Class \h%% Book JA^ CoipghtN" COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. EMERSON EM ERSON HIS CONTRIBUTION TO LITERATURE By DAVID LEE MAULSBY TUFTS COLLEGE, MASS. THE TUFTS COLLEGE PRESS Copyright, 191 i, By Lillian A. Maulsby 1 1,^ 'CI,A3<) ^VI, 320, 321 : " That story of Thor . . . ' 34 ' Further, the close STYLE ample of the seer speaking at his best is the closing paragraph of " Illusions " : "There is no chance and no anarchy in the uni- verse. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere. The young mortal enters the hall of the firmament ; there is he aione with them alone, they pouring on him benedictions and gifts, and beckoning him up to their thrones. On the instant, and incessantly, fall snow-storms of illusions. He fancies himself in a vast crowd which sways this way and that, and whose move- ments and doings he must obey : he fancies him- self poor, orphaned, insignificant. The mad crowd drives hither and thither, now furiously command- ing this thing to be done, now that. What is he that he should resist their will, and think or act for himself ? Every moment new changes and new showers of deceptions to baffle and distract him. And when, by and by, for an instant, the air clears and the cloud lifts a little, there are the gods sitting around him on their thrones, — they alone with him alone." ' So Emerson, who once wished to be a teacher of the essay on Power, vi, 8i, 82 : "I know no more arfecting lesson ..." Also on Money, vi, loi. Again, "Works and Days," VII, 184, 185. Probably the height of Emerson's sus- tained eloquence was reached (xi, 439-443) on Burns. 'VI, 325. 35 EMERSON of rhetoric in Harvard University, that he might make orators, though as he said, he himself was none, pronounced in the course of his daily work passages of the most vital oratory, because the most sincere. They are sometimes like hammered brass, and less often like the flow of the running river. Always they are the original utterance of one who wrought out his own fitting and unique method of speech. As his own they speak to us with lasting power. 36 Ill MODERN IDEALISM : GOETHE CARLYLE MODERN IDEALISM: GOETHE: CARLYLE Having discovered the leading doctrines of Emer- son and some of the leading qualities of his style, we next inquire concerning the effect of his read- ing. The style of Emerson has appeared to be original, securing by its combination of strength and simplicity an axiomatic point the derivation of which it is almost hopeless to search for among the many books he read, if indeed it is to be found in books at all. Is the question equally hopeless : Are the leading ideas of Emerson his own ? The world had reached a fulness of years when he began to think and write. Centuries of thinkers and writers had preceded him. To utter a doct- rine entirely new was, a priori, a matter of great difficulty. Did Emerson succeed in striking out a fresh path on the complicated map of ideas, or was his mission rather to stimulate others to walk bravely in age-approved paths, as he himself was doing } In short, was he primarily a revealer, or an inspirer ? To answer this question will take us into the course of his reading, and it may be said here that 39 EMERSON Emerson's manner of reading was his own. He sought in books primarily the thoughts that, so far as he could tell, he already entertained. Or he sought concrete illustrations of such thought. Or, again, he sought stimulus and a working mood. That book he Uked best which put him into the frame of mind for work, and by work he meant the expression of such thoughts as, when heard or read by others, would in turn benefit men, by giving them the good hope which never left him, and by estab- lishing those foundations of faith which result in high and orderly living. The main lines of Emerson's reading, desultory though it was, were in the current idealism, with occasional excursions into mysticism and pantheism; in the philosophy and poetry of the Orient ; in Plato, with less important Greek philosophers, and in Montaigne. He preferred the poets to the philosophers, but it must be remembered that he called Swedenborg and Plato poets. From the English poets it is safe to say Emerson gained life rather than doctrine, — a stimulus to self-expres- sion. Wordsworth he never fully admired, though Wordsworth's view of nature as the gateway to God was not unlike his own. Shakespeare to Emerson lacked the moral elevation which will mark the Prophet-Poet of the future. From Plutarch, in the nature of the case, he culled anec- 40 IDEALISM dote rather than absorbed philosophy. From the preacher WiUiam Ellery Channing, whom as a youth he had heard with delight, Emerson received the truth that morality and religion blend, one into the other; from him he learned the progressive Right, revealing itself to every human soul ; the one-ness of each soul to its divine Source ; its power to receive Divinity and to grow ; the sacred- ness of the individual conscience, and the freedom due to individual thought. He found as well in Channing some things that he did not fully accept, such as a postulating of the unique nature of Christ, a special emphasis upon the Bible, and an unqualified belief in immortality. It will be sufficient, therefore, to confine our inquiry to the lines already laid down. Let us begin by asking what Emerson found in the current idealism, historically descending from Berkeley, and expressed with more variety and vigor in Germany, whence it was interpreted for English readers by Coleridge and Carlyle. A letter from Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson, in answer to questions concerning his father's ac- quaintance with philosophy, says : " In college Mr. Emerson read Cudworth,' dehghting in his book ^Emerson puts Cudworth among authors of the second class, in an abstract of a lecture given in Appendix F to Cabot's 41 EMERSON not for the writer's views but for what it told him of Plato and the older philosophers ; and he was thus led to their works. The ancient philosophers with their poetical ideas — Heracleitus, Xenophanes, Empedocles, Plato, and the Neo-Platonists, espe- cially Plotinus, — appealed to him far more than modern metaphysicians, for whose works he cared little. . . . He first got at the thoughts of the Germans (from Eckhart and Leibnitz down to Kant, Goethe, Oken, and Schelling) through Cole- ridge, in whose works he took great pleasure. . . . But it was the great poets he cared for as teachers far more than the metaphysicians. He classed Swedenborg and Plato as poets." It appears, then, that Emerson gave heartiest attention to writers of imagination, and that he turned more readily to the ancient than to the modern philosophers. This view is corroborated by a passage in " English Traits," ' in the midst of which, citing Berkeley, Schelling, Hegel, and many more as examples of men who lived on a high plane of thought, Emerson says : ^* These ... do all have a kind of filial retrospect to Plato and the Greeks." "Life," p. 715. Cudworth was the author of "The True Intel- lectual System of the Universe " (167S). See iv, 294, and Index. ^P. 241. 42 IDEALISM Yet when a boy he had caught Berkeley's thought with delight, as a letter to Margaret Fuller tells us. " I know but one solution to my nature and rela- tions, which I find in remembering the joy with which in my boyhood I caught the first hint of the Berkeleyan philosophy, and which I certainly never lost sight of afterwards. ... I was not an electrician but an idealist. I could see that there was a Cause behind every stump and clod, and, by the help of some fine words, could make every old wagon and wood-pile and stone-wall oscillate a little and threaten to dance." ' The belief of Berkeley is hit off in another part of the passage from " English Traits " cited above : *' that we have no certain assurance of the existence of matter," ^ Moreover, throughout Emerson's works are scat- tered references by name, and occasionally by doct- rine, to the German philosophers of the Kantian school. " Build therefore your own world," say both Kant and Emerson. ^ Now and then Schel- ling is quoted.4 And Hegel's name appears oftener than any more explicit reference. 