Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

Plato's views of social life are instructive. His idea of woman, of her place and function, should interest women of our time. They might find much to admire, and less to criticise than they imagine. His opinions were greatly in advance of the practice of his own time, and, in some important particulars, of ours, and which, if carried into legislation, would favorably affect social purity. His proposition to inflict a fine on bachelors, and deny them political privileges, is a compliment to marriage, showing in what estimate he held that relation. So his provision for educating the children, and giving women a place in the government of the republic, after they had given citizens to it, are hints of our modern infant schools and woman's rights movements. His teachings on social reform generally are the best of studies, in some respects more modern than the views of our time,--anticipating the future legislation of communities. On the matter of race and temperament he thought profoundly, comprehending as have few of our naturalists the law of descent, complexions, physiognomical features and characteristics.

SOCRATES.

"Socrates," says Grote, "disclaimed all pretensions to wisdom. He announced himself as a philosopher, that is, as ignorant, yet as painfully conscious of his ignorance and anxiously searching for wisdom as a correction to it, while most men were equally ignorant, but unconscious of their ignorance, believed themselves to be already wise, and delivered confident opinions without ever having analyzed the matters on which they spoke. The conversation of Socrates was intended, not to teach wisdom, but to raise men out of this false persuasion of wisdom, which he believed to be the natural state of the human mind, into that mental condition which he called philosophy.

"His 'Elenchus' made them conscious of their ignorance, and anxious to escape from it, and prepared for mental efforts in search of knowledge; in which search Socrates assisted them, but without declaring, and even professing inability to declare, where the truth lay in which this search was to end. He considered this change itself a great and serious improvement, converting what was evil, radical, ingrained, into evil superficial and moveable, which was a preliminary condition to any positive acquirement. The first thing to be done was to create searchers after truth, men who look at the subject for themselves, with earnest attention, and make up their own individual convictions. Even if nothing ulterior were achieved, that alone would be a great deal.

"Such was the scope of the Socratic Conversation, and such the conception of philosophy (the peculiarity which Plato borrowed from Socrates), which is briefly noted in the passage of the Lysis and developed in the Platonic dialogues, especially in the Symposeum."

Observe how confidently the great master of Dialectic went into the discussion, dealing directly all the while with the Personality of his auditors, and driving straight through the seeming windings of the discourse at the seats of thought and of sensibility, by his searching humor, his delightful irony, thus making the mind the mind's guest and querist in his suggestive colloquy. Affecting perhaps to know less than any, he yet showed those with whom he conversed how little they knew, while professing to know so much, convicting them of being ignorant of their own ignorance, real wisdom beginning in humility and openness to instruction. If he puzzled and perplexed, it was but to reduce their egotism and ignorance, and prepare them for receiving the truths he had to lay open in themselves. Plato, Aristotle, the German Methodists, but define and deliver the steps of his method.

BERKELEY.

Of modern philosophic writers, Berkeley has given the best example of the Platonic Dialogue, in his "Minute Philosopher," a book to be read with profit, for its clearness of thought and method. His claim to the name of metaphysician transcends those of most of his countrymen. He, first of his nation, dealt face to face with ideas as distinguished from scholastic fancies and common notions, and thus gave them their place in the order of mind; and this to exhaustive issues, as his English predecessors in thought had failed to do. His idealism is the purest which the British Isles have produced. Platonic as were Cudworth, Norris, Henry More, in cast of thought less scholastic than Taylor of Norwich,--who was an exotic, rather, transplanted from Alexandrian gardens,--Berkeley's thinking is indigenous, strong in native sense and active manliness. His works are magazines of rare and admirable learning, subtleties of speculation, noble philanthropies. They deserve a place in every scholar's library, were it but to mark the fortunes of thought, and accredit the poet's admiring line:--

"To Berkeley every virtue under heaven."

BOEHME.

MONDAY, 9.

Write to Walton, the British Boehmist, whose letters interest by the information they contain of himself and of his literary ventures. Any disciple of the distinguished Mystic and student of his works, living in foggy London in these times, is as significant and noteworthy as are students of Hegel in St. Louis.[21] Mysticism is the sacred spark that has lighted the piety and illuminated the philosophy of all places and times. It has kindled especially and kept alive the profoundest thinking of Germany and of the continent since Boehme's first work, "The Aurora," appeared. Some of the deepest thinkers since then have openly acknowledged their debt to Boehme, or secretly borrowed without acknowledgment their best illustrations from his writings. It is conceded that his was one of the most original and subtlest of minds, and that he has exercised a deeper influence on the progress of thought than any one since Plotinus. Before Bacon, before Newton, Swedenborg, Goethe, he gave theories of nature, of the signatures of colors and forms, of the temperaments, the genesis of sex, the lapse of souls, and of the elementary worlds. He stripped life of its husk, and delivered its innermost essence. Instead of mythology, he gave, if not science, the germs, if nothing more. And when the depths of his thinking have been fathomed by modern observers it will be soon enough to speak of new revelations and arcana. His teeming genius is the genuine mother of numberless theories since delivered, from whose trunk the natural sciences have branched forth and cropped out in scientific systems. And like Swedenborg, it has borne a theology, cosmology, illustrious theosophists and naturalists,--Law, Leibnitz, Oken, Schelling, Goethe, Baader, and other philosophers of Germany.

