the moods of the soul But these moods also are finite and transient; where shall we look then for Reality? Nowhere but in the soul itself can it be found. We have described life as a flux of moods, but we must not forget there is that in us which is permanent and unchangeable. This unchanging principle is revealed to us by consciousness, and by it we are identified, now with the infinite God, now with the flesh of the body. So we may look upon ourselves from two distinct points of view; from the first, we are seen to be the absolute and unchanging God, from the second, we seem identified with perishable matter. "In our more correct writing, we give to this generalization the name of Being, and thereby confess that we have arrived as far as we can go. Suffice it for the joy of the universe, that we have not arrived at a wall, but at interminable oceans." SUBJECT OR THE ONE." It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery we have made, that we exist. That discovery is called the Fall of Man. Ever afterwards we suspect our instruments. We have learned that we do not see directly, but mediately, and that we have no means of correcting these colored and distorted lenses which we are, or of computing the amount of their errors. Perhaps these subject-lenses have a creative power; perhaps there are no objects. Once we lived in what we saw, now, the rapaciousness of this new power, which threatens to absorb all things, engages us. Nature, art, persons, letters, religions, objects, successively tumble in, and God is but one of its ideas. Nature and literature are subjective phenomena; every evil and every good thing is a shadow which we cast. The great and crescent self, rooted in absolute nature, supplants all relative existence, and ruins the kingdom of mortal friendship and love. . . The soul is not twin-born, but the only begotten, and though revealing itself as a child in time, child in appearance, is of a fatal and universal power, admitting no co-life. Every day, every act, betrays the ill-concealed deity. We believe in ourselves as we do not believe in others. We permit all things to ourselves, and that which we call sin in others, is experiment for us. It is an instance of our faith in ourselves, that men never speak of crime as lightly as they think: or, every man thinks a latitude safe for him self, which is nowise to be indulged to another. The act looks very differently on the inside and on the outside; in its quality, and in its consequences. Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him, or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles: it is an act quite easy to be contemplated, but in its sequel it turns out to be a horrible jangle and confounding of all relations. . . . Inevitably does the universe wear our color, and every object fall successively into the subject itself. The subject exists, the subject enlarges; all things, sooner or later, fall into place. As I am, so I see; use what language we will, we can never say any thing but what we are; Hermes, Cadmus, Columbus, Newton, Bonaparte, are the mind's ministers." CONCLUSION." Illusion, Temperament, Succession, Surface, Surprise, Reality, Subjectiveness,-these are the threads in the loom of time, these are the lords of life." First we wake up to a full conviction of the real existence of the outworld; this is Illusion. Then we recognize that we see the outworld only according to the constitution of our natures, and find that much we considered real was a deception aris ing from our Temperament. Here com mences the emancipation of the soul from the illusions of sense, here commences the doubt whether nature outwardly exists. After this, we find in ourselves a law of consecutive changes, which unlocks new mysteries, showing us more clearly that we create the outworld and then deceive ourselves by supposing our own creation to have an outward existence; this is Succession. Then comes the rule of life. If these things are mere appearances, they are at least appearances, and are real to us; let us therefore live in appearances, skate on them, but never again allow ourselves to be involved in them; this is Surface. But always, whatever rule of life we may form for ourselves, the soul intervenes; new appearances, new forms, spring up, unexpectedly to ourselves, and the rule of life is found to be futile; this is Surprise. This intervention of the soul reveals to us the fact that we are the absolute God; this is Reality. After this, the full truth flashes upon us, that we are not only God, but also nature, that God and nature are but aspects of the individual soul; this is Subjectiveness. V. Such appears to be the meaning and connection of Mr. Emerson's Essay on Experience. The other essays contain the same thoughts, the same general material, expressed in a different manner. We do not conceive it necessary to enter into any general appreciation of the system; its partial and inadequate character is manifest, and its errors expose themselves. We have called this system Transcendentalism; but only by a gross abuse of language. Idealism and Transcendentalism are very different from the doctrine we have been examining; and we regret that our misapplication of terms has been rendered necessary by the popular usage. We shall take occasion to speak farther of this matter in a future article. A FRAGMENT. "All truth is beautiful, but not all beauty Made worship-leads the absorbed and restless soul Mr. Tennyson, in a poem, exquisitely wrought in many of its parts, entitled the Palace of Art, has represented the final and utter loathing brought over a Soul, who, building herself a splendid structure, adorned with every thing grand and beautiful in nature, and stored with all forms of knowledge and art, had shut herself in from God and men to a solitary contemplation of these fair things, and to a still life of intellectual pride forever feeding upon itself. In the following poem, written several years since, something of the same moral is involved-that neither natural beauty in all objects of the universe, nor the highest knowledge, which is the growth and manifestation of intellectual beauty, is sufficient to satisfy an immortal mind. Yet thousands, unhappily always the brightestminded among men, have made this fatal error-lived in a sole realm of unbounded riches, and died miserably poor. It may be added, though it can hardly be necessary-as the two poems are, in structure and conduct, so entirely different-that this piece was written before the Palace of Art was published in this country, and before the writer had ever seen it. * DARKNESS was in my heart. The shadows of many sorrows lay upon my soul. The spirits I had summoned were powerless to aid me. "Must it be so ?" I said; "shall the last of the race of Erdolph, whose years have passed in vigils and sufferings, be ever baffled thus ? What is life to me-what death? Behold! the bubbles may rise, and sink again, on the Great Sea! but ever each shapeth itself anew, and comes freshly forth, again and again, to feed upon the sunlight. EXISTENCE keepeth little account of form, or place, or years; to have been is the eternal promise of to be. If my ministers can avail me not, what do I lingering farther among these present shapes, or counting any more the little moments? But I will consult the mightiest of them all, the spirit of the waters." ocean. * * So I went forth at the dead hour of night, and stood by the gray and melancholy Wild and mournful sighed the winds around, and a few trembling stars were imaged on the dark and rocking billows. Spirit of Ocean!" I cried aloud, "where dwelleth thy power and the glory of thy presence? By my magic words and fearful spell, I bid thee conduct my spirit to thy shadowy court." So I uttered the magic words and the fearful spell above the troubled waters. A tremulous light, swayed to and fro, advanced over the deep, and a voice of strange utterance said, "follow the spirit-torch wheresoe'er it lead thee." Suddenly my burden of clay became ethereal, and, a bodiless consciousness, I followed far along the billows the waving light and the weird voice, and entered the depths of ocean. A clear and limitless vision was given me to behold all things; and presently I saw that from the shadow of night we had emerged where sunlight lay upon the deep. Beautiful, unutterably strange and beautiful, were the hues and forms amid the green waters. All around glanced the colors of the sunbow amid groves of coral and crystal halls, and shapes of exceeding loveliness moved through them by the light of their own brightness. It was a world of life. The emerald and ruby rocks were spangled with waving stars; on the sea-forest boughs swung crescent moons; strange, glittering creatures moved habitant in the sparry caves; and all throughout lived a slumbrous melody, like the dying tones of an organ. Death, too, had been there. The pebbly bed was strewed with the wrecks of navies. Uncounted treasures of diamonds and gold lay unhoarded; helmets and swords rested motionless where they fell; and all among the coral groves were scattered the bones of the dead, white and smoothand it was seen, where the maiden lay locked in her lover's arms, by her long hair flowing in threads of amber. Still glided on that guiding light, and louder and sweeter grew that melody of Ocean. Then uprose before me, yet afar, a vast and caverned concave. Crystal were the pillars thereof, gems and pearls were scattered on its pave, and the fretted roof blazed with the diamonds of a world. There were born those solemn harmonies-there moved forms of light, and faces, indistinct but of sad and spiritual beauty, looked forth by the shining columns. Yet nearer came I; and I saw, far within and dim with templed twilight, a throne of ocean-stone, rising with many gleaming steps, and adorned with many rare and marvelous things. Then unembodied voices, I knew not whence, spoke to my spirit. Why, then, of us seekest thou Pain knowing no cure, THIRD VOICE. Hast thou learned all earth's wisdom That thou seek'st the green ocean To win for thee more? That knowledge is sorrow, To tints ever new? But beauty is fleeting As sound on the wind, FOURTH VOICE. Or would'st thou escape from The woes of life's day- ALL THE VOICES. But if thou wilt not stay thy steps Then I looked, and above the shining throne uprose a shadowy and awful form. His presence darkened the green waters around, and the deep-born melodies grew still; and ever it was greater and more awful as I gazed upon it. I drew near, yet unfaltering, and a voice like a forest wind fell upon my ear; and to that voice I answered. Spirit of Ocean. Erdolph. What wouldst thou, child of sorrow? Spirit of Ocean. For I know That thou art mortal. Spirit of Ocean. Erdolph. Erdolph. Spirit of Ocean. Erdolph. Doth no sorrow fall Seek thou not to read From sphere to sphere, whose nature only One Spirit of Ocean. Spirit of Ocean. Erdolph. My love was in the Beautiful-adored, My early friend, my dear and earnest mother, Her whispers were my teachings, stirring more I had no life but as I lived in her; And she did seem to make all hues and forms, All sounds, all seasons, for my own delight. Bearing young leaves and flowers; the strong-soul'd summer Thou fed'st thy deathless nature! Not in vain Yet I grew "The beautiful," I said, "is of the mind: My thought makes all things lovely: lo! there are— Fields thrice more fair than ever nature shows To souls untaught, nor can the outward world Give any forms so fair as may arise |