Transcendentalist Hermeneutics: Institutional Authority and the Higher Criticism of the Bible 9780822382829

Citation preview

Transcendentalist Henneneutics

Post-Contemporary Interventions Series Editors: Stanley Fish and FredricJameson

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics Institutional Authority and the Higher Criticism

ojthe Bible

Richard A. Grusin

Duke University Press Durham and London 199 I

© 1991 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 00 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

For mother, wife, and daughter Marcia, Ann, and Sarah Grusin

Contents

List of Abbreviations Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter One. Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry "The True Doctrine Respecting Forms" "My Regeneration of Mind, Manners, Inward & Outward Estate"

"Hoc Est Corpus Meum" "To Make Those Who Partake of It Better" "How It Figures in the Ledger" "An Amulet against Delusions" "By Hatred of Excess" "The Sublime Attractions of the Grave" "The Scheme of Necessity" "We Worship in the Dead Forms of Our Forefathers" The Moral Presence of Christ

ix xi

9 14 18 24 28

33 35

39 44

46

Chapter Two. The Divinity School "Address" Controversy "There Is No Dead Letter but a Perpetual Scripture"

"Endorser for the Heresy" The "Unitarian Conscience" and the "Regula Fidei" "The Teacher of the Coming Age"

55

61 72

viii

Contents

Chapter Three. Thoreau's Mythological Interpretation Seeing through "The Mist of Prejudice"

"To Look through Each Other's Eyes" "History, Poetry, Mythology!" "A la Mode Strauss" "The Mist of Prejudice" "A Natural Sabbath"

81

84

93 102 108

Chapter Four. The Two Theodore Parkers: Interpretation, Intuition, and Maternal Authority

"There Are Two Theodore Parkers Now" "The Great Spiritual Trial of My Life" "What God Pronounces True" "The Dear Heavenly Mother" "The Oldest Institution of the World" Notes Works Cited Index

115 118 12 4

13° 14°

List of Abbreviations

CE CS

CW JMN L W YES

Centenary Edition ofthe Works of Theodore Parker The Complete Sermons ofRalph Waldo Emerson The Collected Works ofRalph Waldo Emerson TheJournals and Miscellaneous Notebooks ofRalph Waldo Emerson The Letters ofRalph Waldo Emerson The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Centenary Edition Young Emerson Speaks: Unpublished Discourses on Many Subjects

Acknowledgments

As the example of Emerson suggests, to acknowledge our debts is to be

reminded (sometimes painfully) of our lack of self-reliance. I am nonetheless pleased to take this opportunity to remember those on whom I have relied. My debts to the works of many scholars are inscribed both in the text and in the notes. I am grateful also to those who (at one stage or another) have either read and commented on various parts of this work or helped to refine my arguments-Mitchell Breitwieser, Richard Bridgman, Gillian Brown, Stanley Fish, Richard Hutson, Steven Knapp, Ken Knoespel, Joel Myerson, Walter Reed, and Michael Rogin. I would in addition like to thank the two readers for Duke University Press, Julie Ellison and Wallace Williams. Finally, there are four people without whom this book would never have been. To Walter Benn Michaels and Frances Ferguson, under whose academic parentage this work was engendered, and to Howard Horwitz and Stuart Culver, by whose sibling rivalries I continue to be challenged, I owe a debt that will never fully be repaid.

Introduction "We Do Not Make a World of Our Own"

On September 9, r832, Ralph Waldo Emerson told his parishioners at Boston's Second Unitarian Church: "It is my desire, in the office of a Christian minister, to do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart" (W r r: 24). What Emerson could not wholeheartedly do was administer the Lord's Supper. When the Second Church rejected the changes he had proposed-including the elimination of the elements and the withdrawal of the claim that Jesus had permanently authorized the Supper-he felt compelled to resign his office after only three years' service. Since r877, when O. B. Frothingham, Transcendentalism's first (and most appreciative) historian, claimed that "The Lord's Supper," Emerson's "epoch-making" resignation sermon, "raised the whole issue" of Transcendentalism in New England, historians of American literature and culture have viewed his resignation as the paradigmatic expression of the Transcendentalist antipathy to all institutionalized forms of religious observance.! In A World Elsewhere Richard Poirier clarified what is at stake in such a reading of Emerson's resignation. "Having abandoned the ministry in r832," Poirier writes, Emerson embarked upon his lifelong attempt to become a "poet": "a man who can relinquish the accoutrements of society and civilization in order to possess a purer and larger sense of the self" (63). For Poirier "this relinquishment of social and literary ties" is not only characteristic of Transcendentalism, but "is the final evidence in American literature that a man is becoming a 'poet,' finding his proper 'style'" (62).

2

Introduction

Thus to see Emerson's resignation as a rejection of institutional authority in the search for "a purer and larger sense of the self" is to see his resignation as the emblematic (if not inaugural) moment of the powerful reading of American literature currently being challenged by the ongoing revision of American literary scholarship in the name of history and ideology. That is, to maintain such a reading of Emerson's resignation is to see the American literary canon as a corporate, if diverse, attempt to possess a self that is independent of (and fundamentally opposed to) "the accoutrements of society and civilization."2 In this reading of Emerson's resignation, it is not only the self but the very idea of the "literary" that is considered to be independent of society's institutional accoutrements. For if American literature is defined as the attempt to free the self from the constraints of institutional authority, then it follows that what counts as literature must be similarly defined. Or, as Poirier put it, Emerson's (and by extension any American "poet's") "opposition to conventional systems prevents his appealing for support to any realities constituted outside his own language," which as the language of a "poet" is seen to be free from the arbitrary linguistic conventions of ordinary language.3 Thus "The Lord's Supper" counts as literary (in fact it is the only sermon included in the published Works) because it is seen to terminate Emerson's involvement with institutionalized religion, whereas the remaining 136 sermons he wrote as minister to the Second Church do not because they are seen to be constrained by the linguistic and social conventions of the Unitarian pulpit, thus disabling them for the literary tasks of the "poet." For the past two decades American cultural historians have been exploring the ways in which art and literature are bound up with social, economic, and political institutions. Increased attention to questions of race, class, and gender has revealed that these issues have often been repressed or concealed in traditional American literary histories. Just as the figure of Emerson plays a central role in such histories, so the text of Emerson represents an interpretive crux for revisionist critics. In this regard my work is no exception, participating in the ongoing endeavor to reconceptualize the legacy of Emersonian Transcendentalism for American literary and cultural history. At the same time, however, I hope to avoid what I see as a limitation of some revisionist criticism: a tendency to hold on to the traditional reading of Transcendentalist anti-institutionalism, even while exposing the ways in which this reading serves a particular set of ideological, institutional practices. Thus, while the reading of Transcendentalist discourse that I set forth in this book participates in the ongoing

Introduction

3

reVISIon of American literary history, it also aspires to a more radical revisionism. Rather than accepting as fundamental the logical and rhetorical oppositions that are thought to derive from Emersonian Transcendentalism-between intuition and institutions, the literary and the political, self and society, heart and head-I set out to reexamine these oppositions in the discursive context from which they emerged. Much recent criticism also sets out to demonstrate that these oppositions are not absolute, disinterested, or universal, arguing instead that they are ideological, interested, and historically specific. Nonetheless such demystifications often accept the fact that the discourse of Transcendentalism upholds as absolute such logical and rhetorical oppositions. My book questions this fact, suggesting that Transcendentalism was from the beginning more complicated and less committed to these oppositions than either traditionalists or revisionists might have us believe. In reconsidering Transcendentalist anti-institutionalism I begin with a full-scale reconsideration of Emerson's resignation from the ministry, which remains one of the predominant images of an American literature free from society's arbitrary "conventional systems." Even in the most antinomian moments of his deliberations over resigning the ministry, however, as in the following January 1832 journal entry, Emerson refused to conceive of the solution to his problems as the outright rejection of all institutional authority. It is the best part of the man, I sometimes think, that revolts most against his being the minister. His good revolts from official goodness. If he never spoke or acted but with the full consent of his understanding, if the whole man acted always, how powerful would be every act & every word. Well then or ill then how much power he sacrifices by conforming himself to say & do in other folks' time instead of his own! The difficulty is that we do not make a world of our own but fall into institutions already made & have to accomodate [sic] ourselves to them to be useful at all. & this accomodation is, I say, a loss of so much integrity & of course so much power. But how shall the droning world get on if all its beaux esprits recalcitrate upon its approved forms & accepted institutions & quit them all in order to be single minded? The double refiners would produce at the other end the double damned. (JMN 3: 3 18- 19)

More than simply a weakening of the young minister's determination to resign his office, this entry suggests that in the months before his resignation Emerson's concern with how to break from religious institutions was

4

Introduction

inseparable from his concern with how to act effectively within them. Emerson here articulates three distinct positions in regard to our action within institutions. Because "we do not make a world of our own," he rejects the suggestion of the "double refiners" that we seek a world elsewhere (proleptically qualifying the Orphic Poet's claim at the end of Nature to "Build, therefore, your own world," GW I: 45).4 And because our fall into institutions entails "a loss of so much integrity & of course so much power," he is equally loath to find himself amidst the "double damned," who "say & do in other folks' time." Although (as throughout his career) he portrays the conflict between individual and institutional authority as a matter of choice, the choice to reject the authority of a particular institution involves simultaneously an accommodation to the authority of "institutions already made." I cite this passage from the journal because its portrayal of a self-reliant rejection of institutional authority as one strategy among others for dealing with such authority is paradigmatic of the Transcendentalist approach toward institutionalized religion that my book unfolds. In examining the questions of institutional authority that inform Emerson's deliberations on resigning from the ministry, I begin with what has become almost a critical commonplace: that the higher criticism of the Bible, in its focus on factors such as authorship, date, place of origin, circumstances of composition, and historical credibility, provided Emerson a hermeneutic model with which to liberate himself from the historical and institutional authority of the Unitarian interpretation of Scripture. 5 This coupling of higher critical influence with the rejection of institutionalized religious authority furnishes the principle of selection governing my treatment of Emersonian Transcendentalism. In pursuing the influence of higher criticism on the Transcendentalist critique of institutions, my book addresses what in the past two decades has become a burgeoning interest among literary critics in the history and theory of biblical criticism. My aim in exploring this influence has not been to assemble a comprehensive source study but to consider a number of representative instances in which the higher criticism affected the Transcendentalist understanding of the historical authority of institutionalized religion. Accordingly my first chapter examines the influence of the higher criticism on Emerson's resignation, an influence that proves to be more heterogeneous than has often been suggested. Reading "The Lord's Supper" in its appropriate contexts-the post-Reformation history of theological debate over communion; Emerson's developing conception of his ministerial commitment; the death of his first wife; and the extensive deliberation of

Introduction

5

the question of resignation in journal, letters, and sermons-I trace the way in which Emerson's influence by the higher criticism was filtered through a number of diverse sources. The result of this reading is to demonstrate that Emerson's resignation consisted in a reexamination (one might say, resignification) of the way in which religious forms and institutions worked. In rejecting the authority of the Lord's Supper and resigning the ministry, Emerson concludes that "the true doctrine respecting forms" is that religious authority consists not in the external embodiment of such emblems as the bread and wine of communion but in the internalization of a "critical conscience" that is both inscribed by and the judge of existing religious institutions. After investigating the influence of the higher criticism on Emerson's resignation from the ministry, I turn in the second chapter to his assault on the Unitarian interpretation of historical Christianity and the personal authority of]esus. The Divinity School "Address" is customarily understood as the culmination of higher critical influence on Emerson's critique of Unitarianism. Emerson's critique of Unitarian preaching in the "Address" is sometimes taken as an instance of Unitarian principles of interpretation turned against the increasing professionalization of the Unitarian ministry. Situating the "Address" in the context both of the antebellum culture of professionalism and of the biblical hermeneutics being taught in New England's divinity schools, I argue that Emerson's advice to Harvard's graduating seniors to "preach the moral sentiment" ("to show us that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake") is best understood as a case of ministerial professionalism turned against the Unitarian presupposition that correct interpretive principles produce correct interpretations of the Bible. In addition to tracing the extent of higher critical influence on Emerson's early career, I pursue the question of the higher criticism in relation to two quite different Transcendentalists on whom Emerson himself had an important influence. In the book's third chapter I investigate Henry David Thoreau's critique of institutionalized religion in the "Sunday" chapter of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Although Thoreau was less directly affected by the higher criticism than Emerson, he formulates an account of mythological interpretation that ironically has more bearing on the higher criticism than either Emerson's resignation from the ministry or his Divinity School "Address." Consequently I read the Week's "Sunday" chapter in relation to the continental development (and subsequent criticism) of the maxim that to interpret Scripture correctly the biblical interpreter should aim to see through the eyes of its authors or intended

6 Introduction

audience. Taking as my starting point Thoreau's suggestion in Walden that to look through the eyes of another would constitute the greatest of all possible miracles, I argue that the account of mythological interpretation set forth in the Week constitutes a denial of the possibility either of reading ancient texts through the eyes of their authors or of reading them independently of our own particular historical, institutional situations. Whatever acquaintance with continental higher criticism Thoreau might have had would likely have come from Theodore Parker, whose review of David Friedrich Strauss's infamous Life of Jesus I take up in relation to Thoreau's mythological interpretation. In the book's final chapter I examine the coupling of maternal and intuitive authority in Parker's lifelong critique of institutionalized religion. Although Parker had the most thorough and extensive knowledge of the higher criticism among the Transcendentalists, he makes surprisingly little use of this knowledge in his sermons and published works-relying instead on the internalization of a logical and rhetorical identity between maternal and divine authority. Read in the context of the two autobiographical pieces composed in the year before his death, Parker's attempt to ground religion permanently in our innate intuitive faculties turns out itself to be contingent upon the authority of such transient institutions as marriage and the family. More clearly than either Emerson or Thoreau, Parker reveals the way in which the Transcendentalist appeal to the authority of the heart is an appeal not to a source of authority independent of institutions but to an authority so fundamentally institutional-in Parker's case the authority of the mother-that it appears to be innate. Among the lessons that Emerson, Thoreau, and Parker took from the higher criticism was what in the present critical climate might be characterized as the discovery of history. Much as the influence of ideology on the ongoing revision of American literary history has fostered the recognition that art and literature are inseparable from the ideological context in which they occur, the influence of the higher criticism on Emerson, Thoreau, and Parker spawned a recognition that the religious truths set forth in the Bible are not the absolute and unconditioned word of God but the product of the historical epochs in which the Bible was written, edited, and collected. One consequence of this collective realization was the perceived need to reconceptualize the authority of existing religious institutions. And as the above passage from Emerson's journal suggests, the aim of such reconceptualization consists not in the "single-minded" rejection of institutional authority but in a more complicated effort to accommodate oneself to the authority of

Introduction

7

"institutions already made" by accommodating existing institutions to the authority of oneself. Or to put it differently, the authority on which these Transcendentalists would ground a rejection of religious institutions is predicated upon the very institutions they set out to reject. Although the logical and rhetorical opposition between individual and institutional authority constitutes the fundamental legacy of Transcendentalist discourse for American culture, it is precisely the imagination of "a world elsewhere" underwritten by this opposition that this book sets out to complicate. For it is only insofar as "we do not make a world of our own" that the Orphic Poet's injunction to "build, therefore, your own world" has any force at all.

Chapter One Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry "The True Doctrine Respecting Forms"

'~y Regeneration

ofMind, Manners, Inward & Outward Estate"

In the opening sentence of Freedom and Fate Stephen Whicher maintains that "Emerson came late into his force" (3). Because this claim remains substantially unquestioned, passages such as the journal passage discussed in the introduction have often been dismissed as the residue of Emerson's early immaturity. 1 Although Whicher considers Nature Emerson's first great work, he nonetheless contends that "Emerson came into his intellectual majority" in 1831 (23). Arguing that "the first two volumes of his journalthose before his resignation from the Second Church-show little distinction of style or thought," Whicher does not see Emerson's resignation as the first indication of his disenchantment with the ministry (3).2 Rather he traces this disenchantment to Emerson's professional dedication in the journal for 1824, a dedication that signifies a wholehearted acceptance not of the ministry's forms and institutions but of its literary nature (5). Eric Cheyfitz has described the figure of Emerson that Whicher and others have bequeathed to American literary history as "resolutely disembodied"-a figure whose locus classicus is the transparent-eyeball passage in Nature ("Foreword" vii). In Whicher's influential account, Cheyfitz argues, "it is embodiment, the force of experience, that marks the decisive loss of power in Emerson.... Emerson's revolutionary or originary power resides in his disembodiment" ("Foreword" viii). Thus just as Emerson's

10

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

embodiment of a professional character in the dedication to the ministry entails a "decisive loss of power," so the disembodiment enacted in Emerson's resignation from the ministry would constitute for Whicher an access of "revolutionary or originary power." Emerson's reasons for resigning his ministry were complex and multilayered. In this chapter I attempt to sort out those reasons, reading his resignation sermon in the context not only of the history of the Lord's Supper (from the Reformation to the liberal Unitarianism of his day), but also of his evolving conception of the ministry (from the 1824 dedication to the extended deliberations in both the journals and letters on the question of resignation). In so doing I argue that Emerson came to understand his resignation not as a wholesale rejection of the authority of religious institutions but as a continuation of the goals of his ministry set forth in his professional dedication. For Whicher the problem with this dedication is that it is not a genuine act of self-reliance; Emerson imposes "a professional character 'as a robe,'" a character whose "foreignness to his independent nature" is demonstrated by the "vigor of his recoil" from the ministry in 1832 (5). But if we turn to Emerson's dedication, we can see that it is Whicher himself who has imposed an interpretation of the dedication that is foreign to its professed intent. 3 As the dedication unfolds it becomes clear not only that it is the embodiment of character that is at issue in his commitment to the ministry but that it is precisely the foreignness of the ministry's professional character that Emerson hopes to embody when he dedicates himself to a career in divinity. The dedication begins with a self-critical examination of Emerson's abilities in which he describes his character in terms similar to those used by Whicher. "I cannot dissemble that my abilities are below my ambition. And I find that I judged by a false criterion when I measured my powers by my ability to understand & to criticize the intellectual character of another. For men graduate their respect not by the secret wealth but by the outward use; not by the power to understand, but by the power to act." (fMN 2: 238). Unable to employ his private powers in public situations, Emerson possesses a youthful social awkwardness that prevents him from manifesting his genuine talents. Although Whicher blames the professional demands of the ministry for contributing to Emerson's "want of sufficient bottom," Emerson seems uncertain whether the fault is society's or his own (fMN 2: 240): every comparison of myself with my mates that six or seven, perhaps sixteen or seventeen, years have made has convinced me that there

Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry

I I

exists a signal defect of character which neutralizes in great part the just influences my talent ought to have. Whether that defect be in the address, in the fault of good forms, which Queen Isabella said, were like perpetual letters commendatory, or deeper seated in an absence of common sympathies, or even in a levity of the understanding, I cannot tell. (jMN 2: 238) No matter where the blame is placed, Emerson is convinced that his "defect of character" lies in the failure to convert his private wealth into a viable form of public currency. Because of this failure, Emerson finds himself unfit for medicine or law: "But in Divinity I hope to thrive" (jMN 2: 239).4 Emerson's hopes for success in "Divinity" rest in part on his "strong imagination" and his "passionate love for the strains of eloquence," both of which promise him to be "the possessor of those powers which command the reason & passions of the multitude. The office of a clergyman is twofold; public preaching & private influence. Entire success in the first is the lot of few, but this I am encouraged to expect. If however the individual himself lack that moral worth which is to secure the last, his studies upon the first are idly spent" (jMN 2: 239-40). Emerson expresses his uncertainty over his prospective success in the ministry in terms of the same lack of "moral worth," the "want of that confidence of manner which springs from an erect mind which is without fear and without reproach," that renders him unfit for medicine or law (jMN 2: 240). But now his problem seems to have been reversed. He is confident of his powers of "public preaching" but unsure of his powers of "private influence." There is, however, an even more significant reversal involved in this account of his qualifications for the ministry. His "signal defect" is no longer purely social but is seen to have infected the "secret wealth" of his innermost character. Emerson characterizes this inward lack of moral worth in terms of a failure to govern his body, reminding himself that "'Spare Fast oft with Gods doth diet,' thatJustinian devoted but one out of twenty four hours to sleep," and that "this week (for instance) I will remember to curtail my dinner & supper sensibly & rise from table each day with an appetite; & so see if* it be fact that I can understand more clearly" (fMN 2: 240). Although the asterisk after "if" refers to a note that limits the duration of Emerson's diet ("N.B. Till Tuesday Evg next"), the entry goes on to emphasize that his character defects ("I have mentioned a defect of character; perhaps it is not one, but many") revolve around a failure to achieve what he calls "an entire conquest of himself" (jMN 2: 240).

12

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

We applaud as possessed of extraordinary good sense, one who never makes the slightest mistake in speech or action; one in whom not only every important step of life, but every passage of conversation, every duty of the day, even every movement of every muscle-hands, feet, & tongue, are measured & dictated by deliberate reason. I am not assuredly that excellent creature. A score of words & deeds issue from me daily, of which I am not the master. They are begotten of weakness & born of shame. (JMN 2: 240) Cheyfitz suggests that the defect of character described in this passage (and throughout his ministerial dedication) is Emerson's "inability to converse," his "lack of conversational eloquence" (Trans-Parent 104, 106). Tellingly Emerson imagines this lack of eloquence in explicitly corporeal terms. Insofar as his lack of moral worth has infected his innermost character, its symptoms manifest themselves bodily, in "every movement of every muscle-hands, feet, & tongue." Emerson elaborates the bodily nature of this infection when he introduces a hypothetical objection to his choice of career: that one who is so unworthy is not morally fit to be a minister. And the good have a right to ask the Neophyte who wears this garment of scarlet sin, why he comes where all are apparelled in white? Dares he hope that some patches of pure & generous feeling, some bright fragment of lofty thought, it may be of divine poesy shall charm the eye away from all the particoloured shades of his Character? And when he is clothed in the vestments of the priest, & has inscribed on his forehead "Holiness to the Lord," & wears on his breast the breastplate of the tribes, then can the Ethiopian change his skin & the unclean be pure? (JMN 2: 241) The logic of this objection duplicates the logic Emerson uses above to describe his character defects. Initially he describes these defects as social ones, like the spiritual faux pas of wearing a "garment of scarlet sin ... where all are apparelled in white." And just as his signal defect of character "is not one, but many," so his "garment of scarlet sin" multiplies into the "particoloured shades of his Character," from which his "oratorical eloquence" can at best hope to "charm the eye away" (Trans-Parent 106,jMN 2: 240). The process of sinful incorporation is completed when Emerson imagines himself "clothed in the vestments of the priest." The "particoloured shades of his Character" will have been absorbed into his body:

Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry

13

"then can the Ethiopian change his skin & the unclean be pure?" Once the outward sign of an inward unworthiness, Emerson's "garment of scarlet sin" will have become unworthy of itself. "How shall I strenuously enforce on men the duties & habits to which I am a stranger? Physician, heal thyself" (JMN 2: 241).

In the course of his ministerial dedication, Emerson transforms his character defects, which initially seemed to be the fault of "good forms" (the failure to manifest publicly a private wealth), into an inward failing (the lack of moral worth). In the same way he hopes that the public forms of the ministry will work to transfer their virtues from "the vestments of the priest" to the privacy of his character. I am young in my everlasting existence. I already discern the deep dye of elementary errors, which threaten to colour its infinity of duration. And I judge that if I devote my nights & days in101m to the service of God & the War against Sin,-I shall soon be prepared to do the same in substance. ... My trust is that my profession shall be my regeneration of mind, manners, inward & outward estate; or rather my starting point. (JMN 2: 241-42) Whicher argues that Emerson's professional robe worked to prevent the natural growth of his genuine, literary character. Emerson's dedication envisions the growth of character in precisely the opposite terms, imagining that the formal adherence to the duties of the ministry will begin his "regeneration of mind, manners, inward & outward estate." Whereas Whicher sees the professional demands of the ministry as stains on Emerson's "literary character," Emerson sees these demands as the solution that will bleach out "the deep dye of elementary errors" from his "particoloured" character. Emerson's professional dedication depicts the development of character in such a way as to suggest that he can best develop genuine character by donning one or another suit of professional garments. The self on which he is to rely is itself reliant on professional virtues. Even Emerson's literary talent, which Whicher considers the truly genuine element of his character, does not originate from himself: "I inherit from my sire a formality of manner & speech, but I derive from him or his patriotic parent a passionate love for the strains of eloquence" (JMN 2: 239). Although it is true that Emerson's ministerial dedication represents his commitment to a career in which he can satisfy his "passionate love for the strains of eloquence," it does not do so at the expense of the ministry's professional demands.

14

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

Emerson's dedication to the ministry in 1824 represents a genuine commitment both to the professional aspects of the Unitarian ministry and to a regimen of bodily regulation in which, he contends, "I oblige myself professionally to a life which all men freely & advisedly adopt" (JMN 2: 240). Not only does Emerson hope to minister to others in the course of his professional career, but he hopes that the forms and institutions of his profession will minister to him as well. "Hoc Est Corpus Meum"

In one of the few essays devoted exclusively to "The Lord's Supper," published in 1944, Mary C. Turpie argues that because Emerson borrowed extensively from Thomas Clarkson's A Portraiture of Quakerism for his objections to the Supper, his resignation sermon "is the least original of all his writings" (101).5 Despite Turpie's convincing demonstration that the exegetical section of Emerson's resignation sermon is taken almost point by point from Clarkson's history of the Quakers, most recent discussions of "The Lord's Supper" have failed to acknowledge Turpie's essay,6 insisting instead that the sermon demonstrates the influence of German higher criticism on Emerson's hermeneutics? Yet in contending that Emerson's resignation sermon is preoccupied with questions of interpretation, one does not need to rule out the possibility that the Supper was really at issue in his departure from the Second Church. As Ursula Brumm suggests, in the "religious culture" of New England Puritanism "it is the Lord's Supper that serves as a catalyst" for religious reform (104). By claiming "that Jesus did not command the rite of the Lord's Supper for all people and for all time," Brumm writes, "Emerson goes one step further toward removing religion from the institutionalized sphere" (104). For Brumm the real significance of Emerson's resignation sermon lies in the fact that "he went one step further than Donathan] Edwards in modifying Calvinist principles" ofbiblical interpretation (106). Although Brumm's account of Emerson's resignation effectively duplicates in another form the claim for Emerson's antiinstitutionalism that this chapter sets out to complicate, her conjunction of Emerson's account of scriptural interpretation with his objections to the Unitarian celebration of the Lord's Supper reminds us that the association between scriptural interpretation and the sacrament of communion was by no means unique either to Emerson or to New England. 8 Because Reformation debate over the Lord's Supper was centered on the Church's interpretation of Jesus' words of institution, "Hoc est corpus

Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry

15

meum," such debate inevitably came around to questions of embodiment-both how the elements could embody Jesus and how partaking of Jesus' spiritual body could provide a communicant with assurance of eternallife. In A Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity ofthe Church, for example, Martin Luther defends his literal interpretation of these words on exegetical grounds. In this interpretation, Luther insists, "no violence is to be done to the words of God," which "are to be retained in their simplest meaning wherever possible, and to be understood in their grammatical and literal sense, unless the context plainly forbids" (139). The literal sense of Jesus' words is violated, however, by the Church's doctrine of transubstantiation-that the blessings of the administrant effect a miraculous change in the substance of the sacramental bread and wine, transforming them into the body and blood of Christ, even while their form and accidents (color, texture, taste, etc.) remain the same. The Church requires "an absurd and unheard-of juggling with words, to understand 'bread' to mean 'the form, or accidents of bread,' and 'wine' to mean 'the form, or accidents of wine' " (139). "Hoc," Luther argued, was a synecdoche, referring to the bread (the part) which already contains within it the body of Christ (the whole). In the same way, a mother would point to her newborn infant wrapped in its swaddling clothes and say, "This is my child." The body of Christ, like the young Child, would be no less present because it was unseen. Because Christ is already present With, in, and under the form of the sacramental bread and wine, Luther contends, the blessings of the priest effect no miraculous change in the elements. Christ is really present to believers and unbelievers alike, independent of any ritual invocation. Ulrich Zwingli, the Swiss Reformer who represents the furthest extreme from Luther among the major Reformation figures, insists that "Hoc est corpus meum" be understood symbolically. George Santayana's delineation of the "tragedies" of "the little word is" speaks directly to Zwingli's position: "it marries and identifies different things with the greatest innocence; and yet no two are ever identical, and if therein lies the charm of wedding them and calling them one, therein too lies the danger."9 Zwingli bases his interpretation on the little word est, which "marries and identifies" two things (bread and body) whose identity he denies. Interpreting est to meansignijicat, Zwingli describes the bread and wine of the Supper as "a representation and memorial of his body and blood, just as a faithful wife, whose husband has left her a ring as a keepsake, frequently refers to the ring as her husband, saying: This is my late husband, although what she means is that it recalls her husband" (qtd. Hollifield 10). Zwingli's example

16

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

of the faithful wife, like Luther's example of the mother and child, is characteristic of the illustrative value of the feminine in exegetical debates over the Supper. Nonetheless the two examples work for very different ends. For Zwingli any account of Christ's bodily presence in the Supper is Romish superstition. The Supper is not a participation in the "real presence" of Christ, as Luther maintains, but a symbolic commemoration of the body and blood which he gave for mankind. Thus the Supper serves as a means of grace for only those who believe in the power of Christ's sacrifice to provide mankind with eternal life. Faith, not bodily eating, makes the Supper an efficacious rite. IO John Calvin's position on the Lord's Supper can be seen as a synthesis of Luther's and Zwingli's positions. With Luther, Calvin insists that the communicant in the Lord's Supper does indeed participate in Christ's invisible grace; he rejects Zwingli's claim that the Supper is no more than a symbolic commemoration of Christ's sacrifice. Yet at the same time, Calvin agrees with Zwingli's symbolic interpretation of the little word est. The idea of the local presence of Christ's body with, in, and under the form of the bread seems as ludicrous to Calvin as it does to Zwingli. Thus where Luther defends his belief in consubstantiation by appealing to the ubiquity of Christ's spiritual body, Calvin agrees with Zwingli that if Christ's body is present at all times in all places to all who seek him, then we might as well seek him in stones. But whereas Calvin agrees that the bread and wine are symbols of Christ's body and blood, he feels that Zwingli's attribution of only commemorative significance to the Supper robs it of its power as a real mean of grace; Zwingli's Supper is no different from any symbolic commemoration of Christ. Calvin supports his view of the Supper by interpreting "Hoc est corpus meum" as a metonymy, in which the thing signified, Christ's spiritual body, is rightly called by the name of its sign, the bread of the Supper. "For though the symbol differs in essence from the thing signified (in that the latter is spiritual and heavenly, while the former is physical and visible), still, because it not only symbolizes the thing that it has been consecrated to represent as a bare and empty token, but also truly exhibits it, why may its name not rightly belong to the thing?" (Calvin 2: 1385). The bread does not, like "a bare and empty token," arbitrarily signify the body of Christ. Because the sacramental relationship between signifier and signified is motivated by faith, the sacramental bread "truly exhibits" the body of Christ to a faithful communicant. As for Luther, the physical elements contain their spiritual referents. As for Zwingli, they also symbolize these referents.

Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry

17

Calvin defends this apparently contradictory position by making an important distinction between his understanding of sacramental efficacy and those of Luther and Zwingli. Although the latter two disagree about whether the elements contain the sacrificed body and blood of Christ with, in, and under the form of the bread and wine or simply commemorate that sacrifice, both Luther and Zwingli agree that the significance of the Supper is to be found in its representation of the sacrifice. Calvin, however, interprets the Supper as an instrument of faith, whose significance is to be found not in the sacrifice but in the renewal of the promise that accompanies the partaking of the elements in the Last Supper: that those who partake of his body and blood will have eternal life. That is, Calvin relocates the significance of the Supper from the sacrifice of Christ to the faith of the regenerate. For Calvin the decisive body is not so much the sacrificed body ofJesus symbolized by or consubstantial with the bread and wine of the Supper but the body of the communicant in which Jesus' promise of eternal life is renewed. 1 1 Although Calvin characteristically questions the ability of human signs and symbols to represent God's "infinite glory," he finds support for his belief that the elements could truly exhibit mankind's redemption in the Old Testament prefigurations of Christ. 12 As students ofAmerican literature are well aware, New England Puritans, whose colonization of America was consistently characterized as the founding of the New Jerusalem in the North American wilderness, would develop Calvin's association between types and sacraments in the service of the sacramental renaissance that flourished in New England during the decades surrounding the turn of the eighteenth century.I3 Despite this sacramental renaissance, however, the subsequent decline in New England conversions has been amply documented by historians. 14 In an attempt to stem this declension, the Synod of 1662 devised the "half-way covenant," under which the grandchildren of covenantors could be baptized without their parents (who were already being baptized on the force of their parents' covenants) having taken the Supper-provided that these uncovenanted parents would own the covenant, that is, assent to its aims and principles. Although designed to increase church membership, the halfway covenant proved to have the opposite effect. Too many members became content with their halfway salvation, and the number of communicants continued to decline. Because of this continued declension ministers were compelled to use whatever means were at their disposal to persuade their halfway members to take the Supper, while at the same time warning them not to partake hypocritically. Cotton

18

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

Mather manifests this dilemma in his Companionfor Communicants. "It is a sin to come unworthily to, but it is also a sin to stay unworthily from, that Blessed ordinance" (qtd. Miller, "Stoddard" 297).15 One response to the dilemma portrayed by Mather was Solomon Stoddard's decision to open the communion table at his New Hampton church to all who desired to partake of the Supper. 16 Stoddard defended his position in The Safety ofAppearing Before God on the Day ofjudgment, first published in 1687. Like Luther, Stoddard sought certainty in the Supper: "we may conclude that God is very careful to leave no room for doubting in this particular: his design is to put the thing out of all question" (150). Unlike Luther or Mather, Stoddard did not see damnation as the inevitable result of an unfaithful communion, since one took the Supper not with the claim to possess faith, but with the desire either to strengthen or to acquire it. "The great design of this ordinance is for the strengthening of faith; therein is offered to us a special communion with a crucified Saviour" (347).17 Once opened to all who desired to be saved, the Supper would not only signify different things to different communicants but would make available a whole range of different spiritual and bodily practices. Because these new practices tended to obscure the previously clearcut distinction between the elect and the unregenerate, creating a number of intermediary stages between salvation and damnation, Stoddard adopted a six-columned ledger to keep track of the progress of his parishioners (Miller, Colony 286). In so doing Stoddard introduced an interpretive pluralism to the rite, which anticipated the nineteenth-century Unitarian sacramental thought that informs Emerson's 1829 sermon on the Supper, his only extended discussion of the ordinance other than his resignation sermon. UTo Make Those Who Partake ofIt BeUer"

When Emerson was ordained at the Second Cpurch on March 1 I, 1829, the administration of the sacraments was among his formal duties. Although he rarely discussed the Lord's Supper in his sermons, the few times he did so occurred at crucial junctures in his career as minister. In a sermon on the office of a Christian minister preached four days after his ordination, Emerson first presented the members of the Second Church with his views on the sacraments. The Lord's Supper, he tells them, "is a symbol of a holy affection. And so it opens the door of the heart. He therefore who adventures to break the bread and pour out the waters of life should be himself

Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry

19

susceptible of emotion. The minister should be a man offeeling, or I fear he will vainly endeavour to excite movements in other souls that have no archetypes in his own" (CS I: 239). In claiming that the minister should be "a man of feeling," Emerson would transform the minister himself into an embodiment of the elements. Just as the bread and wine embody Jesus' promise of redemption, so the minister should embody the "archetypes" of the feelings he hopes to excite in the souls of his parishioners. I8 In March 1829 Emerson was undoubtedly "a man of feeling" susceptible to the emotions of the heart; some six months later he would marry Ellen Tucker, whose untimely death was to play an important role in his decision to resign the ministry. In the weeks before his marriage, Emerson's thoughts were interestingly enough on the Lord's Supper. On August 29, 1829, Emerson told his congregation that in our struggle for "selfcommand," "We need every support and every affection; we need the intercession of the faithful, and the Saviour; we need the kind monition of the Lord's Supper, and all the encouragement of each other's faith & example, and we need the effort of every moment" ("Self-Command"). The sermon's conjunction of the Lord's Supper with what might be a prescription for a happy marriage ("all the encouragement of each other's faith and example") suggests an implicit connection between the two sacraments, whether because administering communion "opens the door of the heart" or because marrying Ellen represented for Emerson a seal or renewal of his commitment to the profession of the ministry-if only on the level of thinking that a young minister needs a wife. I9 Whatever the reason, Emerson preached his first complete sermon on the Lord's Supper on September 27, three days before his marriage to Ellen, taking as his text Luke 22:19, "This do in remembrance of me." Ameditation on institutional change, the sermon opens with the claim that "God has given to us, as to each generation in succession, the dominion of the world, the care of supporting and carrying forward the frame and institutions of society" (YES 54). Although it is man's duty to support and carry forward society's institutions, Emerson suggests that these institutions are not identical to those of past ages: "The character of society is every moment undergoing a change. We stand on the same shores, but in different dress, with different laws, different customs, and new occupations. We read the same books but they speak to us in a different sense. That which bears the same name and stands in the same place is not always the same thing" (YES 54). In describing the historical development of the Lord's Supper, Emerson throughout the sermon vacillates between an interpretive pluralism and a

20

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

moral progressivism. What sounds like pluralism in the above passage ("We read the same books but they speak to us in a different sense") sounds like progressivism as he goes on to liken the development of man's moral institutions to the organic growth of nature: "God has made the acorn such that it will grow to an oak and he has made his moral institutions capable of a far mightier growth" (YES 55). As God's foremost moral institution, Christianity is especially suited to such growth. "As men think more and demand more Christianity is found to mean more, has more excitement and more consolation, and to be a nobler moral rule with more flexible application to life than a wise man who should have heard it expounded in the dark ages could have dreamed" (YES 55). Because the meaning of Christianity depends upon the moral and intellectual capaCities of mankind, rather than the organic capacities of nature, its value is Virtually limitless: "Neither are we to imagine that we have seen all or comprehended all; but let us believe as our forefathers did, that God has yet much light to impart" (YES 55).

Just as the meaning of Christianity has grown through the ages, so the Lord's Supper has increased its value and significance since that time "very early in the history of the Church, when gross superstition was combined with that ordinance" (YES 55). Emerson cites as an example of the progress of man's moral and intellectual development the "gross superstition" of the "famous doctrine of transubstantiation or the belief of the real presence of God in the bread and wine": "The very statement of this notion seems erroneous to us and incredible, a proof of how much we have truer notions than our ancestors" (YES 56). And it is precisely the fact that transubstantiation seems erroneous to Emerson and his Unitarian parishioners that proves the success of Jesus' intentions in instituting the Supper. Because Jesus "could not but foresee what perversions must be expected from the extreme ignorance of the world, to degrade the faith he would teach," Emerson continues, "he could not but feel that this institution must have a meaning and an use changed and accommodated to every age to which it should descend, and not only so, but almost peculiar to the mind of every disciple" (YES 57). Foreseeing the inevitable misinterpretations of his ordinance that would result "from the extreme ignorance of the world," Jesus did not specify the formal details of the Supper. "He set no time, he fixed no number, he added no mystery. He left his ordinance loose to go down to all churches suitable to the wants of all" (YES 57 ).20 If Jesus intended the Lord's Supper to be interpreted differently by men of different ages, Emerson sees no reason to insist otherwise. "I feel no anxiety, brethren, that all men should think alike of its nature and intent. I

Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry

2 I

am willing that every Christian should see it coloured by the complexion of his own mind" (YES 57). The liberal Unitarians of Emerson's day regularly opposed their own interpretive pluralism to the dogmatic interpretations of Christian doctrine which their Orthodox adversaries imposed on their followers. But as the Orthodox commonly rejoined, and as Emerson was to discover in 1832, the Unitarians' claim that they enforced no dogma is a misleading one (Wright 37). Although an interpretive pluralism works in theory to allow all believers the liberty to interpret the Supper in whatever way they will, it works in practice to enforce its own uniformly progressivist view that "the institution to all men is assuming, and with progress of men's minds will assume a more spiritual and useful character" (YES 57). For if the Supper is indeed becoming "more spiritual and useful" as our minds progress, then its significance is moving toward a unanimity of opinion that rules out the interpretive pluralism that Emerson's sermon seems at first to advocate, since those less spiritual and useful interpretations are being gradually discarded in favor of "more spiritual and useful" ones. 21 Emerson implicitly acknowledges this point when he tempers his claim for an interpretive pluralism. I said it was not important that men should think alike. Still, I think that there are certain broad views of the Lord's Supper which are the result of the good sense and liberal thinking of the age and which ought, therefore, to influence our practice much more than they do. And mainly I think it should embrace all men who believe in the divine authority of Christianity and not as now, only a small minority. (YES 57) An interpretive pluralism is acceptable to Emerson only so long as it conforms to "certain broad views" dictated by the "good sense and liberal thinking of the age," particularly the view that "the whole end and aim of this ordinance is nothing but this, to make those who partake ofit better. To join the Church is not to say I am good, or I have been, but I desire to be" (YES 57-58). Like Stoddard's claim that the Supper is a converting ordinance, Emerson's belief that the Supper's powers of moral improvement should be available to all who "believe in the divine authority of Christianity" appears to advocate a plurality of opinion regarding the Supper's "nature and intent." If put into practice, however, this interpretive plurality would begin to disappear. Emerson's claim that it is unnecessary for all Christians to think alike of the Supper's intent is itself an agent for insuring that they do think alike of its intent. As more people partake of the Supper, more will receive its benefits. As these people are made better by the Supper, they will begin to interpret the ordinance as having "a more

22

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

spiritual and useful character." This will in turn increase the Supper's efficacy as a means of moral improvement, as well as lead to an increase in the number of communicants, thus keeping the Supper's progressive powers of moral improvement in perpetual motion. Emerson's liberal Unitarianism, which claims to advocate a plurality of opinion, really advocates a unanimity of opinion: that "the whole end and aim of this ordinance is nothing but thiS, to make those who partake ofit better. " Three years after praising the Lord's Supper for its powers of moral improvement, however, Emerson told his parishioners that he was compelled to resign his position as their minister because he could no longer administer communion as the office required. His resignation sermon is composed of two distinct parts. The first, longer section of the sermon contains the Quaker-derived exegesis with which he supports his claim that Jesus had not instituted the Supper as a permanent rite. The second part of the sermon anticipates the counterargument that, although "the rite was not designed to be perpetual," it should be celebrated anyway for the "undoubted occasion of much good" that it had provided for the Christian world (W 1 I: 16). The borrowed exegesis of the first part of the sermon hinges on a reinterpretation of "This do in remembrance of me," the text of Emerson's earlier sermon on the Supper. Although the 1829 sermon does not provide an explicit paraphrase of this text, Emerson's understanding ofJesus' words of institution can easily be inferred. Fearing on the eve of his death, when "the hour was at hand when his ministry on earth should close," that "the passage of time and the terrors of persecution and the temptations of sense might" work to diminish the faith and zeal of his disciples,Jesus appointed a "feast of remembrance" to insure "that the devout affections of every time and of every heart" would remember him and would continue "the great reformation which was the object of his life" (YES 56-57). He left his ordinance flexible in order that people and churches of future times could interpret it to meet their own needs and wants, thus allowing the Supper gradually to "assume a more spiritual and useful character." Thus according to Emerson's 1829 interpretation of "This do in remembrance of me," Jesus used this purposely vague expression in order to insure the continuation of "his ministry on earth," unimpeded by his impending death. "He set no time, he fixed no number, he added no mystery" so that his ordinance could go down to the ages "suitable to the wants of all." According to Emerson's resignation sermon, however,Jesus did not intend to establish a new religious institution when he broke bread and drank wine with his disciples, but was only celebrating the traditional Passover

Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry

23

supper with them, just as the head ofanyJewish family would have done with his kin. Although Luke, the only evangelist who records "this do in remembrance of me," was not even present among the disciples, Emerson does not question the authenticity of Luke's report. Instead he supports his claim that Jesus did not authorize a permanent observation of the Supper by reinterpreting Luke's narrative as a scene from a gospel fiction (Buell 1°9). As in Emerson's earlier interpretation,Jesus' words are prompted by his impending death, for which he "wishes the minds of his disciples to be prepared." "When hereafter," he says to them, "you shall keep the Passover, it will have an altered aspect to your eyes. It is now a historical covenant of God with the Jewish nation. Hereafter it will remind you of a new covenant sealed with my blood. In years to come, as long as your people shall come up to Jerusalem to keep his feast, the connection which has subsisted between us will give a new meaning in your eyes to the national festival, as the anniversary of my death." (W II: 7) In 1829 Emerson had suggested that Jesus established a new institution, a new feast of remembrance, in order to continue his ministry on earth in spite of his impending death. By 1832, however, Emerson no longer sees Jesus' institution of the Lord's Supper as being purposely vague in order to guarantee a progressively more spiritual and useful character for the ordinance. In fact he no longer sees it as the institution of a new ordinance at all but as a new interpretation of the already-eXisting institution of the Passover: "I cannot bring myself to believe that in the use of such an expression he looked beyond the living generation, beyond the abolition of the festival he was celebrating, and the scattering of the nation, and meant to impose a memorial feast upon the whole world" (W II: 7). Reinterpreting "This do in remembrance of me" as Jesus' attempt to embody within the Passover artifacts a reminder of his death, Emerson echoes Zwingli's interpretation of the Supper as a memorial of Jesus' sacrifice, though disagreeing with Zwingli's conviction that Jesus had instituted the Lord's Supper as a permanent feast of remembrance. 22 And just as "This do in remembrance of me" enabled]esus to transform the bread and wine of the Passover supper into emblems of both God's historical covenant with the]ewish people and the new covenant with all who would believe in]esus' saving grace, so in his reSignation sermon Emerson transforms the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper into emblems of his resignation, suggesting in effect that when his parishioners celebrate the Supper in future years, it will have a new meaning in their eyes as the embodiment of their young minister's resignation.

