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THE 
 
 nfFLUE]!^CE OF EMERSON. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM R. THAYER, 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 CUPPLES, UPHAM, AND COMPANY. 
 
 ©in Corner ISooftstore. 
 1886. 
 
 I r 
 
^ 
 
THE 
 
 INFLUEI^CE OF EMERSON. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM R. THAYER, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "the CONFESSIONS OF HERMES/ 
 
 > i 
 
 * * 
 
 > » » 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 CUPPLES, UPHAM, AND CO:\rPANY. 
 
 ©Ill Corner 33aokst0rc. 
 1886. 
 
1 
 
 < 
 
 Copyright, 18SG, 
 By William R. Thayer. 
 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 
 
^9^" 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF EMERSON. 
 
 ^ I ^HE oldest masterpiece in literature contains the profoundly 
 -^ sad utterances of a mighty soul, upon whom tlie frailty 
 of man, the mystery of evil, the pangs of conscience, the 
 sorrows and disappointments and failures of life, laid an 
 almost intolerable burden. " My soul is weary of my life," he 
 cried; "I will leave my complaint upon myself; I will speak 
 in the bitterness of my soul. I will say unto God, Do not con- 
 demn me; show me wherefore thou contendest with me. Is it 
 good unto thee that thou shouldcst oppress, that thou shouldest 
 despise the work of thine hands, and shine upon the counsel 
 of the wicked ? " Across the ages that cry of anguish sounds 
 to us distinct, pathetic, human ; and it has had numberless 
 echoes in every land which, since Job's Epic of Sorrow was 
 written, has left literary records of itself Prophets, preachers, 
 and poets, and builders and destroyers of philosophic systems, 
 have wailed forth similar notes of doubt and agony, and liave 
 attempted to discover, by Reason or l)y Faith, the cause of the 
 heaviness of life and a remedy for it. 
 
 Who has not felt his heart sink within him as he realized 
 the awful discrepancy between what mankind would be and 
 what they are, between the attainment and the desire ! How 
 insignificant the individual appears, — a mere time-bubble float- 
 ing for a moment between two eternities, a child who must face 
 the inexorable forces by which the stars arc l^alanccd ! Only 
 by drudgery can he keep himself alive on the planet, only by 
 bitter experience does he come at last to know which habits 
 are wholesome and whicli harmful ; and when, after blind 
 
gropings for superhuman help, he reaches tlie conviction that 
 there is a moral purpose — and consequently a moral Ruler — 
 in the universe, he is perplexed by a thousand fresh enigmas. 
 Out of the shadows a Voice asks him : " Why does the Source 
 of all virtue and goodness make goodness and virtue so hard 
 for mankind to practise ? Why does the God of truth veil 
 truth from his creatures ? And what, if God })refers the good 
 to the wicked, becomes of the wicked ? 
 
 " Looked at from one side, the record of organic life on 
 earth seems but the tale of a perpetual conflict between the 
 strong and the weak, — a conflict in which the strong always 
 win and the weak always perish. Those fittest to survive de- 
 stroy their inferiors. But what becomes of those that fail ? 
 Were they created merely that their stronger enemies might 
 destroy them? And, after all, the fittest themselves arc soon 
 superseded : in a few generations they take the place of the 
 weak; they are doomed to destruction, and creatures a little 
 stronger live in their stead. To the tender-hearted, this spec- 
 tacle of the incessant slaughter of countless millions of indi- 
 viduals is appalling, saddening. Wherefore this extravagant 
 waste of life ? To keep each species up to the level of its best 
 members ? But in the perspective of geology the existence 
 of a species dwindles to a span of no greater relative breadth 
 than the existence of the individual in the view of history. 
 xVnd what value can a Creator who despises the component 
 members of a race set upon the race as a whole ? 
 
 " Wo talk of the forward march of civilization and of the 
 superiority of our time over preceding ages, and assume that 
 a beneficent Power is guiding mankind towards perfection. 
 We persistently look ahead to tliat ideal millennium which, 
 with the sense of the reality of Sorrow, has lived in the imag- 
 ination and poetic longings of noblc-hcartcd men. But Avhat 
 of the generations dead, to Avhicli no inkling of Utopia was 
 ever whispered ? Did they shoot up and wither merely to fur- 
 nish manure from which our larger growth should spring ? 
 May not a similar lot be ours and all men's ? Alas ! if we are 
 here only to work for a posterity which must in turn perish, 
 how vain, how unutterably hopeless is life ! 
 
••* And see how slowly, with what infinite pain and patience, 
 a people rises toward what we call civihzation 1 Every im- 
 provement in mechanical implement, every increase of knowl- 
 edge and recognition of a higher moral standard, requires 
 years, perhaps centuries, for dissemination. Each helpful 
 thouoht or device has been wrested from the invisible Keeper 
 of Knowledge, who grudgingly surrenders it to his mortal 
 antagonist. Life is a cruel combat between frailty and omnipo- 
 tence, in which the former can gain nothing, and the latter 
 can lose nothing. 
 
 " The religions that have dominated mankind have been 
 pervaded with the conviction that life is hard, that happiness 
 is illusory, that by renunciation alone can peace of mind be 
 attained. Do you not hear a piteous Terror sighing througli 
 every creed ? This conflict between good and evil has been 
 typified as a struggle between a personal God and a personal 
 Devil. The human race, it is preached, is under a blight. 
 Utterly unworthy, it must hasten to perdition, but for the sac- 
 rifice of some saviour. Prometheus, Buddha, Clu-ist, by their 
 sublime unselfishness earn for mortals a larger hope of salva- 
 tion. If the good fail to thrive in this world, they will be 
 rewarded in the next ; and though the wicked flourish here, 
 hell awaits them hereafter. The conception of divine venge- 
 ance jangles strangely with the assertion that God is love. 
 Yet Christianity offers a great hope, promises that in the 
 end the rigliteous shall be cared for by God ; it holds out to 
 the down-trodden and afflicted a prospect of rest and comfort ; 
 it gives strength to bear present ills for the sake of winning 
 divine approval. Nevertheless, what Christian can justify the 
 prevalence of wrongs, of sin, of pain, of failure, in a world 
 ruled by a God whose pretended attributes are right, justice, 
 mercy, love ? Among men, the honest do not steal, the truth- 
 ful do not lie, the loving are not cruel ; why should not the 
 works of your divinity correspond to the character you ascribe 
 to him?" 
 
 Then will the universe clothe itself in mourning to him who 
 has listened to this Voice. Pain, disease, crime ; the pettiness 
 
6 
 
 of daily life ; the vast uneducated multitudes stretching like 
 a Slough of Despond over the Past and into the Future ; tlie 
 incubus of poverty ; heredity crippling offspring to punish 
 the sins of the fathers ; the plaintive cry of the children, the 
 curses of the wicked, the jests of the ribald, — will blot out of 
 his heart the belief in a world governed by a deity which dearly 
 loves it. A crushing sense of the futility of every effort will 
 come over him. Why toil to lift one or two, when millions 
 must inevitably fall? What will become of those millions when 
 they have fallen ? Were every American a paragon of virtue 
 and enlightenment, would not Asia, Africa, and the Oceanic 
 hordes remain unsaved ? Alas ! poor wretches, sinking by 
 myriads in the angry ocean, the little cork I toss you can keep 
 none of you from drowning. And so, with a soul full of 
 anguish and compassion, or of desperate wrath and bitterness, 
 according as his nature leads him to heed chiefly the sufferings 
 of others or his own, he is ready to acknowledge with the 
 pessimist that life is not worth living. 
 
