This work is a storehouse of facts for the history of Voltaire and his time. We do not think it will materially alter the judgment pronounced on him by such critics as Carlyle, Morley, and the majority of French writers in our day. Voltaire was a shining light in his age, but that age has gone by, and can never return.
[RALPH WALDO EMERSON][44]
Matt. vi. 23.—If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
It is natural and fit that many pulpits to-day should take for their theme the character and influence of the great thinker and poet who has just left us; for every such soul is a new revelation of God's truth and love. Each opens the gateway between our lower world of earthly care and earthly pleasure into a higher heavenly world of spirit. Such men lift our lives to a higher plane, and convince us that we, also, belong to God, to eternity, to heaven. And few, in our day, have been such mediators of heavenly things to mankind as Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Last Sunday afternoon, when the town of Concord was mourning through all its streets for the loss of its beloved and revered citizen; when the humblest cottage had on its door the badge of sorrow; when great numbers came from abroad to testify their affection and respect, that which impressed me the most was the inevitable response of the human heart to whatever is true and good. Cynics may tell us that men are duped by charlatans, led by selfish demagogues, incapable of knowing honor and truth when set before them; that they always stone their prophets and crucify their saviors; that they have eyes, and do not see; ears, and never hear. This is all true for a time; but inevitably, by a law as sure as that which governs the movements of the planets, the souls of men turn at last toward what is true, generous, and noble. The prophets and teachers of the race may be stoned by one generation, but their monuments are raised by the next. They are misunderstood and misrepresented to-day, but to-morrow they become the accredited leaders of their time. Jesus, who knew well that he would be rejected and murdered by a people blind and deaf to his truth, also knew that this truth would sooner or later break down all opposition, and make him master and king of the world. "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me."
Last Sunday afternoon, as the grateful procession followed their teacher to his grave in the Concord cemetery, the harshness of our spring seemed to relent, and Nature became tender toward him who had loved her so well. I thought of his words, "The visible heavens and earth sympathized with Jesus." The town where "the embattled farmers stood;" where the musket was discharged which opened the War of the Revolution—the gun of which Lafayette said, "It was the alarm-gun of the world;" the town of Hawthorne's "Old Manse," and of his grave, now that Emerson also sleeps in its quiet valley, has received an added glory. It has become one of the "Meccas of the mind."
Let me describe the mental and spiritual condition of New England when Emerson appeared. Calvinism, with its rigorous dogmatism, was slowly dying, and had been succeeded by a calm and somewhat formal rationalism. Locke was still the master in the realm of thought; Addison and Blair in literary expression. In poetry, the school of Pope was engaged in conflict with that of Byron and his contemporaries. Wordsworth had led the way to a deeper view of nature; but Wordsworth could scarcely be called a popular writer. In theology a certain literalism prevailed, and the doctrines of Christianity were inferred from counting and weighing texts on either side. Not the higher reason, with its intuition of eternal ideas, but the analytic understanding, with its logical methods, was considered to be the ruler in the world of thought. There was more of culture than of intellectual life, more of good habits than of moral enthusiasm. Religion had become very much of an external institution. Christianity consisted in holding rational or orthodox opinions, going regularly to church, and listening every Sunday to a certain number of prayers, hymns, and sermons. These sermons, with some striking exceptions, were rather tame and mechanical. In Boston, it is true, Buckminster had appeared,—that soul of flame which soon wore to decay its weak body. The consummate orator Edward Everett had followed him in Brattle Square pulpit. Above all, Channing had looked, with a new spiritual insight, into the truths of religion and morality. But still the mechanical treatment prevailed in a majority of the churches of New England, and was considered, on the whole, to be the wisest and safest method. There was an unwritten creed of morals, literature, and social thought to which all were expected to conform. There was little originality and much repetition. On all subjects there were certain formulas which it was considered proper to repeat. "Thou art a blessed fellow," says one of Shakespeare's characters, "to think as other people think. Not a man's thought in the world keeps the roadway better than thine." The thought of New England kept the roadway. Of course, at all times a large part of the belief of the community is derived from memory, custom, and imitation; but in those days, if I remember them aright, it was regarded as a kind of duty to think as every one else thought; a sort of delinquency, or weakness, to differ from the majority.
If the movements of thought are now much more independent and spontaneous; if to-day traditions have lost their despotic power; if even those who hold an orthodox creed are able to treat it as a dead letter, respectable for its past uses, but by no means binding on us now, this is largely owing to the manly position taken by Emerson. And yet, let it be observed, this influence was not exercised by attacking old opinions, by argument, by denial, by criticism. Theodore Parker did all this, but his influence on thought has been far less than that of Emerson. Parker was a hero who snuffed the battle afar off, and flung himself, sword in hand, into the thick of the conflict. But, much as we love and reverence his honesty, his immense activity, his devotion to truth and right, we must admit to-day, standing by these two friendly graves, that the power of Emerson to soften the rigidity of time-hardened belief was far the greater. It is the old fable of the storm and sun. The violent attacks of the tempest only made the traveler cling more closely to his cloak; the genial heat of the sun compelled him to throw it aside. In all Emerson's writings there is scarcely any argument. He attacks no man's belief; he simply states his own. His method is always positive, constructive. He opens the windows and lets in more light. He is no man's opponent; the enemy of no one. He states what he sees, and that which he does not see he passes by. He was often attacked, but never replied. His answer was to go forward, and say something else. He did not care for what he called the "bugbear consistency." If to-day he said what seemed like Pantheism, and to-morrow he saw some truth which seemed to reveal a divine personality, a supreme will, he uttered the last, as he had declared the first, always faithful to the light within. He left it to the spirit of truth to reconcile such apparent contradictions. He was like his own humble-bee—