Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
TECHNOLOGY
AND THE PASTORAL IDEAL
IN AMERICA
Leo Marx
OXYORD
For JA NE
more than ever
Contents
OXFORD
UNlVBRSITY PllB SS
Copyright © I 964. 2000 b)' Oxford University Press v Two Kingdoms of Force 227
First pHhli<h cd hy Oxfurol l 1niwt<it y l'ress, New Yot·k. 1964 VI Epilogue: The Garden of Ashes 354
1\)8 :Madison A\·cn ut•, N"" ' iuk, :-<e"' York 100 16
F'irst issuc·cl as an Oxforcl Unh-,·rsit\' l'n·« paperback, 1967 AfTERWORD 367
Oxford is a n•~ti<tt·rwl trarkma rk ufOxfm·d l:nh·crsit)' Press
NOTES 387
All ri!(IHs n·<crwcl. !'\u part or tlri• pnblk;uion "'")' be reproduced,
..;torcct in a n ·u·it·val systc·m. u1 tran"imiu t•d, in ;my form or by any means,
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 407
t•lt.·c tronir . nH·claattica l. phutcu·npvin~ . rl·Cording. or o ehcrwise.
'''ithuut the• p1 it1r pt•rmi..;sloU tl{ O xfurrl U nivcnity Pn:.•ss.
I N DEX 409
Ubrnry uf Cun~rc·<s C ualugntK· in·I'Hblication Data
~l;orx, Leo. 1!119-
Titc m:ochint· 111 tho: garden : t<'t hnulngy and the p astoral ideal in America I Leo Marx
p. em.
Includes hihliclj(r;tphic rt'fcrcnll'' .nul index.
lSI\;>; (}.19-51!\351·X (pbk.)
ISB:>.: (). I~~o;, 1335().1 ILLUSTRATIONS
I l'tnl<•<l St:ttc:r-Civili7ation. 2. :>.:.HurL--social aspect.<--l:nited St:ucs.
3 rt·t'luu•I•'I:'-Soci:tl aspcct.,_t · nned Stmcs. I. Till.,,
Elli!l. l . ~1 :1;, 2000
9H-d c21 !1!1.3 11;97 Plate 1. The Roundhowc in the Rock Island Railroad Yard
at El Reno, Oklahoma. frontispiece
9 R 7 6 5 I ~ 2 I
Printed iuthe l ' tuH:d Statt·~ ut Autt:~rcca Plate 2. "The Lackawanna Valley" by George Inness. facing uo
u n acid-ln-e p.tpt•t
r
TILE M ACHINE IN THE CARDEN
4 obscure. What possible bearing can the urge to idealize
My purpose is to describe and evaluate the uses of the a simple, rural environment have up_on the_ lives men
pastoral ideal in the interpretation of American experi- lead in an intricately organized, urban, mdustnal, nuclear-
ence. I shall be tracing its adaptation to the conditions of armed society? The answer to this central question must
life in the New World, its emergence as a distinctively start with the distinction between two kinds of pastoral-
American theory of society, and its subsequent transforma- ism- one that is popular and sentimental, the other
tion under the impact of industrialism. This is not meant imaginative and complex.
to be a comprehensive survey. If I were telling the story
in all its significant detail, chronologically, I should have
I
to begin at the moment the idea of America entered the 1
mind of Europe and come down to the present- to, say, The first, or sentimental kind is difficult to define or even
the death of Robert Frost in 1963. But I have chosen not to locate because it is an expression less of thought than
to attempt anything so ambitious. Instead, I propose to of feeling. It is widely diffused in our culture, insinuating
concentrate upon selected examples, "some versions," as itself into many kinds of behavior. An obvious exampl~
William Empson might put it, of American pastoralism. is the current "flight from the city." An inchoate longing
Nor have I confined myself to the richest, most coherent for a more "natural" environment enters into the con-
literary materials. At points I shaU consider examples temptuous attitude that many Americans adopt toward
which have little or no intrinsic literary value. In fact, urban life (with the result that we neglect our cities and
this is not, strictly speaking, a book about literature; it desert them for the suburbs). Wherever people turn away
is about the region of culture where literature, general from the hard social and technological realities this ob-
ideas, and certain products of the collective imagination- scure sentiment is likely to be at work. We see it in our
we may call them "cultural symbols"•- meet. To appre- politics, in the "localism" invoked to oppose an adequate
ciate the significance and power of our American fables national system of education, in the power of the farm
it is necessary to understand the interplay between the bloc in Congress, in the special economic favor shown to
literary imagination and what happens outside literature, "farming" through government subsidies, and in state
in the general culture. My special concern is to show how electoral systems that allow the rural population to retain
the pastoral ideal has been incorporated in a powerful a share of political power grossly out of proportion to its
metaphor of contradiction - a way of ordering meaning size. It manifests itself in our leisure-time activities, in)
and value that clarifies our situation today. 1 the piety toward the out-of-doors expressed in the wilder-
T he notion that pastoralism remains a significant force ness cult, and in our devotion to camping, hunting, fish-
in American life calls for an explanation. At first thought ing, picnicking, gardening, and so on. But there is no
the relevance of the ancient ideal to our concerns in the need to multiply examples; anyone who knows America
second half of the twentieth century is bound to seem today will think of many others.
• A ''cultu ral symbol" is an image that conveys a special meaning Nowhere is the ill-defined feeling for "nature" more
(tliought and feeli ng) to a large number of those who share the culture.
. '
6 THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN
There can be little doubt that it affects the nation's taste and pastoralism as a literary mode. Nor for that matter
, in serious literature, reinforcing the legitimate respect do they often invoke the word "pastoral." But whether
enjoyed by such writers as Mark Twain, Ernest Heming- they refer to "agrarianism" (the usual term), or to the
way, and Robert Frost. But on the lower plane of our hold of "rural values" upon the national consciousness
collective fantasy life the power of this sentiment is even (Hofstadter), or to the "agrarian myth" (Hofstadter), or
more obvious. The mass media cater to a mawkish taste to the "Old Republican idyll" (Meyers), or to the "myth
for retreat into the primitive or rural felicity exemplified of the garden" (Smith), they all seem to agree that for
by TV westerns and Norman Rockwell magazine covers. some time now this tendency to idealize rural ways has
\
Perhaps the most convincing testimony to the continuing been an impediment to clarity of t ought an , rom their
\., appeal of the bucolic is supplied by advertising copy- point of view, to social progress. Anyone who shares their
writers; a favorite strategy, validated by marketing re- assumptions is likely to find this judgment highly per-
y' search, assumes that Americans are most likely to buy suasive. They demonstrate that in public discourse, at
r the cigarettes, beer, and automobiles they can associate least, this ideal has appeared with increasing frequency
\ with a rustic setting. in the service of a reactionary or false ideology, thereby
No single motive can account for these disparate phe- helping to mask the real problems of an industrial civil-
nomena. Yet each ra~exw:_~ss~mething of the yearning ilization. 2
for a simpler, mo~. harmonious tyle of life, an existence When seen by critics of "mass culture," moreover, the
"closer to nature," that is the , ychic root of all pastoral- popular kind of American pastoralism assumes an equally
ism -genuine and ~ur-ious:"That such desires are not pernicious, if slightly different, aspect. Then it looks like
peculiar to Americans goes without saying; but our ex- a native variant of that international form of "primitiv-
perience as a nation unquestionably has invested them ism" to which Ortega y Gasset, among others, began
with peculiar intensity. The soft veil of nostalgia thatt calling attention years ago. In Th e Revolt of the Masses
hangs over o~r urb~nized landscape is largely a vestige of (1930), Ortega uses the term to describe the outlook of
the o~ce dommant Image of an undefiled, green republic, a new kind of man, "a Naturmensch rising up in the
a qmet land of forests, villages, and farms dedicated to midst of a civilised world":
the pursuit of happiness.
The world is a civilised one, its inhabitant is not: he
I In recent years several discerning, politically liberal
historians of American thought have traced the gradual
does not see the civilisation of the world around him, but
he uses it as if it were a natural force. The new man
attenuation, in our public life, of the ideas once embodied wants his motor-car, and enjoys it, but he believes that
in this cherished image. I am thinking especially of the it is the spontaneous fruit of an Edenic tree. In the
'~ork of ~ichard Hofst~dter, Marvin Meyers, and Henry depths of his soul he is unaware of the artificial, almost
Nash Sm1th. These wnters have not been concerned, to incredible, character of civilisation, and does not extend
8 THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN Sleepy H ollow, 1844 9
his enthusiasm for the instruments to the principles of life. What puzzles him most is the implication that
which make them possible. mankind would be happier if our complex, technical order
Ortega's caricature points to the shallow, not to say per· could somehow be abandoned. "How has it come a bout,"
verse, conception of reality inherent in our sentimental he asks, "that so many people have adopted this strange
pastoralism. If his industrial Natttrmensch bears a strik· attitude of hostility to civilization?" •
ing resemblance to many Americans we should not be Freud's answer- an avowedly speculative one- is that
entirely surprised. After all, what modern nation has had such attitudes are the product of profound, long-standing
a history as encouraging to the illusion that its material discontent. H e interprets them as signs of widespread
well-being is, in Ortega's phrase, "the spontaneous fruit frustration and repression. Although he assumes that every
of an Edenic tree"? a social order rests upon the denial of powerful instinctual
The same phenomenon aroused Sigmund Freud's inter· needs, we are allowed to infer that today's advanced society
est. In his General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (1920), may be singularly repressive. Can it be that our institu·
he takes up the nostalgic feeling we often attach to the tions and cultural standards ar e enforcing an increasingly
unspoiled landscape as an illustration of our chronic yearn· pain ful, almost unbearable degree of privation of instinct?
ing to en joy "freedom from the grip of the external If so, this might well explain the addiction of modern
world." To Freud this impulse is the very epitome of man to puerile fantasies. In the light of th ese conjectures,
fantasy-making: the sentiments we have considered take on a pathological
coloring, as if symptomatic of a collective neurosis.
The creation of the mental domain of phantasy has a
Aided by the insights of Freud, Ortega, and the his·
complete counterpart in the establishment of "reserva·
tions" and "nature-parks" in places where the inroads torians, we may begin to characterize the dominant motive
of agriculture, traffic, or industry threaten to change back of this curious state of mind. Evidently it is generated
. . . the earth rapidly into something unrecognizable. by an urge to withdraw from civilization's growing power
The "reservation" is to maintain the old condition of and complexity. What is attractive in pastoralism is the
things which has been regretfully sacrificed to necessity felicity represented by a n image of a natural landscape.
eve.rywhere else; there everything may grow and spread a terra in either unspoiled or, if cultivated, rural. Move·
as It pleases, including what is useless and even what is m en~ toward such a symbolic landscape also may be under-
harmful. The mental realm of phantasy is also such a stood as movement away from a n "artificial" world, a
reservation reclaimed from the encroaches of the reality· world identified with "art," using this word in its broadest
principle.
sense to mea n the d isciplined habits of mind or arts d evel·
Freud comes back to this subject later in Civilization and oped by organized communities. In other words, this im·
Its Discontents {1930). He admits that he is puzzled by pulse gives r ise to a symbolic motion away from centers
~hat he calls the "amazing" tendency of presumably civil· of civi lization toward the_ir opposite, nature, away from
lled men to idealize simple and often primitive conditions sophistication toward simpl khy, or, to introduce the cardi·
10 TliE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN Sleepy H ollow, I844 11
nal metaphor of the literary mode, away from the city it. An initial receptivity to the pastoral impulse is one way
toward the country. When this impulse is unchecked, the in which our best writers have grounded their work
result is a simple-minded wishfulness, a romantic perver- in the common life. But how, then, are we to explain
sion of thought and feeling. the fact that the same impulse generates such wholly differ-
If this more popular kind of pastoralism were the only ent states of mind? While in the culture at large it is the
kind evident in America today, we should have every starting point for infantile wish-fulfillment dreams, a
reason to conclude that it is merely another of our many diffuse nostalgia, and a naive, anarchic primitivism, yet it
vehicles of escape from reality- one of those collective also is the source of writing that is invaluable for its power
mental activities which can be taken seriously only for to enrich and clarify our experience. Where, then, shall
diagnostic purposes. When we turn from the general to we locate the point of divergence between these two modes
\ the "high" literary culture, however, we are struck at once
by the omnipresence of the same motive. One has only
of consciousness?
Rather than attempt to answer the question in general
to consider the titles which first come to mind from the terms, I want to describe an event which points to an
classical canon of our literature- the American books answer. Although it is an episode in the life of a writer
admired most nowadays- to recognize that the theme of who was to become famous, it is in other respects a typical
withdrawal from society into an idealized landscape is and indeed commonplace event of the time. No doubt
r central to a remarkably large number of them. Again and most of the writer's contemporaries, whether literary men
again, the imagination of our most respected writers- or not, had similar experiences. Yet in retrospect we can
one thinks of Cooper, Thoreau, Melville, Faulkner, Frost, see that this ordinary experience, partly because of its
Hemingway- has been set in motion by this impulse. typicality, was one of those inconspicuous moments of
But while the starting point of their work and of senti- discovery that has proven to be decisive in the record of
mental pastoralism may be the same, the results could our culture. What the writer d iscovers, though he by no
hardly be more different. means recognizes its importance, is a metaphor; he seizes
How shall we define that difference? The work of seri- upon the symbolic property or meaning in the event itself
ous writers is different, clearly, in most of the ways that -its capacity to express much of what he thinks and feels
works of art differ from the flow of casual, undisciplined about his situation.
expression that makes up the general culture. In fact the
question .might easily be put aside, as it often is, simply
by assertmg that "literature" embodies a more sensitive 2
and precise, a "higher," mode of perception. T o do that, On the morning of J uly 27, 1844, Nathaniel H awthorne
~owever, i.s to miss a chance of defining the complex rela- sat down in the woods near Concord, Massachusetts, to
tion ~etween serious literature and the larger body of await (as he put it) "such little events as may happen."
meanmgs and values, the general culture, which envelops His purpose, so far as we can tell, was chiefly literary.
12 THE 1\fACiiiNE IN THE CARO}: N Sleepy Hollow, z844 13
Though he had no reason to believe that anything mem· idly brooding upon the minutiae of nature, and now and
orable would happen, he sat there in solitude and silence then permitting his imagination a brief Hight. Along the
and tried to record his every impression as precisely as path, for example, he notices that "sunshine glimmers
possible. The whole enterprise is reminiscent of the pains· through shadow, and shadow effaces sunshine, imaging
taking literary exercises of his neighbor, Henry Thoreau. that pleasant mood of mind where gaiety and pensiveness
Hawthorne filled eight pages of his notebook on this occa- intermingle." For the most part, however, Hawthorne is
sion. What he wrote is not a finished piece of work and satisfied to set down unadorned sense impressions, and
yet, surprisingly enough, neither is it a haphazard series especially sounds- sounds made by birds, squirrels, in·
of jottings. One incident dominates the rest of his impres· sects, and moving leaves.
' But then, after a time, the scope of his observations
I sions. Around this "little event" a certain fonnal- one
might almost say dramatic- pattern takes shape. It is to
this pattern that I want to call attention.&
widens. Another kind of sound comes through. He hears
the village clock strike, a cowbell tinkle, and mowers
To begin, Hawthorne describes the setting, known in whetting their scythes.
the neighborhood as "Sleepy Hollow": Without any perceptible change of mood or tone, he
shifts from images of nature to images of man and society.
. . . a shallow space scooped out among the woods, which
He insists that "these sounds of labor" do not "disturb
surround it on all sides, it being pretty nearly circular,
the repose of the scene" or "break our sabbath; for like )
I or oval, and two or three hundred yards- perhaps four
or five hundred - in diameter. The present season, a
thriving field of Indian com, now in its most perfect
a sabbath seems this place, and the more so on account I
of the cornfield rustling at our feet." He is describing a '
growth, and tasselled out, occupies nearly half of the state of being in which there is no tension either within
hollow; and it is like the lap of bounteous Nature, filled the self or between the self and its environment. Much of
with bread stuff. this hannonious effect is evoked by the delicate interlacing
Then, in minute detail, he records what he sees and hears of sounds that seem to unify society, landscape, and mind.
close by. "Observe the pathway," be writes, "it is strewn What lends most interest, however, to this sense of all-
over with little bits of dry twigs and decayed branches, encompassing harmony and peace is a vivid contrast:
and the sear and brown oak-leaves of last year that have But, hark I there is the whistle of the locomotive -the t
been moistened by snow and rain, and whirled about by
harsh and gentle winds, since their departed verdure . . . "
long shriek, harsh, above all other harshness, for the
space of a mile cannot mollify it into harmony. It tells
I
And so on. What counts here, needless to say, is n ot the a story of busy men, citizens, from the hot street, who
matter so much as the feeling behind it. Hawthorne is have come to spend a day in a country village, men of
using natural facts metaphorica11y to convey something business; in short of all unquietness; and no wonder that\
about a human situation. From several pages in this vein it gives such a startling shriek, since it brings the noisv\
we get an impression of a man in almost perfect repose, world into the midst of our slumbrous peace. As ou~ \.
I
l
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Sleepy Hollow, r844 15
thoughts repose again, after this interruption, we find terranean How of thought and feeling and then, suddenly,
ourselves gazing up at the leaves, and comparing their the startling shriek of the train whistle bearing in upon
different aspect, the beautiful divenity of green. . . . hi~, forcing him to acknowledge the ex.istence of a reality \
) ahen to the pastoral dream. What begins as a conventional
With the train out of earshot and quiet restored, Haw-
thorne continues his observations. An ant colony catches tribute to the pleasures of withdrawal from the world- /
\ his eye. Possibly, he muses, it is the very model of the a simple pleasure fantasy -is transformed by the inter-~
community which the Fourierites and others are pursuing ruption of the machine into a far more complex state
in their stumbling way. Then, "like a malevolent genius," of mind.
he drops a few grains of sand into the entrance of an ant Our sense of its evocative power is borne out by the
hole and obliterates it. The result is consternation among fact that variants of the Sleepy Hollow episode have
the inhabitants, their frantic movements displaying their appeared everywhere in American writing since the 184o's.
"confusion of mind." How inexplicable, he writes, must We r_ecall the scene in Walden where Thoreau is sitting
be the agency which has effected this mischief. But now rapt m a revery and then, penetrating his woods like the \
it is time for him to leave. Rising, he notices a cloud scream of a hawk, the whistle of the locomotive is heard; I
moving across the sun; many clouds now are scattered or the eerie passage in M oby-Dick where Ishmael is explor- 1
about the sky "like the shattered ruins of a dreamer's ing t~e inner~ost recesses of a beached whale and suddenly
Utopia .. .." Then, in a characteristic tone of self-depre- the Image shifts and the leviathan's skeleton is a New
cation, he remarks upon the "narrow, scanty and meagre" England textile mill; or the dramatic moment in Huckle-
record of observation he has compiled during his morn· berry Finn when Huck and Jim are floating along peace-
ing in the woods. What troubles him is the discrepancy fully ~nd a monstrous steamboat suddenly bulges out of
between the shallow stream of recorded thought ("distinct the mght and ! maspes straight through their raft. Morcr
and expressed thought") and the broad tide of dim emo· often than not in these episodes, the machine is made to ,--....,
tions, ideas, and associations that had been flowing all the appear with startling suddenness. Sometimes it abruptly
while somewhere at the back of his mind. "When we see enters ~ Happy Valley, at others a traveler suddenly comes
_how little we can express," he concludes, "it is a wonder upon It. In one of Melville's tales ("The Tartarus of
that any man ever takes up a pen a second time." Maids"), the narrator is trying to find a paper mill in
Yet the fact is that Hawthorne has succeeded in express- the mountains; he drives his sleigh into a deep hollow
ing a great deal. True, there are no memorable revelations between hills that rise like steep walls, and he still cannot
to be got from these notes, no surprises, nothing of imme- se~ the place when, as he says, "suddenly a whirring, hum-
diate interest from a biographical, historical, or critical mmg sound broke upon my ear. I looked, and there, like
standpoint. And yet there is something arresting about an arrest_ed avalanche, lay the large whitewashed factory."
the episode: the writer sitting in his green retreat dutifully The ommous sounds of machines, like the sound of the
attaching words to natural facts, trying to tap the sub- steamboat bearing down on the raft or of the train break·
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN
J6
ing in upon the idyll at Walden, reverberate endlessly in how evocative the simple device is, especially when we
our literature. We hear such a sound, or see the s1ght consider that at bottom it consists of nothing more com-
which accompanies it, in The Octopus, The Education plicated than noise clashing through harmony. This is the
of Henry Adams, The G1·eat Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, sensory core of the larger design, its inherent power to be
"The Bear" - and one could go on. Anyone familiar with revealed by its receptivity to the connotations that Haw-
American writing will recall other examples from the thorne gathers about it. Like the focal point of a ,co~pli
work of Walt Whitman, Sarah Orne Jewett, Henry James, cated visual pattern, this elemental, irreducible dissonanc; '
Sherwood Anderson, Willa Cather, Eugene O'Neill, Rob· contains the whole in small. /
ert Frost, H art Crane, T. S. Eliot, J ohn Dos Passos, Ernest These observations suggest the conventional cli<rt'llcter
Hemingway- indeed it is difficult to think of a major of Hawthorne's composition. For all the apparent spon-
American writer upon whom the image of the machine's taneity of his response to the event, and in spite of the
sudden appearance in the landscape has not exercised its novelty of the railroad in 1844- a recent and in many
fascination. 8 ways revolutionary invention - it is striking to see how
What I am saying, in other words, is that Hawthorne's little there is here that can be called "original." One sus-
notes mark the shaping (on a microscopic scale to be sure) pects indeed that if we had access to all the notebooks
of a metaphoric design which recurs everywhere in our kept by aspiring American writers of the 184o's we would
the stock contrast between city and country each had been
So ends the first eclogue. As far as the narrative is con- assumed to occupy a more or less fixed location in space:
cerned, nothing has been solved. The poem offers no hint the country here, the city there. But in 1844 the sound of
of a "way out" for Melibreus or those who inhabit the a train in the Concord woods implies a radical change
ravaged countryside. All that he gets for solace is one m the conventional pattern. Now the great world is m-
I \
\
32 TH E MACHINE IN THE GAROEN Sleepy Hollow, z814
~
nological power, a power that does not remain con-
fi ned to the traditional boundaries of the city. It is a
centrifugal force that threatens to break down, once and
for all, the conventional contrast between these two styles
of li fe. The Sleepy Hollow episode prefigures the emer-
~
gence, after 1844, of a new, distinctively American, post-
romantic, industrial version of the pastoral design. And
I the feelings aroused by this later design will have the ef-
fect of widening the gap, already great, between the
pastoralism of sentiment and the pastoralism of mind.
-
upon the image of the railroad as counterforce, is re-shap-
ing a conventional design to meet the singular conditions
of life in nineteenth-century America. To understand his
response to the machine we must appreciate the intensity
of his fee ling for its opposite, the landscape. The same
may be sa id of many American writers. Their heightened
Shakespeare's American Fable 35
people wrote accounts of the episode, and unmistakable
echoes of at least two of them may be heard in Th e Tem-
pest, particularly in the storm scene. At cne point, more-
II Shakespeare's American Fable over, Ariel refers to having fetched dew from the "still-
vex'd Bermoothes." Though all of these facts are well
kno·wn and reasonably well established, they do not in
If any man shall accuse these repone of partial! falshood,
supposing them to be but Utopian, and legendarie fables, themselves suggest a particularly significant relation be-
because he cannot conceive, that plentie and famine, a tern• tween the play and America. They indicate only that
pcrate climate, and distempered bodies, felicities, and mil· Shakespeare was aware of what his countrymen were doing
-
pleasing land, (the quantity and bignesse thereof consid- that a most striking fact about the New World was its
ered) and meerely naturall , as ever man set foote upon." 9 baffling hospitality to radically opposed interpretations.
William Strachey, in his report, also confronts the am- If America seemed to promise everything that men al-
biguity of nature in the New World. As already men- ways had wanted, it also threatened to obliterate much of
tioned, he had been impressed by the legendary hideous- what they already had achieved. The paradox was to be
ness of the islands: a cardinal subject of our national literature, and begin-
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Shak espeare's American Fable 47
ning in the nineteenth century our best writers were able New World. But, for all the jesting, a genuine sense of
to develop the theme in all its complexity. Not that the the terrain- its palpable presence- comes through. The
conflict was in any sense peculiar to American experience. actuality of the landscape, hence the close juxtaposition
It had always been at the heart of pastoral; but the dis· of fact and fancy, is a distinguishing mark of pastoral set
covery of the New World invested it with new relevance, in the New World. To be sure, a remote and unspoiled
with fresh symbols. Nothing demonstrates this fact more landscape had long been a feature of the mode. But the
clearly than the play Shakespeare wrote in the hour usual setting of pastorals had been a never-never land.
colonization began. The writer did not pretend that it was an actual place,
and the reader was not expected to take it as one. (In
Europe, for one thing, it was difficult to credit the exist-
2 ence of a site that was both ideal and unoccupied.) In the
ADRIAN. Though this island seem to be desert,- age of discovery, however, a note of topographical realism
SEBASTIAN. Ha, ha, hal entered pastoral. Writers were increasingly tempted to set
the action in a terrain that resembled, if not a real place,
ADRIAN. Uninhabitable, and almost inaccessible,- then the wish-colored image of a real place. Even when
SEBASTIAN. Yet,-
the connection is not made explicit, as in Th e T empest,
ADRIAN . Yet,-
I ANTON IO. He could not miss't.
ADRIAN . It must needs be of subtle, tender and deli-
we surely feel the imaginative impact of an actual New
World.
cate temperance. This sense of discovery accounts in part for the close
ANTONIO. Temperance was a delicate wench. affinity between the travel literature and Elizabethan
SEBASTI AN. Ay, and a subtle; as he most learnedly pastoral. Many voyagers resort to pastoral conventions in
deliver'd. writing their reports. What gives them a special stamp,
ADRIAN . The air breathes upon us here most sweetly. indeed, is the close juxtaposition of the conventional and
SEBASTIAN. As if it had lungs, and rotten ones.
the novel; artificial devices of rhetoric are used to re-
ANTONIO. Or as 'twere perfum'd by a fen.
port fresh, striking, geographical facts. The combination
GONZALO. Here is everything advantageous to life.
ANTONIO. True; save means to live.
heightens the sense of awe at the presence of a virgin con-
- SEBASTIAN. Of that there's none, or little. tinent. Although we may recognize Virgil's shepherds in
GONZALO. How lush and lusty the grass looks! how Barlowe's Indians, who are gen tle and loving after the
green Ill manner of the golden age, the fact remains that the place
This exchange takes place when the court party first is Virginia. Virginia does exist. Can it be, then , that the
examines the island after the '\Teck: it is a comic version old, old dream suddenly has come true? The question,
of the effort to reconcile conflicting attitudes toward the even when unexpressed, makes itself felt in much of the
THE MACH INE IN THE CARDEN Shallespem·e's American Fablr
48 . . 49
ly writing about America, and it lends fresh conv1ct1on Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
ear f 1· ·
and immediacy to the pastoral impulse. We ee 1t m No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;
Gonzalo's exclamation: "How lush and lusty the grass No occupation; all men idle, all;
looks! how green!" The greenness of grass is hardly ~ And women too, but innocent and pure:
novelty, yet the conventionality of the image lends credi- No sovereignty; -
bility to the episode. The effect comes from the stren~th SEBASTIAN. Yet he would be King On 't.
of feeling attached to so homely a fact. Could anyth_mg ANTONIO. The latter end of his commonwealth forgets
the beginning.
but green grass, actually before hi~ eyes, _pr~.uce s? lyncal
GONZALO. All things in common Nature should produce
a banality? "The singing of the ltttle buds, C_hns~opher
Without sweat or endeavour: treason, felony,
Columbus had written in 1492 of a West Indtan ISland, Sword, pike, knife, gun or need of any engine,
"is such that it seems that one would never desire to Would I not have; but Nature should bring forth,
depart hence. " 12 , .. • • Of it own kind, all foison, all abundance,
But what kind of place is Shakespeare s unmhabtted To feed my innocent people. 13
island"? Like Arcadia or Virginia, it is remote and un-
spoiled, and at first thought we are likely to remem~er How seriously shall we take the old man's vision of the
it as a kind of natural paradise. The play leaves us wlth island's possibilities? Most scholars say that Shakespeare
merely is mocking the whole idea. We know that he bor-
I a memory of an enchanted isle where life is easy and the
scenery a delight. Or if this is not the whole truth (after
all, what about Caliban?), it surely is clear that the island
rowed it, and indeed some of th e actual words, from
Montaigne's essay on cannibals - one of the fountain-
is the sort that can be expected to arouse utopian fantasies heads of modern primitivism. W e also know that the
in the minds of Europeans. Had not the voyages of Colum- speech belongs to a tradition that goes back to the ancient
bus and Cabot inspired Sir Thomas More's Utopia in Greek idea of man's original state. Gonzalo admits as
1516? As soon as the storm is over and the castaways re- much a moment later: "I would with such perfection
assemble on the beach we hear the discussion just cited. It govern, sir, f T' excel the Golden Age." But it is one
is Gonzalo, the "honest old Councellor," who is most re- thing to identify Shakespeare's source and quite another
sponsive to the promise of the green island. Soon he is to know what to make of this famous passage. \Ve sense
half-seriously ruminating about the kingdom he would immediately that the world of Gonzalo's imagination, for
-
ment. The rest of the action, until Prospero announces in work by the time the action begins. In twelve years he
the last act that the " charm dissolves a pace," is a kind of has changed the island from a howling desert into what
dream. ' Vhat is more, the dramatic structure of The Tem- seems an idyllic land of ease, peace, and plenty. With his
pest sets this o pening scene off fro m the rest. Critics fre- magic he has eliminated or controlled many unpleasant,
quently note how close Shakespeare comes to observing ugly features of primal nature. And yet enough remain to
the classical unities in the play- how (except for the dispel the primitivistic daydream that Gonzalo speaks. 1 ~
THE MACH INE IN TilE GARDEN Shakespeare's American Fable 55
54
Apart from the initial storm, the most vivid reminder of But finally it is Prospero himself who most clearly de·
the island's past is Caliban. It is from Caliban that fines the nature of nature, and man's relation to it, in the
Prospero learns an invaluable lesson about unimproved exotic setting of The Tempest. Before his exile he had led
nature. At first his feelings about primitive man, like ~n almost exclusively passive and contemplative life, "rapt
Gonzalo's, had been those of the more optimistic Eliza· m secret studies." If there is still something of the medieval
bethan voyagers. He had responded to Caliban as Gonzalo hermit about Prospera as we see him, he now recognizes
responds to the "Shapes" that Prospero conjures up: what was wrong with his earlier life. By "neglecting
worldly ends," he had helped the conspiracy that took his
If in Naples
throne. Since then he has been forced to exercise as well
I should report this now, would they believe me?
as study power. His survival and his triumph rest upon
If I should say, I saw such islanders,-
For, certes, these are people of the island, - art, a white magic akin to science and technology. As
Who, though they are of monstrous shape, yet, note, readers of The Golden Bough or the work of Malinowski
Their manners are more gentle, kind, than of k~ow, there are close affinities between magic and modern
Our human generation you shall find sc1ence, particularly in their tacit views of man's neces·
Many, nay, almost any. sary posture in the face of physical nature. Both presup·
pose our ability and our need to master the non·human
As he reminds Caliban, Prospera once had thought it pos·
thro~gh ac~ivity of mind. The aim of Prospero's magic,
I sible to nurture and redeem him:
I have us'd thee,
as h1s relat10ns w.ith Ariel and Caliban show, is to keep
the elements of a1r, earth, fire, and water at work in the
Filth as thou art, with human care; and lodg'd thee service of his island community. He does not share Gon·
In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate zalo's faith in what "Nature should produce 1 Without
The honour of my child. sweat or endeavour." 21 ·
Like her father, Miranda also had pitied Caliban before Each of these attitudes toward nature accords with a
the abortive attack. She had taught him human speech, distinct , idea of .history. Li.ke all primitivist programs,
but now she refers to him as: "Abhorred slave, 1 Which Gonzalo s plantatlOn speech m effect repudiates calculated
any print of goodness wilt not take, 1 Being capable of human effort, the trained intellect, and, for that matter
all ill!" It is true that Prospero has Caliban in his power the idea of civilization itself. It denies the value of history:
-
about passion, his own included . When Ariel reports the But having said all this, we still must cope with what now
anguish of his enemies, Prospera has to master his venge- seems a paradox: our initial impression that in The Tem-
ful impulse: pest Shakes~e~re glorifies nature, the island landscape,
Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th' quick, and the rust1c1ty of Prospera's little community. To con-
Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury clude that Prospera's triumph is a triumph of art over
Do I take part. . .. nature does not square with our full experience of the
ss THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Shakespeare's A merican Fable 59
play. ·we cannot forge t that here redemption is ~ade pos- nand, who is following sounds that seem to Row from
sible by a journey away from Europe into t~ e w1lderness. the very terrain itself:
In Milan the hero's art was anything but tnumphant; .on
the island it helps to create a kind of natu.ral paradise. Where should this music be? i' th' air or th' earth?
It sounds no more: and, sure, it wai ts upon
Here is a life of unexampled bounty, seremty, freedom,
Some god o' th' island. Sitting on a bank,
and delight. It is an idealized rural style of li.fe, in stri.k· Weeping again the King my father's wrack,
ing contrast to what we may infer abou.t life back m This music crept by me upon the waters,
Milan. The simple comforts, the dreamhke remote~ess Allaying both their fury and my passion
from the stress of the great world, the lyrical immemon With its sweet air... .
in the immediate sensations of nature- we identify all
of these boons with the unspoiled landscape. Above all, That this music actually is made by Ariel is a point I will
we think of the setting as conducive to a sensuous inti· come back to. Now we need only observe that the music
macy between man and not-man , like the echoes in Virgil's seems to emanate from the air and earth and water. It is
first eclogue, that nourishes the spirit as well as the bod~. one with the landscape, and its effect upon Ferdinand is
But how then are we to reconcile the triumph of Prospera s similar to the effect of the setting upon several of the
intellectual ideal with a celebration of the movement away others. We think of Adrian: "The air breathes upon us
from advanced society toward nature? here most sweetly," or Gonzalo: "How lush and lusty the
grass looks! how green !" 2a
Some critics, it should be sa id, deny that The Temp est
embraces a positive view of physical nature or, t~ be more Music puts at rest the fu ry of th e storm. The opposition
concrete, of the island setting. But perhaps that 1s because between music and the tempest is symbolic of the deepest
Shakespeare, like many writers working in tl~e pastoral conflict in the play. In fact, one critic (G. Wilson Knight)
tradition, relies upon auditory images to carry Ius stro~?est mainta ins that these polar images are the key to the dom-
affirmation of man's rootedness in nature. The vJs1ble inant unifying theme of the entire Shakespearean can on.
landscape is relatively insignificant in T he T empest, but H ere, in any event, there is no mistaking the power of
to conclude that the characters are unaffected by the set· m usic to allay the forces of disorder. Even Caliban, as
tinCT is to ignore what Shakespeare does with music. The readers often note, responds to the melodious atmosphere:
uninhabited island is a land of musical enchantment, and ... the isle is full of noises,
from beginning to end all kinds of engaging sounds play Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
upon our ears. We hear music b~ing sung and p.layed Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
• and talked about; we hear the mus1c of the poetry 1tself; Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices . ..
and, what is most reveal ing, music often serves as the Caliban's bestiality, the equ ivalent within human nature
audible ex pression of external nature's influence upon of the untamed elements without, is partly offset by his
mind. After the wreck, the first survivor we meet is Ferdi- singu Jar, heavy-footed grace of language. (Jf the language
6o THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Shakespeare's American Fable 6t
was given him by Miranda, the feeling is his own.) And it ARIE L. • • •if you now beheld them, your affections
is heard, significantly, in homage to the island's bountiful Would become tender.
landscape: PROS. Dost thou think so, spirit?
I'll show thee the best springs; I'll pluck thee berries: A.RIE L. Mine would, sir, were I human.
I'll fish for thee, and get thee wood enough. PROS. And mine shall.
Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling
I prithee, let me bring thee where crabs grow; Of their afflictions, and shall not myself,
And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts; One o£ their kind, that relish all as sharply
Show thee a jay's nest, and instruct thee how Passion as they, be kindlier mov'd than thou art?
To snare the nimble marmoset; I'll bring thee Thou~h with their high wrongs I am struck to th' quick,
To clustering filberts, and sometimes I'll get thee Yet With my nobler reason 'gainst my fury
Young scamels from the rock. Wilt thou go with me? Do I take part . . .
Monstrous though he is, there is in Caliban a vein of Or, as another token of nature's promise, witness Pros-
crude tenderness that makes itself felt largely as suscepti- pera's success in bringing his daughter up to perfect
bility to music and landscape. As a result he is more womanhood in this remote place. Here, far from the
appealing than several of the deceitful, corrupt, and be- sophistication of Europe, he actually does create a brave
sotted men of Europe washed up on this beach. In The ?ew world, even if Miranda ingenuously (and how iron-
T empest music is a measure of the beauty, order, and pro- Ically!) confuses it with an old ignoble one.2o
portion of the physical universe.2• But why, then, if he does not permit us to take Gonzalo
But how, then, can we interpret the story of Prospera 's and his ~reamland seriously, does Shakespeare expect us
exile, the experience of "reality" in The Te mpest, as a to feel differently about Prospera and his New World
total repudiation of Gonzalo's utopian fantasy? If the Arcadi~? The answer may be found by comparing the
plantation speech rests upon the idea of a beneficent order plantat10n speech and the lovely masque of Act IV.
running through nature, so in a way does the Pythagorean
musical motif. So does Prospera's delicate masque. For T~ere are go:>d reasons for thinking of the masque -
that matter, the entire fable unquestionably affirms the Ferdmand calls It a "most majestic vision"- as the coun-
impulse of civilized man to renew himself by immersion terpart,_ for Prospera, of Gonzalo's vision of the perfect
in the simple, spontaneous instinctual life. Witness Ariel, plantation. Each ~n its way is _a tribute to the principle
the spirit of air who helps Prospero recognize what is truly of natural fecundity. Each depicts an ideal land of abun-
• human. Once an aloof and haughty scholar, Prospero dance and joy. Each has its inception in an image of land-
learns on the island the compassion that finally allows him scape. At th: beginning of the masque, Iris (accompanied
to restore his enemies to themselves. At the moment, by soft music) sets the stage by addressing Ceres:
already mentioned, when he controls his impulse toward Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas
revenge, it is Ariel who gives him his cue: Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats, and pease,·
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Shakespeare's American Fable 63
Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep, long time. It is the traditional domain of Ceres, that is,
And flat meads thatch'd with stover, them to keep; of agri-cultu re (in the Latin: fields plus culture), an amal- j
Later the goddess of agriculture responds by blessing the gam of landscape and art. If the land now looks like a
betrothed couple in these words: magnificent garden, there is no reason to doubt that it
Earth's increase, foison plenty, once was a hideous wilderness. This paradise is a product
Barns and garners never empty; of history in a future partly designed by men. (Perhaps
Vines with clust'ring bunches growing; there is more than a graceful compliment in Ceres' lines:
Plants with goodly burthen bowing; "Spring come to you at the farthest 1 In the very end of
Spring come to you at the farthest harvest!") The successful blending of art and nature colors 1
In the very end of harvest! all the final affirmations of The Tempest. The music o(
Scarcity and want shall shun you; the island is not made of the native woodnotes wild we
Ceres' blessing so is on you. might expect to hear in Gonzalo's perfect plantation.
Like the imaginary plantation, this 1s m effect another Rather it is a product of collaboration between Prospera
openhearted utopian vision. Indeed, if we listen closely and Ariel. Miranda, by the same token, combines the
to Ceres we can hear a distinct echo (notice the repetition qualities of natural simplicity with breeding and educa-
of "faison") of Gonzalo's speech; in his plantation, he had tion. Her presence requires us to take seriously the pros-
said: pect of utopia. She has the gift of wonder. (Her name is
derived from the Latin, mirari, to wonder, or mirus, won-
... Nature should bring forth,
Of it own kind, all foison, all abundance, derful.) Hence her response when she first sees the court
party:
To feed my innocent people.
The affinity between the two visions is heightened by the 0 wonder!
warm relation between the two men. When he first sees How many goodly creatures are there here!
his old friend, Prospera cries, "Holy Gonzalo, honourable How beauteous mankind is! 0 brave new world,
That has such people in'tl 21
man," and again, a moment later, "0 good Gonzalo, I
My true preserver." 2o The tone of the masque carries over into the final
And yet the differences between the two finally are more moments of the play, which are filled with the joy that
revealing than the similarities. Prospera's masque is a follows the success of controlled human effort. It is Pros-
dream, as is the plantation speech, but it is a dream far pera's effort that is being rewarded, and the tone differs
• more consistent with what The Tempest tells us of reality. markedly from the tone of Gonzalo's vision, with its yearn-
Here the landscape, so far from representing Eden or the ing for a soft, passive, and indolent style of life. All of
original state of nature, is an idealized version of old Eng- Prospera's behavior, including the masque, suggests that
land- a countryside that men have acted upon for a half-formed, indistinct idea of history as a record of human
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN
Shakespeare's American Fable 65
improvement, or progress, that was incipient in Renais- is closer, within the world of The Tempest, to "reality"
sance thought generally. His commitment to art for the or the possible. In fact, the masque may be taken as an
melioration of life reminds us of Francis Bacon, who at oblique statement of the principles for which he now goes
this time not only wrote an important chapter in the his- forth to suppress Caliban and redeem his European
tory of the idea of progress, but was convinced that. the enemies.21
superiority of the present to the past could be ~xplame? The difference between the masque and the plantation
by specific innovations in the practical arts. It ts a test~ speech, finally, is the difference between a pastoral and a
mony to the power of the poetic imagination that thts primitive ideal. For Prospero the center of value is located
hermit, with his magical incantations, also can seem a in the traditional landscape of Ceres. He stands on a
prophet of the emergent faith in progress.28 • middle ground, a terrain of mediation between nature
But the difference between Gonzalo and Prospero 1s not and art, feeling and intellect. Any inclination that he
that one accepts and the other rejects the idea of utopia. might have had to trust in primal nature (as indicated by
Like his gentle friend, Prospero also delights in dreams his original attitude toward Caliban) now has been checked
of the good life. But he does not lose sight of the line by his experience of the hideous wilderness, by what he
that separates dream and reality. Shakespeare dramatizes knows of the storm and of his own aggressive impulses
the point most tellingly when, without warning, Prospera and, of course, by what he has come to accept as the truth
stops the masque. Before that, to enhance the effect, we about Caliban. Even in the closing moments of the play,
are shown the powerful grip that these poetic images take when he forgives his former enemies, he says nothing to
upon the mind. As he watches the little play, Ferdinand suggest a change in his estimate of Caliban as "A devil,
exclaims: "Let me live here ever;/ So rare a wonder'd a born devil, on whose nature I Nurture can never
father and a wise I Makes this place Paradise." Ferdinand stick. . . ." His recognition of inherent and perhaps irre-
is carried away, and so (he admits in an aside) is Prospera. mediable aggressiveness in man saves Prospera's utopian
That is when he "starts suddenly, and speaks; after which, bent from sentimentality. But neither does he go to the
to a strange, hollow and confused noise. .. ." the actors opposite extreme. That he has reservations about the culti-
vanish. Prospero "had forgot that foul conspiracy/ Of the vated man, about power, intellect, and art, is implied by
beast Caliban and his confederates. . . ." Twelve years his final act of renunciation. In the end he abjures the
before, in Milan, he had remained "rapt" in the life of potent art that distinguishes him from ordinary men. As
the mind while an attack was being mounted against him.
if distrusting the uses of power, he vows to bury his staff
He is not about to repeat that mistake. He has learned
• that the urgencies of power take precedence, at least in
and drown his book. The action of The Tempest has the
effect of mitigating the duality that first sets it off. It is
order of time, over visionary pleasures. Yet there is noth-
a comedy in praise neither of nature nor of civilization,
ing in what he says or does to belittle the masque. Like
but of a proper balance between them. 80
Gonzalo, Prospero values utopian visions. But his dream
66 THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Shakespeare's American Fable 67
and order manifest in unconscious nature. If a resolution
4 of the pastoral conflict is conceivable, Shakespeare implies,
I began by saying that there are revealing connections, it is because art itself is a product of nature. In The
beyond the facts about Shakespeare's sources, between The Winte,-'s T ale, a play closely related to The T empest both
Tempest and America. The first connection is genetic. It in spirit and time of composition, he had made his most
links the theme of the play to the contradiction within searching statement of the theme. Perdita and Polixenes
the Elizabethan idea of the New World. Is the virgin land are discussing the relative merit of wild and man·bred
best described as a garden or a hideous wilderness? In fl owers. In Perdita's garden there are no cultivated flowers:
The Tempest, as in the travel reports, we can find appar· ... of that kind
ent confirmation of both images. The island, like Amer- Our rustic garden's barren; and I care not
ica, could be Eden or a hellish desert. As the action To get slips of them.
progresses, the weight of its implication swings like a POLIXENES. Wherefore, gentle maiden,
pendulum between the poles of nature and civilization. Do you neglect them?
The opening movement, when Milan comes to the wilder- PERDITA. For I haYe heard it said
ness, describes the widest arc: a vast distance between the There is an art which in their piedness shares
howling storm, in which art counts for everything, and With great creating Nature.
Gonzalo's primitivist vision of Eden regained, where POLIXENES. Say there be;
nature counts for everything. But as Prospero's power Yet Nature is made better by no mean
But Nature makes that mean; so, over that an
makes itself felt, the arc becomes shorter. His aim is recon-
Which you say adds to Nature, is an art
cil iation, and as he masters the situation, the pendulum That Nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
slows down; we move from storm to calm, from discord A gentler scion to the wildest stock,
toward harmony. In the end we are permitted a glimpse, And make conceive a bark of baser kind
but only a glimpse, of the possibility of man's earthly By bud of nobler race. This is an art
transfiguration. \Vhich does mend Nature, change it rather, but
But what justification are we given for so utopian a The art itself is Nature.
vision? Leaving aside the force of the convention itself
(this is, after all, a comedy), we may ask whether the The context, it is generally conceded, lends Shakespeare's
ending is a tribute to Prospero's art or to the musical support to Polixenes' view of the matter: the artificial is
order, latent in nature, represented by Ariel? The answer but a special. human category of the natural. Mind and
implied by the last act is that neither art nor nature can nature are in essence one. Nature is all. This conviction
be the basis for hope. So far as the play affirms the pastoral underlies the seriousness with which Shakespear e, in The
ideal of harmony, it draws upon Shakespeare's sense of T empest, treats the pastoral ideaJ.l"
an underlying unity that binds consciousness to the energy But what is there about Th e T empest that imparts a
68 THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Shakespeare's American Fable 6g
rare and compelling credibility, even profundity, to what called prophetic. By this I mean that the play, in its over-
for so long had seemed an incredible ideal? No single all d esign, prefigures the design of the classic American
answer will do, but it is clear that certain realities of the fables, and especially the idea of a redemptive journey
age of discovery lend this ancient fantasy its astonishing away from society in the direction of nature. As in Walden,
force and depth. A universal awareness of vast, remote, Moby-Dick, or H uckle berry Finn, the journey begins with
and unspoiled continents had renewed the plausibility of a renunciation. The hero gives up his place in society
the pastoral dream, now projected into the future. Al- and withdraws toward nature. But in Th e Tempest, as
though most earlier versions of pastoral had been set in in the best of American pastoral, the moral significance
never-never lands, and although The Tempest contains of this move is ambiguous. The island, after all, is the
only one allusion to the actual New World, its setting is home of Caliban, who embodies the untrammeled wild-
not wholly fanciful. We begin with a commonplace event ness or cannibalism at the heart of nature. And that fact
of the age: a ship caught in a storm and beached on an also proves to be a comment upon human nature, as
uninhabited island. It is like an Elizabethan news report. Prospera indicates at the end: "Two of these fellows you 1
Beginning with this episode enables Shakespeare to avoid Must know and own," he says, "this thing of darkness
the artificiality, the initial wrenching away from the world I I Acknowledge mine." In The Tempest the island is
of ordinary experience, that we expect of pastoral. To be not an ideal place, any more than the woods are in Walden
sure, we move swiftly from the tempest into a world of or the sea in Moby-Dick or the river in H uckleberry Finn.
dreamlike enchantment, but, nevertheless, we move there And yet, in a world that contains corrupt Milan, the
from an event that has the plausibility of the actual. On island does offer hope. Precisely because it is untainted
this island we encounter no courtiers masquerading as by civilization, man's true home in history, it offers the
shepherds; these are castaways, survivors of a wreck, and chance of a temporary return to first things. H ere, as in
their situation keeps us in mind of the real world beyond. a dream, the superfluities and defenses of everyday life
And though the body of the play is closer in texture to are stripped away, and men regain contact with essentials.
myth than to reality, the action carries us from the actual In the wilderness only essentials count. America, Emerson
to the mythical and back again. Like the verse, with its will say, is a land without history, hence a land "where
vibrant sense of place, the action reflects the poet's aware- man asks questions for which man was made." a2
ne~s of an ~nsp?ile~ terrain - a new world that really What finally enables us to take the idea of a successful
extSts. The 1magmat1ve authority of the fable arises from "return to nature" seriously is its temporariness. It is a
the seriousness and wonder with which Shakespeare is journey into the desert and back again - "a momentary
~ble to depict a highly civilized man testing his powers stay against confusion." On the island Prospera regains
m a green and desolate land. access to sources of vitality and truth. This we must grant
In addition to the genetic connection between The even if we deny that the island, representing external
T empest and America, there is another that can only be nature, provides anything more than a setting for the
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Shakespeare's American Fable 71
renewal that Prospera achieves through an effort of mind And so to Naples and then to Milan. The play fosters
and spirit. What happens during his exile is what may no illusion that a permanent retreat from the city is pos-
happen to us in any of our departures from routine waking sible or desirable. But the temporary exile, or psychic
consciousness. It is what may happen in sleep, especially renewal, may also be understood in political terms. If the
in dreams (the action of The Tempest is a kind of dream), city is corrupt, it is men who have made the journey of
in the act of love, perhaps even in death where the race self-discovery who must be relied upon to restore justice,
renews itself if only in making room for the newborn. It the political counterpart of psychic balance. Thus the
is not necessary to commit the pathetic fallacy in order to symbolic action, as in our American fables, has three
accept the restorative power of this movement, literal or spatial stages. It begins in a corrupt city, passes through
symbolic, away from the city toward nature. The contrast a raw wilderness, and then, finally, leads back toward the
between "city" and "country" in the pastoral design makes city. But the court party is not returning to the same
perfect sense as an analogue of psychic experience. It Milan from which it came. There is now some hope that
implies that we can remain human, which is to say, fully what has been learned on the island can be applied to
integrated beings, only when we follow some such course, I the world. What has been learned, needless to say, is not
back and forth, between our social and natural (animal) the lesson of primitivism. So far as the ending lends cred-
selves. In Milan Prospera's sense of value had become dis- ibility to the pastoral hope, it endorses the way of Prospera,
torted; he had succumbed to the tyranny of his scholarly not that of Gonzalo; the model for political reform is
ambitions. But on the island he rediscovers what it means neither Milan nor the island as they existed in the begin-
to be a father, to have senses and a passional self. What ning; it is a symbolic middle landscape created by media-
is ascribed to "nature" in the design may plausibly be tion between art and nature.
understood as the vitality of unconscious or preconscious But although Shakespeare invests the pastoral hope with
experience. The partnership between these two realms of unexampled charm and power, in the end he refuses to
being is a means as well as an end in Shakespeare's fable. make of it anything more than a hope. It is a vision that
The resolution is accomplished by Prospera working with he checks, in the final scene, by unequivocal reminders of
Ariel. Even as the final unravelling draws near, Prospera human limitations. "There is no pure comedy or tragedy
requires Ariel's help - "some heavenly music" to lead the in Shakespeare," says Boris Pasternak. "His style is be-
court party to the climax. In the closing scene several of tween the two and made up of both; it is thus closer to
the "lost" Europeans find each other and themselves: the true face of life than either, for in life, too, horrors
and delights are mixed." For all the efficacy of Pros-
... in one voyage
Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis, pera's magic, the ending of The Temp est leaves us a long
And Ferdinand, her brother, found a wife way from a brave new world. There, for one thing, is
Where he himself was lost, Prospero his dukedom Caliban, that "thing of darkness" who vows to be even
In a poor isle, and all of us ourselves, wilier in the future. There, too, are those unrepentant
When no man was his own.aa villains, Antonio and Sebastian, who doubtless are more
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN
culture that values discipline, work, performance. He tual gratification with those refinements of civilization
knows perfectly well how dangerous it is for the eyes of ~ased on performance - work - hence a degree of repres-
Europeans to be ravished by the beauties of naked nature: Slon. In other words, he wanted nothing less than the
ideal reconciliation of nature and art which had been
... they depend altogether upon the Liberality of Nature, depicted by writers of pastoral since Virgil's time.
without endeavouring to improve its Gifts, by Art or
Industry. They spunge upon the Blessings of a warm Beverley was groping for the distinction between two
Sun, and a fruitful Soil, and almost grutch the Pains of garden metaphors: a wild, primitive, or pre-lapsarian Eden
in which he thought to have found the Indians and a
gathering in the Bounties of the Earth. I should be . '
cultivated garden embracing values not unlike those rep-
asham'd to publish this slothful Indolence of my Coun-
trymen, but that I hope it will rouse them out of their resented by the classic Virgilian pasture. At times, in the
Lethargy, and excite them to make the most of all those History, he seems on the point of saying as much. And as
happy Advantages which Nature has given them; and if a ~atter of fact the landscape of reconciliation, a mild,
it does this, I am sure they will have the Goodness to agricultural, semi-primitive terrain, was soon to become a
forgive me. commonpla~e in t~e rising Bow of descriptive writing
So ends The History and Present State of Virginia. It abou.t Amenca. Trymg to persuade European friends and
is an ingenuous, vigorous, wonderfully vivid book. The relatives to come over, or promoting various business
rhythm of statement and counterstatement that begins to enterprises, many colonists described the new land as a
emerge toward the end leaves us with a sense of unre· retr~at, a place to r~tire to away from the complexity,
solved conflict. Having begun with Nature's garden as his an~Iety, and oppress10n of European society. A favorite
controlling metaphor, Beverley discovers in mid-career eplth~t was asylum, a word which also might be used to
that he cannot accept what it implies. He does not like descnbe the setting of Virgil's first eclogue or, for that
what has happened to the British in Virginia. He de- matter, Irving's Sleepy Hollow. In I71 o, just five years
nounces them for their soft, slack ways. Yet the apparent ~fte~ Beverley's History was published, an anonymous
source of this evil condition is the lush green land itself, Swtss Gentleman" writing from South Carolina put it
the landscape on which his high hopes had rested at the this way:
outset. Although in the end he repudiates the convention This Country, perhaps, may not abound so much with
with which he began, he is unable to define a new posi- those gay and noisy amusements which generally the
tion. Nevertheless, we can make out the direction in which great and rich affect; but . . . for those who affect Solitude
he was moving. What he wanted, after all, was to reconcile ?ontemplation, Gardening, Groves, Woods, and the lik~
his admiration for the primitive life with what he knew Innocent Delights of plain simple Nature .. .
of the needs of a truly civilized community. He was look-
ing for a conception of life which would combine (to use this is the place! To describe the country in these terms
the language of Freud) the Indians' high level of instinc· was to resolve the root contradictions of Beverley's His-
88 THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN The Garden 8g
tory. It is the resolution implicit in the pastoral ideal. period. Today it is difficult to realize that Europeans have
Eighty years after the appearance of Beverley's book his not always looked upon the landscape as an object of
contribution was acknowledged by the foremost celebrant aesthetic interest and delight. But the fact is that land-
of the pastoral theory of America. 10 scape painting emerged as a distinct genre only during the
Renaissance, and it did not achieve real popularity until
the eighteenth century, when aesthetic interest in natural
2 scenery reached something of a climax. One writer has
By 1785, when Jefferson first printed his Notes on Jlir- sugg~sted, in fact, that the arts of travel, poetry, painting,
ginia, the pastoral idea of America had developed from architecture, and gardening might be regarded as having
the dim, semi-articulate compromise hinted toward the been fused, in this era, into a single art of landscape.
end of Beverley's History into something like an all- Moreover, the problem of judging the relative merits of
embracing ideology. But then, too, the whole tenor of landscapes produced a large body of aesthetic theory; com-
Western thought had changed. During the eighty years plex distinctions were made between beautiful, pictur-
between the two books a whole series of ideas we identify esque, and sublime scenery. Nor was the landscape merely
with the Enlightenment helped to create a climate con- the concern of theoreticians. On both sides of the Atlantic
ducive to Jeffersonian pastoral: I am thinking of the wide- ~adi~s. and .gentlemen traveled great distances to gaze at
spread tendency to invoke Nature as a universal norm; msp.mng vistas. Often they carried Claude glasses, pieces
the continuing dialogue of the political philosophers about of tmted, framed glass with handles named after Claude
the condition of man in a "sta.te of nature"; and the Lorrain, who after his death in 1682 had become the
simultaneous upsurge of radical primitivism (as expressed, most popular landscape painter of the age. When a viewer
for example, in the cult of the Noble Savage) on the one used the Claude glass the landscape was transformed into
hand, an_!_ the doctrines of perfectibilil un<!_progress on a prov~sional work of art, framed and suffused by a golden
the other. A full discussion of the English background tone. hke that of the master's paintings. The significant
wou require a volume in itself. Yet we can get some fact 1s that the glass helped to create a pastoral illusion.
