CONFUCIUS, ZOROASTER, PERSIAN POETRY "NATURE creates in the East the uncontrollable yearning to escape from limitation into the vast and boundless, to use a freedom of fancy which plays with all works of Nature, great or minute, galaxy or grain of dust, as toys and words of the mind; inculcates a beatitude to be found in escape from all organization and all personality, and makes ecstasy an institution." These sentences, prefixed in the Centenary edition to the speech delivered, 1860, in Boston, in honor of the Chinese embassy, doubtless come near to expressing the fundamental attraction which all Eastern thought had for Emerson. The Hindus he places if anything a little higher than the Persians,' but he found in the Oriental temperament as a whole that seizure upon the central unity to the comparative neglect of details which corresponded to his own habits of thought. Dr. Emerson tells us how his father became acquainted with the Eastern oracles and poetry.2 I VIII, 239. 2 VIII, 413 ff. In Thomas Taylor's translations of Proclus he found the Chaldean Oracles attributed to Zoroaster, from which, by the way, he most frequently quotes in his works rather than from other Zoroastrian works. Besides, he owned a book, the Desatir, or "Regulations," containing sayings of fifteen Persian prophets.2 The full title is "The Desatir, or Sacred Writings of the Ancient Persian Prophets, together with the Ancient Persian Version and Commentary of the Fifth Sasan, carefully published by Mulla Firuz Bin Kaus," Bombay, 1818.3 In his essay on "Persian Poetry" he gives prominent place to the German versions of Persian belles-lettres made by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, and it was these German translations, as Dr. Emerson says, that formed the basis of Emerson's own re-translations and of his knowledge of the chief Persian poets. Comments on Hafiz appear in Emerson's Journal as early as 1841, and his interpretative poem, "Saadi," was printed in The Dial for October, 1842. Extracts from Confucius appear in The Dial for April, 1843. I See the Emerson Index, under Proclus; and quotations from Taylor in The Dial, vol. IV, p. 529 ff. 2 See quotations in The Dial, vol. IV, p. 59. 3 III, 314. No doubt, speaking generally, Emerson liked Confucius, Zoroaster, Hafiz, Saadi, and the rest, because they were all in some true sense heroic men; besides, they furnished him quotable material. But we should strive to be more particular in stating his affinities with each. Of Confucius he cited, in the address in honor of the Chinese embassy, his intellectual modesty, his so-called "Golden Rule," his emphasis upon the doctrine of self-responsibility. He did not refer to certain other points of contact, such as the satisfaction of Confucius in the poverty of his youth because it had taught him many arts; and such sayings as the following: "The superior man may have to endure want, but he is still the superior man. The small man in the same circumstances loses his self-command." Again, Confucius says with Emerson: "Man is greater than any system of thought." A favorite quotation from Confucius is that in which the governor who complained of thieves was assured that his own covetousness was the cause of covetousness in others. Both Confucius and Emerson sought to produce righteousness in the individual; both trusted in the contagion of personal righteousness. But Con fucius believed that the self needed to be conquered: Emerson that the native instincts needed rather to be liberated. Both saw virtue as its own |