a friend of mine, one of the elder bookmen of harvard, told me some twenty years ago that he had only once seen ralph waldo emerson vexed out of his transcendental tranquillity and almost olympian calm. it was a sunday afternoon in concord, and the philosopher had been drawn from his study by an unwonted noise in the house. on the back porch he found his own offspring and some children of the neighbours engaged in a romping, boisterous game. with visible anger he stopped it, saying, “even if you have no reverence for the day, you ought to have enough sense and manners to respect the traditions of your forefathers.”
emerson’s puritanism was in the blood. seven of his ancestors were ministers of new england churches of the early type. among them was peter
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bulkley, who left his comfortable parish in bedfordshire, england, to become the pastor of “the church in the wilderness” at concord, massachusetts; father samuel moody of agamenticus, maine, who was such a zealous reformer that he pursued wayward sinners even into the alehouse to reprove them; joseph emerson of malden, a “heroic scholar,” who prayed every night that no descendant of his might ever be rich; and william emerson, the patriot preacher, who died while serving in the army of the revolution. these were verily “soldiers of the lord,” and from them and women of like stamina and mettle, emerson inherited the best of puritan qualities: independence, sobriety, fearless loyalty to conscience, strenuous and militant virtue.
but he had also a super-gift which was not theirs. that which made him different from them, gave him a larger and more beautiful vision of the world, led him into ways of thinking and speaking which to them would have seemed strange and perilous, (though in conduct he followed the strait and narrow path,)—in short, that which made him what he was in himself and to countless other men, a seer,
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an inspirer, a singer of new light and courage and joy, was the gift of poetic imagination and interpretation. he was a puritan plus poetry.
graduating from harvard he began life as a teacher in a boston school and afterwards the minister of a boston church. but there was something in his temperament which unfitted him for the service of institutions. he was a servant of ideas. to do his best work he needed to feel himself entirely independent of everything except allegiance to the truth as god gave him to see it from day to day. the scholastic routine of a female academy irked him. the social distinctions and rivalries of city life appeared to him both insincere and tiresome. even the mild formulas and regulations of a unitarian church seemed to hamper him. he was a come-outer; he wished to think for himself, to proclaim his own visions, to act and speak only from the inward impulse, though always with an eye to the good of others. so he left his parish in boston and became a preacher at large to “these united states.” his pulpit was the lecture-platform; his little books of prose and verse carried his
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words to a still larger audience; no man in america during his life had a more extended or a deeper influence; he became famous both as an orator and as a writer; but in fact he was always preaching. as lamb said to coleridge, “i never heard you do anything else.”
the central word of all his discourse is self-reliance,—be yourself, trust yourself, and fear not! but in order to interpret this rightly one must have at least an inkling of his philosophy, which was profoundly religious and essentially poetical. he was a mystic, an intuitional thinker. he believed that the whole universe of visible things is only a kind of garment which covers the real world of invisible ideas and laws and principles. he believed also that each man, having a share in the divine reason which is the source of all things, may have a direct knowledge of truth through his own innate ideas and intuitive perceptions. emerson wrote in his diary, “the highest revelation is that god is in every man.”
this way of thinking is called transcendentalism, because it overleaps logic and scientific reasoning.
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it is easy to see how such a philosophy might lead unbalanced persons into wild and queer and absurd views and practices. and so it did when it struck the neighbourhood of boston in the second quarter of the 19th century, and began to spread from that sacred centre.
but with these vagaries emerson had little sympathy. his mysticism was strongly tinctured with common sense, (which also is of divine origin,) and his orderly nature recoiled from eccentric and irregular ways. although for a time he belonged to the “transcendental club,” he frequently said that he would not be called a transcendentalist, and at times he made fun, in a mild and friendly spirit, of the extreme followers of that doctrine. he held as strongly as any one that the divine light of reason in each man is the guide to truth; but he held it with the important reservation that when this inner light really shines, free from passion and prejudice, it will never lead a man away from good judgment and the moral law. all through his life he navigated the transcendental sea safely, piloted by a puritan conscience, warned off the rocks by a keen sense of
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humour, and kept from capsizing by a solid ballast of new england prudence.
he was in effect one of the most respected, sagacious, prosperous and virtuous villagers of concord. some slight departures from common custom he tranquilly tested and as tranquilly abandoned. he tried vegetarianism for a while, but gave it up when he found that it did him no good. he attempted to introduce domestic democracy by having the servants sit at table with the rest of the household, but was readily induced to abandon the experiment by the protest of his two sensible hired girls against such an inconvenient arrangement. he began to practise a theory that manual labour should form part of the scholar’s life, but was checked by the personal discovery that hard work in the garden meant poor work in the study. “the writer shall not dig,” was his conclusion. intellectual freedom was what he chiefly desired; and this he found could best be attained in an inconspicuous manner of living and dressing, not noticeably different from that of the average college professor or country minister.
ralph waldo emerson.
from a photograph by black, boston.
here you see the man “in his habit as he lived,”
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(and as thousands of lecture-audiences saw him,) pictured in the old photograph which illustrates this chapter. here is the familiar décor of the photographer’s studio: the curtain draped with a cord and tassel, the muslin screen background, and probably that hidden instrument of torture, the “head-rest,” behind the tall, posed figure. here are the solemn “swallow-tail coat,” the conventional cravat, and the black satin waistcoat. yet even this antique “carte de visite,” it seems to me, suggests something more and greater,—the imperturbable, kindly presence, the noble face, the angelic look, the serene manner, the penetrating and revealing quality of the man who set out to be “a friend to all who wished to live in the spirit.”
whatever the titles of his lectures,—man the reformer, the method of nature, the conduct of life, fate, compensation, prudence, the present age, society and solitude,—his main theme is always the same, “namely the infinitude of the private man.” but this private man of emerson’s, mark you, is linked by invisible ties to all nature and carries in his breast a spark of the undying fire which is of
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god. hence he is at his best when he feels not only his personal unity but also his universal community, when he relies on himself and at the same time cries
“i yield myself to the perfect whole.”
this kind of independence is the truest form of obedience.
the charm of emerson’s way of presenting his thought comes from the spirit of poetry in the man. he does not argue, nor threaten, nor often exhort; he reveals what he has seen or heard, for you to make what you will of it. he relies less on syllogisms than on imagery, symbols, metaphors. his utterance is as inspirational as the ancient oracle of delphi, but he shuns the contortions of the priestess at that shrine.
the clearness and symmetry of his sentences, the modulations of his thrilling voice, the radiance of his fine features and his understanding smile, even his slight hesitations and pauses over his manuscript as he read, lent a singular attraction to his speech. those who were mistrustful of his views on theology
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and the church, listened to him with delight when he poetized on art, politics, literature, human society and the natural world. to the finest men and women of america in the mid-victorian epoch he was the lecturer par excellence, the intellectual awakener and liberator, the messenger calling them to break away from dull, thoughtless, formal ways of doing things, and live freely in harmony with the laws of god and their own spirit. they heard him gladly.
i wonder how he would fare to-day, when lecturers, male or female, have to make a loud noise to get a hearing.
