Complete Prose Works Part 19

According to Hegel the whole earth, (an old nucleus-thought, as in the Vedas, and no doubt before, but never hitherto brought so absolutely to the front, fully surcharged with modern scientism and facts, and made the sole entrance to each and all,) with its infinite variety, the past, the surroundings of to-day, or what may happen in the future, the contrarieties of material with spiritual, and of natural with artificial, are all, to the eye of the _ensemblist_, but necessary sides and unfoldings, different steps or links, in the endless process of Creative thought, which, amid numberless apparent failures and contradictions, is held together by central and never-broken unity--not contradictions or failures at all, but radiations of one consistent and eternal purpose; the whole ma.s.s of everything steadily, unerringly tending and flowing toward the permanent _utile_ and _morale_, as rivers to oceans. As life is the whole law and incessant effort of the visible universe, and death only the other or invisible side of the same, so the _utile_, so truth, so health are the continuous-immutable laws of the moral universe, and vice and disease, with all their perturbations, are but transient, even if ever so prevalent expressions.

To politics throughout, Hegel applies the like catholic standard and faith. Not any one party, or any one form of government, is absolutely and exclusively true. Truth consists in the just relations of objects to each other. A majority or democracy may rule as outrageously and do as great harm as an oligarchy or despotism--though far less likely to do so. But the great evil is either a violation of the relations just referr'd to, or of the moral law. The specious, the unjust, the cruel, and what is called the unnatural, though not only permitted but in a certain sense, (like shade to light,) inevitable in the divine scheme, are by the whole const.i.tution of that scheme, partial, inconsistent, temporary, and though having ever so great an ostensible majority, are certainly destin'd to failures, after causing great suffering.

Theology, Hegel translates into science.[16] All apparent contradictions in the statement of the Deific nature by different ages, nations, churches, points of view, are but fractional and imperfect expressions of one essential unity, from which they all proceed--crude endeavors or distorted parts, to be regarded both as distinct and united. In short (to put it in our own form, or summing up,) that thinker or a.n.a.lyzer or overlooker who by an inscrutable combination of train'd wisdom and natural intuition most fully accepts in perfect faith the moral unity and sanity of the creative scheme, in history, science, and all life and time, present and future, is both the truest cosmical devotee or religioso, and the profoundest philosopher. While he who, by the spell of himself and his circ.u.mstance, sees darkness and despair in the sum of the workings of G.o.d's providence, and who, in that, denies or prevaricates, is, no matter how much piety plays on his lips, the most radical sinner and infidel.

I am the more a.s.sured in recounting Hegel a little freely here,[17] not only for offsetting the Carlylean letter and spirit-cutting it out all and several from the very roots, and below the roots--but to counterpoise, since the late death and deserv'd apotheosis of Darwin, the tenets of the evolutionists. Unspeakably precious as those are to biology, and henceforth indispensable to a right aim and estimate in study, they neither comprise or explain everything--and the last word or whisper still remains to be breathed, after the utmost of those claims, floating high and forever above them all, and above technical metaphysics. While the contributions which German Kant and Fichte and Sch.e.l.ling and Hegel have bequeath'd to humanity--and which English Darwin has also in his field--are indispensable to the erudition of America's future, I should say that in all of them, and the best of them, when compared with the lightning flashes and flights of the old prophets and _exaltes_, the spiritual poets and poetry of all lands, (as in the Hebrew Bible,) there seems to be, nay certainly is, something lacking--something cold, a failure to satisfy the deepest emotions of the soul--a want of living glow, fondness, warmth, which the old _exaltes_ and poets supply, and which the keenest modern philosophers so far do not.

