II--EMERSON
       1
       It has seemed to the writer, that Emerson is greater--his
       identity more complete perhaps--in the realms of revelation--
       natural disclosure--than in those of poetry, philosophy, or
       prophecy. Though a great poet and prophet, he is greater,
       possibly, as an invader of the unknown,--America's deepest
       explorer of the spiritual immensities,--a seer painting his
       discoveries in masses and with any color that may lie at hand--
       cosmic, religious, human, even sensuous; a recorder, freely
       describing the inevitable struggle in the soul's uprise--
       perceiving from this inward source alone, that every "ultimate
       fact is only the first of a new series"; a discoverer, whose
       heart knows, with Voltaire, "that man seriously reflects when
       left alone," and would then discover, if he can, that "wondrous
       chain which links the heavens with earth--the world of beings
       subject to one law." In his reflections Emerson, unlike Plato, is
       not afraid to ride Arion's Dolphin, and to go wherever he is
       carried--to Parnassus or to "Musketaquid."
       We see him standing on a summit, at the door of the infinite
       where many men do not care to climb, peering into the mysteries
       of life, contemplating the eternities, hurling back whatever he
       discovers there,--now, thunderbolts for us to grasp, if we can,
       and translate--now placing quietly, even tenderly, in our hands,
       things that we may see without effort--if we won't see them, so
       much the worse for us.
       We see him,--a mountain-guide, so intensely on the lookout for
       the trail of his star, that he has no time to stop and retrace
       his footprints, which may often seem indistinct to his followers,
       who find it easier and perhaps safer to keep their eyes on the
       ground. And there is a chance that this guide could not always
       retrace his steps if he tried--and why should he!--he is on the
       road, conscious only that, though his star may not lie within
       walking distance, he must reach it before his wagon can be
       hitched to it--a Prometheus illuminating a privilege of the Gods-
       -lighting a fuse that is laid towards men. Emerson reveals the
       less not by an analysis of itself, but by bringing men towards
       the greater. He does not try to reveal, personally, but leads,
       rather, to a field where revelation is a harvest-part, where it
       is known by the perceptions of the soul towards the absolute law.
       He leads us towards this law, which is a realization of what
       experience has suggested and philosophy hoped for. He leads us,
       conscious that the aspects of truth, as he sees them, may change
       as often as truth remains constant. Revelation perhaps, is but
       prophecy intensified--the intensifying of its mason-work as well
       as its steeple. Simple prophecy, while concerned with the past,
       reveals but the future, while revelation is concerned with all
       time. The power in Emerson's prophecy confuses it with--or at
       least makes it seem to approach--revelation. It is prophecy with
       no time element. Emerson tells, as few bards could, of what will
       happen in the past, for his future is eternity and the past is a
       part of that. And so like all true prophets, he is always modern,
       and will grow modern with the years--for his substance is not
       relative but a measure of eternal truths determined rather by a
       universalist than by a partialist. He measured, as Michel Angelo
       said true artists should, "with the eye and not the hand." But to
       attribute modernism to his substance, though not to his
       expression, is an anachronism--and as futile as calling today's
       sunset modern.
       As revelation and prophecy, in their common acceptance are
       resolved by man, from the absolute and universal, to the relative
       and personal, and as Emerson's tendency is fundamentally the
       opposite, it is easier, safer and so apparently clearer, to think
       of him as a poet of natural and revealed philosophy. And as such,
       a prophet--but not one to be confused with those singing
       soothsayers, whose pockets are filled, as are the pockets of
       conservative-reaction and radical demagoguery in pulpit, street-
       corner, bank and columns, with dogmatic fortune-tellings.
       Emerson, as a prophet in these lower heights, was a conservative,
       in that he seldom lost his head, and a radical, in that he seldom
       cared whether he lost it or not. He was a born radical as are all
       true conservatives. He was too much "absorbed by the absolute,"
       too much of the universal to be either--though he could be both
       at once. To Cotton Mather, he would have been a demagogue, to a
       real demagogue he would not be understood, as it was with no self
       interest that he laid his hand on reality. The nearer any subject
       or an attribute of it, approaches to the perfect truth at its
       base, the more does qualification become necessary. Radicalism
       must always qualify itself. Emerson clarifies as he qualifies, by
       plunging into, rather than "emerging from Carlyle's
       soul-confusing labyrinths of speculative radicalism." The
       radicalism that we hear much about today, is not Emerson's kind--
       but of thinner fiber--it qualifies itself by going to _A_ "root"
       and often cutting other roots in the process; it is usually
       impotent as dynamite in its cause and sometimes as harmful to the
       wholesome progress of all causes; it is qualified by its failure.
