Chapter 2

Hence comes the difficulty--the futility of attempting to fasten on Emerson any particular doctrine, philosophic, or religious theory. Emerson wrings the neck of any law, that would become exclusive and arrogant, whether a definite one of metaphysics or an indefinite one of mechanics. He hacks his way up and down, as near as he can to the absolute, the oneness of all nature both human and spiritual, and to God's benevolence. To him the ultimate of a conception is its vastness, and it is probably this, rather than the "blind-spots" in his expression that makes us incline to go with him but half-way; and then stand and build dogmas. But if we can not follow all the way--if we do not always clearly perceive the whole picture, we are at least free to imagine it--he makes us feel that we are free to do so; perhaps that is the most he asks. For he is but reaching out through and beyond mankind, trying to see what he can of the infinite and its immensities--throwing back to us whatever he can--but ever conscious that he but occasionally catches a glimpse; conscious that if he would contemplate the greater, he must wrestle with the lesser, even though it dims an outline; that he must struggle if he would hurl back anything--even a broken fragment for men to examine and perchance in it find a germ of some part of truth; conscious at times, of the futility of his effort and its message, conscious of its vagueness, but ever hopeful for it, and confident that its foundation, if not its medium is somewhere near the eventual and "absolute good" the divine truth underlying all life. If Emerson must be dubbed an optimist--then an optimist fighting pessimism, but not wallowing in it; an optimist, who does not study pessimism by learning to enjoy it, whose imagination is greater than his curiosity, who seeing the sign-post to Erebus, is strong enough to go the other way. This strength of optimism, indeed the strength we find always underlying his tolerance, his radicalism, his searches, prophecies, and revelations, is heightened and made efficient by "imagination-penetrative," a thing concerned not with the combining but the apprehending of things. A possession, akin to the power, Ruskin says, all great pictures have, which "depends on the penetration of the imagination into the true nature of the thing represented, and on the scorn of the imagination for all shackles and fetters of mere external fact that stand in the way of its suggestiveness"--a possession which gives the strength of distance to his eyes, and the strength of muscle to his soul. With this he slashes down through the loam--nor would he have us rest there. If we would dig deep enough only to plant a doctrine, from one part of him, he would show us the quick-silver in that furrow. If we would creed his Compensation, there is hardly a sentence that could not wreck it, or could not show that the idea is no tenet of a philosophy, but a clear (though perhaps not clearly hurled on the canvas) illustration of universal justice--of God's perfect balances; a story of the analogy or better the identity of polarity and duality in Nature with that in morality. The essay is no more a doctrine than the law of gravitation is. If we would stop and attribute too much to genius, he shows us that "what is best written or done by genius in the world, was no one man's work, but came by wide social labor, when a thousand wrought like one, sharing the same impulse." If we would find in his essay on Montaigne, a biography, we are shown a biography of scepticism--and in reducing this to relation between "sensation and the morals" we are shown a true Montaigne--we know the man better perhaps by this less presentation. If we would stop and trust heavily on the harvest of originality, he shows us that this plant--this part of the garden--is but a relative thing. It is dependent also on the richness that ages have put into the soil. "Every thinker is retrospective."

Thus is Emerson always beating down through the crust towards the first fire of life, of death and of eternity. Read where you will, each sentence seems not to point to the next but to the undercurrent of all. If you would label his a religion of ethics or of morals, he shames you at the outset, "for ethics is but a reflection of a divine personality." All the religions this world has ever known, have been but the aftermath of the ethics of one or another holy person; "as soon as character appears be sure love will"; "the intuition of the moral sentiment is but the insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul"; but these laws cannot be catalogued.

If a versatilist, a modern Goethe, for instance, could put all of Emerson's admonitions into practice, a constant permanence would result,--an eternal short-circuit--a focus of equal X-rays. Even the value or success of but one precept is dependent, like that of a ball-game as much on the batting-eye as on the pitching-arm. The inactivity of permanence is what Emerson will not permit. He will not accept repose against the activity of truth. But this almost constant resolution of every insight towards the absolute may get a little on one's nerves, if one is at all partial-wise to the specific; one begins to ask what is the absolute anyway, and why try to look clear through the eternities and the unknowable even out of the other end. Emerson's fondness for flying to definite heights on indefinite wings, and the tendency to over-resolve, becomes unsatisfying to the impatient, who want results to come as they walk. Probably this is a reason that it is occasionally said that Emerson has no vital message for the rank and file. He has no definite message perhaps for the literal, but messages are all vital, as much, by reason of his indefiniteness, as in spite of it.