 But is this the end ? Is life at bottom an abyss of woe spun 
 across with a gossamer film of illusions through which all 
 except children — light-footed in their blissful ignorance — 
 must sink ? Are these failures and wrongs, this weariness and 
 despair, not real, — nay, the only realities ? Is the " worship 
 of sorrow" not for all hearts? Has not that lamentation of 
 Job resounded through the ages, — an endless, pitiful wail like 
 that heard by Dante in the starless air of Hell, an awful 
 affirmation of the hopelessness of living ? 
 
 Let us listen to one who sings apart from the dolorous choir, 
 — to Emerson. 
 
 Emerson's works, like the Bible or Shakspeare or those 
 collections of proverbs in which in every language are summed 
 up the wit and wisdom of unnumbered nameless poets and 
 philosophers, might furnish texts for sermons of any color, 
 Theist or pantheist or agnostic might bind his arguments with 
 quotations from the many-sided Essays. Nay, at different 
 times Emerson tells a different story to the same person, — as I 
 have experienced in reading his essay on Fate, for instance, 
 
which has seemed to me both an inspiring assertion of the free- 
 dom of the will and an unanswerable argument for fatalism. 
 This apparent shifting is the obstacle that prevents many per- 
 sons from understanding Emerson. We shun uncertainty, and 
 seek amid the unceasing changes of life an immutable stand- 
 point. Those religions which have influenced for the longest 
 time the largest numbers of human beings have accordingly 
 made the boldest pretension of resting on impregnable founda- 
 tions and asserted an adequate knowledge of heavenly as well 
 as of earthly affairs. To bring order out of the seeming chaos 
 of the natural and spiritual worlds is the incessant effort of 
 Reason. It deduces laws, it weaves theories, — cables which 
 connect it with the shore, no matter how far it drift upon the 
 undiscovered sea. It has rules for everything, a pigeon-hole 
 for everything ; and when a fact does not fall directly under 
 the law. Reason complacently argues from the exception the 
 truth of the law, itself. But are we really governed by as many 
 rules capable of exact demonstration as we persuade ourselves ? 
 Is there not much that is spontaneous and unconscious in our 
 actions ? Speaking precisely, is not the tracing of laws an 
 after-process of the Reason, which strives to impose its ex-post- 
 facto logic on our lives ? For example, we neither love nor 
 hate by logic, nor by any other formula recognized at the mo- 
 ment. Each act, each event is new, and will be tinged by the 
 individuality of each person. The logician who thinks to con- 
 found Emerson by demanding syllogistic corroboration, or by 
 confronting him with contradictory opinions bearing on the 
 same subject, will get no satisfaction. " Let me remind you 
 that I am only an experimenter. Do not set the least value on 
 what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, — as if I 
 pretended to settle anything as true or false. I unsettle all 
 things ; no facts to me are sacred, none profane. I simply 
 experiment, — an endless Seeker, with no Past at my back." ^ 
 The object of the present essay is therefore to state as briefly 
 and as clearly as possible what may he called Emerson's lead- 
 ing views, often borrowing, for the sake of exactness, his own 
 
 1 Circles. 
 
8 
 
 language, which defies condensation. To attempt to attack 
 them with the usual weapons of philosophical criticism would 
 be ludicrously unprofitable, for only Quixotic philosophers dis- 
 })lay their prowess by overthrowing systems which do not exist. 
 Emerson's creed, lilie Shakspeare's, baffles definition ; but 
 who on this account is blind to the religion and philosophy in 
 Hamlet and 3Iacheth ? If in one place Emerson makes a half- 
 statement, be sure that somewhere else its complement and 
 corrective have been recorded. He can be understood only by 
 those who seek for the spirit of all his work. To single out a 
 paragraph or chapter as representative, generally misrepresents 
 him. Let us examine, then, the Emersonian scheme, taking 
 care always to remember this warning of his : " I know better 
 than to claim any completeness for my picture. I am a frag- 
 ment, and this is a fragment of me. I can very confidently 
 announce one or another law, which throws itself into relief 
 and form, but / am too young yet hy some ages to compile a 
 coder 1 
 
 Emerson divides the Universe into Nature and Soul, com- 
 prising under the former all that is not me in the natural world 
 and in art. Nature is man's teacher. First of all she dis- 
 closes herself to him as Commodity P- She is not only the 
 material, but the result of man's labor. She furnishes every- 
 thing except the spirit that directs his labor. She is his home, 
 workshop, and playground ; his food and raiment. These 
 functions and relations all men, even the dullest, recognize. 
 But the cleverer man docs not stop here ; he watches her 
 metliods and invents devices for lessening his toil and increas- 
 ing his comforts. " The private poor man hatli cities, ships, 
 canals, bridges, built for him. He goes to the post-office, and 
 the human race run on liis errands ; to the book-shop, and the 
 human race read and write of all that happens, for him ; to 
 the court-house, and nations repair his wrongs." 
 
 But Nature has a higher purpose than merely to feed and 
 clothe man, — services she renders equally to the meanest 
 
 1 Experience. ^ Nature, chap. ii. 
 
,/ 
 animals ; in threefold fashion she satisfies his love of Beauty} 
 
 First, natural forms in and for themselves give pleasure, by 
 resting the weary and by causing purely sensuous delight. The 
 tradesman " comes out of the din and craft of the street and 
 sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again." A gorgeous 
 sunrise or sunset, a varied landscape, the succession of plants, 
 and the orderly march of tribes of birds and insects, have a 
 perennial fascination for the sympathetic observer. But a higher 
 element — the spiritual — is essential to its perfection. This 
 pageant of land and sea and sky is more than a mere wonder- 
 stirring yet meaningless show, it is the emblem of the Divine 
 Mind. " Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue." Finally, 
 *' the beauty of the world may be viewed as it becomes an 
 object of the intellect." Nature has correspondence with 
 thought, as well as with virtue and emotion ; and from intel- 
 lectual admiration is born that desire to re-embody beauty in 
 new forms from which Art springs. " No reason can be asked 
 or given why the soul seeks beauty. Truth and goodness and 
 beauty are but different faces of the same All." Higher than 
 the beauty in Nature, however, is the inward beauty of the 
 soul, which it heralds. 
 
 Again, Nature is the vehicle of thought ; she furnishes 
 Languagey Words are primarily signs of natural facts ; later, 
 they become symbols of spiritual facts. With metaphors 
 learned from the outside world we clothe our inmost thoughts 
 susceptible of expression : the poet in words, the sculptor in a 
 statue, the musician in sounds. "Man is conscious of a uni- 
 versal soul within or behind his individual life, wherein, as in 
 a firmament, the natures of Justice, Truth, Love, Freedom, 
 arise and shine. This universal soul, he calls Reason : it is 
 not mine or thine or his, but we are its ; we are its property 
 and men." But how disproportionate it seems that we should 
 use this " grand cipher," which Reason stamps upon Nature, " to 
 expedite the affairs of our pot and kettle ! " " We are like 
 travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs." 
 When, therefore, we ask ourselves if these symbols have not 
 
 ^ Nature, chap. iii. 2 ibid., chap. iv. 
 
