Part 16

In his first great work, the work which startled Europe, Rousseau recalled man to himself. He said, "The true philosophy is to commune with one's self,"--the greatest saying, thinks Henri Martin, that had been pronounced in that century. Rousseau condemned luxury, and uttered a prophetic cry of woe over the tangled perplexities of the time. "There is no longer a remedy, _unless through some great revolution, almost as much to be feared as the evil it would cure,--which it is blamable to desire, impossible to foresee_."

"_Man is naturally good_," says Rousseau. Before the frightful words "mine" and "thine" were invented, how could there have been, he asks, any vices or crimes? He denounced all slavery, all inequality, all forms of oppression. His writings were full of exaggeration, but, says the French historian, "no sooner had he opened his lips than he restored earnestness to the world." The same writer, after speaking of the faults of the "Nouvelle Héloïse," adds that nevertheless "a multitude of the letters of his 'Julie' are masterpieces of eloquence, passion, and profundity; and the last portions are signalized by a moral purity, a wisdom of views, and a religious elevation altogether new in the France of the eighteenth century." Concerning "Emile," he says, "It is the profoundest study of human nature in our language; it was an ark of safety, launched by Providence on the waves of skepticism and materialism. If Rousseau had been stricken out of the eighteenth century, whither, we seriously ask, would the human mind have drifted?"[43]

The "Social Contract" appeared in 1762. In this work Rousseau swept away by his powerful eloquence the arguments which placed sovereignty elsewhere than in the hands of the people. This fundamental idea was the seed corn which broke from the earth in the first Revolution, and bears its ripe fruit in republican France to-day. D'Alembert, who disliked Rousseau, said of "Emile" that "it placed him at the head of all writers." The "Social Contract," illogical and unsound in many things, yet tore down the whole framework of despotism. Van Laun, a more recent historian, tells us that Rousseau was a man of the people, who knew all their wants; that every vice he attacked was one that they saw really present in their midst; that he "opened the flood-gates of suppressed desires, which gushed forth, overwhelming a whole artificial world." Villemain writes that the words of Rousseau, "descending like a flame of fire, moved the souls of his contemporaries;" and that "his books glow with an eloquence which can never pass away." Morley, to whom Rousseau is essentially antipathic, says of the "Social Contract" that its first words, "Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains," thrilled two continents,--that it was the gospel of the Jacobins; and the action of the convention in 1794 can be explained only by the influence of Rousseau. He taught France to believe in a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Locke had already taught this doctrine in England, where it produced no such violent outbreak, because it encountered no such glaring abuses.

Such is the striking contrast between these two greatest writers in modern French literature. It is singular to observe their instinctive antagonism in every point of belief and character. The merits of one are precisely opposite to those of the other: their faults are equally opposed.

The events of Voltaire's life have been so often told that Mr. Parton has not been able to add much to our knowledge of his biography. He was born in 1694 and died in 1778, at the age of eighty-four, though at his birth he was so feeble that those who believe that the world's progress depends on the survival of the fittest would have thought him not fit to be brought up. This was also the case with Goethe and Walter Scott. His father was a notary, and the name Arouet had that of Voltaire added to it, it being a name in his mother's family. This affix was adopted by the lad when in the Bastille, at the age of twenty-four. As a duck takes to water, so Voltaire took to his pen. In his twelfth year he wrote verses addressed to the Dauphin, which so pleased the famous Ninon de l'Enclos, then in her ninetieth year, that she left the boy a legacy of two thousand francs. He went to a Jesuits' school, and always retained a certain liking for the Jesuits. His father wished to make him a notary, but he would "pen a stanza when he should engross;" and the usual struggles between the paternal purpose and the filial instinct ended, as usual, in the triumph of the latter. He led a wild career for a time, in the society of dissipated abbès, debauched noblemen, and women to whom pleasure was the only object. Suspected of having written a lampoon on the death of Louis XIV., he was sent to the Bastille, and came forth not only with a new name, but with literature as his aim for the rest of his life. His first play appeared on the stage in 1718, and from that time he continued to write till his death. He traveled from the _château_ of one nobleman to another, pouring out his satires and sarcasms through the press; threatened by the angry rulers and priests who governed France, but always escaping by some adroit manœuvre. In England he became a deist and a mathematician. His views of Christ and Christianity were summed up in a quatrain which may be thus translated. Speaking of Jesus, he says,--

"His actions are holy, his ethics divine; Into hearts which are wounded he pours oil and wine. And if, through imposture, those truths are received, It still is a blessing to be thus deceived."