[Footnote 21: A mystic book entitled "Quinquenergia, or Proposals for a new Practical Theology," by Henry S. Sutton, was published in London in 1854. Mr. Sutton is plainly tinctured with Boehme's theosophy, if not a disciple of his as appears from his book. It is a volume of singular originality, and the latest modern attempt at a Genesis from First Principles that I have met with. It seems to have attracted few readers in England or in this country.]

His learned English disciple and translator, Rev. William Law, an author once highly esteemed and much read by a former generation of pietists, says of him in his Introduction to Boehme's Works:--

"Whatsoever the great Hermes delivered in oracles, or Pythagoras spoke by authority, or Socrates or Aristotle affirmed, whatever divine Plato prophesied, or Plotinus proved,--this and all this, or a far higher and profounder philosophy, is contained in Boehme's writings. And if there be any friendly medium that can possibly reconcile these ancient differences between the divine Wisdom that has fixed her place in Holy Writ and her stubborn handmaid, natural Reason,--this happy marriage of the Spirit of God and the soul, this wonderful consent of discords in harmony,--we shall find it in great measure in Boehme's books; only let not the non or misunderstanding of the most rational reader (if not a little sublimed above the sphere of common reason) be imputed as a fault to this elevated philosopher, no more than it was to the divine Plotinus, whose scholars, even after much study, failed to comprehend many of his doctrines."

Dr. Henry More, with a qualifying discrimination of Law's estimate, writes:--

"Jacob Boehme, I conceive, is to be reckoned in the number of those whose imaginative faculty has the preeminence above the rational, and though he was a holy and good man, his natural complexion, notwithstanding, was not destroyed but retained its property still, and therefore his imagination being very busy about divine things, he could not without a miracle fail of becoming an enthusiast, and of receiving divine truths upon the account of the strength and vigor of his fancy, which being so well qualified with holiness and sanctity, proved not unsuccessful in sundry apprehensions, but in others it fared with him after the manner of men, the sagacity of his imagination failing him, as well as the anxiety of reason, does others of like integrity with himself."[22]

[Footnote 22: Students of Boehme have been few and far between. Edward Taylor appears to have been Boehme's most distinguished disciple in England before William Law. He published "A Compendious View of the Teutonic Philosophy." London, 1670. Also Jacob Boehme's "Philosophy Unfolded in divers Considerations and Demonstrations, and a Short Account of his Life." London, 1690. John Sparrow published Boehme's Tracts and Epistles. London, 1662. John Pordage's "Theologia Mystica, or the Mystic Divinity of the Eternal Invisibles," London, 1683, is a rare volume.]

MR. WALTON'S LETTER.

"By Theosophy I understand the true science of Deity, Nature, and Creature. There are two classes of theosophists, or true mystic philosophers. The one such as Gichtel, the editor of the first German edition of Jacob Boehme (whose letters and life in seven volumes are now being translated into English, and if the necessary funds can be raised they will be printed.) Gichtel truly experimented the regenerated life of Christianity according to the science thereof contained in Boehme's writings; Bramwell fathomed Christianity according to the simple _prima facie_ representation thereof in the Gospel; in like manner in another form Terstegan was also a high proficient therein, as were also some of the ancient mystics and ascetics of France, Spain, and Germany, as referred to in the Cyclopedia. In the path of Gichtel there have been few and remote followers.

"The other class is composed of those who have intellectually fathomed the scope of Boehme's philosophy, such as Freher, Law, Lee, Pordage, and others.

"As to the pretended independent 'seers,' outsiders of Boehme's revelations,--whose names need not be mentioned,--these are of course not to be admitted into the category of the standard theologists, being mere phantasmatists or visionaries, and who, though uttering a great many good, and to some recondite minds, surprising things, say in effect nothing but what is to be found in a much more solid and edifying form in the writings of ancient classic divines and philosophers.

"As you will see by the accompanying printed papers, I assert that for theosophy to have its true efficiency in the world, there must not only be an intellectual acquaintance with all nature, magical, mental, and physical,--all which is present in every point of sense and mental essence as revealed in Boehme,--but there must be the actual realization of the translocated principles of man's threefold being into their original co-relative positions, and this in high confirmed reality; which is only another expression for the theological and alchymical term, 'regeneration.' And further, I say, there must therewith be a profound knowledge of the science and manifestation of animal magnetism.

"As to spiritism, of course at present theosophy has nothing to do with it, except to contemplate the workings of the magia of the fantasy of the grounds of nature, as shown in it.

"I may just observe, that, if you are not acquainted with the facts, you will find in V. Schubert, a German Professor, some most interesting interpretations of and deductions from Boehme's philosophy. He is a truly ingenious elucidator of many of nature's secrets purely from his conception of Boehme, and for general reading in theosophy, is much more interesting than Baader, who is very technical. But, as for myself, I cannot derive from these or any other authors, what my understanding requires that is beyond the manuscripts and printed authors in my sole possession. Those I have, contain the philosophy of nature and creation far more lucidly and classically opened than is found in any modern publication, for it is fundamentally demonstrated therein; whereas in Hamburger and others, Boehme is merely systematized, leaving his profundities in their original abyss, like ore in the mine; whereas my authors work it all out as far as they could in their day.

"I am and have been long engaged in preparing a compendium of the true principles of all Being, and setting forth all its stages up to the present time: all which is a great mystery both to philosophy and science, as you are doubtless aware. It has never yet been done, and is indeed the grand desideratum. We have never yet been able to reconcile the seeming or allowed declaration of Scripture concerning the creation, with the Newtonian philosophy, and the disclosures of modern chymic, electric, and other sciences, so as to present a solid, united, and convincing chain of the history of nature from the first point of mental essence, to the present state of physical things. And yet there must be such a history and knowledge thereof, latent in the human mind, and in the present daylight of theosophy and physical science, capable of being educed thereout, in a manner commending itself on the sight of it, with almost the force of self-evidence, though in some points appearing to clash with the seeming sense of Scripture.

"My labors are in the preparation of a series of symbolic illustrations (like Quarle's Emblems), whereby, with the accompanying text, to produce this kind of self-evident conviction. Of course I only open the procedure to the present time. You may conceive the time and labor and expense entailed by such an effort. Also the fierce daily long discussions with an avowed and actual rationalist opponent, whom I have for the purpose, without which the truth or science cannot be made to rise up apprehensively in the mind, and then only in a mind in which theosophical and modern scientific knowledge is, as it were, all in living activity, like a magic looking-glass, wherein the images are all living, and can be called forth instantly into visibility, as required by the formula of each successive consideration arising in the discussion, or during private meditation and reading of Boehme, having an object in view.

"The science of all things lies in the Mind. In Newton this plant of Jacob Boehme was largely cultivated for his day; but now, by means of modern science, the true history of all being can be brought forth as a complete logical tree. And this is what the world wants, a perfect philosophy and a perfect theology, as one only sound of the word of nature. This was the divine object in giving the last dispensation through Boehme, though this was such a chaos yet unavoidable. From which revelation of the ground and mystery of all things have ensued all the grand regenerating discoveries of modern science, as I have shown, and can now more fully demonstrate. All date from that new opened puncture of divine light in Boehme.

"I may just mention that I have a collection of all the chief editions of Boehme, in German, Dutch, English, and French, together with other elucidations whereby to produce a new and most harmonious edition of Boehme. Indeed such a thing cannot be accomplished without the means in my possession. I also have at command with me the literary and critical knowledge requisite to produce a correct translation. For there are numerous errors of sense in the German as in the English copies. Indeed in some cases the sense of the passage is not apprehensible. I trust the world will call for this work before I die, in order that I may have the pleasure of preparing, or rather directing, its accomplishment. If I can procure a copy of the Cyclopedia you write about, I shall be happy to present it to you.[23]

[Footnote 23: The "Cyclopedia of Pure Christian Theology and Theosophic Science," is to contain the works of Boehme and his distinguished followers, Freher, Gechtel, Pordage, Lee, Law, and others. The first volume is already printed for private circulation, and deposited in the chief libraries of Europe and America. It contains six hundred and eighty-eight closely printed pages, chiefly of exposition and comment on Boehme, with biographical accounts of Boehmists and of their works interspersed in voluminous notes.]

"I am, dear Sir, Yours very truly,
"CHRISTOPHER WALTON.

"LONDON, 15th February, 1868."

"The object of these publications," says Mr. Walton, in his Prospectus, "and of their distribution in the libraries of Great Britain and the United States, is to induce and promote in a general manner, the study of pure metaphysical science, commencing at its root and ground in Deity, thence through all those principles of nature, eternal and temporal, of mind, spirit, and body, which develop and concentre themselves in the form, constitution, and support of man, as such, with a view to render it subservient to its true end and design, namely, the radical purification of theology throughout the earth, and the final resolution of it into a fixed and progressive science, and art in its kind, as contemplated and provided for by Christianity."

For those interested in the history of Mysticism, "Vaughan's Hours with the Mystics," published in London, 1856, is an interesting volume, full of information communicated by way of conversation, and in an attractive style.

CRABBE ROBINSON'S DIARY.

THURSDAY, 19.

Crabbe Robinson's Diary is interesting; all he tells us of Landor, Wordsworth, Coleridge, is especially so. The book gives, perhaps, the best personal and literary picture of the times in which he lived. Few men had a wider circle of literary acquaintances than the author. His book is a real addition to contemporary literature, and shows the value of the Diary for preserving in an attractive form what would otherwise have been lost to the world. Robinson is no Boswell; he knew what to omit, what to commit to writing, gave fair transcripts of what he saw, without prepossession or prejudice.

COLERIDGE.

What Robinson tells of Coleridge is especially noticeable.

"I used," he says, "to compare him as a disputant to a serpent,--easy to kill if you assume the offensive; but if you attack him, his bite is mortal. Some time after writing this, when I saw Madame De Stael, in London, I asked her what she thought of him. She replied, 'He is very great in monologue, but he has no idea of dialogue.'"

Perhaps not. Yet with his equal, he would not have been found wanting in this respect. Less English than German in genius, he would have been on terms of equality with thinkers of all times. But for his introduction of German ideas into English literature, we had waited a generation or more. He comprehended and interpreted the ideas and methods of its great thinkers. Better than most, he fulfilled Plato's canon, that "only the gods discriminate and define." I find him the most stimulating of modern British thinkers. He had wider sympathies with pure thought, and cast more piercing glances into its essence and laws than any contemporary.

I must repeat my sense of obligation to him for the quickening influence which the perusal of his pages always awakens, at every paragraph making me his debtor for a thought, an image, which it were worth while to have lived for, so stimulating is his phrase to imagination and reason alike; scarcely less to understanding and memory. If his mysticism tinge his speculations with its shifting hues, and one threads the labyrinth into which he conducts with wonder and amazement, he yet surrenders unreservedly to his guide, sure of coming to the light, with memorable experiences to reward him for the adventure.

His appreciation of the Greek, as of the Teutonic genius, is the more remarkable when we consider how rarely his countrymen have comprehended foreign ideas; and that Shakespeare even found in him his first interpreter.

In his Literary Remains, we find these remarkable notes on the Greek drama:--

"It is truly singular that Plato--whose philosophy and religion were both exotic at home, and a mere opposition to the finite in all things, genuine prophet and anticipator of the protestant era--should have given in his dialogue of the Banquet a justification of our Shakespeare. For he relates that, when all the other guests had either dispersed or fallen asleep, Socrates only, together with Aristophanes and Agathon, remained awake; and that, while he continued to drink with them out of a large goblet, he compelled them, though most reluctantly, to admit that it was the business of one and the same genius to excel in tragic and comic poetry; or, that the tragic poet ought, at the same time, to contain within himself the powers of comedy. Now, as this was certainly repugnant to the entire theory of the ancient critics, and contrary to all their experience, it is evident that Plato must have fixed the eye of his contemplation on the innermost essentials of the drama, abstracted from conditions of age and country. In another passage he even adds the reason, namely: that opposites illustrate each other's nature, and in their struggle draw forth the strength of the combatants, and display the conquered as sovereign even in the territories of the rival power."

Again: "The tragic poet idealizes his characters by giving to the spiritual part of our nature a more decided preponderance over animal cravings and impulses than is met with in real life; the comic poet idealizes his characters by making the animal the governing power, and the intellectual the mere instrument. But as tragedy is not a collection of virtues and perfections, but takes care only that the vices and imperfections shall spring from the passions, errors, and prejudices which arise of the soul; so neither is comedy a mere crowd of vices and follies, but whatever qualities it represents, even though they are in a certain sense amiable, it still displays them as having their origin in some dependence on our lower nature, accompanied with a defect in true freedom of spirit and self-subsistence, and subject to that unconnection by contradiction of inward being, to which all folly is owing."

Coleridge, while writing this masterly analysis of the seats of the tragic and comic in man's inner being, and with the text of Plato and of Shakespeare before him, must have been contemplating the springs of his own defects, the strength twinned with his weaknesses, which ever made him the helpless demigod he was; aspiring ever, yet drawn downward by the leash of his frailties, as tragic a character as any that Shakespeare himself has drawn.

SELDEN'S TABLE TALK.

TUESDAY, 24.

"Learned Selden," learned in civil and political wisdom as were few of his great contemporaries. If his book of Table Talk has less repute than Bacon's famous Essays, like that, opened anywhere, it displays the author's eminent discretion, his comprehensive understanding, apposite illustration of his theme. His homely, familiar manner, has its attractions as well for the scholar as for the common reader; pregnant as are his sentences with his great good sense, rare learning, bringing abstruse subjects home to the affairs of life in a style at once perspicuous and agreeable. "He was a person," says Lord Clarendon, "whom no character can flatter, or transmit in any expressions equal to his merit. He was of such stupendous learning in all kinds of languages that a man would have thought he had been entirely conversant among books, and had never spent an hour but in reading and writing. Yet his humanity, courtesy, and affability were such, that he would have been thought to have been bred in the best courts, but that his good-nature, charity, and delight in doing good, and in communicating all he knew, exceeded his breeding. His style in all his writings seems harsh, and sometimes obscure, which is not wholly to be imputed to the abstruse subjects of which he commonly treated, but to a little undervaluing of style, and too much propensity to the language of antiquity; but in his conversation he was the most clear discourser, and had the best faculty of making hard things easy, and of presenting them to the understanding, of any man that hath been known."

Coleridge, who never let any person of eminence, in thought or erudition, escape his attention, says: "There is more weighty bullion sense in this book (The Table Talk) than I ever found in the same number of pages of any uninspired writer."

Ben Jonson addressed him thus:--

... "You that have been
Ever at home, yet have all countries seen,
And like a compass keeping one foot still
Upon your centre, do your circle fill
Of general knowledge....
I wondered at the richness, but am lost
To see the workmanship so excel the cost!
To mark the excellent seasoning of your style,
And manly elocution! not one while
With horror rough, then rioting with wit,
But to the subject still the colors fit,
In sharpness of all search, wisdom choice,
Newness of sense, antiquity of voice!
I yield, I yield. The matter of your praise
Floods in upon me, and I cannot raise
A bank against it; nothing but the round
Large clasp of nature such a wit can bound."

One's pen cannot be better drawn across paper, than in transcribing some of his wise and pithy sayings:--

"_Books._ 'Tis good to have translators, because they serve as a comment, so far as the judgment of the man goes."

"Quoting of authors is most for matter of fact; and then I cite them as I would produce a witness, sometimes for a free expression; and then I give the author his due, and gain myself praise for reading him."

"Henry the Eighth made a law that all men might read the Scripture, except servants; but no woman except ladies and gentlewomen who had leisure and might ask somebody the meaning. The law was repealed in Edward Sixth's days."

