We shall find, therefore, that Isaac Hecker's struggles were many and painful before he fully recognized and attained the necessary means to the end he craved. They were characteristic also. He was looking for the satisfaction of his rational aspirations rather than for the solution of historical problems, although his mind was too clear not to see that the two are inextricably bound up together. But inasmuch as at the period of which we are writing, which was that of the Oxford Tracts, controversy turned mainly on questions of historical continuity and of Divine warrant in the external revelation of holy Scripture, it follows that he, and such as he, must have taken a lonely and unfrequented road towards the truth. Every time he looked at the Church he was greeted with the spectacle of unity and uniformity, of discipline and order. These are elements which always have been, and probably always will be, most attractive to the classes called educated, to men seeking for external notes of truth, flying from disorder, fearful of rebellion. But to Isaac Hecker, the only external note which deeply attracted him was that of universal brotherhood. If he were to bow his knee with joy to Jesus Christ, it would be because all, in heaven and earth or hell, should one day bend in union with him.

It takes an intimate knowledge of Catholicity to perceive the interior transformation of humanity by its supernatural aids. On the one hand, the influence of Isaac Hecker's Brook Farm surroundings was to persuade him to confide wholly in nature, which there was very nearly at its unaided best. On the other hand, the treasures of Catholicity for the inner life were hidden from him. Religion, in his conception of it—in the true conception of it—must be the binding of all things together, natural and supernatural. Hence we find him at times complaining that the Church is not sufficient for his wants. If it were not personal in its adaptation to him, it was little that it should be historical this, hierarchical that, or biblical the other. It must be his primarily, because he cannot live a rational and pure life without it. An ordinarily decorous life, if you will; free from lust or passion, and without gross unreason, but nevertheless tame, unprogressive, dry and unproductive, without any absolute certainty except that of the helplessness of man. Such a life seemed to him hardly more than a synonym for death. "The fact is," as he writes on a page now lying before us, "I want to live every moment. I want something positive, living, nourishing. I negative only by affirming."

The earliest entry in this diary has been already quoted in the first



CHAPTER of the present biography. On its second page occurs the following account of his impressions while in church on Easter Sunday:

"Monday, April 17, 1843.—Yesterday I went to the Catholic church at West Roxbury. It was Easter Sunday. The services were, to me, very impressively affecting. The altar-piece represented Christ's rising from the tomb, and this was the subject-matter of the priest's sermon. In the midst of it he turned and pointed to the painting, with a few touching words. All eyes followed his, which made his remarks doubly affecting. How inspiring it must be to the priest, when he is preaching, to see around him the Saviour, and the goodly company of martyrs, saints, and fathers! There may be objections to having paintings and sculptures in churches, but I confess that I never enter a place where there is either but I feel an awe, an invisible influence, which strikes me mute. I would sit in silence, covering my head. A sanctified atmosphere seems to fill the place and to penetrate my soul when I enter, as if I were in a holy temple. 'Thou standest in a holy place,' I would say. A loud word, a heavy footstep, makes me shudder, as if an infidel were desecrating the place. I stand speechless, in a magical atmosphere that wraps my whole being, scarcely daring to lift my eyes. A perfect stillness comes over my soul; it seems to be soaring on the bosom of clouds."

"Tuesday, April 18.—I confess that either the Church is not sufficient for my wants or I have not seen it in its glory. I hope it may be the latter. I do not want to say it, but I must own that it fills me no more. I contemplate it, I look at it, I comprehend it. It does not lead me to aspire. I feel that either it has nothing to give, or that what it has is not that for which my soul is aching. I know it can be said in reply that I cannot know what the Church has until I am in communion with it; that it satisfies natures greater than mine; that it is the true life of the world; that there is no true spirituality outside of it, and that before I can judge it rightly my life must be equal to it in purity and elevation. Much more might be said. But, after all, what is it? The Catholic shows up the Anglican; the Anglican retorts with an accusation of corruption, and even a want of purity; the Protestant, the Presbyterian, claim their own mission at the expense of consistency and good logic. . . .

"The whole fact, I suppose, is that if there is anything in Succession, Tradition, Infallibility, Church organism and form, it is in the Catholic Church, and our business will be to stop this controversy and call an Ecumenical Council which shall settle these matters according to the Bible, Tradition, and the light of the Church."

There is a touch of unconscious humor in the final paragraph which clamored for quotation. But it was plainly written in profound earnest.

"Thursday, April 20.—My soul is disquieted, my heart aches. . . Tears flow from my eyes involuntarily. My soul is grieved—for what? Yesterday, as I was praying, the thought flashed across my mind, Where is God? Is He not here? Why prayest thou as if He were at a great distance from thee? Think of it. Where canst thou place Him—in what locality? Is He not here in thy midst? Is His presence not nearest of all to thee? Oh, think of it! God is here. . . .

"Am I impious to say that the language used in Scripture for Christ's expresses the thoughts of my soul? Oh, could we but understand that the kingdom of heaven is always at hand to the discerner, and that God calls upon all to 'Repent, for ye shall not all disappear until it shall open. This generation shall not pass away.'"

Then follows a page of philosophizing on time and eternity, immensity and space, and "monads who may develop or fulfil their destiny in other worlds than this," a reminiscence, perhaps, of the lectures on such topics at which Mr. Curtis says Isaac used to "look in," hoping to "find an answer to his questions." Such speculations are a trait throughout the diary, though they are everywhere subordinate to the practical ends which dominantly interest him. A day or two later comes a passage, already given in a preceding chapter, in reference to certain prophetic dreams which it has been given him to see realized. And at once this follows:

"April 24, Noon.—The Catholic Church alone seems to satisfy my wants, my faith, life, soul. These may be baseless fabrics, chimeras dire, or what you please. I may be laboring under a delusion. Yet my soul is Catholic, and that faith responds to my soul in its religious aspirations and its longings. I have not wished to make myself Catholic, but that answers on all sides to the wants of my soul. It is so rich, so full. One is in harmony all over—in unison with heaven, with the present, living in the natural body, and the past, who have changed. There is a solidarity between them through the Church. I do not feel controversial. My soul is filled."

From this point he speedily recedes. By the next day he is "lost almost in the flesh"; "fallen into an identity with my body," and notes that for some time he has "done little in study, but feel that I have lived very much." What hinders him he supposes to be "contemplating any certain amount of study which I ought to accomplish—looking to it as an end. Why should I not be satisfied when I am living, growing? Did Christ and His apostles study languages? I have the life—is not that the end?"

"April 28.—What shall I say? Am I wrong? Should I submit and give myself up to that which does not engage my whole being? To me the Church is not the great object of life. I am now out of it in the common meaning. I am not subject to its ordinances. Is it not best for me to accept my own nature rather than attempt to mould it as though it were an object? Is not our own existence more than this existence in the world?

"I read this morning an extract from Heine upon Schelling which affected me more than anything I have read for six months. The Church, says Schelling in substance, was first Petrine, then Pauline, and must be love-embracing, John-like. Peter, Catholicism; Paul, Protestantism; John, what is to be. The statement struck me and responded to my own dim intuitions. Catholicism is solidarity; Protestantism is individuality. What we want, and are tending to, is what shall unite them both, as John's spirit does—and that in each individual. We want neither the authority of History nor of the Individual; neither Infallibility nor Reason by itself but both combined in Life. Neither Precedent nor Opinion, but Being—neither a written nor a preached Gospel, but a living one. . . .

"It is only through Christ we can see the love, goodness, and wisdom of God. He is to us what the telescope is to the astronomer, with this difference: He so exalts and purifies us that our subject becomes the power to see. The telescope is a medium through which the boundaries of our vision are enlarged, but it is passive. Christ is an active Mediator who begets us if we will, and gives us power to see by becoming one with Him."

"May 3.—We all look upon this world as suits our moods, assimilating only such food as suits our dispositions—and no doubt there is sufficient variety to suit all. . . . Every personality individualizes the world to himself not subjectively but truly objectively. . . . Every individual ought, perhaps, to be satisfied with his own character. For it is an important truth of Fourier's that attractions are in proportion to destinies. Fear in proportion to hope, pain in proportion to pleasure, strength in proportion to destiny, etc. But it is mysterious that we know all this. 'Man has become as one of us.' We are all dead.

"Ah, mystic! dost thou show thyself in this shape? But now, being dead, shall we receive life and immortality (for I imagine immortality the solidarity of life—i.e., the union of the two lives, here and heaven) through Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, and so lose 'the knowledge of good and evil.' For as in Adam all died, so shall ye all be made alive through Jesus Christ.' The effect of the fall was literally the knowledge of good and evil. God knows no evil, and when we become one with Him, through the Mediator, we shall regain our previous state. Knowledge is the effect of sin, and is perhaps destined to correct itself. Consciousness and knowledge go together. Spontaneity and life are one. Knowledge is no gain, for it gives nothing. I can only know what has been given through spontaneity. Spontaneity is unity, one; knowledge is division of being. If Adam had not been separated he would doubtless not have sinned. 'The woman that Thou gavest me said unto me, Eat, and I did eat.' Still, through the seed of the woman, which will be the union restored, is the serpent to be bruised."

"May 4.—The real effect of the theory of the Church is to isolate men from the outward world, withdraw them from its enjoyments, and make them live a life of sacrifice of the passions. This is one statement. Another would be this: all these things can and should be enjoyed, but in a higher, purer, more exalted state of being than is the present ordinary condition of our minds. The only opposition to them arises when the soul becomes sensual, falls into their arms, and becomes lost to higher and more spiritual objects. . . .

