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ON EMERSON
AND OTHER ESSAYS

THE WORKS OF MAURICE MAETERLINCK
ESSAYS
The Treasure or the Hcuaui
WiSDOU AND DESTIHV
The Life of the Bee
The Buried Teufle
The Double Garden
The Measure of the Hours
Oh Emerson, and Other Essays
Our Eternity
The Unknown Guest
The Wrack of the Storu
Mountain Paths
PLAYS
Sister Beatrice, and Ardiane and Barbe Bleue
Joyzelle, and Monna Vanna
The Blue Bird, A Fairy Play
Mary Magdalene
P^llSas and M£lisahde, A^>D Other Plays
Princess Maleine
The Intruder, and Otser Plays
Aglavaine and Selysette
The Miracle of Saint Anthony
The Betrothal'; A Sebuel to The Blue Bird
FOEUS HOLIDAY EDITIONS
Our Friend the Dog
Thb Swaru
Death Thoughts frou Maeterlinck
The Blue Bird
The Life of the Bee
News of Sfrinc and Other Nature Studies
The Light Beyond

On Emerson
And Other Essays

BY
MAURICE MAETERLINCK

Translated by
Montrose J. Moses

^

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1920

Copyright, 1912,
By Dodd, Mead and ComfanV
Published, Sefttmber, vgi-t

CONTENTS PAGE
Emerson , .J . . .; . ,., ..; . 31
NOVALIS . . ., . ,, . . . 53
RUYSBROECK .., « ,., ,,, , . I19

ON EMERSON
AND OTHER ESSAYS

FOREWORD
The three essays contained in this volume
have for the first time been brought to
gether for English readers. The one on
Emerson has served its purpose as a
preface to seven essays of Emerson, trans
lated by MUe. Mali, who took the
pseudonym of I. Will. The other two
were originally intended and were used as
introductions to extensive selections made
and translated by M. Maeterlinck from the
works of Ruysbroeck and Novalis. In
amended form, the three essays may be
found in the French edition of "The
Treasure of the Humble."
At his simplest, it is not an easy matter
to translate Maeterlinck. Especially difficult
is it when one is dealing with a double
mystic, or rather with the mystic Maeter-
9

Foreword
linck's interpretation of three transcen
dental thinkers. Many times has our
author expressed himself on the subject of
the translator's art, and it is well to remem
ber these words of his relative to the prob
lem confronting him when he attempted a
translation of "Macbeth" :
"It is that secret life which it is important
to understand and to reproduce as well as
one can. Extreme prudence is required,
since the slightest false note, the smallest
error, may destroy the illusion and destroy
the beauty of the finest page."
But it is a question whether translation
means alone the understanding of the secret
life of the piece, or whether it does not also
mean faithfulness in reproducing, as near as
possible, the word-structure and the form.
For example, translating Maeterlinck's
translation of passages from Emerson, one
is forced to depart materially from the ex-

Foreword
act tenor of Emerson's thought, and to for
sake the compact reticence of his style. And
it is not far wrong to consider these quoted
passages in the French as almost para
phrases. Yet the secret life of Emerson's
philosophy is there, even though I have
considered it best to quote Emerson ex
actly. And while reading Maeterlinck's
essay on his avowed master and greatest in
fluence, it will be noted how completely and
how unconsciously Emerson's thoughts have
been assimilated by Maeterlinck. In his
essay there are many echoes of "The Over-
Soul" and "Spiritual Laws."*
Maeterlinck's interest in the mediaeval
mystic, Ruysbroeck, must have begun while
he was a student at the Jesuit College of
Saint-Barbe. It was in 1891 that "The
Ornament of Spiritual Marriages" was
?See Hamilton Osgood's "Maeterlinck and Emer
son," Arena, 15:563-73, March, 1896; Poet-Lore,
Jan.-Mar., 1898, 10 : 76-84. II

Foreword
translated from the Flemish, while in 1895
there followed the equally difiicult task of
translating from the German Novalis's
"The Disciples at Sai's" and "The Frag
ments." Only the year before, 1894,
Maeterlinck had prefaced MUe. Mali's
volume. When it is recollected that 1889
saw the publication of "La Princesse Ma
leine" and "Serres Chaudes," and that "Le
Tresor des Humbles" (1896) was his first
book of essays, one may readily understand
what an important part Ruysbroeck, No
valis, and Emerson had in the forming of
Maeterlinck's sympathy with such thought.
The philosophic studies that comprise the
following volume represent, therefore, the
sources of his philosophic inspiration.
Maeterlinck once showed to an American
acquaintance his much worn volume of
Emerson's "Essays," heavily underscored
and filled with marginal notes. This en
thusiasm of the disciple is also discernible in
12

Foreword
his attitude toward Ruysbroeck and
Novalis. In his essay on the former there are many
more original extracts given than in the
other essays. And though one rnay not al
ways agree with Maeterlinck as to the equal
excellence of these passages, one can, none
theless, be in hearty sympathy with the fer
vour which he displays and with the true
conviction he expresses.
Maeterlinck's point of view as a biogra
pher is likewise of significance. He deals in
all three essays with men to whom the
external event was nought beside the inner
life. Save in the instance of the pathetic
love tragedy of Novalis, he does not relish
fact as much as he does the discovery of the
soul's expression. He hastens over the few
events in Ruysbroeck's sainted life, relieved
that he can pass quickly to the core of his
philosophy. And as for Emerson, he alto
gether ignores locality and time. On read-
13

Foreword
ing the essay, one might as well be noting
a disembodied spirit.
These essays, therefore, being very
largely abstract, I have thought it best to
give a close rendering, departing from the
form only where more clearness might be
gained. In regard to Ruysbroeck, there are a few
facts which might serve to heighten the ac
count to be found in Maeterlinck's essay.
Though the dates of his birth and death
are given, it is well to realise that the old
monk lived to the ripe age of one hundred
and six years, and that, at the last, when
it was heard how the Admirable John had
passed away, there were many, so William
Sharp records, who believed that Ruys
broeck had been the man nearest God since
Christ. Throughout his life he exhibited
unbounded spirituality, and claimed for
himself that he never spoke unless within
him he was moved by the Holy Ghost.
14

Foreword
His theology was thoroughly Catholic,
and even as his expression of thought was
mystical, so were his actions always at
tended by evidences of mystery. We are
told by one of the monk's few EngUsh
biographers, Dom Vincent Scully, C.R.L.,
who also wrote the article on Ruysbroeck
in the "CathoUc Encyclopedia," that "he
loved to wander and meditate in the soli
tude of the forest adjoining the cloister; he
was accustomed to carry a tablet with him,
and on this to jot down his thoughts as he
felt inspired so to do."
He was gentle and fond of life around
him, even caring for the birds that came to
be fed by him. So fervent was he that, like
the Christus in the Passion Play, he often
times swooned while celebrating the Mass,
through the sheer excess of his spiritual
emotion. Legend has it that after his
death, as he lay on his bier, there was
performed a miracle, and that in his vest-
is

Foreword
ments he arose and celebrated for the last
time the sacred mysteries of his beloved
Church. According to authorities, John Ruys
broeck, named after his town, in the same
manner that Thomas a Kempis was named,
was called by his contemporaries the Ad
mirable Doctor and the Divine Doctor.
For many years after his death his remains
were most carefully preserved ; but,ini783,
when Joseph II. suppressed Groenendael
Priory, the relics were transferred to St.
Guciule's, Brussels. There they remained
until the French Revolution, during which
upheaval they were lost.
The sainted Ruysbroeck was not ofliciaUy
recognised by his Church until within com
paratively recent years. Many attempts
were made to reward his virtues, but it
was only by a decree dated December i,
1908, that the title of "Blessed" was be
stowed upon the devout mediaeval monk.
16

Foreword
Though in 1869 a translation of Ruys
broeck was issued in France, done by Ernest
Hello, himself a mystic and an influence on
MaeterUnck, still to Maeterlinck belongs
the credit of having given an impetus to re
cent French appreciation of Ruysbroeck.
In England, portions of Maeterlinck's essay
were published by Jane T. Stoddart in the
London Expositor for 1894, and were
amplified in a volume, "Ruysbroeck and
the Mystics by Maurice Maeterlinck"
(London, 1896). At a later date (Lon
don, 1905), Earle BailUe translated "Re
flections from the Mirror of a Mystic"
from Hello's "CEuvres Choisies de Ros-
brock," with a few passages taken from the
Latin text of Surius.
All commentators acknowledge with due
gratefulness the work of Maeterlinck,
though some CathoUc scholars join in deny
ing the statement made by him and others
that Ruysbroeck was ignorant and only
17

Foreword
miraculously divined the science of his age
and of the ages to come. Scully writes :
"A word of warning is needed against
the assumption of some writers who would
exalt the genius of Ruysbroeck by dwelling
on what they term his illiteracy and igno
rance. As a matter of fact, the works of
the Blessed John manifest a mastery of the
sacred sciences, and a considerable acquaint
ance even with the natural sciences of his
day." Add to this the enthusiasm of Surius, who
is Ruysbroeck's true commentator, and
whose admiration is reflected in Maeter
linck's own attitude :
"I do not believe that there is a man who
can approach these magnificent and simple
pages without great and singular profit. Let
none excuse himself from reading this book
on the plea of the inaccessible sublimity of
iB

Foreword
Ruysbroeck. The great man has accustomed
himself to all, and ;the most abandoned
soul on earth may find again in reading him
the path of salvation. Arrows dart from
the pages of Ruysbroeck, aimed by no hand
of man, but by the hand of God; and deeply
they embued themselves in the soul of the
reader who is a sinner. Innocent reader,
reader of unstained robe, Ruysbroeck is at
once most lowly and most sublime. In his
description of the Spiritual Espousals, he
surpasses admiration, he surpasses praise;
all the commencement, all the progress, all
the height, all the transcendent perfection
of the spiritual Ufe is there."
The reader of Maeterlinck's essay will in
fer that the Belgian has oftentimes been
prompted to stretch his images to the very
limits of consistency, in order to maintain
the comparison of Ruysbroeck's style and
manner with the foliage of Iceland or
19

Foreword
rather of the glacial regions. This license
taken with the French language results
in a tendency to coin words. Readers
of Ibsen's "Brand" in the original soon
recognise that the little Norwegian, in that
respect, followed the custom of Carlyle.
Yet Maeterlinck's enthusiastic approach
cannot take from the fact that the quota
tions he makes from Ruysbroeck, while
oftentimes rich in imagery and ardent in be^
lief, are frequently illogical and prolix in
construction — two faults often apparent in
the untutored. Nevertheless, as a whole,
the essay is of significance in the develop
ment of Maeterlinck, and his French is
beautiful. English readers can do no better than
approach NovaUs through the combined ap
preciations of Carlyle and Maeterlinck.
Strange to say, the former adopts the same
method adopted by the latter in his essay
on Ruysbroeck. I mean, he includes in his
20

Foreword
text copious extracts from "The Frag
ments" of Novalis. And as examples of
mystic thought, we cull from the Carlyle
translations these excerpts :
"Philosophy is properly Home-sickness;
the wish to be everywhere at home."
"We are near awakening when we dream
that we dream."
"Man is the higher Sense of our Planet;
the star which connects it with the upper
world; the eye which it turns towards
Heaven." "Life is a disease of the spirit; a work
ing incited by Passion. Rest is peculiar to
the spirit."
"If our Bodily Life is a burning, our
Spiritual Life is a being burnt, a Combus
tion (or, is precisely the inverse the case?) ;
Death, therefore, perhaps a Change of
Capacity." 21

Foreword
"There is but one Temple in the World ;
and that is the Body of Man. Nothing is
holier than this high form. Bending before
men is a reverence done to this Revelation
in the Flesh. We touch Heaven, when we
lay our hands on a human body."
"Man consists in Truth. If he exposes
Truth, he exposes himself. If he betrays
Truth, he betrays himself. We speak not
here of Lies, but of acting against Convic
tion." "The true Poet is all-knowing; he is an
actual world in miniature."
"Goethe is an altogether practical Poet.
He is in his works what the English are in
their wares : highly simple, neat, convenient
and durable. He has done in German Lit
erature what Wedgewood did in EngUsh
manufacture. He has, Uke the English, a
natural turn for Economy, and a noble
Taste acquired by Understanding. Both
X2

Foreword
these are very compatible, and have a near
afiinity in the chemical sense . . . . 'Wil-
helm Meister's Apprenticeship' may be
called throughout prosaic and modern. The
romantic sinks to ruin, the Poesy of Nature,
the Wonderful. The book treats merely
of common worldly things: Nature and
Mysticism are altogether forgotten. It is a
poetised civic and household History; the
Marvellous is expressly treated therein as
imagination and enthusiasm. Artistic
Atheism is the spirit of the Book. ... It
is properly a Candide, directed against
Poetry : the Book is highly unpoetical in
respect of spirit, poetical as the dress and
body of it are. . . . The Introduction of
Shakespeare has almost a tragic effect. The
hero retards the triumph of the Gospel of
Economy; and economical Nature Is finally
the true and only remaining one."
In the course of his essay, Maeterlinck
23

Foreword
has occasion to refer to Carlyle's attitude
toward Novalis's second romantic attach
ment. In view of the profound effect of the
child, Sophie, upon his work, many author
ities offer varied excuses for his sudden
change of heart, after the girl's death.
Carlyle thus views the matter : '
"Yet, perhaps, after all, it Is only in a
Minerva-Press Novel, or to the more tender
Imagination, that such a proceeding would
seem very blamable. Constancy, in its true
sense, may be called the root of all excel
lence ; and especially excellence Is constancy
In active well-doing. In friendly helpfulness
to those that love us, and to those that hate
us ; but constancy In passive suffering, again,
in spite of the high value put upon it in
Circulating Libraries, is a distinctly inferior
virtue, rather an accident than a virtue, and
at all events Is of extreme rarity in this
world. To Novalis, his Sophie might stiU
24

Foreword
be a saintly presence, mournful and un
speakably mild, to be worshipped in the In
most shrine of his memory : but worship of
this sort is not man's sole business; neither
should we censure Novalis that he dries his
tears, and once more looks abroad with
hope on the earth, which is still, as It was
before, the strangest complex of mystery
and light, of joy as well as sorrow. 'Life
belongs to the living; and he that lives
must be prepared for vicissitudes.' The
questionable circumstance with Novalis
is his perhaps too great rapidity In
that second courtship; a fault or misfor
tune the more to be regretted, as this
marriage also was to remain a project, and
only the anticipation of it to be enjoyed by
him." The German reader of Novalis will find
a copious bibliography extant. His chiefest
work, "Henry of Ofterdlnger," has been
25

Foreword
translated several times into English. (J.
Owen, 1842, Cambridge, Mass.; H. H.
Moore, 1853.)
Now, from these essays, which in their
composition are contemporaneous with the
practice of his art theories as exemplified in
the marionnette dramas, Maeterlinck very
well shows his tendency toward the essence,
toward the spirit of things, so marked in his
prose work of later years. There may be
nothing new in his critical approach;
there is certainly nothing controversial or
scholastic In his biographical researches.
But we note in these essays just that ten
dency In thought and in Interest which was
soon to find expression in "The Treasure of
the Humble" and "Wisdom and Destiny."
And what may be said of Maeterlinck's
theory of dramatic art is Ukewise true of
his philosophic expression — for his attitude
toward the theatre is an attitude toward
life. He is an Iconoclast in both respects,
26

Foreword
which, I take it, means that he has redis
covered for men the value of unseen forces.
Herein he declares his kinship with Emer
son. His genius Is no more tangible than
the genius of those he discusses. On the sur
face he is not more original than many an
other possessing a similar romantic style. In
his philosophy he has these three masters,
Ruysbroeck, NovaUs, and Emerson; in his
poetry he is indebted to Poe, Whitman, and
Villlers de I'lsle-Adam — a queer group In
themselves. Though he has had to modify
his theory of drama, still his art theory is
his approach toward life, and this is his
great claim to originality.
He has utilised unseen forces ; he regj^rds
men simply as products of these forces. He
has made us feel the hidden powers that
mould us. He is more aloof than near, and
in this respect he is like Ruysbroeck and
Npvalis. Not one of them has the democ
racy of Emerson. But his artistic ablUty, so
27

Foreword
closely identified with his philosophic belief,
which he always discourses upon with en
thusiasm. Is the new element which Maeter
linck has individualised. If there are those
who believe that he has not received justifi
cation for his stand In modern thought. It
might be well for them to compare some
of the thoughts of Maeterlinck, herein ex
pressed, with the philosophy of Henri
Bergson. In the preparation of this translation I
have been in constant touch with those who
are in sympathy with Maeterlinck and with
mystic philosophy. To Professor Charles
Downer, to the Reverend B. Stuart Cham
bers, and to others I am indebted for kind
assistance and helpful suggestions. It is
with pleasure that I acknowledge the
courtesy of Mr. Alexander Teixeira de
Mattos, who has kindly consented, with the
permission of M. Maeterlinck, to allow the
present translation. Mr. Teixeira is the
28

Foreword
ofiicial translator of Maeterlinck's works.
The following editions were used :
L'Ornement des Noces Spirituelles, de
Ruysbroeck FAdmirable, Traduit du Flamand
et accompagne d'une Introduction par Maurice
Maeterlinck. Bruxelles: Paul Lacomblez,
1910. Les Disciples a Sais et Les Fragments de
Novalis, Traduits de I'Allemand et precedes
d'une Introduction par Maurice Maeterlinck.
Bruxelles : Paul Lacomblez, 1909.
/ Sept Essais d'Emerson: Confiance en Soi-
meme, — Compensation, — Lois de I'Esprit, — Le
Poete, — Caractere, — L'Ame Supreme, — Fatal-
ite. Traduits par I. Will (M. Mali), avec
preface de Maurice Maeterlinck. Bruxelles:
Paul Lacomblez, 1911. Montrose J. Moses.
New York, June, 1912.

«9

EMERSON
ONLY one thing matters," says No
valis, "and that Is the search for our
transcendental self." This self we discern
at moments in the words of God, of poets,
and of sages; In the depths of certain joys
and sorrows; in sleep, in love and sickness,
and in unforeseen crises where it signals us
from afar, and points out our relations with
the universe. Some philosophers devote
themselves solely to this Investigation, and
they write those books In which only the
extraordinary prevails. "What is there of
value In books," says our author, "If It be
not the^lranscendental ^nd^the extraor-
dinary ?" These philosophers are as paint
ers striving to seize a likeness in the dark.
Some trace abstract images for us, very
remarkable but almost indistinct. There
31

On Emerson and Other Essays
are others who succeed In fixing an attitude
or an habitual gesture of the superior life.
A number exist who imagine strange be
ings. There are not many of these Im
ages. They are never alike. Some of them
are very beautiful, and those who have not
seen them dwell all their lives through like
unto men who have never come forth Into
broad daylight. The lines of these images
are purer than the lines of heaven ; but then
these figures appear to us so very distant
that we know not if they be alive, or if they
were created in our mind's eye. They are
the work of pure mystics, and man does not
as yet recognise himself in them. Others
there are whom we call poets, and who
speak to us Indirectly of these things. A
third class of thinkers, elevating by one de
gree the myth of the old centaurs, has given
us an Image of this occult identity more easy
of access — ^by blending the characteristics of
our apparent self with those of our superior
32

On Emerson and Other Essays
self. The countenance of our divine soul
smiles at times over the shoulder of the hu
man soul, her sister, bent to the humble
labours of thought; and this smile, which
gives us a fleeting glimpse of all that lies
beyond thought, alone matters In the works
of men.
There are not many who have shown us
that man is greater and more profound
than man, and who have thus succeeded in
fixing some few of the eternal allusions
which we encounter at every instant of life,
in a gesture, a sign, a look, a word, — in
silence and in the events which surround us.
The science of human greatness is the
strangest of sciences. None among us is
ignorant of it ; but most of us do not know
that we possess It. The child that meets me
"will not be able to tell his mother what he
has seen; however, as soon as his~eyes have
sensed my presence, he knows all that I am,
all that I have been, all that I shall be, even
33

On Emerson and Other Essays
as well as my brother, and thrice better
than myself. He knows me Immediately In
the past and In the future, in this world
here, and in the other worlds, and. In turn,
his eyes reveal to me the role I assume in
the universe and in eternity.
Our Infallible souls discern each other,
and as soon as the child's glance has met
mine, — my face, my attitude and the In
finite which surrounds them and of which
they are the interpreters, — he knows what
to cling to; and though he cannot as yet
distinguish the crown of an emperor from
the wallet of a beggar, he has known me
for one Instant as exactly as God knows me.
It Is true that we already act like gods,
and our entire life passes amidst certitudes
and Infinite infallibilities. But we are blind
men who play with precious stones along
the roadway; and that man who knocks at
my door expends, at the very moment he
greets me, as many marvellous spiritual
34

On Emerson and Other Essays
treasures as the prince whom I have wrested
from death. -I open to him, and In an in
stant he sees at his feet, as though from the
height of a tower, all that takes place be
tween two souls. I judge the country woman
of whom I ask the way as profoundly as
though I had asked of her the life of my
mother, and her soul has spoken to me as
intimately as that of my betrothed. She
rises rapidly to the very greatest mysteries
before answering me; then she tells me
quietly, knowing on a sudden what I am,
that it will be necessary for me to take the
foot-path to the left for the village. If I
pass an hour amidst a crowd, without say
ing anything and without giving It a single
thought, I have judged a thousand times
the Uving and the dead. And which of
these judgments will be altered on the last
day? There are in this room some five or
six beings who speak of rain and of pleasant
weather; but above this miserable conversa-
35

