Page images
PDF
EPUB

trine, "Ev Kal Tâv, the One and the All, constantly recurs in Emerson's writings. Xenophanes said, "There is one God, the greatest among gods and men, comparable to mortals neither in form nor thought." Mr. Arthur K. Rogers, in his Student's History of Philosophy, says that what Xenophanes taught was that what we name God is the one immutable and comprehensive material universe which holds within it and determines all those minor phenomena to which an enlightened philosophy will reduce the many deities of the popular faith. The conception is not unlike that of Spinoza in later times.'

[ocr errors]

Page 43, note 2. in December, 1832, History.

This passage occurs in a lecture given before the Boston Society of Natural

Page 45, note I. Although ther degradation" was a Platonic doctrine, I think it so contrary to Mr. Emerson's steady belief in amelioration that the expression here implies merely that the animals are lower steps in an ascending series. Page 46, note I. This image, slightly varied, is found in "Pan," Poems, Appendix.

Page 46, note 2. Mr. Emerson's brilliant brothers, Edward Bliss Emerson and Charles Chauncy Emerson, had died within the two years before the publication of Nature. Of Edward's powers and nobility, his brother tells in his poem, "The Dirge." Of Charles he wrote: "Beautiful without any parallel in my experience of young men was his life.

I have felt in him the inestimable advantage, when God allows it, of finding a brother and a friend in one."

Page 47, note I. Mr. Emerson wrote in one of his Journals, "I remember when a child, in the pew on Sundays, amusing myself with saying over common words, as 'black,' 'white,' board,' etc., twenty or thirty times, until the

[ocr errors]

words lost all meaning and fixedness, and I began to doubt which was the right name for the thing, when I saw that neither had any natural relation, but were all arbitrary. It was a child's first lesson in Idealism."

Page 52, note 1. The flowing universe is told of in many of the poems, as in "Woodnotes," II., “The rushing metamorphosis," etc., and later "Onward and on, the eternal Pan," etc.

Page 53, note 1.

Page 53, note 2.

Shakspeare, Sonnet lxx.

Shakspeare, Sonnet cxxiv.

Page 53, note 3. In a letter written in December, 1838, to Rev. James Freeman Clarke, then editing in Ohio The Western Messenger, to which Mr. Emerson contributed "The Humble-Bee," he says:

[ocr errors]

"I remember in your letter you mentioned the remark of some friend of yours that the verses,

[ocr errors]

Take, O take those lips away,' were not Shakspeare's; I think they are. Beaumont, nor Fletcher, nor both together were ever, I think, visited by such a starry gleam as that stanza. I know it is in Rollo, but it is in Measure for Measure also; and I remember noticing that the Malones, and Stevens, and critical gentry were about evenly divided, these for Shakspeare, and those for Beaumont and Fletcher. But the internal evidence is all for one, none for the other.

If he did not write

it, they did not, and we shall have some fourth unknown singer. What care we who sung this or that? It is we at last who sing."

Page 55, note 1.

The solid, solid universe

Is pervious to love, etc.

"Cupido," Poems.

Page 56, note 1.

Leonhard Euler (1707-1783), a Swiss mathematician of remarkable gifts; also a man of character and wide culture. He was called by Catherine of Russia to the Academy of St. Petersburg as professor of physics, and later of mathematics. Frederick the Great induced him to come to Berlin, where he remained many years, returning, however, to Russia. In total blindness during his last years, he did important work.

Page 57, note 1.

Proverbs viii. 23, 27, 28, 30.

Page 58, note 1. Plotinus (204-269 a. D.), of Lycopolis in Egypt, a disciple of Ammonius Saccus of Alexandria, sometimes called the founder of Neo-Platonism, went to Rome and taught philosophy there. Plotinus accompanied the Emperor Gordian in his expedition into Persia, and thus came in contact with the teachings of Zoroaster. He said, "The sensuous life is a mere stage play. all misery in it is only imaginary, all grief a mere cheat of the players; the soul is not in the game; it looks on." -Student's History of Philosophy, by Arthur K. Rogers.

Page 62, note 1.

pendix.

Page 64, note 1.

Page 67, note 1.

"The Bohemian Hymn," Poems, Ap

Milton, Comus, 13, 14.

This passage refers to Mr. Emerson's visit to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris a few months before. See note to the motto of this essay.

Page 70, note I. It is very possible that Mr. William T. Harris is right where he says, in speaking of Mr. Alcott's philosophy: "I have been obliged to think . . . that Mr. Emerson attempted to preserve in the last chapter of his book on Nature . . . a picture of Mr. Alcott as Orphic Poet' by writing out in his own words and with an effort to reproduce the style of thought, words and delivery of Mr. Alcott,

[ocr errors]

7

the idealistic theory which he had heard with such great interest." Memoir of Bronson Alcott, by F. B. Sanborn and

W. T. Harris.

Page 72, note I. "He who desires to signify divine concerns through symbols is orphic, and, in short, accords with those who write myths concerning the Gods."- Proclus, Theology of Plato, I. iv. Page 73, note 1. Alexander Leopold Franz Emmerich Hohenlohe (1794-1849), a priest, born at Würtemberg, of a princely family, known for the miraculous cures, attributed to his prayers, in Germany and England, and at Washington, of a Mrs. Mattingly, in 1824.

[ocr errors]

Page 73, note 2. I am indebted to Dr. Ralph Barton Perry, of Harvard University, for the following information with regard to these expressions: The phrase (vespertina cognitio) signifies the twilight knowledge of man that is contrasted with the full-day knowledge of God (matutina cognitio). Knowledge of things in their several natures and particularity is twilight knowledge, while the knowledge of the ideas that constitute the plan of creation is day knowledge. This distinction corresponds to the technical distinction between a posteriori and a priori knowledge. The distinction between morning and evening knowledge refers to the direction of the partial knowledge. To glorify God, or to see him from the standpoint of darkness, is cognitio matutina; to fall away to darkness is cognitio vespertina. The angels have both in one, the vespertina being contained in the matutina. The angels have the vespertina in so far as they know the lower only through the higher or see the higher in the lower and so always glorify God. The use of these phrases is very curiously mingled with the problem of morning and evening as applying to the period preceding the creation of the sun and

moon. See St. Augustine's City of God, Book XI., chapters vii and xxix, Dods's translation. Also the Summa Theologiæ of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part I., Quæstio lviii, Art. 6; Quæstio lxxiv, Art. 3."

Page 76, note 1.

Wiser far than human seer, etc.

Also:

"The Humble-Bee," Poems.

Let me go where'er I will,

I hear a sky-born music still.

66

Fragments on The Poet," Poems, Appendix.

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

In 1834 Mr. Emerson had been chosen to give the Poem at the annual meeting of the Phi Beta Kappa Society in Cambridge. Three years later he was invited to give the Address. A month before the meeting he wrote in his Journal :

29 JULY, 1837.

If the All-wise would give me light, I should write for the Cambridge men a theory of the Scholar's office. It is not all books which it behooves him to know, least of all to be a book-worshipper, but he must be able to read in all books that which alone gives value to books in all to read one, the one incorruptible text of Truth. That alone of their style is intelligible, acceptable to him.

as

In his Memoir of Emerson Mr. Cabot speaks of this address

66 a much needed monition to the cultivated class of persons

[ocr errors][ocr errors]
« PreviousContinue »