ; he thinks 
 that the transceiidentalists are probably right ; he does not look 
 with scorn upon our socialistic doctrines. He searches for his 
 authorities through the entire history of philosophy ; and thus, after 
 having listened to all the modern doctrines with complaisance and 
 patience, he breaks silence to give us maxims that might have 
 issued now from the school of the Portico, and now from the 
 gardens of the Academy. . . . All the names of ancient and 
 modern philosophers are cited together, as if they expressed the 
 same opinion.. . Skeptics and mystics, rationalists and pantheists, 
 are side by side. Schelling, Oken, Spinoza, Plato, Kant, Sweden- 
 borg, Coleridge, meet on the s^ame page. In this country of democ 
 racy, all thinkers seem brothers ; distance effaces the differences, 
 and blends them all into the same light. Emerson sees the works 
 of oar philosophers marked simply with the seal of truth and 
 human genius, and not bearing the stamp of the genius loci." 1 
 
 It is this remarkable capacity for drinking from many 
 fountains, culling his sweets from every variety of 
 flower, which justifies Noah Porter in calling him 
 " the wide-minded Emerson." 2 It is this same charac- 
 te/istic which has led to^ his .being Called a philosopher, 
 -poet, seer, critic, moral diagnoser, literary creator, by 
 different persons. He has been compared with Carlyle, 
 Goethe, Herder, Rousseau, Spinoza, Marcus Aurelius ; 
 and yet how different is he from each and all ! He 
 writes now like a Puritan moralist, or a Montaigne, or 
 an Epictotus; but anon how like he is to Schelling, 
 
 1 An American Thinker and Poet, Revue des Deux Mondes, Aug. 1, 
 1847. 
 
 2 Books and Reading, p. 70. 
 
272 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 Boehme, or Plotinus ! On one page he is a grim 
 believer in fate and nature ; the next shows how strong 
 his faith in divine grace, that we are nothing but by 
 the will of God ; and only a page or two beyond, he 
 asserts the absolute spontaneity of the mystic ; before 
 the essay ends, he is a sober moralist teaching the 
 plainest lessons of duty. That he seizes something of 
 truth from all these many and antagonistic sources is 
 not the most striking characteristic of his mind, but 
 that he blends them into a united and consistent whole. 
 He does this by the aid of insight, not by reason. He 
 does not cull at random the ingredients of his essays ; 
 intuition discovers relations and a unity where reason 
 halts and the dialectical method sees only antagonism. 
 
 Though Emerson has ranged somewhat widely for 
 
 the materials of his thought, yet his philosophic affinity 
 
 has been with a special and a very limited school of 
 
 / thinkers. His manner of thinking wao oarly and-rury 
 
 r deeply affectgd fry P1n.tr>. /"That great thinker believed 
 
 1 in a supersensible, wo rid, wKere all things are in the 
 
 L form of ideas. The material world is but a crude 
 
 / image or reflection of this spiritual world. Man once 
 
 ti dwelt in the supersensible world, but his desires 
 
 I brought him into the world of sense. His reason is 
 
 / even yet a direct organ of knowledge of the super- 
 
 ^X sensible, and by its aid he can know its truths with 
 
 absolute certainty. Mind prnp.p.dp^ thfi body: while the 
 
 soul is an active, creative ^pririciple. Plato dwells mucn 
 
 on Thu puwurs" iiiid e telTilty of tile snnTjWrul frpnihiin 
 
 Emeraon IpanuHLJnsjjwn soujjajth. From hhjiraTsa, 
 
 Emerson caught his optimism~i"Tiis trust in the good, 
 
 anj^ his conviction lhartr~evii is but ashadow. Plnfn 
 
 _tation of the universe, and he makes perfect truth and 
 perfect virtue to be synonymous. 
 
 he says, and goodness is a true source of knowledge. 
 In his -new readings" of Plato, in Representative Men, 
 in enumerating the several doctrines taught by him, 
 Emerson gives clear indication whence many of his 
 own leading ideas came. He mentions the law of con- 
 
AS A THINKER. 273 
 
 traries ; man a-s a microcosm, or that each thing reflects 
 all other things ; compensation ; " the laws below are 
 sisters of the laws above ; " " the coincidence of science 
 and virtue ; " the supersensible is under the domain of 
 law ; " the self-evolving power of spirit ; " the scale of 
 the mind, or that life ranges in stages one above the 
 other, each reflecting the one above it ; and that man 
 has come up from the lower orders of life in the self- 
 evolving ascent of spirit. All these theories have a 
 prominent place in Emerson s essays, and they may be 
 said to form thesubstantial basis and framework of his 
 speculations* file probably comes nearer to accepting 
 the whole of Plato s philosophy than that of any other 
 thinker.^/ 
 
 As has been the case with nearly every great teacher, 
 Plato has been a fruitful fountain of speculation to later 
 thinkers ; and various schools have branched off from 
 him. His most affirmative and his religious ideas gave 
 rise to a school which has had its representatives in every 
 age since his time. Its greatest name in the ancient 
 world was Plotinus, who was also early and earnestly 
 studied by Emerson. In the middle of the third cen 
 tury after Christ, Plotinus took up Plato s theory of 
 the co-eternity of ..the soul with its ideas, and of the 
 sameness of their substance and origin, and interpreted 
 it as teaching the identity of nature and soul, things 
 and reason. Many of the followers, of Plato regarded 
 nature and reason as being distinct ; but Plotinus iden 
 tified them, and taught they were only forms of the 
 same eternal Absolute. Plotinus arid the school he 
 formed, known as the Neo-Platonists, were doubtless 
 affected by Pythagoras, Philo, the philosophy of Persia, 
 and perhaps even that of India ; but they regarded them 
 selves as legitimate interpreters of the great master. 
 While Plato taught that there were many distinct ideas, 
 that of the Good being the highest, Plotinus elevated 
 the Good or the One above the world of ideas. He re 
 garded the material universe and the universe of ideas 
 as alike emanations from the One. From the One 
 emanates the world of ideas, from ideas the soul, while 
 
274 RALPH WALDO EMEIISON. 
 
 from the soul emanates the sensible world. This theory 
 re-appears frequently in modern times, as the successive 
 spheres of Swedenborg, the potences of Schelling, and it 
 is a favorite teaching of Emerson s. Plotinu&laught that 
 man nuts forth the world out of himself, because ot Jiis 
 lust for the sensibTe)\yeJ; as man subdues the sense,sjic 
 rpiirns, JIH.P.TT towards^ GocL Vhe chief means to t^is 
 return is jjiiJiiUpn, or _pos^asv. by which man rises above 
 the sensible world into a direct knowing and seeing of 
 the supersensible and its truth. Around Plotinna. and 
 his predecessor, Arnmonius Saccas, there grew up a 
 distinct school of thought, teaching the philosophic 
 
 majj^r, and making intuitionTn^metBod of know^T?. 
 One of his disciples was Porphyry, ~who distinctly 
 taught that matter emanates from the supersensible or 
 from the soul. Amelius departed so far from Plotinus 
 as" to teach the unity of all souls in the world-soul, a 
 favorite doctrine of Emerson s. A Christian teacher, 
 Synesius, at the middle of the fifth century made this 
 philosophy the basis of his Christianity. Contemporary 
 with him was Proclus, its last great pagan representative. 
 Not long after, it appeared in a remarkable defense of 
 Christianity by an anonymous writer, known as the 
 Pseudo-Dion} y sius, or Areopagite. In Emerson s essay 
 on Lut-ell(ji;t, there is to be found a striking proof of his 
 great indebtedness to the Platonic school. Its leading 
 Hp-ftH are thrvap of tb^ N^o-PLatom sts, as that the intellect 
 is impersonal, that we are nothing of ourselves, that all 
 thinking is a pious reception of truth from above,Hhat 
 
 ring poT^rir^ Trii^w^ ft? mnr-1^ QC nnnfli^r that silenC6TlS 
 
 necessary for the incoming of God s grace, that entire 
 self-reliance belongs to the intellect as a representative 
 of-.tlieJuJjjija&aulr - The basis of this teaching is thatj)f 
 thp iinjfry of all sprain fhp wnrlrWml \frhe derTendence 
 rf.man for real knowledge upon intuition, and thajj^tui- 
 
 S4*UoibIu wurld. After eloquently defending these ideas, 
 he points to this company of Greek thinkers for confir 
 mation of their truthfulness; and lie pays a glowing 
 
AS A THINKER. 275 
 
 tribute to the value of their teaching. That he should 
 in this lecture, in which he presents his own theory of 
 knowing, devote its closing passage to an eloquent 
 defense of the whole school of Platonic thinkers, affords 
 remarkable confirmation of their influence over his 
 thinking. His words are these : J - 
 
 " I can not recite, even thus rudely, laws of the intellect, without 
 remembering that lofty and sequestered class of men who have been 
 its prophets and oracles, the high-priesthood of the pure reason, 
 the Trixmegisti, the expounders of the principles of thought from 
 age to age. When, at long intervals, we turn over their abstruse 
 pages, wonderful seems the calm and grand air of these few, these 
 great spiritual lords, who have walked in the world, these of the 
 old religion, dwelling in a worship which makes the sanctities of 
 Christianity look parvenucs and popular ; for persuasion is in 
 soul, but necessity is in intellect. ^ This band of grandees, Hermes, 
 Heraclitus, Empedocles, Plato, Plotinus, Olympiodorus, Proclus, 
 Synesius, and the rest, have somewhat so vast in their logic, so 
 primary in their thinking, that it seems antecedent to all the ordi 
 nary distinctions of rhetoric and literature, and to be at once poetry 
 and music and dancing and astronomy and mathematics, The 
 truth and grandeur of their thought is proved by its scope and 
 applicability, for it commands the entire schedule and inventory of 
 things for its illustration." 
 
 After Proclus, Neo-Platonism passed over to Christian 
 ity, and it became the basis of Augustine s theology. 
 At the end of the fifth century it was taught by Boe- 
 thius, and at the middle of the ninth it was taken 
 up by John Scotus Erigena. Its ideas frequently ap 
 peared down to the time of the Schoolmen, when they 
 affected Albertus Magnus, Duns Scotus, and Thomas 
 Aquinas. At this period they re-appeared in Eck- 
 hart in a new and distinct form, and have finally been 
 adopted by a remarkable school of modern thinkers. 
 Eckhart taught at the beginning of the fourteenth cen 
 tury, held high offices in the church, was a famous 
 preacher, but was brought before the Inquisition and 
 had twenty-eight of his doctrines condemned. He based 
 his theology on Neo-Platonism, especially on the teach 
 ings of J:he Pseudo-Dionysius, and was influenced by 
 Augustine, Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas. 
 
 i Essays, first series, p. 313. 
 
276 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 s ^f-^* 
 
 Though Emerson has not studied Eckhart- many 
 favorite ideas will be found presented by that thinker. 
 With Eckhart, perhaps even before with Erigena, the 
 Neo-Platonic doctrine of emanation was abandoned for 
 that of immanence ; and God is regarded as the indwell 
 ing life of the world. " The essence of all creatures, he 
 says, is eternally a divine life in Deity." Out of God 
 nothing can exist, the outward world is a symbol of his 
 innermost essence, and evil is but a privation cf the full 
 ness of his nature. The soul pre-existed in God, shared 
 in his nature, was not then individual, but free and un 
 conditioned, and as immanent in him shared in the 
 process of creation. The soul is an efflux from God ; 
 but as no longer fully sharing in his nature, it has .be 
 come corrupt. In time it will return into the undevel 
 oped Deity and be at one with him. Death to the indi 
 vidual self, surrender to God, is the condition of this 
 Vv. return. Those who have attentively read Emerson will 
 recognize the meaning of Eckhart, when he says there 
 is something in the soul which is above the soul, a di 
 vine spark, an uncreated light. This is the unity of all 
 souls in the Over-soul ; and it is absolute and free from 
 all names and forms, higher than knowledge, higher 
 than love, and is satisfied only with the super-essential 
 essence. In this perfect union of the soul with God, all 
 J:hat is creaturely, all that is individual, ceases to exist. 
 Knowing, according to Eckhart, is a supernatural vision, 
 the action of God in the soul. With Proclus, he holds 
 that faith is a direct communion with God, and the 
 means of all knowledge. As true knowing is an act of 
 divine grace, God communicating himself to the soul, 
 man must not search or reason or use any power of his 
 own. He must remain quiet, passive, unemployed of 
 outward things, that God may find him a fit receptacle 
 for truth. To the man who has utterly abandoned self, 
 Eckhart says, God communicates all his nature, essence, 
 / and life. In the very spirit and manner of Emerson be 
 \ says the inner voice is the voice of God. To those who 
 would find aid in some outward exercise of religion, he 
 exclaims, "Why abide not in your own selves?, and 
 
AS A THINKER. 277 
 
 take hold on your own possession ? Ye have all truth 
 essentially within you ! " He says the righteous man is 
 in substance and in nature without distinction what 
 God is, and that in the moments of intuition the soul is 
 raised above individuality, and ceases to know its sepa- , 
 rateness from God. 
 
 The teachings of Eckhart spread widely throughout 
 Germany. Similar theories were taught by many others, 
 giving origin to a large school of mystics, and finally 
 led to the Reformation. From the stand-point of intui 
 tion, of an inner revelation, they criticised the church, 
 and regarded Christianity as a spiritual life separate 
 from its doctrines and ritual. One of their favorite 
 teachings was, that man is a microcosm. As all things 
 are of the ^ame nature and origin, as God dwells in all 
 his fullness in the soul, the soul becomes an epitome of 
 the universe. The doctrine of immanence was ex 
 panded by the theory of development through contra 
 ries, so that light and darkness, good and evil, clashing 
 with each other, produce creation. All these ideas were 
 taken up by Jacob Boehme, at the beginning of the 
 seventeenth century, woven into a theory of correspond 
 ences, and given the form of a nature-philosophy. He 
 gel says he read much, especially the mystic, theosophic, 
 and aichemistic writings, and in part, at least, Paracelsus, 
 who taught the idea of man as a microcosm, and who 
 first developed the theory that existence is a series of an 
 titheses. William Law, the greatest of Boehme s Eng 
 lish disciples, says that " whatsoever the great Hermes 
 delivered in oracles, or Pythagoras spoke by authority, 
 or Socrates debated, or Aristotle affirmed, whatever 
 divine Plato prophesied, or Plotinus proved, this, and 
 all this, or a far higher and profounder philosophy, is 
 contained in Boehme s writings." He regards the uni 
 verse as a universal revelation of God, matter as dor 
 mant mind, and mind as self-conscious matter; and the 
 inmost of man s nature is in the deepest sense one with 
 the highest in God. He finds in man the measure of 
 all things ; so that when he would study nature, the 
 best means to it are to be found in the soul. He sees 
 
278 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 in nature the same divine life, the same glory and man 
 ifestation of God, there is in the soul. As they so ex 
 actly correspond, it is enough to look into the soul, if 
 we would know what nature is. He also teaches, that, 
 as God dwells in the soul and the soul in God, passivity 
 is the means to the perfection of this union, and that 
 even now Paradise may be realized by the soul. 1 
 Boehme s truly noble disciple, William Law, says that 
 "life in an angel and life in a vegetable has but one 
 and the same form, one and the same ground in the 
 whole scale of beings ; and the reason is, because nature 
 is nothing else but God s own outward manifestation of 
 what he inwardly is and can do." He says the intuitive 
 knowing of truth " depends upon thy right submission 
 and obedience to the speaking of God in thy soul. 
 Stop, then, all self-activity, listen not to the suggestions 
 of thy own reason, run not in thy own will ; but be re 
 tired, silent, passive, and humbly attentive to this light 
 within thee." 2 With these general ideas of Boehme s 
 system Emerson thoroughly agrees, but not at all with 
 his more special doctrines. Holbeach justly says that 
 in reading Emerson we might sometimes fancy we had 
 Eckhart before us ; and that " the identity of thought 
 and language with the old-world Germans will strike 
 every reader at once." 3 
 
 In this philosophic development we come next to 
 Schelling. In the second or third period of his think 
 ing, he came under the influence of Boehme ; and he 
 was also affected by the Neo-Platonists, Eckhart, and 
 some of the other mystics. It is not probable that 
 i Emerson was to any more than a limited extent 
 directly affected by Schelling, but it is certain that 
 much of what he has taught is to be found in the writ 
 ings of this philosopher. Schelling teaches that nature 
 and mind, subject and object, are one and identical in 
 the Absolute, and that this identity is known by intel 
 lectual intuition. This is a fundamental conception 
 
 1 Vaughan s Hours with the Mystics. 
 
 2 Quoted in Overtoil s William Law. Nonjuror and Mystic. 
 8 Contemporary Review, February, 1877. 
 
AS A THINKER. 279 
 
 of Emerson s philosophy, and in much else they exactly 
 agree. The theory that man is a living synthesis or 
 microcosm of the universe became the leading idea 
 in Schelling s nature-philosophy, and it has touched 
 modern thought OD many sides. He took up, also, the 
 theory of contraries, and regarded nature and spirit as 
 the two great poles of the Absolute. 3his idea led 
 him, and many others, to make constant use of the 
 magnet as a symbop Mind and matter, soul and 
 nature, are related as the two poles of the magnet ; 
 they are merely the positive and negative manifesta 
 tions of the Absolute. The idea of Plotinus, that 
 there have been successive emanations, beginning with 
 the One, each lower producing one still lower, was not 
 literally revived by Schelling as it was by Swedenborg ; 
 but he held that there are successive grades of phenom 
 enal existence, which he called potences. From the 
 clod up to God there is a continuous ascension of life, 
 and the lower is continually reaching forward that itj 
 may realize the higher. 
 
 In Schelling s theory of knowledge, a main doctrine 
 is, "that our ideas so completely correspond with 
 things, there is nothing in them which is not in our 
 ideas." " There ,not only exists outside of us, he says, 
 a world of things independent of us, but pur represen 
 tations agree with them in such a manner that there is 
 nothing else in the things beyond what they present to 
 us. The necessity which prevails in our objective 
 representations is explained by saying that the things 
 are unalterably determined ; and by this determination 
 of the things, our ideas are also indirectly determined. 
 By this first and most original conviction, the first 
 problem of philosophy is determined, namely, to 
 explain how representations can absolutely agree with 
 objects existing altogether independently of them." 
 This he finds in the " absolute identity of being and 
 seeming," or subject and object. On this point, he 
 says, 
 
280 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 " How at once tlis objective world conforms itself to ideas in us, 
 and ideas in us conform themselves to the objective world, it is 
 impossible to conceive, unless there exists between the two worlds 
 the ideal and the real a pre-established harmony. But this pre- 
 sstablished harmony itself is not conceivable, unless the activity, 
 whereby the objective world is produced, is originally identical 
 with that which displays itself in volition, and vice versa." 
 
 
 As in the case of his predecessors, Sp]-|^1inor rjnt, only 
 adepts the theory of identity, but with them also iie 
 makes intuition the means of perceiving this identity. 
 "There dwells in us all, he says, a secret, wrmderfii 
 faculty, by virtue of which we can withdraw from the 
 mutations of time int:> our innermost disrobed selves, 
 and there behold the eternal under the form of immu 
 tability ; such vision is our innermost and peculiar 
 experience, on which alone depends all that we know 
 and believe of a supersensible world." These leading 
 ideas of Schelling and his predecessors were accepted 
 by Coleridge, especially the conception of reason as 
 one, that the human is identical with the divine reason. 
 "Coleridge was a diligent reader of Schelling, but even 
 more so of Tauler, Boehme, Law, and Ft^ With 
 the^ men he regarded all truth as a direct revelation 
 to the s;ml. This revelation takes place through rea 
 son, which is an intuitive, supernatural factor in man, 
 not personal to us, but the manifestation in conscious 
 ness of the universal reason. Reason is therefore a 
 common factor in the human and the divine, by which 
 they are essentially united and made one. 
 
 From Plotinus to Coleridge, there has been a con 
 tinuous succession of thinkers, through Proclus, Eck- 
 hart, Boehme, and Schelling, who have maintained a 
 peculiar philosophic doctrine, that of identity and 
 intuition. Other thinkers have held both these 
 theories, but not in the same religious, theosophic 
 spirit which has marked this succession of speculators. 
 These men have held to them in the spirit of mysticism ; 
 and though there have been other mystics, it has had 
 here a peculiarity of its own. Emerson is the latest 
 representative of this school of thought. Its philo- 
 
AS A THINKER. 281 
 
 sopliic spirit, its doctrines, its religious peculiarities, its 
 moral qualities, may all be found in him. With 110 one 
 of these men does he fully agree ; and he has freely 
 selected, rejected, and combined their teachings in a 
 manner quite his own. "fThe dark background of 
 Being, of which Boehme and Schelling speculated, 
 their peculiar theory of the trinity, which Hegel took 
 from Eckhart as the basis of his philosophy, and many 
 other speculations of these thinkers, Emerson has 
 rejected. As a whole, Ms philosophy would be pro 
 nounced very different from, that of any of his prede 
 cessors; and yet there can be. no doubt he had these men 
 for teachers, and that in a feHv leading, simple ideas he 
 thoroughly agrees with theirfK In Plato and Plptinus 
 the_foundation of his speculations was laid ^ and with 
 the aid of Boehme, Coleridge, Caiiyle, the German 
 and the English idealists, the edifice of his thought has 
 been erected, ^The materials thus given have been 
 used in a manner quite his own, with an originality 
 marked and distinct.**- To them have been added, not 
 only the results of his own vigorous thinking, but many.* 
 of the commonly accepted theories of the idealists of \ 
 his time. rThe theory of intuition was one that filled 
 
 the German literature Avhich Caiiyle and others began / 
 t the time Emerson was preparing / 
 for the pulpit. .jTo that theory was added what natu-f % / 
 
 to introduce at about the time Emerson was prewiring* 
 
 rally followed, the conception of genius as the true 
 oracle of heaven. Goethe and his contemporaries 
 made this a cardinal truth, as well ^as the notion of 
 ^absolute individual liberty, another offshoot from the ; 
 doctrine of intuition, ^ultimate love of nature, raid 
 communion with its divine life, was an extraordinary 
 characteristic, both of Goethe and Wordsworth ; and it U 
 ~GarBmJ;rjojnjyif^^ mysticism of Schelling and I 
 
 -Geler-klgo. \While the earlier mystics taught Emerson \ 
 the doctrine of self-renunciation and dependence on \. 
 God, aH-the later Germans he read taught individuality T 
 and self-reliance. \ He combined the two ideas and *) 
 made them one, / 
 
 To the English Platonists of the Elizabethan era, 
 
282 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 Emerson is also largely indebted. In his English Traits 
 he has named these men, More, Hooker, Bacon, Sidney, 
 Lord Brooke, Herbert, Browne, Donne, Spenser, Chap 
 man, Milton, Crashaw, Norris, Cudworth, Berkeley, 
 Jeremy Taylor, and says, "such richness of genius 
 had not existed more than once before." Though IKJ 
 
 f has not been to any great extent a student of Kant, 
 Fichte, and Hegel, yet he has been largely in sympathy 
 with the general tendencies of thought represented by 
 Lessiug, Herder, and Goethe. Truces of their influence 
 frequently appear on his pages. ^WKpn Hfir 1 ? 1 .. ri >r> " 
 laims the sujerjorit.y of na.tnrp.tn fliefresalts of history, 
 ~ intnitirm nvpr vp.^nn. he has the fullest sympathy 
 Q-F F.TnpyftpflX These G-rmftnn mnrln in^nntijy^i feluitive- 
 
 L^gian the ideal man ; and 
 
 mnrt wnrlr fnjrpfV^r, fl t s, *. wlio1P 1 in fipmivjngr triillr. S 
 
 " Every thing that man undertakes to produce, said 
 Goethe, whether by action, word, or in whatsoever wa;y, 
 ought to spring from the union of all his faculties. All 
 that is isolated is condemnable." ^They taught the im 
 manence of nature in the human, the doctrines of iden 
 tity and intuition, as undoubted truthK They saw God 
 Jn r>nf,]]yp and regarded it, with Goethe, as his living gar 
 ment. The genius they looked upon as the messenger 
 of truth, the real means of human progressvJL Herder 
 said that "true morality is religion under whatever 
 form it may show itself, * and he rejected all theological 
 discussion as useless. Kant said they are always in 
 the service of God whose actions are moral, and that 
 absolutely impossible to serve God otherwise. 1 
 Curly le took up this thought, making the Moral Sense 
 the center of man s life, and the link which connects 
 him with God. He refused any attempt to explain mind, 
 but looked to nature as its representative and symbol. 
 He saw life and law everywhere present, und said all 
 things make on us an identical impression when 
 rightly seen. This is true because of the absolute unity 
 of things, .because there is but One Mind. He made 
 self-renunciation his first moral doctrine, and action ac- 
 
 i Ilillrbranu s Guruum Thought. 
 
AS A THINKER. 283 
 
 cording to God s laws the second. He saw in man the 
 epitome of nature ; and he strenuously maintained the 
 theory of the unity of the mind, that all its powers must 
 work in common. He saw in the believing man the true 
 worker, and he measured the intellect by the moral life. 1 
 The universe is to him " but one vast symbol of God," 
 while " through every star, through every grass-blade, 
 and most through every living soul, the glory of a pres 
 ent God beams." All religions, he asserts, are but sym 
 bols and outward expressions of infinite truths within. 
 " The one end, essence, and use of all religion, past, 
 present, and to come, is this only ; to keep the moral 
 conscience, or inner light, of ours alive and shining. .!/ 
 Hence, historic religions lost their "old value to him, as 
 the^Klii to Lessing ; and this spirit was communicated 
 to Emerson> Indeed, with this whole movement, rep\ 
 resented by all the great Germans from Lessing to 
 Novalis, and by Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Carlyle in 
 England, Emerson has been in sympathy. Those ideas 
 which became to them the universal truths lying at the 
 basis of all thinking, he has accepted in the same spirit./ 
 
 His readings of the Oriental mystics, especially those 
 of Persia and India, have had their effect on Emerson s 
 writings. He has found there a wide affinity with his 
 own speculations, and a presentation of all his leading 
 ideas. The intensity with which these ideas are there 
 presented, the imaginative power of these writings, and 
 the absoluteness of the soul-trust which they indicate, 
 has attracted and deeply interested him. 
 
 The teachings of his predecessors Emerson has ac- \ 
 cepted rather as the basis for a social and moral refor 
 mation of life than as % philosophy. The philosophy 
 has been incidental, merely a ground-work of faith and 
 conviction, not a speculative system. He has presented 
 a theosophy rather than a philosophy in his writings, a 
 spiritual rather than an intellectual theory of the uni- , 
 verse. For this reason, doubtless, his real place in the < 
 stream of philosophic speculation has so often been mis 
 taken. Yet that place is a clearly defined one; and a 
 
 1 Crozier s Religion of the Future. 
 

 284 EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 comparison of his theories with those of the men already 
 named, will show how intimate his relations with them. 
 He has given expression to his philosophic attitude by 
 saying it was his desire to put away all discussions and 
 disputes for a discovery of moral laws. In a conversa 
 tion with Brownson, he once said, " I find myself in the 
 midst of a truth which I do not understand. I do not 
 / find that any one understands it. I only wish to make 
 a clean transcript of my own mind." That is, he saw no 
 hope of arriving at the truth, by any methods of reason 
 ing, but would take instead that transcript of truth 
 given to the mind by intuition. His attitude towards 
 all dialectical and scientific methods he well expressed 
 when he said, " A person seeking truth is like a man 
 going out in a dark night with a lantern in search of 
 something." So poor does he find the lantern of the 
 understanding in comparison with the sun of intuition ! 
 It is idle, useless, to seek truth, to go in search for it ; 
 as it is a revelation, an act of God s grace in the soul. 
 The outward world, helpful as it is, can teach us noth 
 ing but through its affinity to what is given in us by the 
 Infinite -Reason ; all the methods of understanding and 
 induction are like a lantern in a dark night. Even in 
 his study of nature, and in his use of the conclusions of 
 science, he constantly indicates his affinity of thought to 
 Boehme and kichelling. In his pages will not be found 
 the science of either as science ; but their method of 
 looking at nature, their acceptance of it as an expression 
 of the divine, and their theory of its exact correspond 
 ence to the moral and spiritual world, will be found 
 everywhere through his writings. 
 
 Emerson is not only an idealist, but a mystic. Indi 
 vidual as his nrysticism may be in many of its features, 
 he is only to be understood when placed in the com 
 pany of the great mystics of all ages, and his teachings 
 compared with theirs. That he is something more than 
 a mystic does not make this statement any the less true. 
 He is not a skeptic or a rationalist, in the philosophic 
 sense ; and he has no real affinity with either of these 
 schools of thought. His mysticism has broken away 
 
AS A THINKER. 205 
 
 from all sectarian and historic limits, arid accepted the 
 ground of universal religion. It has planted itself 
 deeply and strongly on an ethical basis, has rejected 
 mere feeling, and has displayed great practical wisdom. 
 As a result, his mysticism is more in sympathy with 
 the tendencies of modern life than that of any of his 
 predecessors. Yet the tendencies and sympathies of 
 his mind are clearly shown by his interest in the occult, 
 and in the significance he attaches to dreams. 1 As a 
 genuine mystic, he dwells on the prophetic powers of 
 the soul ; and though he repudiates modern spiritualism, 
 he maintains with continued emphasis his faith in the 
 mind s supersensuous functions. 
 
 NOTE. Essential aid to the comprehension of Emerson s writings 
 will be found in Vaughan s Hours with the Mystics and Hunt s Essay 
 on Pantheism. Though neither of these authors fully und -rsfand.s or 
 appreciates his subject, yet each furnishes valuable aid to the general 
 student of the history of opinions. The careful reader of these books 
 will not longer doubt where Emerson belongs as a thinker. Ullmann s 
 Reformers before the Reformation furnishes valuable aid to an under 
 standing of the German mystics; while Professor Lasson, in Ueberweg s 
 History of Philosophy, presents an able summary of the speculations 
 of Eckhart and his successors. Overtoil s William Law, Nonjuror and 
 Mystic, has some good chapters on mysticism, and a fair account of 
 Boehme. Tulloch s work on The Cambridge Platonists, being the 
 second volume of his Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in 
 England in the Seventeenth Century, will give a few hints of Emer 
 son s debt to the Elizabethan thinkers. Hillebrand s Lectures on Ger 
 man Thought indicate to how large an extent many of Emerson s 
 ideas were common property among the German writers of the time of 
 Lessing and Goethe. Crozie*r s Religion of the Future gives the best 
 statement yet made of Emerson s relations to Carlyle. Eucken s 
 Fundamental Concepts of Modern Philosophic Thought traces the ori 
 gin and development and present value of several of those ideas 
 Emerson has made fundamental in his philosophy. Among other 
 works consulted in the writing of this chapter, are the essays of Mar- 
 tineau and Shairp, Thompson s lectures on Plato, and the histories of 
 philosophy by Bowen, Lewes, Maurice, Schwegler, Morell, Ueberweg, 
 and Chalybaus. 
 
 1 See essay on Deinonology in North American Review for March, 
 1877. 
 
286 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 XX. 
 
 UNIVERSAL SPIRIT. 
 
 THCKHART says that God u has the substance of all 
 -J-^ creatures in himself," that u he is a Being who 
 has all being in himself," and that " all things are in 
 God and all things are God." This is the fundamental 
 postulate alike of transcendentalism and mysticism. 
 Emerson accepts it by saying there is in all things a 
 unity so supreme that the ultimate fact we reach, " on 
 every topic, is the resolution of all into the ever- 
 blessed One." 1 " Under all this running sea of cir 
 cumstance, whose waters ebb and flow with perfect bal 
 ance, lies the aboriginal abyss of real Being. Essence, 
 or God, is not a relation, or a part, but the whole. 
 Being is the vast affirmative, excluding negation, self- 
 balanced, and swallowing up all relations, parts, and 
 times within itself." 2 
 
 This is his fundamental proposition, the existence of 
 Being, or God, as the substans, me, or essence of -"all 
 things. He makes Being 1 an absolute unity, outside of 
 which nothing whatever exists. \jod is "All JnjklL) All 
 things proceed irom this center, and can never depart 
 from their relations to it. All things are manifesta 
 tions or revelations of God; all help to show forth his 
 nature. "God is the all-fair," he says. He is more 
 than v that ; " Truth, goodness, and beauty are but dif 
 ferent faces xxf the sarae_J\ II." 8 -I .God is, and all things 
 are but shadows of him." 4 
 
 God is the life in all things, not only, but in each 
 thing he is present with all his attributes; "so that all 
 the laws of nature may be read in each fact." " The 
 
 1 Essays, first series, p. 61. 2 Ibid., p. 108. 
 
 3 Miscellanies, p. 22. 4 Essays, first series, p. 281. 
 
UNIVERSAL SPIRIT. 287 
 
 true doctrine of omnipresence is, that jGfo^ re-appen.ra 
 with all L.LS parts in every moss and cobweb. The 
 value of the universe contrives to throw itself into 
 every point." l When we try to define God, however, 
 we can not ; he is beyond all definition, because he 
 includes all definitions. " Of that ineffable essence 
 which we call Spirit, says Emerson, he that thinks most 
 will say least." 2 
 
 " We can foresee God in the coarse, and, as it were, distant 
 pi; enomena of matter ; but when we try to define and describe 
 himself, both language and thought desert us, and we are as help 
 less as fools and savages. That essence refuses to be recorded in 
 propositions ; but when man has worshiped him intellectually, the 
 noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of God. 
 It is the organ through which the universal spirit speaks to the 
 individual, and strives to lead back the individual to it." 3 
 
 In Wood-notes he has written these words concerning 
 the pervasive and immanent character of the Universal 
 Spirit : 
 
 " Thou meetest him by centuries, 
 
 And lo ! he passes like the breeze ; 
 
 Thou seek st in globe and galaxy, 
 
 He hides in pure transparency ; 
 
 Thou askest in fountains and in fires, 
 > He is the essence that inquires. 
 
