Emerson’s Editor’s Address was published in the first issue of the Massachusetts Quarterly Review, December, 1847. Through the miracles of the Internet and Google’s Book Search, you can read the while magazine. Emerson, Theodore Parker and James Elliot Cabot were the editors of the quarterly which was, to an extent, the successor to The Dial. It was a literary, philosophical, and humanitarian journal whose pages hosted James Russell Lowell, Julia Ward Howe and Henry James (the elder) before its demise in 1850.
In Emerson’s inaugural address, he writes on themes that will be familiar to anyone who has been following along on this Emerson journey of mine. He begins by praising the ingenuity of Americans and the progress technology has brought–trains and telegraphs moving people and information faster than ever before. He marvels at the power such things bring to a country and its people. But of course we are waiting for the other shoe to drop, and, of course, it does:
The aspect this country presents is a certain maniacal activity, an immense apparatus of cunning machinery which turns out, at last, some Nuremberg toys. Has it generated, as great interests do, any intellectual power ? Where are the works of the imagination - the surest test of a national genius ? At least as far as the purpose and genius of America is yet reported in any book, it is a sterility and no genius.
But, on the one hand, as Emerson bemoans the lack of a “profound voice speaking to the American heart,” on the other hand he suggests that moral and material values are “always commensurate” and no one yet knows what new purpose Destiny has for those involved in “this sudden creation of enormous values.”
As Emerson moves from delighting in American prosperity to surveying the political scene, he flips again to complaining about a missing intellectual class. The sad and funny thing is, he sounds like he could be describing the current state of politics in America. The “intriguers” who only care about victory are in power and have “put the country into the position of an overgrown bully.” And in a time when the country needs leaders with the honor and strength to do the right thing, we have instead “a snivelling and despised opposition, clapped on the back by comfortable capitalists from all sections” whose governing philosophy is
Rely on us for commercial representatives, but for questions of ethics, - who knows what markets may be opened? We are not well, we are not in our seats, when justice and humanity are to be spoken for.
Eerily familiar.
Emerson soon moves to another favorite topic, religion. Emerson has mentioned many times about how his era is one that seems to be without a high degree of religion. In fact, many people appear to be searching for a religion. He didn’t see this as a bad thing since Emerson himself, though very religious, was not religious within the common framework of an institution. So it isn’t surprising that he doesn’t see searching as a sign of moral decline. On the contrary, he says,
that man need not fear the want of religion, because they know his religious constitution, - that he must rest on the moral and religious sentiments, as the motion of bodies rests on geometry. In the rapid decay of what was called religion, timid and unthinking people fancy a decay of the hope of man. But the moral and religious sentiments meet us everywhere, alike in markets as in churches. A God starts up behind cotton bales also. The conscience of man is regenerated as is the atmosphere, so that society cannot be debauched.
So, to sum up, in his first essay as editor of the new Massachusetts Quarterly Review, Emerson manages to set the tone of things to come by covering, in about 1,000 words, the state of American culture, politics, and religion. Lewis Lapham, eat your heart out.
On a side note, Emerson hasn’t been much in the way of tossing out words I have never seen before in the last dozen or so essays. He is back in form with this essay. I had to look up at least three words. My favorite: caoutchouc - unvulcanized natural rubber.
Next week’s Emerson: Woman
How interesting to discover through Emerson how little we have changed — in good and bad ways. Our culture has changed so much since Emerson’s time, and yet we are still dealing with the very things he describes here.
Oh that bit about politics was almost spooky, wasn’t it? Or can it be that politics has always been that flimsy and we just hope that previous generations had more spine and integrity? How interesting, too, to think that Emerson became an editor - in that respect I found his opening essay most intriguing as he seems never to have mentioned his hopes and preferences for art….? Or was art too mixed in with politics and philosophy for him to mark a distinction?
Dorothy, it is interesting isn’t it? I mean, we think with all our advancements is science and technology and changes in culture we must be really different from 1847. Turns out, we haven’t changed all that much.
Litlove, the bit about politics was spooky. I think we like to think that the past was somehow better (or worse and we have improved) but the sad thing is, I read stuff like this and we haven’t changed all that much. This is Emerson’s second stint as an editor, he was one of the founders of The Dial before this one. I get the impression that The Dial was more about art than the MA Quarterly. I haven’t gotten to his Dial writings yet but I will be!