Confessions and Criticisms by Julian Hawthorne

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But I must not begin to quote Emerson's poetry; only it is worth noting
that he, whose verse is uniformly so abstractly and intellectually
beautiful, kindles to passion whenever his theme is of America. The
loftiest patriotism never found more ardent and eloquent expression than
in the hymn sung at the completion of the Concord monument, on the 19th of
April, 1836. There is no rancor in it; no taunt of triumph; "the foe long
since in silence slept"; but throughout there resounds a note of pure and
deep rejoicing at the victory of justice over oppression, which Concord
fight so aptly symbolized. In "Hamatreya" and "The Earth Song," another
chord is struck, of calm, laconic irony. Shall we too, he asks, we Yankee
farmers, descendants of the men who gave up all for freedom, go back to
the creed outworn of medieval feudalism and aristocracy, and say, of the
land that yields us its produce, "'Tis mine, my children's, and my
name's"? Earth laughs in flowers at our boyish boastfulness, and asks "How
am I theirs if they cannot hold me, but I hold them?" "When I heard 'The
Earth Song,' I was no longer brave; my avarice cooled, like lust in the
child of the grave" Or read "Monadnoc," and mark the insight and the power
with which the significance and worth of the great facts of nature are
interpreted and stated. "Complement of human kind, having us at vantage
still, our sumptuous indigence, oh, barren mound, thy plenties fill! We
fool and prate; thou art silent and sedate. To myriad kinds and times one
sense the constant mountain doth dispense; shedding on all its snows and
leaves, one joy it joys, one grief it grieves. Thou seest, oh, watchman
tall, our towns and races grow and fall, and imagest the stable good for
which we all our lifetime grope; and though the substance us elude, we in
thee the shadow find." ... "Thou dost supply the shortness of our days,
and promise, on thy Founder's truth, long morrow to this mortal youth!" I
have ignored the versified form in these extracts, in order to bring them
into more direct contrast with the writer's prose, and show that the
poetry is inherent. No other poet, with whom I am acquainted, has caused
the very spirit of a land, the mother of men, to express itself so
adequately as Emerson has done in these pieces. Whitman falls short of
them, it seems to me, though his effort is greater.

Emerson is continually urging us to give heed to this grand voice of hills
and streams, and to mould ourselves upon its suggestions. The difficulty
and the anomaly are that we are not native; that England is our mother,
quite as much as Monadnoc; that we are heirs of memories and traditions
reaching far beyond the times and the confines of the Republic. We cannot
assume the splendid childlikeness of the great primitive races, and
exhibit the hairy strength and unconscious genius that the poet longs to
find in us. He remarks somewhere that the culminating period of good in
nature and the world is in just that moment of transition, when the
swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astringency
or acidity is got out by ethics and humanity.

It was at such a period that Greece attained her apogee; but our
experience, it seems to me, must needs be different. Our story is not of
birth, but of regeneration, a far more subtle and less obvious
transaction. The Homeric California of which Bret Harte is the reporter
does not seem to me in the closest sense American. It is a comparatively
superficial matter--this savage freedom and raw poetry; it belongs to all
pioneering life, where every man must stand for himself, and Judge Lynch
strings up the defaulter to the nearest tree. But we are only incidentally
pioneers in this sense; and the characteristics thus impressed upon us
will leave no traces in the completed American. "A sturdy lad from New
Hampshire or Vermont," says Emerson, "who in turn tries all the
professions--who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches,
edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in
successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet--is worth a
hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no
shame in not studying a 'profession,' for he does not postpone his life,
but lives already." That is stirringly said: but, as a matter of fact,
most of the Americans whom we recognize as great did not have such a
history; nor, if they had it, would they be on that account more American.
On the other hand, the careers of men like Jim Fiske and Commodore
Vanderbilt might serve very well as illustrations of the above sketch. If
we must wait for our character until our geographical advantages and the
absence of social distinctions manufacture it for us, we are likely to
remain a long while in suspense. When our foreign visitors begin to evince
a more poignant interest in Concord and Fifth Avenue than in the
Mississippi and the Yellowstone, it may be an indication to us that we are
assuming our proper position relative to our physical environment. "The
_land_," says Emerson, "is a sanative and Americanizing influence which
promises to disclose new virtues for ages to come." Well, when we are
virtuous, we may, perhaps, spare our own blushes by allowing our
topography, symbolically, to celebrate us, and when our admirers would
worship the purity of our intentions, refer them to Walden Pond; or to
Mount Shasta, when they would expatiate upon our lofty generosity. It is,
perhaps, true, meanwhile, that the chances of a man's leading a decent
life are greater in a palace than in a pigsty.

