If Mr. Weiss had stopped with this general thesis, he would probably have carried most Rationalists, certainly the mass of Transcendentalists, with him. They would have been only too glad to welcome so clear and brilliant a champion. But he insisted on gathering up these conceptions into two points of doctrine—God and Immortality. On these points his arguments become strained, and too subtle for ordinary minds. Indeed, many will be inclined to suspect his whole exposition, which would be a misfortune of a very grave character. Mr. Emerson avoided all definite assertion of personality carried beyond the limits of individuality in the present state of existence. Mr. Weiss is more daring, and proclaims a God who arranges creation as it is, and an immortality that drops what to most people constitutes their highly valued possessions—namely, their "animalities" of various kinds. What will most men think of a God who "takes his chances," who "in planet-scenery and animal life is at his play," who puts up in his divine laboratory "curare and strychnine," and cannot "recognize the word disaster," though he makes the thing? To how many will an immortality be conceivable that can "belong only to immutable ideas," that only "springs from the vital necessity of their own souls," that is a clinging "to the breast of everlasting law"?

To tell the truth, the arguments themselves for this rather questionable result of idealism are somewhat unconvincing, not to say fanciful. They are chiefly of a dogmatic kind, that may be met with counter affirmations, equally valid. Many of them are stated in a symbolical or poetical or illustrative manner, the most dangerous of all methods. Examples of this might be multiplied indefinitely. I had marked several for confirmation, but they were too long for quotation. One instance of his mode of reasoning may be given[D]:

But, surely, if this is an argument at all, if it does not beg the very question in debate—namely, whether there is an infinite mind,—is it not an argument for atheism? For either the existing universe fully expresses Deity, in which case Deity is something less than infinite; or Deity must be conceived as very imperfect, and a progressive, tentative Divinity is no better than none.

To be sure, he says: "We attribute Personality to the divine Being, because we cannot otherwise refer to any source the phenomena that show Will and Intellect." That is to say, we yield to a logical necessity. To argue that materialism "reeks with immortality" because "the baldest negation is not merely a verbal contradiction of an affirmation, but a contribution to its probability,—for it testifies that there was something previously taken for granted,"—is really a play upon words, inasmuch as the denial is simply an affirmation of certain facts, and by no means a categorical declaration involving all the facts at issue. By claiming none but relative knowledge, the antithesis is removed.

One is conscious of a suspicion that the author's tremendous overflow of nervous vitality had much to do with the vehemence of his persuasions. He himself countenances such a suspicion. "I confess," he declares, "to an all-pervading instinct of personal continuance, coupled with a latent, haunting feeling that there is a point somewhere in human existence, as there has been in the past, where animality controls the fate of men. Where is that point? We recoil from every effort to draw the line." He had a very strong sense of personality, with its inevitable reference of persistency. "To us, perhaps," he cries, in a kind of anguish, "no thought could be so dreadful, no surmise so harrowing, as that we might slip into nonentity. We impetuously repel the haunting doubt. We shut the eyes, and cower before the goblin in abject dread until it is gone. With the beauty-loving and full-blooded Claudio, we cry,—

and he quotes the rest of the famous passage in "Measure for Measure," adding for himself: "Put us anywhere, but only let us live; and we could feel with Lear, when he says to Cordelia,—

Is not this an exclamation of temperament?

John Weiss was essentially a poet. His pages are saturated with poetry. His very arguments are expressed in poetic imagery. To take two or three examples:

Or this about the poet's inspired hour:

Or the following rhapsody about health:

Or these passages about music, of which he was always a devoted lover, a passionate admirer, an excellent critic. My first extract is used to illustrate the doctrine of evolution, and suggests Browning's poem of "Abt Vogler." It should be said, by the way, that Weiss was a great student of Browning, whose lines in "Paracelsus," prophetic of the evolution doctrine, was often on his lips. He even understood "Sordello."

In calling Mr. Weiss essentially a poet, I am far from implying that he was not a thinker. Perhaps he was more subtle and more brilliant a thinker for being also a poet—that is, for seeing truth through the medium of the imagination, for following the path of analogy. At any rate, his being a poet did not in the least interfere with the acuteness or the precision of his thinking, as any one can see who reads his chapters—those, for example, which compose the volume entitled "American Religion." I had marked for citation so many passages that it would be necessary to quote half the book to illustrate my thesis. When I first knew him, he was a strict Transcendentalist. Dr. Orestes Brownson, no mean judge on such matters, spoke of him as the most promising philosophical mind in the country. To a native talent for metaphysics, his early studies at Heidelberg probably contributed congenial training. His knowledge of German philosophy may well have been stimulated and matured by his residence in that centre of active thought; while his intimacy, on his return, with the keenest intellects in this country may well have sharpened his original predilection for abstract speculation. However this may have been, the tendency of his genius was decidedly toward metaphysical problems and the interpretation of the human consciousness. This he erected as a barrier against materialism; and this he probed with a depth and a fearlessness which were truly extraordinary, and would have been remarkable in any disciple of the school to which he belonged. No one that I can think of was so fine, so profound, so analytical. His volume on "American Religion" was full of nice discriminations; so was his volume on the "Immortal Life"; so were his articles and lectures. His "Life of Theodore Parker" abounded in curious learning as well as in vigorous thinking. He could follow, step by step, the great leader of reformatory ideas, and went far beyond him in subtlety and accuracy of mental delineation. He could not rest in sentiment, must have demonstration, and never stopped till he reached the ultimate ground of truth as he regarded it. Ideas, when he found them, were usually, not always, expressed in symbolical forms. His alert fancy detected likenesses that would have been concealed from common eyes; and often the splendor of the exposition hid the keenness of the logical temper, as a sword wreathed with roses lies unperceived. But the tempered steel was there and they who examined closely felt its edge.

He was a man of undaunted courage, being an idealist who lived out of the world, and a living soul animated by overwhelming convictions, which he was anxious to convey to others as of immense importance. He believed, with all his heart, in the doctrines he had arrived at, and, like a soldier in battle, was unconscious of the danger he incurred or of the wounds he received, being unaware of his own daring or fortitude. He was an anti-slavery man from the beginning. At a large meeting held in Waltham in 1845, to protest against the admission of Texas as a slave State, Mr. Weiss, then a minister at Watertown, Mass., delivered a speech in which he said: "Our Northern apathy heated the iron, forged the manacles, and built the pillory," declared that man was more than constitutions (borrowing a phrase from James Russell Lowell), and that Christ was greater than Hancock and Adams. To his unflinching devotion to free thought in religion, he owed something of his unpopularity with the masses of the people, who were orthodox in opinion, though his failure to touch the general mind was probably due to other causes. The class of disbelievers was pretty large in his day and very self-asserting. Boldness never fails to attract; and brilliancy, if it be on the plane of ordinary vision, draws the eyes of the multitude, who are on the watch for a sensation.

The chief trouble was that his brilliancy was not on the plane of ordinary vision, but was recondite, ingenious, fanciful. He was too learned, too fond of allusions—literary, scientific, historical,—too swift in his mental processes. His addresses were delivered to an audience of his friends, not to a miscellaneous company. They were of the nature of soliloquies spoken out of his own mind, instead of being speeches intended to meet the needs of others. His lectures and sermons were not easy to follow, even if the listener was more than usually cultivated. Shall it be added that his sincerity of speech, running into brusqueness, startled a good many? He was theological and philosophical, and he could not keep his hands off when what he considered as errors in theology or philosophy came into view. His wit was sharper than he thought, while the laugh it raised was frequently overbalanced by the sting it left behind in some breasts. It was too often a "wicked wit," barbed and poisoned, which one must be in league with to enjoy. They who were in sympathy with the speaker were delighted with it, but they who were not went off aggrieved. No doubt this attested the earnestness of the man, who scorned to cloak his convictions; but it wounded the self-love of such as were in search of pleasure or instruction, and interfered with his general acceptableness. A broad, genial, good-natured, truculent style of ventilating even heresies may not be repulsive to people of a conventional, believing turn; in fact, it is not, as we know. But the thrusts of a rapier, especially when unexpected, are not forgiven. Mr. Weiss drew larger audiences as a preacher on religious themes than he did as a lecturer on secular subjects, where one hardly knew what to look for, because he was known to be outspoken and capable of introducing heresies on the platform.

Then he was in all respects unconventional. His spontaneous exuberance of animal spirits, which led him to roll on the grass, join in frolicsome games, play all sorts of antics, indulge in jokes, mimicry, boisterous mirthfulness, was inconsistent with the staid, proper demeanor required by social usage. How he kept himself within limits as he did was a surprise to his friends. Ordinary natures can form no conception of the weight such a man must have put upon his temperament to press it down to the level of common experience. Temptations to which he was liable every day do not visit average minds in their whole lifetime, and cannot by such minds be comprehended. The stiff, upright, careful old man cannot understand the jocund pliability of the boy, who, nevertheless, simply expends the superfluity of his natural vigor, and relieves his excess of nervous excitability. On thinking it all over, remembering his appetite for life, his joy in existence, his nervous exhilaration, his love of beauty, his passionate ardor of temperament, I am surprised that he preserved, as he did, so much dignity and soberness of character. I have seen him in his wildest mood, yet I never saw him thrown off his balance. With as much brilliancy as Sydney Smith, he had, as Sydney Smith had not, a breadth of knowledge, a depth of feeling, a soaring energy of soul that kept him above vulgar seductions, and did for him, in a nobler way, what ambition, love of place, conventional associations did for the famous Englishman.

The difficulty was that he was too far removed from the common ground of sympathy. He could not endure routine, or behave as other people behaved, and as it was generally fancied he should. If Sydney Smith's jocularity interfered with his promotion, how much more did he have to contend with who to the jocularity added an enthusiastic devotion to heresy, a partiality for metaphysical speculation, and a poetic glow that removed him from ordinary comprehension! With an unworldliness worthy of all praise, but fatal to the provision of daily bread, he left the ministry, a fixed income, a confirmed social position, ample leisure for study and for literary pursuits, and launched forth on the uncertain career of lecturer. He was not the first who failed in attempting to harness Pegasus to a cart, in the hope of making him useful in mundane ways. Neither discharged his full function. The cart would not run smoothly, and the steed was not happy. The old profession has this advantage: that to all practical purposes, the wagon goes over the celestial pavement where there is no mud nor clangor, and Pegasus can seem to be harnessed to a chariot of the sun.

Weiss simply disappeared from view. His books were scattered; his lectures and sermons were worked over and over, the best of them being published in his several volumes. A few relics of the author remain in the hands of his widow, who is grateful for any recognition of his genius, any help to diffuse his writings, and tribute to his memory. They who knew him can never forget him. Perhaps the very vividness of their recollection makes them indifferent to the possession of visible memorials of their friend.

Samuel Johnson should be known as the apostle of individualism. The apostle I say, for this with him was a religion, and the preaching of individualism was a gospel message. He would not belong to any church, or subscribe to any creed, or connect himself with any sect, or be a member of any organization whatever, however wide or elastic, however consonant with convictions that he held, with beliefs that he entertained, with purposes that he cherished, with plans that were dear to him. He never joined the "Anti-Slavery Society," though he was an Abolitionist; or the "Free Religious Association," though its aims were essentially his own, and he spoke on its platform. He made it a principle to act alone, herein being a true disciple of Emerson, whose mission was to individual minds. He wrote a long letter to me on the occasion of establishing the "Free Religious Association," of which I wished him to become a member, that recalls the letter written by Mr. Emerson in reply to George Ripley when asked to join the community of Brook Farm, and whereof the following is an extract:

