Transcendentalism in New England Part 10

Mr. John Fiske, a disciple of Herbert Spencer, and an exceedingly able expositor of the philosophy of which Spencer is the acknowledged chief, makes a.s.sertions equally positive:[6]

"However strict the parallelism may be within the limits of our experience, between the phenomena of the mind, and the segment of the circle of motions, the task of transcending or abolishing the radical ant.i.thesis between the phenomena of mind and the phenomena of matter, must always remain an impracticable task; for, in order to transcend or abolish this radical ant.i.thesis, we must be prepared to show how a given quant.i.ty of molecular motion in nerve tissue can be transformed into a definable amount of ideation or feeling. But this, it is quite safe to say, can never be done."

[6] Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, Vol. II., p. 442.

There are of course, distinguished names on the other side. The work on "Intelligence," by Mr. Taine, which Mr. Mill warmly commends as the "the first serious effort (in France) to supply the want of a better than the official psychology," cannot be wisely overlooked by any one interested in this problem. Taine objects to Tyndall's statement of the problem, declares that by approaching it from another point, it is soluble, and frankly undertakes to solve it.[7]

[7] On Intelligence, Book III., chap. I.

"When we consider closely any one of our conceptions--that of a plant, an animal, a mineral--we find that the primitive threads of which it is woven, are sensations, and sensations only. We have proof of this already if we recollect that our ideas are only reviving sensations, that our ideas are nothing more than images which have become signs, and that thus this elementary tissue subsists in a more or less disguised form at all stages of our thought." "It is true that we cannot conceive the two events otherwise than as irreducible to one another; but that may depend on the way we conceive them, and not on their actual qualities; their incompatibility is perhaps rather apparent than real; it arises on our side and not on theirs."

Mr. George H. Lewes[8] follows closely Taine's line of argument, but developes it with more system. He too quotes Tyndall, alludes to DuBois Reymond and makes reference to Mill. Lewes holds it to be a severe deduction from proven facts "that the neural process and the feeling are one and the same process viewed under different aspects. Viewed from the physical or objective side, it is a neural process; viewed from the psychological or subjective side, it is a sentient process."

[8] Problems of Life and Mind II. pp. 410, 415.

"It is not wonderful that conceptions so dissimilar as those of Motion and Feeling should seem irreducible to a common term, while the one is regarded as the symbol of a process in the object, and the other as the symbol of a process in the subject. But psychological a.n.a.lysis leads to the conclusion that the objective process and the subjective process are simply the twofold aspects of one and the same fact; in the one aspect it is the Felt, in the other it is the Feeling."

For the remarkable reasonings by which these a.s.sertions are justified, the readers must consult the works quoted. Their novelty renders any but an extended account of them unfair; and an extended account would be out of place in a general study like this.

Should the a.n.a.lyses of Taine and Lewes prove successful at last, and be accepted by the authorities in speculative philosophy, idealism, as a philosophy, must disappear. The days of metaphysics in the old sense, will be numbered; the German schools from Kant to Hegel will become obsolete; Jacobi's doctrine of faith, Fichte's doctrine of the absolute Ego, Sch.e.l.ling's doctrine of intellectual intuition, will be forgotten; Cousin's influence will be gone; the fundamental ideas of Transcendental teachers, French, English, American, will be discredited; and the beliefs founded on them will fade away. There will, however, be no cause to apprehend the personal, social, moral or spiritual demoralization which the "Sensualist" doctrines of the last century were accused of encouraging. The att.i.tude of the human mind towards the great problems of destiny has so far altered, the problems themselves have so far changed their face, that no shock will be felt in the pa.s.sage from the philosophy of intuition to that of experience. Questions respecting the origin, order and regulation of the world, the laws of character, the const.i.tution of society, the conditions of welfare, the prospects and relations of the individual, are put in new forms, discussed by new arguments, and answered by new a.s.surances. The words atheism and materialism have pa.s.sed through so many definitions, the conceptions they stand for have become so completely transformed by the mutations of thought, that the ancient antipathies are not longer excusable; the ancient fears are weak. The sanct.i.ties that once were set apart in ideal shrines will be perfectly at home among the demonstrated facts of common life.

