cause and effect

[thoreau]

For a while I've been using this tagline in my emails:

Shallow men believe in luck ... Strong men believe in cause and effect. — Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

and recently I was revisiting the essay it comes from, "Worship" from Conduct for Life. (full text link here)

'Tis a short sight to limit our faith in laws to those of gravity, of chemistry, of botany, and so forth. Those laws do not stop where our eyes lose them, but push the same geometry and chemistry up into the invisible plane of social and rational life, so that, look where we will, in a boy's game, or in the strifes of races, a perfect reaction, a perpetual judgment keeps watch and ward. And this appears in a class of facts which concerns all men, within and above their creeds.

Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances: It was somebody's name, or he happened to be there at the time, or, it was so then, and another day it would have been otherwise. Strong men believe in cause and effect. The man was born to do it, and his father was born to be the father of him and of this deed, and, by looking narrowly, you shall see there was no luck in the matter, but it was all a problem in arithmetic, or an experiment in chemistry. The curve of the flight of the moth is preordained, and all things go by number, rule, and weight.

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect. A man does not see, that, as he eats, so he thinks: as he deals, so he is, and so he appears; he does not see, that his son is the son of his thoughts and of his actions; that fortunes are not exceptions but fruits; that relation and connection are not somewhere and sometimes, but everywhere and always; no miscellany, no exemption, no anomaly, — but method, and an even web; and what comes out, that was put in. As we are, so we do; and as we do, so is it done to us; we are the builders of our fortunes; cant and lying and the attempt to secure a good which does not belong to us, are, once for all, balked and vain. But, in the human mind, this tie of fate is made alive. The law is the basis of the human mind. In us, it is inspiration; out there in Nature, we see its fatal strength. We call it the moral sentiment.

We owe to the Hindoo Scriptures a definition of Law, which compares well with any in our Western books. "Law it is, which is without name, or color, or hands, or feet; which is smallest of the least, and largest of the large; all, and knowing all things; which hears without ears, sees without eyes, moves without feet, and seizes without hands."

If any reader tax me with using vague and traditional phrases, let me suggest to him, by a few examples, what kind of a trust this is, and how real. Let me show him that the dice are loaded; that the colors are fast, because they are the native colors of the fleece; that the globe is a battery, because every atom is a magnet; and that the police and sincerity of the Universe are secured by God's delegating his divinity to every particle; that there is no room for hypocrisy, no margin for choice.

Now that you read this in context, what do you think?

Comments

[madknits.livejournal.com]

Dear Mr Emerson was a leader of the Transcendentalist movement, and it shows.

It's a fine quote, but some might quibble with shallow/strong. But I like it, and it is so very typical of Emerson.

[low-fat-muffin.livejournal.com]

Where Thoreau spoke in generalities - Emerson knew how to use words as weapons for his point of view. His syntax is strong (words like shallow and strong in the quote is not a mistake, although the qoute is an excerpt and not written right next to one another) Emerson was a professional speaker - and evangelist for his cause (transcendentalism and the earliest signs of the environmental movement). Where Thoreau's words were often layered in a resin of such powerful passion - - his words were picked up by Ghandi and many other activists who followed.

Lots to ponder.

and I love to ponder and think.

I am in love with Emerson for his concept of the oversoul.

The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose. Foolish people ask you, when you have spoken what they do not wish to hear, `How do you know it is truth, and not an error of your own?' We know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are awake. It was a grand sentence of Emanuel Swedenborg, which would alone indicate the greatness of that man's perception, --"It is no proof of a man's understanding to be able to confirm whatever he pleases; but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false, this is the mark and character of intelligence."

So come I to live in thoughts, and act with energies, which are immortal. Thus revering the soul, and learning, as the ancient said, that "its beauty is immense," man will come to see that the world is the perennial miracle which the soul worketh, and be less astonished at particular wonders; he will learn that there is no profane history; that all history is sacred; that the universe is represented in an atom, in a moment of time. He will weave no longer a spotted life of shreds and patches, but he will live with a divine unity. He will cease from what is base and frivolous in his life, and be content with all places and with any service he can render. He will calmly front the morrow in the negligency of that trust which carries God with it, and so hath already the whole future in the bottom of the heart.

[madknits.livejournal.com]

Those are lovely. They are also very typical of a Victorian view of the world. But I think they still resonate today.

I used to be a UU minister, so I know from Emerson. Oi, do I know from Emerson! I have a fondness for dear Mr Channing, who was the first to use the word unitarian in a non-perjorative way. But it's been many years since I've read all those guys.

[truthfeather.livejournal.com]

The difficulty of course is that our perceptions are often erroneous, whether that be of a particular physical image, or how we concieve of ourselves, the world at large or Truth. At some point though, it is hoped (or at least I hope) that after numerous corrections, we develop the habits of virtue which enable us to apprehend reality correctly.

[that-dang-otter.livejournal.com]

Predestination has fallen on hard times, because it has been shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no way to understand today's universe that can tell us what tomorrow's universe will look like. No measurement apparatus is fine enough, no computer is fast enough, no theory is good enough - much of what transpires is really, truly beyond our ability to forecast, and may be genuinely random.

It is startling to see someone talk about "cause and effect" as a corollary to predestination, rather than as an invitation to make choices.

[quirkstreet.livejournal.com]

Well put. The shift from cause and effect to "the man was born to do it" struck me as nearly impossible to believe any more. Cause and effect, yes, but there are so many causes and so many effects all happening at once, often chaotically.