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CHAPTER 5 THE CALL TO SERVE Re-centering America 1844–1871 “What is a man born for, but to be a Reformer; a Remaker of what man has made; a renouncer of lies; a restorer of truth and good.” —Emerson, “Man the Reformer” The publication of Essays, Second Series in October 1844 marked the end of the first stage of Emerson’s emergence as America’s poetic oracle, seer, and redeemer. One of the most significant essays in this collection is a work that reflects both the triumphs and the tragedies endured by him in this prolific period . Titled simply, but tellingly, “Experience,” it is a powerful, complex, and highly personal rumination on the vicissitudes and trials of life. It was stimulated, in part, by the tragic death of Emerson’s firstborn child just two years earlier. The essay reveals both the strengths and the limitations of his Transcendental philosophy as he had articulated it up to this point. The essay begins with the observation that we live in a world of illusions where “dream delivers us to dream.” In spite of this disconcerting lack of certainty in our lives, we must live in this world as well as we can. “We live amid surfaces,” observes Emerson, “and the true art of life is to skate well on them.” As a means towards this end, he offers the reassurance that amid this “flux of moods” and scenes, we are intuitively aware that “there is that in us which changes not.” This divine power within, described variously here as “Fortune, Minerva, Muse, Holy Ghost,” provides guidance and a sense of direction in a belittered world. It is this divine genius that makes possible our individuality, which rests on “the capital virtue of self-trust.”1 159 All of this is well and good and consonant with Emerson’s philosophy as previously articulated. But in this particular rendering of it, a dissonant note is sounded that does not appear in the earlier works of this period. The answer to life’s challenge as presented here does not fully satisfy . Merely skating gingerly on the surface of things is not, finally, an adequate answer to the complex question, “How shall I live in this world?” Something more is needed. Emerson himself seems to sense this deficiency. “I know better than to claim any completeness for my picture,” he says. “I am a fragment, and this is a fragment of me.” Indeed, there is an unusual tentativeness and uncertainty in this essay that undoubtedly derives from Emerson’s own growing discomfort with the general badness of the present time in America. Despite his own efforts to encourage reform, the nation was clearly becoming more corrupt by the day. Materialism was rampant. People in public office were subservient to the power of government rather than the masters of it, and slavery, America’s most egregious moral and social failing, was about to expand exponentially with the imminent annexation of Texas as a slave state. Meanwhile, the churches remained dumb as the corrupting influence of the slave power spread. It was now threatening to infect virtually every aspect of America’s social and political life. Clearly, something more than a call to self-culture was required if social justice was to become a reality. What that something would eventually be is hinted at obliquely at the conclusion of the essay. “Never mind the ridicule,” says Emerson, “never mind the defeat: up again old heart! . . . there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realize, will be the transformation of genius into practical power.”2 Bringing about this romantic transformation became the focus of Emerson’s life for virtually all of his remaining years. In the mid-twentieth century, the psychomythic humanists articulated a re-centered vision of humanity that emphasized the unifying potential of the collective unconscious in opposition to an excessive and debilitating emphasis on consciousness that then dominated Western culture . In the mid-nineteenth century, Emerson articulated a re-centered vision of humanity by emphasizing the unifying potential of the “OverSoul ,” which he also called “our common heart.” He hoped thereby to overcome a pervasive feeling of alienation and fragmentation that afflicted his society. His primary opposition resided in what he called simply , “the Establishment,” by which he meant a complex of conservative property interests and the cultural and political institutions that protected them.3 As noted earlier, Emerson saw such conservatism as one of the inherent...

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