Ralph Waldo Emerson [pp. 400-402]

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
Love of virtue for its own sake: "It does not ask
to dine nicely nor to sleep warm," he speaks with
great beauty. "Whenever a mind is simple," he
says again, "and receives a divine wisdom, then
old things pass away-means, teachers, texts, temples fall. Whence, then, this worship of the past?"
Now, to our mind, these principles are strangely
significant of the non-conservative, democratic,
anon provincial, spirit of our government soul and
its healthy body. We leave it to the reader.
Mr. Emerson is an orator. Whatever cooler reflection and self-investigation may teach, while we
are reading him, his point is carried. Were he required to rise and say, "I trust you not; you err!"
who would not feel the word choking him? If his
reason is, at times, turned aside by enthusiasm, the
fire-works around dazzle you, and inhibit your seeing of it. He is an eagle let loose from your hand;
you gaze on him as he soars aloft in the sky; you
follow him even when opposite the sun; and you
will follow him, not heeding your pain of neck nor
the bogs that you tread through! But, alas for him!
he rises too high for you at times; he is now a dim
speck on the clouds; your eyes water; your brain
reels; he is lost in the blue ether! But again he
descends; you have not followed; and though he
bear the snow of a higher clime on his head, though
he bear a leaf from another sphere, and bids you
have faith in his word, you can not give your heart!
You can sympathize with no such transcendental
voyage as that-proud soul I
But Mr. Emerson is not the cold intellectual of
the baser sort. He has that ennobling passion that
is so because it is of the mind; and as passion falls
short of this it is animal. His feelings and love of
humanity and his susceptibilities of nature join
with their parent, his intellect, in portraying those
sensuous images that glisten, like dew-drops beneath
the morning, in his pages. Let every young man
take to heart-they can do him no hurt-this, from
an Address to the Students of Theology at Cambridge:
" Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone;
to refuse the good models, even those most sacred in
the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or vail. Friends enough you will find,
who will hold up to your emulation Wesleys and
Oberlins, saints and prophets. Thank God for
these good men, but say,'I also am a man.' Imitation can not go above its model...
"Let us not aim at common degrees of merit.
Can we not leave to such as love it the virtue that
glitters for the commendation of society, and ourselves pierce the deep solitudes of absolute ability
and worth? We easily come up to the standard of
goodness in society. Society's praise can be cheaply
secured, and almost all men are content with those
easy merits; but the instant effect of conversing
with God, will be to put them away...
"In such high communion let us study the grand
strokes of rectitude-a bold benevolence and independence of friends-so that not the unjust wishes
VOL. X.-28
of those who love us shall impair our freedom; but
we shall resist, for truth's sake, the freest flow of
kindness, and appeal to sympathies far in advance.
And what is the highest form in which we know
this beautiful element? A certain solidity of merit
that has nothing to do with opinion, and which is
so essentially and manifestly virtue, that it is taken
for granted that the right, the brave, the generous
step will be taken by it, and nobody thinks of commending it. You would compliment a coxcomb
doing a good act; but you would not praise an
angel. The silence that accepts merit as the most
natural thing in the world is the highest applause."
As we have no room, in this paper, even to express our thoughts of Mr. Emerson, as we are enjoined from giving more than the most vague generalization of his principles, and, above all, as what
we say will probably be overskipped for the pearls
of his, we will copy one or two other extracts that
have charmed us.
From an Essay on Nature we give this excerpt:
"But in other hours nature satisfies the soul purely
by its loveliness, and without any mixture of corporeal benefit. I have seen the spectacle of morning from the hill-top over against my house, from
daybreak to sunrise, with emotions that an angel
might share. The long, slender bars of cloud float
like fishes in the sea of crimson light. From the
earth, as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. I
seem to partake its rapid transformations; the active
enchantment reaches my dust, and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind. How does Nature
deify us with a few and cheap elements! Give me health
and a day, and I will'make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria, the sunset and
moonrise my Paphos, and unimaginable realms of
faerie."
We envy not the man who does not answer, with
a tear, the appeal made to his mind by the following divine sentiments on LovE, whether he be a
"spooney," as we used to designate sensitive swains
at college, or something worse. Under his wand
this olden giant wakes to new life and beauty.
Nothing is trite to Emerson. He says: "What
fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any
passage betraying affection between two parties?
Perhaps we never saw them before, and never shall
nleet them again. But we see them exchange a
glance, or betray a deep emotion, and we are no
longer strangers. We understand them, and take
the warmest interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a lover. The earliest
demonstrations of complacency and kindness are
Nature's most winning pictures. It is the dawn of
civility and grace in the coarse and rustic. The
rude village boy teases the girls about the schoolhouse door; but to-day he comes running into the
entry, and meets one fair child arranging her satchel;
he holds her books to help her, and instantly it
seems to him as if she removed herself from him infinitely, and was a sacred precinct. Among the
throng of girls he runs rudely enough; but one
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