By DONALD DeMARCO
An aphorism is a brief statement, usually containing a piece of practical wisdom. It is not as witty as an epigram, as noble as a proverb, or as overused as an adage. It is closer to the maxim, which, according to Mark Twain, “consists of a minimum of sound and a maximum of sense.” A maxim, however, differs from an aphorism in that it is always a short rule for moral conduct, such as “look before you leap.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, that quintessential American whom Oliver Wendell Holmes believed to have personified “America’s Declaration of Independence,” was most adept at writing aphorisms. One of my favorites that flowed from the pen of this ordained Unitarian minister is the following: “All that I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all that I have not seen.” This statement is sufficiently rich in philosophical and theological implication that it warrants analysis. It bears more wisdom than the eye might see at first glance.
Suffering and death were close companions of Emerson. Three of his siblings died in childhood. His father passed away two weeks before the young Emerson’s eighth birthday. Two of his bright and promising younger brothers died early in life of tuberculosis. His wife, Ellen Louise Tucker, also succumbed to the same disease, at age 20, just two years into their marriage.
His aforementioned aphorism, therefore, is not something he wrote off the top of his head. Indeed, it came from a heart that understood well how people who have suffered deeply could question God’s love.
Emerson speaks to all of us. We all see things that give us a sense of God’s presence. At the same time, we see things that cause us to question why He allows so much suffering in the world. But Emerson does not merely “see,” in the conventional sense of the term, he sees through things to another world.
In his first published essay, “Nature,” he makes the following statement: “Nature is a language and every new fact one learns is a new world; but it is not a language taken to pieces and dead in the dictionary, but the language put together into a most significant and universal sense. I wish to learn this language, not that I may know a new grammar, but that I may read the great book written in that tongue.”
Emerson saw the book of nature as authored by the Creator. St. Thomas Aquinas saw nature as a reflection of the Eternal Law, a notion not very much different than Emerson’s view. Nature is diaphanous, something through which we can see something else. The 18th-century poet William Blake made reference to this when he drew a distinction between seeing with the eye and seeing through the eye:
“This life’s dim Windows of the Soul/ Distorts the Heaven’s from Pole to Pole/ And lead you to believe a Lie/ When you see with, not thro’, the Eye.”
Seeing only with the eye is to see nothing more than matter. It is simply a glance. But to see through the eye is to see what exists beyond the realm of mere nature.
Malcolm Muggeridge compared his conversion into the Catholic Church with the blind man whose sight Jesus restored: “Whereas I was blind, now I see” (John 9:25). “How [could I] have not understood,” he writes in his book that bears the simple title, Jesus, “that the grey-silver light across the water, the cry of the sea-gulls and the sweep of their wings, everything on which my eyes rest and my ears hear, is telling me about God.”
For Muggeridge, his new vision allowed him to pass from what he referred to as a “kingdom of fantasy to the kingdom of reality.”
The book of nature is, as Emerson tells us, something that “teaches” far more than biology can. It teaches us that there is a trustworthy God who operates through nature. We need that special vision of seeing through the eye to sense His existence. But God’s being, seen through all the wonders of His creation, is seen as a God whom we can trust. The God of beauty must be a God of trustworthiness. Another poet, William Wordsworth, spoke of nature being “apparelled in celestial light.” That “light” originates from a Being that transcends nature, but makes His presence known through nature.
Finally, the Rev. Emerson, recognizes that he is unable to judge the Creator he has never met. This is what gives added depth to his aphorism. Though we may be hurt, crushed, devastated by the loss of loved ones, we are in no position to judge the God we cannot see. There is nothing in nature that implies the existence of an untrustworthy God. We can rejoice when we sense God’s presence, and humbly bow our heads when we do not understand.
Gerard Manley Hopkins struggled to comprehend why God would allow five Franciscan nuns to perish aboard the Deutschland. “For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand,” he wrote in his most dramatic poem, The Wreck of the Deutschland. When we do not sense God’s presence, we do not understand, and must withhold judgment. God knows what we cannot know. “Thou art lightning and love,” Hopkins remarked. We rejoice in the love, and should remain silent about the lightning.
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, Conn., and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That Is Going Mad; Poetry That Enters the Mind and Warms the Heart; and How to Flourish in a Fallen World are available through Amazon.com.
(Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth and Charity Forum. He is the 2015 Catholic Civil Rights League recipient of the prestigious Exner Award for “Catholic excellence in social service.”)
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