Carlyle represents a contemporary reviewer taking leave of the Belles-Lettres department somewhat in this abrupt manner:
Such is the humorous but essentially truthful picture of the condition
and product of the creative faculties during the second quarter of the
present century. The great poets, Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Goethe,
and Schiller, had fulfilled their tasks and gone to other spheres; and
all that remained with few exceptions, were weak and feeble echoes of their
dying strains, caught up and repeated by numerous imitators and pretenders.
And so has it ever been; the visions and perceptions of one man become
the creed and superficial life-element of other minds. Swedenborg
is worthy to be enrolled among the master minds of the world, because he
entered for himself into the Arcana of the profoundest mysteries that can
concern human intelligences; his greatest thoughts are revolved, quoted
and represented in all 'New Church' publications, but very rarely digested
and assimilated by those who claim to be his followers. Still more
rare is it to find any receiver of 'the heavenly doctrines' determined
to enter for himself into the very interiors of all that Swedenborg taught--
to see, to the mighty reflections that Swedenborg was able to give of interior
realities, but their originals as they stand constellated in the heavens!
But Divine Providence, leading forth the race, as a father the tottering
steps of his children, causes the outward form, on which all men are prone
to rely, to be forever changing and passing away before their eyes.
The seeds of death are ever found luring in the fairest external appearances,
till those externals become the mere correspondences and representatives
of interior realities, and then, though enduring as the fadeless garments
of the blest, they are ever-varying, as those robes of light change with
each changing state. The Coming Age will recognize the profoundest
truths in the internal thought of the Swedish sage, while his most tenacious
adherents will be forced to admit that, in externals, he often erred, and
was not unfrequently deceived. But the discovered error will not
only wean them from a blind and bigoted reliance upon frail man, but confirm
the sincere lovers of truth in loyalty to her standard. So also,
the spiritualists are being taught a severe but salutary lesson, that if
they will penetrate into the heavenly Arcana of the Inner Life, they must
do so by purifying and elevating their own minds, and not by 'sitting in
circles' or ransacking town and country to find the most 'reliable Mediums.'
Still no step in human progress and development is in vain; even the falls
of the child are essential to his discipline. The mistakes and errors
of men are needful while in their present imperfect state. They are
to the seekers of truth what trials and losses are to those in the pursuit
of wealth; they but enhance the value of the prize, and confirm the devotion
of the true aspirant as frowns rekindle the ardor of lovers.
Moreover, as man must ever enter into the kingdom of a new unfolding
truth with the simplicity and teachableness of little children, it is well
that the outer form of the old disappear, that the new may stand alone
in its place. It seems also to be a Law that when a change entire
and universal is to be outwrought, the means preparatory to its introduction
shall be equally widespread, and ultimated to the lowest possible plane.
Hence the Spiritual manifestations meet the most external minds; and allow
even the unregenerate to know by experience the fact and process of Spiritual
inspiration; so that scepticism becomes impossible to the candid and living
mind. The second step will be, after such have been convinced that
Spiritual intercourse is possible, that they learn that it is worse than
useless for the purpose of attaining anything desirable, beyond this conviction--
except so far as is orderly and directed, not by the will of man, but of
God. But as the old form of poetic inspiration died out with Byron
and Shelley, Wordsworth and Goethe, and the miscellaneous Spirit-intercourse
itself also as quickly passes away, there will, we apprehend, spring up
forms of mediatorial inspiration, of which there will be two permanent
types. The first and highest, as it seems to us, will be the opening
of the interiors to direct influx to the inspiring sources of love and
wisdom. The heavens will flow down into the hearts and lives, into
the thought and speech of harmonic natures, as the silent dews impregnate
the patient earth. Men will live in heaven, hence they must be inspired
by that breath of life that fills its ethereal expanse. A second
class of Media will be used for the ultimation, for ends of use and in
accordance with Laws of Order, of the creative thoughts and hymns, the
Epics and Lyrics, of individual Spirits and societies of Spirits.
These will be to the former Media as the youthful artist who copies the
work of a master, to the Angelos and Raphaels, who both design and execute
their plans, though they themselves, in their deepest interiors, are instructed
and sustained from above.
But in the transition period in which we now are, many varieties of
Mediumship must be expected. There are those who stand in rapport
with the diseased mentalities of the past and present and pour forth as
Divine Revelations the froth and scum of a receding age; they are the sponges
who absorb the waste and impurities of humanity. They are also like
running sores that gather the corrupt humors and drain the body of its
most noxious fluids. There are others who come in contact with the
outmost portion of the Spirit-life. These give crude, and in themselves,
false notions of the state of man after death; yet they prepare the way
for more truthful disclosures; if in no other way by stimulating the appetite
for more substantial nourishment. There are those who are lifted
by genial inspirations to receive influxes from the upper mind-sphere of
the age. They stand, as it were, on clear mountains of intellectual
elevation, and with keenest perception discern the purer forms of new unfolding
truths ere they become sufficiently embodied to be manifest to the grosser
minds of the race. Of these Ralph Waldo Emerson is the highest-type.
He sees the future of truths as our Spirit-seers discern the future of
man; he welcomes those impalpable forms, as Spiritualists receive with
gladdened minds the returning hosts of Spirit-friends.
There are other mediatorial natures who are in mental and heart-sympathy
with man, as he now is, struggling to free himself from the tyranny of
the old and effete, and to grasp and retain the new life flowing down from
the heavens. And as the kindling rays at first produce more smoke
than fire, so their lay is one of promise rather than performance.
Such we conceive to be the interior condition of the author of Leaves of
Grass. He accepts man as he is as to his whole nature, and all men
as his own brothers. The lambent flame of his genius encircles the
world-- nor does he clearly discern between that which is to be preserved,
and that which is but as fuel for the purification of the ore from its
dross. There is a wild strength, a Spartan simplicity about the man,
and he stalks among the dapper gentlemen of this generation, like a drunken
Hercules amid the dainty dancers. That his song is highly mediatorial
he himself asserts, though probably he is unacquainted with the Spiritual
developments of the age.