Meet Mr. Emerson; 4; The Dialogue

I have been writing and speaking. What were once called novelties for 25 or 30 years and have not now one disciple. Why not that what I said was not true. Not that it has not found intelligent receivers but because it did not go from any wish in me to bring men to me but to themselves. I delight in driving them from me. What could I do if they came to me. They would interrupt and encumber me. This is my boast that I have no school follower. I should have counted a measure of the impurity of insight if it did not create independence. Ralph Waldo Emerson adding a note to his Journal April 1859 he was restating the message he had been delivering to Americans by voice and pen for as he said 25 or 30 years each individual is great and should think for himself. For more than a hundred years what Emerson said and

wrote has attracted some and driven others away for more than a hundred years he has been attacked and defended by literary critics historians social scientists. In our day is Emerson and antiquarian subject for academic specialists only. What about the casual reader. Emerson has been called one of the most quoted authors in the English language who turns to Emerson today. And why me to Mr. Emerson. A series of radio programs presenting in survey fashion excerpts from his journals lectures and essays. These programs were produced by station WAGA at the University of Wisconsin for national educational radio under a grant from the National Home Library Foundation. Today thumbing through. Emerson once said that the key to every man is his thought and that a person can

only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own. Did people need to be reformed. What were their problems. Can we find parallels in our own civilization more than a hundred years ago. Emerson traveled the land stopping in large cities and in small towns talking to people. What did he talk about. Better ask what didn't he talk about. According to some twentieth century critics historians and social scientists. In so far as he had a message it was the ultimate meaning of life and nature. He proclaimed the divine spirit of man and all living things. His subject matter embraced the totality of sensed and observed experience. It starts from a conviction about man's central importance in the world which he never really elaborates but which he accepts as necessary and evident and profoundly human.

It almost is said the only human account of the world in modern scientific times. Emerson saw the expanding commercialism the rampant materialism of America already given over to things. This is words ring with the celebration of the living person the unquenchable free spirit. Reality eluded him. He was far from being like a Plato or an Aristotle past master in the art and the science of life. But his mind was and God with unusual plasticity with unusual spontaneity and liberty of movement. It was a fairyland of thoughts and fancies. He was like a young god making experiments in creation. He blotched the work and always began on a new and better play. Every day he said Let there be light and every day the light was New his sun like that of Hara Cletus was different every morning.

He believed that the sun would be taken out of the skies before the love of freedom would be taken out of the breast of man. Emerson was the cow from which came the milk of the American idealist philanthropist boosters reformers Yes the statesman preachers editors who have been on the side of the angels in this country ever since the very moment when science was speaking in terms of struggle when it became certain that nature was utterly indifferent to the ambitions and morals of men. Emerson held out the great promise that man could live with the over so. Emerson came to life when the Constitution was fourteen years old and lived several years after the Republic had passed the crisis of civil war. During his most productive years he addressed a society that has been compared in many respects with modern America. Andrew Jackson had said Let the people rule. Though it was smaller and less complex the

society historian George probes knows that it was a society possessing in many important features the distinguishing traits that we regard today as central to the American image. Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Optimism worship of work the seeking of pleasure acquisitive spirit materialism religion and generosity in the words of George probes. It was a time of great praise of the merits of democracy and the forces of democracy and equality changed American life in all its aspects. It was a lively exciting competitive reforming confident age however not all Americans exulted in the restless buoyant self-assertive democratic quality of that era. It was also a period of literary and philosophical ferment. Historian Henry Steele commenter adds to the picture. It was a day when almost every man you met might draw a plan for a new society or a

new government. From his pocket a day of infinite hope and infinite discontent. Every institution was called upon to show its credentials and to justify its course of conduct. The great and the trivial alike. The institution of the state or the practice of shaping the institution of the church or the eating of meat. The institution of marriage or the wearing of beards. Nothing was immune nothing was sacred nothing was taken for granted. Nothing but the right of inquiry. Emerson capsulize the ferment of his aids the reason why the world lacks unity and lies broken and in heaps. It is because man. Is disunited with himself. One might ask what does that mean. Putting aside that question though let's ask another. Might Emerson look in our world and repeat that pronouncement. And if so what do you have an audience. We went

