The Enduring Significance of Emerson’s Divinity School Address

By John Haynes Holmes

It is not often remembered how purely political, even legal, was the thought which led to the rise of American civilization. Not only the controversies but the ideals which precipitated the outbreak of the Revolutionary War were concerned with questions of taxation, representation, local governmental autonomy, relations between king and subjects and between subjects and parliament. The immortal Declaration of Independence was a recitation of political disabilities and oppressions, and the righteousness of public revolt against them. The central principle of our new democracy, the self-evident truth that "all men are created equal," was in origin and character a concept of legal relationship. Equality meant equality before the law—an identity of interest in that social contract which was regarded as the basis of free society. There was no spiritual philosophy behind this idea of democracy, not a trace of mystical idealism, nothing that moved in the inner as contrasted with the outer lives of men. The characteristic figures in this period of early Americanism were the demagogic Sam Adams, who stirred up the mob against its rulers, the aristocratic George Washington, whose forte was action and not thought, the shrewd Benjamin Franklin, with his worldly wisdom and pragmatic lore, the statesmanlike Thomas Jefferson, who sought the emancipation of men from the tyranny of government, and the legalistically-minded James Madison, who wrote a document of government under which free men could live and a free nation grow.

What was lacking in all this was a soul, and a teacher of the soul. What did democracy mean in the inner content of its life? What was the spiritual vindication of its social principle? Why were men equal? From what source did rights proceed? These were questions which demanded an answer, in terms of philosophy and religion, if democracy was to survive. And the answer came only with Emerson, who, like the oracle at ancient Delphi, spoke of the gods and their destinies for men. What Emerson did was to penetrate these outward phenomena of laws and constitutions, social contracts and free governments, and reach to the inner core of reality. He saw in the citizen the man, and in the man the soul which linked him with the divine. This soul, like the oversoul from which it sprang, and of which it was a part, was a universal and not a special possession. It was an endowment of human nature itself, and therefore a quality of men—men of every race and nationality, of every class and clan. Each individual had within him the spirit of the Whole, and thus, apart from his inevitable limitations, was the Whole. It was this which gave to the single person rights, crowned this person with liberty, conferred upon him authority to control his own life and, in consultation and co-operation with other men, the life of society. It was this also which set each man apart as himself the source of truth, a "new-born bard of the Holy Ghost." What this meant to the individual was shown by Emerson in many an early essay, of which "Self-Reliance" is the most famous; what it meant to the world of scholarship and learning was disclosed in the Phi Beta Kappa oration of 1837; what it meant to religion was revealed in the Divinity School Address of 1838. What it meant to democracy, to America, to the history of society and the destiny of man, became the burden of utterances and writings through the years which now, as the collected works of Emerson, constitute a Bible of this new republic.