       But the Radicalism of Emerson plunges to all roots, it becomes
       greater than itself--greater than all its formal or informal
       doctrines--too advanced and too conservative for any specific
       result--too catholic for all the churches--for the nearer it is
       to truth, the farther it is from a truth, and the more it is
       qualified by its future possibilities.
       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.
       Intense lights--vague shadows--great pillars in a horizon are
       difficult things to nail signboards to. Emerson's outward-inward
       qualities make him hard to classify, but easy for some. There are
       many who like to say that he--even all the Concord men--are
       intellectuals. Perhaps--but intellectuals who wear their brains
       nearer the heart than some of their critics. It is as dangerous
       to determine a characteristic by manner as by mood. Emerson is a
       pure intellectual to those who prefer to take him as literally as
       they can. There are reformers, and in "the form" lies their
       interest, who prefer to stand on the plain, and then insist they
       see from the summit. Indolent legs supply the strength of eye for
       their inspiration. The intellect is never a whole. It is where
       the soul finds things. It is often the only track to the over-
       values. It appears a whole--but never becomes one even in the
       stock exchange, or the convent, or the laboratory. In the
       cleverest criminal, it is but a way to a low ideal. It can never
       discard the other part of its duality--the soul or the void where
       the soul ought to be. So why classify a quality always so
       relative that it is more an agency than substance; a quality that
       disappears when classified. "The life of the All must stream
       through us to make the man and the moment great." A sailor with a
       precious cargo doesn't analyze the water. Because Emerson had
       generations of Calvinistic sermons in his blood, some
       cataloguers, would localize or provincialize him, with the
       sternness of the old Puritan mind. They make him THAT, hold him
       THERE. They lean heavily on what they find of the above influence
       in him. They won't follow the rivers in his thought and the play
       of his soul. And their cousin cataloguers put him in another
       pigeon-hole. They label him "ascetic." They translate his outward
       serenity into an impression of severity. But truth keeps one from
       being hysterical. Is a demagogue a friend of the people because
       he will lie to them to make them cry and raise false hopes? A
       search for perfect truths throws out a beauty more spiritual than
       sensuous. A sombre dignity of style is often confused by under-
       imagination and by surface-sentiment, with austerity. If
       Emerson's manner is not always beautiful in accordance with
       accepted standards, why not accept a few other standards? He is
       an ascetic, in that he refuses to compromise content with manner.
       But a real ascetic is an extremist who has but one height. Thus
       may come the confusion, of one who says that Emerson carries him
       high, but then leaves him always at THAT height--no higher--a
       confusion, mistaking a latent exultation for an ascetic reserve.
       The rules of Thorough Bass can be applied to his scale of flight
       no more than they can to the planetary system. Jadassohn, if
       Emerson were literally a composer, could no more analyze his
       harmony than a guide-to-Boston could. A microscope might show
       that he uses chords of the 9th, 1lth, or the 99th, but a lens far
       different tells us they are used with different aims from those
       of Debussy. Emerson is definite in that his art is based on
       something stronger than the amusing or at its best the beguiling
       of a few mortals. If he uses a sensuous chord, it is not for
       sensual ears. His harmonies may float, if the wind blows in that
       direction, through a voluptuous atmosphere, but he has not
       Debussy's fondness for trying to blow a sensuous atmosphere from
       his own voluptuous cheeks. And so he is an ascetic! There is a
       distance between jowl and soul--and it is not measured by the
       fraction of an inch between Concord and Paris. On the other hand,
       if one thinks that his harmony contains no dramatic chords,
       because no theatrical sound is heard, let him listen to the
       finale of "Success," or of "Spiritual Laws," or to some of the
       poems, "Brahma" or "Sursum Corda," for example. Of a truth his
       Codas often seem to crystallize in a dramatic, though serene and
       sustained way, the truths of his subject--they become more active
       and intense, but quieter and deeper.
