No wonder the people at Harvard got mad with Emerson. A lot of what Emerson said was sort of confusing to me, but I can summarize what I interpreted from his words with this:
Nature is the definition of perfection. We humans are nothing compared to what it is. The things we humans hold dear to our hearts - things like Virtue, Morality, and Law (Emerson capitalized all of these words, so I assumed he was talking about them as symbols of God) are dumb because only nature can actually comply to all of them. Our souls as pure beings can comply to them as well, but since we are not pure beings, we might as well give it up. Man is constantly making mistakes because he is no longer connected with nature. The ideas that the Prophets are based upon - things like miracles and prophecy - are flawed because they are retrospective. Christianity has lost its "godliness" because it is now flawed by a human presence. When Jesus was in charge, Christianity was the saving grace of the world, since Jesus was essentially nature in human form. But when Jesus was killed at the cross, the human system ruined the faith. Preachers will never be able to do anything right because they aren't Jesus, but if they can become Jesus then the faith will come back. You can achieve this by being as humanly human as you can be, but quite frankly that's impossible because only nature and pure souls make us human, which we sorely lack.
Yeah, if I were sitting at that speech I would have been fuming. I would have been wondering who this guy thought he was telling me that I couldn't preach because I had no connection to God and it was because of preachers and ministers like myself who made Christianity this flawed and hated. I would have been so angry. As a non-religious person I can see where Emerson is coming from...somewhat. I mean, obviously Christianity was the best when the guy who created it was around. The problem with human prophets and what not is that we aren't immortal, so that means we can't keep the same system for all of eternity. It has to change with the change of people, with the change of time. It cannot remain constant. So of course its not as good as it was when it first started. Kind of like when one person makes the best pancakes ever and passes the recipe on; the pancakes are going to taste different by the second person. But did he have to say it so bluntly to a bunch of soon-to-be preachers who probably wanted to hear things about the amazing responsibility they were about to undertake and how their influence would make the system that much better?
Come on, Emerson. It was their graduation, not a funeral for the souls of mankind. Cut them some slack.
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Hannah,
ReplyDeleteYou seem very much on the right track here, though you're still circling around the heart of the matter here. Is it really that Emerson decries such traditionally lauded values as Virtue, Morality and Law? Are humans (in his view) really fundamentally flawed (or is it 'organized' religion'--which he refers to as a 'cult')? I think you're on more solid ground when you speak of Emerson's views on Christ and other prophets. Here, you may be getting closer to the heart of the argument that Emerson was making (i.e. that Christ alone, in all of history, showed us the true potential that resides in ALL men--but then, by deifying him, we essentially lost out perfect model of the perfect man). But we'll be talking about all this at greater length in class, and my hope is that our discussion will help dispel some of the confusion you're feeling right now.
Again, a good post!