Chapter 8

The ignorance, narrow-mindedness, and _odium theologicum_ which prevailed in America until 1840 was worse than that in Europe under the Church in the Middle Ages, for even in the latter there had been an Agobard and an Abelard, Knight-Templar agnostics, and _illuminati_ of different kinds. The Unitarians, who believed firmly in every point of Christianity, and that man was saved by Jesus, and would be damned if he did not put faith in him as the Son of God, were regarded literally and truly by everybody as no better than infidels because they believed that Christ was _sent_ by God, and that Three could not be One. Every sect, with rare exceptions, preached, especially the Presbyterians, that the vast majority even of Christians would be damned, thereby giving to the devil that far greater power than God against which Bishop Agobard had protested. As for a freethinker or infidel, he was pointed at in the streets; and if a man had even seen a "Deist," he spoke of it as if he had beheld a murderer. Against all this some few were beginning to revolt.

There came a rumour that there was something springing up in Boston called Transcendentalism. Nobody knew what it was, but it was dreamy, mystical, crazy, and infideleterious to religion. Firstly, it was connected with Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and finally with everything German. The new school of liberal Unitarians favoured it. I had a quick intuition that here was something for me to work at. I bought Carlyle's _Sartor Resartus_, first edition, and read it through forty times ere I left college, of which I "kept count."

My record here as regards some books may run a little ahead; but either before I went to college or during my first year there (almost all before or by 1840-'41), I had read Carlyle's "Miscellanies" thoroughly, Emerson's "Essays," a translation of Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," the first half of it many times; Dugald Stewart's works, something of Reid, Locke, and Hobbes's "Leviathan"; had bought and read French versions of Schelling's "Transcendental Idealism" and Fichte's fascinating "Destiny of Man"; studied a small handbook of German philosophy; the works of Campanella and Vanini (Bruno much later, for his works were then exceeding rare. I now have Weber's edition), and also, with intense relish and great profit, an old English version of Spinoza's _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_. In which last work I had the real key and clue to all German philosophy and Rationalism, as I in time found out. I must here modestly mention that I had, to a degree which I honestly believe seldom occurs, the art of _rapid_ yet of carefully-observant reading. George Boker once, quite unknown to me, gave me something to read, watched my eyes as I went from line to line, timed me by watch, and finally examined me on what I had read. He published the incident long after, said he had repeated it more than once _a mon insu_, and that it was remarkable.

Such a dual life as I at this time led it has seldom entered into the head of man to imagine. I was, on the one hand, a school-boy in a jacket, leading a humiliated life among my kind, all because I was sickly and weak; while, on the other hand, utterly alone and without a living soul to whom I could exchange an idea, I was mastering rapidly and boldly that which was _then_ in reality the tremendous problem of the age. I can now see that, as regards its _real_ antique bases, I was far more deeply read and better grounded than were even its most advanced leaders in Anglo-Saxony. For I soon detected in Carlyle, and much more in Emerson, a very slender knowledge of that stupendous and marvellous ancient Mysticism which sent its soul in burning faith and power to the depth of "the downward-borne elements of God," as Hermes called them. I missed even the rapt faith of such a weak writer as Sir Kenelm Digby, much more Zoroaster! Vigourous and clever and bold writers they were--Carlyle was far beyond me in literary _art_--but true Pantheists they were _not_. And they were men of great genius, issuing essays to the age on popular, or political, or "literary" topics; but _philosophers_ they most assuredly were _not_, nor men tremendous in spiritual truth. And yet it was precisely as _philosophers_ and thaumaturgists and revealers of _occulta_ that they posed--especially Emerson. And they dabbled or trifled with free thought and "immorality," crying Goethe up as the Light of Lights, while all their inner souls were bound in the most Puritanical and petty goody-goodyism. Though there were traces of grim Scotch humour in Carlyle, my patron saint and master, Rabelais, or aught like him, had no credit with them.

They _paddled_ in Pantheism, but as regards it, both lacked the stupendous faith and inspiration of the old adepti, who flung their whole souls into God; and yet they sneered at Materialism and Science.

I did not then see _all_ of this so clearly as I now do, but I very soon found that, as in after years it was said that Comteism was Catholicism without Christianity, so the Carlyle-Emersonian Transcendentalism was Mysticism without mystery. Nor did I reflect that it was a calling people from the nightmared slumber of frozen orthodoxy or bigotry to come and see a marvellous new thing. And when they came, they found out that this marvellous thing was that they had been _awakened_, "only that and nothing more"; and _that_ was the great need of the time, and worth more than any magic or theosophy. But I had expected, in simple ignorant faith, that the sacred mysteries of some marvellous cabala would be revealed, and not finding what I wanted (though indeed I discovered much that was worldly new to me), I returned to the good old ghost-haunted paths trodden by my ancestors, to dryads and elves and voices from the stars, and the _archaeus_ formed by the astral spirit (not the modern Blavatsky affair, by-the-bye), which entyped all things . . . and so went elving and dreaming on 'mid ruins old.