       Then there comes along another set of cataloguers. They put him
       down as a "classicist," or a romanticist, or an eclectic. Because
       a prophet is a child of romanticism--because revelation is
       classic, because eclecticism quotes from eclectic Hindu
       Philosophy, a more sympathetic cataloguer may say, that Emerson
       inspires courage of the quieter kind and delight of the higher
       kind.
       The same well-bound school teacher who told the boys that Thoreau
       was a naturalist because he didn't like to work, puts down
       Emerson as a "classic," and Hawthorne as a "romantic." A loud
       voice made this doubly TRUE and SURE to be on the examination
       paper. But this teacher of "truth AND dogma" apparently forgot
       that there is no such thing as "classicism or romanticism." One
       has but to go to the various definitions of these to know that.
       If you go to a classic definition you know what a true classic
       is, and similarly a "true romantic." But if you go to both, you
       have an algebraic formula, x = x, a cancellation, an apercu, and
       hence satisfying; if you go to all definitions you have another
       formula x > x, a destruction, another apercu, and hence
       satisfying. Professor Beers goes to the dictionary (you wouldn't
       think a college professor would be as reckless as that). And so
       he can say that "romantic" is "pertaining to the style of the
       Christian and popular literature of the Middle Ages," a Roman
       Catholic mode of salvation (not this definition but having a
       definition). And so Prof. B. can say that Walter Scott is a
       romanticist (and Billy Phelps a classic--sometimes). But for our
       part Dick Croker is a classic and job a romanticist. Another
       professor, Babbitt by name, links up Romanticism with Rousseau,
       and charges against it many of man's troubles. He somehow likes
       to mix it up with sin. He throws saucers at it, but in a
       scholarly, interesting, sincere, and accurate way. He uncovers a
       deformed foot, gives it a name, from which we are allowed to
       infer that the covered foot is healthy and named classicism. But
       no Christian Scientist can prove that Christ never had a stomach-
       ache. The Architecture of Humanism [Footnote: Geoffrey Scott
       (Constable & Co.)] tells us that "romanticism consists of...a
       poetic sensibility towards the remote, as such." But is Plato a
       classic or towards the remote? Is Classicism a poor relation of
       time--not of man? Is a thing classic or romantic because it is or
       is not passed by that biologic--that indescribable stream-of-
       change going on in all life? Let us settle the point for "good,"
       and say that a thing is classic if it is thought of in terms of
       the past and romantic if thought of in terms of the future--and a
       thing thought of in terms of the present is--well, that is
       impossible! Hence, we allow ourselves to say, that Emerson is
       neither a classic or romantic but both--and both not only at
       different times in one essay, but at the same time in one
       sentence--in one word. And must we admit it, so is everyone. If
       you don't believe it, there must be some true definition you
       haven't seen. Chopin shows a few things that Bach forgot--but he
       is not eclectic, they say. Brahms shows many things that Bach did
       remember, so he is an eclectic, they say. Leoncavallo writes
       pretty verses and Palestrina is a priest, and Confucius inspires
       Scriabin. A choice is freedom. Natural selection is but one of
       Nature's tunes. "All melodious poets shall be hoarse as street
       ballads, when once the penetrating keynote of nature and spirit
       is sounded--the earth-beat, sea-beat, heart-beat, which make the
       tune to which the sun rolls, and the globule of blood and the sap
       of the trees."
       An intuitive sense of values, tends to make Emerson use social,
       political, and even economic phenomena, as means of expression,
       as the accidental notes in his scale--rather than as ends, even
       lesser ends. In the realization that they are essential parts of
       the greater values, he does not confuse them with each other. He
       remains undisturbed except in rare instances, when the lower
       parts invade and seek to displace the higher. He was not afraid
       to say that "there are laws which should not be too well obeyed."
       To him, slavery was not a social or a political or an economic
       question, nor even one of morals or of ethics, but one of
       universal spiritual freedom only. It mattered little what party,
       or what platform, or what law of commerce governed men. Was man
       governing himself? Social error and virtue were but relative.