5 ^ Cabot's " Life," p. 478. ^v, 242. 3 Cabot's "Life," p. 261. i, 64; also, vi, 9. *v, 242; VI, 13. s But see v, 242. 43 EMERSON In fact, the use made by Emerson of the mod- ern idealistic philosophers is hke that he made of other books : he took what pleased him and let the rest go. Still, it will not do to let the case rest at this point. It is better to try to show how far Emerson's habitual thought agreed with the more prominent doctrines of modern idealism. We can see once for all that he made, in his writings, no attempt to enter into the difficult technical details of the several resultant philosophical systems. The name "Transcendentalist," used in a generic and modified sense, was one of the bequests of Kant's philosophy to the school of thought that flourished in New England in 1842; and in that year Emerson ascribed the origin of the half- derisive term to the Koningsberg thinker.' He harks back to Kant when he says : " Science has come to treat space and time as simply forms of thought";^ and still again when he accredits its author with his famous rule for moral conduct : "Act always so that the immediate motive of thy will may become a universal rule for all intelligent beings." ^ There is something more than acci- cident, perhaps, in the harmony between the em- ' See " The Transcendentalist," vol. I. 2 VI, 320. ^vii, 27. This rule is in mind again in x, 92. 44 IDEALISM phasis which Kant places upon the absolute good that resides in a being of good will, a being who does his duty, and Emerson's assertion at the close of " Compensation " that the good man alone has ab- solute good. It is probable, however, that Emerson never read Kant in the original, and never mas- tered the outlines of his philosophy as a whole. Certainly there is no discussion of Kant's peculiar tenets when the connection of thought would make such discussion appropriate.' For one thing, Kant was no optimist ; for another, he believed that the only reward of virtue — the only manifestation of God's benevolence — is made to man's moral consciousness. The practical side of Emerson's mind saw the long-deferred reward of virtue be- come manifest in circumstances as well as in character.^ Emerson does not, like Kant, postu- late immortality; he waits to see the outcome of mortal life, assured that it is good. And, as we have hinted, there is no reference in Emerson to categories and antinomies, to the things-in-them- selves and to the transcendental unity of apper- ception by which a man's thoughts are organized. At the close of an article on Kant printed in The Dial when Emerson was editor of it,^ appears ^ As, V, 238-244. ^ Close of " Compensation." 3 April, 1844. By J. E. Cabot. See "An Historical and Bio- 45 EMERSON the following inclusive sentence : " His main prin- ciple, however, which he so courageously and philo- sophically upholds throughout — that we can know nothing out of ourselves — contains the leading idea of Modern Philosophy." While we know that Emerson was ballasted with common sense enough to prevent entire absorption in mysticism, we know also that he looked within for the best revelation ; and in this emphasis upon the inner life in which both writers agree lies their main resemblance, and in some degree the indebtedness of the later to the earlier thinker. Of the post-Kantians, Emerson is most closely related to Schelling, both in doctrine and tempera- ment. Yet it is difficult to say that this relation is derivative in character. Mr. G. W. Cooke ex- presses the case fairly : " It is not probable that Emerson was to any more than a limited extent directly affected by Schelling, but it is certain that much of what he has taught is to be found in the writings of this philosopher." ' We shall have something more to say of Schelling, a little below ; meanwhile as to Fichte. With Fichte's emphasis on duty as the key to knowledge Emerson would graphical Introduction to The Dial,'' by G. W. Cooke (Cleve- land, The Rowfant Club, 1902). ^ " R. W. Emerson, his Life, Writings, and Philosophy," Boston, 1882; p. 278. 46 IDEALISM find himself in sympathy, though it is doubtful if he could have entertained the problem as to the explanation of human knowledge in its strictly metaphysical aspect. Besides, Fichte takes a more social view of the universe than it was in Emerson's temperament to do. Fichte's figure of the vine and the branches as expressing the relation of God to men is as old as Christianity, but Emerson's emphasis is rather upon the relation of each single branch to its source. And Emerson's God is larger than the whole of human society. Still, he would agree with Fichte that two can work together only if they see the same world.' But Emerson, after all, accepts the universe more passively, as in essence absolutely good. He looks toward amelioration of present ills, but he is less assertive, less combatant, and as we have said, less social than Fichte. Hegel, again, with his constant appeal from con- sciousness to other consciousness, was still farther from Emerson's quiet contemplation of his own soul. There is no explicit reference in Emerson to a social consciousness. In Hegel's Absolute as made up of all series of contradiction and strife, there is a hint, but only a hint, of Emerson's com- pensation. And of Hegel's crabbed terminology ' Royce : "The Spirit of Modern Philosophy," p. 153. 47 EMERSON we find no trace. It is true that there is at first glance a striking resemblance between the two authors as to the nature of history. Hegel sees fundamental consciousness coming to itself in human affairs. History, he says, is the content of God's consciousness. This doctrine sounds very like the opening sentence of Emerson's essay on History. And, if we allow for the suggestions of evolution that Emerson received from Lamarck and Oken, it is barely possible that we can assert a substantial identity between the two views. In his later years, Emerson read with pleasure the exposition of Hegel's doctrines made by Dr. J. Hutchinson Stirling, but Mr. Cabot says it was the style rather than the thought that impressed him. This judgment is strengthened by the letter which Emerson wrote to Carlyle, January 7, 1866, charg- ing Stirling (one would think truly) with having learned his manner from the beloved author of " Sartor Resartus." To come back to Schelling, as representative of the Romantic School of German philosophy : In Schelling Emerson found a congenial tempera- ment — not careful of consistency, impatient of system, fond of the concrete artistic expression of nature and of men. After all, Emerson, though he has been denied artistry, is at heart a poet, and always values words that are pictures, verses that 48 IDEALISM are '* Spheres and cubes, to be seen and handled." ' The " Identitats-Philosophie " is substantially Emer- son's. There is the thought world and there is the world of nature, apparently distinct ; but these two, says Schelling, are at base one. Nature is symbolic. There is analogy between the mind and the outer world, and in nature the enlight- ened may see spirit bodied forth. So in effect says Emerson. Both perceive an evolution of consciousness : . . . And the poor grass shall plot and plan What it will do when it is man. ^ Follow your genius wherever it leads, and change your mind when your heart changes. This is the message of both. In summary up to this point, let us say that Emerson caught the main idea of modern German philosophy, — the central reality of spirit, — and that here and there he echoed one or another minor idea of Kant and his immediate successors. But he was not primarily a philosopher, nor one to master philosophical systems ; and if the resem- blance between the utterances of Emerson and ^ Preface to " Parnassus," viii. ^"Bacchus": Poems, p. 126. "Plants grope ever upward toward consciousness." iii, 181. 