George Parsons Lathrop

“ The world is mind orecipitated.” He believed in the Over-Soul as a light guiding man, the light of intuitive perception, in God as the soul of the world, and in the human soul as one with that Over-Soul. ”

“ It taught that the universe consists of nature and the soul, and that external nature serves four purposes — viz.: commodity, beauty, language, and discipline. It ministers to the senses; then to the love of beauty; then it gives us language — i. e., supplies words as the signs of natural facts, by which we interpret our own spirits. Natural laws applied to man become moral laws; and thus we perceive the highest use of nature, which is discipline. ”

“ It will fast enough gather beauty, music, picture, poetry.” While he thus advanced in viewing science, he advanced also in viewing all other subjects; but it was from the point of view of intuition and oneness with what he called the Over-Soul. Everything that he said must be looked at in the light of his own remark, “Life is a train of moods.” But his moods rest upon the certainty, to him, of his own intuition. Emerson's presentation of his views is generally in a large degree poetic. His poems sum up and also expand his prose. ”

“ He was destined to rouse a much greater hostility himself by his address to the senior class in the Divinity college, Cambridge, 15 July, 1838. With great force and beauty of language he attacked the formalism of contemporary religion, and the traditional limited way of using the mind of Christ. “Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead. . . . The soul is not preached. ”

“ Much question has been made whether Emerson was rather a poet than a philosopher, or whether he was a philosopher at all. An exact philosopher he was not; but all that he wrote and said was based upon philosophic ideas. He was an intellectual rather than an emotional mystic, an idealist who insisted upon the application of idealism to the affairs of daily life. He believed that “Nature is the incarnation of a thought. ”

“ Any end pursued for itself, by the practical faculty, must become an offence. The end should be “inapprehensible to the senses”; then it would always be a good, always giving health. Briefly, it was Emerson's mission not to do practical work for reforms, but to supply impulses and a high inspiration to the workers. In 1841 he lectured on “The Conservative,” and the next year on " The Transcendentalist," saying that “transcendentalism ” was simply modern idealism, and that the “new views” were the oldest of thoughts cast in a new mould. ”

“ It is certainly the best analysis of the English people that has been written by an American, and probably the best produced in any country. The style is succinct and exact, sown with epigram, as in most of Emerson's writings; but, the purpose being more objective than that of his essays, the saving common sense that underlies all of his thinking is here brought constantly and predominantly into view. Previously to this publication he had given seven lectures in Freeman place chapel, Boston, and another in New York, and had also made addresses before the Anti-slavery society in both cities. ”

“ He regards the poems as the most complete and worthy expression of Emerson's genius. But Dr. Everett's discovery of passion in Emerson's poetry is not generally accepted by other critics. As has been well remarked by another writer, the verse, in general abstractly and intellectually beautiful, kindles to passion only when the chosen theme is distinctly American or patriotic. Emerson constantly preached by life and pen a new revelation, a new teacher of religion and morals, putting himself always in the place of a harbinger, a John crying in the wilderness. ”

“ Supported by Goethe's deep love of nature as a companion of man, and Wordsworth's conception of it as interfused with spirit, Emerson made a new advance, reiterated the idea of a transcendent faculty, intuitive religion, and perception of God, and embodied in an original form the spiritual interpretation of nature. ”

“ But Emerson here showed how quick he was to seize upon the newest thought in science or elsewhere if it seemed to be true. Eleven years passed, and he declared in the essay on “Worship,” in “Conduct of Life”: “The religion which is to guide and fulfil the present and coming ages must be intellectual. The scientific mind must have a faith which is science. ”

“ It is the office of a true teacher to show us that God is, not was; that he speaketh, not spake. The true Christianity — a faith like Christ's in the infinitude of man — is lost.” To each of the graduates he said: “Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost, cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hands with the Deity.” ”

“ A nation of freemen will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which inspires all men.” His friend, Bronson Alcott, having set up a school in Boston for teaching young children by methods based on a new theory of education, published in 1837 a book reporting his own conversations with the children on the gospels, which excited severe criticism, and Emerson defended him in the Boston “Courier.” ”

“ From this time his career became distinctively that of a literary man, although for several years he confined himself mainly to lecturing, and most of his prose writings were first given to the public orally. Carlyle had said to Longfellow that when Emerson came to Craigenputtock it was “like the visit of an angel.” In 1836 he edited early sheets of Carlyle's “Sartor Resartus,” and in 1838 three volumes of the same author's essays, all of these appearing in book-form in this country before they did so in England, and netting a comfortable sum for Carlyle. ”

“ Two years later he collected in a volume of “Poems” his scattered metrical pieces, many of which had been printed in periodicals. He did not escape sharp criticism, but the circle of his admirers rapidly widened. A new periodical, “The Massachusetts Quarterly Review,” began its career at Boston in 1847, edited by Theodore Parker, a disciple of Emerson, who expounded the “new views” in a more combative way; and Emerson wrote for it an “Editor's Address,” inculcating a wise and sincere spirit in meeting the problems of the state, of slavery, and socialism. ”

“ The address, pronounced with strong conviction, led to lively controversy, in which Emerson took no part. Ten lectures were given by him, in the winter of 1838-'9, on “The Doctrine of the Soul,” “Home,” “The School,” “Love,” etc., followed later by “Man the Reformer,” “The Method of Nature,” and a “Lecture on the Times.” In these he treated some of the reforms then agitated — temperance, anti-slavery, non-resistance, no government, and equal labor. Having come to hold the position of a religious reformer, he was looked to for sympathy with other reforms ”

“ The doctrine of the “many in one,” which he incessantly taught, is exemplified in himself and his works. The best extant accounts of Emerson are “Ralph Waldo Emerson, his Life, Writings, and Philosophy,” by George Willis Cooke (Boston, 1881) ; “Ralph Waldo Emerson,” by Oliver Wendell Holmes (Boston, 1884) ; “Emerson at Home and Abroad,” by Moncure D. Conway; “Biographical Sketch,” by Alexander Ireland; “The Genius and Character of Emerson, Lectures at the Concord School of Philosophy,” edited by F. B. Sanborn (Boston, 1885) . See, also, F. B. Sanborn's “Homes and Haunts of Emerson.” ”

“ Gradually his influence, and that of Coleridge and Carlyle in England, produced a reaction against the philosophy of Locke and Bentham, which, denying all innate ideas, and insisting upon purely mechanical revelation, had hitherto ruled Unitarians in Old and New England. The reactionists affirmed the existence of innate ideas, and a faculty in man that transcends the senses and the understanding. ”

“ This course was followed by ten lectures on English literature in 1835, twelve on the philosophy of history in 1836, and in 1837 ten on human culture. Much of the matter embraced in them was afterward remoulded and brought out in his later volumes of essays, or condensed into the rhythmic form of poems. Mr. Emerson married, in September, 1835, Miss Lidian Jackson, of Plymouth, Mass. He then left the “Old Manse,” where he had been staying with Dr. Ripley, and moved into a house on the old Lexington road, along which the British had retreated from Concord in 1775. ”

“ Associated as he was with the idealists, in the capacity of chief intellectual leader, he took a cordial interest in the semi-socialistic experiment at Brook Farm (1840 to 1847) , with which some of the brightest New England men and women of that day were connected ”