Chapter I: Preface

In 1839, Margaret Fuller, delicate in health and much overtaxed, consented to gratify many who loved her by opening in Boston a series of “Conversations for Women.” In a Circular quoted by Emerson, she says to Mrs. Sophia Ripley:—

“Could a circle be assembled in earnest, desirous to answer the
questions, ‘What were we born to do?’ and ‘How shall we do it?’
I should think the undertaking a noble one.”

This was certainly the original intent of the famous “Fuller Conversations,” which, beginning then, were continued at intervals, until Margaret left Boston for New York in 1844.

It seems a little singular, therefore, to find her writing to Ralph Waldo Emerson of this series, Nov. 25, 1839, as follows:—

“The first day’s topic was the genealogy of Heaven and Earth;
then the Will or Jupiter; the Understanding, Mercury: the
second day’s, The celestial inspiration of Genius, perception
and transmission of Divine Law; Apollo the terrene inspiration,
Bacchus the impassioned abandonment. Of the thunderbolt, the
caduceus, the ray and the grape, having disposed as well as
might be, we came to the wave and the sea-shell it moulds to
beauty....

“I assure you, there is more Greek than Bostonian spoken at the
meetings!”

Under the forms suggested by Mythology, Margaret proceeded to open all the great questions of life. In a literary sense, she distinctly stated that she knew little about the doings on Olympus, nor had she received any help from German critical works,—of which at the present day she would have found many.

These Conversations owed their attraction first to the absolute novelty of her theme to many of those she addressed, and still more to the variety and freshness of her own treatment. The opening, at the Boston Athenæum, of the splendid collection of casts presented by Thomas Handasyd Perkins, and many private collections of pictures, engravings, gems, and miniature casts, had interested her intensely, and both mind and fancy were absorbed in the contemplation of their themes. In these Conversations she depicted what she had gained from Art, rather than the little that she had acquired through study. If I may judge from a later experience, her Latin studies rather injured than developed her brilliant fancies. She never could remember what she had said, never could repeat a brilliant saying, and, if obliged to read any illustration, read it, as all her friends admitted, very badly. From a statement made to Emerson, I quote the following:—

“Her mood applied itself to the mood of her companion, point
to point, in the most limber, sinuous, vital way; ... and this
sympathy she had for all persons indifferently.”

The communication of which the above is a sample I have always read with amazement, for I never knew a person of whom it would seem less true. When conversing with one sympathetic person, it was undoubtedly true; when resting upon the affection and loyalty of her young women,—a most gifted and extraordinary circle,—it was doubtless equally so; but when the class of March, 1841, was formed, a very different aspect of herself appeared.

The fame of her “talks” had spread. She had great need of money, and some of the gentlemen who were accustomed to talk with her, and some of the ladies of her day-class, suggested an evening class, to be composed of both ladies and gentlemen, and to meet at the house of the Rev. George Ripley in Bedford Place. Ten Conversations were to be held, and the tickets of admission cost twenty dollars each, a very high price for that time. It was in the book-room of Elisabeth Peabody that I first heard them discussed. I was very young to join such a circle; and when she invited me, Elisabeth had more regard, I think, to Margaret’s purse, than to my fitness for the company. But it was a great opportunity. The members were full of excitement over the projected opening of Brook Farm. All were in good spirits, and bright sayings ran back and forth. I had been carefully trained in the Art of Reporting, and at that time made careful abstracts on the following day of any lecture that had interested me. In these I trusted to my memory. It was not possible to do this with the Conversations; so I invented a sort of short-hand, and carried note-book and pencil with me. I sat a little out of sight that I might not embarrass Margaret, but Elisabeth Peabody and Mrs. Farrar found me out. Elisabeth wrote what she called an abstract, every night; but an examination of her abstracts quoted by Mr. Emerson shows that what she wrote was not what any one said, but the impression made upon her own mind by it. These abstracts she always read to me, the next morning. I wrote out my short-hand notes before breakfast and carried them down to her about noon. I greatly enjoyed listening to her papers, and she was so absorbed in them that she often forgot to ask for mine, which was a great relief to me.

