Sacramento daily record-union., 1882-04-29
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
Emerson lived so long as almost to

the generation which had accepted his
oracular utterances, and he lived far into a
new generation, which had other ways of
looking at the world, and which was less
in sympathy with the Sage of Concord than
its predecessor. Yet to those who have
famillarized themselves with the intel.
lectual history of the Emerson Period, as it
may truly be styled, it will appear very
certain that few men have exercised a
wider or more wholesome influence upon
the American mind than this least system
attic of all philosophers. To understand his
position and his work at all, however,
some reference to the circumstances among
which he was placed is necessary. He en-
tered active life at time when the New
| England intellect was in a peculiar fer
ment. The commixture and mutual reac-
| tion of the two recent revolutions
of the Old and that of the New worlds
had wrought an unexampled impatience
with all that savored of stupidity, per
versity, superstition and conventionalism.
There was in the adolescent Mind of the
time and the locality mighty yearning
after Reform in all its multifarious shapes.
New England Youth felt that it had a
mission that it was given to it to regener-
ate the effete old world. All the shackles
of social observance were to be
thrown off. Everything was to be
at once practical and natural. The
challenge-Cui Bono was to be put
to the most sacred ceremonial.
Nothing was to be allowed to continue
simply because it had hitherto existed.
And out of this hurly-burly of WIS.,
ionary reform the crudest, strangest,
most impractical and maice exper-
iments proceeded. The simplicity and
the culture of the ancient Greek Re.
publics were to be reproduced. The
Arcadian but otherwise impossible union
of hard labor and equally hard thinking,
was to be established. An era of "plain
"iving and high thinking" was to be
inaugurated. The black broth of Lace
demon was to be made the stimulant of
Pericleap culture and intellectual power.
But unfortunately there was perilous
want of agreement among the new philos-
ophers. They were all reformers, but
then each thought his own faverite
reform the one necessary and urgent
measure. And they mistook zeal for
liberalism, forgetting that zeal may be as
distinguished in the service of the Inquisi.
tion as on behalf of Human Rights. In
truth they had not recovered from the
poison of Rousseau's false sentimental
ity and sham philosophy, and SO they
fell into narrowness, and into criticism
Of orthodoxy which was as intolerant
as the bigotry it denounced, and
into dreams and impracticable ideas Of
return to primitive ways, and finally
into that disillusionizing waking which
ends all such fallacious movements, and
recalls the experimenters to sobriety and
fact
Now Emerson found himself in the midst
of this intellectual turmoil, and there was
a time when he was disposed to let himself
float with the stream. He shared the pre-
vailing impatience of old views, of retro
spective criticism. which he encountered.
He said, about this time, The foregoing
generations beheld God and Nature face
" to face; we, through their eyes. Why
" should not we also enjoy an original rela-
" ton to the universe? Why should not
eve have poetry and philosophy of in
" sight and not of tradition, and religion
" by revelation to us, and not the history
of theirs7 The sun shines
" to-day also. There is new wool and
' fax In the fields. There are new
" lands, new men, new thoughts. Let
" US demand our own works and laws and
60 worship" This does not influence the
present generation, but it was as torch
to tow when Emerson wrote it, forty years
ago. 1t met the aspirations OF that
brilliant, eager, sanguine, ambitious throng
which was then running over with the
promise and potency of all manner OF
strange reforms. The Channings, Tho
reaus, Fullers, Hawthornes, Ripleys,
Danas, Dwights, Burtons, Parkers, Cur-
tises, and many more whose names have
since become familiar in connection with
very different occupations, were all seek
ing ways by which the redemption of the
world could be hastened, and all or nearly
all believed in the practicability of creating
an original philosophy, literature, art,
everything. Had Emerson drifted with
the current, however, he would have
passed out of sight and memory genera
ton ago. Fortunately his genius was at
least as practical as it was philosophical,
and he perceived, in good time, the hope
lessness of the enterprises upon which so
much enthusiasm and energy was being or
about to be wasted.
In his lecture on "New England Re.
formers" he pointed out the fallacies of
the new line of criticism and reform He
recognized the crucial defects of the
various notifications of the methods of
st. Simon, Fourier and Owens, which
were then cropping up all over New Eng
land. And he says: 1.-The criticism and
" attack on institutions which we have
d" witnessed has made one thing plain,
"that society gains nothing whilst man,
L" not himself renovated, attempts to reno.
"vate things around him ; he has become
" tediously good in some particular, but
" negligent or narrow in the rest and
hypocrisy and vanity are often the dis.
" "gusting result There is here a clear and
piercing vision and Justly discriminating
Judgment. And what can be better or more
wholesome than this, from the same lect-