|
Part I.
Part I.
Introductory Note
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, Mass., on May 25, 1803, the son
of a prominent Unitarian minister. He was educated at the Boston Latin School
and at Harvard College, from which he graduated at eighteen. On leaving
college he taught school for some time, and in 1825 returned to Cambridge to
study divinity. The next year he began to preach; and in 1829 he married Ellen
Tucker, and was chosen colleague to the Rev. Henry Ware, minister of the
historic church in Hanover Street, Boston. So far things seemed to be going
well with him: but in 1831 his wife died, and in the next year scruples about
administering the Lord`s Supper led him to give up his church. In sadness and
poor health he set out in December on his first visit to Europe, passing
through Italy, Switzerland, and France to Britain, and visiting Landor,
Coleridge, Wordsworth, and, most important of all, Carlyle, with whom he laid
the foundation of a life - long friendship. On his return to America he took
up lecturing, and he continued for nearly forty years to use this form of
expression for his ideas on religion, politics, literature, and philosophy. In
1835 he bought a house in Concord, and took there his second wife, Lidian
Jackson. The history of the rest of his life is uneventful, as far as external
incident is concerned. He traveled frequently giving lectures; took part in
founding in 1840 the Dial, and in 1857 the Atlantic Monthly, to both of which
he contributed freely, and the former of which he edited for a short time;
introduced the writings of Carlyle to America, and published a succession of
volumes of essays, addresses, and poems. He made two more visits to Europe,
and on the earlier delivered lectures in the principal towns of England and
Scotland. He died at Concord on April 27, 1882, after a few years of failing
memory, during which his public activities were necessarily greatly reduced.
At the time of Emerson`s death, he was recognized as the foremost writer
and thinker of his country; but this recognition had come only gradually. The
candor and the vigor of his thinking had led him often to champion unpopular
causes, and during his earlier years of authorship his departures from
Unitarian orthodoxy were viewed with hostility and alarm. In the Abolitionist
movement also he took a prominent part, which brought him the distinction of
being mobbed in Boston and Cambridge. In these and other controversies,
however, while frank in his opinions, and eloquent and vigorous in his
expression of them, he showed a remarkable quality of tact and reasonableness,
which prevented the opposition to him from taking the acutely personal turn
which it assumed in relation to some of his associates, and which preserved to
him a rare dignity.
Recognition of his eminence has not been confined to his countrymen.
Carlyle in Britain and Hermann Grimm in Germany were only leaders of a large
body of admirers in Europe, and it may be safely said that no American has
exerted in the Old World an intellectual influence comparable to that of
Emerson.
Worship
This is he, who felled by foes,
Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows:
He to captivity was sold,
But him no prison - bars would hold:
Though they sealed him in a rock,
Mountain chains he can unlock:
Thrown to lions for their meat,
The crouching lion kissed his feet:
Bound to the stake, no flames appalled,
But arched o`er him an honoring vault.
This is he men miscall Fate,
Threading dark ways, arriving late,
But ever coming in time to crown
The truth, and hurl wrongdoers down.
He is the oldest, and best known,
More near than aught thou call`st thy own,
Yet, greeted in another`s eyes,
Disconcerts with glad surprise.
This is Jove, who, deaf to prayers,
Floods with blessings unawares.
Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line,
Severing rightly his from thine,
Which is human, which divine.
Some of my friends have complained, when the preceding papers were read,
that we discussed Fate, Power, and Wealth, on too low a platform; gave too
much line to the evil spirit of the times; too many cakes to Cerberus; that we
ran Cudworth`s risk of making, by excess of candor, the argument of atheism so
strong, that he could not answer it. I have no fears of being forced in my own
despite to play, as we say, the devil`s attorney. I have no infirmity of
faith; no belief that it is of much importance what I or any man may say: I am
sure that a certain truth will be said through me, though I should be dumb, or
though I should try to say the reverse. Nor do I fear skepticism for any good
soul. A just thinker will allow full swing to his skepticism. I dip my pen in
the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot. I have no
sympathy with a poor man I knew, who, when suicides abounded, told me he dared
not look at his razor. We are of different opinions at different hours, but we
always may be said to be at heart on the side of truth.