On Emerson and Other Essays
tion, six souls carry on a conversation which
no human wisdom could approach without
danger. And though they speak through
their glances, their hands, their faces, and
their assembled presence, they shall ever be
Ignorant of what they have said. However,
they must wait the end of their elusive con
verse, and that is why they have an unde
finable mysterious joy In their ennui, with
out knowing what hearkens within them to
all the laws of life, of death, of love, — laws
which pass like inexhaustible rivers around
the house.
' Thus is It everywhere and always. We
live only by virtue of our transcendental
being, whose actions and thoughts momen
tarily pierce the envelope which surrounds
us. I go to-day to see a friend whom I
have never seen before, but I know his
work, and I know that his soul is extraor
dinary, and that he has passed his life ex
pressing it as exactly as possible, and in ac-
36

On Emerson and Other Essays
cordance with the duty of superior intel
lects. I am full of uncertainty, and it is a
solemn hour. He enters, and at the open
ing of the door which reveals his presence,
every explanation of himself that he has
given us during a number of years falls
Into dust. He is not what he believes him
self to be. He is of another nature than his
thoughts. Once more we prove that the
emissaries of the spirit are ever faithless.
He has said many profound things of his
soul; but in that small time which divides
a glance that pauses from a glance that van
ishes, I have learned all that he could never
say, and all that he was never able to cul
tivate In his spirit. Henceforward, he be
longs to me forever. Formerly we were
united by thought. To-day, something a
myriad times more mysterious than thought
gives us to each other. For years and years
we had waited this moment; and, behold,
we feel that all is useless, and, for fear of
37

On Emerson and Other Essays
silence, we, who were prepared to show
each other secret and amazing treasures,
talk about the time of day or about the
setting sun, so as to give our souls an op
portunity to wonder at each other and to
bind themselves In another silence which
the murmur of lips and of thought will
not be able to disturb. . . .
In reality, we live only from soul to soul,
and we are gods who do not know each
other. If It Is impossible for me this even
ing to bear my solitude, and if I should go
among men, they will only tell me that the
storm has beaten down their pears or that
the late frost has closed the port. Is it for
this that I have come? And yet, I shall
soon go away from it, my soul as satisfied
and as full of new richness and power as
though I had passed these hours with Plato,
Socrates, and Marcus Aurelius. What their
mouth utters signifies nought besides what
their presence declares, and It is Impossible
38

On Emerson and Other Essays
for man not to be great and admirable.
What the mind thinks is of no importance
beside the truth that we are, — a truth which
silently afiirms itself; and if, after fifty years
of soUtude, Epictetus, Goethe, and St. Paul
should come to my island, they could tell
me only what the smallest cabin-boy on
their ship would say to me at the same time,
and perhaps more directly.
In truth, what is strangest about man are
his gravity and his hidden wisdom. The
most frivolous amongst us never really
laughs, and in spite of his efforts, never
succeeds In losing a minute, for the human
soul Is attentive and does nothing useless.
Ernst ist das Lehen: Life is grave, and in
the depths of our being, our soul has not
yet smiled. On the other side of our invol
untary emotions, we lead a marvellous life,
still, very pure, and very certain, to which
our hands which are outstretched, our eyes
which are opened, and our unexpected
39

On Emerson and Other Essays
glances which meet, make continual allu
sion. All our organs are the mystical ac
complices of a superior being; and It Is
never a man, — but a soul that we have
^ known. I did not see that poor wretch who
-begged for alms on the steps before my
door. But I perceived some other thing : in
our eyes two identical destinies saluted each
other and loved each other, and, just when
he stretched forth his hand, the small door
of the house opened for an Instant upon the
sea. "In my dealing with my child," writes
Emerson [in "Over-Soul"], "my Latin and
Greek, my accomplishments and my money
stead me nothing. They are all lost on him;
but as much soul as I have avails. If I am
merely wilful, he gives me a Rowland for
an Oliver, sets his will against mine, one for
one, and leaves me. If I please, the degrada
tion of beating him by my superiority of
40

On Emerson and Other Essays
etrength. But if I renounce my will, and
act for the soul, setting that up as umpire
between us two, out of his young eyes looks
the same soul; he reveres and loves with
me. But if it be true that the least amongst
us is not able to make the slightest gesture
without reckoning with the soul and with
the spiritual kingdoms wherein the soul
reigns, it is also true that the wisest scarcely
ever thinks of the infinite which is moved
by the opening of an eyeUd, by the bend
ing of the head, and by the closing of a
hand. We live so far from ourselves that \
we are ,ignorant of nearly everything that 1
occurs at the horizon of our being. We
wander at random in the valley, without
suspecting that all our actions are repro
duced and gain their significance on the
mountain top, and it is necessary at times
for some one to come to us and say : Raise
41

On Emerson and Other Essays
your eyes, see what you are, see what you
do; it is not here that we live; it is up
yonder, high above us, that we are. This
glance exchanged in the dark; these words
which had no meaning at the foot of the
mountain — see what they become and what
they signify further on the snowy summits;
and how our hands, which we believe so
feeble and so small, unknowingly reach God
every moment.
Some there are who have come tb us, and
who have touched us In this manner on the
shoulder, revealing to us yonder what takes
place upon the glaciers of mystery. They
are not many. There are three or four In
this century! There were five or six in
centuries past ! And all that they have been
able to say to us is nought in comparison
with what has taken place and with that of
which our soul is not ignorant. But what
does It matter I Are we not like unto a man
who has lost his eyesight during the first
42

On Emerson and Other Essays
years of his childhood? He has seen the
endless spectacle of beings. He has noted
the sun, the sea, and the forest. Now, and
always, these marvels are ever-present in his
make-up; and should you speak of them,
what will you be able to say to him, and
what will your poor words be beside the
glade, the tempest, and the dawn which
still live In the depths of his spirit, and are
made part of his flesh? He will Usten to
you, however, with an intense and aston
ished joy, and though he know all, and
though your words represent what he
knows more imperfectly than a glass of
water represents a broad river, — the small,
ineffective phrases which fall from the lips
of man will illumine for a moment the
ocean, and the light and shadow which
dwell amidst the darkness beneath his dead
Uds. The faces of this "transcendental me," of
which NovaUs speaks, are probably Innu-
43

On Emerson and Other Essays
merable, and not one of the mystic moral
ists has succeeded In studying the same.
Swedenborg, Pascal, Novalis, Hello, and
several others examine our relations with an
abstract, subtle, and very remote Infinite.
They lead us upon mountains whose sum
mits do not seem natural or habitable to us,
and where we often breathe with diflUculty.
Goethe accompanies our soul upon the
shores of the sea of Serenity. Marcus
Aurelius places our soul on the hill-side of
an ideal humanity, its perfect excellence
somewhat tiresome, and beneath too heavy
a foliage of hopeless resignation. Carlyle,
the spiritual brother of Emerson, who in
this century has given us warning from the
other end of the valley, has brought be
fore us In lightning strokes, upon a back
ground of shadow and storm, of an un
known, relentlessly strange, the only
heroic moments of our being. He leads us
like a flock frightened by the tempest,
44

On Emerson and Other Essays
toward unknown and sulphurous pastures.
He drives us into the profoundest depths of
darkness, which he has discovered with joy,
and where shines alone the intermittent and
passionate star of heroes, and there he
abandons us, with a mischievous laugh, to
the vast reprisals of mysteries.
But at the same time, behold Emerson,
the good morning shepherd of pale
meadows, green with a new optimism, both
natural and plausible. He does not lead us
to the edge of a precipice. He does not
make us go from the humble and familiar
close, because the glacier, the sea, the
eternal snows, the palace, the stable, the |
cheerless hearth of the poor, and the cot i
of the sick, — all are found beneath the j
same heaven, purified by the same stars, and |
subjected to the same infinite powers.
He came for many just when he should
have come, and just when they had extreme
need of new explanations. Heroic hours
45

On Emerson and Other Essays
are less apparent, those of abnegation have
not yet returned; there remains to us only
our daily Ufe; and even then we are not
able to live without greatness. He has given
an almost acceptable meaning to this life
which no longer has its traditional horizons,
and perhaps he has been able to show us
that It is strange enough, profound enough,
and great enough to have need of no other
end than itself. He has no more knowledge
of it than the others, but he affirms with
more courage, and he has confidence in
mystery. You must live — all of you who
pass through days and years, without ac
tions, without thoughts, without light, be
cause, in spite of everything, your life is
incomprehensible. You must live because
no one has the right to avoid spiritual
events In commonplace weeks. You must
live because there are no hours without in
nermost miracles and without Ineffable sig
nificance. You must live because there is
46

On Emerson and Other Essays
not an act, there is not a word, there Is not
a gesture which escapes inexplicable claims
in a world "where there are many things to
do and few things to know."
There is neither a great nor a small life,
and a deed of Regulus or Leonidas has no
significance when I compare It with a mo
ment of my soul's secret life. They might
have done what they did, or they might
not have done it — these things do not
touch the soul; and the soul of Regulus,
while he was returning to Carthage, was
probably as absorbed and as indifferent as
that of the mechanic going toward the fac
tory. The soul is far removed from all our
deeds; it is too far from all our thoughts.
Deep within us it Uves alone a life of which
it does not speak ; and on the heights where
it exists, variety of being Is no longer dis
cerned. We move, weighted down beneath
the burdens of our soul, and there is no
symmetry between It and us. It probably
47

On Emerson and Other Essays
never thinks deeply of what we do, and this
can itself be read on our face. If one could
ask an Intelligence from another world
what is the composite expression of the facei
of all men. It would without doubt reply,
after having seen all men In their joys, in
their sorrows, and In their perturbations,
"They seem as though thinking of other
-things." Be great, be wise and eloquent.
The soul of the poor man who holds forth
his hand at the corner of the bridge will
not be jealous, but yours perhaps will envy
him his silence. The hero has need of ap
probation from ordinary men, but the or
dinary man does not ask the approbation of
heroes, and he pursues his life without un
easiness, as one who has all his treasures in
a safe place.
"When Socrates speaks," writes Emer
son, "Lysis and Menexenus are afflicted by
no shame that they do not speak. They also
48

On Emerson and Other Essays
are good. He likewise defers to them, loves
them whilst he speaks. Because a true and
natural man contains and is the same truth
which an eloquent man articulates, but In
the eloquent man, because he can articulate
it, it seems something the less to reside, and
he turns to these silent, beautiful, with the
more Inclination and respect."
Man is eager for explanations. -Hisjife
must be^shown to-him. He rejoices when
he somewhere jindsJ:he exaciinterpretation
of a small gesture which he^has Jieen-mak-
ing^ for some twenty-five years. Here on
earth there Is no trivial gesture; there are
in great proportion the attitudes of our
quotidian soul. You will not find in this life
the eternal character of the thought of
Marcus Aurelius. Yet Marcus Aurelius is
thought par excellence. Besides, who
among us leads the life of a Marcus
Aurelius ? Here, it is the man and nothing
49

On Emerson and Other Essays
more. He Is not arbitrarily exalted; he is
merely nearer us than usual. It is John
who prunes his tree ; It is Peter who builds
his house ; it Is you who speaks to me of the
harvest ; it is I who give you my hand. But
we are so situated that we touch the gods,
and we are astonished by what we do. We
did not know that all the foj-ces of the soul
were present ; we did not know that all the
laws of the universe were about us, and we
turn dumbfounded, like people who have
seen a miracle.
Emerson has come to affirm simply this
equal and secret grandeur of our life. He
has encompassed us with silence and witR
wonder. He has placed a shaft of light be
neath the feet of the workman who leaves
the workshop. He has shown us all the
powers of heaven and of earth, at the same
time intent on sustaining the threshold
upon which two neighbours speak of the
rain that falls or of the wind that blows.
50

On Emerson and Other Essays
And above these two passers-by who accost
each other, he has made us see the counten
ance of God who smiles with the counten
ance of God. He is nearer than any other
to our common life. He Is the most atten
tive, the most assiduous, the most honest,
the most scrupulous, and probably the most
human of guides. He Is the sage of com
monplace days, and commonplace days are
In sum the substance of our being. More
than a year passes by without passions,
without virtues, without miracles. Teach
us to respect the little hours of life. If this
morning I have been able to act with the
spirit of Marcus Aurelius, do not over
emphasise my actions, for I know, even I
myself, that something has happened. But
if I believe I have sacrificed my day to
wretched enterprises, and If you are able
to prove to me that I have lived meanwhile
as profoundly as a hero, and that my soul
has not lost its rights, then you will have
SI

On Emerson and Other Essays
done more than if you had persuaded me
to save my enemy to-day, for you have In
creased within me the amount, the great
ness, and the desire of Ufe ; and to-morrow.
In all likelihood, I shall know how to live
with respect.

>¦

NOVALIS

MEN travel by diverse roads; who
soever follows them and com
pares them will see arise strange figures,"
writes our author. I have chosen three of
these men whose ways lead us upon three
different summits. I have seen glimmer on
the horizon of Ruysbroeck's works the
bluest peaks of the soul, while in Emerson
the most humble summits of the human
heart round themselves irregularly. Here
we find ourselves upon the sharp and often
dangerous convolutions of the brain; but
there are haunts full of delicious shade be
tween the verdant inequalities of these
crests, and the atmosphere there Is of an
unchangeable crystal. S3

On Emerson and Other Essays
It is splendid to note how many ways of
the human soul diverge toward the inacces
sible. For an instant, we must follow the
steps of the three souls I am about to men
tion. They went, each In his manner, much
further than the sure circles of ordinary
consciousness, and each of them met with
truths which are not similar and which we
nonetheless ought to welcome as prodigal
and reclaimed sisters.
A hidden truth is what makes us Uve. We
are its unconscious and silent slaves, and we
find ourselves bound so long as it has not
appeared. But should one of these extraor
dinary beings, which are the antennas of
the human soul, many in one, suspect it
an instant while groping In the shadows, the
humblest amongst us, by an indescribably
sudden and inexplicable consequence, feels
freed of something. A new truth, higher,
purer, and more mysterious, takes the place
of that which is discovered and which dis-
S4

On Emerson and Other Essays
appears forever, and the soul of all, without
anything betraying its presence outwardly,
inaugurates a more serene era, and cele
brates profound fetes of the soul, in which
we take only a tardy and very remote part.
And I believe it is thus that the soul rises,
and tends toward a goal of which it alone
knows. All that we can say of it is nothing in it
self. Place in one scale of the balance all
the words of the wisest men, and in the
other the unconscious wisdom of the child
yonder who passes, and you will see that
what Plato, Marcus AureUus, Schopen
hauer, and Pascal have revealed to us will
not outweigh by a line the vast treasures
of the unconscious, for the child who is
silent is a thousand-fold more wise than
Marcus Aurelius who speaks. However, If
Marcus Aurelius had not written his
twelve books of "Meditations," a part of
the unknown treasures our child holds
SS

On Emerson and Other Essays
within him, would not be the same. Per
haps it Is not possible to speak clearly of
these things, but those who know how to
question themselves profoundly enough,
and who know how to live — ^were it only
the fraction of a second and in accordance
with their whole being, — feel that that Is.
It is possible that some day we may dis
cover the reasons why, if Plato, Sweden
borg, or Platinus had not existed, the soul
of the peasant, who has never read them
and who has never heard tell of them,
would not be what it infallibly is to-day.
But however that may be, no thought was
ever lost to any soul, and who will tell the
parts of ourselves which live, thanks to the
thoughts which have never been expressed ?
Our consciousness has more than one de
gree, and the wisest take note only of that
part of our consciousness which is almost
unconscious, because it is on the point of be
coming divine. To increase this transcen-
56

On Emerson and Other Essays
dental consciousness seems ever to have
been the unknown and supreme desire of
men. It matters little that they are igno
rant of it, for they are ignorant of every
thing; and yet they act In their souls as
wisely as the most wise. It Is true that
the majority of men are destined to live only
at the very moment they die. In the mean
time this consciousness increases only by in
creasing the inexplicable around us. We
seek to know in order to learn not to know.
We increase only by increasing the mysteries
that weigh us down, and we are slaves
who are only able to keep in them the de
sire to live on condition of making heavy,
without ever becoming disheartened there
by, the pitiless weight of their chains. . . .
The history of these wonderful chains
is the unique history of ourselves; for we
are only a mystery, and what we know is
not very interesting. Thus far the history
is not extensive; it is contained in a few
57 '"

On Emerson and Other Essays
pages, and the best of us, so it is claimed,
are afraid to think of it. How few dare
advance as far as the limits of human
thought; and give us the names of those
who remain there a few hours ! . . . More
than one has promised us the history, and a
few others have taken it in hand a moment,
but a short while after they lost, step by
step, the force that was necessary for them
to exist there ; they fell back again into their
exterior life. Into the known fields of human
reason, and everything glowed afresh, as
formerly, before their eyes.
In truth, that is why it Is difficult to ques
tion the soul and to recognise the small
voice of the child within one, amidst the
useless noises around. Yet nevertheless, how
little the other efforts of the spirit matter
when one thinks of It, and how our ordinary
Ufe passes from us ! One would say that in
the outer world only our fellow-creatures of
the empty, distracted, and sterile hours ap-
S8

On Emerson and Other Essays
pear. But here within us Is the only fixed
point of our being and the seat Itself of life.
We must take refuge there incessantly. We
know all the rest before any one has spoken
to us of It; but here we learn very much
more than can be told ; and it Is at this mo
ment, when phrases cease and when words
conceal themselves, that our restless eyes
suddenly encounter, through the years and
centuries, another look which lay patiently
in wait for our look on the road to God.
Our eyelids fiutter at the same time, the
eyes become moist with a sweet and terrible
dew from the same mystery, and we know
that we are not alone on the endless
road. . . .
But what books speak to us of this place
in life? Metaphysics scarcely touch the
frontiers; and these once passed, in truth
what remains? A few mystics who seem
mad, because they would probably repre
sent the very nature of man's thought. If
59

On Emerson and Other Essays
he had the leisure or the force to be a true
man. Because we love above all the masters
of ordinary reason: Kant, Spinoza, Scho
penhauer, and some others, — there is no
justification for us to repulse the masters
of a different reason — which Is an Intimate
reason as well and which very likely will be
our future reason.
In the meanwhile they have told us some
indispensable things. Open the most pro
found of the ordinary moralists or psycholo
gists, — he will speak to you of love, of
hatred, of pride, and of the other passions
of the heart, and these things please us for
an Instant, like flowers plucked from their
stems. But our real and unalterable life
passes a thousand leagues from love and
a hundred thousand leagues from pride. We
possess a 5^// more profound and more inex
haustible than theSelfoi passions or of pure
reason. There is no need to tell us what
we experience when our mistress abandons
60

On Emerson and Other Essays
us. She goes away to-day; our eyes weep,
but our soul does not weep. Maybe it
hears the event and transforms It into light,
for all that befalls shines In the soul. May
be also the soul knows nothing of the
event; and if so, what use to speak of It?
We must leave such small things to those
who do not feel that life is profound.
If; I have read La Rochefoucauld or
Stendhal this morning, do you believe that
I have acquired some thoughts which make
me more a man, and that the angels, whom
we must approach night and day, will find
me more beautiful? Everything that does
not go beyond experimental and quotidian
wisdom does not belong to us, and is un
worthy of our soul. Everything that we are
able to learn without anguish lessens us. I
will smile regretfully should you succeed in
proving to me that I am an egoist even in
the sacrifice of my happiness and of my life.
But what is egoism compared with so many
6i

On Emerson and Other Essays
other all-powerful things I feel living in me
with an unspeakable life? It Is not upon
the threshold of passions that the pure laws
of our being are to be found. There comes
a moment when the phenomena of habit
ual consciousness — which could be called
passionate consciousness or the conscious
ness of relations in the first degree, — ^no
longer benefit us, and no longer reach our
life. I agree that this consciousness is often
Interesting in some phase, and that It Is es
sential to know its character. But on the
surface It is a plant, whose roots are timid
of the great central fire of our being.
I can commit a crime without the least
breath disturbing the smallest flame of this
fire; and on the other hand a look ex
changed, a thought which fails to unfold, a
minute which reveals nothing, can stir it in
terrible whirlpools to the depths of its re
treat, and make it overflow my life. Our
soul does not judge as we judge ; it is a ca-
62

On Emerson and Other Essays
priclous and hidden thing. It can be touched
by a breath, and Ignored by a tempest. We
must seek for what touches It; the whole
matter is there, for It is there that we exist.
Thus, to return to this ordinary con
sciousness which reigns supreme at so great
a distance from our soul, I know more than
the one person whom the marvellous pic
ture of Othello's jealousy, for example, no
longer astounds. It is determinate in the
first circles of man. It remains, provided
one takes care to open neither the doors nor
the windows ; otherwise the image falls into
dust in the breath of all the unknown that
awaits it outside. We listen to the dia
logue between the Moor and Desdemona,
as a perfect thing, but It cannot prevent us
from thinking of more profound things. Let
the warrior from Africa be deceived or not
by the noble Venetian, he yet has another
Ufe. There must pass in his soul and
around his being, at a time coincident with
63

On Emerson and Other Essays
his most miserable suspicions and his most
brutal anger, events a thousand times more
sublime, — which his cries cannot disturb,
— and through the surface emotion of
jealousy an unalterable existence is pursued
which the genius of man has so far shown
only In passing.
Is this the source of the sadness that
marks some masterpieces ? Poets can write
them only on condition of closing their eyes
to the terrible horizons, and of imposing
silence on the grave and numberless voices
of their soul. If they had not done It, they
would have lost courage. Nothing is sad
der and more elusive than a masterpiece,
because nothing reveals better the power-
lessness of man to perceive its grandeur and
Its dignity. And if a voice does not warn
us that the most beautiful things are
nought beside what we are, nothing will be
little us more.