sense of the way the over-all shift in thought and taste N~ painter, with the possible exception of Poussin, has
contributed to the pastoral idea of America by noting tned harder to depict the Virgilian ideal than Claude.
three closely related preoccupations of the age: the land- His favorite subject, as described by Kenneth Clark, was
scape, agriculture, and the general notion of the "middle a vision "of a Golden Age, of grazing flocks, unruffled
state" as the desirable, or at any rate the best attainable, waters and a calm, luminous sky, images of perfect har-
human condition. mony between man and nature, but touched ... with Mo-
zartian wistfulness, as if he knew that this perfection
In the record of Western culture there is nothing to could last no longer than the moment in which it takes
compare with the vogue for landscape that arose in this possession of our minds." Although their themes may not
go THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN The Garden 91
be as explicitly Virgilian as Claude's, a similar mood nature manifestly was vigorous and growing in vigor. • 12
colors the work of many other popular painters of the A major difficulty lay in the very notion of provoking
period. 11 Sicilian Muses to song on the banks of the Thames. Even
Everyone knows that in the eighteenth century English at the time poets and critics had begun to re-examine the
poets also turned their attention as never before to the whole conception of pastoral. By 1709, when Pope started
natural landscape. In the handbooks the work of men publishing, a complicated critical debate on the subject
like Gay, Thomson, Akenside, Young, Gray, Goldsmith, had arisen. The neo-classicists, Pope's party, favored close
Burns, and Cowper is often designated as "pre-romantic imitation of the ancients; their opponents, the rationalists,
nature poetry." But we do not think of this school as wanted to modernize the mode. Starting with the reason-
having anything to do with the pastoral tradition, that able assumption that the constant element in pastoral is
is, with the pastoral poem defined as a distinct formal psychological rather than formal, the rationalists (or mod-
entity. Actually, reams of such poems were being turned erns) argued for the inclusion of native materials. What
out by English poets- in all likelihood more than in any they wanted was an idyllic poem after the manner of
century before or since- but they are largely unread- Theocritus and Virgil, but about English shepherds set in
able: imitative, overstylized, cold, and, in a word, dead. the English landscape. No doubt Spenser's work was the
Without question the sorry reputation of the pastoral as nearest thing to an ideal model. In the vast collection of
the dullest, most artificial of forms stems chiefly from this arid theorizing on the subject, however, there is no recog-
period. Thus Alexander Pope, who began his career in nition of the gulf that was opening between the conven-
this vein: tion and the feelings that people now had in the presence
of nature. Accordingly the pastorals written under the
First in these Fields I try the Sylvan Strains, banner of the moderns are on the whole indistingu ishable
Nor blush to sport on Windsor's blissful Plains:
in tone and spirit from the work of their opponents. Here,
Fair Thames Aow gently from thy sacred Spring,
for example, are a few lines by Ambrose Philips, then
While on thy Banks Sicilian Muses sing;
generally regarded as the leading practitioner of the new
Let Vernal Airs thro' trembling Osiers play,
And Albion's Cliffs resound the Rural Lay. style and Pope's most formidable rival:
HOBBL'IOL. Full fain, 0 blest Eliza! would I praise
Pope, it is said, was only sixteen when he wrote his pas- Thy maiden rule, and Albion's golden days.
torals, but the sad truth is that, dull as they seem, they Then gentle Sidney liv'd, the shepherds' friend:
are more accomplished and engaging than most of their Eternal blessings on his shade attend!
kind written after 1700. Later he called them his most • According to Joseph Spence, at one point Pope considered writinf
labored verses. What is curious, at least at first glance, is "American pastorals." "It might be a very pretty subject for any good
that so brilliant a technician was unable to breathe life genius ... to write American pastorals; or rather pastorals adapted to
several of the ruder nations, as well as the Americans. I once had a
into the pastoral at a time when the impu lse toward thought of writing such and talked it over with Gay... ,"
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN The Garden 9S
LANQUET. Thrice happy shepherds now: for Dorset loves that we get from nature itself. Yet he does not identify
The country Muse, and our delightful groves; the natural with the wild. In fact, he says, "we find the
While Anna reigns. Oh ever may she reign! works of nature still more pleasant, the more they resem-
And bring on earth a Golden Age again.18 ble those of art." It is the mingling of mind with brute
In retrospect it is not difficult to see what was happen· matter that is most affecting. "Hence it is that we take de-
ing. While the debate about the character of pastoral light in a prospect which is well laid out, and diversified
poetry went on and on, generating endless speculation, with fields and meadows; woods and rivers; . . . in any
and while Pope and Philips and others were writing their thing that hath such a variety or regularity as may seem the
stiff, bookish poems, the old form actually was dying. At effect of design. in what we call the works of chance." Ap-
the very same time enthusiasm for the landscape was ris- plying this principle to taste in gardens, Addison rejects
ing on all sides and Addison was laying a theoretical the formal English style, with its geometrically sculptured
groundwork for a new visual literature. In his 1712 trees, in favor of the more "natural" style prevailing in
Spectator papers on the "Pleasures of the Imagination" France and Italy. In those countries, he says, "we see a
he expounds what is in effect an aesthetic corollary to large extent of ground covered over with an agreeable
Locke's system. Arguing that sight is the most perfect of mixture of garden and forest, which represent every where
the senses and the true source of the pleasure we get from an artificial rudeness, much more charming than that neat-
the exercise of the imagination, Addison prepares the way ness and elegancy which we meet with in . . . our own
for the modem (romantic) notion of the imagination as country." 111
a way of knowing. On the spectrum of modes of percep· In effect Addison is building a theoretical bridge be-
tion, with the gross sensual pleasures such as touch at tween the ideal of the old pastoral, the imaginary land-
one pole, and the refinements of the pure intellect (under- scape of reconciliation, and a new attitude toward the
standing) at the other, he locates the imagination in the environment more congenial t.o a scientific and com·
middle position. It mediates between the brutish senses mercial age. Indeed, the "mixture of garden and forest"
and the abstract intelligence. Although he grants to the with its "artificial rudeness" points toward the pastoral
powers of the understanding the highest place, he also image of America. Addison extends the notion of the
notes certain ways in which the imagination is more ef- garden to larger and larger tracts of land until he seems
fective and, by implication, more important: it offers ob- to be talking about the whole rural scene as if it were one
vious, easily acquired pleasures. "It is but opening the vast garden. The formal style of garden which he rejects
eye," he says. "and the scene enters." 14 embodies a purely aristocratic, leisure-class ideal of con-
What kind of scene? What objects are likely to provide spicuous waste. It separates beauty from utility and work.
the greatest pleasure? If Addison had to choose, he would " It might, indeed, be of ill consequence to the pub-
choose works of nature over works of art. No mere art, he lic," he notes, "as well as unprofitable to private per-
says, can provide that sense of "vastness and immensity" sons, to alienate so much ground from pasturage. and
THE MACHINE IN THE GAR.DEN The Garden 95
94
the plow. . . ." Instead, he proposes a garden landscape By Nature's swift and secret-working hand,
that is in fact a farmland: The garden glows, and fills the liberal air
With lavish fragrance; while the promis'd fruit
But why may not a whole estate be thrown into a kind
Lies yet a little embryo, unperceiv'd,
of garden by frequent plantations, that may turn as much
to the profit, as the pleasure of the owner? A marsh over- Within its crimson folds . Now from the town,
Buried in smoke, and sleep, and noisome damps,
grown with willows, or a mountain shaded with oaks, are
Oft let me wander o'er the dewy fields,
not only more beautiful, but more beneficial, than when
Where freshness breathes, and dash the trembling drops
they lie bare and unadorned. Fields of corn make a pleas-
ant prospect, and if the walks were a little taken care of From the bent bush, as through the verdant maze
that lie between them, if the natural embroidery of the Of sweetbriar hedges I pursue my walk;
Or taste the smell of dairy .. .
meadows were helpt and improved by some small addi-
tions of art, and the several rows of hedges set off by trees To our taste the language of "The Seasons" (1730) may
and flowers, that the soil was capable of receiving, a man seem excessively literary, but we can hardly fail to recog-
might make a pretty landscape of his own possessions. 18 nize a new resonance, an awareness of topography actually
Within a few years James Thomson was following Ad- perceived that rarely, if ever, gets into the stock pastorals
dison's lead. Although his work cannot be described as of the age. It seems "something strange," sa id Joseph War-
pastoral in the old, strict meaning of the term, there is a ton in 1756, speaking of Pope, "that in the pastorals of a
more important sense in which it is continuous with the young poet there should not be found a single rural
Virgilian tradition. To Pope, or, for that matter, to image that is new." The crucial difference lies in the par-
Philips, pastoral was a name for a fixed body of poetic ticularity of Thomson's imagery: the town buried in
conventions, and they had presided over its death. But if smoke, the walk through a maze of sweetbriar hedges, the
we take the vital element in pastoral to be the design, the smell of cattle strong enough to taste. Gone are the
ordering of meaning and value around the contrast be- "flowery meads," "verdant vales," "mossy banks," and
tween two styles of life, one identified with a rural and "shady woods" of the standard poetic landscape of the
the other with an urban setting, then the pastoral was age. Although we recognize a stock pastoral contrast here,
by no means dead. On the contrary, Thomson was help- most of Thomson's contemporaries would have denied
ing to save the mode by fashioning a new idiom, a lan- that "The Seasons" was a pastoral poem. Actually, the
guage closer to the actual feelings that men had about poem epitomizes an early stage in the revitalizing of the
nature. Although strongly influenced by Virgil, Thomson pastoral design that would culminate in Wordsworth's
had the wit to dispense with many of the formal devices The Prelude. In these lines Thomson prefigures a charac-
of traditional pastoral and address himself to experience. teristic Wordsworthian topography: a town of "noisome
At once, array'd damps" set against a country landscape. What adds to the
In all the colours of the flu shing year significance the passage holds for us is the fact that young
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN The Garden
g6 97
Thomas Jefferson copied most of it into his commonplace ~ut the conven~ions of the old pastoral provided a totally
book. 11 madequ~te veh1cle for such ideas and emotions. The pas-
toral, sa1d Dr. Joh.nson, is .an "eas~, vulgar, ... disgusting"
In recent years scholars have clarified the relation be- mode; whatever rmages 1t supphed were "long ago ex.
tween the vogue for landscape as an aesthetic object and hausted." Meanwhile, a large audience was being in-
the great scientific revolution that began in the seven- s~cted in the appreciation of the landscape as a great re-
teenth century. In the first place, as knowledge of the ligiOus metaphor, an expositor (in Emerson's fine phrase)
physical universe rapidly increased, a new sort of en- of the divine mind.ts
vironmentalism was encouraged in every department of
thought and expression. The psychology of Locke dem- In the same period the importance of landscape was en-
onstrated how meaning was derived, through sense percep- hanced by a new veneration for certain of its sociological
tion, from the surroundirtg world of objects. Yet the scene or economic meanings. There was nothing new, to be
"out there" no longer was conceived as it had been in sure, abou~ the expression of agrarian pieties. In England.
Shakespeare's time. Telescopes and microscopes were un- much earher, ~he ge?eral ~enaissance of classical learning
covering a vast, orderly cosmos behind the visible mask of had helped to mtenstfy nattve respect for agriculture. Any
nature. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that a new mode n~mber of Greek ~nd Latin authors besides Virgil pro-
of feeling, a heightened responsiveness to the environment vided models of pratse for husbandry: Hesiod, Xenophon
now developed. In a sense the change in aesthetic attitudes Cato, Cicero, Varro, and Horace among them. Then, too:
toward nature was as revolutionary as the change in the glamorous prospect of settling new lands, remote from
science. For now a well-composed landscape, whether de· centers of civilization, added to the appeal of rural as
picted in words or paint, might arouse some of the feelings against urban life. The stock literary contrast between the
that men had when they contemplated the grand design happiness and innocence of a bucolic golden age and the
of the Newtonian universe. corrupt, self-seeking, and disorderly life of the city (or
Although scientific knowledge seemed to drain certain court) had been a ruling motif of Elizabethan literature.
traditional religious myths of their cogency and power, Often i~ was invoked with high seriousness, as an apparent
so that it no longer was quite possible to read Genesis as affinnat10n of a pastoral ethic that Sidney had compressed
it once had been read, the same knowledge enabled artists into a tidy couplet:
to invest the natural world with fresh mythopoeic value. Greater was that shepheards treasure,
The movements of the heavenly bodies, space (an awe- Then this false, fine, Courtly pleasure.
some, unimaginable infinity of space), and the landscape
itself all were to become repositories of emotions formerly Although we generally assume that this simple moral
reserved for a majestic God. It was not enough to call scheme is offered ironically, many readers then and now
this newly discovered world beautiful; it waS sublime. have taken it straight. According to Hallett Smith, for ex-
' J, , -.
g8 THE MACHIN E IN THE CARDEN Th e Garden
99
ample, most Elizabethan writers of pastoral were seriously ;oked by a recognition, however inchoate, of the impend-
committed to the whole system of value which turns on mg threat to the supremacy of rural values. The early
the " rejection of the aspiring mind." Whether they were encroachment of what we would call industrialization be-
or not, the fact remains that they provided a paradigm comes obvious, for instance, in Oliver Goldsmith's popu-
for the agrarian celebration. By substituting the husband- l~r poem, "The Deserted Village." Published about the
man for the shepherd in Smith's account of the pastoral t1me the craze reached its peak, in 1770, the poem is a
ethic, it was easy to transform the farmer into a cult fig- lament for the charms of rural life which the Enclosure
ure. Instead of striving for wealth, status, and power, he Acts apparently were destroying. The whole situation is
may be said to live a good life in a rural retreat; he rests rem~rka~ly like that of Virgil's first eclogue. H ere again
content with a few simple possessions, enjoys freedom the tdylhc . moo~ i~ intensified by the hostile policies of
from envying others, feels little or no anxiety about the state; hke VIrgil, Goldsmith dwells upon the eviction
his property, and, above all, he does what he likes to of the "laboring swain" from "lovely bowers of innocence
do.l& and ease. " Part of the effect is achieved by glossing over
To this traditional literary motif the eighteenth cen- the distinction between the countryman who actually does
tury added a new set of theoretical arguments. Political the work and ~e gentleman (or poet) who enjoys rural
econom ists and agricultural reformers now dwelled as e.ase. But the . pomt, after all, is to idealize a rural way of
never before upon the primacy of agriculture in creating hfe. By ha~mg the swain, like a traditional literary
the wealth of nations. While the physiocrats, extremists of shepherd, enJOY both the ease of the rich and the simple
the movement, insisted that husbandry was the only true ~onesty of the poor, Goldsmith is able to suggest (as Wil-
source of economic value, most of the experts, including ham Empson has put it) a " beautiful relation" between
the incomparable Adam Smith, agreed that agriculture the two classes. What is important about the rural world
was the primary and indispensable foundation of national ~n any event, is not merely the agricultural economy bu~
prosperity. All of these ideas contributed to the steadily 1ts all.eg~d moral, aesthetic, and, in a sense, metaphysical
rising prestige of farmers and farming, often reaching the supenonty to the urban, commercial forces that threaten
public by way of agricultural reformers and popularizers it. Both the tone and the thematic design of "The Deserted
such as Arthur Young. V~ll~ge·~ will reappear in American responses to indus-
But there also was a curious strain of extravagance run- tnahzatwn. As a matter of fact, Goldsmith foresees the
ning through the cult, a seemingly neurotic tendency that migration of the rural muse:
these rational theories cannot explain. After the middle
of the century, among the upper classes, the taste for the Ev'n now, methinks, as pond'ring here I stand,
I see the rural virtues leave the land.
bucolic rose to an extraordinary pitch of faddish excite-
ment. A passion for gardening and playing farmer cropped Down where yon anch'ring vessel spreads the sail ...
up in r emote villages of England as well as at the court The vessel, needless to say, is bound for America and
of Louis XVI. Some of the fever seems to have been pro- when it sails "sweet Poetry" (that "charming nydtph")
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN
The Garden 101
100
will be aboard. In the New World Englishmen will have It is a moral position perfectly represented by the image
another chance to realize the village ideal, a social order of a rural order, neither wild nor urban, as the setting of
represented neither by the hideous wilderness: man's best hope.21
Although it stems from classical antiquity, the "middle
Those pois'nous fields with rank. luxuriance crown'd, state" theory enjoyed its greatest diffusion and acceptance
Where the dark scorpion gathers death around; during the eighteenth century. One thing that made it
Where at each step the stranger fears to wake
so popular was the need to reconcile increasingly strong
The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake;
claims by extremists at either pole of the debate about the
nor by the European city where the swain fiees only nature of man. The two schools may be called progressivist
To see profusion that he must not share; and primitivist. At the same time that electrifying ad-
To see ten thousand baneful arts combin'd vances in learning and the arts seemed to sanction a be-
To pamper luxury, and thin mankind . . .20 lief, or at least a new degree of confidence, in the per-
fectibility of civilized man, books like Beverley's History
were supplying Europe with apparent testimony in favor
A belief in the superiority of rural life was a sociological of primitive life. In effect, they called into question the
corollary, for Goldsmith's generation, to the widely ac- whole value of civilization. After all, the Virginia Indian
cepted ethical doctrine that the "middle state" was the did seem happier and better-natured than the average
best of all possible human conditions. According to this Londoner. In many ways the stock figure of the Noble
venerable idea, man is the creature who occupies the mid- Savage, which now became immensely popular, resembles
dle link in the "great chain of being," the point of transi- the good shepherd of the old pastorals. At least they share
tion between the lower and higher, animal and intellectual certain negative virtues: neither displays the undignified
forms of being. A grand, compelling metaphor, it figures restlessness, ambition, or distrust so common in advanced
a moral scheme which Arthur Lovejoy calls the "ethic of societies; neither, above all, is consumed by a yearning for
the middle link." Men, in this view, must accept an un- approval and praise.22
satisfactory but nonetheless unavoidable compromise be- Yet, as we have seen in the case of Beverley, it was not
tween their animal nature and their rational ideals. easy for intelligent men to maintain a primitivist posi-
Whether we like it or not, the theory goes, we will always tion. In his H istory Beverley anticipates (in a crude and
find ourselves mediating between these contraries, and so half-articulate fashion , to be sure) the dialectic that was
we had best learn to live in the uncomfortable middle. • to be worked out again and again during the next few
• It is worth noting that the unavoidable relativism implicit in this generations. On a higher plane of sophistication, Jean-
"middle state ethic" probably contributes to the pragmatic bent of Amer· Jacques Rousseau was drawn to the spontaneity and free-
lean thought in Lhe nineteenth century. By definition this it a scheme dom he associated with primitive life; but he too had to
that admits of no absolute solutions. and looks to an endless series of
od hoc decisions, compromises, and adjustments in resolving problema.
face the undeniable fact that "natural man" was, by Eu-
lOll THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN The Garden IO!J
ropean standards, amoral, uncreative, and mindless. Un- and low ideas of actual peasants . . . and if . . . he
able finally to endorse either the savage or the civilized makes his Shepherds discourse as if they were courtiers
model, Rousseau was compelled to endorse the view that and scholars, he then retains the name only, but wants
mankind must depart from the state of nature- but not the spirit of Pastoral Poetry.
too far. • He came to believe, as Lovejoy says, that " 'per· He must, therefore, keep in the middle station be-
tween these. He must form to himself the idea of a rural
fectibility' up to a certain point was desirable, though be·
state, such as in certain periods of Society may have
yond that point an evil." 2 3 actually taken place, where there was ease, equality, and
The desirability of a similar reconciliation between the innocence; where Shepherds were gay and agreeable,
animal and rational, natural and civilized, conditions of without being learned or refined; and plain and artless,
man always had been implied by the pastoral ideal. In his without being gross and wretched. The great charm of
influential lectures on rhetoric (published in 178g), Hugh Pastoral Poetry arises from the view which it exhibits of
Blair, the Scottish divine, made the connection between the tranquillity and happiness of a rural life. This pleas-
pastoral and the "middle state" theory explicit. Discuss- ing illusion, therefore, the Poet must carefully maintain.
ing the nature of pastoral, Blair follows the line taken by Although Blair is talking about the best setting for a
Pope in his "Discourse on Pastoral Poetry" (written in pastoral poem, not about social actualities, he does leave
1704), distinguishing between the two ways of depicting the way open for readers who tpight be tempted to con-
bucolic life. One might be called realistic: shepherd life fuse the two. At certain times, he says, such ideal societies
described as it actually is, which is to say, "mean, servile, of the "middle landscape" actually may have existed. And
and laborious." The second way is to impute the polished if they existed once, why not again? The conjecture is
taste and cultivated manners of high civilization to the worth mentioning because of the great prestige that
swain. But if the first is repellent, the ideas of real Blair's work was to enjoy in America. "I shall take care
shepherds being what they are ("gross and low"), the sec- to get Blair's lectures for you as soon as published," wrote
ond is implausibly idealistic; hence Blair rejects them Thomas Jefferson to James Madison in 1784. The Lec-
both. tures were used as a textbook in American colleges down
to the middle of the next century."
