Part 11

"That 'tis a thing impossible to frame Conceptions equal to the Soul's desires; And the most difficult of tasks to keep Heights which the Soul is competent to gain."

The heights were gained nevertheless, and kept long enough for a view of the land of promise; and ever since, though the ascent is a dim recollection, and the great forms have come to look like images in dreams, and the mighty voices are but ghostly echoes, men and women have been happy in laboring for the heaven their fathers believed they saw.

VII.

PRACTICAL TENDENCIES.

Mr. Emerson--we find ourselves continually appealing to him as the finest interpreter of the transcendental movement--made a confession which its enemies were quick to seize on and turn to their purpose.

"It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest observer, that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw themselves from the common labors and competitions of the market and the caucus, and betake themselves to a certain solitary and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit has yet appeared to justify their separation. They hold themselves aloof; they feel the disproportion between themselves and the work offered them, and they prefer to ramble in the country and perish of ennui, to the degradation of such charities and such ambitions as the city can propose to them. They are striking work and crying out for somewhat worthy to do. They are lonely; the spirit of their writing and conversation is lonely; they repel influences; they shun general society; they incline to shut themselves in their chamber in the house; to live in the country rather than in the town; and to find their tasks and amusements in solitude. They are not good citizens; not good members of society; unwillingly they bear their part of the public and private burdens; they do not willingly share in the public charities, in the public religious rites, in the enterprises of education, of missions, foreign or domestic, in the abolition of the slave trade, or in the temperance society. They do not even like to vote. The philanthropists inquire whether Transcendentalism does not mean sloth; they had as lief hear that their friend is dead as that he is a Transcendentalist; for then is he paralyzed, and can do nothing for humanity."

This extreme statement must not be taken as either complete or comprehensive. They who read it in the lecture on "The Transcendentalist" must be careful to notice Mr. Emerson's qualifications, that "this retirement does not proceed from any whim on the part of the separators;" that "this part is chosen both from temperament and from principle; with some unwillingness too, and as a choice of the less of two evils;" "that they are joyous, susceptible, affectionate;" that "they wish a just and even fellowship or none;" that "what they do is done because they are overpowered by the humanities that speak on all sides;" that "what you call your fundamental institutions, your great and holy causes, seem to them great abuses, and, when nearly seen, paltry matters." But even this apology does not quite exonerate his friends.

Transcendentalism certainly did produce its share of idle, dreamy, useless people--as "Sensationalism" produced its share of coarse, greedy, low-lived and bestial ones. But its legitimate fruit was earnestness, aspiration and enthusiastic energy.

We must begin with the philosophy of Man. The Transcendentalist claims for all men as a natural endowment what "Evangelical" Christianity ascribes to the few as a special gift of the Spirit. This faith comes to expression continually. The numbers of the "Dial" are alight with it.

"Man is a rudiment and embryon of God: Eternity shall develop in him the Divine Image."

"The Soul works from centre to periphery, veiling her labors from the ken of the senses."

"The sensible world is spirit in magnitude outspread before the senses for their analysis, but whose synthesis is the soul herself, whose prothesis is God."

"The time may come, in the endless career of the soul, when the facts of incarnation, birth, death, descent into matter, and ascension from it, shall comprise no part of her history; when she herself shall survey this human life with emotions akin to those of the naturalist on examining the relics of extinct races of beings."

"Of the perception now fast becoming a conscious fact,--that there is one mind, and that also the powers and privileges which lie in any, lie in all; that I, as a man, may claim and appropriate whatever of true or fair or good or strong has anywhere been exhibited; that Moses and Confucius, Montaigne and Leibnitz are not so much individuals as they are parts of man and parts of me, and my intelligence proves them my own,--literature is far the best expression."

Thus Mr. Alcott and Mr. Emerson. Thomas T. Stone,--a modest, retiring, deep and interior man, a child of the spiritual philosophy, which he faithfully lived in and up to, and preached with singular fulness and richness of power--makes his statement thus, in an article entitled "Man in the Ages," contributed to the third number of the "Dial":

"Man is man, despite of all the lies which would convince him he is not, despite of all the thoughts which would strive to unman him. There is a spirit in man, an inspiration from the Almighty. What is, is. The eternal is eternal; the temporary must pass it by, leaving it to stand evermore. There is now, there has been always, power among men to subdue the ages, to dethrone them, to make them mere outgoings and servitors of man. It is needed only that we assert our prerogative,--that man do with hearty faith affirm: 'I am; in me being is. Ages, ye come and go; appear and disappear; products, not life; vapors from the surface of the soul, not living fountain. Ye are of me, for me, not I of you or for you. Not with you my affinity, but with the Eternal. I am; I live; spirit I have not; spirit am I.'"