 He is the axis of the star ; 
 
 He is the sparkle of the spar ; 
 
 He is the heart of every creature ; 
 
 He is the meaning of each feature ; 
 
 And his mind is the sky, 
 
 Than all it holds more deep, more high." 
 
 Emerson f.p.a.p.hqs that Qn r l is t,V>P substance of the 
 jiyjerse, the material out of which all things are/ formed. 
 and the life which animates all which exists. XNot only 
 the substance of the universe, so that all things whatso 
 ever partake of his nature and being, but also the foun 
 tain in man, that we call the soul. He says with Fichte, 
 " that all existence in time has its root in a higher exis 
 tence above time ; that, strictly speaking, there is but 
 
 i Ibid., p. 91. 2 Miscellanies, p. 59. 3 ibid., p. 60. 
 
288 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 one life, one animating power, one living reason ; and 
 that the greatest of errors, and the true ground of all 
 error, is the delusion of the individual that he can exist, 
 live, think, and act of himself. The first of thought 
 and being, the starting-point and substance, at once 
 the subject and object of speculation, is the one, true, 
 and absolutely self-existent Being, the God whom 
 all hearts seek. And that each individual moment of 
 man s life on earth is contained within the development 
 of the one original divine life ; that whatever meets the 
 view, and seems beyond that one life, is not beyond it, 
 but within it ; that to see tilings truly, means to _.ee 
 them only in and through the one original life ; that the 
 light and life of religion, light and life of God, is the 
 only true light and life, the only science and the only 
 virtue, 1 all this is as true to Emerson as to Fichle. 
 
 Though Spirit refuses to be recorded in propositions, 
 yet it is not merely as a universal essence that we are 
 to regard it. kt Self-existence is the attribute of the 
 Supreme Cause," 2 and by that Emerson means much 
 the same that other idealists express by the word per 
 sonality. Upon those who are unnecessarily afraid <;f 
 defining God, he urges a disregard of a seeming coiiMst- 
 ency with their own words, and that they permit the 
 soul to speak out its own deep sentiments of affection 
 and trust. "In your metaphysics you have denied per 
 sonality to the Deity ; yet when the devout motions of 
 the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they 
 should clothe God with shape and color." 3 The theory 
 is nothing, but it is every thing to yield the soul su 
 premely to the love of God. We are to accept God 
 as he appears in that moment of our union with him, 
 nothing questioning, nothing doubting. As he appears 
 then a person, a spirit communing with spirit, so we 
 are to accept him. 
 
 To limit Emerson s idea of the Infinite Spirit to what 
 he has said directly about God, would be to do him great 
 injustice. His idea of God is presupposed in his idea 
 
 1 Flint s Philosophy of History, vol. i. p. 414, 
 
 2 Essays, first series, p. 61. 8 Ibid., p 50. 
 
UNIVERSAL SPIRIT. 289 
 
 of the soul, and must be studied in conjunction with 
 it. The conception he entertains of the soul necessi- j 
 tates belief in God as a supreme intelligent Existence, i 
 A thinking soul can not hold communion with an un-. v 
 thinking essence. A self-reliant soul can not be mergedft 
 in an ocean of being, and it can find its power only inj^ 
 perfect harmony with a self-reliant personality like its 
 own. Emerson s attitude is not that of the theologian 
 and philosopher, but that of the poet, the seer, and the 
 worshiper. God is so near to his soul, and so dear to 
 his thought, he is so absorbed in the joy of that blessed 
 union, he forgets to ask any questions. Strangers study 
 each other critically ; but friends, bound heart to heart, 
 forget all matters of clothing and complexion. He as 
 sumes Go.d to exist, stops not to define, but pushes on 
 to a realization of those relations in which man stands 
 to him. HP 1nr>Vft at every subject, studiftft-a^ery ofyjact. 
 in the light of its relations to God ; but to name God 
 wherever lie sees him would be an endless task. This 
 constant naming of an inexhaustible idea and reality 
 would only serve to lower it ; but in refusing to name 
 it, he all the more surely expresses its protean nature 
 and its constant presence. His absorbing belief in the 
 reality of God, and his acceptance of that belief as 
 vitally necessary to the health of the mind, he has 
 earnestly expressed in one of his more recent essays. 
 His faith in the self-sufficingness of the laws of God, and 
 his refusal to accept them as limited by any historical 
 forms, are as stoutly as ever asserted in the same words. 
 
 k Unlovely, he says, nay, frightful, is the solitude of the soul 
 which is without God in the world. To wander all day in the sun 
 light among the tribes of animals, unrelated to any thing better; to 
 behold the horse, cow, and bird, and to foresee an equal and speedy . 
 end to him and them, no ; the bird, as it hurried by with its bold 
 and perfect flight, would disclaim his sympathy, and declare him an 
 outcast. To see men pursuing in faith their varied action, warm 
 hearted, providing for their children, loving their friends, performing 
 their proinistis, what are they to this chill, houseless, fatherless, 
 jlimle- s Cain, the man who hears only the sound of his own foot 
 step;; in God s resplendent creation? To him, it is no creation ; to 
 him, these fair creatures are hapless specters ; he knows not what 
 
290 KALPH WALDO EMEKSON. 
 
 to make of it ; to him, heaven and earth have lost their beautv 
 How gloomy is the day, and upon yonder shining pond, what mel 
 ancholy light ! I can not keep the sun in heaven, if you take away 
 the purpose that animates him. The ball, indeed, is there ; but his 
 power to cheer, to illuminate the heart as well as the atmosphere, 
 is gone for ever. It is a lamp-wick for meanest uses. The words, 
 great, venerable, have lost their meaning ; every thought loses all 
 its depth, and has become mere surface. 
 
 " But religion has an object. It does not grow thin or robust 
 with the health of the votary. The object of adoration remains for 
 ever unhurt and identical. We are in transition from the worship 
 of the fathers which enshrined the law in a private and personal his 
 tory to a worship which recognizes the true eternity of the law, its 
 presence to you and me, its equal energy in what is called brute- 
 nature as in what is called sacred history. The next age will be 
 hold God in the ethical laws, as mankind begins to see them in 
 this age, self-equal, self-executing, instantaneous, and self-affirmed, 
 needing no voucher, no prophet, and no miracle besides their own 
 irresistibility, and will regard natural history, private fortunes, 
 and politics, not for themselves, as we have done, but as illustra 
 tions of those laws, of that beatitude and love. Nature is too thin 
 a screen : the glory of the One breaks in everywhere." l 
 
 He accepts the truth there is in both theism and 
 pantheism, recognizing alike the absolute unity and 
 the endless diversity of the manifestation. The panthe 
 ism of the theologians and philosophers, however, never 
 had an existence as an historical faith ; and he has been 
 too earnest a believer to accept any thing so shadowy 
 and unreal. He has avoided alike the anthropomor 
 phism of the theistic faiths ; and the failure to recognize 
 a transcendent unity, which has been the defect of the 
 pantheistic theories. Theodore Parker long ago clearly 
 denned Emerson s position, showing him not to have 
 been at any time a pantheist, as that word is used by 
 theologians. 
 
 "He has an absolute confidence in God. lie has been foolishly 
 accused of pantheism, which sinks God in nature ; but no man is 
 further fronxi.t. He never sinks God in man ; he does not stop with 
 the law, in matter or morals, but goes to the Law-giver ; yet proba 
 bly it would not be so easy for him to give his definition of God, 
 as it would be for most graduates at Andover or Cambridge. 
 With his confidence in God he looks things fairly in the face, and 
 never dodges, never fears. Toil, sorrow, pain, these are things 
 
 l The Unitarian Review, January, 1880 ; essay on The Preacher. 
 
UNIVERSAL SPIRIT. 2Dl 
 
 wliich it is impious to fear. Boldly he faces every fact, never re 
 treating behind an institution or a great man. In God his trust is 
 complete; with the severest scrutiny he joins the highest rever 
 ence." 1 
 
 Emerson ignores those sharp distinctions and defini 
 tions which would -have saved him from the charge of 
 pantheism, He really holds to " the sublime creed, that 
 the world is not the product of manifold power, but of 
 one will, of one mind ; and that one mind is everywhere 
 active, in each ray of the star, in each wavelet of the 
 pool; and whatever opposes that will is everywhere 
 balked and baffled, because things are made so, and not 
 otherwise." 2 He will always doubtless be open to the 
 charge of pantheism, because, though he maintains so 
 persistently that the world is the product of one will 
 and one mind, yet he so emphasizes the unity of nature 
 and man with God as to seem to blot out all distinc 
 tions. He sometimes says that man becomes God hx 
 his TT)Qpjprtg "f fiftsflalflp. iTif.nrj|inn. Such phraseology "is 
 undoubtedly pantheistic; but it is poetical, not to be 
 read literally* When it is read in the light of his clear 
 judgment and sound common sense, and of his clear 
 intellectual perceptions, it will be found susceptible of 
 another interpretation. He is a theist of the school of 
 Goethe, Carlyle, F. W. Newman, and Theodore Parker ; 
 a mystic who accepts devoutly the .theism of intuition, 
 \3fl wk n fi T1fla fr n ^ ft living-reality JtMn his own^oul. 
 
 If a pantheist is one who asserts the absolute unity 
 o matter and mind, then Emerson is a pantheist. He 
 rejects that sharp distinction between matter and mind, 
 good and evil, which has sometimes been accepted as 
 the characteristic of theism. Should this definition be 
 maintained, Emerson could not by any possibility be 
 called a theist. He holds to the doctrine of the one 
 substance as strongly as Spinoza did. Does he also as 
 sert that there is but one thinker, one self-acting agent ? 
 If he does, then is he a pantheist. He certainly would 
 seem to do so, for what else does he mean by his doc- 
 
 i Massachusetts Quarterly Renew. 2 Miscellanies, p. ]20 
 
292 RALPH WALDO EMERSOX. 
 
 trine of the Over-soul? He regards the mind of man 
 as a part of the Infinite Mind, but he asserts for man 
 moral freedom. He also strongly declares that each 
 mind is different from every other mind, 1 and he teach 
 es the individuality of the soul in a very positive man 
 ner. In thus maintaining the freedom and uniqueness 
 of the individual soul, he makes himself a theist. 
 
 1 Essays, first series, pp. 40, 69. 
 
NATURE. 293 
 
 XXI. 
 
 NATURE. 
 
 THE law of contraries, as expressed by Plato and his 
 successors, was revived by Eckhart and Boehine ; 
 and it became an important element in the nature-phi 
 losophy of Schelling and Goethe. With Boehme, 
 
 "These contraries are his trade-winds, whereby he voyages to 
 and fro, and traverses with such facility the whole system of things. 
 He teaches that the Divine unity, in its manifestation, or self-real 
 ization, parts into two principles, variously called light and dark 
 ness, joy and sorrow, fire and light, wrath and love, good and evil. 
 Without what is termed the darkness and the fire, there would be 
 no love and light. Evil is necessary to manifest good. Xot that 
 every thing is created by God for evil. In every thing is both good 
 and evil ; the predominance decides its use and destiny." l 
 
 This idea occupied a. prominent place in the specu 
 lations of Kant, Schelling, Goethe, and in all the Ger 
 man thought of their day. 
 
 " The scientific investigation of nature showed a particular bias 
 during this period to the adoption of a duality of forces as domi 
 nant there: In mechanics, Kant had given a theory of the anti 
 thesis of attraction and repulsion ; in chemistry, the phenomena of 
 electricity, abstractly conceived as positive and negative, were 
 assimilated to magnetism ; in physiology, there was the antagonism 
 of irritability and sensibility, etc. As against these dualities, 
 Schelling passed forward to the unity of all opposites, of all 
 dualities, not the abstract unity, but to the concrete ideality, the 
 harmonious concert and co-operation of the whole heterogeneous 
 variety. The world is the actuose unity of a positive and negative 
 principle, and those two opposing forces, in conflict or coalition, 
 lead to the idea of a world-organizing, world-systematizir. - princi 
 ple, the soul of the universe." 2 
 
 1 Vau.fljhan a Hours with tho Mystics, vol. ii. p. 109. 
 
 2 Sclnvegler s History of Philosophy, p. 290. 
 
294 RALPH WALDO EMERSOX. 
 
 Schelling saw in mind andLgflatter, simply the polar 
 
 Absolute being truly 
 
 seen only at the indifference point of the two poles. 
 The magnet became with him, as with Goethe and 
 malny others, the symbol of this unity of nature and 
 soul in the Universal Spirit. In mind and matter, sub 
 ject and object, is the same substance, the same life, 
 the same identical power ; but one is positive, the other 
 negative. All things manifest this tendency ; each 
 thing has its positive and its negative manifestation^, 
 This is a universal law., thp, first hy\y expressed Jyyjthe^ 
 "Oniversal Spirit in its creative development. 
 "* This theory occupies an importanTpTace in Emerson s 
 philosophy. JVLind is also with him the positive, matter 
 the negative,~cxiiression ot tiio Universal {Spirit, or the 
 
 __ " g9 " "^ 7 T^ 
 
 solute Substance; and this polarity is essential to 
 itsjnamfestation. 11(3 sees in mind and matter, subject 
 and object, not "unlike things, but the 
 
 itK 
 
 the same absolute rrailitK As an essential thing in 
 itself nature has no existence, but it is the negative 
 pvpqqi rm of Universal IMind. " Eyerj_ thing in 
 nature, -says Emerson, is bipolar, or has a positive and 
 negative pole. There is a male and female, a spirit 
 and a fact, a north and a south. Spirit is the positive, 
 the event is the negative. Will is the north, action 
 the south, pole." l " Whilst the world is thus dual, he 
 says, so is every one of its parts. The entire system 
 of things gets represented in every particle. There is 
 somewhat tliat resembles the ebb and flow of the sea, 
 day and night, man and woman, in a single needle of 
 the pine, in a kernel of corn, in each individual of 
 every animal tribe." 2 This polarity appears as motion 
 and rest, 3 so that nature is one stuff with two ends ; or 
 as nature and thought in perpetual tilt and balance. 4 
 In man it is expressed as a double consciousness, as a 
 private and public nature whose interests are not the 
 same. 5 
 
 1 Essays, second series, p. 98. 2 Essays, first series, pp. 80, 87. 
 
 8 Essays, second series, pp. 175, 176. 4 Conduct of Life, p. 30. 
 6 Ibid. , p. 40. 
 
NATURE. 295 
 
 As nature and thought are the magnetic poles of the 
 TJrp vp/rsn.1 Miml. n.s both inhprn in and are nothing 
 apart from that Central Life they manifest, it follows 
 ,-they exactly correspond to each other. Tkoy rpflppj-, 
 \fl.m] rnTprprpt, ^q^h Hie other. ^They are identical in 
 Tin/hire, i rlp.ntip.n.1 in their laws, identical in the impres- 
 sion they make, simply because each is the Universal 
 Spirit in its positive or negative form. It is the same 
 magnetism, .but different only in appearing at the 
 opposite ends of the magnet. This view of mind and 
 matter leads to the doctrine of identity, which in one 
 form or another is a cardinal one with , all the idealists 
 and mystics., Even so orthodox a mystic as William 
 Law says, " Body and Spirit are not two separate, 
 independent things, but are necessary to each other, 
 and are only the inward and outward conditions of 
 one and the same being." l The doctrine of identity 
 Emerson expresses in these words : " A perfect parallel 
 ism exists between nature and the laws of thought." 2 
 This relation between matter and mind, he says, is not 
 a fancied one, but stands in the will of God ; 3 so that 
 " the laws of .the moral nature answer to those of 
 matter as face to face in a glass." 4 ." Intellect and 
 morals appear only the material forces 011 a higher 
 plane. The- laws of material nature run up into the 
 invisible world of the mind," and in those laws we find 
 a key to. the facts of human consciousness. 5 Identifr^X 
 of nature and man, matter and mind, object and sub- \ 
 ject, gives the basis and the means of knowledge. 
 " Things are so strictly related, that from one object 
 the parts and properties of any other may be pre 
 dicted." 6 Man and nature are so much alike, that man 
 can know naturp by what it is in \ himself. " Man car 
 ries the world in his head, the whole astronomy and 
 chemistry suspended in a thought. Because the his 
 tory of nature is charactered in his brain, therefore is J 
 he the jirophet and discoverer of her secrets." 7 Man 
 
 1 Spirit of Love. 2 Letters and Social Aims, p. 7. 
 
 3 Ibid., pp. 8, 9. 4 Nature, pp. 30, 31. 
 
 5 Perpetual Forces, p. 273. 6 Essays, second series, p. 177. 
 7 Ibid., p. 178. 
 
296 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 can understand the objective world, only because he 
 is of like nature with it. The maxim of Plotinus, 
 Boehme, and Schelling, that " like can be known only 
 by like," is fully accepted by Emerson. 
 
 " The possibility of interpretation, he says, lies in the identity of 
 the observer with the observed. Each material thing has its celes 
 tial side; has its translation, through humanity, into the spiritual 
 and necessary sphere, where it plays a part as indestructible as any 
 other." Man "is not representative, but participant. Like caii 
 only be known by like. The reason why he knows about them 155, 
 that he is of them ; he has just come out of nature, or from being a 
 part of that thing. Animated chlorine knows of chlorine, and in 
 carnate zinc, of zinc. Their quality makes his career; and he can 
 variously publish their virtues, because they compose him. Man, 
 made of the dust of the world, does not forget his origin ; and all 
 -that is yet inanimate will one day speak and reason." l 
 
 The material world Emerson regards as precipitated 
 ^ mind, while Nature is a symbol ot the AL solntfiT 1\ fat 
 ter is undeveloped mind. He says " that which once 
 existed in intellect as pure law, has now taken body as 
 Nature. It existed in the mind in solution ; now, it has 
 I been precipitated ; and the bright sediment is the 
 
 J world . " 2 >&L-J&we Em eraojnseems to have been 
 affe ctecl by the theory of I^ytTnus^ wIior says creatjpri 
 resulted from a tail on the part of pure souls, whose 
 sense-desires Lhey put Coi lli as nature. IT he was at all 
 
 f affected by that theory, however, it was only tempo 
 rarily. He has regarded matter as the first scale, or 
 sphere, of being. From it life rises in successive forms 
 of development, through mind, to complete union with 
 the Universal Spirit. How nature came to exist he 
 seems not to have attempted to solve. He appears to 
 entertain the opinion of many .idealists, that self-mani 
 festation is a necessity of the Absolute. The process of 
 the return of matter, the lowest form of that manifesta 
 tion, back into its original, he explains by the theory of 
 continuous self-development. " Every natural fact, he 
 says, is an emanation. Not the cause, but an ever novel 
 effect, nature descends always from above. Tt is un- 
 
 1 Representative Men, p. 17. 2 Miscellanies, p. 18!>. 
 
NATURE. 297 
 
 broken obedience. The beauty of these fair objects is 
 imparted into them from a metaphysical and eternal 
 spring. In all animal and vegetable forms, the physiol 
 ogist concedes that no chemistry, no mechanics, can ac 
 count for the facts ; but a mysterious principle of life 
 must be assumed, which not only inhabits the organ, 
 but makes the organ." l Nature is alive with God^fluid \ 
 mid YD 1 a* 1 " 1 ** w 1 ^ h 1 pT-pgp n pQ As God sees nature, it 
 is " a transparent law, not a mass of facts," 2 a method * 
 which laws are revealed to the soul and expressed by^ 
 it. -v^atumis a revelation to mini of that Universal Soul 
 in which he belongs, of which .he is a part ; and it serves j^ 
 also to reveal to him the laws of his own nature. " The 
 genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, 
 the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, 
 the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are 
 demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self- 
 relying, soul." 3 Nature was once thought, and towards 
 thought it always tends. " The world is mind precipi 
 tated, and thc-Yolutile essence is for ever escaping again 
 into the state of free thought. Hence the virtue and 
 pungency of the influence on the mind, of natural ob 
 jects, whether inorganic or organized. Man imprisoned, 
 man crystallized, man- vegetative, speaks to man imper 
 sonated." 4 " Man is fallen ; nature is erect, and serves 
 as a differential thermometer, detecting the presence or 
 absence of the divine sentiment in man." 5 \ 
 
 Mature is growing, ever proceeding towards ^spirit. J 
 " We can point nowhere to any thing final, but tendency 1 
 appears on all hands ; planet, system, constellation, total \ 
 nature is growing like a field of maize in July, is be 
 coming somewhat else, is in rapid metamorphosis. The 
 eiubryo does not x more strive to be man than yonder 
 burr of light we call a nebula tends to be a ring, a 
 comet, a globe, and a parent of new suns." 6 The in 
 herent, quickening life of Nature, natura naturans, is 
 drawing all things towards their perfect realization of 
 
 1 Miscellanies, p. 191. 2 Essays, first series, p. 274. 
 
 8 Ibid., p. G2. 4 Essays, second series, p. 190. 
 
 6 Ibid., p. 174. o Miscellanies, p. 194. 
 
298 EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 themselves in spirit. This process of evolution Emerson 
 thus describes : 
 
 " It publishes itself in creatures, reaching from particles to spicula, 
 through transformation on transformation to the highest symme 
 tries, arriving at consummate results without a shock or a leap. A 
 little heat, that is, a little motion, is all that differences the bald, 
 dazzling white, and deadly cold poles of the earth from the prolific 
 tropical climates. All changes pass without violence, by reason of 
 the two cardinal conditions of boundless space and boundless time. 
 . . . How far off is the trilobite, how far the quadruped I how in 
 conceivably remote is man ! All duly arrive, and then race af tei 
 race of men. It is a long way from granite to oyster; farther yet 
 to Plato, and the preaching of the immortality of the soul. Yet all 
 must come, as surely as the first atom has two sides." 1 
 
 Nature is in a constant process of development, grow- 
 in g m o re and more perfect" Its rocks are becoming vege- 
 table ; its vegetables, animal ; its animals, man. Man 
 has come up through every form of life below him, v^t 
 rexains his sympathies with every form, and reprodiicesih 
 his own development every phase of life below him. In 
 his essay on Circles, and elsewhere, Emerson illustrates 
 the perpetual law of development through the law of 
 contraries, or through the mutual conflicts of the various 
 forces of the world. He finds there are no fixtures in 
 nature, that permanence is but a word of degrees, and 
 that every ultimate fact is but the first of a new series. 
 In the essay on the Sovereignty of Ethics, he shows 
 how the Universal Spirit works throughout nature to 
 secure what is right. In securing the right a final vic 
 tory in every struggle, progress is secured. His theory 
 is outlined in these paragraphs : 
 
 " Tis in the stomach of plants that development begins, and 
 ends in the circles of the universe. Tis a long scale from the go 
 rilla to the gentleman, from the gorilla to Vlato, K ewton, Shak- 
 spere, to the sanctities of religion, the refinements of legislation, 
 the summits of science, art, and poetry. The beginnings are slow 
 and infirm, but tis an always accelerated march. The geologic 
 world is chronicled by the growing ripeness of the strata from lower 
 to higher, as it becomes the abode of more highly organized plants 
 and animals. The civil history of men might be traced by the suc 
 cessive meliorations as marked in higher moral generalizations, 
 
 >, -econd series, p. 174. 
 
NATURE. 299 
 
 virtue meaning physical courage, then chastity and temperance, then 
 justice and love ; bargains of kings with peoples of certain rights 
 to certain classes, then of rights to masses ; then at last came the 
 day when, as the historians rightly tell, the heroes of the world 
 were electrified by the proclamation that all men are born free and 
 equal. 
 
 " Every truth leads in another. The bud extrudes the old leaf, 
 and every truth brings that which will supplant it. ... In the 
 pre-adamite, Nature bred valor only; by and by she gets on to man, 
 and adds tenderness , and thus raises virtue piecemeal. 
 
 " When we trace from the beginning, that ferocity has uses, 
 only so are the conditions of the then world met ; and these mon 
 sters are the scavengers, executioners, diggers, pioneers, and fertil 
 izers, destroying what is more destructive than they, and making- 
 better life possible. We see the steady aim of Benefit in view from 
 the first. Melioration is the law. The cruelest foe is a masked 
 benefactor. .The wars, which make history so dreary, have served 
 the cause of truth and virtue. There is always an instinctive sense 
 of right, aiTvQbscure idea^which animates either party, and which 
 in long periods vindicates itself at last. Thus a sublime confidence 
 is fed at the bottom of the heart, that, in spite of appearances, in 
 spite of malignity and blind self-interest, living for the moment, 
 an eternal, beneficent necessity is always bringing things right; 
 and, though w r e should fold our arms, which we can not do ; for 
 our duty requires us to be the very hands of this guiding sentiment, 
 and work in the present moment, the evils we suffer will at last 
 end themselves through the incessant opposition of Nature to every 
 thixig hurtful." 
 
 In speaking of the correlation of forces, and other laws 
 of nature, he even more explicitly states the method of 
 this development. 
 
 " These attempts of latest science are a slow showing of particu 
 lars of the broad and older assertion of philosophers, that each new 
 fact was only a variety under the same old law, which Newton ex 
 pressed when he said, The world was made at one cast. It is 
 only a particular instance of unity that Button and the physiologists 
 taught, when they showed that Nature, in the creation of all her an 
 imal forms, from the lowest and oldest fossil up to mammals and 
 man, has worked on one plan, from which she has never swerved. 
 Aw tliis unity exists in the organization of insect, beast, bird, still 
 ascending to man, and from the lowest types of man to the highest, 
 so it does not less declare itself in the spirit or intelligence of the 
 brute. In ignorant ages it was common to vaunt the human supe 
 riority by- underrating the instinct of other animals. Better dis 
 cernment finds that the only difference is of less and more. Ex 
 periment shows the dog to reason as the hunter does ; and all the 
 animals show the same good sense in their humble walk that man, 
 
300 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 who is their enemy or friend, does ; and if it be in smaller measure, 
 yet it is not damaged, as his is often, by freak and folly. ISt. Pierre 
 says of animals, that a moral sentiment seems to have determined 
 their physical organizations. This unity of design in the creation 
 this unity of thought is the key to all science. There is a 
 kind of latent omniscience, not only in every man, but in every 
 particle; that convertibility which we see in plants, whereby the 
 same bud becomes a leaf, bract, sepal, flower, seed, as the need is, 
 so that repairs are made, and when one part is wounded the defi 
 ciency is supplied by another. This self-help and self-creation 
 proceed from the same power which works in the feeblest and 
 meanest structures, by the same design in a lobster, or in a worm, 
 as a wise man would if imprisoned in that low form. It is the 
 effort of God, the Supreme Intellect, in the extremest boundary of 
 his universe ; and long before Newton, a broader philosophy as 
 serted the perfect agreement between matter and mind, and affirmed 
 that there is nothing on earth" which is not in the heavens in a heav 
 enly form, and nothing in the heavens which is not on earth in an 
 earthly form ; their expression of that mystery in which all poetry 
 and all language is founded, that we are able to find symbols of 
 our sentiments and thoughts in the objects of nature ; that the 
 whole of nature agrees with the W 7 holc of thought." l 
 
 This is Schilling s idea, that the Absolute is to be 
 completely perceived in nature. 2 In nature he yaw a 
 life-power constantly at work, in a universal process of 
 self-evolution. In the rock and the pure soul is the 
 same life and the same life-development. This life- 
 power continuously rises from its lowest level in mat 
 ter, through successive grades or stages or scales of 
 being, to self-consciousness in man. In matter there is 
 to be found only spirit dormant, the possibility of self- 
 development. All higher forms manifest in nature 
 have come from matter by this life-process ; and man is 
 only matter brought back through successive potences 
 or scales of being to reason, to freedom, and self-con 
 scious realization of the Infinite Spirit. As we rise 
 in the scale, of being, we come to a constantly increas 
 ing energy, to greater internal power and capacity for 
 self-guidance, and to a higher form of freedom. Mat 
 ter is subject, man as a pure soul is free. This highest 
 
 1 Newspaper report of lecture on Natural Religion, delivered in 
 Horticultural Hall, Boston, before the Free Religious Association, 
 April 4, lS(i .. 
 
 2 Schwegler s History of Philosophy. 
 
NATURE. % 301 
 
 potence shares in the life of God no more than the 
 tree does, as Eckhart says, only as it realizes itself and 
 its union with the Universal Spirit. In this whole 
 conception of nature and life Emerson shares in the 
 theories of his predecessors, especially as they have 
 been expressed by Schelling. The following brief sum 
 mary of Schilling s philosophy might almost answer as 
 an epitome of Emerson s : 
 
 " Universal unity must be the principle of all interpretation of) 
 nature. The first principle of a philosophical theory of nature is, 
 to look for polarity and dualism everywhere. On the other hand, 
 all consideration of nature must end in recognition of the absolute 
 unity of the whole, a unity, however, which is to be discerned in 
 nature only on one of its sides. Nature is, as it were, the instru 
 ment by which absolute unity eternally makes real all that has 
 been pre-formed in the absolute mind. The absolute, then, is com 
 pletely to be perceived in nature ; although the world of externality 
 produces only in series, only successively and in infinite gradation, 
 what is at once and eternally in the world of truth." 1 
 
 Emerson regards the laws working throughout nature 
 as the methods of that life-process by which the Uni 
 versal Spirit, as actualized in matter, returns into full 
 realization of itself again in spirit. The, laws of mat 
 er are really the laws cf spirit. They are the thoughts 
 aT God, the pulse-beats of his being. They are the 
 methods of the incoming of the Absolute to nature and 
 man, whereby these finite manifestations of the Uni 
 versal Spirit are being drawn up to complete develop 
 ment in harmony with God. 
 
 __m_oxals, in thought, m__e_very act of communion with 
 
 God, n*-nmP.h a.fl IT 
 
 p, 
 
 uhrir 
 
 of thn rnmp iiahirp \ _^_ ^ 
 
 life in all things, and an absolule""umty in all things, 
 law reigns everywhere with its invariable methods 
 He believes that the inflexible law of matter runs up 
 into the subtile kingdom of will and of thought ; that, if 
 our planet never loses its way through space, 
 
 a secrel^er gravitation, a secreter projection, rule not less tyran 
 nically in human history, and keep the balance of power from age 
 
 1 Schwegler s History of Philosophy, p. 21)2. 
 
302 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 to age unbroken. For, though the new element of freedom and 
 an individual has been admitted, yet the primordial atoms are pre 
 figured and pre-determined to moral issues, are in search of justice, 
 and ultimate right is done. Religion or worship is the attitude of 
 those who see this unity, intimacy, and sincerity ; who see that, 
 against all appearances, the nature of things works for truth and 
 right for ever. 
 
 " Tis a short sight to limit our faith in law r s to those of gravity, 
 of chemistry, of botany, and so forth. Those laws do not stop 
 where our eyes lose them, but push the same geometry and 
 chemistry up into the invisible plane of social and rational life, so 
 that, look where we will, in a boy s game, or in the strifes of races, 
 a perfect re-action, a perpetual judgment keeps watch and ward. 
 And this appears in a class of facts which concerns all men, within 
 and above their creeds. . . . The curve of the flight of the moth is 
 pre-ordained ; and all things go by number, rule, and weight. . . . 
 But, in the human mind, this tie of fate is made alive. The law 
 is the basis of the human mind. In us it is inspiration ; out there 
 in Nature we see its fatal strength." 1 
 
 Emerson finds that there is no chance and no 
 anarchy in the universe. 2 Even man is hooped on 
 every side by necessity, the necessity of acting accord 
 ing to the eternal laws. 3 Not even in a single case can 
 one fantastical will prevail over the law of things, or 
 in any manner derange the order of nature. 4 Law 
 demands as complete an obedience in morals as in mat 
 ter; for it is the "same fact existing as sentiment and 
 as will in the mind, whicti works in Nature as irresist 
 ible law, exerting influence over nations, intelligent 
 beings, or down in the kingdoms of brute or of chemi 
 cal atoms." 5 Piety and skepticism, he thinks, unite in 
 declaring that nothing is of us or our works ; that all is 
 of God.6 
 
 All things are under the method and t.Vm ]n\v of thp 
 Tnfim tp. Spirit. A higher law than that of our will rcfk. 
 ulates events ; for God exists, and thnre is tor us noth 
 ing but a believing love in him. Whatever we may do, 
 we can not overturn a single law ; and the only result 
 neglecting any law is that we are crippled by it. 
 
 liere is a soul at the center of nature, and over the 
 
 i Conduct of Life, pp. 190-192. Ibid., p. 287. 
 