"All is dark before me, impenetrable darkness. I appear to live in the centre. Nothing seems to take hold of my soul, or else it seeks nothing. Where it is I know not. I meet with no one else around me. I would that I could feel that some one lived in the same world that I now do. Something cloudy separates us. I cannot speak from my real being to others. There is no mutual recognition. When I speak, it is as if a burden accumulated round me. I long to throw it off, but I cannot utter my thoughts and feelings in their presence; if I do, they return to me unrecognized. Shall I ever meet with one the windows of whose soul will open simultaneously with mine?"

On the first Sunday of May Isaac went into Boston to hear Brownson preach, and a day or two later made the subjoined shrewd comments on the sermon in a letter to his mother:

"May 9, '43.—His intention is to preach the Catholic doctrine and administer the Sacraments. How many of them, I suppose, depends on circumstances. He justifies himself on the ground that he that is not against us is for us, and that in times of exigency, and in extraordinary cases, we may do what we could not be excused for doing otherwise. And he thinks by proclaiming the Catholic faith and repudiating the attempt to build up a Church, that in time the Protestant world will become Catholic in its dispositions, so that a unity will be made without submission or sacrifice. Under present circumstances it would be impossible, even if the Protestant churches should be willing to unite with the Catholic, that the Catholic could even supply priests for forty millions of Protestants, the Protestant priests being most of them married, etc.

"I confess the sermon was wholly unsatisfactory to me, un-catholic in its premises, and many of his arguments and facts chimerical and illusive. If you grant that the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church, there is, to my thought, no stopping-place short of its bosom. Or even if it is the nearest to the truth, you are under obligations to join it. How any one can believe in either one of those propositions, as 0. A. B. does, without becoming a Catholic in fact, I cannot conceive. This special pleading of exceptions, the necessity of the case, and improbable suppositions, springs more, I think, from the position of the individual than from the importance or truth of the arguments made use of. Therefore I think he will give up in time the ground upon which he now supports his course—not the object but his position. . . . I have bought a few Catholic books in Boston which treat upon the Anglican claims to Catholicity, and I think I can say, so far, I never shall join a Protestant Church—while I am not positive on the positive side, nor even in any way as yet decided."





CHAPTER VII

STRUGGLES

THE citations thus far made from Isaac Hecker's youthful diary, although penned at Brook Farm, bear few traces of that fact. They might have been written in a desert for all evidence they give of any special influence produced upon him by personal contact with others. It is not until the middle of May, 1843, that he begins to make any reference to his actual surroundings.

Before following him into these more intimate self-confidences, and especially before giving in his own words an account of that peculiar occurrence which so permanently affected his future, some preliminary remarks seem necessary.

It has been said already, in an earlier chapter of this biography, that but for some special intervention of Divine Providence, it is more than probable that Isaac Hecker would have led the ordinary life of men in the world, continuing, indeed, to cherish a high ideal of the duties of the citizen of a free country, but pursuing it along well-beaten ways. There is no doubt that, unless some such event as he has narrated, or some influence equivalent to it in effect, had supernaturally drawn him away, he would of his own volition have sought what he was repeatedly advised to seek by his most attached friends, a congenial union in wedlock. He was naturally susceptible, and his attachments were not only firm, but often seemed obstinate. Of celibacy he had, up to this time, no other idea than such as the common run of non-Catholics possess. At home, indeed, when afterwards pressed to seek a wife, he had answered, truly enough, though holding fast to his secret, that he "had no thought of marrying and felt an aversion to company for such an end." And again he writes to his mother, anxious and troubled for his future, that the circle which surrounded him in New York oppressed and contracted him, and abridged his liberty. There was no one in it who "increased his life."

But at Brook Farm he met some one, as is revealed by his diary and correspondence, who deeply attracted him, and who might have attracted him as far as marriage had he not already received the Holy Spirit's prevenient grace of virginity. That is to say, he found "a being," to use his impersonal term, whose name and identity he is careful to veil, awkwardly enough at times with misleading pronouns, whose charm was so great as to win from him what would have been, in his normal state, a marital affection. But he was no longer normal. Although still beyond the visible pale of that garden of elect souls, God's holy Church, he was already transformed by the quickening grace which "reaches from end to end mightily and orders all things sweetly." Our next quotations afford explicit proof on this point:

"Tuesday, May 16.—Life appears to be a perpetual struggle between the heavenly and the worldly.

"Here at Brook Farm I become acquainted with persons who have moved in a higher rank in society than I—persons of good education and fine talents; all of which has an improving influence on me. And I meet with those to whom I can speak, and feel that, to a great degree, I am understood and responded to. In New York I am alone in the midst of people. I am not in any internal sense en rapport with them.

"I suppose the reason why I do not, in my present state, feel disposed to connect myself with any being, and would rather avoid a person whom I was conscious I might or could love, is that I feel my life to be in a rapid progress, and that no step now would be a permanent one. I am afraid the choice I would have made some time since (if there had not been something deeply secret in my being which prevented me) would now be very unsatisfactory. I feel conscious there could not have been an equal and mutual advance, because the natures of some are not capable of much growth. And I mistrust whether there would not have been an inequality, hence disharmony and unhappiness.

"To be required to accept your past is most unpleasant. Perhaps the society with which I was surrounded did not afford a being that unified with mine own. And I have faith that there are spiritual laws beneath all this outward framework of sight and sense, which will, if rightly believed in and trusted, lead to the goal of eternal life, harmony of being, and union with God. So I accept my being led here. Am I superstitious or egoistic in believing this? This is, no doubt, disputed territory. Have we any objective rule to compare our faith with which would give us the measure of our superstition? How much of to-day would have seemed miraculous or superstitious to the past? I confess I have no rule or measure to judge the faith of any man.

"The past is always the state of infancy. The present is an eternal youth, aspiring after manhood; hoping wistfully, intensely desiring, listfully listening, dimly seeing the bright star of hope in the future, beckoning him to move rapidly on, while his strong heart beats with enthusiasm and glowing joy. The past is dead. Wish me not the dead from the grave, for that would be death re-enacted. . . .

"Oh, were our wishes in harmony with heaven, how changed would be the scenes of our life! . . . This accordance would be music which only the angels now hear—too delicate for beings such as we are at present. List! hast thou not heard in some bright moment a strain from heaven's angelic choirs? Oh, yes! In our sleep the angels have whispered such rich music, and the soul being then passive, we can hear. And the pleasure does not leave us when passion and thought take their accustomed course.

"O man! were thy soul more pure, what a world would open to thy inner senses! There would be no moment of thy existence but would be filled with the music of love. The prophet said: 'In that day my eyes were opened.' And behold what he saw! He saw it. Could we but hear! The word of the Lord is ever speaking—alas! where is one that can hear? Where are our Isaiahs, our Ezekiels, our Jeremiahs? Oh! thou shrunken-visaged, black, hollow-eyed doubt! hast thou passed like a cloud over men's souls, making them blind, deaf and dumb? Ah, ha! dost thou shudder? I chant thy requiem, and prophets, poets, and seers shall rise again! I see them coming. Great heaven! Earth shall be again a paradise, and God converse with men!"

The next entry is undated, but it was probably made on the last day of May. It has served to fix the proximate time of the illness and disquiet which led to his first withdrawal from business and home.

"Wednesday.—About ten months ago—perhaps only seven or eight—I saw (I cannot say I dreamed; it was quite different from dreaming; I was seated on the side of my bed) a beautiful, angelic being, and myself standing alongside of her, feeling a most heavenly pure joy. It was as if our bodies were luminous and gave forth a moon-like light which sprung from the joy we experienced. I felt as if we had always lived together, and that our motions, actions, feelings, and thoughts came from one centre. When I looked towards her I saw no bold outline of form, but an angelic something I cannot describe, though in angelic shape and image. It was this picture that has left such an indelible impression on my mind. For some time afterward I continued to feel the same influence, and do now so often that the actual around me has lost its hold. In my state previous to my vision I should have married ere this, for there are those I have since seen who would have met the demands of my mind. But now this vision continually hovers over me and prevents me, by its beauty, from accepting any one else; for I am charmed by its influence, and conscious that, should I accept any other, I should lose the life which would be the only one wherein I could say I live."

Those of our readers who are either versed in mystical theology or who have any wide knowledge of the lives of the Church's more interior saints, with neither of which Isaac Hecker had at this time any acquaintance, will be apt to recall here St. Francis of Assisi and his bride, the Lady Poverty, the similar occurrences related by Henry Suso of himself, and the mystic espousals of St. Catharine. We have in this relation not only the plainly avowed reason why he accepted the celibate life, even before entering the Church or arriving at any clear understanding of his duty to do so, but we have something more. Not yet certain of his own vocation, the dream of a virginal apostolate, including the two sexes, had already absorbed his yearnings, never again to be forgotten. Neither priest nor Catholic, save in the as yet unrevealed ordinance of God, he was no longer free to invite any woman to marriage, no matter how deeply he might be sensible of her feminine attraction. The union of souls? Yes; for uses worthy of souls. The union of bodies? No; that would only clip his wings and narrow his horizon. Thenceforward the test of true kinship with him could only be a kindred aspiration after union in liberty from merely natural trammels, in order to tend more surely to a supernatural end.

