James Clarke said that if in our time every public speaker must bend to his audience to a degree, it was still more necessary in Greece.
We were told to consider Minerva for the next conversation, and to write down our thoughts about her. For my part I don’t like using Latin names for Greek deities. It greatly confuses my ideas. Jupiter and Zeus seem very different to me.
In regard to the story that Apollo never saw a shadow, Caroline Sturgis asked how Apollo could destroy an alien nature if he never met it.
There was quite an unsatisfactory talk about this, which would have ended had anybody remembered how the sun solves the enigma every day. The sun never sees the shadow it destroys. When its rays fall, light is. It annihilates the alien by merely being. So Truth annihilates Falsehood, yet cannot meet it. The two are never in one presence.
CAROLINE WELLS HEALEY.
March 20, 1841.
IV.
March 26, 1841.
Margaret opened our talk by saying that the subject of Wisdom presented more conversable points than that of Genius. We could all think and talk about Wisdom, and any man who had ever scratched his finger was to a degree wise.
Minerva was the child of Counsel and Intelligent Will. She had no infancy, but sprang full-armed into being. Ready, agile, she was in herself the history of thought. She did not need that her life should be one of incident. Her attendant emblems are expressive: the Sphinx, the owl, the serpent, the cock, and the javelin suggest her whole story.
William White asked why Genius was masculine and Wisdom feminine.
Margaret thought no one could find any difficulty in the fact that Genius was masculine. It presented itself to the mind in the full glow of power. The very outlines of the feminine form were yielding, and we could not associate them with a prominent, self-conscious state of the faculties. Wisdom was like woman, always ready for the fight if necessary, yet never going to it; taking reality as a basis, and classifying and arranging upon it all that Genius creates,—seeing the relations and proper values of things.
George Ripley objected to this definition. He might have imbibed a Hebrew idea, but the office of Wisdom was surely something more than this,—a purely mechanical and orderly tact.
Margaret said she had not meant to give our view of it, only the Greek idea as manifest in the story of Minerva. To William White she said, smiling, that she supposed he had not wondered so much that Genius should be masculine as that Wisdom should be feminine! But the Greeks were wise, and she revered their keen perception.
Elisabeth Hoar said it seemed to her that Wisdom provided means. A hero might be inspired by Genius, but Wisdom provided his armor, taught him to distinguish the goal, and to perceive clearly the relation to it of any onward step.
Margaret agreed to this, and
William Story said that Genius was indebted to Wisdom for means of communication. Genius thinks words impertinent, but Wisdom apprehends its intuitions, and gives them shape.
Margaret said further, that Wisdom must adopt instinctively the finest medium.
It seemed to me that Wisdom not only gave power of communication, but power of attainment. Walter Scott was a good instance of the union of intuitive perception and human sagacity, but all these words about it cleared up nothing.
Margaret then proposed that we should take up the attributes of Minerva, and so get at the facts.
Mr. Ripley did not think it noble enough when she based Wisdom upon realities.
William Story said Wisdom must have something to work upon. He thought Wisdom compared the intuitions of Genius with realities.
Charles Wheeler thought the word actual would help them out of their difficulty.
I wanted to quote Emerson to the effect that the Ideal is more Real than the Actual.
Margaret agreed with Mr. Wheeler, and said that by reality she understood anything incarnated,—whatever was tangible. She then went on to speak of the Sphinx. What was it?
Elisabeth Hoar seemed surprised at the question. Was it not one thing to everybody?
Margaret called for her idea, but she would not give it.
Margaret said that to herself it represented the development of a thought, founding itself upon the animal, until it grew upward into calm, placid power. She revered these good ancients, who did not throw away any of the gifts of God; who were neither materialists nor immaterialists, but who made matter always subservient to the highest ends of the Spirit.
William White asked if the festivals of the Gods, the highest source of their influence over the people, did not show how little they had penetrated to the spirit of things?
Margaret thought ambrosia and nectar were proper emblems of Divine Joy. They were not to be taken literally.
“But,” persisted White, “the great body of the people thought them so.”
William Story said, with happy grace, that the great body of the people might be excused for such a thought.
Margaret enjoyed the pun, and said that the great Greek body was sensuous and ate, but that the Greek soul knew better than to suspect the Gods of opening their mouths.
E. P. P. waked up at this moment, and asked what Margaret would say to Berkeley’s theory.
Margaret said she did not know what it was!
E. P. P. said, the evolution of all things from the soul, the non-existence of matter.
James P. Clarke thought it very difficult to decide how far spirit and matter were one. A man’s identity was not in the particles which came and went every seven years, but in the spirit. Yet these particles constituted the wall of separation between himself and others. His identity was in his spirit.
George Ripley begged leave to disagree. He thought we knew as much about matter as about spirit, and that Berkeley’s theory was as good as any.
Margaret said that if God created matter, of course it was evolved from spirit; that matter could not be antagonistic to that from which it was evolved. To express a complete idea, we had only to say, “Jehovah, I am.”
“Or,” Charles Wheeler added, “to be silent.”
“Yes,” said Margaret, “and in that lies the merit of Mythology. Every faculty was, according to that, an incomplete statement. Therefore Mr. Ripley did wrong to confound Minerva with the Logos.”
E. P. P. did not see that Berkeley’s statement was answered.
William Story came in with another pun. “If Berkeley thought so, it was no matter!”
