Now, eternity is above time, and above the world of time, consequently above nature. Catholicity, by the very force of the term, must include all truth, and therefore the truth of the supernatural as well as of the natural. But Mr. Emerson denies the supernatural, and does not, of course, even profess to have any knowledge that transcends nature. How, then, can he pretend to have attained to catholic truth? He himself restricts nature to the external universe, which is phenomenal, and to soul, by which he means himself. But are there no phenomena without being or substance which appears or which shows itself in them? Is this being or substance the soul, or, in the barbarism he adopts, the ME? If so, the NOT-ME is only the phenomena of the ME, and of course identical with myself, as he implies in what he says of the "one man." Then in me, and emanating from me, are all men, and the whole of nature. How does he know this? Does he learn it from nature?
Of course, Mr. Emerson means not this, even if his various utterances imply it. He uses the word creation, and we suppose he intends, notwithstanding his systematic views, if such he has, contradict it, to use it in its proper sense. Then he must hold the universe, including, according to his division, nature and soul, has been created, and if created, it has a creator. The creator must be superior, above nature and soul, and therefore in the strictest sense of the word supernatural; and as reason is the highest faculty of the soul, the supernatural must also be supra-rational.
Does the creator create for a purpose, for an end? and if so, what is that end or purpose, and the medium or means of fulfilling it, whether on his part or on the part of the creature? Here, then, we have the assertion of a whole order of truth, very real and very important to be known, which transcends the truth Mr. Emerson professes to have, and which is not included in it. We say again, then, that he has not attained to catholicity, and we also say that, by the only method he admits, he cannot attain to it. How can he pretend to have attained to catholicity, and that he has already a truth more universal than Christianity reveals, when he must confess that without the knowledge of a supernatural and supra-rational truth he cannot explain his origin or end, or know the conditions of his existence, or the means of gaining his end?
Mr. Emerson says, as we have quoted him,
"Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy."
Alway it asketh, asketh,
And each answer is a lie.
There is here a grand mistake. If he had said the Creator instead of creation, there would have been truth and great propriety in the author's assertion. Nature—and we mean by nature the whole created order—excites us to ask many very troublesome questions, which nature is quite incompetent to answer. The fact that nature is created, proves that she is, both as a whole and in all her parts, dependent, not independent, and therefore does not and cannot suffice for herself. Unable to suffice for herself, she cannot suffice for the science of herself; for science must be of that which is, not of that which is not.
Mr. Emerson, we presume, struck with the narrowness and inconsistencies of all the religions he had studied, and finding that they are all variable and transitory in their forms, yet thought that he also discovered something in them, or underlying them all, which is universal, invariable, and permanent, and which they are all honest efforts of the great soul to realize. He therefore came to the conclusion that the sage can accept none of these narrow, variable, and transitory forms, and yet can reject none of them as to the great, invariable, and underlying principles, which in fact is all they have that is real or profitable. To distinguish between the transient and permanent in religion was the common aim of the Boston movement from 1830 to 1841, when we ourselves began to turn our own mind, though very timidly and at a great distance, toward the church. Mr. Emerson, Miss Margaret Fuller, A. Bronson Alcott, and Mr. Theodore Parker regarded the permanent elements of all religions as the natural patrimony or products of human nature. The present writer differed from them, by ascribing their origin to supernatural revelation made to our first parents in the garden, universally diffused by the dispersion of the race, and transmitted to us by the traditions of all nations. Following out this view, the grace of God moving and assisting, we found our way to the Catholic Church, in which the form and the invariable and permanent principle, or rather, the form growing out of the principle, are inseparable, and are fitted by the divine hand to each other.
The others, falling back on a sort of transcendental illuminism, sunk into pure naturalism, where such of them as are still living, and a whole brood of young disciples who have sprung up since, remain, and, like the old Gnostics, suppose themselves spiritual men and women in possession of the secret of the universe. There was much life, mental activity, and honest purpose in the movement; but those who had the most influence in directing its course could not believe that any thing good could come out of Nazareth, and so turned their backs on the church. They thought they could find something deeper, broader, and more living than Christianity, and have lost not only the transient, but even the permanent in religion.