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The following mystic poem, which might have come from an ancient Egyptian, dropped from one who has since become distinguished for something very different from mysticism. Has he seen it these many years? Can he believe that he was ever in the mood to write it? It is called

VIA SACRA

 
Slowly along the crowded street I go,
Marking with reverent look each passer's face,
Seeking and not in vain, in each to trace
That primal soul whereof he is the show.
For here still move, by many eyes unseen,
The blessed gods that erst Olympus kept.
Through every guise these lofty forms serene
Declare the all-holding life hath never slept,
But known each thrill that in man's heart hath been,
And every tear that his sad eyes have wept.
Alas for us! the heavenly visitants, —
We greet them still as most unwelcome guests
Answering their smile with hateful looks askance,
Their sacred speech with foolish, bitter jests;
But oh! what is it to imperial Jove
That this poor world refuses all his love?
 

A remarkable feature of the "Dial" were the chapters of "Ethnical Scriptures," seven in all, containing texts from the Veeshnu Sarma, the laws of Menu, Confucius, the Desatir, the Chinese "Four Books," Hermes Trismegistus, the Chaldæan Oracles. Thirty-five years ago, these Scriptures, now so accessible, and in portions so familiar, were known to the few, and were esteemed by none but scholars, whose enthusiasm for ancient literature got the better of their religious faith. To read such things then, showed an enlightened and courageous mind; to print them in a magazine under the sacred title of "Scriptures" argued a most extraordinary breadth of view. In offering these chapters to its readers, without apology and on their intrinsic merits, Transcendentalism exhibited its power to overpass the limits of all special religions, and do perfect justice to all expressions of the religious sentiment.

The creed of Transcendentalism has been sufficiently indicated. It had a creed, and a definite one. In his lecture on "The Transcendentalist," read in 1841, Mr. Emerson seems disposed to consider Transcendentalism merely as a phase of idealism.

"Shall we say then that Transcendentalism is the Saturnalia or excess of Faith; the presentiment of a faith proper to man in his integrity, excessive only when his imperfect obedience hinders the satisfaction of his wit. Nature is Transcendental, exists primarily, necessarily, ever works and advances; yet takes no thought for the morrow. Man owns the dignity of the life which throbs around him in chemistry, and tree, and animal, and in the involuntary functions of his own body; yet he is balked when he tries to fling himself into this enchanted circle, where all is done without degradation. Yet genius and virtue predict in man the same absence of private ends, and of condescension to circumstances, united with every trait and talent of beauty and power."… "This way of thinking, falling on Roman times, made stoic philosophers; falling on despotic times made patriot Catos and Brutuses; falling on superstitious times, made prophets and apostles; on popish times, made protestants and ascetic monks; preachers of Faith against preachers of Works; on prelatical times, made Puritans and Quakers; and falling on Unitarian and commercial times, makes the peculiar shades of Idealism which we know."

It is audacious to criticize Mr. Emerson on a point like this; but candor compels the remark that the above description does less than justice to the definiteness of the transcendental movement. It was something more than a reaction against formalism and tradition, though it took that form. It was more than a reaction against Puritan Orthodoxy, though in part it was that. It was in a very small degree due to study of the ancient pantheists, of Plato and the Alexandrians, of Plutarch, Seneca and Epictetus, though one or two of the leaders had drunk deeply from these sources. Transcendentalism was a distinct philosophical system. Practically it was an assertion of the inalienable worth of man; theoretically it was an assertion of the immanence of divinity in instinct, the transference of supernatural attributes to the natural constitution of mankind.

Such a faith would necessarily be protean in its aspects. Philosopher, Critic, Moralist, Poet, would give it voice according to cast of genius. It would present in turn all the phases of idealism, and to the outside spectator seem a mass of wild opinions; but running through all was the belief in the Living God in the Soul, faith in immediate inspiration, in boundless possibility, and in unimaginable good.