If, on the other hand, the school to which Spencer, Fiske and Tyndall belong is right, the science of mind will recover its old dignity, though under new conditions. n.o.body has spoken more plainly against the intuitive philosophy, than Mill. No one probably is further from it than Tyndall, though he responds in sentiment to the eloquent affirmations of Martineau, and quotes Emerson enthusiastically, as "a profoundly religious man who is really and entirely undaunted by the discoveries of science, past, present or prospective; one by whom scientific conceptions are continually trans.m.u.ted into the finer forms and warmer hues of an ideal world." Under the influences of the new psychology, dogmatic idealism will probably be deprived of its sceptre and sway. The claim to intuitive knowledge of definite truths of any order whatsoever will be abandoned, as untenable on scientific or philosophical grounds; but imagination, which, as Emerson says, "respects the cause,"--"the vision of an inspired soul reading arguments and affirmations in all nature of that which it is driven to say;" emotion, which contains all the possibilities of feeling and hope; the moral sentiment, which affirms principles with imperative authority; these remain, and claim their right to create ideal worlds of which the natural world is image and symbol. The Transcendentalism which concedes to all mankind spiritual faculties by virtue whereof divine ent.i.ties are seen in definite shape--the personal G.o.d--the city of the heavenly Jerusalem--will be superseded by the poetic idealism that is the cheer and inspiration of poetic minds, animating them with fine visions, and gladdening them with unfading, though vague, antic.i.p.ations.

The Transcendental doctrine has been exposed to most deadly a.s.sault on the ethical side. The theory of moral intuition, which held that "every man is, according to the cautious statement of James Walker, born with a moral faculty, or the elements of a moral faculty, which, on being developed, creates in him the idea of a right and a wrong in human conduct; which summons him before the tribunal of his own soul for judgment on the rect.i.tude of his purposes; which grows up into an habitual sense of personal responsibility, and thus prepares him, as his views are enlarged, to comprehend the moral government of G.o.d, and to feel his own responsibility to G.o.d as a moral governor,"--has fallen into general disrepute; and in its place a persuasion is abroad, that, in the language of Grote, "the universal and essential tendencies of the moral sense, admit of being most satisfactorily deduced from other elementary principles of our nature." It is now a widely accepted belief among conservative thinkers, that "conscience" is not a faculty, or an element, existing here in germ, there in maturity; but is the result of social experience. Moderate Transcendentalists conceded the necessity of _educating_ conscience, which still implied the existence of a conscience or moral sense to be educated. It is now contended that conscience itself is a product of education, a deposit left in the crucible of experiment, a habit formed by the usage of mankind. The justification of this view has gone so far, that it seems likely to become the recognized account of this matter; but in course of substantiating this doctrine, a new foundation for ethical feeling and judgment is laid, which is as immovable as the transcendental "facts of consciousness." The moral sentiments are represented as resting on the entire past of the race, on reefs of fact built up by the lives of millions of men, from the bottom of the deep of humanity. The finest moral sensibility caps the peak of the world's effort at self-adjustment, as the white, unsullied snow rests on the summit of the Jungfrau. The intuition is referred to in another genesis, but it is equally clear and equally certain. The difference of origin creates no difference of character. Moral distinctions are precisely the same for idealists and sensationalists. Here at least, the transcendentalist and his adversary can dwell in amity together.

IX.

THE SEER.

A discerning German writer, Herman Grimm, closes a volume of fifteen essays, with one on Ralph Waldo Emerson, written in 1861, approved in 1874. The essay is interesting, apart from its literary merit, as giving the impression made by Mr. Emerson on a foreigner to whom his reputation was unknown, and a man of culture to whom books and opinions rarely brought surprise. He saw a volume of the "Essays" lying on the table of an American acquaintance, looked into it, and was surprised that, being tolerably well practised in reading English, he understood next to nothing of the contents. He asked about the author, and, learning that he was highly esteemed in his own country, he opened the book again, read further, and was so much struck by pa.s.sages here and there, that he borrowed it, carried it home, took down Webster's dictionary, and began reading in earnest. The extraordinary construction of the sentences, the apparent absence of logical continuity, the unexpected turns of thought, the use of original words, embarra.s.sed him at first; but soon he discovered the secret and felt the charms. The man had fresh thoughts, employed a living speech, was a genuine person. The book was bought, read and re-read, "and now every time I take it up, I seem to take it up for the first time."

The power that the richest genius has in Shakspeare, Rafael, Goethe, Beethoven, to reconcile the soul to life, to give joy for heaviness, to dissipate fears, to transfigure care and toil, to convert lead into gold, and lift the veil that conceals the forms of hope, Grimm ascribes in the highest measure to Emerson.

"As I read, all seems old and familiar as if it was my own well-worn thought; all seems new as if it never occurred to me before. I found myself depending on the book and was provoked with myself for it. How could I be so captured and enthralled; so fascinated and bewitched? The writer was but a man like any other; yet, on taking up the volume again, the spell was renewed--I felt the pure air; the old weather-beaten motives recovered their tone."

To him Emerson seemed to stand on the ground of simple fact, which he accepted in all sincerity.

