[ [B] Reprinted from the Unitarian Review of May, 1888.
This man was a flame of fire. He was genius unalloyed by terrestrial considerations; a spirit lamp always burning. He had an overflow of nervous vitality, an excess of spiritual life that could not find vents enough for its discharge. As his figure comes before me it seems that of one who is more than half transfigured. His large head; his ample brow; his great, dark eyes; his "sable-silvered" beard and full moustache; his gray hair, thick and close on top, with the strange line of black beneath it, like a fillet of jet; his thin, piping, penetrating, tenuous voice, that trembled as it conveyed the torrent of thought; the rapid, sudden manner, suggesting sometimes the lark and sometimes the eagle; the small but sinewy body; the delicate hands and feet; the sensitive touch, feeling impalpable vibrations and detecting movements of intelligence within the folds of organization (they say he could tell the character of a great writer by holding a sealed letter from his hand),—all indicated a half-disembodied soul. His spoken addresses and written discourses confirm the impression.
I first met him at the meetings of the "Hook-and-Ladder,"[C] a ministerial club of which we both were members. At the house of Thomas Starr King, in Boston, he read a sermon on the supremacy of the spiritual element in character, which impressed me as few pulpit utterances ever did, so fine was it, so subtle, yet so massive in conviction. Illustrations that he used stay by me now, after the lapse of more than forty years. I next heard him in New Bedford, at the installation of Charles Lowe, when, in ill-health and feeble, he gave, in substance, the discourse on Materialism, afterwards published in the volume on "Immortal Life." It struck me then as exceedingly able; and it derived force from the intense earnestness of its delivery, as by one who could look into the invisible world, and could speak no light word or consult transient effects. Many years later, I listened, in New York, to his lectures on Greek ideas, the keenest interpretation of the ancient myths, the most profound, luminous, sympathetic, I have met with. He had the faculty of reading between the lines, of apprehending the hidden meaning, of setting the old stories in the light of universal ideas, of lighting up allusions. The lecture on Prometheus I remember as especially radiant and inspiring; but they were all remarkable for positive suggestions of a very noble kind.
[C] We copy from a private letter the following account of the origin of this club and of its grotesque name, which has lost, alas! its significance to the younger generation. "In the year 1844 (I think it was) a few of us young ministers formed a club, including Charles Brigham, Edward Hale, John Weiss, with one or two elders, as Dr. Hedge and, later, O. B. Frothingham, Starr King, W. R. Alger, William B. Greene, and others. We went long without a name, in spite of my urgent appeals as Secretary, till one fine day, at George R. Russell's house in West Roxbury, in an after-dinner frolic, Weiss turned the garden-engine hose upon a fellow-member and drenched him from head to foot; upon which escapade it was unanimously agreed to call ourselves the 'Hook-and-Ladder,' by which name the memory of it is fondly kept among us to this day. A similar older fraternity had gone by the name of the 'Railroad Association,' and, in imitation, when it was proposed to borrow a title from some like line of industry we, on this sudden whim, chose the fire-department."
His genius was eminently religious. Not, indeed, in any customary fashion, nor after any usual way. He belonged to the Rationalists, was a Protestant of an extreme type, an avowed adherent of the most "advanced" views, a speaker on the Free Religious platform, a writer for the Massachusetts Quarterly, and for the Radical. His was a purely natural, scientific, spiritual faith, unorthodox to the last degree,—logically, historically, critically, sentimentally so,—so on principle and with fixed purpose. The accepted theory of religion excited his indignation, his scorn, his amazement, and his mirth. He could brook no dogmatic limitations, even of the most liberal sect, but went on and on, past all barriers, facing all adversaries, confronting every difficulty, and resting only when there was nothing more to discover. He had an agonized impatience to know whatever was to be known, to get at the ultimate data of assurance. Nothing less would satisfy him. His cup of joy was not full till he could touch the bottom. Then it overflowed, and there was glee as of a strong swimmer who is sure of his tide. His exultation is almost painful, as he welcomes fact after fact, feeling more and more positive, with each new demonstration of science, that the advent of certainty was by so much nearer. Evidence that to most minds seemed fatal to belief was, in his sight, confirmatory of it, as rendering its need more clear and more imperious. "We need be afraid of nothing in heaven or earth, whether dreamt of or not in our philosophy." "The position of theistic naturalism entitles it not to be afraid of all the scientific facts that can be produced." "There is dignity in dust that reaches any form, because it eventually betrays a forming power, and ceases to be dust by sharing it." "It is a wonder to me that scholars and clergymen are so skittish about scientific facts." "We owe a debt to the scientific man who can show how many moral customs result from local and ethnic experiences, and how the conscience is everywhere capable of inheritance and education. He cannot bring us too many facts of this description, because we have one fact too much for him; namely, a latent tendency of conscience to repudiate inheritance and every experience of utility, to fly in its face with a forecast of a transcendental utility that supplies the world with its redeemers, and continually drags it out of the snug and accurate adjustment of selfishness to which it arrives." There is a great deal to the same purpose. In fact, Mr. Weiss cannot say enough on this head. He accepts the doctrine of evolution in its whole length and breadth. "Of what consequence is it whence the living matter is derived? We are not appalled at the possibility that organic matter may be made out of non-living, or, more properly, inorganic matter. We are nerved for such a result, whether it occur in the laboratory or in nature, by the conviction that the spiritual functions are no more imperilled by using matter in any way, than that the Creator hazarded his existence by originating matter in some way to be used by himself and by us." "Science does me this inestimable benefit of providing a universe to support my personal identity, my moral sense, and my feeling that these two functions of mind cannot be killed. Its denials, no less than its affirmations, set free all the facts I need to make my body an expression of mental independence. Hand-in-hand with science I go, by the steps of development back to the dawn of creation; and, when there, we review all the forces and their combinations that have helped us to arrive, and both of us together break into a confession of a force of forces."