Be it observed that all this time I really did not know what I knew. Boys are greatly influenced by their surroundings, and in those days every one about me never spoke of Transcendentalism or "Germanism," or even "bookishness," without a sneer. I was borne by a mysterious inner impulse which I could not resist into this terrible whirlpool of _belles- lettres_, occulta, facetiae, and philosophy; but I had, God knows, little cause for pride that I read so much, for it was on every hand in some way turned against me. If it had only been reading like that of other human beings, it might have been endured; but I was always seen coming and going with parchment-bound tomes. Once I implored my father, when I was thirteen or fourteen, to let me buy a certain book, which he did. This work, which was as dear to me as a new doll to a girl for a long time, was the _Reductorium_ or moralisation of the whole Bible by Petrus Berchorius, black-letter, folio, Basle, 1511. It was from the library of a great and honest scholar, and, as the catalogue stated, "contained MS. notes on the margin by Melanchthon."

Promising, this, for an American youth who was expected to go into business or study a profession!

While at Hurlbut's school I took lessons in Spanish. There was a Spanish boy from Malaga, a kind of half-servant, _half-protege_ in a family near us, with whom I practised speaking the language, and also had some opportunity with a few Cubans who visited our family. One of them had been a governor-general. He was a Gallician by birth, but I did not know this, and innocently asked him one day if _los Gallegos no son los Irlandeses d'Espana_?--if the Gallicians were not the Irish of Spain--which drew a grave caution from my brother, who knew better than I how the land lay. I really attained some skill in Spanish, albeit to this day "Don Quixote" demands from me a great deal of dictionary. But, as I said before, I learn languages with _incredible_ difficulty, a fact which I cannot reconcile with the extreme interest which I take in philology and linguistics, and the discoveries which I have made; as, for instance, that of _Shelta_ in England, or my labours in jargons, such as Pidgin-English, Slang, and Romany. But, as the reader has probably perceived, I was a boy with an inherited good constitution only from the paternal side, and a not very robust one from my mother, while my mind, weakened by long illness, had been strangely stimulated by many disorders, nervous fevers being frequent among them. In those days I was, as my mother said, almost brought up on calomel--and she might have added quinine. The result of so much nervousness, excessive stimulating by medicine, and rapid growth was a too great susceptibility to poetry, humour, art, and all that was romantic, quaint, and mysterious, while I found it very hard to master any really dry subject. What would have set me all right would have been careful physical culture, boxing, so as to protect me from my school persecutors, and _amusement_ in a healthy sense, of which I had almost none whatever.

Hurlbut's became at last simply intolerable, and my parents, finding out in some way that I was worse for being there, removed me to a far better school kept by E. C. Wines, who had written books on education, and attained some fame thereby. This was in 1839-'40, and I was there to be prepared for college. We were soon introduced to an old French gentleman, who was to teach us, and who asked the other boys what French works they had read. Some had gone through _Telemaque_, or _Paul et Virginie_, _Florian_, _etcetera_. The good-goody nature of such reading awoke in me my sense of humour. When it came to my turn, and I was asked, I replied, "_La Pucelle d'Orleans_ and _Dictionnaire Philosophique_ of Voltaire, the Confessions of Rousseau, the Poems of Villon, _Charles d'Orleans_, _Clotilde de Surville_, and more or less of Helvetius, D'Holbach, and Condillac." Here the professor, feeling himself quizzed, cast forth his hands as in disgust and horror, and cried, "_Assez_! _assez_! Unhappy boy, you have raked through the library of the devil down to the dregs!" Nor was I "selling" him, for I certainly had read the works, as the records of the Philadelphia Library can in a great measure prove, and did not speak by hearsay.

I had at this time several severe long attacks of illness with much pain, which I always bore well, as a matter of course or habit. But rather oddly, while in the midst of my Transcendentalism, and reading every scrap of everything about Germany which I could get, and metaphysics, and study--I was very far gone then, and used to go home from school and light a pipe with a long wooden stem, and study the beloved "Critic of Pure Reason" or Carlyle's Miscellanies, having discovered that smoking was absolutely necessary in such reading--[De Quincey required a quart of laudanum to enable him to enjoy German metaphysics]--there came a strange gleam of worldly dissipation, of which I never think without pleasure. I had passed one summer vacation on a farm near Philadelphia, where I learned something in wood-ranging about wild herbs and catching land-tortoises and "coon-hunting," and had been allowed to hire and ride a horse.