64

On Emerson and Other Essays
'The soul," says Emerson [In "The
Over-Soul"], "is superior to Its knowledge,
wiser than any of its works. The great poet
makes us feel our wealth, and then we think
less of his compositions. His greatest com
munication to our mind Is, to teach us to
despise all he has done. Shakespeare car
ries us to such a lofty strain of InteUigent
activity, as to suggest a wealth which beg
gars his own; and we then feel that the
splendid works which he has created, and
which in other hours we extol as a sort of
self-existent poetry, take no stronger hold
of real nature than the shadow of a passing
traveller on the rock."
The sublime cries of great poems and of
great tragedies are nothing more than the
mystic cries of anguish which do not belong
to the exterior life of these poems or of
these tragedies. They resound an Instant
out from the inner life, and make us hope
6S

On Emerson and Other Essays
I know not what of the unforeseen — and
which we expect, none the less, with so
much impatience ! until our passions — too
well-known — cover them once more with
their snow. ... It is at such moments as
these that humanity Is brought for a second
in the presence of itself, as a man is brougUt
in the presence of an angel. Now, it is im
portant for humanity to place itself as often
as possible in the presence of itself, so as to
know what It is. Should some being of
the other world descend amongst us, and de
mand of us the supreme flowers of our soul,
and the claims of the earth's greatness,
what would we give him? Some would
bring forward the philosophers without
knowing what they did. I have forgotten
which one has declared that he would offer
Othello, King Lear, and Hamlet.
Ah, well, we are not what these are ! and
I believe that our soul will die of shame in
the depths of our flesh, because It Is well
66

On Emerson and Other Essays
aware that Its visible treasures are not made
to be opened to the eyes of strangers, and
contains only false precious stones. The
most humble amongst us, during the mo
ments of solitude when he knows what is
necessary for him to know, feels that, he
has the right to be represented by some
thing other than a masterpiece. We are in
truth invisible beings. We should have
nothing to say to the celestial envoy and
nothing to show him, and our most beauti
ful possessions would appear suddenly to
us like those poor family relics which seem
so precious in the remoteness of their case,
but which look so miserable when they are
brought forth from their oblivion for a
second, In order to show them to some In
different person.
We are invisible beings who live only
within ourselves, and the attentive visitor
would go away without ever suspecting
what he might have seen, unless in that mo-
67

On Emerson and Other Essays
ment our Indulgent soul should intervene.
It is so apt to run away from small things,
and we have such trouble finding it in life
that we fear to caU it to our assistance.
However, it Is ever present, and never de
ceives Itself nor is deceived, once it has been
summoned. It would show to the unex
pected emissary the clasped hands of man,
his eyes so full of nameless dreams, and
his lips unable to speak; and perhaps the
other, if he be worthy of understanding,
would not dare to question. . . .
But If other proofs were necessary to
him, the soul would bring him among those
whose works almost approach silence. It
would open the door of the dwellings where
a few loved it for itself, taking account of
the small movement of its body. They
would both climb to the high soUtary
plateaus where consciousness rises one de
gree higher, and w'here all those who are
concerned about themselves prowl atten-
68

On Emerson and Other Essays
tively around the monstrous circle which
binds the apparent world to our superior
worlds. The soul would go with him to
the limits of mankind; for it is where man
seems on the point of finishing that he prob
ably begins; and his essential and Inde
structible parts find themselves only in the
invisible where it is essential for him to keep
watch on himself. It Is on these heights
alone that there are thoughts which the soul
can declare, and ideas which resemble the
soul and which are as imperious as the soul
itself. It is there that humanity has ciwelt an
instant, and those peaks, feebly aglow, are
probably the only gleams which show the
earth in spiritual spaces. Their reflections
have truly the colour of our soul. We feel
that the passions of the mind and heart re
semble, to the eyes of a foreign Intelligence,
petty village quarrels; but in their works
the men of whom I speak have emerged
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On Emerson and Other Essays
from the smallest village of passions, and
they have said some things that will in
terest those who are not of this earthly
parish. Our humanity must not keep up an
agitation exclusively within its innermost
depths, like a horde of moles. Let It
live as though some day It should render ac
count of Its life to Its elder brothers. The
mind alone contemplates itself, like a local
celebrity which makes the traveller smile.
There are other things than the mind, and
It is not the mind alone which allies us to
the universe. It Is time to confound it no
longer with the soul. What is essential for
us to consider Is not what takes place as
between men, but what has place within us
above the passions of reason. If I offer to
a foreign IntelUgence only La Rochefou
cauld, LIchtenberg, Meredith, or Stendhal,
it would regard me as I regard, in the
depths of a dead town, the hopeless bour-
70

On Emerson and Other Essays
geois who speaks to me of his street, of his
marriage, and of his business.
What angel will demand of Titus why
he has not married Berenice and why An-
dromaque Is promised to Pyrrus? What
will Berenice amount to, if I compare her
to what is Invisible in the beggar-woman
who stops me or in the prostitute who
beckons me ? A mystic word only can now
and then represent a human being; but our
soul does not exist in these other regions
without shadows and without abysses. And
do you yourselves stop there in the grave
hours when life Is heavy on your shoulder ?
Man Is not in these things, and yet these
things are perfect. But one must speak of
them only to one's self, and It is right to re
main silent concerning them If some visitor
knocks one evening at the door. Yet If this
same visitor should surprise me at the mo
ment when my soul is looking for the key
to her nearest treasures in Pascal, Emerson,
71

On Emerson and Other Essays
or Hello, or, on the other hand, in some
one of those who were concerned about
pure beauty, I will not close the book in
embarrassment; and perhaps he himself
will take therefrom some idea of an inti
mate being condemned to silence, or will
know at least that we were not all con
tented inhabitants of the earth.

II

Among these envoys of the human soul,
NovaUs probably represents one of the
most imponderable, one of the most subtle,
and one of the most transparent aspects of
the superior being silent within the depths
of us. He is the strolling soul, the crystal
line bee of this almost Immovable group.
He Is likewise a mystic as the others, but his
mysticism is of a special kind. "What is
mysticism?" he asks himself in one of his
fragments, "And what should be treated
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On Emerson and Other Essays
mystically? Religion, love, poUtlcs. AU
lofty things have some connection with
mysticism. If all men were only a couple
of lovers, the difference between mysticism
and non-mysticism would be at an end."
Between a mystic thought and an ordi
nary thought, however exalted it may be,
there is the same difference as between the
dead eyes of the blind and those of the
child who beholds the mountain and the sea.
The soul of man never errs here. The ques
tion is not alone of mysticism, theological or
ecstatic. All who perceive things beyond
the customary phenomena of passion or
reason are themselves mystics also. Had
Pascal aided Racine while he wrote "Bere
nice," the lovers of Berenice would have
been mystic — that is to say more human —
and Pascal would have put there an inde
scribable something which would have re
called the look of the loved one at the mo
ment when her eyes encountered those of
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On Emerson and Other Essays
her lover. And the poem would have been
inexhaustible. Instead of which Berenice
now lives a dry and detached life which
will never be renewed. Berenice is undy
ing, but she does not, like Hamlet and
Cordelia, commune with God.
There are a thousand diverse mysticisms.
"Mysticism," says Matter, the biographer
of Claude de Saint-Martin, "has gone
further than positive science and rational
speculation, and has as many diverse
forms as there are eminent mystics. But
beneath all its forms it has two ambitions
which are the same : to arrive in metaphysi
cal studies as far as Intuition, and In moral
practice as far as perfection. The highest
science and the highest morality: — this in
two words is wUat it looks for, what it has
the determined will to conquer, and the pre
tension if not to teach — for its conquests
teach little — at least to let see imperfectly."
Novalis does not concern himself ex-
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On Emerson and Other Essays
pressly with theosophy, with magic, with
transcendental pneumatology, with meta
physical cosmology, or with all we find in
the spacious circles of the mystic, properly
speaking. He Is an almost unconscious
mystic who has no aim. He thinks mysti
cally, since a thought which communicates in
a certain fashion with the infinite is a mystic
thought. We must everywhere seek for
thoughts of this kind, for they are the only
ones In which our soul truly lives. And as
these thoughts are very rare, we must be
contented with the slightest efforts and at
tempts. I do not mean to say that Novalis
Is a supremely admirable being. His teach
ing is very vague, and he does not advance
any new solution to the great questions of
being. But some of his thoughts- are un
doubtedly impregnated with the special
odour of our soul, and you recognise with
out trouble this odour that no language can
ever define. He has found a way to clothe a
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On Emerson and Other Essays
certain number of earthly things in mystic
vestments; and these are the calmest, the
most spontaneous, and the most virginal
vestments one can encounter. His mysticism
Is even so natural and so essential that we
do not see It at the outset.
In him, infinite communications are
formed before you realise it, and extend
over all with grace. He does not torture
himself; he does not search in shadows or
In tears, but he smiles at things with a
gentle Indifference, and regards the world
with the inattentive curiosity of an angel,
unoccupied and distraught by long memo
ries. He plays simply in the gardens of
the soul, without suspecting that he has
reached the extreme end of life, and that he
often passes his hands between the branches
to pluck the flowers from the other side of
the burning hedge.
He Is also very far from the exuberant
and obscure joy of the ascetic mystic. He
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On Emerson and Other Essays
does not feel the intolerable flames that
melt souls at the opposite poles of divine
love. He is rather an astonished and sweet-
voiced child who possesses the sense of
unity. He is not sad and he is not restless.
"There Is not, properly speaking, any un-
happlness In this world," he tells us; and
yet he was as unhappy as any other man.
But unhappiness could not sink into his
soul, nor did it succeed In troubUng his
thoughts. "Sorrow is a divine vocation," he says
again ; but one feels that he has not known
sorrow, and that he speaks of it as a travel
ler who has not fathomed the language of
a country through which he passes. Do
what It may, the soul is the sister of sorrow
or of joy, and events are not able to work
any change in it. When his little sweet
heart died — the only woman he truly loved
— his life seemed broken. He did no more
than weep dreamily upon her grave. At
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On Emerson and Other Essays
what point In his work did she die ? That is
very difficult to say; and, In spite of all his
tears, the angelic optimism of his life could
not become darkened; — so true is it that
we know but a few things concerning the
laws of the soul, and that our life has no
action on it.
Besides, he does not concern himself with
anything that is certain. He lives in the
domain of erratic intuitions, and nothing Is
more elusive than his philosophy. His
mysticism, to use one of his expressions
which he loves and which he often employs
when he speaks of his science, is rather "a
magic IdeaUsm." It seems to him that noth
ing is more within reach of the spirit than
the infinite, and that is why he scarcely ever
enters the ordinary field of human thoughts.
He only wanders over the frontiers of this
thought, but he goes over nearly all of
them. With the greater number of mystics
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On Emerson and Other Essays
known to us, mysticism is psychological;
that is to say, it attaches Itself to a species
of transcendental psychology where the
soul itself endeavours to study Its own
habits and passions, as our mind, In ordi
nary psychology, endeavours to study the
passions and habits of our being, apart from
mystery. The immovable soul falls back
upon Itself and concerns Itself less with the
unknown which lies about it than with the
unknown which lies within ; or rather, it per
ceives accidentally the exterior mystery only
through and in relation to the inner mys
tery. In general, it Is mystic only in re
spect to Itself, whereas, in Novalis, the soul
may be mystic In Its relation to a chemical
phenomena, a pathological law, or an arith
metical problem.
The soul shifts position every moment,
and finds Itself again everywhere outside of
itself. Instead of drawing within it the
externals and appearances, the soul mixes
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On Emerson and Other Essays
Itself with them and so saturates them with
its essence that it changes their substance.
It transcendentalises less Its own Self than
the universe. It enters art, science, and
morals ; and this art, science, and morals are
no longer what they were and no longer
directly belong to present life.
Moreover, we do not know how to de
fine better than Novalis has done, illusive
nature and the particular origin of his
spiritual emotions. "There are in aU of
us," he writes, "certain thoughts which
seem to have a character entirely different
from others, for they are accompanied by
a sensation of fatality; yet nevertheless,
there Is no outward reason for them to be:
born. It seems that we take part in a dia
logue, and that some unknown and spiritual
being gives us In a strange manner the op
portunity of developing the most obvious
thoughts. This being must be superior since
it enters en rapport with us in a way impos-
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On Emerson and Other Essays
sible to those beings bound to phenomena.
This being must be homogeneous with us,
since It treats us as spiritual beings, and only
very rarely calls us to personal activity.
This superior Self Is to man what man Is to
nature, or what the sage is to the child.
Man endeavours to become like unto it, as
he endeavours to become similar to the not-
Self. It is Impojssible to establish this fact ;
each of us must experience it for himself.
This Is a fact of superior order that
superior man alone can grasp, but the others
endeavour to bring it out in themselves.
Philosophy is an auto-logician of superior
essence, an auto-manifestation: the excita
tion of the real Self by the ideal Self.
Philosophy is the foundation of all the other
manifestations, and the determination to
philosophise is the invitation made by the
real Self to take consciousness, to awaken
itself, and to become spirit."
It would be difficult, concerning the
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On Emerson and Other Essays
thought with which we are here occupied,
and which goes beyond the first circles of
the soul, to find a notion more acceptable
than that which In passing we here en
counter: "Philosophy," — and Novalis
means to speak only of transcendental
philosophy, — "Is an excitation of the real
Self by the ideal Self." As for the nature
of his thoughts, he determines this better
than the most skilful commentator would,
when he says: "that they [the thoughts]
are accompanied by a sensation of fatality,
and that an unknown being gives him in a
strange fashion the opportunity to develop
the most obvious among them."
The evidence of which he speaks is more
over this fugitive evidence which we per
ceive only at the most lucid hours of life.
But what we see only at long intervals, ob
scurely and without our realising, without
any other thing revealing it to us to save an
unknown satisfaction and an indefinable in-
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On Emerson and Other Essays
crease of a general force, he perceives every
day, and succeeds in holding fast to a part
of what he perceives.
If we must characterise Novalis by a
word, we might say that he was a scientific
mystic, though he only concerned himself
with science at moments, and at places
where it was on the point of being con
founded with poetry. "There Is a divining
atmosphere," he says somewhere; and he Is
the one of those who come forth the most
rarely out of this precious atmosphere. He
catches a glimpse continually, on the ex
treme limits of the plausible, of many things
of which there is no proof, but which we
ourselves are nevertheless unable to refrain
from recognising and admiring. He touches
upon them only In passing; and before you
have had time to recover from your aston
ishment, he awaits you, all smiles, on the
most solitary cape of the other hemisphere.
Novalis has those eyes which for an in-
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On Emerson and Other Essays
stant bind all worlds together. Perhaps he
is the one who has most profoundly pene
trated Intimate and mystic nature and the
secret unity of the universe. He has the
sense and the very sweet torment [meaning
that he chafes under the thought] of unity.
"He sees nothing isolated," and above all
things he Is the doctor who looks in amaze
ment at the mysterious relations existing be
tween all things. He gropes without cessa
tion at the extremes of this world, where
the sun only rarely shines, and on every side
he suspects and touches lightly upon strange
coincidences and astounding analogies, ob
scure, trembling, fugitive, and timid, which
vanish before one has understood.
But he has caught a glimpse of a certain
number of things one would never have
suspicioned, had he not gone so far. He Is
the clock that has marked some of the most
subtle hours of the human soul. It is evi
dent that he has more than once been mis-
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On Emerson and Other Essays
taken ; but despite the winds of folly and of
error whirling around him, he has been able
to maintain himself a longer time than any
other on the dangerous peaks where all is
at the point of being lost. He seems to be
the hesitant consciousness of unity, but the
most vaguely complete that we have had
thus far. And there are few human
beings in whom our universe was more
spiritualised and more divinely human. He
is like the serene master of Sai's: "He
hears, sees, touches, and thinks at the same
time. Often, the stars seem to him like
men; then again men seem to him like the
stars, stones like animals, clouds like plants.
He plays with forces and phenomena."
Ill
Friedrlch von Hardenberg, who in litera
ture took the name of "Novalis," was born.
May 2, 1772, in the old family residence of
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On Emerson and Other Essays
Weldestedt, in the ancient county of Mans
field, Saxony. His father, who had been a
soldier in youth, and who was an honest and
solid German, — ^who, moreover, never un
derstood anything of the genius of his son,
was director of the Saxony salt-works — an
important employment at that time, —
which assured a very large Independence to
his household.
His mother, of whom little is said, ac
cording to custom, though mothers create
the soul of beings, was In all llkeUhood one
of those sweet and pious women who, pass
ing through life without explaining to her
self the attitude of man, contents herselT by
remaining silent and by hiding what she
knows and divines, beneath a poor, humble
smile. It Is possible that Novalis had
memories of her in describing the simple
and tender woman who accompanied his
hero, Henry of Ofterdingen, in his ideal
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On Emerson and Other Essays
It was with her and with his three sisters
that NovaUs passed, in this small, lonely
chateau, the whole of his deUcate child
hood. He Uved there, within the rooms of
the old German dwelling — rooms slightly
sombre and crowded — that discreet and
silent life which allows the inner being time
to find itself and to question itself from the
first hours. Then he studied at the universi
ties of Jena, Leipzig, and Wittenberg, and
now we have come to the time when, hav
ing passed those obscure years through
which the soul unconsciously makes ready,
— and when it is about to enter those paths
of light traced by his work upon his life, —
he does the small things of which Uves are
made. The year is 1794. Thirteen years have
passed since Kant published his "Critique of
Pure Reason"; but not more than four or
five years have elapsed since this book
spread in Germany and began, with enthusl-
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On Emerson and Other Essays
asm and anger, the despotic reign of the
philosopher of Koenigsberg. While Kant
analyses, FIchte at the same time recon
structs the world in his "Doctrine of
Sciences," while Schelling, In his small room
at Leipzig, already teaches to those dis
ciples among whom was Novalis, the abso
lute identity of the objective and of the sub
jective. It is not the place here to recall, apropos
of a rather literary philosophy, the great
quarrels of the golden age in German meta
physics. It suffices that we know the youth
of Novalis was passed, even In the very
centre of this vast conflagration of human
thought. But never did he enter into the
narrow prisons of systematic philosophy.
He loved better to imagine the world
according to the free transports of
his soul than to limit it to the exigen
cies of a first idea, irrevocable and arbi
trary. He had genius, and Kane has

On Emerson and Other Essays
declared that genius has no place in
science. Of the three great philosophers who then
governed human thought, it Is certain that
FIchte, the passionate thinker, left the most
profound impressions on his mind; and he
often recalls him in his writings. It is,
nevertheless, impossible to know exactly the
Influence they had upon the soul of Novalis,
for the true inner life depends on those
small circumstances which can never be
known. Goethe, In his spiritual autobiog
raphy, speaks of none of the large events of
his life, but devotes many long pages to the
humble games of his childhood. The soul
never listens, but It sometimes hears, and
should we go to the sources of our new and
definitive existence, we would often find
there the word of a drunkard, of a maid,
or of a prostitute, even where the wisest
among our masters have spoken in vain.
Besides, the philosopher never remains
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On Emerson and Other Essays
long among his brothers. "Philosophy,"
Novalis writes somewhere, "rests at this
moment in my library. I am happy in hav
ing traversed this labyrinth of pure reason,
and In having dwelt anew, body and soul,
within the refreshing countries of the
senses. . . . One can place philosophy very
high without making it the director of his
house, and without resigning one's self to
live solely for it. Mathematics alone do not
make the soldier and mechanic ; so, philoso
phy alone will not make a man."
At the same time we find ourselves
within the great literary century of Ger
many. Goethe, who is so difficult to de
fine, the man with a thousand aptitudes, the
Argus who smiles gravely upon all Inner
truth, is about to give "Faust" to the world,
and is on the eve of publishing "Wilhelm
Meister." And "Wilhelm Meister," that
illusive and inexhaustible book of all books,
influences Novalis till his death. He did
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On Emerson and Other Essays
not like it, yet he returned to it incessantly.
He was obsessed by it, and could no longer
forsake It. In the diary for the last years
of his life, the most important event of the
morning or of the evening was daily the
impatient and discontented adoration of the
"Meister." He loved It and detested it at the
same time, as one loves and detests a mis
tress to whom a mysterious and wretched
law attaches you. This was the book of his
life, and one could say of it that It weighed
heavily upon his entire existence. He
wrestled vainly against "the angel of ro
mantic irony" ; he contradicted it and re
pulsed it; and the instant after, he fell again
into its arms, his eyes closed In admiration.
He knew, nevertheless, the faults of this
breviary of daily life. "It Is entirely mod
ern and prosaic," he tells us. The romantic
perishes here just as the poesy of nature and
the marvellous. It speaks only of ordinary
things. Artistic atheism — that is the spirit
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On Emerson and Other Essays
of the book." But "the ardent and sainted
NovaUs," as Emerson calls him, was not
able, amidst the greatest sorrows of his life,
to forget for an Instant this Candide di
rected against poetry, which till his last days
possessed his soul with the memory of his
dead sweetheart.
Around Goethe all Germany flourished.
We know the history of the Romantic
School. So as to picture the milieu In which
his life flowed. It suffices only to know
that, still very young, — almost a child
— Novalis turned quite often to the
great and tender Schiller, and never
forgot the ecstasy In which those
delicious hours steeped him. He was an
intimate friend of the two Schlegels, whose
beautiful translations introduced Shake
speare to Germany. He was also the friend
of the enormous Jean- Paul, so little known
In France — Jean-Paul, the romantic and
mystic Rabelais of the Germans, the
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On Emerson and Other Essays
most powerful, the most slovenly, the most
inexhaustible, the most chaotic and the
most gentle of literary monsters. Then,
toward his final days, it was Ludwig Tieck,
the good and faithful Tieck of artless and
limpid legends, who set about earnestly at
tempting, with Schlegel, to collect the works
of this child whom death had impatiently
seized. But, as yet, death was at the turn of the
road. Novalis had finished his law studies.
He likewise applied himself to chemistry
and to mathematics. He left Wittenberg
and Installed himself at Tennstedt. Hence
forward, the several years set aside for the
accomplishment of his work were passed
between Tennstedt, Weissenfels, and Griin-
ingen in Thuringia. Destiny, who knows
what must be done, and who draws from
some men of Interest to her all that can be
drawn, places him in the small, drowsy,
familiar and patriarchal town of central
03.

