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The Conscious Evolution of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Part 1)
The influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson on the future trajectory of American philosophy probably cannot be over-estimated. He held a metaphysical vision of an evolving universe. His idealism with its dualistic character would be largely rejected by the next generation of thinkers, Peirce and James. But their vision of an evolving universe can be seen as an extension of Emerson’s thought. Both Peirce and James acknowledge their debt to the great man of Concord, but the true extent of his influence may not be possible to ascertain, let us leave it as immense.
In his original publication of “Nature” in 1836 Emerson was already describing the growth of the universe, but in his essay by the same name published in 1844 with his second series of essays he was beginning to articulate the outlines of an evolutionary spirituality. Dr. Robert C. Gordon in his essay Emerson, Evolution and Transmigration depicts Emerson’s struggle over his belief in evolution on the one hand and his fear that it was rooted in spiritual materialism on the other. By 1844 evolution seemed to be winning out in Emerson’s writing and it was holding fast to a spiritual framework.
Nature as he described it “publishes itself in creatures, reaching from particles and spicula, through transformation on transformation to the highest symmetries, arriving at consummate results without a shock or a leap.” All that is needed for this miraculous progression of form he claims are “the two cardinal conditions of boundless space and boundless time.” Emerson was aware that the geologists of his time were convincingly estimating that the earth was immensely older than anyone had ever imagined and this huge span of time, Emerson believed, meant that nature had the time required to do her evolutionary work.
“Now we learn what patient periods must round themselves before the rock is formed, then before the rock is broken, and the first lichen race has disintegrated the thinnest external plate into soil, and opened the door for the remote Flora, Fauna, Ceres, and Pomona, to come in. How far off yet is the trilobite! how far the quadruped! how inconceivably remote is man! All duly arrive, and then race after race of men. It is a long way from granite to the oyster; farther yet to Plato, and the preaching of the immortality of the soul. Yet all must come, as surely as the first atom has two sides.”
Clearly Emerson has an evolutionary view of the universe and he continues to describe the universe not as a collection of expanding parts, but as a single growing thing. “…from the beginning to the end of the universe, she has but one stuff,” he writes adding, “Compound it how she will, star, sand, fire, water, tree, man, it is still one stuff, and betrays the same properties.”
The universe is not a collection of separate objects. It is one unified whole that grows. This is an idea that will carry on straight through the development of American philosophy. Emerson also shows the beginnings of an insight about how this growth happens that will later be reflected in the work of Charles Sanders Peirce and still later in the thinking of contemporary thinkers like Ken Wilber. Emerson writes, “She (nature) keeps her laws, and seems to transcend them.” This combination of retaining what is and creating the new is the formula for growth that both Peirce and Wilber will later draw upon. Wilber in his writings on Integral Theory will popularize the phrase ‘transcend and include’ to describe the same sentiment about the mechanim of evolution.
Emerson also hints at the prominent place that consciousness plays in evolution when he describes the ladder of development as a “system in transition” that travels from plant to animal to man. About men he says, “The men, though young, having tasted the first drop from the cup of thought, are already dissipated: the maples and ferns are still uncorrupt; yet no doubt, when they come to consciousness, they too will curse and swear.” And so it appears that Emerson is already seeing the emergence of consciousness as the crowning achievement of the evolutionary process in 1844.
The universe begins, he postulates with an “aboriginal push” an idea that predates the modern Big Bang theory by nearly 100 years. Once this push occurs it “ propagates itself through all the balls of the system, and through every atom of every ball, through all the races of creatures, and through the history and performances of every individual.” Almost 200 years later the spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen would make almost the same sentiment when he claimed that “When you experience the creative impulse awakening in your self, it’s no different than the original impulse that became the whole universe. It’s nothing less that the Big Bang itself, working in you and through you.”
Dear Jeff, I love reading again about Emerson. When I read the nice comment of Lynn, I thought that probably most Americans are brought up with Emerson, while most Europeans are not. I was reading ‘an American Scholar’ and I really was amazed how his ideas where (for the Europeans: he talks about the importance for students of nature as Jeff talks writes about it, than of history –not to become a book-worm, but to create depth of mind, and of physical labor/action, to really learn life not out of books, but to create character which is higher than intellect; ‘a great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think). Emerson wrote this in 1837 and I can imagine he is still read. Just looking through it again, some things that I underlined: ‘Free should the scholar be. Free and brave. Free even of the definition of freedom, without any hindrance that does not arise out of his own constitution’…’the world is his who can see through its pretentions.. Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind’..’For a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth the particular natures of all men. Each philosopher, each bard, each actor ahs only done for me, as by a delegate, what one day I can do for myself’…’It is one soul which animates all men’. That is how Emerson starts: man is not a priest, a professor or an engineer, man is all. But man is divided, metamorphosed into a thing: a priest becomes a form, the attorney a statute-book, the mechanic a machine, the sailor a rope of a ship. The scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state he is a Man Thinking, in the degenerate state the parrot of other men’s thinking’..Reading towards the end, I had to think about Van Gogh, born in 1853 who was the first who wanted to paint ‘the common people’. Emerson says: ‘I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into to-day ..’there is no trifle, there is no puzzle, but one design unites and animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench’ .. ‘the near explains the far, the drop is a small ocean. A man is related to all nature’….In the scholar.. in yourself is the law of nature, in yourself slumbers the whole of reason, it is for you to know all. Too long we have listened to the courtly muses of Europe ..’We will walk on our own feet, we will work with our own hands, we will speak our own minds’..A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men’.
When I read this, I understand why I always change when stepping into the US. I always have the experience that my life is in my own hands, if there is a collective consciousness, that definitely is American..