In 1859, Mr. Alcott had another and larger opportunity to exercise his wisdom as an educator of youth. He was chosen superintendent of the schools of Concord; a position that called out the finest qualities of his mind, and put to immediate use the results of his long experience, but relieved him from the business arrangements for which he had never displayed an aptitude. The three brief but remarkable reports that he made on the condition and needs of the schools, increase one's respect for the workings of the spiritual philosophy in this field of effort. If the suggestions offered in those reports were to any considerable extent adopted, if the noble and gracious spirit of them was felt, the schools of Concord should be model schools of their class.
"The school is the primary interest of the community. Every parent naturally desires a better education for his children than he received himself, and spends liberally of his substance for this pleasure; wisely hoping to make up his deficiencies in that way, and to complement himself in their better attainments; esteeming these the richest estate he can leave, and the fairest ornaments of his family name."
"Especially have I wished to introduce the young to the study of their minds, the love of thinking; often giving examples of lessons in analysis and classification of their faculties. I think I may say that these exercises have given much pleasure, and have been found profitable alike to the teacher and the children. In most instances, I have closed my visits by reading some interesting story or parable. These have never failed of gaining attention, and in most cases, prompt responses. I consider these readings and colloquies as among the most profitable and instructive of the superintendent's labors."
Pilgrim's Progress, Krummacher's Parables, Æsop's Fables, Faery Queen, the stories of Plutarch and Shakspeare, were his favorites.
"The graceful exercise of singing has been introduced into some of the schools. It should prevail in all of them. It softens the manners, cultivates the voice, and purifies the taste of the children. It promotes harmony and good feelings. The old masters thought much of it as a discipline. 'Let us sing' has the welcome sound of 'Let us play,' – and is perhaps the child's prettiest translation of 'Let us pray,' – admitting him soonest to the intimacy he seeks."
"Conversations on words, paraphrases and translations of sentences, are the natural methods of opening the study of language. A child should never be suffered to lose sight of the prime fact that he is studying the realities of nature and of the mind through the picture books of language. Any teaching falling short of this is hollow and a wrong done to the mind."
"For composition, let a boy keep his diary, write his letters, try his hand at defining from a dictionary and paraphrasing, and he will find ways of expressing himself simply as boys and men did before grammars were invented."
"Teaching is a personal influence for the most part, and operating as a spirit unsuspected at the moment. I have wished to divine the secret source of success attained by any, and do justice to this; it seemed most becoming to regard any blemishes as of secondary account in the light of the acknowledged deserts. We require of each what she has to give, no more. Does the teacher awaken thought, strengthen the mind, kindle the affections, call the conscience, the common sense into lively and controlling activity, so promoting the love of study, the practice of the virtues; habits that shall accompany the children outwards into life? The memory is thus best cared for, the end of study answered; the debt of teacher to parents, of parents to teacher discharged, and so the State's bounty best bestowed."
"A little gymnasticon, a system of gestures for the body might be organized skilfully and become part of the daily exercises in our schools. Graceful steps, pretty musical airs, in accompaniment of songs – suiting the sentiment to the motions, the emotions, ideas of the child – would be conducive to health of body and mind alike. We shall adopt dancing presently as a natural training for the manners and morals of the young."
"Conversation is the mind's mouth-piece, its best spokesman; the leader elect and prompter in teaching; practised daily, it should be added to the list of school studies; an art in itself, let it be used as such, and ranked as an accomplishment second to none that nature or culture can give. Certainly the best we can do is to teach ourselves and children how to talk. Let conversation displace much that passes current under the name of recitation; mostly sound and parrotry, a repeating by rote not by heart, unmeaning sounds from the memory and no more. 'Take my mind a moment,' says the teacher, 'and see how things look through that prism,' and the pupil sees prospects never seen before or surmised by him in that lively perspective. So taught the masters; Plato, Plutarch, Pythagoras, Pestalozzi; so Christianity was first published from lovely lips; so every one teaches deserving the name of teacher or interpreter. Illustration always and apt; life calling forth life; the giving of life and a partaking. Nothing should be interposed between the mind and its subject matter – cold sense is impertinent; learning is insufficient – only life alone; life like a torch lighting the head at the heart."
"Next to thinking for themselves, the best service any teacher can render his scholars is to show them how to use books. The wise teacher is the key for opening the mind to the books he places before it."