This may seem to some a strange beginning to a life so simply and entirely set apart from the active, or, at least, public union of the sexes in apostolic labors. Strange or not, the reader will see it to be more true as this biography proceeds, and its writer is not conscious of any reluctance to make it known. Such an integral supernatural mission to men was what he ever after desired and sought to establish, though he only attained success on the male side. We cannot deny that this diary, surprising to us in many ways, was most so in this particular, although in this particular we found the explanation of many words spoken by Father Hecker in his maturity and old age, words the most sober and the most decided we ever heard from him. He never for an hour left out of view the need of women for any great work of religion, though he doubtless made very sure of his auditor before unveiling his whole thought. He never made so much as a serious attempt to incorporate women with his work, but he never ceased to look around and to plan with a view to doing so. Among the personal memoranda already mentioned are found evidences of this so direct, and corroborated by such recent facts, that they cannot be used until the lapse of time shall have made an extension of this life as well possible as necessary.

"June 1.—One cannot live a spiritual life in the world because it requires so much labor to supply food and clothing that what is inward and eternal has to be given up for the material and life in time. If one has to sustain himself at Brook Farm without other means to aid him, he must employ his strength to that degree that he has no time for the culture of the spiritual. I cannot remain and support myself without becoming subject to the same conditions as existed at home. I cannot expect them to be willing to lessen their present expenses much for the sake of gaining time for spiritual culture; nor do I see how I can at home live with my relatives and have the time which I require. I see no way but to give up the taste for fine clothing and variety in food. I would prefer the life of the monastery to that of the external world. The advantages for my being are greater. The harmony of the two is the full and perfect existence; but the spiritual should always be preserved at the expense of the other, which is contrary to the tendency of the world, and perhaps even to that of this place. I would prefer going hungry in body than in soul. I am speaking against neither, for I believe in the fulness of life, in amply supplying all its wants; but the kingdom of God is more to me than this world. I would be Plato in love, Zeno in self-strength, and Epicurus in aesthetics; but if I have to sacrifice either, let Epicurus go."

"June 12.—At times I have an impulse to cry out, 'What wouldst Thou have me to do?' I would shout up into the empty vault of heaven: 'Ah, why plaguest Thou me so? What shall I do? Give me an answer unless Thou wilt have me consumed by inward fre, drying up the living liquid of life. Wouldst Thou have me to give up all? I have. I have no dreams to realize. I want nothing, have nothing, and am willing to die in any way. What ties I have are few, and can be cut with a groan.'"

"Monday, June 26.—Solomon said, after he had tasted all the joys of the world, 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.' I, my friend, who have scarcely tasted any of the pleasures of the world, would say with Solomon, 'all is vanity.' I see nothing in which I can work. All are vanities, shadows; beneath all there is nothing. Great God! what is all this for? Why torment and pain me so? Why is all this action a profanity to me? And even holiness, what is it?

"Oh! I am dumb; my soul is inarticulate. There is that in me which I would pour out. Oh! why is it that the noblest actions of humanity speak not to my soul? All life is inadequate—but not in the sense of the world. I would joyfully be silent, obscure, dead to all the world, if this alone which is in me had life. I ask not for name, riches, external conditions of delight or splendor. No; the meanest of all would be heaven to me, if this inward impulse had action, lived itself out. But no; I am imprisoned in spirit. What imprisons? What is imprisoned? Who can tell?

"You say, good adviser, 'You must accept things as they are—be content to be; have faith in God; do that work which your hands find to do.' Good; but it is taken for granted we know what things are—which is the question. 'Be content to be.' Be what? 'Have faith in God.' Yes. 'Work?' Yes; but how? Like others. But this is not work to me; it is death; nay, worse—it is sin; hence, damnation—and I am not ready to go to hell yet. Your work gives me no activity; and to starve, if I must, is better than to do the profane, the sacrilegious labor you place before me. I want God's living work to do. My labor must be a sermon, every motion of my body a word, every act a sentence. My work must be devotional. I must feel that I am worshipping. It must be music, love, prayer. My field must be the kingdom of God. Christ must reign in all. It must be Christ doing in me, and not me. My life must be poetical, divine. Head, heart, and hands must be a trinity in unity; they must tone in one accord. My work must be work of inspiration and aspiration. My heart cannot be in heaven when my head and hands are in hell. I must feel that I am building up Christ's kingdom in all that I do. To give Christ room for action in my heart, soul, and body is my desire, my aim, purpose, being. . . .

"It is not he who goes to church, says his prayers, sings psalms, says 'Lord, Lord,' who is in God and establishing His kingdom. No; it is he who is doing it. The earth is to be His kingdom, and your prayers must be deeds, your actions music ascending to heaven. The Church must be the kingdom of God in its fulness. . . .

"Are we Christians if we act not in the spirit in which Christ acted? Shall we say: 'What shall we do?' Follow the spirit of Christ which is in you. 'Unless ye are reprobates, ye have it in you.' 'Be ye faithful, as I am,' said Jesus. 'Love one another as I have loved you.' Take up your cross and follow Him. Leave all, if the Spirit leads you to leave all. Do whatever it commands you. There will be no lack of action. Care not for the world; give up wealth, friends, those that you love, the opinions of all. Be willing to be despised, spit upon, crucified. Be silent, and let your silence speak for you."

It is plain that what Isaac Hecker is here condemning is the life of the world, wholly ordinary in its aims and motives. It is not to be understood as a condemnation of the common lot of men, or of that life in itself. It was only as he saw it over against his own vocation to something higher that it became repulsive, nay guilty to him. Nor was he even yet so settled in his view of the contrasted worth of the two careers between which he had to choose, as to be quite free from painful struggles. In the entry made on the day preceding this outburst, he once more recurs to the subject of marriage:

"Monday Evening, June 26.—This evening the same advice that has been given me before, first by the doctor who attended me, next by my dearest friend, was given me again by a man who now resides here."

"Tuesday Morning, June 27.—Rather than follow this advice, I would die. I should be miserable all my life. Nay, death before this. These men appear to me as natural men, but not in the same life as mine. They are older, have more experience and more judgment than I, perhaps; but considering the point of view from which their judgment is formed, their advice does not appear to be the counsel for me. I never can, nor will, save my health or life by such means. If that is the only remedy, then unremedied must I remain.

"But the cause of my present state of mind is not what they suppose. It is deeper, higher, and, O God! Thou knowest what it is! Wilt Thou give me hope, strength, guidance?" . . .

"Friday, June 29.—Am I led by something higher to the life to which I am tending? Sometimes I think it is most proper for me to return home, accept things as they are, and live a life like others—as good, and as much better as possible. If I can find one with whom I think I can live happily, to accept such a one, and give up that which now leads me.

"My friends would say this is the prudent and rational course—but it appears this is not mine. That I am here is one evidence that it is not mine. A second is that I struggled against what led me here as much as lay in my power, until I became weak, sick, and confined to my bed. Farther than that I could not go.

"They tell me that if I were married it would not be so with me. I will not dispute this, although I do not believe it. But, my good friends, that is the difficulty. To marry is to me impossible. You tell me this is unnatural. Yes, my brethren, it may be unnatural, but how shall I be natural? Must I commit that which in my sight is a crime, which I feel would make me miserable and be death to my soul? 'But this is foolish and one-sided in you. You are wrong-minded. You will lose your health, your youthful joy, and the pleasure which God has, by human laws, designed you to enjoy. You should give up these thoughts and feelings of yours and be like those around you.

"Yes, my friends, this advice I accept with love, knowing your kindness to me. But, alas! I feel that it comes from such a source that I cannot receive it."

"July 5.—My brother George has been here; he stayed three days. He told me he had often talked with my brother John about living a life higher, nobler, and more self-denying than he had done. It appears from his conversation that since I left home they have been impressed with a deeper and better spirit. To me it is of much interest to decide what I shall do. I have determined to make a visit to Fruitlands. To leave this place is to me a great sacrifice. I have been much refined in being here.

"To stay here—to purchase a place for myself—or to go home. These are questions about which I feel the want of some friend to consult with. I have no one to whom I can go for advice. If I wish to be self-denying, one would say at home is the best, the largest field for my activity. This may be true in one sense. But is it wise to go where there are the most difficulties to overcome? Would it not be better to plant the tree in the soil where it can grow most in every direction? At home, to be sure, if I have strength to succeed, I may, perhaps, do the most good, and it may be the widest sphere for me. But there are many difficulties which have such a direct influence on one to injure, to blight all high and noble sentiments, that I fear to encounter them, and I am not sure it is my place. Perhaps it would be best for me not to speculate on the future, but look to Him who is above for wise direction in all that concerns my life. Sacrifices must be made. I must expect and accept them in a meek, humble, and willing spirit."





CHAPTER VIII

FRUITLANDS

WHAT influenced Isaac Hecker to leave Brook Farm, a place so congenial in many ways to his natural dispositions, was, plainly enough, his tendency to seek a more ascetic and interior life than he could lead there. The step cost him much, but he had received all that the place and his companions could give him, and his departure was inevitable.

His next move in pursuit if his ideal took him to Fruitlands. This was a farm, situated near Harvard, in Worcester Co., Massachusetts, which had been bought by Mr. Charles Lane, an English admirer of Amos Bronson Alcott, with the hope of establishing on it a new community in consonance with the views and wishes of the latter. Perhaps Fruitlands could never, at any stage of its existence as a corporate home for Mr. Alcott's family and his scanty following of disciples, have been truly described as in running order, but when Isaac Hecker went there, on July 11, 1843, it was still in its incipiency. He had paid the Fruitlanders a brief visit toward the end of June, and thought that he saw in them evidences of "a deeper life." It speaks volumes for his native sagacity and keen eye for realities, that less than a fortnight's residence with Mr. Alcott should have sufficed to dispel this illusion.

Bronson Alcott seems to have been by nature what the French call a poseur; or, as one of his own not unkindly intimates has described him, "an innocent charlatan." Although not altogether empty, he was vain; full of talk which had what was most often a false air of profundity; unpractical and incapable in the ordinary affairs of life to a degree not adequately compensated for by such a grasp as he was able to get on the realities that underlie them; and with an imposing aspect which corresponded wonderfully well with his interior traits. That, in his prime, his persuasive accents and bland self-confidence, backed by the admiration felt and expressed for him by men such as Emerson, and some of the community at Brook Farm, should have induced an open-minded youth like Isaac Hecker to take him for a time at his own valuation, is not strange. The truth is, that it was one of Father Hecker's life-long traits to prove all things, that he might find the good and hold fast to it. There was an element of justice in his make-up which enabled him to suspend judgment upon any institution or person, however little they seemed to deserve such consideration, until he was in a condition to decide from his own investigations. We shall see, later on, how he tried all the principal forms of Protestantism before deciding upon Catholicity, strong as his tendency toward the Church had become. We have never known any other man who, without exhibiting obstinacy, could so steadfastly reserve his judgment on another's statement, especially if it were in the nature of a condemnation.

When Isaac Hecker first made his acquaintance, Mr. Alcott had but recently returned from England, whither he had gone on the invitation of James P. Greaves, a friend and fellow-laborer of the great Swiss educator, Pestalozzi. Mr. Alcott had gained a certain vogue at home as a lecturer, and also as the conductor of a singular school for young children. Among its many peculiarities was that of carrying "moral suasion" to such lengths, as a solitary means of discipline, that the master occasionally publicly submitted to the castigation earned by a refractory urchin, probably by way of reaching the latter's moral sense through shame or pity. This was, doubtless, rather interesting to the pupils, whether or not it was corrective. Mr. Alcott's peculiarities did not stop here, however, and Boston parents, when he began to publish the Colloquies on the Gospels which he held with their children, concluded, on the evidence thus furnished, that his thought was too "advanced" to make it prudent to trust them longer to his care. Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody, since so well known as an expositor of the Kindergarten system, had been his assistant. She wrote a Record of Mr. Alcott's School which attracted the attention of a small band of educational enthusiasts in England. They gave the name of "Alcott House" to a school of their own at Ham, near London, and hoped for great things from the personal advice and presence of the "Concord Plato." He was petted and feted among them pretty nearly to the top of his bent; but his visit would have proved a more unalloyed success if the hard Scotch sense of Carlyle, to whom Emerson had recommended him, had not so quickly dubbed his vaunted depths deceptive shallows.

On his return he was accompanied by two Englishmen who seemed to be like-minded with himself, a Mr. H. G. Wright and Mr. Charles Lane, both of whom returned within a year or two to their own country, wiser and perhaps sadder men. Lane, at all events, who was a simple and candid soul for whom Isaac Hecker conceived a long-enduring friendship, sunk all his private means irrevocably in the futile attempt to establish Fruitlands on a solid basis. To use his own words in a letter now at our hand, though referring to another of Mr. Alcott's schemes, his little fortune was "buried in the same grave of flowery rhetoric in which so many other notions have been deposited."

Lying before us there is an epistle—Mr. Alcott's most ordinary written communications with his friends must have demanded that term in preference to anything less stately—in which he has described his own ideal of what life at Fruitlands ought to be. No directer way of conveying to our readers a notion of his peculiar faculty of seeming to say something of singular importance occurs to us, than that of giving it entire. Though found among Father Hecker's papers, it was not addressed to him but to one of his most-valued Brook Farm associates:

"Concord, Mass., February 15, 1843.—DEAR FRIEND: In reply to your letter of the 12th, I have to say that as until the snow leaves the ground clear, the Family cannot so much as look for a locality (which then may not readily be found), it seems premature to talk of the conditions on which any association may be formed.

"Nevertheless, as human progress is a universally interesting subject, I have much pleasure in communicating with you on the question of the general conditions most conducive to that end.

"I have no belief in associations of human beings for the purpose of making themselves happy by means of improved outward arrangements alone, as the fountains of happiness are within, and are opened to us as we are preharmonized or consociated with the Universal Spirit. This is the one condition needful for happy association amongst men. And this condition is attained by the surrender of all individual or selfish gratification—a complete willingness to be moulded by Divinity. This, as men now are, of course involves self-renunciation and retrenchment; and in enumerating the hindrances which debar us from happiness, we shall be drawn to consider, in the first place, ourselves; and to entertain practically the question, Are we prepared for the giving up all, and taking refuge in Love as an unfailing Providence? A faith and reliance as large as this seems needful to insure us against disappointment. The entrance to Paradise is still through the strait gate and narrow way of self-denial. Eden's avenue is yet guarded by the fiery-sworded cherubim, and humility and charity are the credentials for admission. Unless well armed with valor and patience, we must continue in the old and much-trodden broad way, and take share of the penalties paid by all who walk thereon.

"The conditions for one are conditions for all. Hence there can be no parley with the tempter, no private pleas for self-indulgence, no leaning on the broken reed of circumstances.

"It is not for us to prescribe conditions; these are prescribed on our natures, our state of being—and the best we can do, if disqualified, is either to attain an amended character, or to relinquish all hopes of securing felicity.

"Our purposes, as far as we know them at present, are briefly these:

"First, to obtain the free use of a spot of land adequate by our own labor to our support; including, of course, a convenient plain house, and offices, wood-lot, garden, and orchard.

"Secondly, to live independently of foreign aids by being sufficiently elevated to procure all articles for subsistence in the productions of the spot, under a regimen of healthful labor and recreation; with benignity towards all creatures, human and inferior; with beauty and refinement in all economies; and the purest charity throughout our demeanor.

"Should this kind of life attract parties towards us—individuals of like aims and issues—that state of being itself determines the law of association; and the particular mode may be spoken of more definitely as individual cases may arise; but, in no case, could inferior ends compromise the principles laid down.

"Doubtless such a household, with our library, our services and manner of life, may attract young men and women, possibly also families with children, desirous of access to the channels and fountain of wisdom and purity; and we are not without hope that Providence will use us progressively for beneficial effects in the great work of human regeneration, and the restoration of the highest life on earth.

"With the humane wish that yourself and little ones may be led to confide in providential Love,

"I am, dear friend, very truly yours,

"A. BRONSON ALCOTT."

It must be admitted that there is something delightful in the naivete of this undertaking to be "sufficiently elevated to live independently of foreign aids," after first getting "the free use of a spot of land, . . . including, of course, a convenient plain house, and offices, wood-lot, garden, and orchard." Establishments which would tolerably approximate to this description, and to the really essential needs of its prospective founder, have long existed in every civilized community. There are certain restrictions placed upon their inmates, however, and Mr. Alcott's desire was to make sure of his basis of earthly supplies, while left entirely free to persuade himself that he had arrived at an elevation which made him independent of them. Still, though "a charlatan," it must not be forgotten that he was "an innocent" one. He was plainly born great in that way, and had no need to achieve greatness in it. As Father Hecker said of him long afterwards, "Diogenes and his tub would have been Alcott's ideal if he had carried it out. But he never carried it out." Diogenes himself, it may be supposed, had his ideal included a family and an audience as well as a tub, might finally have come to hold that the finding of the latter was a mere detail, which could be entrusted indifferently to either of the two former or to both combined. Somebody once described Fruitlands as a place where Mr. Alcott looked benign and talked philosophy, while Mrs. Alcott and the children did the work. Still, to look benign is a good deal for a man to do persistently in an adverse world, indifferent for the most part to the charms of "divine philosophy," and Mr. Alcott persevered in that exercise until his latest day. "He was unquestionably one of those who like to sit upon a platform," wrote, at the time of his death, one who knew Alcott well, "and he may have liked to feel that his venerable aspect had the effect of a benediction." But with this mild criticism, censure of him is well-nigh exhausted. There was nothing of the Patriarch of Bleeding Heart Yard about him except that "venerable aspect," for which nature was responsible, and not he.

Fruitlands was the caricature of Brook Farm. Just as the fanatic is the caricature of the true reformer, so was Alcott the caricature of Ripley. This is not meant as disparaging either Alcott's sincerity or his intelligence, but to affirm that he lacked judgment, that he miscalculated means and ends, that he jumped from theory to practice without a moment's interval, preferred to be guided by instinct rather than by processes of reasoning, and deemed this to be the philosopher's way.

In the memoranda of private conversations with Father Hecker we find several references to Mr. Alcott. The first bears date February 4, 1882, and occurs in a conversation ranging over the whole of his experience between his first and second departures from home. We give it as it stands:

"Fruitlands was very different from Brook Farm—far more ascetic."

"You didn't like it?"

"Yes; but they did not begin to satisfy me. I said to them: 'If you had the Eternal here, all right. I would be with you.'"

"Had they no notion of the hereafter?"

"No; nothing definite. Their idea was human perfection. They set out to demonstrate what man can do in the way of the supremacy of the spiritual over the animal. 'All right,' I said, 'I agree with you fully. I admire your asceticism; it is nothing new to me; I have practised it a long time myself. If you can get the Everlasting out of my mind, I'm yours. But I know' (here Father Hecker thumped the table at his bedside) 'that I am going to live for ever.'"

"What did Alcott say when you left?"

"He went to Lane and said, 'Well, Hecker has flunked out. He hadn't the courage to persevere. He's a coward.' But Lane said, 'No; you're mistaken. Hecker's right. He wanted more than we had to give him.'"

Mr. Alcott's death in 1888 was the occasion of the reminiscences which follow:

"March 5, 1888.—Bronson Alcott dead! I saw him coming from Rochester on the cars. I had been a Catholic missionary for I don't know how many years. We sat together. 'Father Hecker,' said he, 'why can't you make a Catholic of me?' 'Too much rust here,' said I, clapping him on the knee. He got very angry because I said that was the obstacle. I never saw him angry at any other time. He was too proud.

"But he was a great natural man. He was faithful to pure, natural conscience. His virtues came from that. He never had any virtue beyond what a good pagan has. He never aimed at anything more, nor claimed to. He maintained that to be all.

"I don't believe he ever prayed. Whom could he pray to? Was not Bronson Alcott the greatest of all?"

"Did he believe in God?"

"Not the God that we know. He believed in the Bronson Alcott God. He was his own God."

"You say he was Emerson's master: what do you mean by that?"

"He taught Emerson. He began life as a pedler. The Yankee pedler was Emerson's master. Whatever principles Emerson had, Alcott gave him. And Emerson was a good pupil; he was faithful to his master to the end.

"When did I know him first? Hard to remember. He was the head of Fruitlands, as Ripley was of Brook Farm. They were entirely different men. Diogenes and his tub would have been Alcott's ideal if he had carried it out. But he never carried it out. Ripley's ideal would have been Epictetus. Ripley would have taken with him the good things of this life; Alcott would have rejected them all."

"How did he receive you at Fruitlands?"

"Very kindly, but from mixed and selfish motives. I suspected he wanted me because he thought I would bring money to the community. Lane was entirely unselfish.

"Alcott was a man of no great intellectual gifts or acquirements. His knowledge came chiefly from experience and instinct. He had an insinuating and persuasive way with him—he must have been an ideal pedler."

"What if he had been a Catholic, and thoroughly sanctified?"

"He could have been nothing but a hermit like those of the fourth century—he was naturally and constitutionally so odd. Emerson, Alcott, and Thoreau were three consecrated cranks: rather be crank than president. All the cranks look up to them."

Beside these later reminiscences we shall now place the contemporary record of his impressions made by Isaac Hecker while at Fruitlands. Our first extract, however, was written at Brook Farm, a few days before going thither:

"July 7, 1843.—I go to Mr. Alcott's next Tuesday, if nothing happens. I have had three pairs of coarse pants and a coat made for me. It is my intention to commence work as soon as I get there. I will gradually simplify my dress without making any sudden difference, although it would be easier to make a radical and thorough change at once than piece by piece. But this will be a lesson in patient perseverance to me. All our difficulties should be looked at in such a light as to improve and elevate our minds.

"I can hardly prevent myself from saying how much I shall miss the company of those whom I love and associate with here. But I must go. I am called with a stronger voice. This is a different trial from any I have ever had. I have had that of leaving kindred, but now I have that of leaving those whom I love from affinity. If I wished to live a life the most gratifying to me, and in agreeable company, I certainly would remain here. Here are refining amusements, cultivated persons—and one whom I have not spoken of, one who is too much to me to speak of, one who would leave all for me. Alas! him I must leave to go."

In this final sentence, as it now stands in the diary and as we have transcribed it, occurs one of those efforts of which we have spoken, to obliterate the traces of this early attachment. "Him" was originally written "her," but the r has been lengthened to an m, and the e dotted, both with a care which overshot their mark by an almost imperceptible hair's-breadth. If the nature of this attachment were not so evident from other sources, we should have left such passages unquoted; fearing lest they might be misunderstood. As it is, the light they cast seems to us to throw up into fuller proportions the kind and extent of the renunciations to which Isaac Hecker was called before he had arrived at any clear view of the end to which they tended.

"Fruitlands, July 12.—Last evening I arrived here. After tea I went out in the fields and raked hay for an hour in company with the persons here. We returned and had a conversation on Clothing. Some very fine things were said by Mr. Alcott and Mr. Lane. In most of their thoughts I coincide; they are the same which of late have much occupied my mind. Alcott said that to Emerson the world was a lecture-room, to Brownson a rostrum.

"This morning after breakfast a conversation was held on Friendship and its laws and conditions. Mr. Alcott placed Innocence first; Larned, Thoughtfulness; I, Seriousness; Lane, Fidelity.

"July 13.—This morning after breakfast there was held a conversation on The Highest Aim. Mr. Alcott said it was Integrity; I, Harmonic being; Lane, Progressive being; Larned, Annihilation of self; Bower, Repulsion of the evil in us. Then there was a confession of the obstacles which prevent us from attaining the highest aim. Mine was the doubt whether the light is light; not the want of will to follow, or the sight to see."

"July 17.—I cannot understand what it is that leads me, or what I am after. Being is incomprehensible.

"What shall I be led to? Is there a being whom I may marry and who would be the means of opening my eyes? Sometimes I think so—but it appears impossible. Why should others tell me that it is so, and will be so, in an unconscious way, as Larned did on Sunday last, and as others have before him? Will I be led home? It strikes me these people here, Alcott and Lane, will be a great deal to me. I do not know but they may be what I am looking for, or the answer to that in me which is asking.

"Can I say it? I believe it should be said. Here I cannot end. They are too near me; they do not awaken in me that sense of their high superiority which would keep me here to be bettered, to be elevated. They have much, very much. I desire Mr. Alcott's strength of self-denial, and the unselfishness of Mr. Lane in money matters. In both these they are far my superiors. I would be meek, humble, and sit at their feet that I might be as they are. They do not understand me, but if I am what my consciousness, my heart, lead me to feel—if I am not deceived—why then I can wait. Yes, patiently wait. Is not this the first time since I have been here that I have recovered myself? Do I not feel that I have something to receive here, to add to, to increase my highest life, which I have never felt anywhere else?

"Is this sufficient to keep me here? If I can prophesy, I must say no. I feel that it will not fill my capacity. O God! strengthen my resolution. Let me not waver, and continue my life. But I am sinful. Oh, forgive my sins! What shall I do, O Lord! that they may be blotted out? Lord, could I only blot them from my memory, nothing would be too great or too much."

"July 18.—I have thought of my family this afternoon, and the happiness and love with which I might return to them. To leave them, to give up the thought of living with them again—can I entertain that idea? Still, I cannot conceive how I can engage in business, share the practices, and indulge myself with the food and garmenture (sic) of our home and city. To return home, were it possible for me, would most probably not only stop my progress, but put me back.

"It is useless for me to speculate upon my future. Put dependence on the spirit which leads me, be faithful to it; work, and leave results to God. If the question should be asked me, whether I would give up my kindred and business and follow out this spirit-life, or return and enjoy them both, I could not hesitate a moment, for they would not compare—there would be no room for choice. What I do I must do, for it is not I that do it; it is the spirit. What that spirit may be is a question I cannot answer, What it leads me to do will be the only evidence of its character. I feel as impersonal as a stranger to it. I ask, Who are you? Where are you going to take me? Why me? Why not some one else? I stand amazed, astonished to see myself. Alas! I cry, who am I and what does this mean? and I am lost in wonder."

"Saturday, July 21.—Yesterday, after supper, a conversation took place between Mr. Alcott, Mr. Lane, and myself; the subject was my position with regard to my family, my duty, and my position here. Mr. Alcott asked for my first impressions as regards the hindrances I have noted since coming here. I told him candidly they were: 1st, his want of frankness; 2d, his disposition to separateness rather than win co-operators with the aims in his own mind; 3d, his family, who prevent his immediate plans of reformation; 4th, the fact that this place has very little fruit on it, while it was and is their desire that fruit should be the principal part of their diet; 5th, my fear that they have too decided a tendency toward literature and writing for the prosperity and success of their enterprise.

"My relations with my family are very critical at this period—more so than they have ever been. It is the crisis of the state we have been in for this past year. If God gives me strength to be true to the spirit, it is very doubtful how far those at home will be willing to second it. I have written them a letter asking for their own aims and views of life, and I am anxious for their answer. The question of returning is not a wilful one with me, for it is the spirit which guides me. If it can live there, I go back. If not, I am governed and must follow where it leads, wherever that may be."

The letter referred to in this entry of the diary is too long, and covers too much ground already traversed, to be quoted in full, but it contains some striking passages. It was written at Fruitlands, July 17, '43. After inquiring with his customary directness what are their aims in life and what they are doing to attain them, he goes on to say:

"Although the idea or aim which each one aspires toward and tries to realize will be colored by his own peculiar tendencies, still, in substance, in practice, they will agree if they are inspired by the self-same spirit."

Here we have the practical good sense which reined in and directed Isaac Hecker throughout his life, making it finally impossible for him not to see and recognize the visible Church, notwithstanding his mystical tendency, his want of thorough education, and his birthright of heresy.

Again he writes:

"There are all the natural ties why we should not be separated, and no reasons why we should, unless there exists such a wide difference in the aims we seek to realize that it would be injurious or impossible for us to live in family, in unity, in love. I do not believe this difference exists, but if it does, and we are conscious of being led by a higher spirit than our own, we should and would sacrifice all that hinders us from the divine calling. That demands implicit, uncompromising obedience. It speaks in the tone of high authority. The dead must bury their dead. That which offends it must be got rid of at all costs, be it wife, parents, children, brothers, sisters, or our own eye or hand. I do not contemplate a sacrifice of either of these; still, it is well to consider whether, if such a demand should be made of us, we are in such a state of mind that we would be willing to give one or all up, if they should stand in the way of our progress toward God. . . .

"If you desire to continue the way of life you have and do now lead, be plain, frank, and so express yourselves explicitly. If not, and you have any desire or intention in your minds to alter or make a radical change in your external circumstances for the sake of a higher, better mode of life, be equally open, and let me know all your thoughts and aspirations which are struggling for expression, for real life. . . .

"We have labored together in union for material wealth; can we now labor in the same way for spiritual wealth? If there are sufficient points of accord in us in this higher life, we must come together and live in harmony. Since my departure from home there has been a change in my mind, or, perhaps more truly, a sudden and rapid growth in a certain direction, the germs of which you must have heretofore perceived in my conduct and life. On the other hand, I suppose there has been a progress in your minds, and I feel that the time has arrived when we should see where we are, so that we may either come together or separate. Our future relation cannot be a wilful one. It must be based on a unity of spirit, for the social, the humane instincts cannot bind us together any longer. . . . Have we the spiritual as well as the natural brotherhood? this is the question which deeply concerns us now. . . . I do not know what the spirit has done for you since my departure. If it has led you as it has led me, there is no reason why I should be amongst strangers by birth, although not altogether strangers in love . . . Think seriously upon your answer. Act true. Life is to me of serious import, and I feel called upon to give up all that hinders me from following this import wherever it may lead. But do not let this influence you in your judgments. We have but a short life to live here, and I would offer mine to some worthy end: this is all I desire. My health is very good. I am still at Fruitlands, and will remain here until something further happens. Accept my deepest love."

While waiting for an answer to this letter, the diary shows how continuously Isaac's mind was working over this problem of a final separation from his kindred. It seems probable that it was, on the whole, the deepest emotional one that he had to solve. Both filial duty and natural affection were strong sentiments with him. One notices in these letters how courteous and urbane is the tone he uses, even when insisting most on the necessity which lies upon him to cut all the ties which bind him. This was a family trait. In a letter written to us last September in answer to a question, Mr. Charles A. Dana incidentally refers to a visit he paid Isaac Hecker at his mother's house. "It was a very interesting family," he writes, "and the cordiality and sweetness of the relations which prevailed in it impressed me very greatly."

The entry we are about to quote opens with an odd echo from a certain school of mysticism with which Isaac about this time became familiar:

"July 22, 1843.—Man requires a new birth—the birth of the feminine in him.

"The question arises in my mind whether it is necessary for me to require the concurrence of my brothers in the views of life which now appear to demand of me their actualization.

"Can I not adopt simple garmenture and diet without their doing so? Must I needs have their concurrence? Can I not leave results to themselves? If my life is purer than that of those around me, can I not trust to its own simple influence?

"But if there is a great difference of spirit, can we live together? Does not like seek like? In money matters things must certainly be other than they have been. We must agree that no accounts shall be kept between ourselves, let the consequences be what they may. I would rather suffer evils from a dependence on the spirit of love than permit that of selfishness to exist between us. I ask not a cent above what will supply my immediate, necessary wants. . . They may demand ten times more than I, and it would be a happiness to me to see them use it, even if I thought they used it wrongfully. All the check I would be willing to employ would be that of love and mutual good feeling. If I remain as I now am, I shall require very little, and that little would be spent for the benefit and help of others.

"July 23.—I will go home, be true to the spirit with the help of God, and wait for further light and strength. . . . I feel that I cannot live at this place as I would. This is not the place for my soul. . . My life is not theirs. They have been the means of giving me much light on myself, but I feel I would live and progress more in a different atmosphere."

On the 25th of July Isaac finally departed from Fruitlands, and after remaining for a few days at Brook Farm, he returned to his home in New York. Before following him thither, it may be well to give at once such further references to this period of his life as are contained in the memoranda. The following extract is undated:

"A propos of Emerson's death, Father Hecker said: 'I knew him well. When I resolved to become a Catholic I was boarding at the house of Henry Thoreau's mother, a stone's-throw from Emerson's at Concord.'"

"What did Thoreau say about it?"

"'What's the use of your joining the Catholic Church? Can't you get along without hanging to her skirts?' I suppose Emerson found it out from Thoreau, so he tried his best to get me out of the notion. He invited me to tea with him, and he kept leading up to the subject and I leading away from it. The next day he asked me to drive over with him to the Shakers, some fifteen miles. We stayed over night, and all the way there and back he was fishing for my reasons, with the plain purpose of dissuading me. Then Alcott and he arranged matters so that they cornered me in a sort of interview, and Alcott frankly developed the subject. I finally said, 'Mr. Alcott, I deny your inquisitorial right in this matter,' and so they let it drop. One day, however, I was walking along the road and Emerson joined me. Presently he said, 'Mr. Hecker, I suppose it was the art, the architecture, and so on in the Catholic Church which led you to her?' 'No,' said I; 'but it was what caused all that.' I was the first to break the Transcendental camp. Brownson came some time after me.

"Years later, during the war, I went to Concord to lecture, and wanted Emerson to help me get a hall. He refused.

"Alcott promised that he would, but he did not, and I think Emerson dissuaded him. After a time, however, a priest, a church, and a congregation of some six or seven hundred Catholics grew up in Concord, and I was invited to lecture, and I went. The pastor attended another station that Sunday, and I said the Mass and meant to give a homily by way of sermon. But as I was going to the altar, all vested for the Mass, two men came into my soul: one, the man who lived in that village in former years, a blind man, groping about for light, a soul with every problem unsolved; the other a man full of light, with every problem solved, the universe and the reason of his existence known as they actually are. Well, there were those two men in my soul. I had to get rid of them, so I preached them of to the people. Some wept, some laughed, all were deeply moved. That night came the lecture. It rained pitchforks and pineapples, but the hall, a large one, was completely filled. Multitudes of Yankees were there. Emerson was absent, but Alcott was present. I had my lecture all cut and dried. 'Why I became a Catholic' was the subject. But as I was about to begin, up came those two men again, and for the life of me I couldn't help firing them off at the audience, and with remarkable effect. Next day I met Emerson in the street and we had a little talk together. None of those men are comfortable in conversation with an intelligent Catholic. He avoided my square look, and actually kept turning to avoid my eyes until he had quite turned round! Such men, confronted with actual, certain convictions are exceedingly uncomfortable. They feel in subjection to you. They cannot bear the steadfast glance of a man of certain principles any better than a dog can the look of his master. Like a dog, they turn away the head and show signs of uneasiness."

From the memoranda, also, we take this reminiscence of George Ripley, the man whom Father Hecker loved best of all the Transcendental party:

"January 23, 1885.—Seeing my perplexity at Brook Farm, George Ripley said, 'Mr. Hecker, do you think we have not got true religion? If you think so, say so. If you have views you think true, and which we ought to have, let us hear them.' I answered, 'No; I haven't the truth, but I am trying to get it. If I ever succeed, you will hear from me. If I don't, you never will. I am not going to teach before I am certain myself. I will not add myself to the list of humbugs.'

"Ripley was a great man; a wonderful man. But he was a complete failure. I loved him dearly, and he knew it, and he loved me; I know well he did. When I came back a Redemptorist from Europe, I went to see him at the Tribune office. He asked me, 'Can you do all that any Catholic priest can do?' 'Yes.' 'Then I will send for you when I am drawing towards my end.'

"Indeed, if one could have gone to Ripley, at any time in his later years, and said, 'You will never return again to the society of men,' and persuaded him it was true, he would have said at once, 'Send for Father Hecker or some other Catholic priest.' I am persuaded that the fear of facing his friends hindered George Ripley from becoming a Catholic. He sent for me when taken down by his last illness, but his message was not delivered. As soon as I heard that he was ill I hastened to his bedside, but his mind was gone and I could do nothing for him."

And now, having given so fully such of his own impressions as remain of the persons and places which helped to shape Father Hecker in early manhood, we will terminate the record of this period with two letters, one from each community, which were written him soon after his return to New York. No words of our own could show so well the hearty affection and implicit trust which he awakened and returned:

"Brook Farm, September 18, 1843.—MY DEAR FRIEND: I was rejoiced to hear from you, though you wrote too short a letter. Your beautiful fruit, enough to convert the direst sceptic to Grahamism, together with the pearled wheat, arrived safely, although a few days too late to be in perfectly good order. We distributed them to all and singular, men, women, and children, who discussed them with great interest, I assure you; many, no doubt, with silent wishes that no good or beautiful thing might ever be wanting to you. I am glad to learn that you are so happy in New York, that you find so much in your own mind to compensate for the evils of a city environment, and that your aspirations are not quenched by the sight of the huge disorders that daily surround you. I hardly dare to think that my own faith or hope would be strong enough to reconcile me to a return to common society. I should pine like an imprisoned bird, and I fear I should grow blind to the visions of loveliness and glory which the future promises to humanity. I long for action which shall realize the prophecies, fulfil the Apocalypse, bring the new Jerusalem down from heaven to earth, and collect the faithful into a true and holy brotherhood. To attain this consummation so devoutly to be wished, I would eat no flesh, I would drink no wine while the world lasted. I would become as devoted an ascetic as yourself, my dear Isaac. But to what end is all speculation, all dreaming, all questioning, but to advance humanity, to bring forward the manifestation of the Son of God? Oh, for men who feel this idea burning into their bones! When shall we see them? And without them, what will be phalanxes, groups and series, attractive industry, and all the sublime words of modern reforms?

"When will you come back to Brook Farm? Can you do without us? Can we do without you? But do not come as an amateur, a self-perfectionizer, an aesthetic self-seeker, willing to suck the orange of Association dry and throw away the peel. Oh! that you would come as one of us, to work in the faith of a divine idea, to toil in loneliness and tears for the sake of the kingdom which God may build up by our hands. All here, that is, all our old central members, feel more and more the spirit of devotedness, the thirst to do or die, for the cause we have at heart. We do not distrust Providence. We cannot believe that what we have gained here of spiritual progress will be lost through want of material resources. At present, however, we are in great straits. We hardly dare to provide the means of keeping warm in our pleasant nest this winter.

"Just look at our case. With property amounting to $30,000, the want of two or three thousands fetters us and may kill us. That sum would free us from pecuniary embarrassment, and for want of that we work daily with fetters on our limbs. Are there not five men in New York City who would dare to venture $200 each in the cause of social reform, without being assured of a Phalanx for themselves and their children for ever? Alas! I know not. We are willing to traverse the wilderness forty years; we ask no grapes of Eshcol for ourselves; we do not claim a fair abode in the promised land; but what can we do, with neither quails nor manna, with raiment waxing old, and shoes bursting from our feet?

"Forgive me, my dear Isaac, for speaking so much about ourselves. But what else should I speak of? And who more sympathizing with our movement than yourself?

"Do not be surprised at receiving this letter so long after date. Not less than four times have I begun it, and as often have been interrupted. Pray write me now and then. Your words are always sweet and pleasant to my soul. Believe me, ever yours truly,

"GEORGE RIPLEY."

"Harvard, Mass., November 11, 1843.—DEAR FRIEND: Your kind letter of the 1st came duly to hand, and we are making arrangements to enjoy the benefit of your healthful bequest.

"Please to accept thanks for your sympathy and the reports of persons and things in your circle. They have interested me much but I am about to make you the most incongruous return conceivable. For pleasure almost unqualified which you have conferred on me, I fear I shall trouble you with painful relations; in return for a barrel of superfine wholesome wheat-meal, I am going to submit to you a peck of troubles. Out of as many of these as you lovingly and freely can, you may assist me; but, of course, you will understand that I feel I have no claim upon you. On the contrary, indeed, I see that I run the hazard of forfeiting your valued friendship by thus obtruding my pecuniary concerns into our hitherto loftier communings. You know it to be a sentiment of mine, that these affairs should never be obtruded between aesthetic friends, but what can one do in extremity but to unburden candidly to the generous?

"When I bought this place, instead of paying the whole $1,800, as I wished, $300 of my money went to pay old debts with which I ought to have had nothing to do; and Mrs. Alcott's brother, Samuel J. May, joined his name to a note for $300, to be paid by instalments in two years. And now that the first instalment is due, he sends me word that he declines paying it. As all my cash has been expended in buying and keeping up the affair, I am left in a precarious position, out of which I do not see the way without some loveful aid, and to you I venture freely to submit my feelings. Above all things I should like to discharge at once this $300 note, as unless that is done the place must, I fear, fall back into individuality and the idea be suspended. Now, if as much cash is loose in your pocket, or that of some wealthy friend, there shall be parted off as much of the land as will secure its return, from the crops alone, in a few years; or, I would sell a piece until I can redeem it; or, I would meet the loan in any other secure way, if I can but secure the land from the demon usury. This mode seems to me the most desirable. But I could get along with the instalment of $75, and would offer like security in proportion. Or, if you can do it yourself, and would prefer the library as a pledge, you shall select such books as will suit your own reading and would cover your advance in cash any day you choose to put them up to auction, if I should fail to redeem them. Or, I would give my notes of hand that I could meet by sales of produce or of land. If I had the benefit of your personal counsel, we could contrive something between us, I am sure, but I have no such aid about me. The difficulty in itself is really light, but to me, under present circumstances, is quite formidable. If at your earliest convenience you acquaint me with your mind, you will much oblige.

"I have another trouble of a personal nature. I suffer already this winter from the inclemency of the weather, so much that my hands are so chapped that I can scarcely hold the pen. If I could find employment in a more southern position that would support me and the boy, and leave a little to be applied to the common good, I would undertake it. I think I could at the same time be of some mental and moral service to the people where I might be located.

"Another trouble. Young William has been very ill for the last month, brought on, I believe, by excessive work. He is still very weak, and has not sat up for three weeks.

"All these, besides sundry slighter plagues, coming upon me at once, have perhaps a little disconcerted my nerves, and the advice and assistance of a generous friend at such a juncture would be indeed serviceable. If the journey were not so long and so costly I would ask you to come. Be assured that whatever may be your decision in any of these relations, my esteem for you cannot be thereby diminished. My only fear is that such encroachments on your good nature will reduce your estimation of, dear friend, yours most sincerely,

"CHARLES LANE.

"Regards to the Doctor and all friends. The Shakers have kindly inquired for you, and they still take much interest in our life. Have you seen the last Dial? The Present is good, but surely not good enough. I hope to write a more universal letter in response to your next, for which I wait."

Poor Lane, failing to find any equally confiding and generous friend to shoulder with him the personal debts of the founder of Fruitlands, was compelled at last to let the farm "lapse into individuality" and to see "the idea suspended." In his next and "more universal letter" he announces that the experiment is ended in consequence of Mrs. Alcott's refusal to remain on the place through the winter. Lane went over to the neighboring Shaker community, and from there to England, where Father Hecker met him during his own residence at Clapham, after his ordination. His letters followed Father Hecker for several years, and breathe always the same unselfishness, the same simple trust in human goodness, and the same fondness for speculations on "the universal."





CHAPTER IX

SELF-QUESTIONINGS

NOT finding any solution of his spiritual difficulties at either Fruitlands or Brook Farm, Isaac Hecker turned his face once more toward the home from which he had departed nearly a year before. He expected little from this step, but his state of mind was now one in which he had begun to anticipate, at any turn, some light on the dispositions of Providence in his regard which might determine his course for good and all. And, meantime, as patient waiting was all that lay in his own power, it seemed the wisest course to yield to the solicitations of his kindred and abide results in his own place. He did not go there at once, however, after quitting Alcott's community, but returned to Brook Farm for a fortnight. His journal during this period offers many pages worthy of transcription.

It is possible that we have readers who may deem us too copious in our quotations from this source. But, if wearisome to any, yet they are necessary to those for whom this Life is especially written. The lessons to be learned from Father Hecker are mainly those arising from the interaction between God's supernatural dealings with him, and his own natural characteristics. This fact, moreover, is typical as well as personal, for the great question of his day, which was the dawning of our own, was the relation of the natural man to the regenerating influences of Christianity. This being so, it is plain to our own mind that no adequate representation of the man could be made without a free use of these early journals. They seem to us one of the chief Providential results of the spiritual isolation of his youth. He was in a manner driven to this intimate self-communing, on one hand by his never-satisfied craving for sympathetic companionship, and on the other by his complete unacquaintance with a kind of reading which even at this point might have shed some light upon his interior difficulties. In later years he enjoyed, in the study of accredited Christian mystics, that kind of satisfaction which a traveller experiences who, after long wanderings in what had seemed a trackless desert, obtains a map which not only makes his whole route plain, but assures him that he did not stray from well-known paths even during his times of most extreme bewilderment.

That the diary has the character we here claim for it, and is not the mere ordinary result of a morbid and aimless introspection, is plainly shown by the speedy cessation of excessive self-analysis on Father Hecker's part, after he had actually reached the goal to which he was at this period alternately sweetly led and violently driven. But it is also shown by the deep humility which is revealed precisely by this sharp probing of his interior. Though he felt himself in touch with God in some special way, yet it was with so little pride that it was his profound conviction, as it remained, indeed, throughout his life, that what he had all had or might have. But the study of his interior thus forced upon him was far from a pleasing task. "It is exceedingly oppressive to me to write as I now do," we find him complaining; "continually does myself appear in my writing. I would that my I were wholly lost in the sea of the Spirit—wholly lost in God."

We preface the subjoined extract from the diary with the remark that Father Hecker's reading of signs of the Divine will in men and events often brought him to the verge of credulity, over which he was prevented from stepping by his shrewd native sense. Though he insisted all his life on interpreting them as signal flags of the Divine wisdom, this did not hinder him from gaining a reputation for sound practical judgment:

"Brook Farm, July 31, 1843.—Man is the symbol of all mysteries. Why is it that all things seem to me to be instinct with prophecy? I do not see any more individual personalities, but priests and oracles of God. The age is big with a prophecy which it is in labor to give birth to."

"My experience is different now from what it has been. It is much fuller; every fibre of my being seems teeming with sensitive life. I am in another atmosphere of sentiment and thought. . . . I have less real union and sympathy with her, and with those whom I have met much nearer heretofore. It appears as if their atmosphere was denser, their life more natural, more in the flesh. Instead of meeting them on my highest, I can only do so by coming down into my body, of which it seems to me that I am now almost unconscious. There is not that sense of heaviness, dulness, fleshliness, in me. I experience no natural desires, no impure thoughts, nor wanderings of fancy. Still, I feel more intensely, and am filled to overflowing with love, and with desire for union. But there is no one to meet me where I am, and I cannot meet them where they are."

All his life Father Hecker was on the lookout for the great human influences which run across those of religion, either to swell their volume or to lessen their force. These are mainly the transmissions of heredity, and the environments that are racial, temporal, epochal, or local. This enduring tendency is foreshadowed in the following extracts:

"August 2, 1843.—I have been thinking much of late about the very great influence which nationality and the family progenitors have upon character. Men talk of universality, impartiality, many-sidedness, free judgment, unbiased opinion, and so on, when in reality their national and family dispositions are the centre and ground of their being, and hence of their opinions. They appear to be most themselves when they show these traits of character. They are most natural and earnest and at home when they speak from this link which binds them to the past. Then their hearts are opened, and they speak with a glow of eloquence and a peculiar unction which touch the same chord in the breasts of those who hear them. It is well for man to feel his indebtedness to the past which lives in him and without which he would not be what he is. He is far more its creature than he gives himself credit for. He reproduces daily the sentiments and thoughts of the dim and obscure before. There are certain ideas and aspirations which have not had their fulfilment, but which run through all men from the beginning and which are continually reproduced. There is a unity of race, called Humanity; one of place, called Nationality; one of birth, called Kindred; one of affinity, called Love and Friendship. By all these we are greatly influenced. They all make their mark upon the man."

"The faculties which take cognizance of the inner world have been awakened in only a few of the human race, and these, to distinguish them, have been called prophets, miracle-workers, Providential men, seers, and poets. Now, their privilege is that of all men in a greater or less degree, just as is the case with regard to the faculties which relate to the outward world. For when men in general were as ignorant about the exterior world as they now are about the interior, the men of science, the astronomers, the mathematicians, the founders of the arts, were held to be miraculous, gods, and they were deified. What any one man (and this is a most comfortable and cheering thought) has been or has done, all men may in a measure be or do, for each is a type, a specimen of the whole human race. If it is said in reply, 'These miracles or great acts, which you hold as actual, are mere superstitious dreams,' I care not. That would be still more glorious for us, for then they are still to be performed, they are in the coming time, these divine prophetic instincts are yet to be actualized. The dreams of Orpheus, the inspired strains of the Hebrew bards, and, above all, the prophecies of Christ, are before us. The divine instincts will be realized as surely as there is a God above who inspires them. It is the glory of God that they should be so; it is His delight. This world must become heaven. This is its destiny; and our destiny, under God, is to make it so. Prophecy is given to encourage and nourish our hopes and feed our joys, so that we may say with Job, 'I know that although worms shall eat this flesh, and my bones become dust, yet at the latter day I shall see my Redeemer face to face.'"

The sentences which follow can be paralleled by words taken from all who have truly interpreted the doctrine of Christ by their lives or their writings:

"To him that has faith all things are possible, for faith is an act of the soul; thy faith is the measure of thy power."

"If men would act from the present inspiration of their souls they would gain more knowledge than they do by reading or speculating."

"No man in his heart can ask for more than he has. Think of this deeply. God is just. We have what we ought to have, even according to our own sense of justice."

"The desire to love and be beloved, to have friends with whom we can converse, to enter society which we enjoy—is it not best to deny and sacrifice these desires? It may be said that, gratified, they add to life, and the question is how to increase life, not how to diminish it. But by denying them, would not our life gain by flowing in a more heavenly direction?"

"We are daily feeding the demons that are in us by our wicked thoughts and sinful acts; these are their meat and drink. I make them gasp sometimes. My heart laughs quite merrily to think of it. When I am hungry, and there is something tempting on the table, hunger, like a serpent, comes creeping up into my throat and laps its dry tongue with eagerness for its prey, but it often returns chagrined at its discomfiture."

"That which tempts us we should deny, no matter how innocent it is in itself. If it tempts, away with it, until it tempts no more. Then partake of it, for it is then only that you can do so prudently and with temperance."

"All our thoughts and emotions are caused by some agent acting on us. This is true of all the senses and the spiritual faculties. Hence we should by all possible means purify and refine our organism, so that we may hear the most delicate, the sweetest, the stillest sounds and murmurings of the angels who are about us. How much fuller and richer would be our life if we were more acutely sensitive and finely textured! How many exquisite delights nature yields which we are not yet aware of! What a world surrounds us of which none but holy men, prophets, and poets have had a glimpse!"

"The soul is a plate on which the senses daguerreotype indelibly pictures of the outer world. How cautious should we be where we look, what we hear, what smell, or feel, or taste! And how we should endeavor that all around us should be made beautiful, musical, fragrant, so that our souls may be awakened to a divine sense of life without a moment's interruption!"

"O God, be Thou my helper, my strength and my redeemer! May I live wholly to Thee; give me grace and obedience to Thy Spirit. May all self be put from me so that I may enter into the glorious liberty of the sons of God, Awaken me, raise me up, restore me, O Jesus Christ, Lord, Heavenly King!"

In reading what next follows it must be remembered that at the time when it was written Isaac Hecker had absolutely no knowledge of Catholic mystical theology. It is since that day that English-speaking Catholics have had access to the great authorities on this subject through adequate translations. But what little he had learned from other sources, combined with his own intuitional and experimental knowledge of human capabilities for penetrating the veil, had already furnished him with conclusions which nothing in his devoted study of Catholic mystical writers forced him to lay aside:

"Belief in the special guidance of God has been the faith of all deeply religious men. I will not dispute the fact that some men are so guided, but will offer an explanation of it which seems to me to reconcile it with the regular order of laws established by God. My explanation would be that this guidance is not a miraculous power, specially bestowed upon some men, but merely a higher degree of ordinary divine guidance. Our ordinary life is inspired; the other is only a higher degree of what is common to all. The evil which arises from the contrary opinion is this: men who have received a higher degree of insight believe that it is a special miraculous gift, and that all they may say is infallibly true, whereas they still retain their own individuality though raised to a purer state of being. They have not been so raised in order to found new sects, or to cause revolutions, but to fulfil the old, continue and carry it on as far as they have been given light to do so. In forming new sects they but reproduce their own individualities with all their errors. So Swedenborg did, and Wesley, men of modern times who were awakened in a greater degree than the mass of their fellows. Their mistake lay in their attempt to make universal ends out of their individual experiences. In the ordinary state no man does this, but these, being lifted a little above the mass, became intoxicated. The only one, so far as I have read, who has had humility equal to his inspiration was Jacob Boehmen. Luther, Calvin, Fox, Penn, Swedenborg, Wesley, had self in view. Selfism is mixed with their universalism. None has spoken truth so pure and universal as Boehmen. He is the most inspired man of modern times. He had more love and truth than all the other mystics put together, and fewer faults than either one of them taken singly."





CHAPTER X

AT HOME AGAIN

IT was the middle of August, 1843, when Isaac Hecker once more took up his residence with his family in New York. His first endeavor was to sink back again as far as possible into the old routine of business.

"To-morrow I commence to work," he writes on the evening of his return. "My interior state is quiet and peaceful. I have not met any one yet. My dear mother understands me better than any one else. How far business will interfere with my inner life remains to be seen. O Lord! help me to keep my resolution, which is not to let the world enter my heart, but to keep it looking toward Thee! My heart has been in a constant prayerful state since I have been at home. It is busy in its own sanctuary, its own temple, God. O Lord! preserve it."

One of the first noteworthy things revealed by the diary—which from this time on was kept with less regularity than before—is that Isaac not only maintained his abstemious habits after his return, but increased their rigor. For a robust man, working hard for many hours out of every twenty-four, and deprived of all the pleasant relaxations, literary, conversational and musical, to which he had been accustoming himself for many months, the choice of such a diet as is described in the following sentences was certainly extraordinary:

"August 30.—If the past nine months or more are any evidence, I find that I can live on very simple diet—grains, fruit, and nuts. I have just commenced to eat the latter; I drink pure water. So far I have had wheat ground and made into unleavened bread, but as soon as we get in a new lot, I shall try it in the grain."

He had evidently at this time a practical conviction of the truth of a principle which, in after years, he repeated to the present writer in the form of a maxim of the transcendentalists: "A gross feeder will never be a central thinker." It is a truth of the spiritual no less than of the intellectual order. A little later we come upon the following profession of a vegetarian faith, which will be apt to amuse as well as to edify the reader:

"Reasons for not eating animal food.

"It does not feed the spirit.

"It stimulates the propensities.

"It is taking animal life when the other kingdoms offer sufficient and better increment.

"Slaughter strengthens the lower instincts.

"It is the chief cause of the slavery of the kitchen.

"It generates in the body the diseases animals are subject to, and encourages in man their bestiality.

"Its odor is offensive and its appearance unaesthetic."

The apprehension under which he had labored, that city life would present many temptations which he would find it difficult to withstand, appears to have been unfounded. Some few social relaxations he now and then permitted himself, but they were mostly very sober-toned. "Last evening I attended a Methodist love-feast," is his record of one of these. "In returning I stopped at the ward political meeting." Then he notes that although the business he follows is especially full of temptations—as no doubt it was to a man keeping so tight a rein over his most natural and legitimate appetites—he feels deeply grateful that, so far, he has had no need to fear his being led away. "What yet remains?" he adds. "My diet is all purchased and all produced by hired labor. I suppose that slave labor produces almost all my dress. And I cannot say that I am rightly conditioned until all I eat, drink, and wear is produced by love."