Some stupid person spoiled the wit by trying to explain it, and the question remained to us just as much matter as ever.
They talked about the Sphinx again, yet said little. It holds more meaning in its passive womb than talk will ever play the midwife to. It was the child of the Destructive Element and Feeling,—Typhon and Echidna,—the human heart experienced in misfortune touched by death. Thought rooted in the actual and developed by tenderness was rooted in this figure.
“Everybody knows that Wisdom stings,” said Margaret, and so we went on to the serpent.
Somebody spoke of the Greek Tartarus.
Ida Russell thought its torment was not acute, but consisted of the deprivation of comforts.
The wandering idleness of it would be intolerable to an active Greek, Elisabeth Hoar thought, but more endurable than any device of a priesthood. As for our serpent, no one seemed to know much about it.
Margaret said that we owed it so much, that she felt in duty bound to know something of it.
James F. Clarke said that the Christian serpent was quite another thing.
Everybody laughed at the idea of a Christian serpent.
William White professed great admiration for the reptile. We should have had no Christianity but for its beguiling.
Margaret agreed!—and said she supposed everybody felt that.
Mrs. Russell thought the casting of the skin very expressive.
James F. Clarke gave Coleridge’s exposition, to the effect that the serpent was the common understanding! It would touch and handle all things, and even sought to be as the Gods, knowing good from evil. Its undulating motion—its belly now on the ground, now off—expressed both the aspiration and the subserviency of the creature.
Margaret asked if serpents ever swallowed their own tails?
Charles Wheeler said that must be an arbitrary form.
Margaret replied, that she had been struck by the difference between the Mexican and the Greek serpent. The Mexican was folded back upon itself.
Not always, I said. Its tail is sometimes in its mouth, and the variations seem to be occasioned by the architectural necessity.
James F. Clarke spoke of a Virginia snake that moves in a circle, and asked if when Mr. Emerson talked about “coming full circle” he was not thinking of that?
Margaret laughed, and declared that serpent must be of Yankee invention. Æsculapius bore two on his staff, Mercury two on his divining-rod, and the cock was also sacred to Æsculapius.
I asked if this did not indicate a certain subjection of these Gods to Wisdom?
Some questions written on paper were here read. One asked why Minerva was born of the stroke of Vulcan, and why she was the patroness of weavers, and what that had to do with the story of Arachne.
Margaret replied with ill temper to the first, that it was because Vulcan held the hammer,—to the second, that she did not know.
But was there really so little meaning in the fact that Mechanic Art so ministered to Intelligent Will that she could afford to miss the point?
She said we could see that Minerva was told to marry Vulcan, but declined; would have nothing to do with the sooty cripple.
Sophia Ripley said, aptly enough, that Minerva had been changing her mind ever since!
Ida Russell thought that when Mechanic Art was married to Beauty, it might charm even Wisdom.
George Ripley said she might well have despised the brute force, but as it grew into something more noble, have learned to love it. Dr. Dana[2] was the servant of the Lowell corporation. In these days no corporation could exist without its man of science. His salary was a mere pittance, and when he made a discovery with which all Europe rang, he asked for a part of the profits. “We will consider,” said the soulless corporation, and they decided that they had a legitimate right to all that could be made out of their servant!
“Thus,” I said, “Wisdom sows for the Mechanic Art to reap?”
“Exactly so,” was the reply; “and this contains the essence of the Yankee philosophy.”
The life of Wisdom was one long struggle for something beyond a merely serviceable knowledge. Bending alike to art and artisan, she still refused to love the latter till he had wooed Beauty to their common service. But Wisdom has of late married Vulcan. He no longer limps, and has washed his face in the springs of love and thought, and sits in holiday robes beside his bride.
Somebody said that the story of Arachne was an instance of the Goddess’s vindictiveness.
Margaret hoped that the vindictiveness was a popular interpolation. If so, the story of Marsyas shows that she was malicious. She brought his misfortunes upon him. If her own voice was discordant, there was no reason why his voice should please!
“Divinities have a right to be indignant,” said somebody. Did Margaret blush?
In speaking of the artistic representations of Minerva, Margaret said some beautiful things. Minerva was as tall and large as she could be, without being masculine. Her face was thoughtful and serene, without being sweet. Her eye was so full and clear that it had no need to be deep.
The talk was closed by Margaret’s reading the Essay that E. P. P. had sent in, and the criticisms upon it.
E. P. P. began by speaking of the conservatism which disinclined Jupiter to the birth of Minerva.
“Yes,” Margaret said, “the good was always opposed to the better.”
E. P. P. then spoke of the Parthenon, upon which, according to the Homeric Hymn, the story of Minerva’s birth was sculptured.
Margaret said it had been difficult to believe that the Greeks would put so ugly a thing upon their temple, but the ruins showed a Vulcan with his hammer in his hand, and the form of the Goddess hovering over the cloven skull.
Why, asked E. P. P., did Ulysses represent Wisdom in the Odyssey?
Margaret thought he represented the history of a thought in life, when he tired us all out with his long story, and so pushed us to decision.
E. P. P. alluded to the different conceptions of Minerva in the Iliad and the Odyssey, and this led to the question of priority of composition.