So far as I know, these Reports of mine are the only attempt ever made deliberately to represent these or any of Margaret’s “Conversations” word for word. Of course, much was omitted as not worth recording, nor did I ever write down anything that I could not understand. Many of the members I knew intimately, and fell naturally into writing of them by initials and first names, as they always spoke to and of each other. At times I fell back into the Mr., Mrs., or Miss, which was my own habit. It is well to call those we love by any name they will permit, but the familiar habit of the Transcendental circle was full of social peril to the younger members, who, conceiving it a proof of genius, followed it, when its origin was forgotten, and were much misunderstood in consequence in later years.

I offer the Reports exactly as they were written. I should like to alter them in several small ways if I could do it honestly. We met to discuss Grecian Mythology as interpreted to Margaret’s mind by Art; but Latin and Greek names were used as if they were synonymous, and Latin poems were quoted, as well as Greek traditions. This confused my mind then, and does still. Athene and Minerva, Zeus and Jupiter, are by no means the same persons to me, Art or no Art.

It may be thought by those who cannot remember the persons who enacted this little drama, or by those who do remember and know well how very distinguished a company this was, that I should have eliminated my own reflections, and dropped out of the story.

This would I think have been greatly unjust to Margaret, who never enjoyed this mixed class, and considered it a failure so far as her own power was concerned. She and Mr. Emerson met like Pyramus and Thisbe, a blank wall between. With Mr. Alcott she had no patience, and no one of the class seemed to understand how sincere and deep was her interest in the theme. In no way was Margaret’s supremacy so evident as in the impulse she gave to the minds of younger women.

It was the wish of Margaret’s mother and brothers, as it is also the wish of her surviving relatives, that I should print these pages. After Arthur’s death, Richard Fuller undertook to carry out a plan to which both had agreed, and which Margaret’s mother had greatly at heart. They desired that I should write a simple, straightforward account of Margaret, including her residence in Italy, her marriage, the birth of her child, and her death. This they intended to print at their own expense, and they thought it might be so written as to put an end to many absurd and painful rumors which had followed the publication of the first Memoir. That I might prepare for this, all Margaret’s manuscripts were in my custody for more than a year. The completion of the work was prevented by Richard Fuller’s unexpected death. No surviving member of the family was able to carry out his intention.

I still have in my possession the estimate of his sister’s character which Richard made for my use.

I should like to add, that the scholar will see that the stories from Apuleius and Novalis do not exactly correspond to the originals. They were reported exactly as they were told.

CAROLINE HEALEY DALL.

Sept. 1, 1895, WASHINGTON, D. C.

A LIST OF PERSONS ATTENDING THE CLASS NAMED IN THIS REPORT.

_About thirty persons usually attended._

GEORGE RIPLEY. The well-known clergyman, settled over a
Unitarian church in Purchase St., Boston, afterward the
President of the Association at Brook Farm, and later literary
editor of the New York “Tribune.”

SOPHIA DANA RIPLEY, his wife.

ELISABETH PALMER PEABODY. A woman of remarkable accumulations
of learning, and as remarkable a breadth of sympathy. She
was a teacher,—an enthusiastic advocate of the Kindergarten,
and opened at No. 13 West St., Boston, a foreign Circulating
Library, which soon became a sort of Literary Exchange of the
greatest use to New England. Her own great powers did not
accomplish all they ought, because it was impossible for her to
apply them systematically.

FREDERICK HENRY HEDGE. The well-known German and ecclesiastical
scholar, whose remarkable scholarship and character have not
yet received the commemoration they deserve. He was at this
time settled over the church in Bangor, Maine.

JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. Already the pastor of the Church of the
Disciples, in Boston, and preaching at Amory Hall. The outline
of his lovely and useful life is preserved in a memoir by the
Rev. E. E. Hale, D.D.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON. The Concord philosopher.

MRS. FARRAR, born Rotch, the wife of the Harvard Professor of
Physical Science and Mathematics.

FRANCIS G. SHAW. The son of a well-known Boston merchant, to
be honored through all time as the father of Colonel Robert G.
Shaw, who was buried where he fell, with the negroes whom he
died to free.

MRS. SARAH B. SHAW, his wife.

ANN WILBY CLARKE, wife of a Boston bank-officer and the oldest
member of an English family of Wilbys, nearly every member of
which was at some time a teacher in Boston or its neighborhood.

MRS. JONATHAN RUSSELL of Milton, widow of the U. S. Minister
to Sweden (1814-1818), residing on the old Governor Hutchinson
place at Milton, and

MISS IDA RUSSELL, her daughter.

WILLIAM WHITE. The brother of the first wife of James Russell
Lowell, who was killed by a fall from the bluff at Milwaukee in
1856.

WILLIAM W. STORY. Sculptor, poet, and lawyer, and well known as
a contributor to Blackwood. Still living.

CAROLINE STURGIS, daughter of William Sturgis of
Boston,—married later to Mr. Tappan,—a most gifted and charming
creature.

MRS. ANNA BARKER WARD, wife of S. G. Ward, now living in
Washington.

JONES VERY of Salem. A Transcendental poet.

ELISABETH HOAR was the daughter of Samuel Hoar of Concord,
Mass., and of Sarah, the daughter of Roger Sherman of
Connecticut. Elisabeth was not the least gifted of her very
gifted family. One brother, recently deceased, was President
Grant’s first Attorney-General; another is the well-known
Senator from Massachusetts to the Congress of the United
States; and a third, Edward Sherman Hoar, was distinguished
as a scholar and botanist. To great intellectual gifts,
Elisabeth added personal loveliness and a saintly serenity of
character. She was betrothed to Charles Emerson (a brother of
Ralph Waldo Emerson), who died of sudden illness just before
the time appointed for their marriage. He was also a rarely
gifted person, and after his death his family transferred their
tenderest affection to Elisabeth. The reader of the various
Lives of Emerson will see that she is often mentioned, and
several of Emerson’s letters are addressed to her. Had she
chosen to devote herself to literature, she would have been
greatly distinguished. The Life of Mrs. Ripley of Waltham,
written for “The Women of Our First Century,” and published
by a committee appointed at the Centennial Exhibition in
Philadelphia, was written by her. She died in 1878.

A. BRONSON ALCOTT of Concord. A memoir of him has been written
by the Hon. F. B. Sanborn of Concord, assisted by Wm. T. Harris.

W. MACK. A gentleman of great ability, who taught a school
in Belmont. His daughter was the first wife of Stillman, the
artist. The family is, I think, extinct, unless Mrs. Stillman
left a daughter.

SOPHIA PEABODY. A younger sister of E. P. P., afterwards Mrs.
Nathaniel Hawthorne.

MARIANNE JACKSON. A lovely, beloved, and accomplished woman,
who died early. She was the daughter of Judge Charles Jackson,
one of the soundest jurists who ever sat on a Massachusetts
bench,—the sister of Mrs. Oliver Wendell Holmes, of Mrs.
Charles C. Paine, and the aunt, I believe, of Mr. John T. Morse.

I have reserved for the last the name of the only sound Greek scholar among us: Charles Wheeler.

CHARLES STEARNS WHEELER. Born in Lincoln, near Concord, Dec.
19, 1816, of H. U. 1837, distinguished as a Greek scholar from
whom much was expected. To economize in order to pursue his
Greek studies he built a shanty at Walden, which is said to
have served as a suggestion to Thoreau. He went to Germany
directly after these Conversations, and died suddenly of fever
at Leipzig, in the summer of 1843. His death was a great
grief and a great shock. I have not forgotten the sensation
it produced. Beloved and honored by all who knew him, the
community of scholars was especially bereaved. To this day, I
am able to trust fearlessly to any information obtained from
him.

“_Only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness._”—LONGFELLOW.

MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS.

I.

_Monday Evening, March 1, 1841._

Margaret opened the conversation by a beautiful sketch of the origin of Mythology. The Greeks she thought borrowed their Gods from the Hindus and Egyptians, but they idealized their personifications to a far greater extent. The Hindus dwelt in the All, the Infinite, which the Greeks analyzed and to some degree humanized. All things sprang from Cœlus and Terra.,—that is, from Heaven and Earth, or spirit and matter. Rhea, or the Productive Energy, and Saturn, or Time, were the children of Cœlus and Terra. The progress of any people is marked by its mythi. Mythology is only the history of the development of the Infinite in the Finite. Saturn devoured his own children until the disappointed Rhea put a stone (or obstacle) in his way, and she succeeded in raising Jupiter. The development of human faculties was slow, therefore Time seemed to absorb all that Productive Energy brought forth, until Energy itself created obstacles; and of these was born the Indomitable Will. Jupiter represented that Will, and usurped the rule of Time, fighting with the low and sensual passions, represented by the Titans and the Giants, until he seated himself securely on the Olympian Throne, the Father of the Gods. This Will was not in itself the highest development of either Beauty, Genius, Wisdom, or Thought; but such developments were subject to it, were its children.