The editors and reviewers of its day could make nothing of it. The most entertaining part of the present writer's task has been the reading of articles on Transcendentalism in the contemporaneous magazines. The reviewers were unable to resist the temptation to make themselves ridiculous. The quarterlies and monthlies are before me, looking as if they resented the exposure of their dusty and musty condition, and would conceal if they could the baldness of their wit. It would be cruel to exhume those antique judgments, so honest, yet so imbecile and so mistaken. The doubts and misgivings, the bitternesses and the horrors, the sinkings of heart and the revolvings of soul may be estimated by any who will consult the numbers of the Christian Examiner, the Biblical Repository, the Princeton Review, the New Englander, the Whig Review, Knickerbocker, (Knickerbocker is especially facetious), but we advise none to do it who would retain their respect for honorable names. The writers, let us hope, did the best they knew, and it would be unkind to expose the theological prejudice, the polemical acrimony, the narrowness and flippancy they would have been ashamed of had they been aware of it.

A good example of the courteous kind of injustice may be found in the Christian Examiner for January, 1837, in a review of "Nature" from the pen of a Cambridge Professor, who writes in a kindly spirit and with an honest intention to be fair to a movement with which he had no intellectual sympathy:

"The aim of the Transcendentalists is high. They profess to look not only beyond facts, but, without the aid of facts, to principles. What is this but Plato's doctrine of innate, eternal and immutable ideas on the consideration of which all science is founded? Truly, the human mind advances but too often in a circle. The New School has abandoned Bacon, only to go back and wander in the groves of the Academy, and to bewilder themselves with the dreams which first arose in the fervid imagination of the Greeks. Without questioning the desirableness of this end, of considering general truths without any previous examination of particulars, we may well doubt the power of modern philosophers to attain it. Again, they are busy in the enquiry (to adopt their own phraseology) after the Real and Absolute, as distinguished from the Apparent. Not to repeat the same doubt as to their success, we may at least request them to beware lest they strip the truth of its relation to Humanity, and thus deprive it of its usefulness."

We quote this passage not merely to show how inevitably the best intentioned critics of Transcendentalism fell into sarcasm, nor to illustrate the species of error into which the "Sensational" philosophy betrayed even candid minds; but to call attention to another point, namely, the general misconception of the practical aims and purposes of the new school. It was a common prejudice that Transcendentalists were visionaries and enthusiasts, who in pursuit of principles neglected duties, and while seeking for The Real and The Absolute forgot the actual and the relative. Macaulay puts the case strongly in his article on Lord Bacon:

"To sum up the whole; we should say that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a God. The aim of the Baconian philosophy was to provide man with what he requires while he continues to be man. The aim of the Platonic philosophy was to raise us far above vulgar wants. The aim of the Baconian philosophy was to supply our wants. The former aim was noble; but the latter was attainable. Plato drew a good bow; but, like Acestes in Virgil, he aimed at the stars; and though there was no want of strength and skill, the shot was thrown away. Bacon fixed his eye on a mark which was placed on the earth, and within bow shot, and hit it in the white. The philosophy of Plato began in words and ended in words – noble words indeed; words such as were to be expected from the finest of human intellects exercising boundless control over the finest of human languages. The philosophy of Bacon began in observations and ended in arts. The smallest actual good is better than the most magnificent promises of impossibilities. The truth is, that in those very matters for the sake of which they neglected all the vulgar interests of mankind, the ancient philosophers did nothing or worse than nothing – they promised what was impracticable; they despised what was practicable; they filled the world with long words and long beards; and they left it as wicked and as ignorant as they found it."