10 
 
 some inherent significance, we are forced to conclude that 
 " this relation between the mind and matter is not fancied by- 
 some poet, but stands in the will of God. . . . There seems to 
 be a necessity in spirit to manifest itself in material forms ; 
 and day and night, river and storm, beast and bird, acid and 
 alkali, pre-exist in necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and 
 are what they are by virtue of preceding affections in the 
 world of spirit. A Fact is the end or last issue of spirit." 
 
 And now man discovers that "Nature is a Discipline.'''' I 
 Every atom, every property of matter brings a lesson. First, 
 the understanding is instructed in intellectual truths ; it per- 
 ceives differences. Each natural object has a peculiar use. 
 Space and Time teach that " things are not huddled and 
 lumped, but sundered and individual." Therefore " the wise 
 man shows his wisdom in separation, in gradation, and 
 Ms scale of creatures and of merits is as wide as nature. The 
 foolish have no range in their scale, but suppose every man is 
 as every other man. What is not good they call the worst, 
 and what is not hateful they call the best." Behold, next, 
 liow every event proclaims " the exercise of the Will or the 
 lesson of power." Inch by inch all natural forces are subju- 
 gated by the man of character. " His victorious thought 
 comes up with and reduces all things, until the world be- 
 comes at last only a realized will, — the double of the man." 
 Moreover, all things are moral ; Nature is the ally of reli- 
 gion, for " every natural process is a version of a moral 
 sentence." Borne in upon the mind from all sides is the 
 conviction of a Unity, in which all exists and which per- 
 meates all. 
 
 Since to the " one end of Discipline all parts of Nature 
 conspire, a noble doubt perpetually suggests itself, — whether 
 this end be not the Final Cause of the Universe, and whether 
 Nature outwardly exists." This doubt can never be settled, 
 because the evidence of the senses can never be tested, and 
 must always be ideal. Let no one argue from this Idealism.,'^ 
 however, that the stability of the material world is in danger. 
 
 1 Nature, chap. v. ^ Ibid., chap. vi. 
 
 ,,-ja?«' 
 
11 
 
 " God never jests with us," but guards inviolably the perma- 
 nence of Nature. As our culture in Idealism widens, we 
 outgrow our earlier superstition that " man and Nature are 
 indissolubly joined . . . that things are ultimates." We 
 escape from the " despotism of the senses, which binds us to 
 Nature as if we were a part of it, and shows us Nature aloof, 
 and, as it were, afloat. ... If the Reason be stimulated to 
 more earnest vision, outlines and surfaces become transparent, 
 and are no longer seen ; causes and spirits are seen through 
 them." And Nature herself urges us to our emancipation ; 
 the poet helps us ; the philosopher, the student of intellectual 
 science, and, finally, ethics and religion, help us to perceive 
 that Nature is an " appendix of the soul." 
 
 Nature is the perpetual reminder of God. "It always 
 speaks of Spirit,^ suggests the absolute. . . . And of that 
 ineffable essence which we call Spirit, he that thinks most will 
 say least." But he will come to recognize that " it does not 
 act upon us from without, that is, in space and time, but 
 spiritually, or through ourselves : therefore that Spirit, that is, 
 the Supreme Being, does not build up Nature around us, but 
 puts it forth through us, as the life of the tree puts forth new 
 branches and leaves through the pores of the old." Under- 
 standing this, we are " animated to create our own world 
 through the purification of our soul." Emerson closes this 
 essay on Nature — the purest and loftiest spiritual message 
 yet uttered in America — with this promise : "As fast as you 
 conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will 
 unfold its great proportions ... so fast will disagreeable ap- 
 pearances, — swine, spiders, snakes, pests, mad-houses, prisons, 
 enemies, — vanish ; they are temporary, and shall be no more 
 seen.- . . . The kingdom of man over Nature, which cometh 
 not with observation, — a dominion such as now is beyond his 
 dream of God, — he shall enter without more wonder than the 
 blind man feels who is gradually restored to perfect sight." 
 
 Even from this glimpse we see two principles illuminating 
 Emerson's faith, — a high Idealism, bespeaking Unity, immor- 
 
 ^ Nature, chap. vii. 
 
12 
 
 tal and infinite, and an unshaken belief in the majesty of the 
 Individual. Intuition apprises us immediately of an ineffable 
 Spirit whose abode is the Universe, whose emblems are Wis- 
 dom, Virtue, and Love. It follows that every individual is a 
 part of this Spirit, and that he is not necessarily the fallen, 
 despicable wretch depicted by Moses and still bemoaned in 
 many churches, but a living child of God, — and who can say 
 how much that means ? 
 
 Emerson is the unwearied champion of Individuals. All 
 his sentences are addressed to them. He reveals to them the 
 possibilities lying within reach of all. Mere bigness and burly 
 multitudes get no praise from him. The glib cant of the 
 demagogue issues not from his lips. " Leave this hypocritical 
 prating about the masses," he says sternly. "Masses are rude, 
 lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and 
 need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to 
 concede anything to them, but to tame, drive, divide, and break 
 them up, and draw individuals out of them. The worst of 
 charity is, that the lives you are asked to preserve are not 
 worth preserving. Masses ! the calamity is the masses." ^ 
 Yet Emerson brings the humblest of his listeners up to the 
 level of the world-heroes. You feel in reading him that no 
 act of heroism, no ordeal of devotion, no supreme renunciation 
 would be hard. " I like that every chair shall be a throne 
 and hold a king."^ Probably no actual king, except the ever- 
 beautiful Marcus Aurelius, could have filled Emerson's 
 " throne " worthily. 
 
 The Individual, being a sharer in the Infinite Spirit, must 
 rise in the world of spirit. Each virtue shall add a plume to 
 his wings. He must be self-reliant. With such a sponsor, 
 what has he to fear ? It ill becomes one who knows that he 
 is on a mission for the infinite and eternal to quail before the 
 finite and transitory. " Why should we feel ourselves to be 
 men, unless it be to succeed in everything, everywhere?" 
 exclaims Mirabeau. Emerson adds, " That we are here is 
 proof that we ought to be here."^ The day dawns when 
 
 ^ Considerations by the Way. ^ Manners. 
 
13 
 
 we realize that we must be ourselves, trust ourselves, accept- 
 ing cheerfully the time and land into which Providence has 
 called us. Little will it avail us to pray the prayers and 
 accept the creeds of others. The authors of those prayers 
 and creeds relied courageously upon themselves ; they ad- 
 monish us to imitate, not their words, but their self-reliance. 
 Why should we ransack England, Italy, and Greece for 
 patterns ? We shall find no more in Rome than we take 
 with us thither. 
 
 All things conspire to acquaint the Individual with Spirit. 
 Out of dangers and trials he shall extract self-confidence and 
 courage. The strength that lay in each difficulty shall, when 
 overcome, be added to his strength. Art shall make visible 
 for him Beauty, which before lurked dimly in his mind, and 
 Beauty shall delight him as the charm that invariably vivifies 
 perfect work. Books shall introduce him to the assembly of 
 the choice spirits whom the ages have elected to represent 
 Immanity. Friendship shall bring him face to face with those 
 who are pursuing a soul's journey similar to his. Love, finally, 
 shall disclose to hira most intimately and sweetly the embodi- 
 ment of the Universal Love. 
 
 But the integrity of the Individual must be carefully guarded ; 
 he must not be deceived into mistaking any of these for the 
 end of his existence : God alone is that. So he is frequently 
 reminded, if he linger too long over business or art or books 
 or friends, that only the Eternal can permanently satisfy him. 
 These reminders often seem rude, often they cause heartache ; 
 but at last he understands their purpose. " The death of a 
 dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but 
 privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or 
 genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of 
 life, terminates an epoch of infancy or youth which was waiting 
 to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation or a household or 
 style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more 
 friendly to the growth of character. . . . And the man or 
 woman who would have remained a sunny garden-flower, with 
 no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by 
 the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener is made 
 
14 
 
 the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide 
 neighborhoods of men." ^ 
 
 One truth of vital importance must, therefore, be learned, — 
 nothing abides except Spirit. Matter and its accidents under- 
 go unintermitted change. Life is fluid, not sohd ; progressive, 
 not stationary. The soul is. 
 
 When once this truth has been grasped we wonder no longer 
 why laws, religions, and social customs cannot be permanent. 
 They are dams made to fit one time ; the river of Humanity 
 flows through all times. See, for example, how significant 
 this is when applied to ethics. The ethical codes, one after 
 another, grow too small, and must be cast off, or repaired and 
 enlarged. As men's faith in a personal God diminishes, their 
 need of a personal symbol of him diminishes; Christ the 
 Man has more significance than Christ the God. Likewise, 
 many enlightened persons no longer believe in everlasting 
 damnation, —a scheme of compensation evidently contrary to 
 all the testimony of life, because it assumes that the universal 
 flux will cease and that the guilty soul will remain in a fixed 
 shape in hell, in spite of the fact that all souls are moving. 
 Moreover, it attaches an absolute value to a human, relative 
 act. Which of us would dare to assert that a single act or a 
 sinole thought is the summary and completion of his career, 
 or that it is even conceivable that any momentary experience 
 should become solid, unchanged forevermore? Look where 
 we will, development, or unfolding, is going on ; no end is 
 reached, or thinkable. The human imagination has drawn a 
 finite, temporal hell to do what it intends shall be an infinite 
 and eternal work. Let us beware of usmg our foot-rule and 
 hour-^lass to measure immeasurable Space and Time. All 
 human theories of retribution must be false if they are false to 
 this law of life ; namely. Growth, or Being, or Becoming. 
 
 Emerson overthrows the fetich Consistency because under 
 the pretence of being consistent men too often remain 
 dwarfed. They are tethered to a dogma, they have eaten 
 all the food within their reach; and yet, instead of going forth 
 
 1 Compensation. ' See Self-Reliance. 
 
15 
 
 to feed in the inexhaustible pastures of the universe, their 
 consistency makes them revolve hungrily in their little disk of 
 stubble. Life is larger than a theory, — does it not include 
 all theories ? The soul is larger than a dogma. But Consis- 
 tency, which cannot grow, denies the right of growth to his 
 victim. The clinging to the Past indicates an ignoble suspi- 
 cion that the Present and Future must fall short, and that 
 the infinite has limitations. The healthy soul welcomes 
 change as the creator of newer, grander conditions. " In 
 proportion to the vigor of the individual, these revolutions 
 are frequent, until in some happier mind they are incessant, 
 and all worldly relations hang very loosely about him, becom- 
 ing, as it were, a transparent fluid membrane through which 
 the living form is seen, and not, as in most men, an indurated 
 heterogeneous fabric of many dates and of no settled character, 
 in which the man is imprisoned." ^ 
 
 « 
 
 There are two questions which every earnest man has asked 
 himself, oftenest in trembling or grim desperation: "Am I 
 the puppet of Fate ? " " What means this crushing mystery 
 of Sin ? " Upon the answers to these questions depend his 
 views of morals, his happiness in this world, his hope of im- 
 mortality, his belief in God. If he ask himself in vain ; if, 
 in spite of diligent self-questioning and entreaty, the reply 
 never come, — he will turn to the great wise men who stand at 
 the entrance to the temple as spokesmen of the gods invisible 
 within. Lucky will it be if from any lips issue words to put 
 his perplexity at rest ! It is only too likely that their re- 
 sponses will be his old riddles in new garb. Then will he 
 depart in sorrow, crying out with Omar Khayyam, — 
 
 " O thou who didst with pitfall and with gin 
 Beset the Road I was to wander in, 
 
 Thou wilt not with Predestined Evil round 
 Enmesh, and then impute my Fall to Sin ! 
 
 " O thou who Man of baser Earth didst make, 
 And even with Paradise devise the Snake, 
 
 For all the Sin wherewith the Face of ]\Ian 
 Is blackened, Man's Forgiveness give — and take." 2 
 
 1 Compensation. ^ Rubaiyat, Ixxx. Ixxxi. 
 
 / 
 
16 
 
 It seems that the Keeper of these secrets has never yet 
 revealed them to mortal coaxing or compulsion. They are 
 impregnable to the assaults of dialecticians. Philosophical 
 and scientific system-makers have hurled ingeniously contrived 
 engines against the adamantine stronghold. After the din 
 and dust of the concussion vanish, the rock rises there, grim, 
 silent, awful; and the splinters of the puny battering-ram 
 strew its base. Nevertheless, though dialectics fail and vision 
 be dim, we live, and, in living, by hints and inklings we begin 
 to infer something concerning those secrets which we could 
 not take by storm. Emerson's inestimable worth appears in 
 this ; he furnishes you with no weapon of attack, but by preg- 
 nant hints and by discovering hidden relations he will assist 
 you towards a reasonable certainty. In 1853 he wrote to 
 Carlyle in regard to the essay on Fate, then recently writ- 
 ten : " You will survive the reading, and will be a sure proof 
 that the nut is not cracked. For when we find out what fate 
 is, I suppose the Sphinx and we are done for, and Sphinx, 
 (Edipus, and the world ought by good rights to roll down 
 the steep into the sea." ^ 
 
 Of what nature, then, is the assistance Emerson gives us 
 towards accepting that bitter mystery, the apparent conflict of 
 Fate and Free-will ? Certainly no single phrase sums up his 
 views. We need not hope to win him for an ally for either 
 camp. He states with unflinching candor that Fate is omni- 
 present. "Great men, great nations, have not been boasters 
 and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have 
 manned themselves to face it." ^ He shows how heredity, sex, 
 temperament, circumstances inevitably shape, limit, bind the 
 individual. He describes the perpetual struggle between brute 
 matter and thought, " the spirit which composes and decom- 
 poses Nature,"— a struggle, fierce and necessary, between God 
 and Devil. But even from the darkest aspect of the enigma 
 Emerson plucks radiant counsel. " If you believe in Fate to 
 your harm," he says, " believe in it at least for your good. 
 For if Fate is so prevailing, man also is part of it, and can 
 confront fate with fate.'" ^ 
 
 1 Carlyle-Emerson Correspondence, ii. 217. ^ Fate. 
 
17 
 
 Admit the scope of Fate, you must equally admit the free- 
 dom of the Will. Should this contradiction clash with your logic, 
 it will nevertheless tally with your experience. Intellect, in 
 that which pertains to itself, testifies to a Necessity ; Will, 
 in that which pertains to Will, testifies to Freedom : you must 
 believe both, since each has no authority either to prove or dis- 
 prove matters outside of its sj)here. The intuition which 
 makes you aware of moral responsibility is as indubitable as 
 any other fact which enters your consciousness. Yet it neces- 
 sarily transcends mathematical demonstration. Will you on 
 this account scornfully toss it away as chimerical or worthless ? 
 Then for the same reason you must deny the commonest, yet 
 inscrutably secret, facts of experience, such as the union of 
 mind and matter, or variety proceeding from unity, or motion 
 from rest. So Emerson maintains that the moral sentiment 
 demands the freedom of the Will. Every fact is moral, and 
 manifests the moral nature of Spirit. Fate, therefore, dissi- 
 pates the immoral delusion that trusts in luck or chance or a 
 law-breaking " special Providence." Fate presupposes and 
 asserts the permanence and sacredness of Law and of that 
 " Blessed Unity which holds natures and souls in perfect so- 
 lution and compels every atom to serve a universal end." 
 Believing absolutely in the beneficence of the Great Spirit, 
 from whom all things ebb and to whom all things flow back, 
 Emerson could not help believing that the end served by every 
 atom is not only universal, but ultimately good. With our 
 relative knowledge we cannot possibly prove that what seems 
 transiently bad will remain eternally bad, or that even from 
 what is bad at the moment good may not be derived ; yet even 
 measuring by our every-day standard of good and bad, we de- 
 tect numerous instances, either in our own lives or in history, 
 of great blessings originating in apparent calamities. This 
 being true of phenomena whose purport we presume to deter- 
 mine, why should not the same be true of all phenomena ? 
 Our shortsightedness extends to our view of morals. We do 
 not behold crime immediately punished according to our code, 
 and we exclaim, therefore, that the guilty escape, or that there 
 is no moral law. But every account is settled, though we be 
 
18 
 
 not present at the settlement ; and " every ultimate fact is the 
 first of a new series." ^ Evidently, were Emerson a professed 
 fatalist and nothing more, he would meet Fate as a friendly, 
 and not as a malignant, power. 
 
 A recent critic^ has brought tlie charge against Emerson 
 " that he has little to say of that horrid burden and impediment 
 on the soul which the churches call Sin, and which, by what- 
 ever name we call it, is a very real catastrophe in the moral 
 nature of man. He had no eye, like Dante's, for the vileness, 
 the cruelty, the utter despicableness to which humanity may be 
 moulded. The courses of Nature and the prodigious injustice 
 of man in society affect him with neither horror nor awe." 
 If this charge were true, Emerson's name would already be 
 foro-otten, — nay, it would never have emerged from obscurity. 
 Not by " mere playing w^ith words" did he rise to be one of the 
 great moral forces of this century. Not by shutting his eyes, 
 not by betaking himself to the clouds, when his questioners put 
 to him this bitter puzzle or pointed at the hideous spectres of 
 evil, did he soothe their terrible doubts and revive their courage. 
 If he had not known their need, how could he have ministered 
 to them ? How could his spirit still speak the right word to a 
 new generation of inquirers ? The truth is, that to bring such 
 a charge against Emerson is to proclaim an imperfect under- 
 standing of his teaching and a crippled appreciation of his 
 character. Emerson does not shut his eyes upon the nightmare 
 of Sin. Less than any other modern moralist does he blink 
 the truth, because he has no theory or sect to serve by half- 
 statements or by suppression. On the contrary, it is because 
 he has dared to scrutinize all that he dares to tell all. We call his 
 tone optimistic from its habitual healthy ring ; but let nobody 
 suppose it lacks other notes, or that he wished himself to be 
 thought of as singing pretty little ditties, jocund madrigals, and 
 ballads of fair weather. 
 
 In the chapters on Fate and Power, in those on Com- 
 pensation and Considerations by the Way and Behavior, 
 — not to mention others, — Emerson's deep realization of the 
 
 1 Circles. ^ Mr. John Morley. 
 
19 
 
 existence and mystery of Evil is recorded. Listen to a few of 
 
 his stern facts : — 
 
 - We must see that the world is rough and surly, aud will not mind 
 drowning a man or a woman, but swallows your ship like a gram of dust 
 The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect uo persons. 
 - Let us not deny it up and down. Providence has a wild, rough, incal- 
 culable road to its end, and it is of no use to try to whitewash its huge, 
 mixed instrumentalities, or to dress up that terrific benefactor in a clean 
 shirt and white neckcloth of a student of divinity.- "Nature work 
 very hard, and only hits the white once in a million throws. In mankind 
 she is contented if she yield one master m a century.' - 
 
 Let these, from among a hundred quotable passages of iden- 
 tical import, bear witness that Emerson, " unshaken, unseduced, 
 unterrified," dared "to look at the monster. The quotations 
 that follow help to corroborate and to explain why the hideous 
 spectacle overcame neither his courage nor his hope : — 
 
 " Fate keeps everything alive so long as the smallest thread of public 
 neces4tv holds it on to the tree. The coxcomb and bully and thief class 
 are allowed as proletaries, every one of their vices being the excess or 
 acridity of a virtue. The mass are animal, in pupilage, and near chim- 
 panzee." 2 "In front of these sinister facts, the first lesson of history is 
 the good of evil."i " Nothing, Falsehood, may indeed stand as the great 
 nicht, or shade, on which, as a background, the living nniverse paints 
 itself forth : but no fact is begotten by it; it cannot work, for it is not. 
 It cannot work any good ; it cannot work any harm. It is harm, inasmuch 
 as it is worse not to be than to be." ^ " Our philosophy is affirmative, and 
 readily accepts the testimony of negative facts, as every shadow points to 
 the sun " " " The Medical College piles up in its museum its grim mon- 
 sters of morbid anatomv, and there are melancholy sceptics with a taste 
 for carrion who batten on the hideous facts in history, — perseciitions, 
 inquisitions, St. Bartholomew massacres, devilish lives, Nero, Caesar 
 Boro-ia, Marat, Lopez, men in whom every ray of humanity was 
 extinguished, parricides, matricides, and whatever moral monsters. 
 These are not cheerful facts, but they do not disturb a healthy mmd; 
 they require of us a patience as robust as the energy that attacks us, and 
 an unresting exploration of final causes. Wolf, snake, and crocodile are 
 not inharmonious in nature, but are made useful as checks, scavengers, 
 and pioneers; but we must have a scope as large as Nature's to deal with 
 beast-like men, detect what scullion function is assigned them, and 
 foresee in the secular melioration of the planet how these will become 
 unnecessary and will die out." ^ 
 
 1 Fate. 2 Considerations by the Way. ^ Compensation. 
 
 i Spiritual Laws. ^ Courage. 
 
20 
 
 Emerson looks upon Sin as relative. He sees, with eyes as 
 keen as Darwin's, tlie everlasting reciprocity between tlie indi- 
 vidual and his environment. He understands that in order to 
 lift the individual you must take him from his lower up to a 
 higher plane. Why this is true, Emerson pretends not to ex- 
 plain, fully aware that it is as inexplicable as that anytliing 
 is; but he insists that the realization of this truth suffices to 
 direct our conduct. " I have learned," he says, " that I cannot 
 dispose of other people's facts. . . . They wish to be saved 
 from the mischiefs of their vices, hut not from their vices.'' ^ 
 Emerson stands on a high cliff, beneath which a crowd of 
 unfortunates call to him to extricate them from a bog. From 
 his eminence he sees, beyond the slough, firm land, pleasant 
 meadows, and wooded hills, and he replies to the strugglers : 
 " You can never be comfortable while you remain where you 
 are ; a few brave steps will bring your feet upon solid ground." 
 He does not tell them to try to fill up the bog, or to spend 
 their lives in wondering why it is there and why they are in- 
 volved in it, but he tells them to go out of it. Once let them 
 reach a stable footing, and all thought of their plight will 
 vanish. This may illustrate, however rudely, the manner in 
 which life answers most of our questions : not by a direct Yes, 
 or M, not by a glib phrase, but by a roundabout experience 
 in which we live the answer. 
 
 In our ordinary transactions we look for a definite, tangible 
 payment for work. By the introduction of a neutral symbol 
 of "^exchange we are apt to lose sight of the intrinsic conditions 
 of compensation. In early times if a man wanted a cow he 
 did a si)ecified piece of work and received a cow as wages ; 
 now we work ostensibly for money,— of no value in itself unless 
 it be the equivalent of a considerable number of articles. 
 Hence vagueness arises concerning the true relations between 
 work and wages. Moreover, we are inclined to imagine that 
 rewards in the moral world come in the same fashion as in the 
 labor-market. 
 
 It need hardly be pointed out that this view has dominated 
 
 1 Experience. 
 
21 
 
 every organized system of religion. The good Mohammedan 
 is to be rewarded in heaven by unrestricted license to gratify 
 his sensual appetites, without risk of satiety. The North 
 American Indian, through whose robust veins and wiry muscles 
 vibrates the desire of activity, hopes to awaken in a " happy 
 hunting-ground," — a region where game never grows scarce, 
 and where every arrow hits the mark. The more libidinous 
 Asiatic, finding his chief solace in the flesh, commands that 
 his women be buried alive with him, so that they may be ready 
 for his pleasure upon his arrival in the other world. The Turk 
 has faith that Allah will people heaven with houris ; the more 
 sceptical and careful Asiatic deems it prudent to provide for 
 his own comfort. What Arab ever left his darling horse out 
 of his dream of heaven ? The Christian ideal of paradise 
 has varied in accordance with the large variety of peoples who 
 have called themselves Christians. Doubtless, no two ideals 
 agree ; but the underlying characteristic of all has been that 
 heaven is a place where all wrongs will be righted and all 
 longings satisfied. The Almighty sits there as a judge who 
 rewards or punishes mortals according to their good or evil 
 deeds on earth. The virtuous will receive a crown, the sym- 
 bol— is it not? — of their dearest desire; while the wicked 
 will be doomed to everlasting torment. So completely, at 
 times, has this fiction of what we may call the " reward-of- 
 merit" scheme of compensation contaminated branches of tlie 
 Christian Church that its members did not even wait for the 
 sentence of the Almighty Judge, but assumed to know before 
 doomsday what He would decree. The Catholics, for instance, 
 had a tariff, in which was set down the cost of any transgres- 
 sion. If a nobleman wished to kill an enemy, or to rob the 
 poor, or to outrage defenceless women, he could do so with 
 impunity, provided he bought an " indulgence" of the Pope, — 
 the indulgence being a certificate for notifying the recording 
 angel in heaven that the sinner had settled his score on earth. 
 Even to-day, millions of Catholics are taught that the felicity of 
 the souls of their loved ones in the other world can be enhanced 
 by the burning of candles in this!— a superstition which, like 
 that of those persons who by means of table-rappings and 
 
22 
 
 slate-scratcliings think to communicate with the spirits of 
 departed friends, begets pity, and not contempt. 
 
 These examples are cited solely to illustrate the pathetic 
 extreme to which the notion that heaven is a, place for the distri- 
 bution of prizes has carried professing Christians. Other illus- 
 trations might have been chosen whicli would liave shown less 
 forcibly the same fact ; for the characteristic alkided to is trace- 
 able even in such noble visions as the " divine rose of Love " of 
 Dante's Paradise. As religion becomes more spiritual, men 
 cherish purer views of heaven ; so that if nothing remained of 
 a race except the picture it had drawn, in hope and in fear, of 
 heaven, we could determine accurately its civilization. 
 
 But is it not possible that here on earth are the conditions 
 supposed to obtain in the imaginary heaven ? that to-day, that 
 every day, is a "day of judgment" ? What if it turn out that a 
 man may not wait until the end of time to be punished for his 
 evil deed, but that he is punished on the spot, — that the com- 
 mission of the wrong and the punishment are simultaneous ? 
 What if it be true that " virtue is its own reward " ? 
 
 If we follow the standards of the stock-exchange and the 
 political platform, or even those of many theologies, we shall 
 hear that "the wicked prosper ; the good are unhappy ; Wrong 
 very often tramples upon Right." Not until we agree as to 
 what makes true prpsperity can we establish wherein true com- 
 pensation lies. Let us define prosperity, therefore, as "that 
 state in which the Spirit can most fully exercise its relations 
 with God." Neither wealth, nor social position, nor business 
 success, nor public honor, nor any other external profit is 
 essential to this communion. " Be cheerful also, and seek not 
 external help, nor the tranquillity which others give : a man 
 Ihen must stand erect, not be kept erect by others," says 
 Marcus Aurelius ; and he adds in another passage : " Things 
 do not touch the soul, for they are external and remain immov- 
 able ; but our perturbations come only from the opinion which 
 is within. . . . Does any one do wrong ? It is to himself that 
 he does the wrong." Is not this the meaning of Goethe's 
 saying: "Every debt is paid in this life"? Is not this the 
 clue to Emerson's doctrine of Compensation? 
 
23 
 
 The soul's health abides in God, in Goodness. Every good 
 act increases our store of goodness and strengthens our rela- 
 tions with God. Every bad act, on the other hand, removes 
 us by just so much from him ; in this removal, this depriva- 
 tion, consists our punishment. Since the greatest imaginable 
 bliss is to be pervaded by spirit, the greatest calamity is to be 
 cut off therefrom ; and each act, to the extent of its moral 
 value, immediately takes us nearer to or farther from the Over- 
 Soul. The compensation coincides with the work. The attempt 
 to separate the good from the price which must be paid for it 
 would never be tried, says Emerson, were it not that " when 
 the disease began in the will, of rebellion and separation, the 
 intellect is at once infected, so that man ceases to see God 
 whole in each object, but is able to see the sensual allurement 
 of an object, but not see the sensual hurt, and thinks he can 
 cut off that which he would have from that which he would 
 not have." ^ Is this not a more reasonable and spiritual view 
 than that other in which the avenging deity is represented as 
 pursuing culprits but never overtaking them until they stumble 
 over the precipice of death into the bottomless pit of hell ? 
 
 In this view each sinful act draws a film between the indi- 
 vidual and the Great Spirit, until, in the end, no light could 
 pierce for the guidance of the sinner. His spiritual life be- 
 comes warped. One by one the qualities that ennoble are 
 quenched, for want of nourishment. Should the degradation 
 continue to the lowest conceivable limit, should every channel 
 of communication with God be closed, the soul must go out 
 from, or, more precisely, could not enter into, the individual. 
 It is as if we should descend the scale of organic life : at each 
 descent some organ or faculty would be extinguished, until we 
 reached those shapeless creatures whose single attribute is life; 
 beyond them is Nothingness, the real perdition. In this de- 
 parture from perfection, in this loss of those characteristics 
 which we associate with the noblest ideal, in this imbruting, 
 lives the real curse of guilt, the real punishment ; and not in 
 the confinement of the wretch in a prison during this life and 
 
 ' Compensation. 
 
24 
 
 in a hell during the next. " Crime and punishment grow out 
 of one stem." Be it again noted that in the ordinary concep- 
 tion of heaven and hell, Time enters as an impossible element: 
 tortures and rewards are referred to temporal standards ; but 
 Spirit is eternal. 
 
 Over the world of possessions the same balance is held. 
 Despite apparent disparity, justice is done. The peasant, 
 seehig only the splendor, power, ease, and luxury of the king, 
 dreams that if he were king all his desires could be easily 
 gratified ; he does not see the cares and responsibilities of 
 kingship, which make a sovereign often less free than his sub- 
 jects. We daily hear persons who would " give anything " 
 (that is, nothing) to own So-and-so's millions ; but they forget 
 that the millionnaire has paid cent for cent for all his fortune, 
 and that he has acquired with it its very real limitations and 
 burdens. These persons " see the mermaid's head," but over- 
 look " the dragon's tail." So, too, with genius. Everybody 
 would -gladly write the great poem or symphony, or paint the 
 great picture ; but how many would pay the artist's price for 
 the privilege ? How many would learn with Dante, during 
 twenty years of exile, how hard it is to mount and descend a 
 stranger's stairs, and how salt is a stranger's bread ? How 
 many would bear Beethoven's burden of melancholy and deaf- 
 ness ? How many would share Michael Angelo's ninety years 
 of titanic but unspeakably sad loneliness ? We arrange to re- 
 ceive everything and to give nothing, and our hearts convict 
 the plan as ignoble. " He is base — and that is the one base 
 thing in the universe — to receive favors and render none."^ 
 
 Thus the " radical tragedy of Nature, the seeming distinc- 
 tion of More or Less," assumes a different aspect. Inequalities, 
 injustice, deprivations, the lifting up of the dishonest and the 
 beating down of the virtuous, affect the external world, and not 
 the Soul. The wise man knows that equality is everywhere 
 preserved. The immemorial experience of mankind empha- 
 sizes the fact tliat upon no race, time of life, rank, or posses- 
 sions is conferred the right to a monopoly in happiness. The 
 
 1 Compensation. 
 
25 
 
 spiritual sustenance necessary for the soul's welfare, like light 
 and air, is free to all. Does any one think of Socrates or 
 Christ as poor? or of Spinoza, patiently grinding lenses in 
 Amsterdam, as lacking in aught that the worldly rich Dutch 
 merchants could have given him ? Which of us would prefer 
 to be Yanderbilt, with all his millions, rather than Emerson ? 
 
 You cannot hril)e him who places virtue above all other 
 things, unless you offer him virtue. Shall you persuade him 
 to lead a virtuous life by promising him a heaven filled with 
 rewards that he despises? Does the lover ask for any higher 
 recompense than the bliss of loving? Yerily, we insult man's 
 divinest attributes w^hen we treat them like mercenaries hired 
 to fight the battle of life with him! 
 
 I fear that to those unacquainted with Emerson a controver- 
 sial temper may seem at times to intrude itself into this 
 review of the problems of Fate, Sin, and Compensation ; but 
 Emerson never descends to controversy. He never argues, — 
 he affirms. He tells what he sees ; if you do not see it like- 
 wise, he does not present credentials testifying to his veracity. 
 He addresses the soul rather than the intellect. He knows 
 that spiritual experience is not less but more real because it 
 eludes verbal expression. The misunderstandings and wrang- 
 lings which we call " theology " arise from the vain attempt to 
 explain spiritual experience in terms of material experience, 
 to fortify Faith (which is not Reason) by Reason (which is not 
 Faith). Should we smile at, or pity, a father who should try 
 to demonstrate to us, by means of the binomial theorem, that 
 he loved his children ? Emerson excels as a spiritual guide 
 and mental stimulator because he never falls into this confu- 
 sion. He does not try to overthrow by Faith the evidence that 
 Reason has authority to judge ; neither does he, like so many 
 theologians, lead Faith away from her coign of vantage to be 
 attacked and grievously wounded by Reason. Both bring him 
 priceless messages, but of different quality. 
 
 Health needs no advocate. Emerson takes this truth for 
 granted, and he also takes it for granted that you will know 
 intuitively when you are in health. Pain in the physical world 
 
26 
 
 and evil in the moral world are the symptoms of ill-health. Be 
 sure that whatever lifts, broadens, cheers, is good for you, and 
 that whatever lowers, warps, depresses, is bad for you. Do not 
 waste time philosophizing why the latter should be, but get rid 
 of it in all haste. Emerson calls the theological problems of 
 predestination, original sin, and evil " the soul's mumps, mea- 
 sles, and whooping-coughs," and he declares that " a simple 
 mind will not know these enemies." His object is not to tell 
 you why the poisonous air stifles you, but to call you away from 
 the miasma into a salubrious neighborhood. Of all men he has 
 the largest faculty of discovering spiritual good. He finds it 
 everywhere and in everybody. Carlyle took him through the 
 slums of London, and asked : " Don't you believe in a hell 
 now ? " Emerson said firmly, " No." For him, at the bottom 
 of the deepest well the stars are shining. Underneath the 
 evil on the surface he sees the permanent substance. Good. 
 We marvel at the keenness of his insight. He takes pagans 
 or Christians, ancients or moderns, to illustrate his convictions, 
 and the very wealth and variety of his illustrations suggest to 
 us that Virtue has belonged to no single age or people, neither 
 has it been the honor of any particular creed ; the godlike m 
 man hallows all ages and places. 
 
 Emerson extols to-day ; he never disturbs himself about 
 the future. If you are doing your best now, he says, you are 
 fittino- yourself for any career that may come to you five years 
 or five hundred years hence. Herein his teaching differs 
 from that of Buddha and the Stoics and from the interpreta- 
 tion his followers have assigned to Christ's teaching. The 
 Hindoo saviour exhorts his disciples to destroy all desire, be- 
 cause thus alone can they be absorbed into that dreamless rest 
 which is Nirvana. The Stoics aspired to attain to tranquillity 
 by smothering the passions and by keeping austerely in view 
 the axiom that it mattered not whether one lived or died; 
 and Christ's words have been so read that " othcr-worldliness " 
 — or the regulating of conduct with an eye upon the rewards 
 and demands of the next life, to the maiming of the highest 
 development in this life — has been a prominent and depress- 
 ing characteristic among almost all classes of Christians. 
 
