RALPH WaLpo EMERSON A PAPER READ BEFORE THE NEW YORK GENEALOGICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY DECEMBER 14, 1883 WITH AFTERTHOUGHTS BY WILLIAM HAGUE, D.D. G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS NEW YORK: 27 & 29 WEST 23D STREET LONDON: 25 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN 1884 RALPH WaLpo EMERSON A PAPER READ BEFORE THE NEW YORK GENEALOGICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY DECEMBER 14, 1883 WITH AFTERTHOUGHTS BY WILLIAM HAGUE, D.D. G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS NEW YORK: 27 & 29 WEST 23D STREET LONDON: 25 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN 1884 | rcs A A.2z84120 COPYRIGHT BY WILLIAM HAGUE, D.D. 1884 Press of G. P. Putnam's Sons New York PREFATORY NOTES. The following ‘‘ paper’? would have been issued from the press at an earlier date, in accordance with the call of the Genealogical and Biographical Society, December 14, 1883, but for the detention of the writer away from the city by several weeks of illness. Despite all detentions, however, I have been favored with opportunities for enjoying Mr. Matthew Arnold’s recent “ Lecture on Emerson,” both as a listener and a reader, and have taken occasion to offer a supplement of Afterthoughts, suggested by the Essayist’s judgments. Meanwhile many friends have inquired as to the fortunes of the “paper,” and called renewedly for its publication. Of all these Iam reminded by a communica- tion from one whose friendly words often prove factors in good atfempts, either great or small, Rt. Rev. Henry C. Potter, D.D., Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of New York: New York, January 16, 1884. My Dear Dr. HacueE: You have not forgotten, I trust, your promise to consider the matter of putting your Reminiscences of Emerson into a more permanent form. I am sure they will interest a wider circle of readers than that which has thus far seen them; and I venture to hope that these may ere long be permitted to have them. Faithfully yours, H. C. POTTER. In this connection we are happy to present a communica- iii iv PREFATORY NOTES. tion of kindred tone from Rev. William R. Williams, D.D., of New York: 27 GROVE STREET, December 21, 1883. My Dear Dr. HaGueE: Your personal acquaintance with Ralph Waldo Emerson at the turning-point in his history, and in years after, gives your personal reminiscences of him marked value. The relations of his philosophical views to the New Platonism of earlier times, and their bearing on the Materialism, Agnosticism, and Pantheism that emerge in our own age, are worthy to be seriously pondered. I trust your Essay may be fitly published and widely read. Yours truly, WILLIAM R. WILLIAMS. In this connection, also, I introduce a communication from the Rev. John Lord, LL.D., author of “ Ancient States and Empires,” “Old Roman World,” etc.: New York, fed. 29, 1884. Dear Doctor Hacue: I am glad to learn that your paper on Emerson, with whom you were so long and well acquainted, is soon to be published. You will render a service in showing how far Neo-Platonism, the Phi- losophy of Plotinus, entered into his writings. Most truly, J. LORD. RALPH WALDO EMERSON: LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. In an article lately published in a Boston journal, com- memorating several names pertaining to “the transition period” signalized by the advent of the railroad power, (1830-34), the chronological point of distinction between Old and New Boston, mention was made of an introduction to the Rev. Ralph Waldo Emerson, colleague of Rev. Henry Ware, Jr., in the ministry of the Second Unitarian Church; his relation to me as my nearest clerical neighbor being emphasized at the time, soon after my inauguration to the ministry of the First Baptist Church, then approach- ing the one hundred and sixty-sixth anniversary of its birth- year. The article thus put forth in Boston has suggested the invitation that brings before this Society, to-night, this paper with its theme set for the hour of our monthly gath- ering. The introduction here noted having occurred in 1831, at the house of mutual friends, where Mr. Emerson’s participa- tion in a funeral service indicated his parochial relation to a part of the bereaved family circle, rendered the occasion notable as the starting-point of a welcomed acquaintance- ship. His manner was genially responsive, while his coun- tenance, tone and bearing were suggestive, apart from all culture, of a rarely gifted nature. Though only five years older than myself, his position as the colleague of the Rev. Henry Ware, Jr., invested him with a certain prestige of dignity equivalent to an additional decade of years, and I 2 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. made the likelihood of meeting him often prospectively interesting. Our wide parochial surroundings of more than a century’s growth in a homogeneous community, would constantly furnish apt occasions for friendly intercourse on matters of common concern, municipal or educational. It seemed, just then, that any observing stranger, even at a first meeting, would be quick to recognize the presence of a unique, transparent personality; a free, self-reliant mind uttering itself without restraint and without guile; not fluent, as that of a trained talker watching the impressions he is making, but with speech aptly winning, spontaneous as that of a little child impelled to find expression for the thought or feeling of the moment. MENTAL UNREST AS TO CHURCH ORGANISM. Even at that early period it was often, from my point of view, a matter of wonder that a man so highly gifted, dis- tinguished by degrees of insight and of far-sight so excep- tional, with a positive Christian faith so inconsiderable, could be content or at all able to bear the routine of a pastorate requiring weekly pulpit services necessarily characterized by statements or by implications of relative non-belief rather than any order of truths supernaturally and di- vinely revealed. My personal conviction was that, with simply natural ethics to inculcate, I could have no heart to meet the regular calls of a ministry that arose in the first century as the exponent of a gospel supernaturally attested, implying thus a lively faith in certain historical facts, all vocal with teachings that enkindled the highest style of enthusiasm, a new uplifting power to every recip- ient. Surely, I said,—now and then soliloquizing,—surely I would be obliged to abandon the pulpit and take to litera- ture, or drift into communism, or seek the platform as a lecturer on philosophy or history, or perhaps political economy embracing the relations of labor and capital; or on some mastered specialty of thought or enterprise that RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 3 could “ possess my soul’”’ as the one work given me to do. A professional relation that would require me to use the traditional terms and phraseologies of the Christian minis- try for secular ends, emphasizing my non-beliefs, would be to me tedious; incongruous, distasteful, and intolerable. These soliloquies turned out to be instinctively prophetic, verified by experiences of historic interest. To that issue Mr. Emerson came, ere long, with the most calm and settled determination. The statement of reasons for this “new departure,” was made to me by Mr. Emerson himself, about the time of its occurrence, in a casual conversation, as here recorded, with the occasion that called it forth. It chanced that on a Monday morning, in 1832, we metin the street, each carrying a little hand-satchel. Approach- ing, we exchanged salutations, and then followed this brief talk: “Mr. Emerson, it seems that we are travellers to-day, going in opposite directions, and our time, therefore, is limited; but if you have a minute’s margin, I should like, for information, to put aquestion which no one except your- self can fitly answer.” | ‘Do so freely,” he replied ; “I amnotina hurry; I have margin