Margaret thought the Odyssey was written when Homer was young and romantic; but E. P. P. and myself stood out stoutly for the precedence of the Iliad. I said, without the least bit of real knowledge, that I should not wonder if there were two centuries between the poems, they seemed to indicate such entirely different states of society; but certainly the Odyssey was latest.
Charles Wheeler said that the best scholars seemed all of one mind. The Iliad was written first by Homer,—the Odyssey long after by another hand.
E. P. P. said that there was a gem which represented Minerva as married to a mortal, but she could tell nothing more about it.
Jones Very said that when Wisdom falls into decay we call it Genius!
Does that mean that prophetic power fallen back from the moral nature to the intellect is dwarfed accordingly?
CAROLINE W. HEALEY.
March 27, 1841.
V.
April 2, 1841.
The story of Venus and Cupid and Psyche was discussed.
Margaret said that of Venus she had less to say than of either of the preceding Deities! She was not the expression of a thought, but of a fact. She was the Greek idea of a lovely woman,—the best physical development of woman. When we have said, “It is,” we have said all. The birth of Beauty was the only ideal thing about her. She sprang from the wave, from the flux and reflux of things, from the undulating line. On this Venus, transitoriness had set its seal. As we look at her, we feel that she must change. Her loveliness is too fair to last. Her beauty would pass next moment. She could not live a year, we think, without losing something of her full grace. It was peculiarly Greek to create a beautiful symbol, and to pause in the symbol. The Greeks were very apt to do this. They did it effectually in the Goddess of Love. She was sportive in all her amours. They had no idea of an Everlasting Love. They enjoyed themselves too much to abstract themselves. Venus seemed to Margaret a merely human creature. She was not the type of Universal Beauty: the Greek eye was closed to that. Still, their own embodiment did not satisfy their own need. They filled out their ideal with Venus Urania, Hebe, and all the attendant Hours and Graces, yet were not satisfied. Then came the fable of Psyche and her three Cupids. Venus was only a pretty girl! Her cestus, her doves, her pets, her jealousies, all betray it. The Venus Urania was more. She was the child of Celestial Light. Hebe was born of immortal bloom. To fill out the gaps in their conception, Eros, or Love in Sadness, Cupid a frolicsome boy, and the more noble, more creative Love which brooded over Chaos were evolved from their consciousness. Psyche, who did not appear until the age of Augustus, who was too modern to be mythological, yet glowing with mythic beauty, was only another evidence of their imperfect idea. Her story expresses more than that of Venus. It tells not only the story of human love, but represents the pilgrimage of a soul. The jealousy of Venus was that which the good must always feel toward the better which is to supersede it, and as soon as Psyche looked upon her sleeping lover she became immortal. The soul in the fulness of Love became conscious of Destiny.
James Clarke asked what was the difference between the girl-mother—the Madonna—and the Greek Venus.
Margaret replied, with more patience than I was capable of, that the Madonna represented more than passing womanly beauty. She was prophetic, and lived again in her child.
Then, persisted James F., why was Vulcan the husband of Beauty, to which Margaret gave no satisfactory answer. He then gave his own thought, to which I can do no justice, although it was what I tried in vain to say at the last conversation. It amounted to this,—that in seeking for beauty we lose it, but in aiming at utility through hard labor we find perfect proportion—and consequently perfect beauty. He said that he and his sister Sarah had often spoken to each other about this, and he felt that the time would come when essays would be written about our ships, as we now write essays about the Pyramids and the Greek Art. Posterity might find the proof of our search after beauty in the graceful prow and swelling hold and tall, tapering mast or shrouds of shredded jet; in the bellying canvas and the patron saint which watches the wake from the stern. But we know that the ship, the most beautiful object in our modern world, was the product of labor, gradually evoked, according to the law of fitness, compass, and general proportion. To bring its form into a natural relation to wind and wave, was to find perfect harmony and beauty. At first the prow was too sharp, and the water had rushed over it; the hold was too shallow, and she sat ungracefully where she now rides as mistress.
Emerson quoted some German author to the same effect.
Mr. Clarke said there was something in one of R. W. E.’s own Essays which expressed the same thing.
Emerson laughed and said, “Very important authority,” and would have changed the subject, when—
William White said that it did not tally well with James Clarke’s theory that the ugly steamer had succeeded the beautiful clipper.
Mr. Clarke said the theory failed only because there was no noble end in view. The steamer was not intended to be in harmony with Nature.
Emerson asked if the Greeks had no symbol for natural beauty. Several were suggested that he would not accept, but he finally took Diana on Charles Wheeler’s suggestion.
Wheeler then spoke of the birth of Venus. He said many writers thought the story as late as that of Psyche, and the line of Hesiod relating to it an interpolation.
Margaret thought she should have suspected this if she had never heard it. The thought it expressed was too comprehensive to be in keeping with the remainder of her story.
Charles Wheeler would not accept the criticism, but went on to talk about the marriage of Venus with Mars, which had amazed Olympus.
Margaret said the Olympian Deities were like modern men, who talk to women forever about their softness and delicacy, until women imagine that the only good thing in man is a strong arm. The girl elopes with a red coat, and the indignant lords of creation wonder why she did not appreciate their modest merit and unobtrusive virtues. Poor Beauty weeps out the crimson stain upon her escutcheon in a long age of suffering.
A laugh followed this bright sally, and then somebody said that Venus once married Mercury.
Margaret declared that must be an interpolation, for there were no points of sympathy between the Goddess of beauty and the God of craft.
James Clarke did not know about that; he thought that the finish and completeness of the late robbery of Davis, Palmer, & Co. constituted a kind of beauty!
Margaret said that affair was altogether grand; she had never heard of anything so Greek as Williamson’s exclaiming, “Gentlemen! you will not deprive me of the implements of my trade?” She could not help respecting his impudence! The Greeks ought to be respected for developing every human faculty into deity. She thought lying, stealing, and so forth only excesses of a good faculty; and so did the Greeks, for in their mistaken way they had deified Mercury. The Spartans taught their children to steal, and the Greeks universally acknowledged that to cheat was honorable if it could be concealed.
I remembered the passage in the “Republic” where Polemarchus confesses that he had learned from Homer to admire Autolycus, grand sire of Ulysses, distinguished above all men for his thefts and oaths! Thrasymachus said that the unjust were both prudent and good, if they were able to commit injustice to perfection! Is the immortality of Autolycus the destiny of Williamson?
Wheeler said there certainly was a well authenticated marriage between Venus and Mercury.
I could not help thinking it might be an astral connection that was indicated. On that remarkable day of his birth, Mercury was not content with stealing the divining-rod from Apollo; he took also the cestus from Venus, the voice from Neptune, the sword from Mars, the will from Zeus, and his tools from Vulcan! Sagacity compassed all the deeps of divinity to reach its end.
Ida Russell asked if Venus and Astarte were not the same.
Margaret said Astarte belonged to the stars.
Did not Venus, I wonder? But of course they are creations far asunder as the poles.
Charles Wheeler thought Astarte and Venus Urania were the same.
Ida said that could not be. The first statues of Astarte were rough blocks of wood, with veiled heads.
So, I said, were all first statues of Deities; so that was no argument.
When James Clarke asked Margaret to compare Venus with the Madonna, a curious talk arose between Alcott, Margaret, Charles Wheeler, and Emerson.
Alcott wanted to know why Christ was not as much an impersonation of a human faculty as either of the Greek Deities!
Margaret said Jesus was not a thought. He was born on the earth, and lived out a thought. He was no abstraction to her, but a brother.
Alcott wanted to know whether a purer mythology, suited to the wants of coming time, might not arise from the mixed mythology of Persians, Greeks, and Christians!
A very confusing and tiresome talk arose thereupon, which Charles Wheeler smiled at, but did not join in, and which profited nobody.
CAROLINE WELLS HEALEY.
April 3, 1841.
VI.
CUPID AND PSYCHE.
April 9, 1841.
Margaret thought it would be very impertinent to begin by telling what everybody knew,—the old story of Cupid and Psyche.
E. P. P. declared that Margaret never told it twice alike, and at last she yielded and said:—
The beautiful young princess Psyche was envied by Venus, who sent Eros to destroy her; but the God, finding Psyche wholly lovely, wedded her. They lived happily until Psyche began to doubt. Eros had told her that she must not seek to know him; but curiosity prevailed over faith, and in looking at him as he slept she wounded and waked him. He left her in dismay; and as a punishment the three trials which are the lot of mortals were awarded to her. She must sort grain, she must bring three drops from the river Styx, and must get the box of beauty from Proserpine. The birds helped her with the grain; but when she reached the banks of the Styx and stooped to fulfil the second task, she found the water too dark, too cold, and the eagle came to her aid. At the prospect of the third trial her soul sank; she refused to undertake it; but, winning from one of the Gods the secret of self-dependence, she set off for Tartarus, gave the usual sop to Cerberus, and returned with her prize. But she was “possessed” with the idea that the treasures the box contained might restore to her her husband’s love, and she opened the box as she came. The noxious vapors which issued from it deprived her of consciousness, and she fell. Eros, who had flown to seek her as soon as his wound was healed, brought her the gift of Immortality which he had begged of Jupiter.
Elisabeth Hoar asked what had become of Psyche’s sisters, whose interference was a striking point in the story.
Margaret said she knew nothing of them, and wished Miss Hoar would tell us. Her own knowledge of the story was gained entirely from Raphael’s original studies, and his frescos on the walls of a Roman palace.
Elisabeth Hoar recapitulated. The parents of Psyche were ordered by the angry Venus to expose her upon a high mountain, when Zephyr carried her to the embraces of Love, who dwelt in the depths of a quiet valley hard by. Her sisters came to bewail her death, and Psyche begged Love to let Zephyr bring them to rejoice in her happiness. For some time he refused, telling her that it was not for her good, and that she could be happy without them. This our foolish Psyche would not believe, and at last they were permitted to come, only she must not tell them the little she knew about her husband.
The first time Psyche had sent them away loaded with gifts. They had questioned her about her husband, and Psyche replied that he was only a lovely child. The year went round, and again the lovely bride longed for her sisters’ presence. Again the God entreated her to be patient, assuring her that if they came it would only be to make her miserable. Psyche could not be quieted. Again they came, again they questioned. She forgot the story she had previously told, and replied that he was an old man, bent with years, but very kind to her. Then the envious women saw that Psyche was herself ignorant of his true nature. They told her that he was a dragon, and meant to devour her; that they had themselves seen him as he passed through the fields. They begged her to take a knife and lamp and kill him as he slept. The frightened Psyche consented.
