Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay on Napoleon, like virtually everything he wrote, sheds light far beyond its immediate point of focus, maintaining relevance even when Napoleon himself is regarded as little more than a cliché for overweening ego. It lays bare the universal character of a unique historical player. The lion’s share of the essay generously praises Napoleon’s many admirable qualities -- his intelligence, his industry, his attention to detail, his tireless energy, his incomparable will. Emerson holds that great man of action up as shining exemplar of all that the striving middle class aspired to be, now that the Revolution had blown the game wide open. He credits him with championing the proletariat while thumbing his nose at the effete aristocracies of Europe. Then comes a pivotal paragraph, which I happily quote at length after the fold:
I call Napoleon the agent or attorney of the Middle Class of modern society; of the throng who fill the markets, shops, counting-houses, manufactories, ships, of the modern world, aiming to be rich. He was the agitator, the destroyer of prescription, the internal improver, the liberal, the radical, the inventor of means, the opener of doors and markets, the subverter of monopoly and abuse. Of course, the rich and aristocratic did not like him. England the centre of capital, and Rome and Austria, centres of tradition and genealogy, opposed him... and the instinct of the young, ardent, and active men, everywhere, which pointed him out as the Giant of the Middle Class, make this history bright and commanding. He had the virtues of the masses of his constituents; he had also their vices. I am sorry that the brilliant picture has its reverse. But that is the fatal quality which we discover in our pursuit of wealth, that it is treacherous, and is bought by the breaking or weakening of the sentiments; and it is inevitable that we should find the same fact in the history of this champion, who proposed to himself simply a brilliant career, without any stipulation or scruple concerning the means.
Oops. Say what? A brilliant career cannot be the be-all-end-all for a sensitive person of good will? One must take the means into account and the effect of that brilliant career on those whom it might eclipse? One must balance one’s striving for prominence with consideration of those who might stand in the way? Of course the implied field of these accountings is that of power and property. Emerson goes on to give a schematic rundown of the eternal dialectic between the haves and the have-nots.
In describing the two parties into which modern society divides itself, the Democrat and the Conservative, I said, Bonaparte represents the Democrat... against the stationary or Conservative party. I omitted to say... that these two parties differ, only as young and old. The democrat is a young conservative; the conservative is an old democrat. The aristocrat is the democrat ripe, and gone to seed; because both parties stand on the one ground of the supreme value of property, which one endeavors to get, and the other to keep.
The supreme value of property, which one endeavors to get, and the other to keep. This is the vital phrase, not just of Emerson’s essay, but one illuminative as well of this or any time where the social tide is shifting. It translates what might otherwise be an encomium into a critique, not just of Napoleon, but of any person or movement that rides the changing balance of power without taking into consideration the fulcrum on which all power must ultimately rest. I am talking about Life itself, not as a material riot of chemicals, but as a fundamentally mysterious and miraculous and immediate event which some have considered to be holy.
Emerson concludes his essay:
It was not Bonaparte’s fault. He did all that in him lay, to live and thrive without moral principle. It was the nature of things, the eternal law of man and of the world, which baulked and ruined him; and the result, in a million experiments, will be the same. Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail. The pacific Fourier will be as inefficient as the pernicious Napoleon. As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick, there will be bitterness in our laughter, and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits, which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men.
As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences... Beyond the apparent and radical call for egalitarian distribution of wealth, I take this passage to mean that as long as our civilization is based on materialism, as long as it frames its values in terms of material interests, the essential happiness of life will elude us. For while Emerson was not religious in any doctrinaire sense that I have been able to detect, he was nevertheless a spiritual man through and through, and that spirituality implicitly colored his interpretation of events and informed his prescriptions.
Emerson is an American landmark not visited often enough, in my estimation. In the heat of the battle over resources, over property and fences, it is easy to forget that simply effecting the crude transfer of assets from one constituency to another does not guarantee peace or utopia, especially not as long as ideologues and religious fanatics roam the planet. We really do need to understand our predicament from a perspective that takes into account the overwhelming similarities between contending parties, and that counsels, at the very least, respect for one’s adversaries, if for no other reason than that they are genetically all but indistinquishable from oneself. A perspective, that for lack of a better word, I would have to call: spiritual. And Emerson, though spiritual to the core, spoke with enough brilliance and common sense that atheists and the religious alike can agree he had good things to say.
There are enduring unresolved tensions at this site around the issue of religion. Many believe religion to be a huge part of The Problem -- and I am not inclined to disagree. But many (including many who should know better) also insist upon conflating religion with spirituality. Many on the religious right do this as well, or the obverse of this, believing in the literal truth of scripture despite the obvious distinction in every day parlance between the letter and the spirit of any verbal formula. Truth is truth and words are words, and while words might sometimes be able to point to the truth they are entirely inadequate when it comes to giving a complete and accurate representation of truth. Which is why I suppose Jesus chose to speak in parables, those tantalizing stories that were clearly fanciful and yet pointed to and opened the understanding to deep and abiding truths.
Say what you like about Jesus, he had the people’s attention. Probably because he was utterly unlike and way smarter than anyone they had come across before. He had a way about him, that seemed to encourage people to touch base with their deepest, most intimate selves. And he pointed to a life program larger than mere comfort and acquisition. He was emphatically apolitical. Which is perhaps why so many whose passions and energies are wrapped up in politics have such difficulty relating to him. He really wasn’t about fixing or improving the System. He was about giving men and women the power to recognize their true value independent of the conditions in which life had placed them. Another profoundly spiritual man who gave the religious of his time and place a huge headache.
Render unto Caesar, he said. Render unto Napoleon. Do what you gotta do to keep body and soul together, but don’t forget the great Mystery on which it all rests and without which it all boils down to a meaningless pile of suffering no matter how much money you raise, how many votes you garner, how adept you are at transferring resources from their side to your side, how successful in redrawing the ever shifting fences.