 3 Ibid., pp. Itf, 17. 4 Ibid., p. 41. 
 
 6 Sovereignty of Ethics, p. 406. 6 Essays, second series, p. 71, 
 
NATURE. 303 
 
 .will of every- mau^an thnt noun of via on,n wrong fhfi 
 universe. It has so infused its strong enchantment into 
 nature, that we prosper when we accept its advice ; and 
 when we struggle to wound its creatures, our hands are 
 glued to our sides, or they beat our own breasts. The ! 
 whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We\ 
 need only obey." 1 Every good which comes to us is by j 
 obedience to the law of God, an obedience which wey 
 shall freely elect to accept, when we know what it is ; 
 and in it we shall find all our freedom. " The last les 
 son of life, the choral song which rises from all elements 
 and all angels, is a voluntary obedience, a necessitated 
 freedom." * 
 
 lie illustrates moral and spiritual obedience by refer 
 ence to the laws of nature. Water drowns us; but, if 
 we obey its conditions, we can float our ship on it 
 through all seas. There is no porter, he says, like grav 
 itation. There are laws of force, however ; and we can 
 not tamper with or warp them. " Tjip m,n.n must bpml 
 to the law, never the law to him." All th-e^ forces of 
 ^hprrTnaii obes"~th(nr conditions", become his 
 
 servants. Then u no force but Is Tils force; "He does 
 not possess them ; he is a pipe through which their cur 
 rents flow. If a straw be held still in the direction of 
 the ocean-current, the sea will pour through it as through 
 Gibraltar. If he should measure strength with them, 
 if he should fight the sea and the whirlwind with his 
 ship, he would snap his spars, tear his sails, and swamp 
 his bark ; but by cunningly dividing the force, tapping 
 the tempest for a little side-wind, he uses the monsters, 
 and they carry him where he would go." 8 Until the 
 other day steam was a devil to be dreaded ; but we have 
 learned its law, become obedient to it, and now it is one 
 of our best servants. Emerson finds that right drainage 
 destroys typhus, that every other pest is not less in the 
 chain of cause and effect, and may be fought off. 4 As 
 we make all material forces our servants and helpers by 
 
 i Essays, first series, p. 124. 2 Conduct of Life, p. 201) 
 
 3 Perpetual Forces, North American Review, September, 1877, p. 274, 
 * Conduct of Life, pp. 27, 28. 
 
304 RALPH WALDO EMERSON". 
 
 accepting their conditions and obeying their laws, so 
 " we arrive at virtue by taking its direction instead of 
 imposing ours." 
 
 " The forces are infinite. Every one has the might of all ; for 
 the secret of the world is that its energies are solidaires ; that they 
 work together on a system of mutual aid, all for each and each for 
 all ; that the strain made on one point bears on every arch and 
 foundation of the structure. But if you wish to avail yourself of 
 their might, and in like manner if you wish the force of the intel 
 lect and the force of the will, you must take their divine direction, 
 not they yours. Obedience alone gives the right to command. It 
 is like the village operator who taps the telegraph-wire and surprises 
 the secrets of empires as they pass to the capital. So this child of 
 the dust throws himself by obedience into the circuit of the heav 
 enly wisdom, and shares the secret of God." l 
 
 From his doctrine of universal law grows Emerson s 
 [first moral principle, that of self-renunciation.\ We- -"" p 
 torenounce all that is individual, personalTaiKr selfish, 
 and to follow the universal ends oi" liliLUre. " We" 
 can not l^uidy w,rds with nature; and if we measure 
 our individuaf^CTrces-rrgnirisTTiers, we may easily feel as 
 if we were the sport of an insuperable destiny." 2 " We 
 can not bring the heavenly powers to us ; but, if we will 
 only choose our jjbs in directions in which they travel, 
 they will undertake them with the greatest pleasure. 
 It is a peremptory rule with them, that they never go 
 out of their road." 3 But if we take their way, all is 
 strength and peace for us. By renouncing cur own will 
 and accepting theirs, we gainall the might of their 
 power, Tind till Wisdom conies in Upon us. " We need 
 only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by 
 lowly listening we shall hear the right word." 4 " There 
 is a principle which is the basis of things, which till 
 speech aims t > say, and all action to evolve, a simple, 
 quiet, undescribed, (indescribable presence, dwelling 
 very peacefully in us, our rightful lord; we are not to 
 do, but to let do ; not to work, but to be worked upon ; 
 and to this homage there is a consent of all thoughtful 
 and just men in all ages and conditions." 5 How im- 
 
 1 Perpetual Forces, p. L 7 ( .). 2 Essays, second series, p. 188. 
 
 3 Society and Solitude, p. 20. 4 Essays, lirst series, p. 1-4. 
 
 6 Conduct of Life, p. 185. 
 
NATURE. 305 
 
 perative he makes this condition of self-renunciation and 
 obedience to God may be seen when he says that the 
 true artist " must disindividualize himself, and be a man 
 of no party and no manner and no age, but one through 
 whom the soul of all men circulates, as the common air 
 through the lungs. He must work in the spirit in 
 which we conceive a prophet to speak, or an angel of 
 the Lord to act; that is, he is not to speak his own 
 words, or do his own works, or think his own thoughts ; 
 but he is to be an organ through which the universal 
 mind acts." l Not only is this the manner of. action for 
 the artist, .but for all .men in all vocations. It is the 
 method by which wisdom is to be obtained, and that by 
 which character is to be possessed. Emerson would 
 say as strongly as Epictetus does, that we are to be ab- 
 sojlutely resigned to the will of God. We are to have \ 
 Sno othe^ thought no. other wish, than to become^pgr^ 
 
 to God, accejiting his laws, cioing^iis 
 will, becoming the organs through whichhe acis^\| By / 
 reifoucino; all that is individual ancP particular, byZ. 
 
 the law ot^ God, the Uver-soui becomes our/ 
 we are~Tll aWii into the 1 rtKHiiccls of the uni- 
 
 Then all liuth op(vii& bifure us, and we 
 iiy uf pe^ce. 
 
 ^ Nature ia a perfect symbol of the spiritual ; a picture, 
 
 _tp_jthe senses and^neljjmi^r^^^hTgiJ^the^ heavenly 
 
 laws. It is an object-lesson in the truths ot the soul, 
 
 ~~and~i4 presents objectively all the realities of the Infinite. 
 
 It is, especially, a lesson in moral truths, a ifl&t.kQ4^of 
 
 ^discipline to the soul, ut leads us to freedom through 
 
 obedien, and to know that we can come to the highest 
 
 seli-realization only as we become the organs of the 
 
 Universal Spirit. 
 
 Emerson has been as constant an observer of nature 
 as Tyndall or Darwin, but his method of interpretation 
 has been that of Schelling and Wordsworth. The value 
 of investigation he fully realizes, and he makes no mis 
 takes in his own use of scientific facts. To one who 
 
 1 Society and Solitude, p. 43. 
 
30G RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 spoke to him of the help received from his pages, he 
 gave this statement of his own method : 
 
 " The fields and forests, the life of plants and animals, and the 
 teeming industries of men, on every hand, are open to the vision of 
 us all. These have been my teachers. You are free to gather 
 from the original sources as well as I. What is needed by students 
 is the habit of original investigation, and the courage to write down 
 personal thoughts and observations." 
 
 He has seen in the study of nature a corrective to the 
 speculations of the mind, and his interest in this study 
 has grown largely out of his regarding the laws of na 
 ture as really laws of the spiritual world. Elizabeth P. 
 Peabody reports that in one of his lectures in Boston, 
 in 1860, he said, " If you wi^h to understand intellec 
 tual philosophy, do not turn inward by introversion, but 
 I study natural science. Every time you discover a law 
 of things you discover a principle of mind." Thus has 
 he found a corrective against the fancies of too great 
 subjectivity, and a test for the speculative conclusions of 
 the intuitive method. He has made a faithful applica 
 tion of both corrective and test in working out his own 
 theories. 
 
 He has caught up with quick avidity the ripest con 
 clusions of modern science, and made them take their 
 place in the world he interprets. He knows the value 
 of scientific facts, and where they belong. " Emerson 
 has a scientific method, said his friend Agassiz, of the 
 severest kind, and can not be carried away by any theo 
 ries." Another great scientific teacher, Tyndall, as the 
 result of his careful and frequent reading of Emerson s 
 books, pronounces this striking judgment : 
 
 " In him we have a poet and a profoundly religious man, who is 
 really and entirely undaunted by the discoveries of science, past, 
 present, and prospective. In his case, poetry, with the joy of a 
 bacchanal, takes her graver brother science by the hand, and cheers 
 him with immortal laughter. By Emerson scientific conceptions 
 are continually transmuted into the finer forms and warmer lines of 
 an ideal world." 
 
MIND, AND THE OVER-SOUL. 307 
 
 XXII. 
 
 MIND, AND THE OVER-SOUL. 
 
 MIXD is the positive manifestation of the Universal 
 Spirit. Because positive, it is the source and cen- 
 tgr_ of things. Emerson thinks we can not define it, 
 that we"know not what it is but as we see and realize it 
 in ourselves. In HQJIII it appears as intellect, but it is 
 gll sfjpptihl n f T ^ ^Tyidnngi Tf. fst f.t^ same power, the 
 same- faculty, when it acts as will, reason, or affections, 
 and in every manifestation acts as a single force. This 
 view of mind is shared HI by the school of thinkers to 
 which he belongs, and has been made prominent in the 
 writings of Carlylc. Tkojiiiind is both that which sees 
 and that which is seen. It is hid from our cunning 
 definitions, as from our comprehension, through its 
 perfect transparency, and is too near for us to realize its 
 nature. All the terms of mind, he says, are derived 
 from those of matter ; and all the laws of matter can be 
 applied to thought by evident analog} 7 -. This is true, 
 hopflyqaft min 1 \\\v\ mattf"* TP^ n n in._ f h. Universal Spirit, 
 corresponding precisely wiUi each other. Every law of 
 nature, he said in his lectures on the Natural History of 
 tlKT"Tntellcct, is a law of mind ; and these laws are to be 
 discovered by the aohlr microscope of analogy. To 
 gravity or central! ly in matter corresponds truth in the 
 mind. Polarity is the next most universal law of na 
 ture, and to this corresponds sex in mind. So he would 
 understand the mind, not by any a priori process, but 
 through the study of nature and the observation of 
 their constant correspondence in methods and laws. 
 
 A brie~f synopsis of this course of lectures will give a 
 clearer understanding of his theory of mind, though it 
 
 1 Essays, fir* series, p. L 95. 
 
308 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 must necessarily be very imperfect. In watching the 
 stream of thought, he said in the third lecture, we come 
 upon something in man that knows more than he does. 
 This is instinct, a shapeless giant, unfinished at the two 
 extremities, the source of all our knowing. Above this 
 first crude power is perception, the intellect applied to 
 the facts of life and individualizing them. It sees things 
 in relations, discerns their unity. An acute perception is 
 the source of genius, so that a mere hint leads us into 
 the truth. All depends on the angle of our vision as 
 to what we see in the world, for mind makes the world 
 to be whatever it is. The next faculty is memory, 
 which deals in second-hand thoughts, but is the bitumen 
 matrix in which the other faculties work. Its charac 
 teristics are tenacity, choice, rapidity, and logic. Then 
 follows imagination, which reveals the constant relations 
 between matter and mind. God does not talk to us in 
 prose, but by use of symbols, correspondences, and hints ; 
 and imagination takes hold of these, and reveals how 
 nature id the key to spirit. A new figure of speech is 
 of immense value to mankind, and the productions and 
 changes of nature give rise to the nouns of language. 
 A good image, drawn from any simple fact in nature, 
 never rests there, but flies round the globe to find con 
 stantly new applications to life. Hence all physical 
 facts are words for spiritual facts. We are always 
 asking how many mental laws can be applied to matter, 
 how many diameters can be drawn clear through from 
 mind to matter ; for the laws of matter are but adopted 
 metaphysics. It is, therefore, the poet who can read 
 the mind, because he applies imagination in the compre 
 hension of those analogies which relate it to matter. 
 Analysis hinders this process ; but intuition, with the 
 aid of imagination, reads the secret. The imagination 
 transubstantiates evcry-day bread into everlasting sym 
 bols. After imagination follows inspiration, the know 
 ing of truth. He made genius his next topic, and said 
 its characteristic is a neglect of yesterday in reliance on 
 the inspiration of to-day. It breaks all rules, and train- 
 pies on the laws of the race with its string sandals. It 
 
MIND, AND THE OVEE-SOUL. 309 
 
 looks after causes, and it mortgages the one whom it 
 possesses to his ideas. He defined genius and common 
 sense as being of the same family, and said that an 
 ounce of mother-wit is worth a pound of clergy. 
 
 Turning from the faculties of the mind to its laws, he 
 said that physical laws may be applied to mental phe 
 nomena, not only qualitatively but quantitatively. In 
 proportion to the clearness with which the law of iden 
 tity is perceived, is the depth of the mind. The first 
 law of mind, then, is identity ; and it is quite indifferent 
 whether we say " all is matter " or " all is spirit." The 
 second law is that of degree, constant ascent from egg 
 to full growth. It is the scale in the mind, by which 
 we rank thoughts and put the sensual as lower than 
 the moral. The third law is that of detachment, the 
 power to make subjects objects, to separate sensations 
 from each other, to regard thoughts as apart from our 
 own mind. It separates the mind from what it ob 
 serves, and it is a measure of intellectual power. An 
 other law is pace, the measure of the mind s rapidity. 
 It makes degrees of intellect, for rapidity of movement 
 in thoughts determines the capacity of the mind. Life 
 is age-long to him who uses the telegraph in thought. 
 The law of bias is, like the universal polarity of matter, 
 a bent of the mind in a certain direction ; so that each 
 soul is unique, has a special capacity. It is a Divine 
 whisper to each soul ; but the voice is still after it is 
 given, and we may obey it or not. God makes but one 
 of each kind, and a bias in some one direction is the 
 first mark of a master. In the last lecture he spoke of 
 veracity as the primary rule of the intellect. He said 
 there is too much negation in the world, and that the 
 highest minds are affirmative. The bulwark of moral 
 ity is found in not accepting degrading, negative views ; 
 nor was any thing ever gained by acknowledging the 
 omnipotence of limitations. 
 
 As matter is the negative manifestation of the Uni 
 versal Spirit, and has all its life and its development 
 through the direct immanence of the Absolute, so is 
 rniiid an expression of the Universal Spirit in its posi- 
 
310 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 tivejpowr> Man is the Universal Spirit present in a 
 material organism. He is of the Divine, he lives in 
 the Divine ; every power he manifests is that of the 
 Divine Life. Emer&qn does not regard the human soul 
 as a separate indivi&ttttlily, lGtulljr--6ut off from other 
 beings, but a a manifestation of the Universal Being. 
 He says, " the soul 111 mull is" nol nil OTgall, but animates 
 and exercises all the organs ; is not a function, like the 
 power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but 
 uses these as hands and feet ; is not a faculty, but a 
 light ; is not the intellect or the will, but the master of 
 the intellect and the will ; is the background of our 
 being, in which they lie, an immensity not possessed, 
 and that can not be possessed. From within or from 
 behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes 
 us aware that we are nothing, that the light is all." * 
 This " background of our being " was understood by 
 Eckhart, who wrote of it as a " simple ground " in the 
 soul, where man is in perfect union \vith God. It is 
 the soul as it was before separated from God in a life of 
 desire and individual self-seeking. Eckhart says, 
 
 " There is something in the soul which is above the soul, divine, 
 simple, an absolute Nothing. ... I have called it a Power, some 
 times an Uncreated Light, sometimes a Divine Spark. It is abso 
 lute, and free from all names and forms, as God is free and absolute 
 in himself. It is higher than knowledge, higher than love, higher 
 than grace ; for in all these there is distinction. . . . This Light is 
 satisfied only with the super-essential essence. It is bound on enter 
 ing into the simple ground, the still waste, wherein is no distinc 
 tion, neither Father, Son, nor Holy Ghost, into the unity where 
 no man dwelleth. There is it satisfied in the light, there it is one ; 
 there is it in itself, as this Ground is a simple stillness in itself, 
 immovable." 
 
 This is the doctrine/ o|^theOver-soul, as conceived 
 In th.e. fourteenth century* by lliu lafehor of German 
 4t is tne conceptibn Of J^jJiiiL -as one, that 
 is a state in the soul wherein it is in perfect 
 union with the world of souls. This idea of the ground 
 in the soul Tauter still furiher developed. lie calls it 
 the center of the soul, that depth where God always 
 
 1 Essays, first series, p. 240. 
 
MIND, AND THE OVER-SOUL. 811 
 
 dwells. To him it is the moral sentiment, that eternal 
 sense of the right which abides unchanged in the soul 
 of man. This center of man s nature is so grounded in 
 God that the spirit is sunk and dissolved in the inmost 
 of the Divine nature. Through this ground " God pours 
 himself _out_jnto our spirit^ as the sun rays forth its nat 
 ural light into the air , and hlls it with sunshine, so that 
 no eye can tell the difference between the sunshine and 
 the air. If the union of the sun and air can not be dis 
 tinguished, how far less this divine union of the created 
 and uncreated Spirit ! Our spirit is received and swal- 
 Jowed up in the abyss which is its source^ This 
 
 /Ground, Spark, or Light, is -a, depth in the soul where 
 the divine and the human arc one, and wherein the soul 
 is not conscious of distinction from God. 
 
 After this idea had been carried some steps farther on 
 in its development, -WP. find Schelling ._declanmy that 
 
 Jiiere is but one ^ nsnr |- ^the . JmmaiT ancT the di v me 
 being identical. From him this thought was taken* up 
 by Cole]4dg^--wlia^&i>s^^ Coleridge 
 
 believed in a supersensuous, impersonal light in man, 
 which he calls reason ; and he identifies it with the 
 Universal Reason. 
 
 " He speaks of Reason as an immediate beholding of supersensi 
 ble things, as the eye which sees things transcending sense. He 
 identifies lleason in the human mind with Universal Reason ; calls 
 it impersonal ; indeed, regards it as a ray of the Divinity in man. 
 In one place he makes it one with the light which lighteth every 
 man ; and in another he says that Reason is the presence of the Holy 
 Spirit in the finite understanding, at once the light and the univer 
 sal eye. It can not be rightly called a faculty, lie says, much less a 
 personal property of any human mind. We can not be said to pos 
 sess Reason, but rather to partake of it ; for there is but one Rea 
 son, which is shared by all intelligent beings, and is in itself the 
 Universal or Supreme Reason. He in whom Reason dwells can as 
 little appropriate it as his own possession, as he can claim owner 
 ship in the breathing air, or take in the cope of heaven." l 
 
 Emerson_ writes of the Universal Mind, .or the Q.ver- 
 soul, as Qcvleridge writes of the Universal Reason. It is 
 one aihd universal, and. is a iignt! wtnch___pjiasfisses and 
 
 1 Sliairp s Studies in Poetry and Philosophy, p. 168. 
 
312 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 guides man,. To this idea Emerson adds the conception 
 of God as the soul of the world, as the Universal Mind 
 pervading all things, and regards the human mind as ail 
 integral part of the Absolute Mi ml. So he says there 
 " one mind common tQ all individual men," \vhjle 
 u everv man is a.n inlet to the samfi and"to all of the 
 Siiiiie." [ \Thid common mind in all men is the^ver- 
 soul. Each person is an inlet out of this great ocelot, 
 anc[ it pours the same waters into all. We are filled 
 with this flood, and are nothing but dry and dusty 
 banks without it. To Emerson, as to Tanler and Col 
 eridge, the Dvgr-sn]]] is within us a mornl In.w ; so that 
 we learn what is right and true, not by exjperience, but^ 
 Because, there is, ip us t.hP. trmni-.mn*Qj au wisdom and 
 -auliiiilily- Man can know the truth, because God is a 
 light within him revealing all things. The suggestions 
 given him by Schelling and Coleridge he has developed 
 into a consistent theory of knowledge and of the rela 
 tions of man to God. Sometimes almost in the very 
 phrases of Coleridge he announces his central doctrine 
 of the " Over-soul :" 
 
 " Our first experiences, he says, in moral as in intellectual nature, 
 force us to discriminate a universal mind, identical in all men. 
 Certain biases, talents, executive skills, are special to each indi 
 vidual ; but the high, contemplative, all-commanding vision, the 
 sense of Right and Wrong, is alike in all. Its attributesWe self- 
 existence, eternity, intuition, and command. It is the mincl of the 
 mind; we belong to it, not it to us. It is in all men, and aansti- 
 tutes them men. In bad men it is dormant, as health is in men 
 entranced or drunken ; but, however inoperative, it exists under 
 neath whatever vices and errors. The extreme simplicity of this 
 intuition embarrasses every attempt at analysis. We can only 
 mark, one by one, the perfections which it combines in every act. 
 It admits of no appeal, looks to no superior essence. It is the 
 reason of things. 
 
 " The antagonist nature is the individual, formed into a finite 
 body of exact "dimensions, with appetites which take from everybody 
 else what they appropriate to themselves, and would enlist the 
 entire spiritual faculty of the individual, if it were possible, in 
 catering for them. On t lie perpetual conflict between the dictate of 
 this universal mind and the wishes and interests of the individual, 
 the moral discipline of life is built. The one craves a private 
 
 1 Essays, first scries, p. 3. 
 
MIND, AND THE OVER-SOUL. 313 
 
 benefit, which the other requires him to renounce out of respect to 
 the absolute good. Every hour puts the individual in a position 
 where his wishes aim at something which the sentiment of duty for 
 bids him to seek. lie that speaks the truth executes no private 
 function of an individual will, but the world utters a sound by his 
 lips. He who doth a just action seeth therein nothing of his own ; 
 but an inconceivable nobleness attaches to it, because it is a dictate 
 of the general mind. We have no idea of power so simple and 
 so entire as this. It is the basis of thought, it is the basis of being. 
 Compare all that we call ourselves, all our private and personal 
 venture in the world, with this deep of moral nature in which we 
 lie, and our private good becomes an impertinence, and we take 
 part with hasty shame against ourselves." l 
 
 Ahf>vp, the imlivirhiiil ma.n, fh*?n, is this - , 
 
 "within which every man s particular being is con- 
 tained and made one with all others." Jt is a " Unity," 
 " the eternal One ; " and " man is the facade of this tem 
 ple wherein all wisdom and all good abide." 2 Eacliiajji- 
 vigliial man is an incarnation of this universal .man, and 
 i.-. Ui.- QT. Q oil UP pT.^p^+; QO QV pT. Q QQ Q ri T^rr jo foyijj 
 
 Aine Ileason, which is the mind of the \vorld; and every 
 man is an i n 1 ^T~To ^rTj^TT^TX T i "he, ( Prer-son 1 d es} cends 
 jnto mainland he is a pensioner on its bounty, bal^loss 
 without it. On this side of our natures Emerson sees 
 go separation of man from God ; but as this is true only 
 on one side, V>A f]po.g apf rp<ra.rd man as a mere manifesta 
 tion of God. " As there is no screen or ceiling, he says, 
 between our heads and the infinite heavens, so is there 
 no bar or wall in the soul where man, the effect, ceases, 
 and God, the cause, begins. The walls are taken away. 
 We lie open on one side to the deeps of spiritual nature, 
 to the attributes of God." 4 This unity of man and God 
 he finds to be so intimate, that he says to us, 
 
 " Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line, 
 Severing rightly his from thine, 
 Which is human, which divine." 5 
 
 tWhen man is perfectly obedient to the workings of the 
 Over-souCand becomes just at heart, "then in so far 
 
 1 Essay on Character, in the North American Tleview for April, 180(5. 
 iDrcggnya, fir*t. series. PP- 244-24(5. a Society and Solitude, p. 45. 
 
 4 Essays, first series, pp. 2te, 747. 6 Conduct of Life, p. 173. 
 
314 EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 is he God ; the safety of God, the immortality of God, 
 the majesty of God, do enter into that man with jus 
 tice " and obedience. 1 " Ineffable is the union of man 
 and God in every act of the soul. The simplest per 
 son., wIjQ in his integrity worships God, becomes (iocTT 
 vet for ever and over the influx of this Letter and uni 
 versal self is new and unsearchable." 2 Tn snp.]i words 
 as these Emerson is thoroughly a mystic. Eckhart has 
 the same meaning, when he says, " God and I are one in 
 knowing, God s essence is his knowing, and God s know 
 ing makes me to know him. Therefore is his knowing 
 my knowing. The eye whereby I see God is the same 
 eye whereby he seeth me ; mine eye and the eye of God 
 are one eye, one vision, one knowledge, and one love." 
 
 The idea of Eckhart and Emerson, as it is of Boehme, 
 Schelling, Coleridge, and all others who accept the con 
 clusions (,f mysticism, is that of the absolute oneness 
 of the Universal Spirit, that there is but one essential 
 being and life, that this life is present in all things, that 
 man has his life in the Universal Spirit, that all his 
 thinking is its expression through him. 3 Eckhart says 
 the soul is in God, and God in her ; and what she 
 doeth she doeth in God, and God doeth in her. Tauler 
 tells us that " the spirit becomes the very truth which 
 it apprehends. God is apprehended by God. We 
 become one with the same light with which we see, 
 and which is both the medium and object of our 
 vision." He says again, " God is a Spirit ; and our 
 created spirit must be united to and lost in the 
 uncreated, even as it existed in God before creation. 
 Every moment in which the soul re-enters into God a 
 complete restoration takes place. This is when the 
 
 1 Miscellanies, p. 178. 2 Essays, first series, p. 205. 
 
 3 Fichte, in his Characteristics of the Present Age, says the indi 
 vidual is but a " single ray of the on" universal and necessary Thought " 
 "There, is hut One Life, lie says, hut OIK- animating power, one Living 
 Reason, which is the only possible independent and self-sustaining 
 Kxistenrr and Life, of which all that seems to us to exist and live is 
 but a modification, definition, variety, and form." He again says t hat 
 "it is only by and to mere earthly and finite perception, that this one 
 and homogeneous Life of Reason is broken up and divided into separate 
 individual persons." 
 
MIND, AND THE OVER-SOUL. 815 
 
 inmost of the spirit is sunk and dissolved in the inmost 
 of the divine nature, and is thus new-made and trans 
 formed. God thus paura himself out into our spirit, as 
 -tli P. qnri rays forth its material light, and fills the air 
 with sunshine, so that no eye can tell the difference 
 between the sunshine and the air." In the godly man 
 " God lives, forms, ordains, and works." Then hath 
 "the created spirit lost itself in the Spirit of God; 
 yea, is drowned in the bottomless sea of Godhead." 
 
 Emerson not only sees God immanent in natiire. 
 that its life and laws are actual expressions of his being 
 and nature, hut hf> ja inn-pan ant in man, so that all his. 
 thoughts and his very life are Prod s thoughts and life. 
 Man is an inlet from the ocean of Being, a spark from 
 off the Infinite Altar, a needle that conducts the Mag 
 netic Power of the universe. The Soul of the world 
 pours its truth into him, and he is what it makes him 
 to become. The Over-soul is that Infinite Life, in 
 which all souls find their common origin and continued 
 existence. It is the banyan-tree of Eternity, which 
 sends down a multitude of shoots to grow as separate 
 trees, but above are all united in one common life. So 
 the - Over-soul sends down into Nature its growing 
 branches of truth, and these take root as human 
 beings; but above .they are united in the Universal 
 Spirit. They have a life of their own, but they are 
 nothing unless constantly sustained by that Life from 
 which they proceed. In writing of the doctrine of 
 compensation, Emerson says men who can not accept it 
 do not see " that He, that /, is there, next and within ; 
 the thought of the thought ; the affair of affairs ; that 
 he is existence, and take him from them, and they 
 would not be." 1 There is, then, but one Soul, the Soul 
 that is over and within all things. 
 
 ^All souls stand in likp. rfjlatfinrn to til in OUT mil 
 receive from it their life, have in them its nature, and 
 so have like endowments and capacities. This leads 
 Emerson to the conclusion that " the differences 
 
 1 The Sovereignty of Ethics, p. 409; North American Review, April, 
 18G6. 
 
316 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 between men in natural endowment are insignificant 
 in comparison with their common wealth." He goes so 
 far as to say that everybody knows as much as the 
 savant, because all stand in like relations to the Over- 
 soul. This is the idea which lies at the foundation of 
 his interpretation of history, that " there is one mind 
 common to all individual men." As nature is a revela 
 tion of God in the unconscious, so is history a revelation 
 of God in the conscious domain of freedom. The whole 
 of history is necessary to realize the whole of the Soul, 
 as each man expresses but a part of it. Yet we can 
 best understand history by our own life, and each indi 
 vidual reads all history in his own person. This is 
 true, because history is a revelation of the Over-soul, 
 its expression in time ; and each person has the key to 
 it in himself, for he has his life also in the Over-soul. 
 History is a repetition on a large scale of what each 
 person experiences and knows. " Of the Universal 
 Mind each individual man is one more incarnation. 
 All its properties consist in him. Each new fact in his 
 private experience flashes a light on what great bodies 
 of men have done, and the crises of his life refer to 
 national crises." l 
 
 1 Essays, first series, p. 4. 
 
INTUITION. 317 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 INTUITION. 
 
 AS like can only be known by like, ashman knows 
 God only because he. is of the nature of Ciod, it 
 follows that-all .knowing is a direct perception or an in 
 tuition. \ All. the. -mystics, from Plotinus to Emersouv 
 find in man 8HWipejansaous factor, or faculty, through 
 which we know the things of God and the spiritual 
 world. ScdieiHng calls it an intellectual, intuition, and 
 Coleridge knows it as reason ; but it necessarily follows 
 as a consequence of the primary ideas of mysticism. 
 Eckhart said, "I have a power in my soul which ena 
 bles me to perceive God." " I know something higher 
 than science, says Schelling, a beholding of that which 
 is in God." " The mortal eye, he says, closes only in 
 the highest science when it is no longer the man who 
 sees, but the Eternal Beholding which has now become 
 seeing in him." How fully Schelling anticipated Emer 
 son s theory of intuition may be seen from this state 
 ment of his teachings on the subject, 
 
 " Schelling asserts that there is a capacity of knowledge above 
 or behind consciousness, and higher than the understanding, and 
 that this knowledge is competent to human reason, because this 
 lleason itself is identical with the Absolute. In this act of knowl 
 edge, which he calls the intellectual intuition, as distinguished from 
 the intuitions of sense, there exists no distinction of subject and 
 object, no contrast of knowledge with existence ; all difference is 
 lost in mere indifference, all plurality in simple unity. The Abso 
 lute is identical with the reason which apprehends it. Because 
 man is himself a manifestation of the Absolute, he can know the 
 source and essence of his being only by falling back behind the 
 limits and conditions of his phenomenal existence, and knowing 
 himself as he really is, God. All things are God ; in him we 
 live and move and have our being. Of course, the act is ineffable, 
 it is the vision and the faculty divine, lie who is incapable of it 
 
318 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 is incompetent for philosophy. This is what Cousin means by his 
 doctrine of the impersonality of reason. That by which I appre 
 hend the truth, he says, is not my reason, nor your reason, but 
 lleason itself, as such, or in abstract ; also, the truth itself, thus 
 known, is not my truth or your truth, but truth as such, or the 
 Absolute, identical with the faculty which apprehends it." l 
 
 accepts in full the doctrine of intuition, ;ts 
 it had been elaborated by the thinkers who preceded 
 him. All .the truth WP. know, he aays. mines to na na 
 
 n.Ti inst.jfiPjt. \flnr1 VVP. n.rp. fn fnmf. f.bp ingfinp.f-.. f.hnngl-j ypn 
 n vnnrlnr nr^ rpn^nn fnr wlio if. tiPMiOhgli. 2 All OUT tl UO 
 
 thinking is a pious reception of the truth we have done 
 nothing to create. " We do not determine what we 
 think. We only open our senses, clear away, as we can, 
 all obstruction from the fact, and suffer the intellect to 
 see. We have Ijttlft r.rmtvnl nvpr ^ fl^ngbf^ W e 
 are the prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for mo 
 ments into their heaven, and so fully engage us, that we 
 take no thought for the morrow, gaze like children, with 
 out an effort to make them our own. By and by we 
 fall out of that rapture, bethink us where we have been, 
 what we have seen, and repeat, as truly as we can, 
 what we have beheld. As far as we can recall these 
 ecstasies, we carry away in the ineffaceable memory the 
 result ; and all men arid all the ages confirm it. It is 
 called Truth. But the moment we cease to report, and 
 attempt to correct and contrive, it is not truth." 3 
 
 In words such as these Emerson indicates his theory 
 of the mind and of knowledge. He maintains that all 
 knowledge is a vfivp]fl,t.iVmXnii int.nitinn rh rppt. t,n tTio 
 receiving soul. \ The source and essence of genius, of 
 virtue. aiicTof me. he savs^is that which we call sponta-, 
 neity or instinct. " We denote "this primary wisdom as 
 Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In 
 that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis can 
 not go, all things find their common origin.." 4 Thus all 
 knowing is a direct, simple perccptio n .\ We know 
 
 1 Bowen s Modern Philosophy,- p. 342. 
 
 2 Essays, first series, pp. 297-1^)9. 8 Ibid., p. 298 
 Ibid., p. 5G. 
 
INTUITION. 319 
 
 are_o.L like .nature with, ouraelies, 
 
 because one life flows through them and through us. 
 In true knowing, there is no effort on our part, except 
 to open the way for the truth to shine in. The process 
 of knowing we can not explain ; all philosophy is here 
 at fault. That wa have this faculty^of intuition is all we. 
 .kuouvuud we should not seek to explain it. Through 
 it God speaks all tilings to us, and makes it impossible 
 that we should listen to any other voice. 1 
 
 Emerson lays the greatest possible stress on this the 
 ory of spontaneity and intuition. He appears some 
 times to take away all self-direction and all need of 
 human search for truth. 
 
