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Emerson's Sacred Science
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
In the experimental period following the “Divinity School Address” Emerson worked out a dialectic in terms of myth as a way of combating skepticism with faith, and throughout his subsequent career, notably in “Song of Nature” and in the prose “Fate” and English Traits, he gave increasing scope to the mythic vision of man's cosmic and historical experience. In the verse of “The Skeptic,” written in 1842, he settled the question of sectarian religion in favor of disillusion and skepticism. But in a series of Journal entries from 1843 to 1845, in the dialectic confrontation of opposites—science and religion, skepticism and faith, evolution and emanation—he accepted skeptical science together with the religious impulse, but lifted both to a new level of occult insight and symbolically clairvoyant fable.
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References
1 See my article, “The Importance of Emerson's Skeptical Mood,” Harvard Lib. Bull., xi (Winter 1957), 117–139. Three recent books on Emerson provide important general background for the discussion of myth: Vivian C. Hopkins' Spires of Form (Cambridge, 1951), on Emerson's aesthetics and—especially significant here—theories of the imagination and symbolism; Sherman Paul's Emerson's Angle of Vision (Cambridge, 1952), on the concept of Unity and the interlocked correspondences in Emerson's dualistic world; and Stephen E. Whicher's Freedom and Fate (Philadelphia, 1953), on Emerson's philosophic growth from transcendental egoism through skepticism to an objective humanism. See also Charles Feidelson's Symbolism and American Literature (Chicago, 1953) for an important chapter on Emerson.
2 Coleridge, Complete Works, ed. William G. T. Shedd, 7 vols. (New York, 1853), ii, 445; iii, 363; The Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Edward Waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes, 14 vols. (Boston, 1909–14), v, 151–152; vi, 143—hereafter cited as Journals. See Auguste Thé-odor Hilaire, Baron Barchou de Penhoen, Histoire de la philosophie allemande depuis Leibnitz jusqu'à Hegel, 2 vols. (Paris, 1836), i, 117–118. In the Literaria Biographia Coleridge distinguishes between the primary and the secondary imagination; and on this point Miss Hopkins is especially discriminating when she says that Emerson's theory ignores “the fusing and shaping quality which Coleridge emphasizes in the secondary imagination” (Spires of Form, p. 39). It is equally true, however, as the documentary evidence shows, that in the practical labor of shaping his own mythical view Emerson studiously put the Coleridgean secondary imagination to work.
3 Characteristics of Goethe, 3 vols. (London, 1833), i, 36–37; Journals, iii, 567; v, 401; Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Centenary ed., 12 vols. (Boston, 1903–04), ix, 140—hereafter cited as Works.
4 Austin, i, 21. See my article, “The Year of Emerson's Poetic Maturity: 1834,” PQ, xxxiv (Oct. 1955), 357–359. For Goethe's influence in specific aesthetic doctrine, see Vivian C. Hopkins' “The Influence of Goethe on Emerson's Aesthetic Theory,” PQ, xxvii (Oct. 1948), 325–344, and also her Spires of Form, pp. 72, 74, 135–136.
5 The passage that Emerson extracted is more extensive than the portion quoted above. Emerson added the notation “Goethe Nachg. Werke, vol. 10, p. 85.” See Goethe's Werke, l (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1828–33), 85–86. The last 15 volumes of this edition (55 vols.) comprise the Nachgelassene Werke. Emerson got this significant passage from an “Erwiderung” by Ernst Meyer (l, 75–92), a treatment of Goethe's philosophical ideas, replete with quotations, of which this is one. It occurs originally in the Farbenlehre (see Werke, liii, 28–29).
6 Trans. Thomas Taylor (Chiswick, 1821), pp. 343–344. The passage in question is actually a quotation from Proclus. Emerson's personal copy of Iamblichus is in the Houghton Library.
7 New Jerusalem Mag., ii (Sept. 1828), 24. See Journals, iii, 163, for Emerson's Swedenborgian reflections on animal forms in the Jardin des Plantes on his first trip to Europe.
8 See my article, “The Sources of Emerson's ‘Song of Nature’, ” Harvard Lib. Bull., ix (Autumn 1955), 306–307. See n. 2 above for comment on Coleridge's secondary imagination.
9 Journals, vii, 58, 67, 69. See Robert Chambers, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation: Second Edition. From the Third London Edition, Greatly Amended by the Author. And an Introduction by Rev. George B. Cheever, D.D. (New York, 1845), pp. 128, 163. This edition is in Emerson's library at Concord, where I consulted it. For Chambers' book as a source for “Song of Nature” see my article already referred to, pp. 305–306. For the phrase “arrested development” see Robert L. Haig, “Emerson and the ‘Electric Word’ of John Hunter,” New England Quart., xxviii (Autumn 1955), 394–397.
