ARTICLE II. TWO PHASES OF EMERSON'S THOUGHT. BY REV. J. C. ALLEN. "HITCH your wagon to a star," wrote Emerson to Lincoln during the progress of the war. The advice is equally needed by one who attempts to follow Emerson through the progress of his thought. Indeed, before the task is more than well begun, such an one will find that he has already done so. He is following a literary star of the first magnitude, so bright, that fixed in the western hemisphere, it shines in the east-being, in fact, through the medium of . translation, visible in the whole intellectual heavens. No American author is more popular on the other side the Atlantic, and, in some regards, no one is more deserving the esteem in which he is held. No writer more carefully weighs his words. Every one is, indeed, a "honey-cell of thought." Albeit, some of the honey is made from material that spoils the flavor. Yet no theme is so commonplace but in the subtle alchemy of his mind is transmuted, even baser metals becoming gold. So pure is his style, so chaste his expression, so honest his purpose, so great the constant richness of his thought, that in reading Emerson one feels he is enjoying nature, a beautiful landscape, not of the ordinary kind-hill, valley, plain, or mountain peak that may be climbed-but rather that he is traversing an elevated plateau bordered by peaks of suggested thought that pierce the very clouds. Emerson spoke because he had something to say. He had something to say because he was a thinker. He held that we never reach the best use of books "until our own thought rises to such a pitch that we can not afford to read much." "Man thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings. But when the intervals of darkness come, as come they must, when the sun is hid and the stars withdraw their shining, we repair to the lamps which were kindled by their ray to guide our steps to the East again, where the dawn is." The breadth and vigor of his thought may be almost described in his own words regarding the Declaration of Independence. In reply to Mr. Choate's criticism on what he called "the glittering generalities" of that document, Emerson said: "Glittering generalities? rather, BLAZING UBIQUITIES." With so much material, the endeavor to review it all in the space allotted this paper could result in nothing better than "glittering generalities." Therefore it seems best to call attention to Two Phases of Emerson's Thought. I. HIS PRACTICALITY. This term is not used to characterize shrewdness in the management of personal matters, though evidently they did not suffer. Mr. E. P. Whipple quotes the racy testimony to Emerson's thrift, incidentally given by a stalwart Vermonter in a railway car. "The train, as usual, stopped at Concord. Then one of the giants turned to the other and lazily remarked, 'Mr. Emerson, I hear, lives in this town.' 'Ya-as,' was the drawling rejoinder, and I understand that, in spite of his odd notions, he is a man of con-sid-er-able propity.'" He was pre Mr. Emerson was not a man of affairs. eminently one of ideas. But when he turned his attention to the practical matters of life his views were clear and correct. He wrote delightfully on labor, considered both for its own sake and as an educator. "A man should have a farm or a mechanical craft for his culture. We must have a basis ARTICLE II. TWO PHASES OF EMERSON'S THOUGHT. BY REV. J. C. ALLEN. The advice is equally "HITCH your wagon to a star," wrote Emerson to Lincoln during the progress of the war. needed by one who attempts to follow Emerson through the progress of his thought. Indeed, before the task is more than well begun, such an one will find that he has already done so. He is following a literary star of the first magnitude, so bright, that fixed in the western hemisphere, it shines in the east-being, in fact, through the medium of translation, visible in the whole intellectual heavens. No American author is more popular on the other side the Atlantic, and, in some regards, no one is more deserving the esteem in which he is held. No writer more carefully weighs his words. Every one is, indeed, a "honey-cell of thought." Albeit, some of the honey is made from material that spoils the flavor. Yet no theme is so commonplace but in the subtle alchemy of his mind is transmuted, even baser metals becoming gold. So pure is his style, so chaste his expression, so honest his purpose, so great the constant richness of his thought, that in reading Emerson one feels he is enjoying nature, a beautiful landscape, not of the ordinary kind-hill, valley, plain, or mountain peak that may be climbed-but rather that he is traversing an elevated plateau bordered by peaks of suggested thought that pierce the very clouds. Emerson spoke because he had something to say. He had something to say because he was a thinker. He held that we never reach the best use of books "until our own 433 thought rises to such a pitch that we can not afford to read much." "Man thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings. But when the intervals of darkness come, as come they must, when the sun is hid and the stars withdraw their shining, we repair to the lamps which were kindled by their ray to guide our steps to the East again, where the dawn is." The breadth and vigor of his thought may be almost described in his own words regarding the Declaration of Independence. In reply to Mr. Choate's criticism on what he called "the glittering generalities" of that document, Emerson said: "Glittering generalities? rather, BLAZING UBIQUITIES." With so much material, the endeavor to review it all in the space allotted this paper could result in nothing better than "glittering generalities." Therefore it seems best to call attention to Two Phases of Emerson's Thought. I. HIS PRACTICALITY. This term is not used to characterize shrewdness in the management of personal matters, though evidently they did not suffer. Mr. E. P. Whipple quotes the racy testimony to Emerson's thrift, incidentally given by a stalwart Vermonter in a railway car. "The train, as usual, stopped at Concord. Then one of the giants turned to the other and lazily remarked, Mr. Emerson, I hear, lives in this town.' 'Ya-as,' was the drawling rejoinder, and I understand that, in spite of his odd notions, he is a man of con-sid-er-able propity."" He was pre Mr. Emerson was not a man of affairs. eminently one of ideas. But when he turned his attention to the practical matters of life his views were clear and correct. He wrote delightfully on labor, considered both for its own sake and as an educator. "A man should have a farm or a mechanical craft for his culture. We must have a basis for our higher accomplishments, our delicate entertainments of poetry and philosophy, in the work of our hands. Manual labor is the study of the external world. When I go into my garden with a spade and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands. But not only health but education is in the work.. Labor is God's education; he only is a sincere learner, he only can become a master, who learns the secrets of labor, and who, by real cunning, extorts from nature its scepter." His views of business life, its virtues, vices, falsity, and need of reform were extremely practical. He recognized not only facts, but underlying principles. The great difficulty in reforming abuse in trade is, that though everybody sees it, and everybody shares it, nobody acknowledges responsibility. "That is the vice that no one feels himself called to act for man, but only as a fraction of man." In every thing Emerson was intensely personal. Individual responsibility was always emphasized, and even in religion he was at times practical. "Religions are obsolete when lives do not proceed from them." His opinions were broad and clear; often prophetic. In a lecture on "The Times," delivered in Boston in 1841, he said: "The present age will be marked by its harvest of projects for the reform of domestic, civil, literary, and ecclesiastical institutions." After mentioning the crusades against war, negro slavery, intemperance, government based on force, usages of trade, court and custom-house oaths, and the agitation regarding systems of education and the laws of property, he said: "These movements are, on all accounts, important; they not only check the special abuses, but they educate the conscience and intellect of the people. How can such a question as the slave trade be agitated for forty years by all the Christian nations, without throwing great light on ethics into the general mind? The temperance question, . drawing with it all the cu |