The God was sleeping in radiant beauty at her side, and as she gazed upon him she drew an arrow from his quiver and carelessly scratched her finger. Impassioned by the wound, she bent over him, and a drop of scalding oil fell from her lamp. Angry and confused, the God awoke, and, irritated by the pain, flew away. Psyche clung to him; but she could not support herself, and he was too angry to hold her. She fell to the ground, and he, perched upon a neighboring tree, reproached her.
Margaret did not know this, but said she remembered that Psyche tried to drown herself.
Elisabeth said that was later. She despaired, and threw herself into the river; but the river pitied her, and bore her to the shore. Venus, growing tired of her guest, sent Mercury to advertise her. Psyche yielded to the terms of the Goddess, rendered herself up, and was busy sorting the gifts in the temple of Beauty when Custom was sent to berate her.
This, I suppose, is a condensation of the lovely allegory of Apuleius in the second century of our era, but it seems to me Elisabeth made some additions.
Margaret said that everybody had to contend with the meddlesome sisters. They were at the bottom of every fairy story, from that of Psyche to Beauty and the Beast.
Elisabeth Hoar said it was always with the young soul as it was with Psyche. It could give no account of the love which made it so happy.
So, I said, every human heart shrivels under a curious touch. Love is angry that we wound him, and if he ever does return it is with Immortality in his hand. When custom berates, God accepts.
James Clarke asked if there was not a celebrated statue of Cupid and Psyche.
Margaret had only heard of Canova’s, but James said he was sure there was one older.
William Story asked if it were older than Apuleius, but James did not know.
Ida Russell said it was wrong for Psyche to look.
Yes, Margaret said, but her temptations were strong; and if they had not come through her sisters, they must have come through her own soul. Everything was produced by antagonism. This morning she had taken up Kreitzer, meaning to open the Greek volume, but took up the Indian. In that Mythology which William Story called deep and all-embracing there were the antagonist principles of Vishnu, or unclouded innocence, and Brahm, who could only become pure by wading through all wickedness. There seemed to be a need of sin, to work out salvation for human beings.
Emerson said faith should work out that salvation. It was man’s privilege to resist the evil, to strive triumphantly; to recognise it—never! Good was always present to the soul,—was all the true soul took note of. It was a duty not to look!
Margaret thought it the climax of sin to despair. She believed evil to be a good in the grand scheme of things. She would not recognize it as a blunder. She must consider its scope a noble one. In one word, she would not accept the world—for she felt within herself the power to reject it—did she not believe evil working in it for good! Man had gained more than he lost by his fall. The ninety-nine sheep in the parable were of less value than the “lost found,” over which there was joy in heaven.
E. P. P. spoke of the Tree of Life,—which would have made immortal those who ate of the Tree of Knowledge.
Caroline Sturgis said that this probation was what she could not comprehend. We began at the circumference, and if we fulfilled our destiny must end by being near the centre. How much better to have begun there! Why could not God have made it so?
William Story began to say that God must seek the best good of all his creatures; but Caroline interrupted him by saying that there was certainly more good at the centre than at the circumference.
William White thought all this good, better, and best very puzzling.
Margaret asked Caroline if she could not see probation to be a good, as she had herself defined it?
Are we better then, than God? asked Caroline.
Not better, replied Margaret, for we cannot compare dissimilar things.
William White asked if any one could be more than good, more than pure.
William Story said perfection had its degrees!
White said, How can you progress after you have reached your goal?
As if any live man ever did reach his goal! said I.
Is there any progress for God? retorted he.
Not any, for that is a contradiction in terms, I said; but surely you conceive of it for souls in heaven?
Margaret said something about the Gospel injunction to be perfect even as our Father in Heaven is perfect. Does not “even as” mean “after the pattern of”? Does it involve the nature, as well as the degree?
Emerson interrupted quickly, “We are not finite.”
Everybody smiled; but the best answer to this is found in the fact, that we never conceive of ourselves as infinite and at rest,—only as reaching after the Infinite in our motion.
White said to Caroline Sturgis, “If evil brings knowledge of good, is it not a gain?”
William Story talked nobly, something to this effect: That good and evil were related terms. If both did not exist, neither could, antagonism being the spring of most things in the universe.
Margaret went back to Cupid, and said that in Raphael’s original studies Cupid was always a boy,—in his frescos, a youth, almost a man. She spoke of the difference of expression which he gave to his Venus and his Psyche, especially in the eye. That of Psyche was deep and thoughtful. The distinction extended to their attendant Cupids, and was most marked in the Psyche when she takes the cup of Immortality from her husband.
Margaret wanted to pass on to Diana, but there were too many clergymen in the company. Everybody was interested in somebody nearer at hand, and views of the unchanging Providence were next presented.
Margaret said God was the background against which all creation was thrown.
William Story asked if she did not think He was greater than his creatures?
“Always beyond,” was Margaret’s reply.
Creation, Story said, was rather the exponent of a Love which must bless, than of an activity which must act. It was a Paternal power that ruled, not an autocratic power which fathered us.
Margaret said that the story of Cupid and Psyche was the story of redemption. It contained the seeds of the doctrine of election,—saving by grace, and so on!
A good many queer things were said on various points touched by this.
Emerson said, that to imagine it possible to fall was to begin to fall.
E. P. P. got into a little maze trying to introduce Margaret and R. W. E. to each other,—a consummation which, however devoutly to be wished, will never happen!
James Clarke told her that she was just where Paul was when he said, “What then? Shall I sin, that Grace may the more abound?”
Emerson said the woodlands could tell us most about Diana, about whom we contrived to say very little. The omission of orgies in her worship was dwelt upon. Her pure and sacred character with the Athenians was compared to that of the Diana of Ephesus, whose orgies were not unusual, and who was considered as a bountiful mother rather than as a virgin huntress.
Ida Russell said that her Mythology accused Diana of being the mother of fifty sons and fifty daughters!
Margaret laughed, and said that certainly was Diana of Ephesus!
The maddening influence of moonlight was commented upon, as if it were a fable; but William Story said it was a fact. In tropical regions very sad consequences resulted from long gazing on the moonlight or sleeping in it. In one town he had known sixteen persons bewildered in this way.
William White said that in a late book of Nichols it was contended that the moon had some light of her own, because she shows a brazen color even under eclipse, when the dark side of the earth is toward her. But why may she not gather stellar light from the whole universe, as the earth seems to?
Sallie Gardiner said something to William Story in a low voice. He laughed, and said he had been thinking of the consequences of his theory.
Margaret asked what he was talking about.
Story said it was an application of eclipses to his theory that love was the motive to creation. If the sun is beneficent truth shorn of its beams, it would be like the moon, no better than brass!
Caroline Sturgis asked why the Mahomedans bore the crescent.
William White said because of some change in the moon which occurred at the time of the Hegira.
William Story said that the worshippers at Mecca carried the crescent before Mahomet’s time. There is a crescent on the black stone.
Both stories may be true. There is certainly a crescent on the old Byzantine coin, or besant.
Ida Russell said something about Diana being wedded.
This reminded E. P. P. of Minerva’s marriage, discussed last week. She said that Charles Wheeler had seen the gem of which she then spoke, and that Neptune was the favored suitor.
William Story said the Greeks could not wed Neptune to Diana, for the tides were too low in the Mediterranean!
C. W. HEALEY.
April 10, 1841.
VII.
PLUTO AND TARTARUS.
April 15, 1841.
Margaret said very little about Pluto. On the first evening she had called him the depth of things, and James Clarke now had a good deal to say upon the three ideas which she thought pervaded the Greek mythology,—the source, the depth, and the extent or flow of thought. He said that this distinction had struck him very forcibly when Margaret first mentioned it. We speak of widely diffused thought, of aspiring and profound thought; of sympathetic, exalted, or deep feeling,—and this seemed to exhaust language. It was through the depths of feeling and experience that we came to the profound of thought.
E. P. P. said, “There is no genius in happiness.” Not a very intelligible statement.
Margaret said, “There is nothing worth knowing that has not some penalty attached to it. We pay it the more willingly in proportion as we grow wise. Depth, altitude, diffusion, are the three births of Time. It is this which makes the German cover the operations of the miner with a mystic veil. Bostonians laugh at the Germans because they think.”
Wheeler liked what Mr. Clarke said, and added that there was meaning in the Irish phrase, “Lower me up.”
Margaret said that all the punishments of Tartarus expressed baffled effort, the penalty least endurable to the active Greek.
Mr. Mack thought it singular that in every nation where the belief in Tartarus had prevailed, an exact locality had always been assigned to it.
William White said that, so long as anybody could point out the locality of the garden of Eden, we had no need to smile at the locality of a Tartarus or an Elysium.
I do not think these “myths” belong to the same class.
Charles Wheeler quoted Champollion to the effect that the Styx was only a small river flowing between the Temple at Thebes and a neighboring “place of tombs.” The ferryman was named Charon, and the Egyptian habit of judging the dead probably gave rise to the rest of the fable.
Margaret said, “This was very natural.” She asked Mr. Wheeler the meaning of certain names.
Phlegethon, he answered, meant burning fire; Acheron, anguish.
Why did not somebody say that the lifeless current of the Styx first tempted Homer to give it to the Infernals? It is in reality a river of Epeiros.
The Styx, Wheeler said, was a cold unhealthy stream, like that which caused the death of Alexander. It flowed slowly through Acadia, but was supposed to take its rise in Hades. Lethe is a river near the Syrtus in Africa. It disappears in the sand, but rises again. Hence its name.
Mr. Wheeler had some difficulty in explaining certain inconsistencies in the poets.
Mr. Clarke quoted the remark of Achilles (?) concerning Elysium,—that a day of hard labor on earth was preferable to an eternity of pleasure in Elysian fields!
Margaret said that in Elysium, as in Tartarus, souls waited. These restless Greeks could do nothing. They were cut off from action, which was their delight. All their punishments seem to consist of frustrated effort,—the consequence of some presumption. Tantalus was ever thirsty and ever famished because he had aspired to nectar and ambrosia. Ixion, who would have scaled the heavens, was condemned to incessant revolution upon a wheel, which never paused yet never accomplished anything. The Danaides, who murdered the love which wooed them, were doomed to fill a broken vessel with water which as constantly escaped. Sisyphus, who had never labored except for a selfish end, was to roll a stone up hill, which as constantly rolled down,—fit emblem of all selfish labor. As for Tityrus, who sought to violate the secrets of Nature, the vulture fed always upon his entrails.
Wheeler said this did not represent frustrated effort.
Margaret said, No: this was remorse; but there was an admirable instance of the former given by Goethe, of a man who wove rope from the sedges which grew upon the banks of Lethe, for an ass who continually devoured it. The moral seemed to be that the ass could just as well have eaten them unwoven. Goethe goes on to say that the Greeks only thought that the poor man had a prodigal wife, but that the moderns would look deeper and see more in the fable.
We all weave sedges for asses to eat, thought I.
Margaret seemed to think that every heart might have an experience which would correspond to Tartarus. Every hero must visit it at least once.
I suggested Pluto, Persephone, the Fates, the Gorgons, the Furies, and Cerberus. Pluto was equal to Neptune and Jupiter.
Margaret continued: Hades was not given to Pluto to mark defective character, but simply as his kingdom. His wants were all supplied. The bride Olympus refused him he was permitted to steal from earth while she gathered flowers. Persephone, seed of all things, must dwell in the dark; but another legend tells us that if she had been willing to leave her veil, she might have stolen away. There was a meaning in her being forbidden to eat in the infernal regions. Fate said, “Do not touch what you don’t want.” Psyche was forbidden to partake of the regal banquet Persephone spread. Seeking for Immortality, this soul, like every other, must be content to eat bitter bread.
There was then a talk about Cerberus and the Gorgons.
Mr. Clarke said that in the New Testament the dog seemed to stand for popular prejudice. The swine stood for what could not, the dog for what would not, be convinced.
Yes, Margaret said, the wolf is a misanthropic dog. He has little dignity.
Ida Russell said Cerberus stood for the temperaments.
Well, Margaret said, that being so, she liked the Greeks for making no allowance for the lymphatic. To what, she continued, do we offer the first sop, as we pass through life? As for the Gorgons, every one, she thought, would find his own interpretation of them. To her there was no Gorgon but apathy; there is nothing in creation that will so soon turn a live man into stone. These Gorgons were three women, who used one eye and one tooth between them,—except Medusa, who was beautiful and perfect. Her hair had provoked the envy of Minerva, and was changed into serpents. Margaret had a copy of a gem, which Marion Dwight had made for her, which showed this.
E. P. P. asked if Perseus did not endeavor to show Medusa her own head.
Margaret said that might well rouse her!
Charles Wheeler explained. Perseus only used a mirror given him by Minerva to avoid looking at the Gorgon.
Caroline Sturgis said that the old woman who keeps house for Helen in the second part of “Faust” was a Gorgon to her.
This dragged a critical analysis of the “Faust” forward.
Margaret said the Seeker represents the Spirit of the Age. He never sinned save by yielding, and yet he was emphatically saved by grace. It was difficult to see what Goethe meant until he got to the Tower of the Middle Ages. That made all clear.
Charles Wheeler said, the reader would a great deal rather that Faust went to the Devil than not!
Margaret defended Goethe’s way of exhibiting character, of which Wilhelm Meister was an instance. Goethe said to himself, What should I do with a hero in such rascally society? Meister preferred the Brahmal experience.
E. P. P. asked if this moral indifference was well?
Margaret replied, that it was just as frightful as any other Gorgon. If we are to have a purely intellectual development, it was well for a man like Goethe to represent it. To choose fairly between evil and good, the intellect must regard both with indifference.
Somebody asked how the Gorgon’s head came to be on the Ægis of Minerva?
If Apathy is the Gorgon, surely Wisdom needs it!
Then we began to talk about Theseus in connection with Tartarus. Why should he sit forever on a stone?
Margaret thought he represented reform!
Mr. Mack said reform checked itself by its own fanaticism.
Wheeler, in this connection, asked after the Greek notion of accountability.
Margaret did not think the Greeks had any.
Wheeler assured her to the contrary, and told anecdotes to prove it. He spoke of the fatal transmission of guilt in one family, generation after generation.
Margaret said the Greeks never rejected facts.
Ida Russell spoke of the last King of Athens, Codrus, supposed to have been punished for the crimes of his ancestors.
Wheeler said that when the Greeks killed some ambassadors, they felt so sure that Heaven would avenge the sin that they sent two citizens to expiate it; but Darius, to whom they were sent, refused to release the Greeks from their impending doom.
Margaret said the moment such a supposition was started, there were plenty of facts to sustain it. Orestes is the purified victim of his family. The old Greeks had made no complete statement of their destiny or their accountability.
E. P. P. said they had made it in art.
C. W. HEALEY.
April 16, 1841.
VIII.
MERCURY AND ORPHEUS.
April 22, 1841.
Margaret said it surprised her that young men did not seek to be Mercuries. She said that one of the ugliest young men that she knew had become so enraptured with one of Raphael’s Mercuries, that he confessed to her that he was never alone without trying to assume its attitude before the glass. She said she could not help laughing at the image he suggested, an ugly figure in high-heeled boots and a strait-coat in the act of flying, commissioned with every grace from Heaven to men! but she respected the feeling, and thought every sensitive soul must share it.
Emerson had sent Sophia Peabody several fine engravings. One of these, a Correggio, represented a woman of Parma as a Madonna. It might give any woman a similar desire.
William Story, Frank Shaw, Mr. Mack and his friends, Mrs. Ripley, Ida Russell, and Mrs. S. G. Ward were all missing to-night.
Margaret said that she was sorry she had allowed our subject to embrace so much. The Grecian Mercury seemed to mean so little that she had not thought of the depth and difficulty connected with the Egyptian Hermes. Among the Greeks, Ceres, Persephone, and Juno represent the productive faculties, Jupiter and Apollo the divine, and Mercury simply the human understanding, the God of eloquence and of thieves.
Marianne Jackson thought it strange that he should be at once the God of persuasion and the Deity of theft!
Margaret said eloquence was a kind of thieving!
Did the Greeks so consider it? asked Marianne.
Margaret said, Yes, more than any nation in the world, and taught their children so to do; and in fact such mental recognitions were what distinguished the nation from all other peoples.
The Egyptian Hermes represented the whole intellectual progress of man. If one made a discovery it was signed Hermes, and under that name transmitted to posterity. Hence the forty volumes of Hermetic theology, philosophy, and so on. Individuals were merged in the God. Hermes was always the mediator, the peacemaker, and it was in this relation that the beautiful story was told of the caduceus. Mercury has originally only the divining-rod which Apollo had given him, but, finding two serpents fighting one day, he pacified them, and had ever after the right to bear them embracing on his rod. There was another story, Margaret said, which she could not understand,—the story of his obtaining the head of the Ibis from Osiris. Hermes kept the first or outside gates of Heaven, a significant fact typically considered.
I am sure there is something in Heeren’s researches about the Ibis story, but Caroline Sturgis said, No.
William White asked if the God gave the name to the planet?
Margaret said, Yes; and it was given because it stood nearest the sun.
E. P. P. said Plutarch had written something about Hermes in his “Morals.”
Margaret said, Perhaps so, but she didn’t know, as she never could read them. Plutarch went round and round a story; presented all the corners of it, told all the pretty bits of gossip he could find, instead of penetrating to its secret. So she preferred his anecdotes of Heroes to his Parallels or Essays.
I said, in surprise, how much I liked the “Morals.”
“Yes,” Margaret said, “even Emerson paid the book the high compliment of calling it his tuning-key, when he was about to write.”
E. P. P. said Coleridge was her own tuning-key, and asked Margaret if she had no such friendly instigator.
Margaret said she could keep up no intimacy with books. She loved a book dearly for a while; but as soon as she began to look out a nice Morocco cover for her favorite, she was sure to take a disgust to it, to outgrow it. She did not mean that she outgrew the author, but that, having received all from him that he could give her, he tired her. That had even been the case with Shakespeare! For several years he was her very life; then she gave him up. About two years ago she had occasion to look into “Hamlet,” and then wished to refresh her love, but found it impossible. It was the same with Ovid, whose luxuriant fancy had delighted her girlhood. She took him up, and read a little with all her youthful glow; but it would not last. Friends must part, but why need we part from our books? She regretted her oddity, for she lost a great solace by it.
She proceeded to contrast the Apollo with Mercury. In Egypt, Hermes was the experimental Deity, the Brahma.
Caroline Sturgis asked what the Hermes on the door-posts of the Athenian houses meant.
Margaret thought that he posed there as a messenger, an opener of the gates merely, and then spoke of several Mercuries by Raphael. One she knew, so full of beauty and grace that it seemed a single trumpet-tone. Another all loveliness was handing the cup of life to Psyche. She wondered that such symbols as Apollo and Mercury did not inspire all young men with ardor, and make them something better than young men usually are.
William White said Apollo was too far beyond the average man to do this; but that Mercury, graceful and vivacious, would naturally attract the attention.
Margaret asked if he would be an easier model to imitate, and then repeated her anecdote about the ugly youth who longed to be a Mercury.
William said that if his faith had been strong enough, the transformation might have taken place.
Query—what is meant by strong enough?
Margaret spoke of the Egyptian Osiris in his relation to Hermes, and said that she did not like him to be confounded with the Apollo. He was in reality the Egyptian Jove.
This led me to speak of the Orphic Hymn in which Apollo is addressed as “immortal Jove.”
Margaret said she had discovered very little about Orpheus. In relation to the five points of Orphic theology, she had lately read a posthumous leaf from Goethe’s Journal. The existence of a Dæmon seemed to be a favorite idea of his. He did not believe with Emerson that all things were in our own souls, but that they existed in the original souls, (does anybody know what that means?) and we must go out to seek them. This notion Goethe thought verified by his own experience. Goethe’s works, Margaret thought, had more variety than anybody’s except Shakespeare’s. His powers of observation seemed to condense his genius.
William White wondered why Goethe showed such tenderness for Byron.
Margaret said that in every important sense Byron was his very opposite; but Goethe hardly looked upon him as a responsible being. He was rather the instrument of a higher power. He was the exponent of his period.
Sophia Peabody had been making a drawing of Crawford’s Orpheus at the Athenæum. It was here brought down for me to see.
At Sophia’s request, Margaret repeated a sonnet she had written on it. She recited it wretchedly, but the sonnet was pleasant.
I spoke of Bode’s Essay on the Orphic Poetry, and sympathized in his view of the spuriousness of the Hymns. They might have been signed Orpheus, however, as other things were signed Hermes, simply because they were exponents of Orphic thought.
Margaret dilated on this Orphic thought.
I quoted Proclus in his Commentary on Plato’s “Republic” as follows:—