10 Two vols. (London, 1843–44), i, xliv, xlix–l. Wilkinson's scorn for “decadent science” would have received support in Emerson's mind from Thomas Taylor, the crotchety Neoplatonist. See Sydenham and Taylor's edition of Plato's Works, 5 vols. (London, 1804), ii, 431–432.
11 Heeren's 2 titles: Historical Researches into the Politics, Intercourse, and Trade of the Principal Nations of Antiquity, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1833), a treatment of the Persians, Babylonians, Indians, etc., and Historical Researches into the Politics, Intercourse, and Trade of the Carthaginians, Ethiopians, and Egyptians, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1832). For the description of the palace at Karnak see the latter, ii, 247. See also Belzoni, Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries Within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs, and Excavations, of Egypt and Nubia, 2 vols. (London, 1822), i, 282–283. For Emerson's interest in both Heeren and Belzoni see MS Journal D (1838–39), pp. 63, 67, 80–81, 89, 147, et passim, in the Houghton Library. See also The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Ralph Leslie Rusk, 6 vols. (New York, 1939), ii, 154, 168–169—hereafter cited as Letters. See also Bourrienne, Private Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, 4 vols. (London, 1830), i, 222–223, 228, 365. For Emerson's borrowing of Belzoni and Bourrienne from the Boston Athenaeum, see Kenneth W. Cameron, Ralph Waldo Emerson's Reading (Raleigh, N. C, 1941), pp. 24, 25–26. See finally Colebrooke's Miscellaneous Essays, 2 vols. (London, 1837), ii, 374–450.
12 See James E. Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1887), ii, Appendix F, 752; Letters, iii, 306. Works, i, 338.
13 Works, iv, 174–183, 178.
14 Works, iii, 23; i, 39, 73, 122; ii, 3, et passim; iii, 8.
15 Journals, vii, 304–305, 286–289.
16 Journals, vii, 281–282, 323–324, 284, 311. See Alexander Chodzko, Specimens of the Popular Poetry of Persia (London, 1842), pp. 73–81, 165, 175, for the passages that Emerson rather freely transcribed in his Journals. For the fable of Zohák see Firdausi, The Sháh Námeh, trans. James Atkinson (London, 1832), pp. 12–16.
17 Journals, vii, 284. In this passage Emerson confuses the prophet Chiser with the fountain Kewser, as Foster Y. St. Clair has pointed out in his “Emerson's ‘Chiser, the Fountain of Life’, ” PQ, xxvi (Oct. 1947), 83. See Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte der schönen Redekünste Persiens (Vienna, 1818), pp. 17, 20, 23. Emerson could have got the same references from the same editor's Der Diwan von Mohammed Schemsed-din Hafis, 2 vols. (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1812–13), but they are scattered throughout the two volumes, and the more concentrated discussion in the “Allgemeine Uebersicht” of the Redekünste is the more likely source. As early as 1829–30 and again in 1839 Emerson could have discovered Kaf, the Simurgh, and the ring of Solomon in Robert Southey's Thalaba. For his borrowing of this Oriental romance see Kenneth Walter Cameron, Emerson the Essayist, 2 vols. (Raleigh, N. C, 1945), ii, 163, 165.
18 See my article “The Sources,” pp. 309–311.
19 Works, xii, 416; iii, 179; vi, 36.
20 See “The Sources,” pp. 325, 317, 319.
21 Cabot, n, Appendix F, 754. See also Emerson's letter, 19 April 1853, in The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Charles Eliot Norton, 2 vols. (Boston, 1883), ii, 217.
22 Works, xii, 406–407; iv, 177; vi, 20, 5–6.
23 Works, xii, 408; vii, 37. “Thoughts on Art” was subset quently included in Society and Solitude under the title “Art” (Works, vii, 37–57). See Journals, ix, 216–218.
24 There has been a curious superficiality in the treatment of the Greek contribution to Emerson's view of Fate. Arthur Christy, in his The Orient in American Transcendentalism (New York, 1932), p. 99, approvingly quotes a passage from the Journals in Oct. 1845, (vii, 123) which dismisses Greek tragedy in the face of the “dread reality” presented in Hindu systems. One can only say that in instances of this kind Emerson is not a safe guide to Emerson, for what he took most seriously in 1838–39, as the record shows, he dismissed whimsically enough in 1845 in his preoccupation with a different version of Fate.
25 The True Intellectual System, ed. Thomas Birch, 4 vols. (London, 1820), i, 225–226, 343. See also Vivian C. Hopkins' “Emerson and Cudworth: Plastic Nature and Transcendental Art,” American Literature, xxiii (March 1951), 83, and my article, “Emerson's Poetic Maturity,” pp. 359–360.
26 Two vols. (London, 1816), ii, 452. For Emerson's acquisition of this title see Letters, ii, 406, 430.
27 Works, vi, 20–23, 30, 49. The best general treatment of the unfolding of Emerson's view of Fate throughout a lifetime of thought is to be found in Whicher's Freedom and Fate, pp. 156–157,166–167, et passim.
28 See Works, vii, 52, for Emerson's adaptation of Goethe's aesthetic doctrine that the form of a work of art rests upon the necessary. On this subject consult Hopkins, Spires of Form, p. 72 and p. 238, n. 13, where Miss Hopkins quotes Emerson's translation from Goethe in MS Journal B. For references above, see Joseph Marie, Baron de Gérando, Histoire comparée des systèmes de philosophie, 4 vols. (Paris, 1822–23), i, 483; Cudworth, i, 72, 75, 225–226, 343, et passim. For a passage on Necessity in Journals, v, 508, see Select Works of Plotinus, trans. Thomas Taylor (London, 1817), p. 417. Finally, see Plato, ii, 435–436.
29 Works, xii, 408. For Hedge see Henry David Gray, Emerson: A Statement of New England Transcendentalism (Stanford, 1917); Ronald Vale Wells, Three Christian Transcendentalists, Columbia Stud, in American Culture, No. 12 (New York, 1943); Stanley M. Vogel, German Literary Influences on the American Transcendentalisls, Yale Stud, in English, No. 127 (New Haven, 1955); and Ralph Leslie Rusk, The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York, 1949), Rusk's Letters (especially Vol. iii) provide an ampler view of Emerson's interest in Schelling than do the Journals. Although the first Journal entry from Barchou de Penhoen occurs in 1841 (Journals, vi, 143), there is a strong possibility that Emerson knew the French handbook in 1838–39. Emerson's copy of Barchou de Penhoen is in his library in the Concord Antiquarian Society, where I consulted it, but it is without date of acquisition or any notation. Michelet's handbook presents a far more difficult problem. In MS Journal Z occurs Emerson's translation of portions of the biographical section of Michelet's treatment of Schelling. But this Journal, with a label on the spine reading “Z 1837,” is chronologically confused, for one portion contains entries presumably for 1837 and another portion contains entries clearly dated from Nov. 1842 to Feb. 1843. The excerpts from Michelet's Geschichte ...,2 vols. (Berlin, 1837–38), though standing in the 1837 section, are from Vol. ii (1838), and hence the confusion. As a piece of negative support for the view that Emerson might have known Michelet as early as 1838–39, it should be noted that Hedge's review article on Coleridge (Christian Examiner, xiv [March 1833], 108–129), in the section devoted to German metaphysics (pp. 118–127), did not set forth the particular doctrines or terms of Schelling's philosophy that are central to the discussion above. For a complete discussion of Emerson's use of Barchou de Penhoen and Michelet, see my forthcoming article. For the passage on the will, quoted above, see Michelet, ii, 268.
30 See Barchou de Penhoen, ii, 62, 64, 75, also 60; Michelet, ii, 384, 352; Works, vi, 23. This is not to say that Emerson had any patience with, or aptitude for, the infinitely subtle ramifications of the dialectics. See Letters, iii, 303–304, 345.
31 Journals, viii, 76–77, 120; John B. Stallo, General Principles of Nature (Boston, 1848), pp. 409–410—the synthesis occurs in the section on Hegel.
32 Works, ii, 30–31 (for the original passages in the Journals see iii, 435, and v, 438); Works, ii, 107; xi, 238–239, 337. For a general literary treatment see Stephen E. Whicher, “Emerson's Tragic Sense,” American Scholar, xxii (Summer 1953), 285–292.
33 See my article, “The Importance of Emerson's Skeptical Mood,” pp. 132–133.
34 Works, ix, 32. See The Tragedies of Aeschylus Translated by R. Potter (London, 1819), p. 229. For Emerson's borrowing of this volume in 1837 from the Boston Athenaeum see Cameron, Emerson's Reading, p. 23.
35 Works, vi, 325; Plotinus, p. 506—italics of the text. The passage occurs at the close of the treatise, “On the Good, Or the One.”
36 Journals, viii, 565–566, 534, 525.
37 Works, v, 41, 43, 239–240, 248, 279, 281.
38 See Works, iv, 183, and vi, 37, for Emerson's own use of the word balance.
39 Whicher, Freedom and Fate, pp. 146, 158.
40 Ibid., pp. 109–122.
41 I wish to thank the Ralph Waldo Emerson Memorial Association, through Mr. Edward Waldo Forbes, for permission to use manuscripts housed in the Houghton Library at Harvard.