_ Early Letters To John S. Dwight
Chapter X
NEW YORK,
March 3, 1844. Your letter was very grateful to me. I had supposed the silence would be broken by some music burst of devotion, and that all friends would be dearer to you the more imperative the call upon your strength to battle for the Ideal. It half reproved me for the meagre sheet the same day brought to your hand. And yet could we see how all the forces of heaven and earth unite to shape the particle that floats idly by us, we should never see meagreness more.
I do not think (and what a heresy!) that your life has found more than an object, not yet a centre. The new order will systematize your course; but I do not see that it aids your journey. Is it not the deeper insight you constantly gain into music which explains the social economy you adopt, and not the economy the music? One fine symphony or song leads all reforms captive, as the grand old paintings in St. Peter's completely ignore all sects. Association will only interpret music so far as it is a pure art, as poetry and sculpture and painting explain each other. But necessarily Brook Farm, association and all, do not regard it artistically, but charitably. It regenerates the world with them because it does tangible good, not because it refines. We must view all pursuits as arts before we can accomplish.
With respect to association as a means of reform, I have seen no reason to change my view. Though, like the monastic, a life of devotion, to severe criticism it offers a selfish and an unheroic aspect. When your letter first spoke of your personal interest in the movement, I had written you a long statement of my thought, which I did not send, and then partly spun into an article for
The Present, which I did not entirely finish. It was only a strong statement of Individualism, which would not be new to you, perhaps, and the essential reason of which could not be readily treated. What we call union seems to me only a name for a phase of individual action. I live only for myself; and in proportion to my own growth, so I benefit others. As Fourier seems to me to have postponed his life, in finding out how to live, so I often felt it was with Mr. Ripley. Besides, I feel that our evils are entirely individual, not social. What is society but the shadow of the single men behind it. That there is a slave on my plantation or a servant in my kitchen is no evil; but that the slave and servant should be unwilling to be so, that is the difficulty. The weary and the worn do not ask of me an asylum, but aid. The need of the most oppressed man is strength to endure, not means of escape. The slave toiling in the Southern heats is a nobler aspect of thought than the freed black upon the shore of England. That is just now the point which pains me in association, its lack of heroism. Reform is purification, forming anew, not forming again. Love, like genius, uses the means that are, and the opportunities of to-day. If paints are wanting, it draws charcoal heads with Michael Angelo. These crooked features of society we cannot rend and twist into a Roman outline and grace; but they may be animated with a soul that will utterly shame our carved and painted faces. A noble man purges these present relations, and does not ask beautiful houses and landscapes and appliances to make life beautiful. In Wall Street he gives another significance to trade; in the City Hall he justifies its erection; in the churches he interprets to themselves the weekly assembly of citizens. He uses the pen with which, just now, the coal-man scrawled his bill, and turns off an epic with the fife that in the band so sadly pierced our ears. He moves our trudging lives to the beauties of golden measures. He laughs heartily at our absorbing charities and meetings, upon which we waste our health and grow thin. He answers our distressing plea for the rights of the oppressed, and the "all-men-born-to-be-free-and-equal" with a smiling strength, which assures us therein lies the wealth and the equality which we are trying to manufacture out of such materials as association, organization of society, copartnership, no wages, and the like. While this may be done, why should we retire from the field behind the walls which you offer? Let us die battling or victorious. And this, true for me and you, is true to the uttermost. The love which alone can make your Phalanx beautiful, also renders it unnecessary. You may insure food and lodgings to the starving beggar, I do not see that strength is afforded to the man. Moreover, a stern divine justice ordains that each man stand where he stands, and do his utmost. Retreat, if you will, behind this prospect of comfortable living, but you do so at a sacrifice of strength. Your food must be eternal, for your life is so. I do not feel that the weary man outworn by toil needs a fine house and books and culture and free air; he needs to feel that his position, also, is as good as these. When he has, by a full recognition of that, earned the right to come to you, then his faith is deeper than the walls of association, and the desolate cellar is a cheerful room for his shining lore. Men do not want opportunities, they do not want to start fair, they do not want to reach the same goal; they want only perfect submission. The gospel now to be preached is not, "Away with me to the land where the fields are fair and the waters flow," but, "Here in your penury, while the rich go idly by and scoff, and the chariot wheels choke you with dust, make here your golden age."
"Who cannot on his own bed sweetly sleep,
Can on another's hardly rest."
So sings the saintly George Herbert, no new thought in these days of ours.
The effect of a residence at the Farm, I imagine, was not greater willingness to serve in the kitchen, and so particularly assert that labor was divine; but discontent that there was such a place as a kitchen. And, however aimless life there seemed to be, it was an aimlessness of the general, not of the individual life. Its beauty faded suddenly if I remembered that it was a society for special ends, though those ends were very noble. In the midst of busy trades and bustling commerce, it was a congregation of calm scholars and poets, cherishing the ideal and the true in each other's hearts, dedicate to a healthy and vigorous life. As an association it needed a stricter system to insure success; and since it had not the means to justify its mild life, it necessarily grew to this. As reformers, you are now certainly more active, and may promise yourselves heaven's reward for that. That impossibility of severance from the world, of which you speak, I liked, though I did not like that there should be such a protest against the world by those who were somewhat subject to it. This was not my first feeling. When I went, it seemed as if all hope had died from the race, as if the return to simplicity and beauty lay through the woods and fields, and was to be a march of men whose very habits and personal appearance should wear a sign of the coming grace. The longer I stayed, the more surely that thought vanished. I had unconsciously been devoted to the circumstance, while I had earnestly denied its value. Gradually I perceived that only as a man grew deeper and broader could he wear the coat and submit to the etiquette and obey the laws which society demands. Now I feel that no new order is demanded, but that the universe is plastic to the pious hand.
Besides, it seems to me that reform becomes atheistic the moment it is organized. For it aims, really, at that which conservatism represents. The merit of the reformer is his sincerity, not his busy effort to emancipate the slaves or to raise the drunkards. And the deeper his sincerity the more deeply grounded seems to him the order he holds to be so corrupt. God always weighs down the Devil. Therefore the church is not a collection of puzzling priests and deceived people, but the representative, now as much as ever, of the religious sentiment. A pious man needs no new church or ritual. The Catholic is not too formal nor the Quaker too plain. If he complains of these, and build another temple and construct a new service, it is not the satisfaction which piety would have. Luther's protest was that of the intellect against the supremacy of sentiment. So was Unitarianism, and now we do not seek in the Boston churches for the profound pietists. Does not our present experience show that as fast as we are emancipated from morality and the dominance of the intellect, we revert to the older rituals, if we need any. And if we have no need, the piety can so fully inform them, that we seek no other. The transcendental is a spiritual movement. It is the effort to regain the lost equilibrium between the intellect and the soul, between morals and piety. Therefore, put of its ranks come Catholics and Calvinists and mystics, and those who continue the reform movement commenced by Luther; and, proceeding at intervals down the stream of history, are the Rationalists. There is indeed a latent movement, badly represented by these reforms, and that is the constant perception of the supremacy of the Individual. But the stronger the feet become the more delicate may be the movements. The more strictly individual I am, the more certainly I am bound to all others. I can reach other men only through myself. So far as you have need of association you are injured by it.
You will gather what I think from such hints as these. I recognize the worth of the movement, as I do of all sincere action. Other reasons must bind me peculiarly to the particular me at Brook Farm. "Think not of any severance of our loves," though we should not meet immediately. Burrill will see if there is any such place as we wish about you. I have not much hope of his success. The scent of the roses will not depart, though the many are scattered. I hardly hope to say directly how very beautiful it lies in my memory. What a heart-fresco it has become! All the dignity, the strength, the devotion will be preserved by you; that graceful "aimlessness" comes no more. And yet that was necessary. Long before I knew of the changes I perceived that the growth of the place would overshadow the spots where the sunlight had lain so softly and long. We must still regret the waywardness of the child, though the man is active and victorious; and the delicate odor of the blossom is unrivalled by the juicy taste of the fruit. The one implies necessity; the other a self-obedient impulse. You see I do not forget it was a child; but the philosopher has no better playfellow.
I wish this was me instead of my letter, for a warm grasp of the hand might say more than all these words. Yr friend,
G.W.C. _