"Laymen have best interpreted the hard places in the Bible, such as Scaliger, Grotius, Salmasius, etc. The text serves only to guess by; we must satisfy ourselves fully out of the authors that lived about those times."

"_Ceremony._ Ceremony keeps up all things. 'Tis like a penny glass to a rich spirit, or some excellent water; without it the water were spilt, the spirit lost."

"_Damnation._ To preach long, loud, and damnation, is the way to be cried up. We love a man that damns us, and we run after him to save us."

"_Friends._ Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes, they were easiest to his feet."

"_Language._ Words must be fitted to a man's mouth. 'Twas well said of the fellow that was to make a speech for my Lord Mayor: he desired to take measure of his lordship's mouth."

"_Learning._ No man is wiser for his learning; it may administer matter to work in, or objects to work upon; but wit and wisdom are born with a man."

"_Power._ Syllables govern the world."

"_Reason._ The reason of a thing is not to be inquired after till you are sure the thing itself is so. We commonly are at 'What's the reason of it?' before we are sure of the thing. 'Twas an excellent question of my Lady Cotton, when Sir Robert Cotton was magnifying of a shoe which was Moses' or Noah's, and wondering at the strange shape and fashion of it,--'But, Mr. Cotton,' says she, 'are you sure it is a shoe?'"

"_Religion._ Religion is like the fashion; one man wears his doublet slashed, another laced, another plain; but every man has a doublet. So every man has his religion. We differ about trimming."

"We look after religion as the butcher did after his knife, when he had it in his mouth."

WOMAN.

SUNDAY, 29.

Ever the feminine fades into mystery,
Pales undistinguished into the powers of nature,
There working with earnest force in silence,
Bashful and beautiful in its reserves.

Divination seems heightened and raised to its highest power in woman, like mercury, the more sensitive to the breath of its atmosphere;--the most delicate metre of character, as if in the finest persons, the sex predominated to give the salient graces and gifts peculiar to woman. The difference appears to be of bias, not of positive power, of thought and feeling differently disposed, and where the extremes merge towards unity, not easily discriminated. Still, each preserves its distinctive traits under all differences, neither being mistaken for the other. A woman's thought is not taken for a man's, nor the contrary; though the outward expression were the same, each preserves its sexual tone and color. Any seeming exceptions are counterfeits, and confirm the law that sentiment is feminine, thought masculine, by whomsoever expressed; neither can blend fully and confound the other under any metamorphosis, sex being a constant factor individualizing the personality of souls. The ancient philosophers had so good an opinion of the sex, that they ascribed all sciences to the Muses, all sweetness and morality to the Graces, and prophetic inspiration to the Sibyls.

Women have been subject alike to the admiration and contempt of men. It were handsomer to quote the poet's praises than blame, the Greek poets Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides especially. I like to enrich my pages with some of their fine lines, and not less for the new interest taken in the sex.

_Æschylus._

"Wedlock is a state preordained of Destiny, and its
Obligations are more binding than an oath."

"Bite thy lips or ever thou speak words of impurity."

"Can heaven's fair beams show a fond wife a sight
More welcome than her husband from his wars
Returned with glory, when she opes the gate
And springs to welcome him."

_Euripides._

"Men need not try where women fail."

"To a father waxing old
Nothing is dearer than a daughter; sons
Have spirits of a higher pitch, but less inclined
To sweet endearing tenderness."

"Happy is it so to place
A daughter; yet it pains a father's heart
When he delivers to another's house
A child, the object of his tender care."

"A wise man in his house should find a wife
Gentle and courteous, or no wife at all."

"With silence of the tongue
And cheerfulness of look I entertained
My husband; where my province to command
I knew, and where to yield obedience to him."

"When the wife endures
The ungentle converse of a husband rude
In manners, in his person rude, to die
Were rather to be wished."

"If well accorded, the connubial state
From all its strings speaks perfect harmony;
If ill at home, abroad the harsh notes jar,
And with rude discord wound the ear of peace."

"For women are by nature formed
To feel some consolation when their tongue
Gives utterance to the afflictions they endure."

"O trebly blest the placid lot of those,
Whose hearth-foundations are in pure love laid,
Where husband's breast with tempered ardor glows,
And wife, oft mother, is in heart a maid."

_Sophocles._

"Note well a house that is prosperous among men, and you Will find
virtue among its women folk."

"Seek not thy fellow-citizens to guide
Till thou canst order well thine own fireside."

SEPTEMBER.

"While slowly o'er the hills
The unnerved day piles his prodigious sunshine.
Here be gardens of Hesperian mould,
Recesses rare, temples of birch and fern,
Perfumes of light-green sumac, ivy thick,
And old stone fences tottering to their fall,
And gleaming lakes that cool invite the bath,
And most aerial mountains for the West."
--_Channing._

WALDEN POND.

MONDAY, 6.

To Walden with May, who takes a pencil sketch for her collection. Thoreau's hermitage has disappeared, and the grounds are overgrown with pines and sumac, leaving the site hardly traceable. The shores of Walden are as sylvan as ever near Thoreau's haunt, but have been shorn of wood on the southern side. No spot of water in these parts has a more interesting history. It well deserved the poet's praises while Thoreau dwelt on its shores.