I see not why we should give ourselves such sanctified airs. If the
Divine Providence has hid from men neither disease, nor deformity, not corrupt
society, but has stated itself out in passions, in war, in trade, in the love
of power and pleasure, in hunger and need, in tyrannies, literatures, and
arts, - let us not be so nice that we cannot write these facts down coarsely
as they stand, or doubt but there is a counter - statement as ponderous, which
we can arrive at, and which, being put, will make all square. The solar system
has no anxiety about its reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty is as
safe; nor have I any fear that a skeptical bias can be given by leaning hard
on the sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, which the doctrine of
Faith cannot downweigh. The strength of that principle is not measured in
ounces and pounds: it tyrannizes at the centre of Nature. We may well give
skepticism as much line as we can. The spirit will return, and fill us. It
drives the drivers. It counterbalances any accumulations of power.
"Heaven kindly gave our blood a moral flow."
We are born loyal. The whole creation is made of hooks and eyes, of
bitumen, of sticking - plaster, and whether your community is made in
Jerusalem or in California, of saints or of wreckers, it coheres in a perfect
ball. Men as naturally make a state, or a church, as caterpillars a web. If
they were more refined, it would be less formal, it would be nervous, like
that of the shakers, who, from long habit of thinking and feeling together, it
is said, are affected in the same way, at the same time, to work and to play,
and as they go with perfect sympathy to their tasks in the field or shop, so
are they inclined for a ride or a journey at the same instant, and the horses
come up with the family carriage unbespoken to the door.
We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as a tree bears apples. A
self - poise belongs to every particle; and a rectitude to every mind, and is
the Nemesis and protector of every society. I and my neighbors have been bred
in the notion, that, unless we came soon to some good church, - Calvinism, or
Behmenism, or Romanism, or Mormonism, - there would be a universal thaw and
dissolution. No Isaiah or Jeremy has arrived. Nothing can exceed the anarchy
that has followed in our skies. The stern old faiths have all pulverized. `Tis
a whole population of gentlemen and ladies out in search of religions. `Tis as
flat anarchy in our ecclesiastic realms, as that which existed in
Massachusetts, in the Revolution, or which prevails now on the slope of the
Rocky Mountains or Pike`s Peak. Yet we make shift to live. Men are loyal.
Nature has self - poise in all her works; certain proportions in which oxygen
and azote combine, and, not less a harmony in faculties, a fitness in the
spring and the regulator.
The decline of the influence of Calvin, or Fenelon, or Wesley, or
Channing, need give us no uneasiness. The builder of heaven has not so ill
constructed his creature as that the religion, that is, the public nature,
should fall out: the public and the private element, like north and south,
like inside and outside, like centrifugal and centripetal, adhere to every
soul, and cannot be subdued, except the soul is dissipated. God builds his
temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions.
In the last chapters, we treated some particulars of the question of
culture. But the whole state of man is a state of culture; and its flowering
and completion may be described as Religion, or Worship There is always some
religion, some hope and fear extended into the invisible, - from the blind
boding which nails a horseshoe to the mast or the threshold, up to the song of
the Elders in the Apocalypse. But the religion cannot rise above the state of
the votary. Heaven always bears some proportion to earth. The god of the
cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the
merchants a merchant. In all ages, souls out of time, extraordinary,
prophetic, are born, who are rather related to the system of the world, than
to their particular age and locality. These announce absolute truths, which,
with whatever reverence received, are speedily dragged down into a savage
interpretation. The interior tribes of our Indians, and some of the Pacific
islanders, flog their gods, when things take an unfavorable turn. The Greek
poets did not hesitate to let lose their petulant wit on their deities also.
Laomedon, in his anger at Neptune and Apollo, who had built Troy for him, and
demanded their price, does not hesitate to menace them that he will cut their
ears off.^1 Among our Norse forefathers, King Olaf`s mode of converting Eyvind
to Christianity was to put a pan of glowing coals on his belly, which burst
asunder. "Wilt thou now, Eyvind, believe in Christ?" asks Olaf, in excellent
faith. Another argument was an adder put into the mouth of the reluctant
disciple Rand, who refused to believe.
[Footnote 1: Iliad, Book xxi, 1. 445.]
Christianity, in the romantic ages, signified European culture, - the
grafted or meliorated tree in a crab forest. And to marry a pagan wife or
husband, was to marry Beast, and voluntarily to take a step backwards towards
the baboon.
