The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I

by William James Stillman

CHAPTER XIII

THE ADIRONDACK CLUB—EMERSON AND AGASSIZ

In the main, our occupations were those of a vacation, to kill time and escape from the daily groove. Some took their guides and made exploration, by land or water; after breakfast there was firing at a mark, a few rounds each, for those who were riflemen; then, if venison was needed, we put the dog out on the hills; one boat went to overhaul the set lines baited the evening before for the lake trout. When the hunt was over we generally went out to paddle on the lake, Agassiz and Wyman to dredge or botanize or dissect the animals caught or killed; those of us who had interest in natural history watching the naturalists, the others searching the nooks and corners of the pretty sheet of water with its inlet brooks and its bays and recesses, or bathing from the rocks. Lunch was at midday, and then long talks, discussions de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis; and it was surprising to find how many subjects we found germane to our situation.

Emerson has told the daily life in verse in "The Adirondacs," adding his own impressions of the place and time. It is not generally considered among the most interesting of his poems, being a narrative with reflections, and such a subject could hardly rise above the interest of the subject of the narration, which was only a vacation study; but there are in it some passages which show the character of Emerson's intellect better than anything else he has written. His insight into nature, like that of the primitive mind as we find it in the Greek poetry, the instinctive investment of the great mother with the presence and attribute of personality, the re-creation from his own resources of Pan and the nature-powers, the groping about in that darkness of the primeval forest for the spiritual causes of the things he felt,—all this is to me evident in the poem; and it is the sufficient demonstration of the antique mould of his intellect, serene, open-eyed to natural phenomena, seeing beyond the veil they are, to the something beyond, but always questioning, hardly concluding, and with no theories to limit his thought or bend it to preconceived solutions. Knowing that all he saw in this undefiled natural world, this virgin mother of all life (for around Follansbee Pond, at the time we went, there was the primeval woodland, where the lumberer had not yet penetrated, and the grove kept still the immaculacy of the most ancient days), that all this was the mask of things, he was ever on the watch if perchance he might catch some hint of the secret,—secret never to be discovered, and therefore more passionately sought. This seems to me contained in "The Adirondacs" as in no other work of the philosopher. And to me the study of the great student was the dominant interest of the occasion. I was Agassiz's boatman on demand, for while all the others had their personal guides and attendants, I was his; but often when Emerson wanted a boat I managed to provide for Agassiz with one of the unoccupied guides, and take the place of Emerson's own guide. Thus Emerson and I had many hours alone on the lake and in the wood. He seemed to be a living question, perpetually interrogating his impressions of all that there was to be seen. The rest of us were always at the surface of things,—even the naturalists were only engaged with their anatomy; but Emerson in the forest, or looking at the sunset from the lake, seemed to be looking through the phenomena, studying them by their reflections on an inner speculum.

In such a great solitude, stripped of the social conventions and seeing men as they are, mind seems open to mind as it is quite impossible for it to be in society, even the most informal. Agassiz remarked, one day, when a little personal question had shown the limitations of character of one of the company, that he had always found in his Alpine experiences, when the company were living on terms of compulsory intimacy, that men found each other out quickly. And so we found it in the Adirondacks: disguises were soon dropped, and one saw the real characters of his comrades as it was impossible to see them in society. Conventions faded out, masks became transparent, and for good or for ill the man stood naked before the questioning eye,—pure personality. I think I gathered more insight into the character of my companions in our greener Arden, in the two or three weeks' meetings of the club, than all our lives in the city could have given me.

And Emerson was such a study as can but rarely be given any one. The crystalline limpidity of his character, free from all conventions, prejudices, or personal color, gave a facility for study of the man, limited only by the range of vision of the student. How far my vision was competent for this study is not for me to decide; so far as it went I profited, and so far as my experience of men goes he is unique, not so much from intellectual power, for I should be indisposed to accept his as the mind of the greatest calibre among those I have known, but as one of absolute transparency of intellect, perfect receptivity, and devotion to the truth. In the days of persecution and martyrdom Emerson would have gone to the stake smiling and undismayed, but questioning all the time, even as to the nature of his own emotions. It was this serene impassibility in his study of human nature which gave the common impression of his coldness,—an impression which is shown, by the anecdote I have elsewhere recorded of Longfellow, to have been shared by one who might have been supposed to know him well for years. But Emerson was not cold or disposed to make mere subjects of analysis of his friends, as Longfellow thought; he was an eager student of men as of nature, but superficial men he tired of and dropped, nothing being to be learned from them, though where he found what he looked for in a character he never tired of it. His friendships were of the most constant because of this temper, and it was only their serenity and almost impersonality that made them seem frigid to those whose temperament was widely different. Wrong, injustice to man or beast, roused his warmth in indignation,—he could be hot enough on occasion; though the quiet warmth of his affection for his friends was like the sun of May. But undoubtedly his greater passion was for the truth in whatever form he could find it.

