I have begun reading Odell Shepard’s selection of Alcott’s Journals, which Alcott kept for more than 50 years, and it is like finding an old/new friend. A few samples from the first few pages:
- The idea that half my life is gone and so little is accomplished worthy a mind and hearty destined for such noble activities and acquisitions, overpowers me. but I soon rise and again plod on my way, hoping and regretting. [11-2-1829, Alcott not quite 30 years old.]
- … and I see clearly what before was obscured by the gloss of exterior matter: Spirit all in all – matter its form and shadow. [May, 1833]
- [Comparing America to the rest of the world:] Circumstances are widely different. Man is operating in vastly different external relations. We are spread over a wider space; we have freer air; Nature spreads itself around us on a wider scale; our situation is wholly new. [April 24, 1834]
- We investigate the qualities or apprehend the laws of this universe to little purpose if the relations which they hold to our being are not made the primary objects of observation and thought. [January, 1835]
- When God would reveal himself to a people, he entrusts the sacred truth not to that people in their aggregate capacity but to a gifted spirit among them, who transforms it from himself into them. [Jan. 2, 1835]
Someone said that the 19th century was Emerson’s, the 20th, Thoreau’s, but the 21st would be Bronson Alcott’s. I am beginning to believe it.