Once embarked in it, he gave his whole mind to its accomplishment, – all his industry, all his organizing talent, all his high sense of duty. He worked day and night; he wrote letters; he answered inquiries; he mastered the science of agriculture; he did the labor of a practical farmer; he maintained the supervision of the strange family that gathered about him. Very remarkable was his success in keeping the intellectual side uppermost, in keeping clear of the temptations to give way to instinctive leanings. His associations were with books and study and bright people. He brought the most brilliant men and women of the day to the place. He awakened the interest of the general community. He diffused an atmosphere of cheerful hope around the experiment. It is easy to make sport of Brook Farm; to laugh at the odd folks who came there; to ridicule their motives and actions; to repeat stories of extravagant conduct; to tell of the eccentric behavior of men and maidens who were right-minded but impulsive; to follow spontaneousness to its results; to trace the course of unrestricted liberty. But it is not fair to remember these things as peculiarities of Brook Farm, as incidents of its conception, or as incidents that were agreeable to Mr. Ripley. He exerted the whole weight of his character against them. He watched and guarded. We do not hear of him in connection with the scandals, the laxities, or the frolics. His efforts were directed to the supremacy of ideas over instinct, the idea of a regenerated society, something very different from joyousness, or merriment, or the fun of having a good time. He, too, was gay; he felt the delight of freedom; but his gayety was born of happy confidence in the principle at stake, his delight was connected with the advent of a new method of intercourse among men. I remember hearing him once deliver a speech in Boston. In it he spoke of the "foolishness of preaching," and avowed his willingness to be a pioneer in the task of breaking out a new future for humanity, a ditcher and delver in the work of constructing the new building of God. He had the coming time continually in view. Others might enjoy themselves, others might grow tired of waiting, but he held smiling on his way, determined to carry out the idea to the end. There was something grand in the steady intellectual force with which he did his best to carry through a principle that commanded more and more the assent of his reason. When the demonstration of Charles Fourier was laid before him, no argument was required to persuade him to adopt it. He took it up with all his energy; his enthusiasm rose to a higher pitch than ever; the rationale of the movement was revealed to him, and apparently he saw for the first time the full significance of the scheme he had been conducting. The impelling power of an intellectual conviction was never more splendidly illustrated. Nobody discerned so clearly as he did the financial hopelessness of the experiment. Nobody felt the burden of responsibility as he felt it. Yet he did not flinch for a moment, and his patient assumption of the indebtedness at last had the stamp of real heroism upon it. His renewal of the most painful traditions of "Grub Street" until the liabilities of Brook Farm were cleared off is one of the noble histories, a history that cannot be told in detail because of the modesty which has left no record of toil undergone or duty done. The old simile of the sun struggling with clouds, and gradually clearing itself as the day wears on, best illustrates my view of this man's accomplishment. There were the clouds of orthodoxy which were burned away at Cambridge. Then came the clouds of Unitarian divinity, which were dispelled by the transcendental philosophy. These were succeeded by the dark vapors of the ministry, and these by the sentimental philanthropy of New England rationalism. At length his intellect broke through these obscurations and showed what it truly was.