49 EMERSON Schelling is strongest, it is because their person- ality was in the first place more nearly identical. The contact between Emerson and Goethe is closer. After his return from his first visit to Europe (1833), Emerson complied with the urgency of his new friend Carlyle so far as to make a man- ful effort to read the whole of Goethe in the origi- nal German. The fifty-five little volumes of the complete works used in this endeavor form part of Emerson's library at Concord. Considering that he had never before studied German, the task was stu- pendous. Yet we are told that his interest in Goethe grew, and in 1840 he was able to write Carlyle that he had " contrived to read almost every volume." ' Without doubt, in the multifarious German, Emerson came upon many illustrations of his own ideas. " It is delightful to find our own thought in so great a man," he wrote in his Journal, in 1844.^ Goethe furnished, both in his life and in his works, embodiment of the views that Emerson labored to express. ^ But there was, besides, a bond between those two, much as in many respects they differed. This bond was, in a single word, ' IV, 370. 'IV, 377- 3 See the Index to the complete works of Emerson, under " Goethe." 50 GOETHE the individualism of both. Goethe's aim, like Emerson's after him, was to live out his own life in his own way. Goethe, too, acknowledged that he sought his materials from a thousand persons, and borrowed unblushingly.' The main resem- blances between the two cease at this point. Goethe sought universal knowledge as a means to an end — culture. Further, in seeking to live his own life, Goethe descended to experiences that Emerson could not approve, much less imitate. For Emerson believed that " The foundation of culture, as of character, is at last the moral senti- ment.^ Thus, although there was always cordial recognition of the great German's encyclopedic attainments, to which the more slenderly furnished New Englander laid no claim, there was ahvays a serious qualification in the latter's admiration, sum- marized perhaps as well as anywhere in the sen- tence, '' Goethe, the surpassing intellect of modern times, apprehends the spiritual, but is not spir- itual." 3 Or, in other terms : " That Goethe had not a moral perception pro- portionate to his other powers is not, then, merely a circumstance, as we might relate of a man that he had or had not the sense of time or an eye for Man, 200. ^ VIII, 228. 'XII, 45. 51 EMERSON colors, but it is the cardinal fact of health or dis- ease ; since, lacking this, he failed in the high sense to be a creator, and, with divine endowments, drops by irreversible decree into the common history of genius. He was content to fall into the track of vulgar poets and spend on common aims his splendid endowments, and has declined the office proffered to now and then a man in many centuries in the power of his genius, of a Redeemer of the human mind. . . . Let him pass. Humanity must wait for its physician still at the side of the road, and confess as this man goes out that they have served it better, who assured it out of the innocent hope in their hearts that a physician will come, than this majestic artist, with all the treasuries of wit, of science, and of power at his command." ' The same note is sounded many times.' A few examples wall make plain that Emerson habitually praised Goethe with moderation. "He is a poet, — poet of a prouder laurel than any con- temporary, and, under this plague of microscopes (for he seems to see out of every pore of his skin), strikes the harp with a hero's strength and grace. "^ ^xii, 331, 332. ^ IV, 284, 2S9, 369, 370. See also the remarks of Dr. Ed. W. Emerson in the accompanying Notes. See again, The Dial^ Oct., 1840, for the earlier form of ''Thoughts on Modern Lit- 2 IV, 272. 52 GOETHE In the Journal of 1837, Emerson agrees that Goethe's opinions are generally right, but takes exception to his estimate of Sterne and perhaps of Byron.' One must read this pivotal writer if one would not be an old fogy,^ although there is always the suspicion that he is not quite sincere, but striving to astonish the reader.^ As to literary criticism, Emerson never liked the first part of "Faust." He terms its method " introversive," which apparently means that the ego is viciously emphasized. Yet he calls Mephistopheles the first organic figure that has been added to literature for ages, one which will remain as long as Prometheus.-^ The second part of ^' Faust " went far to reverse his criticism : '' A piece of pure nature like an apple or an oak, large as morning or night, and virtuous as a brier-rose." ^ We quote once more from " Thoughts on Modern Literature " : " [Goethe] does not say so in syllables, yet a sort of conscientious feeling he had to be tip to the universe is the best account of many of [his stories]. . . . He never stopped at surface, but pierced the purpose of a thing and studied to reconcile that purpose with his own being. Hence a certain greatness encircles every fact he treats ; ^l"^'' 373- ^iv, 373, from the Journal of 1851. 3x11,326. -^iv, 277. ^111,242. 53 EMERSON for him it has a soul, an eternal reason why it was so, and not otherwise. This is the secret of that deep realism, which went about among all objects he beheld, to find the cause why they must be what they are. <'But also that other vicious subjectiveness, that vice of the time, infected him also. We are pro- voked wdth his Olympian self-complacency, the patronizing air with which he vouchsafes to tol- erate the genius and performances of other mor- tals. . . . This subtle element of egotism in Goethe certainly does not seem to deform his compositions, but to low^er the moral influence of the man. . . . "We think, when we contemplate the stu- pendous glory of the world, that it were life enough for one man merely to lift his hands and cry with Saint Augustine, ' Wrangle who pleases, I will wonder.' ' Well, this he did. Here was a man who in the feeling that the thing itself was so admirable as to leave all comment behind, went up and down, from object to object, lifting the veil from every one, and did no more. . . . " But now, that we may not seem to dodge the question which all men ask, nor pay a great man so ill a compliment as to praise him only in the ^ " He moves our wonder at the mystery of our life." iv, 375 ; Journal, 1S31. Cf. Carlyle in " Sartor Resartus," Book I, ch. x. 54 GOETHE conventional and comparative speech, let us hon- estly record our thought upon the total worth and influence of his genius. Does he represent, not only the achievement of that age in which he lived, but that which it would be and now is be- coming ? And what shall we think of that absence of the moral sentiment, that singular equivalence to him of good and evil in action which discredits his compositions to the pure ? . . . We can fancy him saying to himself : ' There are poets enough of the ideal ; let me paint the Actual ! . . . ' " Yes, O Goethe, but the ideal is truer than the actual. . . . " ^ Emerson's admiration of Goethe, then, was qualified by a number of considerations, the lead- ing objection being ethical. And yet when Rev. John Weiss railed against Goethe's morals, Emer- son declared him " a worshiper of truth, and a most subtle perceiver of truth." . . . ''This clergyman should have known that the movement which in America created these Unitarian dissenters, of which he is one, began in the mind of the great man he traduces." - He could not allow another to find fault with a man who, whatever his blemishes, was yet a great intellectual leader. ^ " Thoughts on Modem Literature," vol, xii. ^iv, 371. See also the poem, " To J. W." 55 EMERSON Clearly, Emerson wished to say the best he could of Goethe. And yet, as we have seen, his nature was at odds with Goethe's. Carlyle, who introduced Goethe to him, was much more a debtor to this exponent of modern German thought. Goethe's emphasis upon action, for ex- ample, corresponds to Carlyle's Gospel of Work. The notes in MacMechan's edition of " Sartor Resartus " show abundantly the indebtedness of Carlyle to Goethe, even to the use of catch-words and phrases. One of these, — "half -man," — not mentioned by Professor MacMechan, is borrowed by *' Sartor" from " Wilhelm Meister." ' Even Goethe's fragmentariness, observed by Emerson,^ is paralleled in the heterogeneous structure of the clothes philosophy. On the other hand, Goethe's sentimental and romantic spirit are alien to the mature Emerson. His concreteness of illustration, the body in which he makes tangible his thought, are close to Car- lyle's vivid style,3 and far from Emerson's native tendency to abstractions. Moreover, in the drama, ^ " Die Halbmenschen " : " W. Meister's Lehrjahre," Book III, ch. xii, paragraph 2. 