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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, Literature as an art. (search)
, into comfort and good dinners. This is most noticeable in detached organizations, --Moravians, Shakers, Quakers, Roman Catholics,they all go the same way at last; when persecution and missionary toil are over, they enter on a tiresome millennium of meat and pudding. To guard against this spiritual obesity, this carnal Eden, what has the next age in reserve for us? Suppose forty million perfectly healthy and virtuous Americans, what is to keep them from being as uninteresting as so many Chinese? I know of nothing but that aim which is the climax and flower of all civilization, without which purity itself grows dull and devotion tedious,--the pursuit of Science and Art. Give to all this nation peace, freedom, prosperity, and even virtue, still there must be some absorbing interest, some career. That career can be sought only in two directions,--more and yet more material prosperity on the one side, Science and Art on the other. Every man's aim must either be riches, or somethi
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, Americanism in literature. (search)
p forward,and in that advancing figure you have the American. We are accustomed to say that the war and its results have made us a nation, subordinated local distinctions, cleared us of our chief shame, and given us the pride of a common career. This being the case, we may afford to treat ourselves to a little modest self-confidence. Those whose faith in the American people carried them hopefully through the long contest with slavery will not be daunted before any minor perplexities of Chinese immigrants or railway brigands or enfranchised women. We are equal to these things; and we shall also be equal to the creation of a literature. We need intellectual culture inexpressibly, but we need a hearty faith still more. Never yet was there a great migration that did not result in a new form of national genius. But we must guard against both croakers and boasters; and above all, we must look beyond our little Boston or New York or Chicago or San Francisco, and be willing citizens
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, A letter to a young contributor. (search)
nd of our writers the same dash and the same accuracy that we demand in railroading or dry-goods jobbing. The mixture of nationalities is constantly coining and exchanging new felicities of dialect: Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Africa, are present everywhere with their various contributions of wit and shrewdness, thought and geniality; in New York and elsewhere one finds whole thoroughfares of France, Italy, Spain, Portugal; on our Western railways there are placards printed in Swedish; even China is creeping in. The colonies of England are too far and too provincial to have had much reflex influence on her literature, but how our phraseology is already amplified by our relations with Spanish America! The life-blood of Mexico flowed into our newspapers while the Mexican war was in progress; and the gold of California glitters in our primers. Many foreign cities may show a greater variety of mere national costumes, but the representative value of our immigrant tribes is far greater
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, Ought women to learn the alphabet? (search)
irtue is knowledge; for women, to renounce knowledge is virtue ? No doubt, the progress of events is slow, like the working of the laws of gravitation generally. Certainly, there has been but little change in the legal position of women since China was in its prime, until within the last dozen years. Lawyers admit that the fundamental theory of English and Oriental law is the same on this point: Man and wife are one, and that one is the husband. It is the oldest of legal traditions. Wheit, lanam fecit. In Boeotia, brides were conducted home in vehicles whose wheels were burned at the door, in token that they were never to leave the house again. Pythagoras instituted at Crotona an annual festival for the distaff; Confucius, in China, did the same for the spindle; and these celebrated not the freedom, but the serfdom, of woman. And even into modern days this same tyrannical necessity has lingered. Go spin, you jades! Go spin! was the only answer vouchsafed by the Earl o
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, The Greek goddesses. (search)
d they indeed are feminine, three to one. The Roman Catholic Church, with more wisdom of adaptation, has kept one goddess from the Greek; and the transformed Demeter, with her miraculously born child, which is now become masculine, presides over every altar. Softened and beautified from the elder image, it is still the same,--the same indeed with all the mythologic mothers, with the Maternal Goddess who sits, with a glory round her head and a babe on her bosom, in every Buddhist house in China, or with Isis who yet nurses Horus on the monuments of Egypt. As far as history can tell, this group first appeared in Christian art when used as a symbol, in the Nestorian controversy, by Cyril, who had spent most of his life in Egypt. Nestorius was condemned in the fifth century, for asserting Mary to be the mother of the human nature of Jesus, and not also of the divine; and it was at this time that the images of the Virgin and Child were multiplied, to protest against the heretic who