How he
hates the roysterers, and all the rank, turbulent, human passions,
and is chilled by the thought that perhaps after all Shakespeare
led a vulgar life!
When Tyndall was here, he showed us how the dark, coarse, invisible
heat rays could be strained out of the spectrum; or, in other
words, that every solar beam was weighted with a vast, nether,
invisible side, which made it a lever of tremendous power in
organic nature. After some such analogy, one sees how the highest
order of power in the intellectual world draws upon and is
nourished by those rude, primitive, barbaric human qualities that
our culture and pietism tend to cut off and strain out. Our culture
has its eye on the other end of the spectrum, where the fine violet
and indigo rays are; but all the lifting, rounding, fructifying
powers of the system are in the coarse, dark rays--the black devil--
at the base. The angel of light is yoked with the demon of
darkness, and the pair create and sustain the world.
In rare souls like Emerson, the fruit of extreme culture, it is
inevitable that at least some of the heat rays should be lost, and
we miss them especially when we contrast him with the elder
masters. The elder masters did not seem to get rid of the coarse or
vulgar in human life, but royally accepted it, and struck their
roots into it, and drew from it sustenance and power: but there is
an ever-present suspicion that Emerson prefers the saints to the
sinners; prefers the prophets and seers to Homer, Shakespeare, and
Dante.
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