enough of time.” “Well, I will tell you then, that Iam boarding with my little family at Mrs. Wilson’s, on Green Street, where I enjoy the society of several of your parishioners and friends as companions in table-talk, and find that your people are greatly agitated by the report that you have renounced the observance of the Lord’s Supper, and refuseall participation in it as a religious rite. Loth as I am to say a word un- advisedly touching a matter of such personal interest, I should like to be informed in regard to two points: Is the alleged renunciation a fact? If so,—the ground of it?” “ Ves,” he answered, “it is a fact, and the ground of it is my conviction that in the development of religions we have outgrown all need of this externalism, or the like of it, in any 4 RALPH WALDO EMERSON, way whatsoever. This conviction has been intensified by fresh readings of the leading Quaker writers, with whom I find myself in sympathy.” To this I replied: “ Thanks; your statement of reasons is satisfactory as explanation; normally developed, I should say, from your point of view; nevertheless, I presume your sympathies have gone beyond the bounds of Quakerdom, even over into Asia, attracted by affinities with some ideas of older origin.” This allusion to a Pantheistic trend provoked a smile that seemed to say: “ Your guess is suggestive, but we must go.” And so we parted quickly, to make sure of redeeming the time that this short episodal talk had cost us. HIS POSITION EXCEPTIONALLY ATTRACTIVE. The withdrawal of Mr. Emerson from all churchly organ- ism was gently but decisively accomplished. He used to say: “Let every man be his own church.” That rather queer phrasing anticipated whole pages of his essay-writing. It made the ultimate issue quite plain to the common mind. Assoon as this step of his early career had been taken, my personal interest in his course and style of action as an independent man, an original personality, was greatly quickened; my communication with him became more free, unembarrassed by any degree of sensitiveness as to the proprieties pertaining to official or clerical relations. See- ing that he had broken away from ecclesiasticism entirely, ignoring at once all external or supernatural revelation, still asserting himself as a philosophical and religious teacher, “falling back on Nature,” the recipient of fresh truths as a familiar correspondent in direct communication with Nature, I became more and more curious to learn how a mind thus strongly trending would see and report to us the past, present, and future of this mysterious universe wherein we live. Appreciating, as I did, sympathetically, his dissatisfaction with his inherited church-position, I de- RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 5 sired to trace the lone way of his ‘new departure.’’ This feeling was strengthened by the free scope accorded to it; for he always talked as one quite sure that the plainest speech, the most direct way of “ putting things,” was best liked, and he thus constantly awakened in one the feeling, that he never could be offended by the sharpest antagonism of asincere man. This childlike simplicity, this ‘“ believ- ing and therefore speaking,” was of itself a life-long power, characterizing not only the casual or private talk, but also the set public address. In this connection, I may say, incidentally, that its free expression was once somewhat startling to me, and, to many, quite amusing, on a certain occasion, the meeting of the American Institute, composed mainly of teachers, at the State Capitol, where he delivered the opening discourse. Having finished my appointed ser- vice as chaplain, and offered the introductory prayer, he, at once stepping into the place I had occupied, commenced his address with a brilliant paragraph containing a par- enthetic affirmation of the uselessness of prayer ! TENTATIVE STEPS TO THE NEW CAREER. During several years following the period here noted, the opportunities for occasionally meeting Mr. Em- erson were not quite so continuous as might have been reasonably hoped for. Early in the year 1832 he had been bereaved of the wife of his youth; and then, ere long, the state of his health suggested his visit to Europe in 1833, a year well remembered by Thomas Carlyle, as an era of his home history signalized by the acquisition of Mr. Emer- son’s acquaintance. After his return to America, he was not so much in our neighborhood as had been his wont. In 1834 Concord became his abiding home-centre, where he devoted himself to reading, study, and literary work, keep- ing himself in communication with Boston and the world at large mainly by means of lectures, single or in series, availing himself of the Lyceum platform, which, at the 6 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. time, seemed to him arising power destined to supersede the pulpit. At this period, particularly, he embraced within his range of study, the old Neo-Platonic Mysti- cism, as taught by Plotinus (3d century), by Porphirius (3rd and 4th), and by Proclus (5th century), tracing, too, its modern developments—especially in Germany. In 1835. he established his household by a second mar- riage, and in 1836 he put forth his first volume anony- mously, (calling it ‘an entering wedge,”) ninety-three pages, entitled “NATURE,” the first sentence whereof, in the spirit of the authors above named, affirmed the in- validity of all external or supernatural revelations, and the all-sufficiency of every soul’s own intercommunica- tion with Nature for realizing the highest possibilities of humanity. The motto upon the title-page was a quotation from Plotinus: “Nature is but an image or imitation of Wisdom, the last thing of the soul; nature being a thing which doth only do, but not know.” In the first words of this new book, the writer appealed to the century against the primary claim of Christianity, exclaiming: “ The fore- going generations beheld God and Nature face to face; we, through their eyes: why should not we enjoy also an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us and not the history of theirs?” GENERAL REUNION IN PROVIDENCE, R. I. During the following year, 1837, soon after my removal from Boston to Providence, “ The New Views ”’ were made more familiar than ever to the thought and talk of an ex- tending circle of readers and students, whose interest was quickened by the enlivening presence of Margaret Fuller, “a born teacher,” and also the centre of a Sociality whose bond of union was intellectual culture. As one of a special evening class readily gathering around her for the study RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 7 of the German language and literature, I was naturally led by the incidental topics of conversation to a more continu- ous turning of thought in this new line of advancement. At this time her helpful friend, Mr. Emerson, shared her companionship and the social life of Providence for several weeks, having accepted an invitation to deliver a course of lectures. At the close of that series he announced as supplemen- tary, “ A Lecture on Religion,” to be delivered at another hall ‘‘ across the bridge.” A large audience answered the call. Among the listeners I occupied a seat near the speaker, and as soon as the lecture was ended, he addressed to me a remark that led to the following conversation: “T think, Mr. Emerson, this whole audience would agree in saying that your tracing of the character of Jesus, his spirit and style of action as a man and a teacher, was marvellously apt, just, and beautiful, giving to us fresh impressions of his moral greatness as the inaugurator of a new era. A unique paragraph of Rousseau has often been quoted as eloquently appreciative; but there seems to me nothing extant in literature that surpasses the characterization you have presented here. Yet, in regard to one suggested point Iam somewhat puzzled—namely, the. question : What re- lation does the testimony of the miracles