Study Edition · Essay 47
The Conservative
Source: Lecture delivered at the Masonic Temple, Boston, 9 December 1841; printed in The Dial (1842) and in Nature, Addresses, and Lectures (1849). Text from Project Gutenberg #71683. ABRIDGED: the lecture runs to about 7,600 words; this edition gives the opening (through the fable of Saturn and Uranus and the great list of contrasts), the passage on how nature unites old and new, and the conclusion. Omitted passages are marked. Archaic verb forms modernized; vocabulary kept and glossed.
Emerson, the leading American essayist of his century and the voice of Transcendentalism, gave this lecture in a series on “The Times.” He was not a party politician. He looks at conservatism and reform as two permanent forces in human nature, as old as memory and hope. He invents a myth about two gods arguing, then fires off a long run of balanced contrasts, each one a quotable aphorism. His conclusion is that each side is “a good half, but an impossible whole.” Notice how he finds his best examples in nature: the oak, the river, the growing sea-shell.
59 sentences: 21 simple, 26 moderate, 12 complex. Hover a number for its paraphrase; click it for the full note.
Key Vocabulary
- innovationthe introduction of new ideas or methods
- hierarchya system of ranks, one above another
- patriciana member of the ancient Roman aristocracy
- plebeiana commoner in ancient Rome
- ecclesiasticalrelating to the Church
- synoda church council
- irreconcilableimpossible to bring into agreement
- antagonismactive opposition between two forces
- primalfirst; most basic
- centripetalpulling toward the centre
- centrifugalpushing away from the centre
- salientleaping forward; most noticeable
- infinitudeboundlessness; infinite capacity
- adroitskilful; clever
- debonaircharming, easy-going and confident
- imperiouscommanding; domineering
- husbandrycareful management of resources
- asinineextremely stupid (literally, like a donkey)
- approbationapproval
- vituperatedharshly criticized
The Essay
The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.1 This quarrel is the subject of civil history.2 The conservative party established the reverend hierarchies and monarchies of the most ancient world.3 The battle of patrician and plebeian, of parent state and colony, of old usage and accommodation to new facts, of the rich and the poor, reappears in all countries and times.4 The war rages not only in battle-fields, in national councils, and ecclesiastical synods, but agitates every man's bosom with opposing advantages every hour.5 On rolls the old world meantime, and now one, now the other gets the day, and still the fight renews itself as if for the first time, under new names and hot personalities.6
Such an irreconcilable antagonism, of course, must have a correspondent depth of seat in the human constitution.7 It is the opposition of Past and Future, of Memory and Hope, of the Understanding and the Reason.8 It is the primal antagonism, the appearance in trifles of the two poles of nature.9
There is a fragment of old fable which seems somehow to have been dropped from the current mythologies, which may deserve attention, as it appears to relate to this subject.10
Saturn grew weary of sitting alone, or with none but the great Uranus or Heaven beholding him, and he created an oyster.11 Then he would act again, but he made nothing more, but went on creating the race of oysters.12 Then Uranus cried, ‘a new work, O Saturn! the old is not good again.’13
Saturn replied, ‘I fear.14 There is not only the alternative of making and not making, but also of unmaking.15 Do you see the great sea, how it ebbs and flows? so is it with me; my power ebbs; and if I put forth my hands, I shall not do, but undo.16 Therefore I do what I have done; I hold what I have got; and so I resist Night and Chaos.’17
‘O Saturn,’ replied Uranus, ‘you cannot hold your own, but by making more.18 Your oysters are barnacles and cockles, and with the next flowing of the tide, they will be pebbles and sea-foam.’19
‘I see,’ rejoins Saturn, ‘you are in league with Night, you have become an evil eye; you spoke from love; now your words smite me with hatred.20 I appeal to Fate, must there not be rest?’21 ‘I appeal to Fate also,’ said Uranus, ‘must there not be motion?’22 But Saturn was silent, and went on making oysters for a thousand years.23
After that, the word of Uranus came into his mind like a ray of the sun, and he made Jupiter; and then he feared again; and nature froze, the things that were made went backward, and, to save the world, Jupiter slew his father Saturn.24
This may stand for the earliest account of a conversation on politics between a Conservative and a Radical, which has come down to us.25 It is ever thus.26 It is the counteraction of the centripetal and the centrifugal forces.27 Innovation is the salient energy; Conservatism the pause on the last movement.28 ‘That which is was made by God,’ says Conservatism.29 ‘He is leaving that, he is entering this other;’ rejoins Innovation.30
There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.31 It affirms because it holds.32 Its fingers clutch the fact, and it will not open its eyes to see a better fact.33 The castle, which conservatism is set to defend, is the actual state of things, good and bad.34 The project of innovation is the best possible state of things.35 Of course, conservatism always has the worst of the argument, is always apologizing, pleading a necessity, pleading that to change would be to deteriorate; it must saddle itself with the mountainous load of the violence and vice of society, must deny the possibility of good, deny ideas, and suspect and stone the prophet; whilst innovation is always in the right, triumphant, attacking, and sure of final success.36 Conservatism stands on man's confessed limitations; reform on his indisputable infinitude; conservatism on circumstance; liberalism on power; one goes to make an adroit member of the social frame; the other to postpone all things to the man himself; conservatism is debonair and social; reform is individual and imperious.37 We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter, we stand by the old; reformers in the morning, conservers at night.38 Reform is affirmative, conservatism negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth.39 Conservatism is more candid to behold another's worth; reform more disposed to maintain and increase its own.40 Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention; it is all memory.41 Reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry.42 It makes a great difference to your figure and to your thought, whether your foot is advancing or receding.43 Conservatism never puts the foot forward; in the hour when it does that, it is not establishment, but reform.44 Conservatism tends to universal seeming and treachery, believes in a negative fate; believes that men's temper governs them; that for me, it avails not to trust in principles; they will fail me; I must bend a little; it distrusts nature; it thinks there is a general law without a particular application, law for all that does not include any one.45 Reform in its antagonism inclines to asinine resistance, to kick with hoofs; it runs to egotism and bloated self-conceit; it runs to a bodiless pretension, to unnatural refining and elevation, which ends in hypocrisy and sensual reaction.46
And so whilst we do not go beyond general statements, it may be safely affirmed of these two metaphysical antagonists, that each is a good half, but an impossible whole.47 Each exposes the abuses of the other, but in a true society, in a true man, both must combine.48 Nature does not give the crown of its approbation, namely, beauty, to any action or emblem or actor, but to one which combines both these elements; not to the rock which resists the waves from age to age, nor to the wave which lashes incessantly the rock, but the superior beauty is with the oak which stands with its hundred arms against the storms of a century, and grows every year like a sapling; or the river which ever flowing, yet is found in the same bed from age to age; or, greatest of all, the man who has subsisted for years amid the changes of nature, yet has distanced himself, so that when you remember what he was, and see what he is, you say, what strides! what a disparity is here!49
Throughout nature the past combines in every creature with the present.50 Each of the convolutions of the sea-shell, each node and spine marks one year of the fish's life, what was the mouth of the shell for one season, with the addition of new matter by the growth of the animal, becoming an ornamental node.51 The leaves and a shell of soft wood are all that the vegetation of this summer has made, but the solid columnar stem, which lifts that bank of foliage into the air to draw the eye and to cool us with its shade, is the gift and legacy of dead and buried years.52
… In conclusion, to return from this alternation of partial views, to the high platform of universal and necessary history, it is a happiness for mankind that innovation has got on so far, and has so free a field before it.53 The boldness of the hope men entertain transcends all former experience.54 It calms and cheers them with the picture of a simple and equal life of truth and piety.55 And this hope flowered on what tree?56 It was not imported from the stock of some celestial plant, but grew here on the wild crab of conservatism.57 It is much that this old and vituperated system of things has borne so fair a child.58 It predicts that amidst a planet peopled with conservatives, one Reformer may yet be born.59
Sentence Notes
In plain English: The two parties that split every country, the party of Conservatism and the party of Change, are very old; they have fought over who owns the world ever since it was created.
In plain English: This quarrel is what political history is about.
In plain English: The conservative party set up the respected priestly orders and the kingdoms of the earliest times.
In plain English: The struggle between aristocrats and common people, between mother country and colony, between old customs and adjusting to new facts, between rich and poor, shows up again in every country and every age.
Reference & context: “Parent state and colony” would make American listeners think of their own Revolution against Britain.
In plain English: The war goes on not only on battlefields, in parliaments and in church councils, but every hour inside each person's heart, where competing benefits pull him both ways.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: Emerson moves the battle from the outside world into each individual mind.
In plain English: Meanwhile the old world rolls on; first one side wins, then the other, and the fight keeps starting again as if for the first time, with new names and passionate new leaders.
In plain English: Such a never-ending conflict must, of course, be rooted just as deeply in human nature.
