(1836-)
enry Mills Alden, since 1864 the editor of Harper's Magazine, was born in Mount Tabor, Vermont, November 11th, 1836, the eighth in descent from Captain John Alden, the Pilgrim. He graduated at Williams College, and studied theology at Andover Seminary, but was never ordained a minister, having almost immediately turned his attention to literature. His first work that attracted attention was an essay on the Eleusinian Mysteries, published in the Atlantic Monthly. The scholarship and subtle method revealed in this and similar works led to his engagement to deliver a course of twelve Lowell Institute lectures at Boston, in 1863 and 1864, and he took for his subject 'The Structure of Paganism.' Before this he had removed to New York, had engaged in general editorial work, and formed his lasting connection with the house of Harper and Brothers.
As an editor Mr. Alden is the most practical of men, but he is in reality a poet, and in another age he might have been a mystic. He has the secret of preserving his life to himself, while paying the keenest attention to his daily duties. In his office he is immersed in affairs which require the exercise of vigilant common-sense, and knowledge of life and literature. At his home he is a serene and optimistic philosopher, contemplating the forces that make for our civilization, and musing over the deep problems of man's occupation of this earth. In 1893 appeared anonymously a volume entitled 'God in His World,' which attracted instantly wide attention in this country and in England for its subtlety of thought, its boldness of treatment, its winning sweetness of temper, and its exquisite style. It was by Mr. Alden, and in 1895 it was followed by 'A Study of Death,' continuing the great theme of the first,--the unity of creation, the certainty that there is in no sense a war between the Creator and his creation. In this view the Universe is not divided into the Natural and the Supernatural: all is Natural. But we can speak here only of their literary quality. The author is seen to be a poet in his conceptions, but in form his writing is entirely within the limits of prose; yet it is a prose most harmonious, most melodious, and it exhibits the capacity of our English tongue in the hand of a master. The thought is sometimes so subtle as to elude the careless reader, but the charm of the melody never fails to entrance. The study of life and civilization is profound, but the grace of treatment seems to relieve the problems of half their difficulty.
His wife did not live to read the exquisite dedication given below.
From 'A Study of Death,' 1895, by Harper and Brothers
A DEDICATION
TO MY BELOVED WIFE
My earliest written expression of intimate thought or cherished fancy was for your eyes only; it was my first approach to your maidenly heart, a mystical wooing, which neglected no resource, near or remote, for the enhancement of its charm, and so involved all other mystery in its own.
In you, childhood has been inviolate, never losing its power of leading me by an unspoken invocation to a green field, ever kept fresh by a living fountain, where the Shepherd tends his flock. Now, through a body racked with pain, and sadly broken, still shines this unbroken childhood, teaching me Love's deepest mystery.
It is fitting, then, that I should dedicate to you this book touching that mystery. It has been written in the shadow, but illumined by the brightness of an angel's face seen in the darkness, so that it has seemed easy and natural for me to find at the thorn's heart a secret and everlasting sweetness far surpassing that of the rose itself, which ceases in its own perfection.
Whether that angel we have seen shall, for my need and comfort, and for your own longing, hold back his greatest gift, and leave you mine in the earthly ways we know and love, or shall hasten to make the heavenly surprise, the issue in either event will be a home-coming; if here, yet already the deeper secret will have been in part disclosed; and if beyond, that secret, fully known, will not betray the fondest hope of loving hearts. Love never denied Death, and Death will not deny Love.
From 'A Study of Death,' 1895, by Harper and Brothers
THE DOVE AND THE SERPENT
The Dove flies, and the Serpent creeps. Yet is the Dove fond, while the Serpent is the emblem of wisdom. Both were in Eden: the cooing, fluttering, wingèd spirit, loving to descend, companion-like, brooding, following; and the creeping thing which had glided into the sunshine of Paradise from the cold bosoms of those nurses of an older world--Pain, and Darkness, and Death--himself forgetting these in the warmth and green life of the Garden. And our first parents knew naught of these as yet unutterable mysteries, any more than they knew that their roses bloomed over a tomb: so that when all animate creatures came to Adam to be named, the meaning of this living allegory which passed before him was in great part hidden, and he saw no sharp line dividing the firmament below from the firmament above; rather he leaned toward the ground, as one does in a garden, seeing how quickly it was fashioned into the climbing trees, into the clean flowers, and into his own shapely frame. It was upon the ground he lay when that deep sleep fell upon him from which he woke to find his mate, lithe as the serpent, yet with the fluttering heart of the dove.
