MEMOIR OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON, LL.D. BY JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. IN preparing the memoir of our late distinguished associate, I shall not find it necessary to enter into the details of his life, or to speak particularly of his literary works, methods, or judgments. All this has been fully and ably done in previous biographies. Among these I may especially refer to the very thorough work of the Rev. George Willis Cooke and the later admirable biography by our associate Dr. Holmes. Mr. Cooke's work is full of interest and value; and that of Dr. Holmes will, I think, be always regarded as one of the best biographies in the language. We may also refer to a collection of lectures upon Mr. Emerson delivered at the Summer School of Philosophy in Concord by different speakers. Mr. Moncure D. Conway has published a volume called “Emerson at Home and Abroad," which may be described as bright, sympathetic, inaccurate, entertaining, and unreliable. It gives no hint of the source of Emerson's power, the nature of his convictions, or the character of his literary work. It emphasizes his negations, and passes too lightly over his affirmations, and thus obscures the very quality which was the chief source of his power. Mr. Emerson was born in Boston on the 25th of May, 1803. His father, who died when he was eight years old, was minister of the First Church in this city. The Rev. William Emerson was an excellent preacher and writer, one of the editors of the "Monthly Anthology," and associated in thought and work with Buckminster, Kirkland, Channing, Thacher, and Norton. A member of this Society, he was interested in his 66 torical and literary matters; and his son was brought up in an atmosphere of pure thought. Ralph Waldo Emerson graduated at Harvard in his eighteenth year, and in 1829 was settled as preacher over the Second Church in Boston. I went with Margaret Fuller to hear him preach, one Sunday afternoon, in the old church at the North End. I recollect that we were both impressed by the calm, sweet, and pure strain of thought which pervaded the discourse. He resigned his position in 1832, visited Europe in 1833, and on his return to America went to live in Concord. Shortly after, he began to lecture; and the rest of his life was passed in lecturing and writing. But there ran in his veins the blood of seven generations of New England clergymen, and he remained essentially a preacher to the end of his days. Whatever form his discourse might take, it was always animated by spiritual truth and moral purpose. Whether he gave lectures on English Literature, or wrote a Battle Hymn, or printed articles in the Dial," or made an Anti-slavery Speech, or delivered a Phi Beta Kappa Oration, or sang a song to the Humble-bee, he was a teacher of religion and righteousness. Unable to belong to any sect, or permanently to subscribe to any system of opinion, he was yet in sympathy with the affirmations of every faith. He believed firmly in the three essential truths of religion, God, Duty, and Immortality. But he believed these truths, not from outward testimony or argument, but from the higher testimony of the soul itself. He was the great Intuitionist of our day, resting all his convictions on the primal deliverances of the consciousness. He had no metaphysics with which to bind these insights into a system, no arguments with which to silence an opponent. Hence the fragmentary character of his utterance, and the want of progress in his thought. In every new paragraph he seemed to be setting out afresh, and the sentences in each of these paragraphs would confirm the belief of those who hold that no two atoms ever come in contact. But this very absence of continued purpose disarmed opposition. Who could oppose him when there was nothing to oppose? As he proceeded, they who disapproved of his first statement would find themselves agreeing with the second; they who were confused by one sentence and thought it obscure or paradoxical, would be filled with delight at what followed, which might illuminate the whole range of experience and clear up doubts which had long harassed them. Perhaps in this mental characteristic the two friends Carlyle and Emerson came nearer than in any other. In each, insight, apprehension, aperçu, exceeded method, comprehension, and logical force. Each frequently found himself on the two opposite sides of the same question. A good telescope has two qualities, defining power and space-penetrating power. Carlyle and Emerson excelled in both qualities; but Emerson had a more subtile discrimination, and Carlyle took in a wider field. Neither could found a school of thought, but each was an inspiration to his time. Each was a prophet; but Carlyle was a prophet like John the Baptist, a Voice crying in the Wilderness. Emerson was a prophet of light and love, overcoming evil with good, dispelling darkness with light, and always comforting our souls by announcing that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand. It is the duty of one who writes a memoir for the Historical Society to endeavor to fix the historical position of his subject. This at best can be only an endeavor; but I think we shall all now admit that Emerson's place in history is distinct and permanent. He is an original mind, not repeating in finer forms the staples of common opinion, but moving the world from some point outside of the world. Fed by the traditions of the past, and a debtor to every inspired soul who had preceded him, he also received the inspiration intended for himself from the beginning. He opened his mind to the new light which his time required and which God was ready to impart. Thus all he said was vital, not with novelty, but with originality. That pure limpid stream from a new Helicon came for the refreshing of the nations. Men of the most opposite positions and training, Tyndal and Huxley, Dean Stanley and Martineau, heard him speaking in their own tongue. His word passed easily over the common boundaries of thought. State lines, mountains, and ocean were no impediment. And to-day his word runneth very quickly; for it is not his word, but the word to which he has listened. "The passive Master lent his hand To the vast soul that o'er him planned; |