He lived many years at Cirey with the Marchioness of Châtelet; the marquis, her husband, accepting the curious relation without any objection. Then followed the still stranger episode of his residence with Frederic the Great, their love quarrels and reconciliations. After this friendship came to an end, Voltaire went to live near Geneva in Switzerland, but soon bought another estate just out of Switzerland, in France, and a third a short distance away, in the territory of another power. Thus, if threatened in one state, he could easily pass into another. Here he lived and worked till the close of his life, an untiring writer. He was a man of infinite wit, kind-hearted, with little malignity of any sort, wishing in the main to do good. His violent attacks upon Christianity may be explained by the fact of the corruptions of the Church which were around him. The Church of France in that day, in its higher circles, was a persecuting Church, yet without faith: greedy for wealth, living in luxury, careless of the poor, and well deserving the attacks of Voltaire. That he could not look deeper and see the need of religious institutions of a better sort was his misfortune.

This work is a storehouse of facts for the history of Voltaire and his time. We do not think it will materially alter the judgment pronounced on him by such critics as Carlyle, Morley, and the majority of French writers in our day. Voltaire was a shining light in his age, but that age has gone by, and can never return.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON[44]

MATT. vi. 23.--_If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light._

It is natural and fit that many pulpits to-day should take for their theme the character and influence of the great thinker and poet who has just left us; for every such soul is a new revelation of God's truth and love. Each opens the gateway between our lower world of earthly care and earthly pleasure into a higher heavenly world of spirit. Such men lift our lives to a higher plane, and convince us that we, also, belong to God, to eternity, to heaven. And few, in our day, have been such mediators of heavenly things to mankind as Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Last Sunday afternoon, when the town of Concord was mourning through all its streets for the loss of its beloved and revered citizen; when the humblest cottage had on its door the badge of sorrow; when great numbers came from abroad to testify their affection and respect, that which impressed me the most was the inevitable response of the human heart to whatever is true and good. Cynics may tell us that men are duped by charlatans, led by selfish demagogues, incapable of knowing honor and truth when set before them; that they always stone their prophets and crucify their saviors; that they have eyes, and do not see; ears, and never hear. This is all true for a time; but inevitably, by a law as sure as that which governs the movements of the planets, the souls of men turn at last toward what is true, generous, and noble. The prophets and teachers of the race may be stoned by one generation, but their monuments are raised by the next. They are misunderstood and misrepresented to-day, but to-morrow they become the accredited leaders of their time. Jesus, who knew well that he would be rejected and murdered by a people blind and deaf to his truth, also knew that this truth would sooner or later break down all opposition, and make him master and king of the world. "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me."

Last Sunday afternoon, as the grateful procession followed their teacher to his grave in the Concord cemetery, the harshness of our spring seemed to relent, and Nature became tender toward him who had loved her so well. I thought of his words, "The visible heavens and earth sympathized with Jesus." The town where "the embattled farmers stood;" where the musket was discharged which opened the War of the Revolution--the gun of which Lafayette said, "It was the alarm-gun of the world;" the town of Hawthorne's "Old Manse," and of his grave, now that Emerson also sleeps in its quiet valley, has received an added glory. It has become one of the "Meccas of the mind."

Let me describe the mental and spiritual condition of New England when Emerson appeared. Calvinism, with its rigorous dogmatism, was slowly dying, and had been succeeded by a calm and somewhat formal rationalism. Locke was still the master in the realm of thought; Addison and Blair in literary expression. In poetry, the school of Pope was engaged in conflict with that of Byron and his contemporaries. Wordsworth had led the way to a deeper view of nature; but Wordsworth could scarcely be called a popular writer. In theology a certain literalism prevailed, and the doctrines of Christianity were inferred from counting and weighing texts on either side. Not the higher reason, with its intuition of eternal ideas, but the analytic understanding, with its logical methods, was considered to be the ruler in the world of thought. There was more of culture than of intellectual life, more of good habits than of moral enthusiasm. Religion had become very much of an external institution. Christianity consisted in holding rational or orthodox opinions, going regularly to church, and listening every Sunday to a certain number of prayers, hymns, and sermons. These sermons, with some striking exceptions, were rather tame and mechanical. In Boston, it is true, Buckminster had appeared,--that soul of flame which soon wore to decay its weak body. The consummate orator Edward Everett had followed him in Brattle Square pulpit. Above all, Channing had looked, with a new spiritual insight, into the truths of religion and morality. But still the mechanical treatment prevailed in a majority of the churches of New England, and was considered, on the whole, to be the wisest and safest method. There was an unwritten creed of morals, literature, and social thought to which all were expected to conform. There was little originality and much repetition. On all subjects there were certain formulas which it was considered proper to repeat. "Thou art a blessed fellow," says one of Shakespeare's characters, "to think as other people think. Not a man's thought in the world keeps the roadway better than thine." The thought of New England kept the roadway. Of course, at all times a large part of the belief of the community is derived from memory, custom, and imitation; but in those days, if I remember them aright, it was regarded as a kind of duty to think as every one else thought; a sort of delinquency, or weakness, to differ from the majority.

If the movements of thought are now much more independent and spontaneous; if to-day traditions have lost their despotic power; if even those who hold an orthodox creed are able to treat it as a dead letter, respectable for its past uses, but by no means binding on us now, this is largely owing to the manly position taken by Emerson. And yet, let it be observed, this influence was not exercised by attacking old opinions, by argument, by denial, by criticism. Theodore Parker did all this, but his influence on thought has been far less than that of Emerson. Parker was a hero who snuffed the battle afar off, and flung himself, sword in hand, into the thick of the conflict. But, much as we love and reverence his honesty, his immense activity, his devotion to truth and right, we must admit to-day, standing by these two friendly graves, that the power of Emerson to soften the rigidity of time-hardened belief was far the greater. It is the old fable of the storm and sun. The violent attacks of the tempest only made the traveler cling more closely to his cloak; the genial heat of the sun compelled him to throw it aside. In all Emerson's writings there is scarcely any argument. He attacks no man's belief; he simply states his own. His method is always positive, constructive. He opens the windows and lets in more light. He is no man's opponent; the enemy of no one. He states what he sees, and that which he does not see he passes by. He was often attacked, but never replied. His answer was to go forward, and say something else. He did not care for what he called the "bugbear consistency." If to-day he said what seemed like Pantheism, and to-morrow he saw some truth which seemed to reveal a divine personality, a supreme will, he uttered the last, as he had declared the first, always faithful to the light within. He left it to the spirit of truth to reconcile such apparent contradictions. He was like his own humble-bee--

"Seeing only what is fair, Sipping only what is sweet; Thou dost mock at fate and care, Leave the chaff and take the wheat."

By this method of positive statement he not only saved the time usually wasted in argument, attack, reply, rejoinder, but he gave us the substance of Truth, instead of its form. Logic and metaphysic reveal no truths; they merely arrange in order what the higher faculties of the mind have made known. Hence the speedy oblivion which descends on polemics of all sorts. The great theological debaters, where are they? The books of Horsley and McGee are buried in the same grave with those of Belsham and Priestley, their old opponents. The bitter attacks on Christianity by Voltaire and Paine are inurned in the same dark and forgotten vaults with the equally bitter defenses of Christianity by its numerous champions. Argument may often be necessary, but no truth is slain by argument; no error can be kept alive by it. Emerson is an eminent example of a man who never replied to attacks, but went on his way, and saw at last all opposition hushed, all hostility at an end. He devoted his powers to giving to his readers his insights, knowing that these alone feed the soul. Thus men came to him to be fed. His sheep heard his voice. Those who felt themselves better for his instruction followed him. He collected around him thus an ever-increasing band of disciples, until in England, in Germany, in all lands where men read and think, he is looked up to as a master. Many of these disciples were persons of rare gifts and powers, like Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker, George Ripley, Hawthorne. Many others were unknown to fame, yet deeply sensible of the blessings they had received from their prophet and seer of the nineteenth century. For this was his office. He was a man who saw. He had the vision and the faculty divine. He sat near the fountain-head, and tasted the waters of Helicon in their source.

His first little book, a duodecimo of less than a hundred pages, called "Nature," published in 1836, indicates all these qualities. It begins thus:--

"Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, criticisms. The foregoing generations beheld God and Nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight, and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?... The sun shines to-day also.... Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable."

This was his first doctrine, that of self-reliance. He taught that God had given to every man the power to see with his own eyes, think with his own mind, believe what seemed to him true, plant himself on his instincts, and, as he says, "call a pop-gun a pop-gun, though the ancient and honorable of the earth declare it to be the crack of doom." This was manly and wholesome doctrine. It might, no doubt, be abused, and lead some persons to think they were men of original genius when they were only eccentric. It may have led others to attack all institutions and traditions, as though, if a thing were old, it was necessarily false. But Emerson himself was the best antidote to such extravagance. To a youth who brought to him a manuscript confuting Plato he replied, "When you attack the king you ought to be sure to kill him." But his protest against the prevailing conventionalism was healthy, and his call on all "to be themselves" was inspiring.

