MYSTICISM AND PANTHEISM

Before approaching those Greek authors that Emerson loved so well, orderly procedure suggests that attention be paid to two special forms of philosophical thought, with each of which at one time or another he has been identified.

Emerson is often called a mystic, and it must be acknowledged that there is some degree of justification for the term. If "the thought that is most intensely present with the mystic is that of a supreme, all-pervading, and in-dwelling power, in whom all things are one," this thought is at the foundation of Emerson's philosophy. The article from which the preceding quotation is taken goes on to say that the single principle enunciated is an insufficient criterion of mysticism as distinguished from the main assumption of all religion. The ordinary philosophical definition of mystic is one who believes in the possibility of direct personal revelation from God to man. Emerson certainly so believed, as we soon shall see. The intensity of realization of the divine in the individual, or

from another point of view, the dependence upon periods of exaltation, ecstasy, or special revelation for a knowledge of truth these are the more exact qualities of differentiation. From this standpoint also there is evidence that Emerson was essentially a mystic. He too had special seasons of spiritual exaltation. "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 eye-ball: I am nothing; I see all; the currents of Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God." In addition to partaking of the mystic's season of special revelation, Emerson's trend agrees with what has been pointed out as the theoretic drift of mystical states. Professor James, after citing striking examples of mystical ecstasy, speaks as follows of the philosophical directions of such inarticulate states: "One of these directions is optimism, and the other is monism. . . . We feel them as reconciling, unifying states. They appeal to the yes-function more than to the no-function in One thinks of Emerson's optimism, his unfaltering declaration of the eternal One, his

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II, 10. Cf. the poem "Pan." See also III, 71, and the Index under "Ecstasy."

2" The Varieties of Religious Experience," p. 416, ed. 1902.

fondness for affirmative statement and for attempts to reconcile opposites in a great all-satisfying assertion.

It may be added that there is a likeness between the mystical doctrine that God should not be prayed to for anything and Emerson's pulpit habit of public meditation that so exasperated those accustomed to public petition.

But if Emerson appears mystical in being the subject of states of peculiar exaltation and insight, and also in sharing the fundamental philosophical content of mysticism, is he to be completely described by this term which has so often been used to denominate him sometimes in reproach? There are at least two respects in which Emerson avoids the excesses of historical mysticism: one is in his practical common sense, and the other is in his virtue. His upbringing in poverty, forcing him into hard contact with actual affairs, may have had something to do with the former; at any rate it is the universal testimony that he was a duplex product, uniting spiritual vision with ordinary prudence. Lowell's oft-quoted couplet will scarcely be bettered:

"A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, whose range Has Olympus for one pole, for t'other the Exchange."

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Contrast his small valuation of wealth, after the mystic's fashion,' with his well known remark to Fields the publisher on a second payment of royalty on a reprinted book. He took the money, saying: "I was a thief from the foundation of the world." In short, his moments of elevation did not, in the days of his maturity, destroy his ability to appreciate a fact. Further, the same common sense applied to religion made it impossible that his conduct should even faintly suggest the vicious extremes to which mysticism led in the days of the Spanish Inquisition. Lasciviousness, charlatanry, the doctrine that the sins of the body are not chargeable to one of the Illuminated Emerson's name lends no countenance to such folly. His compound contained ingredients which kept him from permanent detachment from actual affairs on the one hand, and on the other hand from sinful excesses due to a failure to distinguish between a genuine divine revelation and its counterfeit. his own time, the contrast was conspicuous between his poised sanity and the eccentricities of the unbalanced Transcendentalist.3 Besides, Emerson's treatment of well-known mystics in his 1II, 123 and Note.

2 H. C. Lea, "A History of the Spanish Inquisition," ch. v. 3" Emerson in Concord," pp. 206-211.

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