"Hengist had verament
A daughter both fair and gent,
But she was heathen Sarazine,
And Vortigern for love fine
Her took to fere and to wife,
And was cursed in all his life;
For he let Christian wed heathen,
And mixed our blood as flesh and mathen."^2
[Footnote 2: Moths or worms.]
What Gothic mixtures the Christian creed drew from the pagan sources,
Richard of Devizes` chronicle of Richard I.`s crusade, in the twelfth
century, may show. King Richard taunts God with forsaking him: "O fie! O how
unwilling should I be to forsake thee, in so forlorn and dreadful a position,
were I thy lord and advocate, as thou art mine. In sooth, my standards will in
future be despised, not through my fault, but through thine: in sooth, not
through any cowardice of my warfare, art thou thyself, my king and my God
conquered, this day, and not Richard thy vassal." The religion of the early
English poets is anomalous, so devout and so blasphemous, in the same breath.
Such is Chaucer`s extraordinary confusion of heaven and earth in the picture
of Dido.
"She was so fair,
So young, so lusty, with her eyen glad,
That if that God that heaven and earthe made
Would have a love for beauty and goodness,
And womanhede, truth, and seemliness,
Whom should he loven but this lady sweet?
There n` is no woman to him half so meet."
With these grossnesses, we complacently compare our own taste and
decorum. We think and speak with more temperance and gradation, - but is not
indifferentism as bad as superstition?
We live in a transition period, when the old faiths which comforted
nations, and not only so, but made nations, seem to have spent their force. I
do not find the religions of men at this moment very creditable to them, but
either childish and insignificant, or unmanly and effeminating. The fatal
trait is the divorce between religion and morality. Here are know - nothing
religions, or churches that proscribe intellect, scortatory religions; slave -
holding and slave - trading religions; and, even in the decent populations,
idolatries wherein the witness of the ritual covers scarlet indulgence. The
lover of the old religion complains that our contemporaries, scholars as well
as merchants, succumb to a great despair, - have corrupted into a timorous
conservatism, and believe in nothing. In our large cities, the population is
godless, materialized, - no bond, no fellow - feeling, no enthusiasm. These
are not men, but hungers, thirsts, fevers, and appetites walking, How is it
people manage to live on, - so aimless as they are? After their peppercorn
aims are gained, it seems as if the lime in their bones alone held them
together, and not any worthy purpose. There is no faith in the intellectual,
none in the moral universe. There is faith in chemistry, in meat, and wine, in
wealth, in machinery, in the steam - engine, galvanic battery, turbine -
wheels, sewing machines, and in public opinion, but not in divine causes. A
silent revolution has loosed the tension of the old religious sects, and, in
place of the gravity and permanence of those societies of opinion, they run
into freak and extravagance. In creeds never was such levity; witness the
heathenisms in Christianity, the periodic "revivals," the Millennium
mathematics, the peacock ritualism, the retrogression to Popery, the
maundering of Mormons, the squalor of Mesmerism, the deliration of rappings,
the rat and mouse revelation, thumps is table - drawers, and black art. The
architecture, the music, the prayer, partake of the madness: the arts sink
into shift and make - believe. Not knowing what to do, we ape our ancestors;
the churches stagger backward to the mummeries of the dark ages. By the
irresistible maturing of the general mind, the Christian traditions have lost
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 personality; and it recedes, as all persons must, before the
sublimity of the moral laws. From this change, and in the momentary absence of
any religious genius that could offset the immense material activity, there is
a feeling that religion is gone. When Paul Leroux offered his article "Dieu"
to the conductor of a leading French journal, he replied, "La question de Dieu
manque d`actualite."
In Italy, Mr. Gladstone said of the late King of Naples, "it has been a
proverb, that he has erected the negation of God into a system of government."
In this country, the like stupefaction was in the air, and the phrase "higher
law" became a political jibe. What proof of infidelity, like the toleration
and propagandism of slavery? What, like the direction of education? What, like
the facility of conversion? What, like the externality of churches that once
sucked the roots of right and wrong, and now have perished away till they are
a speck of whitewash on the wall? What proof of skepticism like the base rate
of which the highest mental and moral gifts are held? Let a man attain the
highest and broadest culture that any American has possessed, then let him die
by sea - storm, railroad collision, or other accident, and all America will
acquiesce that the best thing has happened to him; that, after the education
has gone far, such is the expensiveness of America, that the best use to put a
fine person to, is, to drown him to save his board.