As the Dove, though winged for flight, ever descended, so the Serpent, though unable wholly to leave the ground, tried ever to lift himself therefrom, as if to escape some ancient bond. The cool nights revived and nourished his memories of an older time, wherein lay his subtile wisdom, but day by day his aspiring crest grew brighter. The life of Eden became for him oblivion, the light of the sun obscuring and confounding his reminiscence, even as for Adam and Eve this life was Illusion, the visible disguising the invisible, and pleasure veiling pain.
In Adam the culture of the ground maintained humility. He was held, moreover, in lowly content by the charm of the woman, who was to him like the earth grown human; and since she was the daughter of Sleep, her love seemed to him restful as the night. Her raven locks were like the mantle of darkness, and her voice had the laughter of streams that lapsed into unseen depths.
But Eve had something of the Serpent's unrest, as if she too had come from the Under-world, which she would fain forget, seeking liberation, urged by desire as deep as the abyss she had left behind her, and nourished from roots unfathomably hidden--the roots of the Tree of Life. She thus came to have conversation with the Serpent.
In the lengthening days of Eden's one Summer these two were more and more completely enfolded in the Illusion of Light. It was under this spell that, dwelling upon the enticement of fruit good to look at, and pleasant to the taste, the Serpent denied Death, and thought of Good as separate from Evil. "Ye shall not surely die, but shall be as the gods, knowing good and evil." So far, in his aspiring day-dream, had the Serpent fared from his old familiar haunts--so far from his old-world wisdom!
A surer omen would have come to Eve had she listened to the plaintive notes of the bewildered Dove that in his downward flutterings had begun to divine what the Serpent had come to forget, and to confess what he had come to deny.
For already was beginning to be felt "the season's difference," and the grave mystery, without which Paradise itself could not have been, was about to be unveiled,--the background of the picture becoming its foreground. The fond hands plucking the rose had found the thorn. Evil was known as something by itself, apart from Good, and Eden was left behind, as one steps out of infancy.
From that hour have the eyes of the children of men been turned from the accursed earth, looking into the blue above, straining their vision for a glimpse of white-robed angels.
Yet it was the Serpent that was lifted up in the wilderness; and when He who "became sin for us" was being bruised in the heel by the old enemy, the Dove descended upon Him at His baptism. He united the wisdom of the Serpent with the harmlessness of the Dove. Thus in Him were bound together and reconciled the elements which in human thought had been put asunder. In Him, Evil is overcome of Good, as, in Him, Death is swallowed up of Life; and with His eyes we see that the robes of angels are white, because they have been washed in blood.
From 'A Study of Death,' 1895, by Harper and Brothers
Death and Sleep
The Angel of Death is the invisible Angel of Life. While the organism is alive as a human embodiment, death is present, having the same human distinction as the life, from which it is inseparable, being, indeed, the better half of living,--its winged half, its rest and inspiration, its secret spring of elasticity, and quickness. Life came upon the wings of Death, and so departs.
If we think of life apart from death our thought is partial, as if we would give flight to the arrow without bending the bow. No living movement either begins or is completed save through death. If the shuttle return not there is no web; and the texture of life is woven through this tropic movement.
It is a commonly accepted scientific truth that the continuance of life in any living thing depends upon death. But there are two ways of expressing this truth: one, regarding merely the outward fact, as when we say that animal or vegetable tissue is renewed through decay; the other, regarding the action and reaction proper to life itself, whereby it forever springs freshly from its source. The latter form of expression is mystical, in the true meaning of that term. We close our eyes to the outward appearance, in order that we may directly confront a mystery which is already past before there is any visible indication thereof. Though the imagination engaged in this mystical apprehension borrows its symbols or analogues from observation and experience, yet these symbols are spiritually regarded by looking at life on its living side, and abstracted as far as possible from outward embodiment. We especially affect physiological analogues because, being derived from our experience, we may the more readily have the inward regard of them; and by passing from one physiological analogue to another, and from all these to those furnished by the processes of nature outside of our bodies, we come to an apprehension of the action and reaction proper to life itself as an idea independent of all its physical representations.
