When we go away to think of anything, we never do think. We all talk of life. We all have some thought now. Let us tell it. C----, what is life?"
"C---- replied,--"It is to laugh, or cry, according to our organization."
""Good," said Margaret, "but not grave enough. Come, what is life? I know what I think; I want you to find out what you think."
"Miss P. replied,--"Life is division from one"s principle of life in order to a conscious reorganization. We are cut up by time and circ.u.mstance, in order to feel our reproduction of the eternal law."
"Mrs. E.,--"We live by the will of G.o.d, and the object of life is to submit," and went on into Calvinism.
"Then came up all the antagonisms of Fate and Freedom.
"Mrs. H. said,--"G.o.d created us in order to have a perfect sympathy from us as free beings."
"Mrs. A.B. said she thought the object of life was to attain absolute freedom. At this Margaret immediately and visibly kindled.
"C.S. said,--"G.o.d creates from the fulness of life, and cannot but create; he created us to overflow, without being exhausted, because what he created, necessitated new creation.
It is not to make us happy, but creation is his happiness and ours."
"Margaret was then pressed to say what she considered life to be.
"Her answer was so full, clear, and concise, at once, that it cannot but be marred by being drawn through the scattering medium of my memory. But here are some fragments of her satisfying statement.
"She began with G.o.d as Spirit, Life, so full as to create and love eternally, yet capable of pause. Love and creativeness are dynamic forces, out of which we, individually, as creatures, go forth bearing his image, that is, having within our being the same dynamic forces, by which we also add constantly to the total sum of existence, and shaking off ignorance, and its effects, and by becoming more ourselves, i.e., more divine;--destroying sin in its principle, we attain to absolute freedom, we return to G.o.d, conscious like himself, and, as his friends, giving, as well as receiving, felicity forevermore. In short, we become G.o.ds, and able to give the life which we now feel ourselves able only to receive.
"On Sat.u.r.day morning, Mrs. L.E. and Mrs. E.H. were present, and begged Margaret to repeat the statement concerning life, with which she closed the last conversation. Margaret said she had forgotten every word she said. She must have been inspired by a good genius, to have so satisfied everybody.--but the good genius had left her. She would try, however, to say what she thought, and trusted it would resemble what she had said already. She then went into the matter, and, true enough, she did not use a single word she used before."
The fame of these conversations spread wide through all families and social circles of the ladies attending, and the golden report they gave, led to a proposal, that Margaret should undertake an evening cla.s.s, of four or five lessons, to which gentlemen should also be admitted. This was put in effect, in the course of the winter, and I had myself the pleasure of a.s.sisting at one--the second--of these soirees. The subject was Mythology, and several gentlemen took part in it. Margaret spoke well,--she could not otherwise,--but I remember that she seemed enc.u.mbered, or interrupted, by the headiness or incapacity of the men, whom she had not had the advantage of training, and who fancied, no doubt, that, on such a question, they, too, must a.s.sert and dogmatize.
But, how well or ill they fared, may still be known; since the same true hand which reported for the Ladies" Cla.s.s, drew up, at the time, the following note of the Evenings of Mythology. My distance from town, and engagements, prevented me from attending again. I was told that on the preceding and following evenings the success was more decisive.
"Margaret"s plan, in these conversations, was a very n.o.ble one, and, had it been seconded, as she expected, they would have been splendid. She thought, that, by admitting gentlemen, who had access, by their cla.s.sical education, to the whole historical part of the mythology, her own comparative deficiency, as she felt it, in this part of learning, would be made up; and that taking her stand on the works of art, which were the final development in Greece of these multifarious fables, the whole subject might be swept from zenith to nadir. But all that depended on others entirely failed. Mr. W.
contributed some isolated facts,--told the etymology of names, and cited a few fables not so commonly known as most; but, even in the point of erudition, which Margaret did not profess, on the subject, she proved the best informed of the party, while no one brought an idea, except herself.
"Her general idea was, that, upon the Earth-worship and Sabaeanism of earlier ages, the Grecian genius acted to humanize and idealize, but, still, with some regard to the original principle. What was a seed, or a root, merely, in the Egyptian mind, became a flower in Greece,--Isis, and Osiris, for instance, are reproduced in Ceres and Proserpine, with some loss of generality, but with great gain of beauty; Hermes, in Mercury, with only more grace of form, though with great loss of grandeur; but the loss of grandeur was also an advance in philosophy, in this instance, the brain in the hand being the natural consequence of the application of Idea to practice,--the Hermes of the Egyptians.
"I do not feel that the cla.s.s, by their apprehension of Margaret, do any justice to the scope and depth of her views.
They come,--myself among the number,--I confess,--to be entertained; but she has a higher purpose. She, amid all her infirmities, studies and thinks with the seriousness of one upon oath, and there has not been a single conversation this winter, in either cla.s.s, that had not in it the spirit which giveth life. Just in proportion to the importance of the subject, does she tax her mind, and say what is most important; while, of necessity, nothing is reported from the conversations but her brilliant sallies, her occasional paradoxes of form, and, sometimes, her impatient reacting upon dulness and frivolity. In particular points, I know, some excel her; in particular departments I sympathize more with some other persons; but, take her as a whole, she has the most to bestow on others by conversation of any person I have ever known. I cannot conceive of any species of vanity living in her presence. She distances all who talk with her.
"Mr. E. only served to display her powers. With his st.u.r.dy reiteration of his uncompromising idealism, his absolute denial of the fact of human nature, he gave her opportunity and excitement to unfold and ill.u.s.trate her realism and acceptance of conditions. What is so n.o.ble is, that her realism is transparent with idea,--her human nature is the germ of a divine life. She proceeds in her search after the unity of things, the divine harmony, not by exclusion, as Mr.
E. does, but by comprehension,--and so, no poorest, saddest spirit, but she will lead to hope and faith. I have thought, sometimes, that her acceptance of evil was _too great_,--that her theory of the good to be educed proved too much. But in a conversation I had with her yesterday, I understood her better than I had done. "It might never be sin to us, at the moment,"
she said, "it must be an excess, on which conscience puts the restraint.""
The cla.s.ses thus formed were renewed in November of each year, until Margaret"s removal to New York, in 1844. But the notes of my princ.i.p.al reporter fail me at this point. Afterwards, I have only a few sketches from a younger hand. In November, 1841, the cla.s.s numbered from twenty-five to thirty members: the general subject is stated as "Ethics." And the influences on Woman seem to have been discussed under the topics of the Family, the School, the Church, Society, and Literature. In November, 1842, Margaret writes that the meetings have been unusually spirited, and congratulates herself on the part taken in them by Miss Burley, as "a presence so positive as to be of great value to me." The general subject I do not find. But particular topics were such as these:--"Is the ideal first or last; divination or experience?" "Persons who never awake to life in this world."
"Mistakes;" "Faith;" "Creeds;" "Woman;" "Daemonology;" "Influence;"
"Catholicism" (Roman); "The Ideal."
In the winter of 1843-4, the general subject was "Education." Culture, Ignorance, Vanity, Prudence, Patience, and Health, appear to have been the t.i.tles of conversations, in which wide digressions, and much autobiographic ill.u.s.tration, with episodes on War, Bonaparte, Goethe, and Spinoza, were mingled. But the brief narrative may wind up with a note from Margaret on the last day.
"_28th April, 1844_.--It was the last day with my cla.s.s. How n.o.ble has been my experience of such relations now for six years, and with so many and so various minds! Life is worth living, is it not?
"We had a most animated meeting. On bidding me good-bye, they all, and always, show so much good-will and love, that I feel I must really have become a friend to them. I was then loaded with beautiful gifts, accompanied with those little delicate poetic traits, of which I should delight to tell you, if we were near. Last came a beautiful bouquet, pa.s.sion-flower, heliotrope, and soberer blooms. Then I went to take my repose on C----"s sofa, and we had a most serene afternoon together."