       This habit of not being hindered by using, but still going beyond
       the great truths of living, to the greater truths of life gave
       force to his influence over the materialists. Thus he seems to us
       more a regenerator than a reformer--more an interpreter of life's
       reflexes than of life's facts, perhaps. Here he appears greater
       than Voltaire or Rousseau and helped, perhaps, by the centrality
       of his conceptions, he could arouse the deeper spiritual and
       moral emotions, without causing his listeners to distort their
       physical ones. To prove that mind is over matter, he doesn't
       place matter over mind. He is not like the man who, because he
       couldn't afford both, gave up metaphysics for an automobile, and
       when he ran over a man blamed metaphysics. He would not have us
       get over-excited about physical disturbance but have it accepted
       as a part of any progress in culture, moral, spiritual or
       aesthetic. If a poet retires to the mountain-side, to avoid the
       vulgar unculture of men, and their physical disturbance, so that
       he may better catch a nobler theme for his symphony, Emerson
       tells him that "man's culture can spare nothing, wants all
       material, converts all impediments into instruments, all enemies
       into power." The latest product of man's culture--the aeroplane,
       then sails o'er the mountain and instead of an inspiration--a
       spray of tobacco-juice falls on the poet. "Calm yourself, Poet!"
       says Emerson, "culture will convert furies into muses and hells
       into benefit. This wouldn't have befallen you if it hadn't been
       for the latest transcendent product of the genius of culture" (we
       won't say what kind), a consummation of the dreams of poets, from
       David to Tennyson. Material progress is but a means of
       expression. Realize that man's coarseness has its future and will
       also be refined in the gradual uprise. Turning the world upside
       down may be one of its lesser incidents. It is the cause, seldom
       the effect that interests Emerson. He can help the cause--the
       effect must help itself. He might have said to those who talk
       knowingly about the cause of war--or of the last war, and who
       would trace it down through long vistas of cosmic, political,
       moral evolution and what not--he might say that the cause of it
       was as simple as that of any dogfight--the "hog-mind" of the
       minority against the universal mind, the majority. The un-courage
       of the former fears to believe in the innate goodness of mankind.
       The cause is always the same, the effect different by chance; it
       is as easy for a hog, even a stupid one, to step on a box of
       matches under a tenement with a thousand souls, as under an empty
       bird-house. The many kindly burn up for the few; for the minority
       is selfish and the majority generous. The minority has ruled the
       world for physical reasons. The physical reasons are being
       removed by this "converting culture." Webster will not much
       longer have to grope for the mind of his constituency. The
       majority--the people--will need no intermediary. Governments will
       pass from the representative to the direct. The hog-mind is the
       principal thing that is making this transition slow. The biggest
       prop to the hog-mind is pride--pride in property and the power
       property gives. Ruskin backs this up--"it is at the bottom of all
       great mistakes; other passions do occasional good, but whenever
       pride puts in its word...it is all over with the artist." The
       hog-mind and its handmaidens in disorder, superficial brightness,
       fundamental dullness, then cowardice and suspicion--all a part of
       the minority (the non-people) the antithesis of everything called
       soul, spirit, Christianity, truth, freedom--will give way more
       and more to the great primal truths--that there is more good than
       evil, that God is on the side of the majority (the people)--that
       he is not enthusiastic about the minority (the non-people)--that
       he has made men greater than man, that he has made the universal
       mind and the over-soul greater and a part of the individual mind
       and soul--that he has made the Divine a part of all.
       Again, if a picture in economics is before him, Emerson plunges
       down to the things that ARE because they are BETTER than they
       are. If there is a row, which there usually is, between the ebb
       and flood tide, in the material ocean--for example, between the
       theory of the present order of competition, and of attractive and
       associated labor, he would sympathize with Ricardo, perhaps, that
       labor is the measure of value, but "embrace, as do generous
       minds, the proposition of labor shared by all." He would go
       deeper than political economics, strain out the self-factor from
       both theories, and make the measure of each pretty much the same,
       so that the natural (the majority) would win, but not to the
       disadvantage of the minority (the artificial) because this has
       disappeared--it is of the majority. John Stuart Mill's political
       economy is losing value because it was written by a mind more "a
       banker's" than a "poet's." The poet knows that there is no such
       thing as the perpetual law of supply and demand, perhaps not of
       demand and supply--or of the wage-fund, or price-level, or
       increments earned or unearned; and that the existence of personal
       or public property may not prove the existence of God.