Johnson ended by discarding the church entirely. In 1881 he wrote:

In a sermon, "Living by Faith," he says:

In the paper on "Transcendentalism," he says:

Mr. Johnson abhorred the monarchical principle. It was his endeavor to track it from its origin, through all its forms of institution, ceremonial, dogma, symbol, from the earliest times to the latest, through the whole East to the farthest West. This was the burden of his studies in Oriental religions, the sum of his criticism, the aim of his public teaching. He was profoundly, intensely, absorbingly religious, but the form of his religion was not "Christian" in any recognized sense, Romanist, Protestant, or Unitarian. The most radical thought did not altogether please him. His was a worship of Law, Order, Cause, Harmony, impersonal, living, natural; a recognition of mind as the supreme power in the universe; a cosmic, eternal, absolute faith in intellectual principles as the substance and soul of the world. God was, to him, a spiritual being, alive, vital, flowing in every mode.

These quotations, which might be multiplied indefinitely, in fact, which it is difficult not to multiply, are probably enough to satisfy any who really wish to know that here was a truly religious man, a really devout man, the possessor of a living faith; one who held fast to more Deity than the multitude cherished, and welcomed him in a much more cordial, comprehensive, natural manner; one who fairly drenched the world and man with a divine spirit, but who was all the more spiritual on this account, as a man attests his vigor by his ability to lay aside his crutches, and put the medicine-chest, bottles, and boxes on the shelf, to walk in cold weather without an overcoat, or lie naked on the ice and melt it through.

Of course, the only justification of a pretension of this kind is the actual vitality necessary for such a feat, the sanity demanded by one who would stand or go alone. In Samuel Johnson's case there was no question of this. Spiritually, he was a whole man, self-poised, self-contained, strong, clear, alert, a hero and a saint. His conversation, his bearing, conduct, entire attitude and manner indicated the most jubilant faith. He never faltered in his confidence, never wavered in his conviction, never abated a jot of hope that in the order of Providence all good things would come. There was something staggering to the ordinary mind, in his assurance of the divine wisdom and love. There was something altogether admirable in the elevation of his character above the trials and vexations that are incident to the human lot, and that seemed heaped upon him. For his own was not a smooth or fortunate life, as men estimate felicity. His health was far from satisfactory. He was not rich or famous or popular or sought after. He lived a life of labor, in some respects, of denial and sacrifice. Not until after his death was the full amount of his renunciation apparent even to those who thought they knew him well.

He was a Transcendentalist—that is to say, he believed in the intuitive powers of the mind; he was sure that all primary truths, such ideas as those of unity, universe, law, cause, substance, will, duty, obligation, permanence, were perceived directly, and are not to be accounted for by any data of observation or inference, but must be ascribed at once to an organic or constitutional relation of the mind with truth.

And again, in the same article—that on "Transcendentalism," first printed in the Radical Review for November, 1877, and afterwards included in the volume of "Lectures, Sermons, and Essays":

And again, for we cannot be too explicit on this point:

It will be observed that Mr. Johnson does not make himself answerable for specific articles of belief on God or immortality, but confines his faith to the persuasion of indwelling mind, sovereign, eternal, imperial. "Immortality," he says, "is immeasurable chance for all. In its light, all strong, blameless, heroic lives—divine plants by the wayside—tell for the nature they express. God has made no blunder in our spiritual constitution. Power is in faith." This intense belief in the soul, in all the native capacities of our spiritual constitution, in the supremacy of organic feelings, ideas, expectations over merely private desires, this burning confidence in divinely implanted instincts, this absolute certainty that every promise made by God will be fulfilled, explains the tone of exulting hope in which he writes to bereaved friends.