 " God enters, he says, by a private door into every individual. 
 Long prior to the age of reflection is the thinking of the mind. 
 Out of darkness it came insensibly into the marvelous light of to 
 day. In the period of infancy it accepted and disposed of all 
 impressions from the surrounding creation after its own way. 
 Whatever any mind doth or saith is after a law ; and this native law 
 remains over it after it has come to reflection or conscious thought. 
 In the most worn, pedantic, introverted self-tormentor s life, the 
 greatest part is incalculable by him, and must be, until he can take 
 himself up by his own ears. What am I ? What has my will done 
 to make me what I am ? Nothing. I have been floated into this 
 thought, this hour, this connection of events, by secret currents of 
 might and mind; and my ingenuity and wilfullness have not 
 thwarted, have not aided to an appreciable degree." 2 
 
 He says man is a stream whose source is hidden, for 
 oar being is descending into us from we know not 
 whence. 3 It is this influx of being from above which 
 brings us truth. The perceiving and revealing soul 
 knows the truth when it is presented, and can not be 
 deceived by any fancies of the individual self. 4 There 
 must be faithfulness to the truth, however, and obedience 
 to its commands. " We must not tamper with the 
 organic motion of the soul. Tis certain that thought has 
 its own proper motion ; and the hints which flash from 
 it, the words overheard at unawares by the free mind, 
 are trustworthy and fertile when obeyed, and not per- 
 
 i Ibid., p. 57. 2 Ibid., p. 297. 
 
 s Ibid., p. 244. * Ibid., p. 254. 
 
320 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 verted to low and selfish account." l Again he says, 
 " The one condition coupled with the gift of truth is 
 its use. That man shall be learned who reduceth his 
 learning to practice." 2 The condition is, " Jf,we live 
 triil y^jgg - glin lL^see_^truly." 3 Character is an ex&ct 
 expression of how "much truth we have. "Exactly 
 parallel is the whole rule of intellectual duty to the 
 rule of moral duty ; " 4 and the intellect sinks as 
 the moral nature descends, while it rises with it. 
 " The infallible index of true progress is found in the 
 tone the man takes. If he have not found his home in 
 God, his manners, his forms of speech, the turn of his 
 enterices, the build, shall I say, of all his opinions, 
 ill involuntarily confess it." 5 The intuition must find 
 Qoni^ i^ ^ n nntiim I it can not be held as a private^ 
 __ JHiGL intuition /"rises in thought, to tEe end thai 
 Mt mfhy bfi nttoml n^T^cter!., _Tlm more profound the 
 thought, the more burdensome. Always in proportion 
 the depth of its sense does it knock importurusly at 
 the gates of the soul, to be spoken, to be done_/l 6 It 
 is by this most rigid law of action and character Emer 
 son saves himself from those evil results which the 
 bold insistance on the method of intuition have worked 
 in some minds. It is dangerous for a weak mind to 
 believe that all its impulses are divine revelations, that 
 every seeming intuition is to be followed, that we are 
 what we are by means of a power outside of ourselves 
 entirely. To such a theory, there must be a rigid bal 
 ance and checks. These Emerson has supplied in a . 
 
 " most faithful manner. No intuition is to be regarded 
 that does not conform to the highest moral condu.^ 
 flic tendency of which is not to elevate and purify the 
 life. To none but the pure in heart ajQ these ip tuition a 
 
 _ opened, according to Emerson, "for so to be is the sole 
 inlet of so to know" 1 
 _ Another condition of intuition is silence and medi- 
 
 1 Letters and Social Aims, p. 181. 2 Miscellanies, p. 213. 
 
 8 Essays, first series, p. 59. 4 Ibid., p. ,>0:). 
 
 6 Ibid., p. 260. 6 Society and Solitude, p. 34 
 
 7 Essays, first series, p. 2!X). 
 
INTUITION. 321 
 
 _tation. In this Emerson is fully in accord with all the 
 mystics. We must sit alone, if we would receive the 
 Judith ; let the Over-soul pour into us its flood. He 
 says that if any man would know what the great God 
 speaketh, he must go into his closet and shut the door. 
 " He must greatly listen to himself, withdrawing him 
 self from all the accents of other men s devotion. 
 Even their prayers are hurtful to him, until he have 
 made his own." 1 We must listen only to that Divine 
 Voice which speaks within us, and to do that we must 
 shut out all the rest of the world. Hence, the epochs 
 of our life come " in a silent thought by the wayside 
 as we walk ; " 2 for in that silent inward communion the 
 way of life for us is revealed. " Silence, he says, is a 
 solvent that destroys personality, and gives us leave 
 to be great and universal." 3 We forget the individual 
 cares and ambitions, and find strength and peace in the 
 truth. 
 
 The Spanish mystic, St. Theresa, says we ought to 
 sit alone and wait for God to come to us, in no wise 
 dictating the method of his coming. Madame Guyon 
 regarded her own silent prayers of intuition as immeas 
 urably better than any the church provided. In the 
 same spirit, Eckhart declared that " he who is at all 
 times alone is worthy of God." All the mystics say 
 that God speaks within, and we must sit alone, that we 
 may listen to his voice, and that he may have free oppor 
 tunity to communicate his truth. 
 
 We test our intuitions by action, character, Jind 
 silence ; and we arc to exclude from them all egotism. 
 " This distemper is the scourge of talent." We miist 
 put our act or word aloof from us, and " see it bravely 
 for the nothing it is." Emerson cautions us to beware 
 of the man who says he is on the eve of a revelation. 
 Such presumption " is speedily punished, inasmuch as 
 this habit invites. men to humor it, and, by treating the 
 patient tenderly, to shut him up in a narrower sel^sm, 
 and exclude him from the great world of God s cheer- 
 
 Ibid., p. 267. 2 ibi^ p> 144 . 3 i b id., p. 311. 
 
322 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 ful, fallible men and women." l The egotism of knowl 
 edge is not only dangerous, but it excludes us from 
 the light. The ^trutli comes to only fliofip, who are 
 ready ^absolutely to obey it, who propose no substitutes 
 or explanations. " The icliul, Lllti Tiidlan, the child, and 
 unschooled farmer s boy, stand nearer to the light bj 
 which nature is to be read, than the dissector or the 
 antiquary." 2 The man of science interposes his own 
 explanations, his own conjectures ; and, having offered 
 them, he stands by them, thinks them the truth, and 
 forgets nature in their acceptance. He ought, how- 
 eve t, to be only a mouthpiece, an interpreter, of nature, 
 having no desire but to say how it is with her. So it 
 is that we are to accept the voice of the Over-soul. 
 We are not to speculate about it, not to interpret it, 
 onliiLto iiear and obey. The simple mind, that asks no 
 questions, but yields to its command, is the highest and 
 truest. The conditions of this absolute trust Emerson 
 has stated in these words : 
 
 " I conceive a man as always spoken to from behind, and unable 
 to turn his head and see the speaker. In all the millions who have 
 heard the voice, none ever saw the face. As children in their play 
 run behind each other, and seize one by the ears and make him 
 walk before them, so is the spirit our unseen pilot. That well- 
 known voice speaks in all languages, governs all men ; and none 
 ever caught a glimpse of its form. If the man will exactly obey 
 it, it will adopt him, so that . he shall not any longer separate it 
 from himself in his thought; he shall seem to be it, he shall be it. 
 If he listen with insaiiable ears, richer and greater wisdom is 
 taught him, the sound swells to a ravishing music, he is borne 
 away as with a flood, he becomes careless of his food and of his 
 house, he is the fool of ideas, and leads a heavenly life. But if 
 his eye is set on the things to be done, and not on the truth that 
 is still taught, and for the sake of which the things are to be done, 
 then the voice grows faint, and at last is but a humming in his 
 ears. His health and greatness consist in his being the channel 
 through which heaven flows to earth, in short, in the fullness in 
 which an ecstatical state takes place in him." 3 
 
 The nature of this power he has also described : 
 
 " We distinguish the announcements of the soul, its manifesta 
 tions of its own nature, by the term revelation. These are always 
 
 1 Conduct of Life, p. 115. - Essays, first series, p. 36. 
 
 3 Miscellanies, p. 200. 
 
INTUITION. 323 
 
 attended by the emotion of the sublime. For this communication is 
 an inllux of the Divine mind into our mind. It is an ebb of the in 
 dividual rivulet before the flowing surges of the sea of life. Every 
 distinct apprehension of this central commandment agitates men 
 with awe and delight. A thrill passes through all men at the re 
 ception of new truth, or at the performance of a great action, which 
 comes out of the heart of nature. In these communications, the 
 powe* to see is not separated from the will to do ; but the insight 
 proceeds from obedience, and the obedience proceeds from a joyful 
 perception. Every moment when the individual feels himself in 
 vaded by it is memorable. By the necessity of our constitution, a 
 certain enthusiasm attends the individual s consciousness of that 
 divine presence. The character and duration of this enthusiasm 
 varies with the state of the individual, from an ecstasy and trance 
 and prophetic inspiration which is its rarer appearance to the 
 faintest glow of virtuous emotion, in which form it warms, like our 
 household fires, all the families and associations of men, and makes 
 society possible. A certain tendency to insanity has always attended 
 the opening of the religious sense in men, as if they had been 
 blasted with excess of light. The trances of Socrates, the union 
 of PlotinUs, the vision of Porphyry, the conversion of Paul, the 
 aurora of Boehme, the convulsions of George Fox and his Quakers, 
 the illuminations of Swedenborg, are of this kind. What was in 
 the case of these remarkable persons a ravishment, has, in innu 
 merable instances in common life, been exhibited in less striking 
 manner. Everywhere the history of religion betrays a tendency to 
 enthusiasm. The rapture of the Moravian and Quietist ; the open 
 ing of the internal sense of the Word, in the language of the New- 
 Jerusalem church ; the revival of the Calvinistic churches ; the 
 experiences of the Methodists, are varying forms of that shudder of 
 awe and delight with which the individual soul always mingles with 
 the universal soul. The nature of these revelations is the same ; 
 they are perceptions of the absolute law. They are solutions of the 
 soul s own questions. They do not answer the questions w r hich 
 the understanding asks. The soul answers never by words, but by 
 the thing itself that is inquired after." l 
 
 Emerson believes in the Inner Light of the Quaker, 
 the Ecstasy of Plotinus, the Divine Illumination of Swe 
 denborg. Trutk-iajiot the result of thoughy^ is not 
 to. be attained to by reasoning, least of all is it a product 
 of the senses and understanding ; it is a divine light, an 
 inward illumination. He frequently calls this instinct, 
 or intuition, The Moral SentimentX Through it comes 
 every law of conduct: and if gives us those moral com 
 mandments which are eternal, because out of the very 
 
 1 Essays, first series, p. 255. 
 
324 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 core of Being. This power " puts us at the heart of 
 Nature, where we belong, in the cabinet of science and 
 of causes, there where all the wires terminate which 
 hold the world in magnetic unity, and so converts us 
 into universal beings." 1 
 
 " This wonderful sentiment, which endears itself as it is obeyed, 
 seems to be the fountain of intellect ; for no talent gives the im 
 pression of sanity, if wanting this ; nay, it absorbs every thing into 
 itself. Truth, Power, Goodness, Beauty, are its varied names, - 
 faces of one substance. Before it, what are persons, prophets, or 
 seraphim, but its passing agents, momentary rays of its light? 
 
 " The moral sentiment is alone important. There is no labor or 
 sacrifice to which it will not bring a man, arid which it will not 
 make easy. Under the action of this sentiment of the Right, his 
 heart and mind expand above himself, and above Nature. 
 
 "Devout men, in the endeavor to express their convictions, 
 have used different images to suggest this latent force ; as, the 
 light, the seed, the Spirit, the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, the 
 Daemon, the still small voice, etc., all indicating its power and its 
 latency. It refuses to appear, it is too small to be seen, too obscure 
 to be spoken of; but, such as it is, it creates a faith which the con 
 tradiction of all mankind can not shake, and which the consent of 
 all mankind can not confirm." 
 
 " We affirm that in all men is this majestic perception and com- 
 mand ; that it is the presence of the Eternal in each perishing man ; 
 that it distances and degrades all statements of whatever saints, 
 heroes, poets, as obscure and confused stammerings before its silent 
 revelation. They report the truth. It is the truth. When I think 
 of Keason, of Truth, of Virtue, I caii not conceive of them as lodged 
 in your soul and lodged in my soul, but that you and I and all souls 
 are lodged in that ; and I may easily speak of that adorable nature, 
 there where only I behold it, in my dim experiences, in such 
 terms as shall seem to the frivolous, who dare not fathom tlieir 
 consciousness, as profane." 
 
 " We pretend not to define the way of its access to the private 
 heart. It passes understanding. The soul of God is poured into 
 the world through the thoughts of men. When the Master of the 
 Universe has ends to fulfill, he impresses his will on the structure of 
 minds." 2 
 
 He insists again and again that is impossible to know: 
 
 ^the character of this intuitive jpower, or the manner of 
 
 its incoming to the mind. With Plotinus, he callsjitan 
 
 ecstasy.^ Hg gflprfissea hia_.beHf>f ".that nothing "~gival 
 
 and lasting can be done except by inspiration,^ which 
 
 P,"P. JW. "" 2 Ibid., pp. 358-360. 
 
INTUITION. 
 
 finds expression in enthusiasm. J -rfttinfiy is a normal 
 
 <*ipuitiQiirg nf nil wlin ]iyfi fttf \tr\~* * " Poets have siglial- 
 
 ized their consciousness of rare moments, when they 
 were superior to themselves, when a light, a freedom, 
 a power, came to them, which lifted them to performances 
 far better than they could reach at other times." l All 
 .^rciit achievements of whatever kind are accomplished 
 by enthusiasm and abandonment. 2 Life itself is an 
 ecstasy, 3 and, when true to its highest law, is only anT 
 abandonment to the will of God. Even in nature there 
 " is 110 private will, no rebel leaf or limb ; but the whole 
 is oppressed by one superincumbent tendency, obeys 
 that redundancy, or excess, of life, which, in conscious 
 beings, we call ecstasy."" 4 XJ.n 
 
 revelation in I" fl - n 
 
 reve _ _ 
 
 of recuiviiig the Over-soul into our own natures in a 
 new access of truth, is -always a miracle f// which no 
 frequency of oecurreuce or incessant study can ever 
 familiarize, but which must always leave the inquirer 
 stupid with wonder." 5 * 
 
 " The path is difficult, secret, and beset with terror. The an 
 cients called it ecstasy or absence, a getting out of their bodies 
 to think. All religious history contains traces of the trance of 
 saints, a beatitude, but without any sign of joy, earnest, solitary, 
 even sad ; the flight, Plotinus called it, of the alone to the alone ; 
 Mvmf," the closing of the eyes, whence our word, Mystic. The 
 trances of Socrates, Plotinus, Porphyry, Boehme, Bunyan, Fox, 
 Pascal, Guyon, Swedenborg, will readily come to mind. This 
 beatitude conies in terror, and with shocks to the mind of the 
 receiver." 6 
 
 Some minds are more capable of intuition than others, 
 and become the revealers of new truths. "Rare, ex 
 travagant spirits come to us at intervals, who disclose 
 to us jiew facts in nature. Men of God have, from 
 tirrjft tn tirne, walked among men, and mrulfl thpir rM-nfi- 
 misao&Jfilt-Ju^be^oort and ooul of the commonest 
 hearer." 7 " In all ages, souls out of time, extraordi- 
 
 Social Aims, pp. 243-348. 
 
 2 Essays, first series, p. 292. 3 Conduct of Life, p. 35. 
 
 4 Miscellanies, p. 195. 5 Essays, first series, p. 304. 
 
 6 Representative Men, p. 99. " Essays, first series, p. 25. 
 
326 RALPH WALDO EMERSOX. 
 
 nary, prophetic, are born, who are rather related to the 
 systgm- of the moLkLthan to their particular agean d 
 locality. These arm ounce absolute truths." 1 TTIese 
 great men become theleaders and the centers of the 
 world s advancement. u An institution is the length 
 ened shadow of one man," and " all history resolves itself 
 very_asily into^the hingrapky of a few stout jvnd^ear- 
 nest persons." 2 ^ Mankind have, he says, in all ages, 
 attached themselves to a few persons, who, either by 
 the quality of that idea they embodied, or by the large 
 ness of their reception, were entitled to the position of 
 leaders and law-givers. These teach us the qualities 
 of primary nature, admit us to the constitution of 
 things." 3 Again he says, " A man, a personal ascend 
 ency, is the only great phenomenon. When nature has 
 work to be done, she creates a genius to do it. Follow 
 the great man, and you shall see what the world has at 
 heart in these ages. There is no omen like that." 4 In 
 the general introduction he wrote to an English book 
 on The Hundred Greatest Men, published in 1879, he 
 very characteristically sets forth his theory of the great 
 man. It is the theory of all the great Germans of the 
 eighteenth century he defends therein. Hamann be 
 lieved in absolute individual liberty ; Lavater pro 
 claimed the autocratic power of genius ; while Lessing, 
 Herder, Fichte, Goethe, and all the others, preached this 
 doctrine of the power of the great man. Cousin made 
 it the central thought in his interpretation of history, 
 and Curly le gave to it his entire approval. The whole 
 of that introduction is in these words : ; 
 
 " The Spanish historians tell us that it was not any of the wild 
 and unknown animals, or fruit, or even the silver and gold of the 
 new world, but the wild man, that concentrated the curiosity of 
 the contemporaries of Columbus. And we all of us remember in 
 the charming account of the prince of the Pelew Islands, brought 
 in the last century into England, that what most of all the splen 
 did shows of London fastened his eye with mystery of joy, was the 
 mirror in which he saw himself. In like manner it is not the mon 
 ster, it is not the remote and unknown, which can ever powerfully 
 
 i Conduct of Life, p. 178. 2 Essays, first series, pp. 53, 54. 
 
 8 Representative Men, p. 25. 4 Miscellanies, p. 198. 
 
INTUITION. 327 
 
 work on the human mind ; the way to touch all the springs of won 
 der in us is to get before our eyes as thought, that which we are 
 feeling and doing. The things that we do we think not. What I 
 am. I can not describe any more than I can see my eyes. The 
 moment another describes to me that man I am, pictures to me in 
 words that which I was feeling and doing, I am struck with sur 
 prise. I am sensible of a keen delight. I be, and I see my being, 
 at the same time. The soul glances from itself to the picture with 
 lively pleasure. Behold what was in me, out of me 1 Behold the 
 subjective now objective ! Behold the spirit embodied ! 
 
 " What does every earnest man seek in the deep instinct of soci 
 ety, f roni his first fellowship a child with children at play - - up 
 to the heroic cravings of friendship and love, what but to find 
 himself in another mind ; because such is the law of his being that 
 only can he find out his own secret through the instrumentality of 
 another mind. We hail with gladness this new acquisition of our 
 selves. That man I must follow, for he has a part of me ; and 1 
 follow him that I may acquire myself. 
 
 " The great are our better selves, ourselves with advantages. It 7 
 is the only platform on which all men can meet. If you deal with ( 
 a vulgar mind, life is reduced to beggary. He makes me rich, him 
 I call Plutus, who shows mo that every man is mine, and every fac 
 ulty is mine ; who does not impoverish me in praising Plato, but 
 contrariwise is adding assets to my inventory. 
 
 " An etherlal sea ebbs and flows, surges and washes hither and 
 thither, carrying its whole virtue into every creek and inlet which 
 it bathes. To this sea every human house has a water-front. 
 Every truth is a- power. Every idea from the moment of its 
 emergence begins to gather material forces, after a little while 
 makes itself known. It works first on thoughts, then on things ; 
 makes feet, and afterwards shoes ; first hands, then gloves ; makes 
 men, and so the age and its material soon after. The history of 
 the world is nothing but a procession of clothed ideas. As cer 
 tainly as water falls in rain on the tops of mountains, and runs 
 down into valleys, plains, and pits, so does thought fall first in the 
 best minds, and runs down from class to class, until it reaches the 
 masses, and works revolutions. 
 
 " The Universal Man is now coining to be a real being in the 
 individual mind, as once the Devil was. All questions touching 
 human life the daily press now discusses. I will not say that 
 there is no darker side to the picture, or that what is gained in 
 universality is not lost in enthusiasm. We have in the race the 
 sketch of a man which no individual comes up to. I figure to 
 myself the world as a hollow temple, and each several mind as an I 
 exponent of some sacred part therein ; each a jet of flame affixed \ 
 to some capital or triglyph or rosette, bringing out its significance J 
 to the eye-by its shining. 
 
 " We delight in heroes, but we can hardly call them a class ; for?" 
 the essence of heroism is that it takes the man out of all class 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 We call them providential men. They draw multitudes and na 
 tions after them, as the nation shares /he idea that inspires them. 
 [ know _ the pure examples are few; tofew benefactors scattered 
 along history to make the earth sweet\ For the most part, the 
 mud of temperament clouds the purit^and we see this sheathed 
 omnipotence in characters we can not otherwise respect. They 
 show their legitimate prerogative in nothing more than their power 
 to misguide us. For the perverted great derange and deject us, 
 and perplex ages with their fame. 
 
 " The great men of the past did not slide by any fortune into 
 their high, place. They have been selected by the severest of all 
 judges, j ime. As the snow melts in April, so has this mountain 
 lost in every generation a new fragment. Every year new parti 
 cles have dropped into the flood as the mind found them wanting 
 in permanent interest, until only the Titans remain. 
 
 " Nothing good, nothing grand has been withheld. The ages of 
 Time, the resources of Being, play into our tutelage. Here the 
 world yields to us its soul. To our insight old sages live again. 
 The old revolutions find correspondence in the experiences of the 
 mind. Wonderful spiritual natures, like princedoms and poten 
 tates,, stand bending around us. Each one of the century repre 
 sents a department of life and thought." 
 
 Emerson is not a hero-worshiper, does not make 
 the great man so important as do Carlyle, Cousin, .and 
 Herder. /^With him the great man is one who is able to 
 express Xfcare clearly some idea which others also accept. 
 He says every great man is a unique, it is true, but also 
 tr^at. every soul is individual and unrepresented. The 
 genius of any kind is but a mouth-piece of the soul, and 
 the soul is open to all. If he has some fortunate power, 
 h,e has weaknesses to balance it; and in his total power 
 he is no greater than others. Great men are to be 
 accepted, only as showing us what we can become, only 
 because we see in them what is in us. " There is any 
 thing but humiliation in the homage men pay to a great 
 man; it is sympathy, love of the same things, effort 
 to each them, the expression of their hope of what 
 they tvhall become when the obstructions of their mal 
 formation and mal-education shall be trained away. 
 Great men shall not impoverish, but enrich, us. Great 
 men, the age goes on their credit; but all the rest, 
 when their wires are continued, and not cut, can do as 
 signal things, and in new parts of nature." l If we trust 
 
 1 Letters and Social Aims, p. 202. 
 
INTUITION. 329 
 
 the great man too much, it will be to our hurt. He must 
 never take the place of that Over-soul, which is the 
 guide, and should be the only final trust, of us all. 
 " The man has never lived, Emerson says, that can feed 
 us ever." l We must not attach ourselves too closely 
 to any great man, lest his defects cause us to lose faith 
 in the truth. No man must usurp the place of the 
 soul, or stand to us instead of the descending of God s 
 truth into us from above. 
 
 " Our exaggeration of all fine characters arises from the fact that 
 we identify each in turn with the soul. But there are no such men 
 as we fable ; no Jesus, nor Pericles, nor Caesar, nor Angelo, nor 
 Washington, such as we have made. We consecrate a great deal 
 of nonsense, because it was allowed by great men. There is none 
 without his foible, (l verily believe if an angel should come to 
 chant the chorus of me moral law, he would eat too much ginger 
 bread, or take liberties with private letters, or do some precious 
 atrocity.} It is bad enough that our geniuses can not do any thing 
 usef ul,/mit it is worse that no man is fit for society who has fine 
 traits. He is admired at a distance, but he can not come near with 
 out appearing a cripple. . . . The magnetism which arranges tribes" 
 and races in one polarity is alone to be respected ; the men are steel- 
 filings. Yet we unjustly select a particle, and say, O steel-filing 
 number one ! what heart-drawings I feel to thee ! what prodigious 
 virtues are these of thine ! how constitutional to thee, and incom 
 municable ! Whilst we speak, the loadstone is withdrawn, down 
 falls our filing in a heap with the rest ; and we continue our mum 
 mery to the wretched shaving. Let us go for universals ; for the 
 magnetism, not for the needles. Human life and its persons are 
 poor empirical pretensions. A personal influence is an ignis fatuus." 2 
 
 It is the magnetism of the Spirit which Emerson 
 always preaches. A few of the steel-filings are more 
 completely draws, for the time being, into its influence 
 than others ; and their attracting power is greater, only 
 for this reason. " He who is immersed in what concerns 
 person or place, can not see the problem of existence." 3 
 So he says, that, however great and welcome may be the 
 claims and virtues of persons, "the instinct of man 
 presses eagerly onward to the impersonal and illimita 
 ble." 4 Again, he says, "No historical person begins to 
 
 i Miscellanies, p. 103. 2 Essays, second series, pp. 219, 220. 
 
 8 Essays, first series, p. 296. 4 Ibid., p. 284. 
 
330 KALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 content us," and because " there is no such critic and 
 beggar as this terrible Soul." l He believes in the vast 
 and illimitable Soul, and all that persons can do is to 
 give us some hint of its operations. To it we mu. , 
 in it we must put our trust; ijik.rn persons, however 
 great. " Before the revelations of the Soul, time, space, 
 and nature shrink away. The soul looketh steadily for 
 wards, creating a world before her, leaving worlds behind 
 her. She has no dates nor rites nor persons nor special 
 ties nor men. TJ^^id JsiiGiKSjajil^ the web 
 of events is the flowing robe in which she is clothed." 2 
 The great man is great, only wherein he has been obedi 
 ent to the voice of the Spirit. All men ought and may 
 foe thus obedient. Emerson, consequently, dwells most 
 
 pmplmtinn.lly rm f.ho. upprl nf Smi)4yi]jgf ; of accepting 
 
 that teaching which the Universal Mind gives to every 
 person. " A man should learn to detect and watch that 
 gleam of light which flashes across his mind within, more 
 than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages." 3 
 He is to trust that power within, because it is the Uni 
 versal Mind speaking through him, and because he 
 represents somewhat of its nature no other person can 
 express. Each person is to trust himself, because " the 
 power which resides in him is new in nature ; and none 
 but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does 
 he know until he has tried." 4 
 
 s doctrine of self-trust is really that of Soul- 
 lepends on his doctrine of self-renunciation, 
 all individual desires and purposes, that the 
 Spirit may speak through us. It depends on man s being 
 an inlet of the Over-soul, on his doctrine of immediate 
 intuition and revelation. We are not to trust the indi 
 vidual self, but that Self which unites man in immediate 
 co^iii,tion with (Jod. u Nothing is at last sacred but the 
 integrity of your own mind," 5 because the mind is .the 
 descending Spirit. " No law can be sacred to me but 
 that of my nature," 6 because it is the law of the Over- 
 
 * Society and Solitude, p. 274. 2 Essays, first series, p. 24 ( J. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. :). 4 Ibid., p. 40. 
 
 Ibid., p. 44. Ibid. 
 
 he know un 
 / Emerson * 
 
 1 trust. It.d( 
 rejection of 
 
INTUITIOX. 331 
 
 soul. " The magnetism which all original action exerts 
 is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. 
 Who is the Trustee ? What is the aboriginal Self on 
 which a universal reliance may be grounded? The 
 inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of 
 genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity, 
 or Instinct." l Whoever so lives that this power works 
 freely in him will find that " it is not by any known or 
 accustomed way ; he shall not discern the footprints 
 of any other ; he shall not see the face of man ; he shall 
 not hear any name ; the way, the thought, the good, 
 shall be wholly strange and new. It shall exclude ex 
 ample and experience. All persons that ever existed 
 are its forgotten ministers." 2 Emerson asks why it is 
 that we prate of self-reliance ; and says it is not because 
 the individual is a confident power in himself, but be 
 cause he is the agent of that Soul which speaks through 
 him. God will deign to enter and inhabit, only the man 
 who puts off all foreign support, and stands alone. 3 
 This is the doctrine of self-renunciation in another form. 
 We surrender ourselves absolutely to the will of God, 
 obey his laws, hearken only to his voice, and then w 
 become strong with his strength and wise with his truth". 
 That .this is what lie means by ^eli -tunst, Emerson has 
 himself distinctly stated. " It is, he says, our practical 
 perception of the Deity in man. It has its deep foun 
 dations in religion. If you have ever known a good mind 
 among the Quakers, you will have found that is the ele 
 ment of their faith." He says that books or men can not 
 " compare with the greatness of that counsel which is 
 open to you in happy solitude. I mean that there is for 
 you the following of an inward leader, a slow dis 
 crimination that there is for each a Best Counsel, which 
 enjoins the fit word and the fit act for every moment. 4 
 Emerson agrees with the Quakers, and all other mystics 
 who believe in an Inward Light, or guidance. In his 
 doctrine ^pf self-reliance, however, he comes nearer to 
 Swedenborg s idea of self-hood ; and he approaches also 
 
 i Ibid., p. 55. 2 Ibid , p. GO. 
 
 8 Ibid., p. 78. 4 Letters and Social Aims, pp. 276, 277. 
 
332 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 very closely to Hegel s conception of personality. We 
 reject the individual self, accept the guidance and influx 
 of the Over-soul, and therein we find a higher and truer 
 self. In rejecting the individual for the universal, as 
 Emerson so constantly urges us to do, we are not to 
 overlook that personality which separates us from all 
 other souls. 
 
 "Every mind has a new compass, a new north, a new direc 
 tion of its own, differencing its genius and aim from every other 
 mind, as every man, with whatever family resemblances, has a 
 new countenance, new manner, new voice, new thoughts, and new 
 character. Whilst he shares with all mankind the gift of reason 
 and the moral sentiment, there is a teaching for him from within, 
 which is leading him in a new path, and, the more it is trusted, 
 separates and signalizes him, while it makes him more important and 
 necessary to society. We call this specialty the bias of each indi 
 vidual. And none of us will ever accomplish any thing excellent 
 or commanding except when he listens to this whisper, which is 
 heard by him alone. Swedenborg called it the proprium, not a 
 thought shared with others, but constitutional to the man. A 
 point of education that I can never too much insist upon is this 
 tenet, that every individual man has a bias which he must obey, 
 and that it is only as he feels and obeys this that he rightly de 
 velops and attains his legitimate power in the world. It is his 
 magnetic needle, which points always in one direction to his proper 
 path, with more or less variation from any other man s. He is 
 never happy nor strong until he finds it, keeps it ; learns to be at 
 home with himself ; learns to watch the delicate hints and insights 
 that come to him, and to have the entire assurance of his own 
 mind. And in this self-respect, or hearkening to the privatest 
 oracle, he need never be at a loss. In morals, this is conscience ; 
 in intellect, genius ; in practice, talent ; not to imitate or surpass a 
 particular man in his way, but to bring out your own new way ; to 
 each his own method, style, wit, eloquence." 1 
 
 1 Letters and Social Aims, p. 274.. 
 
FATE AND FREEDOM. 333 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 FATE AND FREEDOM. 
 
