Essays Before a Sonata Part 1

Essays Before a Sonata.

by Charles Ives.

BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Charles Ives (1874-1954) was probably one of the most psycho-intellectually brilliant, imaginative and flexible Americans to ever "walk the land of freedom." A graduate of Yale, he became a multi-millionaire in the American insurance industry, introducing brilliant innovations within that industry. He also, unlike a few composers, found the time and the money (being a shrewd and practical businessman) to get married and have children.

His accomplishments for which he is best known, however, are those in the field of music. At the time of its composition, Ives' music was probably the most radically modern in history, and by itself had enough material to serve as the foundation of modern 20th century music. For example, at the turn of the century, this eccentric composer created band works featuring multiple melodies of multiple time signatures opposing and complimenting each other within the same piece. Ives was also a revolutionary atonal composer, who created, essentially without precedent, many atonal works that not only pre-date those of Schoenberg, but are just as sophisticated, and arguably even more so, than those of the 12-tone serialist.

Among those atonal works was his second, "Concord" piano sonata, one of the finest, and some would say the finest, works of cla.s.sical music by an American. It reflects the musical innovations of its creator, featuring revolutionary atmospheric effects, unprecedented atonal musical syntax, and surprising technical approaches to playing the piano, such as pressing down on over 10 notes simultaneously using a flat piece of wood.

What a mischievious creative genius!

And yet, despite the musically innovative nature of these works, from a thematic standpoint, they are strictly 19th century. Ives, like American band-composer Sousa, consciously infused patriotic or "blue-blood" themes into his pieces. In the "Concord," he attempted to project, within the music, the 19th century philosophical ideas of the American Transcendentalists, who obviously had a great impact on his world-view.

Thus, while other atonal composers such as Schoenberg or Berg attempted to infuse their music with "20th century" themes of hostility, violence and estrangement within their atonal music, the atonal music of Ives is, from a thematic standpoint, really quite "tonal."

Ives wrote the following essays as a (very big) set of program notes to accompany his second piano sonata. Here, he puts forth his elaborate theory of music and what it represents, and discusses Transcendental philosophy and its relation to music. The essays explain Ives' own philosophy of and understanding of music and art. They also serve as an a.n.a.lysis of music itself as an artform, and provide a critical explanation of the "Concord" and the role that the philosophies of Emerson, Hawthorne, Th.o.r.eau and the Alcotts play in forming its thematic structure.

INTRODUCTION

The following pages were written primarily as a preface or reason for the [writer's] second Pianoforte Sonata--"Concord, Ma.s.s., 1845,"--a group of four pieces, called a sonata for want of a more exact name, as the form, perhaps substance, does not justify it. The music and prefaces were intended to be printed together, but as it was found that this would make a c.u.mbersome volume they are separate. The whole is an attempt to present [one person's] impression of the spirit of transcendentalism that is a.s.sociated in the minds of many with Concord, Ma.s.s., of over a half century ago. This is undertaken in impressionistic pictures of Emerson and Th.o.r.eau, a sketch of the Alcotts, and a Scherzo supposed to reflect a lighter quality which is often found in the fantastic side of Hawthorne. The first and last movements do not aim to give any programs of the life or of any particular work of either Emerson or Th.o.r.eau but rather composite pictures or impressions. They are, however, so general in outline that, from some viewpoints, they may be as far from accepted impressions (from true conceptions, for that matter) as the valuation which they purport to be of the influence of the life, thought, and character of Emerson and Th.o.r.eau is inadequate.

I--Prologue

How far is anyone justified, be he an authority or a layman, in expressing or trying to express in terms of music (in sounds, if you like) the value of anything, material, moral, intellectual, or spiritual, which is usually expressed in terms other than music? How far afield can music go and keep honest as well as reasonable or artistic? Is it a matter limited only by the composer's power of expressing what lies in his subjective or objective consciousness? Or is it limited by any limitations of the composer? Can a tune literally represent a stonewall with vines on it or with nothing on it, though it (the tune) be made by a genius whose power of objective contemplation is in the highest state of development? Can it be done by anything short of an act of mesmerism on the part of the composer or an act of kindness on the part of the listener? Does the extreme materializing of music appeal strongly to anyone except to those without a sense of humor--or rather with a sense of humor?--or, except, possibly to those who might excuse it, as Herbert Spencer might by the theory that the sensational element (the sensations we hear so much about in experimental psychology) is the true pleasurable phenomenon in music and that the mind should not be allowed to interfere? Does the success of program music depend more upon the program than upon the music? If it does, what is the use of the music, if it does not, what is the use of the program? Does not its appeal depend to a great extent on the listener's willingness to accept the theory that music is the language of the emotions and ONLY that? Or inversely does not this theory tend to limit music to programs?--a limitation as bad for music itself--for its wholesome progress,--as a diet of program music is bad for the listener's ability to digest anything beyond the sensuous (or physical-emotional). To a great extent this depends on what is meant by emotion or on the a.s.sumption that the word as used above refers more to the EXPRESSION, of, rather than to a meaning in a deeper sense--which may be a feeling influenced by some experience perhaps of a spiritual nature in the expression of which the intellect has some part. "The nearer we get to the mere expression of emotion," says Professor Sturt in his "Philosophy of Art and Personality," "as in the antics of boys who have been promised a holiday, the further we get away from art."

