|
|
||
 |
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||
|
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
|
by Amos Bronson Alcott
Like its suburban neighbor beside the Charles, our village, seated along the banks of its Indian stream, spreads a rural cradle for the fresher literature; and aside from these advantages it well deserves its name for its quiet scenery and plain population. Moreover, few spots in New England have won a like literary repute. The rural muse has traversed these fields, meadows, woodlands, the brook-sides, the river; caught the harmony of its changing skies, and portrayed their spirit in books that are fit to live while Letters delight, and Nature charms her lovers. Had Homer, had Virgil, fairer prospects than our landscape affords? Had Shakespeare or Goethe a more luxuriant simplicity than ours? Only the wit to say or sing these the poet needs; and of this our neighborhood has not less than many sounding cities. Plain as our landscape is, it has special attractions for the scholar who courts quiet surroundings, scenery not too exciting, yet stimulating to genial and uninterrupted studies. If the hills command no very broad horizon, the prospect is sufficiently sylvan to give an agreeable variety without confusing the mind, while the river in good part compensates for the sameness, as it winds sluggishly along the confines of the village, flowing by the monument into the distance through the meadows. Thoreau, writing of it jocosely says: "It is remarkable for the gentleness of its current, which is hardly perceptible, and some have ascribed to its influence the proverbial moderation of the inhabitants of Concord, as celebrated in the Revolution and on other occasions. It has been suggested that the town should adopt for its coat-of-arms a field verdant with the Concord River circling nine times round it." Not in stirring times like ours, when the world's affairs come posted with the successive sun rising or setting, can we ignore magazines, libraries, and ephemera of the press. Newspapers intrude into every house, almost supersede the primers and textbooks of the schools, proffering alike to hand and eye intelligence formerly won only by laborious studies and much expense of time and money. Cheap literature is now in vogue; the age, if not profound, has chances for attaining some superficial knowledge, at least, of the world's doings and designings; the experiments of the few being hereby popularized for the benefit of the many everywhere, the humblest even partaking largely of the common benefit. Life and literature need the inspiration which idealism quickens and promotes. The history of thought shows that a people given to sensationalism and the lower forms of materialism have run to ruin. Only that which inspires life and nobility of thought can maintain and preserve itself from speedy and ignoble decay. And we have too palpable evidences of corruption, public and private, to leave us in doubt as to the tendency of not a little of the cultivation and teachings in our times. . . The idealists have given deeper insight into life and nature than other schools of thought. If inclined to visionariness, and seemingly sometimes on the verge of lunacy even, they have revealed depths of being, a devotion to the spirit of universality, that render their works most edifying. They, more than any other, hold the balance between mind and matter, and illuminate literature, while they furthered the science, art, and religion of all times. An age deficient in idealism has ever been one of immorality and superficial attainment, since without the sense of ideas, nobility of character becomes of rare attainment, if possible. If the speaker cannot illuminate the parlor, shall he adorn the pulpit? Who takes most of private life into the desk comes nearest heaven and the children who have not lapsed out of it. Is it not time in the world's history to have less familiarity with sin and the woes of the pit? Commend me to him who holds me fast by every sense, persuades me -- against every bias of temperament, habit, training, culture -- to espouse the just and lovely, and he shall be in my eyes thereafter the Priest of the Spirit and the Sent of Heaven. It is undeniable that, with all our teaching and preaching -- admirable as these often are -- the current divinity falls behind our attainments in most things else; the commanding practical sense and adventurous thoughts of our time being unawakened to the concerns wherein faith and duty have their seats, and from whose fountains life and thought are spiritualized and made lovely to men. Though allegory is superseded in good part by the novel, the field for this form of writing is as rich and inviting as when Bunyan wrote. A sacred allegory, treating of the current characteristics of the religious world, would be a powerful instrumentality for awakening and stimulating the piety of our times. Every dogma embodies some shade of truth to give it seeming currency. Take the theological trinity as an instance which has vexed the literal Church from its foundation, and still perplexes its learned doctors. An intelligible psychology would interpret the mystery even to the unlearned and unprofessional. Analyse the attributes of your personality -- that which you name yourself -- and you will find herein the threefold attributes of instinct, intelligence, will, incarnate