"He regards the world in its immediate aspect, with fresh vision; the thing done or occurring before him opens the way to serene heights. The living have precedence of the dead. Even the living of to-day of the Greeks of yesterday, n.o.bly as the latter thought, moulded, chiselled, sang. For me was the breath of life, for me the rapture of spring, for me love and desire, for me the secret of wisdom and power."... "Emerson fills me with courage and confidence. He has read and observed, but he betrays no sign of toil. He presents familiar facts, but he places them in new lights and combinations. From every object the lines run straight out, connecting it with the central point of life. What I had hardly dared to think, it was so bold, he brings forth as quietly as if it was the most familiar commonplace. He is a perfect swimmer on the ocean of modern existence. He dreads no tempest, for he is sure that calm will follow it; he does not hate, contradict, or dispute, for he understands men and loves them. I look on with wonder to see how the hurly-burly of modern life subsides, and the elements gently betake themselves to their allotted places. Had I found but a single pa.s.sage in his writings that was an exception to this rule, I should begin to suspect my judgment, and should say no further word; but long acquaintance confirms my opinion. As I think of this man, I have understood the devotion of pupils who would share any fate with their master, because his genius banished doubt and imparted life to all things."

Grimm tells us that one day he found Emerson's Essays in the hands of a lady to whom he had recommended them without effect. She had made a thousand excuses; had declared herself quite satisfied with Goethe, who had all that Emerson could possibly have, and a great deal more; had expressed doubts whether, even if Emerson were all that his admirers represented, it was worth while to make a study of him. Besides, she had read in the book, and found only commonplace thoughts which had come to herself, and which she considered not of sufficient importance to express. So Emerson was neglected.

"On this occasion she made him the subject of conversation. She had felt that he was something remarkable. She had come upon sentences, many times, that opened the darkest recesses of thought. I listened quietly, but made no response. Not long afterwards she poured out to me her astonished admiration in such earnest and impa.s.sioned strain, that she made me feel as if I was the novice and she the apostle."

This experience was repeated again and again, and Grimm had the satisfaction of seeing the indifferent kindle, the adverse turn, the objectors yield. The praise was not universal indeed; there were stubborn dissentients who did not confess the charm, and declared that the enthusiasm was infatuation. Such remained unconverted. It was discovered that Emerson came to his own only, though his own were a large and increasing company.

The reasons of Grimm's admiration have been sufficiently indicated in the above extracts. They are good reasons, but they are not the best.

They do not touch the deeper secret of power. That secret lies in the writer's pure and perfect idealism, in his absolute and perpetual faith in thoughts, his supreme confidence in the spiritual laws. He lives in the region of serene ideas; lives there all the day and all the year; not visiting the mount of vision occasionally, but setting up his tabernacle there, and pa.s.sing the night among the stars that he may be up and dressed for the eternal sunrise. To such a spirit there is no night: "the darkness shineth as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike." There are no cloudy days. Tyndall's expression "in his case Poetry, with the joy of a baccha.n.a.l, takes her graver brother science by the hand, and cheers him with immortal laughter"--is singularly infelicitous in phrase, for it is as easy to a.s.sociate night orgies with the dawn as the baccha.n.a.lian spirit with Emerson, who never riots and never laughs, but is radiant with a placid buoyancy that diffuses itself over his countenance and person. Mr. Emerson's characteristic trait is serenity. He is faithful to his own counsel, "Shun the negative side.

Never wrong people with your contritions, nor with dismal views of politics or society. Never name sickness; even if you could trust yourself on that perilous topic, beware of unmuzzling a valetudinarian who will soon give you your fill of it." He seems to be perpetually saying "Good Morning."

This is not wholly a result of philosophy; it is rather a gift of nature. He is the descendant of eight generations of Puritan clergymen,--the inheritor of their thoughtfulness and contemplation, their spirit of inward and outward communion. The dogmatism fell away; the peaceful fruits of discipline remained, and flowered beautifully in his richly favored spirit. An elder brother William, whom it was a privilege to know, though lacking the genius of Waldo, was a natural idealist and wise saint. Charles, another brother, who died young and greatly lamented had the saintliness and the genius both. The "Dial"

contained contributions from this young man, ent.i.tled "Notes from the Journal of a Scholar" that strongly suggest the genius of his eminent brother; a few pa.s.sages from them may be interesting as throwing light on the secret of Emerson's inspiration.

"This afternoon we read Shakspeare. The verse so sank into me, that as I toiled my way home under the cloud of night, with the gusty music of the storm around and overhead, I doubted that it was all a remembered scene; that humanity was indeed one, a spirit continually reproduced, accomplishing a vast orbit, whilst individual men are but the points through which it pa.s.ses.

