To Miss Jane Norton.

Cambridge, June 23, 1874.

Thanks for your whiff of Ashfield. I suppose that it must seem a much longer time to you. The shifted scene, the rattling machinery of the stage (by rail and the stage-coach in real life, — as well as at the play), count moments or hours for months and years; a longer time to you than to those whom you leave behind, or who, like me, keep memory in bonds of terrible subjection to the present. When let loose, or breaking away in one of these life-scene shiftings, what pranks it plays; with what sportive contradiction it drags its chain,— combining and confusing the true distinctions of time, shifting the costumes, stealing the gray robes of the sober long-past and putting them over the petticoats of the customary just-past, and decking out the old Then with the vivid motley of the Now. If memory were always so lively, it might be more serviceable; but not perhaps in just this way, which, though a lively movement, can hardly be called progressive. This display is interesting psychologically, as showing the nature of the faculty; just as dancing and athletic sports show the capacities of our limbs in their greatest, though least serviceable, range of action.

No doubt, sports are measures of capacities for work. The humor of an age is an index of its sober interests. The animals that dream are nearest man in intelligence, and dreamers among men are nearest the great poets. These pranks are moreover instructive, as showing, by contrast, what are the more common illusions of memory. Whatever conscience (the court of resident foreign ambassadors in us) may require of memory in behalf of prudence and considerateness, this

servant does grudgingly; it is secretly in alliance with our individual weaknesses and unreason. The memory and the self are one in the flesh. Its black marks are more delible than the white. Pleasures last longer than pains in memory, or more of them last, because the selfish will practises memory secretly in the rehearsal of them. For the most part, we remember what we like, and are therefore grateful to memory, — the indulgent, the kind, illusive painter of the past, whose pictures are on the whole bright day-scenes, — or, at worst, tender twilights. I say, for the most part, and on the whole, notwithstanding typical instances to the contrary, which memory, no doubt just now on its duty, will be pleading to your consciences as proofs of its fidelity.

But it is unreasonable to expect that a wise court of Olympus will listen uncritically to the testimony of this Hermes in his own trustworthiness. Conscience does not really trust the crafty cup-bearer, but is always trying to surprise him by the accidents of life, — searching his pockets, setting the eloquence of the preacher against his persuasions, shifting scenes to catch him at his thefts. But this only incites him to his grander pranks and lies, — as you were observing in a sentence, and as I have been repeating through these pages, not exactly in rhyme.

You seem to doubt whether the memories of the blind are capable of such great revivals, or the rousing of great feelings by little thoughts and impressions, since they lack the associations of vision. I have no doubt they are so capable. Why not?

The world is always as large as the mind, and varied in as many individual objects or impressions as the interests of feeling can create in it, though these be only groups of touches and sounds. Or the unexperienced world is so much greater than the mind that it presses through narrowest crevices into the moulds prepared for it in our capacities for

thought or feeling. Mr. Darwin quotes about Laura Bridgman, that, “when a letter from a beloved friend was communicated to her through the gesture language (by touch), she laughed and clapped her hands, and the color mounted to her cheeks.” “On other occasions, she has been seen to stamp for joy.” Here, touches alone gave a world large enough to rouse depths of feeling to which greater and graver depths doubtless answered.

At this point, I broke off my talk for lunch; and, after lunch and a talk with a friend from our table, who came to smoke with me, we were summoned by discharges of cannon to the festival scenes of the Dedication ceremonies. The dedication of the Memorial Hall at Cambridge, on Tuesday afternoon, July 23, 1874. ⁷⁶ I wandered without design in the crowd, or with the design only of escaping shortly back to the high, moralizing themes of this letter. But unjust fortune ruled otherwise. I espied classmates in a procession; joined them; was conducted with them to within a few benches from the speakers; heard every word, the prayer included; and learned afterwards that I had unwittingly joined the honored company of “the Committee of Fifty;” whereas many enthusiastic ladies, who had thought of nothing all day but to enjoy the things I despised, who had waited patiently an hour and a half of the hot afternoon for this purpose, were given reserved seats where they could hear nothing. The hall appears to have poor acoustical capacities; but does not seem worse adapted to the end of hearing than Providence seemed to be for bringing right ears to the hearing point. But perhaps devotion and enthusiasm are, in the arrangements of Providence, their own great and sufficient reward; and the occasion as a whole duly honored, may have more than compensated for the loss to its devotees of its details. Not to know what they lost may be a blessed oblivion.

I cannot tell how great an enthusiasm would have survived it. . . .

I have projected a philosophical dialogue with three interlocutors (to represent duly the varieties of the human mind), into which I propose to introduce the metaphysics I was writing some time ago, — about the time of your magical party for the children, — and all the various points of my recent studies in optics. It shall be called “Color and Form,” and may include, among other things, some art criticisms, which I talked about with ----- on Sunday. First scene, Sunset; second, a Laboratory, or Study by gaslight, with Huxley Perkins’s Positivist Hymn. This refers to an amusing piece in the “New York World,” professing to be the account of the life and death of a positivist child. ⁷⁷ I propose to explain in the person of my scientific sceptic why colors exist, and to make him confound the teleology of the æsthetic and religious enthusiast, in accordance with the judgment of my third interlocutor, who shall have good sense without subtlety, and shall keep the others down to the point of intelligibleness. I have not thought yet what names to give them, except A. B. C. Perhaps Greek names would be best. But shall they all be men? or shall the sensible one, or shall the enthusiast, be a woman? What do you think? If she be the sensible one, her decision might be attributed to personal preference or prejudice. If the enthusiast, it would be ungallant that she should be defeated by two men. I doubt if sex would not complicate the plot, and compromise the argument, as Mr. Godkin thinks it would in politics.

Perhaps you will help me in the dramatic arrangements. I think that, to begin with, a sunset is a happy thought. It introduces the colors so naturally. The scientific observer shall be looking at it between his legs, and the æsthetic religious enthusiast will disdain to do so. Shall I send the parts, as they are done, in the form of letters?