What does Emerson intend by trusting the time? Does he mean the spirit
of the age? If we replace the word time by Divine Providence, the
passage becomes intelligible and notably significant; but if he meant
the prevailing spirit of the time, the earlier part of Emerson's career
is a perfect contradiction of it. If in his youth he had trusted the
prevailing tendency of his time he would have become a conservative
formalist, and never heard of as an independent thinker. It might even
be said that few men have ever trusted their own time less. Like
Gladstone, he was dissatisfied with the present and looked toward the
future. They both exerted themselves with all their might to
revolutionize public opinion and give to the future the stamp of their
own ideas. The old Hebrew prophets whom Emerson so much resembled did
not trust their own time, but were constantly complaining of it. So
Cicero cried out, "O tempora, O mores!" and Savonarola, and many others.
It would seem as if in this poetic rhapsody the writer had lost sight of
his subject almost immediately upon stating it, and had substituted
Providence for it in his mind. This was not unfrequently the case with
him, and may account for those vague aerial flights which his
commentators have referred to. Hawthorne says, "Mr. Emerson is a great
searcher for facts, but they seem to melt away and become unsubstantial
in his grasp.
Pages:
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125