RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882)

Emerson was born in Boston on 25 May, 1803. His ancestry was not only Puritan but clerical; yet, as an indication how greatly conditions had changed since the seventeenth century, it may be mentioned that his father tended towards Unitarian views and that he at one time hoped to found a church which should have no written expression of creed or covenant. In 1811 this father died, leaving Mrs. Emerson with five young boys to bring up and with practically no money. Her task was the more difficult because she thought first of her sons' educations, and only afterwards of food and clothes; nevertheless, somehow she managed, the sons loyally helping as far as they could. Probably the influence she exerted can best be seen from a letter she wrote to Waldo just after he had entered Harvard, in answer to one in which he had described his new living quarters. "Everything respecting you is doubtless interesting to me," she said, "but your domestic arrangements the least of anything, as these make no part of the man or the character any further than he learns humility from his dependence on such trifles as convenient accommodations for his happiness. You, I trust, will rise superior to these little things, for though small indeed, they consume much time that might be appropriated to better purpose and far nobler pursuits." Emerson was to live very completely in the spirit of this counsel, but this did not immediately become apparent. He was graduated from Harvard in 1821, not at the head, but near the middle of his class, and was chosen class-poet only after seven others had declined the honor. There followed several years of school-teaching, and preparation for entrance into the ministry-he was "approbated to preach" in 1826—and a trip to the South necessitated by ill-health. In 1829 he was called to the Second Church of Boston, as the junior colleague of Henry Ware, and in the same year he married Miss Ellen Louisa Tucker, of Concord, New Hampshire. Emerson was now happily settled for his life's work, or so it seemed, for a brief space. But early in 1831 his wife died from tuberculosis, and a year and a half afterwards he was compelled to resign his pastorate. His reasons for this step were characteristic. For some time he had felt an increasing difficulty about prayer; his position required him to pray at certain stated times, but he could not pray sincerely unless he was in prayerful mood, and he could not command such a mood at will. He had likewise come to feel a difficulty about the Lord's Supper, regarding it as an oppressive symbolic rite which he could no longer administer without doing violence to his own convictions. He explained this to his congregation, concluding: "I have no hostility to this institution: I am only stating my want of sympathy with it. . . . That is the end of my opposition, that I am not interested in it." And when his congregation refused to follow him in this, he resigned. It was the courageous act of a sincere man, bound at any cost to preserve his integrity; or, to put it a little differently, it was the act of an individualist, sure that his most sacred duties were to himself.

The condition of Emerson's health in the fall of 1832 made travel advisable, and on Christmas day of this year he sailed for Malta. Thence he went to Sicily, Naples, Rome, Florence, and through France to England. He was chiefly anxious to encounter a great mind. He sought out Landor, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Carlyle all of them men whose writings had impressed him—but was disappointed. Carlyle disappointed him least, and this was the beginning of a long friendship between the two. But, on the whole, he came home (October, 1833) feeling that the work he had to do must be done independently and could best be done here. That work, which he now faced with renewed strength and hopefulness, was nothing less than the formulation of a new religion. It is enough to say here, concerning it, that it was to be a religion without forms, a religion setting free the inmost spirit of man, not binding the spirit down to the service of alien material symbols. It should be realized that Emerson was not alone in his great aspiration. In America as well as in Europe in the early nineteenth century there were men almost everywhere who felt that the fabric of society was rotten, that the old religion was helpless and well-nigh lifeless, and that, if men were to be saved from the death-like corruption of a materialized civilization given over wholly to the chase after wealth, salvation could come only through a new religion. But Emerson felt, as many others did not, that the new religion could not be forced, that it could be no sudden discovery, that it must be a growth, and that he must advance towards it through the gateway of ever-increasing self-knowledge.

In later years, indeed, he concluded that in modern life the school-aiding the individual to discover, to trust, and to develop his best self through the study of history, literature, and philosophy

-had come to take the place which religion had formerly occupied; but apparently when he returned from Europe he still hoped that he might find some congregation which would be willing to venture with him on a path of religious discovery which, whatever else it might come to mean, would certainly mean the disappearance of creeds and churches. For a time he preached here and there, where opportunity offered; but it was not long until he was forced to recognize that he could never find in the pulpit the freedom he needed. At the same time he began to give a few lectures, and so made the discovery that people would listen with gladness, even with enthusiasm, to whatever he might say from the lecture-platform, even though those same people would not tolerate him in their churches. It was a period when the lyceum, with its courses of lectures, was spreading throughout the country, as if providentially to give Emerson a means of untrammeled communication with people everywhere, and this determined the outward manner of his life from about 1835 until he became too old to endure the hardships of an extended winter lecture-tour. The fees from lectures for many years were small, but he had inherited a small income from his wife, and the total was usually sufficient for his needs, while he kept the independence which for him was an essential condition of existence. In 1834 he wrote in his Journal: “Henceforth I design not to utter any speech, poem, or book that is not entirely and peculiarly my work. I will say at public lectures and the like those things which I have meditated for their own sake and not for the first time with a view to that occasion." To this resolve he was true. And his method of giving form to his message was as much his own as its substance. Throughout his life he kept in his Journal a daily record of his thoughts and reading. As this material accumulated, he indexed it, gathering it together under general heads which served as the titles of his lectures. Thus his lectures were made, sometimes with the result that they had no very obvious coherency. And his essays were in turn compressed from the lectures.

In 1834 Emerson determined to take up his abode in Concord. At first he had quarters in the Old Manse, where Hawthorne later lived and wrote. In the following year he bought a house at the edge of the village, and married Miss Lydia Jackson, of Plymouth. And here he and his wife lived happily during the rest of their days. In the winters he was away, delivering his lectures. In the winter of 1847-1848 he made a second visit to England, and lectured there. In 1872 the Concord house burned, but was at once rebuilt, while Emerson made a third journey abroad. During his last years his mind gradually weakened, and he died at Concord on 27 April, 1882. His position as the greatest of American men of letters is uncontested and does not need to be insisted upon or justified here. Mr. John Jay Chapman's essay on him (reprinted in the later portion of this work) serves as an excellent commentary, and sufficiently explains Emerson's perennial value and significance.

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, 10
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for

seeing,

Then Beauty is its own excuse for being:
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask, I never knew:
But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
The self-same Power that brought me there
brought you.

EACH AND ALL2
LITTLE thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked
clown

Of thee from the hill-top looking down;
The heifer that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,
Deems not that great Napoleon
Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;

? Probably written in 1834 or soon thereafter; first published in Western Messenger, 1839.

On this green bank, by this soft stream, We set to-day a votive stone; 50 That memory may their deed redeem, When, like our sires, our sons are gone.