There can be no manner of doubt that although Father Hecker in after life could good-naturedly smile at the singularities of Brook Farm, what he saw and was taught there had a strong and permanent effect on his character. It is little to say that the influence was refining to him, for he was refined by nature. But he gained what was to him a constant corrective of any tendency to man-hatred in all its degrees, not needed by himself to be sure, but always needed in his dealing with others. It gave to a naturally trustful disposition the vim and vigor of an apostolate for a cheerful view of human nature. It was a characteristic trait of his to expect good results from reliance on human virtue, and his whole success as a persuades of men was largely to be explained by the subtle flattery of this trustful attitude towards them. At Brook Farm the mind of Isaac Hecker was eagerly looking for instruction. It failed to get even a little clear light on the more perplexing problems of life, but it got something better—the object-lesson of good men and women struggling nobly and unselfishly for laudable ends. Brook Farm was an attempt to remove obstructions from the pathway of human progress, taking that word in the natural sense.
Even afterwards, when he had known human destiny in its perfect supernatural and natural forms, and when the means to compass it were in his possession and plainly competent for success, his memory reproduced the scenes and persons of Brook Farm in an atmosphere of affection and admiration, though not unmingled with amusement. He used not infrequently to quote words heard there, and cite examples of things done there, as lessons of wisdom not only for the philosopher but also for the ascetic. He was there equipped with the necessary external guarantee of his inner consciousness that man is good, because made so by his Creator—inclined indeed to evil, but yet a good being, even so inclined. Nothing is more necessary for one who is to be a teacher among a population whose Catholicity is of blood and family tradition as well as of grace, than to know that there is virtue, true and high in its own order, outside the visible pale of the Church. Especially is this necessary if Catholics in any age or country are to be fitted for a missionary vocation. That this is the vocation of the Church of his day was Isaac Hecker's passionate conviction. He was able to communicate this to Catholics of the old stock as well as to influence non-Catholics in favor of the Church; perhaps even more so. More than anything else, indeed, Brook Farm taught him the defect of human nature on its highest plane; but it taught him also the worthiness of the men and women of America of the apostle's toil and blood. The gentle natures whom he there knew and learned to love, their spirit of self-sacrifice for the common good, their minds at once innocent and cultivated, their devotion to their high ideal, the absence of meanness, coarseness, vulgarity, the sinking of private ambitions, the patience with the defects of others, their desire to establish the communism of at least intellectual gifts—all this and much more of the kind fixed his views and affections in a mould which eminently fitted him as a vessel of election for apostolic uses.
Before passing to the study of Isaac Hecker's own interior during the period of his residence at Brook Farm, it is our pleasant privilege to communicate to our readers the subjoined charming reminiscence of his personality at the time, from one who was his associate there:
"West New Brighton, S.I., February 28, 1890.—DEAR SIR: I fear that my recollections of Father Hecker will be of little service to you, for they are very scant. But the impression of the young man whom I knew at Brook Farm is still vivid. It must have been in the year 1843 that he came to the Farm in West Roxbury, near Boston. He was a youth of twenty-three, of German aspect, and I think his face was somewhat seamed with small-pox. But his sweet and candid expression, his gentle and affectionate manner, were very winning. He had an air of singular refinement and self-reliance combined with a half-eager inquisitiveness, and upon becoming acquainted with him, I told him that he was Ernest the Seeker, which was the title of a story of mental unrest which William Henry Channing was then publishing in theDial.
"Hecker, or, as I always called him and think of him, Isaac, had apparently come to Brook Farm because it was a result of the intellectual agitation of the time which had reached and touched him in New York. He had been bred a baker, he told me, and I remember with what satisfaction he said to me, 'I am sure of my livelihood because I can make good bread.' His powers in this way were most satisfactorily tested at the Farm, or, as it was generally called, 'the Community,' although it was in no other sense a community than an association of friendly workers in common. He was drawn to Brook Farm by the belief that its life would be at least agreeable to his convictions and tastes, and offer him the society of those who might answer some of his questions, even if they could not satisfy his longings.
"By what influences his mind was first affected by the moral movement known in New England as transcendentalism, I do not know. Probably he may have heard Mr. Emerson lecture in New York, or he may have read Brownson'sCharles Elwood,which dealt with the questions that engaged his mind and conscience. But among the many interesting figures at Brook Farm I recall none more sincerely absorbed than Isaac Hecker in serious questions. The merely æsthetic aspects of its life, its gayety and social pleasures, he regarded good-naturedly, with the air of a spectator who tolerated rather than needed or enjoyed them. There was nothing ascetic or severe in him, but I have often thought since that his feeling was probably what he might have afterward described as a consciousness that he must be about his Father's business.
"I do not remember him as especially studious. Mr. Ripley had classes in German philosophy and metaphysics, in Kant and Spinoza, and Isaac used to look in, as he turned wherever he thought he might find answers to his questions. He went to hear Theodore Parker preach in the Unitarian Church in the neighboring village of West Roxbury. He went into Boston, about ten miles distant, to talk with Brownson, and to Concord to see Emerson. He entered into the working life at the Farm, but always, as it seemed to me, with the same reserve and attitude of observation. He was the dove floating in the air, not yet finding the spot on which his foot might rest.
"The impression that I gathered from my intercourse with him, which was boyishly intimate and affectionate, was that of all 'the apostles of the newness,' as they were gayly called, whose counsel he sought, Brownson was the most satisfactory to him. I thought then that this was due to the authority of Brownson's masterful tone, the definiteness of his views, the force of his 'understanding,' as the word was then philosophically used in distinction from the reason. Brownson's mental vigor and positiveness were very agreeable to a candid mind which was speculatively adrift and experimenting, and, as it seemed to me, which was more emotional than logical. Brownson, after his life of varied theological and controversial activity, was drawing toward the Catholic Church, and his virile force fascinated the more delicate and sensitive temper of the young man, and, I have always supposed, was the chief influence which at that time affected Hecker's views, although he did not then enter the Catholic Church.
"He was a general favorite at Brook Farm, always equable and playful, wholly simple and frank in manner. He talked readily and easily, but not controversially. His smile was singularly attractive and sympathetic, and the earnestness of which I have spoken gave him an unconscious personal dignity. His temperament was sanguine. The whole air of the youth was that of goodness. I do not think that the impression made by him forecast his career, or, in any degree, the leadership which he afterwards held in his Church. But everybody who knew him at that time must recall his charming amiability.
"I think that he did not remain at Brook Farm for a whole year, and when later he went to Belgium to study theology at the seminary of Mons he wrote me many letters, which I am sorry to say have disappeared. I remember that he labored with friendly zeal to draw me to his Church, and at his request I read the life and some writing of St. Alphonse of Liguori. Gradually our correspondence declined when I was in Europe, and was never resumed; nor do I remember seeing him again more than once, many years ago. There was still in the clerical figure, which was very strange to me, the old sweetness of smile and address; there was some talk of the idyllic days, some warm words of hearty good will, but our interests were very different, and, parting, we went our separate ways. For a generation we lived in the same city, yet we never met. But I do not lose the bright recollection of Ernest the Seeker, nor forget the frank, ardent, generous, manly youth, Isaac Hecker.
"Very truly yours,
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THE private journals from which we are about to quote so largely were an unhoped-for addition to the stock of materials available for Father Hecker's biography. Until after his death not even their existence, still less the nature of their contents, was suspected. With the exception of two important documents, one written while he was in Belgium, in obedience to the requirements of his director; the other in Rome, for the consideration of the four venerable religious whose advice he sought before founding his community, no records of his interior life have been discovered which are at all comparable in fulness to those made during the eighteen months which preceded his admission to the Church. In his years of health and strength he lived and worked for others; and in those weary ones of illness which followed them, he thought and wrote and suffered, but apparently without making any deliberate notes of his deeper personal experience.
On those of our readers whose acquaintance with Father Hecker dates, as our own does, from his intensely active and laborious prime, these revelations of the period when he was being passively wrought upon and shaped for his work by the hand of God, may produce an effect not unlike that we have been conscious of in studying the greater mass from which our extracts are taken. They will, perhaps, be struck, in the first place, by the unexpectedly strong witness they bear to the wholly interior and mystical experience of the man. They testify, moreover, to the real and objective character of that leading which he was constrained to follow; and not only that. They do so in a way which furnishes a convincing reply to a very plausible doubt as to whether the narrow and uncongenial surroundings of his early life might not, by themselves, be sufficient to explain the discontent of a poetic and aspiring nature such as his.
He was at Brook Farm when that community was at its pleasantest. The shadow of care and the premonition of failure were, indeed, already looming up before those who bore the chief responsibilities of the undertaking, but the group by virtue of whose presence it became famous had hardly begun to dwindle. And besides those whose names have since become well known, there were others, young, gay, intelligent, and well bred, acquaintance and familiarity with whom were in many ways attractive to a susceptible youth like Isaac Hecker. What impression he made upon the circle he entered, how cordially he was received and held in high esteem, our readers already know. And if he gave pleasure, he received it also. At first the new circumstances were a little strange and embarrassing to him. After a fortnight, or thereabouts, we find him noting that he is "not one of their spirits. They say 'Mr. Hecker' in a tone they do not use in speaking to each other." But the strangeness soon wore off and he yielded to the influence of the place with a wholeness which would have been entire but for the stronger drawing which never let him free.
On this point, too, the witness of the journal is peremptory. So it is as to the unity and consistence of his interior experiences from first to last. Child, and boy, and man, there was always the same ardent sincerity of purpose in him, the same docility to the Voice that spoke within, the same attitude toward "the life that now is" which Mr. Curtis, in the letter given in the preceding chapter, has described, with so fine an insight, as one of reserve and observation. "He was the dove floating in the air, not yet finding the spot on which his foot might rest," writes Mr. Curtis of Isaac Hecker at that period of his youth when his surroundings and companions were for the first time, and very possibly for the last, wholly congenial to his natural inclinations. And again: "There was nothing ascetic or severe in him; but I have often thought since that his feeling was probably what he might have afterward described as a consciousness that he must be about his Father's business."
These words are significant testimony to the nobility of the impression made on others by Father Hecker's personality in early manhood. Even if our only addition to such scanty knowledge of his life at Brook Farm as could be gathered from his own conversations in later years were this happily-touched sketch, it could hardly be more interesting than it is. But, fortunately, it does not stand alone. Its fine recognition of the lofty purity of his nature is everywhere borne out by the unpremeditated and candid self-revelations of the diary. Their characteristic trait is everywhere aspiration—a sense of joy in elevation above the earthly, or a sense of depression because the earthly weighs him down. Then come eager glances of inquiry in every direction for the satisfaction of his aspirations, little by little narrowing down to the Catholic Church, wherein the dove of Mr. Curtis's image was finally to rest his foot for ever. And in all this he scarcely at all mentions a dread of the Divine wrath as a motive for his flight. It is not out of the city of destruction, but toward the celestial city that he goes. He is drawn by what he wants, not hounded by what he fears. Always there is the reaching out of a strong nature toward what it lacks—a material for its strength to work on, a craving for rational joy, coupled with an ever-increasing conviction that nature cannot give him such a boon. Men who knew Father Hecker only in his royal maturity, sometimes cavilled at his words of emphatic faith in guileless nature; but they had only to know him a little better to learn his appreciation of the supernatural order, and his recognition of its absolute and exclusive competency to satisfy nature's highest aspirations. Reading these early journals, we have constantly recalled the later days when he so often, and sometimes continually, repeated, "Religion is a boon!" No one could know that better than he who had so deeply felt the want it satisfies.
The diary was begun in the middle of April, 1843, when Isaac had just returned to Brook Farm after a fortnight spent at home. It opens with a prayer for light and direction, which is its dedication to the uses not only of an earnest but a religious seeker. He addresses himself directly to God as Father, not making either appeal or reference to our Lord. But there is in it an invocation to those "that are in heaven to intercede and plead" for him, which recalls the fact, so often mentioned by him, that it was the teaching of the Catechism of the Council of Trent on the Communion of Saints which cleared away his final clouds and brought him directly to the Church. There is a note, too, among his later papers, in which, speaking of the phenomena of modern spiritualism, he says that the same longing for an assurance of personal immortality which leads so many into that maze of mingled truth and error, had a great share in disposing his mind to accept the authoritative doctrine of the Church, which here as elsewhere answered fully the deepest longings of his soul.
We shall not attempt to follow the chronological order of the journal with exactness, but in making our extracts shall pursue the order of topics rather than of time. By the middle of April the question of the Church had presented itself so unmistakably to Isaac Hecker, as the necessary preliminary to further progress—to be settled in one way or another, either set definitely aside as unessential or else accepted as the adequate solution of man's problems, that his struggles for and against it recur with especial frequency. Faber has said somewhere that the Church is the touchstone of rational humanity, and that probably no adult passes out of life without having once, at least, been brought squarely face to face with it and made to understand and shoulder the tremendous responsibility which its claims impose. There would be no need of a touchstone if there were no alloy in human nature, no feebleness in man's will, no darkness in his understanding. Were that the condition of humanity, the call to the supernatural order would be simply the summons to come up higher, its symbol a beacon torch upon the heights. As it is, the path may be mistaken. He whose feet have been set in it from birth by Christian training may wilfully forsake it. He whose heart is pure and whose aspirations noble, may be so surrounded by the mists of inherited error and misapprehension that the light of truth fails to penetrate them when it first dawns. The road is always strait which leads any son of Adam to supernal joy in conscious union with his Creator, even when his will is good and his desire unfeigned.
We shall find, therefore, that Isaac Hecker's struggles were many and painful before he fully recognized and attained the necessary means to the end he craved. They were characteristic also. He was looking for the satisfaction of his rational aspirations rather than for the solution of historical problems, although his mind was too clear not to see that the two are inextricably bound up together. But inasmuch as at the period of which we are writing, which was that of the Oxford Tracts, controversy turned mainly on questions of historical continuity and of Divine warrant in the external revelation of holy Scripture, it follows that he, and such as he, must have taken a lonely and unfrequented road towards the truth. Every time he looked at the Church he was greeted with the spectacle of unity and uniformity, of discipline and order. These are elements which always have been, and probably always will be, most attractive to the classes called educated, to men seeking for external notes of truth, flying from disorder, fearful of rebellion. But to Isaac Hecker, the only external note which deeply attracted him was that of universal brotherhood. If he were to bow his knee with joy to Jesus Christ, it would be because all, in heaven and earth or hell, should one day bend in union with him.
It takes an intimate knowledge of Catholicity to perceive the interior transformation of humanity by its supernatural aids. On the one hand, the influence of Isaac Hecker's Brook Farm surroundings was to persuade him to confide wholly in nature, which there was very nearly at its unaided best. On the other hand, the treasures of Catholicity for the inner life were hidden from him. Religion, in his conception of it—in the true conception of it—must be the binding of all things together, natural and supernatural. Hence we find him at times complaining that the Church is not sufficient forhis wants.If it were not personal in its adaptation to him, it was little that it should be historical this, hierarchical that, or biblical the other. It must be his primarily, because he cannot live a rational and pure life without it. An ordinarily decorous life, if you will; free from lust or passion, and without gross unreason, but nevertheless tame, unprogressive, dry and unproductive, without any absolute certainty except that of the helplessness of man. Such a life seemed to him hardly more than a synonym for death. "The fact is," as he writes on a page now lying before us, "I want to live every moment. I want something positive, living, nourishing. I negative only by affirming."
The earliest entry in this diary has been already quoted in the first
"Monday, April 17, 1843.—Yesterday I went to the Catholic church at West Roxbury. It was Easter Sunday. The services were, to me, very impressively affecting. The altar-piece represented Christ's rising from the tomb, and this was the subject-matter of the priest's sermon. In the midst of it he turned and pointed to the painting, with a few touching words. All eyes followed his, which made his remarks doubly affecting. How inspiring it must be to the priest, when he is preaching, to see around him the Saviour, and the goodly company of martyrs, saints, and fathers! There may be objections to having paintings and sculptures in churches, but I confess that I never enter a place where there is either but I feel an awe, an invisible influence, which strikes me mute. I would sit in silence, covering my head. A sanctified atmosphere seems to fill the place and to penetrate my soul when I enter, as if I were in a holy temple. 'Thou standest in a holy place,' I would say. A loud word, a heavy footstep, makes me shudder, as if an infidel were desecrating the place. I stand speechless, in a magical atmosphere that wraps my whole being, scarcely daring to lift my eyes. A perfect stillness comes over my soul; it seems to be soaring on the bosom of clouds."
"Tuesday, April 18.—I confess that either the Church is not sufficient for my wants or I have not seen it in its glory. I hope it may be the latter. I do not want to say it, but I must own that it fills me no more. I contemplate it, I look at it, I comprehend it. It does not lead me to aspire. I feel that either it has nothing to give, or that what it has is not that for which my soul is aching. I know it can be said in reply that I cannot know what the Church has until I am in communion with it; that it satisfies natures greater than mine; that it is the true life of the world; that there is no true spirituality outside of it, and that before I can judge it rightly my life must be equal to it in purity and elevation. Much more might be said. But, after all, what is it? The Catholic shows up the Anglican; the Anglican retorts with an accusation of corruption, and even a want of purity; the Protestant, the Presbyterian, claim their own mission at the expense of consistency and good logic. . . .
"The whole fact, I suppose, is that if there is anything in Succession, Tradition, Infallibility, Church organism and form, it is in the Catholic Church, and our business will be to stop this controversy and call an Ecumenical Council which shall settle these matters according to the Bible, Tradition, and the light of the Church."
There is a touch of unconscious humor in the final paragraph which clamored for quotation. But it was plainly written in profound earnest.
"Thursday, April 20.—My soul is disquieted, my heart aches. . . Tears flow from my eyes involuntarily. My soul is grieved—for what? Yesterday, as I was praying, the thought flashed across my mind, Where is God? Is He not here? Why prayest thou as if He were at a great distance from thee? Think of it. Where canst thou place Him—in what locality? Is He not here in thy midst? Is His presence not nearest of all to thee? Oh, think of it! God is here. . . .
"Am I impious to say that the language used in Scripture for Christ's expresses the thoughts of my soul? Oh, could we but understand that the kingdom of heaven is alwaysat handto the discerner, and that God calls upon all to 'Repent, for ye shall not all disappear until it shall open. This generation shall not pass away.'"
Then follows a page of philosophizing on time and eternity, immensity and space, and "monads who may develop or fulfil their destiny in other worlds than this," a reminiscence, perhaps, of the lectures on such topics at which Mr. Curtis says Isaac used to "look in," hoping to "find an answer to his questions." Such speculations are a trait throughout the diary, though they are everywhere subordinate to the practical ends which dominantly interest him. A day or two later comes a passage, already given in a preceding chapter, in reference to certain prophetic dreams which it has been given him to see realized. And at once this follows:
"April 24, Noon.—The Catholic Church alone seems to satisfy my wants, my faith, life, soul. These may be baseless fabrics, chimeras dire, or what you please. I may be laboring under a delusion. Yet my soul is Catholic, and that faith responds to my soul in its religious aspirations and its longings. I have not wished to make myself Catholic, but that answers on all sides to the wants of my soul. It is so rich, so full. One is in harmony all over—in unison with heaven, with the present, living in the natural body, and the past, who have changed. There is a solidarity between them through the Church. I do not feel controversial. My soul is filled."
From this point he speedily recedes. By the next day he is "lost almost in the flesh"; "fallen into an identity with my body," and notes that for some time he has "done little in study, but feel that I have lived very much." What hinders him he supposes to be "contemplating any certain amount of study which I ought to accomplish—looking to it as an end. Why should I not be satisfied when I am living, growing? Did Christ and His apostles study languages? I have the life—is not that the end?"
"April 28.—What shall I say? Am I wrong? Should I submit and give myself up to that which does not engage my whole being? To me the Church is not the great object of life. I am now out of it in the common meaning. I am not subject to its ordinances. Is it not best for me to accept my own nature rather than attempt to mould it as though it were an object? Is not our own existence more than this existence in the world?
"I read this morning an extract from Heine upon Schelling which affected me more than anything I have read for six months. The Church, says Schelling in substance, was first Petrine, then Pauline, and must be love-embracing, John-like. Peter, Catholicism; Paul, Protestantism; John, what is to be. The statement struck me and responded to my own dim intuitions. Catholicism is solidarity; Protestantism is individuality. What we want, and are tending to, is what shall unite them both, as John's spirit does—and that in each individual. We want neither the authority of History nor of the Individual; neither Infallibility nor Reason by itself but both combined in Life. Neither Precedent nor Opinion, but Being—neither a written nor a preached Gospel, but a living one. . . .
"It is only through Christ we can see the love, goodness, and wisdom of God. He is to us what the telescope is to the astronomer, with this difference: He so exalts and purifies us that our subject becomes the power to see. The telescope is a medium through which the boundaries of our vision are enlarged, but it is passive. Christ is an active Mediator who begets us if we will, and gives us power to see by becoming one with Him."
"May 3.—We all look upon this world as suits our moods, assimilating only such food as suits our dispositions—and no doubt there is sufficient variety to suit all. . . . Every personality individualizes the world to himself not subjectively but truly objectively. . . . Every individual ought, perhaps, to be satisfied with his own character. For it is an important truth of Fourier's that attractions are in proportion to destinies. Fear in proportion to hope, pain in proportion to pleasure, strength in proportion to destiny, etc. But it is mysterious that we know all this. 'Man has become as one of us.' We are all dead.
"Ah, mystic! dost thou show thyself in this shape? But now, being dead, shall we receive life and immortality (for I imagine immortality the solidarity of life—i.e., the union of the two lives, here and heaven) through Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, and so lose 'the knowledge of good and evil.' For as in Adam all died, so shall ye all be made alive through Jesus Christ.' The effect of the fall was literally the knowledge of good and evil. God knows no evil, and when we become one with Him, through the Mediator, we shall regain our previous state. Knowledge is the effect of sin, and is perhaps destined to correct itself. Consciousness and knowledge go together. Spontaneity and life are one. Knowledge is no gain, for it gives nothing. I can only know what has been given through spontaneity. Spontaneity is unity, one; knowledge is division of being. If Adam had not been separated he would doubtless not have sinned. 'The woman that Thou gavest me said unto me, Eat, and I did eat.' Still, through the seed of the woman, which will be the union restored, is the serpent to be bruised."
"May 4.—The real effect of the theory of the Church is to isolate men from the outward world, withdraw them from its enjoyments, and make them live a life of sacrifice of the passions. This is one statement. Another would be this: all these things can and should be enjoyed, but in a higher, purer, more exalted state of being than is the present ordinary condition of our minds. The only opposition to them arises when the soul becomes sensual, falls into their arms, and becomes lost to higher and more spiritual objects. . . .
"All is dark before me, impenetrable darkness. I appear to live in the centre. Nothing seems to take hold of my soul, or else it seeks nothing. Where it is I know not. I meet with no one else around me. I would that I could feel that some one lived in the same world that I now do. Something cloudy separates us. I cannot speak from my real being to others. There is no mutual recognition. When I speak, it is as if a burden accumulated round me. I long to throw it off, but I cannot utter my thoughts and feelings in their presence; if I do, they return to me unrecognized. Shall I ever meet with one the windows of whose soul will open simultaneously with mine?"
On the first Sunday of May Isaac went into Boston to hear Brownson preach, and a day or two later made the subjoined shrewd comments on the sermon in a letter to his mother:
"May 9, '43.—His intention is to preach the Catholic doctrine and administer the Sacraments. How many of them, I suppose, depends on circumstances. He justifies himself on the ground that he that is not against us is for us, and that in times of exigency, and in extraordinary cases, we may do what we could not be excused for doing otherwise. And he thinks by proclaiming the Catholic faith and repudiating the attempt to build up a Church, that in time the Protestant world will become Catholic in its dispositions, so that a unity will be made without submission or sacrifice. Under present circumstances it would be impossible, even if the Protestant churches should be willing to unite with the Catholic, that the Catholic could even supply priests for forty millions of Protestants, the Protestant priests being most of them married, etc.
"I confess the sermon was wholly unsatisfactory to me, un-catholic in its premises, and many of his arguments and facts chimerical and illusive. If you grant that the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church, there is, to my thought, no stopping-place short of its bosom. Or even if it is the nearest to the truth, you are under obligations to join it. How any one can believe in either one of those propositions, as 0. A. B. does, without becoming a Catholic in fact, I cannot conceive. This special pleading of exceptions, the necessity of the case, and improbable suppositions, springs more, I think, from the position of the individual than from the importance or truth of the arguments made use of. Therefore I think he will give up in time the ground upon which he now supports his course—not the object but his position. . . . I have bought a few Catholic books in Boston which treat upon the Anglican claims to Catholicity, and I think I can say, so far, I never shall join a Protestant Church—while I am not positive on the positive side, nor even in any way as yet decided."
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THE citations thus far made from Isaac Hecker's youthful diary, although penned at Brook Farm, bear few traces of that fact. They might have been written in a desert for all evidence they give of any special influence produced upon him by personal contact with others. It is not until the middle of May, 1843, that he begins to make any reference to his actual surroundings.
Before following him into these more intimate self-confidences, and especially before giving in his own words an account of that peculiar occurrence which so permanently affected his future, some preliminary remarks seem necessary.
It has been said already, in an earlier chapter of this biography, that but for some special intervention of Divine Providence, it is more than probable that Isaac Hecker would have led the ordinary life of men in the world, continuing, indeed, to cherish a high ideal of the duties of the citizen of a free country, but pursuing it along well-beaten ways. There is no doubt that, unless some such event as he has narrated, or some influence equivalent to it in effect, had supernaturally drawn him away, he would of his own volition have sought what he was repeatedly advised to seek by his most attached friends, a congenial union in wedlock. He was naturally susceptible, and his attachments were not only firm, but often seemed obstinate. Of celibacy he had, up to this time, no other idea than such as the common run of non-Catholics possess. At home, indeed, when afterwards pressed to seek a wife, he had answered, truly enough, though holding fast to his secret, that he "had no thought of marrying and felt an aversion to company for such an end." And again he writes to his mother, anxious and troubled for his future, that the circle which surrounded him in New York oppressed and contracted him, and abridged his liberty. There was no one in it who "increased his life."
But at Brook Farm he met some one, as is revealed by his diary and correspondence, who deeply attracted him, and who might have attracted him as far as marriage had he not already received the Holy Spirit's prevenient grace of virginity. That is to say, he found "a being," to use his impersonal term, whose name and identity he is careful to veil, awkwardly enough at times with misleading pronouns, whose charm was so great as to win from him what would have been, in his normal state, a marital affection. But he was no longer normal. Although still beyond the visible pale of that garden of elect souls, God's holy Church, he was already transformed by the quickening grace which "reaches from end to end mightily and orders all things sweetly." Our next quotations afford explicit proof on this point:
"Tuesday, May 16.—Life appears to be a perpetual struggle between the heavenly and the worldly.
"Here at Brook Farm I become acquainted with persons who have moved in a higher rank in society than I—persons of good education and fine talents; all of which has an improving influence on me. And I meet with those to whom I can speak, and feel that, to a great degree, I am understood and responded to. In New York I am alone in the midst of people. I am not in any internal senseen rapportwith them.
"I suppose the reason why I do not, in my present state, feel disposed to connect myself with any being, and would rather avoid a person whom I was conscious I might or could love, is that I feel my life to be in a rapid progress, and that no step now would be a permanent one. I am afraid the choice I would have made some time since (if there had not been something deeply secret in my being which prevented me) would now be very unsatisfactory. I feel conscious there could not have been an equal and mutual advance, because the natures of some are not capable of much growth. And I mistrust whether there would not have been an inequality, hence disharmony and unhappiness.
"To be required to accept your past is most unpleasant. Perhaps the society with which I was surrounded did not afford a being that unified with mine own. And I have faith that there are spiritual laws beneath all this outward framework of sight and sense, which will, if rightly believed in and trusted, lead to the goal of eternal life, harmony of being, and union with God. So I accept my being led here. Am I superstitious or egoistic in believing this? This is, no doubt, disputed territory. Have we any objective rule to compare our faith with which would give us the measure of our superstition? How much of to-day would have seemed miraculous or superstitious to the past? I confess I have no rule or measure to judge the faith of any man.
"The past is always the state of infancy. The present is an eternal youth, aspiring after manhood; hoping wistfully, intensely desiring, listfully listening, dimly seeing the bright star of hope in the future, beckoning him to move rapidly on, while his strong heart beats with enthusiasm and glowing joy. The past is dead. Wish me not the dead from the grave, for that would be death re-enacted. . . .
"Oh, were our wishes in harmony with heaven, how changed would be the scenes of our life! . . . This accordance would be music which only the angels now hear—too delicate for beings such as we are at present. List! hast thou not heard in some bright moment a strain from heaven's angelic choirs? Oh, yes! In our sleep the angels have whispered such rich music, and the soul being then passive, we can hear. And the pleasure does not leave us when passion and thought take their accustomed course.
"O man! were thy soul more pure, what a world would open to thy inner senses! There would be no moment of thy existence but would be filled with the music of love. The prophet said: 'In that day my eyes were opened.' And behold what he saw! He saw it. Could we but hear! The word of the Lord is ever speaking—alas! where is one that can hear? Where are our Isaiahs, our Ezekiels, our Jeremiahs? Oh! thou shrunken-visaged, black, hollow-eyed doubt! hast thou passed like a cloud over men's souls, making them blind, deaf and dumb? Ah, ha! dost thou shudder? I chant thy requiem, and prophets, poets, and seers shall rise again! I see them coming. Great heaven! Earth shall be again a paradise, and God converse with men!"
The next entry is undated, but it was probably made on the last day of May. It has served to fix the proximate time of the illness and disquiet which led to his first withdrawal from business and home.
"Wednesday.—About ten months ago—perhaps only seven or eight—I saw (I cannot say I dreamed; it was quite different from dreaming; I was seated on the side of my bed) a beautiful, angelic being, and myself standing alongside of her, feeling a most heavenly pure joy. It was as if our bodies were luminous and gave forth a moon-like light which sprung from the joy we experienced. I felt as if we had always lived together, and that our motions, actions, feelings, and thoughts came from one centre. When I looked towards her I saw no bold outline of form, but an angelic something I cannot describe, though in angelic shape and image.It was this picture that has left such an indelible impression on my mind.For some time afterward I continued to feel the same influence, and do now so often that the actual around me has lost its hold.In my state previous to my vision I should have married ere this, for there are those I have since seen who would have met the demands of my mind.But now this vision continually hovers over me and prevents me, by its beauty, from accepting any one else; for I am charmed by its influence, and conscious that, should I accept any other, I should lose the life which would be the only one wherein I could say I live."
Those of our readers who are either versed in mystical theology or who have any wide knowledge of the lives of the Church's more interior saints, with neither of which Isaac Hecker had at this time any acquaintance, will be apt to recall here St. Francis of Assisi and his bride, the Lady Poverty, the similar occurrences related by Henry Suso of himself, and the mystic espousals of St. Catharine. We have in this relation not only the plainly avowed reason why he accepted the celibate life, even before entering the Church or arriving at any clear understanding of his duty to do so, but we have something more. Not yet certain of his own vocation, the dream of a virginal apostolate, including the two sexes, had already absorbed his yearnings, never again to be forgotten. Neither priest nor Catholic, save in the as yet unrevealed ordinance of God, he was no longer free to invite any woman to marriage, no matter how deeply he might be sensible of her feminine attraction. The union of souls? Yes; for uses worthy of souls. The union of bodies? No; that would only clip his wings and narrow his horizon. Thenceforward the test of true kinship with him could only be a kindred aspiration after union in liberty from merely natural trammels, in order to tend more surely to a supernatural end.
This may seem to some a strange beginning to a life so simply and entirely set apart from the active, or, at least, public union of the sexes in apostolic labors. Strange or not, the reader will see it to be more true as this biography proceeds, and its writer is not conscious of any reluctance to make it known. Such an integral supernatural mission to men was what he ever after desired and sought to establish, though he only attained success on the male side. We cannot deny that this diary, surprising to us in many ways, was most so in this particular, although in this particular we found the explanation of many words spoken by Father Hecker in his maturity and old age, words the most sober and the most decided we ever heard from him. He never for an hour left out of view the need of women for any great work of religion, though he doubtless made very sure of his auditor before unveiling his whole thought. He never made so much as a serious attempt to incorporate women with his work, but he never ceased to look around and to plan with a view to doing so. Among the personal memoranda already mentioned are found evidences of this so direct, and corroborated by such recent facts, that they cannot be used until the lapse of time shall have made an extension of this life as well possible as necessary.
"June 1.—One cannot live a spiritual life in the world because it requires so much labor to supply food and clothing that what is inward and eternal has to be given up for the material and life in time. If one has to sustain himself at Brook Farm without other means to aid him, he must employ his strength to that degree that he has no time for the culture of the spiritual. I cannot remain and support myself without becoming subject to the same conditions as existed at home. I cannot expect them to be willing to lessen their present expenses much for the sake of gaining time for spiritual culture; nor do I see how I can at home live with my relatives and have the time which I require. I see no way but to give up the taste for fine clothing and variety in food. I would prefer the life of the monastery to that of the external world. The advantages for my being are greater. The harmony of the two is the full and perfect existence; but the spiritual should always be preserved at the expense of the other, which is contrary to the tendency of the world, and perhaps even to that of this place. I would prefer going hungry in body than in soul. I am speaking against neither, for I believe in the fulness of life, in amply supplying all its wants; but the kingdom of God is more to me than this world. I would be Plato in love, Zeno in self-strength, and Epicurus in æsthetics; but if I have to sacrifice either, let Epicurus go."
"June 12.—At times I have an impulse to cry out, 'What wouldst Thou have me to do?' I would shout up into the empty vault of heaven: 'Ah, why plaguest Thou me so? What shall I do? Give me an answer unless Thou wilt have me consumed by inward fre, drying up the living liquid of life. Wouldst Thou have me to give up all? I have. I have no dreams to realize. I want nothing, have nothing, and am willing to die in any way. What ties I have are few, and can be cut with a groan.'"
"Monday, June 26.—Solomon said, after he had tasted all the joys of the world, 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.' I, my friend, who have scarcely tasted any of the pleasures of the world, would say with Solomon, 'all is vanity.' I see nothing in which I can work. All are vanities, shadows; beneath all there is nothing. Great God! what is all this for? Why torment and pain me so? Why is all this action a profanity to me? And even holiness, what is it?
"Oh! I am dumb; my soul is inarticulate. There is that in me which I would pour out. Oh! why is it that the noblest actions of humanity speak not to my soul? All life is inadequate—but not in the sense of the world. I would joyfully be silent, obscure, dead to all the world, if this alone which is in me had life. I ask not for name, riches, external conditions of delight or splendor. No; the meanest of all would be heaven to me, if this inward impulse had action, lived itself out. But no; I am imprisoned in spirit. What imprisons? What is imprisoned? Who can tell?
"You say, good adviser, 'You must accept things as they are—be content to be; have faith in God; do that work which your hands find to do.' Good; but it is taken for granted we know what things are—which is the question. 'Be content to be.' Be what? 'Have faith in God.' Yes. 'Work?' Yes; but how? Like others. But this is not work to me; it is death; nay, worse—it is sin; hence, damnation—and I am not ready to go to hell yet. Your work gives me no activity; and to starve, if I must, is better than to do the profane, the sacrilegious labor you place before me. I want God's living work to do. My labor must be a sermon, every motion of my body a word, every act a sentence. My work must be devotional. I must feel that I am worshipping. It must be music, love, prayer. My field must be the kingdom of God. Christ must reign in all. It must be Christ doing in me, and not me. My life must be poetical, divine. Head, heart, and hands must be a trinity in unity; they must tone in one accord. My work must be work of inspiration and aspiration. My heart cannot be in heaven when my head and hands are in hell. I must feel that I am building up Christ's kingdom in all that I do. To give Christ room for action in my heart, soul, and body is my desire, my aim, purpose, being. . . .
"It is not he who goes to church, says his prayers, sings psalms, says 'Lord, Lord,' who is in God and establishing His kingdom. No; it is he who is doing it. The earth is to be His kingdom, and your prayers must be deeds, your actions music ascending to heaven. The Church must be the kingdom of God in its fulness. . . .
"Are we Christians if we act not in the spirit in which Christ acted? Shall we say: 'What shall we do?' Follow the spirit of Christ which is in you. 'Unless ye are reprobates, ye have it in you.' 'Be ye faithful, as I am,' said Jesus. 'Love one another as I have loved you.' Take up your cross and follow Him. Leave all, if the Spirit leads you to leave all. Do whatever it commands you. There will be no lack of action. Care not for the world; give up wealth, friends, those that you love, the opinions of all. Be willing to be despised, spit upon, crucified. Be silent, and let your silence speak for you."
It is plain that what Isaac Hecker is here condemning is the life of the world, wholly ordinary in its aims and motives. It is not to be understood as a condemnation of the common lot of men, or of that life in itself. It was only as he saw it over against his own vocation to something higher that it became repulsive, nay guiltyto him.Nor was he even yet so settled in his view of the contrasted worth of the two careers between which he had to choose, as to be quite free from painful struggles. In the entry made on the day preceding this outburst, he once more recurs to the subject of marriage:
"Monday Evening, June 26.—This evening the same advice that has been given me before, first by the doctor who attended me, next by my dearest friend, was given me again by a man who now resides here."
"Tuesday Morning, June 27.—Rather than follow this advice, I would die. I should be miserable all my life. Nay, death before this. These men appear to me as natural men, but not in the same life as mine. They are older, have more experience and more judgment than I, perhaps; but considering the point of view from which their judgment is formed, their advice does not appear to be the counsel for me. I never can, nor will, save my health or life by such means. If that is the only remedy, then unremedied must I remain.
"But the cause of my present state of mind is not what they suppose. It is deeper, higher, and, O God! Thou knowest what it is! Wilt Thou give me hope, strength, guidance?" . . .
"Friday, June 29.—Am I led by something higher to the life to which I am tending? Sometimes I think it is most proper for me to return home, accept things as they are, and live a life like others—as good, and as much better as possible. If I can find one with whom I think I can live happily, to accept such a one, and give up that which now leads me.
"My friends would say this is the prudent and rational course—but it appears this is not mine. That I am here is one evidence that it is not mine. A second is that I struggled against what led me here as much as lay in my power, until I became weak, sick, and confined to my bed. Farther than that I could not go.
"They tell me that if I were married it would not be so with me. I will not dispute this, although I do not believe it. But, my good friends, that is the difficulty. To marry is to me impossible. You tell me this is unnatural. Yes, my brethren, it may be unnatural, but how shall I be natural? Must I commit that which in my sight is a crime, which I feel would make me miserable and be death to my soul? 'But this is foolish and one-sided in you. You are wrong-minded. You will lose your health, your youthful joy, and the pleasure which God has, by human laws, designed you to enjoy. You should give up these thoughts and feelings of yours and be like those around you.
"Yes, my friends, this advice I accept with love, knowing your kindness to me. But, alas! I feel that it comes from such a source that I cannot receive it."
"July 5.—My brother George has been here; he stayed three days. He told me he had often talked with my brother John about living a life higher, nobler, and more self-denying than he had done. It appears from his conversation that since I left home they have been impressed with a deeper and better spirit. To me it is of much interest to decide what I shall do. I have determined to make a visit to Fruitlands. To leave this place is to me a great sacrifice. I have been much refined in being here.
"To stay here—to purchase a place for myself—or to go home. These are questions about which I feel the want of some friend to consult with. I have no one to whom I can go for advice. If I wish to be self-denying, one would say at home is the best, the largest field for my activity. This may be true in one sense. But is it wise to go where there are the most difficulties to overcome? Would it not be better to plant the tree in the soil where it can grow most in every direction? At home, to be sure, if I have strength to succeed, I may, perhaps, do the most good, and it may be the widest sphere for me. But there are many difficulties which have such a direct influence on one to injure, to blight all high and noble sentiments, that I fear to encounter them, and I am not sure it is my place. Perhaps it would be best for me not to speculate on the future, but look to Him who is above for wise direction in all that concerns my life. Sacrifices must be made. I must expect and accept them in a meek, humble, and willing spirit."
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WHAT influenced Isaac Hecker to leave Brook Farm, a place so congenial in many ways to his natural dispositions, was, plainly enough, his tendency to seek a more ascetic and interior life than he could lead there. The step cost him much, but he had received all that the place and his companions could give him, and his departure was inevitable.
His next move in pursuit if his ideal took him to Fruitlands. This was a farm, situated near Harvard, in Worcester Co., Massachusetts, which had been bought by Mr. Charles Lane, an English admirer of Amos Bronson Alcott, with the hope of establishing on it a new community in consonance with the views and wishes of the latter. Perhaps Fruitlands could never, at any stage of its existence as a corporate home for Mr. Alcott's family and his scanty following of disciples, have been truly described as in running order, but when Isaac Hecker went there, on July 11, 1843, it was still in its incipiency. He had paid the Fruitlanders a brief visit toward the end of June, and thought that he saw in them evidences of "a deeper life." It speaks volumes for his native sagacity and keen eye for realities, that less than a fortnight's residence with Mr. Alcott should have sufficed to dispel this illusion.
Bronson Alcott seems to have been by nature what the French call aposeur;or, as one of his own not unkindly intimates has described him, "an innocent charlatan." Although not altogether empty, he was vain; full of talk which had what was most often a false air of profundity; unpractical and incapable in the ordinary affairs of life to a degree not adequately compensated for by such a grasp as he was able to get on the realities that underlie them; and with an imposing aspect which corresponded wonderfully well with his interior traits. That, in his prime, his persuasive accents and bland self-confidence, backed by the admiration felt and expressed for him by men such as Emerson, and some of the community at Brook Farm, should have induced an open-minded youth like Isaac Hecker to take him for a time at his own valuation, is not strange. The truth is, that it was one of Father Hecker's life-long traits to prove all things, that he might find the good and hold fast to it. There was an element of justice in his make-up which enabled him to suspend judgment upon any institution or person, however little they seemed to deserve such consideration, until he was in a condition to decide from his own investigations. We shall see, later on, how he tried all the principal forms of Protestantism before deciding upon Catholicity, strong as his tendency toward the Church had become. We have never known any other man who, without exhibiting obstinacy, could so steadfastly reserve his judgment on another's statement, especially if it were in the nature of a condemnation.
When Isaac Hecker first made his acquaintance, Mr. Alcott had but recently returned from England, whither he had gone on the invitation of James P. Greaves, a friend and fellow-laborer of the great Swiss educator, Pestalozzi. Mr. Alcott had gained a certain vogue at home as a lecturer, and also as the conductor of a singular school for young children. Among its many peculiarities was that of carrying "moral suasion" to such lengths, as a solitary means of discipline, that the master occasionally publicly submitted to the castigation earned by a refractory urchin, probably by way of reaching the latter's moral sense through shame or pity. This was, doubtless, rather interesting to the pupils, whether or not it was corrective. Mr. Alcott's peculiarities did not stop here, however, and Boston parents, when he began to publish theColloquies on the Gospelswhich he held with their children, concluded, on the evidence thus furnished, that his thought was too "advanced" to make it prudent to trust them longer to his care. Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody, since so well known as an expositor of the Kindergarten system, had been his assistant. She wrote aRecord of Mr. Alcott's Schoolwhich attracted the attention of a small band of educational enthusiasts in England. They gave the name of "Alcott House" to a school of their own at Ham, near London, and hoped for great things from the personal advice and presence of the "Concord Plato." He was petted and fêted among them pretty nearly to the top of his bent; but his visit would have proved a more unalloyed success if the hard Scotch sense of Carlyle, to whom Emerson had recommended him, had not so quickly dubbed his vaunted depths deceptive shallows.
On his return he was accompanied by two Englishmen who seemed to be like-minded with himself, a Mr. H. G. Wright and Mr. Charles Lane, both of whom returned within a year or two to their own country, wiser and perhaps sadder men. Lane, at all events, who was a simple and candid soul for whom Isaac Hecker conceived a long-enduring friendship, sunk all his private means irrevocably in the futile attempt to establish Fruitlands on a solid basis. To use his own words in a letter now at our hand, though referring to another of Mr. Alcott's schemes, his little fortune was "buried in the same grave of flowery rhetoric in which so many other notions have been deposited."
Lying before us there is an epistle—Mr. Alcott's most ordinary written communications with his friends must have demanded that term in preference to anything less stately—in which he has described his own ideal of what life at Fruitlands ought to be. No directer way of conveying to our readers a notion of his peculiar faculty of seeming to say something of singular importance occurs to us, than that of giving it entire. Though found among Father Hecker's papers, it was not addressed to him but to one of his most-valued Brook Farm associates:
"Concord, Mass., February 15, 1843.—DEAR FRIEND: In reply to your letter of the 12th, I have to say that as until the snow leaves the ground clear, the Family cannot so much as look for a locality (which then may not readily be found), it seems premature to talk of the conditions on which any association may be formed.
"Nevertheless, as human progress is a universally interesting subject, I have much pleasure in communicating with you on the question of the general conditions most conducive to that end.
"I have no belief in associations of human beings for the purpose of making themselves happy by means of improved outward arrangements alone, as the fountains of happiness are within, and are opened to us as we are preharmonized or consociated with the Universal Spirit. This is the one condition needful for happy association amongst men. And this condition is attained by the surrender of all individual or selfish gratification—a complete willingness to be moulded by Divinity. This, as men now are, of course involves self-renunciation and retrenchment; and in enumerating the hindrances which debar us from happiness, we shall be drawn to consider, in the first place, ourselves; and to entertain practically the question, Are we prepared for the giving up all, and taking refuge in Love as an unfailing Providence? A faith and reliance as large as this seems needful to insure us against disappointment. The entrance to Paradise is still through the strait gate and narrow way of self-denial. Eden's avenue is yet guarded by the fiery-sworded cherubim, and humility and charity are the credentials for admission. Unless well armed with valor and patience, we must continue in the old and much-trodden broad way, and take share of the penalties paid by all who walk thereon.
"The conditions for one are conditions for all. Hence there can be no parley with the tempter, no private pleas for self-indulgence, no leaning on the broken reed of circumstances.
"It is not for us to prescribe conditions; these are prescribed on our natures, our state of being—and the best we can do, if disqualified, is either to attain an amended character, or to relinquish all hopes of securing felicity.
"Our purposes, as far as we know them at present, are briefly these:
"First, to obtain the free use of a spot of land adequate by our own labor to our support; including, of course, a convenient plain house, and offices, wood-lot, garden, and orchard.
"Secondly, to live independently of foreign aids by being sufficiently elevated to procure all articles for subsistence in the productions of the spot, under a regimen of healthful labor and recreation; with benignity towards all creatures, human and inferior; with beauty and refinement in all economies; and the purest charity throughout our demeanor.
"Should this kind of life attract parties towards us—individuals of like aims and issues—that state of being itself determines the law of association; and the particular mode may be spoken of more definitely as individual cases may arise; but, in no case, could inferior ends compromise the principles laid down.
"Doubtless such a household, with our library, our services and manner of life, may attract young men and women, possibly also families with children, desirous of access to the channels and fountain of wisdom and purity; and we are not without hope that Providence will use us progressively for beneficial effects in the great work of human regeneration, and the restoration of the highest life on earth.
"With the humane wish that yourself and little ones may be led to confide in providential Love,
"I am, dear friend, very truly yours,
It must be admitted that there is something delightful in thenaïvetéof this undertaking to be "sufficiently elevated to live independently of foreign aids," after first getting "thefree useof a spot of land, . . . including,of course,a convenient plain house, and offices, wood-lot, garden, and orchard." Establishments which would tolerably approximate to this description, and to the really essential needs of its prospective founder, have long existed in every civilized community. There are certain restrictions placed upon their inmates, however, and Mr. Alcott's desire was to make sure of his basis of earthly supplies, while left entirely free to persuade himself that he had arrived at an elevation which made him independent of them. Still, though "a charlatan," it must not be forgotten that he was "an innocent" one. He was plainly born great in that way, and had no need to achieve greatness in it. As Father Hecker said of him long afterwards, "Diogenes and his tub would have been Alcott's ideal if he had carried it out. But he never carried it out." Diogenes himself, it may be supposed, had his ideal included a family and an audience as well as a tub, might finally have come to hold that the finding of the latter was a mere detail, which could be entrusted indifferently to either of the two former or to both combined. Somebody once described Fruitlands as a place where Mr. Alcott looked benign and talked philosophy, while Mrs. Alcott and the children did the work. Still, to look benign is a good deal for a man to do persistently in an adverse world, indifferent for the most part to the charms of "divine philosophy," and Mr. Alcott persevered in that exercise until his latest day. "He was unquestionably one of those who like to sit upon a platform," wrote, at the time of his death, one who knew Alcott well, "and he may have liked to feel that his venerable aspect had the effect of a benediction." But with this mild criticism, censure of him is well-nigh exhausted. There was nothing of the Patriarch of Bleeding Heart Yard about him except that "venerable aspect," for which nature was responsible, and not he.
Fruitlands was the caricature of Brook Farm. Just as the fanatic is the caricature of the true reformer, so was Alcott the caricature of Ripley. This is not meant as disparaging either Alcott's sincerity or his intelligence, but to affirm that he lacked judgment, that he miscalculated means and ends, that he jumped from theory to practice without a moment's interval, preferred to be guided by instinct rather than by processes of reasoning, and deemed this to be the philosopher's way.
In the memoranda of private conversations with Father Hecker we find several references to Mr. Alcott. The first bears date February 4, 1882, and occurs in a conversation ranging over the whole of his experience between his first and second departures from home. We give it as it stands:
"Fruitlands was very different from Brook Farm—far more ascetic."
"You didn't like it?"
"Yes; but they did not begin to satisfy me. I said to them:'If you had the Eternal here, all right. I would be with you.'"
"Had they no notion of the hereafter?"
"No; nothing definite. Their idea was human perfection. They set out to demonstrate what man can do in the way of the supremacy of the spiritual over the animal. 'All right,' I said, 'I agree with you fully. I admire your asceticism; it is nothing new to me; I have practised it a long time myself. If you can get the Everlasting out of my mind, I'm yours. But I know' (here Father Hecker thumped the table at his bedside) 'that I am going to live for ever.'"
"What did Alcott say when you left?"
"He went to Lane and said, 'Well, Hecker has flunked out. He hadn't the courage to persevere. He's a coward.' But Lane said, 'No; you're mistaken. Hecker's right. He wanted more than we had to give him.'"
Mr. Alcott's death in 1888 was the occasion of the reminiscences which follow:
"March 5, 1888.—Bronson Alcott dead! I saw him coming from Rochester on the cars. I had been a Catholic missionary for I don't know how many years. We sat together. 'Father Hecker,' said he, 'why can't you make a Catholic of me?' 'Too much rust here,' said I, clapping him on the knee. He got very angry because I said that was the obstacle. I never saw him angry at any other time. He was too proud.
"But he was a great natural man. He was faithful to pure, natural conscience. His virtues came from that. He never had any virtue beyond what a good pagan has. He never aimed at anything more, nor claimed to. He maintained that to be all.
"I don't believe he ever prayed. Whom could he pray to? Was notBronson Alcott the greatest of all?"
"Did he believe in God?"
"Not the God that we know. He believed in the Bronson Alcott God. He was his own God."
"You say he was Emerson's master: what do you mean by that?"
"He taught Emerson. He began life as a pedler. The Yankee pedler wasEmerson's master. Whatever principles Emerson had, Alcott gave him.And Emerson was a good pupil; he was faithful to his master to theend.
"When did I know him first? Hard to remember. He was the head of Fruitlands, as Ripley was of Brook Farm. They were entirely different men. Diogenes and his tub would have been Alcott's ideal if he had carried it out. But he never carried it out. Ripley's ideal would have been Epictetus. Ripley would have taken with him the good things of this life; Alcott would have rejected them all."
"How did he receive you at Fruitlands?"
"Very kindly, but from mixed and selfish motives. I suspected he wanted me because he thought I would bring money to the community. Lane was entirely unselfish.
"Alcott was a man of no great intellectual gifts or acquirements. His knowledge came chiefly from experience and instinct. He had an insinuating and persuasive way with him—he must have been an ideal pedler."
"What if he had been a Catholic, and thoroughly sanctified?"
"He could have been nothing but a hermit like those of the fourth century—he was naturally and constitutionally so odd. Emerson, Alcott, and Thoreau were three consecrated cranks: rather be crank than president. All the cranks look up to them."
Beside these later reminiscences we shall now place the contemporary record of his impressions made by Isaac Hecker while at Fruitlands. Our first extract, however, was written at Brook Farm, a few days before going thither:
"July 7, 1843.—I go to Mr. Alcott's next Tuesday, if nothing happens. I have had three pairs of coarse pants and a coat made for me. It is my intention to commence work as soon as I get there. I will gradually simplify my dress without making any sudden difference, although it would be easier to make a radical and thorough change at once than piece by piece. But this will be a lesson in patient perseverance to me. All our difficulties should be looked at in such a light as to improve and elevate our minds.
"I can hardly prevent myself from saying how much I shall miss the company of those whom I love and associate with here. But I must go. I am called with a stronger voice. This is a different trial from any I have ever had. I have had that of leaving kindred, but now I have that of leaving those whom I love from affinity. If I wished to live a life the most gratifying to me, and in agreeable company, I certainly would remain here. Here are refining amusements, cultivated persons—and one whom I have not spoken of, one who is too much to me to speak of, one who would leave all for me. Alas! him I must leave to go."
In this final sentence, as it now stands in the diary and as we have transcribed it, occurs one of those efforts of which we have spoken, to obliterate the traces of this early attachment. "Him" was originally written "her," but therhas been lengthened to anm,and theedotted, both with a care which overshot their mark by an almost imperceptible hair's-breadth. If the nature of this attachment were not so evident from other sources, we should have left such passages unquoted; fearing lest they might be misunderstood. As it is, the light they cast seems to us to throw up into fuller proportions the kind and extent of the renunciations to which Isaac Hecker was called before he had arrived at any clear view of the end to which they tended.
"Fruitlands, July 12.—Last evening I arrived here. After tea I went out in the fields and raked hay for an hour in company with the persons here. We returned and had a conversation on Clothing. Some very fine things were said by Mr. Alcott and Mr. Lane. In most of their thoughts I coincide; they are the same which of late have much occupied my mind. Alcott said that to Emerson the world was a lecture-room, to Brownson a rostrum.
"This morning after breakfast a conversation was held on Friendship and its laws and conditions. Mr. Alcott placed Innocence first; Larned, Thoughtfulness; I, Seriousness; Lane, Fidelity.
"July 13.—This morning after breakfast there was held a conversation on The Highest Aim. Mr. Alcott said it was Integrity; I, Harmonic being; Lane, Progressive being; Larned, Annihilation of self; Bower, Repulsion of the evil in us. Then there was a confession of the obstacles which prevent us from attaining the highest aim. Mine was the doubt whether the light is light; not the want of will to follow, or the sight to see."
"July 17.—I cannot understand what it is that leads me, or what I am after. Being is incomprehensible.
"What shall I be led to? Is there a being whom I may marry and who would be the means of opening my eyes? Sometimes I think so—but it appears impossible. Why should others tell me that it is so, and will be so, in an unconscious way, as Larned did on Sunday last, and as others have before him? Will I be led home? It strikes me these people here, Alcott and Lane, will be a great deal to me. I do not know but they may be what I am looking for, or the answer to that in me which is asking.
"Can I say it? I believe it should be said. Here I cannot end. They are too near me; they do not awaken in me that sense of their high superiority which would keep me here to be bettered, to be elevated. They have much, very much. I desire Mr. Alcott's strength of self-denial, and the unselfishness of Mr. Lane in money matters. In both these they are far my superiors. I would be meek, humble, and sit at their feet that I might be as they are. They do not understand me, but if I am what my consciousness, my heart, lead me to feel—if I am not deceived—why then I can wait. Yes, patiently wait. Is not this the first time since I have been here that I have recovered myself? Do I not feel that I have something to receive here, to add to, to increase my highest life, which I have never felt anywhere else?
"Is this sufficient to keep me here? If I can prophesy, I must say no. I feel that it will not fill my capacity. O God! strengthen my resolution. Let me not waver, and continue my life. But I am sinful. Oh, forgive my sins! What shall I do, O Lord! that they may be blotted out? Lord, could I only blot them from my memory, nothing would be too great or too much."
"July 18.—I have thought of my family this afternoon, and the happiness and love with which I might return to them. To leave them, to give up the thought of living with them again—can I entertain that idea? Still, I cannot conceive how I can engage in business, share the practices, and indulge myself with the food and garmenture (sic) of our home and city. To return home, were it possible for me, would most probably not only stop my progress, but put me back.