Juno is only the feminine form of this Indomitable Will. By herself she is inferior to it, and whenever she opposes it, loses the game. Vulcan, her child, is Mechanic Art, great in itself to be sure, but not comparable to the Perfect Wisdom, or Minerva, which sprang ready armed from the masculine Will. _She_ was greater than her Father, but still his child.

Neptune, who raises always a “placid head above the waves,” represents the flow of thought,—all-embracing, girdling in the world, Diana and Apollo, or Purity and Genius.

Mercury is Genius in the extrinsic, of eloquence, human understanding, and expression. All were the embodiments of Absolute Ideas, of ideas that had no origin,—that were eternal. Love brooded over Chaos; and the perfect Beauty and Love, represented among the Greeks by Venus and her son, rose from the turbid elements. It is singular that even the ancients should have maintained the pre-existence of Love. It was before Order, Men, or the Gods men worshipped. The fable suggests the truth,—Infinite Love and Beauty always was. It is only with their development in finite beings that History has to do.

Here MARGARET recapitulated. The Indomitable Will had dethroned Time, and, acting with Productive Energy,—variously represented at different times by Isis, Rhea, Ceres, Persephone, and so on,—had driven back the sensual passions to the bowels of the earth, while it produced Perfect Wisdom, Genius, Beauty, and Love, results which were more excellent if not more powerful than their Cause.

To understand this Mythology, we must denationalize ourselves, and throw the mind back to the consideration of Greek Art, Literature, and Poesy. It is only scanty justice that my pen can render to Margaret’s eloquent talk.

FRANK SHAW asked her how she imagined these personifications to have suggested themselves in that barbarous age.

MARGARET objected to the word _barbarous_. She believed that in the age of Plato the human intellect reached a point as elevated in some respects as any it had ever touched.

But the Gods were not the product of that age, but of another far more remote, FRANK objected. Was not the infinity of Hindu conception impaired, when the Greeks attributed to the Gods the duties, passions, and criminal indulgences of men?

MRS. RIPLEY said that the virtue of the Hindu lay in contemplation. If a man had seen _God_, he was exempt from the ordinary obligations of life, and allowed to pass his life in quiet adoration.

MARGARET added that the Greek knew better than that. _He_ felt the necessity of developing the Infinite through action, and embodied this necessity in his art and poesy as well as in his myths.

FRANK seemed still to think that in losing the adoring contemplation of the Hindu, and bringing their deities to the human level, the Greeks had taken one step down.

E. P. P. had always thought it had been a step _up_, and ANN CLARKE thought that the Greeks forgot themselves, merged all remembrance of the Finite, in realizing the individual forces of the Infinite.

WILLIAM WHITE, who had not waded very far into the stream, thought the North American Indian’s worship of the Manitou purer than the Greek worship, for the very reason that the Indian ascribed to his Manitou no passion that had degraded humanity.

MARGARET said that the Indian propitiated his God by vile deeds, by ignoble treacheries and revenge. So the Hindu throws her child into the Ganges, and an ecstatic crowd falls before the car of Juggernaut.

I thought a good deal, but did not speak. Did not William’s question grow out of the simple Unity of the Indian worship? But the Indian does not worship the Manitou because he recognizes a single First Cause, comprehending in itself all beauty, wisdom, purity, and truth, but because his heart is naturally lifted toward an unknown something, which he has hardly yet considered as a Cause. The Greek recognized the abstract forces of the Universe, but did not perceive their Unity, and so personified them separately.

E. P. P. suggested that the Indian had no literature, and had left no record of his Olympus!

MARGARET added that, if we compare the Indian Elysium with the Greek, the difference in spirituality is perceived at once.

HENRY HEDGE said that Frank Shaw talked about Greek mythi, but nobody could show a purely Greek mythos.

FRANK replied that he only meant that when the Greek mind had acted on a myth, it had not refined it.