24

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

In light of the implicit parallels between the Last Supper and "The Lord's Supper," it might be tempting to read Emerson's resignation sermon as an irnitatio Christi. Nor does the martyred tone that can occasionally be heard in the sermon do much to discourage such an interpretation. But it seems more to the point to read the sermon as an expression of what Emerson calls "The true doctrine respecting forms": "that Christianity aims to form in a man a critical conscience, & that being formed he is constituted a judge, the only & absolute judge of every particular form that the established religion presents to him" (JMN 4: 40). In his resignation sermon Emerson exemplifies this "true doctrine respecting forms" by insisting that the aim of Christianity is not formalistic imitation but judgment. In his 1829 sermon on the Supper, Emerson preached that the Christian was enjoined with "the care of supporting and carrying forward the frame and institutions of SOCiety," especially those which had been established by Jesus. Acknowledging that "society is every moment undergoing a change," Emerson did not consider the duty of a Christian to consist in judging "every particular form that the established religion presents to him," but simply in seeing every established institution "coloured by the complexion of his own mind." In his resignation sermon, however, "This do in remembrance of me" represents Jesus' injunction to judge the efficacy of religious forms for oneself. Jesus reinterprets the Passover not to show his disciples how to imitate him but to show them how to redefine the forms and institutions of "the established religion." Similarly Emerson's reinterpretation of "This do in remembrance of me" redefines Unitarian notions of the efficacy of established forms and institutions. Although by 1832 he no longer judged the Unitarian Supper to be a viable institution, the "critical conscience" with which he judges the Supper was formed in part by the very institution he rejects. Before returning to "The Lord's Supper," I want to investigate the formation of this critical conscience in the months leading up to the delivery of Emerson's resignation sermon. t'How It Figures in the Ledger"

The three years that intervened between Emerson's two sermons on the Supper were arguably the years that made Emerson Emerson. 23 During that time he married and lost his wife, was introduced (through Coleridge) to German idealism, and decided to give up the profession to which he had dedicated himself in 1824 and to which he had in many respects been born. His altered understanding of the Lord's Supper can be seen as a complex and multifaceted index of these changes. To understand sufficiently how all

Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry

25

of these factors contributed to the development of Emerson as Emerson, it is necessary to unravel the multiple strands that (taken together) make up the weave of his determination to resign the ministry. One place to begin is 'Journal Q," his "regular journal" from March 10, 1832, until December of that year (JMN 4: 3). Its first few entries alone, some of which are incorporated into the sermons, suggest that the conjunction of his reading in Coleridge with the death of his wife begins to provide Emerson with an account of the way in which the forms of the ministry work to effect moral improvement, an account that enabled him to revise not only his views of the Supper, but his ministerial commitment as wel1. 24 'Journal Q" opens with a discussion of temperance, a virtue which Emerson had seen in his dedication to the ministry as a remedy for his "signal defect of character." Emerson's concern with temperance has its roots at least partly in the burgeoning temperance movement in New England. 25 Despite his undoubted familiarity with the movement, however, Emerson's discussion of temperance (both in 'Journal Q" and in the sermons) can be explained more by his oft-expressed conviction that "Temperance & beneficence contain all other virtues" than by any involvement with the temperance movement of his own. One of the most pervasive topics of his unpublished sermons is "the cardinal virtue of Temperance" ("Fast Day"). Perhaps the most insistent note in these sermons is the antiformalist refrain that a temperate formalism is not true temperance. Here is a man who eats and drinks temperately. He is extremely scrupulous about gratifying his appetite. No luxury, no company, no solicitation can tempt him to excess. And why? Is it because he accounts his body a temple of God and will not displease him by gratifying his low desires? No such matter. If you examine the motive you find it is mere selfishness taking in this instance the form of a prudent care of his health which intemperance has rendered necessary.... Now this temperance I will not call sinful but surely it has no claim whatsoever to the name or the praise or the peace of virtue. ("The Imperfections of Good Men")26 Emerson's distinction between a formal observance of temperance and the true possession of this virtue is not unrelated to his altered understanding of the Lord's Supper, which (like temperance) derives its value not from a merely formal observance, but from its ability to effect moral improvement in those who participate in it. But what links Emerson's concern with temperance to the developing ministerial crisis depicted in the journal is a

26

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

series of sermons delivered in March and April 1832, the period when Emerson first began 'Journal Q." The first of these, delivered March 17, is "The Christian Venture," which takes as its text I Peter 1 :5-7: "And beside this giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; to virtue, knowledge; to knowledge, temperance; to temperance, patience; to patience, godliness; to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, charity." The message of the sermon is that Peter did not intend to set forth "a systematic list of the Christian virtues." The fact that Emerson devotes more than a third of the sermon to temperance serves as an emphatic corrective to Peter's "enumeration" of these virtues. 27 Two weeks after preaching "The Christian Venture," Emerson delivered a sermon on "Self-Command," "which enjoins Temperance in sleep & food; and Chastity, that is, temperance in one's sexual behavior" ("The Virtues Near at Hand"). And four days later Emerson delivered a sermon praising the New England institution· of Fast Day. In line with his earlier criticisms of a merely formal temperance, Emerson's endorsement of Fast Day is not an endorsement of a merely formal observance: "although the Day and its uses are forms, they are not mere forms. Fasting is a form; Humiliation is a form; Prayer is a form; yet they all represent and cover things and although it may be of almost no importance whether you keep this form, or change it, or drop it,-it is of extreme importance that you do not lose the substance" ("Fast Day"). The language of form and substance in the sermon cannot help but recall both the Reformation debate on consubstantiation and Emerson's ministerial dedication, where he commits himself to the ministry "in form" so that he will be able to effect the corresponding commitment "in substance." Although indifferent to the persistence of theforms of the Fast Day, he still considers the institution of the Fast Day a valuable one-if only for its dependence on the temperate "principle" of "the subjection of the body to the Soul. "28 Telling as these sermons are for ~merson's altered understanding of his ministerial commitment, the relationship between temperance, forms, and the Lord's Supper is even more evident in the journal. Where his ministerial dedication had expressed the hope that his profession would regenerate his "inward & outward estate," Emerson begins 'Journal Q" with the claim that an inward temperance constitutes an outward estate. Temperance is an estate. I am richer, the Stoic might say, by my self command than I am by my income. And literally, for his acquaintance spends at the confectioner's what pays the bookseller's bill of the Stoic & makes him rich indeed. Then the sum withholden from the liquor

Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry

27

dealer enables the Stoic to be magnificent in expenses of charity & of taste. To say nothing of the doctor's & apothecary's accounts. (JMN 4: 4) There are two arguments going on here at once, the first of which was a staple of early temperance tracts. On the level of economic value, the Stoic might "literally" claim to be richer than his acquaintance because he doesn't have to pay any money to the confectioner or the liquor dealer, "to say nothing of the doctor's & apothecary's accounts." But the Stoic does not keep the money he saves. In fact in Emerson's example the Stoic is not "literally" richer than his acquaintance at all, since they both spend what money they have. But the Stoic is "rich indeed," not from his fortune, but from the books that he reads and from the "expenses of charity & of taste" that make him appear to be a more magnificent and benevolent man than his acquaintance. The entry continues with an argument very similar to the one above, but which pursues the question of the inward value of temperance in more explicit terms. A good way to look at the matter is to see how it figures in the ledger.

Bacon says-Best spend in the most permanent ways, such as buying Plato. This year I have spent, say $20 in wine & liquors which are drunk up, & the drinkers are the worse. It would have bought a beautiful print that would have pleased for a century; or have paid a debt that makes me wince whenever I remember the person & may make me wince this hundred years. And so on. (JMN 4: 4) This account of the value of temperance once again begins with "the ledger." Not only does money saved on "wine & liquors" provide money to be spent elsewhere but, as in the previous entry, it provides for a more permanent investment if spent on Plato or on "a beautiful print." Like the Lord's Supper, temperance is valuable insofar as it makes one better; intemperance, however, has only the negative value of making "the drinkers ... the worse." Although the value of paying a debt or owning a beautiful print comes from the moral improvement that those actions effect, it is significant that Emerson insists on describing moral improvement in the bodily terms of pleasure and pain. The value of a beautiful print is that it "would have pleased for a century." The value of paying a debt is to remove the source of a pain that could make one "wince this hundred years."29 With its indictment of the degenerative effects of indulgence in liquor, the final paragraph of Emerson's entry describes intemperate drinking in terms that could be equally applicable to unbelieving communion. "But

28

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

every indulgence weakened the moral faculty, hurt at least for the time the intellect, lowered the man in the estimation of the spectators though sharers, injured them, & diminished the means of beneficence" (fMN 4: 45). Although none of these paragraphs refers explicitly to the Lord's Supper, this sacrament clearly informs Emerson's discussion of intemperate drinking. Unlike an efficacious communion, indulgence in liquor weakens "the moral faculty," hurts "at least for the time the intellect," and injures the reputation in the eyes "of the spectators though sharers." Whereas liquor's detrimental value comes from its deterioration of ·the moral faculty, its beneficial effect during communion comes from its power to "make those who partake of it better." The attempt to figure the value of temperance "in the ledger" demands that the ledger be kept in terms of moral as well as financial improvement. And because moral improvement is measured in bodily terms, the body becomes the ledger in which temperance must be written. ~itn

Amulet against Delusions"

Emerson's thinking about temperance was not limited to intemperate drinking. The next page of the journal suggests that just as intemperate drinking deteriorates the moral faculty, so intemperate eating prevents one from being "ready for religion." And like intemperate drinking, intemperate eating is figured in the bodily ledger. "One would think that the hog, that walking sermon upon Gluttony, was enough to turn the stomachs of all men from intemperate eating. Then was ever the full feeder ready for religion?" (fMN 4: 5).30 Demonstrating the important influence of Milton on his understanding of temperance, Emerson cites the four lines from "Comus" that provide the text for which the above passage serves as a gloSS.31 Delivered by the Lady, these four lines conclude the argument for "innocent Nature['s] ... holy dictate of spare temperance" that she uses to counter Comus' powerful argument that "Beauty is Nature's coin, must not be hoarded, / But must be current" (11.738-39). -"Swinish Gluttony Ne'er looks to Heaven amidst his gorgeous feast But with besotted base ingratitude Crams & blasphemes his Feeder." (fMN 4: 5)32 Emerson's transformation of Milton's blasphemed "Feeder" into the "full feeder" of 'Journal Q" contrasts Milton's views on the efficacy of religious

Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry

29

improvement with Emerson's own. Because sacraments like baptism and the Supper are vitalized only with the aid of the Holy Spirit, Milton thinks of communion as an act ofgratitude toward the heavenly Father. For Emerson, however, the efficacy of the sacraments is embodied in man's moral nature; not God the "Feeder" but man the "feeder" is the agent of moral improvement. Emerson's revision of Milton's views of temperance is evident in the next entry of the journal, in which he shifts his attention from gluttony to an extended consideration of temperance as an ornament. Then is there in the world so illustrious an ornament as Temperance? It does not need any explanation to make it admired by a savage tribe or by kings & nobles or by the mob or by wise men. If I choose a diamond breast pin for my ornament, I cannot deny, it is very beautiful, & will attract much attention; but my servant or a ruffian may pilfer it & then it is gone forever, tho' it cost me much. But this decoration no man can take from me, & no law can oblige me to conceal it. No revolution in society can make it of less current value than it has now. It will be a perpetual letter of recommendation and really possesses the virtues falsely ascribed to amulets that of making the bearer healthful & beloved. (fMN 4: 5) Used almost verbatim in "The Christian Venture," the sermon on temperance preached on March 17, this passage pulls together a number of different strands of Emerson's thinking on temperance, the Lord's Supper, and the ministry. Like his previous attempts to figure temperance in the financial ledger, the rhetorical force ofcomparing temperance with a diamond breast pin is to insist that the value of temperance is both permanent (it is not subject to the vicissitudes of the market) and inalienable (it cannot be taken away from its owner). Unlike the Lord's Supper, which needs to be understood differently by different people in order to retain its powers of moral improvement, temperance is immediately admired by all kinds of men, without the explanations of priest and exegesis. As Emerson was to write during his European trip, "Temperance is good English & good French & good Italian" (fMN 4: 90). And like "good forms" in Emerson's 1824 dedication to the ministry, temperance is "a perpetual letter of recommendation." Emerson's attempt to imagine temperance as an ornament helps to crystallize his growing dissatisfaction with the idea (implicit in the celebration of the Lord's Supper) that religious or moral improvement can be externalized in an emblem. In thinking about temperance both in the

30

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

journals and in the sermons, Emerson persists in thinking about what it means to objectify a virtue. That is, he persists in imagining what it means to incarnate in an emblem or a body such bodiless qualities as temperance or Jesus' promise of salvation. Emerson's meditation on embodiment does not endorse the externalization of temperance in an ornament but emphasizes the difference between temperance as an ornament and the elements of communion. Unlike the bread and wine of the Supper, the ornament of temperance is immaterial. Emerson's thinking about temperance as an ornament underscores what troubles him about the Lord's Supper: the belief that one could externalize in the elements one's faith, one's participation in the promise sealed byJesus' sacrifice. Unlike amulets, ornaments, or elements, which attempt to externalize virtue or moral improvement, temperance "really possesses" the power of erasing character defects, of "making the bearer healthful & beloved," because temperance is internalized, embodied within rather than emblemized without. 33 Like his representation of the hog as a "walking sermon upon Gluttony," Emerson's temperance amulet has its source in Milton's "Comus." In this instance, however, Milton was mediated for Emerson by Coleridge. 34 Although Emerson's growing conviction that the Lord's Supper is no longer an effective means of moral improvement is diametrically opposed to the position on the ordinance maintained by Coleridge, "Appendix C" of his Statesmans Manual clearly served to spur Emerson's own thinking about the efficacy of communion. 35 What interested Emerson in "Appendix C" is Coleridge's quotation of thirteen lines from "Comus" as an amulet that "really possesses the power" to help men distinguish between those traditions that they should accept on faith from their ancestors and those that they ought to reject as the superstitions of a deluded age, a distinction central to Emerson's own thinking about the ministry.36 Although opposed to the wholesale rejection of all forms of church or state that have been passed down by tradition, Coleridge makes it clear that he does not advocate an unthinking acceptance of the forms and institutions of our ancestors that will permit mankind "never to grow wiser" (87 ). On the contrary, he offers Scripture and communion as providing the means by which one can (in Emerson's words) "judge of every particular form that the established religion presents to him." Adistinction must be made, and such a one as shall be equally availing and profitable to men of all ranks. Is this practicable?-Yes!-it exists. It is found in the study of the Old and New Testament, if only it be combined with a spiritual partaking of the Redeemer's Blood, of which,

Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry

3I

mysterious as the symbol may be, the Sacramental Wine is no mere or arbitrary memento. (88) In a work directed specifically at the "higher classes of society," one might wonder why Coleridge advocates a "distinction" that "shall be equally availing and profitable to men of all ranks." Frances Ferguson has argued that for Coleridge, language works chiefly by delusion ("Language"). The fact that language has the power to delude its audience (or its maker) constitutes the pOSSibility of an undeluded act of communication. But it also gives Coleridge cause for concern. Because of its powers to delude, written language needs to be directed at different audiences. Although it must be tailored to its audience to communicate effectively, all language for Coleridge should have the same end: to make a distinction that "shall be equally availing and profitable to men of all ranks," the distinction that "the study of the Old and the New Testament" provides for salvation. But it is not any study of the Bible that can provide the distinction that men need for salvation. Its study must be "combined with a spiritual partaking of the Redeemer's Blood." Coleridge's understanding of communion also centers on the question of how an external emblem can embody that which is bodiless. In keeping with his ostensible hierarchy between symbol and allegory, Coleridge insists that unlike an allegory of Christ's sacrifice the symbol of the "Sacramental Wine is no mere or arbitrary memento" of "the Redeemer's Blood."37 Like Luther's belief that the real presence of Christ is contained in the elements of communion, Coleridge's belief that symbols are "consubstantial with the truths, of which they are conductors," should guarantee that the distinction whose truth will "be equally availing and profitable to men of all ranks" (the distinction of faith) will be really present in the symbol of the "Sacramental Wine" (29). Yet, as Ferguson suggests, Coleridge (like Luther) had problems maintaining his distinction between consubstantial symbol and unsubstantial allegory ("Language"). Much as Luther's doctrine of the ubiquity of]esus' body worked to rob the elements of communion of any particular efficacy, so Coleridge's account of the workings of the "study of the Old and the New Testament, when combined with a spiritual partaking of the Redeemer's Blood," breaks down the distinction both between symbol and allegory and between the lower and higher classes of SOCiety. Coleridge's difficulty in maintaining his distinctions manifests itself in his citation of the "Haemony" passage from "Comus," a passage which he describes as a beautiful allegory of the "Sacramental Wine."

32

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

This [wine] is the only certain, and this is the universal preventive of all debasing superstitions; this is the true HAEMaNY, (ai/-La blood: OLVO~ wine) which our Milton has beautifully allegorized in a passage strangely overlooked by all his commentators. Bear in mind, READER! the character of a militant christian, and the results (in this life and in the next) of the Redemption by the Blood of Christ; and so peruse the passage! Amongst the rest a small unsightly root, But of divine effect, he culled me out: The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it, But in a~other country, as he said, Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil! Unknown and like esteem'd, and the dull swain Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon; And yet more med'cinal is it than that moly That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave. He called it HAEMONY and gave it me, And bad me keep it as of sov'ran use 'Gainst all inchantments, mildew, blast, or damp, Or ghastly furies' apparition. MILTON'S COMUS These lines might be employed as an amulet against delusions: for the man, who is indeed a Christian, will as little think of informing himself concerning the future by dreams or presentiments, as of looking for a distant object at broad noonday with a lighted taper in his hand. (88-89) In citing the haemony passage as an "amulet against delusions," Coleridge robs both Milton's verse and the "Sacramental Wine" of any intrinsic efficacy. Because it is only by bearing in mind the character of a militant Christian that one can understand the passage as an allegory of the symbolic "Sacramental Wine," Milton's passage will only work as an amulet to one who is already a Christian. But he "who is indeed a Christian" will as little need an amulet against delusions as he would need a "lighted taper" to find a distant object in broad daylight. In robbing the "Sacramental Wine" of any intrinsic efficacy, Coleridge makes it clear that the distinction that counts is the one between the redeemed and the unregenerate. Thus for the man who can already see

Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry

33

Milton's passage as an allegory of the "Sacramental Wine," the distinction between symbol and allegory is unconsequential. The "study of the Old and the New Testament, . .. combined with a spiritual partaking of the Redeemer's Blood," leads to the same undeluded truth as the reading of Milton's allegory: the sacrifice of Christ for mankind. But for the reader who cannot "bear in mind ... the character of a militant christian, and the results (in this life and in the next) of the Redemption by the Blood of Christ," Milton's allegorical passage will be "strangely overlooked," like the "unsightly root" that the "dull swain / Treads on." Neither the Bible nor Milton will free such a reader from delusions, and for him the distinction between the intrinsic efficacy of the symbol and the arbitrary conventions of allegory will remain intact. For the Christian either the symbolic "Sacramental Wine" or Milton's allegorical amulet can serve as "universal preventives of all debasing superstitions." But for the dull swain or the duller commentators, neither the study of the Bible nor the reading of Milton will constitute "an amulet against delusions." UBy Hatred of Excess"

In light of Coleridge's portrayal of communion as providing for a means of election by interpretation, the critical commonplace (first voiced by Frothingham) that "Transcendentalism simply claimed for all men what Protestant Christianity claimed for its own elect" appears to account for the differences between Emerson's democratic and Coleridge's aristocratic positions regarding the efficacy of the Lord's Supper (Transcendentalism r08, see Whicher 23). Both Emerson's contention that temperance "does not need any explanation to be admired by a savage tribe or by kings & nobles or by the mob or wise men" and his suggestion in the r829 sermon on the Supper that the rite should be available to all "who believe in the divine authority of Christianity" would seem to provide assent to Frothingham's remark. Whereas Coleridge's allegorical amulet served to distinguish the man "who is indeed a Christian" from the man who is not, Emerson's temperance "really possesses the virtues falsely ascribed to amulets that of making the bearer healthful and beloved." Yet like the character of a militant Christian, temperance is not the possession of all men. As with Milton's "haemony" passage, temperance only works as an amulet for those whose recognition of its powers has already provided them with a means of election. In the entry that follows his characterization of temperance as an amulet in 'Journal Q," Emerson

34 Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

suggests the way in which temperance too serves as a means of election by interpretation. "Any thing not base is desireable to bring about so good an end as this of personal purity. Be master of yourself, and for the love of God keep every inch you gain. No man who has once by hatred of excess mastered his appetites would be bought back to his bondage by any possessions" (jMN 4: 5-6). One of the advantages that temperance offers as a decoration is that, unlike a diamond breast pin, it cannot be stolen by a ruffian or one's servant. But while temperance cannot be lost to another, the struggle for temperance can be lost to one's own appetites. In Emerson's diet plan for the self, one must love God and hate excess in order to maintain self-mastery: "love of God" inspires one to "keep every inch" of himself that he has gained; "hatred of excess" prOVides one with a mastery of his appetites that lets him lose every inch that he has gained. For Coleridge, Christianity provided a means of election by interpretation for men of all ranks. For Emerson, though temperance needs no explanation to be admired by all men, it can be attained only by the "man who has ... mastered his appetites" by learning to distinguish between those which are necessary and those which are excessive. Emerson's account of temperance does not eliminate the notion of election. On the contrary, it creates the criterion for a new form of election: election "by hatred of excess." As if to demonstrate his own "hatred of excess," Emerson continues the journal with a gesture reminiscent of Franklin's autobiography. Where earlier Emerson had implied that temperance must be figured in the ledger of the body, here he employs the journal as a ledger in which to record the daily decline in the weight of his food. 28 March my food per diem weighed 14 Y4 OZ 29-13 OZ 2 April 12 y; (jMN 4: 6)

Both the brevity of the ledger's duration and the decreasing volubility of each succeeding entry attest to Emerson's diminishing enthusiasm for the project. And the fact that the ledger has as many unrecorded days as it does recorded ones might suggest that Emerson's desire to master his appetites was a hastily conceived one. But as we have seen in his dedication to the ministry, this is not exactly the case. Following the dedication's invocation of "Comus" as an example of what one who loved "Virtue for her own sake" could write, Emerson had made a similar resolution "to curtail my dinner & supper sensibly & rise from the table each day with an appetite; & so see if it be fact that I can understand more clearly." But where the dedication

Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry

35

presents clear understanding as the result of temperate eating, 'Journal Q" represents temperate eating as the result of clear understanding. If the mark of temperance is clear understanding, then why does Emerson keep track of the declining weight of his "food per diem"? Franklin's own attempt at eliminating his vices makes it clear that it is one thing to attain a virtue for a given period of time and another to maintain it past the period of concentrated attention. Yet it is significant that rather than record a possible fluctuation in his daily consumption of food, Emerson preserves the diminishing sequence of "food per diem" by leaving a three-day lacuna in his ledger, just as in a more extensive struggle for personal purity, Thoreau would leave out ofWalden's ledger of "food per annum" the meals he ate at the homes of others. 38 Even with these unrecorded days Emerson's ledger, like Thoreau's, makes its point: temperance is to be measured not solely by reducing one's food but by reducing one's bondage to one's appetites. Although his diminishing consumption of food may not in itself provide Emerson with personal purity, it can serve as an indicator of how well his "hatred of excess" has helped to purify his understanding of its intemperate appetite for delusion. UThe Sublime Attractions ofthe Grave"

More revealing than the three-day lacuna that intervenes between the second and third entries in the ledger, however, is the circumstance that, although the ledger immediately follows the entry on "hatred of excess" in the pages of the journal, Emerson does not begin measuring his food for a fortnight. The fact that he left a page and a half before the next dated entry (March 23) suggests not only that he had intended to begin his ledger at least by that date, but also that he intended it to continue for longer than three entries. Thus two questions remain unanswered. Why did it take him until March 28 to begin his ledger? And why did he discontinue it after such a short period of time? Although the delay in beginning the ledger could perhaps be the result of something as mundane as the lack of a proper scale with which to measure his food, it is more likely that the chronology of the journal is to be explained by a letter to his brother William, dated March 26, in which Emerson recounts a piece of gossip about himself that had been repeated to him by a friend. Pestered was I sadly one day lately by a quoted conversation [that] came to my ear [that] Mr E. had refused all compromise with his wifes

36 Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

[sic] friends & was gone to law with them." [sic] For [the] first time I saw to my sorrow [that the] thing admitted of [that] face. The facts are [that] by a mutual advised consent we get [the] Supreme Court to distribute [the] estate, & I take no step without advising with Mr & Mrs Kent & Margaret Tucker; and if ever such a story [should] be quoted to you refer to those persons or to Mr Cutler. (L I: 349) Joel Porte has delicately suggested that Emerson's decision to forgo the financial security that the ministry brought him may have stemmed from his forthcoming inheritance from his dead wife's estate. The estate, which proved to be the subject of a great deal of legal maneuvering, was not settled until October 1833. Nonetheless Porte contends that the misplaced confidence of the above letter ("by a mutual consent we get [the] Supreme Court to distribute [the] estate") may have encouraged Emerson to proceed with his resignation (56-63). The letter's mingled tone of irritation and guilt, however, suggests that its more immediate effect was to provoke Emerson to prove to himself (and by extension to others) that he had not been "bought back to his bondage" by his financial expectations. If it is true that Emerson's ledger of "food per diem" was occasioned by hearing an account of himself from the mouth of another, it seems equally true that his sudden discontinuation of the ledger was occasioned by catching a glimpse of himself from the eyes of his dead wife. "29 March. I visited Ellen's tomb & opened the coffin" (jMN 4: 7). Emerson's renewal of the ledger on April 2 might suggest that his three-day hiatus had other causes than his visit to Ellen's tomb. It seems more likely, however, that this one-day resumption is related to the advice from "experience" that he offered the younger members of his congregation in "The Virtues Near at Hand," the sermon preached on April I: "A few ounces, twelve or fourteen of solid food experience has found sufficient for health & vigor." That the resumption of the ledger on April 2 has more to do with Emerson's desire to practice what he preached than with a brief resurgence of enthusiasm for the project underscores the significance of his discontinuation of the ledger on the day he opened Ellen's coffin. Although the (presumably nighttime) visit to Ellen's tomb strikes a Poe-like chord not often heard in Emerson's published prose, his opening of the coffin seems less out of character when seen in light both of the sublime influence of his aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, and of the "sublime attractions of the grave" depicted in two sermons preached just after Ellen's death. Evelyn Barish argues for the centrality of Aunt Mary to Emerson's early

Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry

37

development, claiming that "he made it his task to internalize Mary's voice, her daring, her faith, and her sense of the grandeur of her pursuit, while establishing for himself a more stable relationship to society than hers" ("Angel" 234). Aunt Mary, Barish writes, "was literally obsessed by death. She rode around in public draped in her shroud, until it wore out and had to be replaced-several times. She also had her bed made in the shape of a coffin" ("Angel" 226). Barish cites a journal entry for 1825 (shortly after Emerson had begun his studies at Harvard's Divinity School), which speaks both to the influence of his aunt and to her preoccupation with the dead: "The kind Aunt whose cares instructed my youth (& whom may God reward) told me oft the virtues of her & mine ancestors.... But the dead sleep in their moonless night; my business is with the living" (jMN 2: 316, qtd. "Angel" 225). When Ellen's death threatened the stability of the young minister's relationship to society, his thoughts automatically turned to Aunt Mary, as indicated by a letter he wrote her only two hours after Ellen's death on the morning of February 8, 1831: My angel is gone to heaven this morning & I am alone in the world & strangely happy. Her lungs shall no more be torn nor her head scalded by her blood nor her whole life suffer from the warfare between the force & delicacy of her soul & the weakness of her frame. I said this morn & I do not know but it is true that I have never known a person in the world in whose separate existence as a soul I could so readily & fully believe & she is present with me now beaming joyfully upon me, in her deliverance & the entireness of her love for your poor nephew. (L

I:

318)

In the immediate aftermath of Ellen's death Emerson felt both a strange happiness about Ellen's escape from the warfare between body and soul and a ready and full confidence in the presence of her "separate existence as a soul." The following weeks, however, revealed that his business was often less with the living than with the "moonless night" in which "the dead sleep." In learning to write sermons, Emerson credits Aunt Mary with providing him with a model for his use of religious language (Barish, "Angel," 229). Her influence must have been especially prevalent in two sermons written in the weeks after Ellen's death. In "Consolation for the Mourner" (February 19, 1831), he ascribes to "the truth of God brought by Jesus Christ" the lesson "that when we descend by age or disease to the tomb, it is a change and not a termination of our being" (YES 138). Despite the fact that

38 Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

"the character survives and ascends" and "not a thought of it cleaves to the cold clay we have put in the ground," he seems sorry that the living cannot follow the dead into "the house" of "their Lord": "we follow them down to the last gate of life but our unaided eye cannot explore one step into the gloom beyond" (YES 140-41). Yet partly because "the virtuous dead utter the same sentiment with the virtuous living," he believes "that willinglyoh yes joyfully, we would, if permitted, lay down our head also on the same pillow, so that God would restore us to the society we have lost" (YES 143). Emerson returns to "the sublime attractions of the grave" in the Fast-Day sermon of 1831: "But there is something noble in the love of the dead. And always where there has been any touch of a good nature, the departed have been kept in remembrance. Even the savages revere the land that contains the bones of their fathers" ("Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer"). In the emotional wake of Ellen's death, Emerson's thoughts had insistently tried "the gloom beyond." Because "the practice of filling the arterial system with embalming fluid did not begin until the Civil War," Jerome Loving has speculated that when Emerson opened Ellen's coffin he "probably saw little more than the ravages of decomposition-the decay of the emblem that had brought him so much happiness" (48).39 Despite the previous year's preoccupation with "the sublime attractions of the grave," Emerson's encounter with Ellen's remains could not but have called to mind a piece of proverbial wisdom repeated both within 'Journal Q" and throughout the journals of his early years: "Vacat Temperantia. " The editors of the journal translate the proverb as "temperance is void." But in light of the reminder provided by Ellen's remains, it is likely that Emerson would have preferred the more active translation, "Temperance voids." In the context of his ledger of "food per diem," Ellen's decayed body could have appeared as nothing but an emblem of what might be called temperance degree zero. In the mirror of his wife's remains, Emerson was reminded that a ledgered temperance is one "whose root is intemperance" (JMN 8: 60). The logic of this association can be explained by a sermon preached on the New Year's Eve prior to Ellen's death, in which Emerson suggests that "death seems dreadful" to the "man who has not an acquaintance with his soul": "If he is accustomed to find all his gratifications in meats and drinks and the other pleasures of the senses, why of course the death of the body which is the seal and instrument of all his pleasures must appear to him the end of his pleasures" ("The Record of Time"). Perhaps because "death seems dreadful" to the intemperate, Emerson may have visited Ellen's tomb

Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry

39

as an antidote to his own intemperance both in the formalistic ledger of "food per diem" and in the guilt over his forthcoming inheritance. If this is so, the antidote apparently worked. His intemperate guilt over Ellen's estate did not last much longer than his ledger had. It was already beginning to be alleviated by the thirtieth of March, the first of the three-day lacuna in Emerson's ledger. On that date he filled almost four pages of 'Journal Q" with a discussion of how necessities change, a discussion prompted by his reading in "Mackintosh's Ethics," a work about which he had corresponded to William on the fifteenth of March. UThe Scheme ofNecessity"

In the March 15 letter to William, Emerson had expressed his praise for Sir James Mackintosh's General View of the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, calling it "the most important work on the most important science," which "on a historical basis proposes a new theory ... to reconcile the great repugnant theories that have appeared & reappeared for so many ages and have hitherto seemed irreconcileable" (L I: 348). The new theory to which Emerson refers is Mackintosh's belief that the conscience is of secondary formation. The "great repugnant theories" that his account was meant to reconcile are those of idealism and realism (or in its Lockean incarnation, sensationalism). By March 30, however, the day after Emerson had visited Ellen's tomb, his praise for Mackintosh had been somewhat diminished. Mackintosh failed to provide a convincing account of the "formation of the conscience." I am your debtor, SirJames Mackintosh, for your Ethics & yet, masterly book as it is, highly as I esteem the first account of the Conscience that has ever been given ... yet is it at last only an Outline, nor can suffice to my full satisfaction. Thus I believe in the formation of the Secondary desires but you have not shown me the laws by which one secondary desire becomes paramount instead of another as for instance the love of skill in the Sculptor rather than the love of gain or beneficence or of superiority. And though I admit that you have defined for the first time the Conscience or Moral Sentiments yet you have not told how it was formed, which seems incumbent on one who affirms it of secondary formation. (JMN 4: 7) Emerson's example of the sculptor is not without significance for his discussion of temperance. Like "the love of skill in the Sculptor," it is the

40

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

love of God (or the "hatred of excess"), "rather than the love of gain or beneficence or of superiority," that constitutes temperance in an individual. It is not unreasonable to suppose that Emerson turned to Mackintosh intending to further his understanding of the way in which temperance is inscribed within the body, but such a supposition is unnecessary to argue that Emerson applied his reading of Mackintosh to his recent concerns. Nor is it unreasonable to suppose that his initial enthusiasm for Mackintosh was diminished by his visit to Ellen's tomb, although this assumption, too, is unnecessary to see why Emerson praises Mackintosh's exposition of "Hartley's successive passions" as "An ingenious & pleasing account of human nature" in which "Each becomes the parent of a new & higher passion & itself dies. If the Scheme of Necessity must be admitted, then let that doctrine also be the antidote-the gradual glorification of man" (fMN 4: 78). Not only does Emerson find Hartley's account and its antidote superior to any account of the conscience that Mackintosh offers as his own, but by incorporating the ideas of death and necessity it also improves on Emerson's account of man's progressive nature in his 1829 sermon on the Supper. Hartley's associationism attempts to explain how the mind comes to possess disinterested moral ideas and sentiments, particularly the ideas of right and wrong, which seem to bypass the feelings of pleasure and pain at the heart of Hartley's selfish system. In keeping with his Lockean epistemology, Hartley thinks of sentiments like conscience as secondary, since they do not (like primary ideas) derive directly from sensory impressions of objects in the external world. Through the association both of feelings of pleasure and pain with primary ideas and of primary and secondary ideas with themselves and each other, Hartley hopes to explain how people acquire a moral sense without recourse to what would be, in effect, idealism: the acknowledgment of an innate moral sense. 40 Despite his burgeoning sympathies with the "ideal theory," what Emerson found particularly "ingenious & pleasing" in Mackintosh's explanation of Hartley was his account of how "that which was first sought only as a means, may come to be pursued as an end, and preferred to the original end" (Mackintosh 174).41 In a passage that must have struck a sympathetic chord in Emerson, Mackintosh explains the way in which "one secondary desire becomes paramount over another" in the "frequent case" of the miser: As soon as the mind becomes familiar with the frequent case of the

man who first pursued money to purchase pleasure, but at last, when he becomes a miser, loves his hoard better than all that it could

Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry

41

purchase, and sacrifices all pleasures for its increase, we are prepared to admit that, by a like process, the affections, when they are fixed on the happiness of others as their ultimate object, without any reflection on self, may not only be perfectly detached from self-regard or private desires, but may subdue these, and every other antagonist passion which can stand in their way. As the miser loves money for its own sake, so may the benevolent man delight in the well-being of his fellows. His goodwill becomes as disinterested as if it had been implanted and underived. (166) Just as the miser "first pursued money to purchase pleasure," only to end up "loving his hoard better than all that it could purchase," and the benevolent man first loved goodwill for his own "self-respect or private desires," only to end up pursuing "the happiness of others," so Emerson first sought moral improvement (in his 1824 dedication) in order to attain the "private influence" that constituted half of the duties of the ministry, only to come (in his entries on temperance) to pursue moral improvement as an end in itself, "as if it had been implanted and underived." It is the status of this "as if" in which Emerson is particularly interested. In Mackintosh's account of Hartley, "as if" signifies the elision of selfinterest. In Emerson's adaptation of this account, "as if" signifies the necessity of death, not simply as "privation," but as "the parent of a new & higher passion." The "Scheme of Necessity" makes death a constitutive element of moral improvement, "as if" death had a real purpose and was not meaningless. Just as the change in Emerson's interpretation of "This do in remembrance of me" centered on his revision of the role of Jesus' death in the Supper, so his understanding of "the gradual glorification of man" incorporates death into its interpretation of man's progressive nature, by providing a purpose for this seemingly purposeless (and antiprogressive) neceSSity. Emerson's revision of his earlier account of man's progressive nature is evident in the organic metaphor that he uses to elaborate the implications of "Hartley's successive passions." In his 1829 sermon on the Supper, Emerson uses the organic metaphor to emphasize the continuity of moral progress. "The results of an old philosopher are the elements of his pupil. Their harvest is our seed. God has made the acorn such that it will grow to an oak and he has made his moral institutions capable of a far mightier growth" (YES 55). In 1832, however, Emerson emphasizes the need for discontinuity if man is to advance. The analogies of the lower creation, the caterpillar & tadpole with temporary organs which perish when their object is answered, & the

42

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

creature advanced, come in; & the temporary constitution of the foetus in the womb; the building of nests; & all systems of prospective prote~tion. The parent bird turns her young out of doors when they can shift for themselves. Very costly scaffoldings are pulled down when the more costly building is finished. And God has his scaffoldings. The Jewish Law answered its temporary purpose & was then set aside. Christianity is completing its purpose as an aid to educate man. And Evil is a scaffolding on which universal good is reared. God shall be all in all. (JMN 4: 8) The emphasis of this passage is on the procreative function of death. The temporary organs of the caterpillar and the tadpole must "perish" in order for the butterfly and frog to emerge; the young bird must be turned "out of doors" in order to have young birds of its own; "very costly scaffoldings" must be "pulled down when the more costly building is finished"; the 'Jewish Law" and Christianity, too, must be "set aside" when their purpose has been accomplished. In much the same way it was necessary for Jesus to die so that his followers could reinterpret the Passover as a new covenant with God, or for Ellen to die so that Emerson could reinterpret his commitment to the ministry of the Second Church. But, he believes, such deaths are not in vain. In Emerson's genealogy of morals, they give birth to the "new and higher" lives which they help create. "Secondary passions are formed out of primary ones yet wholly differentnot mixture but combination. The bee makes honey out of thyme & marjoram, but it is then neither thyme nor marjoram. The union of hydrogen & oxygen is like neither one but is water. On this theory ought not emulation to be employed in education?" (JMN 4: 8). The crux of this passage is the rhetorical question with which it concludes. Although it is clear how honey is "wholly different" from "thyme & marjoram" and how water is "wholly different" from "hydrogen & oxygen," how does it follow from these examples that emulation should "be employed in education?" The explanation can most likely be found in Emerson's reading of Edward Biber's biography of Henry Pestalozzi,42 Although the Swiss educator never set forth a systematic theory of education, the guiding idea of his pedagogical theory is that education must be progressive. Describing the moral education of a child in the epistolary treatise How Gertrude Teaches Her Children, Pestalozzi explains how the child's loving dependence on his mother provides the germ from which his dependence on God is derived: "That is, the germ of all feelings of dependence on God, through faith, is in

Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry

43

its essence the same germ which is produced by the infant's dependence on its mother" (89). As "the analogies of the lower creation" suggest, once the infant's dependence on its mother has given birth to a dependence on God, "thefirst grounds of its faith and actions begin to vanish. Growing independence makes the child let go his mother's hand" (89). Just as "the parent bird turns her young out of doors when they can shift for themselves," so the mother encourages the child to let go of her hand once she has inculcated its "dependence on God."43 Although Pestalozzi's description of the child's internalization of both God and its mother undoubtedly bears some interesting psychological implications for Emerson's relationship with both Ellen and Aunt Mary, the epistemological implications of his Pestalozzian understanding of the use of emulation in education are what he pursues in the journal for May 17. The moment you present a man with a new idea, he immediately throws its light back upon the mass of his thoughts, to see what new relation it will discover. And thus all our knowledge is a perpetually living capital, whose use cannot be exhausted, as it revives with every new fact. There is proof for noblest truths in what we already know but we have not yet drawn the distinction which shall methodize our experience in a particular combination. (JMN 4: 19) Not only does Emerson's embodiment of "knowledge" as "a perpetually living capital" echo his characterization of temperance as "a perpetual letter of recommendation," but his contention that a new idea immediately "throws its light back upon the mass of [one's] thoughts" anticipates William James's pragmatist account of the development of knowledge (or the acquisition of new beliefs, which amounts essentially to the same thing). More relevant here, however, is the fact that his injunction to draw "the distinction which shall methodize our experience in a particular combination" bears the unmistakable influence of both Coleridge and Pestalozzi. For Coleridge, the "distinction which shall methodize our experience" is available in "the study of the Old and New Testament, if only it be combined with a spiritual partaking of the Redeemer's blood." With the help ofPestalozzi, Emerson transforms Coleridge's account of the educative role of Scripture into a general truth about epistemology: every "new idea" with which a man is presented "throws its light back upon the mass of his thoughts" and enables him to distinguish the "noblest truths in what we already know." Emerson's use of "combination" to describe the acquisition of new ideas itself throws a new light on his account of emulation in

44 Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

education. Like the production of "honey out of thyme & marjoram" or of water from "The union of hydrogen & oxygen," the addition of "a new idea" to "what we already know" is "not mixture but combination." Education is not an additive process, in which each new idea is merely another accretion on the fossilized mass of one's thoughts. Rather it is an emulative one, in which "all our knowledge ... revives with every new fact." As we have seen, however, such revivification is not without its price: "Very costly scaffoldings are pulled down when the more costly building is finished.... The Jewish Law answered its temporary purpose & was then set aside." And as Emerson's resignation sermon makes clear, even "Christianity is completing its purpose as an aid to educate man." In the second half of his resignation sermon, Emerson describes Jesus' mediation between man and God as a form of education in which "he teaches us how to become like God" (W I I: 18). Although one may learn to "become like God" by imitatingJesus (as in the Lord's Supper), it is only by leaving Jesus behind that one can truly help Christianity fulfill "its purpose as an aid to educate man." Just as honey is different from both thyme and marjoram, so the Christian is different from bothJesus and his previous self. Christianity, like temperance, requires a revolution in one's understanding of himself, which "by hatred of excess" and "the love of God" enables one to eliminate all that is unnecessary in order "to become like God," even if that means eliminating Jesus from Christian worship. It is this Hartleyan "Scheme of Necessity" that prevailed upon Emerson in June 1832 to request the Second Church to consider some changes in its observance of the Lord's Supper, most notably the omission of the elements and the claim that Jesus had authorized the perpetual observance of the rite. 'We Worship in the Dead Forms ofOur Forefathers"

The journal does not refer explicitly to Emerson's request, but it does refer to it cryptically: 'June 2, 1832. Cold cold. Thermometer Says Temperate. Yet a week of moral excitement" (JMN 4: 27). That the temperance indicated by the thermometer is unrelated to the weather is made even more certain in a subsequent entry: "I have sometimes thought that in order to be a good minister it was necessary to leave the ministry. The profession is antiquated. In an altered age, we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers" (JMN 4: 27 ). Although Emerson goes on to say that he would prefer "a Socratic paganism" to "an effete superannuated Christianity," he makes it clear that he no longer wishes to be "suckled in a creed outworn." Now that "Christianity

Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry

45

is completing its purpose as an aid to educate man," Emerson considers the ministry to be an antiquated profession full of dead forms. Rather than ghoulishly continue to worship in these dead forms, he chooses to worship with the new life to which these forms have given birth. When the Second Church rejected his proposed changes in the Supper, Emerson traveled to the White Mountains to seek a new perspective in his "hour of decision" (JMN 4: 30). His trip to the mountains is not without its prophetic overtones. In Conway Emerson sounds like a man awaiting divine inspiration: "What is the message that is given me to communicate next Sunday? Religion in the mind is not credulity & in the practice is not form. It is a life.... It is not something else to be got to be added but is a new life of those faculties you have" (JMN 4: 27). And as he remarks after arriving at Ethan Allen Crawford's house in the Notch of the White Mountains: "He who believes in inspiration will come here to seek it" (JMN 4: 29). "The good of going into the mountains is that life is reconsidered; it is far from the slavery of your own modes of living and you have opportunity of viewing the town at such a distance as may afford you a just view nor can you have any such mistaken apprehension as might be expected from the place you occupy & the round of customs you run at home" (JMN 4: 29). For Emerson a trip to the mountains is the excursionary equivalent of acquiring a new idea. Nonetheless the message he sought did not come to him without a struggle. In a passage that seems to speak both to his own search for inspiration and to his dissatisfaction with the Lord's Supper, Emerson writes: "How hard to command the soul or to solicit the soul. Many of our actions many of mine are done to solicit the soul. Put away your flesh put on your faculties. I would think-I would feel. I would be the vehicle of that divine principle that lurks within & ofwhich life has afforded only glimpses enough to assure me of its being" (JMN 4: 28). On the day after making the above observation, Emerson fills two pages of the journal with an entry which suggests both that he had succeeded in soliciting the soul and that he had received the inspiration he had sought in his "hour of decision." After a paragraph that sketches "the whole picture of this unsabbatized Sunday" in the mountains, Emerson offers a series of final objections to his determination to resign from the ministry (JMN 4: 29). It seems not worth while for them who charge others with exalting forms above the moon to fear forms themselves with extravagant dislike.... But though the thing may be useless & even pernicious, do

46

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

not destroy what is good & useful in a high degree rather than comply with what is hurtful in a small degree. The Communicant celebrates on a foundation either of authority or of tradition an ordinance which has been the occasion ofthousands,-I hope to thousands of thousandsof contrition, of gratitude, of prayer, of faith, of love, & of holy living. Far be it from any of my friends,-God forbid it be in my heart-to interrupt any occasion thus blessed of God's influences upon the human mind. I will not, because we may not all think alike of the means, fight so strenuously against the means, as to miss of the end which we all value alike. (JMN 4: 30) Suggesting that he could accept an ordinance of remembrance with "each one's making it an original Commemoration," Emerson concludes the entry with a reaffirmation of his refusal to administer communion, set forth in terms that hearken back to his earlier discussion of the individual's accommodation to society. I know very well that it is a bad sign in a man to be too conscientious, & stick at gnats. The most desperate scoundrels have been the over refiners. Without accomodation [sic] society is impracticable. But this ordinance is esteemed the most sacred of religious institutions & I cannot got habitually to an institution which they esteem holiest with indifference & dislike. (JMN 4: 30) In Emerson's 1829 account of the Supper, it was not important if a communicant partook habitually "with indifference & dislike." Since people are by nature progressive, and the Supper is an instrument of that progress, even an indifferent communion will make the communicant better; any act will work to the good. Emerson's 1832 rejection ofthe Supper, however, demonstrates a more radical belief in the power of institutions to form one's character than does his 1829 account, since indifferent communion is now seen to "be useless & even pernicious." Just as honey can exist only by sacrificing the thyme and marjoram from which it is made, so the moral improvement of the Supper can be effected only by sacrificing the forms of the Supper that have produced that improvement. Once Emerson understoodJesus' institution of the Supper as a revision of the Jewish Passover, the imitation of his eating and drinking could only be done with "indifference & dislike." The Moral Presence of Christ

In an attempt to accommodate himself to the Second Church, Emerson devoted the first section of his resignation sermon to an exegetical demon-

Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry 47

stration that Jesus did not authorize a perpetual observance of the Lord's Supper. In the second section of his sermon Emerson explains that he would refuse to continue administering the· Supper even if it had been permanently instituted byJesus. Accordingly he concludes the sermon with four objections to the administration of the Supper "in its present form" (W II:

16).