Of all the mental experiences of my past life nothing else survives with the vividness of my summers in the Adirondacks with Emerson. The last sight I had of him was when, on his voyage to Egypt, he came to see me at my home in London, aged and showing the decay of age, but as alert and interrogative as ever with his insatiate intellectual activity. And as I look back from the distance of years to the days when we questioned together, he rises above all his contemporaries as Mont Blanc does above the intervening peaks when seen from afar, not the largest in mass, but loftiest in climb, soaring higher if not occupying the space of some of his companions, even in our little assemblies. Emerson was the best listener I ever knew, and at the other meeting-place where I saw him occasionally, the Saturday Club, his attention to what others were saying was far more notable than his disposition to enter into the discussions. Now and then he flashed out with a comment which lit up the subject as an electric spark might, but in general he shone unconsciously. I remember that one day when, at the club, we were discussing the nature of genius, some one turned to Emerson and asked him for a definition of the thing, and he instantly replied, "The faculty of generalizing from a single example;" and nobody at the table could give so good and concise a definition. There is a portrait of him by Rowse, who knew and loved him well, which renders this side of Emerson in a way that makes it the most remarkable piece of portraiture I know, the listening Emerson.

His insatiability in the study of human nature was shown curiously in our first summer's camp. He had the utmost tenderness of animal life and had no sympathy with sport in any form,—he "named the birds without a gun,"—and when we were making up the outfit for the outing he at first refused to take a rifle; but, as the discussion of make, calibre, and quality went on, and everybody else was provided, he at length decided, though no shot, to conform, and purchased a rifle. And when the routine of camp life brought the day of the hunt, the eagerness of the hunters and the passion of the chase, the strong return to our heredity of human primeval occupation gradually involved him, and made him desire to enter into this experience as well as the rest of the forest emotions. He must understand this passion to kill. One Sunday morning, when all the others went out for the drive of the deer,—necessary for the larder, as the drive the day before had failed,—Emerson asked me to take him out on the lake to some quiet place for meditation. We landed in a deep bay, where the seclusion was most complete, and he went into the woods to meditate. Presently we heard the baying of the hound as he circled round the lake, on the hillsides, for the deer at that season were reluctant to take to the water, and gave a long chase; and, as he listened, he began to take in the excitement of the hunters, and finally broke out abruptly, "Let us go after the deer;" and down the lake we went, flying at our best, but we arrived too late,—Lowell had killed the deer.

He said to me later, and emphatically, "I must kill a deer;" and one night we went out "jack-hunting" to enable him to realize that ambition. This kind of hunting, as most people know, is a species of pot-hunting, much employed by the hunters for the market, and so destructive to the deer that it is now forbidden by the law in all the Adirondack country. The deer are stalked by night along the shores, where they come in to feed, the hunter carrying in his boat a light so shaded that it illuminates only the space directly in front of the boat, the glare blinding the animal so that he does not see the boat or the boatman. In this way the deer may be approached within a few yards if the paddler is skillful; but as he stands perfectly still, and is difficult to see in the dim light, the tyro generally misses him. We paddled up to within twenty yards of a buck, and the guide gave the signal to shoot; but Emerson could see nothing resembling a deer, and finally the creature took fright and ran, and all we got of him was the sound of galloping hoofs as he sped away, stopping a moment, when at a safe distance, to snort at the intruders, and then off again. We kept on, and presently came upon another, toward which we drifted even nearer than to the first one, and still Emerson could see nothing to distinguish the deer from the boulders among which he stood; and we were scarcely the boat's length from him, when, Emerson being still unable to see him, and not caring to run the risk of losing him, for we had no venison in camp and the luck of the morning drive was always uncertain, I shot him. We had no other opportunity for the "jack-hunt," and so Emerson went home unsatisfied in this ambition,—glad, no doubt, when he recalled the incident, that he had failed.