How far such a declaration as this comports with the demand for general immortality made in behalf of those who are conscious of no noble love, who have attained to no conscience, and have no holy possessions, we are not told. Perhaps Mr. Johnson would seize on the faintest intimations of mind as evidencing the presence of moral being, as Mr. Weiss does. But he did not dwell on that side of the problem. Plainly he ascribed little value to mere personality, viewed abstractly and apart from its spiritual development. He wrote to those whom he knew and loved, to remarkable people.

Yet it would not be fair to conclude that immortality was denied to the basest. If immortality is "opportunity," a "chance for all," it is for those who can profit by it or enjoy it. If any are debarred, the cause must be their own incompetence. They simply decease. There is no torment in store for them; no hell is possible.

Samuel Johnson was an enthusiastic evolutionist, but of mind itself, not of matter as ripening into mind. The ordinary conception of evolution,—that the higher came from the lower,—was exceedingly repugnant to him. Every kind of materialism he abhorred as illogical and irrational. The theories of Comte,—that "mind is cerebration;" of Haeckel,—that it is a "function of brain and nerve;" of Strauss,—that "one's self is his body;" of Taine,—that a man is "a series of sensations," were to him as absurd, in science or philosophy, as they were fatal to aspiration and progress.

He is alluding to Tyndall's statement that mind is evolved from the universe as a whole, not from inorganic matter. For himself, he says:

This is absolute enough. It is plain that to this writer the notion of extracting intellect from form is ridiculous.

At the same time the method of evolution is the one adopted by the supreme Mind in its endeavor to awaken in man religious ideas. The exposition of the original faiths—Indian, Chinese, Persian—is a long and eloquent argument for this thesis. All criticism, all thinking, all analysis, all study of history, all investigation of phenomena, point in this direction. This is the rule of creation; this is the solution of the problem of the universe. The successive degrees of this divine ascent, he maintains, are distinctly traceable in the records left for our reading. The threads are fine, of course, but what have we eyes for? It is not necessary that everybody should see them, and the few who can are amply rewarded for the trouble they take in putting their fingers upon the very lines of the heavenly procedure. His peculiar strain of genius admirably qualified him for this delicate task. It was serious, critical, earnest, and aspiring. At one period of his life he was a mystic, wholly absorbed in God, and he always had that tendency towards the more passionate forms of idealism which led him to mystical speculations. The search for God was ever the animating purpose of his endeavor. The law of the blessed life was never absent from his thought. He, all the time, lived by faith, and was naturally disposed to see the gain in all losses. His mind had that penetrating quality which loved to follow hidden trails, and appreciated the subtlest kinds of influence. In a striking passage he speaks of the

This was written in a letter to his sister, on the occasion of a visit to the menagerie to see Herr Driesbach, the horse-tamer. A man who could spring into the empyrean from such ground may be trusted to behold Deity where others behold nothing but dirt; and they who submit to his guidance are pretty certain to come out full believers in the spiritual powers.

Johnson absolutely subordinated dogma to practice, holding fast to the idea involved in the declaration that he who doeth the will shall know the doctrine. He began with the ethics of the individual, the family, the social circle, seeing every principle incarnated there. How faithful he was in all domestic relations the world will never know, for there are details that cannot be divulged. But in all public affairs his constancy was perfect. Dr. Furness of Philadelphia used to say that the anti-slavery struggle in this country taught him more about the essential nature of the Gospel than he had learned in any other way. Samuel Johnson had the same conviction. In a private letter written in 1857 he says:

They who remember his addresses during the war will not need any confirmation of this announcement, and they who heard or have read his sermon on the character and services of Charles Sumner will have the fullest assurance of the cordial appreciation with which every phase of the struggle was entered into.

