Is not this a survival of the puritanic spirit, with its brooding mysticism, its retributive predestination, its sense of the judgment to come? It was said of Carlyle that he was a Calvinist who had lost his creed. May not the same be said of Hawthorne? The old New England theology had in him become attenuated to a mere film, but through it all may we not see the old New England conscience?
Doubtless there is much of this transmitted influence. Hawthorne himself insisted upon it. Speaking of “the stern and black-browed Puritan ancestors,” he said, “Let them scorn me as they will, strong traits of their nature have intertwined themselves with mine.”
But it is possible to exaggerate such likenesses. In Hawthorne’s case there is danger of argument in a circle. We say that there is something in Hawthorne’s imagination, in its sombre mysticism, in its brooding sense of destiny, which is like that of the spirit of the inhabitants of Salem and Boston in the old days when they walked through the narrow streets and through the shadowy woodland ways pondering the fatal sequences of life.
But how do we see these old Puritans? We see them through Hawthorne’s eyes. His imagination peoples for us the old houses. Was Hawthorne’s genius tinged with Puritanism, or are our conceptions of the Puritan character largely Hawthornesque? It is not necessary to argue this matter; it might be better to answer “Yes” to both questions.
It is the privilege of a creative genius to imprint his own features upon his forbears. It is difficult here to determine which is cause and which is effect. How marvelously Rembrandt gets the spirit of the Dutch Burgomeisters! It was fortunate for him that he had such subjects,—stalwart men with faces that caught the light so marvelously. Yes, but had it not been for Rembrandt, who would have told us that these Dutch gentlemen were so picturesque?
The subject of a good artist is accurately figured; the subject of a great artist is transfigured. We cannot separate the historic reality from the transfiguring light.
But however Hawthorne may have been influenced by his Puritan inheritance, it would be hard to find one whose habitual point of view was further removed from what we are accustomed to call the “New England conscience.” It is the characteristic of that type of conscience that it has an ever-present and sometimes oppressive sense of personal responsibility. It is militant and practical rather than mystical. To it evil is not something to be endured but something to be resisted. If there is a wrong it must be righted, and with as little delay as possible.
The highest praise a Puritan could give his pastor was that he was “a painful preacher.” Jonathan Mitchell, writing of the beginnings of the church in Cambridge, says that the people of Cambridge “were a gracious, savory-spirited people, principled by Mr. Sheperd, liking an humbling, heart-breaking ministry and spirit.”
The Puritan theology was based on predestination, but the Puritan temper was not fatalistic. When that latter-day Puritan, Lyman Beecher, was expounding the doctrines of the divine decrees, one of his sons asked him, “Father, what if we are decreed to be lost?” The answer was, “Fight the decrees, my boy!”
The Calvinistic spirit was exactly opposite to the fatalistic acquiescence which shifts the responsibility from the creature to the Creator. To be sure the fall of man took place a long time ago, but we cannot say that it was none of our business. It was not an hereditary misfortune to be borne with fortitude; it was to be assumed as our personal guilt. “Original sin” means real sin. Adam sinned as the typical and representative man, and every man became a sinner. No individual could plead an alibi. The “conviction of sin” was not the acquiescence in a penalty,—it was the heartbreaking consciousness of the “exceeding sinfulness of sin.”