"It is not far beyond the village church,
After we pass the wood that skirts the road,
A lake,--the blue-eyed Walden,--that doth smile
Most tenderly upon its neighbor pines,
And they as if to recompense this love,
In double beauty spread their branches forth.
This lake has tranquil loveliness and breadth,
And of late years has added to its charms,
For one attracted to its pleasant edge
Has built himself a little hermitage,
Where with much piety he passes life.

"More fitting place I cannot fancy now,
For such a man to let the line run off
The mortal reel, such patience hath the lake,
Such gratitude and cheer are in the pines.
But more than either lake or forest's depths
This man has in himself: a tranquil man,
With sunny sides where well the fruit is ripe,
Good front, and resolute bearing to this life,
And some serener virtues, which control
This rich exterior prudence, virtues high,
That in the principles of things are set,
Great by their nature and consigned to him,
Who, like a faithful merchant, does account
To God for what he spends, and in what way.

"Thrice happy art thou, Walden! in thyself,
Such purity is in thy limpid springs;
In those green shores which do reflect in thee,
And in this man who dwells upon thy edge,
A holy man within a hermitage.
May all good showers fall gently into thee;
May thy surrounding forests long be spared,
And may the dweller on thy tranquil shores
Here lead a life of deep tranquillity,
Pure as thy waters, handsome as thy shores,
And with those virtues which are like the stars."

"When I first paddled a boat on Walden," wrote Thoreau, "it was completely surrounded by thick and lofty pine and oak woods, and in some spots, coves of grape vines had run over the trees and formed bowers under which a boat could pass. The hills which form its shore are so steep, and the woods on them so high, that as you looked down the pond from the west end, it had the appearance of an amphitheatre. For some kind of sylvan spectacle, I have spent many an hour when I was younger, floating over its surface as the zephyr willed, having paddled my boat to the middle, and lying on my back across the seats in a summer forenoon, and looking into the sky, dreaming awake until I was aroused by my boat touching the sand, and I arose to see what shore my fates had impelled me to. In these days, when idleness was the most attractive and productive industry, many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day. For I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly. Nor do I regret that I did not waste more of them behind a counter, or in a workshop, or at the teacher's desk, in which last two places I have spent many of them.

"I must say that I do not know what made me leave the pond. I left it as unaccountably as I went to it. To speak sincerely, I went there because I had got ready to go. I left it for the same reason.

"These woods! why do I not feel their being cut more freely? Does it not affect me nearly? The axe can deprive me of much. Concord is sheared of its pride. I am certain by the loss attached to my native town in consequence, one and a main link is broken. I shall go to Walden less frequently.

"Look out what window I will, my eyes rest in the distance on a forest. Is this circumstance of no value? Why such pains in old countries to plant gardens and parks? A certain sample of wild nature, a certain primitiveness? The towns thus bordered with a fringe and tasselled border, each has its preservers. Methinks the town should have more supervisors to control its parks than it has. It concerns us all whether these proprietors choose to cut down all the woods this winter or not. I love to look at Ebby Hubbard's oaks and pines on the hillside from Brister's Hill, and am thankful that there is one old miser who will not sell or cut his woods, though it is said that they are wasting. 'It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good.'"

"Walk round Walden Pond these warm winter days. The wood-chopper finds that the wood cuts easier than when it had the frost in it, though it does not split so readily. Thus every change in the weather has its influence on him, and is appreciated by him in a peculiar way. The wood-cutter and his practices and experiences are more to be attended to; his accidents, perhaps, more than any others, should mark the epochs in a winter's day. Now that the Indian is gone, he stands nearest to nature. Who has written the history of his day? How far still is the writer of books from the man, his old playmate, it may be, who chops in the woods? There are ages between them. Homer refers to the progress of the wood-cutter's work to mark the time of day on the plains of Troy. And the inference from such premises commonly is, that he lived in a more primitive state of society than the present. But I think this is a mistake. Like proves like in all ages, and the fact that I myself should take pleasure in preferring the simple and peaceful labors which are always proceeding; that the contrast itself always attracts the civilized poet to what is rudest and most primitive in his contemporaries;--all this rather proves a certain interval between the poet and the wood-chopper, whose labor he refers to, than an unusual nearness to him, on the principle that familiarity breeds contempt. Homer is to be subjected to a very different kind of criticism from any he has received. That reader who most fully appreciates the poet, and derives the greater pleasure from his work, lives in circumstances most like those of the poet himself.

"This afternoon I throw off my outside coat, a mild spring day. I must hie me to the meadows. The air is full of bluebirds. The ground is almost entirely bare. The villagers are out in the sun, and every man is happy whose work takes him out-of-doors. I go by Sleepy Hollow towards the great fields. I lean over a rail to hear what is in the air, liquid with the bluebird's warble. My life partakes of infinity. The air is deep as our natures. Is the drawing in of this vital air attended with no more glorious results than I witness? The air is a velvet cushion against which I press my ear. I go forth to make new demands on life. I wish to begin this summer well. To do something in it worthy and wise. To transcend my daily routine and that of my townsmen, to have my immortality now,--that it be in the quality of my daily life,--to pay the greatest price, the greatest tax of any man in Concord, and enjoy the most! I will give all I am for my nobility. I will pay all my days for my success. I pray that the life of this spring and summer may be fair in my memory. May I dare as I have never done. May I purify myself anew as with fire and water, soul and body. May my melody not be wanting to the season. May I gird myself to be a hunter of the beautiful, that nought escape me. May I attain to a youth never attained. I am eager to report the glory of the universe: may I be worthy to do it; to have got through regarding human values, so as not to be distracted from regarding divine values. It is reasonable that a man should be something worthier at the end of the year than he was at the beginning."

* * * * *

A delightful volume might be compiled from Thoreau's Journals by selecting what he wrote at a certain date annually, thus giving a calendar of his thoughts on that day from year to year. Such a book would be instructive in many ways,--to the naturalist, the farmer, woodman, scholar; and as he was wont to weave a sensible moral into his writings, it would prove a suggestive treatise on morals and religion also. Not every preacher takes his text from his time, his own eyes, ears, and feet, in his sensible, superior manner.

THE IDEAL CHURCH.

MONDAY, 13.

The divinity students come according to appointment and pass the day. It is gratifying to be sought by thoughtful young persons, especially by young divines, and a hopeful sign when graduates of our schools set themselves to examining the foundations of their faith; the ceilings alike with underpinnings of the world's religious ideas and institutions, their genesis and history. Plainly, the drift of thinking here in New England, if not elsewhere, is towards a Personal Theism, inclusive of the faiths of all races, embodying the substance of their Sacred Books, with added forms and instrumentalities suited to the needs of our time. The least curious observer (I tell my visitors) cannot fail to see that at no previous period in our religious history, had so profound and anxious inquiries been made into the springs and foundations of spiritual truths. The signs of our time indicate that we are on the eve of a recasting of the old forms. Always there had been two divisions in the theological as in the political and social spheres,--the conservative and the radically progressive. This division marks itself at the present, so sweeping is the wave of religious speculation, not only among professed Christians, but among the thoughtful outside of churches. Wherever we look, earnest men are pondering in what manner they can best serve God and man.

Let us discriminate religious truth from mere opinions. The fruit of temperament, culture, individuality, these are wont to be local, narrow, exclusive. The planting of a church to which all men can subscribe, demands a common bond of sympathy, the feeling of brotherhood, mutual respect, peculiarities, culture, respect for old and young. Such is the bond of union for the New Church. The essence of all creeds is God, Personal, Incarnate, without whom a church and divine worship were impossible. Not to enter into the metaphysics of creeds and philosophy of systems, let us sketch an outline of our Ideal Church.

Our forms are of the past, not American. Times modify forms. The world of thought moves fast; what is good for one time may ill suit another. The culture of past ages is stealing into our present thought, deepening, widening it. Sects are provincial, geographical; the coming church is to speak to every need, every power of humanity. A revelation is not a full revelation which fails to touch the whole man, quicken all his powers into beauty and strength of exercise.

First, of the architecture. Let this represent the essential needs of the soul. Our dwelling-houses best typify the tender domesticities of life; let the church edifice embody more of this familiar love. In the ordering of the congregation, let age have precedence; give the front seats to the eldest members; let families sit together, so that the element of family affection be incorporated in the worship. An arrangement of the pews in semicircles will bring all more nearly at equal gradation of distance from the speaker, whose position is best slightly elevated above the congregation. Pictures and statues, representing to the senses the grand events of the religious history of the past, may be an essential part of the church furniture; the statues embodying the great leaders of religious thought of all races. These are not many; the world owes its progress to a few persons. The divine order gives one typical soul to a race. Let us respect all races and creeds, as well as our own; read and expound their sacred books like our Scriptures. Constituting a body of comparative divinity, each is a contribution to the revelation made to mankind from time to time. Could any one well remain exclusive or local in his thought from such studies and teachings? Christianity, as the religion of the most advanced nations, is fast absorbing the beauty, the thought, the truth of other religions, and this fact should find expression also.

Let there be frequent interchange of preachers and teachers, since few can speak freshly to the same congregation for every Sunday in the year; only the freshest thought, the purest sentiments, were their due. Let the services be left to the speaker's selection. Let the music be set to the best lyrical poetry of all ages, poems sometimes read or recited as part of the services. As for prayer, it may be spoken from an overflowing heart, may be silent, or omitted at the option of the minister.

Let the children have a larger share in the religious services than hitherto; one half of the day be appropriated to them. Who can speak to children can address angels; true worship is childlike. "All nations," said Luther, "the Jews especially, school their children more faithfully than Christians. And this is one reason why religion is so fallen. For till its hopes of strength and potency are ever committed to the generation that is coming on to the stage. And if this is neglected in its youth, it fares with Christianity as with a garden that is neglected in the spring-time. There is no greater obstacle in the way of piety than neglect in the training of the young. If we would reinstate religion in its former glory, we must improve and elevate the children, as it was done in days of old."[24]

[Footnote 24: It appears from "Letchford's Plain Dealings concerning New England," that the church in Concord was the first in the colony that adopted the practice of catechising the children on Sundays. "The unmarried people," he says, "were also required to answer questions, after which Mr. Bulkeley gave expositions and made applications to the whole congregation." And this practice soon found its way into all the churches, became a part of the Sunday service in the church, in the family at last. From these it passed, subsequently, into the schools, a part of Saturday forenoon being devoted to recitations, and where the parents were of different persuasions, the teachers heard these from the Westminster, or Church of England catechisms, accordingly. Some of us remember committing both to memory, and having the benefit of so much comparative divinity as these furnished at that early age.]