On the failure of Brook Farm and the final dismissal of all plans for creating society anew, Mr. Ripley's faculties emerged in their full strength. The New England element was withdrawn. There was no longer thought for theology or reform, but solely for knowledge and literature. In Boston he had taken on himself every opprobrious epithet. In his final letter to his congregation he avows his interest in temperance, anti-slavery, peace, the projects for breaking down social distinctions; simply, it would seem, because his philosophy, falling in with popular sentiment, pointed that way; for he was never publicly identified with any of these causes, or ranked by reformers in the order of innovators. Indeed, one of the old Abolitionists told me that she had never associated him with the anti-slavery people, though her family went to his church. In New York there was no pretence of this kind. The devotion to literature absorbed his attention. His democratic concern for the workingmen continued, but in a theoretical manner, if we may judge from the fact that he took no part in domestic or foreign demonstrations, that he made no speech, attended no meeting, consorted with no social reformers, did not even keep up his intimacy with the original leaders of socialism in this country. When the sadness of his first wife's death was over, and the drudgery of toil was ended, he was happier than he had ever been. No time was wasted; no talent was misused. Mental labor was incessant, but in performing it there was pure delight. It is usual to think of his early life as his best, and there were some who regarded him as an extinct volcano; but I am of the opinion that his latter years were his most characteristic, and that he was most entirely himself when his intellectual nature came to its full play. In proportion as the "olden thoughts, the spirit's pall," fell off, he became peaceful and sweet; his view backward and forward became clear, his purpose steady, his will serene. The past was distasteful to him and he seldom alluded to it; but as one puts his childhood and his age together, a steady development is seen to run through both. His could not be a cloudless day, but he went on from glory to glory. His age more than justified the promise of his youth. In his latter years he befriended aspiring young men; he made literature a power in America; he threw a dignity around toil; he associated knowledge with happiness, and rendered light and love harmonious. His favorite author was Goethe, the apostle of culture. His familiarity with Sainte-Beuve, the master of literary criticism, was so great, that on occasion of that writer's decease, he sat down and wrote an account of him without recourse to books. Though without knowledge of art, destitute of taste for music, and deficient in æsthetic appreciation, his sympathy was so large and true that these deficiencies were not felt. The intellectual sunshine was shed over the entire nature, and the book was so universal that it seemed to embrace everything.
This is the property of pure mind, rarely seen in such perfection of lucidity. Such a mind is at once conservative and radical; conservative as treasuring the past, radical as anticipating improvement in the future. There is nothing like fanaticism, but a bright look in every direction, a place for all sorts of accomplishments, hospitality to each new invention, a radiant acceptance of all temperaments. The mind cannot be superstitious, for it cannot believe that divine powers are identified with material objects or occasional accidents; it cannot be ever sanguine as those are who indulge in abstract visions of good, for it knows that progress is very slow and gradual, and that the welfare of mankind is advanced by the process of civilization, by cultivation, acquirement, refinement, the gains of wealth, elegance, and delicacy of taste. It judges by rational standards, not by sentimental feelings, accepting imperfection as the inevitable condition of human affairs and bounded characters. It is not exposed to the convulsions that accompany even the most exalted moods, but calmly labors and quietly hopes for the future.
I do not say that George Ripley was such a mind, merely that his tendency was in that direction. He was limited by traditions; he had too many prejudices. The axioms of the transcendental philosophy clung to him. The shreds of religion hung about him. He could not divest himself of the ancient clerical memories and ways, nor wholly throw off the mantle of personal sympathy he had so long worn. He was not completely secular.
That he was a perfect man is less evident still. His sunny quality was due in some degree to a happy temperament, and was subject to the eclipses that darken the blandest natures, and render sombre the most hilarious spirits. He lacked the steadfast courage of conviction, was somewhat over-prudent and timid, afraid of pain, of popular disapproval, of criticism and opposition. This may have been due in part to his frequent disappointments and the carefulness they forced upon him, to the distrust in his own judgment which he had occasion to learn, and the necessity of confining his action to the point immediately before him. But I am inclined to think that this apprehensiveness was constitutional. If it is suggested by way of objection that the bold experiment of Brook Farm, made in the face of obloquy and derision, indicated moral courage of a high stamp, I would remind the critic of the warm approbation of his friends, and the confident expectation of success on the part of those he was intimate with. His wife not merely gave him her countenance but stimulated his zeal, and surrounded him every day with an atmosphere of faith. He had the applause of Dr. Channing, and the support of his brilliant nephew. Men like Hawthorne, Ellis Gray Loring, George Stearns, not to mention others, urged him on. His own well-beloved sister was one of his ardent coadjutors. He had hopes of Emerson. In short, so far from being alone, he stood in an influential company, and instead of his being altogether unpopular was encompassed by the good-will of those he prized most. It would have required courage to resist such influences. Besides, he was inflated by a momentary enthusiasm which carried him along in spite of himself and would not allow his judgment to work. A sudden storm struck him, lifted unusual waves, caused unexampled spurts of foam, made the ordinarily quiet water boisterous and dangerous, and threw long lines of breakers on the coast, so that what was a still lake became of a sudden a tempestuous sea. One must not hastily imagine that the water had become an ocean, or that it was really an Atlantic formerly supposed to be a pool.