to public libraries to seek an answer. We noted the frequency of borrowings at Emerson volumes thumbing through an assorted collection of 20th century additions. We found sentences and paragraphs jumping from pages passages underlined or marked in some way by some readers. It's the business of critics historians and social scientists to dissect analyze and explain. But what does the more casual readers of our age find in Emerson and are they casual readers. The book borrowers who Mark and underline there is abundant evidence in Emerson's volumes of that best book about habit of writing in books. Here are some of Emerson's thoughts and ideas that some readers have found worthwhile to single out the sinew and heart of man seemed to be drawn out and where become tumorous desponding whimpers. We are afraid of truth afraid of Fortune

afraid of death and afraid of each other. Our age eels know great and perfect persons. We want men and women who shall renovate a life and our social state. But we see that most natures are insolvent cannot satisfy their own wants have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force and do lean in big day and night continuously. Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful we must carry it with us. We find it not a political victory a rise of rents. The recovery of your sick or the return of your absent friend or some other favorable event raises your spirits and you think good days are preparing for your own. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

The world exists for the education of each man. There is no age or state of society or mode of action in history to which there is not somewhat corresponding. In his life everything tends in a wonderful manner to abbreviate itself and yield its own virtue to him. He should see that he can live. All history in his own person. Let a man then know his worth and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal or skulk up and down with the air of a charity boy a bastard or an interloper in the world which exists for him. Trust myself every heart vibrates to that iron string except the place the Divine Providence has found for you. The Society of your contemporaries the connection of events.

These are passages from Emerson's essays which have been underlined by Twentieth Century borrowers as library books. Who are these readers. Students working on papers. Teachers preachers after dinner speakers casual readers reacting personally to the voyages of discovery. The eyes and hands are anonymous but for some reason some people have felt compelled to single out these thoughts and ideas from the pages of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. How it comes to us in silent hours that truth is our only armor in all passages of life and death which is cheap and anger is cheap. But if you cannot argue or explain yourself to the other party cleave to the truth against me against the and you gain a station from which you cannot be dislodged. The other

party will forget the words that you spoke but the part you took continues to plead for you. The escape from false ties. Courage to be what we are. Love what is simple and beautiful. Independence and cheerful relation. These are the essentials. These and the wish to serve to add somewhat to the well-being of man. For something you have missed you have gained something else and for everything you gain you lose something. If the gather gathers too much nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest swells the estate but kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies and exceptions. Who saw it would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be entered by the

name of goodness but must explore if it be goodness nothing at last is sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Modern day readers have mocked these passages in library copies of Emerson's volumes Who are these readers. Why have they been impressed by these particular thoughts and ideas. What were they looking for. Critics. Alfred Kazin and Daniel Aaron offer collaborative views all over this country today there are people for whom Emerson star has never gone out who read him with intensely personal reactions of gratitude and delight. For them Emerson is not an antiquarian subject for academic specialists not a ready source of quotations were after dinner speakers not an assignment in school books to be read with adolescent indifference. But a

writer who helps them to live who encourages and rejoices them because he starts as a matter of course from a point of view about the world which they instinctively share but which they feel they no longer have a right to believe in. Expanding on that theme historian Arthur M. says in their junior our contemporary American society as little use for the individual ist individual ism implies dissent from the group. Dissent implies conflict and conflict suddenly seems divisive un-American and generally unbearable. Our greatest new industry is evidently the production of techniques to eliminate conflict from positive thoughts through public relations to psychoanalysis applied everywhere from the couch to the pope. Our national aspiration has become peace of mind peace of so the symptomatic drug of our ages the train Kweisi togetherness is the banner under which we much into the brave new world.