Emerson's first objection is a simple one; the Unitarian celebration of the Lord's Supper necessarily involves him in a lie: "You say, every time you celebrate the rite, that Jesus enjoined it; and the whole language you use conveys that impression. But if you read the New Testament as I do, you do not believe he did" (W I I: 16- I 7). The assertion that Jesus instituted a permanent feast of remembrance cannot be supported by the figures in the biblical ledger. Jesus did not authorize his disciples to establish a new rite, but instead offered a new interpretation of an already existing one. In keeping with Jesus' intention, Emerson's resignation sermon offers a new interpretation of the Unitarian Supper. Not only does the celebration of the Supper involve in a lie anyone who reads the Bible as Emerson does, it also involves any Unitarian in a contradiction that "tends to produce confusion in our views of the relation of the soul to God" (W I I: 17). Because the communicant must keep Jesus in mind while praying to God, Emerson's second objection to the Supper is that a communicant appears to be worshipping the Trinitarian, not the Unitarian, God. "I am so much a Unitarian as this," Emerson argues, "that I believe the human mind can admit but one God, and that every effort to pay religious homage to more than one being goes to take away all right ideas" (W I I: 18). Whereas new facts work to discover proofs "for noblest truths in what we already know," old forms of worship work "to take away all right ideas."44 Emerson's third objection to the Unitarian Supper is "that the use of the elements, however suitable to the modes of thought in the East, where it originated, is foreign and unsuited to affect us" (W I I: 18). The symbolism of the Supper "is alone a sufficient objection to the ordinance," Emerson insists, and "is reason enough why I should abandon it" (W I I: 19). "We are not accustomed to express our thoughts or emotions by symbolical actions. Most men find the bread and wine no aid to devotion, and to some it is a painful impediment. To eat bread is one thing; to love the precepts of Christ and resolve to obey them is quite another" (W II: 18-19). Emerson's objection to the symbolic nature of the Lord's Supper is of a piece with his antiformalist account of temperance. Just as refraining from excessive eating and drinking does not make one temperate, so partaking of the ele-

48

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

ments in communion does not make one a Christian. Nonetheless, in light of the allegedly symbolic nature of Emerson's resignation, the claim that "We are not accustomed to express our thoughts or emotions by symbolical action" seems incompatible with his later discussions of symbolic language-such as the passage in "The Poet" where he contends that "The use of symbols has a certain power of emancipation and exhiliration for all men," a power which constitutes poets as "liberating gods" (GW 3: 17).45 Although Emerson would appear to be playing the role of liberating god in his resignation sermon by freeing himself and his parishioners from the bonds of communion in the "dead forms of our forefathers," this freedom is a liberation from the impediments that the symbolic elements represented for 9ne who would "love the precepts of Christ and resolve to obey them," while the liberation brought about by the "true poet" is a liberation by use of symbols. These contradictory appraisals of symbols, however, are not as irreconcilable as they appear to be. In "The Lord's Supper," Emerson's chief complaint about the symbolic nature of the sacramental elements is that it is an inflexible one. The elements prescribe a dead form of commemoration that does not take into account their suitability for the individual communicant. It is not the symbolic nature of the elements themselves but the fact that their symbolism is fixed that makes them unworthy for a true commemoration. Emerson makes the same complaint about the mystical use of symbols in "The Poet." The "difference betwixt the poet and the mystic" is that the poet "perceives the independence of the thought on the symbol, the stability of the thought, the accidency and fugacity of the symbol," while the mystic "nails a symbol to one sense, which was a true sense for a moment, but soon becomes old and false" (GW 3: 12,20). "For all symbols are fluxional; all language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead. Mysticism consists in the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one" (GW 3: 20). In the terms of "The Poet," the sacramental bread and wine are mystical, not poetical symbols. At the Last Supper the bread and wine were symbols of the new covenant that would be established with Jesus' followers, symbols that would be meaningful to his disciples during their subsequent Passover celebrations. Jesus' disciples, however, had nailed this "one sense" to the bread and wine as surely as Jesus had been nailed to the cross. The Christians of nineteen subsequent centuries continued to "mistake ... an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one" in their persistent observance of the Supper. Thus Emer-

Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry

49

son plays the liberating god in his resignation sermon when he insists that anything "which tends to awaken a pure thought, a flow of love, an original design of virtue" should constitute "a worthy, a true commemoration" of Jesus' sacrifice for mankind. Seen in terms of "The Poet," Emerson's resignation is the first truly poetical act of his career, liberating himself and those who would believe him from the fixed, rigid mysticism of the sacramental elements. This liberation does not, however, consist of the disembodiment described in traditional literary histories. Emerson's fourth objection to the Supper reiterates the conviction that his resignation is not a liberation from all forms of religious observance, but only from those forms which, like the Lord's Supper, have outlived their usefulness. Emerson quarrels less with the "stability of the thought" that the forms and symbols of the Supper are meant to express than with the insistence that this thought be permanently fixed in a set of mystical symbols. To underscore this fact, he insists that he is "not so foolish as to declaim against forms. Forms are as essential as bodies; but to exalt particular forms, to adhere to one form a moment after it is outgrown, is unreasonable, and it is alien to the spirit of Christ" (W I I: 20). Although forms, like bodies, are essential, they do not themselves embody "the spirit of Christ." Just as Ellen's death terminated a particular chapter of Emerson's life, so forms that have been outgrown need to be relinquished, like the temporary organs of caterpillars and tadpoles or the temporary constitution of the foetus in the womb. Such disembodiments, however, are not ends in themselves, but rather give birth to "new & higher" forms of embodiment. It is this inability of Christianity either to be completely disembodied from, or to be permanently embodied in, particular forms or institutions that Emerson describes as "the distinction of Christianity": If I understand the distinction of Christianity, the reason why it is to be preferred over all other systems and is divine is this, that it is a moral system; that it presents men with truths which are their own reason, and enjoins practices which are their own justification; that if miracles may be said to have been its evidence to the first Christians, they are not its evidence to us, but the doctrines themselves; that every practice is Christian which praises itself, and every practice unchristian which condemns itself. (W I I: 20-2 I) This passage restates in different terms "the true doctrine respecting forms," the embodiment within each individual of a "critical conscience."

50

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

Like the mystical symbols of the sacramental bread and wine, miracles may have been good evidence for a moment, but soon become old and false. It is not the real presence of Christ in the Supper but his moral presence that constitutes "the distinction of Christianity." Like symbols for the poet, the forms and institutions of Christianity "should be as flexible as the wants of men. That form out of which the life and suitableness have departed should be as worthless in its eyes as the dead leaves that are falling around us" (W 11:21).

Emerson's introduction of the organic metaphor is appropriate in light of his earlier sermon on the Supper, since here, as in the journal account of the formation of secondary desires, the emphasis is on discontinuity and death. As the death of a lower passion leads to the birth of a "new & higher" one, so Emerson's rejection of the Unitarian Supper as a self-justifying practice leads to a "new & higher" understanding of the aim of Christianity: "It has for its object simply to make men good and wise." In 1829 Emerson believed in the ability of the Unitarian Supper to effect moral improvement not as an end in itself, but as a means to the continuation ofJesus' ministry on earth. In Emerson's resignation sermon he sacrifices the dead forms of the Unitarian Supper but preserves the end that these forms were intended to achieve ("To make those who partake of it better"), transforming it into the end of Christianity itself ("to make men good and wise"). Like the miser who first pursued money for the pleasure which it could bring him, only to end up pursuing it for itself, Emerson at first pursued moral improvement to fulfill Jesus' ministry on earth, only to preach in his resignation sermon that moral improvement was an end in itself, independent of its role in Jesus' ministry. In the case of the miser and the benevolent man, it is selfinterest that gets elided in the formation of these secondary desires. But in Emerson's revision of the Unitarian Supper, it is the historical authority of Jesus as figured in the biblical ledger that gets elided in Emerson's "new & higher" understanding of Christianity and the ministry.46 Even while eliding the historical authority of the New Testament, however, Emerson supplements its absence with Jesus' moral authority, for it is only through the moral teachings ofJesus and his apostles that mankind has learned to free itself from a purely formal religion. Although Emerson does not considerJesus' historical authority to be binding on one's faith, his moral authority as an educator cannot be overemphasized. Emerson refers to Jesus' incarnation as if it were the conferral of a degree upon a divinity student: "Almighty God was pleased to qualify and send forth a man to teach men that they must serve him with the heart" (W 11: 22). Rather than

Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry

5I

authorize more "idols and ordinances," Emerson contends,Jesus taught us to "seek our well-being in the formation of the soul" (W I I: 22). Emerson's preoccupation with the moral presence of Christ did not come to an end with his resignation sermon. Some eight days later, on the seventeenth of September, he charges "the vulgar great men" of his day with lacking "faith in man's moral nature": "Socrates believed in man's moral nature & knew & declared the fact, that Virtue was the supream [sic] beauty. He was capable therefore of enthusiasm. Jesus Christ existed for it. He is its voice to the world" (JMN 4: 42-43). Two weeks later Emerson elaborates his understanding of "man's moral nature" in an entry in praise of Carlyle's "paper on Corn Law Rhymes" in The Edinburgh Review. Has the doctrine ever been fairly preached of man's moral nature? The whole world holds on to formal Christianity, & nobody teaches the eternal truth, the heart of Christianity for fear of shocking &c. Every teacher when once he finds himself insisting with all his might upon a great truth turns up the end of it at last with a cautious showing how it is agreeable to the life & teaching ofJesus-as if that was any recommendation. As if the blessedness of Jesus' life & teaching were not because they were agreeable to the truth. Well t.his cripples his teaching. It bereaves the truth he inculcates of more than half its force by representing it as something secondary that can't stand alone. The truth of truth consists in this, that it is selfevident selfsubsistent. It is light. You don't get a candle to see the sun rise. Instead of making Christianity a vehicle of truth you make truth only a horse for Christianity. It is a very operose way of making people good. You must be humble because Christ says, "Be humble." "But why must I obey Christ?" "Because God sent him." But how do I know God sent him? "Because your own heart teaches the same thing he taught." Why then shall I not go to my own heart at first? (JMN 4: 45) This passage reiterates Emerson's claim in the resignation sermon that "it is time misspent" to demonstrate how truth "is agreeable to the life & teaching of Jesus" (W I I: 22). Like the efficacy of communion, the truth of Christianity is constituted not by its conformity to the historical details of Jesus' life but by its moral truth. And like his objections to the Unitarian Supper, Emerson's objection to the Unitarian appeal to "the life & teaching ofJesus" is one of utility: "It is a very operose way of making people good." Yet the rhetorical force of the question which ends the above entry ("Why then shall I not go to my own heart at first?") cannot be denied.

52

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

Christian truth is that truth which is inscribed within the body, "as if it were implanted and underived" like one's heart. But as the resignation sermon makes clear, man does not turn to his heart at once because he must first be taught to turn there ("the Almighty God was pleased to qualify and send forth a man to teach men that they must serve him with the heart").47 It is not simply to replace the institutional authority of religious teachers that Emerson suggests that we go to our heart at first, but to point out that these teachers are not making the strongest argument available to them: that religious truth is authorized by the heart. In resigning his office as minister to the Second Church, Emerson did not terminate his commitment to the ministry. The conclusion of his resignation sermon presents the first of three pronouncements he was to make to his parishioners about the inability of his resignation to alter his dedication to the "highest functions" of the ministry. As it is the prevailing opinion and feeling in our religious community

that it is an indispensable part of the pastoral office to administer this ordinance, I am about to resign into your hands that office which you have confided to me. It has many duties for which I am feebly qualified. It has some which it will always be my delight to discharge according to my ability, wherever I exist. And whilst the recollection of its claims oppresses me with a sense of my unworthiness, I am consoled by the hope that no time and no change can deprive me of the satisfaction of pursuing and exercising its highest functions. (W I I: 24-25) Emerson's declaration that recollecting the ministry's claims oppresses him "with a sense of [his] unworthiness" identifies the worthlessness of the Unitarian Supper with his youthful lack of "that moral worth which is to secure" the private influence that constitutes half the "office of a clergyman." This identification of his ministerial dedication with the" dead forms" of the Supper provides the key to understanding Emerson's oft-quoted claim "that in order to be a good minister it was necessary to leave the ministry." Those duties of the ministry which, like the Unitarian Supper, are disagreeable to his feeling need to be stripped away if he is to attain "personal purity" as a minister. His revised understanding of the way in which forms work to effect moral improvement may free him from the historical authority of the dead forms of the Unitarian Supper, but not from the moral authority of his professional dedication to the ministry. And as his dedication makes clear, although the "highest functions" of the ministry are not identical with the particular forms and institutions of the Unitarian

Emerson's Resignation from the Ministry

53

ministry, they cannot be completely separated from those forms and institutions either. 48 Emerson's resignation from the ministry of the Second Church represents a "new & higher" "devotion to the cause of the divine truth" than did his ordination some three-and-a-half years earlier or his professional dedication in 1824, a devotion that exists both as a result of, and at the expense of, the forms of the Unitarian ministry. In his professional dedication Emerson felt that the forms of the ministry would enable him to overcome his "signal defect of character," making him worthy of both halves of the minister's office, "public preaching & private influence." The forms of the ministry, like God's words for his Calvinist forebears, were seen as an unchanging standard to which all ministers must conform if they were to serve God, not just "in!onn," but "in substance. " With this understanding of the powers of the ministry, Emerson accepted the call of the Second Church in March 1829. In September of that year he preached his first sermon on the Lord's Supper, in which he felt confident that the Unitarian Supper, like the profession of the ministry, had the power "to make those who partake of it better." Although Jesus had authorized a perpetual observance of the Supper, Emerson preached in 1829, he "left the ordinance loose to go down to all churches suitable to the wants of all." As long as men conformed to "the good sense and liberal thinking of the age," particularly the belief in the Supper's power of moral improvement, they could interpret the Supper in whatever way they wished. Because of its flexibility, Emerson felt that like Christianity itself the Supper was growing "with progress of men's minds" toward "a more spiritual and useful character." In Emerson's 1829 sermon on the Supper he pictured the moral growth of both mankind and the forms and institutions of Christianity as limitless. By the summer of 1832, however, he had become painfully aware of the important role that limits play in constituting "a more spiritual and useful character." Much as Jesus was born into a formal religion to redeem his fellow men from the dead letter of its historical claims, so Emerson himself was born into Unitarianism to redeem his fellow New Englanders from its "corpse-cold" historical authority. In rejecting the Unitarian Supper Emerson does not deny the power of Christianity "to make men good and wise," but relocates the site of moral improvement from forms and institutions to the heart. As such his resignation from the ministry comes to stand as the inaugural moment in his lifelong project to institutionalize the moral authority of the heart. This is not to say that he sought to make the heart into an institution. Rather, by inscribing his own moral authority within the bodies

54 Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

of others, Emerson sought to incorporate the appeal to the heart within any of a number of different institutional discourses or domains. Thus, no matter "how it figures in the ledger," as Emerson continues to pursue the ministry's "highest functions"-in the weekly supply sermons he was to preach for several years after his resignation, or in his career as lecturer and foremost man of letters in nineteenth-century America-he will continue to minister not only to himself and his former parishioners, but to all who would listen and understand.

Chapter Two The Divinity School "Address" Controversy "There Is No Dead Letter but a Perpetual Scripture"

UEndorserfor the Heresy"

Emerson's resignation from the ministry of Boston's Second Church, undoubtedly the most significant public event in the first three decades of his life, went virtually unnoticed outside his immediate circle of personal and pastoral acquaintances. Nor did it terminate his involvement with New England's ministerial institutions. On his return from Europe in 1833, for example, he seriously considered accepting the call of a New Bedford church, before declining because the church would not accede to his desire to refrain from leading the congregation in public prayer (Rusk 198200). For more than six years following his resignation Emerson regularly accepted invitations to "supply" the pulpits of a number of neighboring churches. Not only did he recycle sermons preached during his tenure at the Second Church, but he also continued to compose new sermons as occasion required. It is true that during the decade following his reSignation Emerson devoted the bulk of his energies to his lectures, prose, and poetry. He delivered several lecture series on a variety of topics from 1833 to 1842; Nature was published in 1836; two of his most famous addresses, "The American Scholar" and the Divinity School "Address," belong to this period; and his poetry began to appear in journals and gift books at this time. Although these productions represent a determined effort by the former minister of the Second Church to establish himself as a man of letters, they also demonstrate his continued involvement with the highest

56 Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

functions of the ministry, to which he had rededicated himself in his resignation. Understood in the context of the social and cultural changes which the ministerial profession undenvent in antebellum America, the literary productions of the decade following his resignation constitute a reflection of the ministry's new professionalism, in which "the minister often appeared to be an entrepreneur, privately negotiating the contractual terms of a successful career as he moved upward from congregation to congregation" (Bledstein 176).1 Nature, the most idealistic of Emerson's works, represents his first sustained effort to negotiate his ministerial career upward from the congregation of Boston's Second Church to the congregation of all mankind. Emerson's demand in the introduction to Nature for "an original relation to the universe" has come to be understood as the motto of Transcendentalist and American anti-institutionalism (GW I: 7). As I suggest in the previous chapter, however, Emerson's appeal to moral authority in matters of religion is not so much an attempt to extricate the self from institutional authority as to institutionalize the authority of the heart. In Nature this attempt manifests itself most clearly in his repeated descriptions of the influence of nature as a ministry. The first of these descriptions occurs in its opening chapter. In the paragraph immediately following the by now all too familiar transparenteyeball passage, Emerson depicts the uplifting influence of nature as a form of ministry to man: "The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable" (GW I: 10). Emerson elaborates this identification of nature and the ministry in the subsequent chapter on "Commodity." "Nature, in its ministry to man, is not only the material, but is also the process and the result. All the parts incessantly work into each other's hands for the profit of man" (GW I: II). Like the ministry, nature's profitability to man is due to the united multiplicity of its forms. "Nature is a sea of forms radically alike and even unique. A leaf, a sun-beam, a landscape, the ocean, make an analogous impression on the mind" (GW I: 17). Like "the institution of preaching," which Emerson describes in the Divinity School "Address" as "the speech of man to men," nature is "an interpreter, by whose means man converses with his fellow men" (GW I: 92, 20). Emerson underscores the partnership of nature and religion in the chapter on "Discipline." Nature is "ever the ally of Religion; lends all her pomp and riches to the religious sentiment. ... What is a farm but a mute gospel?" (GW I: 26). Emerson can only begin, however, to enumerate the ways in which nature ministers to man: "It were a pleasant inquiry to follow into detail their [natural forms] ministry to our

Divinity School "Address" Controversy

57

education, but where would it stop?" (GW I: 28). Although there could be no end to the forms of nature's pedagogical assistance to man, the chapter on "Spirit" makes it clear that the "noblest" end of nature is identical to that of religious forms. "The aspect of nature is devout. Like the figure ofJesus, she stands with bended head, and hands folded upon the breast. The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship" (GW I: 37). And "like the figure of Jesus" described in Emerson's resignation sermon, nature teaches man to be like God: "That essence [Spirit] refuses to be recorded in propositions, but when man has worshipped him [God] intellectually, the noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of God. It is the great organ through which the universal spirit speaks to the individual, and strives to lead the individual back to it" (GW I: 37). Emerson's persistent analogy between nature and the ministry, when it has been discussed at all, has most often been taken as further evidence of Emerson's growing disenchantment with the professional and institutional aspects of the ministry. But it seems more to the point to understand this identification as an instance of Emerson's participation in the changing character of New England's ministerial profession. That neither Emerson nor his contemporaries considered Nature a renunciation of his involvement with the ministry is manifested by both the substance and the circumstances surrounding the Divinity School "Address." The fact that the graduating seniors of Harvard Divinity School invited Emerson to give "the customary discourse on the occasion of their entering upon the Christian ministry" testifies that they did not consider his involvement with New England's ministerial institutions to have been terminated either by his resignation or by his subsequent literary endeavors (L 2: 147). Nor did Emerson consider the request unusual. Although the journals record his uncertainty over the message he was to deliver, there is no indication that this uncertainty extended to the particular institutional circumstances of the address. Nonetheless it is precisely the question of institutional sponsorship that fueled the controversy incited by Emerson's "Address."2 The uproar over institutional sponsorship is notable in at least two respects. The first is that, as critics have repeatedly remarked, the heresies advanced' by Emerson were not entirely new. During the two years prior to the "Address," Unitarians like Ripley had been challenging the assertion that the truth of Christianity depended upon the historical authority of revealed miracles. Barbara Packer echoes more than a century of critics when she claims that "the theology of Emerson's Address does not differ in most important aspects from the positions advanced by Channing in the

58 Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

famous Baltimore sermon, that central document of American Unitarianism" (123). The second and virtually unremarked aspect of the controversy over institutional sponsorship is that Emerson himself felt that the authorities of Harvard Divinity School were justified in disclaiming responsibility for his views. In two letters written on September 2, 1838, Emerson endorses the Harvard faculty's right to disavow his address. In the first letter, addressed to George Bush (a friend and Swedenborgian), Emerson describes the controversy engendered by his address: "The Discourse was delivered at the request of the class leaving the Theological School, &, as I found, offended the Faculty a good deal. The Faculty have certainly a right to any strong statement of their disapprobation, as otherwise the title-page of the address would seem to make the College an endorser for the heresy" (L 2: 156). This passage could be read as merely a conciliatory remark to one who does not share Emerson's views on revelation. But in a letter to his brother William, written on the same day, he expresses the same opinion in almost identical terms. Taken together the two letters suggest that Emerson acknowledges the right of academic institutions to protect their doctrines from heresy, even while maintaining his own right to offend such institutions as he sees fit. The Cambridge Address has given plentiful offense, & will, until nine days are out. The Divinity College has of course a perfect right to a strong statement disclaiming all acceptance of its doctrine & expressing what degree of abhorence it will, because otherwise the title page of the Address would seem to make the College endorser for the heresy. The speech will serve as some of the divisions in the congressional debates to ascertain how men do think on a great question. (L

2:

157)

Despite his initial willingness to grant the Divinity School faculty its right to dissent, a month after these letters Emerson was beginning to chafe under the continued theological "debates." In a letter to Henry Ware, Jr., responding to The Personality of The Deity, Ware's answer to the Divinity School ''Address,'' Emerson takes a more aggressive stance toward being raised "into an object of criticism" by the Harvard faculty: It strikes me very oddly & even a little ludicrously that the good & great men of Cambridge should think of raising me into an object of criticism. I have always been from my very incapacity of methodical writing a chartered libertine free to worship & free to rail lucky when I

Divinity School "Address" Controversy

59

was understood but never esteemed near enough to the institutions & mind of society to deserve the notice of the masters of literature & religion. I have appreciated fully the advantage of my position for I well knew that there was no scholar less willing or able to be a polemic. I could not give account of myself if challenged I could not possibly give you one of the "arguments" on which as you cruelly hint any position of mine stands. (L 2: 166-67) Although endorsing the right of "the good & great men of Cambridge" in "disclaiming all acceptance of [the] doctrine" of his address "& expressing what degree of abhorence [they] will," Emerson cannot understand their "raising [him] into an object of criticism." For Emerson the institutional obligations of the Divinity School faculty differ from his own. Because "the title page of the address would seem to make the Faculty of the college an endorser for the heresy," Emerson condones "any strong statement of their disapprobation" that the faculty sees fit to issue. Because he considers himself, however, "a chartered libertine free to worship & free to rail lucky when I was understood but never esteemed near enough to the institutions & mind of society to deserve the notice of the masters of literature & religion," he feels that the faculty ofthe Divinity School should not expect him to conform to its institutionalized modes of argumentation. Free from any particular institutional commitment, Emerson considers himself free from the burdens of "argument" and "polemic" that such a commitment entails. Emerson's belief that "methodical writing" is the exclusive province of the Divinity School faculty speaks to the current critical consensus that Emerson employs the jargon of the higher criticism in the "Address" to turn Unitarian exegetical methodology against his audience. Joel Porte claims that "It is hard to see how Emerson's frank appropriation of religious terms and concepts could have failed to offend much of his audience" (I 19).Julie Ellison suggests that Emerson's "irreverent [higher critical] citations let his academic audience know that the critical idioms in which they are expert can be turned against them" (104). And in Emerson's Fall Barbara Packer contends that Emerson "was practicing biblical criticism in the style of Norton" (124), an assertion that she has more recently elaborated, arguing that "the Divinity School Address flaunts the jargon of the higher critics" in order to "annoy" Norton and other members of the Harvard audience ("Origin" 83). This critical consensus raises two related questions: Why would Emerson's combination of Unitarian exegetical methods and higher critical jargon offend his audience and why would this offense be expressed in terms of institutional sponsorship?

60

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

The answer to these questions involves the fact that in the newly founded divinity schools of antebellum New England, institutions and exegetical method went hand in hand. Once seen as an office to which one was called by God, by the time of Emerson's professional dedication the ministry had become one profession among a growing number to which an aspiring middle-class youth could devote himself. In dedicating himself to a career in divinity in 1824, Emerson was in a very real sense caught between two conflicting notions of the ministry. On the one hand, his choice of the ministry over law or medicine exemplified the new status of the ministry as one career option among many. But on the other hand, his decision to follow in the family tradition reflects an older notion of the ministry. By the time of his dedication higher education had already begun to usurp the role of the family in defining a young man's choice of a career. In the antebellum culture of professionalism it had become the function of institutions like Harvard Divinity School "to legitimate the authority of the middle class by appealing to the universality and objectivity of 'science'" (Bledstein 12324).3 And in New England's divinity schools "the universality and objectivity of 'science'" were seen to reside in the application of scientifically correct interpretive principles to the biblical text. Both Unitarians and Trinitarians believed that the doctrinal positions taught in their seminaries were authorized by the correct interpretation of the Bible, which was in turn authorized by the scientific application of correct interpretive principles. Emerson's appropriation of Unitarian exegetical methods could be considered threatening because it suggested both to Unitarians and to their opponents that Unitarian interpretive principles led inevitably to Transcendentalism, a claim first advanced by Moses Stuart's depiction of Unitarianism as a "half-way house to infidelity." Emerson's letter to Ware suggests, however, that he sees his address not as an instance of the Unitarian exegetical methods taught at Harvard but as a "libertine" alternative to the "methodical writing," "arguments," and "polemics" of New England's theological schools. Thus when he contends in his address that "with what ever exception, it is still true, that tradition characterizes the preaching of this country; that it comes out of the memory, and not out of the soul; ... that thus, historical Christianity destroys the power of preaching, by withdrawing it from the exploration of the moral nature of man, where the sublime is, where are the resources of astonishment and power," he is effectively undermining the very authority with which the Harvard Divinity School aimed to legitimate its ministerial training (GW I: 87 ). But in advising the Harvard seniors to "let the breath of new life be breathed by

Divinity School "Address" Controversy

61

you through the forms already existing," rather than "to project and establish a Cultus with new rites and forms," Emerson underscores the fact that his rejection of "historical Christianity" is not a rejection of the ministerial profession (CW 1: 92). On the contrary his criticism of the persistence of "tradition" and "memory" in the preaching of his day sounds a challenge, in the name of the developing culture of professionalism, to the outmoded teachings of Harvard Divinity School-a challenge not to the institutional "forms already existing" but to the theological content with which those forms are historically inspired, a challenge to preach "the moral nature of man, where the sublime is." Rather than read Emerson's address as an attempt to turn Unitarian exegetical methods against Unitarian doctrines, I argue that Emerson's address calls into question the belief (shared by Unitarian and Trinitarian alike) that the authority of New England's divinity schools is contingent on their inculcation of scientifically correct interpretive principles in their ministerial aspirants. Because "tradition" and "memory" characterize the teaching of New England's divinity schools, Emerson feels that the attempt to furnish their students with scientifically correct interpretive principles is not truly scientific, since this attempt is in the service not of "the moral nature of man" but of "historical Christianity." As I suggest in the final section of this chapter, Emerson believes that the truth of Christianity is constituted not by the application of correct interpretive principles to the biblical text but by the acquisition of "a faith like Christ's in the infinitude of man" (CW 1: 89). Although it is clearly the case that the founders of New England's divinity schools felt that they were legitimating their ministerial aspirants with the scientific credentials to preach their respective doctrines, Emerson's address suggests that true scientific authority resides not in interpretive principles, but in "the expression of the moral sentiment in application to the duties of life" (CW 1: 83). The

~~Unitarian Conscience"

and the "Regula Fidei"

Although Emerson records that he "shivered when he saw the books of Biblical Criticism on the shelves of the young preacher in Concord," his own thinking was unquestionably influenced by many of the same forces which helped to encourage the higher criticism of the Bible both in Europe and in his native New England (Wright 67-68). By the time Emerson briefly attended Harvard Divinity School in 1825, Orthodox and Unitarian alike had begun to investigate seriously the claims of European biblical criticism.

62

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

With the foundation of Andover Seminary in 1808 as a conservative alternative to the increasingly liberal Harvard College, New England had its "first school for the professional training of the clergy" (Wright 23). Although the exact date of the foundation of Harvard Divinity School is debatable, "By 18 19, it may fairly be said, there was a full-fledged theological seminary in the University" (Wright 28). No matter what date is determined for the precise beginning of Harvard Divinity School, there can be no dispute that a "new era of biblical criticism" was inaugurated when Harvard appointed Joseph Stevens Buckminster its first Dexter Lecturer of Biblical Criticism in 181 I (Wright 44). As Conrad Wright has pointed out, "of the five fields of study into which the [Harvard] curriculum was divided, Biblical criticism was by far the most important" (58). For Unitarian and Orthodox alike, the purpose of critical investigation of the Bible was not to destroy its historical authority but to use that authority to support their respective doctrinal positions. Both Andover and Harvard were founded partly as a response to the growing threat to Christianity that some aspects of the higher criticism seemed to pose and partly as a response to the need to legitimate ministerial authority in the burgeoning culture of professionalism in nineteenthcentury America. The story of the influence of continental higher criticism on the development of professional divinity schools in New England properly begins in 1805, with the appointment of Henry Ware as the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard College. Ware's appointment to Harvard's chair of theology proved to be the decisive signal to Massachusetts Calvinists that Harvard had fallen under the control of the liberal Unitarians. Largely as a result of Ware's appointment, Calvinist clerical leaders were convinced of the need to establish their own institution for the training of the clergy. After an intramural struggle between moderate and conservative elements was resolved, "the new Seminary opened on September 28, 1808" (Williams 7). The source of the struggle was the fear that Andover would follow Harvard down the path of liberalism. The resolution of the struggle was the formulation of a creed of more than a thousand words to which all Andover professors would be required to subscribe every five years. Besides demanding that the Andover professor subscribe to the central doctrines of orthodox Calvinism as it had been practiced in New England for the previous two centuries, the creed also required him to "swear his oppOSition 'not only to Atheists and Infidels, but to Jews, Papists, Mahometans, Arians, Pelagians, Antinomians, Arminians, Socinians, Sabellians, Unitarians, and Universalists'" (Williams 6). Both the terms of the Andover creed

Divinity School "Address" Controversy 63

and the founding of the seminary itself caused the Harvard liberals to take alarm: "Unless the liberals could meet the challenge that Andover represented, the time would come when there would be no young liberal ministers to fill vacant pulpits, and the whole battle of liberalism and orthodoxy would go by default" (Wright 23). The liberals responded to Andover's founding as early as 181 I, with Buckminster's appointment as Harvard's first Dexter Lecturer. Although Buckminster died an untimely death at the age of twenty-eight after suffering an attack of epilepsy in June 18 I 2, his influence on biblical criticism in New England had already been secured-not only by his instrumental role in the publication of J. J. Griesbach's critical edition of the New Testament (the first such edition to be published in America and the one that was to serve as a textbook for the next couple of decades), but also by the dispersal through auction after his death of his library of German and other works of biblical scholarship.4 William Ellery Channing replaced Buckminster as Dexter Lecturer, but resigned after only a year because he felt that he was unsuited to the position's scholarly demands. In 1813 Andrews Norton lobbied his way into the position and worked aSSiduously to have the lectureship upgraded; by 18 19 he occupied the Dexter Professorship of Sacred Literature. Norton held the Dexter Professorship until 183 I, when his earlier marriage to a woman of means helped to finance his retirement from teaching in order to work on his lifelong defense of the genuineness of the Gospels. By the time of his retirement, however, the Harvard Divinity School had become well entrenched among the academic institutions of New England. s Also by the time of Norton's retirement, the amount of time spent by Harvard students on biblical criticism had increased from one exercise per week for one year of their studies to two exercises per week for the entire three-year program (Wright 43). Unlike Andover, Harvard did not demand their professors to subscribe to a doctrinal creed. Whereas one of the five professors at Andover held a chair of Christian theology, Harvard had no such position. Harvard was devoted to "the principle of free inquiry, ... it being understood that 'every encouragement be given to the serious, impartial, and unbiased investigation of Christian truth; and that no assent to the peculiarities of any denomination of Christians be required either of the Students or Instructors' " (Wright 36-37). But as Wright has correctly pointed out, and as the interpretive pluralism of Emerson's 1829 sermon on the Lord's Supper revealed, "it was quite as much a sectarian or party act for the Unitarians to insist that no such assent to the 'peculiarities' of any

64 Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

denomination would be required at Cambridge" as it was for Andover to insist that its faculty members swear their opposition to 'Jews, Papists, Mahometans, Arians, Pelagians, Antinomians, Arminians, Socinians, Sabellians, Unitarians, and Universalists" (37). Free inquiry meant Unitarian inquiry. Just as Unitarian scholars saw free inquiry to lead to a confirmation of their own beliefs, so Calvinist scholars felt that a "serious, impartial, and unbiased investigation of Christian truth" confirmed the doctrinal positions expressed in the Andover creed. Both Andover's Calvinists and Harvard's Unitarians believed that a correct, scientific interpretation of Holy Scripture would demonstrate the truth of their respective faiths and legitimate the authority of their ministers to preach those faiths. Philip Gura has argued that the doctrinal differences between the two parties resulted from the fact that they interpreted Scripture according to different interpretive principles, much as the conflict between Transcendentalism and Unitarianism has been understood as a product of the Transcendentalist rebellion against the exegetical principles employed by Unitarianism. 6 Because of the limited literalism of an "empirical reading of Scripture," Gura contends, Unitarians could not accept those Trinitarian doctrines whose "theological concepts were approachable only through figurative or symbolic discourse" (Wisdom 28-29). Although Andrews Norton and Moses Stuart proved to be the central figures in the exegetical debate between Trinitarianism and Unitarianism, it was Channing's "Unitarian Christianity" that set the discussion in motion. Arguably the most important doctrinal statement of Unitarianism in the nineteenth century, Channing's Baltimore Sermon is not particularly noteworthy for its account of biblical interpretation. In fact the most interesting aspect of its discussion of biblical interpretation is its uncontroversial portrayal of the relationship between interpretive principles and doctrinal ones.7 Channing breaks his sermon into "two natural divisions": "1st, The principles which we adopt in interpreting the Scriptures. And 2ndly, Some of the doctrines which the Scriptures, so interpreted, seem to us clearly to express" (33). The naturalness of this division derives from his belief that particular interpretive principles produce particular interpretations of Scripture. Because the doctrines which one understands to be authorized by Scripture are those which follow directly from one's interpretive principles, it is "natural" to discuss interpretive principles apart from, and prior to, particular doctrinal interpretations. In spite of the importance of scriptural authority for Unitarian doctrines, Channing does not claim that all books of Scripture have the same authority over our doctrinal beliefs. Since

Divinity School "Address" Controversy

65

Christianity is seen to be a progressive revelation, the New Testament is more authoritative than the Old: "whatever Uesus] taught, either during his personal ministry or by his inspired Apostles, we regard as of divine authority, and profess to make the rule of our lives" (33). The interpretive principles that Channing outlines in his sermon are straightforward and for the most part uncontroversial. God's scriptural revelation "is written for men, in the language of men, and ... its meaning is to be sought in the same manner as other books" (34). Although Unitarians were often "said to exalt reason above revelation," Channing contends that the Unitarian appeal to reason is issued in service of revelation. Since "the language of men" admits "various interpretations," Unitarians consider it their "bounden duty to exercise [their] reason upon it perpetually, to compare, to infer, to look beyond the letter to the spirit, to seek in the nature of the subject and the aim of the writer his true meaning" (36). In appealing to "the nature of the subject" and the intentions of the biblical authors, Channing anticipates the position Norton would elaborate against Stuart's attacks: the intrinsic ambiguity of language. From a variety of possible interpretations we select that which accords with the nature of the subject and the state of the writer, with the connection of the passage, with the general strain of Scripture, with the known character and will of God, and with obvious and acknowledged laws of nature. In other words, we believe that God never contradicts in revelation what He teaches in his works and providence. And we therefore distrust every interpretation which, after deliberate attention, seems repugnant to any established truth. (36-37) Curiously, Channing does not claim that these interpretive principles are peculiar to Unitarians. "All Christians are compelled to use them in their controversies with infidels. All sects employ them in their warfare with one another" (37). While Moses Stuart would agree that the principles which Channing had laid out were essentially those which he himself employs in the interpretation of Scripture, his response to Channing's sermon nevertheless insists that the doctrinal differences between the two men result from Channing's abuse of "the office of reason" in interpretation. 8 In fact the basic interpretive problem posed by Stuart's letters to Channing concerns the relationship between interpretive principles and interpretive results. Unable to understand the reasons for the two men's doctrinal differences, Stuart poses this confusion in the form of a question: "How can it be explained, then, supposing that you and I are both sincerely

66 Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

seeking after truth, and that both adopt for substance the same maxims of interpretation, that we should differ so widely in the results that flow from the application of these principles?" (13). Because both men believe that interpretations of particular biblical passages follow from the interpretive principles which one brings to the text of Scripture, Stuart is surprised that in spite of the fact that he and Channing "adopt for substance the same maxims of interpretation," they do not agree on the theological doctrines which should necessarily follow "from the application of these principles." If they truly share interpretive principles, Stuart argues (and Channing would seem to agree), they should also share theological ones. In order to untangle this confusion, Stuart begins his response by elaborating the points of agreement between the two men's interpretive principles. Like Channing, Stuart believes that the New Testament is a more authoritative revelation than the Old: "Whatever from its nature was national and local-is not binding upon us under the Christian dispensation" (8). Similarly both men concur that scriptural language is to be interpreted as any other human language would be: "Of course, the language of the Bible is to be interpreted by the same laws, as far as philology is concerned, as that of any other book. I ask, with you: How else is the Bible a revelation? How else can men ever come to agree in what manner Scripture should be interpreted or feel any assurance that they have attained to the meaning of its language?" (9- 10). And although Stuart also claims that he and Channing agree fully on the employment of "the proper office of reason in the whole matter of religion," he feels that he must "make some objection to the manner, in which the office of reason in the interpretation of Scripture is occasionally described" (10). Stuart believes that the office of reason ought not to extend to interpretation because interpretation is simply a matter of correctly applying accurate exegetical principles to the scriptural (or any other) text: "when reason is satisfied that the Bible is the book of God, by proof of which she cannot reject, and yet preserve her character; and when she has decided what laws of exegesis the nature of human language requires; the office which remains for her, in regard to Scripture, is the application of these laws to the actual interpretation of the Bible" (10). Reason has no business deciding which of God's laws to respect and which to transgr~ss; it is only "to act as the interpreter of Revelation, and not in any case as a legislator. Reason can only judge of the appropriate laws of exegesis, and direct the application of them in order to discover simply what the sacred writers meant to assert" (10-11).9 Whereas Channing suggests that an interpreter

Divinity School "Address" Controversy 67

should "distrust every interpretation ... which seems repugnant to any established truth," Stuart believes that he must rather distrust "any established truth" which can be seen to contradict the "doctrines and facts which God has asserted to be true" (10). Because both parties share identical interpretive principles, Stuart feels that Channing and other Unitarians should agree with him on the Trinitarian interpretation of Scripture. They fail to agree, however, because after arriving at correct interpretations of Scripture, Unitarians then dismiss these undeniably correct interpretations simply because their Trinitarian meanings do not agree with the Unitarians' prior beliefs about such natural truths as the self-identical nature of both human and divine persons. 10 Although Channing did not respond to Stuart's letters (except to append to subsequent editions of his sermon a number of particular scriptural passages that seemed to him to deny the Trinitarian God and the divinity of Christ), his response would probably have been very similar to the one that Norton advanced against Stuart's arguments: that Stuart himself had misunderstood the role of reason during the interpretive act by failing to realize the way in which reason automatically rejects any possible interpretations of a passage that are obviously absurd or clearly unintended by the passage's author. Because of the intrinsic ambiguity of language, Norton avers, interpretation always involves a choice between a variety of possible meanings for anyone particular passage. Norton's reply to Stuart had been described as "the locus classicus of the Unitarians' position on language" (Gura 27 ).11 Like Channing and Stuart, Norton believes that particular interpretive principles produce particular interpretations: "the passages adduced in support of Trinitarian doctrines have been interpreted upon no general principles, or upon none which can be defended" (136). Because Trinitarians base their interpretations not on "general principles," but on childhood associations "between certain words and a certain meaning," Norton argues, every interpretation of Scripture which clashes with these associations (especially Unitarian interpretations) "appears to be doing violence to the language of Scripture" (137 ). Just as Stuart accused Channing of identifying divine revelation with Unitarian reason, so Norton accuses Stuart of identifying Trinitarian childhood associations with a correct interpretation of "the language of Scripture." Although Norton and Stuart disagree about exactly which principles of interpretation are the correct ones (as well as about whether the other adheres to interpretive principles at all), and although they disagree about particular interpretations of passages "Concerning the Nature of God and

68

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

the Person of Christ," both men agree that the conflicts between Unitarian and Trinitarian can be resolved only by the determination and subsequent application of correct principles of interpretation to the biblical text. Norton's central objection to Stuart's account of interpretive principles is that, like other Trinitarians, he fails to recognize the one crucial fact which gives rise to the art of interpretation in the first place: "the intrinsic ambiguity of language" (138).12 According to Norton, all sentences, "if regard be had merely to the words ofwhich they are composed, are capable of expressing not one meaning only, but two or more different meanings" (138 ).13 Interpretation is not simply a matter of determining the one intrinsic meaning that a sentence expresses: "If words and sentences were capable of expressing but a single meaning, no art would be required in interpretation. It would be. .. a work to be performed merely with the assistance of a lexicon and grammar" (160-63).14 But, Norton argues, these two tools could provide one only with the range of possible meanings of a sentence, not with the meaning which was intended by its author. In most accounts of the principles of interpretation, "this fact which lies at the very bottom of the art of interpretation, has either been overlooked, or not regarded in its relations and consequences" (139).15 In addition, because "language is conventional" and thus "varies much in different ages and nations," a verbatim translation of a passage from one language to another is often very different from what the conventional sense of the passage would be in its original tongue (143). As a result both of the intrinsic ambiguity of language and the radical conventionality of meaning, the interpreter must determine, from a variety of possible meanings, what the correct interpretation of any sentence is. Like modern-day intentionalists, Norton feels that interpretive controversies can be adjudicated only by appealing to the author's intention-"by directing our attention to all those considerations which render itprobable that one meaning was intended by the writer rather than another" (148). As is often the case with the intentionalist argument, however, it is not immediately clear how an appeal to authorial intention can escape the problems of conflicting interpretations. On the one hand, it is possible to have contradictory interpretations of "those considerations which render it probable that one meaning was intended by the writer rather than another." And on the other hand, the meaning an author intended is precisely what is at issue in interpretive conflicts. Like his intentionalist descendants, Norton thinks that an appeal to certain kinds of evidence (biographical, historical, rhetorical, etc.) can provide a more immediate or stable access to the author's

Divinity School "Address" Controversy

69

intention than the text itself. 16 But because authorial intention is what is at stake in interpretation, the advice to appeal to that intention can hardly constitute a meaningful principle of interpretation. 17 Although Norton believes that the recognition of the intrinsic ambiguity of language must be included in any account of correct principles of interpretation, he fails to see that the appeal to extrinsic considerations to determine the intended meaning of a particular passage ultimately undermines his conviction of the necessary relationship between interpretive principles and interpretations of particular works (or biblical passages ).18 Like Norton's account of the intrinsic ambiguity of language, Stuart's account of interpretive principles also undermines the necessary relationship between interpretive principles and interpretive results, as can be seen in a work whose very existence would insist on such a relationshipStuart's translation and amplification of J. A. Ernesti's Institutio Interpretis Novi Testamenti. First published in 1827 and popular enough to be reprinted in four different editions, Stuart's translation represented an attempt to put into practice (by specifically detailing what he felt constituted correct interpretive principles) his belief that a correct understanding of Scripture depends on correct interpretive principles. 19 Ernesti's manual presents the same mechanistic vision of interpretation that Stuart presented in his letters to Channing: the province of hermeneutics is to determine correct principles and rules of interpretation, after which all that is left for the interpreter is to apply them mechanically to produce correct interpretations. Ernesti begins by delineating the exegetical principles common to all language and their role in constituting "the ground of all the certainty which attends the interpretation of language" (22). Stuart adds a note to Ernesti's account of the role of interpretive principles which underscores his point very forcefully: "If anyone should deny that the above principles lead to certainty, when strictly observed, he would deny the possibility of finding the meaning of language with certainty" (22). The desire for certainty in interpretation is of course even stronger when one is dealing with the language of revelation. Both Ernesti and Stuart agree that the "principles of interpretation are common to sacred and profane writings" and that "the Scriptures are to be investigated by the same rules as other books" (27 ).20 Stuart's elaboration of this point reiterates one instance of his agreement with Unitarian principles of exegesis: "when God has spoken to men, he has spoken in the language of men, for he has spoken by men andfor men" (27). Such agreement, however, is short-lived. For Ernesti and Stuart,

70

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

all language, whether sacred or profane, "can be properly interpreted only in a philological way" (27). Those who "depend in their interpretations rather on things than on words," those who, like Norton, base their interpretations on extrinsic considerations, lead interpretation into uncertainty and perpetrate "the abuse of reason in the interpretation of Scriptures" (27 ).21

Yet in spite of the firmness with which Ernesti insists that interpretations are to be rule-governed, his manual endorses two rules that (like Norton's appeal to extrinsic considerations to resolve the intrinsic ambiguity of language) undermine his mechanistic vision of interpretation: the usus loquendi and the regula fidei. In a note Stuart defines the former as "the sense which usage attaches to the words of any language" (45), echoing Norton's account of the radical conventionality of meaning. But where Norton sees this conventionality as a primary cause of the intrinsic ambiguity of language, both Ernesti and Stuart see the usus loquendi as a means of safeguarding the intrinsic meaning of a text from ambiguity. Ernesti and Stuart are not, however, in complete agreement about the extent to which this rule should be employed. One of the ways in which the usus loquendi is to be determined is by the context, a means which Ernesti downplays, but of which Stuart doubts "whether there is anyone rule in the whole science of Hermeneutics, so important, and of so much practical and actual use" (59). Whereas Ernesti's manual is intended to provide the biblical interpreter with the rules with which he can determine (independent of any appeal to context) the one correct meaning intrinsic to every particular text, Stuart's endorsement of context in order to determine the usus loquendi undermines the idea that a correct interpretation depends strictly on the mechanical application of correct interpretive principles to the words of the biblical (or any other) text. The regulafidei, or analogy of faith (a hermeneutic principle that goes back at least to Augustine), provides an even more fundamental challenge to the claim that a correct interpretation of Scripture depends on the application of correct interpretive principles to the biblical text. Although Ernesti opposes this principle in interpreting secular language, both he and Stuart favor the analogy of faith in interpreting Scripture. In Ernesti's initial discussion of secular language, he declares that words are not to be interpreted according to the analogy of faith. But Stuart qualifies Ernesti's remark in a note: "If the question be asked, whether scrtptural analogy of faith is a rule of interpretation; the answer must readily be given in the affirmative" (29). Stuart's warning that interpreters should not interpret

Divinity School "Address" Controversy

7I

doctrinally at the expense of the plain truth of Scripture is implicit in Ernesti's reluctance to endorse the rule of faith as an interpretive principle. In the subsequent chapter "On finding the Usus Loquendi in the New Testament," however, Ernesti endorses the analogy of faith: "The analogy of Scripture and of Christian doctrine should be always before our eyes, so that the interpretation may be guided by it, Le., that it may be so far guided by it as that no explanation contrary to it should be adopted" (79). Like Channing and Norton, Ernesti and Stuart present two conflicting accounts of interpretation. They insist that interpretation is a mechanical process, driven by the engine of interpretive principles. But interpretive principles are effective only insofar as they do not produce interpretations that are contradictory to the beliefs already held by the interpreter. The regula fidei instructs Christians to interpret Scripture so that its meaning agrees with what they already know to be true. The quest for rules by which to provide certainty in the interpretation of Scripture comes down to one central rule: interpret the Bible to mean what you are already certain it means. As such, rules do not provide . interpreters with certainty in interpretation; prior beliefs do. Thus when Stuart accepts scriptural authority for his belief in the Trinity and the divinity of Christ (in spite of the fact that these doctrines are incomprehensible), he does so not simply because these beliefs are the product of his application of correct interpretive principles to the biblical text, but because he already believes these doctrines to be true. Stuart does not accept scriptural authority for these doctrines because they do not seem to him to be absurd (as they do to the Unitarians), but they do not seem to him to be absurd because he already believes them to be authorized by Scripture. If the rule of faith is to be followed, there is no guarantee that the application of the same interpretive principles by two different interpreters (no matter how correct these principles may be or how strictly they are applied) would produce the same interpretations of any particular text-unless the two interpreters already agreed with each other about what the text should mean. This is not to say that Stuart no longer believes that correct interpretations are produced by correct interpretive principles, but that the regula fidei works to make all other rules of interpretation incidental and ultimately unnecessary. Interpretive principles (no matter what Stuart or the Unitarians claim for them) can constitute only a posteriori justifications for a priori beliefs. Although Harvard's Unitarians had not formulated a doctrinal creed as explicit as that of Andover's Trinitarians, the Unitarians were not without an interpretive principle analogous to the regulafidei. As Daniel Walker Howe