Upon the whole, and for our purposes, this man's name certainly belongs on the list with the just-specified, first-cla.s.s moral physicians of our current era--and with Emerson and two or three others--though his prescription is drastic, and perhaps destructive, while theirs is a.s.similating, normal and tonic. Feudal at the core, and mental offspring and radiation of feudalism as are his books, they afford ever-valuable lessons and affinities to democratic America. Nations or individuals, we surely learn deepest from unlikeness, from a sincere opponent, from the light thrown even scornfully on dangerous spots and liabilities. (Michel Angelo invoked heaven's special protection against his friends and affectionate flatterers; palpable foes he could manage for himself.) In many particulars Carlyle was indeed, as Froude terms him, one of those far-off Hebraic utterers, a new Micah or Habbakuk. His words at times bubble forth with abysmic inspiration. Always precious, such men; as precious now as any time. His rude, rasping, taunting, contradictory tones--what ones are more wanted amid the supple, polish'd, money--worshipping, Jesus-and-Judas-equalizing, suffrage-sovereignty echoes of current America? He has lit up our Nineteenth century with the light of a powerful, penetrating, and perfectly honest intellect of the first cla.s.s, turn'd on British and European politics, social life, literature, and representative personages--thoroughly dissatisfied with all, and mercilessly exposing the illness of all. But while he announces the malady, and scolds and raves about it, he himself, born and bred in the same atmosphere, is a mark'd ill.u.s.tration of it.

Notes:

[13] It will be difficult for the future--judging by his books, personal dissympathies, &c.,--to account for the deep hold this author has taken on the present age, and the way he has color'd its method and thought.

I am certainly at a loss to account for it all as affecting myself.

But there could be no view, or even partial picture, of the middle and latter part of our Nineteenth century, that did not markedly include Thomas Carlyle. In his case (as so many others, literary productions, works of art, personal ident.i.ties, events,) there has been an impalpable something more effective than the palpable. Then I find no better text, (it is always important to have a definite, special, even oppositional, living man to start from,) for sending out certain speculations and comparisons for home use. Let us see what they amount to--those reactionary doctrines, fears, scornful a.n.a.lyses of democracy--even from the most erudite and sincere mind of Europe.

[14] Not the least mentionable part of the case, (a streak, it may be, of that humor with which history and fate love to contrast their gravity,) is that although neither of my great authorities during their lives consider'd the United States worthy of serious mention, all the princ.i.p.al works of both might not inappropriately be this day collected and bound up under the conspicuous t.i.tle: _Speculations for the use of North America, and Democracy there with the relations of the same to Metaphysics, including Lessons and Warnings (encouragements too, and of the vastest,) from the Old World to the New._

[15] I hope I shall not myself fall into the error I charge upon him, of prescribing a specific for indispensable evils. My utmost pretension is probably but to offset that old claim of the exclusively curative power of first-cla.s.s individual men, as leaders and rulers, by the claims, and general movement and result, of ideas. Something of the latter kind seems to me the distinctive theory of America, of democracy, and of the modern--or rather, I should say, it _is_ democracy, and _is_ the modern.

[16] I am much indebted to J. Gostick's abstract.

[17] I have deliberately repeated it all, not only in offset to Carlyle'

s everlurking pessimism and world-decadence, but as presenting the most thoroughly _American points of view_ I know. In my opinion the above formulas of Hegel are an essential and crowning justification of New World democracy in the creative realms of time and s.p.a.ce. There is that about them which only the vastness, the multiplicity and the vitality of America would seem able to comprehend, to give scope and ill.u.s.tration to, or to be fit for, or even originate. It is strange to me that they were born in Germany, or in the old world at all. While a Carlyle, I should say, is quite the legitimate European product to be expected.

A COUPLE OF OLD FRIENDS--A COLERIDGE BIT

_Latter April_.--Have run down in my country haunt for a couple of days, and am spending them by the pond. I had already discover'd my kingfisher here (but only one--the mate not here yet.) This fine bright morning, down by the creek, he has come out for a spree, circling, flirting, chirping at a round rate. While I am writing these lines he is disporting himself in scoots and rings over the wider parts of the pond, into whose surface he dashes, once or twice making a loud _souse_--the spray flying in the sun--beautiful! I see his white and dark-gray plumage and peculiar shape plainly, as he has deign'd to come very near me. The n.o.ble, graceful bird! Now he is sitting on the limb of an old tree, high up, bending over the water--seems to be looking at me while I memorandize. I almost fancy he knows me. _Three days later._--My second kingfisher is here with his (or her) mate. I saw the two together flying and whirling around. I had heard, in the distance, what I thought was the clear rasping staccato of the birds several times already--but I couldn't be sure the notes came from both until I saw them together.