Substitute Idealism for Platonism, and Transcendentalists for ancient philosophers, and this expresses the judgment of "sensible men" of the last generation, on Transcendentalism. It was not perceived that the two schools of philosophy aimed at producing the same results, but by different methods; that the "Sensationalist" worked up from beneath by material processes, while the "Idealist" worked downward from above by intellectual ones; that the former tried to push men up by mechanical appliances, and the latter endeavored to draw them up by spiritual attraction; that while the disciples of Bacon operated on man as if he was a complex animal, a creature of nature and of circumstances, who was borne along with the material progress of the planet, but had no independent power of flight, the disciples of Kant and Fichte assumed that man was a creative, recreative force, a being who had only to be conscious of the capacities within him to shape circumstances according to the pattern shown him on the Mount. The charge of shooting at stars is puerile. The only use they would make of stars was to "hitch wagons" to them. The Transcendentalists of New England were the most strenuous workers of their day, and at the problems which the day flung down before them. The most strenuous, and the most successful workers too. They achieved more practical benefit for society, in proportion to their numbers and the duration of their existence, than any body of Baconians of whom we ever heard. Men and women are healthier in their bodies, happier in their domestic and social relations, more contented in their estate, more ambitious to enlarge their opportunities, more eager to acquire knowledge, more kind and humane in their sympathies, more reasonable in their expectations, than they would have been if Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker and George Ripley and Bronson Alcott, and the rest of their fellow believers and fellow workers had not lived. It is the fashion of our generation to hold that progress is, and must of necessity be, exceedingly gradual; and that no safe advance is ever made except at snail's pace. But ever and anon the mind of man refutes the notion by starting under the influence of a thought, and leaping over long reaches of space at a bound. Transcendentalism gave one of these demonstrations, sufficient to refute the vulgar prejudice. Its brief history may have illustrated the truth of Wordsworth's lines,

 
"That 'tis a thing impossible to frame
Conceptions equal to the Soul's desires;
And the most difficult of tasks to keep
Heights which the Soul is competent to gain."
 

The heights were gained nevertheless, and kept long enough for a view of the land of promise; and ever since, though the ascent is a dim recollection, and the great forms have come to look like images in dreams, and the mighty voices are but ghostly echoes, men and women have been happy in laboring for the heaven their fathers believed they saw.

VII.
PRACTICAL TENDENCIES

Mr. Emerson – we find ourselves continually appealing to him as the finest interpreter of the transcendental movement – made a confession which its enemies were quick to seize on and turn to their purpose.

"It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest observer, that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw themselves from the common labors and competitions of the market and the caucus, and betake themselves to a certain solitary and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit has yet appeared to justify their separation. They hold themselves aloof; they feel the disproportion between themselves and the work offered them, and they prefer to ramble in the country and perish of ennui, to the degradation of such charities and such ambitions as the city can propose to them. They are striking work and crying out for somewhat worthy to do. They are lonely; the spirit of their writing and conversation is lonely; they repel influences; they shun general society; they incline to shut themselves in their chamber in the house; to live in the country rather than in the town; and to find their tasks and amusements in solitude. They are not good citizens; not good members of society; unwillingly they bear their part of the public and private burdens; they do not willingly share in the public charities, in the public religious rites, in the enterprises of education, of missions, foreign or domestic, in the abolition of the slave trade, or in the temperance society. They do not even like to vote. The philanthropists inquire whether Transcendentalism does not mean sloth; they had as lief hear that their friend is dead as that he is a Transcendentalist; for then is he paralyzed, and can do nothing for humanity."

This extreme statement must not be taken as either complete or comprehensive. They who read it in the lecture on "The Transcendentalist" must be careful to notice Mr. Emerson's qualifications, that "this retirement does not proceed from any whim on the part of the separators;" that "this part is chosen both from temperament and from principle; with some unwillingness too, and as a choice of the less of two evils;" "that they are joyous, susceptible, affectionate;" that "they wish a just and even fellowship or none;" that "what they do is done because they are overpowered by the humanities that speak on all sides;" that "what you call your fundamental institutions, your great and holy causes, seem to them great abuses, and, when nearly seen, paltry matters." But even this apology does not quite exonerate his friends.

Transcendentalism certainly did produce its share of idle, dreamy, useless people – as "Sensationalism" produced its share of coarse, greedy, low-lived and bestial ones. But its legitimate fruit was earnestness, aspiration and enthusiastic energy.

We must begin with the philosophy of Man. The Transcendentalist claims for all men as a natural endowment what "Evangelical" Christianity ascribes to the few as a special gift of the Spirit. This faith comes to expression continually. The numbers of the "Dial" are alight with it.

"Man is a rudiment and embryon of God: Eternity shall develop in him the Divine Image."

"The Soul works from centre to periphery, veiling her labors from the ken of the senses."

"The sensible world is spirit in magnitude outspread before the senses for their analysis, but whose synthesis is the soul herself, whose prothesis is God."

