the optimism of the reason.107 The first stage is illustrated by Emerson's untiring insistence upon the beauty of nature; the second is seen in the conflict of will with things as they are,-a conflict foredoomed to failure; the third is found when we consider this immediate need of action in its relation to the great scheme of things. Optimism is still a matter of faith, but it is a faith founded upon reason. In his essay on "The Sovereignty of Ethics" Emerson writes: "Thus a sublime confidence is fed at the bottom of the heart that, in spite of appearances, in spite of malignity and blind self-interest living for the moment, an eternal, beneficent necessity is always bringing things right; and, though we should fold our arms,-which we cannot do, for our duty requires us to be the very hands of this guiding sentiment, and work in the present moment,-the evils we suffer will at last end themselves through the incessant opposition of Nature to everything hurtful” (X, 182). 107 J. F. Dutton, in the Unitarian Review, vol. XXXV, p. 132. CHAPTER IX. EMERSON'S CONTRIBUTION TO SOCIOLOGY: THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE; THE BROOK FARM IDEA; THEORY OF EDUCATION. No one can have a fundamental philosophy dominating his entire thought, and write upon the subjects of art and society, without implying more or less of an Esthetics and a Sociology. But these, with Emerson, are mere corollaries which might be deduced from his philosophy if he had written no word on either subject. He himself, though from the first he showed a genuine interest in these matters, seems to have become conscious of how his ideas had formulated regarding them after his prime creative impulse had somewhat spent itself in the working out of his idealism; and hence we find separate essays devoted rather to the actual results of his thinking than to a tentative working out of his ideas as they came to him, which is his usual method in treating of philosophic problems. His late and somewhat commonplace essay on Civilization (VII, 23-37), for example, deals directly with the subject matter of Sociology with a definiteness of system and order which shows that Emerson was merely recalling and restating opinions which had long been familiar to him; and much the same thing will be found true of his various essays on art and beauty. Yet as one gives his attention to what Emerson does actually say in the province of Sociology,108 he becomes again surprised at the rigid consistency of his thinking, and at the depth of it. 108 There are two principles at the basis of Emerson's democracy: (1) the Universal Mind is open to all men, hence all men have a divine right to their opinions; and (2) the great (that is, "representative") man is he who is most open to receive truth, while the many-the mob-are "blind mouths"; so that property, culture, even aristocracy of a sort are essential to any true democracy. In several articles which have appeared in various periodicals, it has been said that Emerson was like Carlyle in his attitude toward the man of genius. I do not see how anyone who had read enough of Emerson to venture a printed opinion could hold such a view. Julian Hawthorne has the right of it in this instance: "He was no hero-worshipper, like Carlyle. A hero was, to him, not so much a power 108 I use the word in its broadest sense. EMERSON'S CONTRIBUTION TO SOCIOLOGY 81 ful and dominating personality, as a relatively impersonal instrument of God for the accomplishment of some great end." 109 It cannot be denied that there was in Emerson, as there was in Shakespeare, an instinctive abhorrence of the "vulgar herd," and a corresponding predilection in favor of good birth and breeding. "For a philosopher," said Walt Whitman the super-democrat, "Emerson possesses a singularly dandified theory of manners.' "110 And indeed there is much in Emerson's published utterances which might justify this criticism. "The best are accused of exclusiveness. It would be more true to say they separate as oil and water. . . each seeking his like" (VII, 19). From his very boyhood, we find this attitude of Emerson recorded in his Journals. At nineteen he writes: "From the want of an upper class in society, from the admirable republican equality which levels one with all, results a rudeness and sometimes a savageness of manners which is apt to disgust a polished and courtly man" (J. I, 147). Much more which might be quoted in this connection seems to stand in contrast to those more typically American sentiments which we may also find abundantly on Emerson's pages, and again the old charge of inconsistency confronts us; and again it is to be answered by noting both sides of the contradiction with their synthesis occurring together in the same essay. Let me cite a passage of each sort from "Considerations by the Way" in the Conduct of Life volume: "Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered but to be schooled. . . . The worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving. Masses! the calamity is the masses. . . If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply the population. . . . .. 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" (VI, 237). Is this not rare snobbishness? But look ten pages farther: "By humiliations, by defects, by loss of sympathy, by gulfs of disparity, learn a wider truth and humanity than that of a fine gentleman. A Fifth-Avenue landlord, a West-End householder, is not the highest style of man; and though good hearts and sound minds are of no condition, yet he who is to be wise for many must not be protected. He must know the huts where poor men lie, and the chores which poor men 109 "Emerson as an American" in The Genius and Character of Emerson, P. 68. 