Quaker History, 57, January, 1968
Emerson and Quakerism. By Yukio Irie. Tokyo, Japan: Kenkyusha. 1967.
150 pages. Copies can be obtained from Pendle Hill, Wallingford, Pa.
Dr. Yukio Irie of Tokyo and of Pendle Hill has done a very great service
both to Friends and to Emersonians by this study of the common ground of
these two forms of religious experience. The advantage of his analysis over those
of some other Quaker-Emersonian scholars lies in his thorough study of the
unpublished manuscripts of many of the early sermons, in addition to the better
known lecture on George Fox and the known facts of his reading of Quaker books
and his friendships with New Bedford Quakers.
Dr. Irie's main point is unassailable: that both Transcendentalism and
Quakerism rest finally on the capacity of each human soul to enter into immediate
communication with the Divine soul by calling upon the aid of the "Inner Light."
This is a primary similarity, and it is not surprising that Emerson thought himThis
self "more of a Quaker than anything else." But, as Dr. Irie also points out,
Emerson could not be "anything else" (that is, commit himself exclusively to
any sect) because with him this is an experience of the individual and can only
be achieved in "solitude," whereas the Quaker thinks of it as a group experience
which is intensified by being shared and which incites to group rather than
individual action.
Dr. Irie traces the growth of this common emphasis on a self-reliance which
is in effect a God-reliance from Emerson's earliest days at Harvard to the point
of his purest transcendentalism, 1836-1838, and then argues that his position
was very little if any changed between then and 1860 when he wrote his more
complex and often apparently skeptical essays and lectures. He aims his attack
mainly at Whicher, Carpenter, and others who have argued for a fundamental
psychological and theological change in Emerson's position and personality during
a major crisis between 1838 and 1844. Particularly telling are his point that
Emerson experienced periods of acute self-distrust and despair at various times
throughout his life and his argument that, whatever alternatives Emerson offered,
he always returned finally to a monistic faith in the one moral law. But even
when these arguments are admitted, Emerson's shift to a more dialectic and
pragmatic method of presenting his ideas during these years, whatever the reasons,
as argued and documented by Rusk, Lindeman, and many other Emerson
students, remains to be explained. Dr. Irie does not undertake this much more
complex task, but he need not fear to do so because practicality and pragmatism
are also shared by Emerson with the Quakers.
University of Pennsylvania Robert E. Spille r