I did not know it, but this horse had thrown over his head everybody who had ever mounted him. He was a perfect devil, but also a perfect gentleman. He soon took my measure, and resolved to treat me kindly as a _protege_. When we both wanted a gallop, he made such time as nobody before had dreamed was in him; when he was lazy, he only had to turn his head and look at me, and I knew what that meant and conformed unto him. He had a queer fancy at times to quietly steal up and put his hoof on my foot so as to hurt me, and then there was an impish laugh in his eye. For he laughed at me, and I knew it. There is really such a thing as a horse- laugh. One day we passed through a drove of sheep, and he did not like it--no horse does. After a while I wanted to go by a certain road, but he refused sternly to take it. I found soon after that if I had done so we must have met the sheep again. He had, in fact, understood the route far better than I. I once got a mile out of him in three minutes--more or less; but he had seen me look at my watch, and knew that I wanted to see what he could do. He never did it again. I _may_ have been mistaken here, but it was my impression at the time. Perhaps if I had gone on much longer in intimacy with him I might have profited mentally by it, and acquired what Americans call "horse-sense," of which I had some need. It is the sixth--or the first--sense of all Yankees and Scotchmen. When I returned to the city I was allowed to hire a horse for a few times from a livery stable, and went out riding with a friend. This friend was a rather precociously dissipated youth, and with him I had actually now and then--very rarely--a glass at a bar and oysters. He soon left me for wilder associates, and I relapsed into my old sober habits. Strange as it may seem, I believe that I was really on the brink of becoming like other boys. But it all faded away. Now it became imperative that I should study in earnest. I used to rise at three or four in the morning. What with hard work and great fear of not passing my matriculation, I contrived to get up so much Latin, Greek, and mathematics, that Mr. Wines thought I might attempt it, and so one fine summer day my father went with me to Princeton. I was in a fearful state of nervous anxiety.

COLLEGE LIFE.

PRINCETON.

We went to Princeton, where I presented my letters of introduction, passed a by no means severe examination for the Freshman's class, was very courteously received by the professors to whom I was commended, and, to my inexpressible delight, found myself a college student. Rooms were secured for me at a Mrs. Burroughs', opposite Nassau Hall; the adjoining apartment was occupied by Mr. Craig Biddle, now a judge. George H. Boker was then at the end of his Sophomore year, the term having but a few days to run. He had rooms in college and lived in unexampled style, having actually a carpet on his floor and superior furniture, also a good collection of books, chiefly standard English poets. He at once took me in hand and gave me a character.

Princeton College was entirely in the hands of the strictest of "Old School" Presbyterian theologians. Piety and mathematics rated extravagantly high in the course. The latter study was literally reckoned in the grades as being of more account than all the rest collectively. Thus, as eventually happened to me, a student might excel in Latin, English, and Natural Philosophy--in fact, in almost everything, good conduct included--and yet be the last in the class if he neglected mathematics. There was no teaching of French, because, as was naively said, students might read the irreligious works extant in that language, and of course no other modern language; as for German, one would as soon have proposed to raise the devil there as a class in it. If there had been an optional course, as at Cambridge, Massachusetts, by which German was accepted in lieu of mathematics, I should probably have taken the first honour, instead of the last. And yet, with a little more Latin, I was really qualified, on the day when I matriculated at Princeton, to have passed for a Doctor of Philosophy in Heidelberg, as I subsequently accurately ascertained.

There were three or four men of great ability in the Faculty of the University. One of these was Professor Joseph Henry, in those days the first natural philosopher and lecturer on science in America. I had the fortune in time to become quite a special _protege_ of his. Another was Professor James Alexander, who taught Latin, rhetoric, and mental philosophy. He was so clear-headed and liberally learned, that I always felt sure that he must at heart have been far beyond the bounds of Old School theology, but he had an iron Roman-like sternness of glance which quite suited a Covenanter. The most remarkable of all was Albert Dodd, Professor of Mathematics and Lecturer on Architecture. This man was a genius of such a high order, that had it not been for the false position in which he was placed, he would have given to the world great works. The false position was this: he was the chief pulpit orator of the old school, and had made war on the Transcendentalist movement in an able article in the _Princeton Review_ (which, by the way, was useful in guiding me to certain prohibited works, before unknown to me). But as he was a man of poetic genial feeling, he found himself irresistibly fascinated by what he had hunted down, and so read Plato, and when he died actually left behind him a manuscript translation of Spinoza's works!

