Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems.
Our people, heated by a partisan spirit, necessarily occupied in these
first stages by bringing out the material resources of the land, not
generally prepared by early training for the enjoyment of books that
require attention and reflection, are still more injured by a large
majority of writers and speakers, who lend all their efforts to flatter
corrupt tastes and mental indolence, instead of feeling it their
prerogative and their duty to admonish the community of the danger and
arouse it to nobler energy. The plan of the popular writer or lecturer
is not to say the best he knows in as few and well-chosen words as he
can, making it his first aim to do justice to the subject. Rather he
seeks to beat out a thought as thin as possible, and to consider what
the audience will be most willing to receive.
The result of such a course is inevitable. Literature and art must
become daily more degraded; philosophy cannot exist. A man who feels
within his mind some spark of genius, or a capacity for the exercises of
talent, should consider himself as endowed with a sacred commission. He
is the natural priest, the shepherd of the people. He must raise his
mind as high as he can towards the heaven of truth, and try to draw up
with him those less gifted by nature with ethereal lightness. If he does
not so, but rather employs his powers to flatter them in their poverty,
and to hinder aspiration by useless words, and a mere seeming of
activity, his sin is great; he is false to God, and false to man.
Much of this sin indeed is done ignorantly. The idea that literature
calls men to the genuine hierarchy is almost forgotten. One, who finds
himself able, uses his pen, as he might a trowel, solely to procure
himself bread, without having reflected on the position in which he
thereby places himself.
Apart from the troop of mercenaries, there is one, still larger, of
those who use their powers merely for local and temporary ends, aiming
at no excellence other than may conduce to these. Among these rank
persons of honor and the best intentions; but they neglect the lasting
for the transient, as a man neglects to furnish his mind that he may
provide the better for the house in which his body is to dwell for a few
years.
At a period when these sins and errors are prevalent, and threaten to
become more so, how can we sufficiently prize and honor a mind which is
quite pure from such? When, as in the present case, we find a man whose
only aim is the discernment and interpretation of the spiritual laws by
which we live, and move, and have our being, all whose objects are
permanent, and whose every word stands for a fact.
If only as a representative of the claims of individual culture in a
nation which is prone to lay such stress on artificial organization and
external results, Mr. Emerson would be invaluable here. History will
inscribe his name as a father of his country, for he is one who pleads
her cause against herself.
If New England may be regarded as a chief mental focus to the New
World,--and many symptoms seem to give her this place,--as to other
centres belong the characteristics of heart and lungs to the body
politic; if we may believe, as we do believe, that what is to be acted
out, in the country at large, is, most frequently, first indicated
there, as all the phenomena of the nervous system are in the fantasies
of the brain, we may hail as an auspicious omen the influence Mr.
Emerson has there obtained, which is deep-rooted, increasing, and, over
the younger portion of the community, far greater than that of any other
person.
His books are received there with a more ready intelligence than
elsewhere, partly because his range of personal experience and
illustration applies to that region; partly because he has prepared the
way for his books to be read by his great powers as a speaker.
The audience that waited for years upon the lectures, a part of which is
incorporated into these volumes of Essays, was never large, but it was
select, and it was constant. Among the hearers were some, who, though,
attracted by the beauty of character and manner, they were willing to
hear the speaker through, yet always went away discontented. They were
accustomed to an artificial method, whose scaffolding could easily be
retraced, and desired an obvious sequence of logical inferences. They
insisted there was nothing in what they had heard, because they could
not give a clear account of its course and purport. They did not see
that Pindar's odes might be very well arranged for their own purpose,
and yet not bear translating into the methods of Mr. Locke.
Others were content to be benefited by a good influence, without a
strict analysis of its means. "My wife says it is about the elevation of
human nature, and so it seems to me," was a fit reply to some of the
critics. Many were satisfied to find themselves excited to congenial
thought and nobler life, without an exact catalogue of the thoughts of
the speaker.
Those who believed no truth could exist, unless encased by the burrs of
opinion, went away utterly baffled. Sometimes they thought he was on
their side; then presently would come something on the other. He really
seemed to believe there were two sides to every subject, and even to
intimate higher ground, from which each might be seen to have an
infinite number of sides or bearings, an impertinence not to be endured!
The partisan heard but once, and returned no more.
But some there were,--simple souls,--whose life had been, perhaps,
without clear light, yet still a-search after truth for its own sake,
who were able to receive what followed on the suggestion of a subject in
a natural manner, as a stream of thought. These recognized, beneath the
veil of words, the still small voice of conscience, the vestal fires of
lone religious hours, and the mild teachings of the summer woods.
The charm of the elocution, too, was great. His general manner was that
of the reader, occasionally rising into direct address or invocation in
passages where tenderness or majesty demanded more energy. At such times
both eye and voice called on a remote future to give a worthy reply,--a
future which shall manifest more largely the universal soul as it was
then manifest to this soul. The tone of the voice was a grave body tone,
full and sweet rather than sonorous, yet flexible, and haunted by many
modulations, as even instruments of wood and brass seem to become after
they have been long played on with skill and taste; how much more so the
human voice! In the more expressive passages it uttered notes of
silvery clearness, winning, yet still more commanding. The words uttered
in those tones floated a while above us, then took root in the memory
like winged seed.
In the union of an even rustic plainness with lyric inspirations,
religious dignity with philosophic calmness, keen sagacity in details
with boldness of view, we saw what brought to mind the early poets and
legislators of Greece--men who taught their fellows to plough and avoid
moral evil, sing hymns to the gods, and watch the metamorphoses of
nature. Here in civic Boston was such a man--one who could see man in
his original grandeur and his original childishness, rooted in simple
nature, raising to the heavens the brow and eyes of a poet.
And these lectures seemed not so much lectures as grave didactic poems,
theogonies, perhaps, adorned by odes when some power was in question
whom the poet had best learned to serve, and with eclogues wisely
portraying in familiar tongue the duties of man to man and "harmless
animals."
Such was the attitude in which the speaker appeared to that portion of
the audience who have remained permanently attached to him. They value
his words as the signets of reality; receive his influence as a help and
incentive to a nobler discipline than the age, in its general aspect,
appears to require; and do not fear to anticipate the verdict of
posterity in claiming for him the honors of greatness, and, in some
respects, of a master.
In New England Mr. Emerson thus formed for himself a class of readers
who rejoice to study in his books what they already know by heart. For,
though the thought has become familiar, its beautiful garb is always
fresh and bright in hue.
A similar circle of "like-minded" persons the books must and do form for
themselves, though with a movement less directly powerful, as more
distant from its source.
The Essays have also been obnoxious to many charges; to that of
obscurity, or want of perfect articulation; of "euphuism," as an excess
of fancy in proportion to imagination; and an inclination, at times, to
subtlety at the expense of strength, have been styled. The human heart
complains of inadequacy, either in the nature or experience of the
writer, to represent its full vocation and its deeper needs. Sometimes
it speaks of this want as "under development," or a want of expansion
which may yet be remedied; sometimes doubts whether "in this mansion
there be either hall or portal to receive the loftier of the passions."
Sometimes the soul is deified at the expense of nature, then again
nature at that of man; and we are not quite sure that we can make a true
harmony by balance of the statements. This writer has never written one
good work, if such a work be one where the whole commands more attention
than the parts, or if such a one be produced only where, after an
accumulation of materials, fire enough be applied to fuse the whole into
one new substance. This second series is superior in this respect to the
former; yet in no one essay is the main stress so obvious as to produce
on the mind the harmonious effect of a noble river or a tree in full
leaf. Single passages and sentences engage our attention too much in
proportion. These Essays, it has been justly said, tire like a string of
mosaics or a house built of medals. We miss what we expect in the work
of the great poet, or the great philosopher--the liberal air of all the
zones; the glow, uniform yet various in tint, which is given to a body
by free circulation of the heart's blood from the hour of birth. Here
is, undoubtedly, the man of ideas; but we want the ideal man also--want
the heart and genius of human life to interpret it; and here our
satisfaction is not so perfect. We doubt this friend raised himself too
early to the perpendicular, and did not lie along the ground long enough
to hear the secret whispers of our parent life. We could wish he might
be thrown by conflicts on the lap of mother earth, to see if he would
not rise again with added powers.
All this we may say, but it cannot excuse us from benefiting by the
great gifts that have been given, and assigning them their due place.
Some painters paint on a red ground. And this color may be supposed to
represent the groundwork most immediately congenial to most men, as it
is the color of blood, and represents human vitality. The figures traced
upon it are instinct with life in its fulness and depth.
But other painters paint on a gold ground. And a very different, but no
less natural, because also a celestial beauty, is given to their works
who choose for their foundation the color of the sunbeam, which Nature
has preferred for her most precious product, and that which will best
bear the test of purification--gold.
If another simile may be allowed, another no less apt is at hand. Wine
is the most brilliant and intense expression of the powers of earth. It
is her potable fire, her answer to the sun. It exhilarates, it inspires,
but then it is liable to fever and intoxicate, too, the careless
partaker.
Mead was the chosen drink of the northern gods. And this essence of the
honey of the mountain bee was not thought unworthy to revive the souls