Apart from the account of his travels and other personal experiences,
the Journals are mainly made up of discussions of upwards of fifty
subjects of general and fundamental interest, ranging from art to war,
and looked at from many and diverse points of view. Of these subjects
three are dominant, recurring again and again in each volume. These
are nature, literature, and religion. Emerson's main interests
centered in these themes. Using these terms in their broadest sense,
this is true, I think, of all his published books. Emerson was an
idealist, first, last, and all the time, and he was a literary artist,
or aimed to be, first, last, and all the time, and in the same measure
and to the same extent was he a devout religious soul, using the term
religion as he sometimes uses it, as a feeling of the Infinite.
There are one hundred and seventy-six paragraphs, long and short,
given to literature and art, and one hundred and sixty given to
religious subjects, and over thirty given to nature. It is interesting
to note that he devotes more paragraphs to woman than to man; and more
to society than to solitude, though only to express his dislike of the
former and his love for the latter. There are more thoughts about
science than about metaphysics, more about war than about love, more
about poetry than about philosophy, more on beauty than on knowledge,
more on walking than on books. There are three times as many
paragraphs on nature (thirty-three) as on the Bible, all of which is
significant of his attitude of mind.
Emerson was a preacher without a creed, a scholar devoted to
super-literary ends, an essayist occupied with thoughts of God, the
soul, nature, the moral law--always the literary artist looking for
the right word, the right image, but always bending his art to the
service of religious thought. He was one of the most religious souls
of his country and time, or of any country and time, yet was disowned
by all the sects and churches of his time. He made religion too
pervasive, and too inclusive to suit them; the stream at once got out
of its banks and inundated all their old landmarks. In the last
analysis of his thought, his ultimate theme was God, and yet he never
allowed himself to attempt any definite statement about God--refusing
always to discuss God in terms of human personality. When Emerson
wrote "Representative Men" he felt that Jesus was the Representative
Man whom he ought to sketch, "but the task required great
gifts--steadiest insight and perfect temper; else the consciousness of
want of sympathy in the audience would make one petulant and sore in
spite of himself."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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