Essays Before a Sonata | Page 8

modern, and will grow modern with the years--for his
substance is not relative but a measure of eternal truths determined
rather by a universalist than by a partialist. He measured, as Michel
Angelo said true artists should, "with the eye and not the hand." But to
attribute modernism to his substance, though not to his expression, is
an anachronism--and as futile as calling today's sunset modern.
As revelation and prophecy, in their common acceptance are resolved

by man, from the absolute and universal, to the relative and personal,
and as Emerson's tendency is fundamentally the opposite, it is easier,
safer and so apparently clearer, to think of him as a poet of natural and
revealed philosophy. And as such, a prophet--but not one to be
confused with those singing soothsayers, whose pockets are filled, as
are the pockets of conservative-reaction and radical demagoguery in
pulpit, street- corner, bank and columns, with dogmatic fortune-tellings.
Emerson, as a prophet in these lower heights, was a conservative, in
that he seldom lost his head, and a radical, in that he seldom cared
whether he lost it or not. He was a born radical as are all true
conservatives. He was too much "absorbed by the absolute," too much
of the universal to be either--though he could be both at once. To
Cotton Mather, he would have been a demagogue, to a real demagogue
he would not be understood, as it was with no self interest that he laid
his hand on reality. The nearer any subject or an attribute of it,
approaches to the perfect truth at its base, the more does qualification
become necessary. Radicalism must always qualify itself. Emerson
clarifies as he qualifies, by plunging into, rather than "emerging from
Carlyle's soul-confusing labyrinths of speculative radicalism." The
radicalism that we hear much about today, is not Emerson's kind-- but
of thinner fiber--it qualifies itself by going to A "root" and often cutting
other roots in the process; it is usually impotent as dynamite in its cause
and sometimes as harmful to the wholesome progress of all causes; it is
qualified by its failure. But the Radicalism of Emerson plunges to all
roots, it becomes greater than itself--greater than all its formal or
informal doctrines--too advanced and too conservative for any specific
result--too catholic for all the churches--for the nearer it is to truth, the
farther it is from a truth, and the more it is qualified by its future
possibilities.
Hence comes the difficulty--the futility of attempting to fasten on
Emerson any particular doctrine, philosophic, or religious theory.
Emerson wrings the neck of any law, that would become exclusive and
arrogant, whether a definite one of metaphysics or an indefinite one of
mechanics. He hacks his way up and down, as near as he can to the
absolute, the oneness of all nature both human and spiritual, and to
God's benevolence. To him the ultimate of a conception is its vastness,
and it is probably this, rather than the "blind-spots" in his expression

that makes us incline to go with him but half-way; and then stand and
build dogmas. But if we can not follow all the way--if we do not
always clearly perceive the whole picture, we are at least free to
imagine it--he makes us feel that we are free to do so; perhaps that is
the most he asks. For he is but reaching out through and beyond
mankind, trying to see what he can of the infinite and its
immensities--throwing back to us whatever he can--but ever conscious
that he but occasionally catches a glimpse; conscious that if he would
contemplate the greater, he must wrestle with the lesser, even though it
dims an outline; that he must struggle if he would hurl back
anything--even a broken fragment for men to examine and perchance in
it find a germ of some part of truth; conscious at times, of the futility of
his effort and its message, conscious of its vagueness, but ever hopeful
for it, and confident that its foundation, if not its medium is somewhere
near the eventual and "absolute good" the divine truth underlying all
life. If Emerson must be dubbed an optimist--then an optimist fighting
pessimism, but not wallowing in it; an optimist, who does not study
pessimism by learning to enjoy it, whose imagination is greater than his
curiosity, who seeing the sign- post to Erebus, is strong enough to go
the other way. This strength of optimism, indeed the strength we find
always underlying his tolerance, his radicalism, his searches,
prophecies, and revelations, is heightened and made efficient by
"imagination-penetrative," a thing concerned not with the combining
but the apprehending of things. A possession, akin to the power, Ruskin
says, all great pictures have, which "depends on the penetration of the
imagination into the