Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 54.djvu/574

556 Emerson's thought in regard to evolution. Saint-Hilaire gave the coup de grâce to Cuvier's fight against evolution. Oken is one of the great pioneers of evolution. Goethe shares with Empedoeles, Lucretius, and Erasmus Darwin the great honor of being a poet of evolution. Of the four, Goethe was by all odds the greatest. To him, the doctrine of evolution was of more importance than the downfall of a despot. The eve of the Revolution of 1830 found him watching over the dispute between Cuvier and SaintHilaire with an interest that obscured every other.

"'Well,' remarked Goethe to Soret" (Conversations with Eckermann) "'what do you think of this great event? The volcano has burst forth, all in flames, and there are no more negotiations behind closed doors.' 'A dreadful affair,' I answered, 'but what else could be expected under the circumstances, and with such a ministry, except that it would end in the expulsion of the present royal family?' 'We do not seem to understand each other, my dear friend,' replied Goethe. 'I am not speaking of those people at all; I am interested in something very different. I mean the dispute between Cuvier and Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, which has broken out in the Academy, and which is of such great importance to science.' This remark of Goethe's came upon me so unexpectedly that I did not know what to say, and my thoughts for some minutes seemed to have come to a complete standstill. 'The affair is of the utmost importance,' he continued,' and you can not form any idea of what I felt on receiving the news of the meeting on the 19th. In Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire we have now a mighty ally for a long time to come. But I see also how great the sympathy of the French scientific world must be in this affair, for, in spite of a terrible political excitement, the meeting on the 19th was attended by a full house. The best of it is, however, that the synthetic treatment of Nature introduced into France by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire can now no longer be stopped. This matter has now become public through the discussion in the Academy carried on in the presence of a large audience; it can no longer be referred to secret committees or be settled or suppressed behind closed doors."'

It is obvious to any reader of Emerson's essays that Goethe exercised an enormous influence over him, and that Emerson was much more in sympathy with Goethe than was the fetichistic dualist Carlyle. This influence of Goethe over Emerson's views of evolution is clearly evident in the citation already made.

The evolutionary views of Emerson appear so frequently in his essays that it is astonishing that he should have been misunderstood. The citation by the Minneapolis clergyman from the essay on Nature that "man is fallen" does not refer to the Adamic fall, but the degenerating influence of cities. At the slightest glance, the evolutionary tendency of this essay on Nature is evident. In the paragraph immediately after that containing the reference to fallen man occurs the following:

"But taking timely warning and leaving many things unsaid on this topic, let us not longer omit our homage to the efficient Nature, natura naturans, the quick cause before which all forms flee as the driven snows, itself secret, its works driven before it in flocks and multitudes (as the ancient represented Nature by Proteus, a shepherd), and in indescribable variety. It published 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. A little heat, that is a little motion, is all that differences the bald dazzling white and deadly cold poles of the earth from the prolific tropical climates. All changes pass without violence by reason of the two cardinal conditions of boundless space and boundless time. Geology has initiated us into the secularity of Nature and taught us to disuse our school-dame measure and exchange our Mosaic and Ptolemaic scheme for her large style. We knew nothing rightly for want of perspective. Now we learn what patient ages must round themselves 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."

It would be useless to multiply citations along this line to demonstrate not only that Emerson was an evolutionist, but that his whole philosophy was pervaded by the doctrine. It should be remembered that, at the time Emerson wrote, evolution had won wide favor among thinkers and that the success of the Origin of Species was an evidence, not of the creation of the evolution sentiment by that work, but of a pre-existing mental current in favor of evolution.