"Stories are the idyls of childhood. They cast about it the romance it loves and lives in, rendering the commonest circumstances and things inviting and beautiful. Parables, poems, histories, anecdotes, are prime aids in teaching; the readiest means of influence and inspiration; the liveliest substitutes for flagging spirits, fatigued wits."
"A little atlas of the body mythologically shown from the artist's points of view, the plates displaying the person to the eye, in a set of draped figures, is a book much wanted for first lines in drawing. A child's piety is seen in its regards for its body and the concern it shows in its carriage and keeping. Of all forms the human form is most marvellous; and the modest reverence for its shadings intimates the proper mode of studying it rightly and religiously as a pantheon of powers. The prime training best opens here as an idealism, the soul fashioning her image in the form she animates, and so scrutinizing piously without plucking the forbidden fruits."
"There is a want of suitable aids to the studies of these mysteries. The best books I know are poor enough. In the want of a better, we name for the study of matter in its connection with the mind, including the proper considerations regarding health and temperance, Graham's 'Laws of Life,' a rather dull but earnest book; and for smaller classes and beginners Dr. Alcott's 'House I Live In.' Miss Catherine Beecher's book for studies in Physiology and Calisthenics, is a practical treatise, and should be in all schools. Sir John Sinclair's 'Code of Health' contains a republication of the Wisdom of the Ancients, on these subjects, and is a book for all persons and times."
"Perhaps we are correcting the old affection for flogging at some risk of spoiling the boys of this generation. Girls have always known how to cover with shame any insult of that sort, but the power of persuasion comes slow as a promptitude to supersede its necessity. Who deals with a child, deals with a piece of divinity obeying laws as innate as those he transgresses; and which he must treat tenderly, lest he put spiritual interests in jeopardy. Punishment must be just, else it cannot be accepted as good, and least of all by the wicked and weak."
"The accomplished teacher combines in himself the art of teaching and of ruling; power over the intellect and the will, inspiration and persuasiveness. And this implies a double consciousness in its possessor that carries forward the teaching and ruling together; noting what transpires in motive as in act; the gift that in seeing controls. It is the sway of presence and of mien; a conversion of the will to his wishes, without which other gifts are of little avail."
"Be sure the liveliest dispensations, the holiest, are his (the unruly boy's) – his as cordially as ours, and sought for as kindly. We must meet him where he is. Best to follow his bent if bent beautifully; else bending him gently, not fractiously, lest we snap or stiffen a stubbornness too stiff already. Gentleness now; the fair eye, the conquering glances straight and sure; the strong hand, if you must, till he fall penitent at the feet of Persuasion; the stroke of grace before the smiting of the birch; for only so is the conquest complete, and the victory the Lord's. If she is good enough she may strike strong and frequent, till thanks come for it; but who is she, much less he, that dares do it more than once, nor repents in sorrow and shame for the strokes given? Only 'the shining ones' may do it for good."
"Our teachers open their schools with readings from the New Testament, and this reading is in some of the schools, and would, but for a diffident piety, be followed in all, by devotions and the singing of some suitable morning hymn. The spoken prayers and praises are not enjoined by our rules; and we think we show therein that tender courtesy to the faiths of the heart that true piety loves and cannot overstep. An earnest and sweet disposition is the spring from which children love to taste, and best always if insinuated softly in mild persuasions, and so leading to the practice of the loves and graces that soften and save. A course of readings from the Picture Testament might favor the best ends of spiritual culture. A child should be approached with reverence, as a recipient of the spirit from above. The best of books claims the best of persons and the gracious moments to make its meanings clear; else the reading and listening are but a sound, a pretence, and of no account. I have wished these books were opened with the awe belonging to the eminent Personalities portrayed therein, thinking them best read when the glow of sentiment kindles the meaning into life in the morning hour – the teacher opening her school by opening their leaves."
The following earnest words respecting the duties of the State in regard to the education of its children, may fitly close these fragmentary extracts, which give but the scantiest notions of the richness of suggestion in these reports:
"It is difficult to reach the sources of ignorance and consequent crime in a community like ours, calling itself free, and boasting of its right to do what it will. But freedom is a social not less than an individual concern, and the end of the State is to protect it. The first object of a free people is the preservation of their liberties. It becomes, then, their first duty to assume the training of all the children in the principles of right knowledge and virtue, as the only safeguard of their liberties. We cannot afford to wait at such hazards. The simplest humanities are also the least costly, and the nearest home. We should begin there. The State is stabbed at the hearth-side and here liberty and honor are first sold. It is injured by family neglect, and should protect itself in securing its children's virtue against their parents' vices; for, by so doing, can it alone redeem its pledges to humanity and its citizens' liberties. A virtuous education is the greatest alms it can bestow on any of its children."
Meetings for conversation with the parents of the scholars were a device of Mr. Alcott for bringing the subject of education home to those whose concern in it should be the deepest.
His faith was from the first in conversation, rather than in lecturing or in preaching. Preaching assumed too much in the single mind, paid less than due respect to the minds of the hearers, and gave no opportunity for the instant exchange of thoughts. Lecturing was intellectual and even less sympathetic. By conversation the best was drawn out and the best imparted. All were put on an equality; all were encouraged, none oppressed.
"Truth," Mr. Alcott declares "is spherical, and seen differently according to the culture, temperament and disposition of those who survey it from their individual standpoint. Of two or more sides, none can be absolutely right, and conversation fails if it find not the central truth from which all radiate; debate is angular, conversation circular and radiant of the underlying unity. Who speaks, deeply excludes all possibility of controversy. His affirmation is self-sufficient; his assumption final, absolute. Thus holding himself above the arena of dispute he gracefully settles a question by speaking so home to the core of the matter as to undermine the premise upon which an issue had been taken. For whoso speaks to the personality dives beneath the grounds of difference, and deals face to face with principles and ideas."
"Good discourse sinks differences and seeks agreements. It avoids argument, by finding a common basis of agreement; and thus escapes controversy by rendering it superfluous. Pertinent to the platform, debate is out of place in the parlor. Persuasion is the better weapon in this glittering game."
"Conversation presupposes a common sympathy in the subject, a great equality in the speakers; absence of egotism, a tender criticism of what is spoken. Good discourse wins from the bashful and discreet what they have to speak, but would not, without this provocation. The forbidding faces are Fates to overbear and blemish true fellowship. We give what we are, not necessarily what we know; nothing more, nothing less, and only to our kind; those playing best their parts who have the nimblest wits, taking out the egotism, the nonsense, putting wisdom, information in their place."
Mr. Alcott therefore forsook the platform, seldom entered the pulpit, adopted the parlor, and made it what its name imports, the talking place. Collecting a company of ladies and gentlemen, larger or smaller, as nearly as possible of similar tastes and culture, he started a topic of general interest and broad scope – usually one of social concern with deep roots and wide branches, – and began his soliloquy in a calm and easy strain, throwing out suggestions as he went on, and enticing thoughts from the various minds present. If none responded or accompanied, the discourse proceeded evenly till the measure of an hour was filled. If the company was awake, and sympathetic, the soliloquy became conversation and an evening full of instruction and entertainment followed. When circumstances favored – the room, decorations, atmosphere, mingling of elements – the season was delightful. The unfailing serenity of the leader, his wealth of mental resource, his hospitality of thought, his wit, his extraordinary felicity of language, his delicacy of touch, ready appreciation of different views, and singular grace in turning opinions towards the light, made it clear to all present that to this especial calling he was chosen. For years Mr. Alcott's conversations have been a recognized institution in Eastern and Western cities. Every winter he takes the field, and goes through the Northern and North Western States, with his scheme of topics. The best minds collect about him, and centres of influence are established that act as permanent distributors of culture. The noble idealism never pales or falters. Neither politics, science, financial convulsion, or civil war, disturb the calm serenity of the soul that is sure that mind is its own place, and that infinite and absolute mind is supreme above all.
XI.
THE CRITIC
Margaret Fuller – she was called Ossoli long after the time we are concerned with, in a foreign land and amid foreign associations – Margaret Fuller died July 16th, 1850. In 1852 her Memoirs were published in Boston, written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Freeman Clarke, and William Henry Channing: each giving an individual and personal account of her. These three gentlemen – all remarkable for intellectual capacity, sympathetic appreciation, and literary skill – undertook their task in the spirit of loving admiration, and executed it with extraordinary frankness, courage and delicacy. No more unique or satisfactory book of biography was ever made. They had known Margaret personally and well; were intimately acquainted with her mind, and deeply interested in her character. They had access to all the necessary materials. The whole life – inward and outward – was open to them, and they described it with no more reserve than good taste imposed. Those who are interested to know what sort of a person she was, are referred to that book, from which the biographical materials for this little sketch have, in the main, been taken. Her place here is due to her association with the leaders of the Transcendental movement, and to the peculiar part she played in it.
Strictly speaking, she was not a Transcendentalist, though Mr. Channing declares her to have been "in spirit and thought pre-eminently a transcendentalist;" and Mr. Alcott wrote that she adopted "the spiritual philosophy, and had the subtlest perception of its bearings." She was enthusiastic rather than philosophical, and poetic more than systematic. Emerson's judgment is that —
"Left to herself, and in her correspondence, she was much the victim of Lord Bacon's
idols of the cave
, or self-deceived by her own phantasms… Her letters are tainted with a mysticism which, to me, appears so much an affair of constitution, that it claims no more respect than the charity or patriotism of a man who has dined well and feels better for it. In our noble Margaret, her personal feeling colors all her judgment of persons, of books, of pictures, and even of the laws of the world… Whole sheets of warm, florid writing are here, in which the eye is caught by 'sapphire,' 'heliotrope,' 'dragon,' 'aloes,' 'Magna Dea,' 'limboes,' 'stars,' and 'purgatory' – but one can connect all this or any part of it with no universal experience.
"In short, Margaret often loses herself in sentimentalism; that dangerous vertigo nature, in her case, adopted, and was to make respectable… Her integrity was perfect, and she was led and followed by love; and was really bent on truth, but too indulgent to the meteors of her fancy."
She said of herself:
"When I was in Cambridge I got Fichte and Jacobi; I was much interrupted, but some time and earnest thought I devoted; Fichte I could not understand at all, though the treatise which I read was one intended to be popular, and which he says must compel to conviction. Jacobi I could understand in details, but not in system. It seemed to me that his mind must have been moulded by some other mind, with which I ought to be acquainted, in order to know him well – perhaps Spinoza's. Since I came home I have been consulting Buhle's and Tennemann's histories of philosophy, and dipping into Brown, Stewart, and that class of books."
This was in 1832, before the transcendental movement began. At the same period, writing to a friend on the subject of religious faith – a subject intimately allied with philosophy – she said:
"I have not formed an opinion; I have determined not to form settled opinions at present; loving or feeble natures need a positive religion – a visible refuge, a protection – as much in the passionate season of youth as in those stages nearer to the grave. But mine is not such. My pride is superior to any feelings I have yet experienced; my affection is strong admiration, not the necessity of giving or receiving assistance or sympathy. When disappointed, I do not ask or wish consolation; I wish to know and feel my pain, to investigate its nature and its source; I will not have my thoughts diverted or my feelings soothed; 'tis therefore that my young life is so singularly barren of illusions. I know I feel the time must come when this proud and impatient heart shall be stilled, and turn from the ardors of search and action to lean on something above. But shall I say it? – the thought of that calmer era is to me a thought of deepest sadness; so remote from my present being is that future existence, which still the mind may conceive; I believe in eternal progression; I believe in a God, a beauty and perfection, to which I am to strive all my life for assimilation. From these two articles of belief I draw the rules by which I strive to regulate my life; but though I reverence all religions as necessary to the happiness of man, I am yet ignorant of the religion of revelation. Tangible promises, well-defined hopes, are things of which I do not
now
feel the need. At present, my soul is intent on this life, and I think of religion as its rule; and in my opinion this is the natural and proper course from youth to age."
The tone of this extract is negatively transcendental; that is, it implies that the writer did not belong to the opposite school, in any sense; and that her mind was in condition to accept the cardinal truths of a philosophy, the special doctrines whereof she did not apprehend or feel interested in. Had she entertained a philosophical creed, it would have been the creed of Schelling, more likely than any other.
Margaret Fuller was a critic, and a critic rather from natural gift than from trained perception. Her genius was her guide. Persons and things came to her for judgment, and judgment they received. Searching and frank, but hearty and loving, she judged from the inside. To her, so her biographers tell, with unanimous voice, "the secrets of all hearts were revealed." In private intercourse, in letters, in parlor conversations on books, pictures, statues, architecture, she was ever the judge. The most unlike minds and characters receive their dues with entire impartiality; Goethe, Lessing, Novalis, Jean Paul, were each in kind honored. The last is "infinitely variegated, and certainly most exquisitely colored, but fatigues attention; his philosophy and religion seem to be of the sighing sort." She is steeped to the lips in enjoyment by Southey, whom she was inclined to place next to Wordsworth. Coleridge, Heine, Carlyle, Herschel, attract her mind. She ponders before Michael Angelo's sibyls; displays a singular penetration in her analysis of them, and makes them all interpreters of the genius of woman. The soul of Greek art, as contrasted with Christian, is disclosed to her with a clear perception; the Greek mythology gave up to her its secret; emblems, symbols, dark parables, enigmas, mysteries, laid aside their vails. A friend said of her: "She proceeds in her search after the unity of things, the divine harmony, not by exclusion but by comprehension; and so no poorest, saddest spirit but she will lead to hope and faith. I have thought, sometimes, that her acceptance of evil was
too
great; that her theory of the good to be educed proved too much; but I understand her now better than I did." Atkinson, the "mesmeric atheist," struck her as "a fine instinctive nature, with a head for Leonardo to paint," who "seems bound by no tie, yet looks as if he had relatives in every place." Mazzini impressed her as one "in whom holiness has purified, but somewhat dwarfed the man." Carlyle "is arrogant and overbearing; but in his arrogance there is no bitterness, no self-love. It is the heroic arrogance of some old Scandinavian conqueror; it is his nature, and the untamable energy that has given him power to crush the dragon." Dr. Wilkinson, the Swedenborgian, is "a sane, strong, well-exercised mind; but in the last degree unpoetical in its structure; very simple, natural, and good; excellent to see, though one cannot go far with him." Rachel, Fourier, Rousseau – she has a piercing glance for them all; a word of warm admiration, all the more weighty for being qualified by criticism.
It was probably this keen penetration, this capacity to appreciate all kinds, this inclusiveness of sympathy, that prompted the selection of Margaret Fuller as chief editor of the "Dial," the organ of transcendental thought. Thus she regarded the enterprise:
"What others can do – whether all that has been said is the mere restlessness of discontent, or there are thoughts really struggling for utterance, – will be tested now. A perfectly free organ is to be offered for the expression of individual thought and character. There are no party measures to be carried, no particular standards to be set up; a fair, calm tone, a recognition of universal principles, will, I hope, pervade the essays in every form. I trust there will be a spirit neither of dogmatism nor compromise, and that this journal will aim, not at leading public opinion, but at stimulating each man to judge for himself, and to think more deeply and more nobly, by letting him see how some minds are kept alive by a wise self-trust. We must not be sanguine at the amount of talent which will be brought to bear on this publication. All concerned are rather indifferent, and there is no great promise for the present. We cannot show high culture, and I doubt about vigorous thought. But we shall manifest free action as far as it goes, and a high aim. It were much if a periodical could be kept open, not to accomplish any outward object, but merely to afford an avenue for what of liberal and calm thought might be originated among us, by the wants of individual minds."
"Mr. Emerson best knows what he wants; but he has already said it in various ways. Yet this experiment is well worth trying; hearts beat so high, they must be full of something, and here is a way to breathe it out quite freely. It is for dear New England that I want this review. For myself, if I had wished to write a few pages now and then, there were ways and means enough of disposing of them. But in truth I have not much to say; for since I have had leisure to look at myself, I find that, so far from being an original genius, I have not yet learned to think to any depth, and that the utmost I have done in life has been to form my character to a certain consistency, cultivate my tastes, and learn to tell the truth with a little better grace than I did at first. For this the world will not care much, so I shall hazard a few critical remarks only, or an unpretending chalk sketch now and then till I have learned to do something. There will be beautiful poesies; about prose we know not yet so well. We shall be the means of publishing the little Charles Emerson left as a mark of his noble course, and, though it lies in fragments, all who read will be gainers."
That these modest anticipations were justified and more, need not be said. The "beautiful poesies" came, and so did the various, eloquent, well-considered prose. The people who expected the whole gospel of Transcendentalism may have been disappointed; for the editor gave the magazine more of a literary than philosophical or reformatory tone. That she looked for from others, and was more than willing to welcome. She had a discerning eye for the evils of the time, and a sincere respect for the men and women who were disposed to counteract them. Another extract from her correspondence at this time – 1840 – taken, like the former, from the second volume of the memoirs, leaves no doubt on this point. After speaking of "the tendency of circumstance