But this is holding our author too strictly to the letter of his message.
And, at any rate, the Americanism of Emerson is better than anything that
he has said in vindication of it. He is the champion of this commonwealth;
he is our future, living in our present, and showing the world, by
anticipation, as it were, what sort of excellence we are capable of
attaining. A nation that has produced Emerson, and can recognize in him
bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh--and, still more, spirit of her
spirit--that nation may look toward the coming age with security. But he
has done more than thus to prophesy of his country; he is electric and
stimulates us to fulfil our destiny. To use a phrase of his own, we
"cannot hear of personal vigor of any kind, great power of performance,
without fresh resolution." Emerson, helps us most in provoking us to help
ourselves. The pleasantest revenge is that which we can sometimes take
upon our great men in quoting of themselves what they have said of others.

It is easy to be so revenged upon Emerson, because he, more than most
persons of such eminence, has been generous and cordial in his
appreciation of all human worth. "If there should appear in the company,"
he observes, "some gentle soul who knows little of persons and parties, of
Carolina or Cuba, but who announces a law that disposes these particulars,
and so certifies me of the equity which checkmates every false player,
bankrupts every self-seeker, and apprises me of my independence on any
conditions of country, or time, or human body, that man liberates me....
I am made immortal by apprehending my possession of incorruptible goods."
Who can state the mission and effect of Emerson more tersely and aptly
than those words do it?

But, once more, he does not desire eulogiums, and it seems half ungenerous
to force them upon him now that he can no longer defend himself. I prefer
to conclude by repeating a passage characteristic of him both as a man and
as an American, and which, perhaps, conveys a sounder and healthier
criticism, both for us and for him, than any mere abject and nerveless
admiration; for great men are great only in so far as they liberate us,
and we undo their work in courting their tyranny. The passage runs thus:--

"Let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter. Do not set the
least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I
pretended to settle anything as true or false. I unsettle all things. No
facts to me are sacred; none are profane. I simply experiment--an endless
seeker, with no Past at my back!"

CHAPTER X.

MODERN MAGIC.

Human nature enjoys nothing better than to wonder--to be mystified; and it
thanks and remembers those who have the skill to gratify this craving. The
magicians of old knew that truth and conducted themselves accordingly. But
our modern wonder-workers fail of their due influence, because, not
content to perform their marvels, they go on to explain them. Merlin and
Roger Bacon were greater public benefactors than Morse and Edison. Man is
--and he always has been and will be--something else besides a pure
intelligence: and science, in order to become really popular, must
contrive to touch man somewhere else besides on the purely intellectual
side: it must remember that man is all heart, all hope, all fear, and all
foolishness, quite as much as he is all brains. Otherwise, science can
never expect to take the place of superstition, much less of religion, in
mankind's affection. In order to be a really successful man of science, it
is first of all indispensable to make one's self master of everything in
nature and in human nature that science is not.

What must one do, in short, in order to become a magician? I use the term,
here, in its weightiest sense. How to make myself visible and invisible at
will? How to present myself in two or more places at once? How answer your
question before you ask it, and describe to you your most secret thoughts
and actions? How shall I call spirits from the vasty deep, and make you
see and hear and feel them? How paralyze your strength with a look, heal
your wound with a touch, or cause your bullet to rebound harmless from my
unprotected flesh? How shall I walk on the air, sink through the earth,
pass through stone walls, or walk, dry-shod, on the floor of the ocean?
How shall I visit the other side of the moon, jump through the ring of
Saturn, and gather sunflowers in Sirius? There are persons now living who
profess to do no less remarkable feats, and to regard them as incidental
merely to achievements far more important. A school of hierophants or
adepts is said to exist in Tibet, who, as a matter of daily routine, quite
transcend everything that we have been accustomed to consider natural
possibility. What is the course of study, what are the ways and means
whereby such persons accomplish such results?

The conventional attitude towards such matters is, of course, that of
unconditional scepticism. But it is pleasant, occasionally, to take an
airing beyond the bounds of incredulity. For my own part, it is true, I
must confess my inability to believe in anything positively supernatural.
The supernatural and the illusory are to my mind convertible terms: they
cannot really exist or take place. Let us be sure, however, that we are
agreed as to what supernatural means. If a magician, before my eyes,
transformed an old man into a little girl, I should call that
supernatural; and nothing should convince me that my senses had not been
grossly deceived. But were the magician to leave the room by passing
through the solid wall, or "go out" like an exploding soap-bubble,--I
might think what I please, but I should not venture to dogmatically
pronounce the thing supernatural; because the phenomenon known as "matter"
is scientifically unknown, and therefore no one can tell what
modifications it may not be susceptible of:--no one, that is to say,
except the person who, like the magician of our illustration, professes to
possess, and (for aught I can affirm to the contrary) may actually possess
a knowledge unshared by the bulk of mankind. The transformation of an old
man into a little girl, on the other hand, would be a transaction
involving the immaterial soul as well as the material body; and if I do
not know that that cannot take place, I am forever incapable of knowing
anything. These are extreme examples, but they serve to emphasize an
important distinction.

The whole domain of magic, in short, occupies that anomalous neutral
ground that intervenes between the facts of our senses and the truths of
our intuitions. Fact and truth are not convertible terms; they abide in
two distinct planes, like thought and speech, or soul and body; one may
imply or involve the other, but can never demonstrate it. Experience and
intuition together comprehend the entire realm of actual and conceivable
knowledge. Whatever contradicts both experience and intuition may,
therefore, be pronounced illusion. But this neutral ground is the home of
phenomena which intuition does not deny, and which experience has not
confirmed. It is still a wide zone, though not so wide as it was a hundred
years ago, or fifty, or even ten. It narrows every day, as science, or the
classification of experience, expands. Are we, then, to look for a time
when the zone shall have dwindled to a mathematical line, and magic
confess itself to have been nothing but the science of an advanced school
of investigators? Will the human intellect acquire a power before which
all mysteries shall become transparent? Let us dwell upon this question a
little longer.

A mystery that is a mystery can never, humanly speaking, become anything
else. Instances of such mysteries can readily be adduced. The universe
itself is built upon them and is the greatest of them. They lie before the
threshold and at the basis of all existence. For example:--here is a lump
of compact, whitish, cheese-like substance, about as much as would go into
a thimble. From this I profess to be able to produce a gigantic, intricate
structure, sixty feet in height and diameter, hard, solid, and enduring,
which shall furthermore possess the power of extending and multiplying
itself until it covers the whole earth, and even all the earths in the
universe, if it could reach them. Is such a profession as this credible?
It is entirely credible, as soon as I paraphrase it by saying that I
propose to plant an acorn. And yet all magic has no mystery which is so
wonderful as this universal mystery of growth: and the only reason we are
not lost in amazement at it is that it goes quietly on all the time, and
perfects itself under uniform conditions. But let me eliminate from the
phenomenon the one element of time--which is logically the least essential
factor in the product, unreal and arbitrary, based on the revolution of
the earth, and conceivably variable to any extent--grant me this, and the
world would come to see me do the miracle. But, with time or without it,
the mystery is just as mysterious.

Natural mysteries, then,--the mysteries of life, death, creation, growth,
--do not fall under our present consideration: they are beyond the
legitimate domain of magic: and no intellectual development to which we
may hereafter attain will bring us a step nearer their solution. But with
the problems proper to magic, the case is different. Magic is
distinctively not Divine, but human: a finite conundrum, not an Infinite
enigma. If there has ever been a magician since the world began, then all
mankind may become magicians, if they will give the necessary time and
trouble. And yet, magic is not simply an advanced region of the path which
science is pursuing. Science is concerned with results,--with material
phenomena; whereas magic is, primarily, the study of causes, or of
spiritual phenomena; or, to use another definition,--of phenomena which
the senses perceive, not in themselves, but only in their results. So long
as we restrict ourselves to results, our activity is confined to analysis;
but when we begin to investigate causes, we are on the road not only to
comprehend results, but (within limits) to modify or produce them.