Then it must be said he loved money too well. This infirmity was not native to him, but must probably be imputed to early poverty, the necessity of working hard in order to pay debts not altogether of his own contracting, thus pledging the meagre income of the first sixty years of his life. His final income was large, but it was earned by incessant literary toil, which naturally rendered him avaricious of the rewards that might come to him. His generosity did not have a fair chance to show itself outside of his family. There it was lavish, but there it was too much mixed up with affection, duty, and pride to be credited to his manhood. He did not live long enough, either, to attain complete superiority over his accidents. He was already an old man before he had money for his wants. I remember meeting him on Broadway in 1861, the year of his wife's death, and he said: "My grief is embittered by the thought that she died just as I was getting able to obtain for her what she needed." He was then fifty-nine years of age. It cannot be expected that any impulse of generosity will overcome the habits of a life-time at so advanced a period as this. That they showed themselves at all is remarkable, and establishes as well their power as their existence.
In a word, this man was too heavily weighted by circumstances to do his genius full justice. He seemed to be two individuals, with little in common between them. As one looked at his past or at his present, his real character was differently judged. The most plausible account of him was that which supposed the experiences to be buried in a deep grave, which was seldom uncovered even by the man himself, who lived in the day before him, and rarely glanced back save to mourn over or to make sport of his former career. The only way of establishing a unity in his history is to concede the supremacy of the intellectual quality over the moral in his first endeavors. The prejudice in favor of the moral was and is so strong that to maintain this supremacy will seem like a condemnation of him, though meant in his praise. He probably would so have considered it, especially when carried away by the flood of memories. It was easy for him to be mistaken. His merit consists in the energy of the reason which made headway against a host of disadvantages and achieved something resembling a victory in the end. Some time hence, when the homage paid to sentiment shall have yielded to the worship of knowledge, George Ripley will be regarded as one of the earliest apostles of the light.
All these greatly enriched my life in New York, opened new spheres of activity, and enlarged my whole horizon, both intellectually and socially. Their variety, elasticity, and vigor in many fields of intellectual force added much to the extension of my view, and acted, not merely as a refreshment, but also as a stimulus.
XV.
THE PRESENT SITUATION
The progress of mind is continuous. Strictly speaking, there are no periods of transition, no crises in thought. The history of ideas presents no gap. Every stage begins and ends an epoch. One is often reminded of the common notion that the year begins and ends at a particular moment. Every day begins and ends a year; every hour is equally sacred. Yet solemn thought, worship, self-examination, are precious, and these can be secured only by the observance of times and seasons; so that we fall on our knees and pray when the old year ends and the new one begins.