of Jesus, affirmed by himself as well as the witnesses, sustain to your line of historic thought? I have imagined that it may be to yours, relatively, what the story told at the opening of Plato’s life has been to mine; there it has been said, you know, that while he lay in his cradle the bees came and shed honey on his lips; on reading which I say to myself, that is a very pretty story, but whether it be true or not is a matter of no account.” “Ves,’’ Mr. Emerson replied, “you have answered your own question; the illustration is good.” “Tf so,” I rejoined, “I am now the more perplexed ; for suppose Plato had gone forth asa teacher throughout'Greece, 8 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. addressing the common people as well as the scholars, and claiming the acceptance of his teachings not only as self- witnessing, but as divine communications verified at will by superhuman works recognized as responses to the teacher's words from the one Author of the surrounding sense-world and spirit-world alike, thus attesting an exceptional unity and a supreme authority, what would you have said of Plato?” “Why, certainly,” the reply was, “I should have said that Plato was a great charlatan.”’ “Well, then,” I asked, “ why not say outright the very same of Jesus, that 4e was a great charlatan, seeing that this was exactly what he did throughout the land of Palestine ?” With a quietly musing, meditative air, Mr. Emerson seemed for a moment to be extemporizing an answer, when a group of friends, students and others, came pressing for- ward with their personal greetings, so that the opportunity for further talk in this direction was suddenly ended. We regretted the interruption. ” ERA OF ‘THE NEW PULPIT.” At the time here noted, Mr. Emerson’s forecastings and his tentative efforts upon platforms had interpreted them- selves as the initiation of a newcareer. It was not far from the period of his visits to Providence, asa Lecturer, that he came, after many questionings, to the full recognition of his own life-calling, as one impelled by his genius and “ ordained by Nature,” to the work of the Platform. In January, 1829, he had been by a regular council, ordained to the work of the church-pulpit; now, he was exulting in his sense of freedom from all traditional bonds and in his welcomes to the ‘“ New Pulpit,” where, as he said, “ there is no prescrip- tion.” Assured of fit audience, this fresh feeling of liberty was as a new start in life. Already he had characterized the turn of the time by referring to the groups gathering around him as “ladies and gentlemen without a religion seeking a RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 9 new one,” and some one or more of these had characterized him as “the Apostle of the Eternal Reason.” This style of expression became to us gradually familiar, especially after my return to Boston, in 1840, as minister of the Federal Street Baptist Church, near the time of the memorable notice of a course of lectures to be given forth from the pulpit of Dr. Channing, in Federal Street, by his colleague, Rev. Dr. Ezra S. Gannett, who prefaced that announcement by stating that for twenty years the Unita- rian pulpits having been mainly engaged in dealing with ethical and practical matters had left to the press the dis- cussion of central doctrines, so that a generation had grown up under their ministries not knowing what to believe. To aid in meeting this need, he advertised a course of lectures for six successive Sunday evenings, on “Christ and Christi- anity.” That call drew crowds of listeners. This connec- tion of things indicated not only a certain awakening of thought at the time, but the new field of work also that seemed, from Mr. Emerson’s point of view, fast widening around him, flushed with budding promises. His way had been more than twenty years in process of preparation. He welcomed his opportunities. He “discerned the signs” of his sky. The responsive moods of mind wherein the more youthful audiences greeted the new ideas so musically voiced from the platform, reacted upon him, as helps to larger aims, to a more persistently working force exerted through class gatherings, anniversary orations, issues from the press in pamphlet-form, book-form, and special articles of magazine literature. THE NEW ENTHUSIASM AND ITS EXPONENT. A genuine enthusiasm was thus enkindled. Who could define its range? Some ardent minds predicted immediate and boundless conquests, somewhat like the friends of Charles Fourier in France, who exclaimed, in 1839: “If Fourierism has already won twenty thousand adherents, 10 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. why may it not, in due time, gain twenty millions, or thirty, and thus reconstruct the nation?” As a fit exponent of this rising Western Transcendentalism a new magazine was projected ; and, after many hesitations as to the most worthy name for characterization, it was made “ presenta- ble” by Mr. Emerson, as well as by Margaret Fuller, and named Zhe Dial. The Athenian taste of the really curious or inquiring spirits, “seeking a new religion,” was met by stimulations of brilliant thought, as well as by pro- found psychological intuitions; yet it was in this line of direction that the new enthusiasm, grappling with practical issues, including the financial problem, discovered its first sign of dzmitatzon. Despite the originality of the writing, the generosity of the staff of writers, the lack of golden responses proved that the appreciative or sympathetic minds were but a small fraction of the reading public. The day arrived ere long (1843), when the sales would not pay the expenses, and the ideal Dzal gracefully withdrew itself to the higher shelves of the home-study, or the shaded archives of the public library. Thither some ¢/zte scholar of each successive generation will find his way, in order to muse over its pages and report to his own time the historic significance of the ideal school that it represented. HALF A LIFETIME “AT HIS BEST.” Mr. Emerson’s interest in The Dial, however, was sym- pathetic rather than directly personal. Its departure was, no doubt, more of a disappointment to Margaret Fuller than to him, though for the sake of his “young friends” he desired its success. During the two decades that preceded the Civil War (1841-61), and most of the decade and a half that followed, comprising a little more than a third of a century, he appeared continually “at his best,’’ in the very prime of his power. He greatly enjoyed, in the main, his professional trips, far and near; often derived exhilaration from them, and thus we have known him appear to advan- RALPH WALDO EMERSON, I! tage as a conversationalist amid the chance society of a rail- way excursion. In this connection I am reminded that it was once my pleasure to introduce to him Rev. Dr. Cald- well, now President of Vassar College, to whose compan- ionship Mr. Emerson took kindly, with a decided zest, for the day or two following. Arriving at Buffalo they stayed at the same hotel, and there my engagements took me away from them in another direction. In the evening Mr. Emer- son accepted Dr. Caldwell’s invitation to look in upon the meeting of the American Baptist Missionary Union, where Rev. Dr. Parker, of Cambridgeport, was to give an account of his visit to the Baptist churches of France. Dr. Parker was graphically interesting in the putting of his facts, so that there was no dull listener in the house. Afterward, meeting Dr. Caldwell, I inquired: “Did Mr. Emerson say any thing suggested by the sayings or doings of the meet- ing?” ‘Oh, yes,” replied the doctor, “he spoke of it freely, and I can hardly tell you how greatly amused he seemed to. be with the mere idea of the Baptist Missionary Union attempting in earnest the conversion of France!” That reply, by the way, has of late, often recurred to my thought suggestively. When it was uttered France was an empire, and at that time I knew of some who were hoping and praying that they might live to see France a republic and all religion free. Ere long the empire fell and then Zhe Nation, of New York, well said: “‘ After the lapse of a thou- sand years France must now begin again and build up anew from the very foundations.” Even so: eight years ago I stood in the vestibule of the Chamber of Deputies at Versailles, conversing with one of the evangelical leaders of France, Rev. Dr. Pressensé, in preceding years the able correspon- dent of Zhe Watchman, of Boston, then the representative in the National Legislature of the Department of “ The Seine,” exulting as never before in the freedom of the re- public, the great awakening of the popular mind, and the brightening prospects of primitive Christianity. 