Science, however, blocks our advance in this direction by denying, or at
least refusing to admit, the existence of the spiritual world, or world of
causes: because, being spiritual, it is not sensible, or cognizable in
sense. Science admits only material causes, or the changes wrought in
matter by itself. If we ask what is the cause of a material cause, we are
answered that it is a supposed entity called Force, concerning which there
is nothing further to be known.

At this point, then, argument (on the material plane) comes to an end, and
speculation or assumption begins. Science answers its own questions, but
neither can nor will answer any others. And upon what pretence do we ask
any others? We ask them upon two grounds. The first is that some people,--
we might even say, most people,--would be glad to believe in supersensuous
existence, and are always on the alert to examine any plausible hypothesis
pointing in that direction: and secondly, there exists a vast amount of
testimony (we need not call it evidence) tending to show that the
supersensuous world has been discovered, and that it endows its
discoverers with sundry notable advantages. Of course, we are not obliged
to credit this testimony, unless we want to: and--for some reason, never
fully explained--a great many people who accept natural mysteries quite
amiably become indignant when requested to examine mysteries of a much
milder order. But it is not my intention to discuss the limits of the
probable; but to swallow as much as possible first, and endeavor to
account for it afterwards.

There is, as every reader knows, a class of phenomena--such as hypnotism,
trance, animal magnetism, and so forth--the occurrence of which science
has conceded, though failing as yet to offer any intelligent explanation
of them. It is suggested that they are peculiar states of the brain and
nerve-centres, physical in their nature and origin, though evading our
present physical tests. Be that as it may, they afford a capital
introduction to the study of magic; if, indeed, they, and a few allied
phenomena, do not comprise the germs of the whole matter. Apropos of this
subject, a society has lately been organized in London, with branches on
the Continent and in this country, composed of scientific men, Fellows of
the Royal Society, members of Parliament, professors, and literary men,
calling themselves the "Psychical Research Society," and making it their
business to test and investigate these very marvels, under the most
stringent scientific conditions. But the capacity to be deceived of the
bodily senses is almost unlimited; in fact, we know that they are
incapable of telling us the ultimate truth on any subject; and we are able
to get along with them only because we have found their misinformation to
be sufficiently uniform for most practical purposes. But once admit that
the origin of these phenomena is not on the physical plane, and then, if
we are to give any weight at all to them, it can be only from a spiritual
standpoint. In other words, unless we can approach such questions by an _a
priori_ route, we might as well let them alone. We can reason from spirit
to body--from mind to matter--but we can never reverse that process, and
from matter evolve mind. The reason is that matter is not found to contain
mind, but is only acted upon by it, as inferior by superior; and we cannot
get out of the bag more than has been put into it. The acorn (to use our
former figure) can never explain the oak; but the oak readily accounts for
the acorn. It may be doubted, therefore, whether the Psychical Research
Society can succeed in doing more than to give a respectable endorsement
to a perplexing possibility,--so long as they adhere to the inductive
method. Should they, however, abandon the inductive method for the
deductive, they will forfeit the allegiance of all consistently scientific
minds; and they may, perhaps, make some curious contributions to
philosophy. At present, they appear to be astride the fence between
philosophy and science, as if they hoped in some way to make the former
satisfy the latter's demands. But the difference between the evidence that
demonstrates a fact and the evidence that confirms a truth is, once more,
a difference less of degree than of kind. We can never obtain sensible
verification of a proposition that transcends sense. We must accept it
without material proof, or not at all. We may believe, for instance, that
Creation is the work of an intelligent Divine Being; or we may disbelieve
it; but we can never prove it. If we do believe it, innumerable
confirmations of it meet us at every turn: but no such confirmations, and
no multiplication of them, can persuade a disbeliever. For belief is ever
incommunicable from without; it can be generated only from within. The
term "belief" cannot be applied to our recognition of a physical fact: we
do not believe in that--we are only sensible of it.

