And here we meet him on his philosophy of words. A word, according to St. Thomas, should be the adæquatio rei et intellectus, for a word is really the symbol and articulation of truth. Where words convey no clear or precise idea to the mind they are virtually false. The terminology of Emerson falls even below Carlyle’s in obscurity. What does he mean by the one-soul? What by compensation? What by fate and necessity? Explica terminos is the command of logic and reason; yet he maunders on in vague and extravagant speech, using terms which it is very probable he himself only partly or arbitrarily understands. He is not master of his own style. His own words hurry him along. This fatal bondage to style spoils his best thoughts. He seems to aim at striking phrases and ends in paradox. His very attempt to strengthen and compress his sentences weakens and obscures his meaning. The oracular style does not carry well. He is happiest where he does not don the prophetic or poetical mantle. When we get a glimpse of his shrewd character, he is as gay as a lark and sharp as a fox. He muffles himself in transcendentalism, but fails to hide his clear sense, which he cannot entirely bury or obfuscate. It seems strange to us that such a mind could be permanently influenced by the fantasies of Swedenborg, whom he calls a mystic, but who, very probably, was a madman. The pure mysticism of the Catholic Church is not devoid of what to those who have not the light to read it may seem to wear a certain air of extravagance, which, apparently, would be no objection to Emerson; but it is kept within strict rational bounds by the doctrinal authority of the church. We do not suppose that Emerson ever thought it worth his while to study the mystic or ascetic theology of the church, though here and there in his writings he refers to the example of saints, and quotes their sayings and doings. But it must be a strange mental state that passively admits the wild speculations of Swedenborgianism with its gross ideas of heaven and its fanciful interpretations of Scripture. Besides, Emerson clearly rejects the divinity of Jesus Christ, which is extravagantly (if we may use the expression) set forth in Swedenborgianism, to the exclusion of the Father and the Holy Ghost. He is, or was, a Unitarian, and his allusions to our Blessed Lord have not even the reverence of Carlyle.
Naturalism, as used in the sense of the Vatican decrees, is the proper word to apply to the Emersonian teaching. He has the Yankee boastfulness, materialistic spirit, and general laudation of the natural powers. His transcendentalism has few of the spiritual elements of German thought. He does not believe in contemplation, but stimulates to activity. In his earlier essays he seemed pantheistic, but his last book (Society and Solitude) affirmed his doubt and implicit denial of immortality. He appears to be a powerful personality, for he has certainly influenced many of the finer minds of New England, and, no doubt, he leads a noble and intellectual life. His exquisite æstheticism takes away the grossness of the results to which his naturalistic philosophy leads, and it is with regret that we note in him that intellectual pride which effectually shuts his mind even to the gentlest admonitions and enlightenments of divine grace.
It is a compliment to our rather sparse American authorship and scholarship that England regards him as the typical American thinker and writer. We do not so regard him ourselves, for his genius lacks the sturdy American originality and reverent spirit. But Emerson made a very favorable impression upon Englishmen when he visited their island, and he wrote the best book on England (English Traits) that, perhaps, any American ever produced. The quiet dignity and native independence of the book charmed John Bull, who was tired of our snobbish eulogiums of himself and institutions. Emerson met many literary men, who afterward read his books and praised his style. He has the air of boldness and the courage of his opinions. Now and then he invents a striking phrase which sets one a-thinking. He has also in perfection the art of quoting, and his whole composition betokens the artist and scholar.
There is a high, supersensual region, imagination, fantasy, or soul-life, in which he loves to disport, and to which he gives the strangest names. One grows a little ashamed of what he deems his own unimaginativeness when he encounters our philosopher “bestriding these lazy-pacing clouds.” He wonders at the “immensities, eternities, and fates” that seem to exert such wondrous powers. When Emerson gets into this strain he quickly disappears either in the clouds or in a burrow, according to the taste and judgment of different readers. There is often a fine feeling in these passages which we can understand yet not express. Sublime they are not, though obscurity may be considered one of the elements of sublimity. They are emotional. Emerson belongs rather to the sensualistic school; at least, he ascribes abounding power to the feelings, and, in fact, he is too heated and enthusiastic for the coldness and calmness exacted by philosophical speculation. Many of his essays read like violent sermons; and his worst ones are those in which he attempts to carry out a ratiocination. He is dictatorial. He announces but does not prove. He appears at times to be in a Pythonic fury, and proclaims his oracles with much excitement and contortion. It is impossible to analyze an essay, or hold on to the filmy threads by which his thoughts hang together. It is absurd to call him a philosopher who has neither system, clearness of statement, nor accuracy of thought.
It is a subject of gratulation that Emerson, who has been before New England for the past half-century, has wielded a generally beneficial influence. With his powers and opportunities he might have done incalculable harm; but the weight of his authority has been thrown upon the side of general morality and natural development of strength of character. We know, of course, how little merely natural motives and powers avail toward the building up of character; but it is not against faith to hold that a good disposition and virtuous frame of mind may result from purely natural causes. He has preached the purest gospel of naturalism, shrinking at once from the bold and impious counsellings of Goethe and from the muscularity of Carlyle. He has given us, in himself, glimpses of a noble character, and his ideals have been lofty and pure. New England could not have had a better apostle, humanly and naturally speaking. Its cultivated and rational minds turned in horror and disgust from its rigid Calvinism, its outré religious frenzies, and its sordid and prosaic life. They found a voice and interpreter in Emerson. He marks the recoil from unscriptural, irrational, and unnatural religion.