Thus we trace the rhythmic beating of the pulse to the systole and diastole of the heart, and we note a similar alternation in the contraction and relaxation of all our muscles. Breathing is alternately inspiration and expiration. Sensation itself is by beats, and falls into rhythm. There is no uninterrupted strain of either action or sensibility; a current or a contact is renewed, having been broken. In psychical operation there is the same alternate lapse and resurgence. Memory rises from the grave of oblivion. No holding can be maintained save through alternate release. Pulsation establishes circulation, and vital motions proceed through cycles, each one of which, however minute, has its tropic of Cancer and of Capricorn. Then there are the larger physiological cycles, like that wherein sleep is the alternation of waking. Passing from the field of our direct experience to that of observation, we note similar alternations, as of day and night, summer and winter, flood and ebb tide; and science discloses them at every turn, especially in its recent consideration of the subtle forces of Nature, leading us back of all visible motions to the pulsations of the ether....
In considering the action and reaction proper to life itself, we here dismiss from view all measured cycles, whose beginning and end are appreciably separate; our regard is confined to living moments, so fleet that their beginning and ending meet as in one point, which is seen to be at once the point of departure and of return. Thus we may speak of a man's life as included between his birth and his death, and with reference to this physiological term, think of him as living, and then as dead; but we may also consider him while living as yet every moment dying, and in this view death is clearly seen to be the inseparable companion of life,--the way of return, and so of continuance. This pulsation, forever a vanishing and a resurgence, so incalculably swift as to escape observation, is proper to life as life, does not begin with what we call birth nor end with what we call death (considering birth and death as terms applicable to an individual existence); it is forever beginning and forever ending. Thus to all manifest existence we apply the term Nature (natura), which means "forever being born"; and on its vanishing side it is moritura, or "forever dying." Resurrection is thus a natural and perpetual miracle. The idea of life as transcending any individual embodiment is as germane to science as it is to faith.
Death, thus seen as essential, is lifted above its temporary and visible accidents. It is no longer associated with corruption, but rather with the sweet and wholesome freshness of life, being the way of its renewal. Sweeter than the honey which Samson found in the lion's carcass is this everlasting sweetness of Death; and it is a mystery deeper than the strong man's riddle.
So is Death pure and clean, as is the dew that comes with the cool night when the sun has set; clean and white as the snowflakes that betoken the absolution which Winter gives, shriving the earth of all her Summer wantonness and excess, when only the trees that yield balsam and aromatic fragrance remain green, breaking the box of precious ointment for burial.
In this view also is restored the kinship of Death with Sleep.
The state of the infant seems to be one of chronic mysticism, since during the greater part of its days its eyes are closed to the outer world. Its larger familiarity is still with the invisible, and it seems as if the Mothers of Darkness were still withholding it as their nursling, accomplishing for it some mighty work in their proper realm, some such fiery baptism of infants as is frequently instanced in Greek mythology, tempering them for earthly trials. The infant must needs sleep while this work is being done for it; it has been sleeping since the work began, from the foundation of the world, and the old habit still clings about it and is not easily laid aside....
That which we have been considering as the death that is in every moment is a reaction proper to life itself, waking or sleeping, whereby it is renewed, sharing at once Time and Eternity--time as outward form, and eternity as its essential quality. Sleep is a special relaxation, relieving a special strain. As daily we build with effort and design an elaborate superstructure above the living foundation, so must this edifice nightly be laid in ruins. Sleep is thus a disembarrassment, the unloading of a burden wherewith we have weighted ourselves. Here again we are brought into a kind of repentance, and receive absolution. Sleep is forgiveness.
From 'A Study of Death,' 1895, by Harper and Brothers