The same doctrine is taught in the introductory remarks of the editors of the "Dial." They say they have obeyed with joy the strong current of thought which has led many sincere persons to reprobate that rigor of conventions which is turning them to stone, which renounces hope and only looks backward, which suspects improvement, and holds nothing so much in horror as the dreams of youth. This work, the "Dial," made a great impression, out of all proportion to its small circulation. By the elders it was cordially declared to be unintelligible mysticism, and so, no doubt, much of it was. Those inside, its own friends, often made as much fun of it as those outside. Yet it opened the door for many new and noble thoughts, and was a wild bugle-note, a reveillé, calling on all generous hearts to look toward the coming day.

Here is an extract from one of Emerson's letters from Europe as early as March, 1833. It is dated Naples:--

"And what if it be Naples! It is only the same world of cakes and ale, of man, and truth, and folly. I will not be imposed upon by a name. It is so easy to be overawed by names that it is hard to keep one's judgment upright, and be pleased only after your own way. Baiæ and Pausilippo sound so big that we are ready to surrender at discretion, and not stickle for our private opinion against what seems the human race. But here's for the plain old Adam, the simple, genuine self against the whole world."

Again he says: "Nothing so fatal to genius as genius. Mr. Taylor, author of 'Van Artevelde,' is a man of great intellect, but by study of Shakespeare is forced to reproduce Shakespeare."

Thus the first great lesson taught by Mr. Emerson was "self-reliance." And the second was like it, though apparently opposed to it, "God-reliance." Not really opposed to it, for it meant this: God is near to your mind and heart, as he was to the mind and heart of the prophets and inspired men of the past. God is ready to inspire you also if you will trust in him. In the little book called "Nature" he says:--

"The highest is present to the soul of man; the dread universal essence, which is not wisdom, or love, or power, or beauty, but all in one, and each entirely, is that for which all things exist, and by which they are. Believe that throughout nature spirit is present; that it is one, that it does not act upon us from without, but through ourselves.... As a plant on the earth, so man rests on the bosom of God, nourished by unfailing fountains, and drawing at his need inexhaustible power."

And so in his poem called "The Problem" he teaches that all religions are from God; that all the prophets and sibyls and lofty souls that have sung psalms, written scripture, and built the temples and cathedrals of men, were inspired by a spirit above their own. He puts aside the shallow explanation that any of the great religions ever came from priestcraft:--

"Out from the heart of Nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old; The litanies of nations came, Like the volcano's tongue of flame, Up from the burning core below, The canticles of love and woe.

"The word unto the prophet spoken Was writ on tables yet unbroken; The word by seers or sibyls told, In groves of oak or fanes of gold, Still floats upon the moving wind, Still whispers to the willing mind. One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never lost."

In all that Emerson says of nature he is equally devout. He sees God in it all. It is to him full of a divine charm. "In the woods," he says, "is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God a decorum and sanctity reigns, and we return to reason and faith." "The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me. I am part and particle of God." For saying such things as these he was accused of Pantheism. And he was a Pantheist; yet only as Paul was a Pantheist when he said, "In Him we live and move and have our being;" "From whom and through whom are all things;" "The fullness of him who filleth all in all." Emerson was, in his view of nature, at one with Wordsworth, who said:--

"The clouds were touched, And in their silent faces he could read Unutterable love. Sensation, soul, and form All melted into him; they swallowed up His animal being; in them did he live, And by them did he live; they were his life. In such high hour Of visitation from the living God, Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired."

Emerson has thus been to our day the prophet of God in the soul, in nature, in life. He has stood for spirit against matter. Darwin, his great peer, the serene master in the school of science, was like him in this,--that he also said what he saw and no more. He also taught what God showed to him in the outward world of sense, as Emerson what God showed in the inward world of spirit. Amid the stormy disputes of their time, each of these men went his own way, his eye single and his whole body full of light. The work of Darwin was the easier, for he floated with the current of the time, which sets at present so strongly toward the study of things seen and temporal. But the work of Emerson was more noble, for he stands for things unseen and eternal,--for a larger religion, a higher faith, a nobler worship. This strong and tender soul has done its work and gone on its way. But he will always fill a niche of the universal Church as a New England prophet. He had the purity of the New England air in his moral nature, a touch of the shrewd Yankee wit in his speech, and the long inheritance of ancestral faith incarnate and consolidated in blood and brain. But to this were added qualities which were derived from some far-off realm of human life: an Oriental cast of thought, a touch of mediæval mysticism, and a vocabulary brought from books unknown to our New England literature. No commonplaces of language are to be found in his writings, and though he read the older writers, he does not imitate them. He, also, like his humble-bee, has gathered contributions from remotest fields, and enriched our language with a new and picturesque speech all his own.