 "TT^THICS have their foundation in intuition, according 
 -L^ to Emerson. With Kant, he does not distinguish 
 between morality and religion, but makes them one 
 and the same, the product of man s natural, universal 
 inspiration. He describes the moral sentiment in the 
 very same words with which he describes the workings of 
 religious intuition. Morality results from the direct 
 presence of God in all things, from his delegating 
 divine power to every atom and man. It is everywhere 
 the same life that is manifest, the life of the great 
 Indwelling God ; so that it is the same fact existing in 
 man and atom. " There is no difference of quality, but 
 only of more or less." The immanent presence of God 
 gives to all things the law of his nature, the direction 
 of his thought. This obedience of all things to the 
 attractions of the Indwelling God is law in nature, 
 morality in man. This fatal necessity of obedience to 
 the law of God is the basis of thought, but there it is 
 made alive with moral power. " In us it is inspiration ; 
 out there in Nature we see its fatal strength. We call it 
 the moral sentiment." l To the objector, he emphasizes 
 this necessity of law and obedience : 
 
 " Let me show him that the dice are loaded ; that the colors are 
 fast, because they are the native colors of the fleece ; that the globe 
 is a battery, because every atom is a magnet ; and that the police 
 and sincerity of the universe are secured by God s delegating his 
 dnr.nity to every particle ; that there is no room for hypocrisy, no 
 margin for choice." 2 
 
 Eniersoft i 8 ,,,*^ a fatalist, ^though he uses the word 
 fate so oiten. ITe uses the wonls law, necessity, fate, in 
 
 1 Conduct of Life, p. 192. 2 n^., p . 19 3. 
 
334 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 a sense quite other than that usually given them. He 
 means by them the invincible order and unity of th"e 
 world of ^pirit, that its methods are perfect and invari 
 able ; that justice can never be violated ; that the truth 
 is always the same, and always faithful to itself. The 
 moral sentiment speaks to us the law of God, which 
 never changes, which can not be broken. So he says, 
 
 " The lessons of the moral sentiment are, once for all, an 
 emancipation from that anxiety which takes the joy out of all life. 
 It teaches a great peace. It comes itself from the highest place. 
 It is that, which, being in all sound natures, and strongest in the 
 best and most gifted men, we know to be implanted by the Creator 
 of men. It is a commandment at every moment, and in every 
 condition in life, to do the duty of that moment, and to abstain 
 from doing the wrong. And it is so near and inward and constitu 
 tional to each, that no commandment can compare with it in 
 authority. All wise men regard it as the voice of the Creator 
 himself." 1 
 
 It is thus he regards the moral sentiment, as the 
 direct voice of God to the^sou! of man, through, intui 
 tion. His doctrine of necessity and fate is in entire 
 agreement with it. He recognizes man s relations to 
 nature and the force of the environment, he gives full 
 credit to circumstances, the laws of heredity he fully 
 recognizes. In his essay on Fate, as well as elsewhere, 
 he has written of their influence. All conditions within 
 wliich the &eL spirit acts 7 he knows under the one word, 
 fate. By it lie means the limiting, circumscribing con- 
 drtftmsof material existence, the limits which nature sets 
 for the action of the soul. In the following paragraphs 
 ^his meaning may be fully seen : 
 
 " An expense of ends to means is fate, organization tyranniz 
 ing over character. The menagerie, or forms and powers of the 
 spine, is a book of fate ; the bill of the bird, the skull of the snake, 
 determines tyrannically its limits. So is the scale of races, of tern- 
 penvments; so is sex; so is climate; so is the re-action of talents. 
 imprisoning the vital power in certain directions. Every spirit 
 makes its house, but afterwards the house confines the spirit." 
 
 " Nature is, what you may do. There is much you may not. 
 We have two things, the circumstance and the life. Once we 
 
 1 The Preacher, p. 8. 
 
FATE AND FEEEDOM. 335 
 
 thought positive power was all. Now we learn that negative 
 power, or circumstance, is half. Nature is the tyrannous circum 
 stance ; the thick skull ; the sheathed snake ; the ponderous, rock- 
 like jaw ; necessitated activity ; violent direction ; the conditions 
 of a tool, like the locomotive, strong enough on its track, but which 
 can da nothing but mischief off of it ; or skates, which are wings on 
 the ice, but fetters on the ground. The book of Nature is the book 
 jt Fa/-.-." 
 
 " A man s power is hooped in by necessity, which, by many ex- 
 perimeinr- h touches on every side, until he learns its arc. The 
 limitations renne as the soul purifies, but the ring of necessity is 
 always perched at the top. If we give it the high sense in which 
 ihe poets use it, even thought itself is not above Fate ; that, too, 
 must act according to eternal laws ; and all that is willful and fan 
 tastic in it is in opposition to its fundamental essence. Last of all, 
 high over thought, in the world of morals, Fate appears as vindi 
 cator, leveling the high, lifting the low, requiring justice in man, 
 and always striking soon or late, Avhen justice is not done. 
 What is useful will last ; what is hurtful will sink." l 
 
 In morals and religion fate becomes the polar opposite 
 of spontaneity and the laws or conditions of intuition. 
 So frequent is Emerson s use of the word fate, many 
 of his readers are led astray by it, and forget that his 
 primary idea is that of spontaneity, or intuition ; while 
 fate is only the term to indicate its limits, that intuition 
 is only for those who obey its laws. Emerson accepts 
 both spontaneity and fate, intuition and law ; but he 
 does not attempt to reconcile them by any philosophical 
 explanation : 
 
 " If there be irresistible dictation, he says, this dictation under 
 stands itself. If we must accept fate, we are not less compelled to 
 affirm liberty, the significance of the .individual, the grandeur of 
 duty, the power of character. This is true, and that other is true. 
 But our geometry can not span these extreme points, and reconcile 
 them. AVhat to do? By .obeying each thought frankly, by harp 
 ing, or, if you will, pounding on each string, we learn at last its 
 power. By the same obedience to other thoughts, we learn theirs ; 
 and then conies some reasonable hope of harmonizing them. We 
 are sure, that, though we know not how, necessity does comport 
 with liberty, the individual with the world, my polarity with the 
 spirit of the times." 2 
 
 There K-iate everywhere, in matter, mind, and morals, 
 as bound or limitation ; but fate also has its lord, its 
 
 i Conduct of Life, pp. 6, 11, 16, 17. 2 Ibid., p. 2. 
 
336 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 limits. In man there is free will, and freedom itself be 
 comes then a necessity. There is. always choosing and 
 acting in the soul, and intellect annuls fate. The con 
 dition of freedom- Emerson puts into these words : u So 
 far as a man thinks, he is free." 1 When a man renounces 
 his own whims and guesses, takes the divine directions, 
 learns and obeys the laws of God, then he conquers, and 
 becomes the master of fate. The, first step to the mas 
 tering of fate is, that we shall recognize the invariable 
 will of God, the absolute order and unity of the universe. 
 The second is, self-renunciation and obedience, perfect 
 acceptance of that will and those laws. Wherever there 
 are any facts whose law is not known and obeyed, there 
 is fate. On the other hand, freedom is knowledge of the 
 infinite law, and obedience to it. There is organization 
 behind, liberty before, because intellect is constantly 
 discovering the laws of the world, and by obeying mas 
 ters them. u Liberatioii^of the will .from thf sheaths 
 and clogs of organization which he has outgrown, is 
 the end and aim of this world." 2 All experience, all 
 thought, leads to this blessed result : 
 
 " Just as much intellect as yon add, so much organic power. He 
 who sees through the design T presid^ over it, an^ must, willow. 
 Shic_h must be. Our thought, though it were only an liour~75I3, 
 affirms an oldest necessity, not to be separated from thought, and 
 not to be separated from will. They must always have co-existed. 
 It apprises us of its sovereignty and godhead, which refuse to be 
 severed from it. It is not mine or thine, but the will of all mind. 
 It is poured into the wills of all men, as the soul itself which con 
 stitutes them men. I know not whether there be, as is alleged, in 
 the upper region of our atmosphere, a permanent westerly current, 
 which carries with it all atoms which rise to that height ; but I see, 
 that, when souls reach a certain clearness of perception, they accept 
 a knowledge and motive above selfishness. A breath of will blows 
 eternally through the universe of souls in the direction of the right 
 and necessary. It is the air which all intellects inhale and exhale, 
 and it is the wind which blows the worlds into order and orbit." 8 
 
 Freedom within bonds, necessitated freedom, is what 
 Emerson teaches. Here especially he recognizes the 
 law of antinomy as developed by Kant and Hegel, by 
 
 i Ibid., p. 19. 2 jbid., p. 30. s Ibid., p. 22. 
 
FATE AND FREEDOM. 337 
 
 which we rise through contrasts and opposition to a 
 higher point of view,_ to a higher truth, which absorbs, 
 and holds within itself, the two oppositions. Fate and 
 freedom are alike true, though they antagonize each 
 other. They are the same truth seen from opposite 
 directions, and neither phase of this truth can be spared. 
 If, however, an explicit affirmation of free will is de 
 sired, Emerson has given it : 
 
 " Morals implies freedom and will, he says. The will constitutes 
 the man. He has his life in Nature, like a beast ; but choice is 
 bom in him ; here is he that chooses ; here is the Declaration of 
 Independency, the July Fourth of zoology and astronomy. He 
 chooses, as the rest of the creation does not. But will, pure and 
 perceiving, is not willfulness. When a man, through stubbornness, 
 insists to do this or that, something absurd or whimsical, only 
 because he will, he is weak ; he blows with his lips against the 
 tempest, he dams the incoming ocean with his cane. It were an 
 unspeakable calamity if any one should think he had the right to 
 impose a private will on others. That is the part of a striker, an 
 assassin. All violence, all that is dreary and repels, is not power, 
 but the absence of power. Morals is the direction of the will on 
 universal ends." l 
 
 The world is ^a unity, under the direction of perfect 
 order ; that i_s, it obeys invariable law. Man can elect 
 to obey or disobey this order, to keep the laws or to 
 break them. When he keeps them, rising to that point 
 where he understands them as the workings of the per 
 fect methods of God, then he gladly, of his own free 
 will, accepts them, and finds they impose no restraints, 
 that they are one with the highest spirit of free intelli 
 gence. When we yield up the attempt to guide our 
 selves, and accept the guidance of that great Soul in 
 whom^we live, then do we for the first time discover 
 what it is to have freedom of will, to have, not the 
 impulse and license of the disorderly soul, but the per 
 fect liberty of those who know and "joyously follow the 
 true and. the right. To this thought Emerson con 
 stantly returns, and urges t)ie yitnl v Q H ^f oyrrpmm n- 
 all privates selfish desires, all individual purposes and 
 motives, all wishes which separate from the great order 
 
 1 Character, p. 356. 
 
338 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 of the world and the life of our fellow-men, and of 
 accepting those things alone which are universal. When 
 we have attained the true point of outlook upon life, 
 when we see the order of the world is sacred and 
 necessary, we gladly accept the pain and retribution 
 consequent upon our own disobedience. We rejoice that 
 no hurt c;in be brought upon God s fair world, though 
 we musT suffer. This doctrine of lowly trust and obe 
 dience, of having no will but the will of God, Emerson 
 has clearly taught in one of the most striking and 
 beautiful passages in all his writings. It should be 
 remembered, however, that in this trust and submission 
 he finds the very conditions of self-reliance and personal 
 freedom. 
 
 " A man should be a guest in his own house, and a guest in his 
 own thought. He is there to speak for truth; but who is he? 
 Some clod the earth has snatched from the ground, and with fire 
 has fashioned to a momentary man. Without the truth he is a 
 clod again. Let him find his superiority in not wishing superi 
 ority ; find the riches of love which possesses that which it adores ; 
 the riches of poverty; the height of lowliness, the immensity of 
 to-day ; and, in the passing hour, the age of ages. Wondrous state 
 of man ! Never so happy as when he has lost all private interests 
 and regards, and exists only in obedience and love of the Author." 
 
 " We perish, and perish gladly, if the law remains. I hope it is 
 conceivable that a man may go to ruin gladly, if he see that thereby 
 no shade falls on that he loves and adores. . . . Cripples and inva 
 lids, we doubt not there are bounding fawns in the forest, and lilies 
 with graceful, springing stem ; so neither do we doubt or fail to 
 love the eternal law, of w r hich we are such shabby practicers. 
 Truth gathers itself spotless arid unhurt after all our surrenders 
 and concealments and partisanship, never hurt by the treachery or 
 ruin of its best defenders." 
 
 " Have you said to yourself ever, I abdicate all choice, I see it 
 is not for me to interfere. I see that I have been one of the crowd ; 
 that I have been a pitiful person, because I have wished to be my 
 own master, and to dress, and order my whole way and system of 
 living. I thought I managed it very well. I see that my neighbors 
 think so. I have heard prayers. I have prayed, even ; but I have 
 never until now dreamed that this undertaking the entire manage 
 ment of my own affairs was not commendable. I have never seen, 
 until now, that it dwarfed me. I have not discovered, until this 
 blessed ray flashed just now through my soul, that there dwelt any 
 power in nature that would relieve me of my load. But now I 
 
FATE AND FREEDOM. 839 
 
 "What is this intoxicating sentiment that allies this scrap of 
 dust to the whole of Nature, and the whole of Fate, that makes 
 this doll a dweller in ages, mocker at time, able to span all out 
 ward advantages, peer and master of the elements ? I am taught 
 by it that what touches any thread in the vast web of being touches 
 me. I am representative of the whole ; and the good of the whole, 
 or what I call the right, makes me invulnerable. 
 
 " How came this creation so magically woven that nothing can 
 do me mischief but myself, that an invisible fence surrounds my 
 being, which screens me from all harm that I will to resist ? If I 
 will stand upright, the creation can not bend me. But if I violate 
 myself, if I commit a crime, the lightning loiters by the speed of 
 retribution, and every act is not hereafter but instantaneously re 
 warded according, to its quality. Virtue is the adopting of this dic 
 tate of the universal mind by the individual will. Character is the 
 habit of this obedience, and religion is the accompanying emotion 
 of reverence which the presence of the universal mind ever excites 
 in the individual." l 
 
 All good for man consists in his obedience to the laws 
 of God7^U^^- in Ills disobedience. Truth and virtue, 
 Emerson says, are an influx from God, in response to our 
 obedience to him. "Vice is the absence or departure 
 of the same." 2 Evil is selfishness, personal preference, 
 the desiring a good apart from others. " Every per 
 sonal consideration that we allow costs us heavenly 
 state. We sell the thrones of angels for a short and 
 turbulent pleasure." 3 His conception of evil he has 
 exactly stated in these words : 
 
 " Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute ; it is 
 like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death, 
 or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benev 
 olence as a man hath, so much life hath he. Whilst a man seeks 
 good ends, he is strong by the whole strength of nature. In so 
 far as he roves from these ends, he bereaves himself of power, or 
 auxiliaries; his being shrinks out of all remote channels, he be 
 comes less and less, a mote, a point, until absolute badness is abso 
 lute death." 4 
 
 This concerjtion of evil, as merely adepriyation of 
 life in its~fulmess, is common to the mysticsT Schel- 
 
 is necessary, it is nothing 
 real. Eckhart sees in it necessary phases of the return 
 
 1 Sovereignty of Ethics, p. 410. 2 Essays, first series, p. 108. 
 
 8 Ibid., p. 279. 4 Miscellanies, p. 120. 
 
340 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 of man to God, or a means to the realization of man s 
 perfection. This idea anticipates Emerson s attitude 
 towards this problem, as does Eckhart s assertion that 
 sin is necessary to the development of good in man. 
 He says we should not wish not to have sinned, and this 
 thought Emerson has also more than once expressed. 
 
 Emerson says that "for the intellect there is no 
 crime." l When we apprehend the laws of the world, 
 we see they can not be broken so far as the laws are 
 concerned, that they act always the same whether we 
 obey them or not ; consequently no law, no truth, no 
 principle, is ever violated or ever can be, so far as the 
 law in itself is concerned. It is-io-Jiiuilone the evil is 
 idone, the violation is wrought. So perfect does he 
 regard the order of the universe, he can not think of 
 any actual flaw in it, any real discord. But when we 
 do violence to our own natures, forsaking the law of 
 God, then conscience, declares we have done wrong, 
 and demands renewed obedieace. "Saints are sad, he 
 says, because they behold sin from the point of view 
 of the conscience, and not of the intellect ; a confusion 
 of thought. Sin seen from the thought, is a diminu 
 tion or less; seen from the conscience or will, it is a 
 pravity or bad. The intellect names it shade, absence 
 of light, and no essence. The conscience must feel it 
 as essence, essential evil. This it is not ; it has an 
 objective existence, but no subjective." 2 Again he 
 says, "That pure malignity can exist, is the extreme 
 proposition of unbelief. It is not to be entertained by 
 a rational agent ; it is atheism ; it is the last profanation. 
 The divine effort is never relaxed ; the carrion in the 
 sun will convert itself to grass and flowers ; and man, 
 though in brothels, or jails, or on gibbets, is on his way 
 to all that is good and true." 3 Yet he says that 
 " every thing is superficial, and perishes, but love and 
 truth only." 4 " He who loves goodness, harbors angels, 
 reveres reverence, and lives with God. The less, how 
 ever, we have to do with our sins, the better. No man 
 
 1 Essays, second series, p. 80. 2 Ibid. 
 
 8 Representative Men, p. 138. 4 Ibid., p. 139. 
 
FATE AND FREEDOM. 341 
 
 can afford to waste his moments in compunctions." l 
 We are not to think constantly about our own good, 
 but to look forward towards loyalty to God arid the 
 universal good which results from it. Thus he makes 
 all evil t_o..be lack of harmony, good in the making. 
 Sin is disobedience, selfishness, disloyalty. In his first 
 book" he taught that life is for discipline, to teach us 
 the lessons of spiritual loyalty. The same idea he has 
 maintained in all his books. We try ourselves against 
 the laws of the world, seek to go forward in ways of 
 our own. We are permitted to do so, only because it is 
 by free choice, by our own seekings and experiments, 
 we at last gladly and willingly accept the liberty which 
 is obedience. These missteps, these experiments, and 
 struggles forward, teach us the way of truth as other 
 wise we could not learn it. " We are used as brute 
 atoms, until we think ; then we use all the rest. Nature 
 turns all malfaisance to good." 2 
 
 Emerson has well taught the fact which all historians 
 of social progress now recognize, that man has devel 
 oped by experience, by conflict of interests, by survival 
 of those men and interests fittest to carry forward social 
 order. In his essay on War he gave it fall recogni 
 tion, and in that entitled Considerations by the Way 
 he. developed it more fully. He says the spawning 
 productivity of nature "is not noxious or needless. 
 You will say, this rabble of nations might be spared. 
 But no, they are all counted and depended on. Fate 
 keeps every thing alive so long as the smallest thread 
 of public necessity holds it on the tree. The coxcomb 
 and bully and thief class are allowed as proletaries, 
 every one of their vices being the excess or acridity of 
 a virtue. The mass are animal, in pupilage, and near 
 chimpanzee. But the units whereof this mass is com 
 posed are neuters, every one of which may be grown to 
 a queen-bee." We find the majority of men are unripe, 
 have not yet come to themselves; while in the passing 
 moment the quadruped interest is very prone to pre 
 vail. 3 He says "the first lesson of history is the good 
 
 1 Ibid., p. 137. 2 Conduct of Life, p. 221. a Ibid. 
 
342 RA.LPH WALDO EMEBRON. 
 
 \\ of evil. Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes 
 
 \ja better." 1 His meaning is indicated in numerous 
 
 : historical illustrations, all showing there is a tendency 
 
 iu things to right themselves. " The war or revolution 
 
 or bankruptcy that shatters a rotten system allows 
 
 things to take a new and natural order. The sharpest 
 
 evils are bent into that periodicity which makes the 
 
 errors of the planets and the fevers and distempers of 
 
 men self-limiting. Nature is upheld by antagonism. 
 
 /Passions, resistance, danger, are educators. We acquire 
 the strength we have overcome." So he holds that men 
 are indebted to their vices and defects for a best part 
 of their education.^-Mqral deformity he finds to be 
 "~ gsad^passion frtrCof placV When the impulse which 
 creates the evil is wisely Ndirected, directed in confor 
 mity with the methods o\ nature, then it is good. 
 Equally true it is of cominWities, that an apparent 
 evil may result in good. He\aj r s " we can not trace 
 the triumphs of civilization to such benefactors as we 
 wish. The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, 
 huckstering trade." 2 It is not because trade is selfish 
 that it is the means of good, but because it unites 
 nations in common interests. Commerce can prosper 
 only where there are good laws, and a large measure of 
 justice is secured. For the sake of trade, where no 
 higher ends are regarded, law and good order are estab 
 lished. There is always at work in the affairs of the 
 world, according to Emerson, a power which compels 
 man to be just; so that what is useful and right will 
 last, what is hurtful will sink. 8 In trade, therefore, 
 and everywhere else, it is only the true, just, and right 
 which prospers. And in many other ways Emerson is 
 far from being merely an individualist in his views of 
 
 1 human progress. If he would have us sit alone and 
 listen to the Inward. Voice, he does not regard that as 
 the only means of human development. To a remark 
 able degree he recognizes the value of united action, 
 he sees that the race is a solidarity and he entirely 
 
 i Ibid., p. 222. 2 Society and Solitude, p. 149. 
 
 8 Conduct of Life, p. 17. 
 
FATE AND FREEDOM. 348 
 
 rejects the theory that one can be perfect while any 
 other is imperfect. Though so strong a believer in the 
 great man, yet he clearly enough sees that social con 
 cert is necessary to human progress. He also recog 
 nizes the development which has been secured by the 
 general advance of intelligence. Indeed, Emerson is 
 too broad-minded to see no truth but in one direction. 
 Those who criticise him for his extreme individualism 
 are usually not capable of that breadth of view he has 
 always shown, and do not as clearly perceive as he does, 
 that there is truth in both the individualistic and the 
 socialistic theories of progress. 
 
 Emerson is an ^optimist who jiever doubts, who 
 thoroughly believes that, all things are good at heart. 
 He will not, therefore, believe in any evil which is 
 more than a temporary lack of harmony. He sees God 
 everywhere, and everywhere delegating his law and 
 order to the world. u There is no chance, he says, and 
 no anarcTiy in the .universe.".. JOTS- system and grada 
 tion. l It is^ his large faith in law, as the highest 
 method of freedom, which ! permits- Mm to believe there 
 run roTil m 1 in thp world. He sees a perfect law cf 
 o.orn pension a,t worlr ftYfr^wrmi fi " ."." J< - 1 "" 1 nf cause 
 and effect so exact, that there can be no good or evil 
 whichTS_ not. deserved] Every condition has grown out 
 of precedent conditions. T ijf> ^ tn 11S what we make 
 it. Emerson has outgrown anthropomorphism; he 
 ooes not believe in a God of arbitrary decrees. The 
 methods of God he regards as perfect in their order, 
 system, and invariableness. All conformity to those 
 methods is good, all disregard of them evil. So he 
 regards every evil men suffer from as evidence that the 
 laws of God are not obeyed. Those laws are self- 
 executing ; and the results they produce in us are the 
 exact measures of our obedience to them, and hence of 
 our deserving. God has no favorites, his laws affect all 
 alike.. Igmerson iTees that this pel fULl uidoi in the 
 universe, self-executing, invariable, a law of compensa 
 tion, a law also of cause and effect, insures for each 
 
 1 Ibid .] p. 287. 
 
344 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSOX. 
 
 one a destiny of his own selecting. God judges no 
 man, nor chooses heaven or hell for any. Men always 
 receive and enjoy "precisely thai measure of good or 
 evil they cleserve, which results from their measure of 
 obedience to the laws of God. u He is great whose 
 eyes are opened to see that the reward of actions can 
 not be escaped, because he is transformed into his 
 action, and taketh its nature, which bears its own fruit, 
 like every other tree." l 
 
 Xo evil c vei\ &aCapcs ampim i.shed^acQrding to Emer - 
 son. Whatever theory the intellect devises as explain 
 ing the problem of evil, he finds the conscience always 
 proclaiming that all evil is to be dreaded and shunned 
 as real. Retribution for evil done he finds to be exact 
 ing and instantaneous. In his essay on Compensation, 
 he has given to the world a noble theory of rewards 
 and punishments. He sees God present everywhere, 
 v in the fullness of his being, with the whole vigor of his 
 life, and in the entire power of his law. So he says, 
 
 " The true doctrine of omnipresence is, that God appears with 
 
 V all his parts in every moss and cobweb. The value of the universe 
 
 * contrives to throw itself into every point. If the good is there, so 
 
 is the evil ; if the aihnity, so is the repulsion ; if the force, so the 
 
 limitation. 
 
 * Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. That soul, 
 which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its 
 inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength. 
 Justice is not postponed. A perfect equity adjusts its balance in 
 ^ all parts of life. The dice of God are always loaded. . . . Every 
 lecret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, 
 ivery wrong redressed, in silence arid certainty. What we call 
 etribution is the universal necessity by which the whole appears 
 wherever a part appears. . . . Crime and punishment grow out of 
 one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within 
 the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and effect, 
 means and ends, seed and fruit, can not be severed ; for the effect 
 always blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the 
 fruit in the seed. . . . Pleasure is taken out of pleasant things, 
 profit out of profitable things, power out of strong things, as soon 
 as we seek to separate them from the whole. We can no more 
 halve things and get the sensual good, by itself, than we can get 
 an i;i:-,id that shall have no outside, or a light without a shadow. 
 
 1 Ibid , p. 201. 
 
FATE AND FREEDOM. 845 
 
 "Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which the un 
 wise seek to dodge, which one and another brags that he does 
 not know, that they do not touch him, but the brag is on his 
 lips, the conditions are in his soul. If he escapes them in one 
 part, they attack him in another more vital part. If he has 
 escaped them in form, and in the appearance, it is because he 
 has resisted his life, and fled from himself ; and the retribution is 
 so much death." 1 
 
 Here, again, we see the vital significance of what 
 Emerson teaches concerning self-renunciation and 
 obedience. As we renounce all selfish ends, all whims \ 
 of our own, and seek exactly to obey the laws of the > 
 world, are we made strong and .whole. As we disobey, 
 retribution- follows. Emerson points out how this retri 
 bution results from the failure to obey the laws of God. 
 As we exercise the muscles, they grow stronger. If we 
 study, we grow wiser. Strength comes only by exer 
 cise, wisdom only by search for it. Muscles not used 
 grow powerless ; who does not study remains ignorant. 
 Everywhere it is the same. Love begets love. " The 
 exclusionist in religion does not see that he shuts the 
 door of heaven on himself, in striving to shut out 
 others. Treat men as pawns and ninepins, and you 
 shall suffer as well as they. If you leave out their 
 heart, you shall lose your own." 2 It is not merely that 
 men treat you as you treat them ; but all narrowness 
 and exclusive ness make little the soul, dwarf its sym 
 pathies, cramp its energies. " All infractions of love 
 and equity in our social relations are speedily pun 
 ished." 3 They are punished by fear, hatred, and war. 
 The tyrant is constantly in danger of losing his life 
 from the hatred of those he enslaves. The selfish rich 
 man finds many dangers besetting his riches. " The 
 league between virtue and nature, Emerson says, 
 engages all things to assume a hostile front to vice. 
 XThe beautiful laws and substances of the world perse 
 cute and whip the traitor. He finds that things are 
 arranged for truth and benefit, but there is no den in 
 the wide world to hide a rogue. ^Commit a crime, and 
 
 1 Essays, first series, pp. 91-94. 2 J 
 
346 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 the earth is made of glass." On the other hand, the 
 law holds with equal surety for all right action. " Love, 
 and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically 
 just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation. 
 The good man has absolute good, which, like fire, turns 
 every thing to its own nature, so that you can not do 
 him any harm." l 
 
 FromthisJ-awofi compensation and retribution, as 
 Emerson interprets it, grow .two results, that men are 
 seen as they are, and that all men are capable of receiv 
 ing from life an equal g^od. For the moment we may 
 have credit for virtue we do not possess, by those who 
 do not penetrate to moral causes ; but we soon appear 
 to all the wise as we are. Foolish are they who think 
 they can cheat God, and that his laws will forget to 
 act. Xln the contrary, every disobedience of the laws 
 of the world instantly betrays itself ; and our nature 
 depreciates, weakens. 
 
 " As much virtue as there is, so much appears ; as much good 
 ness as there is, so much reverence it commands. All the devils 
 respect virtue. The high, the generous, the self-devoted sect, will 
 always instruct and command mankinds Never was a sincere word 
 utterly lost. Never a magnanimity fell to the ground, but there is 
 some heart to greet and accept it unexpectedly. A man passes for 
 what he is worth. What he is engraves itself on his face, on his 
 form, on his fortunes, in letters of light. Concealment avails him 
 nothing; boasting nothing. There is confession in the glances of 
 our eyes, in our smiles, in salutations, and the grasp of hands. His 
 sin bedaubs him, mars all his good impression. Men know not 
 why they do not trust him, but they do not trust him. His vice 
 glasses his eyes, cuts lines of mean expression in his cheeks, pinches 
 the nose, sets the mark of the beast on the back of the head, and 
 writes O fool ! fool ! on the forehead of a king. 
 
 ,"If you would not be known to do any thing, never do it. A 
 man may play fool in the drifts of a desert, but every grain of 
 sand shall seem to see. He may be a solitary eater, but he can not 
 keep his foolish counsel. A broken complexion, a swinish look, 
 ungenerous acts, and the want of due knowledge, all blab. 
 
 " On the other hand, the hero fears not, that, if he withhold the 
 avowal of a just and brave act, it will go unwitnessed and unloved. 
 One knows it, himself, and is pledged by it to sweetness of 
 peace, and to nobleness of aim, which will prove in the end a bet 
 ter proclamation of it than the relating of the incident. Virtue is 
 
 i Ibid., pp. 10, i, 104. 
 
FATE AXD FREEDOM. 347 
 
 the adherence in action to the nature of things, and the nature of 
 tilings makes it prevalent. It consists in a perpetual substitution 
 of being for seeming. 
 
 " The lesson which these observations convey is, Be, and not 
 seem. Let us acquiesce. Let us take our bloated nothingness out 
 of the path of the divine circuits. Let us unlearn our wisdom of 
 the world. Let us lie low in the Lord s power, and learn that truth 
 alone makes rich and great." J 
 
 The law of compensation brings men to the same I 
 level, so far as the benefits are concerned which nature 1 
 gives. The genius has his defects and his larger duties I 
 and anxieties. The plowman is ignorant in books, 1 
 but lie has his own ability and enjoyment, and his ) 
 clearer perception of realities. " The walls of rude / 
 minds, Emerson says, are scrawled all over with facts,/ 
 with thoughts." 2 "We are all wise, he adds. The 
 difference between persons is not in wisdom, but in 
 art." 3 Again he says, " The permanent interest of 
 every man is, never to be in a false position, but to 
 have the weight of Nature to back him in all that he 
 does. Riches and poverty are a thick or thin costume, 
 and our life - the life of all of us identical." 4 We 
 all get out of life much the same results. AU experi 
 ences, teach the same laws of renunciation, obedience, and 
 
 self-eliance._ As we receive only what we pay for, if we ! 
 
 have much, w- Jiave many burdens with it. Because^. 
 however, each soul is of the nature of the Universal 
 Mjj^d, it iias tree access into all truth. T.a.nTi m^n js an 
 inlet to ail wisdom wnen nis mind is open to reason, 
 and he "is made a freeman oi the whole estate. What 
 Plato has tnougnt, tie may tnink; wliat a saint has felt, 
 he may feel ; what at any tune has befallen any man, 
 he can understand." This is the thought of his lines 
 which serve as the motto to the essay on History. As 
 an organ of the Universal Mind, each soul is admitted 
 into every thought and aspiration of the greatest souls. 
 
 " I am owner of the sphere, 
 Of the seven stars and the solar year, 
 Of Caesar s hand, and Plato s brain, 
 Of Lord Christ s heart, and Shakspere s strain." 
 
 i Essays, first series, pp. 142, 143. 2 ibid., p. 300. 
 
 Ibid., p. 302. * Conduct of Life, p. 286, 
 
348 KALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 , 
 
 In morals, however, we can not be alike ; for obedi 
 ence receives a reward evil can not possibly find. On 
 virtue there is no tax ; " for that is the incoming of 
 God himself, or absolute existence, without any com 
 pensatlon." This incoming of God to the soul is a gift 
 of grace to those who make pure the channels of their 
 being for its reception, but all men are equal so far as 
 every quality is concerned but the moral. 
 
 _ " In the nature of the soul is the compensation for the inequal 
 ities of condition. The radical tragedy of nature seems to be the 
 distinction of more and less. How can less not feel the pain ; how 
 not feel indignation or malevolence towards more f Look at those 
 who have less faculty, and one feels sad, and knows not well what 
 to make of it. He almost shuns their eye; he fears they will 
 upbraid God. What should they do ? It seems a great injustice. 
 But see^the facts nearly, and these mountainous inequalities vanish. 
 Love reduces them, as the sun melts the iceberg in the sea. The 
 heart and soul of all men being one, this bitterness of His and 
 Mine ceases. His is mine." 
 
 " The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the 
 understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a 
 mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of 
 friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But 
 the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all 
 facts." 1 
 
 The identification of morals and religion has not been 
 a peculiarity of Emerson -s. The idealists have had this 
 thought .before them from the time of Plato, and by the 
 mystics it has been made prominent. In the same way, 
 the unity of being and knowledge has not been new to 
 Emerson. . The mystics, who have found their center of 
 thought m the teachings of Plotinus, Eckhart, Boehme, 
 and Schelling, have all said that conduct and knowledge 
 always stand at the same level in each human soul. 
 Many of the idealists have accepted the same conclu 
 sion, as it was very clearly taught by Plato. Schcl- 
 ling and Caiiyle alike say that intellect and goodness 
 always go together, always are of equal power in the in 
 dividual. Emerson says "the good man will be the 
 wise man." 2 The moral sentiment to him " seems to 
 
 1 Essays, first Heries, pp. 110, 113. 2 Essays, first series, p. 215 
 
FATE AND FREEDOM. 349 
 
 be the fountain of intellect," and it is the basis alike of 
 thought and being. 1 "The high intellect, he says, is 
 absolutely at one with moral nature." 2 This idea he 
 has even more explicitly stated in these words : " There 
 is an intimate inter-dependence of intellect and morals. 
 Given.the equality of two intellects, which will form 
 the most reliable judgments, the good, or the bad 
 hearted ? So intimate is this alliance of mind arid heart, 
 that talent uniformly sinks with character. The bias of 
 errors of principle carries away men into perilous courses 
 as soon as their will does not control their passion or 
 talent." 3 
 
 He believes that the human being is so thoroughly a 
 unit that a defect in any part of it appears in all the 
 others. " I find the unity in human structures, he says, 
 rather virulent and pervasive ; that a crudity in the 
 blood will appear in the argument ; a hump in the 
 shoulder will appear in the speech and handiwork. If 
 his mind could be seen, the hump would be seen." 4 
 That is, the body is a picture, a likeness of the soul, and 
 reflects the soul s true nature. 
 
