speaks. Would you see God, see me; or, see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.'' 999 1 To the view of Emerson, therefore, Christ is not an exceptional person among men. He is one of a class; those, namely, who have lived and spoken from the soul which dwells consciously in us all. "When the gods come among men, they are not known. Jesus was not; Socrates and Shakespeare were not." 2 But this classification will not stand. For no exegesis can make out the religion of Christ to be only self-worship, or the God of the Christian Scriptures to be the same as that of Emerson and Spinoza. We have seen, in noticing Emerson's attitude towards all reforms and charities, to what opposite results the doctrine of Christ and that of the pantheist logically come. The God whose will Christ came to do is a Father, with the father's heart of pity and tenderness towards all his children; the God whom the pantheist would set up in his place, and persuade us to worship, is an eternal fate, which devours all things up. Emerson says, Believe in the god within yourself, and you shall live; Christ says, Whosoever believeth in me shall never die. Emerson says, Obey your own tendency and you shall be led into all truth; Christ says, I am the way, and the truth, and the life. Emerson says, Accept my speculation and it shall unsettle you in all things; Christ says, Take my yoke upon you and ye shall find rest to your soul.

Spirit of

the two

contrasted.

But some one may accuse me of injustice in representing that the spirit of Emerson's doctrine is just the opposite of the spirit of Christ; that he would unsettle and bewilder us, rather than lead us in a plain path, where our

1 Miscellanies, p. 125.

2 Essays, Vol. I., p. 28.

Emerson would unsettle all things.

souls shall be at peace. Yet here are his words, fully justifying all that I have said: "Lest I should mislead any when I have my head and obey my own whims, let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter. Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle anything true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts to me are sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back." Unlike Him who declared that he was the light of the world, Emerson here announces that he is a planet yet uncertain of its own orbit, and which rushes on, in obedience to an inward impulse, regardless alike of the past and the future.

thropist.

1

It may seem to some that I misrepresent Emerson, in saying that he is not a philanthropist, but, so No philan- far as consistent with his theory, a despiser of all acts of charity and beneficence among men. His own language shall decide whether I have misrepre sented him or not. "I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me, and to whom I do not belong. Your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold relief societies; though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb, and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar, which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold."2 As if these words were not enough, he again says, in one of his later works, "Leave

1 Essays, Vol. I., p. 289.

2 Ibid., pp. 45, 46.

Scorn of the masses.

this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are
rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and in-
fluence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled.
I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame,
drill, divide and break them up, and draw individuals out
of them. The worst of charity is, that the lives you are
asked to preserve are not worth preserving. Masses!
the calamity is the masses. I do not wish any mass at
all, but honest men only; lovely, sweet, accom-
plished women only; no shovel-handed, narrow-
brained, gin-drinking, million stockingers or laz-
zaroni at all. If government knew how, I should like to
see it check, not multiply the population. When it
reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will
be hailed as essential. Away with this hurrah of masses,
and let us have the considerate vote of single men, spoken
on their honor and their conscience. In old Egypt it was
established law, that the vote of a prophet be reckoned.
equal to a hundred hands. I think it was much under-
estimated."1 Certainly, this burst of misanthropy almost
rivals Carlyle. It is as undemocratic as the most violent
aristocrat could desire. It savors not of philanthropy, but
of that spirit of caste which would do a Brahman's heart
good. It is, in fact, whether consciously or not to the
author, a passionate rendering of Spinoza's language,
where he says, as one of the inferences from his panthe-
istic system, "The man who lives by reason endeavors as
much as possible not to be touched by pity or com-
passion." 2

In asserting, as I have, that Emerson confounds the

1 Conduct of Life, pp. 218, 219.

Ethics, Pt. IV., Prop. L., Coroll.

No moral distinctions.

bad with the good in morals, and sees only the same kind of sacredness in men as in the meanest animals, it may be said that I wrong him. But his own words shall judge between us. "I talked today with a pair of philosophers: I endeavored to show my good men that I love everything by turns, and nothing long; that I loved the centre, but doted on the superficies; that I loved man, if men seemed to me mice and rats; that I revered saints, but woke up glad that the old pagan world stood its ground, and died hard; that I was glad of men of every gift and nobility, but would not live in their arms." The same soul of nature, that is, which gives understanding to men, reveals itself in the small burrowing creatures; paganism is as good as Christianity while earnestly cultivated; the warrior who desolates a continent, may claim the same homage as the enlightener of a nation. A Cæsar and a Paul are alike noble, as judged by that philosophy which sees God in all action; but Emerson himself, whom this nobility fills with joy, is greater than all, and disdains familiar intercourse with that which he so admires, since the most sacred revelations of God cannot be from without, but are always from within.

Now a stranger, who should visit Emerson after canvassing the views which I have given, would expect to find him the veriest wild creature that was ever caged. But how agreeable, how exhilarating the surprise! better than He is the kindest, gentlest, simplest of men. These bad and hard utterances are not characteristic of him. They belong to the system he has em

Emerson

his theory.

1 Essays, Vol. II., p. 239.

braced, as he is forced to see; but the New England blood in him is too pure to welcome them. He for the most part avoids that side of pantheism which looks towards lawlessness and vice, and keeps rather to its spiritual side, which permits him to discourse so like a Christian mystic, if not in the exact language of Christianity. In nearly all his utterances he is benevolent, and true to our love of the beautiful and just in morals, owing to this great inconsistency. His practice is not in agreement with his theory, and therefore the two do not walk together. That theory, whose realized ultimate would be a social chaos, does not destroy in him a certain high-toned virtue, bred in the ancestral stock, which makes him the friend of order, of domestic purity, and of every grace of character that adorns either public or private life. Possibly some of those who feel the greatest repugnance to Emerson's doctrine, and who believe in a personal God, and one Master, even Christ, are quite as inconsistent with their creed as he, and that, too, far less to their credit, since they are made worse by that which makes him better. It is not honorable to men to disregard in practice a wise system of faith, but in view of Emerson's faith we certainly esteem him the more for saying, "A fool- tency recish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.”1 When Spinoza's landlady came to him, asking him to teach her his doctrine, he advised her to be content with the Christian faith, in which she had been bred up. And Emerson, as though valuing a spirit of sincere piety more

1 Essays, Vol. I., p. 50.

Inconsis

ommended.