"The time may come, in the endless career of the soul, when the facts of incarnation, birth, death, descent into matter, and ascension from it, shall comprise no part of her history; when she herself shall survey this human life with emotions akin to those of the naturalist on examining the relics of extinct races of beings."

"Of the perception now fast becoming a conscious fact, – that there is one mind, and that also the powers and privileges which lie in any, lie in all; that I, as a man, may claim and appropriate whatever of true or fair or good or strong has anywhere been exhibited; that Moses and Confucius, Montaigne and Leibnitz are not so much individuals as they are parts of man and parts of me, and my intelligence proves them my own, – literature is far the best expression."

Thus Mr. Alcott and Mr. Emerson. Thomas T. Stone, – a modest, retiring, deep and interior man, a child of the spiritual philosophy, which he faithfully lived in and up to, and preached with singular fulness and richness of power – makes his statement thus, in an article entitled "Man in the Ages," contributed to the third number of the "Dial":

"Man is man, despite of all the lies which would convince him he is not, despite of all the thoughts which would strive to unman him. There is a spirit in man, an inspiration from the Almighty. What is, is. The eternal is eternal; the temporary must pass it by, leaving it to stand evermore. There is now, there has been always, power among men to subdue the ages, to dethrone them, to make them mere outgoings and servitors of man. It is needed only that we assert our prerogative, – that man do with hearty faith affirm: 'I am; in me being is. Ages, ye come and go; appear and disappear; products, not life; vapors from the surface of the soul, not living fountain. Ye are of me, for me, not I of you or for you. Not with you my affinity, but with the Eternal. I am; I live; spirit I have not; spirit am I.'"

Samuel D. Robbins, another earnest prophet of the spiritual man, utters the creed again in the way peculiar to himself.

"There is an infinity in the human soul which few have yet believed, and after which few have aspired. There is a lofty power of moral principle in the depths of our nature which is nearly allied to Omnipotence; compared with which the whole force of outward nature is more feeble than an infant's grasp. There is a spiritual insight to which the pure soul reaches, more clear and prophetic, more wide and vast than all telescopic vision can typify. There is a faith in God, and a clear perception of His will and designs, and providence, and glory, which gives to its possessor a confidence and patience and sweet composure, under every varied and troubling aspect of events, such as no man can realize who has not felt its influences in his own heart. There is a communion with God, in which the soul feels the presence of the unseen One, in the profound depths of its being, with a vivid distinctness and a holy reverence such as no word can describe. There is a state of union with God, I do not say often reached, yet it has been attained in this world, in which all the past and present and future seem reconciled, and eternity is won and enjoyed: and God and man, earth and heaven, with all their mysteries are apprehended in truth as they lie in the mind of the Infinite."

The poet chimes in with the prophet. We marked for quotation several passages from the "Dial," but a few detached stanzas must suffice. C. P. Cranch opens his lines to the ocean thus:

 
Tell me, brothers, what are we?
Spirits bathing in the sea of Deity.
Half afloat, and half on land,
Wishing much to leave the strand,
Standing, gazing with devotion,
Yet afraid to trust the ocean,
Such are we.
 

And thus he closes lines to the Aurora Borealis:

 
But a better type thou art
Of the strivings of the heart,
Reaching upwards from the earth
To the Soul that gave it birth.
When the noiseless beck of night
Summons out the inner light
That hath hid its purer ray
Through the lapses of the day, —
Then like thee, thou Northern Morn,
Instincts which we deemed unborn
Gushing from their hidden source
Mount upon their heavenward course,
And the spirit seeks to be
Filled with God's eternity.
 

That a philosophy like this will impel to aspiration need not be said; aspiration is the soul of it. The Transcendentalist was constantly on the wing.

