Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems.
of the valiant who had left their bodies on the fields of strife below.
Nectar should combine the virtues of the ruby wine, the golden mead,
without their defects or dangers.
Two high claims on the attention of his contemporaries our writer can
vindicate. One from his sincerity. You have his thought just as it found
place in the life of his own soul. Thus, however near or relatively
distant its approximation to absolute truth, its action on you cannot
fail to be healthful. It is a part of the free air.
Emerson belongs to that band of whom there may be found a few in every
age, and who now in known human history may be counted by hundreds, who
worship the one God only, the God of Truth. They worship, not saints,
nor creeds, nor churches, nor reliques, nor idols in any form. The mind
is kept open to truth, and life only valued as a tendency towards it.
This must be illustrated by acts and words of love, purity and
intelligence. Such are the salt of the earth; let the minutest crystal
of that salt be willingly by us held in solution.
The other claim is derived from that part of his life, which, if
sometimes obstructed or chilled by the critical intellect, is yet the
prevalent and the main source of his power. It is that by which he
imprisons his hearer only to free him again as a "liberating God," (to
use his own words.) But, indeed, let us use them altogether, for none
other, ancient or modern, can more worthily express how, making present
to us the courses and destinies of nature, he invests himself with her
serenity and animates us with her joy.
"Poetry was all written before time was; and whenever we are so finely
organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music,
we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we
lose ever and anon a word or a verse, and substitute something of our
own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down
these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect,
become the songs of the nations."
Thus have we, in a brief and unworthy manner, indicated some views of
these books. The only true criticism of these or any good books may be
gained by making them the companions of our lives. Does every accession
of knowledge or a juster sense of beauty make us prize them more? Then
they are good, indeed, and more immortal than mortal. Let that test be
applied to these Essays which will lead to great and complete
poems--somewhere.
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.[27]
We have had this book before us for several weeks, but the task of
reading it has been so repulsive that we have been obliged to get
through it by short stages, with long intervals of rest and refreshment
between, and have only just reached the end. We believe, however, we are
now possessed of its substance, so far as it is possible to admit into
any mind matter wholly uncongenial with its structure, its faith, and
its hope.
Meanwhile others have shown themselves more energetic in the task, and
notices have appeared that express, in part, our own views. Among others
an able critic has thus summed up his impressions:--
"Of the whole we will say briefly, that its premises are monstrous, its
reasoning sophistical, its conclusions absurd, and its spirit diabolic."
We know not that we can find a better scheme of arrangement for what we
have to say than by dividing it into sections under these four heads:--
1st. The premises are monstrous. Here we must add the qualification,
they are monstrous _to us_. The God of these writers is not the God we
recognize; the views they have of human nature are antipodal to ours. We
believe in a Creative Spirit, the essense of whose being is Love. He has
created men in the spirit of love, intending to develop them to perfect
harmony with himself. He has permitted the temporary existence of evil
as a condition necessary to bring out in them free agency and
individuality of character. Punishment is the necessary result of a bad
choice in them; it is not meant by him as vengeance, but as an
admonition to choose better. Man is not born totally evil; he is born
capable both of good and evil, and the Holy Spirit in working on him
only quickens the soul already there to know its Father. To one who
takes such views the address of Jesus becomes intelligible--"Be ye
therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful." "For with the same
measure that ye mete withal, it shall be measured to you again."
Those who take these views of the relation between God and man must
naturally tend to have punishment consist as much as possible in the
inward spiritual results of faults, rather than a violent outward
enforcement of penalty. They must, so far as possible, seek to revere
God by showing themselves brotherly to man; and if they wish to obey
Christ, will not forget that he came especially to call _sinners_ to
repentance.
The views of these writers are the opposite of all this. We need not
state them; they are sufficiently indicated in each page of their own.
Their conclusions are the natural result of such premises. We could say
nothing about either, except to express dissent from beginning to end.
Yet would it be sweet and noble, and worthy of this late period of human
progress, if their position had been stated in a spirit of religious, of
manly courtesy; if they had had the soul to say, "We differ from you,
but we know that so wide and full a stream of thought and emotion as you
are moved by could not, under the providential rule in which we believe,
have arisen in vain. The object of every such manifestation of life must
be to bring out truth; come, let us seek it together. Let us show you
our view, compare it with yours, and let us see which is the better. If,
as we think, the truth lie with us, what joy will it be for us to cast
the clear light on the object of your aspirations!"
Of this degree of liberality we have known some, even, who served the
same creed as these writers to be capable. There is, indeed, a higher
spirit, which, believing all forms of opinion which we hold in the
present stage of our growth can be but approximations to truth, and that
God has permitted to the multitude of men a multitude of ways by which
they may approach one common goal, looks with reverence on all modes of
faith sincerely held and acted upon, and while it rejoices in those
souls which have reached the higher stages of spiritual growth, has no
despair as to those which still grope in a narrow path and by a
glimmering light. Such liberality is, of course, out of the question
with such writers as the present. Their faith binds them to believe that
they have absolute truth, and that all who do not believe as they do are
wretched heretics. Those whose creed is of narrower scope are to them
hateful bigots; but also those with whom it is of wider are
latitudinarians or infidels. The spot of earth on which they stand is
the only one safe from the conflagration, and only through spectacles
and spyglasses such as are used by them can the sun and stars be seen.
Yet, as we said before, some such, though incapacitated for an
intellectual, are not so for a spiritual tolerance. With them the heart,
more Christ-like than the creed, urges to a spirit of love and reverence
even towards convictions opposed to their own. The sincere man is always
respectable in their eyes, and they cannot help feeling that, wherever
there is a desire for truth, there is the spirit of God, and his true
priests will approach with gentleness, and do their ministry with holy
care. Unhappily, it is very different with the persons before us.
We let go the first two counts of the indictment. Their premises are, as
we have said, such as we totally dissent from, and their conclusions
such as naturally flow from those premises. Yet they are those of a
large body of men, and there must, no doubt, be temporary good in this
state of things, or it would not be permitted. When these writers say,
that to them moral and penal are coincident terms, they display a state
of mind which prefers basing virtue on the fear of punishment, rather
than the love of right. If this be sincerely their state, if the idea of
morality is with them entirely dependent on the retributions upon vice,
rather than the loveliness and joys of goodness, it is impossible for
those who are in a different state of mind to say what they _do_ need.
It may seem to us, indeed, that, if the strait jacket was taken off,
they might recover the natural energy of their frames, and do far better
without it; or that, if no longer hurried along the road by the
impending lash behind, they might uplift their eyes, and find sufficient
cause for speed in the glory visible before, though at a distance;
however, it is not for us to say what their wants are. Let them choose
their own principles of action, and if they lead to purity of life, and
benevolence, and humanity of heart, we will not say a word against them.
But in the instance before us, they do not produce these good fruits,
but the contrary; and therefore we have something to say on the other
part of the criticism, to wit: that "the reasoning is sophistical, and
the spirit diabolic;" for, indeed, in the sense of pride by which the
angels fell, arrogance of judgment, malice, and all uncharitableness, we
have never looked on printed pages more deeply sinful. We love an honest
lover; but next best, we, with Dr. Johnson, know how to respect an
honest hater. But even he would scarce endure so bitter and ardent
haters as these, and with so many and inconsistent objects of
hatred--who hate Catholics and thorough Protestants, hate materialists,
and hate spiritualists. Their list is really too large for _human_
sympathy.
We wish, however, to make all due allowance for incapacity in these
writers to do better; and their disqualifications for their task, apart
from a form of belief which inclines them rather to cling to the past,
than to seek progress for the future, seem to be many.
The "reasoning is sophistical," and it would need the patience of a
Socrates to unravel the weary web, and convince these sophists, against
their will, that they are exactly in the opposite region to what they
suppose. For the task we have not space, skill, or patience; but we can
give some hints by which readers may be led to examine whether it is so
or not.
These writers profess to occupy the position of defence; surely never
was one sustained so in the spirit of offence.
1st. They appeal either to the natural or regenerate man, as suits their
purpose. Sometimes all traditions and their literal interpretations are
right; sometimes it is impossible to interpret them aright, unless
according to some peculiar doctrine, and the natural inference of the
common mind would be an error.
2d. They strain, but vainly, to show the New Testament no improvement on
the Old, and themselves in harmonious relations to both. On this subject
we would confidently leave the arbitration to a mind--could such a one
be found--sufficiently disciplined to examine the subject, and new both
to the New Testament and this volume, as that of Rammohun Roy might have
been, whether its views are not of the same strain that Jesus sought to
correct and enlighten among the Jews, and whether the writers do not
treat the teachings of the new dispensation most unfairly, in their
desire to wrest them into the service of the old.
3d. Wherever there is a weak place in the argument, it is filled up by
abuse of the opposite party. The words "absurd," "infidel,"
"blasphemous," "shallow philosophy," "sickly sentimentalism," and the
like, are among the favorite missiles of these _defenders_ of the truth.
They are of a sort whose frequent use is generally supposed to argue the