Puritanism, always unlovely, despotic, and gloomy, began to lose its hold even upon the second generation of the Puritans. Its life will never be thoroughly revealed to the sunshiny Catholic mind. Perhaps its ablest exponent was Nathaniel Hawthorne, who, in the Scarlet Letter, revealed its possibilities and, in fact, actualities of hideousness. We have no fault to find with any elements of stern self-control or ascetic character that it might develop, but its effect on the intellect was darkening and crippling. The whole Puritan exodus from England was a suppressed and blinding excitement. The rebound from their harsh and unbending discipline was terrific. The frowning-down of all amusement, the irritating espionage over private life, the high-strung religious enthusiasm which it was necessary to simulate if not feel, the abnormal development of ministerial power and influence, and the baleful gloom of Calvinistic doctrine, were elements that had necessarily to be destroyed, or they would madden a nation. They could no more endure, if it were possible to extirpate them, than could a colony of rabid dogs. Human nature, as created by God, tends to preserve the primal type. It asserts its functions, its rights, its powers, and its aptitudes. After a century, in which religious intolerance ruled New England with a rod of iron, the long-pent-up storm burst with indescribable fury and scattered orthodoxy to the four winds. The people breathed more freely; the atmosphere cleared; there was a healthy interchange of sentiment. The predominance of public-school education, combining with the multiplication of books, developed that crude and half-formed culture which has characterized New England to the present day. The best-educated portion of the Union, filled with all the insolence of a little learning, aspired to rule the nation, and succeeded. Its ideas were zealously propagated. Wherever a Yankee settled he planted all New England around him. The peddler did not need religion, but the philosopher did. The culture of æsthetics engaged some; others went off into Socinianism. The doctrines of Fourierism had charms for many, among whom was Emerson. He longed for an ideal life. The country was not leavened then, as now, by the solid thought and practice of Catholicity. The mystic radiance and grace of the Adorable Sacrament did not sweetly pervade the whole atmosphere of the land. Satan was busy and jubilant. The strangest and most eccentric forms of religion sprang up like rank mushroom growths, with neither beauty nor wholesome nutriment. It was then that Emerson’s call to a high manhood seemed to have the right ring in it. At least, it attracted and fixed the wandering attention of New England. For many a winter he lectured, speaking great words, the heroic wisdom of old Plutarch and the practical sense and insight of Montaigne. His fine scholarship won the scholars and his homely maxims charmed the farmers. It was well that in that dreary, chaotic period there was a brave and bold speaker who did not entirely despair of humanity, even when he and his companions had broken adrift from their anchorage in the rotten and worn-out systems of Protestant theology.
The grace of the faith has thus far escaped the Concord philosopher, but who shall speak of the ways of God? The theologian will solve you quickly all questions in his noble science, except questions upon the tract of grace. There he hesitates, for the most intimate and personal communications of God with the soul take place in the mystery of grace. Every man has his own tractatus de gratia written upon his own heart in the all-beautiful handwriting of God, sealing us, as St. Paul says, and writing upon us the mark that distinguishes us as his beloved. It is the miserable consequence of the New England system of early education, which inheres in a man’s very spirit, that it perversely misrepresents the Catholic Church. It is simply astounding how little Americans know about our divine faith. They have never deemed it worth their while to examine it, taking it for granted that all that is said against it is true. We remember, as a boy, reading Peter Parley’s histories, which were very popular in New England, and not a page was free from some misrepresentation of the church. Emerson classes “Romanism” with a half-dozen absurd theories; which goes to show that he has not even reached that point of culture which, according to its advocates, understands and embraces all the great creeds of humanity, in their best and most universal truth.
Mr. Emerson is now in the sere and yellow leaf, and it is to be feared that his intellectual pride, and that nauseating flattery which weak-minded people assiduously pay to men of great intellectual attainments, have left in him a habit of vanity which is fatal to truth. We have known very able men who were prevented from seeing the truth of Catholicity by the dense clouds of incense that their admirers continually wafted before their shrines. The fulness of divine faith which he lacks, and for which he seems mournfully to cry out, is in the happy possession of the humblest child of the Catholic religion; not, as he would think, merely instinctive or the result of education, but living and logical, the gift and grace of the Holy Ghost. Emerson is no theologian, though once a Protestant minister, which fact, however, would not argue much for his theology. But he has a heroic and poetic mind whose native strength manifests itself even in the very eccentric orbit through which it passes.
PAPAL ELECTIONS.
III.
In view of the sad affliction which has so recently befallen the church in the demise of Pope Pius IX.—now of happy memory—we shall preface this article on papal elections with a brief account of the ceremonies that follow upon the death of a Sovereign Pontiff.