       Emerson seems to use the great definite interests of humanity to
       express the greater, indefinite, spiritual values--to fulfill
       what he can in his realms of revelation. Thus, it seems that so
       close a relation exists between his content and expression, his
       substance and manner, that if he were more definite in the latter
       he would lose power in the former,--perhaps some of those
       occasional flashes would have been unexpressed--flashes that have
       gone down through the world and will flame on through the ages--
       flashes that approach as near the Divine as Beethoven in his most
       inspired moments--flashes of transcendent beauty, of such
       universal import, that they may bring, of a sudden, some intimate
       personal experience, and produce the same indescribable effect
       that comes in rare instances, to men, from some common sensation.
       In the early morning of a Memorial Day, a boy is awakened by
       martial music--a village band is marching down the street, and as
       the strains of Reeves' majestic Seventh Regiment March come
       nearer and nearer, he seems of a sudden translated--a moment of
       vivid power comes, a consciousness of material nobility, an
       exultant something gleaming with the possibilities of this life,
       an assurance that nothing is impossible, and that the whole world
       lies at his feet. But as the band turns the corner, at the
       soldiers' monument, and the march steps of the Grand Army become
       fainter and fainter, the boy's vision slowly vanishes--his
       "world" becomes less and less probable--but the experience ever
       lies within him in its reality. Later in life, the same boy hears
       the Sabbath morning bell ringing out from the white steeple at
       the "Center," and as it draws him to it, through the autumn
       fields of sumac and asters, a Gospel hymn of simple devotion
       comes out to him--"There's a wideness in God's mercy"--an instant
       suggestion of that Memorial Day morning comes--but the moment is
       of deeper import--there is no personal exultation--no intimate
       world vision--no magnified personal hope--and in their place a
       profound sense of a spiritual truth,--a sin within reach of
       forgiveness--and as the hymn voices die away, there lies at his
       feet--not the world, but the figure of the Saviour--he sees an
       unfathomable courage, an immortality for the lowest, the vastness
       in humility, the kindness of the human heart, man's noblest
       strength, and he knows that God is nothing--nothing but love!
       Whence cometh the wonder of a moment? From sources we know not.
       But we do know that from obscurity, and from this higher Orpheus
       come measures of sphere melodies [note: Paraphrased from a
       passage in Sartor Resartus.] flowing in wild, native tones,
       ravaging the souls of men, flowing now with thousand-fold
       accompaniments and rich symphonies through all our hearts;
       modulating and divinely leading them.
       3
       What is character? In how far does it sustain the soul or the
       soul it? Is it a part of the soul? And then--what is the soul?
       Plato knows but cannot tell us. Every new-born man knows, but no
       one tells us. "Nature will not be disposed of easily. No power of
       genius has ever yet had the smallest success in explaining
       existence. The perfect enigma remains." As every blind man sees
       the sun, so character may be the part of the soul we, the blind,
       can see, and then have the right to imagine that the soul is each
       man's share of God, and character the muscle which tries to
       reveal its mysteries--a kind of its first visible radiance--the
       right to know that it is the voice which is always calling the
       pragmatist a fool.
       At any rate, it can be said that Emerson's character has much to
       do with his power upon us. Men who have known nothing of his
       life, have borne witness to this. It is directly at the root of
       his substance, and affects his manner only indirectly. It gives
       the sincerity to the constant spiritual hopefulness we are always
       conscious of, and which carries with it often, even when the
       expression is somber, a note of exultation in the victories of
       "the innate virtues" of man. And it is this, perhaps, that makes
       us feel his courage--not a self-courage, but a sympathetic one--
       courageous even to tenderness. It is the open courage of a kind
       heart, of not forcing opinions--a thing much needed when the
       cowardly, underhanded courage of the fanatic would FORCE opinion.
       It is the courage of believing in freedom, per se, rather than of
       trying to force everyone to SEE that you believe in it--the
       courage of the willingness to be reformed, rather than of
       reforming--the courage teaching that sacrifice is bravery, and
       force, fear. The courage of righteous indignation, of stammering
       eloquence, of spiritual insight, a courage ever contracting or
       unfolding a philosophy as it grows--a courage that would make the
       impossible possible. Oliver Wendell Holmes says that Emerson
       attempted the impossible in the Over-Soul--"an overflow of
       spiritual imagination." But he (Emerson) accomplished the
       impossible in attempting it, and still leaving it impossible. A
       courageous struggle to satisfy, as Thoreau says, "Hunger rather
       than the palate"--the hunger of a lifetime sometimes by one meal.
       His essay on the Pre-Soul (which he did not write) treats of that
       part of the over-soul's influence on unborn ages, and attempts
       the impossible only when it stops attempting it.
       Like all courageous souls, the higher Emerson soars, the more
       lowly he becomes. "Do you think the porter and the cook have no
       experiences, no wonders for you? Everyone knows as much as the
       Savant." To some, the way to be humble is to admonish the humble,
       not learn from them. Carlyle would have Emerson teach by more
       definite signs, rather than interpret his revelations, or shall
       we say preach? Admitting all the inspiration and help that Sartor
       Resartus has given in spite of its vaudeville and tragic stages,
       to many young men getting under way in the life of tailor or
       king, we believe it can be said (but very broadly said) that
       Emerson, either in the first or second series of essays, taken as
       a whole, gives, it seems to us, greater inspiration, partly
       because his manner is less didactic, less personally suggestive,
       perhaps less clearly or obviously human than Carlyle's. How
       direct this inspiration is is a matter of personal viewpoint,
       temperament, perhaps inheritance. Augustine Birrell says he does
       not feel it--and he seems not to even indirectly. Apparently "a
       non-sequacious author" can't inspire him, for Emerson seems to
       him a "little thin and vague." Is Emerson or the English climate
       to blame for this? He, Birrell, says a really great author
       dissipates all fears as to his staying power. (Though fears for
       our staying-power, not Emerson's, is what we would like
       dissipated.) Besides, around a really great author, there are no
       fears to dissipate. "A wise author never allows his reader's mind
       to be at large," but Emerson is not a wise author. His essay on
       Prudence has nothing to do with prudence, for to be wise and
       prudent he must put explanation first, and let his substance
       dissolve because of it. "How carefully," says Birrell again, "a
       really great author like Dr. Newman, or M. Renan, explains to you
       what he is going to do, and how he is going to do it." Personally
       we like the chance of having a hand in the "explaining." We
       prefer to look at flowers, but not through a botany, for it seems
       that if we look at them alone, we see a beauty of Nature's
       poetry, a direct gift from the Divine, and if we look at botany
       alone, we see the beauty of Nature's intellect, a direct gift of
       the Divine--if we look at both together, we see nothing.
       Thus it seems that Carlyle and Birrell would have it that courage
       and humility have something to do with "explanation"--and that it
       is not "a respect for all"--a faith in the power of "innate
       virtue" to perceive by "relativeness rather than penetration"--
       that causes Emerson to withhold explanation to a greater degree
       than many writers. Carlyle asks for more utility, and Birrell for
       more inspiration. But we like to believe that it is the height of
       Emerson's character, evidenced especially in his courage and
       humility that shades its quality, rather than that its virtue is
       less--that it is his height that will make him more and more
       valuable and more and more within the reach of all--whether it be
       by utility, inspiration, or other needs of the human soul.
       Cannot some of the most valuable kinds of utility and inspiration
       come from humility in its highest and purest forms? For is not
       the truest kind of humility a kind of glorified or transcendent
       democracy--the practicing it rather than the talking it--the not-
       wanting to level all finite things, but the being willing to be
       leveled towards the infinite? Until humility produces that frame
       of mind and spirit in the artist can his audience gain the
       greatest kind of utility and inspiration, which might be quite
       invisible at first? Emerson realizes the value of "the many,"--
       that the law of averages has a divine source. He recognizes the
       various life-values in reality--not by reason of their closeness
       or remoteness, but because he sympathizes with men who live them,
       and the majority do. "The private store of reason is not great--
       would that there were a public store for man," cries Pascal, but
       there is, says Emerson, it is the universal mind, an institution
       congenital with the common or over-soul. Pascal is discouraged,
       for he lets himself be influenced by surface political and
       religious history which shows the struggle of the group, led by
       an individual, rather than that of the individual led by himself
       --a struggle as much privately caused as privately led. The main-
       path of all social progress has been spiritual rather than
       intellectual in character, but the many bypaths of individual-
       materialism, though never obliterating the highway, have dimmed
       its outlines and caused travelers to confuse the colors along the
       road. A more natural way of freeing the congestion in the
       benefits of material progress will make it less difficult for the
       majority to recognize the true relation between the important
       spiritual and religious values and the less important
       intellectual and economic values. As the action of the intellect
       and universal mind becomes more and more identical, the clearer
       will the relation of all values become. But for physical reasons,
       the group has had to depend upon the individual as leaders, and
       the leaders with few exceptions restrained the universal mind--
       they trusted to the "private store," but now, thanks to the
       lessons of evolution, which Nature has been teaching men since
       and before the days of Socrates, the public store of reason is
       gradually taking the place of the once-needed leader. From the
       Chaldean tablet to the wireless message this public store has
       been wonderfully opened. The results of these lessons, the
       possibilities they are offering for ever coordinating the mind of
       humanity, the culmination of this age-instruction, are seen today
       in many ways. Labor Federation, Suffrage Extension, are two
       instances that come to mind among the many. In these
       manifestations, by reason of tradition, or the bad-habit part of
       tradition, the hog-mind of the few (the minority), comes in play.
       The possessors of this are called leaders, but even these "thick-
       skins" are beginning to see that the MOVEMENT is the leader, and
       that they are only clerks. Broadly speaking, the effects
       evidenced in the political side of history have so much of the
       physical because the causes have been so much of the physical. As
       a result the leaders for the most part have been under-average
       men, with skins thick, wits slick, and hands quick with under-
       values, otherwise they would not have become leaders. But the day
       of leaders, as such, is gradually closing--the people are
       beginning to lead themselves--the public store of reason is
       slowly being opened--the common universal mind and the common
       over-soul is slowly but inevitably coming into its own. "Let a
       man believe in God, not in names and places and persons. Let the
       great soul incarnated in some poor...sad and simple Joan, go out
       to service and sweep chimneys and scrub floors...its effulgent
       day beams cannot be muffled..." and then "to sweep and scrub will
       instantly appear supreme and beautiful actions...and all people
       will get brooms and mops." Perhaps, if all of Emerson--his works
       and his life--were to be swept away, and nothing of him but the
       record of the following incident remained to men--the influence
       of his soul would still be great. A working woman after coming
       from one of his lectures said: "I love to go to hear Emerson, not
       because I understand him, but because he looks as though he
       thought everybody was as good as he was." Is it not the courage--
       the spiritual hopefulness in his humility that makes this story
       possible and true? Is it not this trait in his character that
       sets him above all creeds--that gives him inspired belief in the
       common mind and soul? Is it not this courageous universalism that
       gives conviction to his prophecy and that makes his symphonies of
       revelation begin and end with nothing but the strength and beauty
       of innate goodness in man, in Nature and in God, the greatest and
       most inspiring theme of Concord Transcendental Philosophy, as we
       hear it.
       And it is from such a world-compelling theme and from such
       vantage ground, that Emerson rises to almost perfect freedom of
       action, of thought and of soul, in any direction and to any
       height. A vantage ground, somewhat vaster than Schelling's
       conception of transcendental philosophy--"a philosophy of Nature
       become subjective." In Concord it includes the objective and
       becomes subjective to nothing but freedom and the absolute law.
       It is this underlying courage of the purest humility that gives
       Emerson that outward aspect of serenity which is felt to so great
       an extent in much of his work, especially in his codas and
       perorations. And within this poised strength, we are conscious of
       that "original authentic fire" which Emerson missed in Shelley--
       we are conscious of something that is not dispassionate,
       something that is at times almost turbulent--a kind of furious
       calm lying deeply in the conviction of the eventual triumph of
       the soul and its union with God!
       Let us place the transcendent Emerson where he, himself, places
       Milton, in Wordsworth's apostrophe: "Pure as the naked heavens,
       majestic, free, so didst thou travel on life's common way in
       cheerful Godliness."
       The Godliness of spiritual courage and hopefulness--these fathers
       of faith rise to a glorified peace in the depth of his greater
       perorations. There is an "oracle" at the beginning of the Fifth
       Symphony--in those four notes lies one of Beethoven's greatest
       messages. We would place its translation above the relentlessness
       of fate knocking at the door, above the greater human-message of
       destiny, and strive to bring it towards the spiritual message of
       Emerson's revelations--even to the "common heart" of Concord--the
       Soul of humanity knocking at the door of the Divine mysteries,
       radiant in the faith that it will be opened--and the human become
       the Divine!
       Content of II--EMERSON [Charles Ives' essays: "Essays Before a Sonata"]
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