From: The Dial, Vol. III, No. III (Jan. 1843)
Author:
Published: E. P. Peabody 1843 Boston
WHEREFORE should the author of this little tract have withheld his name from the public eye on this occasion? He is evidently not in his writing noviciate. He is not of mean talent, and he is not unconscious of the fact. He is clear, instructive, poetic, warm, religious, in his statements. The subject is worthy, the style is worthy; but it seems the public is not yet worthy of the author’s confidence. There is certainly somewhat apologetic in the tone of the work; and no man can unblushingly utter an apology to an audience, when he is quite aware that the apology, if any need be offered at all, should come from the audience. The prologue to a serious drama, as well as harlequin, may sometimes be masked.
If the world were in as good and pleasant a humor with the transcendentalist, as the transcendentalist is with the world, he would not need thus hide his modest face. It would be happier, too, for the world, if it were so good-humored. The loss of happiness is on that side, not on that of the unaccepted individual. With the loss of so much happiness, the self-wise world is also deprived of as much intelligence, and an equality of exalted and pore occupation. The cunning folks of this generation keep always some bugbear word, wherewith to frighten the growing young children of affection to bed,—to the bed of sensuousness,—and, of this scornful dictionary “Transcendentalism” is now the chosen current epithet. There is some sign of progress, however, in the attribution of a name, sneeringly or persecutingly as it may be bestowed. The world will shortly begin to suspect that it may mean something; that there is possibly some reality behind the name; and this little book may aid the search of the sincere soul, though it offers but a plan “in little” of the wide field. In nine brief essays, or rather notices or notes, most assuredly, the subject cannot be exhausted. Explained even it can scarcely be, unless the observing mind is already more prepared than merely recipient.
In what point of this boundless prairie of human investigation shall the inquiry be commenced? Many associates you require not; many you will not have. Not the place, not the mode, but the spirit in which we work, is the important question. Are we to apologize? No. Are we to dispute? No. Are we to condemn? No. Neither are we to fear, to trim, to conform, for the purpose of gathering a multitude, or of pleasing one when gathered.
It may be easier to make way with the public, to gain its favor, and to appear to effect an approximation, or to fill up the void of ignorance, of unconsciousness, by the adoption of terms which it understands, or thinks it understands. But, in this procedure, there is delusion on both sides. The traveller who has never seen a railway would have no nearer comprehension of it, if the directors were to call the terminus a booking-office, and the several stations by the old name of inns. Transcendental facts, then, it must be honestly avowed, cannot be comprehended by souls on the nether side of existence. But the willing may be helped. If, in accommodation to popular speech, you descend from the antecedent unity, through the eternal, indivisible trine, and say that “man has a triple nature, animal, rational, spiritual,”—your auditor will ask you who or what the man is who has or possesses this triple nature? Is he it, or something different from it? Does he possess this triple nature as a distinct existence, apart from himself, the soul, the will,—from that unitive point which is his essential self? Better to let the original perplexity remain, informing us that there is more yet to be solved and known, than delude ourselves with a false explanation.
In his love for simplicity, clearness, and despatch, man is liable to fall into some serious errors. Despotic tyranny is simpler, clearer, and quicker, than deliberative justice. Our popular metaphysical systems are, it must he confessed, eminently despotic, hut their justice has yet to be questioned.
Antecedent to all utterances, transcendent of all time, space, and motion, primal to spirit, originative of soul, creative to body; everlasting, eternal, illimitable; indescribable in any terms, these we use or other,—is the One, the Underived, the Unit—GOD.
Of the unutterable, only negative words can be used, which declare their inadequacy while they are used. No research can seek out the unsearchable. The inscribed figure cannot produce itself beyond the sphere which bounds it. The forms which lie next it may, however, be spoken of.
MAN, then, cannot with so much verisimilitude he said to have a triple nature, as that he is a triune being. Man is not only a triune being, but he is a tri-triune being. Let ridicule make of the affirmative whatsoever it may, the faithful student finds that not only can he agree with our retiring author, that man is animal, rational, spiritual, but can assert that he is, in each of these subordinate spheres of being, a coördinate triunity. Man truly is united or oned, or one with the indivisible triune, Love, Wisdom, Power; in Spirit, as the divisible yet undivided Love, Wisdom, Power; in Soul, as affection, understanding, force; in Body, as heart, head, hands.
We repeat—
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The eternal triune . . . . . LOVE WISDOM POWER
Spirit . . . . Love Wisdom Power
Man . . . Soul . . . . . Affection Understanding Force
Body . . . . Heart Head Hands
The material triune . . . . Depth Length Breadth
Thus wide, at least, or wider if you will, is the Creator and the creation. Confining himself, however, to the two lower grades in our being, the mental philosopher, the metaphysician, has never raised his contemplation to aught above the soul. Most inquirers have, like Locke, limited themselves, and, as far as they speculatively could, all humanity, to the hounds of intellect, asserting, with him, that “the understanding is the highest faculty of the soul.” All who have ventured affirmations from the higher level have been saluted with epithets intended to be condemnatory, such as “fanatic,” “mystic,” “theosopher,” and now, it seems, “transcendentalist.”
The soul, as we have above depicted it, is the sphere of idealities, both sympathetic and intellectual. This is the psychical ground, or nature, where occur the sectionalities and divisionalities in which metaphysicians agree to disagree. But man cannot be satisfied in remaining here. The soul cannot be filled by self-contemplation. The soul hungereth and thirsteth after something else, something higher and better than itself, yet like unto itself, or rather that unto which it is like. Your moral philosopher, your metaphysician in ordinary, disdains giving any advice, assistance, or direction, towards this higher supply. It thus devolves on the “fanatic,” the “zealot,” the “transcendentalist,” to exercise this loveful mission.
The metaphysician entertains only the power and understanding of the soul, and these he treats for the greater part as derived from nature, through or by means of the body. The moralist does, indeed, widen his observations so as to include the psychic affections, but he is still only an experimental philosopher, and founds, or pretends to found, all his axioms on experiment, chiefly external, though he does not always wholly exclude the internal.
The sensible race of philosophers is, however, a large one. They are the popular class. They feel themselves to be too strong in numbers to be put down, and, at the same time, they join their well-compacted forces to those of the unphilosophical, and make a combined effort to suppress any exposition of being which transcends their contemplation. The sensible philosophers—that is to say, they who confine their philosophy to what they acquire, or seem to acquire, through their senses—are, in fact, the visionaries, while they labor to cast this opprobrium upon more steadfast minds. They believe, they say, only what they see. They are therefore merely speculators. They have no faith, no reliance on being. What is tangible to the hands, visible to the eyes, that they feel, that they see, that they know.
But the combination of a whole world of sensuous minds against one transcendental soul will not move him. He is not an opponent to them. He sees all they see; he admits all their facts on their ground, but this admission leaves untouched, unimpeached, that other and higher class of facts, and that reality in being, which the mere moral philosopher declares he knows not of, and the existence of which he stoutly denies.
Not only does the sphere of action differ in these two parties, but the point of origin is very different in each. The external observer, of course, contemplates all from an exoteric point, and such psychic life as he admits he builds on a physical basis. The internal realizer dates all from the esoteric centre, and construes every fact affirmatively and synthetically. Concerning the merits of these two schools they themselves may differ interminably.
Frequently and urgently as the esoteric man may declare of real existence, of substance-being, the exoteric man will be able to perceive only a difference in mode, and will of course stand up for the clarity of his own. There is, however, nothing more certain to the transcendentalist, than the fact, that there is something more in all this than a verbal difference. Whenever it is brought against him as an accusation of dwelling in a mere peculiarity in words, a feeling more sacred than self-complacency accepts it, as an acknowledgment of short-coming in him who wills to be an opponent, for of opposition the transcendentalist is guiltless. Position only, and not opposition, is predicable of him. The universality in him finds a place for all philosophies, all opinions, all views. Transcending them, it does not exclude, but it includes them. His claim to a close relation with the universal, with the unity, would be poorly established if he must needs find obstacles in aught that exists. The true artist, he in whom art is vitally, instinctly, creatively, finds no hindrances in surrounding matter. The utmost he declares is of facilities, that they are greater or less.
Transcendentalism is not “hostile to old systems,” though it would supersede them by better life. It does not attempt “to show that the old philosophy is altogether false and hollow, the old systems of metaphysics to be absurd, our moral code unjust, our religion but empty show and idle ceremony, that the old forms of government have no foundation in reason.” (p. 27). It does not “propose to reform the world;” although that supposition being current, it may “be unpopular and fiercely attacked.” (p. 28)
No! The true transcendentalist has higher, nobler, lovelier work, than that of warring with the past, or abusing the present. His best employment is not that of reforming a deformed world, though it sin to the quick of self-condemnation. It belongs not to him to put forth a system, a mere new system, subject to all the worthless vicissitudes of systems in being “imperfectly developed, misunderstood, and misrepresented.” His only occupation is to affirm BEING. Of, from, and in being, he constantly asserts being. His mission is not an attack on erroneous systems, and depraved men. He is an instrument, a medium of being to being. The Being in him utters to Being in other souls. As far as he is found in the regions of opposition, he is not a transcendentalist, but a metaphysician, a wrangler. As the practical philosopher transcends action and matter by observation and knowledge, so the transcendentalist transcends observation and knowledge by being. Both doing and knowing, works and faith are transcended, not annihilated nor opposed, by being.
Transcendentalism is not a mere system opposed to other or to antiquated systems; but it signifies that Love-Spirit, that Life-Power, which uses all systems now presented, and developes new systems as they are required. Its ascent, or transcent, would be poor and worthless if it did not surmount all systems, which are but modulations in the department of human knowledge, and never can amount to realities in human being. If doctrine it must be designated, this is then the transcendental doctrine: it is the substantive, indwelling Spirit in the soul, the real conscience, the religious nature, the source of the inner light, the veritable true, good, and beautiful, not as perception, as contemplation, but as substance, as being.
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