2 IV, 286, 287. 3 See, for example, the architectural details in the Hall of the Past, ** Wilhelm Meister," and the poetic prose of Mignon's funeral-song. 56 GOETHE and in Shakespeare as a dramatist, Emerson is a novice, Goethe a master. Some resemblance, however, may be traced. Goethe said : '* In poetry, only the really great and pure advances us, and this exists as a second nature, either elevating us to itself, or rejecting us.' Emerson's dictum that a poem is to be judged by the state of mind it induces, as ex- pressed in the preface to ** Parnassus," is along the same line of thought. In Wilhelm Meister's Third Religion, ''that veneration of the contradictory, the hated, the avoided," there is a suggestion of Emerson's belief that even sin is destined to work good. Carlyle expresses this doctrine more ex- plicitly in the same book : '' Even on sin and crime to look not as hindrances, but to honor and love them as furtherances of what is holy."" The curious may find also a parallel to the doctrine of self-reliance in the follovv^ing : "In each endow- ment, and not elsewhere, lies the force which must complete it. . . . Let us merely keep a clear and steady eye on what is in ourselves." ^ These, however, are scattered passages, in the midst of ^ Quoted by Emerson, viii, 66. ^"W. Meister, Travels," ch. xi (Carlyle's translation). See also the close of ch. x. 3"W. Meister," viii, ch. v (Carlyle's trans.), vol. ii, p. 155. 57 EMERSON wide plains of text suggesting the Concord thinker not at all, or at a distance of interpretation. Emerson and Carlyle were on terms of greater intimacy than Emerson and Goethe. Although they met only three times, their correspondence was abundant, and the regard of one for the other never failed. Despite strong divergences in tem- perament and upbringing, both hold fast to the supreme reality of spiritual things, and to the spir- itual side of life. It is not always easy to tell which first gave expression to the thoughts that they uttered in common, but it is not over-daring to say that in fundamentals no two men alive in their time were more sympathetic than these. Carlyle ventured to criticize a certain pallor in Emerson's style, and Emerson never could quite approve Carlyle's ideal of hearty laughter ; but these were questions of taste or of personal necessity. Emerson and Carlyle recognized the universe as full of symbols and as itself symbolic ; and both had high regard for him who could perceive the vital truth beneath its half-concealing, half -revealing garment.' Both looked upon history as in the main the personality and deeds of individual leaders.^ ^ See MacMechan's " Sartor Resartus," pp. 201-203 ; cf. Emer- son's essay, "The Foet,^' passim. ^Carlyle's "Essay on Biography,"" Critical and Miscellaneous Essays"; " Sartor," p. 161 ; cf. Emerson on History. 58 CARLYLE Both saw that the author in borrowing may trans- form his material, and so be in effect creative.^ Both trusted the poet to find his own expression, when once insight had enabled him to penetrate below the surface of the world ; he need not imitate the rhythm-beats of conventional versifica- tion ; if only he be himself inspired, his subject will find due music.- To recall Carlyle's style, and furnish parallels of thought, a few further examples are subjoined, in his very words. Man influences other men, says he, not only by letters and messages, but by *'the minutest that he does . . . and the very look of his face blesses or curses whom so it lights on, and so generates ever new blessings or cursing." This suggests Emerson's Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed hath lent.3 Emerson's contemplation of slavery led him back to the prevalent inward slavery of the individual. ^ ^ Carlyle on Voltaire, " Misc. Essays," ii, 57. ^"Gennan Playwrights," in Carlyle's "Critical and Misc. Es- says," Boston, 1858, I, 430; cf. the poem "Merlin," and "The Poet," III, 9, ID. 3 MacMechan's " Sartor," p. 223 ; Emerson's " Each and All." '^ See VI, 23 ; also the beginning of the speech of 1854 on " The Fugitive Slave Law," vol. xi. 59 EMERSON Carlyle's expression of another side of the same thought is as follows : " Thou who exclaimest over the horrors and baseness of the Time . . . think of this : over the Time thou hast no power ; to redeem a world sunk in dishonesty has not been given thee ; solely over one man therein thou hast a quite absolute uncontrollable power ; him redeem, him make honest ; it will be something, it will be much, and thy life and labor not in vain." ' Emer- son said : " Beware, when God lets loose a thinker upon this planet." Carlyle : ''Truly a Thinking Man is the worst enemy the Prince of Darkness can have ; every time such a one announces him- self, I doubt not, there runs a shudder through the Nether Empire." " Carlyle, in his essay on Diderot, urges the thinker (whom he calls also the poet and the seer) to write down that which he sees, whether noble or commonplace. 3 Emerson, in well-known phrase, tells us to speak forth to-day's thought in hard words, and to-morrow's, regardless of a low con- sistency.-* Once more, Carlyle utters the same thought, in ringing tones : ^ " Corn-Law Rhymes," Essays, III, 295. ^ MacMechan's " Sartor," p. 108. 3 Essays, ill, 304. '^" Self-Reliance." 60 CARLYLE " Awake, arise. Speak forth what is in thee : what God has given thee, what the Devil shall not take away." ' To conclude, the sum and substance of the current philosophic idealism came to Emerson chiefly through Coleridge, Goethe, and Carlyle. The earlier idealism of Berkeley had awakened youthful response to the life that throbs in a universe seemingly dead. In Schelling, Emerson found eyes looking upon the world very much as his own looked upon it. In Goethe, he saw an- other man living out, like himself, his individual life. From all, he caught whatever he could assimilate, especially the indwelling spirit of God. ^ MacMechan's " Sartor," p. iSo. 6i IV MYSTICISM AND PANTHEISM MYSTICISM AND PANTHEISM Before approaching those Greek authors that Emerson loved so well, orderly procedure suggests that attention be paid to two special forms of philosophical thought, with each of which at one time or another he has been identified. Emerson is often called a mystic, and it must be acknowledged that there is some degree of justifi- cation for the term. If *' the thought that is most intensely present with the mystic is that of a supreme, all-pervading, and in-dwelling power, in whom all things are one," ' this thought is at the foundation of Emerson's philosophy. The article from which the preceding quotation is taken goes on to say that the single principle enunciated is an insufficient criterion of mysticism as distinguished from the main assumption of all religion. The ordinary philosophical definition of mystic is one who believes in the possibility of direct personal revelation from God to man. Emerson certainly so believed, as we soon shall see. The intensity of realization of the divine in the individual, or ^ Encyclopedia Britannica, " Mysticism." 