HOWARD H. BRINTON
Book Reviews
EMERSON AND QUAKERISM. By YuKIO IRIE. Kenkyusha,
Tokyo. 150 pages (in English). $5.50 from Pendle Hill,
Wallingford, Pa.
This is an important and remarkable book from which both
Quakers and Emersonians have something to learn. Dr. Yukio
lrie, professor of English at Tokyo University of Education,
has a profopnd understanding of Quakerism, as was shown in
his lecture on "The Centre of Quakerism" to the Friends World
Committee at its meeting in Ireland in 1964; he also has a wide
knowledge of Emerson, gained through years of intensive research in America and England in Emerson's published and
unpublished letters, essays, sermons, and lectures.
He finds that Emerson accepts the fundamental Quaker
doctrine of the "universal and saving light" and its social implications. This comes out most clearly in Emerson's lecture
on George Fox, whom he considers a great and revolutionary
religious genius. But Emerson does not understand the silent
meeting for worship. This is not surprising, since in his time
the majority of New England Yearly Meeting was beginning
to revert to a narrow pre-Quaker evangelicalism. Fortunately
Emerson was well read in Quaker literature and was acquainted
with some outstanding contemporary Friends, among them
Mary Roche and Edward Stabler. Yukio Irie records and
answers Emerson's criticism of Quakerism and cites his agreements.
Bradford Smith, in his Meditation, the Inward Art, says
that
Walt Whitman was half a Quaker and that
Emerson said
he was more a Quaker than anything else.
We now need a
book on the Quaker half of Whitman. Emerson was the first
important person to discover Whitman, possibly because they
both shared this kernel of Quakerism.