The reader may imagine what a marvellous _find_ I was to him. George Boker, who was ages beyond me in knowledge of the world--man and woman--said one day that he could imagine how Dodd sat and chuckled to hear me talk, which remark I did not at all understand and thought rather stupid. I remember that during my first call on him we discussed _Sartor Resartus_, and I expressed it as my firm conviction that the idea of the Clothes Philosophy had been taken from the Treatise on Fire and Salt by the Rosicrucian Lord Blaise. Then, in all _naivete_ and innocence of effect, I discussed some point in Kant's "Critic," and a few other trifles not usually familiar to sub-Freshmen, and took my departure, very much pleased at having entered on a life where my favourite reading did not really seem to be quite silly or disreputable. I remember, however, being very much surprised indeed at finding that the other students, in whom I expected to encounter miracles of learning, or youth far superior to myself in erudition and critical knowledge, did not quite come up to my anticipations. However, as they were all far beyond me in mathematics, I supposed their genius had all gone in that direction, for well I knew that the toughest page in Fichte was a mere trifle compared to the awful terrors of the Rule of Three, and so treated them as young men who were my superiors in other and greater things.

There were wearisome morning prayers in the chapel, and roll-call every morning, and then an hour of recitation before breakfast, study till ten or eleven, study and recitation in the afternoon, and evening prayers again and study in the evening. The Sabbath was anything but a day of rest, for we had the same prayers; morning attendance at church; afternoon, the learning and reciting of _four chapters_ in the Bible; while we were expected in the evening to master one or two chapters in the Greek Testament. I am not sorry that I used to read books during sermon-time. It kept me from, or from me, a great deal of wickedness. _Videlicet_:

The sermons consisted principally of assertion that man himself consisted chiefly of original sin. As evil communications corrupt good manners, I myself, being young and impressionable, began to believe that I too was an awful sinner. Not knowing where else to look for it, I concluded that it consisted in my inability to learn mathematics. I do not distinctly remember whether I prayed to Heaven that I might be able to cross the Pons Asinorum, but "anyway" my prayer was granted when I graduated.

Another stock-piece in the _repertoire_ consisted of attacks on Voltaire, Tom Paine, and other antiquated Deists or infidels. I had read with great contempt a copy of "The Rights of Man" belonging to my genial uncle Amos. I say with great contempt, for I always despised that kind of free thought which consisted chiefly of enmity to Christianity. Now I can see that Voltaire and his followers were quite in the right in warring on terrible and immediate abuses which oppressed mankind; but I had learned from Spinoza to believe that every form of faith was good in its way or according to its mission or time, and that it was silly to ridicule Christianity because the tale of Balaam's ass was incredible. Paine was to me just what a Positivist now is to a Darwinian or Agnostic, and such preaching against "infidels" seemed to me like pouring water on a drowned mouse. There had always been in Mr. Furness's teaching a very decided degree of Rationalism, and I had advanced far more boldly on the track. I remember reading translations from Schleiermacher and buying Strauss's "Life of Jesus" before I went to Princeton--I saw Strauss himself in after years at Weinsberg, in Germany--but at Princeton the slightest approach to explaining the most absurd story in the Old Testament was regarded as out-and-out atheism. It had all happened, we were told, just as it is described.

I may as well note here the fact that for many years in my early life such a thing as only reading a book through once rarely happened, when I could obtain it long enough. Even the translations of the Neo-Platonists, with Campanella, Vanini, or the Italian naturalists, were read and reread, while the principal English poets, and such books as I owned, were perused daily.

And here in this great infant arithmetic school I was in due time set down to study Paley's "Evidences of Christianity" and Locke on the Understanding--like Carlyle's young lion invited to a feast of chickweed. Apropos of the first, I have a droll reminiscence. There had been in Philadelphia two years before a sale of a fine library, and I had been heart-broken because my means had not permitted me to buy the works of Sir Kenelm Digby. However, I found them in the Princeton College Library. The first thing I came to in Paley was his famous simile of the watch--taken bodily and without acknowledgment from Digby. The theft disgusted me. "These be your Christian champions!" I thought--

"Would any of the stock of infidels Had been my evidence ere such a Christian!"

And, moreover, Paley forgets to inform us what conclusion the finder might draw if he had picked up a badly made watch which did not keep good time--like this our turnip of a world at times!