Either of these extremes is a rock upon which the Poet
Attractive as it was, the idea of a society of the middle
will split, if he approach too near it. We shall be dis-
landscape was becoming less easy to believe in during the
gusted if he give us too much of the servile employments
178o's. In England the process of "improvement," or what
• Curiously enough, Rousseau thought that mankind had passed through we should call economic development, already seemed to
the ideal state during the pastoral phase of cultural evolution, by which
he meant a paatoral situation in a literal, anthropological sense: a IOCiety
have gone too far. By then the enclosures were destroying
of herdsmen. the vestiges of the old, rural culture, and the countryside
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN The Garden 105
104
was cluttered with semi-industrial cities and dark, satanic The happiest state of man is the middle state between
mills. At this juncture the next thought was obvious and the savage and the refined, or between the wild and the
luxurious state. Such is the state of society in CoN·
irresistible. For three centuries Englishmen had been in NECTICUT , and some others of the American provinces;
the habit of projecting their dreams upon the unspoiled where the inhabitants consist, if I am rightly informed,
terrain of the New World. Long before the 178o's George of an independent and hardy YEOMANRY, all nearly
Herbert had got the prevailing attitude into a couplet: on a level - trained to arms . . . clothed in home-
Religion stands on tip-toe in our land, spun - of simple manners- strangers to luxury- draw-
Ready to passe to the American strand. ing plenty from the ground- and that plenty, gathered
easily by the hand of industry; and giving rise to early
Andrew Marvell, who probably was indebted to Captain marriages, a numerous progeny, length of days, and a
John Smith's account in The Generall Historie of Virginia, rapid increase- the rich and the poor, the haughty
put it this way in his "Bermudas": grandee and the creeping sycophant, equally unknown-
protected by laws, which (being their own will) cannot
What should we do but sing his Praise oppress ... 0 distinguished people! May you continue
That led us through the watry Maze, long thus happy; and may the happiness you enjoy spread
Unto an Isle so long unknown,
over the face of the whole earth. . . .
And yet far kinder than our own?
During the winter of 1785, when he received his copy of
He lands us on a grassy Stage; Price's Observations on the . .. A merican R evolution con-
Safe from the Storms, and Prelat's rage. taining this apostrophe, Jefferson was getting the manu-
He gave us this eternal Spring, script of Notes on Virginia ready for a Paris printer. "I
Which here enamells every thing; have read it with . .. pleasure," he wrote to Price, "as have
And sends the Fowl's to us in care, done many others to whom I have communicated it. The
On daily Visits through the Air.
spirit which it breathes is as affectionate as the observa-
He hangs in shades the Orange bright,
tions . . . are wise and just." Needless to say, there is no
Like golden Lamps in a green Night.
question here of J efferson 's having been influenced by
In America it still was not too late (or so one might Price's version of the pastoral ideal; by this time it was
imagine) to establish a home for rural virtue. In the pe- in the air on both sides of the Atlantic. 24
riod of the Revolution, accordingly, the pastoral idea of In 1785, for example, a pamphlet entitled The Golden
America caught on everywhere in England. To take one Age was published. Although it does not reveal either the
of many examples, here is Richard Price, the outspoken author or the place of publication, the title page itself is
Unitarian minister, friend of Franklin and Jefferson, and a nice exhibit of the affinities between America and the
a leading British champion of the American cause: pastoral ideal:
106 THE MACHINE IN THE CAilDEN The Garden
angel appears and all "nature seemed to smile at his ap·
THE
proach." Describing himself as America's "guardian," the
GOLDEN AGE: angel announces that he has come to dissolve Celadon's
OR, doubts about the future. The rest of the pamphlet con-
Future Glory of North-America sists of a dialogue between Celadon and his celestial con-
Discovered fidant, who provides a graphic description of the Ameri-
By An Angel to Celadon, can millennium. At the climax the angel takes Celadon
in in his arms and carries him to a high mountain in the
Several Entertaining Visions. center of the land. From the great summit the entire con·
VISION I. tinent is visible. To the east he sees "spacious cities . . .
--Ferrea thriving towns . . . a thick conjunction of farms, planta-
Definet, ac toto surget gens Mundo tions, gardens . . . laden with every kind of fruit!"; it
Virgil Eclog IV. is a countryside "charmingly diversified . .. plentifully
Thus Englished, watered" and filled with "elegant buildings adapted to all
The iron past, a golden Age shall rise, the purposes of life." Then the angel orders Celadon to
And make the whole World happy, free, and wise. turn his face westward, and he is "equally surprised at the
BY CELADON wide extended landscape. This western part of America,"
he says, "is as yet but an uncultivated desart; the haunt of
Printed in Lhe Year. M, DCC, LXXXV. savages; and range of wild beasts.- But the soil in gen-
eral is much richer than that of the eastern division . . .."
Into this great land the "poor, the oppressed, and the
The sixteen-page pamphlet begins with a description of persecuted will fly .. . as doves to their windows." The
Celadon, a "man strictly honest, and a real lover of the pamphlet ends with a vision of "a beauteous world rising
country," who lives in "one of the American States." He out of a dreary wilderness," unlimited progress (England's
had fought gloriously against England during the war and decline having begun with the American Revolution), the
now he is "anxious to know the future condition of his taming of the Indians, the conversion of the Jews, and
people." One day, while musing on this subject, he is at the American way spreading over the face of the earth.
last blessed with an agreeable vision. At this point, the Although more extravagant than most versions, The
writer shifts to the first person, Celadon describing his ex- Golden Age is in essence another statement of the pas·
perience in his own words. 28 toral idea of America.
On a summer evening Celadon is tired, and he walks
out and sits on the bank of a stream where he is "delighted Two years earlier the same idea had provided the con-
with the music of the groves." With murmuring waters trolling theme of a full-scale, on-the-spot interpretation of
below and sighing winds above he falls into a trance. An American experience. In his popular Letters from an
108 THE MACHINE IN THE CARD.J::N Th e Garden '09
American Farmer, J. Hector St. John de Crevecreur (an- between your sphere of life and mine, a new fit of aston·
other of Jefferson's correspondents) weaves all of the ishment seized us all I" 27
thematic strands just discussed into a delightful, evocative, Anyone who knows American writing, incidentally, will
though finally simple-minded, book. It projects the old be reminded of all the later fictional narrators who begin
pastoral ideal, now translated into a wholly new vocabu- in the same way, impulsively dissociating themselves from
lary, on to the American scene. At the outset Crevecreur the world of sophistication, Europe, ideas, learning, in a
sets up a typical pastoral situation. Writing as a "humble word, the world, and speaking in accents of rural ig-
American Planter, a simple cultivator of the earth," he norance. "I was young and ignorant," says Mark Twain's
deferentially addresses a learned Englishman who has in- narrator at the beginning of Roughing It, compressing
vited the rustic American to become his correspondent. the gist of innumerable American literary beginnings.
H ere the writer is no mere observer or dreamer; he is But Crevecreur, alas, makes no use of the potentially com-
the American husbandman- a fact which underscores plex framework he establishes at the outset. Although he
the literalness of the pastoral ideal in a New World set- might have provided a counterpoise to the farmer's in-
ting. "Who would have thought," the first letter begins, nocence, the Englishman virtually drops out of sight, and
"that because I received you with hospitality and kind- Crevecreur loses control of the initial contrast between the
ness, you should imagine me capable of writing with farmer and his learned friend. The Letters exhibit one of
propriety and perspicuity?" Incredulity is the dominant the great hazards awaiting American writers who attempt
note of the opening pages. At first, says the epistolary to work in this convention. To put it much too simply
narrator, he was overwhelmed by the invitation: is it pos- for the moment, the trouble is that under the singularly
sible, he had asked, that a man who has lived in that "big beneficent circumstances of native experience, the barrier
house called Cambridge" where "worldly learning is so between art and reality is likely to break down. Crevecreur,
abundant," actually wants to receive letters from a plain as one critic notes, "lived a kind of pastoral poetry." Hav-
farmer? The problem had troubled him. He had con- ing adopted the point of view of the self-derogating, un-
sulted his wife and his minister. She laughed at him, said educated American swain, he seems to forget that it is a
the "great European man" obviously was not in earnest; literary device. (Actually, his family belonged to the lesser
on the other hand, the minister reassured h im, arguing nobility of France, and he had been educated in a Jesuit
that he need only write in his everyday, spoken language. school.) After the sophisticated Englishman drops out of
If the letters be not "elegant," he said, at least they "will sight the farmer's simple definition of reality is allowed
smell of the woods, and be a little wild." Besides, might to govern the entire work.2s
the American rustic not "improve" the sophisticated Eng· To account for the peculiarly "modern, peaceful and
Iishman by acquainting him with the "causes which render benign" qualities of his rural life, the farmer introduces
so many people happy?" At last the farmer was persuaded; all of the familiar environmentalist assumptions of the
but even then, he exclaims, "on recollecting the difference age. He believes that men everywhere are like plants, de-
I 10 THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN The Garden ,,,
riving their "flavor" from the soil in which they grow. In "spirit of place" really can account for the singular VOice
America, with its paucity of established institutions, how- we hear in American books. In the Letters, as elsewhere
ever, the relation between mankind and the physical en- in our literature, the voice we hear is that of a man who
vironment is more than usually decisive. Geography has discovered the possibility of changing his life. Land.
pushes men into farming, which is of course the noblest scape means regeneration to the farmer. In sociological
vocation. But the land is significant not only for the ma- terms, it means the chance for a simple man, who does
terial and political benefits it confers; at bottom it deter- actual work, to labor on his own property in his own be-
mines everything about the new kind of man being half. It gives him a hope for the leisure and economic
formed in the New World. "What should we American sufficiency formerly- which is to say, in Europe- re-
farmers be," he asks, "without the distinct possession of served for another class. It therefore represents the pos-
that soil? It feeds, it clothes us, from it we draw even a sibility of a secular, egalitarian, naturalistic "resurrection"
great exuberancy...." 29 (as Crevecceur calls it at one point), the religious content
The delightfully graphic notion of man drawing ex- of which is now deeply embedded in a new pastoral idiom.
uberancy from the soil exhibits Crevecceur's imagination "These images I must confess," says the farmer of rural
at its best; back of it lies his absolute confidence in the scenes, "I always behold with pleasure, and extend them
power of imagery. Skeptical of abstract ideas, he is a kind as far as my imagination can reach: for this is what may
of homespun Lockian who thinks of the land, or rather be called the true and the only philosophy of an Ameri-
the landscape, as an object that penetrates the mind, filling can farmer." 30
it with irresistible pictures of human possibilities. To The farmer's imagination, as it turns out, has a long
paraphrase Addison, he has but to open his eyes and the reach. With his pleasant farm at the center, he expands
American ethos enters. Just to see this virgin terrain is to the topographical image endlessly, until it achieves mythic
absorb the rudiments of a new consciousness, the Ameri- magnitude. Eastward it reaches to Europe, encompassing
can "philosophy," as he calls it. Without the sense of the l'ancien regime, an oppressive social order of "great lords
landscape as a cardinal metaphor of value, the Letters who possess everything, and of a herd of people who
could not have been vrritten. Indeed, for the farmer it is have nothing." Westward he extends it to the dark forest
the metaphoric even more than the physical properties of frontier where something "very singular" happens to
land which regenerate tired Europeans by filling them to Europeans. Their lives being "regulated by the wildness
overflowing with exuberancy. We are reminded of Robert of the neighbourhood," they become "ferocious, gloomy
Beverley's exuberant style, not to mention Melville's and and unsociable." As he describes the frontiersmen, they
Whitman's- Whitman, whose hero will move from the are "no better than carnivorous animals of a superior
contemplation of a single spear of grass to his barbaric rank, living on the flesh of wild animals"- native Ameri-
yawp. It is not surprising that Crevecceur was one of the can Calibans. Like the Europeans rebuked by Beverley,
writers who convinced D. H. Lawrence that only the they show what happens to those who trust too much in
TH£ MACHIN£ IN TH£ CARDEN The Garden 113
I 12
the "natural fecundity of the earth, and therefore do lit- olutionary war has begun, and he writes in a mood of
tle." Like lazy Virginians, they do not work, do not great agitation. Exposed to imminent Indian attack, des-
improve the natural environment. But now, when the perately anxious for the safety of his family, torn between
typical immigrant arrives in America, he no longer be- loyalty to the homeland and to his neighbors, depressed
holds the raw wilderness. On the contrary, he sees "fair about the need to abandon his farm with all its improve-
cities, substantial villages, extensive fields, an immense ments, he reluctantly has decided to move further west
country filled with decent houses, good roads, orchards, to a peaceful Indian village. But the decision is a painful
meadows, and bridges, where an hundred years ago all was one. Perhaps, he says, "I may never revisit those fields
wild, woody, and uncultivated!" This ideal landscape ob- which I have cleared, those trees which I have planted,
viously has little in common with the "plantation" those meadows which, in my youth, were a hideous wilder-
dream of Shakespeare's Gonzalo or the Edenic Virginia ness, now converted by my industry into rich pastures and
of Beverley's History. The point needs to be made be- pleasant lawns." After weighing the relative advantages
cause Crevecreur, like many another American writer, of moving east and moving west, he chooses west. Like
often is mistaken (in Lawrence's derisive phrase) for a many exponents of the pastoral theory of America, he
"litterateur-Child-of-Nature-sweet-and-pure." But he is veers toward the primitive. But even as he makes his
nothing of the sort. He does not believe, as Lawrence choice, he reaffirms the ideal of the middle landscape:
says he does, that Nature is sweet and pure. He admires
I will revert into a state approaching nearer to that of
improved nature, a landscape that is a made thing, a nature, unencumbered either with voluminous laws, or
fusion of work and spontaneous process. "This formerly contradictory codes, often galling the very necks of those
rude soil," he explains, "has been converted by my father whom they protect; and at the same time sufficiently
into a pleasant farm, and in return it has established aU remote from the brutality of unconnected savage nature.
our rights." 3 1 Do you, my friend, perceive the path I have found out?
Taken as a whole, the moral geography of the Letters it is that which leads to . .. the ... village of - - -,
forms a neat spatial pattern, a compelling triptych that where, far removed from the accursed neighbourhood of
figures an implied judgment upon all the conditions of Europeans, its inhabitants live with more ease, decency,
man which may be thought to exist between the savagery and peace, than you imagine: where, though governed
of the frontier on one side and the court of Versailles on by no laws, yet find, in uncontaminated simple manners
the other. It is in this sense a potentially mythic idea, an all that laws can afford. Their system is sufficiently com-
plete to answer all the primary wants of man, and to
all-encompassing vision that converts the ethic of the mid-
constitute him a social being, such as he ought to be in
dle link into "the true and the only" philosophy for the great forest of nature.
Americans. No one possibly could miss the main point;
nevertheless, the farmer dramatizes it in the final letter, In the Letters from an American Farmer there is no
called "Distresses of a Frontier Man." By now the rev- mention of Arcad ia, no good shepherd, no stock of poeti-
I 14 THE MACI-IINE IN THE C ARDEN The Garde11 115
cisms derived from Virgil, no trite antithesis of country improvements of all sorts with the bucolic ideal ? What
and town, no abstract discord between Nature and Art. did he think would happen when the new society ap-
And yet all of these traditional features of the pastoral proached that delicate point of equilibrium beyond which
mode are present in new forms supplied by American ex- further change, which is to say, further departure from
perience. Instead of Arcadia, we have the wild yet poten- "nature," would be dangerous?
tially bucolic terrain of the North American continent; Part of the answer lies in the way he conceived of
instead of the shepherd, the independent, democratic hus- America's immediate situation. H ere, as he saw it, was a
bandman with his plausible "rural scheme"; instead of the fringe of settlements on the edge of an immense, undevel-
language of a decadent pastoral poetry, the exuberant oped, and largely unexplored continent. At the time nine
idiom, verging toward the colloquial, of the farmer; and out of ten Americans were farmers living in a virtually
instead of generalized allusions to the contrast between classless society, and all of the best informed statesmen
country and town, Crevecreur begins to explore the dif- and political economists agreed that agriculture would r e-
ference between American and European cultures, a com· main the dominant enterprise of the young nation for cen-
plex variation of the grand Nature-Art antithesis which turies to come. T o be sure, in retrospect we can see that
informs all pastoral literature. As for the dream of r econ- industrialization already had begun in England, but no
ciliation, it is now reinforced by the agrarian philosophy one at the time conceived of the process even remotely as
and the "middle state" theory of the age, and it thereby we do. (It would be roughly fifty years before the word
takes on a credibility it never before had possessed. "industrialism" came into use.) Thus when Crevecreur's
Today, looking back across the great gulf created by in· farmer makes one of the unavoidable inventor ies of feudal
dustrial ism, we can easily see what was wrong with the institutions missing in the new world - "no aristocratical
pastoral theory of America. We say that it embodied a families, no courts, no kings, no bishops" and so on - he
na'ive and ultimately static view of history, and so it did. includes "no great manufacturers employing thousands."