12 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Throughout the whole period, just noted, of Mr. Emer- son’s professional life as lay-lecturer and as essayist, his mental poise, his tone, spirit, and genial manner seemed ever the same. Occasional meetings and greetings are now vivid memories; especially as pertaining to his later years, those which occurred while I was associated with him in the Library Committeeship of Harvard University. In those casual or incidental talks, wherein there is no premeditation, and thought springs spontaneously “free and easy” from suggestions serious or trivial, it was quite noteworthy how intimately associated with all kinds of topics was some word or action of his sylvan friend, Henry Thoreau, whom Emerson had lovingly introduced to literature by means of Lhe Dial, the first contribution being a poem published in the first number. Thus it happened, one day, that Mr. Emerson was passing the house of Dr. Robbins, dentist, just as I was leaving it; and, while on the top of the steps, closing the door behind me, he hailed me from the sidewalk with the greeting: ‘“ Pray, what have you been doing there?” “T have been getting a mutilated mouth repaired,” was my reply. “Indeed; have you come to that already? When Thoreau reached that stage of experience, and the opera- tion had been ended, he exclaimed: ‘ What a pity that I could not have known betimes how much Art outdoes Na- ture in this kind of outfit for life, so that I might have spoken for such a set to start with!’” In the conversation that followed, Mr. Emerson spoke with curious interest of what had been lately written on brain-power, and the recent commendations of Scotch oat- meal, fish, wild birds, and articles of diet wherein Nature, by providing stores of phosphatic sustenance, had wrought with such motherly care for the health of our brain-life. | RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 13 FREE PLAY OF CONFLICTING JUDGMENTS IN ENGLAND. In his persistent and effective use of the platform and the press from the very beginning of his professional career, Mr. Emerson was progressively gaining audience at home and abroad; the law of “elective affinities” having asserted itself with special vigor in England, where it was noticed as early as 1842 that the “Radicals” were circulating his lecture, ‘Man, the Reformer,” read January 25, 1841, be- fore the Mechanics’ and Apprentices’ Library, of Boston. At that time the Free-Thought Associations of England indicated a higher tone of vitality than any of their kin in this country. Thus the way of Mr. Emerson’s visit to Eng- land, five years afterward, as an invited lecturer, was gradually prepared, and a community of minds educated to welcome him, even with sympathetic appreciation. Nevertheless, though in listening there was unity of in- terest, the judgments of the listeners were sharply con- flicting—not only of one hearer in relation to another, but of each individual mind at different moments, varying with the contrasted moods induced by the original, self-witness- ing, and the directly antithetic affrmatives of oracular, sybilline tone, abounding in every lecture. Caroline Fox, in her ‘‘ Memories of Old Friends,” pub- lished a year or more ago, records this observation of Mrs. Jane Carlyle: “She thought no good would come of Mr. Emerson’s writings, and grants that he is arrogant and short- coming.” This record is the more noteworthy because it is well known that Mrs. Carlyle had expressed in strong terms, written and unwritten, her interest in reading Mr. Emerson as almost exclusive, rendering her indifferent, comparatively, to all other writings except those of her husband. Both statements may be truthful; not at all contradictory, what- soever, at first, the verbal seeming may suggest. For the works of Mr. Emerson, regarded as a whole, exhibit con- flicting elements of the actual and speculative, the real and fanciful, the self-witnessing generalization, and the illusive i4 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. half-truth, so that we are by turns, short or long, attracted and repelled, uplifted and depressed, instructed and mysti- fied, fascinated and shocked, charmed by a poetic optimism, and horrified by a logically and practically inevitable pes- simism, like that voiced by Schopenhauer as a regular evolution of the data furnished by “Eternal Nature.” From the standpoint occupied by Mr. Emerson he could reveal no way of escape for us from the combination of ter- rible forces traced by Schopenhauer; could do nothing, in fact, but what he did—namely, denounce the philosopher and his doctrine as “ dispiriting ” and “odious.” But this mere emotionalism brings no relief from the horror of that pessimistic abyss. The trend of the younger Free-Thought School of Germany to-day is to the enthronement of Schopenhauer as the imperial thinker, not fully recognized by his own age, but the philosopher-laureate of ours. If we would form a comprehensively just estimate of Mr. Emerson’s prose writings, we must treat them in a manner analogous to that of Plato’s criticisms of Homer, set forth in the second book of the “ Republic.” There Plato, in con- cert with Socrates, discriminates the qualities of Homer’s great epic, and demands the exclusion from the ideal re- public of the poet’s conceptions of the character and conduct of the gods, on account of their influence in demoralizing the Republic’s youth. Even the greatest work of “the godlike Homer” Plato would bring to trial by the test- ‘question : “ What fruitage?’’ From the copies of the Iliad -admitted to circulation he required the elimination of cer- tain mythological elements. So, when Mr. Emerson’s transcendental intuitions or ecstatic revelations, taking form -as oracles, interpret the universe to us pantheistically, bid- ding every soul, though sincerely denying the existence of ‘a personal God, to abandon itself to a blind instinct of Nature-worship whensoever the ecstatic mood shall impel to the adoration of nature, we recognize the ideal identity with that old paganism that did actually demoralize Grecian RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 15 manhood despite its culture, and subordinated cultured intellect to an ascetic Orientalism on the one hand, or, on the other, to a sensual Nature-worship akin to that whereof Paul spoke as abandonment to “a reprobate mind,” and whose Oriental sacred writings Max Miiller has sadly said he can not make presentable throughout, by a fair trans- lation, to English-speaking peoples. THE CENTRAL IDEA OF THIS MYSTIC SCHOOL CHARAC- TERIZED AS ANTI-CHRISTIAN. To particularize: in his lecture on ‘“‘ Self-Reliance” Mr. Emerson puts the central thought of his teaching in a short preceptive sentence, thus: ‘‘In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity; yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color.” This is an apt expression of the interior spirit of that Alexandrian Neo-Platonism, represented by several writers, from Plotinus of the third century to Proclus of the fifth (to the study of whose works Mr. Emerson especially gave himself fora year or more preceding the issue of his first volume, “ Nature”’); a scholastic sectarianism which, while it found scope and play for the intellect in philosophy, eliminated intellectuality from worship, subjecting that, in its purest character and style, to blind emotional instinct ; thus setting up a sharp antithesis to that essential idea of Christian worship which Jesus uttered, in view of the mon- grel or eclectic religionism of the Samaritans, when He said: ‘‘We know what we worship; ye worship ye know not what!’’ Even so: Christianity recognizes no worship as genuine when emptied of this intellectual discernment of its object, while paganism degrades humanity by giving supremacy to a blinding fanciful caprice under the name of religion. From first to last such worship is, in fact, a mere superstition. Thus, when a missionary in India found a pagan man worshipping before a picture as a household 16 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. god, he ventured to inquire of the worshipper if he knew what the picture represented. The devout man said he did not know. ‘‘It is,” said the missionary ‘‘a picture of the Emperor Napoleon.” ‘Oh, well,” said the worshipper, “you know we must worship something !” DOWNWARD TREND OF THE (SO-CALLED) GREEK SCHOOL. In regard to the Neo-Platonic School which seems to have attracted so strongly Mr. Emerson’s youthful sympa- thies, it is worthy of note in this connection that John Stuart Mill, as a literary critic, fitly characterized it eighteen years ago, in an article on “ Grote’s Plato,” Edinburgh Re- view, April, 1866, wherein, after noting the completeness of Grote’s work as far as it had gone, he proceeds thus: “If to this were added a summary of what is known to us con- cerning the Pythagorean revival and the later Academy, no portion of purely Greek thought would remain untreated of; for Neo-Platonicism, an aftergrowth of late date and little intrinsic value, was a hybrid product of Greek and Oriental speculation, and its place in history is by the side of Gnosticism. What contact it has with the Greek mind is with that mind in its decadence; as the little in Plato which is allied to it belongs chiefly to the decadence of Plato’s own mind. We are quite reconciled to the exclu- sion from Mr. Grote’s plan of this tedious and unsatisfac- tory chapter in the history of the human intellect.”* The subtle affinity between Mr. Emerson’s distinctive style and line of thought and the old Gnosticism, a self-asserting transcendental philosophy, is quite clearly apparent. His completed life-work presents him to the world as the first New Englander, or rather American writer, whose specula- tive trend of mind took sympathetically to the Gnostic ideas, and whose inherited proclivity as a born New Eng- lander necessitated the effort to combine those Oriental ele- * ‘Dissertations and Discussions, Political, Philosophical, and Historical.” Vol. iv., pp. 228, 229. New York: Henry Holt & Co, RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 17 ments with the shrewd common-sense of practical Yankee life. Yet, alas, there is no vital unity. The incongruity is glaring and balks all effort to naturalize the alien mysti- cism as an aider to home-culture. The American will live out his supreme ideas, whatsoever they may be, in religion as well as in politics. Let him abandon the idea of a per- sonal God, a divine Fatherhood, as primevally revealed, and he, then logically Agnostic, will not worship at all, utterly repelling the Mystic’s thought of an ecstatic worship “ WITH- OUT IDEAS”’; or, if he yield to the mental inebriation of an esthetic, emotional Nature-worship, he will drift to the extreme of naturalistic spontaneity, ignoring the mere thought of sin or evil as a fossil conventionalism, and say, perhaps, like the gay young Ingersolian, vindicating his moral lawlessness: “It is pure nature; what is nice to me is nice to God!”’ Hence, what fruitage? Moral and social disintegration is the normal aftergrowth. FORECASTING OF ULTIMATE ISSUES. This view of the normal issue of an actual transportation of the Neo-Platonic Mysticism into the popular religious conceptions of our own age as an element of ‘Modern Thought” is not discredited, to say the least, by Mr. Em- erson’s characterization of the moral tone of his own time, after the lapse of nearly half a century from the beginning of his career. In his article entitled “‘ The Sovereignty of Ethics,” published in the North American Review, May, 1878, he clearly recognizes moral retrogression rather than advancement, saddened by the signs of the outlook. Having referred to men of the past, he thus disparages those of the present: ‘‘I confess our later generation appears ungirt, frivolous, compared with the religions of the last or Calvin- istic age. There was in the last century a serious, habitual reference to the spiritual world, running through diaries, letters, and conversations—yes, and into wills and legal 18 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. instruments also,—compared with which our liberation looks a little foppish and dapper. The religion of seventy years ago was as an iron belt to the mind, giving it concen- tration and force. A rude people were kept respectable by the determination of thought upon the eternal world. Now men fall abroad, want polarity, suffer in character and intel- lect. A sleep creeps over the great functions of man; en- thusiasm goes out. In its stead a low prudence seeks to hold society staunch; but its arms are too short; cordage and machinery never supply the place of life. The more intellectual reject every yoke of authority with a petulance unprecedented. It is a sort of mark of probity and sincer- ity to declare how little you believe, while the mass of the community indolently follow the old forms with childish scrupulousness, and we have punctuality for faith, and good taste for character.” Day by day this disparaging characterization becomes more profoundly significant. It is virtually an historic testi- mony as to “seeding and fruitage ” within the writer’s field of observation. But whence this tone of surprise? Why wonder? Can any higher style of character or any better moral issues be fairly looked for from any religion whatso- ever, old or new, that can ignore a personal God—ignore the reality of sin as a positive force, and affirm as one of its “dogmata’’ that “evil is only good in the making” ? Can any religion thus assert itself and yet continue to realize its own ideal as an uplifting or a transforming power? No, never! The old Christian recognition of ‘a law of sin”’ that is itself gravitation to a moral abyss, on the one hand, and a personal union to Christ by a loving faith as in itself redemptive power and eternal life, on the other, is the tested remedy “worthy of all acceptation.” AFTERTHOUGHTS. Since the foregoing paper was read before the Genealogi- cal and Biographical Society the leading critical essayist RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 19 of England, Mr. Matthew Arnold, has delivered his “judicial” lecture on Emerson, in Boston and New York, before large audiences listening with varied emotions of sympathy or antipathy. In his analysis and summing up of Mr. Emerson’s life-work Mr. Arnold spoke ‘‘ as one hav- ing authority.” He made four salient points. First of all he criticised Mr. Emerson as a poet and affirmed that, according to the Miltonic canon, Mr. Emerson was not a great poet. Then, after brief consideration, came forth the announcement that, tried by the highest standards, Mr. Emerson does not take rank with the world’s “great men ‘of letters”; he was not a great writer. Thirdly, it was determined, despite the most brilliant flashes of philosophizing, piercing at times to the core of things, Mr. Emerson was not a great philosopher, lacking entirely the faculty of a builder or philosophical constructor. CHARACTERIZATIONS : THE VAGUE AND THE DEFINED. By the time these limitations and negatives had been skilfully put the receptive mind of the audience had become keenly inquisitive as to what positive power remained to abide the tests of time as a permanent distinction. The answer to that main question of the moment, now expected at once by the mute assembly, was not given in terms clear, plain, simple, and self-explanatory, like the terms that had expressed the three preceding judgments. Far from it; the summary answer to the remaining question affirmed that Mr. Emerson’s chief and distinctive power was like that of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, known as “the Friend and Aider of those who would live in the Spirit.” To many of the listeners that designation of a class conveyed no distinct idea; it was puzzling and bewildering. Nevertheless, the phrase was quite familiar as a Scriptural expression, often employed, especially by the Apostle Paul who speaks of “living in the Spirit” and “ walking in the Spirit,” in connection with correlated forms of speecli. 