March 26, 1841.

Margaret opened our talk by saying that the subject of Wisdom presented more conversable points than that of Genius. We could all think and talk about Wisdom, and any man who had ever scratched his finger was to a degree wise.

Minerva was the child of Counsel and Intelligent Will. She had no infancy, but sprang full-armed into being. Ready, agile, she was in herself the history of thought. She did not need that her life should be one of incident. Her attendant emblems are expressive: the Sphinx, the owl, the serpent, the cock, and the javelin suggest her whole story.

William White asked why Genius was masculine and Wisdom feminine.

Margaret thought no one could find any difficulty in the fact that Genius was masculine. It presented itself to the mind in the full glow of power. The very outlines of the feminine form were yielding, and we could not associate them with a prominent, self-conscious state of the faculties. Wisdom was like woman, always ready for the fight if necessary, yet never going to it; taking reality as a basis, and classifying and arranging upon it all that Genius creates,—seeing the relations and proper values of things.

George Ripley objected to this definition. He might have imbibed a Hebrew idea, but the office of Wisdom was surely something more than this,—a purely mechanical and orderly tact.

Margaret said she had not meant to give our view of it, only the Greek idea as manifest in the story of Minerva. To William White she said, smiling, that she supposed he had not wondered so much that Genius should be masculine as that Wisdom should be feminine! But the Greeks were wise, and she revered their keen perception.

Elisabeth Hoar said it seemed to her that Wisdom provided means. A hero might be inspired by Genius, but Wisdom provided his armor, taught him to distinguish the goal, and to perceive clearly the relation to it of any onward step.

Margaret agreed to this, and

William Story said that Genius was indebted to Wisdom for means of communication. Genius thinks words impertinent, but Wisdom apprehends its intuitions, and gives them shape.

Margaret said further, that Wisdom must adopt instinctively the finest medium.

It seemed to me that Wisdom not only gave power of communication, but power of attainment. Walter Scott was a good instance of the union of intuitive perception and human sagacity, but all these words about it cleared up nothing.

Margaret then proposed that we should take up the attributes of Minerva, and so get at the facts.

Mr. Ripley did not think it noble enough when she based Wisdom upon realities.

William Story said Wisdom must have something to work upon. He thought Wisdom compared the intuitions of Genius with realities.

Charles Wheeler thought the word actual would help them out of their difficulty.

I wanted to quote Emerson to the effect that the Ideal is more Real than the Actual.

Margaret agreed with Mr. Wheeler, and said that by reality she understood anything incarnated,—whatever was tangible. She then went on to speak of the Sphinx. What was it?

Elisabeth Hoar seemed surprised at the question. Was it not one thing to everybody?

Margaret called for her idea, but she would not give it.

Margaret said that to herself it represented the development of a thought, founding itself upon the animal, until it grew upward into calm, placid power. She revered these good ancients, who did not throw away any of the gifts of God; who were neither materialists nor immaterialists, but who made matter always subservient to the highest ends of the Spirit.

William White asked if the festivals of the Gods, the highest source of their influence over the people, did not show how little they had penetrated to the spirit of things?

Margaret thought ambrosia and nectar were proper emblems of Divine Joy. They were not to be taken literally.

“But,” persisted White, “the great body of the people thought them so.”

William Story said, with happy grace, that the great body of the people might be excused for such a thought.

Margaret enjoyed the pun, and said that the great Greek body was sensuous and ate, but that the Greek soul knew better than to suspect the Gods of opening their mouths.

E. P. P. waked up at this moment, and asked what Margaret would say to Berkeley’s theory.

Margaret said she did not know what it was!

E. P. P. said, the evolution of all things from the soul, the non-existence of matter.

James P. Clarke thought it very difficult to decide how far spirit and matter were one. A man’s identity was not in the particles which came and went every seven years, but in the spirit. Yet these particles constituted the wall of separation between himself and others. His identity was in his spirit.

George Ripley begged leave to disagree. He thought we knew as much about matter as about spirit, and that Berkeley’s theory was as good as any.

Margaret said that if God created matter, of course it was evolved from spirit; that matter could not be antagonistic to that from which it was evolved. To express a complete idea, we had only to say, “Jehovah, I am.”

“Or,” Charles Wheeler added, “to be silent.”

“Yes,” said Margaret, “and in that lies the merit of Mythology. Every faculty was, according to that, an incomplete statement. Therefore Mr. Ripley did wrong to confound Minerva with the Logos.”

E. P. P. did not see that Berkeley’s statement was answered.

William Story came in with another pun. “If Berkeley thought so, it was no matter!”

Some stupid person spoiled the wit by trying to explain it, and the question remained to us just as much matter as ever.

They talked about the Sphinx again, yet said little. It holds more meaning in its passive womb than talk will ever play the midwife to. It was the child of the Destructive Element and Feeling,—Typhon and Echidna,—the human heart experienced in misfortune touched by death. Thought rooted in the actual and developed by tenderness was rooted in this figure.

“Everybody knows that Wisdom stings,” said Margaret, and so we went on to the serpent.

Somebody spoke of the Greek Tartarus.

Ida Russell thought its torment was not acute, but consisted of the deprivation of comforts.