MARGARET added that it was a vulgar notion that the Poets of Greece created her Gods; that the Poets were objective, and could give only humanized representations of them.

HENRY HEDGE thought that there was a point to which philosophy aided and prompted the creative power, but, that point passed, rather checked its action. Analysis took the place of the objective tendency.

Well! said WILLIAM WHITE, would not the human mind, aided only by culture, be incapable of any better idea than Frank Shaw suggested? Must not revelation complete the work?

MARGARET said that the answer to his question would be determined by his understanding of the word “revelation.” _She_ could not believe in a God who had ever left himself without a witness in the world. As soon as the human mind and will were ready, there was always some great Truth waiting to be submitted to their united action, until it was worn out. The beautiful Greek era had been succeeded by a period of inaction; the Roman era by another, and so on. She was sorry we had wandered from our subject so far as to doubt her very premises!

FRANK said, everything rested on those premises; so he thought that the ideals of beauty, love, justice, and truth should be referred to the Infinite Mind, and not to the Greek.

I wonder where he was when Margaret told about the Love which “was” before Order!

HENRY HEDGE said that Culture was the Mediator between the Finite and the Infinite.

JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE, alluding to Mr. Hedge’s previous remark upon the growth of philosophy, and the loss of the creative power, said that if that were a fact, it greatly diminished the probability of the birth of pure Genius into the world. Plato wrote when philosophy was at the turning point.

MARGARET said that there were many proofs in Plato that the philosophers understood the personifications of the mythi. She thought that the gods, the demigods, and the heroes of mythology represented distinct classes, and that this was not sufficiently remembered. She referred to the story of the burning of Hercules in Ovid, where Jupiter calls Juno to see how well his son endures!

WILLIAM WHITE said that he thought the idea of Deity was degraded when the Greeks changed a hero into a god; but if Culture be a Mediator, would not Plato have been greater had he been born into the nineteenth century?

JAMES F. CLARKE said Platos were impossible now.

MARGARET agreed, and said that the pride of knowledge which he would find in the world should he appear, would be a greater obstacle than superstition once was.

Did somebody say a little while ago that Will indomitable was born of obstacle?

MARGARET told William White that Coleridge had once said that he could neither measure nor understand Plato’s ignorance! His mind had not reached that altitude!

HENRY HEDGE, not willing to forego the possible birth of Genius, asked if all the experience and discovery with which the world had been enriched since Plato’s time would not furnish enough for the new-comer to act upon?

MARGARET replied that the mind could not receive unless excited. She must go through all the intellectual experience of a Plato, to be as great as he; but she might stand upon the general or even her own intuitive recognition of the truths he had advanced, and go forward to greater results,—but still that would not be to make herself greater.

But, said MRS. RIPLEY, in the first case you would be nothing _but_ Plato.

MARGARET acceded, but begged not to be understood as doubting that the future would be capable of finer things than the past.

The ideal significance of the Mythology was further dwelt upon, and much was said of the contrast between the thought of the priest and the worship of the people. It was acknowledged as a matter of course, that only a few preserved any consciousness of the original significance of the Mythology.

HENRY HEDGE thought that this was the true key to the purpose of the Eleusinian mysteries, whether in Egypt where they originated, or in Greece where they were introduced. Through them, all who chose became initiated into the interior meaning of the Mythology.

CHARLES WHEELER added, that in the flourishing times of the Athenian Republic every citizen was compelled to initiate himself.

MARGARET closed our talk with a gentle reproof to our wandering wits. To prevent such desultory prattling, she desired that a subject should be proposed for the next evening. The story of Ceres or Rhea, in fact the Productive Energy however manifested, carried general favor, and Margaret said archly that she had thought the presence of gentlemen (who had never until now attended one of her talks) would prevent the wandering and keep us free from prejudice!

I thought she was rightly disappointed.

I cannot recall the words, but at some time this evening Margaret distinguished three mythological dynasties. The first was the reign of the Natural Powers. The second, represented by Jupiter, Pluto, and Neptune, stood for the height, the depth, and the surface or flow of things, the first manifestations of human consciousness. The third was the Bacchic, Bacchus not being yet, in her estimation, the vulgar God of the wine-vat and the festival, but the inspired Genius,—being to Apollo, as she said, what the nectar is to the grape.

CAROLINE W. HEALEY.

March 2, 1841.

II.

_March 8, 1841._

Margaret recapitulated the statements she made last week. By thus giving to each fabled Deity its place in the scheme of Mythology, she did not mean to ignore the enfolding ideas, the one thought developed in all—as in Rhea, Bacchus, Pan. She would only imply that each personification was individual, served a particular purpose, and was worshipped in a particular way.

Before proceeding to talk about Ceres, she wished to remind us of the mischief of wandering from our subject. She hoped the ground she offered would be accepted _at least to talk about_! Certainly no one could deny that a mythos was the last and best growth of a national mind, and that in this case the characteristics of the Greek mind were best gathered from this creation.

Ceres, Persephone, and Isis, as well as Rhea, Diana, and so on, seem to be only modifications of one enfolding idea,—a goddess accepted by all nations, and not peculiar to Greece. The pilgrimages of the more prominent of these goddesses, Ceres and Isis, seem to indicate the life which loses what is dear in childhood, to seek in weary pain for what after all can be but half regained. Ceres regained her daughter, but only for half the year. Isis found her husband, but dismembered. This era in Mythology seems to mark the progress of a people from an unconscious to a conscious state. Persephone’s periodical exile shows the impossibility of resuming an unconsciousness from which we have been once aroused, the need thought has, having once felt the influence of the Seasons, to retire into itself.

CHARLES WHEELER reminded Margaret that she had said that the predominant goddesses, without reference to Greece, enfolded only one idea, that of the female _Will_ or _Genius_,—_the bounteous giver_. He had asked her if she could sustain herself by etymological facts, and she replied that her knowledge of the Greek was not critical enough. Since then he had inquired into the origin of the proper names of the Greek deities, and found that it confirmed her impression. The names of Rhea, Tellus, Isis, and Diana were resolvable into one, and the difference in their etymology was only a common and permissible change in the position of the letters of which they are composed, or a mere provincial dialectic change. Diana is the same as Dione, also one of the names of Juno.

E. P. P. asked if Homer ever confounded the last two? MARGARET thought not. Homer was purely objective. He knew little and cared less about the primitive creation of the myths.

R. W. EMERSON thought it would be very difficult to detect this secret. Jupiter, for instance, might have been a man who was the exponent of Will to his race.

MARGARET said, “No; they could have deduced him just as easily from Nature herself, or from a single exhibition of will power.”

R. W. EMERSON said that a man like Napoleon would easily have suggested it.

“What a God-send is a Napoleon!” exclaimed CHARLES WHEELER; “let us pray for scores of such, that a new and superior mythos may arise for us!” Is it malicious to suspect a subtle irony turned against the sacred person of R. W. E. in this speech?

MARGARET retorted indignantly that if they came, _we_ should do nothing better than write memoirs of their hats, coats, and swords, as we had done already, without thinking of any lesson they might teach. She could not see why we were not content to take the beautiful Greek mythi as they were, without troubling ourselves about those which might arise for us!

R. W. E. acknowledged that the Greeks had a quicker perception of the beautiful than we. Their genius lay in the material expression of it. If we knew the real meaning of the names of their Deities, the story would take to flight. We should have only the working of abstract ideas as we might adjust them for ourselves.

MARGARET said that a fable was more than a mere word. It was a word of the purest kind rather, the passing of thought into form. R. W. E. had made no allowance for time or space or climate, and there was a want of truth in that. The age of the Greeks was the age of Poetry; ours was the age of Analysis. _We_ could not create a Mythology.

EMERSON asked, “Why not? We had still better material.”

MARGARET said, irrelevantly as it seemed to me, that Carlyle had attempted to deduce new principles from present history, and that was the reason he did not _respect_ the _respectable_.

EMERSON said Carlyle was unfortunate in his figures, but we might have mythology as beautiful as the Greek.

MARGARET thought each age of the world had its own work to do. The transition of thought into form marked the Greek period. It was most easily done through fable, on account of their intense perception of beauty.

EMERSON pursued his own train of thought. He seemed to forget that we had come together to pursue Margaret’s. He said it was impossible that men or events should _stand out_ in a population of twenty millions as they could from a population of a single million, to which the whole population of the ancient world could hardly have amounted. As Hercules stood to Greece, no modern man could ever stand in relation to his own world.

MARGARET thought Hercules and Jupiter quite different creations. The first _might_ have been a deified life. The second could not.

CHARLES WHEELER said that R. W. E.’s view carried no historical obligation of belief with it. We could not deny the heroic origin of the Greek demigods, but the highest dynasty was the exponent of translated thought.

SOPHIA RIPLEY asked if the life of an individual fitly interwoven with her experience was not as fine a Poem as the story of Ceres, her wanderings and her tears? Did not Margaret know such lives?

R. W. E. thought every man had probably met his Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Venus, or Ceres in society!

MARGARET was sure she never had!

R. W. E. explained: “Not in the world, but each on his own platform.”

WILLIAM STORY objected. The life of an individual was not universal. (!)

SOPHIA RIPLEY repeated, “The inner life.”

WILLIAM STORY claimed to be an individual, and did not think individual experience could ever meet all minds,—like the story of Ceres, for example.

SOPHIA said all experience was universal.

I said nothing, but held this colloquy with myself. Thought is the best of human nature; its fulness urges expression: its need of being met, not only by _one_ other but by every other, _craves_ it. This craving is the acknowledgment of the universal experience. What is _purely_ individual is perishable. _Identity_ is to be separated from individuality for this cause.

MARGARET said the element of beauty would be wanting to our creations. A fine emotion glowed through features which seem to fall like a soft veil over the soul, while it could scarce do more than animate those that were obtuse and coarse in every outline. (!)

“Then,” said WILLIAM STORY, and my heart thanked the _preux chevalier_,—“then something is wanting in the emotion itself.”

WILLIAM WHITE said, stupidly, that sunlight could not fall with equal charm on rocks and the green grass. (!)

I asked if the rock could not give what it did not receive? Flung back by rugged points and relieved by dark shadows, was not the sunlight itself transfigured?

STORY said every face had its own beauty. No act that was natural could be ungraceful.

EMERSON said that we all did sundry graceful acts, in our caps and tunics, which we never could do again, which we never wanted to do again.

MARGARET said, at last we had touched the point. We could not restore the childhood of the world, but could we not admire this simple plastic period, and gather from it some notion of the Greek genius?

R. W. E. thought this legitimate. He would have it that we could not determine the origin of a mythos, but we might fulfil Miss Fuller’s intention.

MARGARET said history reconciled us to life, by showing that man had redeemed himself. Genius needed that encouragement.

Not _Genius_, SOPHIA RIPLEY thought; common natures needed it, but Genius was self-supported.

MARGARET said it might be the consolation of Genius.

MRS. RUSSELL asked why Miss Fuller found so much fault with the present.

MARGARET _had_ no fault to find with it. She took facts as they were. Every age did something toward fulfilling the cycle of mind. The work of the Greeks was not ours.

SOPHIA RIPLEY asked if the mythology had been a prophecy of the Greek mind to itself, or if the nation had experienced life in any wide or deep sense.

MARGARET seemed a little out of patience, and no wonder! She said it did not matter which. The question was, what could _we find_ in the mythi, and what did the Greeks mean that we should find there. Coleridge once said that certain people were continually saying of Shakespeare, that he did not mean to impart certain spiritual meanings to some of his sketches of life and character; but if Shakespeare did not mean it his Genius did: so if the Greeks meant not this or that, the Greek genius meant it.

In relation to the progress of the ages, JAMES F. CLARKE said that the story of Persephone concealed in the bowels of the earth for half the year seemed to him to indicate something of their comparative states. Persephone was the seed which must return to earth before it could fructify. Thought must retire into itself before it can be regenerate.

MARGARET was pleased with this, more especially as in the story of the Goddess it is eating the pomegranate, whose seed is longest in germinating, which dooms her to the realm of Pluto.

GEORGE RIPLEY remarked that we saw this need of withdrawal in the slothful ages when mind seemed to be imbibing energy for future action. The world sometimes forsook a quest and returned to it. We had forsaken Beauty, but we might return to it.

Certainly, MARGARET assented. A perfect mind would detect all beauty in the hearth-rug at her feet: the meanest part of creation contained the whole; but the labor we were now at to appreciate the Greek proved conclusively that _we_ were not Greek. A simple plastic nature would take it all in with delight, without doubt or question.

Or rather, amended EMERSON, would take it up and go forward with it.

It makes no difference, said MARGARET, for we live in a circle.

I did not think it pleasant to track and retrack the same arc, and preferred to go forward with R. W. E., so I asked if there was to be no _higher_ poetry.

MARGARET acknowledged that there was something beyond the aspiration of the Egyptian or the poetry of the Greek.

GEORGE RIPLEY thought we had not lost all reverence for these abstract forces. The Eleusinian mysteries might be forgotten, but not Ceres. We did not worship in ignorance. The mysteries led back to the Infinite. The processes of vegetation were actually heart-rending! Here, _I_ thought, was a basis for my higher poetry.

GEORGE RIPLEY acknowledged that it was so. He seemed to be more conscious of the movement of the world than any of our party. He said we must not measure creation by Boston and Washington, as we were too apt to do. There was still France, Germany, and Prussia,—perhaps Russia! The work of this generation was not religious nor poetic; still, there was a tendency to go back to both. There were to be ultraisms, but also, he hoped, consistent development.

CHARLES WHEELER then related the story of Isis, of her hovering in the form of a swallow round the tree in which the sarcophagus of Osiris had been enclosed by Typhon; of her being allowed to fell the tree; of the odor emitted by the royal maidens whom she touched, which revealed her Divinity to the Queen; of the second loss of the body, as she returned home, and its final dismemberment.

There was little success in spiritualizing more of this story than the pilgrimage, and R. W. E. seemed to feel this; for when MARGARET had remarked that even a divine force must become as the birds of the air to compass its ends, and that it was in the carelessness of conscious success that the second loss occurred, he said that it was impossible to detect an inner sense in all these stories.

MARGARET replied, that she had not attempted that, but she could see it in all the prominent points.

CHARLES WHEELER said that the varieties of anecdote proved that the stories were not all authentic. It was an ancient custom to strike off medals in honor of certain acts of the Gods. To these graven pictures the common people gave their own vulgar interpretations, as they did also to the bas-reliefs on their temples and monuments.

E. P. P. said this accounted for many of the stories transmitted by Homer. When sculpture and architecture had lost their meaning, his inventive genius was only the more stimulated to find one.

CHARLES WHEELER asked what Margaret would make of the story that the tears of Isis frightened children to death?

There was a general laugh, but MARGARET said coolly, that children always shrank from a baffled hope.

Some one contrasted Persephone with her mother.

MARGARET assented to whatever was said, and added that she had been particularly struck with it in an engraving she had recently seen, in which Ceres stood with lifted eyes, full-eyed, matronly, bounteous, ready to give all to all, while Persephone, dejected and thoughtful, sat meditating; and the idea was strengthened by her discovering that Persephone was the same as Ariadne the deserted. I could only guess at the remark by Margaret’s comment. It seemed to imply baffled hope for Persephone.

The Eleusinian mysteries were now alluded to. Although it has been said that only moral precepts were inculcated through these, WHEELER urged that a whole school of Continental authors now acknowledged that the higher doctrines of philosophy were taught.

R. W. E. added, that as initiation became more easy such instruction must have degenerated into a mere matter of form, and many of the _un_initiated surpass the initiated in wisdom.

MARGARET admitted this. Socrates was one of the uninitiated. The crowd seldom felt the full force of beauty in Art or Literature. To prove it, it was only necessary to walk once through the Hall of Sculpture at the Athenæum, and catch the remarks of any half-dozen on Michael Angelo’s “Day and Night.” He would be fortunate who heard a single observer comment on its power.

MRS. RUSSELL asked why the images of the sun and moon were introduced into these mysterious celebrations.

MARGARET asked impatiently why they had always been invoked by every child who could string two rhymes together.

I said that if Ceres was the simple _agricultural_ productive energy, of course the sun was her first minister, its genial influence being as manifest as the energy itself.

In regard to the etymology of the proper names, it seemed reasonable to me that this energy should have gained attributes as it did names. Any nation devoted to the chase would learn to call the lunar deity Diana; any devoted to the cultivation of grain would project her as Ceres. The reproductive powers of flocks and herds would suggest Rhea or Juno, and philosophy or art would invoke Persephone.

When we were talking about beauty, J. F. C. quoted Goethe, and said that the spirit sometimes made a mistake and clothed itself in the wrong garment.