On the other hand is not all music, program-music,--is not pure music, so called, representative in its essence? Is it not program-music raised to the nth power or rather reduced to the minus nth power? Where is the line to be drawn between the expression of subjective and objective emotion? It is easier to know what each is than when each becomes what it is. The "Separateness of Art" theory--that art is not life but a reflection of it--"that art is not vital to life but that life is vital to it," does not help us. Nor does Th.o.r.eau who says not that "life is art," but that "life is an art," which of course is a different thing than the foregoing. Tolstoi is even more helpless to himself and to us. For he eliminates further. From his definition of art we may learn little more than that a kick in the back is a work of art, and Beethoven's 9th Symphony is not. Experiences are pa.s.sed on from one man to another. Abel knew that. And now we know it. But where is the bridge placed?--at the end of the road or only at the end of our vision? Is it all a bridge?--or is there no bridge because there is no gulf? Suppose that a composer writes a piece of music conscious that he is inspired, say, by witnessing an act of great self-sacrifice--another piece by the contemplation of a certain trait of n.o.bility he perceives in a friend's character--and another by the sight of a mountain lake under moonlight. The first two, from an inspirational standpoint would naturally seem to come under the subjective and the last under the objective, yet the chances are, there is something of the quality of both in all. There may have been in the first instance physical action so intense or so dramatic in character that the remembrance of it aroused a great deal more objective emotion than the composer was conscious of while writing the music. In the third instance, the music may have been influenced strongly though subconsciously by a vague remembrance of certain thoughts and feelings, perhaps of a deep religious or spiritual nature, which suddenly came to him upon realizing the beauty of the scene and which overpowered the first sensuous pleasure--perhaps some such feeling as of the conviction of immortality, that Th.o.r.eau experienced and tells about in Walden. "I penetrated to those meadows ... when the wild river and the woods were bathed in so pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead IF they had been slumbering in their graves as some suppose. There needs no stronger proof of immortality." Enthusiasm must permeate it, but what it is that inspires an art-effort is not easily determined much less cla.s.sified. The word "inspire" is used here in the sense of cause rather than effect. A critic may say that a certain movement is not inspired. But that may be a matter of taste--perhaps the most inspired music sounds the least so--to the critic. A true inspiration may lack a true expression unless it is a.s.sumed that if an inspiration is not true enough to produce a true expression--(if there be anyone who can definitely determine what a true expression is)--it is not an inspiration at all.

Again suppose the same composer at another time writes a piece of equal merit to the other three, as estimates go; but holds that he is not conscious of what inspired it--that he had nothing definite in mind--that he was not aware of any mental image or process--that, naturally, the actual work in creating something gave him a satisfying feeling of pleasure perhaps of elation. What will you subst.i.tute for the mountain lake, for his friend's character, etc.? Will you subst.i.tute anything? If so why? If so what? Or is it enough to let the matter rest on the pleasure mainly physical, of the tones, their color, succession, and relations, formal or informal? Can an inspiration come from a blank mind? Well--he tries to explain and says that he was conscious of some emotional excitement and of a sense of something beautiful, he doesn't know exactly what--a vague feeling of exaltation or perhaps of profound sadness.

What is the source of these instinctive feelings, these vague intuitions and introspective sensations? The more we try to a.n.a.lyze the more vague they become. To pull them apart and cla.s.sify them as "subjective" or "objective" or as this or as that, means, that they may be well cla.s.sified and that is about all: it leaves us as far from the origin as ever. What does it all mean? What is behind it all? The "voice of G.o.d," says the artist, "the voice of the devil," says the man in the front row. Are we, because we are, human beings, born with the power of innate perception of the beautiful in the abstract so that an inspiration can arise through no external stimuli of sensation or experience,--no a.s.sociation with the outward? Or was there present in the above instance, some kind of subconscious, instantaneous, composite image, of all the mountain lakes this man had ever seen blended as kind of overtones with the various traits of n.o.bility of many of his friends embodied in one personality? Do all inspirational images, states, conditions, or whatever they may be truly called, have for a dominant part, if not for a source, some actual experience in life or of the social relation? To think that they do not--always at least--would be a relief; but as we are trying to consider music made and heard by human beings (and not by birds or angels) it seems difficult to suppose that even subconscious images can be separated from some human experience--there must be something behind subconsciousness to produce consciousness, and so on. But whatever the elements and origin of these so-called images are, that they DO stir deep emotional feelings and encourage their expression is a part of the unknowable we know. They do often arouse something that has not yet pa.s.sed the border line between subconsciousness and consciousness--an artistic intuition (well named, but)--object and cause unknown!--here is a program!--conscious or subconscious what does it matter? Why try to trace any stream that flows through the garden of consciousness to its source only to be confronted by another problem of tracing this source to its source?

Perhaps Emerson in the _Rhodora_ answers by not trying to explain

That if eyes were made for seeing Then beauty is its own excuse for being: Why thou wert there, O, rival of the rose! I never thought to ask, I never knew; But, in my simple ignorance, suppose The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.

Perhaps Sturt answers by subst.i.tution: "We cannot explain the origin of an artistic intuition any more than the origin of any other primary function of our nature. But if as I believe civilization is mainly founded on those kinds of unselfish human interests which we call knowledge and morality it is easily intelligible that we should have a parallel interest which we call art closely akin and lending powerful support to the other two. It is intelligible too that moral goodness, intellectual power, high vitality, and strength should be approved by the intuition." This reduces, or rather brings the problem back to a tangible basis namely:--the translation of an artistic intuition into musical sounds approving and reflecting, or endeavoring to approve and reflect, a "moral goodness," a "high vitality," etc., or any other human attribute mental, moral, or spiritual.

Can music do MORE than this? Can it DO this? and if so who and what is to determine the degree of its failure or success? The composer, the performer (if there be any), or those who have to listen? One hearing or a century of hearings?-and if it isn't successful or if it doesn't fail what matters it?--the fear of failure need keep no one from the attempt for if the composer is sensitive he need but launch forth a countercharge of "being misunderstood" and hide behind it. A theme that the composer sets up as "moral goodness" may sound like "high vitality," to his friend and but like an outburst of "nervous weakness"

or only a "stagnant pool" to those not even his enemies. Expression to a great extent is a matter of terms and terms are anyone's. The meaning of "G.o.d" may have a billion interpretations if there be that many souls in the world.

There is a moral in the "Nominalist and Realist" that will prove all sums. It runs something like this: No matter how sincere and confidential men are in trying to know or a.s.suming that they do know each other's mood and habits of thought, the net result leaves a feeling that all is left unsaid; for the reason of their incapacity to know each other, though they use the same words. They go on from one explanation to another but things seem to stand about as they did in the beginning "because of that vicious a.s.sumption." But we would rather believe that music is beyond any a.n.a.logy to word language and that the time is coming, but not in our lifetime, when it will develop possibilities unconceivable now,--a language, so transcendent, that its heights and depths will be common to all mankind.

II--Emerson

1

It has seemed to the writer, that Emerson is greater--his ident.i.ty 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 ma.s.ses 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 Parna.s.sus 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 G.o.ds--lighting a fuse that is laid towards men.

Emerson reveals the less not by an a.n.a.lysis 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 G.o.d'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) ill.u.s.tration of universal justice--of G.o.d's perfect balances; a story of the a.n.a.logy or better the ident.i.ty 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 G.o.d. 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 a.s.sociation with the churchmen emanc.i.p.ators.

"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 G.o.d'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 cla.s.s.

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 ill.u.s.tration 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 inst.i.tution 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 G.o.dward perhaps. The rebel of the twentieth century says: "Let us discard G.o.d, immortality, miracle--but be not untrue to ourselves."

Here he, no doubt, in a sincere and exalted moment, confuses G.o.d 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 G.o.d, that the faintest thought of immortality IS G.o.d, and that G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 Th.o.r.eau 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.