20 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. But as Mr. Arnold has not, in common with Paul, any feel- ing of that supernatural order of things that set forth the promised influence of the Spirit as a gift pertaining to the kingdom of the divine Messiah, the usage of the New Testament could aid no one in interpreting the lecturer’s meaning ; hence the unuttered call of sympathetic, inquiring minds was: “Give us light!” As the biblical terminology was of no account in this case asa rule of inter- pretation, the thing needed on the part of Mr. Arnold, just then, was that he should state the genesis of his chosen phrase. But this was not done. The expression is ge- neric and takes its specific sense from its connection, or the known relations of the speaker. If uttered in a lecture by a leading Spiritualist, like Mr. Davis, it would suggest a definite meaning and certain weird associations. If em- ployed, as it might be, by Monsignor Capel, it would give forth a very different significance and that with a ritualistic impress. If sounded forth by Mr. Spurgeon, its evangelical meaning would be understood at once by the vast masses of every human grade attracted as his listeners. As Mr. Arnold, however, did not trace the genesis of his phrase we must turn for this to Mr. Emerson himself. The motto chosen by him for the title-page of his first book, “ Na- ture,” the quotation from Plotinus, already noted, points to the school and the master of his choice, suggests at once the defined meaning of the phrase, and sounds the key-note of Emersonian philosophy. The last words of Plotinus as he was leaving the world were these: “I am striving with all my might to return the divine part of me to the Divine Whole who fills the Universe.” “Professor F. D. Maurice, Cambridge, England, says in his History of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy: ‘Whether Plotinus uttered these words or not as his spirit was depart- ing, they certainly express the effort of his life and the object of his philosophy.” He, the philosopher, the for- mulator, the oracle of Neo-Platonism in the third century, RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 21 was the leader of those ‘‘ who would live in the Spirit,” and affirmed that in a state of ecstasy, wthout ideas, he had been united to God who fills the universe. The only means of realizing this spirit-life were mortifications of the body, absti- nence, and meditation. These essentially Gnostic and Orien- tal devices for delivering the spirit from the power of the evil inherent in matter often induced insomnia, or sleep- lessness; but he conscientiously and logically refused to take care of his health, to use a bath, or to partake of the nourishing food commended to his acceptance. This aspir- ing spiritual man had the courage of his convictions, was almost adored by his followers, Porphyrius, Iamblichus, and Proclus, who repelled the thought of criticising his writings according to the rules that would determine one’s judg- ments of other writings, but asserted that they were to be treated as divine revelations in interpreting the meanings of Plato as well as in communicating truths unknown before by the wise, and which “the vulgar herd were incapable of receiving.” The men pertaining to this school, that so strongly attracted the sympathies of Ralph Waldo Emerson in his youthful manhood, were the representatives of a clearly defined ideal in regard to “living in the Spirit”; recog- nizing in a phrase like that the exponent of an ascetic dis- cipline, superior to Christianity in the fulness of those ecstatic “virtues ” that could lift the spirit above the source of all evils in the earth-bound body, above the whole sense- world to a higher sphere, into an absorbing union with Deity; and thus, to them the phrase would convey a simple meaning, and would be accepted as fitly describing a philo- sophical affiliation. FANCIFUL CLASSIFICATIONS. This characterization, however, which Mr. Emerson, with his Neo-Platonic affinities could sympathetically interpret, would not indicate the end and aim or the ethical style of 22 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. His permanent place in history can not be thus distinguished. His biographers have often said that “in his ‘Meditations’ we find no specu- lations on the absolute nature of the Deity; no clear expres- sion of an opinion as to a future state.” Instead of any Gnostic moods of aspiration after an absorption into Deity, we discern the signs of a sceptical unsettledness as to the existence either of gods ruling over the present or of any conscious being to be realized in the future; and thus, as in the mind of the leading fictionist of our time, George Eliot, the one reigning idea of DUTY comprised essentially the Emperor’s philosophy, and an unconscious living in the life of posterity his only settled ope. These two moral forces derived their sustenance from that Stoic school of philosophy which was founded by Zeno amid the general decadence of the Greek mind, the weakness and wreckage following Pyrrhonic scepticism, to build up strength of character in the culture of individual minds, each one de- veloping all-sufficient resources from within itself, indepen- dently of all externalisms, civil or social. So, too, amid the moral wreckage issuing in the fall of the Roman Republic and the corruptions of Czsarism, the men in whom the sturdy, patriotic spirit of the ancient Roman Republi- cans still lived, instinctively rallied around the banner of the old Stoic philosophy, recognizing in Cato their ideal exponent and their political leader. Cato, defeated, decreéd his own death in Utica. But the Stoic school did not go with him; his last speech did not sound its death-knell ; it continued to transmit itself even unto the sixth genera- tion, and then found honorable burial in the tomb of Marcus Aurelius. A paragraph of an essay from the pen of Goldwin Smith recurs to memory in this connection: “ Looking to Roman opinion, Cato probably did what honor dictated ; and those who prefer honor to life are not so numerous that we can afford to speak of them with scorn. ‘The fool,’ says Dr. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 23 Mommsen,—regarding the drama of the Republic as closing with Cato’s death,—‘ The fool spoke the epilogue.’ Whether Cato was a fool or not, it was not he that spoke the epi- logue. The epilogue was spoken by Marcus Aurelius, whose principles, political as well as philosophical, were identical with those for which Cato gave his life. All that time the Stoic and Republican party lived, sustained by the memory of its martyrs, and above them all by that of Cato. At first it struggled against the Empire ; at last it accepted it; and, when the world was weary of Cesars, assumed the government and gave humanity the respite of the An- tonines.”