65 EMERSON from another point of view, the dependence upon periods of exaltation, ecstasy, or special revelation for a knowledge of truth — these are the more exact qualities of differentiation. From this stand- point also there is evidence that Emerson was essentially a mystic. He too had special seasons of spiritual exaltation. " Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball : I am nothing ; I see all ; the currents of Universal Being circulate through me ; I am part or parcel of God." ' In addition to partaking of the mystic's season of special revelation, Emerson's trend agrees with what has been pointed out as the theoretic drift of mystical states. Professor James, after citing striking examples of mystical ecstasy, speaks as follows of the philosophical directions of such inarticulate states : " One of these directions is optimism, and the other is monism. . . . We feel them as reconciling, unifying states. They appeal to the yes-function more than to the no-function in us. ..." "^ One thinks of Emerson's optimism, his unfaltering declaration of the eternal One, his ' I, 10. Cf. the poem " Pan." See also iii, 71, and the Index under " Ecstasy." ^" The Varieties of Religious Experience," p. 416, ed. 1902. 66 MYSTICISM fondness for affirmative statement and for attempts to reconcile opposites in a great all-satisfying assertion. It may be added that there is a likeness between the mystical doctrine that God should not be prayed to for anything and Emerson's pulpit habit of public meditation that so exasperated those accustomed to public petition. But if Emerson appears mystical in being the subject of states of pecuHar exaltation and insight, and also in sharing the fundamental philosophical content of mysticism, is he to be completely de- scribed by this term which has so often been used to denominate him — sometimes in reproach ? There are at least two respects in which Emerson avoids the excesses of historical mysticism : one is in his practical common sense, and the other is in his virtue. His upbringing in poverty, forcing him into hard contact with actual affairs, may have had something to do with the former; at any rate it is the universal testimony that he was a duplex product, uniting spiritual vision with ordinary prudence. Lowell's oft-quoted couplet will scarcely be bettered : ''A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, whose range Has Olympus for one pole, for t'other the Exchange." ' '"A Fable for Critics." 67 EMERSON Contrast his small valuation of wealth, after the mystic's fashion/ with his well known remark to Fields the publisher on a second payment of roy- alty on a reprinted book. He took the money, saying : " I was a thief from the foundation of the world." In short, his moments of elevation did not, in the days of his maturity, destroy his ability to appreciate a fact. Further, the same common sense applied to religion made it impossible that his conduct should even faintly suggest the vicious extremes to which mysticism led in the days of the Spanish Inquisition.^ Lasciviousness, charlatanry, the doctrine that the sins of the body are not chargeable to one of the Illuminated — Emerson's name lends no countenance to such folly. His compound contained ingredients which kept him from permanent detachment from actual affairs on the one hand, and on the other hand from sinful excesses due to a failure to distinguish between a genuine divine revelation and its counterfeit. In his own time, the contrast was conspicuous be- tween his poised sanity and the eccentricities of the unbalanced Transcendentalist.^ Besides, Emerson's treatment of well-known mystics in his ^ II, 123 and Note. ^ H. C. Lea, " A History of the Spanish Inquisition," ch. v. ^"Emerson in Concord," pp. 206-211. 68 MYSTICISM writings is that of one who weighs, appreciates the good, and notes limitations. Thus he perceives that Jacob Behmen's ' rapture, occasioned by the morning sunhght striking upon the polished pewter " comes to stand to him for truth and faith ; and, he believes, should stand for the same realities to every reader. But the first reader prefers as naturally the symbol of a mother and child, or a gardener and his bulb, or a jeweler polishing a gem. Either of these, or a myriad more, are equally good to the person to whom they are significant. Only they must be held lightly . . . " ^ Yet, determined to do him justice, he praises Behmen, at the cost of Swedenborg : " Behmen is healthily and beautifully wise, not- withstanding the mystical narrowness and incom.- municableness. Swedenborg is disagreeably wise, and with all his accumulated gifts, paralyzes and repels." ^ Emerson's *' fatal gift of perception" sees the defects of those whom he admires — at no time more so than when he discusses mysticism. He longs for the master mind who shall by deeper principles unite existing contradictions. *' See how daring is the reading, the speculation, the experimenting of the time. If now some Genius ^ Or Boehme (1575-1624). ^ iv, 142. 'ni, 34. 69 EMERSON shall arise who could unite these scattered rays ! . . . Here is a great variety and richness of mysticism, each part of which narrowly disgusts whilst it forms the sole thought of some poor Perfectionist or ' Comer-out,' yet when it shall be taken up as the garniture of some profound and all-reconciling thinker, will appear the rich and appropriate dec- oration of his robes." ' Though scattered references to distinguished mystics — Tauler, George Fox,^ Behmen, Plotinus — are found in Emerson's writings, it was to Swedenborg, after all, that he gave fullest cre- dence. Emerson prized Swedenborg for his sym- boUsm 3 — that view of the world so memorably expressed in ''The Poet." From him too may have come suggestion of the doctrine of correspondence.-* Emerson's first introduction to Swedenborgianism may well have been through Sampson Reed's ''Observations on the Growth of the Mind," a little book first published in 1825. Emerson sent a copy of this book to Carlyle in May, 1834,5 'I, 275. ^ Emerson described himself to Haskins as *' more of a Quaker than anything else." T. W. Higginson, "Emerson Centenary," p. 60. 3 IV, 31S, first Note. ^jy, 115, ii6. ^ Correspondence, i, 17. 70 MYSTICISM and was pleased with Carlyle's interest in it/ In truth there is much in this Uttle treatise which would please one of a spiritual turn of mind. Gravitation is one expression of God's immanence, so that literally we walk with Him. The child grows up in his Father's house with a feeling of wonder ; but, improperly, this feeling gradually dis- appears. (So Carlyle said in " Sartor Resartus.") Science, beginning with classification, should never lose the sense of miracle. One is reminded of *' Nature" by such a passage as this: ''The natural world was precisely and perfectly adapted to invigorate and strengthen the intellecual and moral man. Its first and highest use was not to support the vegetables which adorn, or the animals which cover, its surface ; nor yet to give suste- nance to the human body ; — it has a higher and holier object, in the attainment of which these were only means. It was intended to draw forth and mature the latent energies of the soul." ^ Emer- sonian too is the following : " By poetry is meant all those illustrations of truth by natural imagery, which spring from the fact, that this world is the ^ Possibly Carlyle got a hint from this book. Its doctrine of miracles {Edition of 1838, p. 76) is substantially the same as in " Sartor's " chapter on " Natural Supernaturalism," first published July, 1834. ^P. 36, ed. 1838. 71 EMERSON mirror of Him who made it." ' Again, as if a sen- tence from "Self-Reliance": "God is the source of all truth. Creation (and what truth does not result from creation ? ) is the effect of the Divine Love and Wisdom. Simply to will and to think, with the Divine Being, result in creating ; in actu- ally producing those realities, which form the groundwork of the thoughts and affections of man." ^ Here follows the teaching of " The Sphinx " : " Man alone, of all created things, appears on his own account to want the full measure of his happiness ; because he alone has left the order of his creation." ^ And here is the duty to cultivate one's own powers : " Every individual also possesses peculiar powers, which should be brought to bear on society in the duties best fitted to receive them. The highest degree of cultivation of which the mind of any one is capable, consists in the most perfect development of that peculiar organization, which as really exists in infancy as in mature years. . . . All adventi- tious or assumed importance should be cast off, as a filthy garment. . . . There is something which every one can do better than any one else. . . . Kings will be hurled from their thrones, and peasants exalted to the highest stations, by this 'P. 41, ed. 1838. 3 P. 78. ^p. 42. 72 MYSTICISM irresistible tendency of mind to its true level.' . . . It becomes us, then, to seek and to cherish this pecidium of our own minds, as the patrimony which is left us by our Father in heaven. . . . Let a man's ambition to be great disappear in a willingness to be what he is ; then may he fill a high place without pride, or a low one without dejection." ^ It is hard to say what influence such passages as these had upon one who read to discover in his author his own ideas. The book met Emerson when he was about twenty-two, and consequently impressionable. One thing is certain. He did not give to Swedenborgianism unqualified assent, though he venerated its author. In a letter to Carlyle, November, 1834, Emerson says:^ ''Swe- denborgianism . . . has many points of attraction for you. . . . [Swedenborgians] esteem, in common with all the Trismegisti, the natural world as strictly the symbol or exponent of the spiritual, and part for part ; the animals to be the incarna- tions of certain affections ; and scarce a popular expression esteemed figurative, but they affirm to ^ See "The Conservative," i, 317 : " Yonder peasant, who sits neglected there in a comer, carries a whole revolution of man and nature in his head, which shall be a sacred history' to some future ages." ^ S. Reed, pp. 85-87. ^ Correspondence, pp. 32, t^t^. 73 EMERSON be the simplest statement of fact. Then is their whole theory of social relations — both in and out of the body — most philosophical, and, though at variance with the popular theology, self-evident. It is only when they come to their descriptive theism, if I may say so, and then to their drollest heaven, and to some autocratic not moral decrees of God, that the mythus loses me. In general, too, they receive the fable instead of the moral of their iEsop.' They are to me, however, deeply interest- ing, as a sect which I think must contribute more than all the other sects to the new faith which must arise out of all." High praise, but accom- panied by the discrimination of a thinker who was accustomed to pick and choose. In some degree, then, Emerson was a mystic.^ But his mysticism was compatible with life on a high plane of conduct, and was accompanied by a constant perception of differing values. Finally, his mysticism was less a resort to unhabitual moods of illumination than a constant recourse to ^ " Swedeiiborg and Behmen both failed by attaching them- selves to the Christian symbol, instead of to the moral senti- ment, which carries innumerable Christianities, humanities, divin- ities, in its bosom." iv, 135. ^ In 1853, Emerson told F. B. Sanborn, then a Har\'ard sopho- more, that he hoped to see "a good crop of mystics at Harvard." •' The Personality of Emerson," p. 8. 74 PANTHEISM such moods. Those who knew him from day to day speak of his shining presence as it walked the streets of Concord, engaged it might be in humble affairs, as the presence of one who bore about with him the atmosphere and radiance of a rare and lofty soul. As boy and man, he was singularly free from the faults of human kind, and this habitual dwelling on the heights gave his face the benignity and calm of one who not occasionally but always walked in the spirit. The other term that has been applied to Emerson in a derogatory sense is pantheist. Here again it is not difficult to see how the designation arose. The pantheist believes that God is everything, and everything is God. This is not far from Emerson's own belief. But he is evidently not among those who name matter as the simple cause of the uni- verse, and he thus escapes the lowest form of pantheism. It is rather in his dislike to ascribe personality to divinity that his opponents have found a nail on which to hang their epithet. But Emerson's reluctance to regard deity as a person comes from his fear lest personality may limit that which is by nature infinite.' Because of this very ^ From the Journal of 1838 and 1835, as quoted in Cabot's " Life," pp. 341-343 : " What shall I answer to these friendly youths who ask of me an account of theism, and think the views I have expressed of the impersonality of God desolating and 75 EMERSON fear of limitation, leading to mis-worship, does he shrink from identifying Christ with God, as we have already seen. To him, there is indeed one all-embracing entity and cause, but this cause has will, which, in its up-streaming, is ever carrying the creation into something higher.' It is benefi- cent, bringing good out of evil. There is no real confusion of the nature of sin and virtue, for man is called upon to trust the instinct within him ghastly ? I say that I cannot find, when I explore my own con- sciousness, any truth in saying that God is a person, but the re- verse. I feel that there is some profanation in saying that He is personal. To represent Him as an individual is to shut Him out of my consciousness. He is then but a great man, such as the crowd worships. ... I deny personality to God because it is too little, not too much. Life, personal life, is faint and cold to the energy of God. For Reason and Love and Beauty, or that w^hich is all these, — it is the life of life, the reason of reason, the love of love." " We cannot say that God is self-conscious or not self-con- scious, for the moment we cast our eye on that dread nature it soars infinitely out of all definition and dazzles all inquest." " The human mind seems a lens formed to concentrate the rays of the divine laws to a focus which shall be the personality of God. But that focus falls so far into the infinite that the form or person of God is not within the ken of the mind. Yet must that ever be the effort of a good mind, because the avowal of our sincere doubts leaves us in a less favorable mood for action ; and the statement of our best thoughts, or those of our convictions that make most for theism, induces new courage and force." ' VIII, 4. 76 PANTHEISM which leads him on his upward way. God may see an outcome justifying all the present evil in the world, but that vision is no invitation to man to commit sin. Thus the spirit, as well as the letter, of Emerson's teachings, is opposed to those features of panthe- ism with which fault is generally found. Hegel, Schelling, and Spinoza are leading exponents of one or another form of pantheism. Xenophanes also, who first brought pantheism into vogue, is hailed by Emerson because he found One at the base of the universe.' Hegel's view of God as coming to himself in the minds of men and as having no other existence, is nowhere asserted by Emerson. SchelHng's perception of the same life running through nature and man is more nearly Emerson's view. The relation of Schelling and Hegel to Emerson's thought has already been touched upon. It remains to consider Spinoza. Once Emerson mentions Spinoza by name, in generous acknowledgement of stimulus received : *' Plotinus too, and Spinoza, and the immortal bards of philosophy, — that which they have written out with patient courage, makes me bold." ^ The temptation to identify the doctrines of Emerson ^ See infra, ch. vi. ^1,162. 