Bronson Alcott

“ AN odd thought strikes me,” exclaimed Madame de Staël: "we shall receive no letters in the grave !" Nor,it is to be presumed, do they read books the grave. But if it were otherwise,if there were only some kind of celestial or infernal express by which one could communicate with the departed, it would be a great pleasure to transmit two neatly printed volumes ¹ to that quiet corner in what, we trust, is another and better world, where Mr. Alcott tries the patience of Plato, or buttonholes his especial favorite, Jamblichus. It was the ambition of Mr. Alcott’s life to be taken seriously, and his two biographers, both of whom were his disciples while he was on earth, have taken him very seriously and at considerable length. There is even a hint (it would be invidious to call it a threat) of a possible more to come, for in the preface it is said, “ There is ample material remaining the possession of tire editors of this book for a more detailed history of the Concord School of Philosophy and Mr. Alcott’s connection therewith.” “ But,” it is added, and wisely, “ these pages present all that now seems to be needed to portray our friend as he lived, — youth, in middle life, and in serene age.”

The editors do indeed present the raw material from which a correct view of Mr. Alcott is to be gathered, and their work is done with much literary skill and with a becoming modesty on their own part; but nevertheless it is not easy to discover what manner of man Mr. A1 cott was, nor to explain the glaring contradiction between Mr. Alcott as he appeared to the select few and Mr. Alcott as he appeared to the many, more especially as it is the latter appearance which seems to be confirmed by his published works. It is well known how highly Mr. Emerson valued him. Alcott might be described as the one, the single subject upon which Emerson permitted himself to be extravagant. Thus he wrote to Carlyle : “ Alcott gives me the same glad astonishment that he should exist which the world does.” And on other occasions he said or wrote of Mr. Alcott: The most extraordinary man and the highest genius of the time. He is a great man, — the god with the herdsmen of Admetus.” “His conversation is sublime. He is pure intellect.” Professor Harris speaks of Mr. Alcott as his “ spiritual father.” But neither in the Orphic Sayings, nor in the Tablets, nor elsewhere in what the sage left behind him, can this greatness of intellect be discovered. Moreover, we have a singular and weighty piece of testimony concerning the slightness of the contribution made by Mr. Alcott to the world of ideas. In the year 1858 he was at St. Louis, by invitation of Professor Harris, whom he then and there selected as his future biographer ; and with this end in view he dictated to Professor Harris, and afterward signed, the following document, called “ an inventory of his spiritual real estate.” meaning an inventory of his contributions to thought: —

“ (1.) Some thoughts on Swedenborg which Emerson has embodied in his Representative Men.

“ (2.) Some ideas on the spine, — about its being the type of all nature.

“(3.) The idea of the development of the Natural from the Absolute by means of persons.

“ (4.) The thought with reference to temptations in the Orphic Sayings. [No. 12. “ Greater is he who is above temptation than he who, being tempted, overcomes,” etc.]

“ (5.) The Pantheon of the Mind. [Spirit — God. Will — Laws. Love — Persons. Conscience — Right. Imagination — Ideas, etc.] ”

Even under Professor Harris’s own analysis this inventory shrinks into small space. As to No. 1, Professor Harris does not question Emerson’s originality, although, as he says, it may be that Mr. Alcott suggested something to Emerson in regard to that doctrine of correspondence between the physical and the moral world which Swedenborg invented, and which Emerson carried further. It is exemplified in this sentence, for instance : "Justice is the rhyme of things.” As to No. 2, Professor Harris says: “ With regard to the second head of the inventory. — the ideas about the spine as the type of all nature, — I think Mr. Alcott has not preserved in written form the insights which he had at the time of his illumination. As he intimated to me, that period was one of such long-continued exaltation that his bodily strength gave way under it, and his visions of truth came to have mingled with them spectres which he perceived to be due to physical exhaustion.”

But what nonsense is this ! “ The insights which he had at the time of his illumination ” ! Does Professor Harris believe that Mr. Alcott was inspired? The doctrine of the spine, Professor Harris concludes, “ was directly connected with his studies of Swedenborg; ” “ and we have his doctrines of Swedenborg and the archetypal spine only in their results, namely, in the third and fifth items of his inventory, — the idea of the development of the Natural from the Absolute by means of persons, and ‘ the Pantheon of the Mind,’ called elsewhere ‘ the hierarchy of gifts ’ (Tablets, 7, 79).”

This relegates into mist No. 5. As to items 3 and 4, Professor Harris well says : “ The third item in his inventory is the genesis of Nature through the lapse of personal being from holiness. The fourth item, concerning temptation, likewise is a sort of corollary to the doctrine of lapse. Any one who can be tempted is already fallen, for he must possess lusts of the flesh ; if unfallen, or if ascended above evil desires (as the Christian doctrine of regeneration teaches), he is above temptation.”