The guides—rude men of the woods, rough and illiterate, but with all their physical faculties at a maximum acuteness, senses on the alert and keen as no townsman could comprehend them—were Emerson's avid study. This he had never seen,—the man at his simplest terms, unsophisticated, and, to him, the nearest approach to the primitive savage he would ever be able to examine; and he studied every action. When the dinner was over, and the twilight coming on, he sometimes asked me to row him out on the lake to see the nightfall and watch the "procession of the pines," that weird and ghostly phenomenon I have before alluded to.

More than a generation has passed since then. Twenty-five years afterward I went back to the scene of the meeting. Except myself, the whole company are dead, and the very scene of our acting and thinking has disappeared down to its geological basis, pillaged, burnt, and become a horror to see; but, among the memories which are the only realities left to it, this image of Emerson claiming kinship with the forest stands out alone, and I feel as if I had stood for a moment on a mount of transfiguration, and seen, as if in a vision, the typical American, the noblest in the idealization of the American, of all the race. Lowell was of a more cosmopolitan type, of a wider range of sympathies and affections, accepted and bestowed, and to me a friend, loved as Jonathan loved David; but, as a unique, idealized individuality, Emerson looms up in that Arcadian dream more and more the dominant personality. It is as character, and not as accomplishment or education, that he holds his own in all comparisons with his contemporaries, the fine, crystallized mind, the keen, clear-faceted thinker and seer. I loved more Agassiz and Lowell, but we shall have many a Lowell and Agassiz before we see Emerson's like again. Attainments will be greater, and discovery and accomplishments will surpass themselves as we go on, but to be, as Emerson was, is absolute and complete existence.

Agassiz was, of all our company, the acknowledged master; loved by all, even to the unlettered woodsmen, who ran to meet his service as to no other of the company; by all the members of it reverenced as not even Emerson was; the largest in personality and in universality of knowledge of all the men I have ever known. No one who did not know him personally can conceive the hold he had on everybody who came into relations with him. His vast command of scientific facts, and his ready command of them for all educational purposes, his enthusiasm for science and the diffusion of it, even his fascinating way of imparting it to others, had even less to do with his popularity than the magnetism of his presence and the sympathetic faculty which enabled him to find at once the plane on which he should meet whomever he had to deal with. Of his scientific position I cannot speak, though I can see that his was the most powerful of the scientific influences of that epoch in America. When we were traveling it was always in my boat, and we moved as his investigations prompted, wherever there seemed to be a promise of some addition to his collections. We dredged and netted water and air wherever we went, and of course there arose a certain kind of intimacy, which was partly that of a camaraderie in which we were approximately equals, that of the backwoods life in which I was, if a comparison were to be made, the superior, and partly that of teacher and pupil; for, with trifling attainments, I had the passion of scientific acquisition, and all that Agassiz needed to open the store of his knowledge was the willingness of another to learn.

The odium scientificum, which I notice is no less bitter than the variety theologicum, has, in these years, poured on Agassiz the floods of its opprobrium, and even the little dogs of physical science bark at his name; but his greater contemporaries knew and esteemed him better. The revival of the evolutionary hypothesis by Darwin, and the controversies growing out of it, then filled the air, and Agassiz paid the penalty of his eminence and constancy to the system in which he had been grounded by his master, Cuvier. He was attacked and insulted by men who had never made an observation, and, what was more curious, as a panderer to the theological prejudices of the past. But in my mind was still the memory of a former outcry and theological persecution of him, because he had himself laid down what might be considered the forerunner of the doctrine of evolution,—the declaration that the human race could not have been the offspring of one Adam, but must have had a multiple beginning. The result of this was to bring on his head the execrations of the theological world in a storm which no one who had witnessed it was likely to forget or take for other than what it was, the proof of his absolute scientific honesty,—a proof needed by no one who knew him personally, but which, in view of the later animosity shown him, requires reaffirmation.

As I was much with him at this time, and perhaps, out of his family, the one to whom he talked with the greatest freedom and fullness on the subject, owing to my own intense interest in it, it cannot be amiss that I state his exact position as far as he let me see it. It must be remembered that the doctrine of evolution, as he knew it, and in the only form in which it was then stated, was simply and purely that of development by natural selection acting on chance variation, and differing mainly by this from the doctrine of Lamarck, which had long been rejected by the scientific world at large. We have seen since then that this primitive doctrine has been largely supplemented by other theories, and that it no longer stands before the scientific world in the bare simplicity of Darwin's original statement, though even he, at a later date, claimed natural selection not as the only but as the most influential agency of variation of species in creation; repudiating, however, a plan in the universe, and not demanding the influence of the conscious mind on creation. Agassiz's primary objection to the doctrine was that it left the creator out of creation, for it distinctly repudiated the element of design in it; and, though he did not recognize the Creator of Genesis, he could not dispense with the supreme mind.