To-day at noon they appear'd, but apparently either on business, or for a little limited exercise only. No wild frolic now, full of free fun and motion, up and down for an hour. Doubtless, now they have cares, duties, incubation responsibilities. The frolics are deferr'd till summer-close.

I don't know as I can finish to-day's memorandum better than with Coleridge's lines, curiously appropriate in more ways than one:

All Nature seems at work--slugs leave their lair, The bees are stirring--birds are on the wing, And winter, slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring; And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing, Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

A WEEK'S VISIT TO BOSTON

_May 1, '81._--Seems as if all the ways and means of American travel to-day had been settled, not only with reference to speed and directness, but for the comfort of women, children, invalids, and old fellows like me. I went on by a through train that runs daily from Washington to the Yankee metropolis without change. You get in a sleeping-car soon after dark in Philadelphia, and after ruminating an hour or two, have your bed made up if you like, draw the curtains, and go to sleep in it--fly on through Jersey to New York--hear in your half-slumbers a dull jolting and b.u.mping sound or two--are unconsciously toted from Jersey City by a midnight steamer around the Battery and under the big bridge to the track of the New Haven road--resume your flight eastward, and early the next morning you wake up in Boston. All of which was my experience. I wanted to go to the Revere house. A tall unknown gentleman, (a fellow-pa.s.senger on his way to Newport he told me, I had just chatted a few moments before with him,) a.s.sisted me out through the depot crowd, procured a hack, put me in it with my traveling bag, saying smilingly and quietly, "Now I want you to let this be _my_ ride," paid the driver, and before I could remonstrate bow'd himself off.

The occasion of my jaunt, I suppose I had better say here, was for a public reading of "the death of Abraham Lincoln" essay, on the sixteenth anniversary of that tragedy; which reading duly came off, night of April 15. Then I linger'd a week in Boston--felt pretty well (the mood propitious, my paralysis lull'd)--went around everywhere, and saw all that was to be seen, especially human beings. Boston's immense material growth--commerce, finance, commission stores, the plethora of goods, the crowded streets and sidewalks--made of course the first surprising show.

In my trip out West, last year, I thought the wand of future prosperity, future empire, must soon surely be wielded by St. Louis, Chicago, beautiful Denver, perhaps San Francisco; but I see the said wand stretch'd out just as decidedly in Boston, with just as much certainty of staying; evidences of copious capital--indeed no centre of the New World ahead of it, (half the big railroads in the West are built with Yankees' money, and they take the dividends.) Old Boston with its zigzag streets and mult.i.tudinous angles, (crush up a sheet of letter-paper in your hand, throw it down, stamp it flat, and that is a map of old Boston)--new Boston with its miles upon miles of large and costly houses--Beacon street, Commonwealth avenue, and a hundred others. But the best new departures and expansions of Boston, and of all the cities of New England, are in another direction.