77 EMERSON with those of Spinoza is considerable, and in per- sonality as well (despite the difference in their earthly span of years), there are striking resem- blances. Both were *' God-intoxicated " men, un- less any term implying temporary loss of sanity is inapplicable to Emerson. Both were by tempera- ment reserved, and both were separated from the church of their up-bringing by opinions adjudged heretical. But Emerson had not Spinoza's logical faculty, nor was he capable of working out a philo- sophical system. By reason of his lecturing and otherwise, he was brought into more active rela- tions with men than was the expatriated, almost solitary maker of lenses, and, like him, Emerson kept himself sweet-tempered and spiritual. In their thought, too, there is a fundamental similarity. *' Besides God, no substance can be nor can be conceived." ^ "The human mind is a part of the infinite intellect of God." It has "an adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God." ^ These propositions, drawn from Spinoza, might have been written by Emerson. They are the bed-rock of his philosophy. Besides, both Spinoza and Emerson believe in the intuitive ^" Ethic," Part I, prop. xiv. Trans, by W. Hale White, N. Y., 1894. ^ lb., Part II, XI, Cor. ; XLVii. 78 PANTHEISM perception of truth. Both declare that evil is only the privation or negation of good/ In short, it almost seems as if the minds of these two thinkers were created with the same prepossessions, and leapt to the same conclusions. One very striking difference is in their method of arriving at truth. Spinoza is mathematical and scientific. He deduces his results according to geometrical formulae. Emerson is the seer. Spinoza is interested in current discoveries in natural science as a worker in the same field. Emerson is almost entirely unscientific in the modern sense. Spinoza in his opinions makes no room for free will, but regards everything that comes to pass as foreordained. Emerson too writes of fate at times as if man were ringed about with unescapable and even dominating necessity, but he summons with clarion call to action as well as to resignation. Though contem- plative, his Yankee mind has a more practical cast than that of the Jewish mystic. On the other hand Spinoza, while declaring that the highest virtue is to know God, makes much also of love to God, and ingeniously treats the feelings of men at length in an attempt to deduce them mathemati- ' Spinoza's Letters to Blyenbergh, numbered xxxii, or xix. " De Intellectus Emendatione," etc., trans, by R. H. M. Elwes, London, 1898; p. 332. Cf. Emerson, II, 121. 79 EMERSON cally. Both say that virtue is intrinsically a bless- ing.' Spinoza declares explicitly his belief in immortality ; ^ Emerson almost assumes immor- tality. Spinoza is not so thoroughgoing an optimist, for he finds that nature acts in vain, and that God has no end in view in his creation of the universe. ^ In their primary assumption, however, that of the all-inclusiveness of God, they are at one ; and their main divergence is in method — the strict forms of geometric logic on the one hand ; a simple recep- tivity to thought on the other. Emerson, we conclude, is a pantheist, as he is a mystic, in a quaUfied sense. He is neither, in the lower and more scientific forms in which, histori- cally, mysticism and pantheism have appeared. He is a mystic in that he believes in the contact of God with man, and the possibility of consequent direct illumination. He is a pantheist in that he finds God everywhere. ' " Ethic," Part V, prop. xlii. ^ " Ethic," Part V, prop, xxiii. ^ " Ethic," Part I, Appendix, p. 40 ; " Ethic," preface to Part IV, p. 178. 80 V PLATO PLATO Emerson gave to Plato a higher praise than he accorded to any other exemplar of the intellectual Hfe. Here, he said, is the value of many libraries. '' Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated among men of thought." ' Again, " Boethius, Rabelais, Erasmus, Bruno, Locke, Rousseau, Alfieri, Coleridge," — each "is some reader of Plato, translating into the vernacular, wittily, his good things." ' The oft-quoted saying of Emerson that "Plato is philosophy, and phi- losophy, Plato," 3 and another sentence, " Here is the germ of that Europe we know so well," "^ are brought into the light of a sober statement of details by Professor Jowett. " In the ' Republic ' is to be found the original of Cicero's ' De Repub- lica,' of St. Augustine's 'City of God,' of the * Utopia' of Sir Thomas More, and of the nu- merous other imaginary States which are framed upon the same model. The extent to which Aristotle or the Aristotelian school were indebted ' IV, 39. ^ IV, 40. 2 IV, 39. ^iv, 45- 83 EMERSON to him in the * Politics ' has been little recognized, and the recognition is the more necessary because it is not made by Aristotle himself. ... In Eng- lish philosophy, too, many affinities may be traced, not only in the works of the Cambridge Platonists, but in great original writers like Berkeley or Coleridge, to Plato and his ideas. ... Of the Greek authors who at the Renaissance brought a new life into the world, Plato has had the greatest influence. The ' Republic ' of Plato is also the first treatise upon education, of which the writings of Milton and Locke, Rousseau, Jean Paul, and Goethe are the legitimate descendants. Like Dante or Bunyan, he has a revelation of another life ; like Bacon, he is profoundly impressed with the unity of knowledge ; in the early Church he exercised a real influence on theology, and at the Revival of Literature on politics. . . . He is the father of ideaHsm in philosophy, in politics, in literature. And many of the latest conceptions of modern thinkers and statesmen, such as the unity of knowledge, the reign of law, and the equality of the sexes, have been anticipated in a dream by him." ' From the time when, as a young Harvard student, Emerson gladly read in Ralph Cudworth's seventeenth - century theology various illustrative ^ '* The Dialogues of Plato," vol. in, p. iii. 84 PLATO quotations from Plato and others/ until in his old age he laid down for the last time his own much- used translation of the complete Dialogues/ the American recognized in the Greek thinker a master mind in literature. Some people read for ideas. But Emerson, as he himself has told us, read for '* lustres," and to make his own top spin.^ He delighted to find a kindred spirit behind his book. Thus, though the Christian centuries rolled between, he hailed in Plato a man of temperament like his own. More than once the resemblance in personal traits has been pointed out. Both were unsystematic, both scorned to strive for an obvious consistency of thought, both were wide borrowers of the material furnished by other writers. As Dr. Holmes po- litely said, Emerson holds the mirror up to his great men at such an angle as — unintentionally, no doubt — to reflect his own face as well as that ' " The Trae Intellectual System of the Universe," by Ralph Cudworth, 1678. A copy of this book is in the libraiy of Harvard University. For a statement concerning Emerson's first acquaintance with it, see Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson's notes to the Centenary' edition of " Representative Men," pp. 294, 311. ^ Trans, by Sydenham and Taylor, 5 vols., London, 1804. ^ Cabot, pp. 289, 291. See also infra, end of ch. vi. 85 EMERSON of his hero.' Examples of the quaUties common to Plato and Emerson are good breeding,^ under- statement,3 the search for the fit word/ " His patrician polish, his intrinsic elegance, edged by an irony so subtle that it stings and paralyzes," — these words written of Plato by Emerson s might have been written of Emerson himself, though jocularity, sarcasm, and persiflage are refined in the later writer by the amenities of twenty-three hundred civilizing years. Both sought to unite the purest ideahsm with a strict knowledge of practical affairs,^ and, more important than the rest, both sincerely and patiently sought for abso- lute truth, and were not to be put off with the shine of appearances. But this similarity of temperament and method led to a similarity of ideas. It is the present purpose to show, first, the resemblance between the fundamental principles of Plato and those of Emerson, and then to descend to certain narrower generaUzations of each, pointing out also in the process such differences as call for notice. ' IV, 300. 2 IV, 310. 3 IV, 60. Cf. " The Superlative," x, 161. ^ IV, 59. 