Recollections and Impressions, 1822-1890

by Octavius Brooks Frothingham

But a commanding doer he certainly was not; that is, he was no man of expedients, of practical resources, of merely executive will. He appreciated this kind of ability, as his lecture on Napoleon shows, but he possessed little of it, his Yankee ingenuity being more confined in its range. The moral courage belonged to him, the earnestness, the faith, but his ethereal qualities lacked driving force. His principles made him interested in every movement of reform, for he had a boundless hope which led him sometimes into extravagant anticipations of truth and benefit. Every sign of life, intellectual, moral, spiritual, caught his eye, and so long as it promised new developments of power his eager sympathy went with it, but when the creative period ceased he turned away. He early enlisted in the anti-slavery cause, not because he had entire confidence in the negro, or specially liked the abolitionists, but because he demanded the utmost liberty for all men in order that substantial advantages might be widely shared; but he was not prominent among the workers of that reform. His name stood foremost in the list of those who claimed the emancipation of woman from social or political disability, not that he was a worker in the woman's-rights phalanx, not that he looked for any immediate benefit from that agitation, or felt any particular interest in the leaders or in the success of that individual crusade, but that he was in favor of the largest opportunity for all human beings, and wished every particle of power to be used. From the first he welcomed the Free Religious Association as giving promise of original light, greater breadth, fresh vigor, new revelations of knowledge in that most ideal, but most deplorably limited, of all spheres; but when in his view that promise was unfulfilled, though his name still stood with those of its vice-presidents, he ceased to take any part in its proceedings or to feel any personal concern in its affairs. There was something theoretical, speculative, in his attitude as a reformer. His philosophy pledged him to the utmost individualism, and this called for the utmost liberty, that each might receive all he could of the divine fulness and be as much as his nature required. Hence his own limited expectation; hence his enthusiasm in behalf of individuals like Walt Whitman, John Brown, Henry Thoreau; hence the light that came into his eyes when he sat in some reform convention where high thoughts were spoken. His word was given, and it was always inspiring, emancipating, uplifting, heard in the valleys from the dizziest heights of vision; but force was not his to give. Such words were more than "half battles," to be sure, so invigorating were they to all the champions of good causes, but they were words still, and seemed to proceed from some upper region of impersonal mind. They expressed convictions, feelings, desires, but there was lack of blood in them. They seemed made of air; there was soul behind them, but not as much body as many wished. In a word, all the ideal elements were present. He was a man who believed, felt, hoped, had vast resources of faith, but was a thinker more than an actor. Thinking is indeed doing, yet not in the same sphere of achievement.

Emerson recognized the limitations of genius. "Life is a scale of degrees," he says in the lecture on the "Uses of Great Men."

Between rank and rank of our great men are wide intervals. Mankind have in all ages attached themselves to a few persons who, either by the quality of that idea they embodied, or by the largeness of their reception, were entitled to the position of leaders and lawgivers.... With each new mind a new secret of nature transpires; nor can the Bible be closed until the last great man is born.... We cloy of the honey of each peculiar greatness. Every hero becomes a bore at last.... We balance one man with his opposite, and the health of the state depends on the see-saw.

Emerson looks forward to the time when all souls shall lie open to the heavenly influx, and he regards greatness as an earnest of that possibility. What disappointments he must have felt as he was forced to turn away from people who should have been saints and heroes, but were none! What bitter moments he must have known when he stretched out his arms to welcome a goddess and embraced only a cloud! But his expectations continued eager; no feature betrayed evidence that these practical refutations of his theory had effect on his heart.

Whether Emerson's constant belief in the Over-soul, his stubborn theism, his persuasion of an immanent God, was an advantage or a disadvantage to his philosophical view of the universe may be doubted. On the one hand, we cannot question the fact that he owed to it his enthusiastic faith in the substantial unity of creation, his optimism, his assurance of future progress, his confidence in man, his moral earnestness, his elevation of soul, his buoyancy of spirit, his forwardness in all endeavors after reform. On the other hand, it can hardly be denied that it led him to take some things for granted, diverted his mind from the unprejudiced observation of phenomena, prevented his rendering full justice to the scientific method, was the cause of wide aberrations in his estimates of human character, and of a curious onesidedness in his judgments on human condition.

Emerson was always profoundly religious, at heart a supernaturalist. The blood of centuries of pious ancestors was in his veins. His soul was uppermost, not his intellect nor his heart. He was a closet man, a minister at the altar. True, he rejected every form of the religious sentiment, and moved with entire freedom among dogmas however expressed in word or in rite. Every attempt at giving voice to spiritual emotion was disagreeable to him.

I like a church; I like a cowl;
I like a prophet of the soul;
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles;
Yet not for all his faith can see
Would I that cowled churchman be.

Theology had fallen from him like a shroud. He would not venture any definition of the spiritual laws. Doctrine had become faith; prayer was changed into aspiration; the speechless utterance was the only one he cordially listened to. But faith he held fast; aspiration he cherished; the inarticulate language of the eternal was ever in his ears.

Ever and anon would come a burst of conviction. "Oh, my brothers, God exists!" he cries in an ecstasy of emotion. Some years ago Emerson seemed fascinated by the inductive method, so that some of his admirers thought he would become a convert to physical science. But the bent of his nature asserted itself, and he pursued the deductive system as before. His passion for "First Truths," as they were called, was irresistible. He could not abandon the philosophy of intuition, and all his studies—comprehensive, profound, and original as they were,—his insatiable thirst for knowledge, his inordinate appetite for details of fact, incidents, anecdotes, gleanings from literature of every kind, were subservient to this.

Emerson's serenity is often spoken of as evidence of the power of his religious faith. It may allow of this construction, but it may be accounted for on other and different grounds which lie nearer at hand and proceed immediately from more obvious sources. How far may a long ancestral experience in devout meditations, practices, longings, worked into the system and producing a sedate, calm, interior temperament, go in explaining that almost imperturbable tranquillity? The piety of his forefathers was so genuine that it drove him from the church of his adoption, and rendered another calling sacred. Their descendant exhibited the same saintliness which they possessed but in a different fashion. And he was probably saintlier than they were, because he was their child. His brothers had the same characteristic of equanimity by virtue of the same parentage. His brother William, whom I knew intimately in New York, showed in his daily life a similar dignity, and tradition reports the same of Charles. It was the perfect fruitage of centuries of heavenly-minded men, not the peculiarity of an individual soul.