Chester Noyes Greenough

“ This is the incentive—the sublime incentive of approaching the perfection which is ours by nature and by divine intention—that Emerson holds out when he asks us to submit us to ourselves to all instructive influences. ”

“ More clearly than in Nature or in the Past, we see in certain other people such likeness to ourselves, and receive from the perception of that likeness such inspiration, that a real friend "may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature." [13] Yet elsewhere Emerson has more than once urged us not to be "too much acquainted" [14] : all our participation in the life of our fellows, though rich with courtesy and sympathy, must be free from bending and copying. We must use the fellowship of Society to freshen, and never to obscure, "the recollection of the grandeur of our destiny." ”

“ So we often have to fall back upon more gifted souls to interpret for us what we mean but cannot say. Any supreme triumph of expression, therefore, should arouse in us not humility, still less discouragement, but renewed consciousness that "one nature wrote and the same reads." [11] So it is in travel or in any other form of contact with the Past: we cannot derive any profit or see any new thing except we remember that "the world is nothing, the man is all." ”

“ These instructive influences, according to Emerson, are chiefly Nature, the Past, and Society. Let us notice how Emerson bids us use these influences to help us into our higher selves.
NATURE
Nature, which he says [3] "is loved by what is best in us," is all about us, inviting our perception of its remotest and most cosmic principles by surrounding us with its simpler manifestations. "A man does not tie his shoe without recognizing laws which bind the farthest regions of nature." [4] Thus man "carries the world in his head." ”

“ The growing interest in science, the influence of such writers as John Locke, the rise of other learned professions than the ministry, the advance of the merchant class, the increasing concern about political relations with the mother country, the founding of other churches than the Congregational ones which hitherto had virtually constituted an Establishment—all of these influences make American life and letters in the eighteenth century radically different from the century of colonization. ”

“ Especially in the case of autobiography is all this true, for here we have the pleasure of feeling that the record is both authentic and intimate. The best of biographers, however learned, vivid, or philosophical, leaves between us and the past an interval which only a good autobiography can span. Such an autobiography may possess great historical value if its author was intimately connected with significant events and had some capacity to perceive their causes and their effects. ”

“ IV. FRANKLIN AND WOOLMAN
By Professor Chester Noyes Greenough
IN ALL the literature of fact—as distinguished from the literature of fiction—hardly any kind of book surpasses a good biography in its power to interest and instruct. It combines the suspense of the novel with the actuality of history. It fills in the detail without which history would be too impersonal, and it shows us how people, not at all points unlike ourselves, have ordered their lives what their guiding principles have been, and how principles have sometimes been modified to meet circumstances. ”

“ The need of such independence, he thought, was particularly great for the student, who so easily becomes overawed by the great names of the Past and reads "to believe and take for granted." [9] This should not be, nor can it be if we remember what we are. "Meek young men grow up in libraries believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books." ”

“ From the humility of Woolman's utterances one can hardly doubt that his own sins were less grave than he felt them to be, or that his warnings to others had no touch of the pharisaical about them, but came from a heart that unaffectedly desired the good of all men. ”

“ Emerson starts with the assumption that the individual, if he can only come into possession of his natural excellence, is the most god-like of creatures. Instead of believing with the Calvinist that as a man grows better he becomes more unlike his natural self (and therefore can become better only by an act of divine mercy) , Emerson believes that as a man grows in excellence he becomes more like his natural self. ”

“ If, in spite of all these admirable qualities, Emerson's ideas seem too vague and unsystematic to satisfy those who feel that they could perhaps become Emersonians if there were only some definite articles to sign, it must be remembered that Emerson wishes to develop independence rather than apostleship, and that when men revolt from a system because they believe it to be too definite and oppressive, they are likely to go to the other extreme. ”

“ This is the guiding principle of a life so inconspicuous in its outward circumstances and immediate rewards that we cannot possibly apply to it that somewhat worldly and dubious word "career," yet so steadily and unconsciously holy as to deserve our most affectionate regard. Even as a young man Woolman began to be troubled by his own sins and by the dissolute life of many around him. Sometimes he felt moved to speak to others of their manner of life ”

“ Whether he be a great scientist, proving by his discovery of a sweeping physical law that he has some such constructive sense as that which guides the universe, or whether he be a poet beholding trees as "imperfect men," who "seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground," [6] he is being brought into his own by perceiving "the virtue and pungency of the influence on the mind of material objects, whether inorganic or organized." ”

“ Strikingly unlike each other as Franklin and Woolman are in most respects, they agree in representing aspects of the American mind that could hardly flourish in American literature until in the eighteenth century that literature began to move out of New England and its intolerant church.
FRANKLIN'S METHODS IN LITERATURE AND SCIENCE
The career of Franklin well illustrates these changes. He finds himself cramped in Boston and moves to Philadelphia. He pays the most careful attention to the matter of writing well, [4] because he sees that it pays to consult the convenience of the reader. ”