Memories and Studies

29

Elsewhere Mr. Blood writes of the "force of the negative" thus:—"As when a faded lock of woman's hair shall cause a man to cut his throat in a bedroom at five o'clock in the morning; or when Albany resounds with legislation, but a little henpecked judge in a dusty office at Herkimer or Johnstown sadly writes across the page the word 'unconstitutional'—the glory of the Capitol has faded."

30

Elsewhere Blood writes:—"But what then, in the name of common sense, is the external world? If a dead man could answer he would say Nothing, or as Macbeth said of the air-drawn dagger, 'there is no such thing.' But a live man's answer might be in this way: What is the multiplication table when it is not written down? It is a necessity of thought; it was not created, it cannot but be; every intelligence which goes to it, and thinks, must think in that form or think falsely. So the universe is the static necessity of reason; it is not an object for any intelligence to find, but it is half object and half subject; it never cost anything as a whole; it never was made, but always is made, in the Logos, or expression of reason—the Word; and slowly but surely it will be understood and uttered in every intelligence, until he is one with God or reason itself. As a man, for all he knows, or has known, stands at any given instant the realization of only one thought, while all the rest of him is invisibly linked to that in the necessary form and concatenation of reason, so the man as a whole of exploited thoughts is a moment in the front of the concatenated reason of the universal whole; and this whole is personal only as it is personally achieved. This is the Kingdom that is 'within you, and the God which 'no man hath seen at any time.'"

31

There are passages in Blood that sound like a well-known essay by Emerson. For instance:—"Experience burns into us the fact and the necessity of universal compensation. The philosopher takes it from Heraclitus, in the insight that everything exists through its opposite; and the bummer comforts himself for his morning headache as only the rough side of a square deal. We accept readily the doctrine that pain and pleasure, evil and good, death and life, chance and reason, are necessary equations—that there must be just as much of each as of its other.

"It grieves us little that this great compensation cannot at every instant balance its beam on every individual centre, and dispense with an under dog in every fight; we know that the parts must subserve the whole; we have faith that our time will come; and if it comes not at all in this world, our lack is a bid for immortality, and the most promising argument for a world hereafter. 'Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.'

"This is the faith that baffles all calamity, and ensures genius and patience in the world. Let not the creditor hasten the settlement: let not the injured man hurry toward revenge; there is nothing that draws bigger interest than a wrong, and to 'get the best of it' is ever in some sense to get the worst."

32

Or what thinks the reader of the verbiage of these verses?—addressed in a mood of human defiance to the cosmic Gods—

"Whose lightnings tawny leap from furtive lairs,To helpless murder, while the ships go downSwirled in the crazy stound, and mariners' prayersGo up in noisome bubbles—such to them;—Or when they tramp about the central fires,Bending the strata with aeonian treadTill steeples totter, and all ways are lost,—Deem they of wife or child, or home or friend,Doing these things as the long years lead onOnly to other years that mean no more,That cure no ill, nor make for use or proof—Destroying ever, though to rear again."

33

I subjoin a poetic apostrophe of Mr. Blood's to freedom:

"Let it ne'er be known.If in some book of the Inevitable,Dog-eared and stale, the future stands engrossedE'en as the past. There shall be news in heaven,And question in the courts thereof; and chanceShall have its fling, e'en at the [ermined] bench.* * * * * *Ah, long ago, above the Indian ocean,Where wan stars brood over the dreaming East,I saw, white, liquid, palpitant, the Cross;And faint and far came bells of CalvaryAs planets passed, singing that they were saved,Saved from themselves: but ever low Orion—For hunter too was I, born of the wild,And the game flavor of the infiniteTainted me to the bone—he waved me on,On to the tangent field beyond all orbs,Where form nor order nor continuanceHath thought nor name; there unity exhalesIn want of confine, and the protoplasmMay beat and beat, in aimless vehemence,Through vagrant spaces, homeless and unknown.

* * * * * *

There ends One's empire!—but so ends not all;One knows not all; my griefs at least are mine—By me their measure, and to me their lesson;E'en I am one—(poor deuce to call the Ace!)And to the open bears my gonfalon,Mine aegis, Freedom!—Let me ne'er look backAccusing, for the withered leaves and livesThe sated past hath strewn, the shears of fate,But forth to braver days.O, Liberty,Burthen of every sigh!—thou gold of gold,Beauty of the beautiful, strength of the strong!My soul for ever turns agaze for thee.There is no purpose of eternityFor faith or patience; but thy buoyant torchStill lighted from the Islands of the Blest,O'erbears all present for potential heavensWhich are not—ah, so more than all that are!Whose chance postpones the ennui of the skies!Be thou my genius—be my hope in thee!For this were heaven: to be, and to be free."

34

In another letter Mr. Blood writes:—"I think we are through with 'the Whole,' and with 'causa sui,' and with the 'negative unity' which assumes to identify each thing as being what it lacks of everything else. You can, of course, build out a chip by modelling the sphere it was chipped from;—but if it was n't a sphere? What a weariness it is to look back over the twenty odd volumes of the 'Journal of Speculative Philosophy' and see Harris's mind wholly filled by that one conception of self-determination—everything to be thought as 'part of a system'—a 'whole' and 'causa sui.'—I should like to see such an idea get into the head of Edison or George Westinghouse."