But to project this judgment into the past is to miss the This sentence could only have been written on the other
compelling power of the ideal in its eighteenth-century side of the gulf created by industrialization . Obviously
context. That is why we so often mistake it for a primi- Crevecreur is unaware of any necessary relation between
tivist fantasy. From our perspective they may look equally large-scale manufacturing and changing social institutions;
regressive, but the distinction betlveen them was once a the connections between technology, economic develop-
vital element in the American consciousness, and to ignore ment, and the thrust of deprived people for a higher liv-
it is to blur our sense of the past. Crevecreur was no primi- ing standard, which we take for gran ted, did not exist for
tivist; he had no ill usions about the condition of man in a him ; as he thinks about America's future, it involves noth-
state of nature, nor did he repudiate change or econom ic ing of that irreversible and accelerating process of change
development. But how, then, we may well ask, did he now regarded as the very powerhouse of history. As a re-
reconcile his admiration for roads, bridges, fa ir cities and sult, he is able to imagine a society which will embrace
JJ6 THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN The Garde7l
both the pastoral ideal and the full application of the scheme. And yet, essentially the same impulse was at work
arts, of power. His farmer is enlisted in a campaign beneath the surface; it manifested itself in the static, anti-
to dominate the environment by every possible means. historical quality of the whole conception, and by 1785
"Sometimes," he says, "I delight in inventing and execut- Jefferson said as much. Even as he endorsed the same goals
ing machines, which simplify my wife's labour." If there he recognized the problems Crevecreur had glossed over.
is a time ahead when the natural bent of Americans for How could a rural America possibly hold off the forces
improvement will have to be curbed, it is too remote to already transforming the economy of Europe? What poli-
think about. "Here," says the farmer, " . . . human in- cies would a government have to adopt to preserve a sim-
dustry has acquired a boundless field to exert itself in- a ple society of the middle landscape? Even if they were
field which will not be fully cultivated in many ages!" a:: adopted, what chance of success would they have when,
But the unimproved landscape is only part of the an- minor distinctions aside, the same sort of men who were
swer. Granted that native conditions lent a remarkable coming to power in England already were busy in
degree of credibility to his idea of America's future, there America?
is a more important reason for Crevecreur's failure to rec- To appreciate the quality of Jefferson's answers it is
ognize the obvious dilemma of pastoral politics. Indeed, first necessary to be clear about his own preferences. If he
his desire to avoid such problems is precisely what made had been a mere practical politician, a man never tempted
the rural scheme so attractive in the first place. Through- by utopian impulses, his criticism of the goals endorsed
out the Letters the farmer describes America as the "great by Crevecreur would not be of much interest. But Jef-
asylum," a "refuge" from Europe, from power struggles, ferson was an ardent exponent of much the same theory;
politics, or, in our sense of the word, from history itself. he argued for it with a poetic intensity rare in the writ-
In spite of all the deceptive local details, it is still possible ings of American statesmen. A man of immeasurably
to identify the main features of the idyllic Virgilian land- larger mind than Crevecreur, Jefferson also located the
scape in this idealized picture of America. It is a place weak spot- the place where the theory and the facts
apart, secluded from the world- a peace~ul, lovely, class- were likely to come apart. This did not cause him to
less, bountiful pasture. repudiate either; rather he kept his hold upon both, using
the facts of power to check a proclivity toward wishful
thinking, and avoiding the shallows of simple pragmatism
3 by an insistence upon the need for theory- for long-
With the appearance of Crevecreur's Lellers in 1782 the range ideals. In fact, the "doubleness" of Jefferson's ap-
assimilation of the ancient European fantasy to conditions proach toward the pastoral ideal is akin to the basic design
in the N~w World was virtually complete. None of the of the literary mode. Not being an artist, however, he
obvious devices of the old pastoral could be detected in never had to get all of his feelings down in a single place.
the farmer's plausible argument for an American rural As a result, we have to piece together his "version of pas-
11
The Garden 9
118 THE '!\lACHINE IN THE GARDEN
which the book is divided, the first se\·en are devoted to
toral," a way of ordering values which carries us far be- the natural environment:
yond Crevecceur's unqualified affirmation- beyond it in
the direction of the complex attitudes at work in the Query I Boundaries of Virginia
writings of, say, Henry Thoreau and Robert Frost. Query II Rivers
Still, Jefferson's initial commitment is unambiguous. Query III Sea-Ports
Nowhere in our literature is there a more appealing, vivid, Query IV Mountains
or thorough statement of the case for the pastoral ideal Query V Cascades
Query VI Productions Mineral, Vegetable and Animal
than in Noles on Virginia. Although it is his only original,
Query VII Climate
full-length work, it has never been widely read. One need
only turn the pages to see the reason: at first glance it In choosing to begin the Notes in this fashion, Jeffers~n
looks like a cross between a geography textbook and a almost certainly had no complicated literary t~eory m
statistical abstract. Written in answer to a series of ques- mind. Marbois had sent him twenty-two quest10ns. ~e
tions from Fran~ois Marbois, a French diplomat, the simply rearranged them in a logical order, expand~ng
book has a dense, dry, fact-laden surface. This should not their number to twenty-three, and now he was answen~g
be allowed to obscure its enduring qualities: it is in its way them one by one. Nevertheless, the sequ~nce embod1es
a minor classic, rising effortlessly from topographical fact the "Lockian" presuppositions, already d1scussed, about
to social analysis and utopian speculation. In 1780, when the relations between nature, man, and society. Be~ause
Jefferson began writing, the Revolution was not yet over they are part of the book's structure, moreover, t.hes~ tdeas
and the ultimate goals of the new Republic were very do some of their most effective literary work •_nduectl~.
much on his mind. Hence, he not only describes the way Thus the wealth and specificity of the geograph1cal deta1l
things are in Virginia, but he allows himself to reflect in the first part of the book cond~tions ou_r response .to
upon the way they might be. what comes later, much as the whahng lore m M oby-Dtck
Here aga in in Notes on Virginia the land - geography affects our feelings about the metaphysical quest. Before
- has a decisive function. Nothing could be more remote we get to Query XIX, with its passionate defense of a
from the never-never land of the old pastoral than the rural society, the image of the rich, rugged, but largely
setting ] efferson establishes at the outset. This is the open- undeveloped, terrain of Virginia has been firmly embedded
ing sentence of the book: in our minds. It helps to make credible, as no abstract
Virginia is bounded on the East by the Atlantic: on argument could, Jefferson's feeling for the singular plas-
the North by a line of latitude, crossing the Eastern ticity of the American situation.
Shore through Watkins Point, being about 37°. 57'. The book contains repeated movements from fact to
North la titude; from thence ... feeling. Thus the fissure beneath the Natural Bri~ge is
Nor is this matter-of-fact tone confined to the first few sen- first described in mathematical terms, "45 feet w1de at
tences or even pages. Of the twenty-three "queries" into
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN The Garden 121
120
the bottom, and go feet at the top. . . . Its breadth dians.) Jefferson is not endorsing the Indian style of life
in the middle, is about 6o feet, but more at the ends here. What appears as a preference for the primitive ac-
. . ." and so on. And then, with hardly a break: "It is tually is a rhetorical device: were it made a question, he
impossibl e for the emotions, arising from the sublime, to says, he would prefer the Indian way, the whole point
be felt beyond what they are here: so beautiful an arch, being that in the New World such questions need not
so elevated, so light, and springing, as it were, up to hea- arise.M
ven, the rapture of the Spectator is really indiscribablel" Jefferson's syntax, in other words, is aimed at a pastoral,
The treatment of landscape in the Notes recalls a phrase not a primitivist, affinnation. (Depicting the people as
from J ohn Locke's second treatise on government, a book sheep is a stock device of pastoral poetry.) We might call
which influenced J efferson as much as any other single it the "syntax of the middle landscape," a conditional
work: "in the beginning," said Locke, "all the world was statement which has the effect of stressing a range of social
America. . .." A great hope makes itself felt almost possibilities unavailable to Europeans. J efferson remained
wordlessly in the texture of Notes on Virginia. The fond of this sentence structure all his life. As late as 1812,
topographical details, like the opening scenes of The for instance, he is still telling J ohn Adams (speaking of
Tempest, establish a firm naturalistic base for utopian the depravity of France and England) that ''if science
revery. 33 produces no better fruits than tyranny, murder, rapine
Like Shakespeare's Gonzalo, moreover, Jefferson at and destitution of national morality, I would rather wish
times seems to be carried away by the promise of a fresh our country to be ignorant, honest and estimable as our
start. Were it made a question, he says at one point, neighboring savages are." Adams, incidentally, missed or
speaking of the rarity of crime among the Indians, pretended to have missed the point; in his reply he refers,
. . . were it made a question, whether no law, as as if Jefferson had made an unconditional statement, to
among the savage Americans, or too much law, as among his friend's "Preference to Savage over civilized life." But
the civilized Europeans, submits man to the greatest evil, that is not what Jefferson meant. True, this syntax leads
one who has seen both conditions of existence would the mind toward an affinnation of primitive values, cut-
pronounce it to be the last: and that the sheep are ting it loose from an easy acceptance of established ideas
happier of themselves, than under the care of the wolves. and institutions, but behind it there is no serious inten-
It is true that this statement, taken out of context, does tion of going all the way. It is a perfect expression of the
sound as if Jefferson had joined a simple-minded cult of American pastoral ethos. Actually, Jefferson had few il-
Nature. But as so often in American writing, what first lusions about the felicities of primitive life, as he makes
strikes us as the merest vagary of a primitivist proves, on clear elsewhere in Notes on Virginia:
closer inspection, to be something quite different. (Ad- The women are submitted to unjust drudgery. This I
mittedly, there is a charming absurdity in the very prospect believe is the case with every barbarous people. With
of the Virginia philosophe casting his lot with the In- such, force is law. The stronger sex .. . imposes on the
122 THE MACHINE I N THE CARDEN The Garden 123
weaker. It is civilization alone which replaces women in system of manufactures had been laid. This is the
the enjoyment of their natural equality. That first prospect that alarms J efferson and that sets off the well-
teaches us to subdue the selfish passions, and to respect known tribute to rural virtue as the moral center of a
those rights in others which we value in ourselves. democratic society.
At the outset, it is true, Jefferson asserts that his coun·
The symbolic setting favored by Jefferson, needless to say, trymen "will certainly return as soon as they can" to their
resembles the Virgilian landscape of reconciliation, but it former dependence upon European manufactures. But it
now is a real place located somewhere between ['ancien is unlikely that he was so confident as he pretends. By
rt!gime and the western tribes. 35 1785, as we shall see, he was making quite another predic-
Moreover, it is a landscape with figures, or at least one tion. Besides, the vehemence of this attack upon the idea
figure: the independent, rational, democratic husband- of native manufactures would seem, in itself, to belie his
man. The eloquent passage in Query XIX in which he words. A close look at the structure and style of his answer
makes his appearance is the locus classicus of the pastoral to Query XIX (The present state of manufactures, com-
ideal as applied to America. For a q:ntury afterwards, merce, interior and exterior trade?) is revealing. This
politicians, orators, journalists, and spokesmen for the short chapter falls neatly into two parts, each written in
agricultural interest cherished Jefferson's words and, above a distinct style, each exemplifying one of J efferson's at-
all, the ringing declaration: "Those who labour in the titudes toward America's future. It is important enough
earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a and, fortunately, brief enough to cite in its entirety. Here
chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar is the first part:
deposit for substantial and genuine virtue." Sentences We never had an interior trade of any importance. Our
lifted from Query XIX are among the most frequently exterior commerce has suffered very much from the be-
quoted but least understood of Jefferson's words. T aken ginning of the present contest. During this time we have
out of context, for one thing, the picture of the husband· manufactured within our families the most necessary
man loses a· good deal of the charm and meaning it owes articles of cloathing. Those of cotton will bear some
to the force of its opposite. It is significant that Jefferson comparison with the same kinds of manufacture in
creates this ideal figure not while discussing agriculture, Europe; but those of wool, flax and hemp are very
but rather when he is considering the place of manufac· coarse, unsightly, and unpleasant: and such is our at-
tachment to agriculture, and such our preference for
tures in the new nation. Although the process of indus·
foreign manufactures, that be it wise or unwise, our
trialization, in our sense of the word (the use of machine people will certainly return as soon as they can, to the
power in large-scale manufacturing) had not begun, the raising raw materials, and exchanging them for finer
states had stepped up the productivity of domestic manu- manufactures than they are able to execute themselves.
factures during the war. When it was over there were The political ceconomists of Europe have established
some who believed that the foundation for a permanent it as a principle that every state should endeavour to
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN The Garden
manufacture for itself: and this principle, like many stantial and genuine virtue. Jt is the focus in which he
others, we transfer to America, without calculating the keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape
difference of circumstance which should often produce from the face of the earth. Corruption of morals in the
a difference of result. In Europe the lands are either mass of cultivators is a phcenomenon of which no age nor
cultivated, or locked up against the cultivator. Manu- nation has furnished an example. It is the mark set on
facture must therefore be resorted to of necessity not of those, who not looking up to heaven, to their own soil
choice, to support the surplus of their people. But we and industry, as does the husbandman, for their sub-
have an immensity of land courting the industry of the sistence, depend for it on the casualties and caprice of
husbandman. Is it best then that all our citizens should customers. Dependence begets subservience and venality,
be employed in its improvement, or that one half should suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for
be called off from that to exercise manufactures and the designs of ambition. This, the natural progress and
handicraft arts for the other1 [Italics added.] consequence of the arts, has sometimes perhaps been
retarded by accidental circumstances: but, generally
So far Jefferson is speaking in the voice of a scientific speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of the other
rationalist. In arguing that America is an exception to classes of citizens bears in any state to that of its husband-
the general rule that nations should aim at economic self· men, is the proportion of its unsound to its healthy parts,
sufficiency, he merely endorses the commonplace views of and is a good-enough barometer whereby to measure its
the political economists- notably Adam Smith. The ar- degree of corruption. While we have land to labour $en,
gumen t has the incidental appeal, for Jefferson, of under· let us never wish to see our citizens occupied at a work-
scoring the geographic basis of American politics: abun- bench, or twirling a distaff. Carpenters, masons, smiths,
dance of land is what makes America a special case. But are wanting in husbandry: but, for the general opera-
is it best for America to remain an exclusively rural tions of manufacture, let our work-shops remain in
nation? It is just at this point that he betrays the "soft Europe. It is better to carry provisions and materials to
workmen there, than bring them to the provisions and
center" of the pastoral theory. Having worked his way up
materials, and with them their manners and principles.
to the great question in the spare, dispassionate idiom of
The loss by the transportation of commodities across the
political economy, he suddenly changes voices. Between Atlantic will be made up in happiness and permanence
two sentences, a rhetorical question and an "answer," he of government. The mobs of great cities add just so
abandons discursive reasoning. Here is the question, once much to the support of pure government, as sores do to
again, and the rest of Query XIX: the strength of the human body. It is the manners and
spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigour.
Is it best then that all our citizens should be employed
A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the
in its improvement, or that one half should be called
heart of its laws and constitution.
off from that to exercise manufactures and handicraft
arts for the other? Those who labour in the earth are the Although the term agrarian ordinarily is used to de-
chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, scribe the social idea l that J efferson is endorsing here, to
whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for sub- call it pastoral would be more accurate and illuminating.
126 THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN The Garden
This is not a quibble: a serious distinction is involved. To matter what the monetary cost. Unlike the fully com-
begin with, the astonishing shift from the spare language mitted agrarians, he admits that an agricultural economy
of political economics to a highly figurative, mythopoeic may be economically disadvantageous. But that does not
language indicates that Jefferson is a~opting. a liter~ry trouble him, because he rejects productivity and, for that
point of view; or, to be more exact, he 1s adoptmg a pomt matter, material living standards, as tests of a good society.
of view for which an accepted literary convention is avail- The loss of what nowadays would be called "national in-
able. Notice the conventional character of the second half come," he explains, "will be made up in happiness and
of this passage. There can be no doubt about the influence permanence of government."
of literary pastoral upon J efferson. We have touched on All of this makes more sense once we recognize the noble
his youthful reading of J ames Thomson, and his love of husbandman's true identity: he is the good shepherd of
Virgil and the classical poets is well known. In 1813 he the old pastoral dressed in American homespun. One of
still was quoting Theocritus in Greek to John Adams. that traditional figure's greatest charms always had been
But quite apart from his direct response to pastoral poetry, his lack of the usual economic appetites. As Renato Pog-
we are more likely to get a precise idea of Jefferson's gioli observed, in the literary mode the shepherd appears
meaning here if we interpret it as the expression of a everywhere as the "opposite of the homo oeconomicus."
pastoral rather than an agrarian ideal.38 To find an almost perfect model of the Jeffersonian econ-
What, then, is the difference? The chief difference is omy we need only recall the situation of the happy rustic in
the relative importance of economic factors implied by Virgil's first eclogue. There too the economy makes pos·
each term. T o call Jefferson an agrarian is to imply that sible the contained self-sufficiency of the pastoral com-
his argument rests, at bottom, upon a commitment to an munity. Like the swain in his bucolic retreat, the Virginia
agricultural economy. But in Query XIX he manifestly farmer on his family-sized farm would produce every-
is repudiating the importance of economic criteria in thing that his family needs and at most a little more. The
evaluating the relative merits of various forms of society. goal is sufficiency, not economic growth - a virtual stasis
Although the true agrarians of his day, the physiocrats, that is a counterpart of the desired psychic balance or
had demonstrated the superior efficiency of large-scale peace. (Notice that here "permanence of goverm.lent"
agriculture, Jefferson continues to advocate the small, is one of Jefferson's chief concerns.) By equating desires
family-sized farm. Ordinarily, he does not think about with needs, turning his back on industry and trade, the
farms as productive units, a fact which may help to ac- husbandman would be free of the tyranny of the market.
count for his own dismal financial record as a farmer. He Here the absence of economic complexities makes credible
is devoted to agriculture largely as a means of preserving the absence of their usual concomitant, a class struc-
rural manners, that is, "rural virtue." Therefore, he ture. Jefferson grounds this happy classless state in the
would continue shipping raw materials to European fac- farmer's actual possession of land; in such a society all •
tories (and back across the Atlantic in finished form) no men would adopt an aloof patrician attitude toward ac-
THE MACHINE lN THE CARDEN
The Garden 129
128
qms1tive behavior. (At this point the Lockian right of economic behavior enjoys great prestige, Jefferson associ-
private property is woven into the pattern of these "natu- ates it .with oppressive institutions. So far from being part
ral" principles.) But the physical attributes of the land of bemgn nature, it is a kind of malformation or disease.
are less important than its metaphoric powers. What fi. It generates "mobs" of bestialized men who will eat, like
nally matters most is its function as a landscape- an a "canker," at the heart of the republic. At this point the
image in the mind that represents aesthetic, moral, politi- intensity of Jefferson's feeling, a welling up of physical
cal, and even religious values. Standing on his farm, revulsion, makes itself felt in the imagery of suffocation,
"looking up to heaven" and down to his "own soil and degeneracy, and disease ("sores on the body") with which
industry," Jefferson's rustic is in a position to act out all he depicts this awful prospect. What concerns him is not
of the imperatives of the "middle link" ethic. Moreover, agriculture for its own sake, but rather small-scale yeoman
he derives these principles in much the same way that farming as the economic basis for what may be called a
Crevecreur's farmer drew exuberancy from the land- desirable general culture. It is the "happiness," "manners
scape. J efferson invokes the familiar botanical metaphor and spirit" of the people- the over-all quality of life-
when he describes the "germ of virtue" being "deposited" that rules out manufactures. These concerns have more
in the husbandman's breast. It is this moral seed which in common with Virgil's poetry than with The Wealth
enables him to renounce nascent industrial capitalism, that of Nations.