in your own person: -- the root plainly of the trinitarian dogma. -- Not till we have fathomed the full significance of what we mean when we pronounce "I myself," is the idea of person clearly discriminated, philosophy and religion established upon immutable foundations. Ever present and operant is That which never becomes a party in one's guilt, conceives never an evil thought, consents never to an unrighteous deed, never sins; but holds itself impeccable, immutable, personally holy -- the Conscience -- counsellor, comforter, judge, and executor of the spirit's decrees. None can flee from the spirit's presence, nor hide himself. The reserved powers are the mighty ones. Side by side sleep the Whispering Sisters and the Eumenides. Nor is Conscience appeased till the sentence is pronounced. There is an oracle in the beast, an unsleeping police; and ever the court sits, dealing doom or deliverance. Our sole inheritance is our deeds. While remorse stirs the sinner, there remains hope of his redemption. "Only he to whom all is one, who draweth all things to one, and seeth all things in one, may enjoy true peace and rest of spirit." None can escape the Presence. The Ought is everywhere and imperative. Alike guilt in the soul and anguish in the flesh affirm His ubiquity. Matter -- in particle and planet, mind and macrocosm -- is quick with spirit. Born daily out of a world of wonders into a world of wonders, that faith is most ennobling which, answering to one's highest aspirations, touches all things meanwhile with the hues of an invisible world. And how vastly is life's aspect, the sphere of one's present activity, widened and ennobled the moment there step spiritual agents upon the stage, and he holds conscious communication with unseen powers! "He to whom the law which he is to follow," says Jacobi, "doth not stand forth as a God, has only a dead letter which cannot possibly quicken him." The religious life transcends the scientific understanding, its light shining through the clouds to those alone whose eyes are anointed to look behind the veils by lives of purity and devotion. Personal Identity is the sole Identity. "That which knows and that which is known," says Aristotle, "are really the same thing." The knowing that I am affirms also the personality immanent in all persons; and hence of the Supreme Person, since distinct from personality neither mind nor God were thinkable. And it were impossible to have like conceptions in our minds, if we did not partake of one and the same intellect.
An impersonal God were an absurdity. Personality is essential to the idea of spirit, and man, as man, were unthinkable without the presupposition of personality. It is the I that gives subsistence to nature and reality to mind. Where the I is not, nothing is. Religion and science alike presuppose its presence as their postulate arid ground. It is the essence of which substance is the manifestation. Qualities are inherent in substance, and substance is one and spiritual. Personal Identity is spiritual, not numerical, souls being one, bodies not one. Any number of bodies can never attain to unity, since it is the one in each that defines and denotes it. The personality is inclusive of the one in each and in all. Our sleep is a significant symbol of the soul's antecedence. Shall I question that I now am, because I am unconscious of being myself while I slept; or because I am conscious of being then unconscious? I am sure of being one and the same person I then was, and thread my identity through my successive yesterdays into the memory out of which my consciousness was born; nor can I lose myself in the search of myself. At best, our mortality is but a suspended animation, the soul meanwhile awaiting its summons to awaken from its slumbers. Every act of sleep is a metamorphosis of bodies and a metempsychosis of souls. We lapse out of the senses into the pre-existent life of memory through the gate of dreams, memory and fancy opening their folding-doors into our past and future periods of existence: -- the soul freed for the moment from its dormitory in space and time. The more of sleep the more of retrospect; the more of wakefulness, the more of prospect. Memory marks the nadir of our consciousness, imagination its zenith. Before the heavens thou art, and shall survive their decay. Were man personally finite, he could not conceive of infinity; were he mortal he could not conceive of immortality. Whatever had a beginning comes of necessity to its end, since it has not the principle of perpetuity inherent in itself. And there is that in man which cannot think annihilation, but thinks continuance. All life is eternal; there is no other. Despair snuffs the sun from the firmament.
Excerpted from Orphic Sayings and Table Talk, by Amos Bronson Alcott |
How Like an Angel Came I Down: Conversations With Children on the Gospels, by Amos Bronson Alcott Amos Bronson Alcott: An Intellectual Biography, by Frederick Dahlstrand
|
||||
|
Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Book... Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Magazine...
|
|||||
|
|
|||||
|
|
||
|
|
||
[Homepage] [Newsletter] [Search] [Support the Academy] [Link to Us] [Contact the Academy] [Citing Articles from Our Website] [Privacy Policy & Disclaimer]
Copyright 1998-99, 2000-01, 2002-03, & 2004 by The Radical Academy. All Rights Reserved.