CHAPTER III
EMERSON
I find on looking backward that my development proceeded with the help of a series of definitions fixing my attitude toward teachers who made a special appeal to me, and toward great historic tendencies past and present. I was helped both by what I was able to appreciate in them, and, where I diverged, by what they forced me to think out for myself. Here let me acknowledge a passing debt to Emerson. As in the case of Kant, a strong attraction drew me toward Emerson with temporary disregard of radical differences,—although the spell was never so potent or so persistent in the latter instance as in the former. I made Emerson’s acquaintance in 1875. I came into touch with the Emerson circle and read and re-read the Essays. The value of Emerson’s teaching to me at that time consisted in the exalted view he takes of the self. Divinity as an object of extraneous worship for me had vanished. Emerson taught that immediate experience of the divine power in self may take the place of worship. His doctrine of self-reliance also was bracing to a youth just setting out to challenge prevailing opinions and to urge plans of transformation upon the community in which he worked. But I soon discovered that Emerson overstresses self-affirmation at the expense of service. For a time indeed I reconciled in my own fashion the two contrary tendencies. The divine power, I argued, flows through me as a channel—hence the grandeur which attaches to my spiritual nature. But the divine power manifests itself in redressing the wrongs that exist in the world, and in putting an end to such violations of personality as the sexual and economic exploitations which disgrace human society. So for a time I continued to walk on air with Emerson, and had my head in the clouds,—the clouds in which Emerson enveloped me.
Out of this false sense of security, this quasi-pantheistic self-affirmation, the experiences of the next few years effectually roused me. I came to see that Emerson’s pantheism in effect spoils his ethics. Be thyself, he says, not a counterfeit or imitation of someone else. Be different. But why! Because the One manifests itself in endless variety. Penetrating below the surface, however, one finds that in this kind of philosophy the value of difference, to which I attach essential importance on ethical grounds, is nothing more than that of a foil. According to Emerson life is a universal masquerade, and the interest of the whole business of living consists in the ever-renewed discovery that the face behind the different masks is still the same. Difference is not cherished on its own account. And here, as in the case of the uniformity principle of Hebraism, I found myself dissenting.
Emerson is a kind of eagle, circling high up in the ether—non soli cedit.
Emerson with his oracular sayings might have served as a priest at Dodona or led the mysteries at Eleusis. Yet, withal, he is genuinely American,—a rare blend of ancient mystic and modern Yankee,—a valued poet too, but as an ethical guide to be accepted only with large reservations.
CHAPTER IV
THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS
At about this time I began to occupy myself more seriously than I had done before, with the study of the New Testament. I had, I think a great advantage in my approach to it, for the very reason that I had not been brought up in the Christian tradition. I came from the outside, with a mind fresh to receive first-hand impressions. I had not had instilled into me from childhood the kind of hesitant awe that prevents impartial appraisement of excellences and of possible deficiencies. On the other hand, as a searcher I was deeply interested to ascertain what Christianity could give me, and to what extent it could further my spiritual development. I had not the enforcedly apologetic attitude; I did not come prepared to accept without question nor yet to find fault; I came to test for my own use. Here am I, with life and its problem before me—how can the teachings of Jesus help me in my search, in my dire perplexities?
I must say to begin with that I was particularly struck with the originality of Jesus’ teachings, a quality in them which to my amazement I had found disputed, not only by Jews, but by representative Christians. In Jewish circles it is not uncommon to speak almost condescendingly of Christianity as of a daughter religion commissioned to spread abroad the truths of Judaism, with such alloy as may be needed to suit them to the apprehension of the gentiles. But Christian teachers likewise—I remember particularly a recent sermon to that effect—have taken the ground that Jesus added nothing new to the ethical insight of mankind. His work, it is said, consisted merely in supplying a sufficient motive for performing the duties which everyone knows, but which, lacking this motive, we are supposedly impotent to practice. This strange misapprehension of the intimate nature of Jesus’ contribution to ethical progress is largely due, I take it, to the poverty of our moral vocabulary. Language puts at our disposal only a few terms, such as Justice, Righteousness, Love,—which must needs stand for a great variety of moral ideas. Thus Justice in Plato’s use of the word, implies that “a shoemaker shall stick to his last,” that those who perform the humble functions shall be content to perform them in due subservience to their superiors. A very different meaning was attached to justice by the Hebrew prophets as I have explained in the last chapter. Again, a quite different conception of justice is framed and stressed by modern social reformers. Now it is this ambiguity of the moral vocabulary that conceals the novelty of Jesus’ precepts. Thus, to mention only a single capital instance, it has been asserted that the Golden Rule as taught by Jesus is not original, but substantially the same rule that had been laid down by Confucius 500 years before the time of Jesus. But on closer scrutiny it will be seen that the two Golden Rules are by no means the same. As propounded by the Chinese sage the rule appears to mean: Keep the balance true between thyself and thy neighbor; illustrate in thy conduct the principle of equilibrium. As impressed upon his disciples by Jesus it means: Look upon thy neighbor as thy other self; act towards him as if thou wert he.
To return to my point, the impression of novelty which I received in reading the Gospels was definite and striking. The mythological idealization of Jesus, indeed, I put aside as a thing that did not concern me. On the other hand, to say with certain modern liberals that he was just a man, an infinitely gracious personality, one who exemplified in his life the virtues of forgiveness and self-sacrifice, did not satisfy me either. Buddha too had taught forgiveness: “For hatred is not conquered by hatred at any time; hatred is conquered by love.” It could not then be the bare precept of forgiveness that lets light on the secret of Jesus. And self-sacrifice—“Greater love hath no man than this, that he should lay down his life for his friend”—had been practiced within and without the pale of Hebraism.