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Show 254. ferential thermometer, detecting the presence or absense of sentiment in Man. Emerson expressed the need for Man to redeem himself by mystical communion with Nature, and did so in absolute terms. But that process might have its limits. Melville carried such mystical communion to absurdity in Chapter 36 of The Confidence Man, "In which the Cosmopolitan is accosted by a mystic, whereupon ensues pretty much such talk as might be expected." The mystic was Emerson. He spoke about rattlesnakes, of a Mil tonic species. "When charmed by the beauty of that viper, did it never occur to you to change personalities with him? to feel what it was to be a snake? to glide unsuspected in the grass? to sting, to kill at a touch; your whole beautiful body one irridescent scabbard of death? In short, did the wish never occur to you to feel yourself exempt from knowledge, and conscience, and revel for a while in care-free, joyous life of a perfectly instinctive, unscrupulous, and irresponsible creature?" So said the Emersonian mystic. And why not? If one launched into this kind of thinking about Nature, one had to believe in the innocence of lethal snakes. As Melville described it, this mystical stance was passionless and pitiless, and finally the mystic said, "don't you think, that for a man to pity where nature is pitiless, is a little presuming?" This is exactly where Muir had gone in his sympathy for alligators. Had he gone too far? |