* Even so; the government of Marcus Aurelius, like that of his adoptive father, Antoninus Pius, was the government of the philosophical and political party of Cato, constrained without any forethought of its own to accept, for the common good, the gift of Imperialism. But change of place changed not the spirit of the party as thus repre- sented, true still to its original aim, the cultivation of that primitive Roman virtue that had characterized the Repub- lic in its heroic days. This sudden uplifting of the party of the Stoic Cato into the seat of power,—this forty-two years’ “respite” from Cesarism,—is an historical episode, quite exceptional ; not a normal development that any human mind could antici- pate as a possibility. Gibbon tells the story aptly when, having noted the extreme faultiness of Hadrian’s life and then the unexpected recoil, it is added: “‘ He resolved to deserve the thanks of posterity by placing the most exalted merit on the Roman throne. His discerning eye easily discovered a Senator about fifty years of age, blameless in all the offices of life, and:a youth about seventeen whose riper years opened the fair prospect of every virtue; the elder of these was declared the son and successor of Ha- drian, on condition, however, that he himself would imme- * “Lectures and Essays, by Goldwin Smith,” New York, McMillan & Co., 1881, p. 289: ‘‘ The Last Republicans of Rome.” 24 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. diately adopt the younger. The two Antonines,—for it is of them that we are now speaking—governed the Roman world forty-two years with the same invariable spirit of wisdom and virtue.” In this last sentence Gibbon fitly phrases the supreme aim of the Antonines,—* the govern- ment of the Roman world” for the realization of a certain high type of character, distinguished by the primitive sim- plicity of manners and public spirit that had associated the Roman name with those ideas of dignity and moral power that had made them proud of the right to be called Romans. In his “ Meditations’’ Aurelius charges himself to remem. ber ever that he isa Roman. This peculiar ideal, or ruling aim, it is evident, can not be accurately described or dis- tinctively suggested by Mr. Arnold’s phrasing: ‘“ The Friend and Aider of those who would live in the Spirit.” His con- temporaries of the school of Zeno and Cato would not be much helped by this mystical light in determining histori- cally the relative position of the Emperor, who was, indeed, a practical man, a jurist, a soldier, apt in the management of affairs, whose philosophy was really prudential wisdom like that of our own Franklin, a philosophy of observation and common-sense, all toned by the spirit of Stoical self- reliance. This doctrine of self-reliance was the dominating thought or sentiment of the Stoic school; yet, though well trained in that school, Aurelius read widely and eclectically, quo- ting and praising Plato and Epicurus; and thence, of course, not to be classed exclusively with the devotees of any one Master. As Plotinus was not to make his appear- ance upon this earth before the first quarter of the follow- ing century, Aurelius could not have felt the fascination of the Neo-Platonic method of “living in the Spirit” as Mr. Emerson felt it, whose sentiment in- hailing Plato as “the father of all thinkers since his day” the Emperor could not have shared even though he had heard that utterance from a contemporary, while remembering that | | : RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 25 Zeno, the earliest exemplar of his choice for imitation, had written against Plato’s ‘‘ Republic”’ because it treated menas born to subserve political ends, and thence as logically incapable of actualizing the grand Stoical idea of a self- sufficient manhood. That one idea remained as real and actual despite all contingencies or the failure of every hypothesis. He said and wrote that if there are gods he would pray to them, if none he would take care of himself: “In a word, if there is a God all is well ; and if Chance rules do not thou also be governed by it.” ‘If aman has done wrong the harm is his own; but perhaps he has not done wrong—that there are only atoms and nothing else but mixture and dispersion.”* This soliloquy reveals the struggle of an unsettled mind keenly alive to the connec- tion between theology and morality, feeling after a positive basis of belief upon which to ground that eternal distinction between right and wrong which implies moral obligation and normal issues of good or evil. It does not suggest a state of mind capable of such a conception as that of a world-wide leadership in relation to those ‘“ who would live in the Spirit.” GROUNDS OF COMPARISON NOTED. Of the written lectures read by Aurelius, occasionally, to assemblies of the people, there is nothing extant. The “ Meditations,’ composed during several years of camp-life are all that have come down to us. Taking into view the situation of the parties—namely, that in recording these brief sentences somewhat in the style of a private diary, the Emperor had no intention of meeting the needs of any particular class of men or women aspiring “to live in the Spirit,” and that Mr. Emerson certainly had such a purpose at the very outset of his course when he wrote to Thomas Carlyle of the encouragement that came to him * “Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.” Boston Ed. Ticknor & Fields, 1864, Pp. 238, 239, 242. 26 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. from his surrounding of inquiring spirits, ‘“‘ young ladies and gentlemen seeking a new religion,” by whom his warmest sympathies were won and kindled into brightening prophecies of a reconstructed Nature-worship, there seems to be but slight ground for classing together in one category these two writers while comparing their chief aims, their aspirations, their philosophical trendings, or ethical achievements. The contrasts are glaring and show up such a statement as rather fanciful. As sharp in boy- hood as in manhood were these contrasts of mental develop- ment. In the palatial homes of Rome and Lorium the Emperor, Marcus Antoninus Pius, the adoptive father of Aurelius, won the complete mastery of the youth’s think- ing and feeling, awakened a life-long ambition to realize the highest Stoical ideal of a self-reliant mind; and, as the “Meditations” show, ever kept this supremacy. Young Emerson, on the other hand, insensible to the sway of any master-mind within the realm of home-life, attracted suddenly to new planes of thought by the most fascinating writer of the sixteenth century, whom, as a representative man, he has commemorated as ‘‘ Montaigne, The Sceptic,”’ and recoiling from the Puritan ecclesiasticism inherited from eight generations, recognized ere long in the Neo- Platonism of Plotinus the oracular revelations that quick- ened his desire to voice the new ideas that would re- construct a Nature-worship for the advancing inquirers of the nineteenth century, and thus render every human individuality conscious of being an all-sufficient law, prophet, and church unto itself. He exulted, therefore, in his outlook of a new era wherein leading minds, rising above the letter of inherited creedism, would thus “live in the Spirit”; but the Roman Emperor repelled with educated hatred the mere thought of any change involving a new future of the peoples’ religion, sacrificed the best of free- thinking men to the idol of uniformity, and became a more cruel persecutor of Christians in France, Italy, and Asia RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 27 Minor than any one of his predecessors that had reigned over the Roman world. The ideas of the two writers were antagonistic: Mr. Emerson emphasizing the right of the individual mind toa sovereign freedom of thought within the sphere of religion as well as of philosophy; while, on the other hand, the Emperor, Marcus’ Aurelius, was ever ready, in the interest of political unity and the traditional pride of an all-sufficient philosophy, to strike down with an iron sceptre all individ- uality of religious thinking or aspiration. To the view of Prof. Maurice it seems quite inadmissible that the high style of ethical sentiment that distinguished the author of the “Meditations” could co-exist in the same personality with the cruelty of the religious persecutor. Hence he is led to infer that Aurelius must have been misled by his deputies, and that he was ignorant of the facts,—perhaps even ignorant of the existence of the Christians. But these amiable attempts to solve a painful problem are unsustained by facts, and Aurelius’ consultation of the ‘‘ Rescript” of Trajan indicates an imperial policy studied up historically. The ruling idea of his statesmanship in regard to religious uniformity as essential to political unity and civil order necessitated logically the answer sent to the Governor of Gaul, seeking instructions: ‘‘ Let every one who confesses himself a Christian be put to death.” It is not very likely that he was ignorant of the existence of Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, who was burned in that city in the seventh year of his reign, nor of the hosts of martyrdoms pertaining to that period. This alleged incongruity, the co-existence of a high and beautiful style of personal morals with the harsh bigotry of the religious persecutor, is not abnormal or rare, but appears in every age of European history, pagan or anti-pagan. It is the logical issue of a formulated state- religion legally established. Even in our colonial annals we are quite familiar with this style of character. Some of the leading Puritans 28 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. who were responsible for the persecution of those Quakers who found a refuge in Rhode Island were men of amiable dispositions and high ethical excellence. But when the illusive idea, that religious uniformity is essential to civil order, had been accepted as a fundamental principle of statesmanship, all individualities would, of course, be sacrificed to the public necessity—the law of self-preserva- tion. In that case, the more pious the ruler the more sternly resolute would he be in yielding up all things private or merely personal at the call of duty, as by him interpreted. Thus, indeed, when Roger Williams had crossed the Atlantic to procure from the British Throne a charter for the freedom of religion in the State of Rhode Island, the ecclesiastical counsellers of Charles II. opposed the grant, and that charter came forth from the most frivolous king that England had ever known, seemingly inspired of God, as Williams said, to rise with the occasion and assert his determination to ‘ experiment” whether civil order were consistent with such large liberty. Just at this point in our line of comparison the deeply marked contrast between the Emperor and Emerson more clearly appears; for the latter really believed that “the State was made for the individual and not the individual for the State,’—as Dr. Channing used to put the vital doctrine. But no man, even as gentle as Emerson, could have uttered such a doctrine in the presence of Aurelius except ‘at his peril.” Neither could any man, even the godlike Milton, have safely expressed that idea in the presence of the blamelessly moral and devotedly religious King of England, Charles I. How very far were these lofty moralists from any assimilation with any order of men who could be specially designated ‘‘ Aiders of those who would live in the Spirit.” In this connection let it be noted, too, that when Marcus Aurelius was in Athens he was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, and this fact has led his biographers to observe RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 2G that it was his policy to conform to all the traditional re- ligious observances of the different countries where he might chance to be. The restorer of Neo-Platonism, Ploti- nus, would not stoop to such conformity, believing, as he did, in the direct revelations from the infinite to the finite mind; and hence, when his disciple Amelius invited him to share in the sacrifice offered to the gods, on occasions, his answer was: “It is not my part to go to them, but theirs to come to me.” As a man thus “living in the Spirit” he rose superior to all such externalisms. So, too, Mr. Emerson refused to participate with the Unitarian con- gregation, to whom he was preaching, in the participation of the Lord’s Supper, rising above even that externalism “in the life of the Spirit.” If, therefore, it had been said of him that, /zke Plotinus, he was “the Friend and Aider of those who would live in the Spirit,’ the phrase would fitly designate a class of persons recognizing spiritual kinship and a unity of ideas; but to ignore Plotinus entirely, and to name Marcus Aurelius, the politic conformist at all altars, the oppressor of individual consciences, as the type of Emersonianism, is, to say the least, a fanciful and mysti- fying classification. It lacks lucidity. The characters lack affinities ; the generic expression, “those who would live in the Spirit,” does not fitly range them together. The case lacks analysis, and there is no synthesis. We are reminded of a remark of John Stuart Mill on the difficulty of getting at the meaning of the early Greek philosophers, because “the terms which embody it have no equivalents in modern language, which, having fitted itself to the more definite conception of problems, has got rid of many of the vague- nesses and ambiguities to which the early conjectural solu- tions were principally indebted for what plausibility they possessed.” What position of highest eminence, then, does the recent judicial criticism of the great English Essayist assign to Mr. Emerson? Having denied that he was a great poet, a great 30 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. writer, or a great philosopher, we are called upon to honor him as the successor of an imperial moralist who never be- queathed to the world a single sentence with the set pur- pose of uplifting humanity to a higher plane of intellectual, moral, or spiritual life. The assigned position is one of dubious significance, of “vaguenesses and ambiguities” mystifying some minds and awakening enthusiasm in none. THE NEW POSITIVE SCHOOL OF EMERSONIANISM. On the other hand, by some advanced schools of “ Modern Thought’’ speaking through the pulpit and the press, Mr. Emerson’s place in history has been enthusiastically set forth in plain language, needing no aid of side-lights or “Comparative Theology” to fix its meaning. Thus: “ Emerson is the revealing prophet of the nineteenth cen- tury, the successor of Jesus Christ as the inaugurator of anewera.” This is not a quotation from Rev. Dr. Bartol’s sermon, delivered in Boston, on the Sunday following Mr. Arnold’s lecture in that city, although, from first to last, that discourse, teeming with p/us life (an Emersonianism), affirmed the same sentiment. That designation would be a fitting motto for inscription upon the banner around which aspiring spirits may rally in concert for the fulfilment of the brilliant oracle. What will come of it? Will it make a record of its own as a fourth attempt to revive Neo-Platon- ism, combining idealized science with fresh revelations, thus associating historically the names of four great cities— Alexandria, Rome, Florence, and Boston ? No; this cherished hope, like others of its kin, will fail. Marcus Aurelius had no successor after his own likeness. When he had died the Roman Empire was quickly dis- integrated, and his whole life-battle for its maintenance was a waste of power. Thus, to-day, while musing, as at the beginning, over the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, we recognize now as ever his imperial genius as one of the RALPH WALDO EMERSON., 3! greatest of writers ; at the same time, his life-work, asa whole, tested by its supreme ideal, its method and fruitage, shows also a great waste of power, verifying the saying of Jesus touching the harvest of human life : ““ HE THAT GATHERETH NOT WITH ME SCATTERETH ABROAD.”