Amos Bronson Alcott

"O tenderly the haughty day

Fills his blue urn with fire;

One morn is in the mighty heaven,

And one in our desire."

—Emerson.

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INDEPENDENCE DAY.

Sunday, 4.

And the republic now begins to look sweet and beautiful again, as if men and patriotic citizens might walk upright without shame or apologies of any sort. Having managed for a century or more to keep the black man under foot, provoked a war to this end, and, in our straits, availed of his life to spare ours, let us cherish the faith that we are bent honestly now on securing him the rights which his courage and loyalty have won for him and his while the republic stands. Was this slaughter of men and expenditure of treasure, with the possible woes to come, necessary to make us just? And shall we not be careful hereafter that political parties play not false as before the war; the cry for union and reconstruction but a specious phrase for reinstating the old issues under new names? Admitted into the Union, the once rebellious States may break out into new atrocities for recovering their fallen fortunes. It behooves the friends of freedom and human rights to know their friends, and trust those, and only those, who have proved themselves faithful in the dire struggle,—

"Who faithful in insane sedition keep,

With silver and with ruddy gold may vie."

In democratic times like ours, when Power is stealing the world over from the few to the many, and with an impetus unprecedented in the world's history, the rightful depositories of Power, the People, should make sure that their representatives are fitted alike and disposed to administer affairs honorably; the rule being that of the Best by the Best,—an aristocracy in essence as in name; since no calamity can befall a people like the want of good heads to give it stability and self-respect in its own, or consideration in the eyes of foreign beholders. Ideas are the royal Presidents; States and peoples intelligent and prosperous as they are loyal to these Potentates. Liberty is the highest of trusts committed to man by his Creator, and in the enjoyment of which man becomes himself a creator,—a trust at once the most sacred and most difficult to hold inviolate. "Power is a fillet that presses so hard the temples that few can take it up safely." Right is the royal ruler alone, and he who rules with least restraint comes nearest to empire.

And one of the most hopeful aspects of our national affairs is the coming into importance and power of plain, sensible men, like Grant and Boutwell,—men owing their places to their honesty and useful services,—the one in the field, the other in the state. Our village, also, is honored by the elevation of one of its distinguished citizens for his eminent legal attainments and personal integrity. This change for the better in our politics, it seems, came in with President Lincoln, himself the plainest of the plain, one of the most American of American men; is (after his successor's lamentable career) now reinstated in our present chief magistrate, whose popularity is scarcely secondary to any of his predecessors in the Presidential Chair. Our national politics have obviously improved in these respects upon later administrations, and we may reasonably hope for the prevalence of peace and prosperity, such as the country has not enjoyed since the times of Washington and Franklin. The reign of principle appears to have returned into the administration of affairs, honorable men taking the lead, softening, in large measure, the asperities and feuds of parties. Great questions affecting the welfare of the community, and for the solution of which the ablest heads are requisite, are coming into discussion, and are to be settled for the benefit, we trust, of all concerned. Reform in capital and labor, temperance, woman's social and political condition, popular education, powers of corporations, international communication,—these and the new issues which their settlement will effect, must interest and occupy the active forces of the country to plant the republic, upon stable foundations. "An early, good education," says Gray, in his notes on Plato's Republic, "is the best means of turning the eyes of the mind from the darkness and uncertainty of popular opinion, to the clear light of truth. It is the interest of the public neither to suffer unlettered and unphilosophical minds to meddle with government, nor to allow men of knowledge to give themselves up for the whole of life to contemplation; as the first will lack principle to guide them, and others want practice and inclination to business." One might also commend to senators and representatives this sentence from Tacitus: "I speak," he says, "of popular eloquence, the genuine offspring of that licentiousness to which fools and designing men have given the name of liberty. I speak of that bold and turbulent oratory, that inflamer of the people, and constant companion of sedition, that fierce incendiary that knows no compliance, and scorns to temporize,—busy, rash, and arrogant, but, in quiet and well-regulated governments, utterly unknown." Yet I cannot say that I should have written, with my present notion of political or religious obligation, what follows: "Upon the whole, since no man can enjoy a state of calm tranquillity, and, at the same time, raise a great and splendid reputation; to be content with the benefits of the age in which we live, without detracting from our ancestors, is the virtue that best becomes us." The sentiment has a patriotic sound, but conceals the cardinal truth, dear to a patriot, certainly in our times and republic, that a calm tranquillity is hardly compatible with a life of heroic action, and that true progress, so far from detracting from the glory of our ancestors, carries forward that for which they battled and bled, to clothe them and their descendants with a fresher and more enduring fame. Not in imitation of such inflamers of the people, but in the spirit of liberty and loyalty, have Sumner and Phillips won great and splendid reputations, if not silenced the fools and designing men whose bold and turbulent oratory, the genuine offspring of licentiousness, once sounded in our national halls, and came near the separation of our Union.

Whom did the people trust?

Not those, the false confederates of State,

Who laid their country's fortunes desolate;

Plucked her fair ensigns down to seal the black man's fate;

Not these secured their trust.

But they, the generous and the just,

Who, nobly free and truly great,

Served steadfast still the servant race

As masters in the menial's place;

By their dark brothers strove to stand

Till owners these of mind and hand,

And freedom's banners waved o'er an enfranchised land.

These were the nation's trust,—

The patriots brave and just.

PHILLIPS.

Phillips stands conspicuous above most of his time, as the advocate of human rights, the defender of the oppressed. By happy fortune, he enjoys the privilege denied to senators, of speaking unencumbered by convention or caucus. His speeches have the highest qualities of an orator. In range of thought, clearness of statement, keen satire, brilliant wit, personal anecdote, wholesome moral sentiment, the Puritan spirit, they are unmatched by any of the great orators of his time. They have, besides, the rare merit, and one in which our public men have been painfully deficient, of straightforwardness and truth to the hour. They are addressed to the conscience of the country, are spoken in the interest of humanity. Many a soldier in the field during the late war, many a citizen owes his loyalty to hearing his eloquent words.

Above party, unless it be the honorable and ancient party of mankind, they embody the temper and drift of the times. How many public men are here to survive in the pillory of his indignant invectives! The history of the last thirty years cannot be accurately written without his facts and anecdotes. There is no great interest of philanthropy in which he has not been, and still is, active. His words are to be taken as those of an earnest mind intent on furthering the ends of justice, interpreted not by their rhetoric, but strict adherence to principle. Certainly the country has at times hung in the balance of his argument; cabinets and councils hesitating to do or undo without some regard to his words, well knowing the better constituency which he better represents and speaks for,—the people, namely, whose breath can unmake as it has made.

An earnest, truthful man, he has not shared with other statesmen of his time in their indifferency nor their despair; and if by some esteemed a demagogue and disorganizer, such is not his estimate of the part taken by him in the great issues of the past, political and social. The friend of progress, he early threw himself into the conflict, addressed himself to the issues as they rose, rose with them and rode the wave bravely; sometimes hastening, oftentimes provoking the crisis. What States would not adventure upon as policy, he espoused as policy and humanity both. Addressing himself from the first to the great middle class, whose principles are less corrupted by party politics, in whom the free destiny of peoples is lodged, he is gathering the elements of power and authority which, becoming formidable in ability if not in numbers, must secure the country's confidence, and in due time have political dictation and rule.

Then, of the new instrumentalities for agitation and reform, the free Platform derives largely its popularity and efficiency from his genius. Consider the freedom of speech it invites and maintains, free as the freest can make it, a stand whereon every one who will gains a hearing; every opinion its widest scope of entertainment,—the widest hospitality consistent with the decorum of debate. Hither comes any one breathing a sentiment of progress, any daring to dissent against dissent, against progress itself. Here the sexes meet on fair terms. Here, as not elsewhere, is intimated, if not spoken fittingly, the popular spirit and tendency. Here come the most effective speakers by preference to address a free constituency, a constituency to be theirs, if not already, their words leaping into type from their lips, to be spread forthwith to the four winds by the reporting press. 'Tis a school of debate, for oratory, for thought, for practice; has the remarkable merit of freshness, originality; questions affecting the public welfare being here anticipated, first deliberated upon by the people themselves; systems of agitation organized and set on foot for creating a wholesome popular sentiment; in short, for giving inspiration, a culture, to the country, which the universities cannot; training the reason and moral sense by direct dealing with principles and persons as occasion requires; a school from whence have graduated not a few of our popular speakers,—the Orator himself, whose speeches furnish passages for collegiate declamation, from which politicians plume their rhetoric to win a borrowed fame. Cato said, "An orator was a good man skilled in the art of speaking."

More than any lecturer, unless it be Emerson, he has made the lecture a New-England, if not an American institution; is always heard with profit and pleasure by the unprejudiced auditor,—any course in the cities and towns being thought incomplete without his. Nor is it easy to estimate the debt of the free States to his speeches before associations, conventions, in pulpits, the humblest places where his words could be secured. He has already taken his place beside Garrison, has linked his name with the Liberator's, to be on men's lips while the word slave has significance.

If there be any one to whom the country is more largely indebted than another for eminent services in his day, it must be Garrison; unless a doubt may arise in the minds of some, if the hero of Harper's Ferry be not entitled to like honors, since to these illustrious men must be attributed the merit of having struck the most effective blows for the overthrow of slavery, the one inaugurating the era of emancipation, and the other consummating it.

The agitation and outside pressure which they were chiefly instrumental in furthering to its rightful issues, were the most powerful auxiliaries, if not the power itself, which emancipated the mind of the country from its subserviency to the slave dominion. They were the creators of the sentiment that freed the negro at last from his bonds and cleared the way for a true Republican State. Some power superior to the Constitution was required to revise it, and free the whole people from this Arachne's coil that had bound them so long; was especially needed to extricate the rulers themselves from its meshes, and to rescue the rights thus imperilled by unscrupulous placemen who shrunk from the task. These could not help them, caught in the same snare that bound the nation. "Neither the law, nor the Constitution, nor the whole system of American institutions," they were told, "ever had contemplated a case as likely to arise under our system in which a resort would be necessary to provide outside of the law and Constitution for amending the Constitution." The case arose, nevertheless, and was provided for by these powerful agitators, and by the progress of events. The late civil outbreak compelled the necessary amendments, sweeping the compromises, the slave Congress and territory from the statute books and the country itself.

"To all new truths, all renovations of old truths," says Coleridge, "it must be as in the ark between the destroyed and the about-to-be-renovated world. The raven must be sent out before the dove, and ominous controversy must precede peace and the olive wreath."

GREELEY.

Of political editors, next to Garrison, perhaps Horace Greeley was the most efficient in furthering this national result; and by his eminent services in various departments of activity comes nearest to being the people's man, the best representative of character indigenous to New England, or more properly America—like Beecher and Phillips. His power appears to lie in his strong understanding, abundant information, plain statement of his facts, freed from all rhetorical embellishment. A rustic Franklin in his direct way of putting his things before his auditor, he makes plain his meaning in spite of his utter want of all graces of person, or of oratory, handling his subject as a rude farmer his axe and crowbar. There is about him a homely charm of good-nature, a child-like candor, that have all the effect of eloquence, elevating him for the time into the subject he treats. In the statistics of things, practical and political, he is a kind of living encyclopedia of information, and as his chief distinction has made the newspaper a power it had not been before.

May we not credit New England with giving the country these new Instrumentalities for Progress, viz.:—

The Conversation awaits being added to the list.

AGE OF IRON AND BRONZE.

Friday, 9.

Ours can hardly claim to be the Golden Age, but of Bronze and Iron rather. If ideas are in the ascendant, still mind is fettered by mechanism. We scale the heavens to grade the spaces. Messrs. Capital & Co. transact our business for us the globe over. Was it in the Empire News that I read the company's advertisement for supplying mankind with gas at a penny per diem annually? And then, proceeding to say, "that considering the old-time monopoly in the heavenly luminary, the corporation has constructed at fabulous cost their Brazen Cope to shut down upon the horizon at day-break punctually, and so graduate to each customer's tube his just allowance, else darkness for delinquents the year round."

Certainly a splendid conception for distributing sunbeams by the Globe Corporation if the solar partner consent to the speculation. Had Hesiod the enterprise in mind when he sung,—

Or St. Paul, when writing concerning labor and capital: "For I would not," he says, "that other men should be eased and you burdened, but by an equality that now at the time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance may also be a supply for your want, that there may be an equality, as it is written, He that had gathered much, had nothing over, and he that had gathered little, had no lack. If any man will not work, neither should he eat."

Any attempt to simplify and supply one's wants by abstinence and self-help is in the most hopeful direction, and serviceable to the individual whether his experiment succeed or not, the practice of most, from the beginning, having been to multiply rather than diminish one's natural wants, and thus to become poor at the cost of becoming rich. "Who has the fewest wants," said Socrates, "is most like God."

Our "Fruitlands" was an adventure undertaken in good faith for planting a Family Order here in New England, in hopes of enjoying a pastoral life with a few devoted men and women, smitten with sentiments of the old heroism and love of holiness and of humanity. But none of us were prepared to actualize practically the ideal life of which we dreamed. So we fell apart, some returning to the established ways, some soured by the trial, others postponing the fulfilment of his dream to a more propitious future.11 I certainly esteem it an inestimable privilege to have been bred to outdoor labors, the use of tools, and to find myself the owner of a garden, with the advantage of laboring sometimes besides my faithful Irishman, and compare views of men and things with him. I think myself the greater gainer of the two by this intercourse. Unbiassed by books, and looking at things as they stand related to his senses and simple needs, I learn naturally what otherwise I should not have known so well, if at all. The sympathy and sincerity are the best part of it. One sees the more clearly his social relations and duties; sees the need of beneficent reforms in the economics of labor and capital by which the working classes shall have their just claims allowed, the products of hand and brain be more equitably distributed, a finer sympathy and wiser humanity prevail in the disposition of affairs. No true man can be indifferent to that great productive multitude, without whose industry capitalists would have nothing in which to invest; the callings and the professions lack bread and occupation alike. Head and hands best co-operate in this interplay of services. Every gift, besides enriching its owner, should enrich the whole community, opportunities be opened for the free exercise of all, the golden rule stand for something besides an idle text. Every one is entitled to a competence, provided he employs his gifts for the common good. It seems but right that the gifted should return to the common treasury in the ratio of their endowments; be taxed at a higher rate than those to whom like advantages have been denied. Indeed, it is questionable whether the man who is poor by no fault of his, should be taxed at all; give him citizenship rather as an inborn right, as a man, not as a mere producer. Men are loyal from other considerations than self-interest. One would not check the spirit of accumulation, but the monopoly of the gift for the sole benefit of the oppressor. A competence, including every comfort, and even harmless luxuries, is what all men need, all desire, all might have, were there a fair distribution of the avails of labor, opportunities for labor of head or hand for all,—the right to be educated and virtuous included, as the most important. The poor man cannot compete, practically, successfully, with the rich man, the laborer with the capitalist, the ignorant with the instructed,—all are placed at unequal odds, the victims of circumstances which they did not create, and which those who do may use to their injury if they choose. The laborer is broken on the wheel his necessities compel him to drive, feeling the while the wrong done him by those whom he has enriched by his toil.

No tradition assigns a beginning to justice, but only to injustice. Before the Silver, the Brazen, the Iron, comes the Golden Age, when virtue is current, and man at his highest value. It is when man is degraded that virtue and justice are dishonored, and labor deemed disreputable.

Poverty may be the philosopher's ornament. Too rich to need, and self-respecting to receive benefits, save upon terms which render the receiver the nobler giver, he revenges upon fortune by possessing a kingdom superior to mischance and incumbrance.

CONVERSATION ON ENTHUSIASM.12

Wednesday, 14.

Mr.Alcott began the conversation by referring to that of Monday before, on the subject of Temperament and Complexion, and added other fine thoughts about it.

He said, perhaps he had dwelt too much on the symbol of color, but conceived himself borne out in all he had said. "The Greeks held that a brown complexion betokened courage, and those who had fair skins were called children of light and favorites of the gods. And the gods themselves were demonic or divine, as tempered by darkness or light,—the gods Infernal, the Midgods, the Celestials. So Christian art has painted Satan dark, the Christ fair. And late experiments on the sunbeam showed that dark substances imprison the rays,—these absorbing more and delivering less. The more of sun, so much the more of soul; the less of sun, of passion more, and the strange fire." He fancied black eyes were of Oriental descent, were tinged less or more with fairer hues in crossing West. People of sandy hair and florid complexions were of Northern ancestry. The fusion of the various races was now taking place, blending all, doubtless, into a more harmonious and beautiful type.

He asked if there did not lurk in the fancy, if not in our atoms, a persuasion that complexion, like features, voice, gait, typified and emblazoned personal traits of their possessors, if the rhetoric of morals and religion did not revel in like distinctions. "Handsome is that handsome does." Beauty was the birthright of all, if not their inheritance. It was shame that brought deformity into the world. Every child accused, he knew not whom, for any blemish of his. "Why not mine the happy star, too?" Still some trait was insinuated into the least favored, and stamped upon the embryonic clay. Ebony, alabaster, indigo, vermilion, the pigments were all mingled as purity or passion decreed. Types were persistent, family features standing strong for centuries and perpetuating themselves from generation to generation. Place the portraits of a long line of ancestors on the walls, one's features were all there, with the slight variations arising from intermarriage, degrees of culture, calling, climate.

"Eyes were most characteristic. These played the prime parts in life,—eyes and voice. Eyes were a civility and a kingdom: voice a fortune. There was a culture, a fate in them, direful, divine." And he quoted, without naming the author:—

Then added, significantly:—

He said: "Voice classified us. The harmonious voice tells of the harmonious soul. Millions of fiends are evoked in a breath by an irritated one. A gentle voice converts the Furies into Muses. The highest saint is not he who strives the most violently, but he upon whom goodness sits gracefully, whose strength is gentleness, duty loved, because spontaneous, and who wastes none of his power in effort; his will being one and above temptation. True love says, 'Come to my embrace, you are safer with me than you were with yourself, since I am wise above knowledge, and tasting of the apple.' The sequel is bliss and peace. But after fascination comes sorrow, remorse. The touch of the demonized soul is poison. Read Swedenborg's Hells, he added, and beware of demonized eyes!"

I never saw any one who seemed to purify words as Mr.Alcott does; with him nothing is common or unclean.

He then spoke of temperance in its widest sense, as being that which contributed to health of the whole being, body and soul alike. He said, "We should breakfast on sunrise and sup on sunset." And he read passages from Pythagoras, recommending music as a diet. "Pythagoras composed melodies for the night and morning, to purify the brain. He forbade his disciples the using of flesh meats, or drinks which heated and disturbed the brain, or hindered the music of dreams."

At this point of the conversation, Miss Bremer and Mr.Benzon, the Swedish consul, came in, and there was a slight pause.

Mr.Alcott then resumed the subject, and read Emerson's Bacchus, to which he gave new significance. When he had finished, he said, "This is the wine we want." He then spoke of the subject proposed for the evening's conversation, which was Enthusiasm, defining it as "an abandonment to the instincts. The seer," he said, "was one in whom memory predominated, and many of his visions were recollections rather of a former than revelations of a future state." This state of clairvoyance he named "thought a-bed, or philosophy recumbent"; and in this view he spoke of "Swedenborg, who was an enthusiast in the latter sense, and revealed remarkable things." He quoted a passage from Swedenborg's diary, wherein he speaks of his being created with the power of breathing inwardly, suspending his outward breathing, and in this way conversed with angels and spirits.

Miss Bremer asked Mr.Alcott "if he called Swedenborg an enthusiast."

Mr.Alcott said, "Swedenborg was in such fine relations with nature and spirit, that many things seemed revealed to him beyond the apprehension of ordinary men. He was a seer rather of supernatural than of spiritual things; a preternaturalist, rather than spiritualist. He had wonderful insights into nature, also, which science was almost every day confirming."

"His followers claimed that he anticipated important discoveries, both in natural as in spiritual science, and that his merits were enhanced by his claim to supernatural illumination. And whatever his gifts, how assisted, whether by agencies supernatural or preternatural, their operations were of wonderful sweep, his insights surpassing, transcending the comprehension of any successor; of a kind that have led some to suspect that he staggered down under the weight of his endowments. Certainly, he stands, like Boehme, an exceptional mind, in the order of nature, and awaits an interpreter to determine his place in the world of thought. He is the most eminent example furnished in modern biography of the possibilities of the metempsychosis, as if we saw in him an ability to translate himself at will, personally, wheresoever he would, taking his residence for the while in plant, animal, mineral, atom, with the superadded faculty of ravishing its secret. Nor content with this, he ransacks the primeval elements, the limbos of chaos and night. What burglaries he perpetrates! picking of locks, slitting of mysteries, opening rents into things sacred and profane,—of these no end. Then such edifices rising from regions of vagary and shadow, a goblin world, grand, grotesque, seldom lighted from above, or tipped with azure. His heavens had no prospects; no perspective; his hells were lurid; the pit bottomless, a Stygian realm throughout. His genius plunges, seldom soars; is not fledged, but footed; his heaven but the cope of the abyss in plain sight of the doomed. His angels are spectral, unwholesome; his celestials too knowing to be innocent.

"It were a fruitless task to follow him from starting-point to goal, if goal there be, in his restless racing throughout nature. The ghost-seer of shadow-land, whereinto he smuggled all natural things as spiritual phantoms; he needs be studied with due drawback of doubt, as to the veracity of his claim to divine illumination. Still with every abatement, here is a body of truth none can gainsay nor resist; abysses not yet fathomed by any successor, naturalist, or spiritualist."

After this surprising statement of his views of Swedenborg, Miss Bremer asked more questions about Mr. Alcott's definition of an Enthusiast, adding: "Christ, then, if we speak of him as a man, was an enthusiast."

Mr.Alcott, smiling, said, "Yes, the divinest of enthusiasts, surrendering himself entirely to the instincts of the Spirit; might safely do so, being holy, whole, inspired throughout all his gifts, his whole Personality,—the divine fire pervaded every part; therefore he was the celestial man."

The conversation here turned upon Nature, in some way which I do not now recollect, and Mr.Alcott spoke of the great mission of the prophet of nature.

"Nature," he said, "was more to some persons than others; they standing in closer relations to it."

"But nature," said Miss Bremer, "is not wholly good."

"No," said Mr.Alcott; "there is something of Fate in her, too, as in some persons. She, too, is a little bitten."

The expression seemed to amuse her, for she repeated it several times, laughing.

Mr.Alcott then said, "that nature was not wholly sane. It was given to the celestial man alone to take from it only what was salutary, as it was the Nemesis of the demonic man to take what was hurtful. Bees gathered honey from all flowers."

James Russell Lowell asked "if bees did not sometimes secrete poisonous honey?"

Mr.Alcott said "he believed they did, but only when wholesome flowers were denied them."

Miss Littlehale suggested that "honey was not poisonous to the bees, but to men only, and Mr.Lowell allowed that it was not."

Miss Bremer now returned to the word Enthusiast. She said Mr.Alcott had defined it well as "divine intoxication."

I do not follow the order of time in what follows, but record some scattered sayings of the conversation.

Mr.Alcott spoke of "the celestial, or unfallen man, as not making choice of good; he was chosen rather; elected, deliberation presupposed a mixed will, a temptation and a lapse. Then, opening Plotinus, he read this beautiful passage:—

"Every soul is a Venus. And this, the nativity of Venus, and Love who was born at the same time with her, obscurely signify. The soul, therefore, when in a condition conformable to nature, loves God, wishing to be united to him, being, as it were, the desire of a beautiful virgin to be conjoined with a beautiful love. When, however, the soul descends into generation, then being, as it were, deceived by spurious nuptials, and associating herself with another and mortal love, she becomes petulant and insolent, through being absent from her father. But when she again hates wantonness and injustice, and becomes purified from the defilements which are here, and again returns to her father, she is affected in the most felicitous manner. And those, indeed, who are ignorant of this affection, may from worldly love form some conjecture of divine love, by considering how great a felicity the possession of a most beloved object is conceived to be; and also, by considering that those earthly objects of love are mortal and noxious; that the love of them is nothing more than the love of images, and that they lose their attractive power because they are not truly desirable, nor our real good, nor that which we investigate. In the ideal world, however, the object of love is to be found, with which we may be conjoined, which we may participate and truly possess, and which is not externally enveloped with flesh. He, however, who knows this, well knew what I say, and will be convinced that the soul has another life."

Miss Bremer seemed puzzled by this reading as questioning in her mind a distinction between virtue and innocence, or holiness, which Mr.Alcott had discriminated clearly.

Some one inquired, "How can we trust our instincts since these have been so differently educated?"

Mr.Alcott said "they had rather been overborne by the appetites and passions. It was the tragedy of life that these were obscured so soon, and the mind left in confusion. The child was more of an enthusiast than the man ordinarily. And then so many were born old; even in the babe one sometimes sees some ancient sinner. Youth is so attractive because still under the sway of instinct. The highest duty is musical and sings itself. Business, lusts, draw men downwards. Yet were life earnest and true to the instincts, it would be music and song. Life was too much for most. No one was always an enthusiast. It was in the golden moments that he was filled with the overflowing divinity. The blissful moments were those when one abandons himself to the Spirit, letting it do what it will with him. True, most persons were divided, there were two or more of them,—a Deuce distracting them and they in conflict with evils, or devils. But what is the bad but lapse from the good,—the good blindfolded?"

"Ah! Mr.Alcott," said Miss Bremer, laughing, "I am desperately afraid there is a little bit of a devil, after all."

"One's foes are of his own household," said Mr. Alcott. "If his house is haunted it is by himself only. Our Choices were our Saviours or Satans."

Speaking of the temperaments, Mr.Alcott discriminated these in their different elements.

The celestial man was composed more largely of light and ether. The demonic man combined more of fire and vapor. The animal man more of embers and dust.13 The sacraments might be considered symbolically, as Baptism, or purification by water.

Fasting, or temperance in outward delights.

Continence, or chastity in personal indulgences.

Prayer, or aspiring aims.

Labor, or prayer in act or pursuits.

These he considered the regimen of inspiration and thought.

Mr.Alcott closed the conversation by reading from the Paradise Regained a description of the banquet spread by Satan for Christ; also, the lines in praise of Chastity, from the Comus, whose clear statue-like beauty always affects one powerfully.

HAWTHORNE.

Monday, 19.

Hawthorne was of the darker temperament and tendencies. His sensitiveness and sadness were native, and he cultivated them apparently alike by solitude, the pursuits and studies in which he indulged, till he became almost fated to know gayer hours only by stealth. By disposition friendly, he seemed the victim of his temperament, as if he sought distance, if not his pen, to put himself in communication, and possible sympathy with others,—with his nearest friends, even. His reserve and imprisonment were more distant and close, while the desire for conversation was livelier, than any one I have known. There was something of strangeness even in his cherished intimacies, as if he set himself afar from all and from himself with the rest; the most diffident of men, as coy as a maiden, he could only be won by some cunning artifice, his reserve was so habitual, his isolation so entire, the solitude so vast. How distant people were from him, the world they lived in, how he came to know so much about them, by what stratagem he got into his own house or left it, was a marvel. Fancy fixed, he was not to be jostled from himself for a moment, his mood was so persistent. There he was in the twilight, there he stayed. Was he some damsel imprisoned in that manly form pleading alway for release, sighing for the freedom and companionships denied her? Or was he some Assyrian ill at ease afar from the olives and the East? Had he strayed over with William the Conqueror, and true to his Norman nature, was the baron still in republican America, secure in his castle, secure in his tower, whence he could defy all invasion of curious eyes? What neighbor of his ever caught him on the highway, or ventured to approach his threshold?

Yet if by chance admitted, welcome in a voice that a woman might own for its hesitancy and tenderness; his eyes telling the rest.

Your intrusion was worth the courage it cost; it emboldened to future assaults to carry this fort of bashfulness. During all the time he lived near me, our estates being separated only by a gate and shaded avenue, I seldom caught sight of him; and when I did it was but to lose it the moment he suspected he was visible; oftenest seen on his hill-top screened behind the shrubbery and disappearing like a hare into the bush when surprised. I remember of his being in my house but twice, and then he was so ill at ease that he found excuse for leaving politely forthwith,—"the stove was so hot," "the clock ticked so loud." Yet he once complained to me of his wish to meet oftener, and dwelt on the delights of fellowship, regretting he had so little. I think he seldom dined from home; nor did he often entertain any one,—once, an Englishman, when I was also his guest; but he preserved his shrinking taciturnity, and left to us the conversation. Another time I dined with a Southern guest at his table. The conversation turning on the war after dinner, he hid himself in the corner, as if a distant spectator, and fearing there was danger even there. It was due to his guest to hear the human side of the question of slavery, since she had heard only the best the South had to plead in its favor.

I never deemed Hawthorne an advocate of Southern ideas and institutions. He professed democracy, not in the party, but large sense of equality. Perhaps he loved England too well to be quite just to his native land,—was more the Old Englishman than the New. He seemed to regret the transplanting, as if reluctant to fix his roots in our soil. His book on England, entitled "Our Old Home," intimates his filial affection for that and its institutions. If his themes were American, his treatment of them was foreign, rather. He stood apart as having no stake in home affairs. While calling himself a democrat, he sympathized apparently with the absolutism of the old countries. He had not full faith in the people; perhaps feared republicanism because it had. Of our literary men, he least sympathized with the North, and was tremulously disturbed, I remember, at the time of the New-York mob. It is doubtful if he ever attended a political meeting or voted on any occasion throughout the long struggle with slavery. He stood aloof, hesitating to take a responsible part, true to his convictions, doubtless, strictly honest, if not patriotic.

He strove by disposition to be sunny and genial, traits not native to him. Constitutionally shy, recluse, melancholy, only by shafts of wit and flow of humor could he deliver himself. There was a soft sadness in his smile, a reserve in his glance, telling how isolate he was. Was he ever one of his company while in it? There was an aloofness, a besides, that refused to affiliate himself with himself, even. His readers must feel this, while unable to account for it, perhaps, or express it adequately. A believer in transmitted traits needs but read his pedigree to find the genesis of what characterized him distinctly, and made him and his writings their inevitable sequel. Everywhere you will find persons of his type and complexion similar in cast of character and opinions. His associates mostly confirm the observation.

LANDOR.

Landor's Biography, edited by James Forster, and lately published here, well repays perusal. Landor seems to have been the victim of his temperament all his life long. I know not when I have read a commentary so appalling on the fate that breaks a noble mind on the wheel of its passions, precipitating it into the dungeons but to brighten its lights. Of impetuous wing, his genius was yet sure of its boldest flights, and to him, if any modern, may be applied Coleridge's epithet of "myriad mindedness," so salient, varied, so daring the sweep of his thought. More than any he reminds of Shakespeare in dramatic power; of Plato, in his mastery of dialogue; in epic force, of Æschylus. He seems to have been one of the demigods, cast down, out of place, out of his time, restless ever, and indignant at his destiny,—

His stormful, wayward career exemplifies in a remarkable manner the recoiling Fate pervading human affairs. "A sharp dogmatic man," says Emerson, who met him when abroad, "with a great deal of knowledge, a great deal of worth and a great deal of pride, with a profound contempt for all that he does not understand, a master of elegant learning and capable of the utmost delicacy of sentiment, and yet prone to indulge a sort of ostentation of coarse imagery and language. He has capital enough to have furnished the brain of fifty stock authors, yet has written no good book. In these busy days of avarice and ambition, when there is so little disposition to profound thought, or to any but the most superficial intellectual entertainments, a faithful scholar, receiving from past ages the treasures of wit, and enlarging them by his own lore, is a friend and consoler of mankind. Whoever writes for the love of mirth and beauty, and not with ulterior ends, belongs to this sacred class, and among these, few men of the present age have a better claim to be numbered than Mr.Landor. Wherever genius and taste have existed, wherever freedom and justice are threatened (which he values as the element in which genius may work), his interest is here to be commanded. Nay, when we remember his rich and ample page, wherein we are always sure to find free and sustained thought, a keen and precise understanding, an affluent and ready memory familiar with all chosen books, an industrious observation in every department of life, an experience to which nothing has occurred in vain, honor for every just sentiment, and a scourge like that of the Furies for every oppressor, whether public or private, we feel how dignified is this perpetual censor in his cerule chair, and we wish to thank a benefactor of the reading world."

No writer of our time in the difficult species of composition, the dialogue, has attained a success upon so high a plane as Landor in his Conversations, wherein he has treated almost every human interest, brought his characters together, like Plato's interlocutors, from different ages and of differing opinions, using these as representatives of the world's best literature. And besides these his masterpieces, his verses have the chaste and exquisite quality of the best Greek poetry.

"His dialogues number," says his biographer, "not fewer than a hundred and fifty. Different as these were in themselves, it was not the less the distinguishing mark of their genius to be, both in their conformation and in their mass, almost strangely alike; and it is this unity in their astonishing variety, the fire of an inexpressible genius running through the whole, that gives to his books containing them their place among the books not likely to pass away; there is scarcely a form or function of the human mind, sincere or sprightly, cogitative or imaginative, historical, fanciful, or real, which has not been exercised or brought into play in this extraordinary series of writings. The world, past and present, is reproduced in them, with its variety and uniformity, its continuity and change."

What Landor says of written dialogue, holds in still wider latitude, even, in conversation. "When a man writes a dialogue, he has it all to himself, the pro and the con, the argument and the reply. Within the shortest given space of time, he may indulge in every possible variety of mood. He may contradict himself every minute. In the same page, without any sort of violence, the most different shades of sentiment may find expression. Extravagance of statement, which in other forms could not be admitted, may be fully put forth. Dogmas of every description may be dealt in, audaciously propounded, or passionately opposed, with a result all the livelier in proportion to the mere vehemence expended on them. In no other style of composition is a writer so free from ordinary restraints upon opinion, or so absolved from self-control. Better far than any other, it adapts itself to eagerness and impatience. Dispensing with preliminaries, the jump in medias res may at once be taken safely. That one thing should be unexpectedly laid aside, and another as capriciously taken up, is quite natural to it; the subjects being few that may not permissively branch off into all the kindred topics connected with them, when the formalities held ordinarily necessary in the higher order of prose composition have disappeared in the freedom of conversation."

SLEEP AND DREAMS.

Thursday, 22.

"When sleep hath closed our eyes the mind sees well,

For Fate by daylight is invisible."

Things admirable for the admirable hours. The morning for thought, the afternoon for recreation, the evening for company, the night for rest. Having drank of immortality all night, the genius enters eagerly upon the day's task, impatient of any impertinences jogging the full glass. The best comes when we are at our best; and who so buoyant as to be always rider of the wave? Sleep, and see; wake, and report the nocturnal spectacle. Sleep, like travel, enriches, refreshes, by varying the day's perspective, showing us the night side of the globe we traverse day by day. We make transits too swift for our wakeful senses to follow; pass from solar to lunar consciousness in a twinkling, lapse from forehead and face to occupy our lower parts, and recover, as far as permitted, the keys of genesis and of the foreworlds. "All truth," says Porphyry, "is latent; but this the soul sometimes beholds when she is a little liberated by sleep from the employments of the body. And sometimes she extends her sight, but never perfectly reaches the objects of her vision. Hence, when she beholds, she does not see it with a free and direct light, but through an intervening veil, which the folds of darkening nature draw over her eye. This veil, when in sleep it admits the light to extend as far as truth, is said to be of horn, whose nature is such, from its tenuity, that it is pervious to the light. But when it dulls the sight and repels its vision of truth, it is said to be of ivory, which is a body so naturally dense, that, however thin it may be scraped, it cannot be penetrated by the visual rays."

Homer says,—

That is, from the seat of intellect, and declare their import when our will sleeps. Then are they of weighty and reliable import, yet require the like suppression of our will to make plain their significance. Only so is the oracle made reliable. The good alone dream divinely. Our dreams are characteristic of our waking thoughts and states; we are never out of character; never quite another, even when fancy seeks to metamorphose us entirely. The Person is One in all the manifold phases of the Many through which we transmigrate, and we find ourself perpetually, because we cannot lose ourself personally in the mazes of the many. 'Tis the one soul in manifold shapes, ever the old friend of the mirror in other face, old and new, yet one in endless revolution and metamorphosis, suggesting a common relationship of forms at their base, with divergent types as these range wider and farther from their central archetype, including all concrete forms in nature, each returning into other, and departing therefrom in endless revolution.14

"I catch myself philosophizing most eloquently," wrote Thoreau, "when first returning to consciousness in the night or morning. I make the truest observations and distinctions then when the will is yet wholly asleep, and mind works like a machine without friction. I was conscious of having in my sleep transcended the limits of the individual, and made observations and carried on conversations which in my waking hours I can neither recall nor appreciate. As if, in sleep, our individual fell into the infinite mind, and at the moment of awakening we found ourselves on the confines of the latter. On awakening, we resume our enterprise, take up our bodies, and become limited minds again. We meet and converse with those bodies which we have previously animated. There is a moment in the dawn when the darkness of the night is dissipated, and before the exhalations of the day begin to rise, when we see all things more truly than at any other time. The light is more trustworthy, since our senses are pure and the atmosphere is less gross. By afternoon, all objects are seen in mirage."

All men are spiritualists in finer or coarser manners, as temperament and teaching dictate and determine,—the spiritual world revealing itself accordingly. Speculation has in all ages delighted itself in this preternatural realm from whence have risen the ghosts of realties too unsubstantial and fugitive for ordinary senses to apprehend. Whatever the facts, they receive interpretation according to the spirit and intelligence of the believer. The past is full of such prodigies and phenomena, for whose solution all learning, sacred and profane, is revived in its turn. It appears that like opinions have their rounds to run, like theories with their disciples, reappearing in all great crises of thought, and reaching a fuller solution at each succeeding period. A faith, were such possible, destitute of an element of preternaturalism, or of mysticism, pure or mixed, could not gain general acceptance. Some hold on the invisible connects the known with unknown, yet leaving the copula to be divined. We define it on our lips when we pronounce the word Person, and so approach, as near as we may, to the "I Am" of things.

GENESIS AND LAPSE.

Sunday, 25.

"Before the Revolution of 1688," says Coleridge, "metaphysics ruled without experimental philosophy. Since the Revolution, experimental psychology has in like manner prevailed, and we now feel the result. In like manner, from Plotinus to Proclus, that is, from A.D.250 to A.D.450, philosophy was set up as a substitute for religion; during the dark ages, religion superseded philosophy, and the consequences are equally instructive."

"The great maxim in legislation, intellectual or physical, is subordinate, not exclude. Nature, in her ascent, leaves nothing behind; but at each step subordinates and glorifies,—mass, crystal, organ, sensation, sentience, reflection."

Taken in reverse order of descent, Spirit puts itself before, at each step protrudes faculty in feature, function, organ, limb, subordinating to glorify also,—person, volition, thought, sensibility, sense, body,—animating thus and rounding creation to soul and sense alike. The naturalist cannot urge too strongly the claims of physical, nor the plea of the idealist be too vigorously pressed for metaphysical studies. One body in one soul. Nature and spirit are inseparable, and are best studied as a unit. "Either without the other," as Plato said of sex, "is but half itself." Nature ends where spirit begins. The idealist's point of view is the obverse of the naturalist's, and each must accost his side with a first love, before use has worn off the bloom and seduced their vision.

Goethe said of Aristotle that "he had better observed nature than any modern, but was too rash in his inferences and conclusions"; and he adds, "we must go to work slowly, and more indulgently with Nature, if we would get anything from her."

Inspired by his example of dealing thus reverently and lovingly with nature, the great naturalists of our time are reading secrets hitherto hidden from less careful and pious observers. If the results thus far have not satisfied the idealist, it becomes him to consider that his methods are the reverse of theirs, and that when they shall have tracked Life in its manifold shapes and modes of working in nature up to Spirit, their office is fulfilled, their work complete, and their discoveries are passed over to him for a higher generalization and genesis. "A physical delineation of nature," says Humboldt, "terminates at the point where the sphere of intellect begins, and a new world is opened to our view; it marks the limit, but does not pass it."

Whether man be the successor or predecessor of his inferiors in nature, is to be determined by exploring faithfully the realms of matter and of spirit alike, and complementing the former in the latter. Whether surveyed in order descending or ascending, in genesis or process, from the side of the idealist or of the naturalist, the keystone of the arch in either case is an ideal, underpropped by matter or upheld by mind.

Man, the sum total of animals, transcends all in being a Person, a responsible creature. "The distinguishing mark," says Aristotle, "between man and the lower animals is this: that he alone is endowed with the power of knowing good and evil, justice and injustice, and it is a participation in this that constitutes a family and a city." Man is man in virtue of being a Person, a self-determining will, held accountable to a spiritual Ideal. To affirm that brute creatures are endowed with freedom and choice, the sense of responsibility, were to exalt them into a spiritual existence and personality; whereas, it is plain enough that they are not above deliberation and choice, but below it, under the sway of Fate, as men are when running counter to reason and conscience. The will bridges the chasm between man and brute, and frees the fated creature he were else. Solitary, not himself, the victim of appetite, inmate of the den, is man till freed from individualism, and delivered into his free Personality. "Ye must be born again." The conflict between man's desires and satisfactions declares his defection from Personal holiness. While at one personally with himself, life suffices, his wants are seconded as they rise, and his self-respect preserved inviolate. But lapsed from personal rectitude, fallen out of and below himself, he is at variance with things around as within, his senses deceive, his will is divided, and he becomes the victim of duplicities, discontents, the prey of remorse.

"'Tis a miserable thing," says Glanvil, "to have been happy; and a self-contented wretchedness is a double one. Had felicity always been a stranger to humanity, our present misery had not been. And had not ourselves been the authors of our ruin, less. We might have been made unhappy; but since we are miserable, we chose it. He that gave our outward enjoyments might have taken them from us, but none could have robbed us of innocence but ourselves. While man knows no sin, he is ignorant of nothing that it imports humanity to know; but when he has sinned, the same transgression that opens his eyes to see his own shame, shuts them against most things else but that, and the newly-purchased misery. With the nakedness of his body, he sees that of his soul, and the blindness and disarray of his faculties to which his former innocence was a stranger; and that which shows them to him makes them. No longer the creature he was made, he loses not only his Maker's image, but his own. And does not much more transcend the creatures placed at his feet, than he comes short of his ancient self."