27 
 
 With Emerson, however, the " eternal Now" is all important- 
 Hair-shirts, sackcloth and ashes, monasticism, and other pious 
 methods of stunting the growth of the soul he would abolish 
 as being as harmful as the British practice of dwarfing physi- 
 cal growth by dosing prospective jockeys with gin. He dis- 
 approves as much of the remorse which wastes the Present by 
 brooding over the Past, as of the discontent which wastes the 
 Present by brooding over the Future. Repentence manifests 
 itself in the turning to good works, not in the consumption of 
 precious hours by weeping over the irrevocable. To reach your 
 Heaven you must journey through To-day ; therefore let To- 
 day's journey bring you on as bravely and as far as possible. 
 Your welfare can be found wherever you are ; do not imagine 
 that it awaits you in Paris or Athens. God fills all zones 
 with his presence. Cultivate, then, a noble contentment and 
 a high reverence for your surroundings, — parents, friends, 
 business, and native land. Cheerfulness and courage are the 
 supreme virtues after Emerson's heart ; they shine through his 
 writings and lived in his conduct. He exacts a deep patriotism 
 and a love of one's time. 
 
 The practicalness of his teaching stimulates every one who 
 has tasted it: and what teaching is more than miserable hum- 
 bug unless it be practical ? We have in him a unique combi- 
 nation of common sense and spiritual insight. Mr. Lowell's 
 couplet says, with truth, — 
 
 " A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, -whose range 
 Has Olympus for one pole, for t' other the Exchange." 
 
 Other philosophers bewilder you with their abstractions, — 
 their " subjectives" and "objectives," their " ologies" and 
 " isms," — until they convert your search for truth into a search 
 of meanings in the dictionary. Emerson discourses to you of 
 the everlasting verities, and uses for examples the common facts 
 and events of your daily life. In his hand the vulgarest object 
 sparkles with a divine lustre. Has it not been remarked that 
 his sentences have the homeliness as well as the pith of prov- 
 erbs? He beckons mankind from hopeless sfjcculation over 
 the mysteries of the universe, and points out that improvement 
 
28 
 
 and liappiness lie only in or through present realities. '" The 
 only path of escape known in all the worlds of God is per- 
 formance." 1 He alone is consistent who obeys the voice of 
 the Spirit, and that voice calls him ever upward. It has no 
 fixed cry, no password whose significance has been worn 
 away by repetition. To each it speaks new words, suited to 
 his new conditions ; what it whispered to the child it no longer 
 wiiispers to the man. But though the message change, the 
 voice changes not ; in the evening of life we recognize that it 
 emanates from the same eternal source whence it came to 
 gladden our infancy and our prime. 
 
 The complaint is heard that Emerson does not lift the cur- 
 tain of Death and allow us to peer into the mystery beyond, 
 and that he has little to tell us about the immortality of the 
 soul. Persons who make this complaint have failed lamentably 
 to apprehend the unvarying theme of his belief, which is the 
 imperishability of Spirit. They have been blind, too, to his 
 written word. " Men ask," he says, " concerning the immor- 
 tality of the soul, the employments of heaven, the state of the 
 sinner, and so forth. Tbey even dream that Jesus has left 
 replies to precisely these interrogatories. Never a moment did 
 that sublime spirit speak in their patois. To truth, justice, 
 love, the attributes of the soul, the idea of imrautableness is 
 essentially associated. Jesus, living in these moral sentiments, 
 heedless of sensual fortunes, heeding only the manifestations 
 of these, never made the separation of the idea of duration 
 from the essence of these attributes, nor uttered a syllable con- 
 cerning the duration of the soul. It was left to his disciples 
 to sever duration from the moral elements and to teach the 
 immortality of tlie soul as a doctrine and maintain it by 
 evidences. The moment the doctrine of the immortality of 
 the soul is separately taught, man is already fallen." ^ Seek 
 where you will througli Emerson's prose or poetry, and you 
 will find that conviction re-affirmed, — 
 
 " Wliat is excellent, 
 As God lives, is permanent; 
 Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain; 
 Heart's love will meet thee again." ^ 
 
 1 Worship. 2 The Over-Soul. 3 Threnody. 
 
29 
 
 Those who had personal acquaintance with Emerson state 
 that one thing particularly impressed them, — " the sense tliat 
 he seemed to have of a certain great amplitude of time and 
 leisure : it was the behavior of one who really hdieved in an 
 immortal life, and had adjusted his conduct accordingly." ^ 
 Happy the man whose soul has been brimmed with a sense 
 of that great amplitude in his converse with Emerson's 
 thoughts ! 
 
 But let us not blink the fact that many persons do not 
 understand Emerson ; that some pronounce his Essays 
 " commonplace," while others lift their eyebrows and with 
 a superior air say, "moonshine;" that others again with 
 exemplary modesty — if genuine — declare that " he is too 
 deep for them." There is another class of Emersonian 
 fanatics who take it amiss that everybody will not w^orship 
 at the little altar they have dedicated to him. By argument 
 or sarcasm or browbeating they would capture that homage 
 which is worthless unless it come by love. But those who 
 have imbibed even the humblest drop of Emerson's meaning 
 will be annoyed by none of these, for they have learned from 
 him that only the Infinite can satisfy all needs and appease all 
 yearnings. To no book, or music, or landscape, or friend is 
 it granted to say the right word at every moment ; but 
 it is Emerson's high distinction to appeal to us in those 
 moments the soul recognizes as the best. Seek him in lower 
 moods, and his words kindle no response. 
 
 These are some of the keys of the instrument upon which 
 Emerson plays his mighty Hymn of Life. To those persons 
 who require an explanation of the universe by reference to 
 fixed dogmas, Emerson must seem vague, and obscure to those 
 who are not accustomed to contemplate earnestly matters 
 pertaining to the Spirit ; but to those who, in reverence and 
 sympathy, seek his wisdom he unfolds precious revelations. 
 He strips things and persons of their material wrap, and shows, 
 beneath, the Spirit, which is their substance, imperishable and 
 infinite, the soul of the world. 
 
 1 A Western Journey with Mr. Emerson, by Prof. J. B. Thayer. 
 
30 
 
 One hesitates to hand to a stranger a mere cupful from so 
 broad and pure a lake ; but to all of us — both to those who 
 have listened gratefully to his words, and to those who have 
 not — the supreme fact of Emerson's life endures as an en- 
 couragement and a blessing. That we all understand; and 
 we can never forget that there was recently among us a pure 
 and beautiful spirit who looked out upon the world we see, 
 who lived in conditions similar to those which surround 
 us, who shirked no duty as son, husband, father, friend, or 
 citizen, who was familiar with the wisdom of the ages, who 
 knew the frailty and the strength, the disappointments and the 
 aspirations, of humanity, and who gave to us and to posterity 
 out of the sincerity of his soul a message of joy. " Fair is the 
 prize and the hope is great," Plato, antiquity's sentinel, calls 
 from his watch in Athens. Wlr heissen Emli hoffen,— 
 " We bid you to hope," — Goethe echoes, mounting guard at 
 Weimar. And Emerson from Concord responds serenely : 
 
 " Lowly faithful, banish fear, 
 Right onward drive unharmed; 
 The port, well worth the cruise, is near, 
 And every wave is charmed." 
 
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