This cordial sympathy with science, this absence of all savor of a polemical spirit, this hearty welcoming of every fact of anatomy and chemistry, is very noble and inspiring. It is very wise, too, though the noble, hearty side was alone attractive to him. He had in view no other, being a single-minded lover of truth. But, nevertheless, he could not have adopted a more politic course. For thus he propitiated the scepticism of the age, struck in with the prevailing current, disarmed opposition, and erected his own principles on the eminence which scientific men have raised and which they cannot build too high for his purposes. He doubles on his pursuers, and fairly flanks his foes. This throws the labor of refuting him on the idealists, who may not care to become responsible for his positions, and may demur to conclusions he arrives at, while they cannot but applaud his general aims, and wish they could give positive assent to all his specific doctrines. There was always this discrepancy between his sentiment and his logic; but it came out most conspicuously in his elaborate arguments.
The burden of his exposition was the existence of an ideal sphere, quite distinct from visible phenomena; facts of consciousness attesting personality, a moral law, an intelligent cause, an active conscience, a living heart; order, beauty, harmony, humanity, self-forgetfulness, self-denial. As he states it:
I claim, against a strictly logical empirical method, three classes of facts: first, the authentic facts of the Moral Sense, whenever it appears as the transcender of the ripest average utility; second, the facts of the Imagination, as the anticipator of mental methods by pervading everything with personalty, by imputing life to objects, or by occasional direct suggestion; third, the facts of the Harmonic Sense, as the reconciler of discrete and apparently sundered objects, as the prophet and artist of number and mathematical ratio, as the unifier of all the contents of the soul into the acclaim which rises when the law of unity fills the scene. Upon these facts, I chiefly sustain myself against the theory which, when it is consistently explained, derives all possible mental functions from the impacts of objectivity.
If Mr. Weiss had stopped with this general thesis, he would probably have carried most Rationalists, certainly the mass of Transcendentalists, with him. They would have been only too glad to welcome so clear and brilliant a champion. But he insisted on gathering up these conceptions into two points of doctrine—God and Immortality. On these points his arguments become strained, and too subtle for ordinary minds. Indeed, many will be inclined to suspect his whole exposition, which would be a misfortune of a very grave character. Mr. Emerson avoided all definite assertion of personality carried beyond the limits of individuality in the present state of existence. Mr. Weiss is more daring, and proclaims a God who arranges creation as it is, and an immortality that drops what to most people constitutes their highly valued possessions—namely, their "animalities" of various kinds. What will most men think of a God who "takes his chances," who "in planet-scenery and animal life is at his play," who puts up in his divine laboratory "curare and strychnine," and cannot "recognize the word disaster," though he makes the thing? To how many will an immortality be conceivable that can "belong only to immutable ideas," that only "springs from the vital necessity of their own souls," that is a clinging "to the breast of everlasting law"?
To tell the truth, the arguments themselves for this rather questionable result of idealism are somewhat unconvincing, not to say fanciful. They are chiefly of a dogmatic kind, that may be met with counter affirmations, equally valid. Many of them are stated in a symbolical or poetical or illustrative manner, the most dangerous of all methods. Examples of this might be multiplied indefinitely. I had marked several for confirmation, but they were too long for quotation. One instance of his mode of reasoning may be given[D]: