Chapter III: The Opener of Doors

“_Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee and do not try to make the Universe a blind alley._”--EMERSON’S JOURNAL (1841).

There are certain minds which have exercised a vast influence over the thought of the world, as constructors of intellectual systems. Their ambition has been to reduce all things to a formula. They become masters of existing knowledge and arrange it in orderly fashion. Thus Thomas Aquinas summed up the thought of the middle ages in a solid theology to be received by all who came after him. John Calvin, with lawyer-like logic, did the same thing for sixteenth-century Protestantism. Herbert Spencer, with prodigious industry, gathered an immense number of facts and attempted to bring them all into an agreement with his own scientific formula.

Up to a certain point the system-maker is a helper to all those who would live a reasonable intellectual life. He shows us where to put our facts and to a certain degree how to use them. The difficulty comes when new facts are discovered which do not fit into the system, or when in the course of our intellectual development we come upon a fresh point of view.

Then the system becomes a blind alley. We are led into it by a perfectly logical process, but there is no logical way out of it. The mind goes round and round and is conscious of the futility of its own effort. The universe is narrowed to the dimensions of a rigid creed. The system now shuts out more of reality than it explains.

It is when we become conscious of the dangers of making the universe a blind alley and becoming entrapped in rigid forms that we appreciate the function of philosophers like William James and Bergson. They are emancipators of the intellect. In their keen criticism of dogmatic systems they show us a way out. Reality, they assure us, is something vaster than any definition of it.

Emerson belonged to this little company of emancipators, and he went about his business in a very simple and yet effective way. He attacked the assumption that what is usually called consistency is a virtue. No saying of his is more often quoted, and more generally misunderstood:

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said to-day.”

That may be made to seem like a plea for careless and irresponsible ways of thinking and speaking. What standard are we to have by which to test our mental processes? I have heard the words quoted as if they offered an excuse for intellectual lawlessness.

We approach Emerson’s serious meaning only when we emphasize the adjective. It is a _foolish_ consistency which is the hobgoblin of little minds. The fundamental question is “_consistency with what?_” The little mind is thinking not of reality but of its own previous utterances. When an opinion is to be expressed, it says, “This must be made consistent with what I said yesterday. Let me see! What did I say yesterday?” Then, with solemn conscientiousness, yesterday’s statement is repeated and there is felt the satisfaction which comes with duty done.

But what if to-day’s fact is really different from that of yesterday, and can not be expressed accurately by the same phrase? This possibility the little mind does not entertain. It will not allow itself to be contradicted, and so the process goes on which St. Paul describes, “they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.”

Emerson’s real plea is for consistency. But we must be consistent not with a form of words which we have adopted, but with a living reality which we encounter day by day.

What have you seen to-day? What have you done? What new aspect of the universe has become clear to you? What are the facts revealed in your present consciousness? These are the questions that are asked of a person who is using his mind. And his answers are valuable only as they are simple and direct.

In a court of justice this simplicity is required. The witness who is trying to make his answers consistent with one another and with a preconceived theory is sure to come to grief. The cross-questioner will discover flaws in the evidence. The only safe course is to tell the facts as they occurred.

Most of our intellectual confusion comes from the attempts to arrange our opinions according to an artificial order. The catechism is arranged in advance of experience. The questions follow one another in logical order, and each question has its appropriate answer. It is all very satisfactory until the answers are sharply challenged. How do we happen to know so much? How are we able to answer so glibly?

To Emerson the chief value of a catechism lay in the questions, not in the answers. That the deepest and most persistent questions have no satisfactory answers did not depress him. It only proved that both the mind that asks and the universe which delays the answer are greater than we thought. Their meaning can not be expressed in any form of words. He hears the Sphinx saying to the Soul:

“Thou art the unanswered question;
Couldst see thy proper eye,
Alway it asketh, asketh;
And each answer is a lie.
So take thy quest through nature,
It through thousand natures ply;
Ask on, thou clothed eternity;
Time is the false reply.”

The joy of the follower of Truth and Beauty is wonderfully expressed in the little poem called “Forerunners.” We are out-of-doors, and the air is bracing, and the distant hills are alluring. What does it matter that we do not catch up with our “happy guides”? It is enough that we are free to follow. Let others sing of the satisfactions of achievement. Emerson is satisfied with a life that is a continual quest.

“Long I followed happy guides,
I could never reach their sides;
Their step is forth, and, ere the day
Breaks up their leaguer, and away.
Keen my sense, my heart was young,
Right good-will my sinews strung,
But no speed of mine avails
To hunt upon their shining trails.
On and away, their hasting feet
Make the morning proud and sweet;
Flowers they strew--I catch the scent;
Or tone of silver instrument
Leaves on the wind melodious trace;
Yet I could never see their face.
On eastern hills I see their smokes,
Mixed with mist by distant lochs.
I met many travellers
Who the road had surely kept;
They saw not my fine revellers,--
These had crossed them while they slept.
Some had heard their fair report,
In the country or the court.
Fleetest couriers alive
Never yet could once arrive,
As they went or they returned,
At the house where these sojourned.
Sometimes their strong speed they slacken,
Though they are not overtaken;
In sleep their jubilant troop is near,--
I tuneful voices overhear;
It may be in wood or waste,--
At unawares ’tis come and past.
Their near camp my spirit knows
By signs gracious as rainbows.
I thenceforward, and long after,
Listen for their harp-like laughter,
And carry in my heart, for days,
Peace that hallows rudest ways.”

It is not merely the poetic imagination which opens the doors into an enchanted country where one may wander endlessly. The sober reason has also an emancipatory power. There are realities which lie beyond the limits which the dogmatist defines. They may not be logically justified but they are nevertheless a part of the order of the universe. When we cease to dogmatize we become conscious of an order more wonderful than that which we had imagined possible. Things exist side by side which we had supposed to be absolutely incompatible. We can not logically reconcile them, but there they are.

“The world refuses to be analyzed by addition and subtraction. When we are young, we spend much time and pains in filling our note-books with all definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope that, in the course of a few years, we shall have condensed into our encyclopedia the net value of all the theories at which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tables get no completeness, and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola, whose arcs will never meet.

“Neither by detachment, neither by aggregation, is the integrity of the intellect transmitted to its works, but by a vigilance which brings the intellect in its greatness and best state to operate every moment. It must have the same wholeness which nature has. Although no diligence can rebuild the universe in a model, by the best accumulation or disposition of details, yet does the world reappear in miniature in every event, so that all the laws of nature may be read in the smallest fact. The intellect must have the like perfection in its apprehension and in its works.”

Along with Emerson’s insistence on an absolute freedom in thinking we must remember his emphasis on the principle of identity which he discovers everywhere. The universe, he continually tells us is not a blind alley, neither is it a mere welter of conflicting forces. It is marvelously complicated, but touch it at any point and you will find it consistent with itself. Could we understand one part of it we would have the key to all mysteries.

“The universe is represented in every one of its particles. Everything in nature contains all the powers of nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff; as the naturalist sees one type under every metamorphosis, and regards a horse as a running man, a fish as a swimming man, a bird as a flying man, a tree as a rooted man. Each new form repeats not only the main character of the type, but part for part all the details, all the aims, furtherances, hindrances, energies, and whole system of every other. Every occupation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of the world and a correlative of every other. Each one is an entire emblem of human life; of its good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its course, and its end. And each one must somehow accommodate the whole man, and recite all his destiny.

“The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The microscope cannot find the animalcule which is less perfect for being little. Eyes, ears, taste, smell, motion, resistance, appetite, and organs of reproduction that take hold on eternity--all find room to consist in the small creature. So do we put our life into every act. The true doctrine of omnipresence is, that God reappears with all his parts in every moss and cobweb. The value of the universe contrives to throw itself into every point. If the good is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so the repulsion; if the force, so the limitation.”