In plain English: It is the conflict between the past and the future, between memory and hope, between practical understanding and higher reason.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: Three pairs in a row turn a political quarrel into a quarrel between two sides of the mind.
Reference & context: Emerson took this distinction from Coleridge and Kant: “Understanding” is everyday, practical thinking; “Reason” is direct insight into ideals and truths.
In plain English: It is the original opposition: the two poles of nature showing up even in small, everyday matters.
In plain English: There is a fragment of an old myth that seems to have been left out of the usual collections of myths. It may be worth our attention, since it seems to bear on this subject.
Reference & context: The “old fable” is Emerson's own invention, dressed up as ancient myth. Saturn (Greek Kronos) was the father of Jupiter (Zeus); Uranus was the sky-god.
In plain English: Saturn grew tired of sitting alone, with no one but great Uranus, the sky, watching him, so he created an oyster.
In plain English: Then he wanted to act again, but he made nothing new; he just kept making more oysters.
In plain English: Then Uranus cried, “Make something new, Saturn! The old thing is not good when it is repeated.”
In plain English: Saturn answered, “I'm afraid.
In plain English: The choice is not just between making and not making; there is also unmaking.
In plain English: You see how the great sea goes out and comes in? It's the same with me. My power is going out, and if I reach out my hands I won't create, I'll destroy.
Modernized: Seest thou → Do you see
In plain English: So I keep doing what I've already done and hold on to what I have, and in that way I keep back Night and Chaos.”
Why this phrase is worth keeping: The conservative creed in a single sentence: repetition and holding on, as a defence against disorder.
In plain English: “Saturn,” Uranus replied, “you can't keep even what you have except by making more.
Modernized: thou canst not hold thine own → you cannot hold your own
In plain English: Your oysters are turning into barnacles and cockles, and with the next tide they'll be pebbles and sea-foam.”
Modernized: Thy → Your
In plain English: “I see,” Saturn answers. “You're on Night's side; you've become an evil eye. You used to speak out of love; now your words strike me with hatred.
Modernized: thou art → you are; thou art → you have; thou spakest → you spoke; thy → your
In plain English: I appeal to Fate: mustn't there be rest?”
In plain English: “I appeal to Fate too,” said Uranus. “Mustn't there be motion?”
Why this phrase is worth keeping: The whole quarrel boiled down to two questions: rest or motion?
In plain English: But Saturn said nothing and kept making oysters for a thousand years.
In plain English: After that, Uranus's words came into his mind like a ray of sunlight, and he created Jupiter. Then he became afraid again; nature froze, created things began to slide backward, and to save the world, Jupiter killed his father Saturn.
Reference & context: In Greek myth Zeus overthrew his father Kronos rather than killing him; Emerson adapts the story to make his point.
In plain English: This can count as the oldest surviving record of a political conversation between a Conservative and a Radical.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A dry, witty sentence that reveals the point of the invented myth.
In plain English: It is always like this.
In plain English: It is like the balance between the force that pulls toward the centre and the force that flings outward.
Reference & context: In physics, a planet's orbit was then explained as a balance between a centripetal pull toward the sun and a centrifugal tendency to fly away.
In plain English: Change is the energy that leaps forward; Conservatism is the pause after the last step.
In plain English: “Whatever exists was made by God,” says Conservatism.
Modernized: saith → says
In plain English: “He is leaving that and moving into something else,” answers Change.
In plain English: Conservatism's arguments always have something petty about them, but it has the advantage of actually existing.
In plain English: It defends things because it owns them.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: Five words that sum up the conservative position: we approve what we already possess.
In plain English: Its fingers grip what is real, and it won't open its eyes to see something better.
In plain English: The castle conservatism guards is the way things actually are, good and bad together.
In plain English: The goal of reform is the best way things could possibly be.
In plain English: Naturally, conservatism always loses the argument. It is always making excuses, claiming things can't be helped, insisting that change would make things worse. It has to carry the mountain of society's violence and wrongdoing on its back, deny that good is possible, reject ideas, and distrust and stone the prophet. Reform, meanwhile, is always right, winning, on the attack and sure of victory in the end.
Reference & context: “Stone the prophet” recalls Jesus's words in Matthew 23:37: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee.”
In plain English: Conservatism is based on man's admitted limits; reform on his unquestionable boundlessness. Conservatism relies on circumstances; liberalism on inner power. The first aims to make a person fit skilfully into society; the second puts the individual ahead of everything. Conservatism is relaxed and sociable; reform is individualistic and bossy.