Myself a convert to the doctrine of evolution, in as absolute a form as it is held even by the materialists, though differently, I am persuaded that if Agassiz had lived long enough to see the latest development of it he would have accepted it, as did Professor Owen, who was, like Agassiz, and possibly even more literally, a believer in the designer of the universe. The fundamental ground for Agassiz's rejection of it is stated by himself in one of the lectures delivered at Cambridge, as follows: "I believe that all these correspondences between the different aspects of animal life are the manifestations of mind acting consciously with intention towards one object from beginning to end. This view is in accordance with the working of our minds; it is an instinctive recognition of a mental power with which our own is akin, manifesting itself in nature. For this reason, more than any other, perhaps, do I hold that this world of ours was not the result of the action of unconscious organic forces, but the work of an intelligent, conscious power." Whatever might have been the process by which the orderly creation was produced (into which he did not inquire), it was the result of a definite plan and the work of design. The immutability of species, as he defined species, was the logical consequence of this theory, and that, it seems to me, is the substantial difference between him and Darwin.

But Agassiz was no sectarian, and held no other creed than a belief in the Creator. In the fibre of the man was the consciousness of the immanent deity, rooted, perhaps, in that influence of his early theological environage from which no man can ever escape, though he may rebel against it; and the almost universal deduction by the scientific world from Darwin's theory then was that there could be no divine design in creation. It was this negation of the direction of the great artist in the process of creation against which Agassiz rebelled; and although, at a later phase of the conflict, Darwin himself protested against the implication sometimes drawn from his theory, there can be no question that at that moment the general evolutionary opinion was that the hypothesis of a divine authorship of creation was superfluous. Agassiz maintained the presence of "Conscious Mind in Creation;" Darwin did not deny it explicitly, nor did he admit it.

As a matter of observation, no case of a development of one species from another has ever been noted, and the evidence for it is precisely analogous to that adduced by Agassiz, "that it is in accordance with the working of our minds," still further illuminated by the side-lights which science has thrown on it since Agassiz died. The ultimate decision in the individual mind will be according to the bias for or against the "conscious mind" or automatic creation; and it must not be forgotten that one of the most powerful arguments for a large evolution was the discovery by Agassiz that the embryo of the highest organizations passes through an evolution similar to that of the animal creation. Professor Martins—a leading French scientist and an evolutionist—says of Agassiz: "Another of these precursors of modern science is Louis Agassiz. The oldest fossil forms have a simpler organization than the later ones, and represent some stage of the embryonic development of the latter. This truth, established by Agassiz, has, more than any other, enlightened the history of creation, and prepared for the generalization by which the whole may be comprehended. The oldest fishes known are all more or less related to the sharks and skates; their teeth and scales only, with small portions of the skeleton, have been preserved. Their form, widely different from that of the living species, recalls that of the embryo of our living fishes. This is a truth which Louis Agassiz was the first to proclaim to the scientific world."[1]

[Footnote 1: De l'Origine du Monde organique.]

But, beyond this question as to the evidence of mutability of species which Agassiz did not find, he took the position "that the hypothesis of the method of creation by evolution exceeded physical science and became theology, which belonged to the province of theology, into which he had no intention of venturing." That was his statement to me during the interval between the two attacks of brain trouble from the latter of which he died. Science, to his understanding, was observation and classification, arrangement, and it had no function in investigating the causes or modus operandi through which things became what they were.

Amongst the evolutionists whom I have known there have been several who did not accept without modification the theory of natural selection, and supplemented it by design, amongst whom I may mention the great American botanist, Asa Gray,—one of the most distinguished of Darwinians,—who accepted the method of evolution as the modus operandi of the Supreme Intelligence. Professor Jeffries Wyman, the associate of Agassiz in the University, who was one of the doctors of our Adirondack company, accepted in a qualified manner the theory of evolution, but his premature and lamented death set the seal to his conclusions before they were complete, though I have always had the impression that his position was similar to that of Gray. To my question one day as to his conclusions, he replied, with a caution characteristic of the man and very unlike the resolute attitude of Agassiz before the question which the Sphinx proposes still, "An evolution of some sort there certainly was," but nothing more would he say. The loss to American science in his death can never be estimated, for his mind was of that subtle and inductive nature which is needed for such a study, fine to poetic delicacy, penetrating with all the acumen of a true scientific imagination, but modest to excess, and personally so attached to Agassiz that he would with reluctance give expression to a difference from him, though that he did differ was no occasion for abatement of their mutual regard. Wyman's was the poetry of scientific research, Agassiz's its prose, and they offered a remarkable example of mental antithesis, from which, had Wyman lived, much might have been expected through their association in study. Wyman had all the delicacy of a fine feminine organization, wedded unfortunately to a fragile constitution, but the friendship he held for the robust and dominating character of the great Switzer was to the utmost reciprocated.