110 Literary World, XI, 177. do. ... Take Take him out of his protections. . . . Plant him down among farmers, firemen, Indians, and emigrants. Set a dog on him; set a highwayman on him; try him with a course of mobs; send him to Kansas, to Pike's Peak, to Oregon; and, if he have true faculty, this may be the element he wants, and he will come out of it with broader wisdom and manly power" (VI, 247, 248). It is the turn of the poor man to point his finger at the pampered rich, and to claim Emerson as his very own! But Emerson's desire regarding rich and poor alike is "to draw individuals out of them": "The mass are animal, in pupilage, and near chimpanzee. But the units whereof this mass is composed, are neuters, every one of which may be grown to a queen-bee. . . . To say then, the majority are wicked, means no malice, no bad heart in the observer, but simply that the majority are unripe, and have not yet come to themselves, do not know their opinion" (VI, 239, 240). This, then, is all a part of Emerson's extreme individualism. His attitude toward the State is to be wholly explained by his belief in the ultimate value of each member of the commonwealth either in actuality or in potentiality. And as freedom is the last reach of his eudæmonism, if I read Emerson's Ethics aright, so freedom for the individual should be the final purpose of the State; and to apply this axiom is the purpose of all Sociology. This attitude Emerson takes in his Journal as early as 1827: "Wise men perceive that the advantage of the whole is best consulted in consulting the real advantage of the particular" (J. II, 174); and he is still saying the same thing in his Second Series of Essays in 1844: "The only interest for the consideration of the State is persons the highest end of government is the culture of men" (III, 195). But whether this should result in a democratic or monarchial form of government, in socialism or in anarchy, he is not so sure. With one who persists in seeing both sides of every question it is inevitable that there should be statements looking in each direction. "Every human society" writes Emerson in his Journal, "wants to be officered by a best class . . . who are adorned with dignity and accomplishments" (J. VIII, 99); yet the fact remains that "thousands of human beings may exercise toward each other the grandest and simplest sentiments as well as a knot of friends, or a pair of lovers" (J. III, 221). In his English Traits Emerson has much to say regarding the artificiality, inequality, and even tyrannical nature of the English social system: "The feudal character of the English state, now that it is getting obsolete, glares a little, in contrast with the democratic tendencies. The inequality of power and property shocks republican nerves" (V, 166). But before THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE 83 he is done, the other side of the matter claims his attention: "The American system is more democratic, more humane; yet the American people do not yield better or more able men, or more inventions or books or benefits than the English. Congress is not wiser or better than Parliament. France has abolished its suffocating old régime, but is not recently marked by any more wisdom or virtue" (V, 290). In one mood he can say, "I am thankful that I am an American as I am thankful that I am a man" (J. III, 189); and in another mood, "Any form of government would content me in which the rulers were gentlemen" (J. VI, 446). And all of this means merely that the individual is of prime importance, and "The state may follow how it can, At times this attitude leads Emerson to the position made famous by Rousseau: "As if the Union had any other real basis than the good pleasure of a majority of the citizens to be united" (I, 368); and this leads on into occasional statements of frank and open anarchy: "Hence the less government we have the better. . . . To educate the wise man the State exists, and with the appearance of the wise man the State expires" (III, 206). Asked by his English friends if any American had an idea of the right future of this country, he thought not of the statesmen who would make America another Europe, but "of the simplest and purest minds; I said, 'Certainly yes;-but those who hold it are fanatics of a dream which I should hardly care to relate to your English ears, to which it might be only ridiculous,—and yet it is the only true.' So I opened the dogma of no-government and non-resistance" (V, 272). Consistent individualism is bound to end in anarchy. But all the connotation of that word is foreign to Emerson's nature; and his principle of "non-resistance" renders his principle of "no-government" quite innocent and harmless. At times a threat lurks in the shadow: the principle of church and state is wrong, he says boldly in his Journal, and vitiates charity and religion; but "I persist in inaction . . . until my hour comes" (J. V, 294). And after he has refused to join in Ripley's Brook Farm experiment he seems to excuse his own conscience by saying, "I do not wish to remove from my present prison to a prison a little larger. I wish to break all prisons" (J. V, 473). The same attitude shows in what he has to say regarding the private ownership of land. His whole sympathy, says Salter, was with the rising tide of social democracy.111 "Whilst another man has no land, 111 International Journal of Ethics, XIII, 414. |