THE BOSTON OF TO-DAY

In the letters we get from Dr. Schliemann (interesting but fishy) about his excavations there in the far-off Homeric area, I notice cities, ruins, &c., as he digs them out of their graves, are certain to be in layers--that is to say, upon the foundation of an old concern, very far down indeed, is always another city or set of ruins, and upon that another superadded--and sometimes upon that still another--each representing either a long or rapid stage of growth and development, different from its predecessor, but unerringly growing out of and resting on it. In the moral, emotional, heroic, and human growths, (the main of a race in my opinion,) something of this kind has certainly taken place in Boston. The New England metropolis of to-day may be described as sunny, (there is something else that makes warmth, mastering even winds and meteorologies, though those are not to be sneez'd at,) joyous, receptive, full of ardor, sparkle, a certain element of yearning, magnificently tolerant, yet not to be fool'd; fond of good eating and drinking--costly in costume as its purse can buy; and all through its best average of houses, streets, people, that subtle something (generally thought to be climate, but it is not--it is something indefinable in the _race_, the turn of its development) which effuses behind the whirl of animation, study, business, a happy and joyous public spirit, as distinguish'd from a sluggish and saturnine one. Makes me think of the glints we get (as in Symonds's books) of the jolly old Greek cities. Indeed there is a good deal of the h.e.l.lenic in B., and the people are getting handsomer too--padded out, with freer motions, and with color in their faces. I never saw (although this is not Greek) so many _fine-looking gray-hair'd women_. At my lecture I caught myself pausing more than once to look at them, plentiful everywhere through the audience--healthy and wifely and motherly, and wonderfully charming and beautiful--I think such as no time or land but ours could show.

MY TRIBUTE TO FOUR POETS

_April 16_.--A short but pleasant visit to Longfellow. I am not one of the calling kind, but as the author of "Evangeline" kindly took the trouble to come and see me three years ago in Camden, where I was ill, I felt not only the impulse of my own pleasure on that occasion, but a duty. He was the only particular eminence I called on in Boston, and I shall not soon forget his lit-up face and glowing warmth and courtesy, in the modes of what is called the old school.

And now just here I feel the impulse to interpolate something about the mighty four who stamp this first American century with its birthmarks of poetic literature. In a late magazine one of my reviewers, who ought to know better, speaks of my "att.i.tude of contempt and scorn and intolerance" toward the leading poets--of my "deriding" them, and preaching their "uselessness." If anybody cares to know what I think--and have long thought and avow'd--about them, I am entirely willing to propound. I can't imagine any better luck befalling these States for a poetical beginning and initiation than has come from Emerson, Longfellow, Bryant, and Whittier. Emerson, to me, stands unmistakably at the head, but for the others I am at a loss where to give any precedence. Each ill.u.s.trious, each rounded, each distinctive.

Emerson for his sweet, vital-tasting melody, rhym'd philosophy, and poems as amber-clear as the honey of the wild bee he loves to sing.

Longfellow for rich color, graceful forms and incidents--all that makes life beautiful and love refined--competing with the singers of Europe on their own ground, and, with one exception, better and finer work than that of any of them. Bryant pulsing the first interior verse-throbs of a mighty world--bard of the river and the wood, ever conveying a taste of open air, with scents as from hayfields, grapes, birch-borders--always lurkingly fond of threnodies--beginning and ending his long career with chants of death, with here and there through all, poems, or pa.s.sages of poems, touching the highest universal truths, enthusiasms, duties--morals as grim and eternal, if not as stormy and fateful, as anything in Eschylus. While in Whittier, with his special themes--(his outcropping love of heroism and war, for all his Quakerdom, his verses at times like the measur'd step of Cromwell's old veterans)--in Whittier lives the zeal, the moral energy, that founded New England--the splendid rect.i.tude and ardor of Luther, Milton, George Fox--I must not, dare not, say the wilfulness and narrowness--though doubtless the world needs now, and always will need, almost above all, just such narrowness and wilfulness.

MILLET'S PICTURES LAST ITEMS

_April 18_.--Went out three or four miles to the house of Quincy Shaw, to see a collection of J. F. Millet's pictures. Two rapt hours. Never before have I been so penetrated by this kind of expression. I stood long and long before "the Sower." I believe what the picture-men designate "the first Sower," as the artist executed a second copy, and a third, and, some think, improved in each. But I doubt it. There is something in this that could hardly be caught again--a sublime murkiness and original pent fury. Besides this masterpiece, there were many others, (I shall never forget the simple evening scene, "Watering the Cow,") all inimitable, all perfect as pictures, works of mere art; and then it seem'd to me, with that last impalpable ethic purpose from the artist (most likely unconscious to himself) which I am always looking for. To me all of them told the full story of what went before and necessitated the great French revolution--the long precedent crushing of the ma.s.ses of a heroic people into the earth, in abject poverty, hunger--every right denied, humanity attempted to be put back for generations--yet Nature's force, t.i.tanic here, the stronger and hardier for that repression--waiting terribly to break forth, revengeful--the pressure on the d.y.k.es, and the bursting at last--the storming of the Bastile--the execution of the king and queen--the tempest of ma.s.sacres and blood. Yet who can wonder?

Could we wish humanity different?

Could we wish the people made of wood or stone?

Or that there be no justice in destiny or time?

The true France, base of all the rest, is certainly in these pictures. I comprehend "Field-People Reposing," "the Diggers," and "the Angelus"

in this opinion. Some folks always think of the French as a small race, five or five and a half feet high, and ever frivolous and smirking.

Nothing of the sort. The bulk of the personnel of France, before the revolution, was large-sized, serious, industrious as now, and simple.

The revolution and Napoleon's wars dwarf'd the standard of human size, but it will come up again. If for nothing else, I should dwell on my brief Boston visit for opening to me the new world of Millet's pictures.

Will America ever have such an artist out of her own gestation, body, soul?

_Sunday, April 17._--An hour and a half, late this afternoon, in silence and half light, in the great nave of Memorial hall, Cambridge, the walls thickly cover'd with mural tablets, bearing the names of students and graduates of the university who fell in the secession war.

_April 23._--It was well I got away in fair order, for if I had staid another week I should have been killed with kindness, and with eating and drinking.

BIRDS--AND A CAUTION

_May 14._--Home again; down temporarily in the Jersey woods. Between 8 and 9 A.M. a full concert of birds, from different quarters, in keeping with the fresh scent, the peace, the naturalness all around me. I am lately noticing the russet-back, size of the robin or a trifle less, light breast and shoulders, with irregular dark stripes--tail long--sits hunch'd up by the hour these days, top of a tall bush, or some tree, singing blithely. I often get near and listen, as he seems tame; I like to watch the working of his bill and throat, the quaint sidle of his body, and flex of his long tail. I hear the woodp.e.c.k.e.r, and night and early morning the shuttle of the whip-poor-will--noons, the gurgle of thrush delicious, and _meo-o-ow_ of the cat-bird. Many I cannot name; but I do not very particularly seek information. (You must not know too much, or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and water-craft; a certain free margin, and even vagueness--perhaps ignorance, credulity--helps your enjoyment of these things, and of the sentiment of feather'd, wooded, river, or marine Nature generally. I repeat it--don't want to know too exactly, or the reasons why. My own notes have been written off-hand in the lat.i.tude of middle New Jersey.

Though they describe what I saw--what appear'd to me--I dare say the expert ornithologist, botanist or entomologist will detect more than one slip in them.)

SAMPLES OF MY COMMON-PLACE BOOK

I ought not to offer a record of these days, interests, recuperations, without including a certain old, well-thumb'd common-place book,[18]

filled with favorite excerpts, I carried in my pocket for three summers, and absorb'd over and over again, when the mood invited. I find so much in having a poem or fine suggestion sink into me (a little then goes a great ways) prepar'd by these vacant-sane and natural influences.

Note:

[18] _Samples of my common-place book down at the creek:_

I have--says old Pindar--many swift arrows in my quiver which speak to the wise, though they need an interpreter to the thoughtless. Such a man as it takes ages to make, and ages to understand. _H. D. Th.o.r.eau._

If you hate a man, don't kill him, but let him live.--_Buddhistic._ Famous swords are made of refuse sc.r.a.ps, thought worthless.

Poetry is the only verity--the expression of a sound mind speaking after the ideal--and not after the apparent.--_Emerson_.