72

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

has suggested, "The Unitarian conscience was a tool of biblical criticism" (87). Frances Bowen describes the working of the Unitarian conscience very much like Stuart describes the scriptural analogy of faith. "In the perusal of Scripture, the only reason for construing a passage in a metaphorical sense is, often, that by a literal interpretation, it would convey a doctrine utterly repugnant to all our moral feelings. The law written on the heart expounds the law graven on tables of stone."22 Like the regula fidei, the Unitarian conscience guarantees that any literal interpretation of Scripture which conveys "a doctrine utterly repugnant to [Unitarian] moral feelings" should be rejected in favor of a metaphorical sense more harmonious with "the law written on the heart." And as both the regulajidei and the Unitarian conscience make clear, conflicting interpretations of Scripture advanced by Trinitarian and Unitarian interpreters derive not from conflicting interpretive prinCiples, but from conflicting theological beliefs. Not interpretive principles in the mechanistic sense, the regula jidei and the Unitarian conscience ensure that no correct interpretation of Scripture can contradict the a priori beliefs of Trinitarian or Unitarian interpreters, respectively. ~~The

Teacher afthe Coming Age"

The hermeneutic controversies between Trinitarians and Unitarians supply an important context for Emerson's critique of the historical authority of Scripture in the Divinity School "Address." As we have seen, his dissatisfaction with the account of revelation taught in New England's divinity schools was many years in the making. In a series of journal entries written at the end of his European tour in 1833, Emerson rehearses the arguments he was to advance against historical Christianity in the "Address." Although the gist of these arguments (both in the journal and in the "Address") is that moral truth, not local sectarian debates, constitutes the heart of Christianity, Emerson's understanding of moral truth in these entries is involved with a reconsideration of America prompted by his year abroad. This involvement is evident in the upsurge of nationalistic feelings prompted by the imminent end of his tour and subsequent return to America. In "Liverpool, 2 September, 1833," he writes: "Glad I bid adieu to England, the old, the rich, the strong nation, full of arts & men & memories nor can I feel any regret in the presence of the best of its sons that I was not born here. I am thankful that I am an American as I am thankful that I am a man. It is its best merit to my eye that it is the most resembling country to

Divinity School "Address" Controversy

73

America which the world contains" (jMN 4: 81). Emerson's approval of England because it resembles America provides an interesting (though seemingly unwitting) reversal of history. The feeling that he measures up favorably to "the best of [England's] sons" derives from his previously expressed "conviction that the great men of England are singularly ignorant of religion" (jMN 4: 80). On the first of September Emerson had written that "Landor, Coleridge, Carlyle, Wordsworth," while "men of genius," are not minds"of the first class": "Especially are they all deficient all these four-in different degrees but all deficient-in insight of religious truth. They have no idea of that species of moral truth which 1 call the first philosophy" (jMN 4: 78-79). Emerson's advice to these men to read "Norton's Preface to his new book who has stated that fact well" is tinged with the tone of false bravado that can be heard throughout this nationalistic upswell (jMN 4: 80). A" the subsequent entries in the journal attest, however, his endorsement of "Norton's Preface to his new book" is hardly an endorsement of the book's Unitarian contents. 23 For when Emerson elaborates "the error of religionists" which he ascribes to "the great men of England," he also includes American Calvinists and Unitarians, whose deficiency in moral truth suggests that they, too, are not American enough. Religionists do not teach "that species of moral truth which 1 call the first philosophy," Emerson writes, because "they do not know the extent or the harmony of their moral nature" (jMN 4: 83). Much as Norton accuses Calvinists of clinging to childhood associations of the meanings of certain Trinitarian proof-texts, and as the Divinity School "Address" will charge historical Christianity with exaggerating "the personal, the positive, the ritual" (GW I: 82), so Emerson here accuses "every form of Christian and of Pagan faith" of "clinging to little, positive, verbal, formal versions of the moral law": "I call Calvinism such an imperfect version of the moral law. Unitarianism is another, & every form of Christian and of Pagan faith in the hands of incapable teachers is such a version" (jMN 4: 83)· Emerson does not suggest, however, that the solution to this moral imperfection is to be found in a perfect doctrinal "version of the moral law." Such a suggestion would ignore an essential fact that has been consistently overlooked by the "incapable teachers" of Calvinism and Unitarianism: "That no doctrine of God need appeal to a book; that Christianity is wrongly received by all such as take it for a system of doctrines" (jMN 4: 77). Emerson will make this same point in the Divinity School "Address": "I confess, all attempts to project and establish a Cultus with new rites and forms, seem to me vain. Faith makes us, and not we it, and faith makes its

74

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

own forms. All attempts to contrive a system, are as cold as the new worship introduced by the French to the goddess of Reason,-today, pasteboard and fillagree, and ending to-morrow in madness and murder" (GW I: 92). But to say that because Christianity is not a system of doctrines any attempt to contrive a new system will be in vain is not to say that no truth can be found in the doctrinal systems of Calvinism and Unitarianism, or in the Bible itself. All systems of Christian doctrine which recommend themselves to men do so because of the "Moral Truth [that] is in them" (JMN 4: 83-84). A "true Teacher" is able to exhibit this truth in any system of religion, by relinquishing "the falsehoods, the pitifulness, the sectarianisms," and allowing its "Moral Truth" to reveal itself (JMN 4: 83). While both Calvinist and Unitarian agree that whatever in the Bible is local or national and, as such, addressed only to the Jews, should not be binding upon Christians, Emerson extends this stricture to the sectarianisms of Calvinism and Unitarianism themselves. Although the sectarianisms of any single manifestation of Christianity may need to be discarded, Emerson maintains that sectarianism itself serves a historical purpose in the spread and development of Christianity. Sectarianisms ultimately prove not the partial truth of their own imperfect versions of Christianity, but the essential truth of Christianity's moral law. Although Jesus "has had an unnatural an artificial place for ages in human opinions," Emerson avers, this place helped to "add to the dignity of Christ" in "the barbarous state of society" in which Christianity was nurtured (JMN 4: 9 2 -93). "Now that the SS [Sacred Scriptures] are read with purged eyes," however, Christ "will be more truly venerated for the splendor of the contrast of his character to the opinions & practices of his age" (JMN 4: 93). Emerson sees a "true Teacher" as one who can exhibit the moral truth in even the most sectarian system of doctrines. So Jesus' own moral teaching can be seen by those who "read with purged eyes" to be even more remarkable in contrast to "the sensualism, the forms, & the crimes of the age in which he appeared & those that preceded it" (JMN 4: 93). Jesus' teaching is esteemed the more, the more "barbarous" the society of his contemporaries appears. The lesson to be learned from Emerson's theories of pedagogical evaluation, however, is not that a true teacher is one who is free from "the opinions & practices of his age." As Emerson will argue in the Divinity School "Address," the truth of Jesus' teaching does not derive from his refusal to allow the values and customs of his contemporaries to contaminate his Word, but precisely the oppOSite. "Like every wise & efficient man

Divinity School "Address" Controversy

75

he spoke to Ithe/hisl times in all their singular peculiarities. His instruction is almost as local as personal as would be the teaching in one of our Sunday Schools. He speaks as he thinks, but he is thinking for them" (JMN 4: 93).24 BecauseJesus addressed his teaching to the local and personal problems of his contemporaries (i.e., to the sectarianisms of Pharisees, Sadducees, and others), it would be foolish to authorize one's own sectarian beliefs by their conformity to the historical details ofJesus' "life & teaching." Not only do Calvinist and Unitarian alike confound the local, historical aspects ofJesus' teaching with those aspects that have "universality of application" to the moral truth of Christianity, but they also mistake their own "little, positive, verbal, formal versions of the moral law" for the infinite moral law that Jesus taught. The Holy Scriptures are Jesus' expression of truth in the "singular peculiarities" of his own age: "They must be looked upon as one laffirmation/proclamationl glorious of moral truth but not as the last affirmation. There shall be a thousand more" (JMN 4: 93). But as Emerson will contend in the "Address," the fact that Jesus' teaching is not the final expression of moral truth does not mean that the next proclamation of moral truth should ignore entirely the study ofJesus' scriptural proclamation: "I look for the new Teacher, that shall follow so far those shining laws [of the Scriptures], that he shall see them come full circle" (CW I: 93). Upon returning from his European trip, Emerson had elaborated in the journal what it would mean to follow "those shining laws." The teacher of the coming age must occupy himself in the study & explanation of the moral constitution of man more than in the elucidation of difficult texts. He must work in the conviction that the Scriptures can only be interpreted by the same spirit that uttered them. And that as long as the heart & mind are illuminated by a spiritual life there is no dead letter but a perpetual Scripture. (JMN 4: 93-94) Emerson's prose is characteristically indirect in this recipe for scriptural interpretation. It is not clear whether "the teacher of the coming age" must study and explain "the moral constitution of man" as a prerequisite to the correct interpretation of "the difficult texts of Scripture" or whether such a study ought to replace the "elucidation of difficult texts." The fact that Emerson sees man's moral nature to be the "heart" ofJesus' teaching lends credence to the former interpretation of Emerson's injunction (since one could better understand Scripture if one better understood the moral nature which it taught) as well as to the latter (since there would be no need

76 Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

to study Scripture if one could study man instead). BecauseJesus' scriptural message was "man's moral nature," one must study "the moral constitution of man" if one wants to understand what Jesus was teaching. One must be scriptural in order to interpret Scripture correctly. This is not to say, as Norton does, that one must attempt to recreate historically the "singular peculiarities" of the scriptural authors or audience. 25 For like Jesus' teaching, the new teacher's interpretation of Scripture must be as "local as personal as would be the teaching in one of our Sunday Schools." Unlike Norton, Channing, or Stuart, Emerson does not believe that correct interpretation depends on the application of correct principles of interpretation to the biblical text. One does not need to interpret Scripture according to particular interpretive principles because "as long as the heart & mind are illumined by a spiritual life there is no dead letter but a perpetual Scripture." Such a truly scriptural interpretation would seem to make the Bible excessive. Emerson appears to be suggesting that if we interpret Scripture in the proper fashion, with our "heart & mind ... illumined by a spiritual life," there will be no more conflicting interpretations of its "difficult texts." If biblical interpreters would only reject the "dead letter" of historical authority and accept the moral authority of the Bible, then the problems of scriptural interpretation that have divided Calvinist from Unitarian would be solved. Yet the claim that it is "the teacher of the coming age" for whom Emerson provides a recipe for scriptural interpretation suggests that, rather than put an end to conflicting interpretations of Scripture, the moral authority of the Bible denies the possibility of there ever being an end to the conflicting interpretations that bring about sectarianism. Moral authority makes not the Bible, but the number of its interpretations, excessive. Emerson makes this point explicit in a journal entry written on his voyage home from Europe, in which he provides a definition of what he means by "Morals"-or more precisely, in which he resists providing a definition. At sea. 17 September. Yesterday I was asked what I mean by Morals. I reply that I cannot define & care not to define. It is man's business to observe & the definition of Moral Nature must be the slow result of years, of lives, of states perhaps of being. Yet in the morning watch on my berth I thought that Morals is the science of the laws of human action as respects right & wrong. Then I shall be asked-And what is Right? Right is a conformity to the laws of nature as far as they are known to the human mind.-These for the occasion but I propound

Divinity School "Address" Controversy

77

definitions with more than the reserve of the feeling abovenamedwith more because my conceptions are so dim & vague. (JMN 4: 86) Emerson's protestations to the contrary, his definition of "Morals" is neither dim nor vague. Although he appears to be hedging the question of definition in this entry, this hedging provides the key to a rather precise definition of "Morals." When asked what he means "by Morals," Emerson responds that "Morals" is that which he is unable or unwilling to define. He does not hesitate, however, to provide an "observation" "in the morning watch on [his] berth": "Morals is the science of the laws of human action as respects right & wrong." His reluctance to define "Morals" is made readily comprehensible by the near incomprehensibility of his observation: "Morals is the science of the laws of human actions as respects ... a conformity to the laws of nature as far as they are known to the human mind" and a nonconformity to those laws. Definition must be ultimate, definitive. The problem with defining is that when one begins there is no end. One must always be able to provide another definition ("Then I shall be asked-And what is Right?"), an observation for the occasion. It is precisely because there is no end to the definition of "Morals" that Emerson views his own conceptions to be "dim & vague."26 Emerson's punning observation "in the morning watch," however, is determinedly clear-sighted in its insistence on defining "Morals" as what cannot finally be defined, but can only be observed "as far as they are known to the human mind." On the next page of the journal Emerson continues his discussion of "Morals" with a reference to the eminently moral Milton. No matter how much Milton had been "enamoured of moral perfection," Emerson writes, "He did not love it more than I" (JMN 4: 87). Moral perfection "is always the glory that shall be revealed; it is the 'open secret' of the universe; & it is only the feebleness & dust of the observer that makes it future, the whole is potentially in the bottom of his heart. It is the soul of religion" (JMN 4: 87). The vexed "observer" makes it both possible and impossible that the" 'open secret' of the universe" "shall be revealed." Although he possesses the whole potentially in the bottom of his heart, his "feebleness & dust" keep him from attaining that potential. While it may be "the soul of religion," moral perfection proves to be an elusive soul: "It is always the glory that shall be revealed." Because even those who read Scripture "with purged eyes" must lodge those eyes in "feebleness & dust," no one observation of moral truth can be the last one. 27 This, in fact, is precisely the message which Jesus taught: "None knew better than he that every soul occupies a new position & that if

78

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

the stars cannot be counted nor the sands of the sea neither can those moral truths be numbered & ended of which the material creation is only the shadow" (fMN 4: 93). Emerson's use of the Old Testament language of God's promise to the people of Israel (that they would be more numerous than the stars or the sands) emphasizes the fact that his conception of moral truth is inextricably bound up with biblical authority. In rejecting the historical authority of Scripture, Emerson rejects neither its historical veracity nor its moral authority. Nor does he suggest that accepting the moral authority of Scripture will put an end to the problems of scriptural interpretation that plagued Unitarianism and Calvinism. On the contrary, to accept the moral authority of Scripture is precisely to deny that the interpretation of its moral truth could ever end: "there is no dead letter but a perpetual Scripture." Emerson's rejection of the historical authority of Scripture (in the journals as in the "Address") constitutes not a set of interpretive principles different from those of Unitarianism or Calvinism but a different interpretation of the meaning of Scripture. Although his claim that man's moral nature is the "heart of Christianity" represents an interpretation of Scripture that conflicts with both Unitarian and Calvinist ones, this conflict does not derive from the fact that Emerson interprets the Bible according to a different set of interpretive principles. In fact his account of the moral authority of Scripture is not an account of interpretive principles at all, but simply another interpretation of the message which]esus taught. Emerson's critique of historical Christianity in the Divinity School "Address" repudiates both the idea that any single interpretation of Scripture could express completely the moral truth of Christianity and the claim that Christian truth can only be attained by the application of correct interpretive principles to the biblical text. Neither a rejection of the ministerial profession nor a prescription for specific institutional change, the "Address" sets forth an idea of moral truth that is finally neutral in respect to particular institutional changes. It is not the institutional form of the ministry that Emerson sought to revise but the substance of its preaching and teaching. The problem Emerson finds with New England's divinity schools is that they fail to teach "that species of moral truth which I call the first philosophy," that each person can become like God. "The capital secret of [the ministerial] profession," Emerson insists, is "to convert life into truth," not through the preaching of a fixed set of formal doctrines but through "the expression of the moral sentiment in application to the duties of life" (GW I: 85-86). According to Channing, "A sentiment was an emotional regard

Divinity School "Address" Controversy

79

for a rational principle" (Howe 62). Thus Emerson charges Harvard's aspiring ministers with instilling an emotional regard for moral truth in their parishioners. Just as the medical profession must instill an emotional regard for the principle of health to create a constituency for its services, and the legal profession must instill the sentiment of justice to insure a constituency for its services, so the ministerial profession must inculcate the moral sentiment if it is to succeed in regaining "what hold the public worship had on men, ... its grasp on the affection of the good, and the fear of the bad" (GW I: 88). Seen in this light, for a minister to preach historical Christianity would be like a doctor trying to heal his patients by claiming that Hippocrates once healed the sick or a lawyer trying to defend his clients by claiming that Solomon once administered justice. "It is the office of a true teacher to show us that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake" (GW I: 89). Because Emerson sees the truth of Christianity to consist neither in Unitarian nor in Calvinist doctrines, the Divinity School "Address" has traditionally been read as a challenge to the increasing professionalization of the ministry in the first four decades of the nineteenth century. On the contrary, in urging Harvard's ministerial aspirants to preach not historical Christianity but moral truth, Emerson criticizes the teaching of New England's divinity schools not for being too professional but for not being professional enough.

Chapter Three Thoreau's Mythological Interpretation Seeing through "The Mist of Prejudice"

+ ~~To

Look through Each Other's Eyes"

Early in "Economy" Thoreau asks rhetorically: "Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?" (10). In a work that polemically employs "the I, or first person," it is not difficult to see the potential magnitude of "look[ing] through each other's eyes for an instant" (3). By providing an epistemological perspective different from one's own, such a vision would offer a "prospect" against which his own subjective experiences and perceptions could be measured-a perceptual "point d'appui" from which he "might found a wall or state" or "stand right fronting and face to face with a fact" (98). Yet the use of the term "miracle" to describe looking through another's eyes suggests another possible interpretation of Thoreau's questions. For in the "miracles controversy" fueled by Emerson's declaration in the Divinity School "Address" that "the word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, ... is Monster," belief or disbelief in the necessity of Christ's miracles to authenticate the revealed truth of Christianity had been the crucial point of distinction between Unitarianism and Transcendentalism (GW I: 8 I). And one of the foremost maxims of the hermeneutics on which Unitarianism grounded its "miraculous" interpretation of Scripture was, in Thoreau's eyes, a miracle itself: that the biblical interpreter must endeavor to read the Bible through the eyes of its author or intended audience if he is to interpret it correctly.!

82

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

Thoreau glosses the rhetorical questions of "Economy" with a passage that suggests further reference to Emerson's "Address." If we could "look through each other's eyes for an instant," Thoreau continues, "We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology! I know of no reading of another's experience so startling and informing as this would be" (10). Although Thoreau could mean the sequence "History, Poetry, Mythology" to be taken as a hierarchical progression of the imaginative powers, it is telling that this sequence roughly corresponds to the actual development of three different modes of "reading" Scripture through the eyes of its author or intended audience. Emerson implicitly decries this development in his critique of historical Christianity: "The idioms of [Christ's] language and the figures of his rhetoric have usurped the place of his truth; and churches are not built on his principles, but on his tropes. Christianity became a Mythus, as the teaching of Greece and Egypt before" (GW I: 8 I). In demythologizing the historical Christianity of his day, Emerson finds the poetical and mythological interpretations of Scripture as wrongheaded as the historical. In the previous chapter I argued that Emerson's Divinity School "Address" constituted a critique of the Unitarian belief that a correct interpretation of the Bible depended upon the application of correct interpretive principles to the biblical text. Here I argue that Thoreau was engaged in an analogous polemic. By declaring that there could be no greater miracle than "to look through each other's eyes for an instant," Thoreau implies that the process of interpretation on which the Unitarian miracles argument depends (particularly the injunction to interpret Scripture through the eyes of its authors or intended audience) would be more miraculous than the miracles that such an interpretation set out to authorize. Like the farmer in "Economy," Unitarian interpreters are "endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood by a formula more complicated than the problem itself" (33). While it would be unremarkable for Thoreau to address the limitations of merely historical knowledge, his critique of poetry and mythology is worthy of note. For many critics of Thoreau, poetry and particularly mythology are seen to provide him with the weapons he needs to attack the historical, institutional Christianity of his contemporaries. Robert Richardson, for example, who ascribes to Thoreau "the most deliberate, extensive, original, and successful use of myth" among American Renaissance writers, argues that for Thoreau "the proper expression of true religious feeling is through scripture, poetry, and myth, not through buildings and sects and intermediary priests" (98). Lawrence Buell maintains a similar position,

Thoreau '5 Mythological Interpretation

83

contending that "the concept of myth gives [Thoreau] a club with which to attack institutionalized religion" (214). Without questioning the value of myth for Thoreau-who found in the myths of all nations sources of inspiration as plentiful as nature itself-I do wish to question the reasons for which he has been understood to value it. More specifically I want to question Richardson's claim that Thoreau "tried to recover for himself the original conditions in which the early creators of the great myths found themselves" (90). For in comparing the miracle of looking "through each other's eyes for an instant" with the historical, poetical, and mythological interpretations that depend upon this miracle, Thoreau suggests that it is precisely the claim to be able "to recover. . . the original conditions in which the early creators of the great myths found themselves" with which he takes issue. In this chapter I examine three representative instances of the historical, poetical, and mythological interpretations of Scripture-each of which grounds a true interpretation of scripture on the possibility of seeing through the eyes of another. This examination will culminate in a discussion of the most devastating early nineteenth-century critique of this possibility, David Friedrich Strauss's 1835 Das Lebenjesu, and an early American review of Strauss by Theodore Parker in 1840. The chapter will conclude with a reading of "Sunday," from A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers, "Thoreau's earliest important extended treatment of myth," as an example of the account of mythological interpretation that he shared with (at least some of) his Transcendentalist contemporaries (Richardson 92). My aim is to show that when Thoreau says that "to look through each other's eyes" would constitute the greatest of all possible miracles, he means to rule out the possibility of recovering "the original conditions in which the early creators of the great myths found themselves." By redefining Thoreau's understanding of the relation between "institutionalized religion" and "the concept of myth," I demonstrate that Thoreau's work has more pertinence to the Transcendentalist understanding of the role of institutions in biblical interpretation than has previously been thought. In so doing I do not mean to argue that Thoreau was influenced by (or saw himself specifically as addressing) the problems of biblical interpretation that concerned someone like Parker. Rather, I mean to suggest that through his own concern with the interpretive and historical issues raised by his wide readings in such related areas as comparative mythology, classics, ancient history, and comparative linguistics, Thoreau arrived at an understanding of mythological interpretation that (when applied to the religious

84

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

questions raised by the Week's discussion of Sunday) speaks to some of the same concerns raised by the mythical interpretation developed by a number of higher critics. 2 'lHistory, Poetry, Mytbologyr'

The genesis of the Transcendentalist movement has generally been ascribed (in the words of Frederick Hedge) to a "dissatisfaction with the reigning sensuous philosophy, dating from Locke, on which our Unitarian theology was based" (qtd. Cabot I: 244). In claiming that the Transcendentalist dissatisfaction with sensationalism is bound up with a dissatisfaction with Unitarian theology, Hedge suggests that the Transcendentalist "revolt from Locke" cannot be separated from Locke's (and Unitarianism's) insistence that the truth of Christianity can be ascertained only by an "empirical reading of Scripture."3 Thus when Cameron Thompson contends that if we "grant Locke's presuppositions, all the rest-including, it seemed, Boston Unitarianism-followed," he must be understood to include Locke's theological presuppositions as well as his epistemological ones (448). Foremost among Locke's theological presuppositions (as Leslie Stephen describes them in an accurate and, as usual, highly readable narrative of the genesis of Locke's theological project) is the belief that the truth of Christianity must stand or fall on an empirical reading of the eyewitness history ofJesus' life recorded in the Gospels. One day, so he [Locke] tells us, he was thinking of a controversy then raging among dissenters, when it occurred to him to enquire into the "question about justification," and thence, by a natural transition, to ask what is the faith which justifies? To satisfy himself, he adopted a plan analogous to that which had produced the "Essay on the Human Understanding." Casting aside the infinite masses of learned speculation under which the whole subject had been buried, till it was crushed and distorted out of shape, he resolved simply to use his eyes to see what was before him. The process was so uncommon that it might be expected to produce novel results. In short, he read his New Testament without note or comment, as it might have been read by a youthful disciple of a modern dissenting preacher. No such student could have more summarily swept aside the labours of commentators, divines, and the whole tribe of exegetical Dryasdusts, than this venerable philosopher. As he read, the old words, doubtless familiar enough, dazzled him with new light. The meaning seemed to him so

Thoreau's Mythological Interpretation

85

plain that he could not understand how anyone could have missed it. (79)

The plain meaning that dazzled the eyes of "this venerable philosopher," whose empirical resolve was "simply to use his eyes to see what was before him," was that "Christ and the apostles, on admitting converts to the Church, did not exact from them a profession of belief in the Athanasian Creed, the Thirty-nine articles, or the Westminster Confession, but were satisfied with the acknowledgement that Christ was the Messiah" (Stephen 80). The proposition "that Christ was the Messiah" is essentially a historical one. Thus Locke's empirical interpretation of the New Testament inaugurates the defense of the historical authority of Scripture. If one assents to this proposition, Locke argues, one must have faith in the truth of Christianity as revealed in Scripture and must then obey "all divine revelation, as far as one could understand it" (Locke xxv). According to Locke, "the faith which justifies" is faith in the Gospels' proof that Christ was the Messiah. An empirical reading of Scripture, "without note or comment," justifies the historical truth of Christianity. Like Locke's Essay, however, it is not at all clear that his Reasonableness lives up to the most rigorous claims of its avowed empiricism. 4 Just as Locke's empirical epistemology depends on certain nonempirical assumptions both about the relationship between internal mental sensations and external physical reality and about the unvarying structure of the human mind, so his empirical theology can be seen to depend upon these and other assumptions regarding the nature of the biblical text. Unlike his philosophical project, however, in which the empirical philosopher could claim to deal directly with his own experience of the world, his theological project depends on the eyewitness accounts of the inspired biblical authors to provide the empirical theologian with his experience of Christ's world. In other words, Locke must assume that the Gospel accounts of Christ's messiahship represent the life ofJesus to the empirical theologian exactly as it was perceived by them and as it would have been perceived by him. Their sensations must be his sensations. They, too, must be empirical theologians. 5 According to Locke, the only time that Jesus speaks of his messiahship plainly is at the Last Supper. Because here Jesus speaks openly of his messianic role, the Last Supper provides Locke with convincing evidence for his empirical contention that the sole doctrine of the New Testament is that Christ was the Messiah. It is not until Judas has left the table, however, that Jesus speaks openly of his role, so that, Locke explains, 'Judas should

86 Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

not have that Uesus' claim to be the Messiah] to say against him" ( 1 08). Once Judas has left, however,Jesus "talks a little freer to them of his glory and his kingdom than ever he had done before" (1°9). The freedom of speech that Jesus employs consists in this: nowhere but at the Last Supper does Jesus employ the first person to speak of his role in the coming kingdom of God. Locke himself employs the first person to make this point: "I do not remember that anywhere, till now, he uses any such expression as 'my kingdom.' But here now he speaks in the first person" (109). Unlike Jesus' employment of the first-person pronoun at the Last Supper, Locke's use of the first person here is unremarkable, since he consistently employs it throughout the Reasonableness to signify himself. What is remarkable is his use of the first person in a subsequent paraphrase of Christ's own firstperson speech at the Last Supper. Christ's use of the first person occurs in response to Philip's request in John 14:9 to "show us the Father." Because Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in him, Jesus tells Philip, he does not need to see the Father himself, since he can see the Father by seeing the son. Even further, Jesus tells the disciples, after the resurrection the Father shall be in all of them: "You shall know that I am in the Father, and you in me, and I in you."6Just as Jesus' resurrection will collapse the distinction between the disciples and himself, so Locke's paraphrase of this speech collapses the distinction between Locke and Christ. For whereas elsewhere Locke uses "I" only to signify himself (as we saw above), in his paraphrase ofJohn 14:12 ("Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth in me, the works that I do shall he do also, because I go unto my Father") he uses "I" to signify Christ: "Though I go away, yet I shall be in you who believe in me, and ye shall be enabled to do miracles also, for the carrying on of my kingdom, as I have done" (I 1I). In this paraphrase Locke's own identity merges with Christ's just as Christ's merges with the Father's, suggesting that belief in Christ's messiahship is not merely the product of an empirical assent to the evidence of one's own eyes (an assent which one could arrive at through one's own sensations and reflections) but is the product of an assent to the evidence of the eyes of another (a belief in the union of individuals in God the Father, the union of "I" the believer with "I" the Christ). Although this may be a perfectly plausible ground for Christian faith, it is not an empirical assent to the evidence of one's own eyes. The identity of "I" as Locke with "I" as Christ belies the Lockean account of language, in which each word is seen to present one idea to the mind. In addition, the identity of "I"s in this passage cannot be derived from one's sensations and reflections but is produced by

Thoreau '5 Mythological Interpretation

87

Locke's a priori assumption of the identity of both "I"s and "eyes." What would seem to be the most convincing proof ofLocke's historical defense of Christian truth turns out to threaten its epistemological foundation by undermining Locke's empirical resolution "to use his eyes to see what was before him" (emphasis added).7 Despite the problems with Locke's scriptural empiricism, his formulation of the historical argument constitutes a crucial moment in the history of scriptural interpretation. For the Catholic Church the requirements "to make a man a Christian" involved the individual's assent to the dogmas derived from its own divinely sanctioned interpretation of the inspired biblical text. For Protestant Reformers the requirements "to make a man a Christian" depended on the individually inspired interpretation of the word of God. For Locke's empirical theology, however, the requirements to make a man a Christian consisted essentially in the acceptance of the Gospels' historical claim that Christ was the Messiah. This coupling of scriptural authority with the belief in the empirical historicity of Christ's messiahship was to dictate the shape of the next two centuries of critical investigation of the Bible by European scholars. The more immediate effect, however, of Locke's claim that the truth of Christianity depended on an empirical assent to the proposition that Christ was the messiah proved to be the rejection of Locke's formulation of scriptural authority by an English deism that employed many of the same epistemological assumptions entailed in Locke's theological project. 8 Deism was essentially an attack on traditional forms of Christian authority; nonetheless, the freedom with which the biblical texts were treated in the deistic controversy helped give rise in Germany to a proliferation of critical examinations of both Old and New Testaments, the aim of which was to establish an authoritative canon (or scriptural tradition) on which to ground Christian doctrine. 9 Much of the initial impetus for this criticism came from England, not only from the anti-Christian polemics of deism, but also, surprisingly enough, from an Anglican bishop, Robert Lowth, whose Sacra Poesia de Haebraeorum, published in 1753, put forth the claim that Hebrew poetry must be examined with the same literary tools that would be employed on any other ancient poetry.IO Lowth's work embodies a curious bundle of contradictory attitudes toward the question of biblical interpretation, but his insistence that the poetry of the Old Testament be treated aesthetically provided a decisive spark to the burgeoning critical and philological enterprise in the German universities. 1 1 Although not explicitly intended as such, Lowth's treatment of Old Tes-

88 Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

tament poetry constituted a radical departure from previous approaches to the language of revelation, since it ignored the questions of typology that had dominated discussions of the Old Testament since the time of Christ. The motivating force behind his work was the essentially aesthetic desire to treat the ancient poetry of the Hebrews with the same careful attention and admiration that had traditionally been bestowed upon classical verse (Frei 141-42, Kugel 274-86). "It would not be easy, indeed, to assign a reason why the writings of Homer, of Pindar, and of Horace, should engross our attention and monopolize our praise, while those of Moses, of David and Isaiah pass totally unregarded" (1: 44). Accordingly, though concerned to distinguish Hebrew poetry from later classical poetry, he organizes his discussion of Hebrew poetry along classicallines. 12 He defines the aim of poetry as to please and to instruct. He discusses the po~try of the Old Testament in terms of the classical poetic genres. He employs the major poetical figures of classical rhetoric in his analysis of Hebrew poetry. Lowth's desire to treat the Old Testament aesthetically involves him in a particular claim about the Old Testament text: that its value is due not to its verbal inspiration or to its historical accuracy, but to its classical aesthetic qualities. Lowth's invocation of the classical opposition between poetry and history-"History treats of things and persons which have been in actual existence; the subjects of Poetry are infinite and universal"-motivates the development of the poetical interpretation of Scripture (1: 16). His defense of Hebrew poetry dismisses the question of the historicity of the Old Testament narratives, which are more important for their dealing with poetically "infinite and universal" subjects than with "things and persons which have been in actual existence." In treating the poetry of the Old Testament Lowth suspends the question of historical reference that was central to Locke's empirical defense of the New Testament's authority for Christian truth. Yet as Lowth discovers, the problem of history cannot so easily be suspended. Historical reference does become important for his classical defense of Hebrew poetry, particularly in those instances in which "the manner of living, of speaking, of thinking, which prevailed" in biblical times is "found [to be] altogether different from our customs and habits, ... and rashly estimating all things by our own standard, we form an erroneous judgement" ( I: I 13). The problem of history becomes particularly intrusive in Lowth's discussion of the Hebraic use of figuration, since the vehicles for such figures often involve linguistic and cultural allusions that would be foreign to Lowth's contemporaries. To appreciate fully the instruction

Thoreau's Mythological Interpretation

89

which such examples of figuration were meant to impart, the biblical interpreter "must imagine himself exactly situated as the persons for whom it was written, or even as the writers themselves" (I: 114). Because of the differences between the way in which the Hebrews would have read the Bible and the way in which an eighteenth-century Englishman would do so, the Old Testament must be read "as much as possible ... as the Hebrews would have read it": "we must even investigate their inmost sentiments, the manner and connexion of their thoughts; in one word, we must see all things with their ryes, estimate all things by their opinions" (I: 113, emphasis added). Although "the subjects of Poetry are infinite and universal," its language is finite and "treats of things and persons which have been in actual existence." In spite of his desire not to treat the Old Testament as history, Lowth finds that the historically conditioned nature of biblical (or any other) language necessarily involves him in the questions of historical reference he had hoped to avoid. The attempt to bracket the question of historical reference requires him instead to invoke the historicity of biblical language. Thus, Lowth's aesthetic treatment of the poetry of the Old Testament does not suspend the question of historicity; it merely changes its object. The poetry of the Old Testament is historical, but only insofar as it refers to the biblical authors or audience not to the historical events described in the biblical narratives. 13 Yet Lowth's claim that the biblical interpreter "must see all things with [the] eyes" of "the persons for whom [the Bible] was written, or even [of] the writers themselves," is no more free from ahistoricism than was Locke's implied identity between the mind of Christ (or the eyes of the gospelists) and the mind (or eyes) of an empirical Christian. Because Lowth organized his own work along the lines of a classical ars poetica, his investigation of Hebrew poetry is based on enlightenment aesthetic categories not biblical ones. In one important respect Lowth's aesthetic defense of Hebrew poetry proves not very different from Locke's historical defense of Christianity's empirical reasonableness. Just as Locke's attempt to ground Christian truth empirically in the Gospels depended on the presuppOSition of an identity of human minds through history, so Lowth's attempt to examine the universal aesthetic qualities of Hebrew poetry presupposes that Hebrew categories of aesthetic judgment are identical to those of classical poetics. Although Locke and Lowth approached the Bible from different philosophical perspectives and with different theological aims, they share similar epistemological assumptions about the nature of biblical interpretation. Biblical truth, whether historical or aesthetic, whether New Testament or Old,

90

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

depends on an identity between the minds of the biblical authors and principals and the minds of the modern reader: "In one word, we must see all things with their eyes" to understand the truths of the biblical revelation. To see all things with their eyes guarantees both the historical truth of the Gospels' claim that Christ was the Messiah and the universal aesthetic truths of the poetry of the Old Testament. In spite of their divergent aims, Locke and Lowth agree that the biblical interpreter should "imagine himself exactly situated as the person for whom [the Bible] was written, or even as the writers themselves." Although Locke saw his work as an empirical project, and Lowth saw his project as aesthetic, both men proved instrumental in the inauguration of the hermeneutic principle that the Bible (and by extension any other text) must be understood as it would have been by "the persons for whom it was written, or even [by] the writers themselves." One of the first modern scholars to treat the poetry of the Bible as poetry, Lowth was by no means the first to demand that the Bible be read with the eyes of either its intended audience or its authors. 14 Nor was he the last. C. G. Heyne, for example, enjoined as a first principle for reading ancient myths the need to "transplant yourself wholly into the period of the story"; Johann Gottfried Eichhorn extended Heyne's principle of mythological interpretation to the Bible: "Forget the century in which you live and the knowledge it offers you," Eichhorn demanded of the reader of Genesis, "and if you cannot do that, do not imagine that you can savour the Book in the spirit of its origin. The youth of the world which it describes demands a spirit steeped in its depths; the first rays of the dawning light of reason cannot bear the bright lights of its full day; the shepherd speaks only to the soul of a shepherd, and the ancient Oriental only to the soul of another Oriental."15 This mythological approach to interpreting the Bible was introduced to New Englanders in 1833, in the form ofJames Marsh's translation of Johann Gottfried Herder's 1782-83 Vom Geist der Ebraischen Poesie, a work deeply influenced by both Heyne and Eichhorn. 16 In the introduction to his translation of Herder, Marsh argues that, like Lowth, Herder believes that to understand completely the poetry of the Old Testament it is necessary for biblical critics "to place themselves in the condition of those ancient patriarchs and prophets, whose thoughts and feelings they seek to apprehend; to see the world as they saw it, to feel as they felt, to imbibe and express their spirit in its truth and simplicity" (I: 13). But Marsh distinguishes Lowth's work from Herder's "in the point of view, from which it contemplates the subject of which it treats" (I: 4). Lowth's work "exhibits the views, which must naturally be taken, and are

Thoreau's Mythological Interpretation

9I

therefore justly taken, by a mind thoroughly disciplined and cultivated by a study of what in English literature is exclusively understood by classical learning both ancient and modern" (I: 4). If a biblical critic is "to imbibe the genuine spirit, and feel the simple power of every other national literature," Marsh contends, it is necessary for his mind to divest itself completely "of all that is peculiar in its acquired forms of thought, and in those conceptions by which it takes cognizance of the objects of its knowledge," and so to adopt "their conceptions for its own, as to contemplate the world around it under the same relations with them." Only by divesting himself of his own beliefs can the biblical critic "participate in their emotions" and "breathe the spirit of their poetry" (I: 5). Historical investigation of the circumstances of author and audience, or even of the biblical language, is by itself insufficient. The biblical critic "must not only be acquainted with the facts of their history, the modes of life, and the circumstances of every kind, by which their habits of thought and teachings were moulded, as a mass of antiquarian lore, but must learn to place himself entirely in their point ofview, and to see all these particulars in the relation to each other, and to the observer, which they would then assume" (I: 5). While admiring Lowth's work for the careful attention it pays to the poetry of the ancient Hebrews, Marsh (following Herder) feels that Lowth recaptures the letter, but not the spirit, of Hebrew poetry. 17 Marsh distinguishes Herder's attempt to reproduce the "first simple and child-like conceptions of the human mind" from Lowth's attempt to analyze these conceptions in light of the more adult conceptions of an Enlightenment neoclassicism (I: 5-6). Herder tries to understand "the spirit of Hebrew poetry" from the point of view of a primitive Hebrew, whereas Lowth tries to understand that poetry from the more adult perspective of Enlightenment aesthetics. Thus Herder acknowledges the radical change in human "language," "habits of life," and "modes of thought" from the time of the Hebrews to the eighteenth century, while Lowth fails to incorporate this change into his Enlightenment poetics and thus fails to interpret Hebrew poetry as the Hebrews would have (I: 5-6). If we extend Marsh's own metaphor, however, we can see that the difference between the two approaches is not a difference between an adult view of the childlike Hebrew poetry and a childlike view of it but a difference between two adult views of Hebrew poetry, the view of an English neoclassicism and that of a German Romanticism. Only insofar as old age can be said to represent a second childhood can Herder's approach to Hebrew poetry be seen as a successful attempt to see the world once more with the eyes of a child.

92

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

Instead the crucial difference between the two accounts of the Hebrew worldview involves the category of myth. Whereas Lowth's treatment of the Old Testament concerned itself primarily with the way in which its poetry communicated the emotions and ideational concepts of the biblical authors to its readers, Herder's deals mainly with the way in which the biblical authors came to create the poetry of the Old Testament. This difference manifests itself clearly in Herder's description of the biblical account of creation. Herder's work takes the form of a dialogue between the youthful Alciphion and the more elderly Euthyphron. In their second dialogue, "the two friends find themselves together at an appointed spot, a delightful eminence, that furnished a wide and beautiful prospect" (1: 47). Having observed the rising of the sun, Euthyphron queries Alciphion: "Have we not at this moment beheld and admired all the changing scenes of the vast work of creation?" (1: 48). Euthyphron is not speaking figuratively here but, as throughout the dialogues, is advancing the theory of Hebrew poetry that Herder's work propounds. "Not only the first brief history of the creation," he continues, "but all the Hebrew songs in praise of it ... were for the most part formed, as it were, in the immediate view of these very scenes; and it was this view that prompted the most ancient poetry of nature on the subject of the creation" (1: 49). Unlike Lowth's treatment of the Old Testament as poetry, Herder's depiction of the biblical accounts of creation as mythicized descriptions of the sunrise was not meant to strip these accounts of their historicity.I8 Although Herder himself was reluctant to denominate the biblical stories as myths, his attempt to understand them as realistic accounts of the world from the perspective "of the imagination and culture that produced" them was instrumental in the development of the mythical interpretation of the New Testament with which D. F. Strauss was to scandalize the Christian world in his 1835 Das Leben]esu. Before turning to Strauss's adaptation of the mythical interpretation to the question of the New Testament's historicity, I want first to consider the relation between Herder's view of myth and that presented by Thoreau in the Week. At the beginning of the "Sunday" chapter, Thoreau describes the sunrise in terms that might have been spoken by Euthyphron in Herder's dialogue. In the morning the river and adjacent country were covered with a dense fog, through which the smoke of our fire curled up like a still subtiler mist; but before we had rowed many rods, the sun arose and the fog rapidly dispersed, leaving a slight steam only to curl along the surface of the water. It was a quiet Sunday morning, with more of the

Thoreau '5 Mythological Interpretation

93

auroral rosy and white of the yellow light in it, as if it dated from earlier than the fall of man, and still preserved a heathenish integrity:- (43) Thoreau's contention that the rising sun's dispersal of the fog seemed to date the Sunday morning "from earlier than the fall of man" could be taken as an illustration of Euthyphron's claim that "all the Hebrew songs in praise of" creation were written "in the immediate view" of sunrises like the one Thoreau, or the one Euthyphron and Alciphion, beheld. Nor is the analogy weakened by the fact that Thoreau and his brother Adamically "gave names to" the islands they passed and "could see neither house nor cultivated field, nor any sign of the vicinity of man" (44). Yet the difference between the two accounts of the sunrise concerns Herder's desire "to see the world as [the biblical authors] saw it, to feel as they felt, to imbibe and express their spirit in its truth and simplicity." For where Herder considers his dialogians' view ofthe sunrise as an opportunity to place himself imaginatively in the point of view of the biblical authors, Thoreau considers the biblical (and other mythical) accounts of creation as an opportunity to make sense of his own experience of the sunrise. Thus the Homeric sunrise informs "the auroral rosy and white" of the New England dawn just as Genesis' account of Adam and Eve before the Fall informs the brothers' naming ofthe islands and their isolation from any sign ofhumanity. As elements of his own view of the world, Homer and the Bible filter Thoreau's understanding of the sunrise. And as we shall see in our discussion of sight and reading in the Week, to have one's sight filtered by Homer and the Bible is to see not through their eyes but through their mists. 19

What Van Harvey has succinctly described as "the important methodological prinCiple" involved in Strauss's Life ofJesus-that "all human thought and action and language are historically conditioned"-helps account for the work's impact on the Transcendentalists (196).20 As our discussion of Herder suggests, however, Strauss was not the first to arrive at "the conviction that the thought-forms of the first century were radically different from our own or those of the nineteenth century" (Harvey 196). But Strauss's account of biblical interpretation is to be distinguished from Herder's in at least one crucial respect. Herder takes the fact that all "thought-forms" are historically conditioned as an invitation to place ourselves imaginatively in the point of view of the biblical authors. Strauss, on the other hand, takes this fact as a declaration of the undesirability of Herder's project. "An

94 Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

interpretation of Scripture can only be impartial," Strauss writes, "if it unequivocally acknowledges and openly avows that the matters narrated in these books must be viewed in a light altogether different from that in which they were regarded by the authors themselves" (40). Unlike Herder's suggestion that we place ourselves imaginatively in the point of view of the biblical authors, Strauss's solution to the epistemological problem contained in Locke's empirical theology begins with the conviction that in the nineteenth century the Gospels can only be interpreted "in a light altogether different from that in which they were regarded by the authors themselves." To understand fully the implications of this conviction for Strauss's account of scriptural interpretation, we need to consider the Life of Jesus in comparison to "the antiquated systems of supranaturalism and naturalism" that Strauss sought to replace (XXiX).21 Like Locke, Lowth, and Herder, proponents of the uncritical methods of supranaturalism and naturalism agreed that the aim of biblical interpretation was to interpret Scripture through the eyes of its authors. The supranaturalism of the "ancient church," Strauss contends, maintained a "double presupposition: first, that the gospels contained a history, and secondly that this history was a supernatural one." Naturalism "rejected the latter of these presuppositions, but only to cling the more tenaciously to the former" (xxix). Despite his sympathies with naturalism's dismissal of the supernatural from the gospel history, Strauss insists that "science cannot rest satisfied with this half-measure: the other presupposition must also be relinquished" (xxix).22 By replacing the presuppositions of supranaturalism and naturalism with the belief that all human thought is historically conditioned, Strauss takes aim at the belief that biblical interpretation must seek to interpret the eyewitness history set forth in the Gospels through the eyes of the biblical authors. This belief manifests itself differently in the two "antiquated modes" that Strauss seeks to overturn. In a supranaturalist interpretation of Scripture, to interpret the Gospels through the eyes of their authors is to prove the supernatural nature of the life of Jesus. The biblical accounts of the birth, miracles, transfiguration, and resurrection ofJesus represent literal, eyewitness accounts of God's supernatural intervention in human history. In a naturalist interpretation, to interpret the Gospels through the eyes of their authors is to demonstrate the natural basis of seemingly supernatural events. Herder's interpretation of the biblical accounts of creation as mythical accounts of the sunrise represents but one version of this naturalist interpretation. For Strauss the problem with both modes of interpretation

Thoreau '5 Mythological Interpretation

95

is that they assume that such distinctions as that between the natural and the supernatural are identical for biblical authors and nineteenth-century interpreters. The supranaturalists assume that what appeared supernatural to the biblical authors would appear supernatural to us. The naturalists assume that what would count as natural or mythical to the biblical authors would count as natural or mythical to us. Strauss's mythical interpretation attacks the supposition (shared by naturalism and supranaturalism alike) that the Gospels contain a history that is written by men whose presuppositions were the same as our own. Thus Strauss can maintain with the naturalists that nothing described in the Bible need be explained by supernatural causes, and with the supranaturalists that when John says, for example, that Jesus turned water into wine, he does not mean that somebody secretly refilled the water jugs when nobody was looking. The significance of Strauss's mythical interpretation for Transcendentalism is most evident in his treatment of the biblical miracles. Despite the Transcendentalists' denial of the Unitarian contention that the biblical miracles authenticated the truth of Christianity, Parker, along with some of Strauss's detractors, criticizes Strauss for presupposing "that a miracle is utterly impossible" (329). Although Parker is right in suggesting that Strauss dismisses the miraculous as an explanatory category for the supernatural events recorded in the Gospels (to do otherwise would be to partake of the supranaturalism that Strauss sought to dismiss), he fails to recognize that Strauss's treatment of the Gospel miracles provides the clearest example in The Life ofJesus of the differences between the mythical interpretation of Scripture and those of supranaturalism and naturalism. Strauss arranges his discussion ofJesus' miracles in descending order of their historical veracity, beginning with what he considers the most plausible of the miracleS-Jesus' cures of demoniacs. Strauss prefaces his discussion with the assertion thatJesus' contemporaries took his miracles as signs of his messiahship, then provides a detailed summary of the changes that demonic possession has undergone in the history of biblical interpretation. Following the dialectical procedure that he derived from Hegel, Strauss begins with the supernatural interpretation of the "older theology," which (reading the biblical narratives through the eyes of their authors) "espoused the belief in the reality of demoniacal possession" (419). The antithesis to this belief is the naturalist interpretation of the "new theology," which removes the supernatural elements from the Gospel narratives but retains their historical character (419). Because "of the similarity between the consideration of the demoniacs in the New Testament and many natu-

