Essays: Second Series; By R. W. Emerson. Boston
James
Munroe and Company, 1844
At
a distance of three years this volume follows the first series of Essays, which
have already made to themselves a circle of readers, attentive, thoughtful,
more and more intelligent, and this circle is a large one if we consider the
circumstances of this country, and of England, also, at this time.
In England it would seem there are a larger number of persons waiting for an
invitation to calm thought and sincere intercourse than among ourselves. Copies
of Mr. Emerson’s first published little volume called ‘Nature,’ have been sold
by the thousands in a short time, while one edition has needed seven years to
get circulated here. Several of his Orations and Essays from ‘The Dial’ have
also been republished there, and met with reverent and earnest response.
We suppose that while in England the want of such a voice is as great as here,
a larger number are at leisure to recognize the want; a far larger number have
set foot in the speculative region and have ears refined to appreciate these
melodious accents.
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 danger and arouse to nobler energy. The aim of the writer or
lecturer is not to say the best he knows in as few and well-chose 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 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 endowed with a sacred
commission. He is a 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 positon in
which he thereby paces himself.
Apart from the troop of mercenaries, there is one, still larger, of those who
use their power 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 might provide the better for the house in
which his body is to dwell for a few years.
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 tends 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 the 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 centers the
characteristics of heart and lungs to the body politic; if we may believe, as
the writer does believe, that what is to be acted out in this country at large
is, most frequently, first indicated there, as all the phenomena of the nervous
system in 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 any other
person.
His books are received there with a more ready intelligence than elsewhere,
partly because of 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,
always went away discontented. They were accustomed to an artificial method,
whose scaffolding could be easily 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 purpose. They did
not see that Pindar’s odes might be very well arranged for their own purpose,
and ye not bear translating into the methods of Mr. Locke.
Others were content to be benefited by a good influencer without 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 that no truth could exist, unless encased by the burrs of
opinion, went away 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, that 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 a
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 longed 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 rustic plainness with lyric inspirations, religious dignity
with philosophical 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 plow and avoid 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 brows 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 valued his words
as signets of reality; received his influence as a help and incentive to a
nobler discipline than the age, in its general aspect, appears to require; and
did 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 he thus formed himself a class of readers, who rejoice to study
in his books what they already know by heart. For, though the thought had become familiar, its
beautiful garb is always fresh and bright in hue.
A similar circle of like-minded 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 excess of fancy in proportion to imagination, and an
inclination, at times, to subtlety at the expense of strength, has been styled.
The human heart complains of inadequacy, either in 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 want of expansion which may yet
be remedied; sometimes doubts whether ‘ in this mansion there will 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 statements- This
writer has never written one good work, if such a work be one where the whole
commands more attention than the parts. If such an 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 out 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 a great poet, or a great
philosopher, the liberal air of all the zones: the glow, uniform yet various in
tint, which is given to the 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 to
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 ground work 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 fullness 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 preserved 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 the 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 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 our writer can vindication on the attention of his
contemporaries. 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 actions on you cannot fail to be
healthful. It is part of the free air.
He belongs to that band of whom there may be found a few in every age, and who
now in human history may be counted in the hundreds, who worship the one God
only, the God of Truth. They worship, not saints, not creeds, nor churches, nor
relics, nor idols in any form. The mind is kept open to the 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 is through that part of 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 user the courses and destinies of nature, he invest 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 the primal
warblings, and to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, or a
verse, and substitute something of our on, and thus miswrite the poem. The men
of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithful, and these
transcripts, though imperfect, becomes the songs of nations.
“As the eyes of the Lyncaeus were said to see through the earth, so the poet
turns the world to glass, and shows us all things in their right series and procession.
For, through that better perception, he stands one step nearer to things, and
sees the flowing or metamorphosis; perceives that thought is multiform; that
within the form of every creature is a force impelling it to ascend into a
higher form; and following with his eyes the life, uses the forms which express
that life, and so the speech flows with the flowing of nature.”
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 companion of our lives. Does every accession of knowledge or a
more just 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.
New-York Daily Tribune
7 December, 1844
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