Hence, we have in Emerson
the teaching of a vigorous morality without the formality of dogma and
the deadly tedium of didactics. If not laughter, of which only
Shakespeare among the immortals has a copious and unfailing spring,
there is at least gaiety in every piece, and a cordial injunction to men
to find joy in their existence to the full. Happiness is with him an aim
that we are at liberty to seek directly and without periphrasis.
Provided men do not lose their balance by immersing themselves in their
pleasures, they are right, according to Emerson, in pursuing them. But
joy is no neighbour to artificial ecstasy. What Emerson counsels the
poet, he intended in its own way and degree for all men. The poet's
habit of living, he says beautifully, should be set on a key so low
that the commonest influences should delight him. 'That spirit which
suffices quiet hearts, which seems to come forth to such from every dry
knoll of sere grass, from every pine-stump and half-embedded stone on
which the dull March sun shines, comes forth to the poor and hungry, and
such as are of simple taste. If thou fill thy brain with Boston and New
York, with fashion and covetousness, and wilt stimulate thy jaded senses
with wine and French coffee, thou shalt find no radiance of wisdom in
the lonely waste of the pinewoods' (ii. 328).
It was perhaps the same necessity of having to guide men away from the
danger of transcendental aberrations, while yet holding up lofty ideals
of conduct, that made Emerson say something about many traits of conduct
to which the ordinary high-flying moralist of the treatise or the pulpit
seldom deigns to stoop.
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