And now we are upon solid ground, for here we touch upon two real ideas, — the only ideas which Mr. Alcott ever had. It is barely possible that he thought them out for himself, but it is certain that other men, Plato and Joseph Glanvill in especial, gave them to the world considerably in advance of Mr. Alcott. But at all events Mr. Alcott got hold of them early in life ; he clung to them through thick and thin ; he fashioned his conduct upon them, and went to his grave believing them as firmly as ever. These ideas were, first, the Platonic notion that knowledge is mainly reminiscence; and secondly, the related idea (of “lapse ”), expressed in Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality, that man is a being who existed in some anterior state of perfection. Hence Mr. Alcott s really original notions about the treatment and instruction of children. He dealt with them as if they were reasonable creatures, lately fallen from a higher state of existence, with the dew of innocence still moistening their brows. And so he made his schoolroom attractive, ornamented it with pictures and busts, punished himself instead of the scholars if they were naughty, and drew out the children’s minds by skillful questioning, after the manner of Socrates. In this system everything was new, and very much was valuable; but, unfortunately, that touch of the unpractical and the absurd which followed Mr. Alcott through life, and vitiated his mental operations, always, sooner or later, turned his schooling into a farce, alienated the parents of his pupils, and finally set the poor man adrift again upon a sea of pecuniary troubles.

Margaret Fuller very soon discovered the paucity — we do not say the poverty —of Mr. Alcott’s ideas. She is the “wise woman ” whom Mr. Emerson quotes in his diary as saying that Mr. Alcott “ has few thoughts, too few ; she could count them all.” “Well,” Mr. Emerson adds, “books, conversation, discipline, will give him more.” For theology, in the ordinary sense of the word, Mr. Alcott eared little. He was brought up an Episcopalian, but he soon renounced the Episcopal creed, and he seems to have been, as Mr. Sanborn says, one of the first Unitarians, or Theists, in New England. Toward the end of his life, we believe, though Mr. Sanborn nowhere states the fact, he returned to the creed of his fathers. But, whatever his mutations as regards Christianity. Mr. Alcott did have a wonderful, childlike faith in the omnipotence and omnipresence of good, in “a stream of tendency not ourselves, that makes for righteousness.” To him it was never doubtful whether a good or a bad spirit rules this world. It would seem, then, that Mr. Alcott’s attraction for Emerson depended upon his absolute, unsuspecting, every-day adherence to a few great ideas as to the history and nature of man and the government of the universe, “ Alcott,” Emerson wrote in his diary, “ has the great merit of being a believer in the soul. I think he has more faith in the ideal than any man I have known.’ After all, it is not so easy as we sometimes think to believe in the soul, or even in any abstract idea, with the same absoluteness and simplicity with which we believe that the sun is warm or that food is good, and with the same readiness to act upon our belief. Perhaps Emerson’s faith was as strong as Alcott’s, but it was cold and intellectual, whereas Alcott had a fervor in his belief at which Emerson warmed himself as a halffrozen man might warm himself at a fire.

There seems to have been another reason, also, why Emerson was attracted to Mr. Alcott. Mr. Alcott served him as a kind of intellectual dummy, whom he could interrogate with almost the same certainty that he could interrogate himself, so well had Mr. Alcott absorbed his ideas. Thus Emerson writes in his journal: “ In the Alcott fluid men of certain nature can expand and swim at large, such as elsewhere find themselves confined. Of course Alcott seems to such the only great and wise man. He gives them nothing but themselves. But when they meet critics and practical men, and are asked concerning his wisdom, they have no books to show, no dogmas to impart, no sentences or sayings to repeat, and they find it quite impossible to communicate to these their good opinion. Me he has served now these twelve years that way. He was the reasonable creature to speak to that I wanted.”

There is a little of the Emersonian coldness about this, and it recalls a remark of Mr. Henry James (the senior) to the effect that Mr. Emerson treated his friends like lemons, — he sucked them dry of what information they had, and then put them aside. But Emerson was very loyal and very generous to Mr. Alcott, giving him not only sympathy and moral support, but also money and material comforts. It is obvious, too, that Emerson’s good nature led him to exaggerate Mr. Alcott’s capacities as he did those of other men. Of a certain Heraud, for instance, an Englishman, Mr. Sanborn says that “ Emerson, and especially Alcott, had a regard for him, and did not call him a ‘ cockney windbag, as Carlyle did. But it appears from the evidence that Heraud really -was a “ cockney windbag ; ” and therefore Carlyle was right in stating that fact for the benefit of unsophisticated persons like Mr. Alcott. There is no credit in having a regard for those who do not deserve it; on the contrary, such over “good nature ” leads to a lowering of ideals, to a permanent confusion between what is first rate and what is second or third rate. It is clear, as we have intimated, that Emerson wronged Mr. Alcott by his exaggeration of the latter’s capacity. Indeed, when Mr. Alcott’s “ Orphic utterances ” came to he read over in cold manuscript or in colder print, even Emerson failed to find in them wliat he thought was there. He explained the discrepancy by saying that the sage could not write so well as he talked; and Mr. Alcott himself, adopting this theory, used to declare, “ We are not happy with the pen.” But Professor Harris says : “ Although Mr. Emerson could not admit that the writings of Alcott were equal to his conversation, I have the impression that the words actually uttered in speech are the same that are found in his writings (Orphic Sayings and Tablets). The impassioned manner, the high disdain,the air of divine sorrow and reproof, the fiery flashing of the eye, the earnestness of the seer, — all these effected what types and ink cannot convey again. And Emerson himself said :

“ He has more of the godlike than any man I have ever seen, and his presence rebukes and threatens and raises.” Moreover, there is abundant proof that on subjects which he understood Mr. Alcott could write extremely well. What could he better than this passage in his diary for the year 1837, concerning Emerson and his lectures, then first given in Boston ? “ Emerson’s influence will not soon be felt on the age. Its diffusion will he subtle and slow. It will act on the few simple natures which custom and convention have spared us, and these will circulate it m fit time. Many will he pleased by his elegances of manner and giace of diction, and through these will he led to the contemplation of the divine form of beauty that he delights in. Curiosity will be excited to learn the secret of his agency ; and ere the superficial and pedantic are aware, he will steal upon them unperceived.”

It must be remembered that when this was written Emerson had no following. Mr. Alcott sagaciously predicts both his future fame and the way in which it would be acquired, and the manner in which Mr. Alcott does this is not devoid of literary art.

It appears, then, that Mr. Alcott could write with admirable conciseness and clearness. But when, as usually happened, he got upon “ orphic ” subjects, he wrote very ill, — and for the same reason that the Harvard Freshmen, whose translations were held up to universal execration a few months ago, wrote ill. Their English was had, because, being ignorant of their Greek and Latin, they had no clear, definite ideas to express; and Mr. Alcott experienced a similar difficulty. The truth is that Mr. Alcott spent his life groping in regions where it was impossible for him — where perhaps it would he impossible for any man to arrive at results. He sought the unknowable, the one, the origin of all things. I or such a task he was poorly qualified ; his mind was untrained. He had never learned to discriminate ; he mistook vague reverie for thought; he had no sense of proportion ; his reading was desultory, and confined to a few subjects. It is almost a wonder that Mr. Alcott, being deeply conscientious, and taking the world and himself so seriously, did not go mad. A sense of humor, it is frequently said, will save a man from madness, and so, very often, will a knowledge of “ the best that has ever been said and done,” for such knowledge tends to keep the judgment within bounds. But Mr. Alcott had neither sense of humor nor wide knowledge ; and, naturally, he fell into absurdities which during the Fruitlands episode, at least, were near akin to madness. The late Mr. Robert Carter wrote —with some exaggeration, Mr. Sanborn says — of that experiment as follows : —

“No animal substance — neither flesh, fish, butter, cheese, eggs, nor milk — was allowed to be used at Fruitlands. They were all denounced as pollution, and as tending to corrupt the body, and through that the soul. Tea and coffee, molasses and rice, were also proscribed, — the last two as foreign luxuries, — and only water was used as a beverage. Mr. Alcott would not allow the land to be manured, which he regarded as a base and corrupting and unjust mode of forcing Nature. He made also a distinction between vegetables which aspired or grew into the air, as wheat, apples and other fruits, and the base products which grew downwards into the earth, such as potatoes, beets, radishes, and the like. These latter he would not allow to be used. The bread of the community he himself made of unbolted flour, and sought to render it palatable by forming the loaves into the shape of animals and other pleasant images.”

Was there, then, no element of greatness in the man ? Were they right who in his lifetime derided him as a “ crank “ ? Was there no such Alcott as Emerson imagined ? To believe that would be to make a worse mistake than is made by putting him upon the false pedestal which Messrs. Sanborn and Harris have constructed. Mr. Alcott’s character was in some important respects so good as to make him great. None but a pure and single-minded man could have loved truth so passionately and pursued it so unceasingly as Mr. Alcott did. He had, in fact, the same passion for truth and high knowledge that some men have for wine, some for women, and some for horses. It puts a stamp on a man to be a pawnbroker all his life ; to spend all one’s energies in low dissipation imposes another indelible brand ; and can it be thought that a man may devote his waking hours to a search after truth, moral and intellectual, without some reflex action upon his own character ?

Moreover, nature as well as habit gave Mr. Alcott certain great qualities. He possessed the three cardinal virtues of courage, sincerity, and charity. In his early days, when traveling as a peddler in Virginia, he used to astonish the planters by passing, fearless and unharmed, through the ring of fierce mastiffs which guarded their gates. Colonel Higginson tells a very interesting story, too long to be quoted here, of the courageous part that Mr. Alcott played in the unsuccessful attempt to rescue the fugitive slave Burns. Those who knew Mr. Alcott at Concord testify that he had in the highest degree both moral and physical courage : and this, indeed, is evident from the whole course of his life.

None but a brave and sincere man could have impressed others as Mr. Alcott impressed them ; only of such a man could it be said that “ his presence, rebukes and threatens and raises.” Only a brave and sincere man, again, could have stuck to his principles so absolutely as Mr. Alcott did. Whenever, in the course of his checkered life, a question arose between duty, as he conceived it, and self-interest, he did not hesitate about the decision. Thus, for example, he gave the finishing blow to his Boston school by admitting to it a negro scholar, well knowing what would he the result. Once, when a stranger suddenly appeared at his house begging the loan of five dollars, Mr. Alcott lent him ten, not having the smaller bill in his pocket. He did not even take the man’s name, but trusted him utterly, — that being the way, according to his theory, in which one human being ought to treat another human being. It turned out that the stranger was a swindler, a noted "confidence man; ” but in his case (to the honor of all thieves be it said) the theory worked. Touched by Mr. Alcott’s confiding generosity, he came back six months afterward, returned the money, and offered to pay interest. This was no isolated incident in Mr. Alcott’s life. It could be said of him, as of few others, I was hungry, and ye fed me ; naked, and ye clothed me ; sick and in prison, and ye came unto me.

It is true that Mr. Alcott was rather lax in his notions about money, and his family suffered from his improvidence.² Emerson aptly termed him “ a haughty beneficiary.” He was vain, but in a simple, childlike way; and perhaps we shall have to admit that he was lazy. This completes the catalogue of faults visible in one whose whole life is open to our inspection. There is a memorable sentence of Louisa Alcott’s which describes her father as he appeared when she met him at the cars, after a long and fruitless journey in the West: “ His dress was neat and poor. He looked cold and thin as an icicle, but serene as God.” Coming from the lips of an indifferent person, this would have seemed almost blasphemous ; but the words were spoken by his daughter, whose heart was wrung because her father was poor and worn and thin, yet who felt a daughter’s pride in the fact that fate could not quell his courage nor disturb his serenity.

Many and many a clever, well - fed man, the finished product of school and university, could riddle Mr. Alcott’s psychology ; could give him “ points,” as the vulgar phrase is, on Plato and Plotinus, and even on his favorite Jamblichus ; could lay down a philosophy more rational and coherent than that of which Mr. Alcott was master. But how many of these clever, successful men could have endured with cheerful serenity what Mr. Alcott endured ; could have retained inviolate their faith in God and man despite personal failure and humiliation ?

“ That is failure,” he nobly declared, in a passage of his diary written after some new defeat. — “ that is failure when a man’s idea ruins him, when he is dwarfed and killed by it; hut when he is ever growing by it, ever true to it, and does not lose it by any partial or immediate failures, that is success, whatever it seems to the world.”

Perhaps the crowning humiliation of Mr. Alcott’s life occurred when, after his return from the disastrous experiment at Fruitlands, broken in purse and almost broken in spirit, he applied for the humble post of district school teacher in a corner of Concord, and the application was rejected. But even this rebuff, administered by his townspeople and neighbors, did not embitter bis spirit. “ Blessed be poverty,” he wrote, when at this very time Mr. Emerson saved his family and him from starvation,— “ blessed be poverty, if it. makes me rich in gratitude and thankfulness and a temper that rails at none ! ”

After all, if the true object of philosophy be to possess the philosophic spirit, then indeed we can assert that Bronson Alcott was a great philosopher. He practiced what he preached. Socrates himself did not bear the stings of life with more serenity or good humor. And Mr. Alcott gave sufficient proof that, had destiny required it of him. he would have drunk the fatal hemlock as calmly as Socrates did ; not indeed with a jest upon his lips, for Mr. Alcott made no jokes, but with an equal spirit of forgiveness and good will toward those who had persecuted him. It is on this ground that his reputation must rest. He was not, as Mr. Sanborn seems to think, a second Plato ; nor need we fondly linger with Professor Harris upon “ the insights which he had at the time of his illumination.”Mr. Alcott’s true epitaph and epitome will be found in those burning words of his famous daughter : "His dress was neat and poor. He looked cold and thin as an icicle, but serene as God. ”