On Emerson and Other Essays
Germany. It is easy to picture the sur
roundings. There are great trees ; generally
pines all about, and mountains, the metal-
bearing Erzgebirge. The Harz and the
great Thuringia forest are near. The vine
thrives on the banks of the Saale. The in
habitants work in the salt-mines and in the
copper-mines. There are some old, squat
inns, under linden trees, by the wayside;
some towers in ruins upon the cliffs; and
all the dark and green confused, yet none
theless familiar; leaning houses, moss-
grown stubble and slightly blackened cha
teaux of legendary Germany. The people
gather the harvest, singing the while about
the sheaves. They pass the small bridge
over the streamlet in the forest ; they return
to the village at mid-day and In the even
ing : and Ufe, as everywhere under the sun
or stars, flows In expectancy.
In 1776, just at the very moment his
days were ironically numbered, the poetj
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On Emerson and Other Essays
equipped in so many things, prepared to Uve
in the full exercise of his powers. He en
tered into the administration of the Saxony
salt-mines. But some months previously,
the greatest event of his pure and simple
life took place by chance, without noise and
without attracting attention, like all events
which penetrate the soul.
It was during a visit to Thuringia, in
which his good friend Just accompanied
him — Just who later became his astonished
and vague biographer. I leave the word to
Ludwig Tieck, whose narrative still
trembles beneath the fresh-coloured hue of
this first love:
"He arrived at Cronstadt not long ago,
when in a neighbouring country-house he
became acquainted with Sophie von Kiihn.
The first glance he threw upon the beauti
ful and marvellous apparition decided his
life. We can even say that the sentiment
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On Emerson and Other Essays
which now penetrated him and Inspired him
was the substance and the essence of his en
tire Ufe. Often in the look and features of
a child, there is an expression which we
are compelled to call superhuman or celes
tial, since It Is of a very angelic and ethereal
beauty. And usually when we see counte
nances thus purified and made almost trans
parent, the fear comes to us that they are
too fragile, too delicately fashioned for this
life; that death or immortality looks upon
us very profoundly In those sparkling eyes.
And often a rapid decay transforms our sad
presentiment to certitude. These counte
nances are indeed more impressivestillwhen
their first period Is happily over, and when
they offer themselves to us on the flowering
threshold of their adolescence. Every one
who had known this marvellous betrothed
of our friend agrees that no description is
able to convey an idea of the grace and
celestial harmony in which this beautiful
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On Emerson and Other Essays
being moved, of the beauty which shone in
her, of the sweetness and the majesty which
surrounded her.. NovaUs became the poet
each time he spoke of her. She had just
ended her thirteenth year when he saw
her for the first time. The spring and
summer of the year 1795 were the flower
of his life. Every hour he was able to
steal away from his duties, he passed at
Griiningen; and at the close of this same
year, he obtained from Sophie's parents the
desired consent."
It Is probable that the old poet had seen
the small sweetheart only through the
ecstasy of his friend. However, it matters
very little into what vase man pours the
illusions of love, and I believe that Tieck
exaggerates the influence this encounter had
on the life and thought of Novalis. In
such men thought is a sumptuous and cen
tral plant which protected, rises above all
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On Emerson and Other Essays
circumstances. And then, generally, the soul
follows Its way as a blind man who does not
allow himself to be distracted by the flowers
of the road. If, In passing, the soul sees
another soul, it is because this other soul al
ready travels the same paths. And our
inner being Is almost unshakable. Every
work by Novalis, written before and after
the loss of Sophie von Kiihn, has the happy
elasticity of days of pure delirium, of sweet
and infinite love. It was in him that love
Itself dwelt, and the object of his affection
was only an occasion. But really at heart
one does.not know. Many very vital events
often emanate from the woman, and she
frequently changes the direction of a life.
But Is It, Indeed, the woman — ^because she is
the woman, who had the influence, and is it
not rather a soul that has intervened? It
happens, moreover, that a life is changed
without the soul having moved. Yet it is
possible that the woman's soul had an action
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On Emerson and Other Essays
more prompt than that of the man, or it is
possible that we remark It more. However
that may be, this extraordinary maid of
thirteen years was, as you will see, similar
to all maidens of her age. She spoke, she
laughed, she smoothed her hair, she ate
green fruit, and she still played with what
remained of her dolls. We find in Novalis's
last note-books a page of Ingenious memo
randa, wherein he admires her small ges
tures and her little school-girl thoughts,
without suspecting that everyone has made
those gestures and has had those thoughts
since the beginning of the world. He notes
reverently that she "likes vegetable soup,
beef and French beans, just as she likes beer
and wine. She is afraid of a mouse and of
a spider. She is afraid of ghosts. She fears
marriage. She loves passionately all that is
proper for her to love. They sometimes
beat her. She is Irritable and tender
hearted. NovaUs's love often tires her. She
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On Emerson and Other Essays
is cold. She Is an excellent housekeeper.
All alone she tried one day to stop a thief.
She loves to listen to stories. She Is extra
ordinarily insincere." "Women are more'
complete than we," he adds, "more proud
than we. They are more Intuitive than we.
Their nature seems to be our art, and our
nature their art. They individualise; we
universallse. . . ."
Here then she is — such as he loved ; and
we see her a second with his eyes, — a
maiden similar to those you find In all well-
to-do houses andintheparlours of all board
ing-schools. It was she whom he loved and
admired, and it was because of her that he
died. He was perhaps right, and that is not
astonishing. Undoubtedly he knew, with
out being able to confess it to himself, what
there was In her. And if he adored her
little insignificant gestures. It was because
he was not ignorant of the fact that a more
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On Emerson and Other Essays
profound being surely lay awake In the
depths of her commonplace smiling eyes.
One never knows what these lover's en
counters hold. Besides, we can never judge
of a woman by what is left of her acts, of
her thoughts, or by what is said of her. It
Is necessary to have seen her, and to have
approached her, so as to know what she is
and what the unknown being Is worth
which lives within her. For woman, more
than man, is a question of soul.
He was (happy during all one spring, dur
ing all one summer. But misfortune awaited
him, all smiles, on the threshold of the
dying year. The little Sophie fell sud
denly and seriously ill. An abscess formed
in the liver, and her poor virgin flesh was
handed over to the scalpel of the doctors.
The year following, NovaUs passed by
wandering from the paternal house, where
one of his brothers lay dying, to the cot
tage at Griiningen, where his young be-
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On Emerson and Other Essays
trothed was at the point of death. Finally,
on March 19, 1797, Sophie von Kiihn
gave up the dream or life. She was fifteen.
Three weeks after, Novalis's brother In his
turn expired.
It is not necessary to speak at length of
sorrow. All that there Is of an exterior
sorrow varies according to the days In
which we live, and what it possesses of an
inner quality can neither be weighed nor
spoken of. What was at first violent In
Novalis was transformed later Into a
strange peace, saddened and profound, and
the grave and penetrating cold of true life
rose out of the depths of his misfortune.
He was as a drunken man who one even
ing in winter awakens under the stars at
the summit of a tower. From that day forth
he smiled profoundly and his dead sweet
heart began in him a pure and solemn life.
Nothing is more nobly sad than this trans
formation of sorrow at the depths of a soul,
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On Emerson and Other Essays
though nothing perhaps could be less rare.
But the majority of souls are silently sub
missive, and we are surrounded by a crowd
of mute and solitary beauties.
He lived thus with this invisible loved
one. I will quote here a page from his
intimate diary — a page which I have taken
at random — for they all resemble each
other, and, as one remarks frequently at
the approach of death, his life became
serene and monotonous.
"May 5. — Forty-eight days after the
death of Sophie. Early, as of habit,
thought of her. Afterwards, reflections
upon criticism. Then 'Meister.' After the
meal, lively political discussions. Walk.
On the way, happy and profound medita
tions, notably on this remark of Goethe's:
that rarely do we know and choose the
proper means towards the end; that very
rarely do we take the right way. It seems
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On Emerson and Other Essays
that I am becoming better and more pro
found. Of late, I have had a most vivid
image of her before me: in profile, at my
side on the sofa; with a green kerchief. It
is in such situations and characteristic vest
ments that I like to remember her most fre
quently. All the evening, thought of her
very Intimately. God, so far, has guided
me charitably. He will continue to do so."
And the diary runs thus during three
months, detailing with regularity the same
recollections and the same small deeds:
walks, work, meals, small fetes, visits to the
tomb of Sophie, music under the linden-
trees, and evenings under the lamp. "So
cial life becomes more and more foreign to
me, and things more and more indifferent,"
he remarks ; and the next day he rejoices as
a child In a beautiful, sunny day, for life In
spite of all is more powerful than memory.
Among the insignificant facts, he examines
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On Emerson and Other Essays
himself and deliberates: "I have remarked
that it Is my destiny in this world never to
attain anything. It is necessary that I
separate myself from everything in its
prime, and only at the end shall I learn the
best in what I know well. Even myself.
... It Is only now that I have learned
to know myself and to find pleasure in my
self. And that is why I must go from the
world." • He often speaks of a fixed resolution.
He questions what emptiness his death
would make In his family, and realises that
no being is indispensable. When he is
with his friends he speaks more than once
of suicide. The idea of putting an end to
his days — was it floating in his mind ? He
does not say so. The notes continue almost
daily, until the one hundred and second day
after Sophie's death. Then suddenly, on'
turning one of the pages, there shines forth
the name of another woman.
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On Emerson and Other Essays
NovaUs, in 1798, had gone to Freyberg,
in order to study mineralogy under the il
lustrious Werner. There he met a young
girl, JuUe von Charpentier, and the new
betrothments were celebrated a short while
after. Here, all biographers are frightened
away. The good Tieck stammers with ex
cuses, and the old Just passes rapidly by
without daring to look. Carlyle himself,
even though accustomed to the unlooked-
for movements of true heroes, is embar
rassed a moment, and separates active con
stancy from passive constancy, which Is, he
says, a very Inferior virtue, an accident
rather than a virtue, and in every par
ticular very rare In this world. "His
Sophie," he adds, "might still be a saintly
presence, mournful and unspeakably mild,
to be worshipped in the inmost shrine of
his memory; but worship of this sort Is not
man's sole business ; neither should we cen-
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On Emerson and Other Essays
sure Novalis that he dries his tears, and
once more looks abroad with hope on the
earth, which is still as it was before, the
strangest complex of mystery and light, of
joy as well as sorrow. 'Life belongs to the
living; and he that lives must be prepared
for vicissitudes.' " I do not believe that
we should offer many explanations, and I
should love Novalis less had he not loved
twice. It is necessary to live naively, and
the dead have other rights over us.
Now, the happy days returned, sunnier
and more beautiful than formerly. He had
obtained Important employment in Thur
ingia, his life enlarged itself, and his sec
ond fiancee awaited him, smiling in the
sweet impatience of betrothal. Never had
he felt nearer to him the warm and power
ful presence of good fortune. We must
not take too seriously this sensation of
plenitude, of strength, of hope and of joy,
even as we do not trust death. It is the
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On Emerson and Other Essays
instructive and supreme reaction of life
which knows all, against misfortune which
draws near and will land to-morrow. If we
feel our good fortune most vividly, It is
because sorrow In passing touches us on
the shoulder In order to bid us farewell.
Suddenly, during the summer of 1 800, just
at the moment when all his joys were about
to be realised, the unexpected death of one
of his brothers troubled him so profoundly
that a blood-vessel broke in his chest; he
bled profusely. He was carried to Dres
den, then to Weissenfels, where he dragged
on for some time amidst great hope and
briUiant projects, in the manner of con
sumptives, and died on March 25, 1801.
He had not completed his twenty-ninth
year.

108

On Emerson and Other Essays
IV
I shall pass rapidly in review, so as to
end this study, the works of Novalis,
which, in the original edition, accompany
the fragments here translated: "Henry of
Ofterdingen," which is at the beginning of
the collection by Tieck and Schlegel, was
written in Thuringia, in the solitudes of
the "golden meadow," at the foot of the
Kyffhaijserbergs. It was in 1 800, and No
valis, on the verge of death, and engaged
a second time, full of hope, of projects,
and of ardour, smiled at existence with a joy
and a confidence which till then he had
never experienced. "Henry of Ofterdin
gen" was intended by him to be the positive
of which "Wilhelm Meister" was the nega
tive that had weighed upon all his youth.
He desired a kind "of apotheosis of
poetry." As a complete translation of this
log

On Emerson and Other Essays
novel must appear before long, I will dis
pense with an analysis here.
This work, which he had not the time
to finish, is the most continuous and the
most considerable effort of our author. But
one will not find here the astonishing and
happy audacity of the "Fragments." The
artist In "Ofterdingen" wrestles with the
thinker, and their powers are weakened at
moments in the struggle. This is a mono
chrome work, clear, cold, beautiful and
noble. But the pure essence of the genius
of Novalis appears to a less degree here
than elsewhere. From the beginning to the
end, there Is to be found, nevertheless, that
marvellous crystalline clarity which Is his
very own, and which manifests itself espe
cially in this book — a book which some one
has said was written by an angel descended
from some paradise of snow and ice.
Following this, we have the "Hymns to
Night." It is a brief series of poems in
no

On Emerson and Other Essays
prose and in verse, written shortly after the
death of his fiancee. Novalis regarded these
poems as the most perfect part of his work.
"They are," writes Carlyle, "of a strange,
veiled, almost enigmatical character ; never- .
theless, more deeply examined, they appear
nowise without true poetic worth; there is
a vastness, an Immensity of idea; a still
solemnity reigns in them, a soUtude almost
as of extinct worlds. Here and there, too,
some llgUt-beam visits us in the void deep ;
and we cast a glance, clear and wondrous,
into the secrets of that mysterious soul."
. . . Here Is one of these poems :
"The morning — will it ever return ? and
the effort of the earth — ^wIU it never end?
Evil activity consumes the celestial breath
of the night. The secret oblation of love
— wiU it never burn eternally? Time is
measured by light, but the reign of night
knows neither time nor space. Eternal is
III

On Emerson and Other Essays
the duration of sleep. Sacred sleep ! do not
make too rarely happy those who are dedi
cated to the night In their earthly works!
The madman alone disowns you, and
knows no other sleep than the shadow you
spread so mercifully upon us in this twi
light of the true night. They do not feel
you in the golden flood of grapes, In the
marvellous oil of the almond, and in the
tawny vigor of the poppy. They do not
know that it is you who envelops the
bosom of the virgin, and makes a paradise
of her knees. They do not suspect that
from the depths of legends you advance in
half-opening the sky, and that you carry the
key of the dwelUng of happiness; silent
messenger of Infinite secrets."
Novalis is also the author of a series of
"Spiritual Hymns," destined to be sung in
the churches; and of some other poems
which I shall only mention here so as to be
complete. These "Spiritual Hymns" have
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On Emerson and Other Essays
the clear and sweet harmony, the purity and
the strange transparency which characterise
the genius of the poet, but there is no need
to look here for what he himself caUs "the
core of his soul."
We next find, in the Tieck collection,
"The Disciples at Sais," the admirable
physical, or rather metaphysical, novel, of
which a complete translation has been
made. There are few works more myste
rious, more serene, and more beautiful. It
has been said that he climbed I know not
what interior mountain known only to him
self ; and that from the height of this silent
summit he saw at his feet, nature, systems,
hypotheses, and the thoughts of men. He
does not summarise, he purifies; he does
not judge, he dominates without saying
anything. In those very profound and
solemn dialogues, intermingled with sym
bolical allusions, which stretch occasionally
much beyond possible thought, he has fixed
"3

On Emerson and Other Essays
the remembrance of one of the soul's most
lucid Instants. It suffices that the reader be
cautioned that he is here concerned with
on« of those rare books, where each. In ac
cordance with his merits, finds his reward.
Unfortunately the work Is incomplete.
From the beginning, the author has over-
lept the narrow confines of ordinary forces,
and he has been able, for a longer time than
any other, to deviate from it. But one even
ing, it became quite necessary for him fo
halt in his journey before he could describe
what he had already seen; for there is an
abyss between what one is able to say and
what one discovers. Later on. In his num
berless papers, there were found the notes
which are here reproduced and which seem
to refer to some project interrupted either
by awe or death. What there is of It, I
here transcribe:
"Transformation of the Temple of
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On Emerson and Other Essays
Sa'is. Apparition of Isls. Death of the
Master. Dream In the Temple. Studio of
Archseus. Advent of the Greek gods.
Initiation into the mysteries. Statue of
Memnon. Journey to the pyramids. The
Child and his forerunner. The Messiah of
nature. The New Testament and the new
nature. The New Jerusalem. Cosmogony
of the ancients. Hindu divinities."
Let us now leave the fragments of this
mysterious work which oblivion seems to
fret on every side, so as to reach some other
fragments, even more mutilated still, — for
the whole work of this unfortunate poet Is
an ideal monument which fatality made
into marvellous ruins before it was built. It
has been said of Novalis, apropos of these
"Fragments," that he was a German Pas
cal, and the phrase. In some respects, may
be regarded as quite just. Certainly he
has not the clear and profound power, the

On Emerson and Other Essays
ponderous force, and the prodigious elastic
ity of the great wild beast in "Thoughts;"
he Is a Pascal, slightly somnambulistic, who
only very rarely enters the realm of certi
tudes, where he takes delight in his brother.
But there are some things as beautiful as
certitudes. Pascal had not known Boehme,
Lavater, Eckartshausen, ZInzendorf, Yung,
Stilling; and the great Boehme notably
never relinquished the splendid booty that
he seized. Novalis dwells in the realm of
hypotheses and of uncertainty; and the
power of man becomes hesitant in those
regions. He does not possess the pur
pose of Pascal ; he goes in a circle, his eyes
bandaged In the desert; but it is necessary
to recognise that his range is immense. He
wished to accomplish a kind of encyclo
pedic work, wherein the experiences and
the ideas born of the most diverse sciences
would be mutually cleared, sustained, and
verified, he tells us. He probably would
ii6

On Emerson and Other Essays
never have been able to achieve this work,
but the scattered remains of it are beautiful
and strange.
A large proportion of these "Frag
ments" has been collected by Schlegel and
Tieck in the volume which contains the
other works of the poet. In 1846, Ludwig
Tieck, aided by Edouard von Biilow, pub
lished a new series of "Fragments" which
did not even then exhaust the enormous
mass of notes left by the author of "The
Disciples at Sai's." In my tum, I have made
a choice from these selections. Novalis, in
his work, touches upon most of the human
sciences. I have set aside a certain number
of political considerations which now no
longer offer any Interest. I have also dis
carded everything that the advance in
physics and chemistry has made out of date
or erroneous. I have done the same in re
gard to certain historical questions which
bore almost exclusively on the situation
117

On Emerson and Other Essays
in Germany at the time the author
wrote. As for the rest, the choice was more
difficult and arbitrary; for it was necessary
to Umit myself at present. Besides, it is pos
sible that a second volume may complete
this work. I am able to assert, however,
that among these Thoughts, I have
gathered those which are impregnated with
the true and pure essence of Novalis's
genius, whatever the repugnance they have
to tell their secret. I close by hoping that
the reader will pardon Inevitable errors. It
is not easy to translate Into French an ob
scure author who occasionally seems to
speak in a low tone. Our language is a
minute and severe Interpreter, which, before
agreeing to interpret anything, requires con
struing, which It is often very dangerous to
give it.

ii8

RUYSBROECK

A great number of books are more
regularly beautiful than this by Ruysbroeck
the Admirable. A great number of mystics
are more effective and more timely: Swe
denborg and Novalis, among many. It is
most likely that his writings only rarely
meet the needs of the present. On the other
hand, I know of few authors more clumsy;
at times he loses himself In strange possi
bilities ; an4 the first twenty chapters of the
"Ornament of Spiritual Marriages," al
though probably a necessary preparation,
contain only a few Indifferent and pious,
commonplace premises. Externally he has
no order, no scholastic logic. He often re
peats himself, and seems at times to con-
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On Emerson and Other Essays
tradlct himself. He joins the Ignorance of
a child to the science of some one who might
have just returned from the dead. He has
a rabid syntax, which has troubled me more
than once. He introduces an image and
forgets It. He even employs a certain num
ber of unrealisable images; and this phe
nomenon, abnormal in a sincere work, can
be explained only by his awkwardness and
by his extraordinary haste. He is Ignorant
of most of the artifices of speech, and can
only discuss the inexpressible. He is igno
rant of nearly every practice, every qualifi
cation, every resource of philosophic
thought; and he Is compelled to think only
of the inconceivable.
When he speaks to us of his small mo
nastic garden, he can hardly and sufficiently
tell us what is happening there. Then he
writes as a child would write. He under
takes to inform us of what takes place in
God, and he writes many pages that Plato
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On Emerson and Other Essays
could not have written. In every part there
is an absurd disproportion between science
and ignorance, between force and desire.
We must not expect a literary work; you
will perceive nothing more than the convul
sive flight of a tipsy eagle, blind and blood
stained above snowy summits.
I will add a final word in the manner of
a fraternal warning. I have had occasion
to read some books which are considered
very abstruse: the "Disciples of Sais" and
the "Fragments" of Novalis, for instance;
the "Blographia Literaria" and the
"Friend" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge; the
"Timffius" of Plato; the "Enneads" by
Plotinus; Saint-Denys the Areopagite's
"Divine Names" ; and the "Aurora" by the
great German mystic, Jacob Boehme, with
whom our author has a closer analogy.
I would not venture to say that the works
of Ruysbroeck are more abstruse than these
books, but we are less prone to pardon his
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On Emerson and Other Essays
abstruseness, since here we are concerned
with an unknown in which from the begin
ning we have no confidence. It seems to
me essential that we frankly anticipate the
casual reader on the threshold of this
shapeless temple: for the present transla
tion has only been undertaken for the sat
isfaction of a few Platonlsts. I beUeve
that those who have not dwelt in the inti
macy of Plato and of the neo-Platonists of
Alexandria will not proceed very far in the
perusal of this. They will imagine them
selves In a desert; they will have the sensa
tion of a uniform fall into a fathomless
abyss, between black, srnooth walls.
In this book there Is neither ordinary
light nor air; and It is a spiritual abode In
supportable to those not prepared for It.
We must not regard it out of literary
curiosity; there are few bric-a-bracs In it.
The spiritual botanists will not find here any
more flowers than they would find on ice-
122

On Emerson and Other Essays
bergs at the pole. I tell them that this Is a
limitless desert, where ordinary readers will
die of thirst. They will find here few
phrases which we, in the manner of literary
lovers,. might examine and admire; they are
either jets of flame or blocks of ice. Do
not look for roses upon this Iceland. May
be some solitary coroUo awaits between two
icebergs; there are. In fact, some strange
explosions, some unknown expressions,
some unheard-of resemblances, but none of
them pays for the time consumed in com
ing from so far to cull them. We must,
before entering here, be In a philosophic
state as different from the ordinary state as
wakefulness differs from sleep.
Porphyry, in his "Principles of the
Theory of Comprehensibles," seems to
have written the most appropriate warning
to place at the head of this book : "Through
intelligence one says many things of the
source [moral law] which is superior to In-
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On Emerson and Other Essays
telllgence. But one is possessed with an in
tuitive knowledge of it much better by an
absence of thought than by thought itself.
This idea is like that of sleep of which we
speak to a certain extent in a state of wake
fulness, but of which we have knowledge
and perception only by sleep Itself. Indeed,
like is known only by like, and the condi
tion of any knowledge Is that the subject
becomes like unto the object." I repeat. It
Is most difficult to understand this without
preparation; and I beUeve, in spite of our
preparatory studies, that most of this mysti
cism win seem to us purely theoretical, and
that most of these experiences of super
natural psychology are of appeal to us only
in the character of spectators.
The philosophic imagination is a very
slow and dull faculty of education. We are
there, suddenly, at the outposts of human
thought, and well beyond the polar circle
of the mind. It Is strangely cold there ; It is
124

On Emerson and Other Essays
, extraordinarily sombre ; yet you wIU find
there nothing save flames and light. But to
those who come there, without having ac
customed their soul to the new perceptions,
this light and these flames are a,s obscure
and as icy as though they were painted.
The most exact of sciences Is at stake here ;
the question is In looking over the most
rugged and the most inhabitable capes of
the divine "Know Thyself," and the sun of
midnight reigns upon the swelling sea,
where the psychology of man blends Itself
with the psychology of God.
It Is ever of importance to remember this ;
you are concerned here with a very pro
found science, and not with a dream.
Dreams are not for every one ; dreams have
no roots, while the incandescent flower of
divine metaphysics blooms here and has its
roots in Persia, India, Egypt and Greece.
And yet It [science] seems as unconscious
as a flower, and is ignorant of its sources.
"5

On Emerson and Other Essays
Unhappily It Is well-nigh impossible for us
to put ourselves in place of the soul, which,
without effort, conceived this science; we
can neither perceive it ah intra nor repro
duce it In ourselves. It lacks for us what
Emerson also would call "central spon
taneity." We can no longer change these
ideas into our own substance; and, at the
most from without, we can only take ac
count of the prodigious experiences which
are within range of only a very few souls
during the existence of a planetary system.
"It is not legitimate," writes Plotinus,
"for us to enquire whence this intuitive
science springs, as if It were something de
pendent on place and motion ; for it does
not come from here, nor does It start out
from there in order to go elsewhere; but
It either appears or does not appear. So
that we need not pursue it with the inten
tion of discovering in it any secret sources ;
but we must wait in silence until It dazzles
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On Emerson and Other Essays
suddenly upon us, in preparing us for the
sacred spectacle, as the eye waits patiently
for the rising of the sun."
And elsewhere he adds: "It is not by
Imagination or by reasoning, obliged to
derive Its principles from elsewhere, that
we picture to ourselves comprehensible
things (that Is to say what Is there above),
but by the faculty we possess of contem
plating them, the faculty which allows us
to speak of them in this world. We see
them awakening in us here the same power
We should awaken In ourselves when ^we are
In the intelligible world. We resemble the
man who, climbing the summit of a peak.
Would perceive invisible objects with his
own eyes for those who have not climbed
with him."
But though everything, from the stone
and the plant up to man, be contempla
tions, they are unconscious contemplations,
and It is very difficult for us to treasure Iti
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On Emerson and Other Essays
ourselves some memory of the former ac
tivity of the dead faculty. We are In this
respect similar to the eye in the neo-platonic
image: "It moves away from the light so
as to see the shadows ; but because of that
very fact It does not see. For It cannot see
shadows within the light, yet without light
It does not see. In this way, while not see
ing. It sees the shadows as far as It is natu
rally capable of seeing them."
I know what opinion most men will have
of this book. They will consider it the
work of a deluded monk, of a wild solitary
man, of a recluse, delirious with fast, and
consumed by fever. They will see in it an
extravagant and dark dream crossed with
immense flashes, and nothing more. This
Is the ordinary Idea we have of mystics, and
people too often forget that all certainty is
in them alone. After all, if it be true, as
It has been said, that every man is a
Shakespeare in his dreams, then we should
12S

On Emerson and Other Essays
ask If every man in his life is not a silent
mystic, a thousand times more transcenden
tal than those who have limited themselves
by words? What Is the action of the man
whose last motive is not mystic? And Is
not the eye of the lover, or of the mother a
thousand times more abstruse, more im
penetrable, and more mystic than this book,
poor and explainable after all, like all
books which are nought but dead mysteries
whose horizon no longer changes? If we
do not comprehend this. It is probably be
cause we no longer understand anything.
But to return to our author, some will
readily recognise that, far from being
driven mad by hunger, solitude, and fever,
this monk on the contrary possessed one of
the wisest, one of the most exact, and one
of the most philosophical minds that has
ever existed. He lived, we are told, in his
hut at Groenendael amidst the forest of
Soignes. This was at the beginning of one
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On Emerson and Other Essays
of the most savage centuries of the middle
ages: the fourteenth. He did not know
Greek, nor, probably, Latin. He was alone
and poor. Yet, In the depths of this ob
scure Brabantine forest, his .soul, ignorant
and simple, received without knowing it,
the dazzling reflections of all the solitary
and mysterious summits of human thought.
He knew, unconsciously, the Platonism of
the Greeks, the Sufism of Persia, the
Brahmanism of India, and the Buddhism of
Thibet, and his wonderful ignorance resur
rected the wisdom of burled centuries, and
foresaw the science of centuries yet to be
born. I could quote whole pages from
Plato, Plotinus, Porphyry, the Zendic
books, the Gnostics, and the Kabbala whose
almost divine substance is found intact In
the writings of this humble Flemish priest.*
* I will give only an elementary example of it in
two senses of the word. Ruysbroeck distinguishes
three kinds of life: the active life, the inner life,
and the superessential life. The Gnostics dis
tinguish the spirit, the soul, and the material life,
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On Emerson and Other Essays
There are here many strange coinci
dences and many disquieting agreements.
What Is more, at moments he seems to have
fathomed accurately most of his unknown
predecessors ; and just as Plotinus begins his
austere journey at the cross-roads where
Plato, frightened, comes to a standstill and
kneels, so we might say that Ruysbroeck
has awakened, after a slumber of several
centuries, not that kind of thought (for
that kind of thought never sleeps) , but that
kind of speech which was asleep upon the
mountains where Plotinus, dazzled, had
forsaken It by placing his hands over his
eyes, as before an Immense fire.
and divide men into three classes : the pneumatics
or spirituals ; the psychics or animals ; and the hyli-
ques or materials. Plotinus likewise separates in
the soul : intelligence, the reasonable soul, and ani
mal nature. The Zohar notes the spirit, the soul,
and the life of the senses ; and in the two systems,
as in Ruysbroeck, the connection of the three prin
ciples is explained by a procession assimilated with
an irradiation ; then the theory of the divine en
counter : God coming in us from the inside toward
the outside; we, going to him, from the outside
toward the inside, etc. Read also the Sth Ennead.,
etc., etc. 131

On Emerson and Other Essays
But the organism of their thought differs
singularly. Plato and Plotinus are above
all, princes of dialectic. They reach mysti
cism through the science of reasoning.
They make use of their discursive soul, and
seem to mistrust their intuitive or contem
plative soul. Reasoning contemplates itself
in the mirror of reasoning, and forces Itself
to dwell indifferent to the intrusion of all
other reflections. It continues its course as
a river of fresh water in the midst of the
sea, with the presentiment of approaching
absorption. Here, on the contrary, we meet
again the habits of Asiatic thought ; the in
tuitive soul reigns supreme above the dis
cursive purification of ideas by words.
The shackles of the dream have fallen.
Is it less sure? None can say. The mir
ror of human intelligence Is entirely un
known in this book ; but there exists another
mirror, more sombre and more profound,
which we harbour in the innermost depths of
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On Emerson and Other Essays
our being; no detail can be seen there dis
tinctly, nor can words remain on the sur
face; intelUgence would shatter it [the mir
ror]. If for an Instant it reflected there Its
profane light; but something else shows it
self there at times: Is it the soul? Is It
God Himself? or both at the same time?
One will never know. And yet these almost
invisible apparitions are the unique and ef
fective sovereigns in the life of the most in
credulous and of the blindest amongst us.
Here you will perceive nothing more than
gUtterIng reflections in this mirror, and as
Its treasure is inexhaustible, these reflections
will not resemble any of those that we have
experienced within ourselves; and despite
everything, their certitude will appear ex
traordinary. And that Is why I know noth
ing more appalling than this sincere book.
In the world there Is not a psychological
notion, a metaphysical experience, a mystical
Intuition, however abstruse, however pro-
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On Emerson and Other Essays
found, and however unforeseen they may
be, that it would not be possible for us, were
It necessary, to reproduce or to revive an In
stant within ourselves, in order to assure us
of their human identity. But here we are
like unto the bUnd father no longer able to
recall the look of his children. None of
these thoughts has the filial or brotherly
aspect of an earthly thought; we seem
to have lost the experience of God, and
yet all affirms to us that we have not en
tered into the house of dreams. Must we
exclaim with Novalis that the time is no
more when the spirit of God was compre
hensible, and that the meaning of the world
Is forever lost? That formerly all was ap
parition of the Spirit, but that now we ob
serve only some dead reflections that we no
longer understand, and that we live only on
the fruits of better times ?
I think we must declare humbly that the
key to this book is not to be found along
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On Emerson and Other Essays
the ordinary paths of the human spirit.
This key is not destined for worldly gates,
and we must be worthy of It by going as
far as possible from earth. Only one guide
is still met In these solitary crossroads, and
he can give us the final directions toward
these mysterious Icelands of fire, and these
Icelands of abstraction and of love. Plo
tinus it Is who makes an effort to analyse,
by means of human intelligence, the divine
faculty which prevails here. He has felt
what we call by a word which explains noth
ing, the same ecstasies, which in reality are
only the beginning of the complete discov
ery of our being; and amidst their troubles
and their darkness, he has not for an in
stant closed the questioning eye of the psy
chologist who seeks to render an account of
some of the most unusual phenomena of his
soul. He is thus the last pier whence we
can discern, however slightly, the waves and
the horizon of this obscure sea. He makes
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On Emerson and Other Essays
an effort to extend the paths of ordinary in
telUgence to the heart of these devastations,
and that is why we must return there un
ceasingly ; for he Is the only analytical mys
tic. To those who attempt these amazing
excursions, I wish to give here one of the
pages wherein he has attempted to explain
the organism of this divine faculty of Intro
spection. "In Intellectual Intuition," he says, "the
Intellect sees intelligible objects by means of
the light which the Supreme Source sheds
over them, and In seeing these objects, It
really sees the same Intelligible light. But
as it gives its attention to Illumined objects,
it does not see very clearly the principle that
illumines them; if, on the contrary, it neg
lects the objects it sees so as to contemplate
only the light which renders them visible,
it sees the Ught itself and the principle of
light. But It is not outside of itself that
intelUgence contemplates intelUglble Ught
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On Emerson and Other Essays
[or the light which makes the object intel
ligible. In CathoUc doctrine, the principle
of InteUectlon.]. It resembles then the eye
which, without considering an exterior and
strange 'light, before even perceiving it, is
suddenly struck by a splendour which is Its
own, or by a ray which springs forth from
Itself and appears to it amidst darkness. It
is the same when the eye, so as to see no
other objects, closes its lids and draws from
Itself its own light, or when, pressed by the
hand, it perceives the light which it has
within itself. Then, without seeing any
thing on the outside, it sees; it sees even
more than at other moments, for It sees the
Ught [by which it sees]. The other objects
that it saw previously, while luminous, were
not the light itself. Likewise, when intel
ligence closes its eye in some way to other
objects, when it concentrates within itself,
seeing nothing, it sees not an unknown light
which shines In strange forms, but its own
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On Emerson and Other Essays
light which suddenly shines Inwardly with
a pure brightness."*
"It Is necessary," he tells us again, "that
the soul which studies God should form an
idea of Him while seeking to know Him;
it is furthermore necessary that, knowing to
what great things it desires to unite Itself,
and persuaded that It will find bliss in this
union, it should steep itself In the depths of
divinity, until, instead of contemplating
itself, of contemplating the intelligible
world, it becomes itself an object of con
templation, and shines with a splendour of
conceptions which have their source above."
This is nearly all that human wisdom can
tell us here on earth; it is nearly all that
the prince of transcendental metaphysics
has been able to express. As for the other
explanations, we must find them In our
selves, within the depths where all explana-
*Plotinus, sth Ennead. Book V. (Translation by
M. N. Bouillet.) 138

On Emerson and Other Essays
tion is annihilated in its expression. For
this is not alone in heaven or on earth ; it is
above all within ourselves that there are
more things than all our philosophers can
contain,* and since we are no longer obliged
to formulate what is mysterious in us, we
are more profound than all that has been
written, and we are greater than all that
exists. Now, if I have translated this book, it is
solely because I believe that the writings of
the mystics are the purest diamonds of the
wondrous treasure of humanity; though a
translation may be useless probably, for ex
perience seems to prove that it matters little
whether the mystery of the Incarnation of
a thought take place in light or in shadow;
it suffices that It has taken place. But how
ever that may be, mystic truths have a
strange license over ordinary truths; they
can neither grow old nor die. There Is no
*Cf. "Hamlet," Act i, Scene V.
139

On Emerson and Other Essays,
truth which could not, one morning, de
scend upon this world, admirable in power,
in youth, and covered with fresh and won
derful dew appropriate to things which
have not yet been said. Go to-day through
the Infirmaries of the human soul where
people come to die every day, you will
never find there any mystic thoughts. They
have the Immunity of the angels of Sweden
borg which hasten continually toward the
springtime of their youth, so that the oldest
angels seem the youngest ; and yet, whether
they come from India, Greece, or the
North, they have neither country nor anni
versary, and wherever we encounter them
they seem Immovable and real, like God
Himself. A work only grows old in proportion to
its anti-mysticism; and that Is why this book
bears no date. I know that it Is abnormally
confusing; but I believe that a sincere and
candid author Is never obscure in the ever-
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On Emerson and Other Essays
lasting sense of the word, for he always un
derstands himself, and infinitely beyond
what he says. Artificial ideas alone arise
from actual shadows, and flourish only in
literary epochs, and In the bad faith of too
conscious centuries, when the thought of the
writer remained on this side of what he ex
pressed. There, it was the fruitful shade of
a forest, and here, it Is the obscurity of a
vault wherein are born sombre parasites.
We must also take count of this unknown
world which his phrases were to enlighten
through the double and poor medium of
words and of thoughts. Words, as some
one has said of them, were invented for
the ordinary uses of life, and they are un
lucky, restless and amazed, like vagabonds
around a throne, when from time to time
some royal soul leads them elsewhere. And
on the other hand Is thought ever the exact
Image of the unfathomable which prompted
it, and is it not always the shadow of a
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On Emerson and Other Essays
struggle which we see in it, like that of
Jacob with the angel, and confused in pro
portion with the size of the soul and of the
angel? Woe unto us, says Carlyle, if we have in
us only what we are able to express and to
show ! I know that in these pages there are
the reflected shadow of objects we do not re
call having seen, whose use the monk does
not stop to explain, and which we will only
recognise when we see the objects them
selves on the other side of life; but, mean
while, which forced us to look further, and
that Is much. I know again that many of
his phrases float almost like transparent
icicles on the colourless sea of silence, but
they exist; they have been separated from
water, and that is enough. I know, finally,
that the strange plants he has cultivated on
the summits of the spirit are surrounded by
spacious clouds, but these clouds offend only
those who look at them from below, and
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On Emerson and Other Essays
should one have the courage to climb, one
would find that they are the very atmos
phere Itself of these plants, and the only
one wherein they can bloom, sheltered by
inexistence. For it is a vegetation so subtle that It Is
scarcely discernible from the silence where
it has drawn Its sap and where it seems In
clined to dissolve Itself. This whole work,
besides, is like a magnifying glass, applied
to shadow and to silence; and sometimes
one does not see Immediately the end of the
ideas that still are steeped in it. It is some
thing invisible, which at moments appears,
and some attention is evidently necessary to
watch its returns. This book is not too
remote from us; it Is probably at the very
centre of our humanity. But it is we who
are too far from this book; and if it seems
to us disheartening like the desert. If the
desolation of divine love seems terrible
there, and thirst at the summits unbearable,
143

On Emerson and Other Essays
It Is not the work which is too ancient, but
we who are too old perhaps, and sad and
without courage, like some old men around
a child. And it is another mystic, Plotinus,
the great pagan mystic, who probably has
the upper hand over us, when he says to
those who complained of having seen noth
ing on the heights of introspection :
"It is at first necessary to make the organ
of vision analogous to and similar to the
object which it 4s to contemplate. Never
would the eye have perceived the sun had
it not first taken the form of the sun ; In the
same way, never would the soul have seen
beauty if at first It had not become beautiful
itself, and every man should begin by mak
ing himself beautiful and divine so as to ob
tain the view of beauty and of divinity."