Samuel D. Robbins, another earnest prophet of the spiritual man, utters the creed again in the way peculiar to himself.

"There is an infinity in the human soul which few have yet believed, and after which few have aspired. There is a lofty power of moral principle in the depths of our nature which is nearly allied to Omnipotence; compared with which the whole force of outward nature is more feeble than an infant's grasp. There is a spiritual insight to which the pure soul reaches, more clear and prophetic, more wide and vast than all telescopic vision can typify. There is a faith in God, and a clear perception of His will and designs, and providence, and glory, which gives to its possessor a confidence and patience and sweet composure, under every varied and troubling aspect of events, such as no man can realize who has not felt its influences in his own heart. There is a communion with God, in which the soul feels the presence of the unseen One, in the profound depths of its being, with a vivid distinctness and a holy reverence such as no word can describe. There is a state of union with God, I do not say often reached, yet it has been attained in this world, in which all the past and present and future seem reconciled, and eternity is won and enjoyed: and God and man, earth and heaven, with all their mysteries are apprehended in truth as they lie in the mind of the Infinite."

The poet chimes in with the prophet. We marked for quotation several passages from the "Dial," but a few detached stanzas must suffice. C. P. Cranch opens his lines to the ocean thus:

Tell me, brothers, what are we? Spirits bathing in the sea of Deity. Half afloat, and half on land, Wishing much to leave the strand, Standing, gazing with devotion, Yet afraid to trust the ocean, Such are we.

And thus he closes lines to the Aurora Borealis:

But a better type thou art Of the strivings of the heart, Reaching upwards from the earth To the Soul that gave it birth. When the noiseless beck of night Summons out the inner light That hath hid its purer ray Through the lapses of the day,-- Then like thee, thou Northern Morn, Instincts which we deemed unborn Gushing from their hidden source Mount upon their heavenward course, And the spirit seeks to be Filled with God's eternity.

That a philosophy like this will impel to aspiration need not be said; aspiration is the soul of it. The Transcendentalist was constantly on the wing.

"On all hands men's existence is converted into a preparation for existence. We do not properly live, in these days; but everywhere with patent inventions and complex arrangements are getting ready to live. The end is lost in the means, life is smothered in appliances. We cannot get to ourselves, there are so many external comforts to wade through. Consciousness stops half way. Reflection is dissipated in the circumstances of our environment. Goodness is exhausted in aids to goodness, and all the vigor and health of the soul is expended in quack contrivances to build it up."... What the age requires is not books, but example, high, heroic example; not words but deeds; not societies but men--men who shall have their root in themselves, and attract and convert the world by the beauty of their fruits. All truth must be living, before it can be adequately known or taught. Men are anterior to systems. Great doctrines are not the origin, but the product of great lives. The Cynic practice must precede the Stoic philosophy, and out of Diogenes's tub came forth in the end the wisdom of Epictetus, the eloquence of Seneca, and the piety of Antonine."...

"The religious man lives for one great object; to perfect himself, to unite himself by purity with God, to fit himself for heaven by cherishing within him a heavenly disposition. He has discovered that he has a soul; that his soul is himself; that he changes not with the changing things of life, but receives its discipline from them; that man does not live by bread alone, but that the most real of all things, inasmuch as they are the most enduring, are the things which are not seen; that faith and love and virtue are the sources of his life, and that one realises nothing, except he lay fast hold on them. He extracts a moral lesson, a lesson of endurance or of perseverance for himself, or a new evidence of God and of his own immortal destiny, from every day's hard task."

That last strain came from the man who for many years has been known as the foremost musical critic of New England, if not of America, John S. Dwight. Another writes:

"The soul lies buried in a ruined city, struggling to be free and calling for aid. The worldly trafficker in life's caravan hears its cries, and says, it is a prisoned maniac. But one true man stops and with painful toil lifts aside the crumbling fragments; till at last he finds beneath the choking mass a mangled form of exceeding beauty. Dazzling is the light to eyes long blind; weak are the limbs long prisoned; faint is the breath long pent. But oh! that mantling flush, that liquid eye, that elastic spring of renovated strength. The deliverer is folded to the breast of an angel."

The duty of self-culture is made primary and is eloquently preached. The piece from which this extract is taken, entitled "The Art of Life" is anonymous, but supposed to be from Emerson's pen: