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Page 22
This conception of the merry Sphinx may seem strange to the dyspeptic
philosopher pondering on the inscrutableness of the universe. But the
prospectors in the mining camps of the Far West, and the builders of new
cities understand what Emerson meant. Their experience of the ups and
downs of fortune has taught them how to find pleasure in uncertainty.
You never can tell how anything will turn out till you try. That's the
fun of it. They are quite ready to believe that the same thing holds
good in the higher life.
Or take the lines on "Worship." How can Worship be personified?
Emerson's picture is not that of a patriarch on bended knee; it is that
of a vigorous youth picking himself up after he has been knocked down by
his antagonist.
"This is he, who, felled by foes,
Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows."
Religion is a kind of spiritual resilience. It is that which makes a man
come back with new vigor to his work after his first failure. It is the
ability to make a new beginning.
In Emerson the American hurry is transformed into something of spiritual
significance. A new commandment is given to the good man--Be quick! Keep
moving!
"Trenchant Time behoves to hurry,
* * * * *
O wise man, hearest thou the least part,
Seest them the rushing metamorphosis,
Dissolving all that fixture is,
Melts things that be to things that seem."
Morality and religion must be speeded up if they are to do any useful
work in this swift world.
If the ideals of the saints and reformers were criticized, so were those
of the scholars. Matthew Arnold's definition of culture was that of a
man of books. It was the knowledge of the best that had been said and
known in the past. Emerson's lines entitled "Culture" begin with a
characteristic question and end with an equally characteristic
affirmation. The question is--
"Can rules or tutors educate
The semigod whom we await?"
The affirmation is that the man of culture is one who
"to his native centre fast,
Shall into Future fuse the Past,
And the world's flowing fates in his own mould recast."
According to this definition Abraham Lincoln, with his slight knowledge
of the best things of the past, but with the power to fuse such
knowledge as he had and to recast it in his own mould, was a man of
culture. And all true Americans would agree with him.
Emerson, like the "sociable, accessible, republican sort of man" that he
was, was the foe of special privilege. The best things were, in his
judgment, the property of all. He would take religion from the custody
of the priests, and culture from the hands of schoolmasters, and restore
them to their proper place, among the inalienable rights of man. They
were simply forms of the pursuit of happiness of which the Declaration
of Independence speaks. It is a right of which no potentates can justly
deprive the citizen.
Above all, he would protest against everything which tends to deprive
anyone of the happiness of the forward look. There was a cheerful
confidence that the great forces are on our side. Now and then the
clouds gather and obscure the vision, but:
"There are open hours
When God's will sallies free
And the dull idiot may see
The flowing fortunes of a thousand years."
This is the American doctrine of "Manifest Destiny" spiritually
discerned.
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