It is the American Sphinx leading in a game of hide-and-seek. The mystery of existence baffles us, not because there is no answer, but because there are so many. They are infinite in number, and all of them are true. They wait for the mind large enough to harbor them in all their variety, and serene enough not to be annoyed because their contradictions are not at once reconciled.
The catalogue of ills may be never so long, but it fails to depress one who sees everything in the making.
"I heard a poet answer Aloud and cheerfully, 'Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges Are pleasant songs to me.'
"Uprose the merry Sphinx, And crouched no more in stone; She melted into purple cloud. She silvered in the moon."
This conception of the merry Sphinx may seem strange to the dyspeptic philosopher pondering on the inscrutableness of the universe. But the prospectors in the mining camps of the Far West, and the builders of new cities understand what Emerson meant. Their experience of the ups and downs of fortune has taught them how to find pleasure in uncertainty. You never can tell how anything will turn out till you try. That's the fun of it. They are quite ready to believe that the same thing holds good in the higher life.
Or take the lines on "Worship." How can Worship be personified? Emerson's picture is not that of a patriarch on bended knee; it is that of a vigorous youth picking himself up after he has been knocked down by his antagonist.
"This is he, who, felled by foes, Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows."
Religion is a kind of spiritual resilience. It is that which makes a man come back with new vigor to his work after his first failure. It is the ability to make a new beginning.
In Emerson the American hurry is transformed into something of spiritual significance. A new commandment is given to the good man--Be quick! Keep moving!
O wise man, hearest thou the least part, Seest them the rushing metamorphosis,
Dissolving all that fixture is, Melts things that be to things that seem."
Morality and religion must be speeded up if they are to do any useful work in this swift world.
If the ideals of the saints and reformers were criticized, so were those of the scholars. Matthew Arnold's definition of culture was that of a man of books. It was the knowledge of the best that had been said and known in the past. Emerson's lines entitled "Culture" begin with a characteristic question and end with an equally characteristic affirmation. The question is--