If we are to survive we must have ideas vision courage. These things are rarely produced by committee. Everything that matters in our intellectual or moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself. Do these opinions explain the modern reader's interest in Emerson. Henry Seidel Canby changes the focus. Emerson is the George Washington of American literature. He's been made into a plaster saint very cold plaster very highbrow saintliness and his philosophy has been used to get children up in the morning warmed over for sentimental religions and adapted for ads of bathtubs in real estate. Hitched your wagon to a star has been the model of many an American spec.. More than a hundred years ago Emerson read a lecture called the young

American the young men gathered to hear him in Boston February 1844 were members of the Mercantile Library Association skilled workers who met in the evening for intellectual stimulation. There were no public libraries as yet and college was for the few among the self-improvement organizations of skilled workers. Emerson was a frequent and popular lecturer. I call upon you young men to obey your heart. And be the nobility of this land in every age of the world. There has been a leading nation whose eminent citizens were willing to stand for the interest of general justice and humanity at the risk of being called by the man of the moment kind miracle. And fantastic which should be that nation but these days who should be the leaders but the young American. The people and the world is now suffering from the want of

religion and honor in its public mind. In America out of doors all seams are market. Indoors and air tight stove of conventionalism. Everybody who comes into our houses savors of these habits the man of the market. The women of custom. I find no expression in our state papers or legislative debate in our lyceum or churches especially in our newspapers of a high national feeling. No lofty counsels that rightfully stir the blood. I speak of those organs which can be presumed to speak by popular sense. They recommend conventional virtues whatever will earn and preserve property always the capitalist. The college the church the hospital the theater the hotel the road the ship of the capitalist whatever goes to secure

adorn and large these is good. Watch advertises any of these damn novel. The opposition papers so-called are on the same side. They attack the great capitalist but with the aim to make a capitalist of the poor man. The opposition is against those who have money from those who wish to have money but who announces to us in journal or in pulpit or in the street. The secret of heroism man alone can perform the impossible. It was not his wish. Emerson said to bring men to him but to themselves. He believed the essence of Americanism was the opportunity this nation provided to one and all alike. But he decried the mass values which glorified the common man in the mass values which stamped the society of an earlier affluent age. He sensed a

danger to individual ism to human independence demands faith in himself to think for himself and be great. Is this the appeal Emerson has for todays readers underline his thoughts and ideas and library books. Is it this person to person communication that keeps his star alive. A contemporary critic answers he makes contagious a sense of freedom and creativeness. He inspires the reader with a belief in himself in the future aware of fresh potentialities in the self and of fresh new fields of achievement. In todays world menaced by standardization regimentation and indoctrination. Emerson comes as a voice of renewal. Mark Van Doren describes Emerson as an aristocrat who thought all could be aristocrats. He said there were no common people meant that he was not common and that he had never met a man who was.

He asked the most of everybody because he truly believed it could be given as to what we call the Masters and common man. There are no common men. All men are at least of a size. And true art is only possible on the conviction that every talent. Has its apotheosis where men in all ways are better than they seem. They like flattery for the moment but they know the truth for their own. It is foolish cowardice which keeps us from trusting them. And speaking rude truth they resent your honesty for an instant. We'll thank you for it always. What is it we heartily wish of each other to be pleased and flattered to be convicted and exposed shamed out of our nonsense of all crime and made men of instead of ghosts and phantoms.

We are weary of gliding ghostlike through the world which is itself so slight and unreal. We crave a sense of reality. Though it comes in strokes of pain. I explained so by this man like love of truth those excesses and errors into which souls of great vigor but not equal insight often fall. They feel the poverty at the bottom of all the seeming affluence of the world. They know the speed with which they come straight through the thin masquerade and can see discussed at the indigenes of nature through Soul Mirabeau Charles Fox Napoleon Byron. And I could easily add names nearer home of raging riders who drive their speed so hard in the violence of living to

forget it's a Lucian. They would know the worst. And tread the floors of Harrow. The heroes of ancient and modern frame Symon the mystically use alsa by Alexander Caesar have traded life and fortune as a game to be well and skillfully play but the stake not to be valued but at any time it could be hailed as a trifle light as air and thrown up season just before the battle of farce aliar discourses with the Egyptian priest concerning the fountains of the now a member of the audience because it became the fashion to listen to Emerson's talks and to ask what they meant or to refer to someone who prefers to understand them. The same magnanimity shows itself in our social relations in the

preference which each man gives to the society of superiors over that of his equals. All that a man has. Will he give for any rect demeanor in every company and on every occasion he aims at such things as his neighbors prize and gives his days and nights his talents of his heart. To strike a good stroke to acquit himself in all man sights as a man. The consideration of an eminent citizen of a noted merchant of a man of mark in his profession. Naval and military honor. A General's commission a marshal's baton a ducal coronet the laurels of poets and anyhow procured the acknowledgment of eminent merit have this luster for each candidate the to enable him to walk erect and unashamed in the presence of some person before whom he felt himself in theory err. Having raised himself to

this rank and establish his equality with the class of those with whom he would live while. He still finds certain others before whom he cannot possess himself because they have a somewhat fairer grander purer. Which extorts homage of him. Is his ambition pure then will his laurels and his possessions seem worthless. Instead of avoiding these men. Who make his find gold them he will cast all behind him and seek their society only one where they embrace his humiliation and mortification until he shall know why his eye thinks his voice is husky and his brilliant talents are paralyzed in this present dear to us are those who love us. The swift moments we spent with them are a compensation for the great deal of misery they enlarge

our life. But there are those who reject us as worthy for they add another life. They build a heaven before us. Wherever we have not green. And thereby supply to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit and urge us to James Russell Lowell remarks at Emerson's our ration was more disjointed than usual and not even for him. It began nowhere and ended everywhere and it is always with that divine man which is left feeling that something beautiful had passed that something more beautiful than anything else like the rising and setting of stars. Every possible criticism mind have been made on it is stuff that it was not noble. The selfish man suffers more from his selfishness then he from whom that selfishness withholds some important benefit. What he

most wishes is to be lifted to some higher platform. We desire to be made great. That which he fits us and bosom and in beauty and wonder as we are is cheerfulness and courage and the endeavor to realize our aspiration is the life of man is the true romance which when it is valiantly conducted will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction it is so wonderful to our neurologists that a man can see without his eyes that it does not occur to them that it is just as wonderful that he should see with them and that is ever the difference between the wise and the NY. The latter wonders that what is unusual the wise man wonders at the young again comment which as a result was a tone and it did awakened all

elevating associations. He boggled me. He lost his place. But it was as if a creature from some fairer world had lost his way in our fogs. And you will not hear of the packs. There is no history. There is only biography. The attempt to perpetrate to fix a thought or principle fails continually. You can only live for yourself. Your action is good only last it is a lie. Last it is in you. The awkward imitation of it by your child or your disciple is not a repetition of it is not the same thing but another thing. The new individual must work out the whole problem of science letters and theology for himself and all his father's nothing.

There is no history only a biography. Emerson died in 1882 leaving in print volumes of essays lectures poems and journals according to bliss Perrier it is not known when Emerson first began to keep a journal but there are fairly full records from 1820 when he was 16 in his junior year at Harvard to 1875 when he was 72. Emerson's essays were drawn from the material of the lectures he gave in Boston and around the country and for his lectures he drew from his journal which he called his savings bank. It's an almost daily record of his thoughts and ideas expressed sometimes in paragraphs sometimes in single sentences. I suppose that you could never prove to the mind of the most ingenious mollusk that such a creature as a whale was possible.

The great always introduce us to facts. Small man introduced us always to themselves. Some play at chess some play at cards. So I'm play the stock exchange. I prefer to play at cause and effect. Every book is a quotation and every house is a quotation out of all forests and mines and St. Mary's and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors. How foolish is war. The injured party speak to the injury or until their minds me an essay has been defined as an adventure in ideas an exploration of a theme a form of literature in which the part counts perhaps more than the whole. During his lifetime Emerson's

friend Bronson Alcott talked to a meeting at the Hotel Bellevue conquered and described Emerson's method of using his journal entries when putting together the lectures on which the essays were based. A report of that meeting appeared in the Literary Review. The account of Mr. Emerson's methods of study was amusing and suggested drawing some light upon the seeming unbuffered of his writings. When some ideas seizes his mind with such overmastering force as to demand immediate and full expression he sets himself to the task of compiling from his notebooks whatever has been entered from time to time bearing on that general subject. One morning as Mr Allgood happened in his study he found Mr. Emerson bending over the notes thus copied out on separate sheets and spread out all about him on the floor in the endeavor to arrange them in one

hole with some semblance of method some choice thought or paragraph was chosen for the introduction. Another for the climax and other paragraphs were disposed of between the final result of this compiling process was then presented before some audience for the sake of trying it on. Then another and another undergoing various modifications in the meantime till at length that was left in the shape in which it finally appeared. It is very hard to go beyond your public if they are satisfied with your poor performance. You will not easily make better. But if they know what is good and delight in it you will aspire and burn and toil till you achieve it. Emerson always carried a notebook and jotted down his thoughts at all hours and places knowing that someday he would need them for a book or a lecture. If

while reading he saw a sentence that pleased him he wrote it down. If he took a walk and saw something that interested him or which suggested a thought he wished to preserve. He wrote it down. The contents of the notebooks were then transferred to larger volumes which he carefully indexed and stored in plain shelves in the large square library of his home. From these manuscript volumes he drew the notes which he put together for his lectures and subsequently the essays. His subject matter embracing all of life's experience centers on the importance of the individual as the creator of human history. Whatever happened happened first to a person. A man is a bundle of relation is a knot of roots whose flower and fruitage is the world. His faculties refer to nature's out of him and predict the world he has to inhabit. As the fins of the fish foreshadow that water exists

he cannot live without a world. Put Napoleon in an island prison. Let his faculties find no men to act on. No Alps to climb no stake to play for and he would beat the air and appears stupid. It is the largest part of a man that is not inventoried. He has many innumerable parts. He is social professional political sectarian literary. And is this or that set and co-operation. But after the most exhausting census has been made there remains as much more which no tongue can tell. And this remainder is that which interests this is that which the strong genius works upon the region of destiny of aspiration of the unknown. Ah. They have a sequel perswade that as little as they passed for in the world. They are immensely rich in expectations and power.

Nobody has ever yet just possessed this adhesive self to arrive at any glimpse or guess of the awful life that lurks under it for the best part I repeat every mine is not that which he knows but that which hovers in Gleann suggestion is tantalizing possessed before he is said James Russell Lowell. It was chaotic. Boy. But it was all such stuff as stars are made Doris of thoughts and you couldn't help feeling that if only waited a while. All that was nebulous would be whirled into planets that is and would assume the mathematical gravity of a system all through it I felt something in me that cried from the sound of wings but the vast revolutions migrations and gyres on gyres in the celestial societies invite you. But ma'am is not order of nature.

Sack and sack belly and members link in a chain. Nor any ignominy as baggage but a stupendous antagonism. A dragging together of the poles of the universe. He betrays his relation to what is below him thick skull. Small brained fishy but the lightning which explodes and trashes planets and suns is in him on one side elemental order sandstone and granite rock ledges peat bog. Forest sea on shore and on the other part. Thought the spirit which composes and decomposes nature. Here they are side by side God and Devil. Mind and Matter King and conspirator. Belt and spasm riding peacefully together in the eye and brain of every man.

Nor can he blink the free will to hazard a contradiction. Freedom is necessary. If you please to plant yourself on the side of fate and say for ages all then we say our part of faith is the freedom of man. Forever wells up the impulse of choosing and acting in the sole intellect unknowables fate so far as a man thinks he is free and the nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves as most men are. Yet it is wholesome to man to look not at fate but the other way. The practical view is the other his sounder relation to these facts is to use and command. Not to cringe to them.

To Emerson the tragedy of life was those who thought of themselves as types of common man. Men are not made like boxers. Hundred or thousand to order and all exactly alike. I've known dimension and all the properties known but know they come into nature through a nine months astonishment and of a character. Each one incalculable and extravagant possibilities out of darkness and out of the awful cause they come to be caught up into this vision of a seeing partaking acting and suffering life not for Norm not for estimable but slowly or speedily they unfold a new unknown mighty traipse boxes. But these machines are alive. Agitated fearing

and sorrow. Emerson's boundless faith in the infinitude of man is the dominant theme running through his lectures essays and journals printed only after his death. The journals alone add up to 10 volumes coming through one finds hundreds of unrelated jottings ranging widely in topic and mood. It is as easy as falling in nature nothing is done but in the cheapest way. When the fruit is ripe it fall when the fruit is dispatched the leaf for the circuit of the waters is mere folly. The working of man and all animals is a falling forward. All our manual labor and works of strength is pride and splitting digging rowing I've done by dint of continual falling and the globe and Globes Earth Moon Sun comet star fall for ever and ever.

Nature works by short ways. The head of George Washington hangs in my dining room for a few days past and I cannot keep my eyes off of it. It has a certain Appalachian strength as if it were truly the first fruits of America and expressed the country the heavy leaden eyes turned on you as the eyes of an ox in the pasture and the mouth has gravity and depth of quiet as if this man had absorbed all the serenity of America and left none for his restless rickety hysterical countryman. We love morals until they come to us with mountainous melancholy and grim overcharged rebuke. Then we so gladly prefer intellect the like maker. It is not every man sometimes a radical. In politics men are conservatives when they are least vigorous or

when they are most luxurious. They're conservatives after dinner or before taking their rest when they're sick or aged in the morning or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused when they hear music or when they read poetry. They are radicals. Art requires a living soul. The Dunces believe that as it must at any one moment work in one direction and automation will do as well or nearly. And they beseech the artist to say in what direction in every direction he replies in any direction or in no direction. But it must be a lie.

I think that a man should compare advantageously with a river with an oak with a mountain endless flow expansion and grit. It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy and solitude to be self centered. But the finished a man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude in all my lecturers. I have talked one doctrine namely the infinitude of the private man. This the people accept readily enough and even with a loud commendation. As long as I call a lecture art or politics or literature or or the household. But the moment I call it religion they are shocked. It would be only the application of the same truth which they receive elsewhere to a new class of fact.

Don't trust children with edged tools don't trust man a great God with more power than he has until he has learned to use that a little better. What the hell we should make of the world if we could do what we would put a button on the foil to leave young fencers have learned not to put each other's eyes out. Some thoughts and ideas from Emerson's journals. The savings bank which supplied content for his lectures and essays. Emerson addressed a country that he saw in lumbering and floundering. Americans were not living up to the magnificent challenge that was America. He deplored the crass materialism and the mass values that stamped the age and age which is being compared with our own. But and he wrote in his diary as all the people we see want the things we now have and not better things. It is very certain that they will under whatever change or forms keep the old

system. When I see change to men I shall look for a changed world. Reaction from some of Emerson's contemporaries is evidence that he was judged as no ordinary communicator of ideas a speaker and writer with such a wordy flow of thought and so convinced of his own value most underneath his oblique perceptions of arguments have something worthwhile to say. But what is it actually that he is saying. The survey series does not intend to deify Emerson or to present him in the atmosphere of all however evidence that Emerson is read today attests to what seems to have been his own conviction that he had a message for all time for those with the inclination to wade through and seek it out. Meet Mr. Emerson. A series of radio programs presenting in survey fashion excerpts from his journals lectures and essays produced by

station WAGA the University of Wisconsin. A grant from the National Home Library Foundation has made possible the production of this program for national educational radio. This is the national educational radio network.