COLLYER.

Our young divines may study Beecher and Collyer, if they will learn the types of preaching which the people most enjoy and flock to hear. Collyer, without pretension to eloquence, is most eloquent in his plain, homely, human way. He meets his audience as the iron he once smote, and his words have the ring of true steel. He speaks from crown to toe, and with a delightful humor that gives his rhetoric almost a classic charm, his Yorkshire accent adding to the humane quality of his thought. There is as little of scholarly pretence as of priestly assumption in his address, and he makes his way by his placid strength, clear intelligence, breadth of sympathy, putting the rhetoric of the schools to the blush.

BEECHER.

I once entered Beecher's church with a friend who was not often seen in such sanctuaries. Aisles, body, galleries, every slip, every chair, all were occupied, many left standing. The praise, the prayer, the christening,--there were a dozen babes presented for baptism,--all were devout, touching, even to tears at times. I know I wept, while my friend was restive, fancying himself, as he declared, in some Pagan fane. The services all seemed becoming, however. Here was no realm of Drowsy Head. The preaching was the more effective for its playfulness, point, strength, pertinency. Coming from the heart, the doctrine found the hearts of its hearers. The preacher showed his good sense, too, in omitting the trite phrases and traditions, speaking straight to his points in plain, homely speech, that carried the moral home to its mark. It was refreshing to get a touch of human nature, the preaching so often failing in this respect. The speaker took his audience along with him by his impetuosity, force of momentum, his wit playing about his argument, gathering power of persuasion, force of statement as he passed. His strong sense, broad humanity, abounding animal spirits, humor, anecdote, perhaps explain the secret of his power and popularity.

IDEALS.

SUNDAY, 19.

Our instincts are idealists. Contradicting impressions of the senses, they prompt us forth to the noblest aims and endeavors. Aspirants for the best, they prick us forward to its attainment, the more successfully as our theories of life lift us above the planes of precedent and routine, whereon the senses confine us, to the mount of vision and of renovating ideas. Nor are these too lofty or too beautiful to be unattainable. 'Tis when practice strays wide and falls below that they appear visionary and fall into disrepute. Only those who mount the summits command the valleys at their base.

"When we ourselves from our own selves do quit,
And each thing else, then an all-spreading love
To the vast universe our soul doth fit,
Makes us half equal to all-seeing Jove;
Our mighty wings, high-stretched, then clapping light,
We brush the stars, and make them seem more bright."

Enthusiasm is essential to the successful attainment of any high endeavor; without which incentive one is not sure of his equality to the humblest undertaking even. And he attempts little worth living for if he expects completing his task in an ordinary life-time. His translation is for the continuance of his work here begun, but for whose completion time and opportunity were all too narrow and brief. Himself is the success or failure. Step by step one climbs the pinnacles of excellence; life itself is but the stretch for that mountain of holiness. Opening here with humanity, 'tis the aiming at divinity in ever-ascending circles of aspiration and endeavor. Who ceases to aspire, dies. Our pursuits are our prayers; our ideals our gods. And the more persistent our endeavors to realize these, the less distant they seem. They were not gods could we approach them at once. We were the atheists of our senses without them. All of beauty and of beatitude we conceive and strive for, ourselves are to be sometime. Man becomes godlike as he strives for divinity, and divinity ever stoops to put on humanity and deify mankind. Character is mythical. The excellent are unapproachable save by like excellence. A person every way intelligible falls short of our conception of greatness; he ceases to be great in our eyes. God is not God in virtue of attributes, but of the mystery surrounding these. Could we see through the cloud that envelopes our apprehensions, he were here, and ourselves apparent in his likeness. "God," says Plato, "is ineffable, hard to be defined, and having been discovered, to make fully known."

"He is above the sphere of our esteem,
And is best known in not defining him."

Any attempted definition would include whatsoever is embraced within our notion of Personality,--would exhaust our knowledge of nature and of ourselves. Only as we become One Personally with Him do we know Him and partake of his attributes.

"In the soul of man," says Berkeley, "prior and superior to intellect, there is a somewhat of a higher nature, by virtue of which we are one, and by means of which we are most clearly joined to the Deity. And as by our intellect we touch the divine intellect, even so by our oneness, 'the very flower of our essence,' as Proclus expresses it, we touch the First One. Existence and One are the same. And consequently, our minds participate so far of existence as they do of unity. But it should seem the personality is the indivisible centre of the soul, or mind, which is a monad, so far forth as she is a person. Therefore Person is really that which exists, inasmuch as it partakes of the divine unity. Number is no object of sense, but an act of the mind. The same thing in a different conception is one or many. Comprehending God and the creatures in one general notion, we may say that all things together make one universe. But if we should say that all things make one God, this would indeed be an erroneous notion of God, but would not amount to atheism, so long as mind, or intellect, was admitted to be the governing part. It is, nevertheless, more respectful, and consequently the truer notion of God, to suppose Him neither made up of parts, nor himself to be a part of any whole whatsoever."

THE SEARCH AFTER GOD.[25]

[Footnote 25: By Thomas Heywood, 1590.]

"I sought Thee round about, O thou my God!
In thine abode,
I said unto the earth, 'Speak, art thou He?'
She answered me,
'I am not.' I inquired of creatures all
In general
Contained therein; they with one voice proclaim
That none amongst them challenged such a name.