96 Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

rally diseased subjects of our own day," naturalist interpreters have "begun to refer the malady of the former [New Testament demoniacs] also to natural causes, and to ascribe the evangelical supposition of supernatural causes to the prejudices of that age" (419). Due in part to "the advancement in the knowledge of nature and of mind," he continues, "it is no longer the custom to account for" cases "of epilepsy, insanity, and even a disturbance of the self-consciousness resembling the condition of the possessed, ... by the supposition of demoniacal influence" (419). He invokes the naturalist interpretation of demonic possession not because the mythical interpretation represents the logical extension of the naturalist one, but because the mythical interpretation uses the suppositions of its own time (the only suppositions available to an impartial, scientific interpretation of Scripture) to determine what was or was not historical in the Gospels. Strauss reiterates this point more forcefully in the following paragraph where he takes up Olshausen's supranaturalist attempt to reconcile "this inconceivable difference between the conditions of one age and another" in regard to the question of demonic possession (420). "Olshausen, whom we may fairly take as the representative of the mystical [Le., supernatural] theology and philosophy of the present day," denies the naturalist claim that madness and demonic possession are names for the same states, but maintains that each condition existed both inJesus' time and in his own: With respect to our own time he asks, if the apostles were to enter our mad-houses, how would they name many of the inmates? We answer, they would to a certainty name many of them demoniacs, by reason of their participation in the ideas of their people and their age, not by reason of their apostolic illumination; and the official who acted as their conductor would very properly endeavour to set them right: whatever names therefore they might give to the inmates of our asylums, our conclusions as to the naturalness of the disorders of these inmates would not at all be affected. (420) The point of Strauss's rebuttal of Olshausen is that just because we could imagine how mental disturbances would appear through the eyes of the apostles it does not follow that such an interpretation would provide valid criteria for our judgment of the nature of these disturbances. Our interpretation of their mental states can rest only on the presuppositions of our time. Olshausen supports his argument with the contention "that the same forms of disease were, even by the Jews, in one case held demoniacal, in another not so, according to the difference in their origin," but Strauss

Thoreau's Mythological Interpretation

97

counters this claim with scriptural examples suggesting that such a distinction was "certainly not founded on an investigation into the origin of the disease, but solely on its external symptoms" (420). AlthoughJesus' contemporaries did discriminate between madness and possession, their discrimination (despite its apparent similarity to Olshausen's own) is founded on different evidence. Thus, Strauss concludes, he "who believes himself bound by their opinion, without choosing to shut out the lights of modern science," still is faced with "the glaring inconsistency of considering the same diseases as in one age natural, in another supernatural" (420). The supranaturalists denied the radical difference between the suppositions of primitive Christians and those of nineteenth-century interpreters by affirming the unchanging truth of the supernatural events narrated in the Gospels. The naturalists' denial of this difference was based on their belief that the nineteenth-century account of what was or was not natural was identical to that of the primitive Christians. Strauss makes this distinction explicit in his discussion ofJesus' reported cures of lepers. To distinguish further his mythical interpretation from a naturalist one, Strauss begins his discussion of these cures not with the supranaturalist but with the naturalist account. Strauss cites Paulus as representative of the naturalist position, which defends the historicity ofJesus' cures of leprosy by interpreting the biblical accounts of these cures in such a way as to deny that they describe Jesus' miraculous healing of lepers. Such an interpretation involves some strained readings, as in Matthew 8:3: "AndJesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed." For in order to support his naturalist interpretation of this passage, Paulus must insist on a narrative disjunction between "I will" and "be thou clean," a disjunction that would remove any miraculous agency on Jesus' part (438). But it is the interpretive rule that Paulus cites in support of this interpretation that most clearly distinguishes the naturalist from the mythical interpretation. Strauss writes: In support of the natural explanation of this incident, Paulus appeals to the rule, that invariably the ordinary and regular is to be presupposed in a narrative where the contrary is not expressly indicated. But this rule shares the ambiguity which is characteristic of the entire system of natural interpretation, since it leaves undecided what is ordinary and regular in our estimation, and what was so in the ideas of the author, whose writings are to be explained. (438-39)

98 Transcendentalist Hermeneutics As Strauss's refutation of Olshausen makes clear, what distinguishes the

mythical interpretation from both supranaturalist and naturalist interpretations is its insistence on the discontinuity between the suppositions of one age (or culture) and another. The supranaturalist denial of this discontinuity manifests itself in an uncritical acceptance of the thought-forms of the biblical authors. The naturalist denial, on the other hand, leads to "the ambiguity which is characteristic of the entire system of natural interpretation": the inability to distinguish between "what is ordinary and regular in our estimation, and what was so in the ideas of the author, whose writings are to be explained." Although naturalism divests the Gospel narratives of their supernatural character, it shares with supranaturalism the rnability to recognize that, for the biblical authors, the supernatural was (in many cases) the natural. The strength of the mythical interpretation consists in its application to the Gospels of the fact "that all human thought and action and language is historically conditioned." Yet this application also leaves his work open to a criticism that Strauss anticipates: "that such a mass of mythi should have originated in an age so historical as that of the first Roman emperors." We must not however be misled by too comprehensive a notion of an historical age. The sun is not visible at the same instant to every place on the same meridian at the same time of the year: it gleams upon the mountain summits and the high plains before it penetrates the lower valleys and the deep ravines. No less true is it that the historic age dawns not upon all people at the same period. (74) Strauss's metaphorical depiction of the dawning of history is meant to defend his application of the mythical interpretation to the biblical narratives. Yet it also serves to delimit the applicability of his "new mode of considering the life ofJesus" only to those ages on which the light of history has not yet dawned. Although Strauss fails to acknowledge this implication of his metaphor, it has not passed unnoticed. For it is precisely this problem that forms the basis of Parker's criticism of the mythical interpretation in his I 840 review of Strauss's work. After summarizing Strauss's argument in the context of continental higher criticism, Parker concludes his review with an analysis of the four "erroneous principles which lead to [Strauss's] mistaken conclusions" (329). Parker dismisses in fewer than two pages the first three "erroneous principles": that Strauss claims to set out with no presuppositions; that he "passes quite lightly to the conclusion, that the four Gospels are neither

Thoreau's Mythologica~ Interpretation

99

genuine nor authentic"; and that his "book is not written in a religious spirit" (329-31). Parker is most interested in the fourth of these principles, that Strauss's "mythical hypothesis has carried him away" (331). Fondness for theory is "the old Adam of theology," and Strauss has inherited a large portion of "original sin" from this great patriarch of theological error-this father of lies. To turn one of his own warelephants against himself, he has looked so long at mythical stories, that, dazzled thereby, like men who have gazed earnestly upon the sun, he can see nothing but myths wherever he turns his eye,-myths of all colors. This tendency to see myths is the Proton Pseudos, the first fib of his system. (33 1 ) Strauss, Parker explains, defends his mythical interpretation by arguing that Jesus' contemporaries were so accustomed to understanding inexplicable events as the product of supernatural intervention that they "can see nothing but" supernatural intervention wherever they turn their eyes. It is this same tendency to let Strauss's own presuppositions obscure his vision of the life ofJesus that Parker describes as "the Proton Pseudos, the first fib of his system." Because of his "fondness for theory," Strauss is convinced that the Gospel narratives are colored throughout by the mythical presuppositions of the gospelists and thus "can see nothing but myths wherever he turns his eye." Parker's critique of Strauss's "fondness for theory" should not blind us to the significance of the mythical interpretation for Parker's theology. As I discuss in the next chapter, both the "Discourse of the Transient and Permanent in Christianity" (1841) and the Discourse ofReligion (1842), the fullest expressions of Parker's system of absolute religion, incorporate Strauss's conviction "that all human thought and action and language are historically conditioned." Nonetheless the problem Parker finds with Strauss's application of the mythical interpretation to the Gospel narratives is that it "requires very little ingenuity on the part of the critic": "we could resolve half of Luther's life into a series of myths, which are formed after the model of Paul's history; indeed this has already been done. Nay, we could dissolve any given historical event in a mythical solution, and then precipitate the 'seminal ideas' in their primitive form. We also can change an historical character into a symbol of 'universal humanity'" (333). Parker's objection is directed precisely at the application of the mythical interpretation to those events which are the product not of a mythical but of a historical age. Just as the narratives of "an age so historical as that of the Roman emperors," in a

100

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

country where the sun of history has long since dawned, do not represent fair game for Strauss's mythical interpretation, so, Parker contends, much of the life ofJesus is likewise not an appropriate subject for Strauss's "mythical hypothesis." Parker further supports his claim in a delightful demythologization of Strauss's mythical mode of interpretation, where he demonstrates how "the whole history of the United States of America" could be shown to be "a tissue of mythical stories, borrowed in part from the Apocalypse, and in part from fancy" (334). Although Parker's playful treatment ("a la mode Strauss") of the "history of the United States of America" is a lengthy one, it is worth quoting in its entirety to appreciate fully both its force and its wit. The British government oppressing the Puritans is the "great red dragon" of the Revelation, as it is shown, by the national arms, and by the British legend of Saint George and the Dragon. The splendid career of the new people is borrowed from the persecuted woman's poetical history, her dress-"clothed with the sun." The stars said to be in the national banner, are only the crown of twelve stars in the poetic being's head; the perils of the pilgrims in the Mayflower are only the woman's flight on the wings of a great eagle. The war between the two countries is only "the practical application" of the flood which the dragon cast out against the woman, etc. The story of the Declaration of Independence is liable to many objections, if we examine it a la mode Strauss. The congress was held at a mythical town, whose very name is suspicious,-Philadelphia,-Brotherly Love. The date is suspicious; it was thefourth day of the fourth month, (reckoning from April, as it was probable the Heraclidae, and Scandinavians; possible that the aboriginal Americans, and certain that the Hebrews did). Now four was a sacred number with the Americans; the president was chosen for four years; and there were four departments of affairs;four divisions of the political powers, namely,-the people, the congress, the executive, and the judiciary, etc. Besides, which is still more incredible, three of the presidents, two of whom, it is alleged signed the declaration, died on the fourth ofJuly, and the two latter exactly fifty years after they had signed it, and about the same hour of the day. The year also is suspicious; 1776 is but an ingenious -combination of the sacred number, four, which is repeated three times, and then multiplied by itself to produce the date; thus, 444 x 4 = 1776, Q.E.D. Now dividing the first (444) by the second (4), we have Unity thrice repeated (I II). This is a manifest symbol of the national oneness (like-

Thoreau's Mythological Interpretation

101

wise represented in the motto, e pluribus unum) and of the national religion, of which the Triniform Monad, or "Trinity in Unity" and "Unity in Trinity," is the well-known sign!! Still further, the Declaration is metaphysical, and presupposes an acquaintance with the transcendental philosophy, on the part of the American people. Now the Kritik of Pure Reason was not published till after the Declaration was made. Still further the Americans were never, to use the nebulous expressions of certain philosophers, an "idealo-transcendental-and-subjective," but an "objective-and-concretivo-practical" people, to the last degree; therefore a metaphysical document, and most of all a "legalcongressional-metaphysical" document is highly suspicious if found among them. Besides, Hualteperah, the great historian of Mexico, a neighboring state, never mentions this document; and further still, if this Declaration had been made, and accepted by the whole nation, as it is pretended, then we cannot account for the fact, that the fundamental maxim of that paper, namely the soul's equality to itself,-"all men are born free and equal,"-was perpetually lost sight of, and a large portion of the people kept in slavery; still later, petitions,-supported by this fundamental article,-for the abolition of slavery, were rejected by Congress with unexampled contempt, when, if the history is not mythical, slavery never had a legal existence after 1776, etc. etc. But we could go on this way for ever. "I'll" prate "you so eight years together; dinners, and suppers, and sleeping hours excepted; it is the right butter-woman's rank to market." (334-36) Parker appropriately concludes his lengthy burlesque of Strauss's mythical interpretation with Touchstone's critique of Orlando's lovesick poetry. For much as Strauss can see nothing but myths wherever he looks, so Orlando can see nothing but Rosalinde wherever he turns his eyes ("Let no face be kept in mind / But the fair of Rosalinde," III.ii.90-91). Even further, just as Touchstone serves to ascertain the true value of the various characters in A5 You Like It, so Parker's treatment of the Declaration of Independence "a la mode Strauss" is used as a touchstone to demonstrate that much of Strauss's work is not true but fool's gold. When applied to "an age so historical" as that of the American Revolution, Strauss's mythical interpretation proves not invaluable, but worthless. Although Strauss's name would certainly have been on the lips of many of Thoreau's contemporaries, it would only have been through Parker's review that Thoreau (or most New Englanders, for that matter) would have known Strauss in any detail. Despite, or perhaps because of, this only

102

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

superficial knowledge of Strauss, Thoreau finds the idea of a mythological treatment ofAmerican history more valuable than Parker does. For Thoreau myth is an enabling condition of historical knowledge rather than (as for Parker) its negation. Thus, in another passage from the Weeks "Sunday" chapter, Thoreau contends: "To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient history and biography" (60). He unpacks this assertion by suggesting that in "days of cheap printing" like his own, "the Life and Labors of Prometheus" would have filled "many volumes Folio"-not unlike the biblical account of Jesus, which now exfoliates into dense volumes like Strauss's Life ofJesus (60). Unlike Parker (or Strauss), Thoreau would not confine mythology only to prehistorical eras. Because our modern" 'memoirs to serve as a history'" are "but materials to serve for a mythology," Thoreau foresees the day when Benjamin Franklin may have "a line ... in the future classical dictionary, recording what the demigod did, and referring him to some new genealogy. 'Son of - - and - - . He aided the Americans to gain independence, instructed mankind in economy, and drew down lightning from the clouds' " (60-6 I). Like Parker and Strauss, Thoreau believes that all thought is historically conditioned. Hence it is impossible "to look through each other's eyes" even for an instant. In the Week, however, Thoreau makes a more radical application of mythical interpretation than either Strauss or Parker. By applying myth not only to prehistorical but also to contemporary events and literature, Thoreau lets us see the way in which, no matter what they claim, both Strauss and Parker remain committed to an ideal of seeing through the eyes of another. tiThe Mist ofPrejudice"

The sense of sight predominates in the Week (although hearing may run a close second). Over the course of the Week Thoreau exemplifies "Monday's" claim that "Always the laws of light are the same, but the modes and degrees of seeing vary," by referring to (among many others) "village eyes," "the eye of science," a "New England eye," "a mariner's eye," "the poet's eye," "the common eye," and "microscopic eyes." While this proliferation of "eyes" can be explained partly by the generic requirements of the travelogue's picturesque conventions, Thoreau's unconventional travelogue is concerned with sight for more polemical reasons. 23 The Week adapts the aesthetic conventions of sublimity to the question of mythological interpretation to demonstrate how such interpretation can be applied to one's immediate experience. In "Sunday" Thoreau idiosyncratically

Thoreau's Mythological Interpretation

103

equates the role of visual obscurity in the sublime with the role of temporal obscurity in the interpretation of ancient texts, suggesting that the value of mythological interpretation persists even in so historical an age as the nineteenth century. 24 Early in "Sunday," the first full day of the brothers' voyage (Saturday morning was "obscured" by a warm, drizzling rain that delayed their embarkment until "midafternoon"), Thoreau comments: "It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat the mirror-like surface of the water, in which every twig and every blade of grass was so faithfully reflected; too faithfully indeed for art to imitate, for only Nature may exaggerate herself" (48). Perhaps because the reflection is the product of nature's (not man's) mimetic powers, Thoreau feels that it would be rude to trespass on the grass "so faithfully reflected" on the "mirror-like surface of the water." Yet it is not etiquette with which Thoreau is concerned, but sight. The reflection on the river's surface reveals a more widespread truth about the mechanics of vision: "We notice that it required a separate intention of the eye, a more free and abstracted vision, to see the reflected trees and the sky, than to see the river bottom merely; and so are there manifold visions in the direction of every object, and even the most opaque reflect the heavens from their surface" (48).25 Although the faithfulness of the river's reflection is worth noting for its similarities to the nascent art of photography, Thoreau does not consider the river's mimetic abilities to be out of the ordinary: "even the most opaque" object in nature reflects the heavens. In unpacking the claim that all objects "reflect the heavens," Thoreau goes on to suggest that the "manifold visions" that we send "in the direction of every object" transform them into manifold objects: "Some men have their eyes naturally intended to the one and some to the other object" (48). One needs "a separate intention of the eye" to see Nature's mimetic exaggeration, since that reflection is a separate intentional object. And as the citation from "The Elixer" that concludes Thoreau's discussion emphasizes, the choice ofwhether to look at an object or its reflection has real consequences. "A man that looks on glass,

Or it may stay his eye, Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass, And the heavens espy." (48) Both the opening lines of Herbert's poem ("Teach me, my God and King, / In all things thee to see") and its image of looking through "glass" to see "the heavens" work to invert the surface/bottom hierarchy of the reflecting

1°4

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

river: it is not always the reflected surface that requires the "more free and abstracted vision." One needs "a separate intention of the eye" either to see the reflection on the river's surface or to look through reflecting glass and God "And the heavens espy." Yet while the object of perception (surface or bottom, "glass" or "heavens") changes with each "intention of the eye," the object itself (river or "glass") remains the same. The force of this distinction is evidenced a few pages later in Thoreau's gloss on the claim that "the fable which is naturally and truly composed ... admits of [the wise man's] most generous interpretation": "When we read that Bacchus made the Tyrrhenian mariners mad, so that they leapt into the sea, mistaking it for a meadow full of flowers, and so became dolphins, we are not concerned about the historical truth of this, but rather a higher poetical truth" (58). The interpretive logic of this passage is identical to the perceptual logic of the previous one (as to the logic of Lowth's poetical interpretation of the Old Testament). Just as one needs a "more free and abstracted vision" to see the reflection on the river's surface, so one needs "the most generous interpretation" to see the "higher poetical truth" of Ovid's tale. In fact Thoreau is quite "free" with the details of the fable; Ovid ascribes the mariners' motivation either to fear (of the panthers aboard ship) or to madness. Yet Thoreau's ascription of the mariners' metamorphosis to their "mistaking" the surface of the sea for "a meadow full of flowers" both verifies Emerson's claim that "perception is not whimsical, but fatal" and relates the reading of poetical truth to the "separate intention of the eye" required to see the reflections in "even the most opaque" surface. Thoreau's disinterest in the "historical truth" of Ovid's fable is (like perception) not merely whimsical, but derives from his identification of the mechanics ofsublime vision with the mechanics of mythological interpretation. While Ovid's fable doesn't physically change (the words that compose it remain the same), it is a different intentional object if read for its "historical truth" than if read for its "higher poetical truth" (or if read as an instance of mistaken perception rather than fear). Yet as Thoreau points out later in his discussion of fables in "Sunday," "The hidden significance of these fables" is "not so remarkable as the readiness with which they may be made to express a variety of truths" (6 I). Thoreau admires myths and fables not because of any particular "higher poetical truth" they may express, but because they lend themselves so readily to multiple intentions of the eye"as if they were the skeletons of still older and more universal truths than any whose flesh and blood they are for the time made to wear" (6 I). What makes myths and fables so susceptible to multiple interpretations is that,

Thoreau's Mythological Interpretation

105

like those objects which impress us as sublime, they appear somewhat obscure; we cannot see them in full detail. 26 While the obscurity of myths is due largely to time, the obscurity of sublime views is due to physical impediments to vision, as in Thoreau's epiphanic vision from the observatory tower at the summit of "Saddle-back Mountain in Massachusetts" (180). Having arisen before daybreak, Thoreau discovers with the increasing light "an ocean of mist, which by chance reached up exactly to the base of the tower, and shut out every vestige of the earth, while I was left floating on this fragment of the wreck of a world, on my carved plank, in cloudland" (188). Although claiming that his "situation ... required no aid from the imagination to render it impressive," it is clear that the sublimity of his vision derives from the imaginative effort elicited by the mist: "A slight mist, through which objects are faintly visible, has the effect of expanding even ordinary streams, by a singular mirage, into arms of the sea or inland lakes" (188, 191). While only nature may be able to exaggerate itself, the imagination can more readily exaggerate its perceptions of nature when these perceptions are obscured. "The most stupendous scenery ceases to be sublime when it becomes distinct, or in other words limited, and the imagination is no longer encouraged to exaggerate it" (192). Not only does the "ocean of mist" add to the sublimity of Thoreau's view of the sunrise from "Saddle-back Mountain," but the very occasion for remembering this view is predicated upon an incident of obscured vision. Thoreau tells the story of "the day break [seen] from the top of Saddle-back Mountain" in "Tuesday," which begins with the brothers "enveloped in mist as usual" (179). Because "we cannot distinguish objects through this dense fog," Thoreau writes, "let me tell this story more at length" (180). The sublimity of the sunrise is additionally heightened by the fact that, on the night he first climbed the mountain, Thoreau had the opportunity for only "one fair view of the country before the sun went down," because he "was too thirsty to waste any light in viewing the prospect" (184). Similarly Thoreau concludes his recollection when the sun dispels Tuesday's mist just in time for the brothers to "make haste back before the fog disperses to the blithe Merrimack water" (190). Thoreau's retelling of an incident of obscured but sublime vision works to supplement his heavily obscured vision ofTuesday morning much as he twice supplemented obscured vision with reading while on the mountain's summit. He spends the night before his vision "reading by the light of the fire the scraps of newspapers in which some party had wrapped

106

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

their luncheon" (185). He spends "some time" the next morning, he tells us, "reading the names that had been engraved" on the observatory tower, "before I could distinguish more distant objects" (187). For Thoreau the relationship between reading and obscured vision is reciprocal. Not only does reading supplement the obscurity of Saddle-back Mountain, but the obscurity of Thoreau's situation creates the "critical circumstances" in which best to read the "higher poetical truth" contained in the newspaper (185). Read in such circumstances, "The advertisements and the prices current were most closely allied to nature," and "suggested pleasing and poetic thoughts" (185-86). Obscurity both adds sublimity to natural objects and (where vision is more fully obscured) creates the conditions in which to read mythologically even the most contemporary, commercial poetry. The reciprocity between reading and obscurity helps account for the power Thoreau finds in ancient poetry. In "Sunday," for example, Thoreau claims that Homer's "more memorable passages are as naturally bright as gleams of sunshine in misty weather" (92). But it is Ossian's poetry that best exemplifies Thoreau's sense of the importance of obscurity for reading ancient texts. 27 Thoreau's discussion of Ossian, which occurs in "Friday," the final day of the Week, begins with the claim that "Ossian reminds us of the most refined and rudest eras, of Homer, Pindar, Isaiah, and the American Indian" (344). Thoreau does not consider Ossian's verse to be unique but to represent the obscurity of all ancient poetry. As in Homer's poetry, "only the simplest and most enduring features of humanity are seen" in Ossian's verse (344). "The phenomena of life acquire almost an unreal and gigantic size seen through his mists" (344). Much as fables are like skeletons for poetical and mythical interpretation, Ossian's heroes are "shrunk to the bones and sinews": "They are such forms of men only as can be seen afar through the mist, and have no costume nor dialect, but for language there is the tongue itself, and for costume there are always the skins of beasts and the bark of trees to be had" (344-45). Because Ossian's characters are unencumbered by local appurtenances like "costume" or "dialect," they lend themselves readily to mythical interpretation, encouraging the imagination to exaggerate their "unreal and gigantic size." The logic of Thoreau's account of Ossian's poetry can be drawn out if we contrast it with Lowth's poetical and Herder's mythological accounts of scriptural interpretation. For Lowth and Herder the aim of seeing through the eyes of the biblical author or audience was to see the biblical world in all of its particular, local detail-whether (as for Lowth) to understand the universal aesthetic significance of biblical poetry or (as for Herder) to

Thoreau '5 Mythological Interpretation

1°7

capture the mythical significance of the spirit of biblical poetry. For both Lowth and Herder the interpreter must divest himself of his own historically conditioned beliefs so that he can interpret the Bible in terms of the beliefs of its authors or intended audience. But Thoreau recognizes (as did Parker and Strauss) that it is impossible to divest oneself of one's beliefs. In a passage describing the illusory supposition that "the unobstructed atmosphere [is] a fog in the lowlands concealing hills of corresponding elevation to that you are upon," Thoreau concludes that such fog is "the mist of prejudice alone, which the winds will not disperse" (192). Unlike natural mists, "the mist of prejudice" cannot be dispelled. Yet in the illusionary vision described above, "the mist of prejudice" works not as an obstacle to sublimity, but (just as a real mist would) as an aid to the imagination's exaggeration of "the unobstructed atmosphere." Similarly, the "misty weather" through which Ossian's poetry is read exaggerates the stature of his heroes and the sublimity of his verse. Thoreau's conviction of the impossibility of dispersing "the mist of prejudice," and thus of the necessity of reading ancient texts through our own not their authors' eyes, aligns his hermeneutics with those of Strauss and Parker. Yet where they see the exaggerations produced by the mists of prejudice and time as myths to be dissipated by the light of historical truth, Thoreau sees these exaggerations as themselves the vehicles for "higher poetical truth."28 This difference is most evident in Thoreau's treatment of the persistence of myth through time. For where Strauss and Parker would relegate myth to those eras before written history (as Parker's reading of the Declaration of Independence "a la mode Strauss" is meant to show), Thoreau sees myth as an active force in his own (and presumably in every future) age: "The mythological system of the ancients ... is still the mythology of the moderns" (95). In "Sunday" Thoreau elaborates the historical development of mythology, describing the "slow aggregation" through which "mythology [has] grown from the first" (59). By a faint and dream-like effort, though it be only by the vote of a scientific body, the dullest posterity slowly add some trait to the mythus. As when astronomers call the lately discovered planet Neptune; or the asteroid Astraea, that the virgin who was driven from earth to heaven at the end of the golden age, may have her local habitation in the heavens more distinctly assigned to her-for the slightest recognition of poetic worth is significant. (59)

108

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

In Strauss's account of demonic possession, science is depicted as an antimythological agent, revealing the New Testament demoniacs to be naturally diseased in body and/or mind. For Thoreau, however, "the vote of a scientific body," by adding "some trait to the mythus," aids mythology's accretive growth. In "Sunday" he not only details the mechanics of this growth, but (like science, history, or any human discipline) contributes further to the mythic aggregation of the Sabbath. 29 '"it Natural Sabbath"

Critics have consistently read "Sunday" as an exploration of the institution of the Sabbath. Just as consistently, they have seen Thoreau as trying "to shock his reader out of conventionalism" by contrasting the sanctity of the "natural Sabbath" with "the serious infidelity" "which prays, and keeps the Sabbath, and rebuilds the churches" (Buell 2 13-14, Richardson 97-98). Yet Thoreau carefully orders his discussion of the Sabbath, interspersed as it is in "Sunday" with his "essay on the value of myth," not so that "the religiosity of present-day New England" can be "played off against the sacredness of nature and the wisdom of the ancients," but so that he can portray the manner in which "the religiosity of present-day New England" and "the wisdom of the ancients" shape the way that one conceives of "the sacredness of nature" on a Sunday. The chapter's first mention of the Sabbath occurs prior to Thoreau's discussion of the "separate intention of the eye" needed to see the reflections on "the mirror-like surface" of the Concord. Describing the morning, Thoreau notes: "The stillness was intense and almost conscious, as if it were a natural Sabbath, and we fancied that the morning was the evening of a celestial day" (46). The reason that the morning seemed like evening was that the atmosphere, like twilight, distanced his view of the landscape: "The air was so elastic and crystalline that it had the same effect on the landscape that a glass has on a picture, to give it an ideal remoteness and perfection" (46). Not only does the atmosphere make the morning into a mythlike "natural Sabbath," b,ut the historical institution of the Sabbath works (like "the mist of prejudice") to obscure and filter Thoreau's perceptions of the day. Thus Thoreau sees the creatures of the river as participants in the Christian Sabbath: "The frogs sat meditating, all Sabbath thoughts, summing up their week, with one eye out on the golden sun, and one toe upon a reed, eying the wondrous universe in which they act their part; the fishes swam more staid and soberly, as maidens go to church; shoals of golden

Thoreau's Mythological Interpretation

1°9

and silver minnows rose to the surface to behold the heavens, and then sheered off into more sombre aisles" (49). While this passage has been taken as making an invidious distinction between a natural and an institutional Sabbath, its humor comes from Thoreau's reliance on the language of the New England Sabbath to characterize the natural one. Sunday morning on the Concord only appears as a "natural Sabbath" when viewed through the institutional mists of the New England Sabbath. Thoreau does not return to the metaphor of the "natural Sabbath" until "Sunday's" penultimate paragraph. Before doing so, however, he proceeds to examine the role that the Sabbath has played in the region's history. This examination centers on his own experience of the Sabbath, which he prefaces with a discussion of the Sabbath's role in Concord's history, and follows with a discussion of its role in the white race's conflicts with the area's natives. The force of this framing is to underscore the way in which Thoreau's experience of the Sabbath has been conditioned by the myths and legends that history has attached to the institution. Thoreau's discussion of the Sabbath in Concord's history is meant to be contrasted throughout to the brothers' violation of the Sabbath's prohibition of work-as when he describes how "little more than a century ago along these Babylonish waters," the area's planters petitioned" 'the gentlemen, the selectmen' of Concord" to relieve them of their "burden on the Sabbath": "'In the extreme difficult seasons of heat and cold,' said they, 'we were ready to say of the Sabbath, Behold what a weariness is it'" (5 I). A little later in the chapter Thoreau cites Concord's prohibition of traveling "with teams on the Sabbath" as a deliberate contrast to the brothers' journey: "We were the men that were gliding northward, this Sept. 1st, 1839, with still team, and rigging not the most convenient to carry barrels, unquestioned by any squire or Church Deacon and ready to bear ourselves out if need were" (64). And after a citation from "the historian of Dunstable" that" 'towns were directed to erect "a cage" near the meetinghouse, and in this all offenders against the sanctity of the Sabbath were confined,'" Thoreau concludes the passage with the observation that while society's laws "have relaxed a little from [their] strictness, ... there is not less religion than formerly" (64). After all, on "this Sept. 1st, 1839," even the frogs and fish are observing the"Sabbath. Thoreau explains how institutions like "the church and the Sabbath school" form "the mist of prejudice" through which one reads, when he confesses "to having been slightly prejudiced against" the New Testament by these institutions in his "early days" (7 I). After claiming to have over-

I 10

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

come his prejudice against the New Testament, Thoreau explains how his prejudice against "the church and the Sabbath school" persists. "I was once reproved by a minister who was driving a poor beast to some meetinghouse horse-sheds among the hills of New Hampshire, because I was bending my steps to a mountain-top on the Sabbath, instead of a Church, when I would have gone farther than he to hear a true word spoken on that or any other day" (75-76). Against Thoreau's unspoken criticism of a formalistic observance of the Sabbath, the minister, standing on " 'the Lord's fourth Commandment,'" "proceeded to enumerate, in a sepulchral tone, the disasters which had befallen him whenever he had done any ordinary work on the Sabbath" (76). Using his recollection of this prior Sabbath encounter as a springboard, Thoreau launches into an extended critique of the institutional Sabbath of his day. The fact that Thoreau takes pains to emphasize that his quarrel with the institutions of "the Church and the Sabbath school" is a quarrel with the "associations" these institutions have acquired from misuse suggests that associations are precisely what make up institutions in the first place. Because "the country is full of [the] superstition" "that a god was on the watch to trip up those men who followed any secular work" on the Sabbath, he writes, "when one enters a village, the church, not only really but from association, is the ugliest looking building in it" (76). Thoreau's criticism is both architectural and institutional. The contemporary church not only looks ugly because "human nature stoops the lowest and is most disgraced" in it, but it sounds ugly as well (76). "There are few things more disheartening and disgusting than when you are walking the streets of a strange village on the Sabbath, to hear a preacher shouting like a boatswain in a gale of wind, and thus harshly profaning the quiet atmosphere of the day. You fancy him to have taken off his coat, as when men are about to do hot and dirty work" (76). Thoreau continues the maritime analogy with the claim that "the sound of the Sabbath bell far away, now breaking upon these shores, does not awaken pleasing associations, but melancholy and sombre ones rather" (77). Again it is not the sound of the Sabbath bell but the associations through which one hears it that cause Thoreau's displeasure with the institution. And as he explains in a passage that could be the precursor to Ishmael's pantheism on the Pequod's mast, these "melancholy and sombre" associations derive both from his own unpleasant experiences of New England churches and from the earliest biblical mythology. One involuntarily rests on his oar, to humor his unusually meditative mood. It [the sound of the Sabbath bell far away] is as the sound of

Thoreau's Mythological Interpretation

I I I

many catechisms and religious· books twanging a canting peal round the earth, seeming to issue from some Egyptian temple and echo along the shore of the Nile, right opposite to Pharaoh's palace and Moses in the bulrushes, startling a multitude of storks and alligators basking in the sun. (77) One cannot hear the Sabbath bell except through the auditory equivalent of "the mist of prejudice." The bell awakens personal as well as mythical associations, which combine to give it (to Thoreau's ears) a "melancholy and sombre" sound. If Thoreau's critique of the New England Sabbath concluded "Sunday," one could safely assume that he considered the historical associations acquired by the Sabbath simply as obstacles to poetical (or mythical) interpretation. But his exploration of the Sabbath does not end with his description of its bell. Rather he provides a number of alternatives to the contemporary New England Sabbath, beginning with a brief discussion of two instances of "other catechising" that had gone on in Concord "two hundred years ago" (80). The first (from Daniel Gookin's history of the Indians in New England) concerns John Eliot, Gookin's fellow apostle, who convinced "the sachem Wannalancet" to exchange his "old canoe" for a new one of God's making (80). "'Since that time ... this sachem doth persevere, and is a constant and diligent hearer of God's word, and sanctifieth the Sabbath, though he doth travel to Wamesit meeting every Sabbath, which is above two miles; and though sundry of his people have deserted him, since he subjected to the gospel, yet he continues and persists'" (81). Thoreau cites this incident as an implicit attack on a formalistic observance of the Sabbath. Although Wannalancet violates the formal precept against traveling on the Sabbath, he (like Thoreau and his brother) nonetheless "sanctifieth" it; Wannalancet "continues and persists" in his faith despite the criticisms of others. Thoreau follows this excerpt from Gookin with another association that the mythus of the Sabbath has acquired, one which also speaks to the brothers' situation. Citing the records of " 'a General Court held at Boston in New England, the 7th of the final month, 1643-4,'" Thoreau presents the following case of five Indians: "Being asked 'Not to do any unnecessary work on the Sabbath day, especially within the gates of Christian towns,' they answered, 'It is easy to them; they have not much to do on any day, and they can well take their rest on that day'" (81-82). Winthrop's journal records that the five were converted to the gospel. Their initial response, however, could pertain equally well to the literalistic minister who had

I 12

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

reproved Thoreau for climbing a mountain on the Sabbath and who might even have reproved Wannalancet for traveling two miles to "Wamesit meeting." The chapter concludes with two instances of the book's numerous doublings of the brothers, the first of which is "two men, who looked as if they had just run out of Lowell, where they had been waylaid by the Sabbath" (I 12, Buell 216). Stranded on an island, the two men (unlike the Thoreau brothers) have been shipwrecked by the traditional New England Sabbath. Because they are stranded, they miss out on "the longer and brighter twilight" enjoyed by the brothers on the water; presumably they thus fail to notice that "vespers had already rung in many a dim and watery chapel below," where the fish, "whose day is a perpetual twilight," peered through "the gloaming" with "weak and watery eyes" (I 15). Despite the brothers' own Sabbath exertions, Thoreau writes, "we were kept awake by the boisterous sport of some Irish laborers on the railroad, wafted to us over the water, still unwearied and unresting on this seventh day" (I 16). Like the two men "waylaid by the Sabbath," the "Irish laborers" also double the two brothers. Although disdaining (like Thoreau and his brother) the Sabbath's commandment to refrain from work, the "Irish laborers" are nonetheless no more able to see the Sabbath as a natural one than are the two men "waylaid" by it. Seeing the "natural Sabbath" is not a matter of seeing the day independently of its institutional trappings, but of seeing it through the historical "mist of prejudice" that shrouds the nineteenthcentury New England Sabbath. Thoreau's insistence on the value of "the mist of prejudice" for mythological interpretation distinguishes his understanding of such interpretation both from the claim (made by Locke, Lowth, and Herder) that we must see through the eyes of ancient authors to interpret their works correctly and from the claim (made by Strauss and Parker) that we must use our own eyes (and our knowledge of historical truth) to dispel "the mist of prejudice" that obscures the biblical (or any other ancient) text. Unlike Thoreau (and despite their differences in aim and method), all of the above interpreters believe that the aim of interpretation is to see things clearlywhether to see them as the ancients saw them or to see them as they would have appeared to us. For Thoreau, however, sight is always obscured. It is impossible to dispel either our own prejudices (as Locke, Lowth, or Herder would have us do) or the prejudices of the biblical authors or audience (as Strauss or Parker would have us do). Because we cannot see disinterestedly-there is

Thoreau's Mythological Interpretation

I

13

always some "mist of prejudice" to obscure our vision-it becomes impossible (and for Thoreau undesirable) to recover "the original conditions in which the early creators of the great myths found themselves." Because our vision is constituted by the beliefs of our time, we cannot see the world as "the early creators of the great myths" saw it. Although "to look through each other's eyes for an instant" would truly be miraculous, it is a miracle to which Thoreau does not aspire in the Week. But does Thoreau aspire to this miracle in Walden? At first glance it might appear that he does. In Walden Thoreau is preoccupied with stripping away prejudices, with getting rid of luxuries and contingencies, with finding a solid bottom on which to build castles in the air. Yet he just as persistently recognizes that every time we think we have found a point d'appui that is free from the mud and sludge of "opinion and prejudice and tradition," we find (like the traveler in the swamp) that we haven't gotten halfway there yet, but have found a bottom that itself threatens to give way to another (cf. Michaels, "False Bottoms"). In Walden Thoreau finds that there are always more prejudices to be burrowed through, no matter how deep we dig. In the Week, however, particularly in "Sunday," Thoreau is concerned not with dispersing "the mist of prejudice," but with recognizing both its inescapability and its instrumental role for mythological interpretation. The mist of prejudice helps to obscure the inessential, aCCidental, contingent details of ancient texts, so that their skeletal "necessities" can assume more sublime stature. Thus in both works Thoreau recognizes the inseparability of prejudice from truth. In Walden he tries to perceive truth by digging through "opinion and prejudice and tradition" to a place (or state of mind or idea) that would be free from such prejudices. In the Week, however, he recognizes that "the mist of prejudice" cannot be dispersed, but in fact aids the imaginative power of mythological truth. To find that truth one must read myths through the "misty weather" with which they are shrouded, not through the eyes of their authors or intended audience. Yet despite the differences between the two books, both share the same basic project. Digging or wedging through prejudice and tradition in Walden can be seen as an attempt to embody the model of vision in the Week that would see through the mists of prejudice to the skeletal forms beyond. Indeed, like Emerson's meditations on the Lord's Supper, the sacramentalism so evident in Walden is concomitant with an increased attention to questions of materiality and embodiment. In Walden as in the Week, the consequence of Thoreau's attending to embodiment is the recog-

I

14

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

nition that our epistemological relationships with objects (myth, text, vista, bottom, or truth) are obscured by "opinion and prejudice and tradition," "the very atmosphere and medium through which we look." Just as "the mist of prejudice" makes myths and vistas more sublime, so the sludge of "opinion and prejudice and tradition" aids the imagination of a solid bottom-by obscuring its details and making it appear more fantastic and sublime than it really is. Whether conceived of archaeologically or epistemologically, as mud or as mist, "opinion and prejudice and tradition" are not obstacles to finding the "higher poetical truth" of ancient texts, but rather the only spectacles through which such truth can be viewed.

Chapter Four The Two Theodore Parkers: Interpretation, Intuition, and Maternal Authority

+ UThere Are Two Theodore Parkers Now"

In a remark recorded by Frances Power Cobbe, who held a series of conversations with him in Italy during the last year of his life, Theodore Parker provided an unusual representation of his belief in immortality, one of the three doctrines of his system of absolute religion. Miss Cobbe, who had published a number of Parker's works in England during his lifetime and was to publish the English edition of his collected works after his death, had never met Parker before she visited him in Italy in 1860. When the two had finally met, he cautioned her that she was not meeting the real Theodore Parker. "It is strange that we should meet thus at last. But you do not see me, only the memory of me.... There are two Theodore Parkers now; one is dying here in Italy; the other I have planted in America. He will live there, and finish my work" (Frothingham, Parker, 534-35). Understood in terms of orthodox Christianity, the "two Theodore Parkers" seem singularly unremarkable. The idea that one's spiritual or heavenly self lives on after the death of the physical or earthly self is the paradox on which Christianity is built. But Parker represents his two selves not as an earthly and a heavenly self but as two different earthly selves: the one that will be buried in Florence and the one that has been buried to live in America. In representing his own immortality as the earthly harvest of the self he had "planted in America," Parker continues his lifelong critique of institutional religion, in which he sought to supplant the supernatural foundation

I

16

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

of religion with a natural, intuitive one. In Parker's system of absolute religion, immortality (like absolute religion's other two doctrines, morality and the existence of God) is authorized not by the supernatural revelation of the inspired text of scripture, but by the intuitive revelation implanted in all mankind. Yet despite the fact that intuition is the foundational concept of his thought, Parker depicts the self who will survive his death not as "I" but as "he," not as the subjective, intuitive selfbut as the objective, historical self "planted in America." On the eve of his death Parker sounds less like the radical preacher of the "Discourse of the Transient and Permanent in Christianity" than like the literary parablist of "Borges and I," where Borges depicts his two selves in terms not unlike those used to describe the "two Theodore Parkers." Like Parker, Borges distinguishes between two earthly selves-the "I" who lives and acts and the "he" to whom "things happen" (246). Like Parker, Borges is concerned with the reality of his respective selves. His parable concludes: "I do not know which one of us has written this page" (247). And like Parker again, Borges contends that it is the "he," not the "I," who will survive death-or more precisely that the "I" will persist only as a remnant in "him": "I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him" (246). One might be tempted to dismiss the Borgesian implications of the "two Theodore Parkers" as an aberration of the deathbed. Yet the remark to Miss Cobbe is not the only instance in which Parker noted a dual sense of self. In a letter to Dr. Alvan Lamson, completed at ArIes during the first days of 1844, Parker had more nervously recorded his awareness of the "two Theodore Parkers." "Here everything differs so much from home, and I depart so much from my common way of life, that I sometimes doubt if I am the same Theodore Parker that used to live at West Roxbury. I am half inclined to believe that he is a mythological person and has no real historical existence" (Weiss I: 226). Like the remark to Miss Cobbe, the letter to Dr. Lamson distinguishes between the Theodore Parker residing in Europe and the "Theodore Parker that used to live at West Roxbury." But where in the former he expresses confidence that the self that has been planted in America will outlive the self that will be buried in Italy, in the latter he expresses some doubt as to the "real historical existence" of the "Theodore Parker that used to live at West Roxbury." Yet even though circumstances in Europe "differ so much from home, and I depart so much from my common way of life," Parker writes, "when I come to a college, or a book-store, or a Roman temple, and above all to the Palais de Papes at Avignon, I believe that I am myoid self, not a whit changed" (Weiss I: 226). Borges

The Two Theodore Parkers

I

17

remarks a similar phenomenon: "I shall remain in Borges, not in myself ... , but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar" (246). Whether "the Palais des Papes at Avignon" or "the laborious strumming of a guitar," circumstance constitutes the self as "myself" for both Borges and Parker. Or does it? Parker's letter to Dr. Lamson both illuminates and obfuscates his remark to Miss Cobbe. Despite the fact that the two accounts occur more than fifteen years apart, in both of them Parker insists on representing his self as dual. Prompted by European journeys, both accounts distinguish between the self that is living in Europe and the self that was left behind in America. Both perceive circumstances in Europe as a potential threat to the persistence of the American self. And both accounts finally express confidence that the American self will overcome the perceived threat. The letter to Dr. Lamson, however, differs from the remark to Miss Cobbe in at least one crucial respect. Although both of these analyses identify the American Theodore Parker as the more real of the two, they do so for very different reasons. Unlike the remark to Miss Cobbe, in which Parker contends that the self he had "planted in America" will survive the self that "is dying here in Italy," the letter to Dr. Lamson suggests that the persistence of the West Roxbury self is contingent upon the persistence of the self of ArIes or Avignon. The "old self, not a whit changed," that Parker rediscovers in "a college, or a book-store, or a Roman temple" is not independent of the circumstances of life in Europe, but contingent upon them. The Parker who has been buried to live in America, however, is seen to be independent of every possible circumstance, even of death. "All commentators," writes Lawrence Buell, "acknowledge what [Henry Steele] Commager calls 'The Dilemma ofTheodore Parker' " (I 36n). Commager characterizes this dilemma as Parker's "confusion of intuition and experience" (273). This confusion, he contends, "was not so much a personal idiosyncracy [sic] as a social characteristic. Parker's dualism was to an extent the dualism of that entire group of New England reformers who would recreate society in the name of first prinCiples, who glorified individualism in Fourierist phalanxes" (275). In the case of .Parker this dualism manifested itself in an obsession with using historical facts to prove intuitive truths: "Not content with asserting truths of intUition, he spent himself in substantiating them by facts ofdemonstration" (266).1 Because the religious truths that Parker advocates "are intuitive truths-'true before all experience' "-Commager believes that "the lessons of experience are irrelevant and impertinent": "If intuitive truth transcends experience, what is the value

I

18

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

ofan appeal to experience; if a priori truth is not susceptible to factual proof, what is to be gained by citing statistics?" (271-72). Commager's questions make perfect sense in terms of the logical antinomy between intuition and experience within which his discussion of Parker operates. Nor is he alone in employing the terms of this opposition. For the antinomy between intuition and institutions (the current manifestation of Commager's "experience" and the preferred term of Parker's discourse) constitutes the fundamental legacy of Transcendentalism for American intellectual history, a legacy that my analysis of the inescapability of institutions in Emerson and Thoreau has tried to contest,2 In taking up the "two Theodore Parkers" in this final chapter, I challenge this antinomy in its two most systematic theological formulations among the Transcendentalists: Parker's "Discourse of the Transient and Permanent in Christianity" and A Discourse of Religion. By reading these paradigmatic expressions of Parker's radical intuitionalism in the context of his autobiographical writings' I hope to show that what Commager calls Parker's "confusion of intuition and experience" is rather his persistent representation of intuitive truths not as those truths that transcend our institutional experience but as those that are so deeply rooted in the domestic institutions of motherhood, marriage, and family that they no longer seem institutional at all. ~~Tbe

Great Spiritual Trial ofMy Life"

The sudden and decisive nature of Parker's final illness deprived him of the time and materials to compose a full-fledged autobiography in which he could set forth his persistent representation of his two selves. He did, however, manage to compose "a long letter, reviewing [his] life and especially [his] connection with" "the members of the Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society of Boston," to whom he had ministered since January 1846 (CE 13: 286-87). In writing this letter, composed in March and April 1859 on the island of Santa Cruz, where he had sailed in the attempt to recuperate from his bout with consumption, Parker encountered a problem of audience. Although the letter was addressed "only to the members" of his congregation, he knew that "what is offered to the hearts of so many, thereby becomes accessible to the eyes and ears of all who wish to see and hear; so what I write private to you, becomes public for mankind, whether I will or not" (CE 13: 290). Despite the inevitable public destiny foreseen for his letter, Parker reluctantly determines to speak of his "private history." Writing what was