"On all hands men's existence is converted into a preparation for existence. We do not properly live, in these days; but everywhere with patent inventions and complex arrangements are getting ready to live. The end is lost in the means, life is smothered in appliances. We cannot get to ourselves, there are so many external comforts to wade through. Consciousness stops half way. Reflection is dissipated in the circumstances of our environment. Goodness is exhausted in aids to goodness, and all the vigor and health of the soul is expended in quack contrivances to build it up."… What the age requires is not books, but example, high, heroic example; not words but deeds; not societies but men – men who shall have their root in themselves, and attract and convert the world by the beauty of their fruits. All truth must be living, before it can be adequately known or taught. Men are anterior to systems. Great doctrines are not the origin, but the product of great lives. The Cynic practice must precede the Stoic philosophy, and out of Diogenes's tub came forth in the end the wisdom of Epictetus, the eloquence of Seneca, and the piety of Antonine."…

"The religious man lives for one great object; to perfect himself, to unite himself by purity with God, to fit himself for heaven by cherishing within him a heavenly disposition. He has discovered that he has a soul; that his soul is himself; that he changes not with the changing things of life, but receives its discipline from them; that man does not live by bread alone, but that the most real of all things, inasmuch as they are the most enduring, are the things which are not seen; that faith and love and virtue are the sources of his life, and that one realises nothing, except he lay fast hold on them. He extracts a moral lesson, a lesson of endurance or of perseverance for himself, or a new evidence of God and of his own immortal destiny, from every day's hard task."

That last strain came from the man who for many years has been known as the foremost musical critic of New England, if not of America, John S. Dwight. Another writes:

"The soul lies buried in a ruined city, struggling to be free and calling for aid. The worldly trafficker in life's caravan hears its cries, and says, it is a prisoned maniac. But one true man stops and with painful toil lifts aside the crumbling fragments; till at last he finds beneath the choking mass a mangled form of exceeding beauty. Dazzling is the light to eyes long blind; weak are the limbs long prisoned; faint is the breath long pent. But oh! that mantling flush, that liquid eye, that elastic spring of renovated strength. The deliverer is folded to the breast of an angel."

The duty of self-culture is made primary and is eloquently preached. The piece from which this extract is taken, entitled "The Art of Life" is anonymous, but supposed to be from Emerson's pen:

"The work of life, so far as the individual is concerned, and that to which the scholar is particularly called, is Self-Culture, the perfect unfolding of our individual nature. To this end above all others, the art of which I speak directs our attention and points our endeavor. There is no man, it is presumed, to whom this object is wholly indifferent, who would not willingly possess this too, along with other prizes, provided the attainment of it were compatible with personal ease and worldly good. But the business of self-culture admits of no compromise. Either it must be made a distinct aim or wholly abandoned."

But it is time wasted to speak on this point. It has been objected to Transcendentalism that it made self-culture too important, carrying it to the point of selfishness, sacrificing in its behalf, sympathy, brotherly love, sentiments of patriotism, personal fidelity and honor, and rejoicing in the production of a "mountainous Me" fed at the expense of life's sweetest humanities; and Goethe is straightway cited as the Transcendental apostle of the gospel of heartless indifference. But allowing the charge against Goethe to rest unrefuted, it must be made against him as a man, not as a Transcendentalist; and even were it true of him as a Transcendentalist, it was not true of Kant or Fichte, of Schleiermacher or Herder; of Jean Paul or Novalis; of Coleridge, Carlyle or Wordsworth; and who ever intimated that it was true of Emerson, who has been one of the most industrious teachers of his generation, and one of the most earnest worshippers of the genius of his native land; – of Margaret Fuller, whose life was a quickening flood of intellectual influence; – of Bronson Alcott, who, every winter for years, has carried his seed corn to the far West, seeking only a receptive furrow for his treasured being; – of Theodore Parker, who sacrificed precious days of study, his soul's passion for knowledge, his honorable ambition to achieve a scholar's fame, in order that his country, in her time of trial, might not want what he was able to give; – of Wm. Henry Channing, to whom the thought of humanity is an inspiration, and "sacrifice an all sufficing joy;" – of George Ripley, who offered himself, all that he had and was, that the experiment of an honest friendly society might be fairly tried? By "self-culture" these and the rest of their brotherhood meant the culture of that nobler self which includes heart, and conscience, sympathy and spirituality, not as incidental ingredients, but as essential qualities. Self-hood they never identified with selfishness; nor did they ever confound or associate its attainment with the acquisition of place, power, wealth, or eminent repute; the person was more to them than the individual; they sought no reward except for service; and the consciousness of serving faithfully was their best reward.