But though so ardent a follower of the doctrine that ideas lead the world, Johnson was not induced to go all lengths with the sentimentalists. While warmly espousing the cause of the workingman his papers on "Labor Reform" show how keenly critical he could be of measures proposed for his benefit. No one will accuse him of indifference to the claims of woman, but he spoke of "Woman's Opportunity" rather than of "Woman's Rights"; is inclined to think that it is not true that she is left out of political life from the present wish to do her injustice; that "on the whole, the feeling, if it were analyzed, would be found to be rather that of defending her right of exemption, relieving her from tasks she does not desire.... Among intelligent men at least, actual delay to wipe out the anomaly of the voting rule is not so much owing to a spirit of domination or contempt as is too apt to be assumed, as it is to a respect for what woman has made of the functions she has hitherto filled, and the belief that she holds herself entitled to be left free to work through them alone." He has nothing to say regarding the superiority of woman's nature; ventures no definition of her sphere; is not unconscious of feminine infirmities; doubts the efficacy of the ballot; confesses that the level of womanhood would be, at least temporarily, depressed by the larger area of practical diffusion; is by no means certain that women would necessarily act for their own good, and is deeply persuaded of the inferiority of outward to inward influence. This is the one thing he is sure of; this and the principle that "liberty knows—like faith and charity—neither male nor female." In the war between Russia and Turkey he took the part of Turkey, not only because he respected the rights of individual genius and resented invasion, but for the reason that he distrusted the civilizing tendencies of Russia, and thought the interests of Europe might be trusted to the Ottoman as confidently as to the Russian. In a discourse entitled "A Ministry in Free Religion," delivered on the occasion of his resigning the relation of pastor to the "Free Church at Lynn," June 26, 1870, he said:

In this connection he speaks of temperance, the amelioration of the condition of the "perishing" or "dangerous" classes, the various schemes for benefiting the laboring men, plans for adjusting the relations of labor and capital, arrangements for diffusing the profits of production,—causes which he had at heart, but which should be discussed in view of the principle of individual freedom, which must be upheld at all hazards. He was a close reasoner as well as a warm feeler, and would not allow his sympathies to get the upper hand of his ideas. He hoped for the best; he had faith in the highest; he anticipated the brightest; but he tried to see things as they were. He was a student, not a sentimentalist, and while he was ready to follow the most advanced in the direction of spiritual progress, he was not prepared to take for granted issues that still hung in the balance of debate, or to prejudge questions that had not been answered, and could not be as yet.

Such moderation and patience are not common with reformers, and few are independent enough to confess misgivings which are more familiar to their opponents than to their friends. Candor like this shows a genuine unconsciousness of fear, a sincere love of truth, an earnest postponement of personal tastes, ambitions, and connections to the axioms of universal wisdom and goodness; a loyalty to conviction that is very rare, that never can exist among the indifferent, because they do not care, and which is usually put aside by those who do care as an impediment if not as a snare. In courage of this noble kind, Johnson excelled all men I ever knew, for they who had it, as some did, had not his genius, and were spared the necessity of curbing ardor by so much as their temperament was more passive and their eagerness less importunate. Of course of the lower sort,—the courage to bear pain, loss, the misunderstanding of the vulgar, to face danger, to encounter peril, none who knew him can question his possession. In fact, he did not seem to suffer at all, so jocund was he, so much in the habit of keeping his deprivations from the outside world; even his intimates could but suspect his sorrows of heart.

Samuel Johnson was an extraordinary person to look at. He had large dark eyes; black, straight, long hair; an Oriental complexion, sallow, olive-colored; an impetuous manner; a beaming expression. His voice was rich, deep, musical; his gait eager, rapid, swinging; his style of address glowing; his aspect in public speech that of one inspired. He was fond of natural beauty, of art, literature, music; full of fun, witty, mirthful, social. He was attractive to young people, delightful in conversation, ready to enter into innocent amusements. His eye for scenery was fine and quick, his interest in practical science sincere and hearty, his concern for whatever advanced humanity cordial, and his freshness of spirit increased if anything with years.

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