The Two Theodore Parkers

I

19

essentially a spiritual autobiography of his professional life as a minister, Parker nonetheless determines that without speaking of "things which seem to belong only to my private history," his "public conduct might appear other than it really is." While such matters would best be deferred "to a more fitting place in some brief autobiography to be published after [his] death," Parker's ailing health makes it uncertain whether he will have "time to prepare" such a work. Thus he decides, "in small compass, [to] briefly sketch out some small particulars" of his "private history" in this professional account of his ministry. But this decision only serves as another form of deferral, since he hopes that the "small particulars" that he presents to his congregation "might elsewhere be presented in their full proportions, and with appropriate light and shade" (CE 13: 290). There are two points to note about Parker's autobiographical strategy. The first is that he clearly gave a great deal of thought to the image he presented to the public, particularly the image that would remain after his death. The second, and more fundamental, is that he invariably conceives of this image in dual terms. Although this public letter will present a more sketchy account of his "private history" than he could give in "a more fitting place," he must present some account of this history ifhe is to represent his "public conduct" in its true light. Despite the generic constraints imposed by his professional autobiography, the physical constraints imposed by his illness convince him that he cannot safely defer his entire "private history" to "some brief autobiography to be published after [his] death." But it is not only his illness that requires him to present both private and public incidents in the letter to his congregation. Parker's strategy in the spiritual autobiography is (as always) to conceive of the self in dual terms. In the public autobiography, Parker's private self grounds his public self, which might "appear other than it really is" without the knowledge of "some things which seem to belong only to my private history." Yet including particulars of his "private history" in his spiritual autobiography does not preclude writing a personal one, since these particulars themselves need "elsewhere be presented in their full proportions, and with appropriate light and shade," if they are to appear as they really are. The distinction between public and private selves is never-ending for Parker. Even though he represents his private self in the letter from Santa Cruz, there is always a more private self to be represented later. In fact the private self of the professional autobiography is grounded upon the more private self of the autobiography that Parker would find time to begin in Rome just before his death. Although his deteriorating health prevented him from completing it, this auto-

120

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

biographical fragment presents a Theodore Parker quite different from the one presented in the letter from Santa Cruz. Where the autobiographical fragment depicts the "material and human circumstances" of the early years of his life, which Parker contends are necessary to understand his later life correctly, the letter from Santa Cruz presents a curious melange of "public conduct" and "private history." More importantly, however, the two autobiographical pieces present different accounts of the origin of his belief in intuition, the foundation of his system of absolute religion. Because the Santa Cruz letter is essentially a spiritual autobiography, it is unsurprising that Parker presents the origin of his doctrines of absolute religion as an incident from a conversion narrative-"the great spiritual trial of my life" (CE 13: 303). His dark hour was precipitated by his entrance into "the Theological School at Cambridge, then under the charge of the Unitarians, or 'Liberal Christians' " (CE 13: 297). In addition to "the usual routine of theological reading" at Harvard Divinity School, Parker writes, he pursued "[his] own private studies, suited to [his] special wants," foremost among which was the need to determine whether the "religious consciousness" that he found "automatic and indispensable" in himselfwas "really so likewise in the human race." Not satisfied with the "authority of Bibles and Churches" on this matter, he turned his "private studies" to the "common books of philosophy."3 Because neither "the sensational system so ably presented by Locke in his masterly Essay" nor Cousin's "brilliant mosaic" could account for the origin of Parker's own "religious consciousness," he determined that he could do without both of them. But he "found most help in the works of Immanuel Kant, one of the profoundest thinkers in the world, though one of the worst writers, even in Germany." Although Kant "did not always furnish conclusions" that the troubled divinity student "could rest in, he yet gave [him] the true method, and put [him] on the right road." "I found certain great primal intuitions of human nature, which depend on no logical process of demonstration, but are rather facts of consciousness given by the instinctive action of human nature itself" (CE 13: 29 8-301 ). The significance of this discovery for Parker should not be underestimated. Not only did it provide him with the foundation for the system of absolute religion which (in one form or another) he would preach for the rest of his life, but it also enabled him to ground his own "religious consciousness" neither in logical demonstration nor in the "authority of Bibles and Churches," but in what he would describe as the unvarying constitution "of human nature itself." Parker's depiction of the spiritual trial of his divinity school days is

The Two Theodore Parkers

12 I

undoubtedly one of the revelations of his "private history" without which his "public conduct might appear other than it really is." Yet in the guise of revealing an important incident of his "private history," Parker conceals the more fundamental experience on which this spiritual trial is contingent. "I had gone through the great spiritual trial of my life, telling no one of its hopes or fears; and 1 thought it a triumph that 1 had psychologically established these three things to my own satisfaction, and devised a scheme which to the scholar's mind, 1 thought, could legitimate what was spontaneously given to all, by the great primal instincts of mankind" (CE 13: 303). This passage sets forth an invidious distinction between the three doctrines of absolute religion that Parker had "psychologically established" and the "scheme" he had "devised" to "legitimate" these doctrines to "the scholar's mind." And in the context of his autobiographical strategy, Parker's legitimating "scheme" is less legitimate than the confidential revelation of his spiritual trial, of whose "hopes and fears" he had told "no one." But as the autobiographical fragment he would begin at Rome reveals, Parker's disclosure of his spiritual trial is itself a "scheme" he had devised for the purposes of his professional autobiography. Parker's professional autobiography leaves out the more personal event on which this psychological crisis is grounded: the childhood origin of his belief in the authority of intuition, the questioning of which constitutes the spiritual trial of his divinity school days. To point this out is not to suggest that the autobiographical fragment escapes the logic of legitimation that motivates the letter from Santa Cruz. Rather it is to indicate the pervasiveness of the movement of thought that motivated Parker's lifelong attempt to legitimate his intuitive beliefs to both the scholarly and the popular mind. Parker's letter from Santa Cruz moves quickly from his spiritual trial to his professional ordination. "On the longest day of 1837," he writes, "I was ordained minister of the Unitarian Church and Congregation at West Roxbury, a little village near Boston" (CE 13: 304). Being installed in his own parish did not diminish the young minister's scholarly pursuits, but increased them: "with zeal and delight 1 applied myself anew to the great theological problems of the age" (CE 13: 3°7). The young preacher of the Gospel soon discovered, however, that "the ecclesiastical worship of the Bible" did not aid his effort to legitimate the intuitive basis of religion, but was a "fetish" that "hindered the religious welfare and progress" of this effort "more than any other cause." With "great caution" Parker undertook "to oppose this monstrous evil" of the Bible. He "laboriously wrote two sermons on the contradictions in the Scripture," but heeding the advice of

122

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

"older and enlightened ministers," kept his sermons to himself for more than a year. When he did finally determine to preach them (to make his private opinions public), he did so with trepidation, "not venturing to look the audience in the face and see the immediate result" (CE 13: 322). His fears, however, proved to be unfounded. During the week subsequent to his preaching of these sermons many of his parishioners stopped by to thank him "for the attempt to apply common sense to religion and the Bible" (CE 13: 323). The response of his congregation convinced him that the "older and enlightened ministers" had not given him sound professional advice: "a teacher of religion and theology should tell the world all he knew thereunto appertaining, as all teachers of mathematics or chemistry are expected to do in their profession" (CE 13: 323). It was thus as much a matter of professional obligation as of the promptings of intuition that persuaded the young minister to "tell the world all he knew" of the transient and permanent in Christianity. As in his depiction of the origin of his "religious consciousness," Parker continues to reveal incidents of his private history to legitimate his public conduct, particularly his decision to preach and then publish the controversial "Discourse of the Transient and Permanent in Christianity." When, "on the 19th of May, 1841, at the ordination of Mr. Shackford, a thoughtful and promising young man, at South Boston," Parker preached this sermon-the most compelling account of the Transcendentalist claim that the truth of Christianity (or any religion) depends not on the institutional "authority of Bibles or Churches," but on the intuitive authority of man's religious consciousness-his professional career (and personal life) took a decisive turn (CE 13: 324). The Trinitarian ministers who were present joined in a public protest; a great outcry was raised against the sermon and its author. Theological and commercial newspapers rang with animadversions against its wickedness. "Unbeliever," "infidel," "atheist," were the titles bestowed on me by my brothers in the Christian ministry; a venerable minister, who heard the report in an adjoining country, printed his letter in one of the most widely circulated journals of New England, calling on the attorney general to prosecute, the grand jury to indict, and the judge to sentence me to three years' confinement in the State prison for blasphemy. (CE 13: 324) As throughout his ministerial career, Parker refused to let public opinion

prevent him from fulfilling his professional obligation to "tell the world all he knew" about religious truth. In the logic of the professional autobiogra-

The Two Theodore Parkers

I

23

phy, public opinion might shake his legitimating scheme, but could not threaten what was "spontaneously given to all, by the instinctive action of human nature." I printed the sermon, but no bookseller in Boston would put his name to the title-page-Unitarian ministers had been busy with their advice. The Swedenborgian printers volunteered the protection of their name; the little pamphlet was thus published, sold, and vehemently denounced. Most of my clerical friends fell off; some would not speak to me in the street, and refused to take me by the hand; in their public meetings they left the sofas or benches where I sat down, and Withdrew from me asJews from contact with a leper. In a few months most of my former ministerial coadjutors forsook me, and there were only six who would allow me to enter their pulpits.... The Unitarian periodicals were shut against me and my friends-the public must not read what I wrote. Attempts were secretly made to alienate my little congregation, and expel me from my obscure station at West Roxbury. But I had not gone to war without counting the cost. I well knew beforehand what awaited me, and had determined to fight the battle through, and never thought of yielding or being silenced. I told my opponents the only man who could "put me down" was myself, and I trusted I would do nothing to bring about that result. If thrust out of my own pulpit, I made up my mind to lecture from city to city, from town to town, from village to village, nay, if need were, from house to house, well assured that I should not thus go over the hamlets of New England till something was come. (CE 13: 324-25) As he had earlier, Parker presents what appears to be an intimate revelation of his private history (particularly the details about his ostracization) in order to legitimate his "public conduct" (particularly his protracted wrangling with the Unitarian Association over the grounds for his virtual excommunication by 1845) (Hutchison 110-36). The final sentence of the above passage duplicates the movement from public to private ("city" to "town" to "village" to "house") that motivates his letter from Santa Cruz. Although his militaristic rhetoric undoubtedly exaggerates the tenor of the controversy raised by his sermon, the details are generally accurate. The vociferous opposition to his sermon is reason enough to examine it in some detail. But it is not the only reason. The "Discourse of the Transient and Permanent in Christianity" not only elaborates the interpretive logic set forth by Emerson and Thoreau, but also recapitulates the logic both of the professional autobiography and of the "two Theodore Parkers."

124

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

'What God Pronounces True"

In borrowing the phrase "transient and permanent" from an essay by Strauss, Parker signaled to his audience that he was bringing the full extent of his theological scholarship to bear on the biblical contention of the permanence of Christianity.4 The text of the sermon is Luke 2 I :33: "Heaven and earth shall pass away; but my words shall not pass away." Since this verse clearly indicates "that Jesus of Nazareth believed the religion he taught would be eternal," Parker proposes to "consider what is transient in Christianity, and what is permanent therein" (CE 4: 102).5 The sermon opens with an amplification of its text, which contains the enabling paradox of Christianity. After first questioning the reasonableness of calling Christ's words eternal, for "at first sight, nothing seems more fleeting than a word," Parker ascribes the permanence ofJesus' words to their spoken nature ( CE 4: 2). The paraphrase that sums up his initial explication of Luke 21:33 reflects what Derrida has characterized as the logocentric valorization of the spoken word (10-18): "The old heavens and the old earth are indeed passed away, but the Word stands. Nothing shows clearer than this how fleeting is what man calls great, how lasting what God pronounces true" (CE 4: 4).

But if only "what God pronounces true" is permanent, while "what man calls great" is doomed to perish, Parker avers, then Christianity itself, as manifested in human history since the time of Christ, must be perishable: "The difference between what is called Christianity by the Unitarians in our times, and that of some ages past, is greater than the difference between Mahomet and the Messiah" (CE 4: 5). Although the word ofJesus appears to be fixed and certain, and "true religion is always the same thing, in each century and every land, in each man that feels it," man's interpretations of that word have differed so radically that "the Christianity of the pulpit, which is the religion taught, the Christianity of the people, which is the religion that is accepted, and lived out, has never been the same thing in any two centuries or lands, except only in name" (CE 4: 5). Nor does Parker see any immediate prospect of a time when "what men call Christianity" will achieve the permanence of "what God pronounces true." "How do we know there is not a perishing element in what we call Christianity? Jesus tells us his word is the word of God, and so shall never pass away. But who tells us that our word shall neverpass away? that our notion of his word shall stand for ever?" (CE 4: 5-6). Parker's distinction between the transience of "our notion" ofJesus' word and the perma-

The Two Theodore Parkers

125

nence of his word is clearly indebted to Strauss. Although Luke 2 1: 33 has traditionally been interpreted to distinguish between the transience of worldly things and the spiritual permanence of Christianity, Parker characteristically reinterprets this verse to find in what had been permanent (Christianity) elements of both transience (our notion of Christianity) and permanence Oesus' words). Thus no transient interpretation of Jesus' words can ever attain the permanence of "real Christianity" and "what men call Christianity" may not be Christianity at all. But if we "look at this matter a little more closely," Parker suggests, we can see that "in actual Christianity-that is, in that portion of Christianity which is preached and believed-there seems to have been, ever since the time of its earthly founder, two elements, the one transient, the other permanent" (CE 4: 6). Parker again redraws the line between the transient and the permanent, modifying the distinction between "real Christianity" and "what men call Christianity" with a new term, "actual Christianity," that combines the permanence of the former with the transience of the latter. In "actual Christianity," Parker says, "transient things form a great part of what is commonly taught as religion. An undue place has often been assigned to forms and doctrines.... But they are only the accident of Christianity, not its substance" (CE 4: 6). The fact that the permanent substance of Christianity cannot be found in accidental forms and doctrines invites Parker to rewrite Luke 22:13 again: "Forms and opinions change and perish, but the word of God cannot fail" (CE 4: 3 1 ). But this new distinction also fails to hold. Like actual Christianity, forms and doctrines have both permanent and transient elements. The measure of a form's value, Parker argues (following the logic of Emerson's resignation from the ministry and his Divinity School "Address"), is in its use: "So long as they satisfy or help the pious heart, so long they are good" (CE 4: 7 ).6 The same claim can be made for the doctrines of Christianity, which "are quite as changeable as the form" (CE 4: 7). Just as baptism and communion have been considered essential Christian forms, the two essential Christian doctrines have been "the doctrine respecting the origin and authority of the Old and New Testament" and that respecting "the nature and authority of Christ" (CE 4: 12, 17). Again following Strauss, Parker contends that because the higher criticism has shown that the Old Testament authors were not miraculously inspired by God, the truth of Christianity should not be founded on a text whose authors "had only that inspiration which is common to other men equally pious and wise," especially since they "partook of the darkness and limited notions of their age" (CE 4: 15).7 While

126

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

New England Unitarians might be able to accept the implications of an Old Testament written by men who "were by no means infallible," they had a much more difficult time accepting the same truth about the New Testament. Thus when Parker began his sermon with the claim that "true religion," "real Christianity," and "what God pronounces true" are, like the words of Jesus, things which "shall not pass away," his Unitarian auditors would naturally have assumed that he meant that these eternal truths were authorized by the infallible text of the New Testament and its accounts of the miraculous proofs ofJesus' divinity. Parker, however, resurrects Ripley's argument against the necessity of miracles for Christian faith to dispute the claim that the truth of Christianity depends on the personal authority of Jesus presented in the New Testament. 8 In so doing he again takes what had been permanent Oesus' words) and finds within them a transient element (the personal authority ofJesus). Not just the Bible, butJesus himself, is an accident of Christianity that can be done without. Parker stops short of suggesting that 'Jesus of Nazareth had never lived"; nonetheless the very idea of a Christianity in which Jesus did not reside was more than his contemporaries could accept (CE 4: 21). Nor did Parker's solution, that Christianity "is true, like the axioms of geometry, because it is true, and is to be tried by the oracle God places in the breast," provide sufficient compensation for the loss of the personal authority of Jesus and the infallible authority of Scripture (CE 4: 21-22). To Parker's contemporaries this newest candidate for permanence (the intuitive certainty of religious truth) seems to found Christianity on an even more tenuous basis than the evanescent words of Jesus. Although the sermon goes on to assert an identity between Jesus' words and the innate intuitive powers on which Parker would ground the truth of Christianity, this identity works ultimately to demonstrate that our notion of "the oracle God places in the breast" can be no more permanent than our notion of the oracle God placed in the world almost two thousand years ago. Hoping to convince his listeners that the permanence of Christianity rests on the intuitive apprehension of religious truth, Parker reiterates the Straussian claim that all doctrinal manifestations of Christianity are inevitably misinterpretations of the word ofJesus, since they necessarily partake of the transient notions of their age. These notions are so changeable, he says, that even if "a Christian teacher of any age, from the sixth to the fourteenth century," was able to discuss questions of theology and religion with us, "his notions of Christianity could not be expressed in our forms, nor could our notions be made intelligible to his ears. The questions of his age, those on which Christianity was thought to depend-questions which perplexed

The Two Theodore Parkers

127

and divided the subtle doctors-are no questions to us" (CE 4: 26). Nor does Parker suggest "that the change is to stop here" (CE 4: 27). "No doubt an age will come in which ours shall be reckoned a period of darknesslike the sixth century-when men groped for the wall, but stumbled and fell, because they trusted a transient notion, not an eternal truth" (CE 4: 28). Just as we can see the transience of past notions of eternal truth, so a future age will see the transience of our notions of eternal truth as well. Yet once again Parker attempts to redraw the line between transience and permanence. The fact that men have trusted transient notions rather than permanent ones cannot affect the truth ofJesus' words, he contends, since "Christianity itself, that pure religion, which exists eternal in the constitution of the soul and the mind ofGod, is always the same. The Word that was before Abraham, in the very beginning, will not change, for that Word is truth. From this Jesus subtracted nothing; to this he added nothing" (CE 4: 28). Because Jesus neither added nor subtracted any transient notions to God's Word, his words are identical to that Word and are thus eternal. Mankind's notions of his words, however, must inevitably be transient. The authority of Christianity's claim to eternal truth rests not on the transient forms and doctrines of "what men call Christianity," but on the intuitive apprehension of the word of God "eternal in the constitution of the souL" In light of Parker's belief that "an age will come in which ours shall be reckoned a period ofdarkness," it is not immediately apparent why "the oracle God places in the breast" will not also be reckoned "a transient notion, not an eternal truth." Given that Jesus' words have been misinterpreted throughout the ages, so that "the difference between the Christianity ofsome sects, and that of Christ himself, is deeper and more vital than that between Jesus and Plato," it seems plausible that "the oracle God places in the breast" would be subject to the same transient misinterpretations (CE 4: 5). Although Parker might accept the weak version of this claim, that his interpretation of intuitive truth is itself a transient one, he would be reluctant to accept the strong version: that the very idea of an immediate, intuitive apprehension of religious truth is the transient product of a dark age which some future age will view with derision. Parker's sermon offers two possible explanations of the way in which man's intuitive apprehension of Christian truth could escape the interpretive problems that his sermon depicts. But neither of them sufficiently explains why intuition should not be subject to the same transient misinterpretations that have plaguedJesus' words. One defense which Parker provides depends mainly upon the idea of progress set forth in his sermon. Its basic line of argument is that as time goes on man's interpretations ofJesus, words will gradually eliminate their

128

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

accidental, transient elements and thus come closer and closer to the truth. One example of this account of a progressive approximation to an absolute religious truth appears in an analogy to astronomy: "Now, the solar system as it exists in fact is permanent, though the notions ofThales and Ptolemy, of Copernicus and Descartes, about this system, prove transient imperfect approximations to the true expression" (CE 4: 12). The implication of this analogy is that a true account ofJesus' words would be one that has freed itself of all transient, accidental notions. But Parker's comparison of true religion with the solar system works finally to belie the possibility of any system of religion ever attaining the permanence of Jesus' words. For no matter how much of the accidental is eliminated from a theory of the solar system, that theory is of a different order of things than is the solar system that it would explain. Seen in terms of the interpretation of Jesus' words, this analogy suggests that no interpretation can attain the permanence of his words, since the truth of his words is of a different order which cannot fully be explained by the transient notions of any particular age. Jesus' words are a true account of the "Word that was before Abraham" because "From this Jesus subtracted nothing; to this he added nothing." Our words cannot have the permanence ofJesus' words because we must inevitably add something to them in order to make them intelligible. Implicit in Parker's progressive account of interpretation, however, is another, more compelling defense of his claim to intuitive permanence, in which a true interpretation of Jesus' words would depend not on our doctrinal notions of Christianity at all, but on an intuitive apprehension of the truth that is present in even the most transient of doctrines. Although forms and doctrines are only imperfect approximations of Christianity, Parker contends, this does not mean that they possess no truth. On the contrary, if we "turn away from the disputes of the Catholics and the Protestants, of the Unitarian and Trinitarian, of old school and new school, and come to the plain words ofJesus of Nazareth, Christianity is a simple thing, very simple." It is absolute, pure morality; absolute, pure religion; the love ofGod acting without let or hindrance. The only creed it lays down is the great truth which springs up spontaneous in the holy heart-there is a God. Its watchword is, Be perfect as your Father in heaven. The only form it demands is a divine life; doing the best thing in the best way, from the highest motives; perfect obedience to the great law of God. (CE 4: 28-29). The "perfect obedience to the great law of God" "which springs up spontaneous in the holy heart" does not demand a progressive elimination of the

The Two Theodore Parkers

129

accidental from the forms and doctrines of institutional Christianity, since this obedience is seen to be independent of all doctrinal notions. Nonetheless, Parker's explication of the "only creed" and "only form" of Christianity appears to represent an attempt to express an accident-free interpretation of "absolute, pure religion," whose sanction is not miracles or an infallible Scripture or the Church, but "the voice of God in your heart; the perpetual presence of him who made us and the stars over our head; Christ and the Father abiding within us" (CE 4: 28-29). Unlike his progressive defense of the permanence of an intuitive account ofJesus' words, in which that interpretation which had the fewest transient elements would represent the most permanent approximation of the truth, this intuitive defense cultivates a proliferation of transient, accidental elements. Real Christianity "does not demand all men to think alike, but to think uprightly, and get as near as possible at truth" (CE 4: 29). The Christianity of sects, however, "would make all men think alike, or smother their convictions in silence" (CE 4: 30). Any doctrine, no matter how free of transient notions, can work as a doctrine only by demanding others to accept its views as true. "But Christianity gives us the largest liberty of the sons of God; and were all men Christians after the fashion of Jesus, this variety would be a thousand times greater than now: for Christianity is not a system of doctrines, but rather a method of attaining oneness with God" (CE 4: 30). Because the truth of Christianity depends not on forms and doctrines, but on the "voice of God in your heart," the result of all men becoming Christians "after the fashion of Jesus" would be a variety of doctrines "a thousand times greater than now." As the truth of Christianity becomes universally accepted, the number of transient doctrines would not decline, but increase. Yet we should not take at face value Parker's insistence that intuitive Christianity does not demand men to adhere to a system of doctrines. For while his system does provide a great deal of liberty in respect to the traditional forms and doctrines of Christianity, this liberty is contingent on one's belief in the intuitive apprehension of religious truth. Parker's system can allow for a wide variety offormal and doctrinal manifestations ofChristianity only because forms and doctrines are seen to be inconsequential to a true understanding ofJesus' words. But it is no accident that in the passage cited above Parker employs the transient language ofdoctrinal religion to express the necessary beliefs of his system of intuitive Christianity. In fact the three essential truths that Parker enjoins in his doctrinal summation-the intuitive apprehension ofGod, right and wrong, and immortality-correspond to the three facts of consciousness that provided the solution to the spiritual crisis

130

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

of his divinity school days. Although he does not acknowledge the point, it is clear that just as our notion ofJesus' words can only be a transient one, so Parker's notion of the facts of consciousness "eternal in the constitution of the soul" must also be transient. Like Jesus' words, intuition must be interpreted. Just as we can have only our notion ofJesus' words, so we can have only our notion of intuitive truth. The interpretive logic of Parker's sermon duplicates the logic both of his remark to Miss Cobbe and of the letter from Santa Cruz. In claiming that mankind's notions of the word of God will pass away, but that "the voice of God in your soul" will last forever, Parker manifests the same concern with transience and permanence that motivates his representation of the "two Theodore Parkers." Like the self, actual Christianity is represented as dual: "there seems to have been, ever since the time of its earthly founder, two elements, the one transient, the other permanent." Like the self, that which seems to be more permanent, more real, is in fact transient, while that which seems to be transient is in fact permanent: "Heaven and earth shall pass away; but my words shall not pass away." Yet Parker's claim that the permanence of Christianity is to be found in an intuitive apprehension of Jesus' words does not do away with the "two Theodore Parkers." For as we have seen, Parker's sermon presents two conflicting accounts of intuitive permanence. On the one hand, he claims that an intuitive apprehension of Jesus' words is free from the transient notions of a doctrinal manifestation of his words. But on the other hand, his identification ofJesus' words with "the voice of God in your heart" suggests that just as we can have only our notion ofJesus' words and not his words themselves, so we can have only our notion of intuition and not intuition itself. This dualism is continued in the autobiographical fragment that Parker composed at Rome just prior to his death. For where his professional autobiography traces his belief in the intuitive apprehension of religious truth to the "automatic and indispensable" "facts of consciousness given by the instinctive action of human nature itself," his autobiographical fragment suggests that his belief in intuition is itself conditioned in the most fundamental sense by the transient notions of his time. UThe Dear Heavenly Mother"

The fragment that Parker began in Rome is as close as he would come to composing a "brief autobiography to be published after [his] death." Free from the generic constraints of his public letter, this fragment presents "some small particulars" of his "private history" that would have been

The Two Theodore Parkers

I

3I

inappropriate in his professional autobiography. Although it is the most detailed account extant of Parker's childhood, his autobiographical fragment is of interest not so much for its historical accuracy (Parker in fact apologizes for the inaccuracies resulting from a failing memory and a lack of family records), as for its selection of those details which he remembers as important in the last days of his life. The fragment is primarily a compilation of the "material and human circumstances" of Parker's early life, so much so that when he finds that he can no longer write, he closes his manuscript with a "caveat lector" in which he justifies the inclusion of so many apparently insignificant circumstantial details: "The material and human circumstances about a man in his early life have a strong and abiding influence upon all, especially those of a sensitive disposition, who are both easily affected by such externals and rather obstinate in retaining the impression made on them" (CE 13: 449). This passage describes the role of circumstances in forming one's character much as Parker had in his letter to Dr. Lamson. Because one's self is so strongly influenced by the circumstances of his early life, Parker provides this autobiographical account of his childhood in order to present what may be important clues to the character of the "Theodore Parker that used to live at West Roxbury." But iI1 spite of the homage that this fragment pays to external circumstances, it closes with an inward revelation of which Parker is "sure no event in [his] life has made so deep and lasting an impression on [him]" (CE 13: 16). The event Parker depicts is his first awareness of "the voice of God in the soul of man," the intuitive apprehension of religious truth. It is both a touching and a humorous account. Although regularly cited in biographies of Parker, it is worth quoting in its entirety. When a little boy in petticoats in my fourth year, one fine day in spring, my father led me by the hand to a distant part of the farm, but soon sent me home alone. On the way I had to pass a little "pond-hole" then spreading its waters wide; a rhodora in full bloom-a rare flower in my neighborhood, and which grew only in that locality-attracted my attention and drew me to the spot. I saw a little spotted tortoise sunning himself in the shallow water at the root of the flaming shrub. I lifted the stick I had in my hand to strike the harmless reptile; for, though I had never killed any creature, yet I had seen other boys out of sport destroy birds, squirrels, and the like, and I felt a disposition to follow their wicked example. But all at once something checked my little arm, and a voice within me said, clear and loud, "It is wrong!" I held my uplifted stick in wonder at the new emotion-the conscious-

132

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

ness of an involuntary but inward check upon my actions, till the tortoise and the rhodora both vanished from my sight. I hastened home and told the tale to my mother, and asked what it was that told me wrong? She wiped a tear from her eye with her apron, and taking me in her arms, said, " Some men call it conscience, but I prefer to call it the voice of God in the soul of man. If you listen and obey it, then it will speak clearer, and always guide you right; but if you turn a deaf ear and disobey, then it will fade out little by little, and leave you all in the dark and without a guide. Your life depends on heeding this little voice." She went her way, careful and troubled about many things, but doubtless pondered them over in her motherly heart; while I went off to wonder and think it over in my poor childish way. But I am sure no event in my life has made so deep and lasting an impression on me. (CE 13: 15- 16)

This incident is unquestionably meant to be revelatory. Parker's account of his first experience of "the voice of God in the soul of man" seems like the Old Testament prelude to the more Christian spiritual crisis of his divinity school days. Interestingly, this intense personal revelation incorporates motifs from the two principal scenes of revelation in the Old Testament. The flaming shrub which irresistibly draws Parker to it has its source in the bush that burned but did not consume itself when God first revealed himself to Moses; and the intervention of the voice of God just as Parker was about "to strike the reptile" parallels God's intervention just as "Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son" (Gen. 22:10). Despite Parker's objections to the fetishization of Scripture, he conceives of even the most personal unconditioned revelation in the conventional terms of the Old Testament. More importantly, however, just as Abraham and Moses did not understand the meaning of God's intervention until He had explained it to them, so the young Parker is confused by this "new emotion-the consciousness of an involuntary but inward check upon [his] actions." But where Abraham and Moses turned to God to explain their revelations, Parker turned to his mother. Parker's mother makes it clear that the interpretations which men have given to the fact of intuition have differed among different people: "Some men call it conscience, but I prefer to call it the voice of God in the soul of man." One can imagine the way in which Parker's career might have differed if his mother had explained this incident in another way. If she had told him that the voice he had heard was the natural voice of conscience, he

The Two Theodore Parkers

I

33

might have been another Franklin. If she had told him that this voice was only the figment of his actively childish imagination, he might have become a founding father of modern psychology. If she had told him that it was the voice of Nature, he might have become an early advocate of animal rights. Or if she had told him that it was the voice of the Devil he had heard, and that it was to be resisted at all costs, Parker might have become the sternest of Calvinists. No matter how his mother might have interpreted this voice, however, the socializing force of the incident seems clear. It is not because he knew that the voice he had heard was actually pronounced by God, but because it was called the voice of God by his mother that Parker values it as the command of God on whose obedience his life depends. His mother's account is seen as true not because it was free from the accidental notions of her time (as it clearly was not), but because it was the first accidental account that Parker had received and because it came from his mother. As Derrida has observed in a discussion of the natural law of pity in Rousseau, one's obedience to the natural law of God only becomes a divine obedience after it has been supplemented by maternal law (both of which are represented by voice). This obedience works to prove not the prior, unconditioned nature of "the voice of God in the soul of man," but rather precisely the opposite: that the law of God inscribed in man's heart can be constituted as prior to the law of man only after it has first been understood in the conventional, human terms of maternal law (171-92). Although Parker obeys his inner voice before his mother has explained it to him, this obedience is clearly the product of a prior obedience to the parental voice of authority, not a spontaneous obedience to the eternal voice of God. Parker obeys "the oracle God places in the breast" because his mother told him to. Parker's autobiographical fragment represents the culmination of a consistent identification of maternal and divine authority throughout his life. Not unique to Parker, this identification was at the heart of the nineteenth-century cult of motherhood. Jane Tompkins describes the identification of mother and God in pre-Civil War sentimental fiction as instrumental for an evangelical "feminist theology in which the godhead is re-fashioned into an image of maternal authority" (43). But as Parker's autobiographical fragment suggests, the identification of maternal and divine authority was not limited to evangelicalism. Nor, Ann Douglas has suggested, was the cult of motherhood limited to a feminist theology.9 Rather, she contends, it "was nearly as sacred in mid-nineteenth-century America as the belief in some version of democracy": "The American mother of the mid-nineteenth cen-

134

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

tury, encouraged to breast-feed, oversee, and educate her child, was theoretically assuming, for better and worse, almost godlike prominence" (7475). This "godlike prominence" was based on the widespread belief "that men achieved greatness because of the instruction and inspiration they received from their mothers" (74). Douglas cites Lydia Huntley Sigourney's 1837 Letter to Mothers as setting forth one instance ofthis belief: "How entire and perfect is this dominion over the unformed character of your infant" (qtd. 75). In Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Margaret Fuller sets forth another: "Man is of Woman born, and her face bends over him in infancy with an expression he can never forget. Eminent men have delighted to pay tribute to this image, and it is an hackneyed observation, that most men of genius boast some remarkable development in the mother" (49). As both Douglas and Nancy Cott emphasize, ministers were among the foremost agents in the inculcation of the cult of motherhood: "From the turn of the [nineteenth] century," Cott explains, "New England ministers had pointed out the importance of the mother's role" (Cott 85). One such minister, the Reverend John S. C. Abbott, antedates the claims of both Sigourney and Fuller in his 1833 treatise, The Mother at Home: or the Principles ofMaternal Duty Familiarly Illustrated: "If there is throughout the world an instance of complete, unlimited, absolute power on the one hand, and the most entire and helpless submission on the other, it is to be found in the empire which such a parent holds over such a child" (32). Among the most popular of the antebellum books on domestic education, Abbott's work emphasized to the American mother that her influence "has as powerful an action upon the welfare of future generations as all other earthly causes combined" (294). The salvation of future generations depends on their mothers: "The mother must be the earnest and affectionate guide to the Saviour" (168). Abbott makes it clear, however, that it was only by first acknowledging the Saviour herself that the mother could effect her child's salvation: "The great work of the formation of the character of children should be done in the heart of the parent herself" (214). Like Abbott, Parker shared many of the beliefs held by the cult of motherhood, as registered in his contention both that "the mother's face [is] daguerreotyped in the conduct and character of each little boy and girl," and that "the formation of the character is a mighty trust God gives into women's hands" (CE 5: 184, 217 ).10 I introduce Abbott here, however, not for his expression of some of the general principles of the cult of motherhood to which Parker subscribed, but more particularly for his representation of an important childhood incident that developed along the lines of Parker's first experience of "the voice of God in the soul of man."

The Two Theodore Parkers

I

35

Although Abbott repeatedly emphasizes the importance of regular religious conversation, he feels that the most permanent mode of religious instruction can often be found in such transient incidents as Parker describes in his autobiographical fragment: "One such transient incident has a greater effect" and "enters more deeply into the heart than volumes of ordinary conversation" (181, 184). Abbott recounts such an incident in his own life. Having lost a favorite ball, he unexpectedly found it on his way to school the following Monday. Like the young Parker, Abbott runs home to tell the story to his mother: After sympathizing with me in my childish happiness, she remarked that Sir Matthew Hale had said that he never passed the Sabbath well without being prospered the succeeding week. "You remember, my son," she continued, "that you were a good boy yesterday. This shows you, that if you would be happy and prosperous you must remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy." Whether this remark be without exception true, it is not in place now to inquire. But the remark in the connection in which it was made, produced an impression upon my mind which will never be effaced. (187 -88) Although the precept that Abbott's mother instilled would likely be foreign to Parker's doctrines of absolute religion, the psychological economy of the two incidents is identical. Like Parker, Abbott did not grasp the significance of the incident until his mother had explained it to him. Also like Parker, this initial failure of comprehension did not diminish the effect of the inCident, since his mother's remark "produced an impression upon [his] mind which will never be effaced." The resemblance between Abbott's recovery of his lost ball and Parker's discovery of "the voice of God in the soul of man" suggests not that Parker's account was influenced by Abbott's own, but that Parker's understanding of the role of his mother in the formulation of his religious beliefs merits further attention. Although Parker never wrote a treatise on motherhood, his views of the mother's role in religious education play an important part in his religious thought. Like Abbott, Parker believes that all religious sentiments derive from one's mother. In a passage on "Home," from a collection of Parker's unpublished sermons, he quarrels with the claim of "Dr. Arnold" that man knows God only through Christ. l l I should respect him more if he had said he only knew God through his mother; for the mother is still to the hungry heart of mortals the fairest, the highest incarnation of the ever-living, ever-loving God. It is

136

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

she who feeds our body from her own body's life; it is she who feeds our soul from her own spirit's life. She taught the feet to walk, the tongue to speak, guided our stammering lips. Her conscience went before us as a great wakening light, and it is through her that we first become acquainted with our Father God. (CE 5: 188) Whereas for Abbott the mother is "the earnest and affectionate guide to the Saviour," for Parker the mother becomes the Savior herself. Although the truth of Christianity does not rest on the personal authority of Jesus, it seems in the above passage to rest on the personal authority of one's mother. But as the following passages serve to illustrate, just as the intuitive apprehension of God can do without the personal authority ofJesus, so it can do without the personal authority of one's mother as well. The citations which follow are drawn from three different periods of Parker's life. Each of them deals with the relationship between maternal and divine authority. The first is from an 1835 letter to his future wife, Lydia Cabot, in which Parker paints a rather touching picture of his early childhood. How happy is the mother's charge at night, when, with many a prayer, she folds up her little flowerets, and commits them to His care whose eye never slumbers nor sleeps! Perhaps you have not such associations as I have with this period; but now the days when I was a little, yes, a very little child, come up before me, when my mother taught me a prayer and a hymn, and, giving one farewell kiss, left me to repose. I cannot think of those times without a tear-a tear of regret for those days, and of sorrow that I am so little worthy of a fond parent's hopes and prayers and tears. (Weiss I: 74-75) In a sermon delivered in 1846, on the eve of his departure from the West Roxbury congregation to which he had ministered since 1837, Parker provides a more public expression of his mother's role in forming his religious beliefs. Religion was the inheritance my mother gave me-gave me in my birth-gave me in her teachings. Many sons have been better born than I, few have had so good a mother. I mention these things to show you how I came to have the views of religion that I have now. My head is not more natural to my body-has not more grown with it than my religion out of my soul and with it. With me religion was not carpentry, something built out of dry wood, from without; but it was growthgrowth of a germ in my soul. (Weiss I: 29-30)

The Two Theodore Parkers

I

37

And in an 1858 sermon Parker describes the 'Jacob's ladder" that leads from mother's love to God's love. This sermon also provides him with an opportunity to elaborate his characterization of God, elsewhere in his writings, as the "great housekeeper [of the universe], the ever-present mother therein" (CE 5: 3). God loves me as my natural mother never did, nor could, nor can, even now, with the added beatitudes of well-nigh two-score years in heaven. How the religious disposition inclines the little boyar girl to veneration and gratitude, virtues which in the child are what good-breeding is in the full-grown gentleman, giving a certain air of noble birth and well-bred superiority! There is a]acob's ladder for our young pilgrim, wherein he goes up from his earthly mother, who manages the little room he sleeps in, to the dear Heavenly Mother, who never slumbers nor sleeps, who is never careful or troubled about anything, but yet cares continually for the great housekeeping of the world, giving likewise to her beloved even in their sleep. (Weiss I: 32) In each of these passages, Parker consistently identifies his mother with God. But he just as consistently suggests that, unlike "the dear Heavenly Mother," his "natural mother" can be done without. The letter to Lydia Cabot portrays Parker's early childhood relationship with his mother as an idyllic one. But it concludes with a discordant note that can be heard in the other two passages as well: "I cannot think of those times without a tear-a tear of regret for those days, and of sorrow that I am so little worthy of a fond parent's hopes." In the sermon on leaving West Roxbury, Parker again begins by expressing his gratitude for the "religious inheritance" his mother gave him in his birth and in her teachings. He goes on, however, to disavow the significance of this inheritance when he explains that for him "religion was not carpentry, something built up ... from without," but rather the "growth of a germ in my soul." By the 1858 sermon his earlier sense of his own unworth has been transferred to his mother, who did not love him as God does, "nor could, nor can, even now, with the added beatitudes of well-nigh two-score years in heaven." Parker makes it clear that despite her importance in his religious upbringing he can do without his "earthly mother," since she has led him to the 'Jacob's ladder" that brings him up to "the dear Heavenly Mother," God. The sense of dissatisfaction that accompanies Parker's realization that he can do without his earthly mother is implicit in a sermon preached in 1852, when the Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society moved into the fifteen-hundred-seat Boston Music Hall. Describing the public hatred to

138

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

which he had been repeatedly subjected, Parker unintentionally expresses the full extent of his resentment toward his maternal inheritance. After summarizing the system of absolute religion which he had been preaching for the past fifteen years, Parker complains: I cannot be otherwise than hated. This is the necessity of my position,-that I must be hated; and, accordingly, I believe there is no living man in America so widely, abundantly, and deeply hated as I have been, and still continue to be.... I do not blame men for this; not so much as some others have done on my account. I pity very much more than I blame; not with the pity of contempt, I hope, but with the pity of love. I see in the circumstances of men very much to palliate the offenses of their character; and I long ago learned not to hate men who hated me. It was not hard to learn; I began early,-I had a mother who taught me. (CE 13: 65) Of all the preceding passages, this one presents the most complex representation of Parker's resentment of his mother's role in forming his religious consciousness. Fond of describing himself as "the best-hated man in America," Parker here describes this hatred as the necessary result of the religious views which make up his maternal legacy. But his mother also furnished him with the "pity of love" that constitutes the proper response toward those who hate him. Yet his claim that his mother taught him not to blame men for hating him offers another likely target for blame: his mother. For if the hatred to which Parker had been subjected is the necessary result of his religious beliefs, and if those beliefs are the product of his maternal inheritance, then he must imagine that his mother is to blame for the hatred that men have bestowed upon him. Seen in this light, Parker's conflicting accounts of the origin of his religious beliefs (as ,both conditioned by and independent of "material and human CirCUlTIstances") cannot be divorced from his consistently ambivalent attitude toward his maternal inheritance. The implicit resentment of his mother's role in fostering his intuitive consciousness of God, morality, and immortality appears to betray his nagging realization that the facts of consciousness which he claims to be spontaneous and unconditioned by the transient notions of the time are conditioned in the most fundamental sense by his mother. But could it betray something else? The object relations theory of psychoanalysis, for example, pioneered by Melanie Klein, characterizes the child's relation to its mother as "the first and fundamental relation" of its life (248). Such a characterization suggests that Parker's implicit resentment of

The Two Theodore Parkers

139

his maternal inheritance may have psychological, not logical, causes. In fact, the general outline of Klein's account of child development can be seen in Parker's representation of his maternal inheritance. His internalization of his mother's voice as the intuitive voice of God resembles the "introjection" of the "good mother," first embodied in the maternal breast, around which Klein contends that "the ego develops" (250-51). Likewise the mixture of love and hate that Parker expresses toward his mother in his account of men's hatred resembles the mechanism of "projection," "which goes on simultaneously with" introjection, and consists in "a capacity in the child to attribute to other people around him feelings of various kinds, predominantly love and hate" (250). In drawing these parallels between Parker's representation of his mother and the categories of Kleinian analysis, I do not mean to pursue any further a psychoanalytical line of inquiry into Parker's development,12 Although intriguing, the affinities between Parker's account of his maternal inheritance and Klein's account of the mother/child relationship reveal more about the persistence of the cult of motherhood into our own century than they do about the psychology of Parker's childhood relationship with his mother. 13 For despite the importance which Parker ascribes to his mother in providing him with his religious inheritance, he represents her more as a "mythological person" than as one with any "real historical existence." In Parker's remembrances his "natural mother" all but disappears. In fact his ambivalence toward his maternal inheritance seems to represent little more than the ordinary adult realization that he can do without her now that he is grown. What is particularly notable about this realization is its affinity not with the basic premises of Kleinian analysis, but with the logic of the "two Theodore Parkers." For just as Parker claims (in the remark to Miss Cobbe) that the real Theodore Parker can do without the self that is dying in Italy, and (in the "Transient and Permanent") that "the voice of God in your heart" makes it possible to do without transient doctrinal notions of the word of God, so his representations of his maternal inheritance suggest that he can do without his mother as well. Parker's "earthly mother" has passed away, but her maternal voice will not pass away. Parker's autobiographical accounts of his mother's role in forming his belief in "the voice of God in the soul of man" speak to the claim (set forth in the "Transient and Permanent") that intuition is independent of the transient notions of his time. For if his belief in intuition is indeed the product of maternal authority, then it would seem to be the case that, like

140

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

the doctrines of scriptural authority and the personal authority ofJesus, the doctrine of the intuitive apprehension of Christian truth is a transient notion which must ultimately pass away. In representing his maternal inheritance, however, Parker does not resolve the dilemma implicit in his sermon but only duplicates it. Like actual Christianity or the self, Parker's mother has both transient and permanent elements. Parker's "earthly mother" may have died and gone to heaven, but his real mother has not died. She has been planted in his soul where she can finish her work, just as the real Theodore Parker has been planted in America. Rather than choose between these two accounts of the origin of intuition, Parker duplicates them by duplicating his mother. Faced with a choice between maternal and intuitive authority, he refuses to choose. Although the fact that "the ever-present mother therein" enables Parker to do without his "natural mother" may appear to represent a choice of intuitive over maternal authority, it does not, since for Parker to choose intuition is to choose his mother as well. ~~Tbe

Oldest Institution ofthe World"

A Discourse of Religion is the fullest expression of Parker's theological views. If any of his works could be expected to resolve the dilemma implicit in his accounts of the permanence of intuition, the Discourse would be the most likely candidate. As the "Transient and Permanent" was "the first separate document" published with Parker's name, the Discourse was his first full-length book. 14 Its polemical intent is identical to that of the "Transient and Permanent": "to recall men from the transient shows of time, to the permanent substance of religion" (CE I: ix). But where the "Transient and Permanent" addresses the question of religious permanence in interpretive terms, A Discourse of Religion addresses this question in institutional terms: "If the opinions advanced in this discourse be correct, then religion is above all institutions and can never fail; they shall perish, but religion endure; they shall wax old as a garment; they shall be changed, and the places that knew them shall know them no more forever; but religion is ever the same, and its years shall have no end" (CE I: 435). The "Transient and Permanent" takes as its starting point the multiplicity of contradictory interpretations ofJesus' words. A Discourse ofReligion begins with the multiplicity of contradictory institutions: "As we look on the world which man has added to that which came from the hand of its Maker, we are struck with the variety of its objects, and the contradiction between them" (CE I: I). The transience of institutions, Parker writes, has

The Two Theodore Parkers

141

its roots "in man himself. In him is the same perplexing antithesis which we meet in all his works" (CE I: I). As we saw in the "Transient and Permanent," the doctrines of actual Christianity manifest this same "perplexing antithesis." Insofar as they are part of the world which God created, they are permanent "and can never fail." But insofar as they are things which man has added to the world, they "shall wax old as a garment" and must inevitably perish. In the Discourse Parker distinguishes religious institutions from secular ones on the basis of their "cause": "for every institution out of man except that of religion, there is a cause within him, either fleeting or permanent" (CE I: 2). But the "institution of religion, like society, friendship, and marriage, comes out of a principle, deep and permanent in the constitution of man" (CE I: 4). Although the cause of "society, friendship, and marriage" can be traced to a principle within man, the cause of religion is no more internal than is the cause of man himself. "We are not sufficient for ourselves; not self-originated; not self-sustained. A few years ago, and we were not; a few years hence, and our bodies shall not be" (CE I: 5). But as the "two Theodore Parkers" suggest, the transience of our bodies does not obviate the permanence of our selves; the religious element is "deep and permanent in the constitution of man" and exists independently of our bodies. IS Thus stripped of "all accidental circumstances peculiar to the age, nation, sect, or individual, ... the religious element first manifests itself in our consciousness by a feeling of need, of want; in one word, by a SENSE OF DEPENDENCE" (CE I: 7 ).16 While "outward circumstances furnish the occasion by which we approach and discover God, ... they do not furnish the idea itself. This is a fact given by the nature of man" (CE I: 10). Parker's account of the cause of man's permanent religious element can serve as a gloss of his conflicting accounts of the origin of his own belief in "the voice of God in the soul of man." Although his mother's explanation of this voice furnished "the occasion by which" the young Parker approached and discovered God, it did "not furnish the idea itself," since the idea of God is a "fact given by the nature of man." But this gloss on Parker's conflicting accounts of the genesis of his belief in intuition fails to resolve anything. For although the idea of God theoretically "involves no contradiction and is perfect," the "complex and definite conception of God ... as men express it in their language, is always imperfect, sometimes self-contradictory and impossible. Human actions, human thoughts, human feelings, yes, human passions and all the limitations of mortal men, are collected about the idea of God" (CE I: 13).