There is a suggestion of irony in the thought that the power of his vague but compelling vitality, which ever sweeps us on in spite of ourselves, might not have been his, if it had not been for those definite religious doctrines of the old New England theologians. For almost two centuries, Emerson's mental and spiritual muscles had been in training for him in the moral and intellectual contentions, a part of the religious exercise of his forebears. A kind of higher sensitiveness seems to culminate in him. It gives him a power of searching for a wider freedom of soul than theirs. The religion of Puritanism was based to a great extent, on a search for the unknowable, limited only by the dogma of its theology--a search for a path, so that the soul could better be conducted to the next world, while Emerson's transcendentalism was based on the wider search for the unknowable, unlimited in any way or by anything except the vast bounds of innate goodness, as it might be revealed to him in any phenomena of man, Nature, or God. This distinction, tenuous, in spite of the definite-sounding words, we like to believe has something peculiar to Emerson in it. We like to feel that it superimposes the one that makes all transcendentalism but an intellectual state, based on the theory of innate ideas, the reality of thought and the necessity of its freedom. For the philosophy of the religion, or whatever you will call it, of the Concord Transcendentalists is at least, more than an intellectual state--it has even some of the functions of the Puritan church--it is a spiritual state in which both soul and mind can better conduct themselves in this world, and also in the next--when the time comes. The search of the Puritan was rather along the path of logic, spiritualized, and the transcendentalist of reason, spiritualized--a difference in a broad sense between objective and subjective contemplation.

The dislike of inactivity, repose and barter, drives one to the indefinite subjective. Emerson's lack of interest in permanence may cause him to present a subjectivity harsher on the outside than is essential. His very universalism occasionally seems a limitation. Somewhere here may lie a weakness--real to some, apparent to others--a weakness in so far as his relation becomes less vivid--to the many; insofar as he over-disregards the personal unit in the universal. If Genius is the most indebted, how much does it owe to those who would, but do not easily ride with it? If there is a weakness here is it the fault of substance or only of manner? If of the former, there is organic error somewhere, and Emerson will become less and less valuable to man. But this seems impossible, at least to us. Without considering his manner or expression here (it forms the general subject of the second section of this paper), let us ask if Emerson's substance needs an affinity, a supplement or even a complement or a gangplank? And if so, of what will it be composed?

Perhaps Emerson could not have risen to his own, if it had not been for his Unitarian training and association with the churchmen emancipators. "Christianity is founded on, and supposes the authority of, reason, and cannot therefore oppose it, without subverting itself." ... "Its office is to discern universal truths, great and eternal principles ... the highest power of the soul." Thus preached Channing. Who knows but this pulpit aroused the younger Emerson to the possibilities of intuitive reasoning in spiritual realms? The influence of men like Channing in his fight for the dignity of human nature, against the arbitrary revelations that Calvinism had strapped on the church, and for the belief in the divine in human reason, doubtless encouraged Emerson in his unshackled search for the infinite, and gave him premises which he later took for granted instead of carrying them around with him. An over-interest, not an under-interest in Christian ideal aims, may have caused him to feel that the definite paths were well established and doing their share, and that for some to reach the same infinite ends, more paths might be opened--paths which would in themselves, and in a more transcendent way, partake of the spiritual nature of the land in quest,--another expression of God's Kingdom in Man. Would you have the indefinite paths ALWAYS supplemented by the shadow of the definite one of a first influence?

A characteristic of rebellion, is that its results are often deepest, when the rebel breaks not from the worst to the greatest, but from the great to the greater. The youth of the rebel increases this characteristic. The innate rebellious spirit in young men is active and buoyant. They could rebel against and improve the millennium. This excess of enthusiasm at the inception of a movement, causes loss of perspective; a natural tendency to undervalue the great in that which is being taken as a base of departure. A "youthful sedition" of Emerson was his withdrawal from the communion, perhaps, the most socialistic doctrine (or rather symbol) of the church--a "commune" above property or class.

Picking up an essay on religion of a rather remarkable-minded boy--perhaps with a touch of genius--written when he was still in college, and so serving as a good illustration in point--we read--"Every thinking man knows that the church is dead." But every thinking man knows that the church-part of the church always has been dead--that part seen by candle-light, not Christ-light. Enthusiasm is restless and hasn't time to see that if the church holds itself as nothing but the symbol of the greater light it is life itself--as a symbol of a symbol it is dead. Many of the sincerest followers of Christ never heard of Him. It is the better influence of an institution that arouses in the deep and earnest souls a feeling of rebellion to make its aims more certain. It is their very sincerity that causes these seekers for a freer vision to strike down for more fundamental, universal, and perfect truths, but with such feverish enthusiasm, that they appear to overthink themselves--a subconscious way of going Godward perhaps. The rebel of the twentieth century says: "Let us discard God, immortality, miracle--but be not untrue to ourselves." Here he, no doubt, in a sincere and exalted moment, confuses God with a name. He apparently feels that there is a separable difference between natural and revealed religion. He mistakes the powers behind them, to be fundamentally separate. In the excessive keenness of his search, he forgets that "being true to ourselves" IS God, that the faintest thought of immortality IS God, and that God is "miracle." Over-enthusiasm keeps one from letting a common experience of a day translate what is stirring the soul. The same inspiring force that arouses the young rebel, brings later in life a kind of "experience-afterglow," a realization that the soul cannot discard or limit anything. Would you have the youthful enthusiasm of rebellion, which Emerson carried beyond his youth always supplemented by the shadow of experience?

Perhaps it is not the narrow minded alone that have no interest in anything, but in its relation to their personality. Is the Christian Religion, to which Emerson owes embryo-ideals, anything but the revelation of God in a personality--a revelation so that the narrow mind could become opened? But the tendency to over-personalize personality may also have suggested to Emerson the necessity for more universal, and impersonal paths, though they be indefinite of outline and vague of ascent. Could you journey, with equal benefit, if they were less so? Would you have the universal always supplemented by the shadow of the personal? If this view is accepted, and we doubt that it can be by the majority, Emerson's substance could well bear a supplement, perhaps an affinity. Something that will support that which some conceive he does not offer. Something that will help answer Alton Locke's question: "What has Emerson for the working-man?" and questions of others who look for the gang-plank before the ship comes in sight. Something that will supply the definite banister to the infinite, which it is said he keeps invisible. Something that will point a crossroad from "his personal" to "his nature." Something that may be in Thoreau or Wordsworth, or in another poet whose songs "breathe of a new morning of a higher life though a definite beauty in Nature"--or something that will show the birth of his ideal and hold out a background of revealed religion, as a perspective to his transcendent religion--a counterpoise in his rebellion--which we feel Channing or Dr. Bushnell, or other saints known and unknown might supply.

If the arc must be completed--if there are those who would have the great, dim outlines of Emerson fulfilled, it is fortunate that there are Bushnells, and Wordsworths, to whom they may appeal--to say nothing of the Vedas, the Bible, or their own souls. But such possibilities and conceptions, the deeper they are received, the more they seem to reduce their need. Emerson's Circle may be a better whole, without its complement. Perhaps his "unsatiable demand for unity, the need to recognize one nature in all variety of objects," would have been impaired, if something should make it simpler for men to find the identity they at first want in his substance. "Draw if thou canst the mystic line severing rightly his from thine, which is human, which divine." Whatever means one would use to personalize Emerson's natural revelation, whether by a vision or a board walk, the vastness of his aims and the dignity of his tolerance would doubtless cause him to accept or at least try to accept, and use "magically as a part of his fortune." He would modestly say, perhaps, "that the world is enlarged for him, not by finding new objects, but by more affinities, and potencies than those he already has." But, indeed, is not enough manifestation already there? Is not the asking that it be made more manifest forgetting that "we are not strong by our power to penetrate, but by our relatedness?" Will more signs create a greater sympathy? Is not our weak suggestion needed only for those content with their own hopelessness?