5 IV, 57. ^ IV, 54, 55. Cf. Dr. Harris's comment, iv, 315. 86 PLATO The most important part of Plato's work is his theory of Ideas. According to this doctrine the ever-changing objects and perceptions of the sense world are only faint images of eternal realities in the permanent world of being. Each external thing — nay, each mathematical conception, each thought of a thing — has, corresponding to it but highly transcending it, an unseen reality, never actually quite perceived by man, who, however, ascends painfully toward such perception by means of the representative objects of the sense world, and by means of his own reason and reflection. One may thus rise from specific objects to a knowledge of general concepts, and from general concepts appreciate the reality of these Ideas. The objects of sensible experience, and the corre- sponding elusive Ideas, are not, said Plato, essen- tially alike. Their relation is a relation of purpose. That is, the Ideas (which themselves are some- times treated by Plato as endowed with the life of Divinity) wilfully make themselves known to man by means of their pale and shadowy repre- sentations in the world of nature.' Resting in the symbols of things, mankind is involved in ' This statement agrees with Plato's later rather than with his earlier philosophy. But Professor Paul Shorey (Chicago " De- cennial Publications ") argues that there is no essential difference between Plato's earlier and his later teaching. 87 EMERSON the emptiness and fickleness of the shifting world where everything Becomes, and nothing Is. Pen- etrating below the surface, by means of the Dia- lectic method prescribed by Plato, man may reach glimpses of absolute Being. Modern interpreters of Plato declare that his Ideas, as he conceived them, were not in the least spiritual, but were objective in character. It is sufficient for our present purpose to note that readers following Plato were unable to conceive the Ideas as objective, and thus that Plato be- came, as Jowett says above, the father of modern ideahsm. Now it needs very little insight in order to per- ceive a striking resemblance between the funda- mental principles of Plato and those of Emerson. Of course Emerson does not accept the doctrine of Ideas in its Platonic form. But he too was always acting as if the sense world were but the cloak of an eternal reality.' He too was always striving to pierce through the symbols of the temporal that he might abide in the eternal. To Emerson — as may perhaps be read most conveni- ' " It were too much to say that the Platonic world I might have learned to treat as cloud-land had I not known Alcott, who is a native of that country ; yet I will say that he makes it as solid as Massachusetts to me." Emerson's Journal, 1852, quoted by Cabot, p. 280. 88 PLATO ently in the essay called "The Poet" — the things of nature body forth eternal verities, which it is the business of the poet to see and to translate into language that all men may understand. " We are symbols and inhabit symbols. . . . The poet, by an ulterior intellectual perception, gives them a power which makes their old use forgotten, and puts eyes and a tongue into every dumb and in- animate object." ' A tolerably clear exposition of this doctrine is to be found in the essay on ''The Method of Nature " : " In the divine order, in- tellect is primary ; nature, secondary ; it is the memory of the mind. That which once existed in intellect as pure law, has now taken body in nature. It existed already in the mind in solution ; now it has been precipitated, and the bright sediment is the world. . . . We may therefore safely study the mind in nature, because we cannot steadily gaze on it in mind ; as we explore the face of the sun in a pool, when our eyes cannot brook his direct splendors." ^ Before leaving the first phase of the doctrine of Ideas, let me quote from Walter Pater's elucidation ' III, 20. See also on " Poetry and Imagination," in vol. viii. W^indelband's exposition of Plato (p. 194) speaks of this process as the "synoptic intuition of reality presented in single exam- ples " (Cushman's translation of " Windelband's History of An- cient Philosophy"). 2 I, 197. 89 EMERSON of Plato a few sentences describing this doctrine. Observe if, terms being changed, the language of the quotation would not describe the fundamental thought of Emerson as well. '♦ With Plato [the Ideas] are the creators of our reason — those treasures of experience, stacked and stored, which, to each one of us, come as by inheritance, or with no proportionate effort on our part, to direct, to enlarge and rationalize, from the first use of language by us, our manner of taking things. They are themselves . . . the proper ob- jects of all true knowledge, and a passage from all merely relative experience to the ' absolute.' In proportion as they lend themselves to the individ- ual, in his effort to think, they create reason in him ; they reproduce the eternal reason for him." ' Emerson's version of such teaching is in sen- tences like this: *'A11 the parts and forms of Nature are the expression or production of divine faculties, and the same are in us." ^ Or, again : " We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we dis- cern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams." ^ ^" Plato and Platonism," N. Y., 1891, pp. 149, 150. 2 VIII, 43. 3 II, 64. 90 PLATO The correspondence between the views of Plato and those of Emerson is no less evident when the central doctrine of Ideas is carried out into its more specifically ethical and theological applica- tion. Plato, in the sixth book of the ' Republic,' uses the sun as an image by which is figured the highest good.' Just as the sun makes it possible to see what would otherwise be invisible or obscure, so does the Idea of Good make knowledge possi- ble to man. As the sun gives fruitfulness to the earth, without being itself that fecundity, so the Idea of Good enters into and makes possible the being and essence of all things that are known. The Idea of Good conditions knowledge, but is higher than knowledge. It transcends beauty, but is behind all manifestations of beauty. In short, the Idea of Good is the most comprehensive and exalted of all Ideas, uniting the disjunctive Ideas of Knowl- edge and Beauty. Sometimes, as we have already said, Plato seems to give it the attribute of person- ality, and to make it nearly equivalent to God. Thus in the celebrated cave figure in the seventh book of the *' Republic " he says : " My opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort ; and, when seen, is inferred to be the universal ^ Jowett's " Dialogues," vol. iii, p. 209. 91 EMERSON author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual." ' At other times he withdraws God to an infinite distance from His works. ''But the father and maker of all this universe is past finding out ; and even if we found him, to tell of him to all men would be impossible." ^ In much the same way, Emerson finds that virtue is the only thing of intrinsic value. In his essay on Compensation he shows that the lot of one man is about equal to that of any other man. The gain of some new and super-added power, as that of quick transportation, means the loss in de- gree of some more primitive power, as the power to walk. We have watches, but we have forgotten how to tell time by the sun. Even calamities have their beneficent side. All is in equipoise, except virtue. That is an intrinsic benefit, having no counterweight. To be moral, to be spiritual, is to possess the one reality, knowing no discount. In the words of another lecture : " That which is sig- nified by the words * moral ' and * spiritual ' is a lasting essence, and, with whatever illusions we have loaded them, will certainly bring back the ^ Jowett's translation, p. 217. ^ " Timaeus," p. 449, Jowett's trans. 92 PLATO words, age after age, to their ancient meaning. I know no words that mean so much. In our defini- tions we grope after the spiritual by describing it as invisible. The true meaning of spiritual is real. . . . Men talk of