Reference & context: Emerson's original spelling is “debonnair.”
In plain English: We are reformers in spring and summer and defenders of the old in autumn and winter; reformers in the morning, conservatives at night.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: The most famous line of the lecture: politics follows the rhythm of our energy, through the seasons and through each day.
In plain English: Reform says yes, conservatism says no; conservatism aims for comfort, reform for truth.
In plain English: Conservatism is more generous in seeing other people's merit; reform is more inclined to protect and build up its own.
In plain English: Conservatism writes no poetry, prays no prayers and invents nothing; it is all memory.
In plain English: Reform has no gratitude, no caution and no careful management.
In plain English: Whether your foot is stepping forward or back makes a big difference to how you look and how you think.
In plain English: Conservatism never steps forward; the moment it does, it is no longer the establishment but reform.
In plain English: Conservatism tends toward pretence and betrayal everywhere. It believes in a fate that holds us back; it believes people are ruled by their moods; it tells me it's no use trusting principles, because they will let me down, so I must compromise a little. It distrusts nature. It believes in a general law that never applies to any particular case: a law for everyone that includes no one.
In plain English: Reform, in its opposition, tends toward stupid stubbornness, kicking out like a donkey. It slides into selfishness and puffed-up vanity, into airy pretensions and unnatural over-refinement and high-mindedness, which end in hypocrisy and a swing back to indulgence.
Reference & context: Emerson is fair to both sides: after listing conservatism's faults, he lists reform's. Brook Farm, a utopian community founded by his Transcendentalist friends that same year (1841), may be on his mind.
In plain English: So as long as we stick to general statements, we can safely say of these two opposing principles that each is a good half, but neither can work as the whole.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: The thesis of the lecture in a perfectly balanced phrase.
In plain English: Each reveals the other's faults, but in a real society, and in a real person, the two must be joined.
In plain English: Nature gives her highest prize, beauty, only to an action, symbol or person that combines both elements. It does not go to the rock that resists the waves century after century, nor to the wave that endlessly beats on the rock. The greater beauty belongs to the oak, which stands with its hundred branches against a hundred years of storms and yet grows every year like a young tree; or to the river, always flowing yet found in the same bed age after age; or, greatest of all, to the person who has lasted for years amid nature's changes yet has grown so far beyond himself that when you remember what he was and see what he is now, you say: What progress! What a difference!
Why this phrase is worth keeping: Three images, the oak, the river and the growing person, each combine permanence with change.
In plain English: Everywhere in nature, the past and the present are joined in every living thing.
In plain English: Each spiral of a seashell, each knob and spine, marks one year of the creature's life: what was the opening of the shell one season becomes a decorative knob once the growing animal adds new material.
Reference & context: Emerson calls the shellfish a “fish,” as was common usage then.
In plain English: This summer's growth has produced only the leaves and a thin layer of soft wood. The solid trunk, which lifts that mass of leaves into the air to catch our eye and cool us with its shade, is a gift handed down from years long dead and gone.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: The tree trunk becomes a picture of tradition: the past holds up the present.
In plain English: In conclusion, to step back from these one-sided views and look from the high ground of all history, it is a blessing for humanity that reform has come so far and has such an open field ahead of it.
Reference & context: Omitted here: a long middle section in which Emerson lets a conservative speaker defend property, law and society, and replies with the reformer's case.
In plain English: The daring of people's hopes today goes beyond anything known before.
In plain English: It comforts and encourages them with a vision of a simple, equal life of honesty and faith.
In plain English: And on what tree did this hope blossom?
In plain English: It wasn't brought in from some heavenly plant; it grew right here, on the wild crab-apple tree of conservatism.
Reference & context: Gardeners graft fine apple varieties onto hardy wild crab-apple rootstock. The image brings back the tree from earlier in the lecture.
In plain English: It says a lot for this old, much-criticized order of things that it has produced such a beautiful child.
In plain English: It suggests that on a planet full of conservatives, one true Reformer may still be born.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: The ending gives each side its due: reform's hope grew out of conservatism's soil.
Reference & context: “One Reformer” may hint at a Christ-like figure, or at the ideal reformed individual Emerson hoped for.
Fun Fact
The Masonic Temple where Emerson gave this lecture was also where Bronson Alcott ran his experimental Temple School, and where Emerson gave many of his paid lecture series. Lecturing on the “lyceum” circuit was Emerson's main income for decades. He gave around 1,500 lectures across the United States, travelling by train and steamboat as far west as California, and much of what we now read as his essays began as lectures like this one.