And Agassiz's disposition was as generous as large. He had absolutely no scientific jealousy or sectarian feeling. The rancor which was shown him by some of the Darwinians never disturbed his serenity an instant; for of the world's opinion of him and his ideas, even when the "world" was scientific, he never took account other than to regret that science was the loser, by running off on what he considered side issues. We had much conversation on the question of evolution and allied topics, in which my part was naturally that of listener and only occasional questioner, and I remember the warm appreciation he always expressed for Darwin and his researches, for his fineness of observation and scientific honesty. He regarded the widespread acceptance of the theory of natural selection as one of the epidemics which have swept the scientific world from time to time, and looked with absolute serenity to the return of science one day to the conception of creation by design.

I am neither qualified nor disposed to pass judgment on Agassiz as a scientist, or institute any kind of comparison of his relative authority, and probably the time is far away at which his comparative eminence can be estimated impartially. I have only to do with his personality as it appeared to me in our relations, and, as the latest survivor of those who enjoyed that greenwood intimacy, to put on record my impression of the great, lovable, magnanimous man. Of his unbounded generosity and indifference to personal advantage, his freedom from scientific jealousy, everybody who came in contact with him was witness. He refused all offers of emolument from any quarter, and spent all his surplus earnings for the aggrandizement of the great natural-history museum he founded at Cambridge. The propositions of the Emperor Napoleon III. he had declined with thanks as soon as made, and without a thought. He had come to America to study natural history, and did not propose to be diverted from this purpose. To a lecturing agent who offered him a very large sum for delivering a course of lectures in the principal cities of the Union, he replied that he had no time to make money; and he died of overwork, insatiate in the pursuit of the completion of his museum and the classification of his observations. I have heard him speak with pain of the animosity shown him by a Swiss associate in his glacial investigations, who had once been his warm advocate, but there was no bitterness in his manner. I am convinced that there was no bitterness in him, and that all personal feeling was overshadowed and minimized by his absolute devotion to scientific truth, with his loyalty to which nothing ever interfered.

His influence even on the business men of the city of Boston and the legislature of the State of Massachusetts was the most remarkable phenomenon of the kind ever witnessed in that frugal and matter-of-fact community, for he had only to announce that he wanted for his museum or department in the University a donation or an appropriation, to obtain either, so absolutely recognized was his unselfish devotion to science by all classes. There are few of us left who can remember the sudden shadow that fell on our community at his unexpected death, and the universal grief that told of the hold he had on the entire nation; and the mourning extended far beyond the circle of personal acquaintance with Agassiz. Even men who had no interest in physical science took it into consideration on account of him, carried away by his enthusiastic advocacy of its advancement. The religious world forgot the indignation at his repudiation of Adam in the refuge it found from absolute atheism in his affirmation of a Supreme Intelligence, as Creator of all things, though to theological contentions he never gave the slightest consideration.

It is needless to say that this was the effect, not of scientific education or of the capacity in the great majority of those who accepted his position to judge of a theory or a scientific line of demonstration, but of the dominance of personal character in the man, his inflexible honesty and disinterestedness. The last time I saw him was when he came to make me a brief visit in a glen of the White Mountains, where I was encamped near a subject which I was painting, and which was in part composed of huge boulders, dropped in the gorge by a primeval glacier, and brought, perhaps, from beyond Lake Superior. He had then had the first attack of the brain trouble, from which he was recovering, and was making a mountain trip where he could, if possible, study and rest at once. But his want of common prudence in regard to overwork prevented his recovery, and he died just as he was beginning to elaborate his conclusions on the doctrine of evolution, for which he had a colossal plan, cut short in its opening. He was always too hurried in his work, as if he knew that his life would not suffice for its completion, if indeed completion were possible in such work, and he persisted in accumulation of material without pause either to coordinate his ideas or to rest and reflect. I one day said to him that I was intending to write a little book, and he exclaimed: "Oh, I wish I had time to write a little book! All my books come large, and I have not the time to condense them."