144

On Emerson and Other Essays
II
The life of Jean van Ruysbroeck, like
that of the majority of great thinkers of
this world, is entirely within himself; and
he himself said: "I have nothing to do with
the outside." Nearly all of his biographers,
Surius among others, have written almost
two centuries after his death, and their work
appears rather legendary. 'We see therein
a hermit saint, silent, ignorant, extraordi
narily humble, extraordinarily good, and
living, unknown to himself. In the practice
of miracles. The trees, under which he
went to pray to God, were illuminated with
an aureole; the bells of a Dutch convent
rang of their own accord on the day of his
death, and his body, exhumed five years
after the abandonment of his soul, was
found intact, amidst wonderful exhalations
of perfumes which healed the sick brought
from neighboring villages. I4S

On Emerson and Other Essays
Here In a few lines are the things his
torically certain: He was born the year
1274 at Ruysbroeck, a small village be
tween Hal and Brussels. He was at first
vicar In the church of Salnte-Gudule ; then
by the counsel of the hermit, Lambert, he
left the Brabantine village and retired to
Groenendael (the Green Valley) within the
forest of Soignes, In the vicinity of Brussels.
Some holy companions soon joined him
there, and with them he founded the abbey
of Groenendael, whose ruins are still visible
to-day. It was In this retreat that, at
tracted by the strange renown of his theos
ophy and of his superhuman visions, some
pilgrims, the Dominican Jean Tauler and
Gerard the Great, among many others,
came from Germany and from Holland to
visit the humble old man, and returned
therefrom full of an admiration of which
they have left remembrance In their works.
He died, according to the Necrologium
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On Emerson and Other Essays
Monasterii viridis vallis, on December 2,
138 1, and those of his time surnamed him
the Admirable.
At that time It was the ceptury of mystics
and the period of sinister wars in Brabant
and In Flanders ; of violent nights of blood
and of prayers under the fierce reigns of the
three Johns, and of long battles even within
this forest where the saints knelt. Saint
Bonaventure and Saint Thomas Aquinas
had just died, and Thomas a Kempis used
to go and study God In this mirror of the
absolute which the visionary Flemish had
abandoned in the remotest part of the
Green Valley, while after John of Bruges,
the Van Eycks, Roger van der Weyden,
Hugh van der Goes, Thierry Bouts and
Hans Memlinck were to populate with
images the desert word of the hermit.
Here is a catalogue of Ruysbroeck's
writings; his work was enormous. There
are: "The Book of the Twelve Beguins,"
147

On Emerson and Other Essays
"The Mirror of Eternal Salvation," "The
Book of the Spiritual Tabernacle," "The
Glittering Stone," "The Book of Supreme
Truth," "The Book of the Seven Degrees
of Spiritual Love," "The Book of the Seven
Chateaux," "The Book of the Kingdom of
the Loved Ones," "The Book of the Four
Temptations," "The Book of the Twelve
Virtues," "The Book of the Christian
Faith," and "The Ornament of Spiritual
Marriages," and, in addition, seven letters,
two canticles, and a prayer, under the title
in Surius : Epistola septem utiles, Cantiones
dua admodum spiritales and Oratio per-
brevis sed pia valde, of which I have not
been able to recover the original texts in any
of the Flemish manuscripts.
Most of these writings were edited with
the greatest care, a few years ago, by a so
ciety of Flemish bibliophiles: De Maets-
chappij der Vlaemsche Bihliophilen ; and
it is upon the excellent text of this edition
148

On Emerson and Other Essays
that the major part of this translation has
been based.
I will not here undertake an analysis of
these diverse works ; that analysis would be
difficult, monotonous, and useless. Every
book by our author treats exclusively of the
same science; a theosophy appropriate to
Ruysbroeck, the minute study of the soul's
introversion and introspection, the contem
plation of God above images and similes,
and the drama of divine love on the unin
habitable summits of the spirit. I will be
satisfied, therefore, to give a few character
istic extracts from each of these books.
The "Book of the Twelve Beguins," in
the Latin translation by Surius, is entitled:
De vera contemplatione, opus praclarum,
variis divinis institutionibus , eo quo Spiritus
sanctus suggessit ordine descriptis, exube-
rans. That more exactly describes the
work, but It Is found in none of the original
manuscripts. To tell the truth, according
149

On Emerson and Other Essays
to the custom of his times, Ruysbroeck
rarely named his writings; and the titles
which individualise them apparently have
been interpolated by the copyists, like the
marginal rubrics of the chapters. In the
edition of the Maetschappy der Vlaemsche
bihliophilen are gatherfd together under the
title Dat boec van den twaelf beghinen:
first, this treatise of the contemplative life of
which Surius speaks, then a kind of manual
of symboUc astrology, and finally some re
flections upon the passion and the death of
our Lord Jesus Christ. The three works
are moreover clearly separated, and Ruys
broeck plainly Indicates the place where he
renounces the inner universe In order to
descend toward the visible heaven, when he
declares, at the close of Chapter XXXI:
"And after this, I abandon the contempla
tive life, which Is God Himself and which
He grants to those who have renounced to
themselves and who have followed His
ISO

On Emerson and Other Essays
spirit there where He enjoys Himself with
His Disciples, In eternal glory."
The first eight chapters of this book are
written In odd and very beautiful verse,
where there constantly pass ardent spiritual
flashes across similes, as through the win
dows of a cloister that has been burned,
and also benumbed sadnesses somewhat
similar to Villon or Verlalne, on the dark
background of essential love.
Here are some of these verses :
"Contemplation is a science without form,*
Which ever remains above reason.
It is not able to descend into reason,
And reason cannot rise above to it.
The absence of illumined form is a beauti
ful mirror
*The French mode has its English equivalent,
with a double meaning. Psychologically, it is de
fined as "a faculty or a phenomenon of mind con
sidered as a state of consciousness." In the philo
sophical or physical science sense, it means, "the
manner of the existence of a thing, so far as it is
not essential." iSi

On Emerson and Other Essays
Wherein gleams the eternal splendour of
God.
The absence of form Is without manner,
And all the works of reason fail there.
The absence of form is not God,
But it is the Ught which makes us see.
Those who move In the absence of form,
Within divine light.
See in themselves a largeness.
The absence of form Is above reason,
But not without reason.
It sees everything without astonishment.
Astonishment is beneath it;
The contemplative life Is without astonish
ment.
The absence of form sees, but it knows not
what;
It is above everything, and it is neither this
nor that."
Then, the poet, recognising that his
verses were too much wrapped in darkness,
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On Emerson and Other Essays
in their approach toward eternal knowl
edge, tells us suddenly and very simply:
"At present I must cease to rhyme.
So as to speak clearly of contemplation."
From then, he makes use of a strange
prose, obscure as the terrible void which he
discerns, analogous to the great cold which
exists above Images, with bluish jets through
the obscure coldness of abstraction. And
when he descends a moment to similes, he
touches only the most distant, the most
subtle, and the most unknown ; he thus loves
mirrors, reflections, the crystal, fountains,
glittering glasses, water plants, precious
stones, red-hot irons, hunger, thirst, fire,
fish, the stars and everything that aids him
in endowing his Ideas with visible forms and
prostrated before love, on the transparent
summits of the soul, and In fixing the un
heard-of which he reveals with calm.
It Is besides useless to say more, since
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On Emerson and Other Essays
presently you yourself will reach the
threshold of these spiritual marriages and
will thence give heed to the motionless tem
pest of joy, up to the external heart of God.
Alone, In fine, he has almost fathomed
thought after death, and has shown a back
ground of Its vegetation to come amidst the
unintelUglble effluence of the Holy Trinity.
I beUeve that this is a work which we shall
remember elsewhere, perhaps, and always.
You will see, likewise, that the most amaz
ing effusions of Saint Therese are already
no longer distinguished from the height of
colourless glaciers, without air and without
light, where we shall ascend with him "be
yond astonishment and emotion, above
reason and virtues," In the obscure sym
phony of contemplation. Here is a passage
from this book:
"De altero verje contemplationis modo.
"After that comes another form of con
templation. 154

On Emerson and Other Essays
"Those who are raised in the simple
purity of their spirit by love and respect
which they bear to God, stand In His pres
ence the naked and uncovered vision. And
from the splendour of the Father radiates
a simple light, on the apparition of the bare
and imageless thought, raised above senses
and Images, above reason and without
reason, into the exalted purity of the spirit.
"This light is not God, but an inter
mediary between showy thought and God;
It Is called the light of God or the spirit
of the Father. In it, God manifests Him
self simply, not according to the distinc
tion and the mode of His persons, but
in the nakedness of His nature and of
His substance; and in it also, speaks the
spirit of the Father in the elevated
thought, bare and without images. 'Con
template me as I contemplate you.' At
the same time spread the Ingenuousness of
simple eyes, under the shedding of the sim-
I5S

On Emerson and Other Essays
pie splendour of the Father, and they per
ceive the splendour of the Father, that is to
say, the substance or the nature of God in
simple vision, above reason and without dis- '
tinction. "This splendour and this apparition of
God give to the contemplator spirit a real
science of the vision of God, such as can be
seen In this mortal state. In order that you
may understand me well, I wish to give you
a sensible Image of It. When you find your
self In the dazzling radiance of the sun, and
when you remove your eyes from all colour,
from all attention, from all distinction, and
from everything lighted by the sun, if then
you follow simply with your eyes the light
and the rays which radiate from the sun,
you will be led into the very essence of the
sun, and, similarly. If you follow the daz
zling rays which flow from the splendour
of God, in your simple vision, you will be
led into the source of your creation, and
156

On Emerson and Other Essays
there you will find nought but God
alone."

I now approach the second of the works
heretofore enumerated: "The Mirror of
Eternal Salvation" {Die spieghel der Ewig-
her salicheit) Is, like all mystic writings, a
study of the joys of introversion, or of the
return of man unto himself, so as to be in
touch with God; forwarded by the admir
able doctor, and the excellent contemplator
of the Green Valley, "To dear Sister Mar
guerite Van Meerbeke of the convent of
Clarisses In Brussels, the year of Our Lord
1356." In certain manuscripts the piece is
called "The Book of Sacraments," and it Is
indeed the poem of Eucharistic love, above
human kind and material things, and amidst
blind emanations from God, where the soul
seems to throw off the pollen of Its essence
in an eternal prevision. It requires, in order
to realise slightly, here as elsewhere, these
IS7

On Emerson and Other Essays
terrors of love, a tongue which might pos^
sess the intrinsic omnipotence of tongues al
most immemorial. Now, Flemish possesses
this omnipotence, and probably several
Flemish words still have in them Images of
the glacial epochs. He [Ruysbroeck],
therefore, had at his service one of the al
most primitive forms of speech, wherein
words are really lamps behind ideas, while
with us. Ideas must explain the meaning of
words. Also I am Inclined to believe that
every language always thinks more than
man, even than the man of genius who
employs it and who is only the momentary
heart of it ; and that it Is thanks to the lat
ter tongue, that a mysterious, ignorant per
son like Ruysbroeck has been able, by gath
ering together his forces scattered in the
prayers after so many centuries, to write
books which scarcely suit our apprehension
to-day. I translate from this book the fol
lowing fragment: 158

On Emerson and Other Essays
"See, here our reason and all clear
actions must yield; for our powers become
simple in love, and remain silent, and bend
before the apparition of the Father; for the
manifestation of the Father lifts the soul
above reason, in bareness without images;
there, the soul is simple, pure, and empty of
everything, and in this pure emptiness, the
Father shows His divine splendour. In this
splendour, neither reason nor judgment,
neither observation nor distinction, can
enter; all this should remain below It, for
this limitless splendour blinds the spiritual
eyes, in a way that they have to flutter be
fore the inconceivable light. But the simple
eye, above reason, and at the heart of intelli
gence, is always open, and sees and contem
plates with a naked vision, this light by that
very light. Yonder there is eye against
eye, mirror against mirror, image against
image. "By these three things are we like unto
IS9

On Emerson and Other Essays
God, and united to Him. For this vision
in our simple eye is a living mirror that
God has made in His Image. His image is
His divine splendour ; from It He has super
abundantly filled the mirror of our soul, so
that no other splendour and no other image
can enter. But this splendour is not an in
termediary between God and ourselves, for
It is that same splendour which we see, and
also the light by which we see, but not our
eye which sees.
"For though the image of God be with
out intermediary in the mirror of our soul,
and though it be united to it, this image
is not, however, this mirror, for God does
not become a creature. But the union of
the Image in the mirror is so great and so
noble that the soul is called the mirror of
God. "Then, this same image of God we have
received, which we carry in our soul, is the
Son of God, and the eternal mirror of
i6o

On Emerson and Other Essays
God's wisdom, in which we see everything
and are ourselves everlastingly reflected.
However, we are not the wisdom of God;
otherwise we would be able to make our
selves, which is impossible and an heretical
proposition. For all that we are and all
that we have we hold from God and not
from ourselves. And though this sublimity
be immense for our soul. It is none the less
hidden to the sinner and also to many of
those who are just. All that we can know
in the light of nature Is Incomplete, with
out flavour and without emotion; for we
cannot contemplate God or find His in
fluence in our soul, without His aid and
mercy, and without our genuine training In
His love."
The "Book of the Spiritual Tabemacle"
{Dat boec van den Gheesteleken Taberna-
cule). In Tabemaculum Mosis, et ad id
pertinentia commentaria, ubi multa etiam
i6i

On Emerson and Other Essays
Exodi, Levitici, Numerorum mysteria, di-
vino spiritu explicantur, writes Surius, the
longest work of the recluse. Is th6 strange,
na'ive, and arbitrary Interpretation of sym
bols In the ark of the Covenant and of sacri
fices In the ancient law. I will give most
generous extracts from this, for It shows an
interesting and kindly aspect of his Flemish
soul ; and the application and subtlety of the
artist which he employs to illuminate his
symbols, just as his amusing and simple
complaisance In certain effects of colour and
of likeness reminds us at times of his won
derful contemporaries of the school of Co
logne, — the old dream painters. Master
William and Lochner, and the admirable
band of unknown dreamers, who estab
Ushed far from him the almost supernatural
reflections of spiritual beatitudes of this
century and of the century following, which
passed away so near to God and so far
from earth. 162

On Emerson and Other Essays
Here is what he says apropos of the offer
ing of the poor in the Jewish law :
"And they (the doves) shaU hold them
selves near rivers and beside fresh waters,
so that should some bird come from on
high, which might seize them or do them
111, they might recognise it by its reflection
in the water, and guard themselves against
It. The fresh water is the Holy Scripture,
the Ufe of Saints and the mercy of God. We
shall see ourselves in them when we are
tempted; and thus nothing will be able to
harm us. These doves are of an ardent na
ture, and from them are often born young
doves, for each time that, in the glory of
God and for our bliss, we consider sin with
hate and contempt, and virtue with love,
we bring young doves Into the world, that is
to say, new virtues."
Here he pictures, by the aid of these same
doves, the offering of St. Paul :
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On Emerson and Other Essays
"And our Father repUed that his grace
should suffice him, for virtue is fulfilled in
the malady of temptations. When hc un
derstood that, he offered these two doves
into the hands of our Lord. For he for
sook himself and became voluntarily poor
and bent the neck of his doves (which were
his desires) under the hands of our Lord
Jesus Christ and of the Holy Church. And
Christ broke the neck and the wings of the
doves, and then he became powerless to de
sire, or to soar In ways other than what God
desired. And then Christ placed the head
(that is to say dead will In impotency) un
der the broken wings, and then the dove
was ready to be sacrificed, and then the holy
Apostle said: 'Gladly, therefore, will I
glory In my infirmities, that the power of
Christ may dwell In me.' "
Listen as well to this extraordinary ex
planation of the spiritual flowers embroid
ered on the hangings of the tabemacle :
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On Emerson and Other Essays
"On these four curtains of different
colours, our Lord ordered Bezaleel and
Aholiab to weave and to embroider thereon,
by needle, many ornaments. Even so, our
submissive will and our Intelligence place
upon these four colours diverse ornaments
of virtues. Upon the colour white of in
nocence, we shall place red roses, by resist
ing forever all that is evil. We thus pre
serve purity and we mortify our nature ; and
there are red roses with sweet perfume
, which are very beautiful on this white
colour. Again we shall embroider on Inno
cence some sunflowers, by which we mean
obedience; for, when the sun rises in the
east, the sunflower expands toward Its rays
and turns itself ever eagerly toward the
heat of the sun till Its setting In the west.
And at night it closes up and hides its
colours, and awaits the return of the sun.
Even so, we will open our heart, through
obedience, toward the Ught of God's grace;
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On Emerson and Other Essays
and humbly and eagerly we will follow
God's grace, so long as we feel the heat of
love. And when the light of grace stays its
fresh emotions, and when we feel a little or
no longer feel the heat of love, then it is the
night wherein we shut close our heart to all
that can tempt It ; and thus we shall enclose
within us the golden colour of love; and
we shall await a new rising of the sun with
new splendours and with new emotions.
And in this fashion we are able to preserve
Innocence ever in its splendour.
"Upon the colour of hyacinth, like unto
the air, we shall embroider birds with di
verse plumage ; that is to say, we shall bear
in our minds, with a clear observation, the
life and the works of saints, which are
various. And these are their diverse plu
mage, which are graceful and very admir
able, and It is with these plumes that they
have adorned themselves and soared to the
life eternal. There are birds that we must
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remark seriously; if we wish to resemble
them In their plumage, we must follow
them to their eternal rest. Upon the colour
purple, that is to say violet or blood red,
which signifies generosity, we shall place
water-lilies; and they symbolise a free pos
session of all the treasures of God. For
we notice four things about the water-lily.
It keeps itself ever above water and has
four green leaves between the air and the
water, and it is constantly in the earth, and
above is spread open to the sun ; and it is a
remedy to those who are too ardent. And
even so, we can, through generosity and
freedom of spirit, possess the streams of all
the richness of God. And between this free
possession of our spirit and the floods of
prodigal gifts from God, we shall have
green leaves; that is to say, a lofty con
sideration of the manner in which the lib
erality of God flows ever with new gifts,
and in what manner the gifts flow ever
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generously, according to the form of the
loved one who receives them; and In what
manner the chief cause of all gifts Is the
noble background of divine love, and the
nearest cause, the wise and generous nature
of creatures, which can make them like unto
God. For none can know the wealth of
God's gifts, excepting the wise and gener
ous man who, out of the treasures of God
can give wisely and generously to all
creatures. Let us therefore adorn gener
osity, and then we will be strengthened in
the land of all gifts, that is to say In the
Holy Spirit, as the water-lily is made firm
in the depths of the water. And we will
expand our heart, above all, to truth and
toward the sun of justice. And thus we are
a remedy to the whole world; for the
generous heart that possesses the treasures
of God must fill up, console, refresh,
and cool all those who are afflicted.
And it is through that that the pur-
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pie colour is set In the red colour,
that Is to say, in burning love. There we
will place bright stars, that is to say,
some pious and devout prayer for the good
of our neighbour, and some reverent and
hidden observance between God and our
selves. There are the stars which illumine
with their splendour the kingdom of the
heavens and of the earth, and they render
us luminous and fruitful Inwardly, and
establish us In the firmament of eternal
Ufe." After this, I translate entirely the "Chap
ter on Fishes" with its astonishing similes.
"And this Is why the law ordered the
Jews to eat pure fish having scales and fins,
and all the other fish were impure to them
and forbidden by law. From that we un
derstand that our inner Ufe must have a
vestment of virtue, and our inner being
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must be covered over with reasonable con
sideration, in the same way that the fish is
covered and ornamented with its scales.
And our loving force must be able to move
in four ways. That is to say, by triumphing
over our own will, by loving God, by de
siring to resist nature and to acquire virtues.
These are four fins with which our inner life
should swim, like unto fishes, in the water
of divine grace. The fish has still, in the
middle, a dorsal fin which remains motion
less during all its movements. And that Is
why our inner feeling, straight in the
middle, must be empty of everything and
without personal preference ; that is to say,
we must allow God to act in us, and in all
things of heaven and earth.
"And there is the fourth fin which bal
ances us in the mercy of God, and in true
divine peace. And thus our Inner activity
has fins and scales, and becomes for us a
pure food which pleases God. But the
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scales which clad and adorn our being
should be of four colours, for certain fish
have grey scales, others red scales, others
green scales and still others white scales.
The grey scales tell us that we must clothe
our inner life with humble Images, that is to
say, we must think of our sins, of our lack
of virtue, of the humility of our Lord Jesus
Christ and of His mother, and of all things
which could humble us and humiliate us,
and we should love poverty and contempt
as being unknown to every one and as being
disdained by every one. It is the grey
colour which is very beautiful In the eyes of
God. "Finally we must clad our Inner life witK
red scales ; that is to say, we must remember
that the Son of God was martyred through
love for us ; and we must bear His Passion
in memory, like unto a glorious mirror be
fore our Inner eye, so as to remind us of His
love and to delight us In every sorrow. And
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we will also remember the many torments
of the martyrs, who, by their sufferings, fol
lowed Christ up to and Into eternal life.
There are red scales well arranged, and
they clothe agreeably our inner emotion.
"We must again ornament our inner
being with green scales. That Is to say, we
must meditate attentively upon the noble life
of the confessors and of the saints — In what
fashion they despised the world, and by
what marvellous works and In what diverse
ways they honoured God and served Him.
There is the colour green which attracts and
delights the amorous heart and the sound
eye. This is why, let us stir our fins, and
follow the saints by means of all the good
works possible.
"After that, we must array our inner
being In white scales ; that is to say, we must
look at ourselves with the purity of virgins,
and observe in what fashion they fought
and vanquished flesh and blood, that is the
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On Emerson and Other Essays
tendency of nature [natural inclination].
And that is why they carry the crown of
gold and follow the lamb, that is to say
Christ, with new songs which none will
chant except those who have preserved
chastity of soul and body. But if we have
lost purity, we might, however, acquire Inno
cence and clothe ourselves with other vir
tues, reaching the day of judgment more
luminous than the sun, and possessing the
glory of God eternally and without end.
"And that is why we must cover our in
ner being with four kinds of scales, and each
kind should have the Uving fins of good
will; that is to say, it is essential for us to
wish to accomplish by works what we un
derstand by reason. Thus, the inner nour
ishment Is pure ; for all science and all wis
dom, without the virtuous life, are scales
without fins ; and all virtues practised with
out consideration are fins without scales;
and that is why we must know, love, and
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On Emerson and Other Essays
practise virtues so that our life may be pure;
and then we will be nourished with pure
fish which have scales and fins."

And the following passage :
"Afterwards, each lamp had a vase of
gold, full of water, wherein one used to put
out the fire taken from the lights [of the
church]. In this we must learn that each
gift requires of our spirit so simple a pur
pose in each cardinal virtue, that we might
experience In ourselves an amorous predi
lection toward the union with God. And
that is what we observe, likewise, in Jesus
Christ, who Is our mirror for all things : for
in every virtue which He exercised He ex
ceeded so lovingly that He sought with love
for union with His Father.
"And we must reunite all our predilec
tions In this loving predilection which He
performed toward His Father in every
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On Emerson and Other Essays
cardinal virtue. For these loving predilec
tions are our golden vases, full of water,
that is to say, of truth and justice, and we
must Immerse in them our burning wicks,
that is to say, the acts of all the virtues we
have practised; we must extinguish them
there, and plunge them therein, by com
mitting ourselves to His justice, and join
ing ourselves to His venerable merits.
Without that the wick of all our virtues
would smoke and smell badly before God
and all His saints."
Elsewhere he examines the twelve gems
of the high priest's breastplate, and ob
serves in them reflections of eternal symbols,
as well as unforeseen, exact, and revealing
analogies. Judge of It :
"In the rays of the sun, the topaz exceeds
in splendour all precious stones; and, like
wise, the humility of our Lord Jesus Christ
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On Emerson and Other Essays
exceeds In splendour and sublimity all saints
and angels, by reason of His union with the
eternal Father. And in this union the reflec
tion of the divine sun Is so bright and so
glorious, that it attracts and reflects in Its
splendour, in a simple vision, all the looks
of saints and of angels, and those likewise of
all just men to whom this splendour is re
vealed. And in this fashion, the topaz at
tracts and reflects also within itself the looks
which are before it, because of Its great
clearness. But if you were to cut the topaz.
It would become obscured, and If you were
to leave it in its natural state, it would re
main clear. And, likewise. If you desire to
search and to fathom the splendour of the
Word eternal, that splendour will be ob
scured and you will lose It. But leave It
there as it is and follow it with a simple
vision. In the abnegation of yourself, and it
will enlighten you."