So, as a point of time must be fixed upon, we will begin with Thomas Paine. It is not easy to speak fully and justly of Paine, because in so doing we must speak of the misapprehensions and mis-statements of which he has been the victim; and even if we refute these, the bare mention of them leaves a stain on his fame. No doubt his method – application of common-sense to religion – was essentially vicious. Common-sense is an admirable quality in practical affairs, quite indispensable in the management of business of all kinds, but it has no place in the discussion of works of the higher imagination – of poetry, art, music, or faith. But such was the man's genius, such was the demand of his age. It is easy to speak of his ignorance, his coarseness, his impudence, his vanity; but it must be remembered that his education was very imperfect, for he was utterly ignorant of any language but his own, and he did not, apparently, read even the English deists; that he was a man of the people; that he lived in an age of revolutions; that he stood for the rights of common humanity. It must be remembered also that, in the first place, he brought the human mind face to face with problems which had been appropriated by a special class that considered itself exempt from criticism. In the next place he was in dead earnest; not attacking the Bible or religion out of flippancy or brutality, but because he really hated the interpretations that were usually given of sacred things; his attack was against orthodoxy, not against faith. "His blasphemy," says Leslie Stephen, "was not against the Supreme God, but against Jehovah. He was vindicating the ruler of the universe from the imputations which believers in literal inspiration and dogmatical theology had heaped upon him under the disguise of homage. He was denying that the God before whom reasonable creatures should bow in reverence could be the supernatural tyrant of priestly imagination, who was responsible for Jewish massacres, who favored a petty clan at the expense of his other creatures, who punished the innocent for the guilty, who lighted the fires of everlasting torment for the masses of mankind, and who gave a monopoly of his favor to priests or a few favored enthusiasts. Paine, in short, with all his brutality, had the conscience of his hearers on his side, and we must prefer his rough exposure of popular errors to the unconscious blasphemy of his supporters." Then Paine did love his kind; he abhorred cruelty, and desired, after his fashion, to elevate his race.
Examples of this are numerous. At the time when the "Common Sense" and "Crisis" were having an enormous sale, the demand for the former reaching not less than one hundred thousand copies, and both together offering to the author profits that would have made him rich, Paine freely gave the copyright to every State in the Union. In his period of public favor and of intimate friendship with the founders of the government, Paine declined to accept any place or office of emolument, saying: "I must be in everything, as I have ever been, a disinterested volunteer. My proper sphere of action is on the common floor of citizenship, and to honest men I give my hand and heart freely." The State of Virginia made a large claim on the general government for lands. Thomas Paine opposed the claim as unreasonable and unjust, though at that very time there was a resolution before the legislature of Virginia to appropriate to him a handsome sum of money for services rendered. In 1797, Paine was the chief promoter of the society of "Theophilanthropists," whose object was the extinction of religious prejudices, the maintenance of morality, and the diffusion of faith in one God. "It is want of feeling," says this heartless blasphemer, "to talk of priests and bells, while infants are perishing in hospitals, and the aged and infirm poor are dying in the streets." In 1774, Paine published in the Pennsylvania Journal, a strong, anti-slavery essay. While clerk in the Pennsylvania Legislature he made an appeal in behalf of the army, then in extreme distress, and subscribed his entire salary for the year to the fund that was raised. Towards the close of his life, he devised a plan for imposing a special tax on all deceased persons' estates, to create a fund from which all, on reaching twenty-one years, should receive a sum to establish them in business, and in order that all who were in the decline of life should be saved from destitution. It is not generally known that Paine often preached on Sunday afternoons at New Rochelle. In England he spoke in early life from Dissenting pulpits, and to him we owe this exquisite definition of religion: "It is man bringing to his Maker the fruits of his heart." All this is evidence that honorable considerations were at the bottom of his own belief. He was, according to his view, the friend of man, and in this interest wrote his books. He introduced kindness into religion.
He certainly repeated the ideas of Collins and Toland, and the conceptions that were floating in the air, breathed by Voltaire and Diderot; but he did give them voice. The English deists were dead, and would have continued so but for him. He was essentially a pamphleteer, the master of a very rich, simple style that went directly to the hearts of the people. His best performances were unquestionably political, but all his works were marked by the same peculiarities. His mistake was in supposing that the power that could animate an army could pull down a church.
Paine was no saint, but he was no sinner above all that dwelt in Jerusalem. He drank too much; he took too much snuff; he was vulgar; he was a vehement man in a vehement age; he went to dinner in his dressing-gown; and he certainly did not bring his best convictions to bear on his private character; but he did wake up minds that had been dumb or oppressed before. The "Age of Reason" went everywhere, into holes and corners, among back-woodsmen and pioneers, and did more execution among plain moral men than many a book that was more worthy of acceptance. It is a pity that his disciples should be content with repeating his denials, instead of building on the rational foundations which he laid. For instance, they might, while adding to his criticism of the Scriptures, have shown their high moral bearing and their spiritual glow. They might have carried out further his "enthusiasm for humanity," showing that man had more in him than Paine suspected. They might have justified by more scientific reasons his belief in God and in immortality. They might have been truly rationalists as he wanted to be, but could not be at that period. But they were satisfied with saying over and over again what he said as well as he could, but not as well as they can. He was simply a precursor, but he was a precursor of such men as Colenso and Robertson Smith, and a large host of scholars beside.
Paine's best exponent in America is perhaps Robert G. Ingersoll. He is a sort of transfigured Paine. He has all Paine's power over the masses, being perhaps the most eloquent man in America; more than Paine's wit; more than Paine's earnestness; more than Paine's love of humanity; more than Paine's scorn of deceit and harshness, – for he extends his abhorrence of cruelty even to dumb beasts. He has great power of sympathy, a tender feeling for misery of all kinds. He is a poet, as is evident from these words:
We do not know whether the grave is the end of this life or the door of another, or whether the night here is somewhere else a dawn. The idea of Immortality, that like a sea has ebbed and flowed into the human heart with its countless waves beating against the shores and rocks of time and faith, was not born of any book or of any creed or of any religion. It was born of human affection, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death. It is the rainbow, Hope, shining upon the tears of grief.
Paine's simple childlike belief in God and Immortality, Ingersoll remands to the cloudy sphere of agnosticism, as Paine probably would now; but it is my opinion that if evidence which he regarded as satisfactory – that is, legal evidence – could be given, he, too, would accept these articles; for he has none of the elements of the bigot about him. His detestation is simply of hell and a priesthood; for pure, spiritual religion, he has only respect. Like Paine, he attacks the ecclesiasticism and theology of the day, and is satisfied with doing that; and, like Paine, he has convictions instead of opinions, and his character is all aflame with his ideas.
In his private life, in his family relations, in his public career, there is no reproach on his name – nothing that he need be ashamed of.
Mr. Ingersoll does not worship the Infinite under any recognized form or name, but that he adores the substance of deity is beyond all doubt; he worships truth and purity and sincerity and love, – everything that is highest and noblest in human life. One word more I must say, – that his motive is essentially religious. It is his aim to lift off the burden of superstition and priestcraft; to elevate the soul of manhood and womanhood; to promote rational progress in goodness; to emancipate every possibility of power in the race; and this is the aim of every pure religion, – to open new spheres of hope and accomplishment.
The disintegration of the popular orthodoxy goes on very fast, and always under the influence of the moral sentiment. This is very prettily put by Miss Jewett, in one of her short stories, entitled "The Town Poor." Two ladies, jogging along a country road, fall to talking about an old meeting-house which is being improved after the modern fashion. One of them laments the loss of the ancient pews and pulpit, and the substitution of a modern platform and slips. The other says:
When I think of them old sermons that used to be preached in that old meeting-house, I am glad it is altered over so as not to remind folks. Them old brimstone discourses! you know preachers is far more reasonable now-a-days. Why, I sat an' thought last Sabbath as I listened, that if old Mr. Longbrother and Deacon Bray could hear the difference, they'd crack the ground over 'em like pole beans, and come right up 'long side their headstones.
In Chicago, some years ago, orthodox preachers begged a pronounced radical to stay and help them fight the matter out on the inside; and a minister of one of the principal churches there distinctly said that he did not believe in the infallibility of the Bible or an everlasting punishment. A Congregational minister in Connecticut expressed himself as thoroughly in sympathy with the advanced party in theology. An orthodox clergyman in New England declared that he did not know of an orthodox minister in the whole range of his acquaintance who believed in the old doctrine. A minister in Rhode Island, who occupied a high position in the orthodox church, while declining to make an open statement on account of social and political reasons, avowed his willingness to write a private letter disclaiming all belief in the accepted views. The Rev. Howard MacQueary, the Episcopal rector of Canton, Ohio, who has recently published a book, entitled the "Evolution of Man and Christianity," has been convicted of heresy against his own protest and the popular sentiment. The successor of Henry Ward Beecher, in Brooklyn, N. Y., recently published the essentials of his creed. There is no fall in it, no trinity, no miracle in the old sense, no eternal punishment. He declares, frankly, that there is no difference in kind between man, Jesus, and God, but only a difference in degree. The same man recently preached in King's Chapel, and lectured in Channing Hall. The Andover controversy distinctly reveals the decay of the ancient theology. In England dissent has gone very far, as is evident from a book called "The Kernel and the Husk," written by the Rev. Dr. E. A. Abbott, the author of the article on "The Gospels," in the last edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica." In this article the fall is repudiated, the trinity, miracles, the virgin birth, the physical resurrection of Jesus, and eternal punishment; yet even his bishop has not rebuked him. Yes, the moral sentiment is certainly coming to its rights.
Of Unitarianism, after what has been said, it is unnecessary to speak. That there should be a difference between the East and the West is natural. The East holds fast, in large sense, to the ancient theological traditions. The West never had them, and can therefore declare that its fellowship is conditioned on no doctrinal tests, and can welcome all who wish to establish truth and righteousness and love in the world. The West will ultimately prevail; the temper of the East is rapidly wasting away, and the breach will soon be closed up. The new Unitarian churches will be founded on a practical basis, the only requirement being that the minister should be deeply in earnest about religious things. The characteristic of all churches, of whatever name, is an urgent interest in social reform, a deep concern for the disfranchised and oppressed, and a warm feeling towards the elevation of mankind. The universal prayer is, to borrow the pithy language of Dr. F. H. Hedge: "May Thy kingdom come on earth!" not "May we come into Thy kingdom."
If it was hard to do full justice to Thomas Paine, it is harder to do full justice to the Broad Churchman. There is no authoritative account of his position to which appeal can be made, and the great variety of opinion on incidental points makes it difficult to frame any description which the leaders would accept. A great deal depends on the change of circumstances, the ruling spirit of the time, the prevailing tendencies of thought in the period, – whether scientific, critical, or social, – and a great deal depends, too, on the peculiarities of individual temperament, but the fundamental doctrines are the same. The ordinary observer can see the largeness, sympathy, inclusiveness, devotion to actual needs. But the ordinary observer cannot see the real basis of faith in human nature; the manifestation of the Divine Being in the highest possibilities of man; the trust in a living, active, communicating God.
These are cardinal points, and must be insisted on. The inherent depravity of man; his essential corruption; his absolute inability to receive any portion of the divine life, is naturally repudiated. But his feebleness, crudeness, imperfection, his dearth and deficiency, his sensuality, hardness, love of material things, is insisted on, and cannot be exaggerated. Still there is a germ of the divine nature in him, a spark of the divine flame which can be kindled. The familiar language of Longfellow expresses this idea exactly:
"Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple,
Who have faith in God and Nature,
Who believe that in all ages
Every human heart is human,
That in even savage bosoms
There are longings, yearnings, strivings
For the good they comprehend not,
That the feeble hands and helpless,
Groping blindly in the darkness,
Touch God's right hand in that darkness
And are lifted up and strengthened: —
Listen to this simple story."
To this nature, thus receptive, God addresses Himself. He is the Father, the absolute Love, and his desire is to lead men upward towards the height of divine perfection. In all ages, in every way, he has been trying to do this; and all nature, all art, all literature is full of this affection for his child. Even the Pagan myths express this striving of God with man. The existence of what we call evil is assumed, but there is no attempt to explain it or theorize about it or reconcile it with any mode of philosophy. To us it may be simply the divine effort to startle the soul into a consciousness of itself. Even the worst forms of doubt, of denial, of atheism may be parts of this divine effort; even men like Strauss and Feuerbach may be witnesses for truth, because they drive men back in horror from the pit of disbelief, and compel them to take refuge through tears and prayers in the supreme love. Of absolute evil we cannot be sure that there is any; so many ways must the infinite spirit have to awaken men to a sense of their own destiny.