142

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

Parker's use of "conception" rather than "notion" to describe man's imperfect ideas of God is not confined to this single instance. "Thus while the idea of God, as a fact given in man's nature, ... is permanent and alike in all, ... the popular conception of God is of the most various and evanescent character, and is not the same in any two ages or men" (CE I: 16- I 7). Nor, as the following passage makes clear, is Parker's use of "conception" without reason. For it is in fact biological conception that initiates the sequence of events that results in the "various and evanescent character" of "the popular conception of God." "Hence, though the religious faculty be always the same in all, the doctrines of religion, or theology; the forms of religion, or mode of worship; and the practice of religion, which is morality, cannot be the same thing in any two men, though one mother bore them, and they were educated in the same way" (CE I: 37-38). Thus although Parker's mother furnished the occasion for his belief in the intuitive apprehension of God, the inherent imperfections of motherhood itself insure that no two men could share the same conceptions of God, "though one mother bore them, and they were educated in the same way."17 The imperfections of motherhood, however, are not solely responsible for man's contradictory religious conceptions. Man's notions of God are "the measure and the result of the total development of a man, an age, or race." The "phenomena of religion ... must vary from land to land, and age to age, with the varying civilization of mankind; must be one thing in New Zealand, and the first century, and something quite different in New England, and the fifty-ninth century. They must be o~e thing in the wise man, and another in the foolish man" (CE I: 37-38). Because religious phenomena are "the measure and the result" of the progress of mankind, they must differ according to the progress mankind has made. But because the life of the individual is also progressive, religious phenomena "must also vary in the same individual, for a man's wisdom, goodness, and general character, affects the phenomena of his religion. The religion of the boy and the man, of Saul the youth, and Paul the aged, how unlike they appear" (CE I: 38). This discussion of the phenomena of religion is characteristic in its resolution of the progress of mankind into a form of individual progress. Parker in fact concludes his historical overview of religious forms with an analogy between the development of the race and the development of a child into a man. "We creep before walking. Mankind has likewise an infancy, though it will at length put away childish things. Each of these forms did the world service in its day. Its truth was permanent; its error the result of the imperfect development of man's faculties" (CE I: 90-9 I).

The Two Theodore Parkers

143

Although the development from infancy to adulthood is the predominant metaphor that Parker employs to explain the progression of religious forms, he does not represent the entire history of religious progress strictly as the development of a single individual. In the passage cited above, for example, he characterizes the progression from pantheism to polytheism to monotheism as the development from creeping infancy to mature ambulation. Later in the Discourse, however, he employs the same metaphor to characterize the development of monotheism itself. Like crawling, the truth of pantheism and polytheism "did the world service in its day." Just as crawling and walking represent two different stages of the development of a child's physical faculties, so the truth of early Christianity represented "the measure and the result" of mankind's spiritual development. "Low as the Christian church was in the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, it yet represented the best interests of mankind as no other institution" (CE I: 365). Even more than the development from pantheism to monotheism, the development of Christianity dramatizes the confrontation between individuals and institutions that informs Parker's Discourse: "there are but two scales in the balance of power: the individual who is ruled and the institution that governs, here represented by the church" (CE I: 375). In former times the church fulfilled the role which mother and the family were beginning to serve in Parker's time: "Piety and genius found [in the church] an asylum, a school, and a broad arena" (CE I: 377-78). The domestic role played by the church is underscored in the elaborate analogy that concludes Parker's discussion of pre-Reformation Catholicism. Judaism and heathenism nursed and swaddled mankind for Christianity, which came in the fulness of time. The Catholic Church rocked the cradle of mankind. In due season, like a jealous nurse, assiduous and meddlesome, but grown ill-tempered with age and disgust of new things, she yields up with reluctance her rebellious charge, whose vagaries her frowns and stripes will not restrain; whose struggling weight her withered arms are impotent to bear; whose aspiring soul her anicular and maudlin wit cannot understand. Her promise will not coax; nor her baubles bribe; nor her curses affright him more. The stripling child will walk alone. (CE I: 390) To say that "the stripling child will walk alone," however, is not to say that the Reformation freed mankind from the governance of religious institutions, but that it shifted the scene ofgovernance from church to home, from

144

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

priest to parent. If the Catholic Church brought man to his feet, the Reformation brought him to manhood: "They were MEN who dared to come out, these heroes of the Reformation" (CE I: 398). Yet insofar as it represents mankind's coming into manhood, the Reformation also represents its coming into womanhood. The pre-Reformation church was an institution to govern mankind in its infancy. The Reformation enabled mankind to "put away childish things," ultimately to assume the role of parenthood for itself (CE

I:

399).

Of all the sects to which the Reformation had given birth by Parker's time, Unitarianism represented the furthest development of its ideals. In its initial stages "Unitarianism was but carrying out the principles of the Protestant Reformation" (CE I: 421). Like "most reformations," he avers, "its work ... was at first critical and negative. It was a 'Statement of Reasons for not believing' certain doctrines, very justly deemed not scriptural" (CE I: 420). The Unitarianism of Parker's day, however, having begun to establish creeds, found itself at a crossroads. "Unitarianism must do one of two things, affirm the great doctrines of absolute religion, ... or cease to represent the progress of man in theology" (CE I: 427). Although Parker observed in a note added to the fourth edition of the Discourse that "American Unitarians, as a body, have retreated still further back [since 1841], siding with medieval theology and American slavery," it is in its guise as the foremost representative of "the progress of man in theology" that he warns it that if it does not "affirm the great doctrines of absolute religion ... some other will take its office; stand godparent to the fair child it has brought into the world, but dares not own" (CE I: 427-28). Parker's depiction of absolute religion as the "fair child" of Unitarianism is echoed in another warning, of which he reminds the members of the Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society in his letter from Santa Cruz. "But at the beginning I warned you that if you came, Sunday after Sunday, you would soon think very much as I did on the great matters you asked me to teach-because I had drawn my doctrine from the same human nature which was in you, and that would recognize and own its child" (CE 13: 330). This passage brings the domestic metaphor of "the progress of man in theology" to its logical conclusion. In its infancy, mankind was nursed and swaddled by the institutions of heathenism and Judaism. The Catholic Church rocked its cradle until the "stripling child" could walk alone. The Reformation brought mankind to maturity. Institutional Unitarianism brought mankind to parenthood, having given birth to human nature's "fair child": absolute religion. Like mothers, religious institutions fulfill their

The Two Theodore Parkers

145

parental role by delivering themselves phoenix-like of a child. "Out of the ashes of the old institutions there springs up a new being, soon as the world can give it place" (CE I: 390). In this respect Unitarianism is no different from any other institutional religion. Just as mothers furnish the occasion for man's religious consciousness, but do not furnish its cause, so institutional Unitarianism furnishes the occasion for the birth of absolute religion, but not its cause. "Institutions arise as they are needed, and fall when their work is done. Institutions are provisional, man only is final" (CE I: 34).18 As Parker's letter from Santa Cruz suggests, American Unitarianism has had its day. Having arisen when it was most needed, its work has been finished. Not Unitarianism, but "human nature" is the true parent of absolute religion: "I have drawn my doctrine from the same human nature which was in you, and that would recognize and own its child." Like his appeal to "the voice of God in the soul of man," Parker's appeal to human nature is meant to ground the truth of his doctrines of absolute religion in the permanent facts of consciousness, not in the transient conceptions of mankind. Religious doctrines cannot be the same thing in any two men, "though one mother bore them, and they were educated in the same way." The parentage of human nature, however, appears more uniform. The "great doctrines of absolute religion" are identical in all men, since they are drawn from "the same human nature which is in" everyone. Unlike natural mothering, the mothering of human nature is seen to be free from the imperfect conceptions of man and God embodied in the institutions of mankind. Yet Parker's reliance on the maternal metaphor to describe the relationship between human nature and the doctrines of absolute religion suggests that human nature is not so easily separable from the transient institutions of mankind. His claim in the introduction to the Discourse that he "would show men religion as she is-most fair of all God's fairest children," underscores the fact that he is unable to conceive of religion independently of man's domestic institutions (CE I: xxi). This point is further supported by his contention that "the individual alone is a wild man; it is only in society that noble individualism is instantially possible" (CE 4: 402). A child raised apart from society would be unlikely to possess doctrines of absolute religion: "Some persons have been found, who, in early childhood were separated from human society and grew up towards the years of maturity in an isolated state, having no contact with their fellowmortals. These gave no signs of any religious element in their nature.... Yet when these unfortunate persons are exposed to the ordinary influence of life, the religious, like other faculties, does its work" (CE I: 23). The fact that

146

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

individuals raised apart from society "gave no signs of any religious element in their nature" suggests that while religion may be "above all institutions and can never fail," it is nonetheless inconceivable without the "ordinary influence" of human institutions. For as the following passages from Parker's other writings make clear, "the ordinary influence of life" does not simply mean other men. If we imagine the world which "some Captain John Smith" might have observed "thirty, or forty, or only twenty thousand years ago," Parker writes, we can see that the religious element requires more than .the existence of other men to manifest itself: Why, what a world of man he would have found!-man with only instinct, naked in body, naked in mind; without a house or tools, without experience of art, without law or religion, without manners or language; a brute and silent herd of men, subordinate to the forces of material nature ... men with no state, no church, no community, no marriage; men in herds, as fear or instinct gathered them; men in droves, as some hooting giant scared them together. (CE 5: 294) This portrait of a world with "no state, no church, no community, no marriage" is clearly the portrait of a world with no idea of God. And since for Parker the idea of God is logically inseparable from man's consciousness of his own existence, it is clearly a world without the idea of man. If the men of such a world did have a religion, its deity could only be conceived of as a "hooting giant" more wild than themselves, a man without human nature. For as Parker understands it, human nature is not mankind as it would be without the limitations of society's institutions. Nor is human nature the permanent ground out of which the institutions of mankind would naturally grow. On the contrary, human nature itself is inseparable from, and inconceivable without, the institutions of society. But this is not to say that it is identical to those institutions. For just as human nature cannot be reduced to man alone, it cannot be reduced to institutions. While "the individual alone is a wild man," the individual as he appears in society "seems of very small consequence." The same is not true, however, of the individual at home. "When you come home and look into the cradle, or on her who sits at its side, when you meet your grey-haired father or your mother venerable and old, when you take brother and sister by the hand, or put your arm about one best-beloved,-then all this is changed, and the individual seems of importance, and the greatest mass only the tool thereof" (CE 5: 90-9 I ). Although "the vast sum of forces," the

The Two Theodore Parkers

147

"social, ecclesiastical, political, and human" institutions of mankind make the individual appear to be "very unimportant, insignificant even," "all this is changed" in the family, where "the greatest mass" appears as "only the tool" of the individual and human nature is fully revealed (CE 5: 90). The family is the oldest institution of the world. It was a long time before there was a king, with his throne of power, or a priest, with an altar wherein to lay his sacrifice. Church and State came after mankind had been some time on the earth; but the first generation of men founded a family; and the family will last for ever. Forms of government constantly change.... Still the family subsists, knowing no revolution, only a gradual progress and elevation. Forms of religion are as mutable as the letters we write in the sand on the sea-shore; Heathenism is gone, Judaism is gone, and what you and I call Christianity, as a limited form of religion, will also pass away.... With this mutation and passing away of forms of government and religion, the family remains always so, and will still subsist. After the last priest has buried the last king in the ground, after the last stone of the pyramids has been exhaled to heaven as invisible vapour, when the mountain that has fallen has literally come to nought and cannot be seen to the eye,-still the family must subsist, its roots in the primaeval instincts of the human race. (CE 5: 18 7) The claim both that "the first generation of men founded a family," and that the family "will still subsist" after all "forms of government and religion" "pass away," suggests that "the great doctrines of absolute religion" are grounded not in human nature, but in the institution of the family. Although in the Discourse Parker set out to prove that "religion is above all institutions and can never fail," his account of the family suggests that religion is inconceivable without "the oldest institution of the world." Like the word of God, the family existed prior to any institutional form of religion. Like the words ofJesus, the family will subsist even after "the last priest has buried the last king in the ground" and "what you and I call Christianity, as a limited form of religion," has passed away. Unlike merely human birth, the birth of the doctrinal children of human nature cannot be effected without the existence of the family. For as Parker's hypothetical account of the world some score or two thousand years ago makes clear, a world "without law or religion" is a world in which the family ("its roots in the primaeval instincts of the human race") does not yet exist. Why should Parker consider the family to be different from any other

148

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

institution? As he explains in a letter to Robert White, dated October 7, 1849, it is because the family is grounded in marriage. "It seems to me that love between man and woman resulting in marriage, leads to the development of all the spiritual powers of man, or helps in their development. Out of that comes the society of man and wife, then of parent and child, and so on" (Weiss I: 386). Marriage gives birth to the family, which itself gives birth to "all the spiritual powers of man." But marriage itself is not the cause of man's spiritual development; it only furnishes the occasion for its development. Just as religion is demanded by the constitution of the soul, so marriage is "as plainly demanded by the constitution of the human body, as copulation amongst animals is demanded by the constitution of their bodies. So long as the human race continues in the body, the body itself is an argument for marriage" (Weiss I: 385). But to claim that marriage is demanded by the constitution of the body is not to claim that marriage has existed as long as the human race has had bodies. For the human body is only an argument for marriage insofar as it is endowed with human nature: "From psychological considerations, I should think that monogamy was the natural law of human nature.... E.g., among the negro slaves there is no marriage-form; the whole is voluntary; but separations almost never take place. The same is true of the North American Indians, e.g., the Osages, who know nothing of this,-though there is no law or custom to prevent it" (Frothingham, Parker 367-68). The virulence and volubility of Parker's abolitionism attest that his appeal to marriage among the negro slaves is best understood not as an appeal to a more primitive form of mankind, but as an appeal to marriage as a natural (as opposed to a conventional) contract. The voluntary monogamy among Indians and slaves demonstrates that they are subject to the same "natural law of human nature" that exists eternal in the constitution of all men. The fact that there is no "marriage-form" among the slaves or "no law or custom" of monogamy among the Osages does not mean that marriage is somehow independent of institutions but that Parker is unable to conceive of human nature (or man's permanent religious element) without marriage and the family. Like the "Transient and Permanent," A Discourse of Religion undermines its explicit thesis. In relying on the domestic metaphor to explain how "religion is above all institutions and can never fail," Parker reveals that his belief in man's permanent religious element is so deeply connected with his belief in marriage and the family as to appear to be independent of them. Just as his contention that man knows God only through his mother

The Two Theodore Parkers

149

adds further credence to the inseparability of his intuitive apprehension of religious truth from the transient notions of the time, so his contention that monogamy is "the natural law of human nature" supports the claim that for Parker religion is inseparable from at least "the oldest institution of the world." Parker's representation of man's permanent religious element in the Discourse does not escape the conflicting accounts of intuitive permanence that his sermon sets forth, but (like his identification of maternal and intuitive authority) only reiterates the conflict in different terms. Nonetheless in persistently representing religious permanence as inseparable from the transience of mankind's notions, Parker helps us to understand the way in which the transcendence of intuition is constituted by and imbedded in institutions. In A Discourse ofReligion Parker employs the metaphor of individual growth and maturity to describe the relationship between the permanent religious element of man and the transient institutions in which it has manifested itself through time. His representation of the doctrines of absolute religion as the children of human nature is meant to demonstrate not that mankind's religious element is inseparable from institutions but that the progress of mankind's religious consciousness ultimately culminates in the mature divestiture of all transient institutions: "Institutions are provisional, man only is final." Applied to the individual, this sacrificial logic of institutions suggests that the development of an individual's religious consciousness is also measured by those transient institutions which he can do without. Thus Parker's claim that his three doctrines of absolute religionthe intuitive apprehension of God, morality, and immortality-are permanently written in the constitution of the soul represents his belief that his own religious consciousness has been able to do away with the transient institutional notions of his time. But both his depiction of his first revelation of "the voice of God in the soul of man" and his reliance on the domestic metaphor to describe the progress of man's religious consciousness make it clear that his belief in the intuitive apprehension of religious truths is not the product of a mature divestiture of transient institutional notions, but is conditioned in the most fundamental sense by the domestic institutions of the cult of motherhood. When faced with two conflicting accounts of permanence (whether of religion, intuition, or the self), Parker does not choose between the two accounts but turns them into a narrative. The model for this narrative is Luke 2 I: 33, the text of the "Transient and Permanent": "Heaven and earth will pass away; but my words shall not pass away." Although the terms of the

150

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

narrative change, the story it tells is always the same. When discussing the permanence ofJesus' words, Parker tells the story of the transience of our notion ofJesus' words and the permanence of our intuitive apprehension of those words. When discussing the permanence of his own belief in intuition, he tells the story of the transience of other men's notions of intuition and the permanence of his mother's notion of intuition. When discussing the permanence of religion, he tells the story of the transience of man's institutions and the permanence of the religious element in human nature. And when discussing the permanence of human nature, he tells the story of the transience of individuals and the permanence of marriage and the family. While the consistency of this narrative does not eliminate the inconsistencies in Parker's thought, it does help to explain the logic of his deathbed remark to Miss Cobbe. Awaiting the arrival of "the great angel Death" (CE 5: 96), the inevitable harbinger of man's transience, Parker told the story he had been telling his entire life: "There are two Theodore Parkers now: one is dying here in Italy; the other I have planted in America. He will live there, and finish my work."

Notes

Introduction r.

2.

Transcendentalism r 20. Henry Nash Smith was merely repeating a commonplace when he acknowledged in 1939 that Emerson's"decision to withdraw from the ministry in r 832 has been recognized as a significant event in the history of Transcendentalism" (55). Although this commonplace has been echoed up to this day, Smith's cautionary observation that the resignation was not "made inevitable by the logic of Transcendentalism" has been largely ignored (55). Alexander Kern, for example, contended in r 95 3 that Emerson's resignation was dictated by the logic of self-reliance. Kern calls the resignation "the most important act of his career, for it gave him the moral right to speak of Self-Reliance, that is, reliance upon the intuitions of the Over-Soul" (286-87). Some twelve years later, Tony Tanner expressed a similar opinion. Claiming that the Transcendentalists "were more interested in sentiment than institutions," Tanner contends that "this attitude was most significantly dramatized by Emerson's resignation from the Unitarian ministry in 1832" (23). Lawrence Buell has made an even stronger claim for Emerson's resignation, calling it "the outstanding symbolic event in the history of Transcendentalism," which expressed the "distrust [of] the institutional aspects of religion" characteristic of Transcendentalism (2 r). In 1977 Stephen Donadio culminated a hundred-year critical consensus with the assertion that Emerson's resignation entails his "becoming a solitary wanderer-a spiritual leader who derived none of his authority from existing forms and institutions" (I 14- 1 5). For these five men, as for more than a century of critics, the significance of Emerson's resignation for New England Transcendentalism lies in its "epoch-making" rejection of the forms and institutions of the Unitarian ministry, a rejection that is seen to have eliminated all thoughts of institutional reliance from the mind of the twenty-nine-year-old former minister of Boston's Second Church. Poirier's portrayal in A World Elsewhere of Emerson as an emblematic American "poet" has proved seminal for American literary historians concerned with understanding the

152

Notes

Emersonian-American tradition. In the past decade or more, however, Poirier has been developing a more complicated account of Emerson and writing, culminating in Emersonian Reflections. For a discussion of Poirier's recent work as a successful effort to overcome the difficulties faced by those who would revise our traditional account of Emerson, see Grusin, "Revisionism and the Structure of Emersonian Action." 3. Poirier's account of the language of the "poet" derives from the twentieth-century linguistic distinction between ordinary and literary language. In today's new historical climate the belief that poetic language is free from arbitrary conventions has been challenged by two different but related claims: that poetic language is subject to different arbitrary conventions than ordinary language and that (like all language) poetic language is embedded in a discursive network of historical and ideological structures. For an insightful attack on the linguistic assumptions grounding the distinction between poetic and ordinary language, see Fish, "How Ordinary is Ordinary Language?" (Text 97-111). 4. Although it could be argued that Emerson's contention that "we do not make a world of our own" is indicative of the fact that Emerson had not yet attained the intellectual maturity of Nature, such an argument is weakened by a host of recent rereadings of Nature as much less idealistic and apocalyptic than had traditionally been thought. For a revisionist account of Emerson's Orphic apocalypticism, see Richard A. Grusin, " 'Monadnoc': Emerson's Quotidian Apocalypse." 5. In 1981, for example, Philip Gura suggested that the higher criticism helped lead Emerson "to a belief that what was most significant about the Bible was the lesson it proffered man concerning the inherent poetry, the very divinity, of his everyday existence" (103). Three years later Julie Ellison contended that "the higher criticism lent itself to being treated by Emerson as a theory of influence. By depriVing the world's most influential text of the unitary meaning that proved God's authorship, it demonstrated the power of interpretation to diminish the intimidating aspect of writers and traditions-a power that, of course, brought with it new anxieties" (6). In 1986 Barbara Packer offered a more nuanced account of higher critical influence on Emerson, arguing that "the higher criticism offered reassurance to anyone seeking to locate authority within the self rather than outside it, but the man who dismisses a sacrament because it bores him could probably have reached his conclusions without scholarly help" ("Origin" 83). And in 1988 John Michael contended that Emerson's early exposure to the higher criticism helped him to learn "that the condition of textuality, the vulnerability to interpretation, is inescapable" (32).

Chapter One. Emerson's Restgnattonfrom the Mtnlstry 1.

In the past decade this assessment of Emerson's early career has to a minor extent begun to be challenged, and the publication of the Sermons promises to continue this trend. Essays by Sheldon Liebman, Jerome Loving, Wesley Mott, and others have shed some much-needed light on the hitherto concealed significance of the early Emerson. But it is with David Robinson's 1982 Apostle a/Culture that Emerson's early career as a preacher and lecturer has received its most comprehensive treatment. Robinson expresses his agreement with Whicher (and Jonathan Bishop) that "no one who reads the letters and journals can fail to sense Emerson's doubts about entering the ministry" (35). He does not, however, feel that such doubts invalidate the significance of Emerson's commitment

Notes

153

to the ministry, but maintains "that there was also an enormously strong positive motivation for his choice of vocation" (35-36). Robinson's corrective is issued in the service of the thesis that guides his study of Emerson's early career: "that his development is best understood as a gradual following of Unitarian assumptions rather than a rebellion from them" (45). As valuable as this corrective is, however, Robinson's work participates in the misunderstanding of the critique of institutions implicit in Emerson's resignation. Like his critical predecessors, Robinson attributes "Emerson's resignation of the pulpit largely to a building frustration with his profession in general" (45). Although he differentiates his position from Whicher's because he considers the cause of Emerson's resignation not as an "intellectual dissatisfaction" with Unitarianism but as an "essentially professional, or vocational, dissatisfaction," Robinson's treatment of the institutional implications of Emerson's ministerial dedication is essentially of a piece with Whicher's own (44). 2. In a recent study of Emerson's journals as literary artifacts Lawrence Rosenwald has agreed with Whicher's assessment of the journal, dating Emerson's mature journal from 1833. Rosenwald argues that a major reason for Emerson's resignation from the ministry was "to develop his own [literary] system and his journal" (46-47). While it may be the case that the journal doesn't mature until 1833, I would maintain that as early as 1824 we can find passages that are recognizable as the "mature" Emerson. 3. Robinson's understanding of Emerson's dedication differs from Whicher's only in that he ascribes Emerson's professional dissatisfaction to his Unitarianism. Like Whicher, Robinson sees Emerson's ministerial dedication as essentially literary: "The ministry, then, represents for him the necessary means to the pursuit of eloquence, and it is by this standard that he will eventually judge it when he leaves the profession" (39). 4. "Now the profession of Law demands a good deal of personal address, an impregnable confidence in one's own powers, upon all occasions expected & unexpected, & a logical mode of thinking & speaking-which I do not possess, & may not reasonably hope to obtain. Medicine also makes large demands on the practitioner for a seducing Mannerism" (fMN 2: 239). That Emerson's dedication to the ministry was not strictly a dedication to its literary aspects gains added credence from Robert Ferguson's contention in Law and Letters in American Culture that in early nineteenth-century America the law was the profession of choice for aspiring young writers: "No other vocational group, not even the ministry, matched their [lawyers'] contribution" to literature (5). 5. Despite her claims for Emerson's indebtedness to Clarkson, Turpie contends that "Emerson could have made the decision [to resign] without" the aid of his borrowed exegesis, since she, too, believes that it is not communion itself, but all institutionalized forms of religious observance, to which Emerson objects (100). More recently, David Robinson and Jerome Loving have minimized the significance of "The Lord's Supper" for Emerson's decision to resign the ministry. Robinson suggests that "the relatively trivial matter of communion" only "superficially" prompted his resignation (45-46). Loving considers Emerson's objections to the Supper only "his ostensible reason" for resigning the ministry and suggests that his resignation sermon was not "fundamental to Emerson's resignation": "The ceremony was but a symptom of a larger malady" (42, 50). For all three of these critics, this "larger malady" is diagnosed as the conflict "between individualism and institutionalism" that characterizes the Transcendentalist"doctrine of Reform" (Turpie 100). 6. An exception to this is a very recent essay on "The Lord's Supper," which came to my

154

Notes

attention just as this manuscript was going to press. In this essay Ivy Schweitzer acknowledges, but does not pursue the implications of, the affinities between Emerson's position on the supper and that of the Quakers. For further discussion of the affinities between Emerson's resignation sermon and Quakerism, see Irie. 7. Julie Ellison, for example, describes "The Lord's Supper" as Emerson's "declaration of hermeneutic and stylistic independence," in which he "conscientiously uses higher critical techniques" that enable him "in classic Germanic fashion" to undertake "a comparison of the Synoptic Gospels" (61-63). John Michael describes the resignation sermon as a "pastiche of the Higher Criticism" in which Emerson is concerned more with "the nature of interpretation itself" than with the nature of the Lord's Supper (16- 17)· And Barbara Packer, who recognizes that Emerson's vestry lectures partake in what she describes as shameless cribbing, fails to note Emerson's similar scholarly practices in "The Lord's Supper." Although her essay does not engage in an extensive discussion of the sermon, she does characterize it as "The only full-scale exercise in higher critical interpretation [Emerson] ever attempted," "an odd pastiche of Unitarian rationalism and higher critical attempts to reinterpret Jesus' words at the Last Supper by imaginatively reconstructing the cultural context out ofwhich they rose" ("Origin" 82-83). Not only do these three critics overlook the fact that Emerson's exegesis owes more to Quaker theology than to German higher criticism, but in so doing they recapitulate the traditional claim that the Lord's Supper was not really at issue in Emerson's resignation. 8. The following discussion of sacramental history is informed throughout by my reading of Hollifield and Potter. 9. Santayana's discussion of the little word is is quoted by Sharon Cameron in a treatment of the problematics of embodiment in Hawthorne (qtd. 87). Cameron's meditation on embodiment in both Hawthorne and Melville has been influential in my thinking about Emerson's preoccupation with embodiment in this chapter. 10. Hollifield suggests that the differences between Luther's and ZWingli's accounts of the Supper derive from their conflicting understandings of biblical exegesis. "Luther thought that the Spirit revealed itself in and through the external words of Scripture.... For Zwingli, on the other hand, the Spirit acted directly upon the minds of men, enabling them properly to interpret each verse of Scripture in the light of other passages" (13). Although "Scripture was the last recourse" for both men, Hollifield contends, "exegesis failed to produce a consensus because Luther and ZWingli held opposing hermeneutical principles" (13). For a discussion of the problems with similar formulations of the relation between hermeneutical principles and results, see the follOWing chapter. 1 I. Friedrich Schleiermacher provides a concise summary of the three dominant Protestant positions on the Lord's Supper in The Christian Faith, the fullest expreSSion of his theology. Roughly contemporaneous with Emerson's resignation, the position set forth in The Christian Faith proceeds from a more-or-Iess Zwinglian perspective on the Supper: "The first or Lutheran view declares that with the bread and wine Christ conjoined for participation the real presence of His body and blood, but only for the action of bodily partaking in both elements. The second or Zwinglian view declares that Christ conjoined nothing with the bread and wine themselves; by His command He merely conjoined spiritual participation in His flesh and blood with the action of partaking the bread and wine. The third or Calvinistic view declares that while it is true that Christ conjoined something exclUSively with the action of eating and drinking, this was not merely

Notes

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

155

spiritual participation, available quite apart from the sacrament; it was a real presence of His body and blood not to be had anywhere else" (649). "Typology represented a conviction that spiritual truth was accessible in and through the visible, the corporeal, the historical, and thus Calvin spoke of the Old Testament types as sacraments intended to direct and almost lead men by the hand to Christ. He based much of his sacramental theology on this typological exegesis, thereby establishing securely an association between types and sacraments that later Reformed theologians would enthusiastically develop" (Hollifield 23). This sacramental renaissance did not deal with the nature of the sacraments as much as with "practical and pastoral concerns, intended to evoke conversions and to fill the churches with regenerate visible saints" (Hollifield 197). New England sacramental thought was basically an extension of English Puritan debates over the nature of the sacraments, which were in turn elaborations and modifications of Calvin's association of sacraments and types. In Figures and Types of the Old Testament, published posthumously in 1683, Samuel Mather developed this association, defining Old Testament types as "Sacraments and seals of faith on the part of the beleeving [sic] Jew" (qtd. Hollifield 136). Mather's views were representative of those of English Puritans, for whom there was "no essential difference between a type and a sacrament, except that one foreshadowed and the other followed the historical advent of Christ" (Hollifield 136). Although "no absolute consensus" concerning "the relationship between Jewish types and Christian sacraments" obtained among English Puritans, "sacramental worship rested on typological exegesis" (Hollifield 137). Because Calvin's New England descendants interpreted their own covenant with God to found a new Israel in the American wilderness as a type of his original covenant with Moses and the Jews, the association between types and sacraments acquired an even greater importance. For New England Puritans the sacraments signified not only the seal of God's covenant with the individual communicant, but also the renewal of both the individual's covenant with his congregation and the congregation's covenant with God. The New England ideal of a sainthood of all believers explains their concern "to protect the Lord's Supper from the incursions of the profane" (Hollifield 142). In The American jeremiad Sacvan Bercovitch argues that the spiritual declension of the latter half of the seventeenth century in New England has been greatly exaggerated-due in large part to the failure of historians like Miller to understand correctly the jeremiad as a literary form (chap. 1). The classic discussion of the problem of declension is still Miller's The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century. The publication of Mather's sacramental manual in 1690 "marked the first time that any sacramental meditation, in the true sense of the term, was printed on New England presses, which had been pouring forth religious treatises continually since 1639" (Hollifield 197). Mather's manual was the first of "twenty-one separate editions of manuals" to be published in the next thirty-eight years, an outpouring prompted at least partly by the controversy that developed when Solomon Stoddard opened the communion table at his New Hampton church to all who desired to partake of the Supper. The grandfather of Jonathan Edwards, Stoddard was characterized by Perry Miller as a theological ancestor of Channing, Emerson, and Parker and by his contemporaries as a heretic (Colony 286). Edward Taylor summed up the reaction of Stoddard's contemporaries to his decision to open the communion table when he warned Stoddard in a letter

156

Notes

of 1688 "that God's faithful would in subsequent years 'date the beginning of New Englands Apostasy in Mr. Stoddard's motions' " (qtd. Hollifield 209). Despite these nearly unanimous estimates of his place in the history of liberalism, Stoddard's position had both its liberal and its conservative elements. Clearly his insistence that the Supper be available to anyone who desired to partake of it was prompted by the severity of the prevailing admission policies of his day. But Stoddard's reform also spoke to what he considered the laxity of the Mathers' claim that one need only have the vaguest perception of regeneration to be admitted to communion. For in their eagerness "to attract potential communicants who feared the consequences of unworthy reception," the Mathers, Stoddard felt, were misleading those who had not yet experienced a true conversion to believe that they were members of the elect (Hollifield 207-8). Stoddard considered the Supper not a seal of the communicant's covenanting faith but "a seal to the truth of the covenant promise that faith was efficacious to salvation" (Hollifield 216). Thus by opening communion to any individual who believed in the truth of that promise, Stoddard simultaneously liberalized the Supper's criteria for admission and preserved a more conservative definition of regeneration than that maintained by the Mathers. 17. Stoddard's contemporaries defended their position on the Supper with the traditional association of sacraments and types. Stoddard, on the other hand, "subtly undermined the conventional relationship between typology and sacramental thought in the Puritan tradition," the result of which, thought Increase Mather, would be ultimately to "threaten the justification even for infant baptism, which rested in part on the supposition that Jewish circumcision typified the sacrament" (Hollifield 2 18). Although Hollifield contends that "neither Stoddard nor his opponents contributed any genuinely original idea to the continuing discussions over the nature of the Sacrament," this is not entirely true (2 14). While it is the case that William Prynne had defined the Supper as a converting ordinance as early as 1645, Stoddard's dismissal of the connection between typology and the sacraments, and his concomitant opening of the communion table, radically elides the notion of an inward, supernatural regeneration, a notion that had formed the basis of Puritan theology for more than a century. 18. Emerson's early understanding of the Supper is encapsulated in a sermon preached ten days after his ordination. After a lengthy discussion of the way in which "we come to value things, not for themselves, but according to their powers," the newly ordained minister tells his congregation: It is this way ofviewing things that gives all its sacredness and all its tenderness to the rite of our Lord's Supper. What we see is the type of what we know. We eat bread and drink wine in memory of one whom mortal eyes cannot behold and if there were nothing but what we see how vain and frivolous a ceremony were this. But the Christian faith qUickens the dead body of a rite with a liVing soul. It awakens all the affectionate and reverential recollections that attach to our Saviour's name and life and death. It invokes his presence. It asks for his intercession. It smites us with the memory of our own guilt. It exhorts us to penitence, to reformation, to virtue, to hope, to triumphant faith. Not unworthily not in vain then shall we have partaken in this simple memorial, if, when we arise to go out from the ordinance we depart with true sorrow for our imperfection and better purposes for the future than we brought in hither. (CS I: 247-48)

Notes

19.

20.

21.

22.

157

Emerson's typological interpretation of the Supper ("what we see is the type of what we know"), his emphasis on the role of faith in the sacrament ("the Christian faith quickens the dead body of a rite with a living soul"), and his belief that the Supper "invokes [Christ's] presence," are in line with Calvin's, as opposed to Luther's or Zwingli's, interpretation of the sacrament. Yet as with Stoddard, the Supper for Emerson is seen to mean something different to each person who partakes: "It exhorts us to penitence, to reformation, to virtue, to hope, to triumphant faith." The connection between marriage and the Lord's Supper was also made by Coleridge in the Statesman 5 Manual: "The Eucharist is a symbolic, or solemnizing and totum in parte acting of an act, which in a true member of Christ's body is supposed to be perpetual. Thus the husband and wife exercise the duties of their marriage contract of love, protection, obedience, and the like, all the year long, yet solemnize it by a more deliberate and reflecting act of the same love on the anniversary of their marriage" (qtd. Knapp 17). Emerson would not have been likely to know this passage at the time of his marriage; his intensive reading in Coleridge would not begin until a couple of months later. Instead it must have appeared to him when he did finally come across it as one of those rejected thoughts of our own genius that we read in the work of others. The account of the Supper that Schleirmacher sets forth in The Christian Faith maintains, as Emerson does here, both that Jesus' institution of the Lord's Supper allows for variations in the customs of its observance and that the Supper is an instrument of the progressive development of Christianity (638-57 ). A. C. McGiffert contends that Emerson's sermon not only outlines a position that "was in line with the trend of liberal religious thought of his day," but also prOVides an account of the Supper's "aim and intent" that "might almost be quoted from Stoddard" (lES 224). Like Stoddard Emerson considers the Supper an instrument, not a sign, of regeneration. Also like Stoddard Emerson was aware that the Supper's meaning varied according to the moral and spiritual development of the communicant. Emerson's 1829 sermon on the Supper argues that whileJesus intended to institute a permanently efficacious ordinance, he also intended its meaning to change through the ages. More specifically, Emerson's position is of a piece with the account ofJesus' intentions set forth by Hermann Samuel Reimarus in the seven Wolfenbuttel Fragments (1774-78), published anonymously by G. E. Lessing after Reimarus's death. Reimarus contends that "the institution of the Lord's Supper was not a special act and a particular meal; rather, it was the usual Passover meal without the least alteration during which this institution took place incidentally.... Therefore, just as mere tradition had introduced the custom that the Passover bread should remind them of their father's bread of sorrow with the words 'This is the bread of sorrow,' so Jesus wishes his disciples at this festival and with this bread always to remember that he had given this body for them, and in a similar way he says, 'This is my body.''' (118-20). G. W. F. Hegel sets forth a similar account of the Lord's Supper in one of his early theological writings: "Equally touching and humane is the way in which Jesus celebrates the Jewish Passover with [his disciples] for the last time and exhorts them when, their duties done, they refresh themselves with a friendly meal, whether religious or other, to remember him, their true friend and teacher who will then be no longer in their midst; whenever they enjoyed bread and wine, they were to be reminded of his body sacrificed, and his blood shed, for the truth" (89-90). It is likely that Emerson would have known of Reimarus's fragments (though less likely that he

158

23.

24.

25.

26.

Notes

would have known Reimarus's position on the Lord's Supper). He could not, however, have been aware of Hegel's early theological writings; substantially unpublished until 1907, they were not translated into English until 1948. For a discussion of Emerson's development that is (at least in part) complementary to mine, see Milder, who argues that Emerson underwent "two conversions" in the process of becoming the Emerson of the mid- I 830S and beyond-one in 1827, brought about by the voyage to the south he took for reasons of health; the other in 1830, after Ellen had returned from Philadelphia, where she had gone to recover from a relapse of tuberculosis. As interesting as Milder's essay is, I have two problems with it: he misses entirely the significance of Ellen's death, and in the attempt to pin down exactly the date of Emerson's conversions, he ends up ineVitably oversimplifying the workings of a complex human mind. The journal played a crucial role in the articulation of Emerson's thought throughout his life, providing him with the opportunity to develop material for his sermons, public lectures, poetry and prose, as well as serving as commonplace books in which he could record significant passages from his reading. Although the journal did serve as a testing ground for many of his works, it is important not to regard it simply as preparatory to those works. Emerson often kept a number of volumes at anyone time; his trip to Europe after his resignation from the ministry, for example, is recorded primarily in four pocket journals, but he also makes contemporaneous entries in 'Journal Q." That he could choose into which journal he would enter a particular idea, and that his entries are dated so that they could be understood in reference to the daily events of his life, suggests that the journals served the function of helping him to revise his experience into one of a number of possible forms. Lawrence Rosenwald has recently suggested that after Emerson's return to Europe the journal becomes his primary artistic form. Rosenwald provides much useful information about Emerson's practices in the journals, but the claim that they represent his mature artistic form seems overstated-as does the claim that prior to Emerson's resignation the sermons fulfilled the function of the journal. Still, Rosenwald's treatment of the journal not just as a source for supporting documentation but as a text in itself is consistent with my own reading of 'Journal Q" here. In fact the period from 1826, when Emerson was approbated to preach, to 1833, the year of his postresignation trip to Europe, constitutes what Ian R. Tyrrell describes as "the years of the early evangelical crusade against intemperance" (65). Although the latter stages of the pre-Civil War temperance crusade were confined largely to evangelicals, the Unitarians were among the first denominations to organize temperance societies ( I 10). Tyrrell has pointed out that the temperance movement"could easily be equated with moral progress in early and mid-nineteenth century America": "It seemed to reformers that drinking was an archaic custom which was bound to disappear from society" (4). Emerson's discussion of temperance in the journal not only utilizes arguments against intemperance that can be found in the temperance tracts of the period, but also anticipates the association of temperance and abstinence with communion that led extreme advocates of teetotalism at the end of the decade to call for the abolition of fermented wine from the Lord's Supper (Tyrrell 145-47). Emerson makes a similar point in "Improvement by Small Degrees," where he contends that temperance from any motive may produce a clear head, but only temperance from the "desire of pleasing God" constitutes true virtue. Similarly in "Peace in Solitude,"

Notes

159

Emerson preaches against the use of drugs to cure intemperance; such drugs, he argues, do not in themselves make a man intemperate but are at best aids for the improvement of the "moral sense of the victim." 27. Temperance, Emerson writes, stands "in human nature at the very doors of the temple of the body, so that without this virtue there is no room for any other to enter & no exclusion for any vice" ("The Christian Venture"). Emerson's depiction of this virtue as the doorman of the body's temple is characteristic of his antiformalist understanding of temperance. Although it is the virtue most explicitly concerned with a denial of the body, Emerson habitually imagines the possession of temperance in bodily terms. 28. In endorsing the institution of Fast Day, Emerson is endorsing "not one of rare occurrence but of daily observance" ("Fast Day"). But to say that he wants a quotidian Fast Day is not therefore to say that he wants one that is not institutional. In fact eleven days before preaching the Fast Day sermon, Emerson had preached a sermon in favor of another New England religious institution-Sunday School. 29. Emerson's treatment of temperance here (especially the reference to debt) has affinities with the spiritual economy of expenditure that he develops most completely during the early forties. For a discussion of Emerson's spiritual economy, see Richard A. Grusin, " 'Put God in Your Debt': Emerson's Economy of Expenditure." 30. In "The Phoenix on the Wall: Consciousness in Emerson's Early and Late Journals," Evelyn Barish (Greenberger) cites this passage in her perceptive analysis of the function of food and eating images in Emerson's early journals. Barish connects Emerson's rejection of the Lord's Supper with a revulsion at communal eating that she traces back to several factors in Emerson's childhood-including the death of his father and the public eating that Emerson was exposed to because his mother took in boarders to help support the family (47-49). In light of both the broad definition of intemperance in the sermons and Emerson's discussion of intemperate drinking in 'Journal Q," however, Barish seems off the mark in suggesting that" 'intemperance' for Emerson refers generally to eating rather than to any other vice" (48). 3 1 . In his dedication to the ministry Emerson had also invoked "Comus" as an example of virtue. "But I would learn to love Virtue for her own sake, I would have my pen so guided as was Milton's when a deep & enthusiastic love of goodness & of God dictated the Comus to the bard" (jMN 2: 240). For a discussion of Milton, Unitarianism, and Emerson, see Van Anglen. 32. Emerson had tacitly referred to this passage from "Comus" in a journal entry from October 21,1831: "Truth is never crammed down your throat but is, to be understood" (jMN 3: 297). Truth, like temperance, is not so much a matter of what you eat or drink as of how your eating and drinking are understood. 33. Emerson's difficulties with imagining the elements as embodiments of faith are echoed by Hegel in The Spirit ofChristianity, written a couple of years after his discussion of the Lord's Supper in The Positivity of the Christian Religion. As with Hegel's earlier discussion, this treatment of the problematics of embodiment could not have been known by Emerson. Nonetheless, it offers an interesting parallel to Emerson's meditation on temperance as an amulet. But what prevents the action [of eating and drinking] from becoming a religious one is just the fact that the kind of objectivity here in question is totally annulled, while

160

Notes

feeling remains, the fact that there is a sort of confusion between subject and object rather than a unification, the fact that love here becomes visible in and attached to something which is to be destroyed. The bread is to be eaten, the wine to be drunk; therefore they cannot be something divine.... Something divine, just because it is divine, cannot present itself in the shape of food and drink. In a parable there is no demand that the different things compared shall be understood as a unity; but here the thing and the feeling are to be bound together; in the symbolical action the eating and drinking and the sense of being one inJesus are to run into one another. But thing and feeling, spirit and reality, do not mix. Fancy cannot bring them together in a beautiful image. The bread and wine, seen and enjoyed, can never rouse the feeling of love; this feeling can never be found in them as seen objects since there is a contradiction between it and the sensation of actually absorbing the food and drink, of their becoming subjective. There are always two things there, the faith and the thing, the devotion and the seeing or tasting. To faith it is the spirit which is present; to seeing and tasting, the bread and wine. There is no unification for the two. The intellect contradicts feeling, and vice versa. (25 1- 52) For a treatment of the relation between personification and the sublime in Milton and Coleridge, which elaborates in greater detail some of the questions of religious efficacy raised here, see Knapp. 35. Father Barth describes Coleridge's sacramental views as "disappointing" both in their breVity and in their orthodoxy ( 168-81). Doctrinally, his assessment is correct. Nonetheless Emerson found something more than orthodoxy in Coleridge's discussion of the Supper in "AppendiX C" of the Statesman s Manual, a work addressed to the higher classes of society, for whom Coleridge argued that the Bible should serve as a guide to living: "I dare challenge all the critical benches of infidelity to point out anyone important truth, anyone efficient, practical direction or warning, which did not pre-exist, and for the most part in a sound, more intelligible, and more comprehensive form in the Bible" (17). Although the "Statesman's Manual" was not published in America until several months after Emerson's journal entries on temperance, its appendices had already been published in the appendix to the 1829 edition of Aids to Reflection that James Marsh had brought out in Vermont, an edition that Emerson owned (and had enthusiastically read) by the end of that year. For the publishing history of Marsh's edition, see Duffy. For an account of Marsh's intentions in publishing Coleridge, and for a refutation of the claim that Marsh was a minor Transcendentalist, see Carafiol. 36. One of Coleridge's main complaints against the critical "Atheism" represented by "Thomas Payne and his compeers" was directed at the simplistic belief that they were intellectually superior to their ancestors, a belief which they based on the modern, empirical "appeal to the senses" which their ancestors failed rigorously to lodge. Coleridge feels that because these "atheists" did not see that many of their ancestors' errors were in fact "the refraction of some great truth as yet below the horizon," they dismissed these errors "with rudeness." Thus, Coleridge writes, "It remains most worthy of our serious consideration, whether a fancied superiority to their ancestors' intellects must not be speedily followed in the popular mind by disrespect for their ancestors' institutions. Assuredly it is not easy to place any confidence in a form of church or state, of whose founders we have been taught to believe, that their philosophy was jargon, and their feelings and notions rank superstition" (87). 34.

Notes 37.

38.

39.

161

For Coleridge the Eucharist inevitably raised the question of the relation between symbol and allegory, as in the following passage from the Statesman s Manual: "The error on both sides, Roman and Protestant, originates in the confusion of sign or figure with symbol, which latter is always an essential part of that, of the whole of which it is representative. Not seeing this, and therefore seeing no medium between the whole thing and the mere metaphor of the thing, the Romanists took the former or positive pole of error, the Protestants the latter or negative pole." For a suggestive discussion of this passage in the context of a revisionary treatment of the Coleridgean distinction between symbol and allegory, see Knapp 10-23. The days which Emerson leaves unrecorded are a Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. It is possible that, like Thoreau's lacunae in Walden, Emerson's three blank days signify the fact that he was unable to measure his food for those days-perhaps he, too, was eating at the homes of others. Loving calls "Ellen's death and her husband's reflection on it ... the catalyst and not the cause of Emerson's resignation," a catalyst which taught him that "to exalt the particular in any aspect of life ... was alien to life itself and hence the development of character" (50). Whicher expresses much the same opinion when he suggests that Ellen's "death helped to further" both a "revolution in his way of life and wonted occupation" and the development of Emerson's "own hard-tested secret of insulation from calamity: Live in the Soul" (45). Although it is clear~y the case that "it is more than a coincidence that the change [in Emerson's vocation] is aligned closely with Ellen's demise," the logic of this alignment needs to be explained more fully than either Loving or Whicher do (Loving 50).

40.

41.

42.

The Scottish commonsense realists, including Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, and others, had attempted to uphold both an innate moral sense and a Lockean epistemology. The Scottish realism was used by many Unitarian thinkers of the early nineteenth century to stem the growth of idealism in New England. "By 1810 Scottish philosophy was entrenched at Harvard, and it became an integral part of the growing Unitarian movement" (Hovenkamp 19). Although widely disseminated, the Scottish epistemology could not hold off the attacks of idealism, especially in the eyes of those Transcendentalists who had rebelled against the mechanistic scheme of sensationalism. For a fuller discussion of Scottish realism at Harvard in the early nineteenth century, see Howe. Emerson's fascination with Hartley's associationism may not be as unusual as it first appears-regardless of Hartley's commitment to a Lockean epistemology. For as Jerome Christensen has quite persuasively argued, Coleridge, too, despite his claim to have overthrown Hartleyan associationism, remained strongly influenced by Hartley's progressive scheme of necessity throughout his life. For an illuminating discussion of the complex influence of Hartley on Coleridge's thought, see Christensen 33-117; for the role of Mackintosh in mOdifying this relationship, see esp. 97- 104. References to Pestalozzi are scattered throughout Emerson's early essays and lectures, so much so that Pestalozzi comes to stand as a minor saint in Emerson's canon of representative men. For further comments on Emerson's reading of Biber's biography of Pestalozzi, see]MN 4: 6.