Another scar of this skepticism is the distrust in human virtue. It is
believed by well - dressed proprietors that there is no more virtue than they
possess; that the solid portion of society exist for the arts of comfort: that
life is an affair to put somewhat between the upper and lower mandibles. How
prompt the suggestion of a low motive! Certain patriots in England devoted
themselves for years to creating a public opinion that should break down the
corn - laws and establish free trade. "Well," says the man in the street,
"Cobden got a stipend out of it." Kossuth fled hither across the ocean to fry
if he could rouse the New World to a sympathy with European liberty. "Aye,"
says New York, "he made a handsome thing of it, enough to make him comfortable
for life."
See what allowance vice finds in the respectable and well - conditioned
class. If a pickpocket intrude into the society of gentlemen, they exert what
moral force they have, and he finds himself uncomfortable, and glad to get
away. But if an adventurer go through all the forms, procure himself to be
elected to a post of trust, as of senator, or president, - though by the same
arts as we detest in the house - thief, - the same gentlemen who agree to
discountenance the private rogue, will be forward to show civilities and marks
of respect to the public one: and no amount of evidence of his crimes will
prevent them giving him ovations, complimentary dinners, opening their own
houses to him, and priding themselves on his acquaintance. We were not
deceived by the professions of the private adventurer, - the louder he talked
of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons; but we appeal to the
sanctified preamble of the messages and proclamations of the public sinner, as
the proof of sincerity. It must be that they who pay this homage have said to
themselves, On the whole, we don`t know about this that you call honesty; a
bird in the hand is better.
Even well - disposed, good sort of people are touched with the same
infidelity, and for brave, straightforward action, use half - measures and
compromises. Forgetful that a little measure is a great error, forgetful that
a wise mechanic uses a sharp tool, they go on choosing the dead men of
routine. But the official men can in nowise help you in any question of today,
they deriving entirely from the old dead things. Only those can help in
counsel or conduct who did not make a party pledge to defend this or that, but
who were appointed by God Almighty, before they came into the world, to stand
for this which they uphold.
It has been charged that a want of sincerity in the leading men is a vice
general throughout American society. But the multitude of the sick shall not
make us deny the existence of health. In spite of our imbecility and terrors,
and "universal decay of religion," &c. &c., the moral sense reappears to - day
with the same morning newness that has been from of old the fountain of beauty
and strength. You say, there is no religion now. `Tis like saying in rainy
weather, there is no sun, when at that moment we are witnessing one of his
superlative effects. The religion of the cultivated class now, to be sure,
consists in an avoidance of acts and engagements which it was once their
religion to assume. But this avoidance will yield spontaneous forms in their
due hour. There is a principle which is the basis of things, which all speech
aims to say, and all action to evolve, a simple, quiet, undescribed,
undescribable 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. To this sentiment belong vast and sudden enlargements of power.
`Tis remarkable that our faith in ecstasy consists with total inexperience of
it. It is the order of the world to educate with accuracy the senses and the
understanding; and the enginery at work to draw out these powers in priority,
no doubt, has its office. But we are never without a hint that these powers
are mediate and servile, and that we are one day to deal with real being, -
essences with essences. Even the fury of material activity has some results
friendly to moral health. The energetic action of the times develops
individualism, and the religious appear isolated. I esteem this a step in the
right direction. Heaven deals with us on no representative system. Souls are
not saved in bundles. The Spirit saith to the man, "How is it with thee? thee
personally? is it well? is it ill? For a great nature, it is a happiness to
escape a religious training, - religion of character is so apt to be invaded.
Religion must always be a crab fruit: it cannot be grafted and keep its wild
beauty. "I have seen," said a traveller who had known the extremes of society,
"I have seen human nature in all its forms, it is everywhere the same, but the
wilder it is, the more virtuous."
We say, the old forms of religion decay, and that a skepticism devastates
the community. I do not think it can be cured or stayed by any modification of
theologic creeds, much less by theologic discipline. The cure for false
theology is motherwit. Forget your books and traditions, and obey your moral
perceptions at this hour. That which is signified by the words "moral" and
"spiritual," is a lasting essence, and, with whatever illusions we have loaded
them, will certainly bring back the words, age after age, to their ancient
meaning. I know no words that mean so much. In our definitions, we grope after
the spiritual by describing it as invisible. The true meaning of spiritual is
real; that law which executes itself, which works without means, and which
cannot be conceived as not existing. Men talk of "mere morality" - which is
much as if one should say, "poor God, with nobody to help him." I find the
omnipresence and the almightiness in the reaction of every atom in Nature. I
can best indicate by examples those reactions by which every part of Nature
replies to the purpose of the actor, - beneficently to the good, penally to
the bad. Let us replace sentimentalism by realism, and dare to uncover those
simple and terrible laws which, be they seen or unseen, pervade and govern.