is, a market-regulated society in which men must submit But the literary ancestry of the husbandman, like that
to the "casualties and caprice of customers." 81 of Crevecreur's farmer, is obscured by the peculiar credi-
In developing the contrast between the American bility imparted to the pastoral hope under American con-
farmer and the European workman, J efferson also follows ditions. In this environment the political implications of
the Virgilian pattern. He sets the joy of independence the convention are subtly changed. William Empson has
against the misery of dependence. As in the first eclogue, shown that the old pastoral, "which was felt to imply a
the crux here is the relation that each man enjoys with beautiful relation between rich and poor," served as
the natural environment - the land. Like Tityrus, the a. mask of political purposes. By the "trick" of having a
husbandman's life is attuned to the rhythms of nature; but srmple shepherd express strong feelings in a sophisticated
the European worker's access to the land, like Melibreus', language, the poet managed to combine the best of both
has been blocked. As a result he becomes economically worlds. The reader in turn was put in a position to enjoy
dependent, a condition which "begets subservience and the ~icarious resolution of one of his culture's deepest
venality" and so "suffocates the germ of virtue." That is confi1cts. • The result was a kind of conservative quietism.
what will happen, Jefferson is warning. if America de- In a sense, Jefferson's idealized portrait of the husband-
velops its own system of manufactures. The fresh, health- • I ~m parap~r~sin.g Empson's argument, but I feel that Empson fails
giving, sunlit atmosphere of Virginia will be replaced by to clanfy the distmcuon between those versions of pastoral which enable
the dark, fou l air of European cities. At a time when the the reader to enjoy an easy resolution of t.h e conflict and those which
enforce the poet's ironic distance from the pastoral dream, that is be-
idea of the market economy as the " natural" regulator of tween sentimental and complex pastoralism. '
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN The Garden 131
man, a simple yet educated man, a noble democrat, per- what obscure metaphysical link with "nature." But the
forms the same service. But with this vital difference: Jef- conviction with which Jefferson makes this kind of asser-
ferson is supposed to be talking about an actual social tion stems from his belief in the unspoiled American
type in an actual society; at no point is the reader warned, landscape as peculiarly conducive to the nurture of the
as he inevitably is when he picks up a poem, that he is "moral sense." It disseminates germs of virtue.sD
crossing the boundary between life and art. Jefferson's All of these feelings are at work in Jefferson's warning
enemies, who liked to denounce him as a dreamer, against sending an American youth to Europe, far from
might have underscored their abuse by noting the resem- the benign influences of his native ground:
blance between his husbandman and the literary shep-
He acquires a fondness for European luxury and dissipa-
herd. Later this "mythical cult-figure" (Empson 's term) tion and a contempt for the simplicity of his own coun-
of the old pastoral will reappear as the Jacksonian "com- try; he is fascinated with the privileges of the European
mon man." If this democratic Everyman strikes us as a aristocrats, and sees with abhorrence the lovely equality
credible figure, it is partly because the pastoral ideal has which the poor enjoy with the rich in his own country:
been so well assimilated into an American ideology. He he contracts a partiality for aristocracy or monarchy; he
achieves the political results outside literature formerly forms foreign friendships which will never be useful to
achieved by the shepherd. In the age of Jackson there no him, and loses the season of life for forming in his own
longer will be any need to insinuate a beautiful relation country those friendships which of all others are the
between the rich and the poor. By his mere presence most faithful and permanent: he is led by the strongest
the ''common man" threatens- or promises- to sup- of aU the human passions into a spirit for female in-
plant them both.as trigue destructive of his own and others happiness, or
a passion for whores, destructive of his health, and in
In the egalitarian social climate of America the pastoral
both cases learns to consider fidelity to the marriage bed
ideal, instead of being contained by the literary design, as an ungentlemanly practice and inconsistent with hap-
spills over into thinking about real life. Jefferson extends piness: he recollects the voluptuary dress and arts of the
the root contrast between simplicity and sophistication to European women, and pities and despises the chaste af-
opinions on every imaginable subject. "State a moral case," fections and simplicity of those of his own country. . . .
he says, "to a ploughman and a professor. The former will
decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because It would be difficult to find a more comprehensive state-
he has not been led astray by artificial rules." The pastoral ment of the pastoral ethic in American terms. Away from
element in this famous anti-intellectual homily is appar- his own country the chain that links the young man's
ent. The true American is the ploughman, whose values manners to his vocation and his vocation to the soil is
are derived from his relations to the land, not from "arti- broken. A little further on, Jefferson extends the argu-
ficial rules." To be sure, it may be said that the shepherd's ment to literary style. An American educated abroad, he
moral superiority always had been based upon a some- warns, is likely to return
The Garden
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN
. speaking and writing his native tongue as a for- was a Yankee rustic named Jonathan. His great charm is
eigner, and therefore unqualified to obtain those distinc· an intriguing blend of astuteness and rural simplicity.
tions which eloquence of the pen and tongue ensures Beyond question he is a comic cousin of Jefferson's noble
in a free country; for I would observe to you that what husbandman. Combining country manners with a wit
is called style in writing or speaking is formed very early capable of undoing city types, he too embodies the values
in life while the imagination is warm, and impressions of the middle landscape. As a matter of fact, Constance
are permanent. I am of opinion that there never was Rourke's seminal book, American Humor (tg~p), is a
an instance of man's writing or speaking his native study of the pastoral impulse in its most nearly pure
tongue with elegance who passed from 15. to 20. years indigenous form. It suggests the degree to which the cul-
of age out of the country where it was spoken. tural situation in Jefferson's America, with its rare juxta-
Implying that the peculiar "simplicity" of American man- position of crudity and polish, may have approximated the
ners will be embodied in a native language and therefore environment from which the pastoral convention had
a distinct style, Jefferson points toward the work of Henry arisen centuries before. Perhaps that explains D. H. Law-
Thoreau, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, and Robert rence's impression - see the epigraph to this chapter-
Frost- all of whom would write "versions of pastoral" that American writers somehow had by-passed English
in a distinctively American idiom.40 literature, had reached behind it for their inspiration,
In Jefferson's time this way of thinking about American thereby producing work that seems "older" than English
differences reflected the popular mood of post-Revolution- writing. 41
ary patriotism. It was fashionable, during the 178o's, to
take a pious tone toward Europe, sophistication, aristoc· Almost immediately after the first printing of Notes on
racy, luxury, elegant language, etc. "Buy American!" was Virginia, however, Jefferson referred to the idea of a per-
a slogan that arose from the premises of pastoral economic manently undeveloped, rural America as "theory only, and
theory. It meant that crude local products were preferable a theory which the servants of America are not at lib-
{on moral grounds, of course) to European finery. Years erty to follow." He made the statement in answering some
ago Constance Rourke named these attitudes, which ap- questions from G. K. van Hogendorp, who had been read-
pear everywhere in native lore, the fable of the contrast. ing the Notes. Possibly Jefferson's skepticism was encour-
She borrowed the name from Royall Tyler's play, The aged by Hogendorp's shrewd characterization of Dr. Price
Contrast, first produced in 1787. Setting a forthright, plain- in the same letter as an "enthousiast" who was "little
spoken American (named Manly) against a foolish, foppish, informed of local circumstances" and who was "forming a
and sinister Anglicized type (named Dimple), Tyler fash- judgement on America rather from what ... [he wished]
ioned a trite, melodramatic action. But the character who mankind to be, than from what it is." In any event,
really took hold of the popular imagination, and who Hogendorp asked Jefferson to elaborate upon his ideas
ultimately was to reappear in the guise of Uncle Sam, about the nelv nation's future economic development.
1~4 THE MACHI NE IN THE GARDEN The Garden
H ere is Jefferson's reply: curb economic development in turn would require pre-
cisely the kind of governmental power Jefferson detested.
You ask what I think on the expediency of encouraging
Moreover, he admits that the American people already
our states to be commercial? Were I to indulge my own
theory, I should wish them to practice neither commerce have a "decided taste" for business enterprise. The seeds
nor navigation, but to stand with respect to Europe of a dynamic, individualistic economic system had been
precisely on the footing of China. We should thus avoid imported from Europe. Hence the noble husbandman
wars, and all our citizens would be husbandmen. inhabits a land of "theory only," an imaginary land where
desire rules fact and government is dedicated to the pur-
He admitted that under certain conditions America might suit of happiness.
some day be forced to engage in commerce and manufac-
What are we to make of this apparent contradiction?
tures. Ever since Jefferson's death scholars have been trying to
But that day would, I think be distant, and we should discover order in- or to impose it upon- his elusive,
long keep our workmen in Europe, while Europe should unsystematic thought, but without much success. It simply
be drawing rough materials and even subsistence from does not lend itself to ordinary standards of consistency.
America. But this is theory only, and a theory which the There is no way, finally, to cancel out either his ardent
servants of America are not at liberty to follow. Our devotion to the rural ideal or the cool, analytic, pragmatic
people have a decided taste for navigation and com- tone in which he dismisses it. All of his commitments
merce. They take this from their mother country: and
embrace similar polarities. He praises the noble husband-
their servants are in duty bound to calculate all their
measures on this datum .. ,t2 man's renunciation of worldly concerns, but he himself
wins and holds the highest political office in the land; he
Right here the reason for the strange break in the mid- is drawn to a simple life in a remote place, but he cherishes
dle of Jefferson's reply to Query XIX becomes apparent. the fruits of high civilization- architecture, music, litera-
In this letter he reverts to the political economist's lan- ture, fine wines, and the rest; he wants to preserve a pro-
guage, tone, and point of view. Once again the scientific vincial, rural society, but he is devoted to the advance of
empiricist is speaking. He tells Hogendorp that much as science, technology, and the arts. How, then, can we evalu-
he would like to calculate measures according to his own ate Jefferson's conflicting statements about the pastoral
theory, there is a datum which the theory cannot encom- ideal?
pass. What could be further from the high-flown rhetoric The first step in understanding Jefferson, as Richard
of the apostrophe to "those who labor in the earth"? It Hofstadter suggests, is to dispense with shallow notions of
is as if Jefferson had taken that leap into rhetoric because consistency. Observing that he "wanted with all his heart
he knew where the discursive style led. To put the pastoral to hold to the values of agrarian society, and yet . . . be-
theory of America into effect it would be necessary at lieved in progress," H ofstadter concludes that such deep
some point, in fact almost immediately, to legislate against ambiguities lie at the very center of his temperament. To
the creation of a native system of manufactures. But to charge him with inconsistency, after all, is to imply that
136 THE MACHI NE IN THE CARDEN The Garden 137
a firm grasp of the facts or the rigorous imposition of engage while in public office in any kind of enterprise
logic might have improved the quality of his though~. But for the improvement of my fortune, nor to wear any
that is a mistake. The "inconsistencies" just menuoned other character than that of a fanner.
are not the sort that can be swept aside by a tidying-up of And, again, in 1795:
his reasoning. They are not mere opinions. They stem
from a profound ambivalence- a complex response to It is now more than a year that I have withdrawn myself
the conflicting demands of the self and societ~-43 • from public affairs, which I never liked in my life, but
It is striking to see how closely Jefferson s attltu~e _to- was drawn into by emergencies which threatened our
ward his own role conforms to the pattern of contradiction country with slavery, but ended in establishing it free.
I have returned, with infinite appetite, to the enjoyment
displayed in Query XIX . . What he most wanted, or so he
of my farm, my family and my books, and . . . deter-
always maintained, was to live quietly in his rural retreat mined to meddle in nothing beyond their limits.
at Monticello. As Roland Van Zandt has shown, Jefferson
thought of the whole realm of power politics, war, and A year later he was a candidate for the Presidency; twelve
conflict as something Americans might have ignored but years of public service ensued, and it was not until 1809
for the evil pressures of the great (European) world. In- that Jefferson finally retired to his rural seat at Monticello.
variably he regards his political activity as a temporary Calls to public duty followed by withdrawals to the coun-
departure from the natural and proper pattern of his try comprise the very rhythm of his life. Beyond question
life. It is always a concession to an emergency.u Jefferson's contradictory attitudes toward the pastoral ideal
At the beginning of the Revolution, in 1775, he writes are analogous to these conflicting private motives.•&
to John Randolph to explain how much he hates "this When he expresses a yearning for country peace and
unnatural contest." Even at the age of thirty-two he is pleasure he sometimes veers toward sentimental pastoral-
contemplating a permanent retirement from active life. ism. Then he insists that his true vocation is farming;
that a rural life is the proper and the "natural" life for
My first wish is a restoration of our just rights; my sec- an American, and that he only emerges from his sylvan
ond a return of the happy period when, consistently with
retreat when a nefarious "other" threatens the peace. Seen
duty, I may withdraw myself totally from the public
stage and pass the rest of my days in domestic ease and from this vantage the forces which make politics necessary
tranquillity, banishing every desire of afterwards even are not truly American; they always originate somewhere
hearing what passes in the world. else. Projected upon the larger scene, this attitude implies
that a.ll America is -or should be - a kind of pastoral
In 1793, after serving as governor of Virginia, minister to oasis. There is the implication that the young Republic,
France, and Secretary of State, he still regards political if it only could remain undisturbed, would not have to
life as a diversion. confront any serious problems of power. This way of con-
When I first entered on the stage of public life (now ceiving reality is buttressed by Lockian environmentalism,
twenty-four years ago) , I came to a resolution never to a theory of knowl edge and behavior wh ich on the whole
138 THE MACHINE IN THE CAilOEN Th e Garden 1 39
neglects individual or psychic sources of aggression. It is dation to the idea of American manufactures. In a brilliant
the feudal past, perpetuated by corrupt, repressive insti- letter to Benjam in Austin, in t8t6, he retraces his think-
tutions, that accounts for the evil economic and military ing on the subject. "You tell me I am quoted," he WTites,
depradations of Europe. If the pristine landscape of Vir- "by those who wish to continue our dependence on Eng-
ginia is conducive to the nurture of democratic values, land for manufactures. There was a time when I might
think of what happens to men in the European terrain, have been so quoted with more candor, but within the
with its dark, crowded cities, its gothic ruins, and crowded thirty years which have since elapsed, how are circum-
workshops I stances changed!" He then recounts the history of the
A cluster of natural images- the rural landscape, ~apoleonic era, the wars, the exclusion of American ship-
plants, organic growth, gardens, and gardening- connects ~mg from the seas, and, all in all, the experience of what,
Jefferson's political theories with his physical tastes. Like m 1785, "we did not then believe, that there exist both
a great poet, he often achieves a striking fusion of intel- profligacy and power enough to exclude us from the field
lectual and sensual experience. "I have often thought," of interchange with other nations: that to be independent
he writes to Charles Wilson Peale in 1811, "that if heaven for the comforts of life we must fabricate them ourselves.
had given me choice of my position and calling, it should We must now place the manufacturer by the side of the
have been on a rich spot of earth, well watered, and near ~griculturist." But what about the question he had raised
a good market for the productions of the garden. No occu- m Query XIX? Did not the immensity of unimproved
pation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, land in America argue the more or less permanent
and no culture comparable to that of the garden." A supremacy of agriculture?
garden is a miniature middle landscape. It is a place as The former question is suppressed, or rather assumes a
attractive for what it excludes as for what it contains. new form. Shall we make our own comforts, or go with-
Working in his garden he is free of the anxieties and out them, at the will of a foreign nation? He, therefore,
responsibilities of political office. By the same token, if who is now against domestic manufacture, must be for
all America somehow could be transformed into a garden, reducing us either to dependence on that foreign nation,
a permanently rural republic, then its citizens might escape or to be clothed in skins, and to live like wild beasts in
from the terrible sequence of power struggles, wars, and dens and caverns. I am not one of these ...47
cruel repressions suffered by Europe. This is the "logic" The controlling principle of Jefferson's politics is not
back of what is known as the Jeffersonian dream- a to be found in any fixed image of society. Rather it is
native version of an ancient hope} 0 dialectical. It lies in his recognition of the constant need
But, again, the impulse to withdraw from the world to redefine the "middle landscape" ideal, pushing it ahead,
represents only one side of Jefferson. The other side, rep- so to speak, into an unknown future to adjust it to ever-
resented by his active political role, his empirical estimate changing circumstances. (The ideal, in fact, is an abstract
of social forces, emerges clearly in his gradual accommo- embodiment of the concept of mediation between the
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN The Garden
extremes of primitivism and what may be called "over- dorp that America was not headed in the direction he
civilization.") In 1816, accordingly, the momentous ques- preferred. By the time he put it in words, Jefferson already
tion he had raised in 1785 - in our language: shall Amer- had begun to shift his vision of a pastoral utopia from
ica industrialize?- necessarily "assumes a new form." the future to the past.48
Why? Because circumstances have changed. A quarter of In his greatest moments, Jefferson was clear about the
a century earlier it had been possible to imagine, at least difference between his preferences and what he called
when the wishful side of his temperament was in charge, "circumstances." Similarly, he defined many of the im-
that the choice was still open: America might still have portant decisions of his life as choices between private
elected "to stand, with respect to Europe, precisely on pleasures and public responsibilities- between the gar-
the footing of China." But this is no longer feasible. I n den and the world. So thoroughgoing was the double-
t8t6 the choice for America is continuing economic devel- ness of his outlook that he virtually had a separate
opment or one of two unacceptable alternatives: becoming language for each side. Far from being a handicap, it
a satellite of Europe or regressing to the life of cavemen. seems, this inconsistency was a source of his political
To accept the need for manufactures in 1816, therefore, strength. Tracing the history of the J effersonian image
does not mean abandoning his basic principles. But it does since 1826, Merrill Peterson attributes his continuing
mean that he must accommodate himself, however reluc- fascination for us largely to the fact that he expresses
tantly, to the factory system he detests. It is important to decisive contradictions in our culture and in ourselves.••
stress his reluctance: one cannot read the long sequence
of Jefferson's letters on the subject without recognizing Beginning in Jefferson's time, the cardinal image of
the painful anxiety that this accommodation arouses in American aspirations was a rural landscape, a well-ordered
him. But then it may be said that his acceptance of the green garden magnified to continental size. Although it
need for manufactures hardly constitutes mediation be- probably shows a farmhouse or a neat white village, the
tween ideal and reality- mediation, that is, in th& literal scene usually is dominated by natural objects: in the fore-
sense of establishing a compromise; with this decision, ground a pasture, a twisting brook with cattle grazing
after all, the distance between the two seems to be open- nearby, then a clump of elms on a rise in the middle
ing rather than closing. So it is. That is why the feasible distance and beyond that, way off on the western horizon,
policy in 1816 includes what had seemed avoidable in a line of dark hills. This is the countryside of the old
1785. To admit this is only to underline the irony with Republic, a chaste, uncomplicated land of rural virtue.
which Henry Adams portrays the career of Jefferson: dur- In his remarkable book, Virgin Land, Henry Nash Smith [
ing his eight-year term as President of the United States, shows that down to the twentieth century the imagination
Jefferson's policies had the effect of creating precisely the of Americans was dominated by the idea of transforming
kind of society he did not want. But then, even in 1785, the wild heartland into such a new "Garden of the
Jefferson had acknowledged in his wistful letter to Hogen- World." On the whole, Americans were unsentimental
142 THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN The Garden 143
about unmodified nature. Attempts to idealize the wilder- a quality of thought and feeling that can only be called
ness, moreover, finally produced only a sterile, formula- mythic. The "master symbol" described by Smith is not
ridden art- the "western story." As Tocqueville noted, a static emblem of private felicity; it is the aim of a grand
the wilderness was precious to most Americans chiefly for collective enterprise. Accordingly, when he calls it the
what could be made of it- a terrain of rural peace and myth of the garden, Smith is not using the term as it
happiness. is used either in ordinary discourse, meaning an illusory
This symbolic landscape did not exist only on canvas idea, or in contemporary literary criticism, as applied for
or in books, or, for that matter, in the mint.ls of those who example to the poetry of Yeats, meaning a manifestly
were familiar with art and literature. What makes Virgin fictitious, sophisticated invention designed to place a cos-
Land so illuminating is that Smith demonstrates in detail mological frame around one poet's vision of life. As he
how the goals embodied in this image governed behavior uses the term, myth is a mode of belief. He is saying th~ t
~ere
on many planes of consciousness. It activated the stubborn Americans, so far as they shared an idea of what they
settlers who struggled for years to raise crops in what was .doing as a people, actually saw themselves creating
literally a desert; it led congressmen to insist upon certain L~· society m the 1mage of a garden. The quality of their
impractical provisions of the Homestead Act; it lay back feeling was not unlike that of the Greeks in the Homeric
of the peculiarly bitter frustration of western farmers poems, for whom myth presumably expressed a believable
beginning in the 187o's; it kept alive the memory of definition of reality.