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Now examine the strange relation seen
imperfectly through other stones.
"In this article [of the Creed] we com
pare Christ to the noble sapphire, of which
there are two kinds. The first Is yellow,
with purple tints, and seems mixed with
golden powder; the other is sky blue, and
in the reflections of the solar rays it gives
forth a burning splendour, and one cannot
look through It. And we find all that in
our Lord, in this fifth article. For when
His noble soul ascended to heaven. His
body lay in the tomb, yellow, because of
the flight of the soul; purple because of His
bloody wounds; and mingled with golden
powder, because he was joined to the divin
ity. And His soul descended to hell, sky
blue, in such manner that His friends were
rejoiced and became wondrously happy in
His splendour.
"And In His resurrection, the splendour
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On Emerson and Other Essays
became so potent and so huge In body and
soul, because of the irradiation of the sun
. of the divinity, that It shot forth flashes and
burning rays, and kindled with love all that
It touched. And this noble sapphire, Christ,
no one can look through, for He is without
depth, according to divinity."
I pass by the amethyst, "from which
seem to emanate red roses," and I close this
[selection] by translating the final symbols
of the chrysolite, the emerald, and the
jasper. In the first place, the chrysolite :
"This communion of saints and the remis
sion of sins are obtained by the waves of
the night, that Is to say, by two sacraments
of the Holy Church, baptism and penance.
They are the waves which cleanse by faith
the night of darkness : sin. And God made
this oath at the time of Abraham, that He
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On Emerson and Other Essays
would give Himself to us and become as
one of us ; and because of His abundant
common love He wished to wash us In His
blood. And so that we might without
doubt believe in His oath which He had
sworn to Himself, He sealed it with His
own death and the rewards of His death
He gave in common to the Holy Church
for the remission of sins, and to the saints
for the ornament of their glory. This
article, 'the communion of saints and the
forgiveness of sins,' is symbolised for us by
the chrysolite; for it is like the waters of
the sea in Its translucidity and in its green
ness, and what Is more, it has golden re
flections. And, likewise, all the saints and
all the just are translucent through grace
or glory, and they are green through their
holy life, and they have golden reflections
through divine love by which they are
transUlumined. And these three omaments
are common to all saints and to all just
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On Emerson and Other Essays
people, for they are the treasure of the holy
churches, here and in eternal life. And all
those who have through penitence put from
them the colour of the red sea, that is to say
a sinful life, are like unto the chrysolite.
"You know that this sea is red because
of the country and of the depths In which
it is; it Is between Jericho and Zorah.
Jericho signifies the moon and Zorah the
beast that blinds reason. Between the moon
of Inconstancy and the Inclination of reason
toward the beast, resides the red sea, that is
to say, an Impure life. No creature can
dwell aUve in the red sea, and all that does
not live in it goes to the bottom, and that
Is why it Is called the dead sea, because it
has no movement in It, and It Is like unto
bitumen or pitch, for it seizes and kills
everything that comes into it, and in this
way it Is like unto sin which seizes man and
kills him spiritually before the eyes of God,
forcing him Into hell." i8o

On Emerson and Other Essays
Here, finally, the application of the
emerald and of the jasper, to the third and
to the sixth article of the Apostle's Creed :
"In this article, we compare to the Son
of God the beautiful stone which Is called
emerald, and which is so green that leaves
and herbs, and everything that is green, can
not equal its greenness. And by Its green
ness it fills and nourishes the eyes of men
who regard It. Now, when the eternal
Word of the Father was made flesh, the
colour was the greenest that hid ever been
seen. This union is so green and so fine
and so joyful, that no other colour can equal
it; and that is why it has filled and nour
ished the eyes of men who have prepared
themselves in a godly vision. If one should
cut and polish the emerald, there is noth
ing softer or more agreeable to the eye, and
we can recognise in it and observe in it
everything that Is before it, as in a mirror.
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On Emerson and Other Essays
And likewise, if we should detail intently
the existence of Him who adopted our
nature through love of us, we must admire,
nor can we satiate with praise, His sub
limity. And when we consider how He was
made man, we should, because of His
humility, hate ourselves and be unable suffi
ciently to humble ourselves. And when we
examine the motive for which He was- made
man, we cannot rejoice sufficiently nor can
we love Him enough.
"In these three ways we must consider
longingly, and polish and examine lovingly,
Christ, the noble emerald. In so doing, we
will find nothing so pleasing to the eyes of
our reason, nor anything that attracts them
more, for we find Him reflected In us and
we find ourselves reflected In Him through
His grace and a virtuous life, and that is
why we should turn ourselves away from
temporal things and always carry this
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On Emerson and Other Essays
"And, in another article, we compare
Christ to the noble jasper, which is green In
colour and pleasing to the eye, and It Is
almost like the emerald In Its greenness.
And that Is why we liken It to the ascen
sion of our Lord, who was green and beau
tiful before the eyes of the Apostles, and so
pleasing, that they were never able to for
get Him during all their lives. And we
shall justly feel the same thing In ourselves;
we consider the noble emerald, the eternal
Word, as having descended into our nature,
and through love for us, with a supereffluent
viridity, and we shall ourselves rejoice In
that above all, for this vision is full of
graces. We shall consider afterwards how
the glorious jasper, that Is to say Jesus ,
Christ, ascended to heaven with our nature,
and, seated on the right hand of the Father,
has prepared for us the state of glory.
Amen."

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On Emerson and Other Essays
Then comes the book of the "Twelve
Virtues" that Laurentlus Surius more ex
actly entitles Tractatus de pracipuis qui-
busdam virtutibus. The hermit of Groenen
dael appears to have made some violent
effort to open his earthly eyes; and all his
thoughts are Interlaced, with the Ingenuous
ness of divine children, in the green and
blue rays of humility and mercy, while his
prose, ordinarily without personalities, is
here enlivened with counsels and with di
verse events. Here is a fragment on
humility :
"To reach the inferior place [Catholic:
lowest plane] Is to preserve nothing of evil ;
and, as we have always something to fore-
sake, as 'long as we are mortal, we never
attain the lowest plane, because to perish is
to become, not according to the senses, but
according to the negation of them.*
?Translator's note : According to Catholic doctrine,
the lowest plane of humility is the highest plane of
virtue; to die unto one's self is to live.
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On Emerson and Other Essays
And should some one say that immersion In
humility is the lowest plane, I would not
combat it. But It seems to me that to im
merse one's self in humility is to immerse
one's self in God ; for God is the foundation
of humiUty, and He is at equal height and
at equal depth above and below from every
place. And between the lowering and the
coming to the lowest plane, there Is a differ
ence, as far as I can see. For to attain the
lowest plane is to preserve nothing of evil,
and to experience the abasement is to im
merse one's self in humility, and that is an
nihilation In God and death in God.
"Now, we always have something to give
up as long as we Uve, and to have nothing
more to give up Is to have attained the
lowest plane. That is why we are not able
to reach the lowest plane. For what man
has been so humble, that he could not have
been more humble still, and who has loved
so ardently, that he could not have loved
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On Emerson and Other Essays
more ardently still ? Save Christ, certainly
no one. And that is why, let us never be
contented as long as we are mortal, for we
can always become more humble than
we are to-day. And it Is fortunate that we
have a Lord and a God so great that we
can never render Him sufficient honour or
homage. "Yes, even If one of us could do aU that
all men and all angels can do at every mo
ment. But if we immerse ourselves In
humility, that is enough for us, and we sat
isfy God by Himself, for we are in this
Immersion a life with Him, not according to
nature, but through Immersion, since by
humility we have lowered ourselves below
our creation and we are absorbed in God,
who is the foundation of humility. And
there He fails us In nought, for we our
selves are Immersed through ourselves in
God, and there are no more gifts nor ac
ceptances, nor anything that we might call
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On Emerson and Other Essays
there, for there is neither here nor there,
but I know not where."
I transcribe again, from the same book,
the passage which follows on Indifference
to everything:
"Now, he who has found God ruling
thus In him, by reason of grace, and who
abides in God above the work of fortitude,
may dwell Insensible to joy, to sorrow, and
to the multiplicity of creatures. For God
has penetrated him, and he Is more inclined
to look within himself than to look without ;
and this essence recalls itself to him every
where man is found; and this Inclination
and this essence are never forgotten, unless
man deliberately turns himself away from
God, which he will not willingly do ; for he
who has tried God in this way cannot easily
turn away from God; not that this cannot
happen, for no one is certain of anything
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On Emerson and Other Essays
while he Is mortal, unless some revelation
[takes place] .
"The man that God has penetrated in
this way, God takes him up divinely, and
enlightens him in all things, for all things
have for him a divine taste. For he who re
lates everything to the glory of God, has
the taste of God in all things, and God Is
reflected for him in all things. For he takes
all from God's hand, thanks Him, and
praises Him in everything, and God shines
and gleams, all the time, for he waits upon
God with great care, and never willingly
turns himself toward useless things. And
when he sees that he is turned toward use
less things, he turns away from them im
mediately with great bitterness against him
self; and laments to God of his incon
stancy, and determines within himself never
again to turn knowingly toward use
less things. For aU is empty and vain
where there Is not the glory of God,
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On Emerson and Other Essays
or the good of our neighbour, or our
own salvation.
"He who watches thus over himself is
less and less anxious, for he often has the
presence of his friend, and that rejoices him
above all things. He is like one who has
an intense thirst. In his thirst he not only
drinks, and he can think successfully of
other things than the thirst which torments
him, but whatever he does and whatever
he be, or whatever object he thinks upon,
the image of the drink is not effaced in him
as long as he suffers from thirst, and the
longer the thirst the more the suffering in
creases in man. And it is likewise for him
who loves a thing so profoundly that he
tastes nothing else, for nothing else goes
to his heart, except what possesses him and
what he loves. Wherever he be, or with
whomsoever he be, whatever he begins and
whatever he does, nothing estranges from
him what he loves so passionately. And in all
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On Emerson and Other Essays
things he finds the Image of what he loves,
and the greater and more powerful the love,
the more is it present to him; and in that
purpose he is not looking for repose and
idleness, for no anxiety prevents him from
having, ever present, the Image of what he
loves." Let us have a glimpse also of the tract on
"The Christian Faith," De fide et judicio,
tractatulus insignis, according to Surius. It
forms, in Its twenty pages, a kind of cate
chism really magnificent, from which I ex
tract the following fragment on the happi
ness of the chosen :
"We will contemplate with our inner eye
the mirror of God's wisdom, where all
things shine and are illumined — things
which will ever exist and which can gladden
us. And we wiU hear, with our outer ears,
the melody and the sweet hymns of saints
and of angels who will praise God forever.
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And with our inner ear we will hear the
Innate Word of the Father; and in this
Word we will receive all science and all
truth. And the subUme odour of the Holy
Spirit will pass before us, sweeter than all
the balms and precious herbs that ever were,
and this perfume will draw us from our
selves, toward the eternal love of God, and
we shall relish the eternal excellence of God,
sweeter than all honey, which will nourish
us and enter our soul and our body ; and we
will ever be hungry and thirsty for It, and
through hunger and thirst the delights and
nourishment will ever reside, and ever be
renewed; and this is the life eternal.
"W^e shall understand through love, and
we shall be understood through love, and
God will possess us and we shall possess
Him by union. We will enjoy God, and
rest ourselves, united to Him, In beatitude.
And this delight without form, in this super-
essential repose, is the supreme foundation
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On Emerson and Other Essays
of beatitude, for one is here engulfed above
hunger, in satiety; hunger can no longer
enter into it, for there is nought but unity
there ; all loving spirits will rest there In the
superessential shade; and nevertheless will
they sleep and wake ever In the light of
glory." Then comes the book of the "Glittering
Stone." De calculo, sive de perfectione
filiorum Dei, libellus admirahilis, adds
Surius. The point In question here is that
of the mysterious stone of which the Spirit
says in the Apocalypse: Et dabo Hit (vin-
centi) calculum candidum, et in calculo no
men novum scriptum, quod nemo scit nisi
qui accipi (Apoc. ii, 17). This stone, ac
cording to the monk of the forest of
Soignes, is the symbol of Christ, given to
lovers alone, and like a flame reflecting the
love of the Word eternal. And then, these
same darknesses of love open themselves,
whence emerge, in palpitating flowers pcr-
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On Emerson and Other Essays
ceived imperfectly through the gradual ex
pansions of contemplation, and above un
usual greennesses of an unequal joy, cease
less sobs of light. Examine this :
"And from there follows the third point,
that is to say, an activity above reason and
without form; for the unity in God which
every loving spirit has possessed in love, at
tracts and claims externally toward the soul
of Its essence, all divine persons and all lov
ing spirits. And those who love, prove this
attraction, more or less, according to their
love and their activities. And he who
watches for this attraction and is bound to
it can no longer fall into mortal sin. But
the contemplator, who has disowned his
being and everything, does not suffer from
repulsive force, because nothing more Is left
to him, and he Is empty of all ; and thus he
can always enter, one and without images.
Into the most Intimate depths of his spirit.
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There, he sees coming forth an eternal
light, and in this light he establishes the
everlasting existence of the unity of God.
And he himself feels an eternal fire of love,
which above everything desires to be one
with God. And the more he observes this
attraction or this exigency, the more he
feels it. And the more he feels It, the more
he desires to be one with God, for he
wishes to pay the debt that God calls upon
him to pay. This eternal exigency of the
unity of God works In the spirit an eternal
incandescence of love ; but, as the spirit pays
its debt, without interruption, this works in
him an everlasting consumption; for In the
reflection of unity all spirits fail in their
work, and prove nothing other than the con
sumption of all in the simple unity of God.
This simple unity of God none can feel, nor
can one possess It, If he does not hold him
self before the Immense splendour and be
fore love, above reason and without forms.
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In this presence, the spirit feels in him an
eternal burning In love; and in this incan
descence of love he finds neither beginning
nor end. And he feels himself one with this
fire of love. The spirit lives always In fire
within itself, for its love Is eternal. And
he ever feels himself consumed in love, for
he is attracted in the refection of the unity
of God, where the spirit burns in love. If
he observes himself, he finds a distinction
and a difference between God and himself,
but where he burns he is simple and has no
distinction, and that Is why he feels nothing
but unity; for the incommensurable flame
of divine love consumes and absorbs all that
it has enveloped in its essence.
"And you can observe thus that the at
tracting unity of God is no other thing
than boundless love, which draws amorously
toward the inner life. In an eternal delight,
the Father, the Son, and all that dwells In
Him. And we want to burn and consume
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On Emerson and Other Essays
ourselves in this love, eternally, for in it
abides the beatitude of all spirits. And that
Is why we must all of us establish our life
over a fathomless abysm; we shall thus be
able to descend everlastingly in love, and
Immerse ourselves through ourselves In the
limitless depth.
"And by this same love, we shall elevate
ourselves and exceed ourselves in the incon
ceivable heights. And in love without
forms, we shall wander ; and it shall mislead
us in the limitless expanse of God's love.
And there within we should ebb and flow
outside of ourselves, in the unknown
voluptuousness of the divine goodness and
opulence. And this shall be the fusion and
transfusion, the eternal absorption and reab-
sorption of ourselves,* in the glory of God.
Behold, in each of these comparisons I
show to the contemplator his essence and
?Translator's note: Herein is given the idea of
absorbing and of being absorbed. 196

On Emerson and Other Essays
his activities. But no other can under
stand me, for no man can educate another
in contemplation. But when eternal truth
is revealed to the spirit, it has taught the
spirit all that is necessary."
I ought really to translate for you also
the many wonders of Chapters VI, VII
and VIII, which speak "Of the difference
between the mercenary ones and the faithful
servants of God," "Of the difference be
tween the faithful servants and the secret
friends of God," and "Of the difference be
tween the secret friends and the occult chil
dren of God," where verily, the anchorite
of the Green Valley seems to steep his pen
on the side of this world [In other words,
approaches earth]. But can I do so after so
much excess? Finally I ask your Indul
gence still for the following and positively
the last fragment. It Is wondrously beau
tiful. 197

On Emerson and Other Essays
"Now, understand; the progression is
such: In our journey toward God, we must
carry our being and all our works before
us, as an eternal offering to God; and In
the presence of God we shall rest ourselves
with all our works, and dying in love, we
shall surpass all creation, till in the super-
essential kingdom of God. There, we will
' possess God in an eternal death to our
selves. And that is why the spirit of God
says in the book of the Apocalypse:
'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.'
It Is not without reason that these dead are
called the happy dead, for they remain
eternally dead to themselves, and Immersed
through themselves in the joyful unity of
God. And they ever die anew In love
through the attractive reflection of this
very unity. Then the spirit of God says
again: 'They may rest from their labours,
for their works follow them.' In this
way where we are born from God in
198

On Emerson and Other Essays
a spiritual and virtuous Ufe, we carry our
works before us as an offering to God; but
in the absence of plans, were we to die anew
in God, In a life eternally blissful, our good
works would follow us, for they are a life
with us. In our journey toward God through
virtues, God dwells in us, but in our death
to ourselves and to all things, we dwell In
God. If we have faith, hope, and charity,
we have received God; and He dwells with
in us with His mercy, and He sends us
abroad as His faithful servitors, to keep His
commandments. And He recalls us home
as His mysterious friends, if we follow His
counsels. But above all things, if we would
taste God, or feel in us the eternal life,
we must, over and above reason, enter Into
God through our faith ; and there we must
dwell simple, idle, and without models, ele
vated by love In the open nakedness of our
thought. For In dying in love to all things,
in dying In ignorance and In obscurity to all
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On Emerson and Other Essays
attention, we are elaborated and made over
by the eternal Word which is an image of
the Father. And In the passivity of our
spirit, we receive the incomprehensible
splendour which surrounds us and penetrates
us, in the same way that the air is pierced
by the splendour of the sun. And this
splendour Is nothing more than a limitless
vision and contemplation.
"What we are we behold, and what we
behold we are; for our thought, our life,
and our essence are merely united to the
truth which Is God, and are raised with it.
And that is why, in this ingenuous vision,
we are a life and a spirit with God, and that
is what I call a contemplative life. In bind
ing ourselves to God through love, we
choose the better part; but in regarding God
thus In superessence, we possess God en
tirely. This contemplation is joined to an
activity without shape, that Is to say to an
annihilating life, for just when we go from
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On Emerson and Other Essays
ourselves, in the shadows and in the ab
sence of limitless forms, the simple ray of
the splendour of God ever shines bright;
now, we are established in this ray, and it
draws us outside of ourselves, in super-
essence and in the submersion of love. And
this submersion of love is always accom
panied and followed by a shapeless activity
of love. For love cannot be passive. It
seeks to enter through knowledge and taste
into the immense opulence which dwells at
the depths of itself, and it has an Insatiable
hunger. Always to receive in this im
potency. Is to swim against the stream. One
can neither do without that nor receive it;
excel himself In that, nor accept It; remain
silent nor speak, for it is above reason and
Intelligence, and that exceeds all creatures.
And that is why one cannot attain it or
follow it, but we shall look within ourselves :
there we feeL that the spirit of God leads
us and pushes us In this impatience of love;
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On Emerson and Other Essays
and we shaU look above us; there we feel
that the spirit of God draws us outside of
ourselves, and annihilates us in Himself,
that is to say in the superessential love with
which we are one and which we possess
more profoundly and more abundantly than
anything else.
"This possession is a simple and limitless
delectation of all good and of eternal Ufe.
And we are engulfed in this delight above
reason and without reason, in the calm
depths of divinity which will never more be
disturbed. It is through experience alone
that we can know that this is true. For why
that is, or what It is, or in what place it is,
or how it is, neither reason nor activity can
learn, and that is why our activity which
follows remains without shape, that is to
say, without manner."
"For the fathomless good which we taste
and possess, we can neither conceive nor un
derstand, and through our activity we can

