THE EDITORS TO THE
READER
By Ralph Waldo Emerson
We invite the attention of our
countrymen to a new design. Probably not quite unexpected or unannounced
will our Journal appear, though small pains have been taken to secure its
welcome. Those, who have immediately acted in editing the present Number,
cannot accuse themselves of any unbecoming forwardness in their
undertaking, but rather of a backwardness, when they remember how often in
many private circles the work was projected, how eagerly desired, and only
postponed because no individual volunteered to combine and concentrate the
free-will offerings of many cooperators. With some reluctance the present
conductors of this work have yielded themselves to the wishes of their
friends, finding something sacred and not to be withstood in the
importunity which urged the production of a Journal in a new spirit.
As they
have not proposed themselves to the work, neither can they lay any the
least claim to an option or determination of the spirit in which it is
conceived, or to what is peculiar in the design. In that respect, they
have obeyed, though with great joy, the strong current of thought and
feeling, which, for a few years past, has led many sincere persons in New
England to make new demands on literature, and to reprobate that rigor of
our conventions of religion and education which is turning us to stone,
which renounces hope, which looks only backward, which asks only such a
future as the past, which suspects improvement, and holds nothing so much
in horror as new views and the dreams of youth.
With
these terrors the conductors of the present Journal have nothing to
do,—not even so much as a word of reproach to waste. They know that
there is a portion of the youth and of the adult population of this
country, who have not shared them; who have in secret or in public paid
their vows to truth and freedom; who love reality too well to care for
names, and who live by a Faith too earnest and profound to suffer them to
doubt the eternity of its object, or to shake themselves free from its
authority. Under the fictions and customs which occupied others, these
have explored the Necessary, the Plain, the True, the Human,—and so
gained a vantage ground, which commands the history of the past and the
present.
No one
can converse much with different classes of society in New England,
without remarking the progress of a revolution. Those who share in it have
no external organization, no badge, no creed, no name. They do not vote,
or print, or even meet together. They do not know each other's faces or
names. They are united only in a common love of truth, and love of its
work. They are of all conditions and constitutions. Of these acolytes, if
some are happily born and well bred, many are no doubt ill dressed, ill
placed, ill made—with as many scars of hereditary vice as other men.
Without pomp, without trumpet, in lonely and obscure places, in solitude,
in servitude, in compunctions and privations, trudging beside the team in
the dusty road, or drudging a hireling in other men's cornfields,
schoolmasters, who teach a few children rudiments for a pittance,
ministers of small parishes of the obscurer sects, lone women in dependent
condition, matrons and young maidens, rich and poor, beautiful and
hard-favored, without concert or proclamation of any kind, they have
silently given in their several adherence to a new hope, and in all
companies do signify a greater trust in the nature and resources of man,
than the laws or the popular opinions will well allow.
This
spirit of the time is felt by every individual with some difference,—to
each one casting its light upon the objects nearest to his temper and
habits of thought;—to one, coming in the shape of special reforms in the
state; to another, in modifications of the various callings of men, and
the customs of business; to a third, opening a new scope for literature
and art; to a fourth, in philosophical insight; to a fifth, in the vast
solitudes of prayer. It is in every form a protest against usage, and a
search for principles. In all its movements, it is peaceable, and in the
very lowest marked with a triumphant success. Of course, it rouses the
opposition of all which it judges and condemns, but it is too confident in
its tone to comprehend an objection, and so builds no outworks for
possible defence against contingent enemies. It has the step of Fate, and
goes on existing like an oak or a river, because it must.
In
literature, this influence appears not yet in new books so much as in the
higher tone of criticism. The antidote to all narrowness is the comparison
of the record with nature, which at once shames the record and stimulates
to new attempts. Whilst we look at this, we wonder how any book has been
thought worthy to be preserved. There is somewhat in all life
untranslatable into language. He who keeps his eye on that will write
better than others, and think less of his writing, and of all writing.
Every thought has a certain imprisoning as well as uplifting quality, and,
in proportion to its energy on the will, refuses to become an object of
intellectual contemplation. Thus what is great usually slips through our
fingers, and it seems wonderful how a lifelike word ever comes to be
written. If our Journal share the impulses of the time, it cannot now
prescribe its own course. It cannot foretell in orderly propositions what
it shall attempt. All criticism should be poetic; unpredictable;
superseding, as every new thought does, all foregone thoughts, and making
a new light on the whole world. Its brow is not wrinkled with
circumspection, but serene, cheerful, adoring. It has all things to say,
and no less than all the world for its final audience.
Our plan
embraces much more than criticism; were it not so, our criticism would be
naught. Everything noble is directed on life, and this is. We do not wish
to say pretty or curious things, or to reiterate a few propositions in
varied forms, but, if we can, to give expression to that spirit which
lifts men to a higher platform, restores to them the religious sentiment,
brings them worthy aims and pure pleasures, purges the inward eye, makes
life less desultory, and, through raising man to the level of nature,
takes away its melancholy from the landscape, and reconciles the practical
with the speculative powers.
But
perhaps we are telling our little story too gravely. There are always
great arguments at hand for a true action, even for the writing of a few
pages. There is nothing but seems near it and prompts it,—the sphere in
the ecliptic, the sap in the apple tree,—every fact, every appearance
seem to persuade to it.
Our
means correspond with the ends we have indicated. As we wish not to
multiply books, but to report life, our resources are therefore not so
much the pens of practised writers, as the discourse of the living, and
the portfolios which friendship has opened to us. From the beautiful
recesses of private thought; from the experience and hope of spirits which
are withdrawing from all old forms, and seeking in all that is new
somewhat to meet their inappeasable longings; from the secret confession
of genius afraid to trust itself to aught but sympathy; from the
conversation of fervid and mystical pietists; from tear-stained diaries of
sorrow and passion; from the manuscripts of young poets; and from the
records of youthful taste commenting on old works of art; we hope to draw
thoughts and feelings, which being alive can impart life.
And so
with diligent hands and good intent we set down our Dial on the earth. We
wish it may resemble that instrument in its celebrated happiness, that of
measuring no hours but those of sunshine. Let it be one cheerful rational
voice amidst the din of mourners and polemics. Or to abide by our chosen
image, let it be such a Dial, not as the dead face of a clock, hardly even
such as the Gnomon in a garden, but rather such a Dial as is the Garden
itself, in whose leaves and flowers and fruits the suddenly awakened
sleeper is instantly apprised not what part of dead time, but what state
of life and growth is now arrived and arriving.
A
Note on the Text:
-
1st
published in The Dial (July 1840) pp. 1-4.
-
Source:
The Dial (July 1840) pp. 1-4.
-
Report
errors to the Curator of
Collections
Return
to Thoreau's Contemporaries: The
Dial
Return to Thoreau's Contemporaries: Ralph
Waldo Emerson
Return to Thoreau's Contemporaries
|