EMERSON'S DOCTRINE OF THE
INFINITE

THE Course of Emerson's thought is an orderly process. While still young, and living in the old manse in which Hawthorne in after years wrote his lingering tales, he wrote the Treatise on Nature, fifty pages which explain nearly all that is explicable about the correspondence between man and his environment.

He opens the little tract by sketching roughly 'that wonderful congruity which exists between man and the world.'

'Standing on the bare ground-my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me. . . . In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. . . . The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone

and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. . . . Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight does not reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of both.'

Thereafter he discusses the detail of this harmony under the heads of Commodity, Beauty, Language, Discipline.

Of Commodity he has necessarily little to say. On 'the rich conveniences' Earth affords to man it would be easy for an empty writer to expand. A full one is short on the obvious. Man is able to make use of everything in Nature, of beasts, fire, water, stones, and corn.

'In

It is more difficult to speak of Beauty, but there is the fact that 'the simple perception of natural forms is a delight,' and that to us 'every natural action is graceful'; not only so; 'every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine.' private places, among sordid objects, an act of truth or heroism seems at once to draw to itself the sky as its temple, the sun as its cradle. Nature stretches out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness.' Beauty in Nature speaks to Beauty in him.

'No reason can be asked or given why the soul seeks beauty,' but Nature both ministers to man's ardency to realise it and feeds that flame. All Art is founded upon Nature; the beauty of nature re-forms itself in the mind, and not for barren contemplation, but for new creation.' Art is often spoken of in contrast with Nature, but the difference is one of addition, not of opposition.

The purpose of the chapter on Language is to show that Nature is also the vehicle of man's thought: for not only are words 'signs of natural facts,' but 'every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture.' It is easily seen that there is nothing lucky or capri

cious in these analogies, but that they are constant and pervade nature.' 'Hence good writing and brilliant discourse are perpetual allegories. This imagery is spontaneous. It is the blending of experience with the present action of the mind. It is proper creation. It is the working of the Original Cause through the instruments he has already made.'

To speak in the same way of Discipline, 'Nature is a discipline of the understanding in intellectual truths. Our dealing with sensible objects is a constant exercise in the necessary lessons of difference, of likeness, of order, of being and seeming, of progressive arrangement; of ascent from particular to general; of combination to one end of manifold forces'; but not only so; 'Sensible objects conform to the premonitions of Reason and reflect the conscience. All things are moral; and in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature.' . . . 'Thus the use of commodity, regarded by itself, is mean and squalid. But it is to the mind an education in the doctrine of Use, namely, that a thing is good only so far as it serves.' 'All things with which we deal, preach to us.' 'What is a farm but a mute gospel? . . . the chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun.' Every natural fact is a symbol of some moral fact, and can be read by a moral understanding.

'In this brave lodging wherein man is harboured, all his faculties find appropriate and endless exercise.' Indeed Nature's song strikes so directly on our ear, is so much our song, that a doubt is suggested whether Nature has any other object than this reference to us, or even whether the whole is not a dream of the percipient. Certain it is that Nature as read by us is

dependent upon our reading. The report of the senses depends upon the state of the senses. Change the point of view and the scene is changed. All that is observed undergoes a transmutation in human thought, in the unfixing and refixing processes of poetry, and in the pervading and dissolving thought of the philosopher.1 Intellectual science has been observed to beget invariably a doubt of the existence of matter." 'Whilst we behold unveiled the nature of Justice and Truth, we learn the difference between the absolute and the conditional or relative. We apprehend the absolute. As it were, for the first time, we exist. We become immortal, for we learn that time and space are relations of matter; that, with a perception of truth, or a virtuous will, they have no affinity.'. .. 'It appears' then 'that motion, poetry, physical and intellectual science, and religion, all tend to affect our convictions of the reality of the external world.'

There is then nothing outside the individual? By no means: that is an absolute idealism which is not Emerson's. We may regard nature 'as phenomena not as substance,' and yet acquiesce entirely in the permanence of natural laws,' in the existence of other percipient minds, in the reality of an Existence behind phenomena and supporting them. 'Behind nature, throughout nature, spirit is present; one and not compound, it does not act upon us from without, that is, in space and

1 'Is not the charm of one of Plato's or Aristotle's definitions, strictly like that of the Antigone of Sophocles? It is, in both cases, that a spiritual life has been imparted to nature; that the solid seeming block of matter has been pervaded and dissolved by a thought; that this feeble human being has penetrated the vast masses of nature with an informing soul, and recognised itself in their harmony, that is, seized their law.'-Treatise on Nature. 'Idealism.'

time, but spiritually, or through ourselves; therefore, that spirit, that is, the Supreme Being, does not build up nature around us, but puts it forth through us, as the life of the tree puts forth new branches and leaves through the pores of the old.'

It will be seen that Emerson, by a process of detail and founding on observation, reaches and answers in the way of Philosophical Idealism the basic question of metaphysics. By what means does the Ego obtain a knowledge of the Non-Ego? Obviously and easily, replies Idealism, if Ego and Non-Ego are of similar and correspondent nature. Obviously and easily, replies Dualism, accepting both spirit and matter, if it is so ordained. But this is to invent a 'Deus ex machina' to invent a bridge.1 A valid Theism arrives at the conception of Deity, a Mind intelligible to mind, through finding in the Non-Ego a nature similar to the Ego. It does not presuppose the existence, much less the operations of this Mind. There is no question, if the answer is supplied.

Emerson was in no danger of surrendering his whole philosophy, a considering which makes for results, to conclusions ready made. Build your own world,' he says decisively. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit.'

This correspondent revolution is seen throughout the

1 Materialism too is a theory of the Universe that is free from the weakness of Dualism. Its root defect is different, namely that it confounds Appearance and Reality. Idealism,' says Emerson in his terse way, 'is a hypothesis to account for nature by other principles than those of carpentry and chemistry.'