In this connection, a few words will be in order concerning what is called
Spiritism,--a subject which has of late years been exciting a good deal of
remark. Its disciples claim for it the dignity of a new and positive
revelation,--a revelation to sense of spiritual being. Now, the entire
universe may be described as a revelation to sense of spiritual being--for
those who happen to believe _a priori_, or from spontaneous inward
conviction, in spiritual being. We may believe a man's body, for example,
to be the effect of which his soul is the cause; but no one can reach that
conviction by the most refined dissection of the bodily tissues. How,
then, does the spiritists' Positive Revelation help the matter? Their
answer is that the physical universe is a permanent and orderly phenomenon
which (setting aside the problem of its First Cause) fully accounts for
itself; whereas the phenomena of Spiritism, such as rapping, table-
tipping, materializing, and so forth, are, if not supernatural, at any
rate extra-natural. They occur in consequence of a conscious effort to
bring them about; they cease when that effort is discontinued; they abound
in indications of being produced by independent intelligencies; they are
inexplicable upon any recognized theory of physics; and, therefore, there
is nothing for it but to regard them as spiritual. And what then? Then, of
course, there must be spirits, and a life after the death of the body; and
the great question of Immortality is answered in the affirmative!

Let us, for the sake of argument, concede that the manifestations upon
which the Spiritists found their claims are genuine: that they are or can
be produced without fraud; and let us then enquire in what respect our
means for the conversion of the sceptic are improved. In the first place
we find that all the manifestations--be their cause what it may--can occur
only on the physical plane. However much the origin of the phenomena may
perplex us, the phenomena themselves must be purely material, in so far as
they are perceptible at all. "Raps" are audible according to the same laws
of vibration as other sounds: the tilting table is simply a material body
displaced by an adequate agency; the materialized hand or face is nothing
but physical substance assuming form. Plainly, therefore, we have as much
right to ascribe a spiritual source to such phenomena as we have to
ascribe a spiritual source to the ordinary phenomena of nature, such as a
tree or a man's body,--just as much right--and no more! Consequently, we
are no nearer converting our sceptic than we were at the outset. He admits
the physical manifestation: there is no intrinsic novelty about that: but
when we proceed to argue that the manifestations are wrought by spirits,
he points out to us that this is sheer assumption on our part. "I have not
seen a spirit," he says: "I have not heard one; I have not felt one; nor
is it possible that my bodily senses should perceive anything that is not
at least as physical as they are. I have witnessed certain transactions
effected by means unknown to me--possibly by the action of a natural law
not yet fully expounded by science. If there was anything spiritual in the
affair, it has not been manifest to my apprehension: and I must decline to
lend my countenance to any such pretensions."

That would be the reply of the sceptic who was equal to the emergency. But
let us suppose that he is not equal to it: that he is a weak-kneed,
impressionable person, with a tendency to jump at conclusions; and that he
is scared or mystified into believing that "spirits" may be at the bottom
of it. What, then, will be the character of the faith which the Positive
Revelation has furnished him? He has discovered that existence continues,
in some fashion, after the death of the body. He has learned that there
may be such a thing as--not immortality exactly, but--postmortem
consciousness. He has been saddled with the conviction that the other
world is full of restless ghosts, who come shuddering back from their cold
emptiness, and try to warm themselves in the borrowed flesh and blood, and
with the purblind selfishness and curiosity of us who still remain here.
"Have faith: be not impatient: the conditions are unfavorable: but we are
working for you!"--such is the constant burden of the communications. But,
if there be a God, why must our relations with him be complicated by the
interference of such forlorn prevaricators and amateur Paracletes as
these? we do not wish to be "worked for,"--to be carried heavenward on
some one else's shoulders: but to climb thither by God's help and our own
will, or to stay where we are. Moreover, by what touchstone shall we test
the veracity of the self-appointed purveyors of this Positive Revelation?
Are we to believe what they say, because they have lost their bodies? If
life teaches us anything, it is that God does above all things respect the
spiritual freedom of his creatures. He does not terrify and bully us into
acknowledging Him by ghostly juggleries in darkened rooms, and by vapid
exhibitions addressed to our outward senses. He approaches each man in the
innermost sacred audience-chamber of his heart, and there shows him good
and evil, truth and falsehood, and bids him choose. And that choice, if
made aright, becomes a genuine and undying belief, because it was made in
freedom, unbiassed by external threats and cajoleries.

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