 The analogous doctrine of moral affinity also appears 
 in Emerson s pages. He says " society exists by chem 
 ical, affinity," 5 and that in any company a rapid self- 
 distribution takes place, into sets and pairs. This 
 idea he presents in the essay on Spiritual Laws, where 
 he says that a man is a selecting principle, gathering 
 his like to him wherever he goes. " Nothing is more 
 deeply punished, he says, than the neglect of the affini 
 ties, by which alone society should be formed." 6 This 
 affinity is expressed through the eyes. Souls that are 
 fitted to each other look into each other s eyes and read 
 each other s secrets without words. This idea occasion 
 ally appears in the essays, and it is the main thought of 
 the poem on The Visit. Goethe has given expression 
 to the same thought. 
 
 1 Character, p. 358. 2 Sovereignty of Ethics, p. 405. 
 
 3 Conduct of Life, p. 189. * Ibid., p: 38. 
 
 6 Society and Solitude, p. 13. 6 Essays, first series, pp. 129, 135. 
 
350 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 " The unit of the visit, 
 The encounter of the wise, 
 Say, what other meter is it 
 Than the meeting of the eyes ? 
 Nature poureth into nature 
 hrough the channels of that feature. 
 
 look has drained the breast ; 
 gle moment years confessed." 
 
 . \v 
 
 In judging Emerson s moral theories, it should not be 
 
 forgotten that he is an optimist, who believes there is no 
 evil, that there is nothing in the universe but what is 
 food. He refuses to see the evil, to recognize that bur- 
 Leii of pain .and misery, which afflicts so many minds. 
 All is good, all is under the perfect domain of Absolute 
 Love, all tends to a blessed destiny ; this is Emerson s 
 belief. This fail h in the universal good has increased 
 with him as he has grown older, giving. "to his life a 
 serenity and peace and trust of the deepest and pro- 
 foundest ^HTafltiPT -Th? carrion that rots in the sun, 
 the criminal who breaks every law of man and God, 
 are yet on their way to blessedness. It is easy to misun 
 derstand aii3 misrepresent this optimism ; less easy, 
 perhaps, to state it so as not to appear to annul moral 
 distinctions. Whoever will give heed, however, to 
 Emerson s declaration, that every wrong is punished, 
 and that no moral evil can prosper at last, will see that 
 he does not ignore the proper distinctions to be made 
 in regard to conduct. Pie believes in universal progress, 
 
 that all things are on their way to perfect harmony with 
 _ .. ^^ ^^^^^1 / A t j 
 
 (jrod ; he believes that evil and pain and misery are 
 means to this fin al restoration ; but he also believes that 
 the morally pure ai\d holy is, in the end, the only means 
 to the perfect realization of this great consummation. 
 He believes the good is absolute and the evil only phe- 
 i nomenaL The evil is u part of the discipline by which 
 the soul is restored to its union with the Over-soul. 
 This optimism determines all his views of life, as well 
 as his theories of man and the universe and religion. 
 It is to him an unfailing source of confidence in the 
 integrity of man and nature, and it colors his every 
 thought with an aspect of joy and hope. 
 
CONCERNING IMMORTALITY. 
 
 THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 CONCERNING IMMORTALITY. 
 
 HV/TYSTICISM delights to dwell upon the complete 
 / -LV-L union with God which is possible to the soul. 
 The mystic goes so far in_this direction as to speak of 
 man s ^absorption in God, of the soul as being lost in 
 \Godhead. It is always difficult to decide the precise 
 leaning of such language. It is yet a debated question 
 whether, the Buddhist, who is a pure mystic, believes in 
 annihilation or in an utter cessation of that which is 
 merely individual. Only a few European mystics have 
 gone so far as to leave any doubt as to their meaning. 
 Emerson employs their language, and he accepts their 
 view of immortality. What he means when he writes of 
 this subject can only be clearly understood through the 
 aid of the doctrines of mysticism. The mystic repeats 
 constantly the injunction, that we are to abandon self, 
 and become one with God. Tauler says that man must 
 " simply yield himself to God; ask nothing, desire noth 
 ing, love #nd mean only God." " Some will ask, he 
 says, what remains after a man hath thus lost himself in 
 God ? I answer, nothing but a fathomless annihilation 
 of himself ; an absolute ignoring of all reference to him 
 self personally ; of all aim of his own in will and heart, 
 in way, in purpose, or in use. For in this self-loss man 
 sinks so deep, that, if he could, out of pure love and love 
 liness, sink deeper, yea, and become absolutely nothing, 
 he would do so right gladly." He even goes so far as to 
 say that " when the soul enters into the unmixed light, 
 she, with her created I, sinks so deeply into her own 
 nothingness, that she can not by her own power regain 
 the sense of separate existence as creature." By this 
 he does not mean annihilation, not even extinction of 
 
352 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 personality ; for he adds, " But God upholds her with 
 his uncreated power, and keeps the soul still herself" 
 So far from believing in absorption of the soul into 
 the ocean of Being, is Tauler, that he asserts the " free 
 self-determination of man," and says that God, in being 
 free and uncreated, is " alone equal to the soul as touch 
 ing freedom." Man becomes nothing, and yet God alone 
 has freedom equal to his ! Tauler s " nothing," as in 
 the case of the other mystics, is not annihilation, absorp 
 tion, or cessation of personality. It is perfect harmony 
 with God, and cessation of all passion, all merely indi 
 vidual desire. Schelling says that man has the im 
 manent ground of his being in the Absolute, is nothing 
 apart from the indwelling God ; yet he maintains that 
 man is free and personal. "So little, he says, do im 
 manence in God and freedom contradict each other, 
 that only what is free is, in so far as it is so, in God ; 
 while what is devoid of freedom, is, in so far as it is so, 
 of necessity without God." Freedom, therefore, consists 
 in a rejection of what is individual and selfish, for a per 
 sonal self-determination in harmony with God. This is 
 Emerson s idea, when he dwells so strongly upon what 
 is individual, and rejects it as the soul s greatest enemy. 
 When he bids us renounce all that is individual and 
 particular, he does not ask us to cease to exist or to be 
 come absorbed in the Universal Spirit. He also bids us 
 have self-reliance ; and he says that each soul is a new 
 and unmeasured power, unlike all other souls. He re 
 jects the individual, local, notional, selfish ; he retains 
 the personal, divine, and eternal. 
 
 The Theologia Q-ermanica sees the soul s freedom in 
 submission to Eternal Goodness. It says this world is 
 an outer court of eternity, that it is a paradise u in which 
 all things are lawful save one tree and the fruit thereof ; 
 nothing is contrary to God but self-will, to will other 
 wise than as the Eternal Will would have it." That 
 this world is a part of paradise, that the now is eternity, 
 is Emerson s own idea. It is the key to his conception 
 of immortality. Schelling had the same thought. 
 " The I, he says, and its essence, undergoes neither con 
 
CONCERNING IMMORTALITY. 353 
 
 ditions nor restrictions. Its primitive form is that of 
 Being, pure and eternal. We can not say of it, it was, 
 or it. will be, we can only say, it is. It exists absolutely. 
 It is then outside of time and beyond it. The form of 
 its intellectual intuition is eternity. Now, since it is 
 eternal, it has no duration, for duration only relates 
 to objects ; so that eternity properly consists in having 
 nothing to do with time." The soul is eternal, and in 
 its powers is the promise of immortality. Yet we know 
 of a truth that the soul is immortal, not by words or by 
 any outward assurance, only by depth of soul, only by 
 perfect harmony of purpose with the Over-soul. 1 This 
 thought Emerson has thus expressed : 
 
 " There is nothing capricious in nature. In nature the implant 
 ing of a desire indicates that the gratification of that desire is in 
 the constitution of that creature that feels it. If there is a desire 
 to live in a larger sphere, or with more knowledge and power, it is 
 because life and knowledge and power are good- for us, and we are 
 the rational depositories of such things. A future state is an illu 
 sion for the ever-present state. It isn t length of life, but depth of 
 life ; it isn t duration, but a taking of the soul out of time. The 
 spiritual world takes place, the ever-present, that which is always 
 the same. And this is the way we rise in being. I know that the 
 universe can receive no detriment, that there is a remedy for every 
 wrong, and a satisfaction for every soul. 
 
 " I have heard that death takes us away from ill things, not 
 from good. I have heard, that, when we pronounce the name of 
 man, we pronounce the belief of immortality. All great natures 
 delight in stability ; all great men find eternity affirmed in the very 
 promise of their faculties. Life is not long enough for art, not long 
 enough for friendship. The evidence from intellect is as valid as 
 the evidence from love. The being that can share a thought and 
 feeling so sublime as confidence in truth, is no mushroom ; our 
 dissatisfaction with any other solution is the blazing evidence of 
 immortality." 2 
 
 He thinks, that, as soon as thought is exercised, this 
 belief is inevitable. " As soon as virtue glows, this be 
 lief confirms itself. It is a kind of summary or com 
 pletion of man. It can not rest on a legend ; it can not 
 be quoted, from one to another ; it must have the assur- 
 
 1 Essays, first series, pp. 257, 258. 
 
 2 Newspaper report of a lecture delivered before the Parker Frater 
 nity, Dec. G, Id70. 
 
354 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 ance of a man s faculties that they can fill a larger the* 
 ater, and a larger term than nature here allows him." 1 
 He finds that this faith rests on a deep trust in the Uni 
 versal Spirit alone, on the conviction that nothing can 
 depart from its relations to God. In writing of the 
 power and influence of the moral sentiment, how it ab 
 sorbs and commands every other purpose and desire, he 
 says " it makes no stipulations for earthly felicity ; does 
 not ask, in the absoluteness of its trust, even for the as 
 surance of continued life." 2 This is the ground of Emer 
 son s trust, faith in Spirit, supreme confidence in the will 
 of God. As God orders, as in his law and love is best, 
 man is to accept his destiny. When his trust is strong 
 enough, when he sees to the end of this result, he will 
 find that this is absolutely the best. Emerson has faith 
 in the individual soul, but he has greater faith in the In 
 finite Goodness which surrounds and contains all things. 
 He adopts Goethe s idea, however, that, "in order to 
 manifest ourselves as a powerful living principle in -the 
 future, we must be one ; " but he does not adopt Goethe s 
 other opinion, as he is sometimes supposed to do, that 
 "such incomprehensible subjects lie too far off, and only 
 disturb our thoughts if made the theme of daily medi 
 tation." "An able man, says Goethe, who has some 
 thing to do here, and must toil and strive day by day 
 to accomplish it, leaves the future world till it comes, 
 and contents himself with being active and useful in 
 this." Emerson expresses a similar opinion in his essay 
 on Immortality, but in a quite different spirit than 
 Goethe s. He would not shun the subject because in 
 different to it, or merely because it is incomprehensible, 
 but because he has a higher ground of trust than his 
 own personal future. Immortality is to him not a thing 
 of time or place, but capacity of seul. The true revela 
 tion is in the soul, in its ascent to the sublimer heights 
 of being, and not in words that satisfy a low curiosity. 
 When we accept joyfully the tide of being which floats 
 us into the secrets of nature, and live and work with 
 her, "all unawares the ^advancing soul has built and 
 
 1 Conduct of Life. 2 Character, p. 373. 
 
CONCERNING IMMORTALITY. 355 
 
 forged for itself a new condition, and the question and 
 the answer are one." l Emerson s idea is that of Hegel, 
 as Rosenkranz has expressed it in these words : " He 
 remarks that immortality is a quality of mind which is 
 already present, and need not first be mediated by 
 death. It is among the most unhappy errors of man 
 kind that they have expected the truth of spirit, the 
 so-called eternal life, as a beyond, or something which 
 begins with death. He everywhere says that we are 
 now and here in the midst of the absolute." 2 Man s 
 immortality is involved in the infinity and eternity of 
 all that is real and spiritual. Emerson accordingly 
 assures us that " the ground of hope is in the infinity 
 of the world, which infinity re-appears in every parti 
 cle." " Every thing is prospective, and man is to live 
 hereafter. That the world is for his education, is the 
 only sane solution of the enigma." 3 Trust in the soul, 
 as an eternal life in God, is what he here expresses. 
 The capacities of the soul affirm the inspirations of 
 affection and of the moral sentiment. 4 In the Threnody, 
 which commemorates the death of his first son, he has 
 expressed his convictions in words of the strongest 
 
 " Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know 
 What rainbows teach, and sunsets show ? 
 Verdict which accumulates 
 From lengthening scroll of human fates, 
 Voice of earth to earth returned, 
 Prayers of saints that inly burned, 
 Saying. AYhat is excellent, 
 As God lives, is permanent ; 
 Hearts are dust, hearts loves remain ; 
 Heart s love will meet thee again." 
 
 These lines are expressive enough and clear enough in 
 their meaning, it would seem. In the last lines of the 
 poem he returns to the same thought : 
 
 " House and tenant go to ground. 
 Lost in God, in Godhead found." 
 
 * Essays, first series, pp. 257-259. 
 
 2 Hegel as the National Philosopher of Germany. 
 
 * Letters and Social Aims, pp. 298, 299. 
 
 * Society and Solitude, p. 300. 
 
356 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 By losing life we find it, by absolute obedience we gain 
 perfect freedom, by absorption into God we gain true 
 personality. Emerson always recognizes these antino 
 mies of existence, and finds in immortality a* losing of 
 self to gain a higher self. 
 
 Elsewhere he has expressed himself very strongly, as 
 in the essay on The Method of Nature. There he says 
 we can not describe the natural history of the soul, but 
 we know it is divine. We do not know if the qualities 
 of the bodily frame have been together before ; but we 
 do know the qualities of the soul " did not now begin 
 to exist, can, not be sick with my sickness, nor buried 
 in my grave ; before the world was they were." 1 When 
 it is asked whither, we come and where we are bound, 
 he says the answer can .be found only in ourselves, 
 in those intuitions which -open to us the world of truth. 
 We fancy that with the dust we depart, and are not ; 
 but in so far as the truth enters us, we are immortal 
 with its immortality. 2 He sees the significance of this 
 belief ; for he says it is not what we believe concerning 
 it, but the universal impulse to believe that is the material 
 circumstance, and is the principaLfact in the history of 
 the globe. 3 The knowledge, he says, that we traverse 
 the whole scale of being, from the center to the poles 
 of nature, through the power of thought, and have 
 some stake in every possibility, " lends that sublime 
 luster to death, which philosophy and religion have too 
 outwardly and literally striven to express in the popular 
 doctrine of the immortality of the soul. The reality 
 is more excellent than the report. Here is no ruin, no 
 discontinuity, no spent ball." 4 This trust in thought, 
 in mind, is all the promise we have ; but we have found 
 in our experience that it is enough to cover the chasm 
 of death with flowers, for our faculties prophesy for 
 themselves an interminable future of action. 5 All these 
 questions we lust to ask about the future, are a confes 
 sion of sin. No answer in words can reply to a question 
 
 i Miscellanies, p. 214. 2 Ibid., p. 279. 
 
 s Essays, second series, p. 76. 4 Ibid., p. 189. 
 
 5 Conduct of Life, pp. 208, 209. 
 
CONCERNING IMMORTALITY. 357 
 
 of things. It is not an arbitrary decree of God, but in 
 the nature of man, that ja veil shuts down on the facts 
 of to-morrow ; for the soul will not have us read any 
 other cipher than that of cause and effect. By this 
 veil which curtains events, it instructs the children of 
 men to live in to-day. His attitude is really one_ of ab- 
 solutertrusi in Go3. with whom he leaves all me result. 
 The life we nowJJYfi ifi fiQ wondftrfnlj so anchored in the 
 Divine, we need take no thought of the morrow. The 
 immortal life is ours now ; why worry about the future ! 
 In a funeral address he once said, 
 
 " There is to my mind something so absolute in the action of a 
 good man, that we do not, in thinking of him, so much as make any 
 question of the future. For the spirit of the universe seems to say, 
 He has done well ; is not that saying all? " * 
 
 His trust in the soul appears in words like these : 
 
 "A man who has -read the works of Plato and Plutarch and 
 Seneca and Kant and Shakspere and Wordsworth, would scorn to 
 ask such school-dame questions as whether we shall know each other 
 in the world beyond the grave. Men of genius do not fear to die ; 
 they are sure that in the other life they will be permitted to finish 
 the work begun in this ; it is only mere men of affairs who tremble 
 at the approach of death." 2 
 
 With him the belief in immortality is involved in his 
 faith in the soul, which is so absolute as to make all 
 questions of duration and residence of little moment. 
 No one could ask, Is God immortal? With Emerson s 
 trust in the soul, it would be as idle to ask concerning 
 it the same question. His thought comes out in such 
 passages as this : 
 
 " Our dissatisfaction with the materialist statement, in whatever 
 form it comes, is a blazing evidence of tendency. The soul does 
 not age with the body. On the borders of the grave the wise man 
 looks forward with equal elasticity of mind and hope; and why not 
 after millions of years on the verge of still newer existence ? for it 
 is the nature of intelligent beings to be for ever new to life." 
 
 1 At the funeral of George L. Stearns, Medford, April 14, 1*67. 
 
 2 This is from a newspaper report of a lecture on the Relation of 
 Intellect to Morals, delivered in Boston, in I860, in a course of six on 
 The Philosophy of the People. 
 
 3 From a newspaper report of the lecture on Immortality, as given 
 before the Parko.r Fraternity, Dec. 4, 1870. 
 
358 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 The same thought was once expressed by him in a 
 conversation, when he uttered this most suggestive sen 
 tence : " There is hope of a world in which we may see 
 things but once, and then pass on to something new." 1 
 Here is his faith, in the soul as one with the infinite 
 Over-soul, and sharing in all that God is ; and in a life 
 of unending search and attainment, of aspiration and 
 fulfillment, that can not be measured by time. Though 
 he himself refrains from every attempt to put into 
 mortal words these immortal things, for they can be 
 declared no more than the roses bloom and fragrance 
 can be expressed, yet whoever has genuinely entered 
 into the spirit of his words will surely have found 
 these things there. They furnish the very spirit which 
 animates all his most inspired and inspiring essays. 
 
 1 To a friend, after he had delivered the lecture on Immortality in 
 San Francisco. 
 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE SOUL. 359 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE SOUL. 
 
 "THMERSON S philosophic conception of intuition de- 
 f-U termines his attitude towards every religious prob 
 lem. When he says that all writing comes by the grace 
 of God, and air aping ana having, 1 he expresses the 
 central idea embodied in his essays. Religion is, there 
 fore, for him the inward attraction of the soul for the 
 Universal Spirit, alike a motive and a law of life, an 
 impulse, towards trnth, a temper and a spirit of trust 
 and obedience. It is -a motive, and not_a creed; an at 
 traction for truth, and not a church. Its attractions 
 and its truths are too vast for absolute statement ; Jtijs 
 a life, and not a dogma. He will not ? therefore, attempt 
 t<> define the spiritual laws ; lie will set no limits to their 
 opera tiorT in jiis own tnougbt. Conseqnejatly no reli 
 gious writer dogmatizes less, or has less of definition. 
 He shuns expression on the great religious problems, 
 God and immortality, not because he in any sense 
 doubts, but because he believes so much. Because no 
 definition Js adequate to these great thoughts. He 
 must nofte" judged as a"ilieologiah f lie has no capacity 
 for logical statement and rigid abstraction. 2 He is a 
 Fox, an a Kempis, or a Fenelon, a spiritual poet, a seer, 
 a prophet. He would lead men to the truth, and not 
 de|mejj^J&M?-^hem. ITeTwrrald malic the -spiritual reali 
 ties conscious facts to each mind, and not set them to 
 
 1 Essays, second series, p. 71. 
 
 2 Among those who have criticised Emerson s religious views are 
 Dr. Manning, in his Half-Truths and the Truth; Joseph Cook, in sev 
 eral of his published lectures; and James Freeman Clarke, in a lecture 
 delivered in. 18(55. The last is the only one of these critics who has 
 shown himself acquainted with Emerson s philosophy, or who has done 
 justice to his religious views. One of the best of his sympathetic 
 expounders is Crozier, in his Religion of the Future 
 
360 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 words to be chanted on Sunday. He has spoken of the 
 great truths of the moral and spiritual nature, out of 
 the soul s depths, direct to>the heart and mind of other 
 men. Tf here has been no attempt to justify these truths ; 
 no logic,* argument, reasons. He has announced them 
 as the scientist does the laws of nature, declaring they 
 prove themselves true in the experience of each soul, 
 and of all mankind. 
 
 He has been a severe critic of the historic forms of 
 religion, but his real attitude toward all that is genuine 
 has been one of affirmation. More than once has he 
 said, 
 
 " Speak the affirmative ; emphasize your choice by utter ignoring 
 of all that you reject, seeing that opinions are temporary, but con 
 victions uniform and eternal, seeing that a sentiment never loses 
 its pathos or its persuasion, but is youthful after a thousand years." l 
 
 He sees so much truth in which all men can unite, he 
 would have all which divides them forgotten. As it is, 
 in his opinion, the non-essential, the mere outward form, 
 which divides them, he would have all emphasis re 
 moved from it. So he pours forth h^s rich counsel of 
 charity and liberality, in favor of unity and against di 
 vision. It is not because he lacks in conviction, or 
 because he thinks, one statement as good as another, 
 that he takes this position ; but because the truth rises 
 sublimely above all sects and parties to assert itself in 
 the hearts of all men. 
 
 " Be not betrayed, he urges, into undervaluing the churches 
 which annoy you by their bigoted claims. They, too, were real 
 churches. They answered to their times the same need as your 
 rejection of them does to yours. I agree with them more than I 
 disagree. I agree with their heart and motive ; my discontent is 
 wiih their limitations and surface and language. Their statement 
 is grown as fabulous as Dante s Inferno. Their purpose is as real 
 as Dante s sentiment, and hatred of vice. Always put the best in 
 terpretation on a tenet. Why not on Christianity, wholesome, 
 jsv/e^t, and poetic? It is the record of a pure and holy soul, humble, 
 absolutely disinterested, a truth-speaker, and bent on serving, 
 teaching, and uplifting men. Christianity taught the capacity, the 
 
 1 The Preacher, p. 14. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE SOUL. . 361 
 
 element, to love the All-perfect without a stingy bargain for per 
 sonal happiness. It taught that to love him was happiness, to 
 love him in other s virtues." 1 
 
 To class Emerson as a champion of any party in reli 
 gion would be unjust. No man has deeper convictions 
 than he, but he does not hold them as by the charm of 
 any sectarian name. He sees on all sides, respects the 
 truthful in all sects, loves the good in all religions. 
 He is not even a Christian in any party sense whatever, 
 nor by any means a rejecter of Christianity, much less 
 its foe. He sees the good in it, recognizes its great ser 
 vice in the inculcation of a pure,. spiritual religion and 
 a noble morality, loves its lofty spirit of truth and devo 
 tion ; but he is not carried away by it, will not accept 
 its dictation, or be committed to its defense. He is not 
 a system-builder, finds little interest in the problems 
 which divide sects and religions from each other. A 
 theological student from Harvard once went to him 
 with an account of the differences of opinion there 
 among the Unitarian divinity students. " I am not much 
 interested in these discussions, said he ; but still, it does 
 seem deplorable that there is such a tendency in some 
 people to creeds which would take man back to the 
 chimpanzee. I have very good grounds for being a 
 Unitarian, and a Trinitarian too. I need not nibble for 
 ever at qne loaf, but eat it, and thank God for it, and 
 earn another." 2 In the same spirit, he expressed him 
 self toward the larger question of the relations of sys 
 tems of thought to each other, when he said, u I see no 
 objection to being called a Platonist, a Christian, or any 
 other affirmative name, and no good in negation." 
 This attitude towards religion is characteristic of Les- 
 sing, Herder, Goethe, and Cartyle. Lessing s Nathan 
 the }^ise was a great lesson in comparative religions, 
 showing that the essence of -11 faiths is the same. In 
 the second part of his Wilhelm Meixter, Goethe goes 
 even farther, when he writes of. the three reverences, 
 and recognizes the spirit of worship instead of the his 
 tory of religion. Even Schleiermacher rejected the 
 
 * The Preacher, p, 9. 2 Fraser s Magazine, August, 1864. 
 
362 EALPH WALDO EMEKSON. 
 
 historic, and found Christianity, not in literary records, 
 but in the attainment of freedom by the soul; and 
 Hegel made this thought the basis of his philosophy of 
 history. Herder went so far as to ask if Christianity 
 would not pass away, as other historic religions have 
 done, and a higher form of faith succeed to it. Though 
 Carlyle praised Christianity as the religion of sorrow 
 and self-renunciation, yet he did it in a spirit which 
 showed how little he cared for the outward forms. He 
 saw in religion, not a church, -not an historic faith, but 
 the union of the soul with God through intuition, 
 which is possible to all men, and whieh annuls and con 
 demns every other worship, 
 
 The nearness of God, the sacredness of the divine 
 laws, the over-arching presence of the spiritual world, 
 the sublimity and awful sanctity of those hours when 
 the soul is filled with the divine spirit, the authority 
 of the religious sentiment and the conscience, these 
 convictions unite Emerson to the world s great religious 
 teachers. These truths he finds to be perfectly natural 
 to man ; they find their authority in the relations of 
 man to the Cosmos. He finds in Christianity their 
 truest and most spiritual expression ; and hence he 
 loves its teachings, accepts its spirit, rejoices in its 
 moral conquests. When it attempts to make these 
 sentiments synonymous with a person, book, or history, 
 he repudiates its teaching, and rejects its influence as 
 pernicious. H&jj;Qh 
 ance of those great trut 
 have given Christianity its influence in the world ; but 
 all that is special, supernatural, authoritative, he 
 rejects. The soul is its own authority, all worlds are 
 one, the same religious sentiments and truths appear 
 under whatever garb of sect. He loves the Christian 
 spirit when genuinely manifested, as a profound convic 
 tion and sense of spiritual realities, as a high, command 
 ing enthusiasm for what is right and holy; but all there 
 is in it worthy of notice and respect comes from a uni 
 versal religious sentiment. It has no power in and of 
 itself, as an historic mode of worship, to charm and 
 inspire the soul of man. 
 
 his accept 
 hs of the spiritual life which 
 
THE KELIGION OF THE SOUL. 363 
 
 The old enthusiasm of faith, the old consecration to 
 truth, the old profound conviction of the nearness of 
 God and of the sacredness of the inward law of the 
 soul, Emerson would have reproduced. That enthu 
 siasm which makes martyrs, which weds men for ever to 
 great truths, which makes all things else undesirable 
 compared with devotion to the will of God, he believes 
 in, and thinks necessary to the best life. He is himself 
 an enthusiast of this kind, though lie carefully sup- 
 
 Eresses mere feeling as unworthy and misleading, and 
 )oks at all things through the intellect. Mere faith, 
 with Jacobi, or feeling, with Schleiermacher, he is not 
 content with ; for his intellectual convictions must also 
 be satisfied.. He has refused to define or limit the 
 spiritual, and yet he has never made it merely a feeling 
 or an ecstasy. He is a mystic who is calmly intellec 
 tual, a thinker who refuses to apply the measuring rod 
 of reason to the soul, a tlieist who is unable to find 
 limits to the being of God, a Christian who refuses to 
 accept any historic form or name. He refuses ,to be 
 classified, for the- truth appear^ under all disguises. 
 His is the religion of the soul, whose forms and ser 
 vice and book and messiah are to be found alone in 
 the active, aspiring mind/ 
 
 The fact that Emerson early withdrew from the 
 church, and that he has gradually abandoned the out 
 ward observances of religion, has led many to regard 
 him as a skeptic, or in some way as a disbeliever. It 
 was not from any doubts, however, about spiritual 
 truths, that caused him to abandon religious forms and 
 to reject the historic faith of his time. 1 It was an 
 
 1 The following letter concerning Emerson s religions position was 
 written by his son to a gentleman in Indianapolis, in 1880, and may be 
 regarded as authoritative: 
 
 COUCORD, Feb. 17. 
 
 DEAR SIR, Some weeks ago my father received a letter from you inquiring if 
 a statement made to you by a friend in Boston with regard to him was true. The 
 statement was, that, under the influence of Rev. Joseph Cook, he had changed hia 
 religious beliefs, and accepted the doctrines of the Orthodox Congregational ists. 
 My father receives many letters, but now very seldom writes one. 
 
 More than once before letters have been received by him from persons in the 
 West asking almost the same question that you ask, one gentleman stating, that at 
 Minneapolis Rev. Joseph Cook had stated in a public lecture that Mr. Emerson and 
 Mr. Alcott had publicly renounced their early religious beliefs, accepted Jesus as 
 the.ir Saviour, the Bible as divine, and joined the Orthodoj church. Paragraphs have 
 
364 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 excess of faith in spiritual truths which made him a 
 skeptic towards all that is outward and formal. His 
 skepticism is that of the mystic, not that of the 
 materialist or agnostic. He has not rejected the truths 
 of religion, but he has rejected the dogmas and the his 
 toric claims of Christianity. In abandoning formal 
 prayer, he did not cease to believe in prayer as com 
 munion with God, or in man s need of divine guidance. 
 In fact, he has been intoxicated with the things of the 
 soul ; and he has lived in the highest atmosphere of 
 faith and devotion. 
 
 Wherever the doctrine of intuition has been fully 
 accepted, trust in the outward matters of religion has 
 died out. IQaQiLdirectly reveals hiraself to the soul, 
 there is DO np.ftd of rWHing jrph". A T* *f attending 
 church, or of accepting sacraments. Fox abolished 
 sacraments and forms, he repudiated the priest and 
 minister ; the Light was enough. The Sufis believe 
 that God opens his truth to them in feeling, so they 
 reject all books and religions. One of their poets says, 
 " What is the Kaaba to me ? I need God only." They 
 describe themselves, much in the spirit of Emerson, as 
 
 " Owning nor book nor master ; and on earth 
 Having one sole and simple task, to make 
 Their hearts a stainless mirror for their God." 
 
 Jelaleddin Rumi gives expression to this idea in a mau- 
 
 lately appeared in the newspapers stating essentially the same thing. Therefore, it 
 seems to me fair that persons who have been, perhaps, led out of the old paths by 
 Mr. Emerson s teachings, and are now told that ho has admitted that he went astray, 
 and has returned to even a stricter fold than that from which he went forth, should 
 know the truth. I therefore asked and received leave from my father to answer 
 your note. 
 
 The statement is, in every respect, incorrect. Mr. Emerson is acquainted with 
 Rev. Mr. Cook, who has called upon him, when he has exchanged with the Orthodox 
 clergyman of Concord ; and, by invitation of the latter gentleman, Mr. Emerson went 
 on one or two occasions, several years since, to hear Mr. Cook preach in this town. 
 Except on these occasions Mr. Emerson has never had any relations with Mr. Cook. 
 He never reads his lectures. He has not joined any church, nor has he re traded 
 any views expressed in his writings after his withdrawal from the ministry. His 
 last words given to the public on matters of morals and religion may be found in his 
 paper in The North American Review for June, 1878, on the Sovereignty of Ethics, 
 and in his lecture entitled The Preacher, delivered to the divinity stmdents at Har 
 vard University less than a year ago, and now printed in the Unitarian Review for 
 January, 1880. 
 
 Mr. Emerson s friends and readers can judge for themselves whether these 
 papers confirm the truth of the tale that is going about as to his conversion to 
 Orthodoxy. Truly yours, 
 
 EDWARD WALDO EMJBBSON 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE SOUL. 365 
 
 n3r quite parallel to that in wliicli Emerson constantly 
 uses it. 
 
 " He needs a guide no longer who hath found 
 The way already leading to the Friend. 
 Who stands already on heaven s topmost dome 
 Needs not to search for ladders. He that lies, 
 Folded in favor, on the Sultan s breast, * 
 Needs not the letter or the messenger." 
 
 Hafiz says "the object of all religions is alike. All 
 men seek their beloved, and all the world is love s 
 dwelling ; why talk of a mosque or a church ? " In 
 the Hindoo Vemana is to be found the same thought, 
 in words which might have been taken from almost any 
 .of Emerson s essays : " God dwells in all things in his 
 .fullness. All worship is one ; systems of faith are dif 
 ferent, but God is one." Many of the mystics are of 
 this opinion. Boehme holds all means and ordinances 
 valueless but as preparations for receiving the divine 
 operation within, which leads us directly to God. 
 Luther said of a religious thinker of his time, that he 
 was " one of those for whom nothing will do but spirit I 
 spirit! and not a word of scripture or sacrament." 
 Weigel, one of the men from whom Jacob Boehme 
 received his initiation into mysticism, declared the 
 schools of his time utterly barren ; and equally barren 
 did he find all religious forms, creeds, and teaching. 
 Weigel bade Boehme "withdraw into himself, and 
 wait, in total passivity, the incoming of the divine word, 
 whose light reveals unto the babe what is hidden from 
 the wise and prudent." Many other mystics and ideal 
 ists have had the same conception of religion, the same 
 distrust of its outward forms. It led Coleridge to write 
 his Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, in which he deals 
 freely with the Bible. The same spirit of freedom 
 towards the outward matters of religion appears in the 
 writings of Theodore Parker and Frances Power Cobbe, 
 who stand on the same ground as that held in common 
 by Boehifie, Fox, and Emerson. In the name of the 
 spirit within, all have freely criticised the outward 
 expressions of religion. 
 
366 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 Emerson would Lave -no mediators of any sort what 
 ever between God and the so id. Each person may have 
 within him all the light he needs, all the truth he can 
 acquire ; and he never permits any great man or any 
 famous book to usurp the place of that light for a mo 
 ment. So he says, 
 
 " The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it 
 is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God 
 speaketli he should communicate, not one thing, but all things ; 
 should fill the world with his voice; should scatter forth light, 
 nature, time, souls from the center of the present thought ; and 
 new date and new create the whole. Whenever a mind is simple, 
 and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away, means, 
 teachers, texts, temples, fall ; it lives now, and absorbs past and 
 future into the present hour. All things are made sacred by re 
 lation to it, one as much as another. All things are dissolved to 
 their center by their cause ; and, in the universal miracle, petty and 
 particular miracles disappear. If, therefore, a man claims to know 
 and speak of God, and carries you backward to the phraseology of 
 some old moldered nation in another country, in another world, 
 believe him not." l 
 
 Because his faith in the soul never wavers, he will 
 have naught to do with any thing which assumes to take- 
 its place. In the soul there is a constant Thus saith the 
 Lord; and this alone is to be obeyed. God speaks 
 within, giving assurance, courage, and peace ; and this 
 trust is sublime, all-absorbing, wonderful. It is the 
 one power of the world that has made man whatever 
 he is. Without it he is nothing ; with it he can be and 
 do all things. 
 
 Men make dogmas of the intuitions they receive, an<i 
 sligion is "norriTptpd in cuiisfecjue nce.. " All positive 
 ules, ceremonial, ecclesiastical, distinctions of race or 
 of person, are perishable ; only those distinctions hold 
 which are, in the nature of things, not matters of positive 
 ordinance." 2 The creeds and the rituals perish because 
 they are not rooted in any actual truth ; but in their de 
 struction religion thrives, and grows to nobler results. 
 " God builds his temple in the heart, on the ruins of 
 churches and religions." 3 Yet all attempts to embody 
 
 1 Essays, first series, p. 57. 2 The Preacher, p. 8. 
 
 a Conduct of Life, p. 178. 
 
 /^ 
 
 x reli 
 
 ml, 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE SOUL. 367 
 
 religion in creed and ritual affirm the need of spiritual 
 truth and the greatness of the soul s testimony. " The 
 multitude of false churches accredits the true religion." l 
 Though false now, all were once true, and testify, in the 
 devotion they inspire, to the worth of that sentiment out 
 of which they grew. 
 
 " The sentiment, of course, is the judge and measure of every ex 
 pression of it, measures Judaism, Stoicism, Christianity, Buddh 
 ism, or whatever philanthropy or politics or saint or seer pretends 
 to speak in its name. The religions we call false, were once true ; 
 they also were affirmations of the conscience correcting the evil 
 customs of their times. The populace drag down the gods to their 
 own level, and give them their egotism ; whilst in Nature is none at 
 all, God keeping out of sight, and known only as pure law, though 
 resistless. Every nation is degraded by the goblins it worships 
 instead of the Deity. The Dionysia and Saturnalia of Greece and 
 Rome, the human sacrifice of the Druids, the Sradda of Hindoos, 
 the Purgatory, the Indulgences, and the Inquisition of Popery, the 
 vindictive mythology of Calvinism, are examples of this perver 
 sion." 
 
 On the same theme he further writes : 
 
 " Every particular instruction is speedily embodied in a ritual, is 
 accommodated to humble and gross minds, and corrupted. The 
 moral sentiment is the perpetual critic on these forms ; thundering 
 its protest, sometimes in earnest and lofty rebuke, but sometimes 
 also it is the source, in natures less pure, of sneers and flippant 
 jokes of common people, who feel that the forms and dogmas are 
 not true for them, though they do not see where the error lies." 2 
 
 He writes with the most unsparing words of the de 
 fects of religion, resulting from these attempts to embody 
 the moral sentiment in historical faiths : 
 
 " I fear, he says, that what is called religion, but is perhaps 
 pew-holding, not obeys, but conceals, the moral sentiment. I put it 
 to this simple test : Is a rich rogue made to feel his roguery among 
 divines or literary men ? No ? Then tis rogue again under the 
 cassock. What sort of respect can these preachers or newspapers 
 inspire by their weekly praises of texts and saints, when we know 
 they would say just the same things if Beelzebub had written the 
 chapter, provided it stood where it does in the public opinion V 
 
 " Any thing but unbelief, any thing but losing hold of the moral 
 intuitioiisras betrayed in clinging to a form of devotion, or a theo 
 logical dogma, as if it was the liturgy or the chapel that was 
 
 1 Essays, secoud series, p. 173. 2 Character, p. 363. 
 
368 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 sacred, and not justice and humility, and the loving heart and serv 
 ing hand." 1 
 
 Because the spirit of religion is ever the same, though 
 its forms change, the old faiths become myths to us ; 
 but in our time we are coming more and more to ac 
 cept the inward sentiment, and to repudiate the historic 
 form. 
 
 " The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the 
 next. We use in our idlest poetry and discourse the words Jove, 
 Neptune, Mercury, as mere colors, and can hardly believe that they 
 had to the lively Greek the anxious meaning, which, in our towns, 
 is given and received in churches when our religious names are 
 used ; and we read with surprise the horror of Athens, when, one 
 morning, the statues of Mercury, in the temples, were found broken, 
 and the like consternation was in the city, as if, in Boston, all the 
 orthodox churches should be burned in one night." 
 
 " The changes are inevitable ; the new age can not see with the 
 eyes of the last. But the change is in what is superficial ; the prin 
 ciples are immortal, and the rally on the principle must arrive as 
 people become intellectual. I consider theology to be the rhetoric 
 of morals. The mind of this age has fallen away from theology to 
 morals. I conceive it an advance. I suspect, that, when the the 
 ology was most florid and dogmatic, it ^was the barbarism of the 
 people ; and that, in that very time, the best men also fell away from 
 theology, and rested in morals. I think that all the dogmas rest 
 on morals, and that it is only a question of youth or maturity, of 
 more or less fancy in the recipient ; that the stern determination to 
 do justly, to speak the truth, to be chaste and humble, was substan 
 tially the same, whether under a self-respect, or under a vow made 
 on the knees at the shrine of Madonna." 2 
 
 Emerson s thoroughly undogmatic attitude towards 
 all religious questions is abundantly shown in his criti 
 cism of the religious life of the present time. He finds 
 it ungirt, frivolous, lacking in a deep sense of spiritual 
 things, unmindful of the constant presence of the 
 Divine. He has repeatedly declared his sympathy with 
 those former phases of religious thought which absorbed 
 men in the sense of the supernatural. It is the historic 
 forms, the party dogmas, he distrusts, towards which he 
 is a skeptic. His sympathies with the great religious 
 thinkers and seers, and with all those ages which "have 
 been moved by deep and profound religious convic- 
 
 1 The Preacher, p. 10. 2 Character, pp. 363, 3C5. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE SOUL. 369 
 
 tions, show how really religious he is. Plis mind is 
 intoxicated with the sense of God, absorbed in the 
 things of the soul. In the critical, skeptical tendencies 
 of the present he finds a " withering " effect, and that, 
 though the understanding is active, the sentiments 
 sleep. Their effect on the minds of most persons, he 
 has described in these words : 
 
 " I see in them character, but skepticism ; a clear enough per 
 ception of the inadequacy of the popular religious statement to 
 the wants of the heart and intellect, and explicit declarations of 
 this fact. They have insight and truthfulness ; they will i ot 
 mask their convictions ; they hate cant ; but more than this I do 
 not readily find. The gracious motions of the soul piety, adora 
 tion I do not find. Scorn of hypocrisy, pride of personal char 
 acter, elegance of taste and of manners and pursuit, a boundless 
 ambition of the intellect, willingness to sacrifice personal interests 
 for the integrity of the character, all these they have ; but that 
 religious submission and abandonment which give man a new 
 element and being, and make him sublime, it is not in churches, 
 it is not in houses. I see movement, I hear aspirations ; but I see 
 not how the great God prepares to satisfy the heart in the new 
 order of things." l 
 
 Again and again has he expressed his sense of the 
 inadequacy of the religious culture of the present time, 
 and pronounced it cold, lifeless, and unworthy. One 
 more example will suffice. 
 
 " The religion of seventy years ago was an iron belt to the 
 mind, giving it concentration and force. A rude people were kept 
 respectable by the determination of thought on the eternal world. 
 Now men fall abroad, \vant polarity, suffer in character and 
 intellect. A sleep creeps over the great functions of man. 
 Enthusiasm goes out. In its stead a low prudence seeks to hold 
 society stanch, but its arms are too short ; cordage and machinery 
 never supply the place of life. 
 
 " I will not go into the metaphysics of that re-action by which 
 wit takes the place of faith in the leading spirits, and an excessive 
 respect for forms out of which the heart has departed becomes 
 mofet obvious in the least religious minds. To a self-denying, 
 ardent church, delighting in rites and ordinances, has succeeded a 
 cold, intellectual race, who analyze the prayer and psalm of their 
 forefathers ; and the more intellectual reject every yoke of author 
 ity and custom with a petulance unprecedented. It is a sort of 
 mark of probity and sincerity to declare how little you believe ; 
 
 i The Preacher, p. 4. 
 
370 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 while the mass of the community indolently follow the old forma 
 with childish scrupulosity, and we have punctuality for faith, and 
 good taste for character." * 
 
 When Emerson comes to deal with the central doc 
 trine of Christianity, he rejects it in the name of the 
 soul. He sees no need of a messiah who has a per 
 petual mediator in his own intuitions. Emerson finds 
 in Jesus a person of wonderful intuitions and great 
 depth of soul, such a person as may appear in any land 
 or time. 
 
 " Men appear from time to time, he says, who receive with more 
 purity and fullness these high communications. But it is only as 
 fast as this hearing from another is authorized by its consent with 
 his own, that it is pure and safe to each ; and all receiving from 
 abroad must be controlled by this immense reservation. 
 
 It happens now and then, in the ages, that a soul is born 
 which has no weakness of" self, which offers no impediment to 
 the Divine Spirit. which comes down into Xature as if only for 
 the benefit of souls ; and all its thoughts are perceptions of things 
 as they are, without any infirmity of earth. Such souls are as the 
 apparition of gods among men, and simply by their presence pass 
 judgments on them. Men are forced by their own self-respect to 
 give them a certain attention. Evil men shrink, and pay involun 
 tary homage by hiding or apologizing for their action." 2 
 
 He says these " rare, extravagant spirits come to us 
 at intervals, who disclose to us new facts in nature ; I 
 see. he says, that men of God have, from time to time, 
 walked among men. and made their commission felt in 
 the heart and soul of the commonest hearer." These 
 rare spirits he recognizes everywhere, in all religions 
 and times. He finds no antiquity in what they say, for 
 their thought belongs as much to us as to them. Their 
 thought ishuman and universal, for no person or per 
 sons have a monopoly in the truth. He says Jesus 
 astonishes sensual people, and they do not see any 
 place for him in the order of history; but "as they 
 come to revere their intuitions and aspire to live^holily, 
 their own piety explains every fact, every word. So 
 he regards Jesus as one of these rare spirits, pure and 
 
 i Sovereignty of Ethics, p. 415. 2 Character, p. 361. 
 
 Essays, first series, p. 25. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE SOUL. 371 
 
 noble, a sublime teacher, " our best, our dearest saint," 
 but in no way different from many another inspired 
 soul. 1 He could only reveal the Soul, as others have 
 done, and tell us of its glad power ; but we may our 
 selves have the same vision, because we have the same 
 nature, he had. The moment men trust in him they 
 cripple themselves and degrade the soul. The moral 
 sentiment, the gift of intuition, supersedes his teaching, 
 as it does that of every other. Men gain in moral 
 power in so far as they follow this inward leader ; 
 they inevitably lose by every effort to substitute for it 
 a man, church, or book. It will not permit of any 
 substitutes. Its inspirations can not be stored up more 
 than the manna of the wilderness. 
 
 "It is serenely above all mediation. In all ages, to all men, it 
 saith, I am; and he who hears it, feels the impiety of wandering 
 from this revelation to any record or to any rival. The poor Jews 
 of the wilderness cried, Let not the Lord speak to us ; let Moses 
 speak to us I * But the simple and sincere soul makes the contrary 
 prayer : Let no intruder come between thee and me ; deal THOU 
 with me ; let me know it is thy will, and I ask no more. The 
 excellence of Jesus, and of every true teacher, is, that he affirms the 
 Divinity in him and in us, not thrusts himself between it and Us. 
 It would instantly indispose us to any person claiming to speak for 
 the Author of nature, the setting forth of any fact or law which 
 we did not find in our consciousness." 2 
 
 Emerson insists that the moral sentiment is quite 
 sufficient as the guide of men, that its word is the only 
 command they can at last obey. All voices of truth 
 utter its words, all religions are its expressions. He 
 sees in the other religions of the world an interest 
 Christianity does not afford, because we study them 
 without any of those limiting associations attaching to 
 a religion which once laid its dogmatic command on us. 
 
 1 In the Horticultural-Hall lecture on Natural Religion, before the 
 Free Religious Association, April 4, 1809, Emerson said, " I have some 
 times thought, and indeed I al \vay.9 do think, chat the sect of Quakers, 
 in their representatives, appeared to me to have come nearer to the 
 sublime history and genius of Christ than any other of i.lie sects. They 
 have kept t!"> traditions perhaps for a longer time, kept the early purity, 
 did keep it Tor a longer time; and I think I see this cause, I think I find 
 in the language of that sect, in all the history and all the anecdotes of 
 its leaders and teachers, a certain fidelity to the Scriptural character." 
 
 2 Character, p. 359. 
 
372 KALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 " I am far, he says, from accepting the opinion that the revela 
 tions of the moral sentiment are insufficient ; as if it furnished a 
 rule only, and not the spirit by which the rule is animated. For I 
 include in these, of course, the history of Jesus, as well as those of 
 every divine soul which in any place or time delivered any grand 
 lesson to humanity ; and I find in the eminent experiences in all 
 times a substantial agreement. The sentiment itself teaches unity 
 of source, and disowns every superiority other than of deeper truth. 
 Jesus has immense claims on the gratitude of mankind, and knew 
 how to guard the integrity of his brother s soul from himself also ; 
 but in his disciples, admiration of him runs away with their rever 
 ence for the human soul, and they hamper us with limitations of 
 person and text. Every exaggeration of these is a violation of the 
 soul s right, and inclines the manly reader to lay down the New 
 Testament, to take up the Pagan philosophers. It is not that the 
 Upanishads or the Maxims of Antoninus are better, but that they 
 do not invade his freedom ; because they are only suggestions, 
 whilst the other adds the inadmissible claim of positive author 
 ity, of an external command, .where command can not be. This 
 is the secret of the mischievous result, that, in every period of in 
 tellectual expansion, the church ceases to draw into its clergy those 
 who best belong there, the largest and freest minds ; and that in 
 its most liberal forms, when such minds enter it, they are coldly 
 received, and find themselves out of place. This charm in the 
 Pagan moralists, of suggestion, the charm of poetry, of mere truth 
 (easily eliminated from their historical accidents, which nobody 
 wishes to force on us), the Xew Testament loses by its connection 
 with a church. Mankind can not long suffer this loss, and the 
 office of this age is to put all these writings on the eternal footing 
 of equality of origin in the instincts of the human mind. It is 
 certain that each "inspired master will gain instantly by the sepa 
 ration from the idolatry of ages." 1 
 
 When this doctrine of immediate inspiration is lost, 
 then " the base doctrine of the majority of voices usurps 
 its place, and miracles, prophecy, poetry, the ideal life, 
 the holy life, exist as ancient history merely ; they are 
 not in the belief, nor in the aspiration, of society." 2 
 Jesus was a true prophet, saw God incarnated in all 
 men ; but " the idioms of his language and the figures 
 of his rhetoric have usurped the place of his truth, and 
 the churches are not built on his principles, but on his 
 tropes. Christianity became a mythos, as the poetic 
 teachings of Greece and of Egypt, before. He spoke 
 of miracles, for he felt that man s life was a miracle, 
 
 i Ibid., p. 369. 2 Miscellanies, p. 123. 
 
THE RFLIGIOX OF THE SOUL. 373 
 
 and all that man cloth ; and he knew that his daily mira 
 cle shines, as the character ascends. But the word 
 miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a 
 false impression ; it is monster. It is not one with the 
 blowing clover and the falling rain." l Thus did Emer 
 son early express his faith in the natural character of 
 religion, and assert that its office is to carry forward 
 what life everywhere reveals, to higher conclusions. 
 It fulfills, but never annuls, the promise cf nature and 
 man. This narrow regard for the personal and miracu 
 lous passes away as soon as a genuine culture appears, 
 and the Christian traditions lose their hold. " The 
 dogma of the mystic offices of Christ being dropped, 
 and he standing on his genius as a moral teacher, tis 
 impossible to maintain the old emphasis of his person 
 ality ; and it recedes, as all persons must, before the 
 sublimity of the moral laws." 2 The way to preach 
 Jesus to this age, he once said, is to be silent about him. 
 The old ideas, the old persons, will cease to attract us 
 the moment we have an intuition, which will send us for 
 ward to new and better conquests for the moral nature. 
 The fealty to person and form will cease ; yet the truth 
 will not fade, but grow more bright and sure the deeper 
 our intuition. 
 
 "Inspiration will have advance, affirmation, the forward foot, 
 the ascending state ; it will be an opener of doors ; it will invent its 
 own inethods ; the new wine will make the bottles new. Spirit is 
 motive and ascending. Only let there be a deep observer, and he 
 will make light of new shop and new circumstance that afflict you ; 
 new shop or old cathedral, it is all one to him. He will find the 
 circumstances not altered, as deep a cloud of mystery on the cause, 
 as dazzling a glory on the invincible law." 3 
 
 Emerson finds that the Soul is a terrible critic of all 
 that is personal. " No historical person begins to con 
 tent us," he says. 4 There are no such men as we fable, 
 no such Jesus. He cares not for the individual, but 
 for the universal. 5 This thought of the little value of 
 persons fee applies to Jesus, when he says, 
 
 1 Ibid., p. 125. 2 Conduct of Life, p. 18 3. 
 
 3 The Preacher, p. 13. 4 Society and Solitude, p. 274 
 
 5 Essays, second series, pp. 219, 220. 
 
374 RALPH WALDO EMERSOX. 
 
 " Christianity is rightly dear to the best of mankind ; yet was 
 there never a young philosopher whose breeding had fallen into the 
 Christian church, by whom that brave text of Paul s was not 
 specially prized, Then shall also the Son be subject unto Him 
 who put all things under him, that God may be all in all.* Let 
 the claims and virtues of persons be never so great and welcome, 
 the instinct of man presses eagerly onward to the impersonal and 
 illimitable, and gladly arms itself against the dogmatism of bigots 
 with this generous word out of the book itself." l 
 
 He has written with great enthusiasm of the Bible as 
 being of the highest and truest form of literature. All 
 true writing, he holds, must be by the inspiration of 
 God ; and books are to be valued just in proportion to 
 their power to inspire us. As a book of the most in 
 spiring thought, he puts the Bible in the very first 
 rank ; yet its value is, that we find what it says true in 
 our own souls. It shows us, therefore, how true the 
 soul is to itself, that it ever gives the same word to 
 those who seek its truth. In an early number of The 
 Dial he expressed his sense of the value of the Bible. 
 
 " The most original book in the world is the Bible, he there said. 
 This old collection of the ejaculations of love and dread, of the 
 supreme derdres and contritions of men proceeding out of the region 
 of the grand and eternal, by whatsoever different mouths spoken, 
 and through a wide extent of times and countries, seems, especially 
 if you add to our canon the kindred sacred writings of the Hindoos, 
 Persians, and Greeks, the alphabet of the nations, and all pos 
 terior writings, either the chronicle of facts under very inferior 
 ideas, or, when it rises to sentiment, the combinations, analogies, or 
 degradations of this. The elevation of this book may be measured 
 by observing how certainly all observation of thought clothes itself 
 in the words and forms of speech of that book. For the human 
 mind is not now sufficiently erect to judge and correct that scrip 
 ture. Whatever is majestically thought in a great moral element, 
 instantly approaches this old Sanscrit. It is in the nature of 
 things that the highest originality must be moral. The only per 
 son who can be entirely independent of this fountain of literature 
 and equal to it, must be a prophet in his own proper person. 
 Shakspere, the first literary genius of the world, the highest in 
 whom the moral is not the predominating element, leans on the 
 Bible ; his poetry presupposes it. If we examine this brilliant in 
 fluence Shakspere as it lies in our minds, we shall find it rever 
 ent, not only of the letter of this book, but of the whole frame of 
 society which stood in Europe upon it, deeply indebted to the tra- 
 
 1 Newspaper report. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE SOUL. 375 
 
 ditional morality, in short, compared with the tone of the Prophets, 
 secondary. On the other hand, the Prophets do not imply the ex 
 istence of Shakspere or Homer, advert to no books or arts, only 
 to dread ideas and emotions. People imagine that the place which 
 the Bible holds in the world, it owes to miracles. It owes it simply 
 to the fact that it came out of a profounder depth of thought 
 than any other book, and the effect must be precisely proportionate. 
 Gibbon fancied that it was combinations of circumstances that gave 
 Christianity its place in history. But in nature it takes an ounce 
 to balance an ounce." 1 
 
 The great religious books, the scriptures, of the world, 
 he sees are the slow growths of deep religious convic 
 tions, which require centuries in their formation. They 
 voice the aspirations of a nation, the desires of a race, 
 the experiences of generations. They are all alike in 
 character, teach the same moral truths, and have their 
 origin in the same manner. 
 
 " The Bible itself is like an old Cremona ; it has been played 
 upon by the devotion of thousands of years, until every word and 
 particle is public and tunable. And whatever undue reverence 
 may have been for it by the prestige of philonic inspiration, the 
 stronger tendency we are describing is likely to undo. What 
 divines had assumed as the distinctive revelations of Christianity, 
 theologic criticism has matched by exact parallelisms from the 
 Stoics and poets of Greece and Rome. Later, when Confucius and 
 the Indian scriptures were made known, no claim to monopoly of 
 ethical wisdom could be thought of; and the surprising results 
 of the new researches into the history of Egypt have opened to us 
 the deep debt of the churches of Rome and England to the Egyp 
 tian hierology." 2 
 
 Averse as Emerson is to the religious forms that have 
 become artificial, and that take the place of the moral 
 sentiment in the affections of men, yet he loves those 
 forms that are natural, and which grow immediately out 
 of the soul s needs. This is seen in such paragraphs as 
 this : 
 
 " Religion is as inexpugnable as the use of lamps, or of wells, or 
 of chimneys. We must have days and temples and teachers. The 
 Sunday is the core of our civilization, dedicated to thought and 
 reverence*. It invites to the noblest solitude and the noblest society, 
 to whatever means and aids of spiritual refreshment. Men may 
 well come together to kindle each other to virtuous living." 8 
 
 i The Dial, October, 1840. 2 Letters and Social Aims, p. 161. 
 8 Character, p. 370. 
 
376 EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 His respect for Sunday, and his desire that religious 
 culture shall not be neglected, he has expressed in 
 another essay ; and with a hint, also, at the character 
 of that culture. 
 
 " All civil mankind have agreed in leaving one day for contem 
 plation against six for practice. I hope that day will keep its 
 honor and its use. A wise man advises that we should see to it 
 that we read and speak two or three reasonable words every day, 
 amid the crowd of affairs and the noise of trifles. I should say 
 boldly that we should astonish every day by a beam oiit of eter 
 nity ; retire a moment to the grand secret we carry in our bosom, 
 of inspiration from heaven. But certainly on this seventh let us 
 be the children of liberty, of reason, of hope ; refresh the senti 
 ment ; think as spirits think, who belong to the universe, whilst 
 our feet walk in the streets of a little town, and our hands work 
 in a small knqt of affairs. We shall find one result, I am sure, 
 a certain originality and a certain haughty liberty proceeding out of 
 our retirement and self-communion, which streets can never give, 
 infinitely removed from all vaporing and bravado, and which yet is 
 more than a match for any physical resistance. 
 
 " It is true that which they say of our Xew-England oestrum, 
 which will never let us stand or sit, but drives us like mad through 
 the world. The calmest and most protected life can not save us. 
 ~\Ve want some intercalated days, to bethink us, and to derive 
 order to our life from the heart. That should be the use of the 
 sabbath, to check this headlong racing, and put us in possession 
 of ourselves once more, for love or for shame. 
 
 " The sabbath changes its forms from age to age, but the sub 
 stantial benefit endures. We no longer recite the old creeds of 
 Athanasius or Arius, of Calvin or Hopkins. The forms are flex 
 ible, but the uses not less real. The old heart remains as ever 
 with its old human duties. The old intellect still lives, to pierce 
 the shows to the core. Truth is simple, and will not be antique; 
 is ever present, and insists on being of this age and of this 
 moment. Here is thought and love, and truth and duty, new as 
 on the first day of Adam and of angels." 1 
 
 Nowhere has Emerson shown his distrust of religious 
 forms so stro-ngly as in what he has written about 
 prayer. He regards it, not as a petition, but as an act 
 of intuition. 
 
 " Prayer looks abroad, he tells us, and asks for some foreign 
 addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses itself in 
 endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and 
 miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular commodity any 
 
 1 The Preacher, p. 14. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE SOUL. 377 
 
 thing less than all good is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation 
 of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the 
 soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of 
 God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect 
 a private end is meanness and theft. It pre-supposes dualism, and 
 not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at 
 one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all 
 action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, 
 the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are 
 true prayers heard throughout nature." l 
 
 In his first book lie expressed his deep appreciation of v 
 the value of prayer. 
 
 " In the uttermost meaning of the words thought is devout, and 
 devotion is thought. Deep calls unto deep. ... Is not prayer 
 also a, study of truth, a sally of the soul into the unfound 
 infinite? No man ever prayed heartily, without learning some 
 thing," 2 
 
 He once called prayer a plunge into the unfound 
 infinite ; and he has made it synonymous with intui 
 tion, as well as regarding it as a craving and earnest 
 desire to be willing to accept and "obey the laws of 
 God. It is the response of the soul to the attractions 
 of the Over-soul, the joyous acceptance of its guid 
 ance. With Madame Guyon he regards " intuition as a 
 continuous word, potent, ineffable, ever uttered without 
 language ; the immediate, unchecked operation of resi 
 dent Deity." With this conception of intuition she 
 could not simply ask God for aid, but she believed 
 that through it direct communion with God was to be 
 obtained. So she lost faith in the formal prayers of 
 the church, but found all things in what she called the 
 prayer of silence, " that prayer which, unlimited to 
 times and seasons, unhindered by words, is a state 
 rather than an act, a sentiment rather than a request, 
 a continuous sense of submission, which breathes, 
 moment by moment, from the serene depth of the 
 soul, Thy will be done." Her idea is almost identical 
 with Emerson s, when she describes -her prayer of intui 
 tion and silence, as one of "rejoicing and possession, 
 wherein the taste of God was so great, so pure, 
 
 1 Essays, first series, p. 67. 2 Miscellanies, pp. 71, 72. 
 
378 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 unblended, and uninterrupted, that it drew and 
 absorbed the powers of the soul into a profound com 
 munion, without act or discourse." Yet Emerson finds 
 the trusting submission to the laws of God, which 
 recognizes their unity and beauty, to be an act of 
 prayer. It is not the weeding a field which is prayer, 
 but the craving to be at one with God, which the 
 farmer may express even in his daily work. Tauler 
 had precisely Emerson s conception of prayer when he 
 said that " so soon as a man prays for any creature, he 
 praj s for his own harm." " He who seeks God, 
 lie sa} ? s again, if he seeks any thing beside God, will 
 not find him ; but he who seeks God alone in the truth, 
 will find him, and all that God can give with him." 
 Without words the soul prays as it reaches forward to 
 realize its harmony in God, asking for no temporal 
 good, desiring nothing but that perfect peace which 
 comes of union with the Over-soul. 
 
 Emerson closed his Divinity-school address by assert 
 ing his faith that there will come a new teacher, who 
 will lead religion forward to greater heights than ever 
 yet attained. 
 
 " The Hebrew and Greek scriptures contain immortal sentences, 
 that have been bread of life to millions. But they have no epical 
 integrity ; are fragmentary ; are not shown in their order to the in 
 tellect. I look for the new Teacher, that shall follow so far those 
 shining laws, that he shall see them come full circle ; shall see their 
 rounding, complete grace ; shall see the world to be the mirror of 
 the soul ; shall see the identity of the law of gravitation with purity 
 of heart ; and shall show that the Ought, that Duty, is one with 
 Science, with Beauty, and with Joy." 1 
 
 He has again and again repeated this declaration of 
 the imperfection of Christianity, that religion is pro 
 gressive, and that a more perfect expression of its truths 
 will yet come to men. What this pure religion will be 
 he points out in these words : 
 
 " There will be a new church founded on moral science, at first 
 cold and naked, a babe in the manger again, the algebra and mathe 
 matics of ethical law, the church of men to come, without shawms 
 
 i Ibid., p. 146. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE SOUL. 379 
 
 or psaltery or sackbut ; but it will have heaven and earth for its 
 beams and rafters ; science for symbol and illustration ; it will fast 
 enough gather beauty, music, picture, poetry. Was never stoicism 
 so stern and exigent as this shall be. It shall send man home to 
 his central solitude, shame these social supplicating manners, and 
 make him know that much of the time he must have himself to 
 his friend. He shall expect no co-operation, he shall walk with 
 no companion. The nameless Thought, the nameless Power, the 
 super-personal Heart, he shall repose alone on that." l 
 
 In other words, he believes religion will cease to be 
 any thing but intuition, communion with God; and 
 morality, or obedience to God s laws. All that is of 
 sect or party, all that is of historic forms, will pass 
 away ; and the spiritual and moral sentiment will alone 
 remain. He says the life of the old traditions is not in 
 the historic legend about which they are formed, " but 
 in the moral sentiment and the metaphysical fact which 
 the legends enclosed, and these survive." This cen 
 tral, surviving core of unchanging truth, will one day so 
 attract some rare, pure genius, that he will teach only 
 what it asserts. This happy day is yet far off. But he 
 says, 
 
 "It is true that Stoicism, always attractive to the intellectual 
 and cultivated, has now no temples, no academy, no commanding 
 Zeno or Antoninus. It accuses us that it has none; that pure 
 ethics is not now formulated and concreted into a cultus, a frater 
 nity with assemblings and holy-days, with song and book, with 
 brick and stone. Why have not those who believe in it and love it 
 left all for this, and dedicated themselves to write out its scientific 
 scriptures to become its Vulgate for millions ? I answer for one, 
 that the inspirations we catch of this law are not continuous and 
 technical, but joyful sparkles, and are recorded for their beauty, for 
 the delight they give, not for their obligation ; and that is their 
 priceless good to men, that they charm and uplift, not that they are 
 imposed. 
 
 " It has not yet its first hymn. But that every line and word 
 may be coals of true fire, ages must roll ere these casual wide-falling 
 cinders may be gathered into broad and steady altar-flame." 2 
 
 He sees rich promise of this new faith in the wider 
 humanitarian spirit of our time, and in that desire, 
 everywhere manifest, to look at man simply as man, 
 
 1 Conduct of Life, p. 210. 2 Sovereignty of Ethics, p. 4-17. 
 
3 SO RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 regardless of his sect or nation. And every thing is 
 promised in the new regard for the individual. The 
 new faith will throw each person upon his own re 
 sources, so far as the old dogmatic supports are con 
 cerned ; but it will draw his fellows closer to him in 
 friendship and love. Of this slow process, now going 
 on, by which the new faith is being brought to men, he 
 
 "Of course, each poor soul loses all his old stays; no bishop 
 watches him ; no confessor reports that he has neglected the con 
 fessional ; no class-leader admonishes him of absences ; no fagot, 
 no penance, no fine, no rebuke. Is not this wrong? is not this 
 dangerous? Tis not wrong, but the law of growth. It is not 
 dangerous, any more than the mother s withdrawing her hands 
 from the tottering babe, at his first walk across the nursery -floor ; 
 the child fears and cries, but achieves the feat, instantly tries it 
 again, and never wishes to be assisted more. And this infant soul 
 must learn to walk alone. At first he is forlorn, homeless ; but 
 this rude stripping him of all support drives him inward, and he 
 finds himself unhurt; he finds himself face to face with the ma 
 jestic Presence, reads the original of the Ten Commandments, the 
 original of Gospels and Epistles." 1 
 
 The new faith will make all men prophets and 
 apostles of the Spirit. Then America will have a pure 
 religion of its own, for a completed nation will not bor 
 row its faith. Its service will be devotion to man, its 
 bible the inward voice of God, its commandments the 
 laws of nature, its gospel the moral sentiment. It will 
 win and delight men by a loftier spirit of truth and 
 love. It will unite all truth, it will give new motives 
 to life, it will make love the la\v of human relations. 
 The new faith will rest on what is natural to man. 
 " The first position I make, he says, is that natural re 
 ligion supplies still all the facts which are disguised 
 under the dogma of popular creeds. The progress of 
 religion is steadily to its identification with morals." 2 
 Hence he finds that "sensible and conscientious men 
 all over the world are of one religion, the religion of 
 well-doing and daring, men of sturdy truth, men of in 
 tegrity and feeling for others. My inference is, he 
 
 1 Character, p. 371. 2 Sovereignty of Ethics, p. 417. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE SOUL. 881 
 
 adds, that there is a statement of religion possible 
 which makes all skepticism absurd." : In his address 
 at the second annual meeting of the Free Religious 
 Association, he made such a statement of his own 
 belief. It so fully illustrates his religious position it 
 ought to be read in full. 
 
 " I think we have disputed long enough. I think we might now 
 relinquish our theologic controversies to communities more idle 
 and ignorant than we. I am glad that a more realistic church is 
 coming to be the tendency of society, and that we are likely one 
 day to forget our obstinate polemics in the ambition to excel each 
 other in good works. I have no wish to proselyte any reluctant 
 mind ; nor, I think, have I any curiosity or impulse to Intrude on 
 those whose ways of thinking differ from mine. But I am ready 
 to give, as often before, the first simple foundations of my belief, 
 that the Author of nature has not left himself without a witness 
 in any sane mind ; that the moral sentiment speaks to every man 
 the law after which the universe was made ; that we find parity, 
 identity of design, through nature, and benefit, to be the uniform, 
 aim ; that there is a force always at work to make the best better, 
 and the worst good. We have had, not long since, presented to us 
 by Max M tiller, a valuable paragraph from St. Augustine, not at 
 all extraordinary in itself, but only as coining from that eminent 
 Father in the Church, and at that age in which St. Augustine 
 writes : That which is now called the Christian religion existed 
 among the ancients, and never did not exist from the planting of 
 the human race until Christ came in the flesh ; at which time the 
 true religion, which already subsisted, began to be called Christian 
 ity ! I believe that not only Christianity is as old as the crea 
 tion, not only every sentiment and precept of Christianity can be 
 paralleled in other religious writings, but more, that a man of 
 religious susceptibility, and one at the same time conversant with 
 many men, say, a much-traveled man, can find the same idea 
 in numberless conversations. The religious find religion wherever 
 they associate. When I find in people narrow religion, I find also 
 in them narrow reading. Nothing really is so self-publisliing, so 
 divulgatory, as thought. It can riot be confined or hid. It is 
 easily carried ; it takes no room ; the knowledge of Europe looks 
 out into Persia and India, and to the very Caffirs. Every proverb, 
 every fine text, every pregnant jest, travels across the line ; and 
 you will find it at Cape Town or a"mong the Tartars. We are all 
 believers in natural religion ; we all agree that the health and in 
 tegrity of i-> nn is self-respect, self-subsistency, a regard to natural 
 conscience. All education is to accustom him to trust himself, dis 
 criminate between his higher and lower thoughts, exert the timid 
 
 1 The Preacher, p. 7. 
 
382 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 faculties until they are robust, and thus train him to self-help, until 
 he ceases to be an underling, a tool, and becomes a benefactor. I 
 think wise men wish their religion to be all of this kind, teaching 
 the agent to go alone, not to hang on the world as a pensioner, a 
 permitted person, but an adult, self-searching soul, brave to assist 
 or resist the world ; only humble and docile before the source of the 
 wisdom he has discovered within him. 
 
 " As it is, every believer holds a different creed ; that is, all the 
 churches are churches of one member. All our sects have refined 
 the point of difference between them. The point of difference that 
 still remains between churches, or between classes, is in the addi 
 tion to the moral code, that is, to natural religion, of something 
 positive and historical. I think that to be the one difference re 
 maining. I object, of course, to the claim of miraculous dispensa 
 tion, certainly not to the doctrine of Christianity. This claim 
 impairs, to my mind, the soundness of him who makes it, and in 
 disposes us to his communion. This comes the wrong way; it 
 comes from without, not within. This positive, historical, author 
 itative scheme is not consistent with our experience or our expecta 
 tions. It is something not in nature ; it is contrary to that law of 
 nature, which all wise men recognize, namely, never to require a 
 larger cause than is necessary to the effect. George Fox, the 
 Quaker, said, that, though he read of Christ and God, he knew 
 them only from a like spirit in his own soul. We want all the 
 aids in our moral training. We can not spare the vision nor the 
 virtue of the saints ; but let it be by pure sympathy, not with any 
 personal or official claim. If you are childish, and exhibit your 
 saint as a worker of wonders, a thaumaturgist, I am repelled. That 
 claim takes his teachings out of logic and out of nature, and per 
 mits official and arbitrary senses to be grafted on the teachings. 
 It is the praise of our New Testament that its teachings go to the 
 honor and benefit of humanity, that no better lesson has been 
 taught or incarnated. Let it stand, beautiful and wholesome, with 
 whatever is most like it in the teaching and practice of men ; but 
 do not attempt to elevate it out of humanity by saying, This was 
 not a man ; for then you confound it with the fables of every pop 
 ular religion ; and my distrust of the story makes me distrust the 
 doctrine as soon as it differs from my own belief. Whoever thinks 
 a story gains by the prodigious, by adding something out of nature, 
 robs it more than he adds. It is no longer an example, a model ; 
 no longer a heart-stirring hero, but an exhibition, a wonder, an 
 anomaly, removed out of the range of influence with thoughtful 
 men. I submit, that, in sound frame of mind, we read or remem 
 ber the religious sayings and oracles of other men, whether Jew or 
 Indian or Greek or Persian, only for friendship, only for joy in 
 the social identity which they open to us ; and that these words 
 would have no weight with us if we had not the same conviction 
 already. I find something stingy in the unwilling arid disparaging 
 admission of these foreign opinions, opinions from all parts of 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE SOUL. 383 
 
 the world, by our churchmen, as if only to enhance, by their 
 dimness, the superior light of Christianity. Meantime, observe, 
 you can not bring me too good a word, too dazzling a hope, too 
 penetrating an insight from the Jews. I hail every one with de 
 light, as showing the riches of my brother, my fellow-coul, who 
 would thus think, and thus greatly feel. Zealots eagerly fasten 
 their eyes on the differences between their creed and yours ; but 
 the charm of the study is in finding the agreements, the identities, 
 in all the religions of men. 
 
 "Iain glad to hear each sect complain that they do not now 
 hold the opinions they are charged with. The earth moves, and 
 the mind opens. I am glad to believe society contains a class of 
 humble souls who enjoy the luxury of a religion that does not 
 degrade; who think it the highest worship to expect of Ilearen 
 the most and best ; who do not wonder there was a Christ, but 
 that there were not a thousand ; who have conceived an infinite 
 hope for mankind ; who believe that the history of Jesus is the 
 history of every man, written large." 1 
 
 These words may be taken as a distinct statement of 
 Emerson s religious position. They indicate the posi 
 tive, the affirmative, nature of his faith, and yet that 
 he will not commit his instinctive trust to the limits of 
 any formula. " I am too young yet by some ages, he 
 says, to compile a code ; " 2 and he has expressed the 
 same thought about the making of a creed. Little 
 inclined as he may be to enforce these opinions as a 
 creed, yet they will command attention for their bold 
 ness and originality. Though they strip religion of all 
 its rites and forms, yet they make it the commanding 
 concern and interest of mankind. If this faith of the 
 soul may never attract but a few, because most need 
 the aid of history and definite statement, yet it will 
 ever remain a powerful protest against formalism, and 
 an inspiration to a purer worship. Because Emerson s 
 is purely a religion of the spirit, no historic faith will 
 seek to gather sanctions for its teachings, out of his 
 inspirations ; no sect will build on his foundation ; no 
 school of thinkers will name him as its head. He 
 speaks of the truth, but he would not put himself in 
 
 1 Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting of the Free Religious 
 Association, held in Tremont Temple, Boston, May 27 and 28, 1809. 
 Reprinted in Freedom and Fellowship in Religion, p. 384. 
 
 2 Essays, second series, p. 84. 
 
384 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 its stead. In his teachings and in his life he is a great 
 moral influence, he is an awakener and stimulator of 
 the spiritual in man, while in his intellectual convic 
 tions he is a penetrating spirit of truth. He is a lark 
 that heralds the coming day, a sunbeam that dissipates 
 darkness. All the more pervasive, because purely 
 moral and spiritual, will be his influence, reaching all 
 hearts, pervading all forms, entering all sanctuaries, 
 sustaining all right moral considerations, and invigorat 
 ing every true resolve. Life will seem more sacred, the 
 world holier, truth more sure, man diviner, heaven 
 nearer, whenever we love the truth in that untram- 
 meled spirit he has sought to vindicate. Whatever 
 flaws may be found in his philosophic methods, none 
 will be found in those moral and spiritual truths to 
 which he has devoted his life for half a century. As 
 we look truly at his life, and consider attentively the 
 word he has spoken, we ean but say, 
 
 " So long hast thou been loyal to thyself, 
 So long hast thou been loyal to the world, 
 So long hast thou been loyal to 1<hy God, 
 That howso men may look upon thy faith, 
 Thy face looks at them tranquil with its truth." 
 
INDEX. 
 
 A. 
 
 Adams, J. Q., 48. 
 
 Addresses, 59, 120, 127, 133, 138, 164, 166, 
 
 170, 172, 182, 200. 
 Affinity, 97, 349. 
 
 Affirmation, value of, 360, 361, 373. 
 Agassiz, 306. 
 Alcott, 55, 57, 58, 60, 66, 77, 83, 84, 92, 93, 
 
 105, 106, 164, 200, 204, 211, 212, 262, 264. 
 Alger, W. R., 185. 
 YAmerica, 100, 126, 130, 131, 157, 166, 174, 
 
 183. 
 
 American letters, lecture on, 77. 
 Americans, lecture on, 126. 
 American scholar, lecture on, 59. 
 Analogy, 209, 238, 241. 
 Ancestry, 1, 14. 
 Anecdotes, 17, 127, 264. 
 Anthology Club, 14. 
 Anthology, Monthly, 13. 
 Antinomy, 336, 356. 
 "Art, 238. 
 
 Association, Free Religious, 164, 168, 381. 
 Atlantic Monthly, 160, 169, 200. 
 Augustine, 22, 169. 
 
 B. 
 
 Bartol, C. A., 56, 66, 77, 83, 114, 260, 268. 
 Bates, Miss C. F., quoted, 384. 
 ^feeing, ground of, 281, 310, 352. 
 Bias, 124, 172, 309, 332. 
 Bible, 85, 364, 374, 382. 
 Bliss, Daniel, 7. 
 Boehrne, 107, 216, 268, 277, 314, 323, 348, 
 
 365. 
 V Books, 60, 32, 86, 176, 178, 213, 214, 218, 
 
 227. 
 
 Boston Hymn, 152. 
 Bowen, Francis, 43, 114. 
 
 Bradlaugh, Charles, 179, 187. 
 
 Bremer, Frederika, 104, 191, 193, 194, 196, 
 
 253, 260, 266. 
 
 Brook Farm, 91, 94, 95, 97, 99. 
 Brown, John, 140, 141, 142, 154, 164. 
 Brownson, Orestes, 55, 56, 66, 74, 92, 284. 
 Bulkoley, Peter, 2. 
 Burns, Robert, 128, 181, 230. 
 Burns, lecture on, 127. 
 Burroughs, John, 1, 194, 208, 209. 
 Byron, 161, 228. 
 
 C. 
 
 California, visit to, 170. 
 
 Carlyle, 33, 46, 47, 52, 88, 107, 109, 113, 
 
 115, 120, 175, 185, 186, 201, 219, 223, 225, 
 
 239, 268, 282, 302. 
 
 Channing, Dr., 23, 35, 54, 56, 57, 77,93. 
 Channing, W. E., 83, 181, 234. 
 Channing, W. II., 56, 57, 77, 83, 122, 142. 
 Chardon-strcct meetings, 85, 92. 
 Charity, 97. 
 
 Cherokecs, letter on the, 63. 
 Christianity, 29, 31, 67, 86, 164, 360, 361, 
 
 362, 364, 370, 372, 374, 378, 3S1. 
 Churches, 32, 68, 164, 360, 366, 367, 369, 378. 
 Civilization, 101, 135, 147, 342. 
 Civilization, lecture on, 146, 169. 
 Clarke, J. F., 48, 56, 74, 83, 84, 122, 359 n. 
 Clough, A. II., 105, 117, 136. 
 Coleridge, 23, 34, 40, 52, 107, 115, 117, 219, 
 
 270, 280, 311, 312, 314, 317, 365. 
 Combe, George, 54, 91. 
 Compensation, 315, 343, 344, 346, 348. 
 Competition, 97. 
 
 Concord, history of, 3, 37, 177, 182, 199. 
 Concord fight, 10, 30, 182. 
 Concord library address, 176. 
 Concord lyccum, 199. 
 Conduct of Lifts, 128. 
 
 385 
 
386 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Conscience, 340, 344. 
 
 Conway, M. D., 34 n. t 160, 191, 261, 265. 
 "Courage, lecture on, 140, 206. 
 
 Conversational powers, 104, 106, 173, 193, 
 
 194, 198, 200, 264, 2G6. 
 "Contraries, 277, 279, 293, 298. 
 
 Critics, 43, 68, 109, 111, 112, 113, 114, 118, 
 
 129, 184, 189, 210. 
 "Criticism, true spirit of, 82, 215. 
 
 Crozier, J. B., 187, 285 n., 359 n 
 "Culture, 99, 102, 131, 162. 
 
 D. 
 
 Dartmouth College address, 64. 
 Definitions, refuses to make, 287, 289, 291, 
 
 307, 354, 359, 361. 
 Development, 296, 298, 300, 341, 343, 350, 
 
 358. 
 
 Dial, 77, 79, 85, 89, 110. 
 Dial, prospectus of the, 79. 
 Discipline, 41, 341. 
 Divinity School, 23, 66, 71, 185. 
 -Divinity School address, 66, 70, 74, 75. 
 Domestic life, 190, 198. 
 
 E. 
 
 Eckhart, 268, 275, 286, 301, 310, 314, 321, 
 339,348. - 
 
 Ecstasy, 274, 318, 323, 324, 325, 363. 
 
 Education, 90, 98. 
 ^Education, lecture on, 156. 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, 7. 
 "Egotism 321, 322. 
 
 Emerson, Charles Chauncy, 50, 84, 133. 
 
 Emerson, Edward, 6. 
 
 Emerson, Edward Bliss, 49, 84. 
 
 Emerson, Edward Waldo, 364 n. 
 
 Emerson, Joseph, 6. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, born, 16; boy 
 hood, 17; school, 18; college, 20; teach 
 ing, 21, 23; study of theology, 23; be 
 gins to preach, 24 ; ordained, 20 ; settled 
 ministry, 26; resigns, 30; Europe, 33; 
 marriage, 34; lectures, 35; preaching in 
 New Bedford, 35 ; Concord, 36; second 
 marriage, 33; Nature, 40; preaching, 
 44; edits Carlyle, 46; transcendental 
 ism, 53; Transcendental Club, 55; Phi 
 Beta Kappa lecture, 59 ; Divinity School 
 address, 66; Dial, 77; Brook Farm, 94; 
 Essays, 108 ; Poems, 114 ; second visit to 
 England, 115: Miscellanies, US; Repre 
 
 sentative M en, 118; Memoirs of M. Ful 
 ler, 122; English Traits, 125; Conduct 
 of Life, 128; anti-slavery movement, 
 132; Sumner caned, 138; John Brown, 
 140; Rebellion, 144; death of Lincoln, 
 152; Free Religious Association, 164; 
 May-Day, 167; Society and Solitude, 
 169; house burned, 175; third visit to 
 Europe, 175; candidate for lord-rector, 
 179; Parnassus, 181; Letters and So 
 cial Aims, 181 ; Select Poems, 185 ; hun 
 dredth lecture at Concord, 185; old age, 
 189. 
 
 Emerson, Mrs. R. W., 38, 192. 
 
 Emerson, Waldo, 112. 
 
 Emerson, William, 9. 
 
 Emerson, Mrs. William, 12, 16, 21, 24. 
 
 England, visits to, 33, 115, 175. 
 ^English Traits, 837l25. 
 
 Emancipation, 137, 148, 151, 152. 
 
 Emancipation, addresses on, 133, 137, 144, 
 
 147, 150. 
 ^Essays, 108, 113. 
 
 Essays, Carlyle s preface to, 109. 
 
 Ethics, 41, 333, 337. 
 
 Everett, Edward, 20, 22, 39, 54. 
 
 EvxretL Charles Carroll, 188.,y^ar f-T\ 
 
 Examiner, Christian, 10, 28, 43, 68, 71. 
 
 109, 113. 
 Excursions, Thoreau s, 160. 
 
 F. 
 
 Farming, essay on, 169, 204, 206. 
 
 Fate, 333, 335, 341. 
 
 Felton, C. C., 109. 
 
 Fichte, 107, 219, 260, 282, 287, 314 n. 
 
 Fortune of the Republic, 157, 185. 
 
 Fourier, 94, 101. 
 
 France, lecture on, 126. 
 
 Francis, Convers, 56, 57, 75, 92. 
 -Freedom, 292, 300, 303, 336, 343, 352. 
 "Free Religious Association, 164, 168, 381. 
 
 Frcc-Soiler, 136. 
 
 Friends of Universal Progress, 92. 
 
 Friendships, 106, 187, 197. 
 
 Friswell, Hain, 185 n. 
 
 Froudc, J. A., 175. 
 
 Fuller, Margaret, 49, 55, 75, 77, 83, 84, 85, 
 89, 92, 105, 106, 122, 197, 257. 
 
 Furness, W. H., 20, 55, 66. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 387 
 
 G. 
 
 Genius, 216, 281, 308, 318, 325, 347, 370. 
 Glasgow University rectorship, 179. 
 God, 42, 238, 286, 288, 289, 313, 317, 324 
 
 359. 
 Goethe, 24, 53, 107, 172, 188, 201, 219, 221 
 
 223, 225, 281, 349, 354, 361. 
 Goodwin, H. B., 29, 44. 
 Gospels, Alcott s conversations on, 58. 
 Great men, 120, 215, 282, 326, 328, 343, 370 
 Grace, 120, 272, 274, 276, 284, 359. 
 Grimm, H., 188, 221. 
 Ground of being, 281, 310, 352. 
 Guyon, Madame, 321, 377. 
 
 H. 
 
 Habits, 106, 190, 192, 193, 202, 245, 259, 261, 
 
 Hawthorne, 105, 193. 
 
 Hedge, F. H., 56, 77, 83, 84, 92, 113, 253, 
 
 254. 
 
 Hegel, 277, 281, 282, 332, 336, 355, S62. 
 Herbert, George, 39, 181, 236. 
 Herder, 53, 175, 191, 192. 
 Heredity, 1, 15, 334. 
 Hero-worshipper, 328. 
 Higginson, T. W., 169, 200. 
 HSistory, 119, 316. 
 Hoar, E. R., 50, 199. 
 Holbeach, Henry (A. H. Japp), 278. 
 Holbrook, Josiab, 256. 
 Holmes, O. W., 50, 181. 
 Holyoake, G. J., 186, 187. 
 Homer, 177, 242. 
 Hospitality, 197. 
 House, 38, 175, 191, 192. 
 Howard University address, 172, 216, 223. 
 Howells, W. D., 167, 254. 
 Hubbard, Ebenezer, 182. 
 Human life, lectures on, 60, 65. 
 Humor, 99. 
 Hundred Greatest Men, 326. 
 
 I. 
 
 " Ideas, 268, 273, 318, 327. 
 
 Idealism, 42, 268, 269, 348. 
 Identity, 1S-1, 206, 239, 240, 274, 278, 279, 
 280, 294, 295, 296, 309, 317, 320, 348. 
 
 Imagination, 214, 237, 308. 
 
 Immanence, 276, 277, 282. 
 
 Immortality, 298, 351, 353, 357, 359. 
 Individualism, 53, 95, 97, 102, 174, 281, 309, 
 
 312, 342, 380. 
 
 -Infinite, feeling of the, 217, 362. 
 Instinct, 308, 318, 331, 
 
 Institutions, 31, 95, 326, 365. 
 intellect, 274, 296, 336, 340, 349. 
 -Intellect, lectures on, 168, 307. 
 intuition, 66, 213, 215, 280, 281, 284, 306, \ 
 308, 317, 318, 320, 322, 325, 335, 359, 364, \ 
 
 366, 373, 377. 
 
 J. 
 
 Jesus, 67, 70, 86, 95, 98, 370, 372. 
 Jonson, Ben, 289. 
 
 K. 
 
 Kant, 107, 282, 293, 333, 336. 
 Knowing, method of, 213, 216, 276, 314, 
 317, 318, 320. 
 
 Landor, 33, 86, 107, 219, 220, 225. 
 
 Law, 67, 97, 269, 286, 295, 302, 306, 307,333, 
 
 338, 340, 343. 
 Laws, moral, 41. 
 
 Law, William, 277, 295, 299, 301, 319. 
 Lecturer, 36, 49, 59, 115, 116, 118, 128, 148, 
 
 170, 173, 179, 184, 188, 203, 207, 256, 266. 
 Lectures, 35, 36, 39, 47, 60, 61, Go, 86, 94, 
 
 103, 108, 113, 115, 117, 118, 126, 127, 133, 
 
 136, 140, 141, 145, 160, 163, 166, 168, 172, 
 
 185. 
 
 Lessing, 231, 270, 282, 361. 
 Letters, 63, 69, 73, 179, 180, 363 n. 
 Letters and Social Aims, 184. 
 Lexington, East, 59. 
 Light, inward, 67,93, 95, 173, 310, 314, 321, 
 
 322, 324, 330, 331, 342, 364, 365, 371. 
 Lincoln, 145, 146, 152, 203, 262. 
 Literary characteristics, 111, 130, 167, 188, 
 
 195, 208, 210, 211, 271. 
 Literary influence, 130, 231, 270. 
 Literary methods, 73, 167, 202, 204, 207, 
 
 209, 211, 306. 
 Jord s Supper, 30. 
 Love, 250, 340, 345. 
 
 Lowell, J. R., 60, 84, 127, 228, 260, 263. 
 .yceums, 199, 256. 
 
388 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 M. 
 
 Magnetism, 279, 294, 329, 331, 333. 
 -Man, 87, 102, 277, 295, 297, 310, 313, 315 
 319, 326, 347, 352. 
 
 Mann, Horace, 48, 91, 102. 
 
 Manse, old, 9, 36, 40, 175. 
 ^dan, universal, 59, 217, 313, 327. 
 
 Martineau, II., 103, 117, 125, 132. 
 
 Masses, 96, 98, 341. 
 
 Matter, 268, 294, 300, 301, 307. 
 
 May-Day, 167, 246. 
 
 Mediators, 364, 366, 370. 
 
 Messiah, 370. 
 
 Microcosm, man a, 273, 277, 279. 
 
 Milton, 37, 40, 168, 181, 229, 236, 242. 
 
 Mind, 60, 268, 282, 294, 307, 309, 319. 
 
 Ministry, 24, 26, 36, 44, 46, 59, 145, 160. 
 
 Miscellanies, 118. 
 
 Miracles, 366, 372. 
 
 Montaigne, 21, 22, 120. 
 
 Montegut, Emilc, 119, 271. 
 ^Morals, lecture on, 141. 
 
 Moral sentiment, 27, 223, 282, 333, 334, 344, 
 
 348, 354, 368, 371, 379. 
 
 ^-Mysticism, 237, 280, 284, 286, 314, 317,321, 
 325, 348, 351, 363, 365. 
 
 Nature, 40, 53, 118, 296. 
 Nature, 40, 43, 237, 239, 241, 245, 269, 281, 
 293, 294, 296, 304, 305, 315, 335. 
 
 Necessity, 279, 299, 302, 335, 336, 344. 
 
 Neo-Platonists, 53, 273, 275. 
 
 Nichols, Professor, 210, 212. 
 
 Norton, Andrews, 13, 14, 24, 54, 55, 74, 
 
 Norton, C. E., 167. 
 
 o. 
 
 "Optimism, 342, 343, 350. 
 
 Oriental studies, 85, 283, 372. 
 
 Originality, 209, 216, 236, 253, 271, 306. 
 "Over-soul, 53, 59, 238, 274, 276, 288, 310, 
 312, 314, 330. 
 
 P. 
 
 Palfrey, J. G., 136. 
 
 Pantheism, 57, 75, 76, 104, 110, 194, 290. 
 Parker, T., 56, 57, 75, 77, 83, 91, 93, 100, 106, 
 129, 159, 211, 212, 232, 290. 
 
 Parker Fraternity, 160, 163, 358. 
 
 Parnassus, 181. 
 
 Pascal, 22. 
 
 Patriotism, 100. 
 
 Peabody, Elizabeth, 23, 56, 58, 70, 84, 106, 
 
 306. 
 
 Peace, 62. 
 
 Perpetual forces, lecture on, 204. 
 Personal description, 103, 105, 115, 186, 
 
 190, 193, 194. 
 Personal influence, 103, 105, 108, 159, 189, 
 
 201, 266. 
 
 Personality, 67, 288, 304, 322. 
 Philanthropy, 99, 165. 
 "Phi Beta Kappa address, 59. 
 Philosophy, 127, 168, 187, 196, 268, 280, 
 ^283. 
 Plato, 22, 39, 107, 120, 177, 205, 242, 268, 
 
 272, 348. 
 Plotinus, 39, 107, 196, 268, 273, 274, 279, 
 
 296, 317, 323, 325, 348. 
 Plutarch, 171. 
 Poems, 114. 
 Poems, Select, 178, 185. 
 Poetry, 25, 37, 39, 88, 114, 127, 167, 181, 236, 
 
 239, 242, 252, 253. 
 Toetry, lecture on, 127. 
 Polarity, 293, 294, 307, 335, 337. 
 Porter, Noah, 129, 271. 
 Prayer, 31, 66, 86, 321, 338, 364, 376, 378. 
 Preacher, 207, 263. 
 Preacher, duties of the, 67. 
 Present age, lectures on, 65. 
 Profession, selection of, 172. 
 Puritan, a, 200, 236, 237, 271. 
 
 Q. 
 
 Quakers, 35, 323, 331, 371 n. 
 Quincy, E., 91, 92. 
 Quincy, Josiah, 21. 
 Quinet, Edgar, 114. 
 
 K. 
 
 ladical Club, 179, 200. 
 leading, ^2, 39, 52, 107, 216. 
 leuson, 273. 280. 311, 317.J 
 
 Rectorship, Glasgow University, 179. 
 lipley, Ezra, 10, 26, 36, 39. 
 lipley, George, 20, 56, 57, 74, 83, 84, 85, 
 91. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 389 
 
 Ripley, Mrs. Samuel, 18, 22, 34, 198. 
 
 Reform, 62, 91, 94, 96, 98, 102, 106. 
 
 Religion, 46, 87, 102, 130, 165, 238, 283, 290 
 339, 359, 365, 367, 375, 379, 381, 383. 
 
 Religious sentiment, 66, 87, 362. 
 
 Religious attitude at present time, pref 
 ace, 361, 364, 368. 
 
 Representative Men, 115, 118, 205, 272. 
 
 Retribution, 345, 350. 
 
 Revelation, 213, 216, 286, 297, 318, 321, 323, 
 366. 
 
 Review, Massachusetts Quarterly, 100. 
 
 Robinson, Crabbe, 118. 
 
 S. 
 
 Saadi, 171. 
 
 Sanborn, F. B., 19, 27, 181, 260. 
 
 Scale, 273, 296, 300, 309. 
 
 Schelling, 107, 268, 278, 279, 294, 300, 311, 
 
 312,314,317,339,348,352. 
 --"Scholar, address on American, 59. 
 Scholar, vocation of, 59, 64, 162, 270. 
 School, Alcott s temple, 58, 92. 
 Science, 54, 107, 245, 284, 299, 306. 
 Scott, Walter, .address on, 170, 229. 
 Seer, a, 201, 269, 245, 359. 
 --Self-reliance, 60, 64, 66, 96, 281, 289, 330, 
 
 331, 332, 352. 
 -Self-renunciation, 281, 302, 304, 336, 338, 
 
 345, 347, 351, 356. 
 Sentiment, 196, 237, 363. 
 Sermons, 27, 28, 30, 44, 45, 160. 
 Shakspere, 21, 172, 177, 181, 182, 206, 229, 
 
 242, 374. 
 Shelley, 228. 
 Sickness, 195. 
 Silence, 65, 95, 102, 163, 276, 278, 321, 342, 
 
 347. 
 
 Sin, 340, 341. 
 
 Skepticism, 120, 302, 363, 368. 
 Slavery agitation, 28, 113, 132, 133, 136, 
 
 137, 141, 143, 144, 146, 148, 149. 
 Socialism, 85, 95, 97, 100. 
 Social science, 99. 
 Society and Solitude, 169, 203. 
 Solidarite, 145, 342. 
 Soul, 67, 268, 272, 276, 278, 289, 310, 319, 
 
 330, 355. 
 Soul, trust in the, 64, 98, 102, 283, 330, 355, 
 
 363, 366, 371. 
 Southey, 227. / 
 
 Sphinx, 241. 
 
 Spirit, 42, 238, 268, 287, 295. 
 
 Spiritualism, 285. 
 
 Spirit, universal, 42, 43, 76, 245, 252, 268, 
 
 284, 286, 288, 294, 2%, 301, 307, 311, 314, 
 
 347, 354. 
 
 Spontaneity, 253, 319, 331, 335. 
 Stern, Daniel, 111. 
 Stirling, J. H., letter to, 180. 
 St. Theresa, 321. 
 Substans, God as, 286, 291. 
 Sufis, 364. 
 
 Sumner, Charles, address on, 138. 
 Sunday schools, 98. 
 Swedenborg, 42, 54, 94, 102, 107, 120, 242, 
 
 279, 323, 331. - 
 -Symbol, world as, 237, 269, 276, 283, 305. 
 
 T. 
 
 Table-talk, lecture on, 163. 
 
 Tauler, 310, 312, 314, 351. 
 
 Taylor, Father, 28, 33 n, 93, 164. 
 
 Temperance, 98. 
 
 Tennyson, 181, 228. 
 
 Theologia Germanica, 352. 
 
 Thoreau, 83-85, 92, 106, 112, 159, 181, 232. 
 
 Threnody, 112, 355. 
 
 Transcendental Club, 55, 77, 78, 94, 132, 
 
 200. 
 
 Transcendentalism, 52, 56, 66, 268, 286. 
 Transcendentalism in New England, 53, 
 
 56, 66, 74, 77, 81, 92, 93, 108. 
 Trust, 322, 338, 348, 350, 355. 
 Tyler, M. C., 5, 261. 
 Tyndall, John, 186, 187, 306. 
 
 TJ. 
 
 Unitarians, 8, 11, 68, 76, 164 , 361. 
 Unity, 282, 286, 290, 299, 301, 313, 349. 
 
 Y. 
 
 Van Buren, letter to President, 63. 
 Veracity, 241, 309. 
 Very, Jones, 59, 93, 181. 
 Voluntaries, 152. 
 
 w. 
 
 "Ware, Henry, jun., 26, 27, 68, 69, 71, 72. 
 War, lecture on, 61. 
 
390 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 War of the Rebellion, 145, 147, 151, 156, w"ill of God, 96, 291, 363. 
 
 162, 187. 
 
 Webster, Daniel, 136, 137, 164, 166. 
 West Indies emancipation, lecture on, 133. 
 Whipple, E. P., 167, 209, 237, 238, 269. 
 Whitman, Walt, 233. 
 Wilkinson, J. J. GK, 227. 
 "-Will, free, 97, 302, 336, 337. 
 
 Wit, 209, 259, 309. 
 ^Voman s suffrage, 91, 99, 123. 
 Wood-notes, 245, 248, 249, 287. 
 Wordsworth, 23, 34, 53, 107, 115, 117, 181, 
 
 182, 224, 228, 242, 281. 
 Worship, 42, 287, 290, 302, 314, 375, 376, 
 
 379, 382. 
 
14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 SEP21 I975H, 
 
 . . mi n \j^ ij 
 
 (F2336slO)476B 
 
 .General Library 
 
 University of California 
 
 Berkeley 
 

 U.C.BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY