“Mars perpetually discerns and nourishes, and constantly excites the contrarieties of the Universe, that the world may exist perfect and entire in all its parts; but requires the assistance of Venus, that he may bring order and harmony into things contrary and discordant.“Vulcan adorns by his art the sensible universe, which he fills with certain natural impulses, powers, and proportions; butherequires the assistance of Venus, that he may invest material effects with beauty, and by this means secure the comeliness of the world. Venus is the source of all the harmony and analogy in the Universe, and ofthe union of form with matter, connecting and comprehending the powers of the elements. Although this Goddess ranks among the supermundane divinities, yet her principal employment consists in beautifully illuminating the order, harmony, and communion of all mundane concerns.”
“Mars perpetually discerns and nourishes, and constantly excites the contrarieties of the Universe, that the world may exist perfect and entire in all its parts; but requires the assistance of Venus, that he may bring order and harmony into things contrary and discordant.
“Vulcan adorns by his art the sensible universe, which he fills with certain natural impulses, powers, and proportions; butherequires the assistance of Venus, that he may invest material effects with beauty, and by this means secure the comeliness of the world. Venus is the source of all the harmony and analogy in the Universe, and ofthe union of form with matter, connecting and comprehending the powers of the elements. Although this Goddess ranks among the supermundane divinities, yet her principal employment consists in beautifully illuminating the order, harmony, and communion of all mundane concerns.”
I askedMargaretif this was not something like her own thought,—this Venus, for example, was it not better than that we got from Greek art?
She said it was the primal idea, but she did not attach much importance to chronology. Philosophy must decide the age of a thought.
I gave her as good an abstract of Bode’s theory as I could.
William Whitetook the drawing of Orpheus from me, and, while speaking of its beauty, said it always made him angry to think of the deterioration of the human figure. He thought it oughtto have been prevented, and that his ancestors had deprived him of his rights.
Upon this,Margaretentered into a lively disquisition upon masculine beauty. She said the best specimens of it she had ever seen were a Southern oddity named Hutchinson and some Cambridge students who came from Virginia.
We lost a finer talk to-night through the inclemency of the weather.Wheelerwas to have come with a great stock of information. Had he done so, I need not have quoted Bode or Proclus.
CAROLINE W. HEALEY.
April 23, 1841.
April 29, 1841.
We did not have a very bright talk. There were few present, and we had only the subject of last week.Margaretdid not speak at length.Wheelerhad been ill, and his physician prescribed light diet of both body and mind.
Somebody spoke of Mercury sweeping the courts of the Gods, but that suggested nothing to Margaret.
Sarah Shawhad a pin, with a Mercury on it, represented as holding the head of a goat.
Margarethad never seen anything that would explain it, and there was some dispute about it.
E. P. P.said that, according to the Orphic Hymn, Mercury sought the love of Dryope under the form of a goat. Pan was the fruit of that amour. In this form also he wooed Diana.
We wandered from our subject a little, to hearMr. Macktalk about the Gorgons. He thought they stood for the three sides of human nature. Medusa, the chief care-taker, the body, was the only one not immortal, and the only one beautiful. Stheno and Euryale, wide-extended force and wide-extended scope, represented spirit and intellect, essentially immortal. The changing of Medusa’s curls (or elements of strength) into serpents represented the fall. It was not the Gorgons who had but one eye and one tooth between them, but three sister guardians, whom Perseus was compelled to destroy before he could reach Medusa.
Mr. Mackdid not tell us why humannature so divided had a certain petrifying power!
E. P. P.thought the intellect, not the body, was the care-taker. Mr. Mack tried in vain to explain, owing, I think, to his German misconception of words. Certainly the five senses are theproviders, which was what he must have meant.
Margaretliked his theory, because there was a place in it for sin! She disliked failure. Perhaps we all had perceived her attachment to evil! Not that she wished men to fall into it, but it must be accepted as one means of final good.
The only copies of Bode belong to Edward Everett and Theodore Parker. Neither is at this moment to be had. The talk turned on the age of the Orphic idea.
The Orphic Hymns,Wheelersaid, were merely hymns of initiation into the Orphic mysteries. They were altered by every successive priesthood, and finallyby the Christian Platonists. Those now remaining were undoubtedly their work. Perhaps the ancient formulas were still hidden in them. We know the beautiful story of Orpheus. If he indeed represents many, yet all that has been said of him is also true of one.
Mr. Mackdeclared that Eurydice represented the true faith! She was killed by an envenomed serpent, which might possibly stand for an enraged priesthood!
I got a little impatient here, and said I did not care to know about the Hymns; but the Orphic idea, which made Scaliger speak of the Hymns as the “Liturgy of Satan,”—how old was that?
Margaretcould not guess why he called them so.
Charles Wheelersaid that, since they made a heathen worship attractive, perhaps he fancied them a device of the Evil One!
Too great a compliment to Scaliger, I thought.
Margarethad no objection to Orpheus as crowning an age; she liked that multitudes should produce one.
Charles Wheelersaid that Carlyle had spoken of Orpheus as standing in such a relation to the Greeks as Odin bore to the Scandinavians.
Margaretsaid at this point (I don’t see with what pertinency) that Carlyle displeased her by making so much of mere men.
James Clarkequoted Milton, speaking of himself among the revellers of the Stuart Court, as like Orpheus among the Bacchanals.
I said that Bode placed Homer in the tenth century before Christ, and Orpheus in the age just preceding, say the thirteenth century before.
Mr. Mackthought all that mere conjecture.
I told him it made a good deal of difference to me whether the Orphic Mythology came before or after that of Homer. Had man grown out of the noble and into the base idea? Was all our knowledge only memory? Had the Orphic fancies no beauty till the Platonic Christians shaped them?
Margaretresponded to what I said, that she did not like a mind always looking back.
E. P. P.said there was a great deal of consolation in it. Memory was prophecy. She didn’t like such a mind, but since she happened to have it she wanted support for it.
Mr. Macksaid all history offered such support.
Charles Wheelerdidn’t like to believe it, but felt that he must. He spoke of the Golden Age.
Margaretsaid every nation lookedback to this; but, after all, it was only the ideal. The past was a curtain on which they embroidered their pictures of the present.
William Whitesaid that all great men looked to the appreciation of the future. We are too near to the present.
Margaretagreed.
E. P. P.said, all the science of Europe could not offer anything like the old Egyptian lore.
Margaretsaid the moderns needed the assistance of a despotic government.
Charles Wheelerspoke of the monuments in Central America; but before he could utter what was in his mind,Margaretinterrupted, saying that all the greatness of the Mexicans only sufficed to show their littleness. We might have lost in grandeur and piety, but we had gained in a thousand tag-rag ways.
Mrs. Farrarwhispered to me, “Write that down!” and I have done it.
Charles Wheelersaid that late discoveries proved that there was a complete knowledge of electricity among the ancients. There were lightning-rods on the temple at Jerusalem, and they are described by Josephus, who however does not know what they are.
Margaretand I clung to the “tag-rag” gain.
Charles Wheeleragreed with me in thinking the Orphic Hymns of very late origin.
Margaretcould not see the use of creating a race of giants to prepare the earth for pygmies! If these must exist, why not in some other sphere? She referred to the beautiful Persian fable. Thefirstwas God, of course; since man may always revert to Him, what matter about the giants?
I said that primitive ages were supposed to be innocent rather than great.
Margaretsaid the Persian fable bore to the same point as the Vishnu and Brahma. It was antagonism that produced all things. The universe at first was one Conscious Being,—“I am;” no word, no darkness, no light. This Conscious Being needed to know itself, and it passed into darkness and light and a third being,—the Mediator between the two. This Trinity produced ideals,—men, animals, things; and after a period of twelve thousand years all return again into the One, who has gained by the phenomena only a multiplied consciousness.
“Were theymerged?” askedCharles Wheeler.
Margaretsaid, “No! once created, they could not lose identity.”
C. W. HEALEY.
April 30, 1841.
May 6, 1841.
Few present. Our last talk, and we were all dull. For my part, Bacchus does not inspire me, and I was sad because it was the last time that I should see Margaret. She does not love me; I could not venture to follow her into her own home, and I love her so much! Her life hangs on a thread. Her face is full of the marks of pain. Young as I am, I feel old when I look at her.
Margaretspoke of Hercules as representing the course of the solar year. The three apples were the three seasons of four months each into which theancients divided it. The twelve labors were the twelve signs.
E. P. P.accepted this, and spoke of Bryant’s book, which Margaret did not like.
Margaretsaid Bryant forced every fact to be a point in a case. Bending each to his theory, he falsified it. She wished English people would be content, like the wiser Germans, to amass classified facts on which original minds could act. She liked to see the Germans so content to throw their gifts upon the pile to go down to posterity, though the pile might carry no record of the collectors. She spoke of Kreitzer, whose book she was now reading, who coolly told his readers that he should not classify a second edition afresh, for his French translator had done it well enough, and if readers were not satisfied with his own work, they must haverecourse to the translation. This she thought was as it ought to be.
James Clarkesaid it always vexed him to hear ignorant people speak of Hercules as if he were a God, and of Apollo and Jupiter as if they might at some time have been men.
Margaretsaid, Yes, the distinction between Gods and Demigods was that the former were the creations of pure spontaneity, and the latter actually existent personages, about whose heroic characters and lives all congenial stories clustered.
J. F. C. did not like the statues of Hercules; the brawny figure was not to his taste.
Margaretthought it majestic. She said he belonged properly to Thessaly, and was identified with its scenery. She told several little stories about him. That of his sailing round the rock ofPrometheus, in a golden cup borrowed of Jupiter, was the least known. She told the story from Ovid, the glowing account of his death, of the recognition by delighted Jove. She said Wordsworth’s “Tour in Greece” gave her great materials for thought.
Then she turned to Bacchus.
To show in what manner she supposed Bacchus to be theansweror complement to Apollo, she mentioned the statement of some late critic upon the relation of Ceres and Persephone to each other.
Persephone was the hidden energy, the vestal fire, vivifying the universe. Ceres was the productive faculty, external, bounteous. They were two phases of one thing. It was the same with Apollo and Bacchus. Apollo was the vivifying power of the sun; its genial glow stirred the earth, and its noblest product, the grape, responded.
She spoke of the Bacchanalian festivals, of the spiritual character attributed to them by Euripides, showing that originally they were something more than gross orgies.
Mrs. Clarke(Ann Wilby) said that they licensed the wildest drunkenness in Athens.
I said that was at a later time than Euripides undertook to picture. Were they identical with the Orphic? Did Orpheus really bring them from Egypt?
Margaretwould accept that for abeginning.
E. P. P.thought that next winter we might have a talk about Roman Mythology.
Margaretliked the idea, andJames Clarkeseemed to accept it for the whole party. He said that he had never felt any interest in the Greek stories, untilMargaret had made them the subject of conversation.
E. P. P.said she had felt excessively ashamed all through that she knew so little.
Margaretsaid no one need to feel so. It was a subject that might exhaust any preparation. Still, she wished wewouldstudy! She had herself enjoyed great advantages. Nobody’s explanations had ever perplexed her brain. She had been placed in a garden, with a great pile of books before her. She began to read Latin before she read English. For a time these deities were real to her, and she prayed: “O God! if thou art Jupiter!” etc.
James Clarkesaid he remembered her once telling him that she prayed to Bacchus for a bunch of grapes!
Margaretsmiled, and said that when she was first old enough to think aboutChristianity, she cried out for her dear old Greek gods. Its spirituality seemed nakedness. She could not and would not receive it. It was a long while before she saw its deeper meaning.
CAROLINE W. HEALEY.
May 7, 1841.
FOOTNOTES[1]Emerson’s presence at Conversations II. V. and VIII. is noted above, because in his contribution to Margaret’s “Memoirs” he shows that his attendance made absolutely no impression on him. He states that there were butfiveConversations, and that he was present only at the second.[2]Dr. Dana, a celebrated chemist, received a salary from the Merrimac Manufacturing Co. as consulting chemist. Through his experiments and practical skill, a radical change was made in the methods of dyeing and printing calicoes. This was in connection with the use of madder, and the Company claimed his discovery and allowed him no extra recompense. It will be perceived that Mr. Ripley got his supposed facts from the newspapers.
[1]Emerson’s presence at Conversations II. V. and VIII. is noted above, because in his contribution to Margaret’s “Memoirs” he shows that his attendance made absolutely no impression on him. He states that there were butfiveConversations, and that he was present only at the second.
[1]Emerson’s presence at Conversations II. V. and VIII. is noted above, because in his contribution to Margaret’s “Memoirs” he shows that his attendance made absolutely no impression on him. He states that there were butfiveConversations, and that he was present only at the second.
[2]Dr. Dana, a celebrated chemist, received a salary from the Merrimac Manufacturing Co. as consulting chemist. Through his experiments and practical skill, a radical change was made in the methods of dyeing and printing calicoes. This was in connection with the use of madder, and the Company claimed his discovery and allowed him no extra recompense. It will be perceived that Mr. Ripley got his supposed facts from the newspapers.
[2]Dr. Dana, a celebrated chemist, received a salary from the Merrimac Manufacturing Co. as consulting chemist. Through his experiments and practical skill, a radical change was made in the methods of dyeing and printing calicoes. This was in connection with the use of madder, and the Company claimed his discovery and allowed him no extra recompense. It will be perceived that Mr. Ripley got his supposed facts from the newspapers.