To Transcendentalism belongs the credit of inaugurating the theory and practice of dietetics which is preached so assiduously now by enlightened physiologists. The people who regarded man as a soul, first taught the wisdom that is now inculcated by people who regard man as a body. The doctrine that human beings live on air and light; that food should be simple and nutritious; that coarse meats should be discarded and fiery liquors abolished; that wines should be substituted for "spirits," light wines for heavy, and pure water for wines; – has in all ages been taught by mystics and idealists. The ancient master of it was Pythagoras. Their idea was, that as the body was, for the time being, the dwelling-place of the soul, its lodging and home, its prison or its palace, its organ, its instrument, its box of tools, the medium of its activity, it must be kept in perfect condition for these high offices. They honored the flesh in the nobility of their care of it. No sour ascetics they, but generous feeders on essences and elixirs; no mortifiers of matter, but purifiers and refiners of it; regarding it as too exquisitely mingled and tempered a substance to be tortured and imbruted. The materialist prescribes temperance, continence, sobriety, in order that life may be long, and comfortable, and free from disease. The idealist prescribes them, in order that life may be intellectual, serene, pacific, beneficent.

The chief mystic of the transcendental band has been the chief prophet of this innocent word. "The New Ideas," wrote Mr. Alcott, "bear direct on all the economies of life. They will revise old methods, and institute new cultures. I look with special hope to their effect on the regimen of the land. Our present modes of agriculture exhaust the soil, and must, while life is made thus sensual and secular; the narrow covetousness which prevails in trade, in labor, in exchanges, ends in depraving the land; it breeds disease, decline, in the flesh, – debauches and consumes the heart." "The Soul's Banquet is an art divine. To mould this statue of flesh from chaste materials, kneading it into comeliness and strength, this is Promethean; and this we practise, well or ill, in all our thoughts, acts, desires. I would abstain from the fruits of oppression and blood, and am seeking means of entire independence. This, were I not holden by penury unjustly, would be possible. One miracle we have wrought nevertheless, and shall soon work all of them; – our wine is water, – flesh, bread; – drugs, fruits; – and we defy, meekly, the satyrs all, and Esculapius."

"It was the doctrine of the Samian Sage, that whatsoever food obstructs divination, is prejudicial to purity and chastity of mind and body, to temperance, health, sweetness of disposition, suavity of manners, grace of form and dignity of carriage, should be shunned. Especially should those who would apprehend the deepest wisdom, and preserve through life the relish for elegant studies and pursuits, abstain from flesh, cherishing the justice which animals claim at men's hands, nor slaughtering them for food or profit." "A purer civilization than ours can yet claim to be, is to inspire the genius of mankind with the skill to deal dutifully with soils and souls, exalt agriculture and manculture into a religion of art; the freer interchange of commodities which the current world-wide intercourse promotes, spreads a more various, wholesome, classic table, whereby the race shall be refined of traits reminding too plainly of barbarism and the beast." Said Timotheus of Plato, "they who dine with the philosopher have nothing to complain of the next morning." That the doctrine has its warm, glowing side, appears in a characteristic poem in the little volume called "Tablets."

The anchorite's plea was not always as good as his practice. Arguing the point once with a sagacious man of the world, he urged as a reason for abstinence from animal food that one thereby distanced the animal. For the eating of beef encouraged the bovine quality, and the pork diet repeats the trick of Circe, and changes men into swine. But, rejoined the friend, if abstinence from animal food leaves the animal out, does not partaking of vegetable food put the vegetable in? I presume the potato diet will change man into a potato. And what if the potatoes be small! The philosopher's reply is not recorded. But in his case the beast did disappear, and the leek has never become prominent. In his case health, strength, agility, sprightliness, cheerfulness, have been wholly compatible with disuse of animal food. Few men have preserved the best uses of body and mind so long unimpaired. Few have lost so few days; have misused so few; are able to give a good account of so many. The vegetarian of seventy-six shames many a cannibal of forty.