202

On Emerson and Other Essays
never go from ourselves to enter it. And
that is why we are poor in ourselves and
rich in God, full of hunger and thirst In
ourselves, and satiated and drunk in God,
energetic in ourselves, and with an abso
lute idleness In God. And we shall dwell
thus forever. For without the activity of
love, we can never possess God. And he
who feels or believes otherwise Is deceived.
And thus we live completely in God, in pos
sessing our beatitude, and we live wholly in
ourselves in training ourselves by love
toward God. And although we should live
entirely in God and wholly in ourselves,
this is nevertheless only a single life; but it
has double a,nd contrary sensations. For
richness and poverty, hunger, gluttony,
work and idleness — these things are abso
lutely contrary in themselves. None the less
it is in that, that our supreme nobility
resides, now and forever more, for
we cannot completely become God, nor
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On Emerson and Other Essays
can we lose our created essence; that is
impossible. "But should we remain wholly within
ourselves, separated from God, we would
be unhappy and not saved, and that is why
we feel ourselves completely in God and
wholly within ourselves ; and between these
two sensations, we shall find nothing except
the grace of God, and the activities of our
love. For, from the height of our supreme
feeling, the splendour of God shines In us;
which teaches us truth, and pushes us
toward all the virtues in the everlasting love
of God.
"We follow this splendour unceasingly,
even to the source from whence it flows ; and
there we feel nought else than the stripping
of the spirit, and the Immersion In simple
and infinite love, forever. If we remain
there always, by our simple vision, we
should ever feel that, for our Immersion In
the divine reflection, dwells forever and un-
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On Emerson and Other Essays
ceasingly, provided we have departed from
ourselves, and provided we possess God in
the submersion of love. For if we possess
God in the submersion of love, that Is to
say In the loss of ourselves, God is ours
and we are His, and we immerse ourselves,
through ourselves, in our possession which
is God, forever and ever. This Immersion
Is necessary by habitual love, and that is
why 'it has a place during sleep and during
wakefulness, whether one knows it or not.
"And in this way, this immersion does not
deserve any other praises, but it keeps us in
possession of God, arid of all the benefits
that we have received from Him. And this
Immersion is like unto rivers, which, cease
lessly and forever, flow always into the sea,
for that Is the place which is proper for
them. And likewise. If we possess God
alone, our essential immersion through
habitual love flows forever, in an abysmal
feeling which we possess and which is ap-
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On Emerson and Other Essays
proprlate to us. If we were always simple,
and If we always considered absolutely, we
would always have a like sensation. Now,
this Immersion is above all virtues, and
above all the practices of love. For it Is
nothing more than an eternal going from
ourselves, by a distinct prevision, in eager
ness, toward which we incline ourselves, out
side of ourselves, as toward a beatitude. For
we feel an eternal tendency outside of our
selves, toward another than ourselves. And
that is the closest and the most occult dis
tinction that we can see between God and
ourselves; and above it there is no longer
any difference. None the less, our reason re
mains, with open eye, in the shadow; that
Is to say in Infinite Ignorance, and In this
darkness remains occult and hidden from us,
the limitless splendour, for the coming of its
immensity blinds our reason. But it en
velops us in simplicity, and transforms us
by its essence, and thus we are elaborated be-
206

On Emerson and Other Essays
yond our personality, and transformed up
to the immersions of love, where we possess
bliss and are one with God."
Here now Is the "Book of the Seven Steps
of the Ladder of Love" (called by Surius
De septem gradibus amoris, libellus opti-
mus), wherein the prior of Groenendael
studies seven virtues, which lead from intro
version to the border of absorption. I think
this Is one of the most beautiful of the
saint's books — all of which are strange and
beautiful. It would be necessary for me
here to translate sufficiently some of these
extraordinary passages; among others that
wherein he concerns himself with four melo
dies of heaven, but space is lacking in this
Introduction, which is already too long. I
will therefore be contented with transcrib
ing the page which follows :
"The Holy Spirit speaks loudly In us
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On Emerson and Other Essays
with high voice and without words : 'Love
Love Who forever loves you.' His clamour
is an inner tenderness In our spirit. This
voice Is more terrible than the storm. The
flashes that He sends forth open heaven to
us, and show us light and eternal truth. The
heat of His touch and of His love is such
that He wants to consume us wholly. His
touch in our spirit cries out unceasingly:
'Pay your debt, love Love Who eternally
loves you.' From that are bom a great
inner restlessness and a resignation without
shape. For the more we love, the more we
will desire to love; and the more we pay
what love demands of us, the more we dwell
debtors to Love. Love is not silent, 'and
He cries eternally: 'Love Love.' It is an
unknown fight with strange feelings. To
love and enjoy Is to serve and suffer. God
lives in us by means of His graces. He
teaches us. He counsels us. He orders us —
love. Wc Uve in Him above grace, and
208

On Emerson and Other Essays
above our works, in suffering and in enjoy
ment. In us there dwell love, knowledge,
contemplation, and possession, and above
them joy. Our work is to love God; our
pleasure is to undergo the entwining of
Love. "Between love and delight there is a dis
tinction, as between God and His grace.
Where we adhere through love, we are
spirits, but where He strips us of our spirit
and where He reforms us by His spirit, we
are delight. The spirit of God breathes
us toward love and toward good works ; and
It inspires us both In repose arid in joy, and
there is the life eternal; just as we breathe
forth the air which is in us, and breathe in
the fresh air, and it is just this which com
poses our mortal life In nature. And though
our spirit be enraptured, and though Its
work fail in pleasure and in bliss, it is al
ways renewed in grace, in charity, and in
virtues. And that Is why, to enter into an
209

On Emerson and Other Essays
Idle pleasure, to go forth in good works,
and to dwell always joined to the spirit of
God — this is what I love. Just as we open
our material eyes, so do we see ; and just as
we close them rapidly, so do we not see;
just as we die in God, we live outside of
Him, and we dwell one with Him forever."
We next have the "Book of the Seven
Chateaux," caUed by Laurentlus Surius
De septem custodiis opusculum longe piissi-
mum and which is not withbut Its analogies
with the "Chateau of the Soul," by Saint
Therese d'Avila, also with Its seven dwell
ings, of which prayer is the portal. The
hermit of the forest of Soignes sent this
book, with the "Mirror of the Eternal Sal
vation," "to the holy sister Clarlsse, Mar
guerite Van Meerbeke, of the Convent of
Brussels," and that is why the counsel whIcH
he infuses into the prologue is a little touch
ing. He showed her thus In what way she
210

On Emerson and Other Essays
will go to the window of the parlour;
piously, closing her eyes to the countenance
of man; and the joy of sorrow and the care
of the sick, with pale counsels of the hos
pital. Then the seven spiritual chateaux of
Saint Claire arise, whose divine grace closes
the doors that it is no longer necessary to
open in order to see into the streets of one's
heart. Listen to what follows, ever on
love: "And the loving soul cannot give Itself
entirely to God, nor can It receive God en
tirely, for all that It receives, respecting
what Is wanting to it, is a trifle and counts
for nought in Its emotion. And that is why
It Is stirred, and why it sinks in the im
patience and in the fervour of love; for it
can neither do without God nor can it obtain
Him, reach His depth nor His summit, fol
low Him nor abandon Him. And It is there
you will find the tempest and the spiritual

On Emerson and Other Essays
plague of which I have spoken to you ; for
no tongue can describe these many storms
and these agitations which are born from
two sides of love. For love makes man
sometimes ardent, sometimes cold, sometimes
daring, sometimes timid, sometimes joyful
and sometimes sad ; it brings him fear, hope,
despair, tears, complaining, songs, praises,
and numberless similar things. That is
what those suffer who live in the transport
of love, and yet it is the most intimate and
the most useful life that man can live, ac
cording to his vocation.
"But where the vocation of man fails and
can go no higher, there begin the ways of
God : it Is the one where man, by his suffer
ings, his love, and his unsatisfied desires, en
twines himself with God, and cannot be
united : there, the spirit of our Lord comes
like a violent fire that bums, wastes away,
and engulfs everything in it; in such man
ner that man forgets aU his activities and
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On Emerson and Other Essays
forgets himself, and feels nothing else than
if he was a spirit and a love in God. Here
the senses and every force are silent, and
they are satiated and soothed; for the foun
tain of goodness and of divine opulence has
overflowed all, and each has received more
than he could desire.
"Then comes the third condition which
we attribute to our Heavenly Father : that in
which He drains the memory of forms and
Images, and raises naked thought as far as
its origin, which is Himself. There, man
is strengthened in his beginning, which Is
God, and there he is united. And it has
given him the force and freedom to work in
wardly and outwardly, by means of all vir
tues. And he receives knowledge and in
telUgence in all activities according to
reason. And he learns the manner of bear
ing the Inner operation of God, and the
transformation of divine forms above
reason, just as has been said already. And
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On Emerson and Other Essays
above all the divine forms, he will under
stand, by the same Intuition without forms,
the essence of God without forms, which Is
an absence of forms. For one can neither
express It by words, nor works, nor forms,
nor signs, noi: similitudes, but it shows Itself
spontaneously to the ingenious Intuition of
the imageless thought.
"But one may show upon the way signs
and similitudes which prepare man to see
the reign 6f God. And you will imagine
this essence, like the incandescence of a
limitless fire, where all is consumed in a
calm, blazing, and Immutable conflagration.
And it is thus with the satisfied essential
love, which Is a possession of God and of all
the saints, above all modes, and above all
works, and all the practices of virtue. This
love is a limitless calm and flood of riches
and of joys, where all the saints are swal
lowed up in God and In a beatitude without
limit. And this beatitude is wild and waste
214

On Emerson and Other Essays
as a wilderness; for there is neither
form, nor way, nor path, nor repose, nor
measure, nor end, nor beginning, nor any
thing that one could express by words or
show by words. And this Is our simple
beatitude to all, this divine essence, and our
superessence above reason and without
reason. If we want to feel it, it would be
necessary for our spirit to surpass itself,
above our created essence, toward this
eternal center, where all our lines begin and
end. And in this center these lines lose
their name and all their distinction, and
are united to this center, and become that
very unity which the center Is by Itself, and
yet converging lines remain always In them
selves. "Look; thus shall we ever dwell what we
are in our created essence, and yet by the
ascent of the spirit, we pass continually into
our superessence. In It we will be above
ourselves, below ourselves, beyond our
215

On Emerson and Other Essays
breadth, beyond our length, in an eternal
wandering forever."
I will be fairly silent about the tract of
the "Four Temptations," where there are
considered some very subtle dangers which
menace the contemplator, and of which the
most formidable is quietism; but outside of
certain discoveries in the unknown
psychology of the prayer, the work — ^very
brief, as I have said, — offers no summit ex
ceptionally Intense to our soul.
The other tract, of nearly the same
length, — that Is to say a score of pages, —
is entitled the "Book of the Supreme
Truth," or "Samuel" according to Surius,
who adds : Qui alias de alta contemplatione
dicitur, verius autem apologice quorumdam
sancti hujus viri dictorum sublimium inscribi
possit. But this book is so wonderful that
it would be necessary to translate it en
tirely. I shall not quote anything from it
at present; since it is as indivisible as the
216

On Emerson and Other Essays
essence of which it seems to illustrate the
steady effusion in its unique and fearful
mirror. I then come to the "Book of the King
dom of Lovers," the strangest and the
most abstract work of the visionary
of the Green Valley, in the midst
of which the soul extends itself and
is frightened in a spiritual and without
doubt normal void, evoking for the spirit,
which does not follow it there, some glass
bells absolutely black, where there are no
more air, nor Images, nor anything which
one could exactly conceive, except incessant
stars around the void of all that is not
eternal. The book begins with this verse on wis
dom: Justum deduxit per vias rectas et
ostendit illi regnum Dei, and Involves the
three theological virtues and the seven gifts
of the Holy Spirit. I translate immediately
and more amply than ever.
217

On Emerson and Other Essays
In the first place, this on the deserts of
the essence :
"The soul of man being made of nought,
that God took from nowhere, man has fol
lowed nothing which is no part, and he has
flowed from his Self in errors, through im
mersion in the simple essence of God, as in
his own depths, and he is dead in God. To
die In God is to be bUssful, and each accord
ing to his merits — it is to be very different
in grace and In glory. This bliss Is to under
stand God and to be understood by God, in
the joyful unity of divine persons, and to
have emanated through this unity in the
superessence of God. Now this unity being
enjoyed In introversion, and fructifying In
extroversion, the fountain of the unity
flows: that Is to say the Father begot the
Son, the eternal truth, which is the image
of the Father where He Himself shall be
recognized in everything. This image is
218

On Emerson and Other Essays
life, and the cause of all creatures, for In
that image lies everything according to the
divine mode ; and by this Image everything
is done perfectly, and everything is ruled
wisely on this pattern, and on account of
the image everything is appropriated to its
end, as far as it belongs to God to appro
priate it ; for each creature has received the
means of acquiring its beatitude. But the
rational creature is not the image of the
Father, according to the effluence of its
created form, for it flows In its capacity of
creature, and that is why it knows and loves
with measure in the light of grace or of
glory. For no one possesses divine nature
actively, according to the divine mode, if It
be not divine persons ; since no creature can
work according to a measureless mode, for
If he should work thus, he would be God
and no creature.
"In His image, God has made creatures
sImUar to Him, according to nature; and
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On Emerson and Other Essays
those who are turned toward Him, He has
made them even more like, above nature In
the light of grace and of glory, each [of
them], according to its aptitude through the
state of Its soul or through its merits. Now,
all those who feel the Inner touch, and who
have illuminated reason and the impatience
of love, and to whom Is shown the absence
of mode, have joyful Introversion In the
superessence of God. Now, God Is attached
to His essence in a happy manner, and con
templates that very essence He enjoys. Ac-
cording to the mode of the pleasure, the
divine light grows weaker and weaker in the
essence without mode ; but in contemplation
and in the fixation of attention, the
vision cannot founder, for one shall
always contemplate what he enjoys.
Those who fail ceaselessly in the
light are those who rest themselves in
pleasures, amidst wild solitudes where God
is possessed In enjoyment; there fails the

On Emerson and Other Essays
light in repose and in the absence of mode in
the sublime essence. There God is throned
in Himself, and all those who possess God
In grace and in glory to this degree, are the
thrones and tabernacles of God, and they
are dead in God in eternal rest.
"From this death, a superessential life is
bom, that Is to say a contemplative life;
and here begins the gift of Intelligence. For
God, in contemplating ceaselessly the very
essence which He enjoys, and granting im
patience where it renders alike, gives like
wise repose and enjoyment, where He
unites. But there where we are one with
Him in essence and in immersion, there are
no more gifts nor acceptances. And be
cause He reconciles illumined reason, there
where it renders alike, he gives also the
limitless splendour there where he unites.
This boundless splendour is the Image of
the Father. We are created in this Image,
and can be united to it in a sublimity higher
221

On Emerson and Other Essays
than the thrones, provided we contemplate
above failing, the glorious face of the
Father, that is to say the subUme nature of
divinity. "Now, this limitless splendour has been
given in common to all joyful spirits in
grace and In glory. Thus It flows for all
as the splendour of the sun, and yet those
who receive It are not all equally enlight
ened. The sun shines more clearly through
glass than through stone, and througK
crystal than through glass, and every
precious stone burns and shows its nobility
and its power and its colour by the splendour
of the sun. In the same way, each is Il
lumined at the same time in grace and in
glory according to its aptitude for sub
limity; but he who Is more enlightened in
grace, is less than he who Is less enlightened
in glory. Yet the light of glory Is not in
termediary between the soul and this limit
less splendour; but our state, and the time,
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On Emerson and Other Essays
and the Inconstancy disturb us, and that is
why we acquire some merits, and those who
are in glory do not acquire any.
"This sublime splendour Is the ingenuous
contemplation of the Father, and of all
those who contemplate in enjoyment, and
who regard it steadfastly, by means of an
incomprehensible light, each according as he
is illumined. For endless light shines
without Intermission in all thoughts, but the
man who dwells here. In time, is often over
whelmed with images. In such fashion that
he does not always contemplate actively and
fixedly the superessence by means of this
Ught. But he has possessed it virtually in
receiving this gift, and he can contemplate,
when he wishes it. The light by means of
which one contemplates limitless beings and
what one contemplates being abysmal, —
this can never attain that; but fixation and
contemplation dwell eternally In the absence
of mode. In the joyful aspect of subUme
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On Emerson and Other Essays
Majesty, where the Father, by eternal
wisdom, regards fixedly the abyss of its
essence in its mode."
A large part of this book of the "King
dom of the Loved Ones" is written in singu
lar verse. The ternary and breathlessly
monotonous "rhythm is almost like that of
the "Stabat Mater" ; only the third verse of
each strophe reproduces the same rhyme
through the whole work, and is ever sus
tained on an abstraction from whence arise
the two preceding verses like twin flowers
of restlessness and obscurity. One can
imagine this music of the empty author of
the inner dream of the virgins of Mem
linck, whilst their secret senses, their counte
nance, and their small hands join in ecstasy;
but, unhappily, a translation can never renew
here this taste for shadows and for bread
steeped in night ; nor catch the image of this
impression of obscurity illumined with
224

On Emerson and Other Essays
tears, with ice crossed by red irons, and
with oppression without horizon. That is
why I will only translate one of these shad
owy poems. It deals with the gift of In
telligence :
"In order that this gift should illumine it.
It must surpass itself
In superessence.
The measureless splendour.
He will perceive it there
In deep simplicity.
The light of truth
Shall flow through him.
And he will disappear wholly in it.
This general light
Shines upon those who are pure,
And illumines them according to their
merits.
Then they can regard
And contemplate, without sparing them
selves, 225

On Emerson and Other Essays
"The aspect of enjoyment.
One will always contemplate
What one enjoys, with confidence.
Remotely in the loss of divine grace.
The lover has gone very far.
That which causes the eyes to tend
Toward the sublime beatitude.
Yet, It Is attained ;
And the lover possesses the beloved,
In the wastes of unity.
We shall then dwell thus.
Forcing in ourselves our whole life
Toward the sublime abyss."
It is necessary to translate a few more bits
from this exceptional volume. But it is
time to end at last, and I shall close with
this chapter, entitled, "Of the Gift of
Palatable Wisdom."
"The seventh divine gift is that of pala
table wisdom. It Is admitted on the summit
of introversion, and crosses intelligence and
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On Emerson and Other Essays
will according to their Introversion In the
absolute. This relish is without end and
without measure, and fiows inwardly
toward the outside, and imbibes the body
and the soul (in proportion to their re
spective aptitude to receive it) , as far as the
most intimate sense, that is to say as far as
a bodily sensation. The other senses, like
sight and hearing, take their pleasures out
side in the marvels that God has created by
His glory and for the needs of man. This
incomprehensible relish, above spirit, and In
the amplitude of the soul, is without meas
ure, and this Is the Holy Spirit, the in
comprehensible love of God. Below the
spirit, sensation is measured. But as the
forces are imminent, they inundate every
thing. Now, the Father of eternity has
adorned the introversed spirit, with enjoy
ment in the unity, and with active and pas
sive comprehension In the loss of one's self,
and this spirit becomes thus the throne and
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On Emerson and Other Essays
the repose of God; and the Son, eternal
truth, has adorned with His own splendour
introversed intelligence. In order to contem
plate the aspect of enjoyment. And now the
Holy Spirit would adorn the Introversed
will, and the Immanent unity of power, so
that the soul tastes, knows, and proves how
great God is. This relish Is so immense
that the soul imagines that heaven, earth,
and all that is in them should be dissolved
and destroyed In this limitless taste. These
delights are above and below, within and
without, and have wholly enveloped and sat
urated the kingdom of the soul.
"Then intelligence regards simplicity
from whence flow all these delights. From
there the attention of illumined reason is
born. It knows well, however, that It is
powerless to understand these inconceivable
delights, for it observes by means of a
created light, while this joy Is without meas
ure. That is why reason fails in its atten-
aaS

On Emerson and Other Essays
tion; but the intelligence which is trans
formed by this limitless splendour contem
plates without interruption the incompre
hensible joy of beatitude."
It remains for me to say a word about the
diverse translations of Ruysbroeck's work.
Twenty years ago, Ernest Hello published
a very brief volume In which are gathered,
under mostly arbitrary heads, varied pas
sages from our author, translated from a
Latin translation, written in the sixteenth
century by a Carthusian of Cologne, Lau
rentlus Surius.
This translation by Surius, of a subtle and
beautiful Latin, reveals scrupulously and
admirably the sense of the original; but
restless, lengthened, and weakened, it Is like
some distant picture, through impure glass,
when one sees the queer colours of the primi
tive Flemish. There, where the author uses
one word, he habitually puts in two or three
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On Emerson and Other Essays
and then not content, he very often para
phrases what he has already sufficiently
translated. The anchorite has some cries
of love so intense that they are almost blas
phemous; Surius Is afraid of them, and he
says other things. At moments the old
hermit regards still outwardly, and looks, so
as to speak of God, for images In the
garden, the kitchen and In the stars ; Surius
does not always dare to follow him there,
and forces himself to weaken the text or
flatters himself that he ennobles it.
"He escapes me as a vagabond"
says one of the Flemish Begulnes, speaking
of Jesus, and others add :
"I keep house with Jesus.
He Is mine and I am His.
He dispenses to me night and day.
He has stolen my heart;
I am engulfed in His mouth.
I have nought to do outside."
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On Emerson and Other Essays
Elsewhere God says to man :
"I wish to be thy nourishment,
Thy host and thy cook.
My flesh is well prepared
On the Cross through pity for thee;
We shall eat and drink together."
The translator Is frightened and trans
forms these singular outbursts Into pale in
terpretations. The wild and na'ive aspect,
and the immense and cruel love of the
original work disappear most often in a
wise, correct, fulsome, and monotonous
claustral phraseology; though the inner
fidelity remains always irreproachable.
There are some fragments of this transla
tion that Ernest Hello has translated in his
turn; or rather, he has assembled in arbi
trary chapters, some phrases taken from di
verse portions of the work and distorted
them by a double translation, and from It he
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On Emerson and Other Essays
has composed a kind of cento, almost al
ways admirable, but where, in spite of my
researches, I have found only three or four
bits honestly reproduced.
As for the present translation, it has no
other merit than its scrupulous literalness.
Perhaps, it would have been possible to
render it, if not more elegant, at least more
readable, and to clarify the work a little
from the point of view of its theological
and metaphysical phraseology. But it has
seemed to me less dangerous and more loyal
to hold myself to an almost blind word for
word translation. I have also resisted those
Inevitable temptations of false splendours,
for incessantly the spirit of the old monk
touches strange beauties, which his discre
tion does not worry, and all his paths are
peopled with splendid, quiet dreams, whose
sleep his humility has not dared to disturb.
THE END

232

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