We each of us furnish to the angel who stands in the sun, a single observation. The reason why Homer is to me like dewy morning, is because I too lived while Troy was, and sailed in the hollow ships of the Grecians to sack the devoted town. The rosy-fingered dawn as it crimsoned the tops of Ida, the broad sea sh.o.r.e covered with tents, the Trojan hosts in their painted armor, and the rushing chariots of Diomed and Idomeneus,--all these I too saw: my ghost animated the frame of some nameless Argive; and Shakspeare, in King John, does but recall to me myself in the dress of another age, the sport of new accidents. I who am Charles, was sometime Romeo. In Hamlet I pondered and doubted. We forget what we have been, drugged by the sleepy bowl of the Present. But when a lively chord in the soul is struck, when the windows for a moment are unbarred, the long and varied past is recovered. We recognize it all; we are no more brief, ign.o.ble creatures; we seize our immortality and bind together the related parts of our secular being."

From the second record of thoughts a pa.s.sage may be taken, so precisely like paragraphs in the essays that they might have proceeded from the same mind:

"Let us not vail our bonnets to circ.u.mstance. If we act so, because we are so; if we sin from strong bias of temper and const.i.tution, at least we have in ourselves the measure and the curb of our aberration. But if they who are around us sway us; if we think ourselves incapable of resisting the cords by which fathers and mothers and a host of unsuitable expectations and duties, falsely so called, seek to bind us,--into what helpless discord shall we not fall."

"I hate whatever is imitative in states of mind as well as in action. The moment I say to myself, 'I ought to feel thus and so,'

life loses its sweetness, the soul her vigor and truth. I can only recover my genuine self by stopping short, refraining from every effort to shape my thought after a form, and giving it boundless freedom and horizon. Then, after oscillation more or less protracted, as the mind has been more or less forcibly pushed from its place, I fall again into my orbit and recognize myself, and find with grat.i.tude that something there is in the spirit which changes not, neither is weary, but ever returns into itself, and partakes of the eternity of G.o.d."

Idealism is native to this temperament, the proper expression of its feeling. Emerson was preordained an idealist; he is one of the eternal men, bearing about him the atmosphere of immortal youth. He is now seventy-three years old, having been born in Boston May 25th, 1803; but his last volume, "Letters and Social Aims," shows the freshness of his first essays. The opening chapter, "Poetry and Imagination," has the emphasis and soaring confidence of undimmed years; and the closing one, "Immortality," sustains an unwearied flight among the agitations of this most hotly-debated of beliefs. The address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge, in 1867, equals in moral grandeur and earnestness of appeal, in faithfulness to ideas and trust in principles, the addresses that made so famous the prime of his career. There is absolutely no abatement of heart or hope; if anything, the tone is richer and more a.s.sured than ever it was. During the season of his popularity as a lyceum lecturer, the necessity of making his discourse attractive and entertaining, brought into the foreground the play of his wit, and forced the graver qualities of his mind into partial concealment; but in later years, in the solitude of his study, the undertone of high purpose is heard again, in solemn reverberations, reminding us that the unseen realities are present still; that no opening into the eternal has ever been closed.

"Shall we study the mathematics of the sphere," he says to the Cambridge scholars, "and not its causal essence also? Nature is a fable, whose moral blazes through it. There is no use in Copernicus, if the robust periodicity of the solar system does not show its equal perfection in the mental sphere--the periodicity, the compensating errors, the grand reactions. I shall never believe that centrifugence and centripetence balance, unless mind heats and meliorates, as well as the surface and soil of the globe."

"On this power, this all-dissolving unity, the emphasis of heaven and earth is laid. Nature is brute, but as this soul quickens it; nature always the effect, mind the flowing cause. Mind carries the law; history is the slow and atomic unfolding."

"All vigor is contagious, and when we see creation, we also begin to create. Depth of character, height of genius, can only find nourishment in this soil. The miracles of genius always rest on profound convictions which refuse to be a.n.a.lyzed. Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding. Hope never spreads her golden wings but on unfathomable seas."

"We wish to put the ideal rules into practice, to offer liberty instead of chains, and see whether liberty will not disclose its proper checks; believing that a free press will prove safer than the censorship; to ordain free trade, and believe that it will not bankrupt us; universal suffrage, believing that it will not carry us to mobs or back to kings again."

"Every inch of the mountains is scarred by unimaginable convulsions, yet the new day is purple with the bloom of youth and love. Look out into the July night, and see the broad belt of silver flame which flashes up the half of heaven, fresh and delicate as the bonfires of the meadow flies. Yet the powers of numbers cannot compute its enormous age--lasting as time and s.p.a.ce--embosomed in time and s.p.a.ce. And time and s.p.a.ce, what are they? Our first problems, which we ponder all our lives through, and leave where we found them; whose outrunning immensity, the old Greeks believed, astonished the G.o.ds themselves; of whose dizzy vast.i.tudes, all the worlds of G.o.d are a mere dot on the margin; impossible to deny, impossible to believe. Yet the moral element in man counterpoises this dismaying immensity and bereaves it of terror."

Emerson has been called the prince of Transcendentalists. It is nearer the truth to call him the prince of idealists. A Transcendentalist, in the technical sense of the term, it cannot be clearly affirmed that he was. Certainly he cannot be reckoned a disciple of Kant, or Jacobi, or Fichte, or Sch.e.l.ling. He calls no man master; he receives no teaching on authority. It is not certain that he ever made a study of the Transcendental philosophy in the works of its chief exposition. In his lecture on "The Transcendentalist," delivered in 1842, he conveys the impression that it is idealism--active and protesting--an excited reaction against formalism, tradition, and conventionalism in every sphere. As such, he describes it with great vividness and beauty. But as such merely, it was not apprehended by metaphysicians like James Walker, theologians like Parker or preachers like William Henry Channing.

Emerson does not claim for the soul a special faculty, like faith or intuition, by which truths of the spiritual order are perceived, as objects are perceived by the senses. He contends for no doctrines, whether of G.o.d or the hereafter, or the moral law, on the credit of such interior revelation. He neither dogmatizes nor defines. On the contrary, his chief anxiety seems to be to avoid committing himself to opinions; to keep all questions open; to close no avenue in any direction to the free ingress and egress of the mind. He gives no description of G.o.d that will cla.s.s him as theist or pantheist; no definition of immortality that justifies his readers in imputing to him any form of the popular belief in regard to it. Does he believe in personal immortality? It is impertinent to ask. He will not be questioned; not because he doubts, but because his beliefs are so rich, various and many-sided, that he is unwilling, by laying emphasis on any one, to do an apparent injustice to others. He will be held to no definitions; he will be reduced to no final statements. The mind must have free range. Critics complain of the tantalizing fragmentariness of his writing; it is evidence of the shyness and modesty of his mind. He dwells in principles, and will not be cabined in beliefs. He needs the full expanse of the Eternal Reason.

In the chapter on Worship--"Conduct of Life," p. 288, he writes thus:

"Of immortality, the soul, when well employed, is incurious; it is so well, that it is sure it will be well; it asks no questions of the Supreme Power; 'tis a higher thing to confide, that if it is best we should live, we shall live--it is higher to have this conviction than to have the lease of indefinite centuries, and millenniums and aeons. Higher than the question of our duration, is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he who would be a great soul in future, must be a great soul now. It is a doctrine too great to rest on any legend, that is, on any man's experience but our own. It must be proved, if at all, from our own activity and designs, which imply an interminable future for their play."

The discourse on Immortality, which closes the volume, "Letters and Social Aims," moves on with steady power, towards the conclusion of belief. Emerson really seems about to commit himself; he argues and affirms, with extraordinary positiveness. Of skepticism, on the subject, he says:

"I admit that you shall find a good deal of skepticism in the streets and hotels, and places of coa.r.s.e amus.e.m.e.nt. But that is only to say that the practical faculties are faster developed than the spiritual. Where there is depravity there is a slaughter-house style of thinking. One argument of future life is the recoil of the mind in such company--our pain at every skeptical statement."

His enumeration of "the few simple elements of the natural faith," is as clear and cogent as was ever made. He urges the delight in permanence and stability, in immense s.p.a.ces and reaches of time. "Every thing is prospective, and man is to live hereafter." He urges that:

"The implanting of a desire indicates that the gratification of that desire is in the const.i.tution of the creature that feels it; the wish for food; the wish for motion; the wish for sleep, for society, for knowledge, are not random whims, but grounded in the structure of the creature, and meant to be satisfied by food; by motion; by sleep; by society; by knowledge. If there is the desire to live, and in larger sphere, with more knowledge and power, it is because life and knowledge and power are good for us, and we are the natural depositaries of these gifts."

He ranks as a hint of endless being the novelty which perpetually attends life:

"The soul does not age with the body." "Every really able man, in whatever direction he work--a man of large affairs--an inventor, a statesman, an orator, a poet, a painter--if you talk sincerely with him, considers his work, however much admired, as far short of what it should be. What is this 'Better,' this flying ideal but the perpetual promise of his Creator?"