Complete Prose Works
trying it all by Nature--_first premises_ many call it, but really the
crowning results of all, laws, tallies and proofs. (Has it never occur'd
to any one how the last deciding tests applicable to a book are
entirely outside of technical and grammatical ones, and that any truly
first-class production has little or nothing to do with the rules and
calibres of ordinary critics? or the bloodless chalk of Allibone's
Dictionary? I have fancied the ocean and the daylight, the mountain
and the forest, putting their spirit in a judgment on our books. I have
fancied some disembodied human soul giving its verdict.)
NATURE AND DEMOCRACY--MORALITY
Democracy most of all affiliates with the open air, is sunny and hardy
and sane only with Nature--just as much as Art is. Something is required
to temper both--to check them, restrain them from excess, morbidity. I
have wanted, before departure, to bear special testimony to a very old
lesson and requisite. American Democracy, in its myriad personalities,
in factories, work-shops, stores, offices--through the dense streets and
houses of cities, and all their manifold sophisticated life--must either
be fibred, vitalized, by regular contact with out-door light and air and
growths, farm-scenes, animals, fields, trees, birds, sun-warmth and free
skies, or it will certainly dwindle and pale. We cannot have grand races
of mechanics, work people, and commonalty, (the only specific purpose
of America,) on any less terms. I conceive of no flourishing and heroic
elements of Democracy in the United States, or of Democracy maintaining
itself at all, without the Nature-element forming a main part--to be
its health-element and beauty-element--to really underlie the whole
politics, sanity, religion and art of the New World.
Finally, the morality: "Virtue," said Marcus Aurelius, "what is it,
only a living and enthusiastic sympathy with Nature?" Perhaps indeed the
efforts of the true poets, founders, religions, literatures, all ages,
have been, and ever will be, our time and times to come, essentially the
same--to bring people back from their persistent strayings and sickly
abstractions, to the costless average, divine, original concrete.
COLLECT
ONE OR TWO INDEX ITEMS
Though the ensuing COLLECT and preceding SPECIMEN DAYS are both largely
from memoranda already existing, the hurried peremptory needs of copy
for the printers, already referr'd to--(the musicians' story of a
composer up in a garret rushing the middle body and last of his score
together, while the fiddlers are playing the first parts down in the
concert-room)--of this haste, while quite willing to get the consequent
stimulus of life and motion, I am sure there must have resulted sundry
technical errors. If any are too glaring they will be corrected in a
future edition.
A special word about PIECES IN EARLY YOUTH at the end. On jaunts over
Long Island, as boy and young fellow, nearly half a century ago, I heard
of, or came across in my own experience, characters, true occurrences,
incidents, which I tried my 'prentice hand at recording--(I was
then quite an "abolitionist" and advocate of the "temperance" and
"anti-capital-punishment" causes)--and publish'd during occasional
visits to New York city. A majority of the sketches appear'd first in
the "Democratic Review," others in the "Columbian Magazine," or the
"American Review," of that period. My serious wish were to have all
those crude and boyish pieces quietly dropp'd in oblivion--but to avoid
the annoyance of their surreptitious issue, (as lately announced, from
outsiders,) I have, with some qualms, tack'd them on here. _A Dough-Face
Song_ came out first in the "Evening Post"--_Blood-Money_, and _Wounded
in the House of Friends_, in the "Tribune."
_Poetry To-day in America_, &c., first appear'd (under the name of "_The
Poetry of the Future_,") in "The North American Review" for February,
1881. _A Memorandum at a Venture_, in same periodical, some time
afterward.
Several of the convalescent out-door scenes and literary items,
preceding, originally appear'd in the fortnightly "Critic," of New York.
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS
As the greatest lessons of Nature through the universe are perhaps the
lessons of variety and freedom, the same present the greatest lessons
also in New World politics and progress. If a man were ask'd, for
instance, the distinctive points contrasting modern European and
American political and other life with the old Asiatic cultus, as
lingering-bequeath'd yet in China and Turkey, he might find the amount
of them in John Stuart Mill's profound essay on Liberty in the future,
where he demands two main constituents, or sub-strata, for a truly grand
nationality--1st, a large variety of character--and 2d, full play
for human nature to expand itself in numberless and even conflicting
directions--(seems to be for general humanity much like the influences
that make up, in their limitless field, that perennial health-action of
the air we call the weather--an infinite number of currents and forces,
and contributions, and temperatures, and cross-purposes, whose ceaseless
play of counterpart upon counterpart brings constant restoration and
vitality.) With this thought--and not for itself alone, but all it
necessitates, and draws after it--let me begin my speculations.
America, filling the present with greatest deeds and problems,
cheerfully accepting the past, including feudalism, (as, indeed, the
present is but the legitimate birth of the past, including feudalism,)
counts, as I reckon, for her justification and success, (for who, as
yet, dare claim success?) almost entirely on the future. Nor is that
hope unwarranted. To-day, ahead, though dimly yet, we see, in vistas, a
copious, sane, gigantic offspring. For our New World I consider far less
important for what it has done, or what it is, than for results to come.
Sole among nationalities, these States have assumed the task to put in
forms of lasting power and practicality, on areas of amplitude rivaling
the operations of the physical kosmos, the moral political speculations
of ages, long, long deferr'd, the democratic republican principle, and
the theory of development and perfection by voluntary standards, and
self-reliance. Who else, indeed, except the United States, in history,
so far, have accepted in unwitting faith, and, as we now see, stand, act
upon, and go security for, these things? But preluding no longer, let
me strike the key-note of the following strain. First premising that,
though the passages of it have been written at widely different
times, (it is, in fact, a collection of memoranda, perhaps for future
designers, comprehenders,) and though it may be open to the charge of
one part contradicting another--for there are opposite sides to the
great question of democracy, as to every great question--I feel the
parts harmoniously blended in my own realization and convictions, and
present them to be read only in such oneness, each page and each claim
and assertion modified and temper'd by the others. Bear in mind, too,
that they are not the result of studying up in political economy, but of
the ordinary sense, observing, wandering among men, these States, these
stirring years of war and peace. I will not gloss over the appaling
dangers of universal suffrage in the United States. In fact, it is to
admit and face these dangers I am writing. To him or her within whose
thought rages the battle, advancing, retreating, between democracy's
convictions, aspirations, and the people's crudeness, vice, caprices, I
mainly write this essay. I shall use the words America and democracy as
convertible terms. Not an ordinary one is the issue. The United States
are destined either to surmount the gorgeous history of feudalism, or
else prove the most tremendous failure of time. Not the least doubtful
am I on any prospects of their material success. The triumphant future
of their business, geographic and productive departments, on larger
scales and in more varieties than ever, is certain. In those respects
the republic must soon (if she does not already) outstrip all examples
hitherto afforded, and dominate the world.[20]
Admitting all this, with the priceless value of our political
institutions, general suffrage, (and fully acknowledging the latest,
widest opening of the doors,) I say that, far deeper than these, what
finally and only is to make of our western world a nationality superior
to any hither known, and out-topping the past, must be vigorous,
yet unsuspected Literatures, perfect personalities and sociologies,
original, transcendental, and expressing (what, in highest sense, are
not yet express'd at all,) democracy and the modern. With these, and
out of these, I promulge new races of Teachers, and of perfect Women,
indispensable to endow the birth-stock of a New World. For feudalism,
caste, the ecclesiastic traditions, though palpably retreating from
political institutions, still hold essentially, by their spirit, even in
this country, entire possession of the more important fields, indeed the
very subsoil, of education, and of social standards and literature.
I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it
founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools,
theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere
in the past, under opposite influences. It is curious to me that
while so many voices, pens, minds, in the press, lecture-rooms, in our
Congress, &c., are discussing intellectual topics, pecuniary dangers,
legislative problems, the suffrage, tariff and labor questions, and the
various business and benevolent needs of America, with propositions,
remedies, often worth deep attention, there is one need, a hiatus the
profoundest, that no eye seems to perceive, no voice to state. Our
fundamental want to-day in the United States, with closest, amplest
reference to present conditions, and to the future, is of a class,
and the clear idea of a class, of native authors, literatuses, far
different, far higher in grade than any yet known, sacerdotal, modern,
fit to cope with our occasions, lands, permeating the whole mass of
American mentality, taste, belief, breathing into it a new breath of
life, giving it decision, affecting politics far more than the popular
superficial suffrage, with results inside and underneath the elections
of Presidents or Congresses--radiating, begetting appropriate teachers,
schools, manners, and, as its grandest result, accomplishing, (what
neither the schools nor the churches and their clergy have hitherto
accomplish'd, and without which this nation will no more stand,
permanently, soundly, than a house will stand without a substratum,) a
religious and moral character beneath the political and productive
and intellectual bases of the States. For know you not, dear, earnest
reader, that the people of our land may all read and write, and may
all possess the right to vote--and yet the main things may be entirely
lacking?--(and this to suggest them.)
View'd, to-day, from a point of view sufficiently over-arching,
the problem of humanity all over the civilized world is social and
religious, and is to be finally met and treated by literature. The
priest departs, the divine literatus comes. Never was anything more
wanted than, to-day, and here in the States, the poet of the modern is
wanted, or the great literatus of the modern. At all times, perhaps, the
central point in any nation, and that whence it is itself really sway'd
the most, and whence it sways others, is its national literature,
especially its archetypal poems. Above all previous lands, a great
original literature is surely to become the justification and reliance,
(in some respects the sole reliance,) of American democracy.