Henry D. Thoreau 16

Henry D. Thoreau 16

"Just before we heard of this place, Mr. Alcott had

projected a settlement at the Cliffs on the Concord River,

cutting down wood and building a cottage; but so many more

facilities were presented here that we quitted the old

classic town for one which is to be not less renowned. As

far as I could judge, our absence promised little pleasure

to our old Concord friends; but at signs of progress I

presume they rejoiced with, dear friend,

 

"Yours faithfully,

 

"CHARLES LANE."

 

Another Palmer than the Edward here mentioned became an inmate of

"Fruitlands," and, in course of time its owner; the abandoned

paradise, which was held by Mr. Lane and Mr. Alcott for less than a

year, is now the property of his son. Mr. Lane, after a time, returned

to England and died there; Mr. Alcott to Concord, where, in 1845, he

aided Thoreau in building his hut by Walden. Mr. Channing (the nephew

and biographer of Dr. Channing) continued his connection with the

"Phalansterians" in New Jersey until 1849 or later, for in that year

Fredrika Bremer found him dwelling and preaching among them, at the

"North American Phalanstery," to which he had been invited from his

Unitarian parish in Cincinnati, about the time that Brook Farm was

made a community, and before Mr. Alcott's dream had taken earthly

shape at "Fruitlands." The account given by Miss Bremer of the terms

upon which Mr. Channing was thus invited to New Jersey, show what was

the spirit of Transcendentalism then, on its social side. They said to

him,--

 

"Come to us,--be our friend and spiritual shepherd, but

in perfect freedom. Follow your own inspiration,--preach,

talk to us, how and when it appears best to you. We

undertake to provide for your pecuniary wants; live free

from anxiety, how, and where you will; but teach us how we

should live and work; our homes and our hearts are open to

you."

 

It was upon such terms as this, honorable alike to those who gave

and those who received, that much of the intellectual and spiritual

work of the Transcendental revival was done. There was another and an

unsocial side to the movement also, which Mr. Emerson early described

in these words, that apply to Thoreau and to Alcott at one period:--

 

"It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest

observer, that many intelligent and religious persons

withdraw themselves from the common labors and competitions

of the market and the caucus, and betake themselves to a

solitary and critical way of living, from which no solid

fruit has yet appeared to justify their separation. They

hold themselves aloof; they feel the disproportion between

themselves and the work offered them, and they prefer

to ramble in the country and perish of ennui, to the

degradation of such charities and such ambitions as the

city can propose to them. They are striking work and crying

out for somewhat worthy to do. They are lonely; the spirit

of their writing and conversation is lonely; they repel

influences; they shun general society; they incline to shut

themselves in their chamber in the house; to live in the

country rather than in the town; and to find their tasks

and amusements in solitude. They are not good citizens, not

good members of society; unwillingly they bear their part

of the public and private burdens; they do not willingly

share in the public charities, in the public religious

rites, in the enterprise of education, of missions, foreign

or domestic, in the abolition of the slave trade, or in

the temperance society. They do not even like to vote. The

philanthropists inquire whether Transcendentalism does not

mean sloth; they had as lief hear that their friend is

dead, as that he is a Transcendentalist; for then is he

paralyzed, and can do nothing for humanity."

 

It was this phase of Transcendentalism that gave most anxiety

to Thoreau's good old pastor, Dr. Ripley, who early foresaw

what immediate fruit might be expected from this fair tree of

mysticism,--this "burning bush" which had started up, all at once, in

the very garden of his parsonage. I know few epistles more pathetic

in their humility and concern for the future, than one which Dr.

Ripley addressed to Dr. Channing in February, 1839, after hearing

and meditating on the utterances of Alcott, Emerson, Thoreau, George

Ripley, and the other "apostles of the newness," who disturbed with

their oracles the quiet air of his parish. He wrote:--

 

"Denied, as I am, the privilege of going from home, of

visiting and conversing with enlightened friends, and of

reading even; broken down with the infirmities of age, and

subject to fits that deprive me of reason and the use of

my limbs, I feel it a duty to be patient and submissive

to the will of God, who is too wise to err, and too good

to injure. Some reason is left,--my mental powers, though

weak, are yet awake, and I long to be doing something for

good. The contrast between paper and ink is so strong, that

I can write better than do anything else. In this way I

take the liberty to express to you a few thoughts, which

you will receive as well-meant and sincere....

 

"We may certainly assume that whatever is unreasonable,

self-contradictory, and destitute of common sense, is

erroneous. Should we not be likely to find the truth,

in all moral subjects, were we to make more use of

plain reason and common sense? I know that our modern

speculators, Transcendentalists, or, as they prefer to

be called, Realists, presume to follow Reason in her

purest dictates, her sublime and unfrequented regions.

They presume, by her power, not only to discover what is

truth, but to judge of revealed truth. But is not their

whole process marred by leaving out common sense, by

which mankind are generally governed? That superiority

which places a man above the power of doing good to his

fellow-men seems to me not very desirable. I honor most

the man who transcends others in capacity and disposition

to do good, and whose daily practice corresponds with

his profession. Here I speak of professed Christians. I

would not treat with disrespect and severe censure men

who advance sentiments which I may neither approve nor

understand, provided their authors be men of learning,

piety, and holy lives. The speculations and novel opinions

of _such_ men rarely prove injurious. Nevertheless, I would

that their mental endowments might find a better method

of doing good,--a more simple and intelligible manner of

informing and reforming their fellow-men....

 

"The hope of the gospel is my hope, my consolation, support

and rejoicing. Such is my state of health that death is

constantly before me; no minute would it be unexpected. I

am waiting in faith and hope, but humble and penitent for

my imperfections and faults. The prayer of the publican,

'God be merciful to me a sinner!' is never forgotten. I

have hoped to see and converse with you, but now despair.

If you shall think I use too much freedom with you, charge

it to the respect and esteem which are cherished for your

character by your affectionate friend and brother,

 

"E. RIPLEY.

 

"CONCORD, _February 26, 1839_."

 

At this time Dr. Ripley was almost eighty-eight, and he lived two

years longer, to mourn yet more pathetically over the change of times

and manners. "It was fit," said Emerson, "that in the fall of laws,

this loyal man should die." But the young men who succeeded him were

no less loyal to the unwritten laws, and from their philosophy, which

to the old theologian seemed so misty and unreal, there flowered

forth, in due season, the most active and world-wide philanthropies.

Twenty years after this pastoral epistle, there came to Concord

another Christian of the antique type, more Puritan and Hebraic than

Dr. Ripley himself, yet a Transcendentalist, too,--and JOHN BROWN

found no lack of practical good-will in Thoreau, Alcott, Emerson, and

the other Transcendentalists. The years had "come full circle," the

Sibyl had burnt her last prophetic book, and the new æon was about to

open with the downfall of slavery.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VI.

 

EARLY ESSAYS IN AUTHORSHIP.

 

 

It has been a common delusion, not yet quite faded away, that the

chief Transcendentalists were but echoes of each other,--that

Emerson imitated Carlyle, Thoreau and Alcott imitated Emerson,

and so on to the end of the chapter. No doubt that the atmosphere

of each of these men affected the others, nor that they shared a

common impulse communicated by what Matthew Arnold likes to call the

_Zeitgeist_,--the ever-felt spirit of the time. In the most admirable

of the group, who is called by preëminence "the Sage of Concord,"--the

poet Emerson,--there has been an out-breathing inspiration as profound

as that of the _Zeitgeist_ himself; so that even Hawthorne, the

least susceptible of men, found himself affected as he says, "after

living for three years within the subtle influence of an intellect

like Emerson's." But, in fact, Thoreau brought to his intellectual

tasks an originality as marked as Emerson's, if not so brilliant and

star-like--a patience far greater than his, and a proud independence

that makes him the most solitary of modern thinkers. I have been

struck by these qualities in reading his yet unknown first essays

in authorship, the juvenile papers he wrote while in college, from

the age of seventeen to that of twenty, before Emerson had published

anything except his first little volume, "Nature," and while Thoreau,

like other young men, was reading Johnson and Goldsmith, Addison and

the earlier English classics, from Milton backward to Chaucer. Let me

therefore quote from these papers, carefully preserved by him, with

their dates, and sometimes with the marks of the rhetorical professor

on their margins. Along with these may be cited some of his earlier

verses, in which a sentiment more purely human and almost amatory

appears, than in the later and colder, if higher flights of his song.