I owned I did not feel so. I said it gave me an inspiration, an ideal of conduct, not a picture. “Mind you,” I said, “when I call Emerson more philosopher than artist, I am not saying philosophy is less than art.”
“No, I understand that,” said Ruth, “but I, for one, when I read Shakespeare, get not any especial feeling of the completeness or whole understanding of what I read. Emerson uplifts me much more, and gives me power to do things.”
“That may be,” I said. “You may rate either as high or as low as you please, but their genius is different.”
I pointed out, too, how in Emerson’s poetry, with its rare, beautiful couplets, and its many lapses, the genius and philosopher far outshone the man of artistic talent. We had not time to go into detail, or to quote largely, and I did not wish to speak much of literary criticism and methods at this meeting, for I had planned to do so at the next, so I think Henry and Ruth went home unconvinced of the artistic superiority of Shakespeare over Emerson. One might almost as profitably argue who was a greater man, Beethoven or Napoleon!
Marian asked me whether George Eliot was an artist or a philosopher. I told her I thought she was both, but that I believed she would have been more of an artist had she been less a philosopher.
I asked Alfred why he had kept so silent. Did he agree with us?
“Yes,” he said, “I do. It is very interesting. But I don’t talk unless I disagree.”
EIGHTH MEETING
Henry came several days ago to tell me he would be unable to attend this meeting, as he was going to Washington. “I will think of the subject we were going to discuss,” he said.
I opened the meeting with Marian’s paper: