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Ralph Waldo Emerson |
Happy 200th Birthday to Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 - April 27, 1882)
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Introduction
It's Emerson's 200th Birthday— and there's no postage stamp honoring the bicenntenial
of his birth. He's not only America's most notable essayist, naturalist, philosopher, and poet but
also a citizen of the world. His motto "Hitch your wagon to a star" shows that his mind
was not constrained by the horse & buggy of his day, but soared high above the universe.
The first time I encountered Emerson was as a stamp collector— He appeared in the
Famous American series of 1940— a mint set of the 35 stamps was advertised in the
Sunday New York Times for $5, much too expensive for a schoolboy in the mid-1950s.
However I did get copies of the 1¢ Washington Irving, 2¢ James Fenimore Cooper,
and 3¢ Emerson. I read The Last of the Mohicians and Cooper was my favorite
author back then. I don't remember reading Emerson except jotting down some inspiring
quotes of his as an undergraduate at Columbia. When I was at Cornell as a chemistry
graduate student, I bought Phillips Russell's Emerson: The Wisest American
(Brentano's Publishers, NY, 1929)
on the Cornell Bookstore's used book shelf for only a dollar. I was intrigued by the title,
and perhaps by the opening story in Chapter 1: It was Emerson's 59th birthday, and
he and his son Edward was trying to put his calf, into its barn. The son grasped an ear
while the father pushed from behind. But after much huffing and puffing, the heifer
remained firm and refused to give an inch. Nothing in Emerson's
voluminous readings of science and literature told of an effective way of pushing a
calf into a barn. Emerson had no physical strength but he had plenty of persistence.
So he told his son to try again, and still got nowhere. Just then, an Irish servant came
by. With an amused glance, she put a finger into the animal's mouth, and the calf,
seduced by this maternal imitation, at once followed her into the barn. Emerson
returned to the house and after cleansing his hands of their hairy bovine smell,
recorded the incident in his journal, adding this telling declaration: "I like people
who can do things." What I enjoyed about this story is that despite Emerson's great
bookish learning, he valued experience as the way to wisdom. By practicing this
philosophy of self-reliance all his life, he grew in wisdom as he aged.
Emerson's Literary Ethics & Compensation
During the summer of 1964, I read "Literacy Ethics", an address
delivered by Emerson before Literary Societies of Dartmouth College, July 24, 1838
It appeared in Emerson's Nature; Addresses and Lectures. The first paragraph
grabbed my attention when Emerson said "that a scholar is the favorite of Heaven and earth,
the excellency of his country, the happiest of men. His duties lead him directly into the
holy ground where other men's aspirations only point." I didn't know why I was always
happiest when I'm in the library tracking down beautiful quotations, browsing through
ancient books for words of wisdom, or finding the viewpoints of my favorite poets or
philosophers on perplexing problems of life. Emerson tells me that I'm on holy ground
and this is the joy of the research scholar. Now I learn that the scholar's resources
"are co-extensive with nature and truth, yet can never be his, unless claimed by him
with an equal greatness of mind." When the scholar realizes that his intellectual power
is not his, then he's in awe of its infinitude and impersonality. Only then can you be
"a successful diver in that sea whose floor of pearls is all your own."
Emerson warns the scholar to see the daybreak not as "Homeric, or Shakspearian, or Miltonic,
or Chaucerian pictures", but greet the morning afresh with a mind "as large as nature."
To do this, "He must be a solitary, laborious, modest, and charitable soul. He must embrace
solitude as a bride. He must have his glees and his glooms alone." Emerson's address ends
with the exhortions:
You will hear, that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name.
'What is this Truth you seek? what is this Beauty?' men will ask, with derision.
If, nevertheless, God have called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold,
be firm, be true. When you shall say, 'As others do, so will I: I renounce, I am
sorry for it, my early visions; I must eat the good of the land, and let learning
and romantic expectations go, until a more convenient season;'— then dies
the man in you; then once more perish the buds of art, and poetry, and science,
as they have died already in a thousand thousand men. The hour of that choice is
the crisis of your history; and see that you hold yourself fast by the intellect.
It is this domineering temper of the sensual world, that creates the extreme need
of the priests of science; and it is the office and right of the intellect to make
and not take its estimate. Bend to the persuasion which is flowing to you from every
object in nature, to be its tongue to the heart of man, and to show the besotted
world how passing fair is wisdom. Forewarned that the vice of the times and the
country is an excessive pretension, let us seek the shade, and find wisdom in
neglect. Be content with a little light, so it be your own. Explore, and explore."
Tears welled up in my eyes when I read this, and my heart said "Yes!" to Emerson
that I'll be a true scholar always exploring for beauty, truth, and wisdom so as
to keep the garden of art, poetry, and science alive for the world. And Emerson
closes his speech with these thought-provoking words:
Thought is all light, and publishes itself to the universe. It will speak,
though you were dumb, by its own miraculous organ. It will flow out of your
actions, your manners, and your face. It will bring you friendships. It will
impledge you to truth by the love and expectation of generous minds. By virtue
of the laws of that Nature, which is one and perfect, it shall yield every
sincere good that is in the soul, to the scholar beloved of earth and heaven."
Looking back on that day when I felt Emerson was speaking directly to me,
I pledged my youth to truth, the journey to wisdom has been a truly joyous ride.
Mentors in art, poetry, science and spirit came in abundance to guide me.
Friends far and near helped in my spiritual quest for enlightenment.
My life's experience has borne out Emerson's vision that the scholar
is indeed blessed— beloved of heaven and earth.
My copy of Emerson's Compensation was published by Thomas Y. Crowell Co.,
New York, a slim 36-page volume with a beautiful engraved portrait of Emerson
facing the ornate title page. The cover has a landscape of a lakeside with
tall trees, hills in the distance, and brushstrokes of white clouds. It's a
truly meditative scene, an impressionistic painting or photograph. But reading
this book around 1966 (My brother wrote Xmas 1966 on the front page when I
gave it to him), I learned valuable insights from Emerson about divine
justice. Emerson does not use the word karma in this book, a Buddhist
term which I had not come across until a year later. Emerson notes the polarity
or dualism that underlies nature and condition of man:
The same dualism underlies the nature and condition of man. Every excess causes
a defect; every defect an excess. Every sweet hath its sour; every evil its good.
Every faculty which is a receiver of pleasure has an equal penalty put on its abuse.
It is to answer for its moderation with its life. For every grain of wit there is
a grain of folly. For every thing you have missed, you have gained something else;
and for every thing you gain, you lose something. If riches increase, they are
increased that use them. If the gatherer gathers too much, nature takes out of
the man what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, but kills the owner.
Nature hates monopolies and exceptions.
Cosmic Consciousness
In Richard Bucke's
Cosmic Consciousness (1901), Emerson is listed among those
who have experienced a
lesser form of cosmic consciousness. Others in this group include Socrates, Pascal,
Spinoza, Wordsworth, Pushkin, Tennyson, Thoreau, and Ramakrishna. Bucke did not have
access to Emerson's Journals (published 1909) at the time, so his assessment was incomplete.
A recent study Emerson and Zen Buddhism (2001), by John G. Rudy concludes that
Emerson's essays and addresses are similar to Zen masters' teachings. They help us
through a self-emptying process that brings us to our original face before our parents
were born. My hunch that Emerson had experienced full cosmic consciousness came around
1989. I was reading Bliss Perry's The Heart of Emerson's Journals (1926), when
I came across Emerson's September 1, 1833 entry from Liverpool. Emerson had journeyed
to Italy, Switzerland, France, England, and Scotland. He had met Landor, Coleridge,
Carlyle, and Wordsworth. Emerson's assessment of these "wise men"— "they would
be remembered as sensible, well-read, earnest men, not more. Especially are they all
deficient, all these four,— in different degrees, but all deficient,— in
insight into religious truth. They have no idea of that species of moral truth which
I call the first philosophy."
When I checked the dates of these well-known European writers—
Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864),
58 years old [Poems (1795), Imaginary Conversations (1824-1829)],
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1792-1834),
61 years old [13 books including Rime of Ancient Mariner (1789), The Friend (1818),
Kublai Khan (1816), Biographia Literaria (1817)],
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), 38 years old [7 books including translation
of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1824), Life of Schiller (1825),
Essays on Burns (1828), On History (1830)],
William Wordsworth (1770-1850), 63 years old [8 books including
Lyrical Ballads with Coleridge (1798), Tintern Abbey (1798),
Intimations of Immortality (1803-06), The Excursion (1814)],
I ask myself— how a 30-year old Emerson with
no books published yet in 1833
[Nature (1836), Poems (1840), Essays (1841)] could pass judgment
on seasoned writers that were double his age (except Carlyle)? In particular,
where did Emerson experience the "insight into religious truth" that he found deficient
in these men? I believe that Emerson was enlightened by his wife, Ellen Louisa Tucker,
his first true love. Her premature death shook up
Emerson deeply, and in his despair and sorrow, he experienced a spiritual awakening
that is more profound than all his book learning. This led to his enlightenment at
the Mount Auburn Cemetery on
April 11, 1834 where he experienced Zeus or Jupiter consciousness:
"It was Day— that was all Heaven said."
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