Liberty in the Nineteenth Century

by Frederic May Holland

How desirous Emerson was to have the inner light obeyed promptly and fully may be judged from his describing his own habit of writing as follows: "I would not degrade myself by casting about for a thought, nor by waiting for it."... "If it come not spontaneously, it comes not rightly at all." Much of the peculiar charm of his books is due to his having composed them thus. Again and again he says: "It is really of little importance what blunders in statement we make, so only that we make no wilful departure from the truth."... "Why should I give up my thought, because I cannot answer an objection to it?"... "With consistency, a great soul has simply nothing to do."... "Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said to-day."... "I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be"... "ridiculous henceforward." This is not meant for mere theory. We are told often that "Virtue is the spontaneity of the will."... "Our spontaneous action is always the best."... "The only right is what is after my own constitution, the only wrong what is against it."

III. The passages quoted in the last paragraph are of great importance; for they did more than any others to abolish slavery. Its defenders appealed to the Bible as confidently as to the national Constitution; but the Garrisonians declared with Emerson, that "The highest virtue is always against the law." They were confident that they knew the truth as soon as they saw it, and had no need to answer objections. The same faith in spontaneous impressions inspired the suffragists, of whom the next chapter will give some account. Agitations against established institutions sprang up thickly under the first step of Transcendentalism. Church, State, family ties, and business relations seemed all likely to be broken up. Lowell says that "Everybody had a mission (with a capital M) to attend to everybody else's business."... "Conventions were held for every hitherto inconceivable purpose." "Communities were established where everything was to be in common but common sense." The popular authors about 1840 were mostly Transcendentalists; and nearly every Transcendentalist was a Socialist. Some forty communities were started almost simultaneously; but not one-half lasted through the second year. One of the first failures was led by a man who had been working actively against slavery, but who had come to think that the only way to attack it was to try to do away with all private property whatever. Brook Farm lasted half a dozen years, with a success due partly to the high culture of the inmates, and partly to some recognition of the right of private ownership. The general experience, however, was that a Transcendentalist was much more willing to make plans for other people, than to conform in his own daily life to regulations proposed by anyone else. The very multiplicity of the reforms, started in the light of the new philosophy, did much to prevent most of them from attaining success. We have seen how slavery was abolished; but no one should regret the failure of most of the Transcendentalist schemes.

The subsidence of Socialism was especially fortunate on account of the frankness with which matrimony was repudiated by the system most in vogue, that of Fourier. He had followed the spontaneous and instinctive impulses of man with the utmost consistency. Other Socialists have been more cautious; but the problem of reconciling family ties with communal life has not been solved. Some of the English Transcendentalists published a pamphlet recommending systematic encouragement of licentiousness; and an American philosopher, who turned Roman Catholic in 1844, declared that free love was "Transcendentalism in full bloom." The term "higher law" was used to support the pretence of some obligation more binding than marriage. A free-love convention was held in New York about 1857; and very lax ideas had been already announced by active apostles of spontaneity known as Spiritualists.

No writer has done more to encourage purity of thought than Emerson. His life was stainless; but perhaps the best proof of this is his saying, "Our moral nature is vitiated by any interference of our will"; and again, "If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him." No man ever wrote thus who was not either notoriously corrupt or singularly innocent. Policemen and jailers exist largely for the purpose of preventing people from planting themselves on their instincts—for instance, those which lead to theft, drunkenness, and murder. Socialism would perhaps be practicable if industry were as natural as laziness. Almost all moralists have thought it necessary to insist on constant interference with the instincts. So earnest and able a Transcendentalist as Miss Cobbe gives these definitions in her elaborate treatise on Intuitive Morals: "Happiness is the gratification of all the desires of our nature." "Virtue is the renunciation of such of them as are forbidden by the moral law." Theodore Parker insisted on the duty of subordinating "the low qualities to the higher," but Emerson held, as already mentioned, that "Virtue is the spontaneity of the will."

Such language was largely due to his perception that all activity, however innocent, of thought and feeling had been too much repressed by the Puritanical churches, in whose shadow he was brought up. The same mistake was made in the Dark Ages; and the reaction from that asceticism was notorious during the Renaissance. The early Unitarians overrated human nature in their hostility to the Trinitarians, who underrated it; and Emerson went beyond his original associates in the Unitarian ministry because he was more Transcendental. The elevation of his own character encouraged him to hope that our higher qualities are so strong as to need only freedom to be enabled to keep all impure desire in subjection. It was a marked change of tone when in 1876 he allowed these words to be printed in one of his books: "Self-control is the rule. You have in you there a noisy, sensual savage which you are to keep down, and turn all his strength to beauty." Similar passages, especially a censure of the pruriency of Fourierism, occur in essays which were probably written some years earlier, but were not published until after his death. Most of the Transcendentalists have fortunately acknowledged the duty of self-control much more plainly and readily. It is a fair question whether they were more consistent. How does anyone know which of his instincts and impulses to control and which to cultivate? What better light has he than is given either by his own experience or by that of his parents and other teachers? I acknowledge the power of conscience; but its dictates differ so much in different individuals as to be plainly due to early education. Thus even a Transcendentalist has to submit himself to experience; as he would not do if it were really transcended by his philosophy.

Emerson himself was singularly fortunate in his "involuntary perceptions." Those of most men are dark with superstition and prejudice. It is what we have heard earliest and oftenest that recurs most spontaneously. If all mankind had continued satisfied to "trust the instinct to the end though it can render no reason," we should still believe in the divine right of kings, and the supremacy of evil spirits. There would have been very little persecution if men could have known truth when they saw it. Parker believed devoutly in the intuitions, but he said that Emerson exaggerated their accuracy to such an extent that he "discourages hard and continuous thought." "Some of his followers will be more faithful than he to the false principles which he lays down, and will think themselves wise because they do not study, and inspired because they say what outrages common sense." The danger of following instinctive impressions in regard to the currency has been shown in recent American politics. Anyone who is familiar with scientific methods will see where Emerson's failed. It is true that he prized highly many of the results of science, especially the theory of evolution as it was taught by Lamarck and other forerunners of Darwin. His inability to see the value of investigation and verification is disclosed plainly; and he preferred to have people try to "build science on ideas." He acknowledged that too much time was given to Latin and Greek in college; but his wishes in regard to study of the sciences were so old-fashioned as to call out a remonstrance from Agassiz.

IV. How little scientific culture there was before 1860 may be judged from the rapid growth of Spiritualism. Transcendentalism had shown tremendous strength in helping people escape from the old churches; but it was of little use in building new ones. Churches exist for the express purpose of enabling believers in a common faith to unite in public worship. No society could be so holy as solitude to a sincere Transcendentalist; and the beliefs of his neighbours seemed much less sacred than his own peculiar intuitions. Exceptional eloquence might make him pastor of a large society; but it began to decline when he ceased to speak. Transcendentalism was excellent material for weathercocks, but it had to be toughened by adulteration with baser metal before it supplied any solid foundation for a new temple.

Most of the people who had lost faith in the old churches were longing after some better way of receiving knowledge about the heavenly world. Millions of Americans and Europeans rejoiced to hear that spirits had begun to communicate by mysterious raps at Rochester, N. Y., on the last day of March, 1848. Messages from the departed were soon received in many places; but the one thing needful was that the room be filled with believers; and a crowded hall was peculiarly likely to be favoured with strange sounds and sights. Here was the social element necessary for founding a new religion. It appealed as confidently as its rivals to miracles and prophecies, while it had the peculiar attraction of being preached mainly by young women. Instinctive impulses were regarded as revelations from the spirit-land, but not considered infallible except by the very superstitious. The highest authority of an intelligent Spiritualist has usually been his own individual intuition. Some of the earliest lectures on that platform had little faith in anything but science, and put their main strength into announcing those revelations of geology which have dethroned Genesis. One of the first teachers of evolution in America was a Spiritualist named Denton, who held a public debate in Ohio, in 1858, when he defended the theory of man's gradual development from lower animals against a preacher named Garfield, who became President of the United States. Some eminent scientists have become converts to Spiritualism; but its general literature has shown little influence from scientific methods of thought.

The advocates of the new religion have owed much of their success to impassioned eloquence. Opposition to Christianity has been expressed boldly and frequently. Girls of seventeen have declared, before large audiences, that all the creeds and ceremonies of the churches are mere idolatry. Among the earliest communications which were published as dictated by angels in the new dispensation were denials of the miracles of Jesus, and denunciations of the clergy as "the deadliest foes of progress." An eminent Unitarian divine declared in 1856, that "the doctrines professedly revealed by a majority of the spirits, whose words we have seen quoted, are at open war with the New Testament." Some moderate Spiritualists have kept in friendly relations with liberal churches; but many others have been in active co-operation with the most aggressive of unbelievers in religion. The speakers at the Spiritualist anniversary in 1897 said to one another, "You and I are Christs, just as Jesus was," and claimed plainly that "our religion" was distinct from every "Christian denomination." Spiritualists have all, I think, been in favour of woman suffrage; and the majority were abolitionists. Some of Garrison's companions, however, deserted in the heat of the battle, saying that there was nothing more to do, for the spirits would free the slaves. Anti-slavery lecturers in the North-west found themselves crowded out of halls and school-houses by trance-speakers and mediums. One of the most eminent of converts made by the latter, Judge Edmonds, was prominent among the defenders of slavery in the free States.

Freedom from any definite creed or rigid code of morality joined with the constant supply of ever-varying miracles in attracting converts. Those in the United States were soon estimated in millions. Spiritualism swept over Great Britain so rapidly that it was declared by the Westminster Review to give quite as much promise as Christianity had done, at the same age, of becoming a universal religion. No impartial observer expects that now. Believers are still to be found in all parts of Europe and South America, and they are especially numerous in the United States. Proselytes do not seem to be coming in anywhere very thickly; and the number of intelligent men and women who have renounced Spiritualism, after a brief trial, is known to be large. The new religion has followed the old ones into the policy of standing on the defensive.