43.

44.

For further discussion of the relation between maternal and divine authority both in Theodore Parker's works and in antebellum New England generally, see this book's final chapter. Although it is Emerson's Unitarianism, more than any purely temperamental factor, that

162

Notes

leads him to reject the Supper as an efficacious means of moral improvement, it is interesting to note that his delineation ofJesus' role in the Christian economy depicts his mediation as something not very different from Coleridge's "traditional" views of the Supper's efficacy: "But is not Jesus called in Scripture the mediator? He is the mediator in that only sense in which possibly any being can mediate between God and man,-that is, an instructor of man. He teaches us how to become like God. And a true disciple ofJesus will receive the light he gives most thankfully; but the thanks he offers, and which an exalted being will accept, are not compliments, commemorations, but the use of that instruction" (W I I: 18).Just as "he who is indeed a Christian" will use the light of God to interpret the Bible, Milton, or anything he reads as a sign ofJesus' sacrifice for mankind, so "a true disciple ofJesus will receive the light he gives most thankfully" by using "that instruction" "to become like God," not by imitating Jesus' eating and drinking, but by emulating his reinterpretation of the Supper. Jesus teaches us how to deal with traditional forms and institutions; "a true disciple ofJesus" needs to sacrificeJesus from his worship of God in order to give birth to "a new & higher" form of homage. Rather than simply remove all commemoration of Jesus' sacrifice from the Unitarian observance of the Supper, Emerson's proposed changes in the ordinance would reenact that very sacrifice in their omission of Jesus from "the most sacred of religious institutions." The way to become like God is "by hatred of excess" to eliminate all imitative "compliments" and "commemorations" from one's life so that one can make emulative "use of that instruction" offered by Jesus' life. 45. For a discussion of Emerson's views on symbolism, see Feidelson, chap. 4 and passim, and Gura, chap. 3. 46. Emerson concludes his account of objections to the Supper "in its present form" with the claim that his exegetical attempt to see "how it figures in the ledger" was done "for the satisfaction of others" and does not represent "the true point of view." Although this would seem to confirm the claim that Emerson's exegesis can be dismissed as his conventional gesture toward the church, it is important that Emerson does not see fit to omit his exegetical discussion. AI::, in his discussion of temperance, he needed to show how the Supper "figures in the ledger" before he could present "the true point of view." And therefore, although for the satisfaction of others I have labored to show by the history that this rite was not intended to be perpetual; although I have gone back to weigh the expressions of Paul, I feel that here is the true point of view. In the midst of considerations as to what Paul thought, and why he so thought, I cannot help feeling that it is time misspent to argue to or from his convictions, or those of Luke andJohn, respecting any form. I seem to lose the substance in seeking the shadow. (W I I: 22)

47.

The historical authority of Paul, or that of Luke and John, should not be a consideration "respecting any form." Because no opinion has any more authority than one's own, "it is time misspent to argue" whether or not it was once believed that the rite was meant to be perpetual. What matters is the way in which the Supper helps "to make men good and wise." Historical authority alone is "as worthless as the dead leaves that are falling around us." Or, as Emerson told his parishioners in a sermon preached a week prior to his resignation sermon, "the knowledge of God is not a knowledge, as is often supposed, to which we are born ... but there is a process which each individual mind must go through. Only

Notes

48.

163

by his own reflexion, only by his own virtue, can a man grow in the knowledge of God" ("The Increasing Knowledge of God"). In the letter of resignation which he wrote to the proprietors of the Second Church two days after he preached his resignation sermon, Emerson reiterates the claim that his resignation from the ministry cannot deprive him "of the satisfactions of pursuing and exercising its highest functions." "I have the same respect for the great objects of the Christian ministry, & the same faith in their gradual accomplishment through the use of human means, which, at first, led me to enter it. I should be unfaithful to myself, if any change of circumstances could diminish my devotion to the cause of the divine truth" (L I: 356-57). Emerson's third expression of the inability of "change or circumstances" to diminish his "devotion to the cause of the divine truth" appears in his farewell letter to his parish, written on December 22, 1832, the eve of his departure for Europe. Yet, my friends, our faith in the great truths of the New Testament makes the change of place and circumstances of less account to us, by fixing our attention upon that which is unalterable. I find great consolation in the thought that the resignation of my present relations makes so little change to myself. I am no longer your minister, but am not the less engaged, I hope to the love and service of the same eternal cause, the advancement, namely of the Kingdom of God in the hearts of men. (Uncollected Writings 203) These three passages all reflect Emerson's conviction that nothing could eradicate his ministerial "devotion to the cause of the divine truth," "the advancement, namely of the Kingdom of God in the hearts of men." Emerson's rejection of the Unitarian Supper testifies to the success of his formal dedication to the ministry. Having resigned his ministry to the Second Church, Emerson has accomplished what he had set out to do in his ministerial dedication. By devoting his "nights & days inform, to the service of God & the War against Sin," Emerson was by 1832 "prepared to do the same in substance."

Chapter Two. The Divinity School I.

2.

~ltddress" Controversy

Ormond Seavey suggests that Emerson's entire career makes sense as an example of the model of the "itinerant preacher" prevalent in the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century. While Seavey's argument moves in a very different direction from mine in this chapter, his conclusions are certainly compatible with the ones I draw. Despite the fact that Emerson's departing advice to the graduating seniors was "to preserve and enlighten" the "existing forms" of the Unitarian church, "rather than to desert it," David Robinson is not alone in describing the address as "a final break with the church" ( I 34). For Robinson the issue at stake in the address is not Emerson's rejection of the historical authority of miracles in verifying the biblical revelation, but his "abandonment of the concept of God as a 'person'" (127). Because this was "a much more sensitive problem both for Emerson and most other Unitarians," Robinson sees Emerson's address as an attempt to terminate his involvement with institutional Unitarianism (127). The question of Emerson's pantheism was raised most effectively, Robinson argues, by Henry Ware, Jr., in The Personality of the Deity, a sermon preached at Harvard Divinity School some two months after Emerson's address. Ware's sermon is instructive not only for its measured tone and its introduction of the problen1 of pantheism to the Divinity

164

3. 4. 5. 6.

7.

Notes

School "Address" controversy but also for its depiction of the ramifications of Emerson's pantheism for the institutions of Christianity. Ware likens the difference between the Unitarian conception of God and Emerson's own to the difference "between the conditions of a little child that lives in the presence of a judicious and devoted mother, an object of perpetual affection, and other another that is placed under the charge of a public institution, which knows nothing but a set of rules" (qtd. Robinson 127). Ware's analysis of the institutional ramifications of Emerson's pantheism provides an important corrective to the claim that the "Address" represents Emerson's "final break with the church." Reflecting the ideology of the antebellum cult of motherhood, Ware criticizes Emerson's address not for its break with institutional religion but for its break with the family. Insofar as Emerson's address does appear to break with the Unitarian church, Ware takes issue with it not because it rejects institutional religion but because it rejects the domestic aspects of Unitarianism, leaving mankind with only "a public institution, which knows nothing but a set of rules." Ware's inability to recognize the institutional status of the family is not unique. For a discussion of a similar blindness in Theodore Parker, see my discussion in chapter 4. For further discussion of the controversy that arose after Emerson's "Divinity School Address," see Robinson 123-37 and passim, Hutchison 68-96, and Howe 76-82 and passim. My account is indebted throughout to these three sources. For a different reading of Ware's response to Emerson's address, see Van Leer 71-81. For further elaboration of the "culture of professionalism," see Bledstein, especially 12124, 159-68 , 174-77· For further discussion of Buckminster's role in the development of biblical criticism in New England, see Brown 11-29 and Howe 174-77,201-2,254-55. For further discussion of Norton's career at Harvard, see Brown 29-34. Jerry Wayne Brown makes a slightly different case, arguing that prior to 1819, the year of Channing's "Unitarian Christianity," the struggle between Andover's Calvinists and Harvard's Unitarians had been an intramural one over the correct interpretation of Scripture. The orthodox Calvinists had "repeatedly attempted to force the liberal party to confess that they stood outside New England Congregationalism. Until 1819 this attempt met with little success, for the liberals continually referred to the common adherence to scriptural authority on the part of both factions" (72). The liberals, he claims, insisted that their disagreements with the Orthodox would disappear if the two parties could agree on correct interpretive principles. Because Moses Stuart was incapable of discrediting the liberal methods of interpretation, Brown contends, his 1819 epistolary response to Channing's sermon shifted the battleground from interpretive principles to theological and philosophical ones, just as the Orthodox had traditionally done (64n, 72). Andrews Norton, however, "accomplished what the orthodox could not"; by responding to Stuart on theological, not interpretive grounds, he successfully accomplished "the exclusion of the liberals from New England Congregationalism" (73). It is clear from the basic structure of Channing's sermon that he maintained that the liberal dispute with Trinitarian Calvinism was primarily the product of interpretive differences. It has historically been the case, however, that it was the doctrines Channing found in Scripture that created the most controversy among his orthodox contemporaries. But as Wright has pointed out, Channing felt that he "was laying down a challenge to the orthodox on the matter of the interpretation of Scripture quite as much as on the question of the doctrines found in Scripture" (45).

Notes 8.

9.

10.

I I.

12.

13.

14.

15.

165

Brown slightly misstates the case when he suggests that Stuart responded to Channing on theological grounds because he could not discredit liberal principles of interpretation. Gura's contention that the "heated exchange" between Stuart and Channing "revolved around the ultimate authority invested in scriptural language" more accurately describes the situation (Wisdom 25). Not only did three of the five letters that Stuart wrote in reply to Channing's sermon concern the interpretive principles employed by the two men, but both Stuart's translation of]. A. Ernesti's hermeneutic manual and his courses in hermeneutics at Andover suggest that he was more than qualified to refute the liberals' interpretive principles. It is true that Stuart devotes more pages of his reply to theological and philosophical argument than to hermeneutic debate. Although this fact would seem to support Brown's contention, it is important to remember that the theological and philosophical debates about the unity of God and the divinity of Christ are seen to grow directly out of the conflicting interpretive principles employed by the two parties. Furthermore, the lecture notes for Stuart's courses in biblical hermeneutics, housed at the Andover-Newton Theological Library, amply testify to Stuart's interest and expertise in the field. Stuart's contention that the role of reason was to determine the authenticity of the scriptural revelation grows out of the historical defense of scriptural authority inaugurated by Locke and developed by English deists and German rationalists. For further discussion of this defense, see the following chapter. It is interesting to note that the terms of the disagreement between Stuart and Channing parallel the distinction between meaning and significance set forth by such twentiethcentury intentionalists as E. D. Hirsch, who argues (like Stuart) that the province of interpretation is to determine the intended meaning of a text, not its significance for us (Hirsch I - 13 and passim). For a critique of Hirsch's distinction between meaning and significance and his belief that meaning can be grounded in authorial intention, see Knapp and Michaels, "Against Theory." Originally published in the Christian Disciple in the autumn of 1819, Norton's reply to Stuart's "Letters" was expanded in 1833 into a full-length attack on Trinitarianism, A Statement of Reasons for not Believing the Doctrines of Trinitarians, Concerning the Nature ofGod and the Person of Christ. This position is similar to that advanced by Horace Bushnell. For discussions of Bushnell, see Brown 171-79, Feidelson 151-57 and 311-15, Gura 51-71, and Lewis 66-73. The intrinsic ambiguity of language is a position maintained in various guises by such diverse critics as Hirsch, I. A. Richards, and Paul de Man. For an astute discussion of the similarities between these apparently dissimilar critics, see Michaels, "Saving the Text." This seemingly ludicrous account of scriptural interpretation was actually proposed by Dr. Thomas Chalmers, in the article "Christianity" in a nineteenth-century edition of the Edinburgh Encyclopedia. Norton details four main causes of the intrinsic ambiguity of language: the variety of meanings commonly attached to almost every word of every language; the figurative use of words in addition to their "common significations"; the "very large portion of sentences which are not what rhetoricians call figurative, but which are yet to be understood strictly, not to the letter, but with some limitation, and often with a limitation which contracts exceedingly their literal meaning"; and the use of language in eloquence and poetry the aim of which is to stimulate emotion, not to describe something literally ( 14 14 2 ).

166

Notes

16. The shift in emphasis that results from Norton's insistence that the intrinsic ambiguity of language be recognized as a principle of correct interpretation might at first seem to support Brown's claim that in 1819 the controversy between Trinitarian and Unitarian moved from the interpretive to the theological and philosophical arenas. Yet this is not exactly the case. Since Norton feels that the intrinsic ambiguity of language (and the concomitant dismissal of the literal meaning of a text when that meaning is blatantly absurd) is one of the foremost principles of interpretation, his appeal to extrinsic factors (even to philosophical and theological debate) does not turn the controversy away from interpretive questions, but rather expands the question of interpretation so that it now includes extrinsic considerations as well. 17. For a recent discussion of similar issues in interpretation, see Knapp and Michaels, "Against Theory" and "A Reply to Our Critics." 18. The considerations which Norton suggests that one employ to determine the intended meaning of a particular passage make it clear that rather than terminate the problem of conflicting interpretations, the appeal to authorial intention reinvolves the interpreter in another series of interpretive "considerations." Some of these considerations are, the character of the writer, his habits of thinking and feeling, his common style of expression, and that of his age or nation, his settled opinions of belief, the extent of his knowledge, the general state of things during the time in which he lived, the particular local and temporary circumstances present to his mind while writing, the character and condition of those for whom he wrote, the opinions of others to whom he had reference, the connection of the sentence, or the train of thought by which it is preceded and followed, and finally, the manner in which he was understood by those for whom he wrote,-a consideration the importance of which varies with the circumstances. (148-49) To say that one's interpretation of Scripture is a product of the mechanical application of interpretive principles is not the same as to say that one's interpretation of Scripture is the product of one's prior beliefs about the character of a writer, the time in which he lived, the nature of his contemporaries' opinions, or "the manner in which he was understood by those for whom he wrote." By grounding correct interpretation not in the application of correct interpretive principles but in one's knowledge of the historical circumstances of the writer and intended audience of a particular work, Norton appears to have broken with the understanding of his own contemporaries about the way in which one arrives at the correct interpretation of a particular scriptural passage. This is neither to suggest that this break is not implicit in Channing's Baltimore Sermon nor that Norton no longer believes that correct interpretive principles produce correct interpretations. It is to say, however, that Norton's desire to include an awareness of the intrinsic ambiguity of language in any account of correct interpretive principles works to vitiate the very belief that requires him to engage in a detailed account of the art of interpretation: that the disagreement between orthodox and liberal interpreters can be resolved only by the resolution of correct principles of interpretation. 19. Stuart translated Ernesti's manual and amplified it with excerpts from other hermeneutic manuals. Ernesti's manual appeared in New England as Elementary Principles of Interpretation, Translatedfrom the Latin of]. A.. Ernesti by Moses Stuart. 20.

Stuart's edition of Ernesti presents an account of hermeneutics that differs considerably

Notes

21.

22.

23.

24.

25. 26.

167

from the hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur, for whom (following Hans-Georg Gadamer) the aim of hermeneutics is not to determine the one correct and unchanging interpretation of a (sacred or secular) text but to reinterpret each text according to the presuppositions of the interpreter. Like Ernesti and Stuart, Ricoeur considers hermeneutics to be especially important when interpreting the Bible. But unlike Ernesti and Stuart, who consider the importance of hermeneutics for biblical interpretation to consist in the need for certainty in interpreting the language of revelation, Ricoeur considers its importance for biblical interpretation to consist in the need to reinterpret revelation so that its kerygmatic message will remain relevant for all interpreters. In some respects Ricoeur's account of hermeneutics is closer to Norton's than to Ernesti's and Stuart's-particularly Ricoeur's claim that the object of hermeneutics is "the issue of the text," by which he means "the sort of world intended beyond the text as its reference" (99-100). For an interesting discussion of conventionalism in the hermeneutics of Ricoeur and Gadamer, see Knapp and Michaels, "Against Theory 2." Ernesti's insistence that interpretation deal only with the "words" of the text was countered by the more historically minded hermeneutics ofJohann Salomo Semler. As Hans Frei's characterization of the relation between the two men's hermeneutics makes plain, the differences between Ernesti and Semler correspond almost exactly to the differences between Norton and Stuart. "While both Ernesti and Semler are regarded as fathers to 'general' biblical hermeneutics," Frei explains, "Semler was the pioneer in historical interpretation.... Both sought to [draw] up general rules for the interpretation of all writings, including, of course, the Bible. Both acknowledged the importance of following philological principles in order to master the use of language in particular writings.... But there the agreement ended. Semler and most of the critics who came after him insisted in addition that interpretation must be historical. And this meant, of course, not only understanding the use of words in their particular historical linguistic contextwhich would be a purely lexicographical procedure-but also the authors' and their first readers' thought in their particular cultural milieu, in its distinction from that of others, including ours" (246-47). For further discussion of continental hermeneutical options at the beginning of the nineteenth century, see Frei 245-66. Quoted in Howe 87. Bowen's account of the Unitarian conscience is taken from the 1842 Critical Essays on a Few Subjects Connected with the History and Present Condition of Speculative Philosophy, "a collection of articles from the Christian Examiner and the North American Review aimed at discrediting the idealist philosophies" exemplified in Emerson's Divinity School "Address" (Howe 77). Norton's "new book" is in fact his Statement ofReasons, in which he sets forth his account of the rules of interpretation necessary to overcome the intrinsic ambiguity of language. In the "Address" Emerson makes a similar point about the need for true preaching to be local and personal. "The true preacher can always be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life,-life passed through the fire of his thought. But of the bad preacher, it could not be told from his sermon, what age of the world he fell in; whether he had a father or a child; whether he was a freeholder or a pauper; whether he was a citizen or a countryman; or any other fact of his biography" (GW I: 86). For further discussion of the problem of recreating historically the "singular peculiarities" of the scriptural author or audience, see the follOWing chapter. Henry Ware, Sr., defined morals in terms very similar to those employed here by

168

Notes

Emerson. "It seems to me that right and wrong are qualities existing in the nature of things.... To perceive these fitnesses-to distinguish right from wrong-is an intellectual exercise, and we have faculties for performing this office" (qtd. Howe 5 I). Howe explains that "These 'faculties' composed, for Ware, man's rational 'moral sense' " (51). The primary difference between Ware's account of the "moral sense" and Emerson's definition of "morals" is that Ware ascribes right and wrong to "the nature of things," whereas Emerson emphasizes that these "laws" are limited "as far as they are known to the human mind." 27. For further discussion of these important journal passages, see Packer, Emerson s Fall 32 -41.

Chapter Three. Thoreau's Mytbologicallnterpretation I.

2.

3. 4. 5.

6.

7.

For a discussion of Unitarian hermeneutics that differs from my own in the previous chapter of this book, see Gura, Wisdom 15-31. Richardson offers a fine treatment of Thoreau's readings in these areas as well as thorough discussions of the influence of comparative mythology on a number of American Renaissance writers, including Emerson and Parker. For an erratic but informative and entertaining treatment of the mythological school in biblical criticism and its influence on European secular literature from 1770 to 188o, see Shaffer. Gura, "Transcendentalists" I; Feidelson 1 12. For a fuller discussion of Unitarian hermeneutics, see the previous chapter. A concise, insightful discussion of Locke's confusion of explanation and justification can be found in Rorty 139-48. Besides the philosophical problems with Locke's empirical reading of Scripture, his account of the Gospels as eyewitness narratives of Jesus' life has been thoroughly discounted by biblical criticism in the past 150 years. The Gospel narratives are now generally seen to be the product of a number of conflicting oral traditions. For a brief summary of these traditions, see The Cambridge Bible Commentary of the New English Bible I: 74-75, 137-38, and chaps. 3 and 4 passim. In the Divinity School "Address," Emerson interprets this verse not as saying that Christ is a god but as saying that "God incarnates himself in man" (CW I: 81). For further discussion of Emerson's ''Address,'' see the previous chapter. By the time of his Second Vindication ofthe Reasonableness of Christianity, Locke had explicitly incorporated this identity into his defense. This can be seen near the end of the Second Vindication in a concise expression of his empirical formulation of the historical authority of Scripture: "To conclude, what was sufficient to make a man a Christian in our Saviour's time, is sufficient still, viz., the taking of him for our King and Lord, ordained so by God. What was necessary to be believed by all Christians in our Saviour's time, as an indispensable duty which they owed to their Lord and Master, was the believing all divine revelation, as far as one could understand it: and just so is still, neither more nor less" (xxv). The crucial point in this account of the historical authority of Scripture is that the requirements "to make a man a Christian" are identical for all men in all ages: "What was sufficient to make a man a Christian in our Saviour's time," "the believing all divine revelation, as far as one could understand it," is also invariably enjoined upon a Christian in Locke's time, or our own.

Notes

8.

9.

10.

1I.

169

Locke himself was no deist; his religious views were firmly latitudinarian (if one can indeed befinnly latitudinarian). Even so, English deism proved to be something of an offshoot of the theological position espoused in Locke's religious writings, particularly his claim that the truth of Christianity must be empirically discoverable without the aid of innate ideas or supernatural revelation. The deistic movement employed Locke's own criterion of empirical validity to challenge the truth of Christianity as a historical revelation from God. This deistic outgrowth of Locke's position depended on two branches of argument. Its first objection to Locke's conclusion was primarily a hypothetical one: if Christian truth is empirically reasonable and thus able to be discovered by all men in all times, then it must follow that the truths of Christianity preexisted God's scriptural revelation. The force of this objection was to strip Christianity of its historical uniqueness and thus to deprive the Bible of its historical authority as a unique revelation of religious truth. The second objection of deism to Locke's empirical theology centered on the factuality of the Christian revelation. The deists questioned the likelihood that the events depicted in the Gospels-particularly the immaculate conception, the miracles ofJesus, and the resurrection-actually took place as represented. There is no reason to accept the biblical revelation as an unquestioned authority for Christian truth, deists argued, since the Bible also tells of supernatural occurrences that could not possibly be true. Three of the chief proponents of deism were John Toland, whose Christianity not Mysterious ( 1696) argued that the truths of Christianity must be circumscribed within the limits of human reason; Anthony Collins, a friend and disciple of Locke, who argued in A Discourse ofthe Grounds and Reasons ofthe Christian Religion ( 1724) that "the notion of the fulfillment of Old Testament held in the New, which is the basis for the claims ofJesus as Messiah, is either false or absurd" (Frei 68); and Matthew Tindall, whose Christi(lnityas Old as the Creation: Or, The Gospel as a Republication ofthe Religion ofNature ( 1730), which came to be known as the deists' bible, argued that because truth is unchanging the truths of Christianity must be "as Old as Creation." For further discussion of the problems of deism in gaining popular acceptance, see Stephen chaps. 2-4 and Schillebeeckx 591. For an extended discussion of Collins, see Frei 66-85. The influence of English deism in Germany was not limited to pietistic textual criticism. The arguments of Locke, Toland, Collins, Tindall, and others proved instrumental in the intellectual development of such German rationalists as Christian Wolff and Hermann Samuel Reimarus. For further discussion of the influence of English deism in Germany, see KilmmeI51-6I, Frei 96-103 and 113-19, and Talbert 5-18. Lowth's Lectures were delivered in Latin at Oxford in 1741, as part of the responSibilities of his position as Oxford's Praelector of Poetry. For a recent discussion of Lowth's account of Hebrew poetry, see Kugel 274-83 and passim. Lowth confined his investigations to the Old Testament, partly because much of the New Testament was written in prose and partly because he did not wish to call into question (as did the deists) the historicity of the Christian revelation. To suggest that the Church treat the language of the New Testament as it would treat any other language would perhaps threaten the historical beginnings of the Church itself. For Lowth the New Testament was the product of pre-Christian Hebrews. Other scholars, however (including most notably Eichhorn, Herder, and Michaelis), were quick to see the significance of Lowth's work for New Testament studies as well. For further discussion of Lowth's influence on German mythological critics, see Shaffer 20-24.

170

12.

Notes

Shaffer misstates the case when she suggests that Lowth "for the first time considered the Old Testament simply as literature, as Oriental literature" (20). While Lowth sought to distinguish Hebrew poetry from classical poetry, his treatment of biblical poetry from the perspective of a classical ars poetica should be distinguished from Herder's and Eichhorn's Orientalist approaches to the literature of both the Old and the New Testaments. I 3. Lowth's theory of poetic significance is an eighteenth-century forerunner to twentiethcentury affective theories of poetry such as that of I. A. Richards, in which the significance of both religion and poetry lies not in the truth or falsity of their reference to the external world, but in their emotional affect on the reader/listener. 14. In 175 I and 1752, for example,johannJakob Wettstein published a critical edition of the New Testament in Latin. The text that he used was the received edition of the Greek New Testament. What was particularly significant about this edition was Wettstein's publication of textual variants "that were printed immediately below the text itself-so that the reader [could] recognize the improved text at a glance" (Kiimmel 49). Wettstein's edition was also the first to employ the system of chapter and verse enumeration still in use today. But what ties his work to the question of biblical authority and interpretation is his insistence that the "New Testament, like any other writing, be read out of its time and with the eyes of its original readers. 'If you wish to get a thorough and complete understanding of the books of the New Testament, put yourself in the place of those to whom they were first delivered by the apostles as a legacy. Transfer yourself in thought to that time and that area where they first were read. Endeavor, so far as possible, to acquaint yourself with the customs, practices, habits, opinions, accepted ways of thought, proverbs, symbolic language, and everyday expressions of these men'" (Kiimmel 49-50). Like Lowth, Wettstein argued that modern interpreters must read the Bible with the eyes of those who wrote it or of those for whom it was written. "Wettstein's axioms of interpretation ... can be shown to be inexplicable apart from [the] deistic influence" which served to impel Lowth's treatment of sacred poetry in the terms of the secular poetry of the classics (Kiimmel 58). Wettstein's work provided an even more immediate stimulus for German biblical criticism than did Lowth's lectures on Hebrew poetry, since he insisted that the New Testament as well as the Old be read as we would read any other writing. Wettstein's edition of the New Testament represents but another important moment in a complicated historical development; his work, like the others discussed in this chapter, was only one of a number to make the claim that biblical interpreters must attempt to see the world as its authors or intended audience saw it. Wettstein's work was significant partly because it was published in a time and place in which it could receive its proper due, unlike the earlier work of a Genevan theologian, Jean Alphonse Turretini, whose lectures on scriptural interpretation were published by some of his followers in 1728. Turretini's lectures express an interpretive position not very different from Wettstein's or Lowth's: "No judgment on the basis of axioms of our day is to be passed on the meaning of the sacred writers, but one must put oneself into the times and into the surroundings in which they wrote, and one must see what [concepts] could arise in the souls of those who lived in that time" (qtd. Kiimmel59, his insertion). Turretini's works had "very little influence in their own day" (Kiimmel 60). His lectures on interpretation are worth mentioning, however, both to demonstrate that the interpretive axioms expressed by Lowth, Wettstein, and others were not isolated instances in the understanding of what it means to interpret a biblical text and to prOVide a caveat historicus to anyone

Notes

17 I

who expects to find a simple, chronological line of transmission for the changing conceptions of scriptural interpretation. 15. Qtd. Shaffer 124. For further discussion of the mythical interpretation of Eichhorn and Johann Philipp Gabler, see Shaffer 125-30 and Frei 248-5 I. 16. The editor of the first American edition of Coleridge's Aids to Reflection, Marsh was also a student of Moses Stuart at Andover Seminary. Stuart had been attempting to persuade someone to translate Herder for a number of years before Marsh agreed to undertake the task. For a fuller discussion of Marsh's combination of Coleridgean idealism with the Calvinism of Stuart, see Carafiol, Transcendental Puritan. For a discussion of the influence of Marsh's edition of Coleridge's Aids to Reflection on Emerson, see the first chapter of this book. 17. In order to point out the deficiencies of Lowth's work, Marsh compares the difficulties of this enterprise with the easier task of entering "into the spirit of Grecian poetry, to understand the child-like simplicity of Homer": The Greeks were our neighbors and kindred, when compared with the more ancient and Oriental Hebrews. When we place ourselves in the tents of the Hebrew patriarchs, on the plains of Arabia, or the mountains of Palestine, every thing is to be learned anew. The language, the habits of life, the modes of thought and of intercourse, the heavens above, and the earth beneath, all are changed, and present to us a strange and foreign aspect. When in addition to this we coflsider, that the poetry, which we are here called to study, belongs to the earliest periods of recorded time, and embodies many of the first simple and child-like conceptions of the human mind, and when we reflect, too, how difficult it is for us to return upon our own childhood, and revive the faded conceptions and forgotten feelings, with which we then looked abroad upon the works of nature, observed the conduct of our fellowmen, or contemplated our own being and destiny, we may apprehend something of the difficulties, which an author has to overcome, who would fully enter into the spirit of Hebrew poetry, and make it intelligible to a mere English reader. We may understand too how impossible it would be by the method, which Lowth has pursued, and by that alone, to do full justice to a body of poetry so peculiar, and so diverse in its whole spirit, from that which he brings it into comparison. (I: 5-6) 18.

19. 20.

Hans Frei suggests, for Herder "The biblical stories are historical or history-like; they are neither myths nor allegories nor heroic or epic inventions, but natural, simple, and straightforward accounts of actions from credible dispositions" ( 191). For further discussion of Herder's position on biblical interpretation, see Frei 183-2°5. For an interesting, related discussion of Coleridge's adaptation of Herder's mythological interpretation, see Shaffer 96- 1 44. Although St~auss's Das Leben]esu was unavailable in English until George Eliot's translation appeared in 1846, the German edition was widely reviewed in America (Hovenkamp 241, nn. 37-40). Theodore Parker was among the first to review it; his lengthy review appeared in the Christian Examiner in April 1840. Parker's estimation of the work's "profound theological significance" was an accurate one. Strauss's work, he wrote, "marks the age we live in, and to judge from its character and the interest it has already excited, will make an epoch in theological affairs" (276). Parker's contention that The Life of]esus both "marks the age we live in" and "will make an epoch in theological affairs" As

172

Notes

echoes the two not entirely compatible accounts of the work which Strauss presents in the preface to the first German edition. Strauss initially suggests that his work offers "a new mode of considering tbe life of jesus, in the place of the antiquated systems of supranaturalism and naturalism" which had dominated the theological discussion of his age (xxix). But in the next paragraph he qualifies this claim, suggesting that the mythical interpretation propounded in his work "is not brought to bear on the evangelical history for the first time in the present work," but "has long been applied to particular parts of that history, and is here only extended to the entire tenor" (xxix). The question of whether Strauss's work is the product of its age or an entirely "new mode of considering the life ofjesus" is equally applicable to Strauss's assessment ofjesus' role in the history of Christianity. jesus' messianic claims can also be said to "make an epoch in theological affairs," just as they can be shown to be the product of the messianic expectations of the age he lived in. Like Strauss's mythical interpretation, jesus' messianic interpretation of the Old Testament "is not brought to bear" on the Scriptures for the first time, but is "only extended to the entire tenor." Although Strauss's work has been criticized for this ambiguous assessment of the historical uniqueness ofjesus' revelation, our concern with his Life ofJesus is not to determine its position on the historical uniqueness of Christ, but to examine the way in which it reformulated the problem of scriptural interpretation. 2 I. Shaffer seriously misunderstands the difference between Strauss's mythical interpretation and the mythological interpretations of Herder and Eichhorn, arguing that Das Leben Jesu "was only an uncompromising extension of Eichhorn's method to the whole fabric of the New Testament" (128). By Eichhorn's method, Shaffer refers to his injunction to "Forget the century in which you live and the knowledge it offers you," derived from Heyne's principle to "transplant yourself wholly into the period of the story" (qtd. 124). In support of her claim that Strauss merely extended Eichhorn's method, she quotes the following passage from Strauss: "In the absence of any more genuine account which would serve as a correcting parallel, [the historian] must transplant himself in imagination upon the theatre of action, and strive to the utmost to contemplate the events by light of the age in which they occurred" (qtd. 98). Not only does Shaffer provide a widely incorrect page number for this passage (329 rather than 49), but she fails to recognize that the above passage is a paraphrase of Paulus's naturalist account of mythical interpretation, an account with which Strauss consistently quarrels throughout Das Leben Jesu. For a more accurate discussion of Strauss's relation to naturalism and supranaturalism, see Frei 233-66. 22. Strauss is not, as Parker and other commentators have contended, claiming to have freed himself from all presuppositions when he presents his credentials for the job of determining "whether in fact, and to what extent, the ground on which we stand in the gospels is historical." He is only declaring his "internal liberation from certain religious and dogmatical presuppositions ... by means of philosophical studies" (xxix-xxx). 23. Joan Burbick is right to claim that to a certain extent Thoreau resists picturesque conventions in the Week, but it is important to note that he makes use of these conventions as well. The Week is not, as Burbick claims, a rejection of these conventions for the "democratic vision" of "uncivil history," a vision unmediated by convention, but an adaptation of them that creates a new mode of "learned" vision. In general Burbick fails to account for the role of institutions and conventions in Thoreau's "uncivil history." The map of the Concord River that Burbick sees as an unconditioned vision of the land is not

Notes

173

free from conventions, but is in fact conditioned both by English names and by an English worldview (87 ). 24. Thoreau's linkage of the aesthetics of sublimity with the interpretation of ancient texts prefigures a similar linkage in the course of the past two decades, when the study of the relation between the sublime and contemporary literary theory has turned into a burgeoning critical industry. In recent years the relation between literary theory and the sublime has most often been understood in terms of the decentering, destabilization, or (in its most radical formulation) destruction of the interpretive and/or authorial subject. My discussion of Thoreau's treatment of obscurity both in reading ancient texts and in experiencing landscapes as sublime is only tangentially related to the recent critical literature on the sublime. Insofar as my discussion does pertain to recent debates, its implications are to suggest that (folloWing Ferguson's account in Solitude and the Sublime of the aesthetics of individuation) for Thoreau the role of obscurity in the sublime is constitutive, not destructive, of the interpreter's self. In addition to Ferguson, the most important recent book-length studies of the sublime are Weiskel, Hertz, and Knapp. 25. The importance of this idea for Thoreau's thinking is underscored by the fact that in "Autumnal Tints," one of the late natural history essays published shortly after his death, he makes an almost identical point about the perception of scarlet oak leaves in autumn. "The scarlet oak must, in a sense, be in your eye when you go forth. We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads,-and then we can hardly see anything else.... I have found that it required a different intention of the eye, in the same locality, to see different plants, even when they were closely allied, as ]uncaceae and Gramineae: when I was looking for the former, I did not see the latter in the midst of them. How much more, then, it requires different intentions of the eye and of the mind to attend to different departments of knowledge! How differently the poet and the naturalist look at objects!" (174). 26. The classic formulation of the role of obscurity in the sublime is to be found in Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 58-64, where Burke credits obscurity with increasing terror, one of his prerequisites for experiencing the sublime. Burke also emphasizes the importance of obscurity in language, suggesting that "a clear idea is therefore another name for a little idea" ( 63). Thoreau's understanding of the role of obscurity in the sublime differs slightly from Burke's on the importance of terror but agrees with Burke's in holding that obscurity requires us to exaggerate our perceptions with imagination. As a student at Harvard, Thoreau had written favorably of Burke's theory of the sublime in a composition written March 31, 1837, for Edward Tyrrel Channing's rhetoric course (Early ESsays 9399). 27.

28.

The treatment of Homer, Ossian, and Chaucer in the Week is a revised version of a lecture on poetry which Thoreau delivered at the Concord Lyceum on November 29, 1843 (Early Essays 154-73). His interest in Ossian, whose existence was later proved to be the product of an elaborate hoax, was fostered partly by a Nordic Renaissance in the early nineteenth century. For a discussion of Thoreau in relation to Carlyle, Ossian, and the Nordic Renaissance, see Richardson 102-5. Richardson sees Thoreau as refuting the negative, skeptical view of myth advanced by Strauss and Parker in favor of a more affirmative view of myth as the product of the

174

29.

Notes

imaginative powers. But as I suggest, Richardson fails to see that Thoreau is not trying to see through the eyes of ancient authors by recovering the conditions of early writers. Rather Thoreau recognizes, with Strauss and Parker, the impossibility of seeing with any eyes but our own. While it is true that Thoreau affirms myth, this affirmation is not opposed to the skeptical view of myth but rather an outgrowth of it. The mythical interpretation of Strauss reaches its existential culmination in the demythologization of Rudolf Bultmann, who takes as his hermeneutic starting point the necessity of interpreting the Bible through our own eyes. Bultmann claims that to demythologize the kerygma at the heart of the New Testament is not to strip away its mythic elements but to reinterpret the mythology of the kerygma in terms of our own existential situation (Bultmann I -44). While this call to reinterpretation has some similarities with Thoreau's account of mythological interpretation-particularly Bultmann's insistence on viewing the kerygma through the mist of its mythological prejudice-the aim of Bultmann's existentialism is not, like Thoreau's transcendentalism, finally to add to the mythic aggregation of Christianity but (as the term "demythologization" suggests) to undo or, at the very least, to refigure the mythological worldview of the New Testament. For a perceptive introduction to the central issues of Bultmann's demythologization, see Ricoeur 49-72. Chapter Four. The Two Theodore Parkers

I.

Parker was arguably the most learned man in antebellum America. Despite the undoubted exaggeration in the following encomium, the picture Commager presents of Parker's learning was probably subscribed to by many of his contemporaries: His information was as encyclopaedic as it was exact: he could fling a thundering bibliography at the scholarly Professor Francis in response to a cry for aid; he could cite the very page of an obscure monograph on Salic Law when Sumner turned to him in desperation; he was the one man, so the classicist, John King of Salem, records, with whom it was possible to discuss intelligently a disputed reading in a Greek play. He took Buckle severely to task for bibliographical omissions in the History ofCivilization, corrected Hildreth in detail, and administered to Prescott the most severe scholarly lacing that that historican was to receive. His knowledge of legal institutions and history excited the admiration of the learned Sumner (who was not given to admiring others), and when indicted for violation of the fugitive slave law, he prepared for his own defence a masterly treatise on the history of English and American law. His appetite for languages was insatiable: Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, German, Italian, and Spanish he acquired in student days; Syriac, CoptiC, Bohemian, Russian, Icelandic, Danish, Finnish, Lithuanian (and a score more) came later; at the end, he was wrestling with native African dialects. (266-67) Although obviously impressed by the breadth of Parker's learning, Commager repeatedly describes it as a wasteful and excessive "vice," Commager's language suggests that he sees Parker's scholarship as a "dangerous supplement" to his intUition, not unlike the way Derrida characterizes Rousseau's description of masturbation in the ConfeSSiOns. But as Derrida has suggested in regard to Rousseau (and as I will argue here), the supplementation of scholarship is "necessary" for Parker's intuition, both exceeding it and completing it at the same time (Derrida 141-64).

Notes 2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

I I.

175

My use of the term "antinomy" follows Roberto Unger, whose compelling analysis of the major antinomies of liberal thought in Knowledge and Politics provides an acute and powerful critique of Western liberalism. Parker's account of his own private reading bears certain affinities to other spiritual autobiographies, notably Thomas Scott's and]ohn Henry Newman's (Peterson). For a discussion of Parker's review of Strauss's Life o/Jesus, see the previous chapter. For a discussion of Parker's involvement with the higher criticism, including his influence by Strauss, see Richardson 34-48. In "Interpretation and Intuition in Theodore Parker," I relate the issues raised in Parker's sermon to some of the issues that have continued to fuel the ongoing revision of American literary history. Parker's position on the Lord's Supper was very close to the position set forth by Emerson in his resignation sermon: "The Lord's Supper I don't like, as it is now administered. It is a heathenish rite, and means very little, I think. Cast away the elements. Let all who will come into a parlour and have a social religious meeting; eat bread and wine, if you like, or curds and cream and baked apples, if you will; and have a conversation, free and cheerful, on moral questions, or simply personal good feelings and prayers. Only let all be rational and real." This passage from Parker's journal for 1840 is cited in Weiss I: 15556. For a discussion of Emerson's resignation from the ministry, see the first chapter of this book. Historically it was in fact a question of manuscript that first endangered the notion of an infallibly inspired Old Testament. When the French Protestant Capel demonstrated in 1624 that the Hebrew vowel-points were added to the originally consonantal text some time after the original text was written, the notion that every "jot and tittle" of the Old Testament was inspired by God was called into question, particularly since the addition of vowel-points constituted an interpretation of the consonantal text that may not have been congruent with what the original, "inspired" authors had intended (Kraeling 43). Parker had employed this argument a year earlier in his "Levi Blodgett" letter. For a discussion of Parker's "Levi Blodgett" letter ("The Previous Question between Mr. Andrews Norton and his Alumni Moved and Handled in a Letter to All Those Gentlemen," by Levi Blodgett, reprinted Dirks 137-59), see Dirks 72-78 and Hutchison 85-86 and 100. For a discussion of Ripley's role in the "miracles controversy," see Hutchison 55-64. In "Sentimental Power" Tompkins criticizes Douglas for holding on to masculinist, modernist literary prejudices in her dismissal of sentimental fiction as inferior literature. For Tompkins the identification of maternal and divine authority works to empower women to subvert the hegemony of antebellum America's masculinist ideology. Despite the differences between Tompkins and Douglas (as well as among other scholars of gender and domesticity in antebellum America), most scholars are in agreement that the identification of maternal and divine authority was a key premise of the nineteenthcentury cult of motherhood. Among the most prevalent topiCS of Parker's unpublished sermons are family, home, and motherhood. Parker's unpublished sermons are held in the Andover-Harvard Theological Library at Harvard Divinity School. "Dr. Arnold" is probably Dr. Thomas Arnold, who was headmaster at Rugby from 1795 to 184 2 .

12.

I do not deny that these parallels could be used in the context of a more rigorous, fully developed analysis of Parker, but would only disqualify myself from making any such

176

Notes

psychoanalytical claims. From the perspective of an amateur, however, Parker would appear to be a prime candidate for a literary psychoanalysis. He had a large and adoring female following; he and his wife were childless themselves; and his journals and letters are replete with a number of potentially rich recollections of childhood, which the following remarkable passage from an 1854 letter to George Ripley will serve to exemplify: When a boy, I had an intense passion for beauty in every form. I knew all the rare flowers, wild or cultivated. When a little boy in petticoats, I used to lie all the forenoon inJune, and watch the great clouds, and see the incessant play of form and color. There was a pond a mile off, whither I used to go a-fishing; but I only caught the landscape. I never fished much, but looked down into the water, and saw the shadows on the other side creep over the water, and listened to the sounds from the distant farms. When I was six or seven years old, there came a perfectly beautiful young girl to our little district school: she was seven to eight. She fascinated my eyes from my book, and I was chid for not getting my lessons. It never happened before; never after the little witch went away. She only staid a week; and I cried bitterly when she went off. She was so handsome I did not dare speak to her, but loved to keep near her as a butterfly to a thistle-blossom. Her name was Narcissa. She fell over into the flood of time, and vanished before I was seven years old. (Frothingham, Parker 33 0 -3 1 ) 13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

I do not mean by this to suggest that the psychology of Parker's relation with his mother is independent of the ideology of the cult of motherhood. In fact in The Reproduction of Mothering, Nancy Chodorow persuasively connects psychoanalytical and sociological concerns, arguing that the psychological reproduction of mothering in women reproduces the ideology of gender differences in a particular social structure. Chodorow's work should serve notice that anyone pursuing a psychoanalytic reading of Parker would be remiss to ignore the sociological implications of the cult of motherhood. The editors of Parker's collected works call the Discourse "undoubtedly the single work ... by which he will be most permanently remembered," a judgment that history has not borne out. The Discourse contains "the substance of a series of five lectures delivered in Boston" in the autumn of 1841 (CE I: ix). Its popularity in Parker's day is attested to by "the fact that it passed through four editions, three in America, and one in England, covering a range of fourteen years" (CE I: v). Despite Parker's desire to ground man's religious element outside of the body, the logic of his internalization of maternal authority as intuition is not unrelated to the logic of Emerson's incorporation of the moral sentiment discussed in the first chapter. Parker's characterization of the religious element as a sense of dependence derives at least in part from Schleiermacher. Leon Chai, 169-94, provides a useful discussion of Schleiermacher's influence on both Parker and Emerson but one which finally overstates that influence while understating or ignoring other important influences (such as Strauss's influence on Parker). My discussion throughout this section follows Parker in using "men" instead of "people" or "men and women." I do so not because "men" was common usage at the time or because Parker's account of the religious sentiment did not pertain to women (since in fact it did), but because in the context of his expressions of ambivalence toward his

Notes

18.

177

maternal inheritance, it seems clear that he considers the paradigmatic parentichild relationship to be the relationship between mother and son. This seems especially true in this particular example of two men born from the same mother, an example that a more psychoanalytically inclined critic might see as a projection of his own ambivalent feelings. Parker's sacrificial logic of the progress of institutions has a number of affinities with the logic of Emerson's Hartleyan account of moral progress discussed in the first chapter.

Works Cited

Abbott, John S. C. The Mother at Home: or the Principles of Maternal Duty Familiar~v Illustrated. New York: Harper, 1852. Barth,]. Robert. Coleridge and Christian Doctrine. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 19 6 9.

Bercovitch, Sacvan. The American jeremiad. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978. - - - , ed. Reconstructing American Literary History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986. Bledstein, Burton]. The Culture ofProfessionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America. New York: W. W. Norton, 1978. Borges, Jorge Luis. Labyrinths: Selected Ston'es & Other Writings. Ed. Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby. New York: New Directions, 1962, 1964. Brown, Jerry Wayne. The Rise ofBiblical Criticism in America, 1800-1870: The Nezv England Scholars. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1969. Brumm, Ursula. American Thought and Religious Typology. Trans. from German by John Hoaglund. New Brunswick, N].: Rutgers University Press, 1970. Buell, Lawrence. Literary Transcendentalism: Style and Vision in the American Renaissance. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1973. Bultmann, Rudolf, et al. Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate. Ed. Hans Werner Bartsch. New York: Harper, 1961. Burbick,Joan. "Henry David Thoreau: The Uncivil Historian." The American Renaissance: Nezv Dimensions. Ed. Harry R. Garvin and Peter C. Carafiol. Bucknell Reviezv 28, no. 1 (1983): 81-99·

Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Ed.]. T. Boulton. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1958. Cabot,]. E. A Memoir ofRalph Waldo Emerson. 2 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1887. Calvin, John. Calvin: Institutes ofthe Christian Religion. Ed. John T. McNeill. Trans. Ford Lewis Battles. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 196o.

180

Works Cited

Cameron, Sharon. The Corporeal Self: Allegories of the Body in Melville and Hawthorne. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981. Carafiol, Peter C. Transcendent Reason: James Marsh and the Forms of Romantic Thought. Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1982. Chai, Leon. The Romantic Foundations of the American Renaissance. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987. Channing, William Ellery. "Unitarian Christianity." Works. Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1891. Cheyfitz, Eric. "Foreword." An Uneasy Solitude: Individual and Society in the Work ofRalph Waldo Emerson, by Maurice Gonnaud. Trans. from French by Lawrence Rosenwald. Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1987. - - - . The Trans-Parent: Sexual Politics in the Language ofEmerson. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981. Chodorow, Nancy. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. Christensen,Jerome. Coleridge's BlessedMachine ofLanguage. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981. Coleridge, Samuel T. Lay Sennons. Ed. R.]. White. Vol. 6 of The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1972. Collins, Anthony. A Discourse ofthe Grounds and Reasons ofthe Christian Religion. 1724. Commager, Henry Steele. "The Dilemma of Theodore Parker." New England Quarter~y 6 (1933): 257-77·

Cott, Nancy F. The Bonds of Womanhood: