William Ellery Channing, a unitarian minister whose thoughts influenced Emerson, taught that God should be imitated by humans to raise themselves to new heights of human and spiritual experience. In the past, religion forced men to worship God and to humble themselves. Channing argued that God’s entrance into human history had created divinity in man and man should strive through elevated behavior to act divinely as God, his divine father, acts. Emerson taught that the imitation of any man was a form of suicide and that acting as God acts meant that a man must be completely free spiritually. He believed that you find your true life only by relying on yourself alone. He gave up his life as a consecrated minister. He left his base. He had the courage to face the perils of existence on his own. Saint Augustine believed the opposite. For him, self-reliance was not Christian. He put the whole meaning of Christianity in one sentence: Et hoc erat totum: nolle quod volebam et velle quod volebas. “And this was all: to not will what I wanted and to will what you (meaning God) wanted.” Emerson would have put the nolle where the velle was and put the velle where the nolle had been so it read: Et hoc erat totum: velle quod volebam et nolle quod volebas. “And this was all: to will what I wanted and not to will what you (God) wanted.” Emerson believed that holiness was natural and that it could be reached by experience that was genuinely individualistic. Self-reliance. It was the motto of Transcendentalists and baseball players.
Daniel McNeill
Read the complete essay, Transcendentalism and Baseball, at the website of The United States of the World at: www.usoftheworld.com/culture
Read a complete novel by Daniel McNeill at: www.usoftheworld.com/fiction
No comments:
Post a Comment