The wandering idleness of it would be intolerable to an active Greek, Elisabeth Hoar thought, but more endurable than any device of a priesthood. As for our serpent, no one seemed to know much about it.

Margaret said that we owed it so much, that she felt in duty bound to know something of it.

James F. Clarke said that the Christian serpent was quite another thing.

Everybody laughed at the idea of a Christian serpent.

William White professed great admiration for the reptile. We should have had no Christianity but for its beguiling.

Margaret agreed!—and said she supposed everybody felt that.

Mrs. Russell thought the casting of the skin very expressive.

James F. Clarke gave Coleridge’s exposition, to the effect that the serpent was the common understanding! It would touch and handle all things, and even sought to be as the Gods, knowing good from evil. Its undulating motion—its belly now on the ground, now off—expressed both the aspiration and the subserviency of the creature.

Margaret asked if serpents ever swallowed their own tails?

Charles Wheeler said that must be an arbitrary form.

Margaret replied, that she had been struck by the difference between the Mexican and the Greek serpent. The Mexican was folded back upon itself.

Not always, I said. Its tail is sometimes in its mouth, and the variations seem to be occasioned by the architectural necessity.

James F. Clarke spoke of a Virginia snake that moves in a circle, and asked if when Mr. Emerson talked about “coming full circle” he was not thinking of that?

Margaret laughed, and declared that serpent must be of Yankee invention. Æsculapius bore two on his staff, Mercury two on his divining-rod, and the cock was also sacred to Æsculapius.

I asked if this did not indicate a certain subjection of these Gods to Wisdom?

Some questions written on paper were here read. One asked why Minerva was born of the stroke of Vulcan, and why she was the patroness of weavers, and what that had to do with the story of Arachne.

Margaret replied with ill temper to the first, that it was because Vulcan held the hammer,—to the second, that she did not know.

But was there really so little meaning in the fact that Mechanic Art so ministered to Intelligent Will that she could afford to miss the point?

She said we could see that Minerva was told to marry Vulcan, but declined; would have nothing to do with the sooty cripple.

Sophia Ripley said, aptly enough, that Minerva had been changing her mind ever since!

Ida Russell thought that when Mechanic Art was married to Beauty, it might charm even Wisdom.

George Ripley said she might well have despised the brute force, but as it grew into something more noble, have learned to love it. Dr. Dana[2] was the servant of the Lowell corporation. In these days no corporation could exist without its man of science. His salary was a mere pittance, and when he made a discovery with which all Europe rang, he asked for a part of the profits. “We will consider,” said the soulless corporation, and they decided that they had a legitimate right to all that could be made out of their servant!

“Thus,” I said, “Wisdom sows for the Mechanic Art to reap?”

“Exactly so,” was the reply; “and this contains the essence of the Yankee philosophy.”

The life of Wisdom was one long struggle for something beyond a merely serviceable knowledge. Bending alike to art and artisan, she still refused to love the latter till he had wooed Beauty to their common service. But Wisdom has of late married Vulcan. He no longer limps, and has washed his face in the springs of love and thought, and sits in holiday robes beside his bride.

Somebody said that the story of Arachne was an instance of the Goddess’s vindictiveness.

Margaret hoped that the vindictiveness was a popular interpolation. If so, the story of Marsyas shows that she was malicious. She brought his misfortunes upon him. If her own voice was discordant, there was no reason why his voice should please!

“Divinities have a right to be indignant,” said somebody. Did Margaret blush?

In speaking of the artistic representations of Minerva, Margaret said some beautiful things. Minerva was as tall and large as she could be, without being masculine. Her face was thoughtful and serene, without being sweet. Her eye was so full and clear that it had no need to be deep.

The talk was closed by Margaret’s reading the Essay that E. P. P. had sent in, and the criticisms upon it.

E. P. P. began by speaking of the conservatism which disinclined Jupiter to the birth of Minerva.

“Yes,” Margaret said, “the good was always opposed to the better.”

E. P. P. then spoke of the Parthenon, upon which, according to the Homeric Hymn, the story of Minerva’s birth was sculptured.

Margaret said it had been difficult to believe that the Greeks would put so ugly a thing upon their temple, but the ruins showed a Vulcan with his hammer in his hand, and the form of the Goddess hovering over the cloven skull.

Why, asked E. P. P., did Ulysses represent Wisdom in the Odyssey?

Margaret thought he represented the history of a thought in life, when he tired us all out with his long story, and so pushed us to decision.

E. P. P. alluded to the different conceptions of Minerva in the Iliad and the Odyssey, and this led to the question of priority of composition.

Margaret thought the Odyssey was written when Homer was young and romantic; but E. P. P. and myself stood out stoutly for the precedence of the Iliad. I said, without the least bit of real knowledge, that I should not wonder if there were two centuries between the poems, they seemed to indicate such entirely different states of society; but certainly the Odyssey was latest.

Charles Wheeler said that the best scholars seemed all of one mind. The Iliad was written first by Homer,—the Odyssey long after by another hand.

E. P. P. said that there was a gem which represented Minerva as married to a mortal, but she could tell nothing more about it.

Jones Very said that when Wisdom falls into decay we call it Genius!

Does that mean that prophetic power fallen back from the moral nature to the intellect is dwarfed accordingly?

CAROLINE W. HEALEY.

March 27, 1841.