Every man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day
comes when he begins to care that he do not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes
well. He has changed his market - cart into a chariot of the sun. What a day
dawns, when we have taken to heart the doctrine of faith! to prefer, as a
better investment, being to doing; being to seeming; logic to rhythm and to
display; the year to the day; the life to the year; character to performance;
- and have come to know, that justice will be done us, and, if our genius is
slow, the term will be long.
`Tis certain that worship stands in some commanding relation to the
health of man, and to his highest powers, so as to be, in some manner, the
source of intellect. All the great ages have been ages of belief. I mean, when
there was any extraordinary power of performance, when great national
movements began, when arts appeared, when heroes existed, when poems were
made, the human soul was in earnest, and had fixed its thoughts on spiritual
verities, with as strict a grasp as that of the hands on the sword, or the
pencil, or the trowel. It is true that genius takes its rise out of the
mountains of rectitude; that all beauty and power which men covet, are somehow
born out of that Alpine district; that any extraordinary degree of beauty in
man or woman involves a moral charm. Thus, I think, we very slowly admit in
another man a higher degree of moral sentiment than our own, - a finer
conscience, more impressionable, or, which marks minuter degrees; an ear to
hear acuter notes of right and wrong, than we can. I think we listen
suspiciously, and very slowly to any evidence to that point. But, once
satisfied of such superiority, we set no limit to our expectation of his
genius. For such persons are nearer to the secret of God than other; are
bathed by sweeter waters; they hear notices, they see visions, where others
are vacant. We believe that holiness confers a certain insight, because not by
our private, but by our public force, can we share and know the nature of
things.
There is an intimate interdependence of intellect and morals. Given the
equality of two intellects, - which will form the most reliable judgments, the
good, or the bad hearted? "The heart has its arguments, with which the
understanding is not acquainted." For the heart is at once aware of the state
of health or disease, which is the controlling state, that is, of sanity or of
insanity, prior, of course, to all question of the ingenuity of arguments, the
amount of facts, or the elegance of rhetoric. So intimate is this alliance of
mind and 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. Hence the extraordinary blunders,
and final wrong head, into which men spoiled by ambition usually fall. Hence
the remedy for all blunders, the cure of blindness, the cure of crime, is
love. "As much love, so much mind," said the Latin proverb. The superiority
that has no superior; the redeemer and instructor of souls, as it is their
primal essence, is love.
The moral must be the measure of health. If your eye is on the eternal,
your intellect will grow, and your opinions and actions will have a beauty
which no learning or combined advantages of other men can rival. The moment of
your loss of faith, and acceptance of the lucrative standard, will be marked
in the pause, or solstice of genius, the sequent retrogression, and the
inevitable loss of attraction to other minds. The vulgar are sensible of the
change in you, and of your descent, though they clap you on the back, and
congratulate you on your increased common sense.
Our recent culture has been in natural science. We have learned the
manners of the sun and of the moon, of the rivers and the rains, of the
mineral and elemental kingdoms, of plants and animals. Man has learned to
weigh the sun, and its weight neither loses nor gains. The path of a star, the
moment of an eclipse, can be determined to the fraction of a second. Well, to
him the book of history, the book of love, the lures of passion, and the
commandments of duty are opened: and the next lesson taught, is, the
continuation of the inflexible law of matter into the subtile kingdom of will,
and of thought; that, if, in sidereal ages, gravity and projection keep their
craft, and the ball never loses its way in its wild path through space, - a
secreter gravitation, a secreter projection, rule not less tyrannically in
human history, and keep the balance of power from age to age unbroken. For,
though the new element of freedom and an individual has been admitted, yet the
primordial atoms are prefigured and predetermined 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
forever.
`Tis a short sight to limit our faith in laws 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 reaction, a perpetual judgment keeps watch and
ward. And this appears in a class of facts which concerns all men, within and
above their creeds.
|