Others may lead others to him, but he finds his problem in making "gladness hope and fortitude flow from his page," rather than in arranging that our hearts be there to receive it. The first is his duty--the last ours!

2

A devotion to an end tends to undervalue the means. A power of revelation may make one more concerned about his perceptions of the soul's nature than the way of their disclosure. Emerson is more interested in what he perceives than in his expression of it. He is a creator whose intensity is consumed more with the substance of his creation than with the manner by which he shows it to others. Like Petrarch he seems more a discoverer of Beauty than an imparter of it. But these discoveries, these devotions to aims, these struggles toward the absolute, do not these in themselves, impart something, if not all, of their own unity and coherence--which is not received, as such, at first, nor is foremost in their expression. It must be remembered that "truth" was what Emerson was after--not strength of outline, or even beauty except in so far as they might reveal themselves, naturally, in his explorations towards the infinite. To think hard and deeply and to say what is thought, regardless of consequences, may produce a first impression, either of great translucence, or of great muddiness, but in the latter there may be hidden possibilities. Some accuse Brahms' orchestration of being muddy. This may be a good name for a first impression of it. But if it should seem less so, he might not be saying what he thought. The mud may be a form of sincerity which demands that the heart be translated, rather than handed around through the pit. A clearer scoring might have lowered the thought. Carlyle told Emerson that some of his paragraphs didn't cohere. Emerson wrote by sentences or phrases, rather than by logical sequence. His underlying plan of work seems based on the large unity of a series of particular aspects of a subject, rather than on the continuity of its expression. As thoughts surge to his mind, he fills the heavens with them, crowds them in, if necessary, but seldom arranges them, along the ground first. Among class-room excuses for Emerson's imperfect coherence and lack of unity, is one that remembers that his essays were made from lecture notes. His habit, often in lecturing, was to compile his ideas as they came to him on a general subject, in scattered notes, and when on the platform, to trust to the mood of the occasion, to assemble them. This seems a specious explanation, though true to fact. Vagueness, is at times, an indication of nearness to a perfect truth. The definite glory of Bernard of Cluny's Celestial City, is more beautiful than true--probably. Orderly reason does not always have to be a visible part of all great things. Logic may possibly require that unity means something ascending in self-evident relation to the parts and to the whole, with no ellipsis in the ascent. But reason may permit, even demand an ellipsis, and genius may not need the self-evident part. In fact, these parts may be the "blind-spots" in the progress of unity. They may be filled with little but repetition. "Nature loves analogy and hates repetition." Botany reveals evolution not permanence. An apparent confusion if lived with long enough may become orderly. Emerson was not writing for lazy minds, though one of the keenest of his academic friends said that, he (Emerson) could not explain many of his own pages. But why should he!--he explained them when he discovered them--the moment before he spoke or wrote them. A rare experience of a moment at daybreak, when something in nature seems to reveal all consciousness, cannot be explained at noon. Yet it is a part of the day's unity. At evening, nature is absorbed by another experience. She dislikes to explain as much as to repeat. It is conceivable, that what is unified form to the author, or composer, may of necessity be formless to his audience. A home-run will cause more unity in the grand stand than in the season's batting average. If a composer once starts to compromise, his work will begin to drag on HIM. Before the end is reached, his inspiration has all gone up in sounds pleasing to his audience, ugly to him--sacrificed for the first acoustic--an opaque clarity, a picture painted for its hanging. Easy unity, like easy virtue, is easier to describe, when judged from its lapses than from its constancy. When the infidel admits God is great, he means only: "I am lazy--it is easier to talk than live." Ruskin also says: "Suppose I like the finite curves best, who shall say I'm right or wrong? No one. It is simply a question of experience." You may not be able to experience a symphony, even after twenty performances. Initial coherence today may be dullness tomorrow probably because formal or outward unity depends so much on repetition, sequences, antitheses, paragraphs with inductions and summaries. Macaulay had that kind of unity. Can you read him today? Emerson rather goes out and shouts: "I'm thinking of the sun's glory today and I'll let his light shine through me. I'll say any damn thing that this inspires me with." Perhaps there are flashes of light, still in cipher, kept there by unity, the code of which the world has not yet discovered. The unity of one sentence inspires the unity of the whole--though its physique is as ragged as the Dolomites.