Gnostics vs Orphic Naturalism in Vineland

[Jane]

Brock Vond  The Collected Children
Frenesi	    The cllected People


James, Emerson, an American tradition, Pynchon is the true
inheritor of the "Broken" Estate of Herman Melville & Co. 
			


		In that address to
                 the graduating class at Divinity College in
                 1838 which made Emerson famous, the
                 frank expression of this worship of mere
                 abstract laws was what made the scandal
                 of the performance. -

                 "These laws," said the speaker, "execute
                 themselves. They are out of time, out of
                 space, and not subject to circumstance:
                 Thus, in the soul of man there is a justice
                 whose retributions are instant and entire.
                 He who does a good deed is instantly
                 ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by
                 the action itself contracted. He who puts
                 off impurity thereby puts on purity. If a
                 man is at heart just, then in so far is he
                 God; the safety of God, the immortality
                 of God, the majesty of God, do enter into
                 that man with justice. If a man dissemble,
                 deceive, he deceives himself, and goes out
                 of acquaintance with his own being.
                 Character is always known. Thefts never
                 enrich; alms never impoverish; murder
                 will speak out of stone walls. The least
                 admixture of a lie- for example, the taint
                 of vanity, any attempt to make a good
                 impression, a favorable appearance- will
                 instantly vitiate the effect. But speak the
                 truth, and all things alive or brute are
                 vouchers, and the very roots of the grass
                 underground there do seem to stir and
                 move to bear your witness. For all things
                 proceed out of the same spirit, which is
                 differently named love, justice,
                 temperance, in its different applications,
                 just as the ocean receives different names
                 on the several shores which it washes. In
                 so far as he roves from these ends, a man
                 bereaves himself of power, of auxiliaries.
                 His being shrinks... he becomes less and
                 less, a mote, a point, until absolute
                 badness is absolute death. The
                 perception of this law awakens in the
                 mind a sentiment which we call the
                 religious sentiment, and which makes our
                 highest happiness. Wonderful is its
                 power to charm and to command. It is a
                 mountain air. It is the embalmer of the
                 world. It makes the sky and the hills
                 sublime, and the silent song of the stars
is
                 it. It is the beatitude of man. It makes
                 him illimitable. When he says 'I ought';
                 when love warns him; when he chooses,
                 warned from on high, the good and great
                 deed; then, deep melodies wander
                 through his soul from supreme wisdom.
                 Then he can worship, and be enlarged by
                 his worship; for he can never go behind
                 this sentiment. All the expressions of this
                 sentiment are sacred and permanent in
                 proportion to their purity. [They] affect
                 us more than all other compositions. The
                 sentences of the olden time, which
                 ejaculate this piety, are still fresh and
                 fragrant. And the unique impression of
                 Jesus upon mankind, whose name is not
                 so much written as ploughed into the
                 history of this world, is proof of the
                 subtle virtue of this infusion."2

                 Such is the Emersonian religion. The
                 universe has a divine soul of order, which
                 soul is moral, being also the soul within
                 the soul of man.