Thomas J efferson ; it caused artists and writers both popu- Yet Jefferson, as we have seen, could not give full cre-
lar and serious to lose touch, as time went on, with social ?ence to the myth. Although he never entirely repudiated
realities; it excited the imagination of Frederick Jackson 1t, he knew perfectly well that it did not encompass all
Turner, not to mention all the historians who so eagerly of the essential truth about American experience. In
endorsed the "frontier hypothesis" as the most plausible detached moods, he recognized the restless striving of his
explanation for the Americanness of various attitudes and countrymen, their get-ahead, get-rich, rise-in-the-world am-
institutions- and one could go on. "The image of this bitions. Whatever it was that they wanted, or, rather, that
vast and constantly growing agricultural society," says they thought they wanted, it was not the domestic peace
Smith, ". . . became . . . a collective representation, a and joy of the self-sufficient farm. Hence Jefferson's atti-
poetic idea . . . that defined the promise of American tude is not to be confused with a na'ive trust in the ful-
life. The master symbol of the garden embraced a cluster fillment of the pastoral hope. Recognizing that the ideal
of metaphors expressing fecundity, growth, increase, and ~o~iet~ of the ~iddle landscape was unattainable, he kept
blissful labor in the earth. . . ." ~ 1t ~~ v~ew as a kmd ~f model, a guide to long-range policies
For more than a century, then, the American people as md1spensable to mtelligent political thought or action
held on to a version of the pastoral ideal not unlike the as the recognition of present necessities. Like certain great
one that J efferson had set forth in 1785, investing it with poets who have written in the pastoral mode, J efferson's
144 THE 1\fACHINE IN THE CARDEN
its poise as it moved ceaselessly between real and imagined W. B. Yeau, The Tower, 191
s•
worlds. As indicated by the example of Shakespeare, cre- .. . . the most idealist nations invent most mach,· ncs Am .1
s1mply t ·h · · en ca I
ator of Th e T empest and King Lear, an exultant pastoral
wish-image may well emanate from a mind susceptible to
the darkest forebodings. Looking to America's future,
. cems Wi t mechanical inventions. because nobod . {
Amenca ever wants to d
a machine do th
lh • Y 10
h' o any mg. They are idealists. Let
e t mg.
f
""'
D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, 192!1
jefferson anticipates the tragic ambivalence that is the
hallmark of our most resonant pastoral fables. "Our ' L'zfe of j ohnson Boswell describes the
I n h IS
enemy, " he writes during the War of 18 12, "has indeed
moment when he first recognized the . 'fi
the consolation of Satan on removing our first parents h s1gm cance of the
from Paradise: from a peaceable and agricultural nation, ;ev~ tee no~ogy. In March 1776, he visited Matthew Boul-
he makes us a military and manufacturing one." 111 d::i great o~~o wo:ks w~ere a steam engine was in pro-
. o~; Th.e ~ery mgemous proprietor" himself was his
~Ide. I WISh, Boswell writes, "that J ohnson h d b
w1th us· fo · a een
. r lt was a scene which I should have be
glad to contemplate by his light Th en
contriv f · e vastness and the
h. . ~nee o some of the machinery would have 'matched
lS m•g ty mind.' .. In Johnson's absence h
well quotes th ". . • owever, Bos-
./
" e zron chzeftain's" own account of his work
:~~llh neverS~orgeht Mr. Bolton's [sic] expression to me;
ere, lr, w at all the world desires to have -
POWER.'"
when Walt Whitman tells the Brooklyn Art Union that both represent a release of power throu~h se~ure ..of the
the United States has become a nation "of whom the underlying principles of nature. The umverse 1s a mech-
steam engine is no bad symbol," he assumes that his audi- anism." At the abstract end of the spectrum, then, the
ence knows what he is talking about. Needless to say, a symbol of the machine incorporates a whole metaphysical
collective image of this kind gathers meanings gradually, system. It often has been noted that the dominant struc-
over a long period, and it is impossible ~o fix u~n an.y tural metaphor of the Constitution is that of a sel~-re~
single moment when it comes into bemg. Bes1de.s, 1t lating machine, like the orrery or the steam engme; 1t
invariably combines a traditional meaning and a. new, establishes a system of "checks and balances" among three
specific, local or topical reference. The garden ~age distinct, yet delicately synchronized, branches of govern-
ment.15
brings together a universal Edenic myth and a paruc~lar
set of American goals and aspirations. So with the machme. Between the two extremes, the machine as concrete
What is most fascinating about the speeches of Tench object and the machine as root metaphor of being, Coxe
Coxe is that in them we witness the virtual discovery of identifies the power of "mechanism" with a specific eco-
the symbolic properties of the machine image - its capac- nomic faction. He is an avowed spokesman for the manu-
ity to embrace a whole spectrum of meanings ranging from facturing interest. He and his associates in the Pennsyl-
a specific class of objects at one end to an abstract meta- vania delegation are chiefly concerned about the kind of
phor of value at the other.~' power to be generated by the national government's
To Coxe the new and most exciting implication of authority to enforce uniform economic laws, protect pat-
"machine" is technological. In the summer of 1787 the ents, and establish tariffs. Running through much of what
possibilities of the latest technological innovations were they had to say is an inchoate sense of the vast transforma-
just beginning to take hold of the American imagination. tion of life to be accomplished through what we should
While the Constitutional Convention was in session, as call economic development or industrialization. "The time
it happens, "Mad" John Fitch managed, after inconceiv- is not distant," said Gouverneur Morris at one point in
able trials and tribulations, to propel a steam-powered the debates, "when this Country will abound with mechan-
vessel against the current of the Delawa.r e River. When ics & manufacturers who will receive their bread from
some of the delegates went down to the waterfront to their employers." But this is a rare example; the vocabu-
inspect this remarkable invention, what they saw was an- lary at the command of Coxe, Morris, and their friends
other instance of, in Coxe's language, the power of mech- was inadequate to express their full sense of the power
anism. The existence of this kind of machine leads him to be released through the combined agencies of com-
to an optimistic view of the Republic's future, and there merce, science, technology, and republican institutions.
can be no doubt that in his mind the development of To speak of it as "manufacturing" power hardly sufficed,
steam power and the business of the Constitutional Con- particularly in view of the fact that the word still carried
vention are aspects of the same grand enterprise. They much of its pre-industrial meaning, as in handicraft or
166 TH.E MACHINE lN THE GARDEN The Machine
16 7
household manufactures. Their vision had got ahead of labor of the country," and "the first thought and effon of
their language. • 18 our fathers . . . [was to] encourage and protect the
Still, we can be sure about the widespread identification mechanical arts and manufactures. . . ." 17
of the manufacturing interest, the new Republic, and the Among other things, Everett had in mind the Report
new technology. On July 4• 1788, after the Constitution on the Subject of Manufactures which Alexander Hamil-
had been approved by the electorate, there were parades ton, assisted by T ench Coxe, prepared for the Congress
and pageants in many cities, and several featured displays in 1791. This deservedly famous state paper reflects the
of recent industrial progress. In Philadelphia, the new unmistakable shift in attitudes toward manufactures that
"manufacturing society" entered a Hoat in the grand Fed- coincided with the formation of the new government.
eral Procession. It was thirty feet long and thirteen feet Only four years had passed since Coxe had expounded his
wide, and drawn by ten large bay horses. On board eleven ideas in Philadelphia, but Hamilton assumed that they
men and women demonstrated the operation of the latest had been widely accepted. "The expediency of encour-
machinery used in textile manufacture- a spinning aging manufactures in the United States," he says in the
jenny, a carding machine, and a loom. A new American first sentence, "which was not long since deemed very
Hag Hew above the float, and to it was attached the motto: questionable, appears at this time to be pretty generally
"May the Union Government Protect the Manufacturers admitted." 18
of America." One hundred weavers marched behind the In many ways the Report goes far beyond Coxe's
float carrying a banner inscribed, "May Government speeches; it is composed with a systematic rigor and com-
Protect Us." Half a century later, when industrialization prehensiveness that makes his thought seem crude and
was well under way, the notion that 1789 marked the be- impressionistic. But there is one respect in which Coxe's
ginning of the process became something of a common- argument had been more subtle: it took into account, as
place. The chief evil of the colonial situation, said Ed- the Report does not, the hold of the pastoral ideal upon
ward Everett in 1831, had been the "restraint" upon "the the national consciousness. Although Hamilton begins
with a routine effort to placate the agricultural interest,
• Actually, a whole new vocabulary of "industrialism" was just emerg-
ing at this time. In the 178o's and 'go's words like "engine," "machine,"
he is an undisguised advocate of continuing economic de-
"manufacture" and "industry," all of which had been in use long before velopment. He offers no equivalent of Coxe's symbolic
the advent of power machinery, were beginning to take on new meanings. landscape, or his vague implication that, somehow, tech-
At one point Coxe refers to "handicraft manufactures," indicating that nology would help America reach a kind of pastoral
for him at least the word now had become ambiguous. (A View of the
United States, p. !j8n.) On the other hand, David Humphreys published stasis. In fact, he finally makes no rhetorical concessions
"A Poe.m on the Industry of the United States of America" In t8ot, in to Jeffersonian hopes and fears. To support his argument
which he still uaed "industry" in its traditional sense as a character trait for machine production, he describes the advantages of
(diligence) rather than as an economic institution. A careful study of thia
the "cotton-mill, invented in England, within the last
ahift in language would be Invaluable for a detailed ~;nderstandlng of the
impact of industrialization upon consciousnesa. twenty years ..." in this blunt language:
. J'I c f.\\\\~1.\l s~
0
168 THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN The Machine 169
. . . all the different processes for spinning cotton, are would be more likely to endorse the Hamiltonian program
performed by ... machines, which are put in motion by with enthusiasm if permitted to conceive of it as a means
water, and attended chiefly by women and children; and of fulfilling the pastoral ideal.
by a smaller number of persons, in the whole, than are
requisite in the ordinary mode of spinning. And it is an
advantage of great moment, that the operations of this 3
mill continue with convenience, during the night as well
as the day. The prodigious effect of such a machine is By 1830 a contrasting image of the machine had begun
easily conceived. To this invention is to be attributed, to attract the attention of American intellectuals. It came
essentially. the immense progress which has been so sud- out of Germany by way of England. Friedrich Schiller, in
denly made in Great Britain, in the various fabrics of his Letters upon the Aesthetical Education of Man
cotton. 1' ( 1795), had brought in a "complicated machine," "the
monotonous sound of the perpetually revolving wheel,"
Whether he fully intends to endorse it or not, Hamilton to figure the "degeneration" of contemporary culture.
makes no effort to disclaim the chilling idea of putting What was then happening in Europe, according to Schil-
women and children on the night shift in cotton mills. ler, resembled the decline of classical Greek culture. A
The passage exemplifies the tough, hard-boiled tone of "common and coarse mechanism" was setting in, society
the Report. Throughout Hamilton is forthright, unsenti- changing from one in which the individual enjoyed- or
mental, logical, and clear. Taken as a whole, in fact, the at least might have enjoyed- an "independent life" en·
Report is a blueprint for a society aimed at maximum abling him to become "a separate whole and unit in him-
productivity, not as an end in itself, but as the key to na- self," into one dominated by "an ingenious mechanism."
tional wealth, self-sufficiency, and power. The power of The state itself was "splitting up into numberless parts"
the United States as a corporate entity is the ultimate and so was mankind:
goal; what Hamilton wants is the economy best suited to
the establishment of America's supremacy among nations. Man himself, eternally chained down to a little frag-
There can be little doubt that Tench Coxe wanted much ment of the whole, only forms a kind of fragment; hav-
the same sort of society. Unlike Hamilton, however, Coxe ing nothing in his ears but the monotonous sound of
the perpetually revolving wheel, he never develops the
saw the need to couch this aim in the language of the
harmony of his being; and instead of imprinting the seal
prevailing ideology. No matter what the economic be- of humanity on his being, he ends by being nothing
havior of his countrymen might seem to indicate, Coxe more than the living impress of the craft to which he
understood that they preferred not to acknowledge wealth devotes himself, of the science that he cultivates. This
and power as their goals. In this sense he was a subtler very partial and paltry relation, linking the isolated
and more farsighted - if less candid - advocate of indus- members to the whole, does not depend on forms that are
trialization than H amilton. He foresaw that Americans given spontaneously; for how could a complicated
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN The Machin e
machine, which shuns the light, confide itself to the free Fire-king has visited the fabulous East. . . There is no
will of man? end to machinery. Even the horse is stripped of his
Here Schiller is using "machine," in the technological harness, and finds a fleet fire-horse yoked in his stead.
... For all earthly, and for some unearthly purposes,
sense, to represent a "mechanistic" social system, the in-
we have machines and mechanic furtherances; for mine·
creasingly complex kind of society emerging along with ing our cabbages; for casting us into magnetic sleep. We
the new machine power.2o remove mountains, and make seas our smooth highway;
Of the English writers who used this device, none was nothing can resist us. We war with rude Nature; and,
to have a greater influence in America than Thomas by our resistless engines, come off always victorious, and
Carlyle. He had published his "Life" of Schiller in 1823-4· loaded with spoils.
and in his Edinburgh R eview essay "Signs of the Times"
Carlyle then extends the effects of "machinery" (still in
(182g), he seizes upon the machine as the most telling
the outward sense) to the emergent social and economic
"sign" of modern life. If asked to select a name for the
system which he would soon name "industrialism."
age, he says, he would n ot call it the "Heroical, Dev~
tional, Philosophical, or Moral Age, but, above all others, . . . What changes, too, this addition of power is intro-
the Mechanical Age. It is the Age of Machinery, in every ducing into the Social System; how wealth bas more and
outward and inward sense of that word . . ." Playing more increased, and at the same time gathered itself
upon all possible connotations of "machinery," Carlyle more and more into masses, strangely altering the old
turns it into the controlling symbol for a new kind of cul- relations, and increasing the distance between the rich
ture. It is the culture, the inner world of thought and feel- and the poor. . ..
ing, that really interests him, but he regards the image of It is the second, or "inward," sense of the word "ma-
machinery as representing the causal nexus between the chine," however, to which Carlyle devotes most attention.
new culture and the outer world, or society. Accordingly, What concerns him is the way the "mechanical genius
he uses the words "machine," "machinery," and "mecha- . .. has diffused itself into quite other provinces. Not the
nism" in two distinct, though finally complementary, external and physical alone is now managed by machinery,
ways. 21 but the internal and spiritual also." Here "machinery"
First, there is the "outward" sense: "machine" points di- stands for a principle, or perspective, or system of value
rectly to the new technology: which Carlyle traces through every department of thought
Our old modes of exertion are all discredited, and and expression: music, art, literature, science, religion,
thrown aside. On every hand, the living artisan is driven philosophy, and politics. In each category he detects the
from his workshop, to make room for a speedier, in- same tendency: an excessive emphasis upon means as
animate one. The shuttle drops from the fingers of the against ends, a preoccupation with the external arrange·
weaver, and falls into iron fingers that ply it faster. . .. ment of human affa irs as against their inner meaning and
Men have crossed oceans by steam; the Birmingham consequences. Although he is using the image of the rna-
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN The Machin e
chine metaphorically, he does not lose control of the dis- of the mind contingent upon images flowing in upon it
tinction between fact and metaphor. In discussing the from the outside, he reduces thought to what is ultimately
functions of government, for example, he admits that they a reflex of the world "out there." To account for a man's
include much that is essentially routine or mechanical. ideas and values only, or even chiefly, by the circum-
"We term it indeed, in ordinary language, the Machine stances in which he lives is, according to Carlyle, to divest
of Society, and talk of it as the grand working wheel from his thought of will, emotion, and creative power. If the
which all private machines must derive, or to which they mind is a reflex of what is, how can it possibly control cir·
must adapt, their movements." In this context, Carlyle cumstances? Control implies the power to compare what
recognizes, machine is a figure of speech, yet the figure is with what may be. To Carlyle the empirical philosophy
seems to contain a prophetic truth. is negative and quietistic. "By arguing on the 'force of
circumstances,' " he says, "we have argued away all force
Considered merely as a metaphor, all this is well enough; from ourselves; and stand lashed together, uniform in
but here, as in so many other cases, the 'foam hardens dress and movement, like the rowers of some boundless
itself into a shell,' and the shadow we have wantonly galley." In its transactions with the world outside, a mind
evoked stands terrible before us, and will not depart at so conceived responds like one cogged wheel turned by
our bidding.
another. Used in this way the image of the machine con·
His point is that the age is increasingly reliant upon notes loss of inner freedom even as it provides outward
"mere political arrangements," and that in politics, as in power. "Practically considered," says Carlyle, "our creed
all else, less and less account is being taken of that which is Fatalism; and, free in hand and foot, we are shackled in
"cannot be treated mechanically." Carlyle's immediate heart and soul with far straiter than feudal chains."
target is utilitarianism, with its emphasis upon the proper One of the remarkable things about "Signs of the
structure of institutions. But back of that philosophy he Times" is the clarity and cogency with which Carlyle con·
sees the environmentalism of the eighteenth century- nects the machine as object (a technological fact) and the
the view that, on the whole, external conditions determine machine as metaphor (a token of value). In large part his
the quality of life, hence human suffering can best be at· success is due to a tacit recognition of culture as an in·
tacked by contriving better social machinery. What tegrated whole. Like a modern anthropologist, Carlyle is
bothers Carlyle is the easy assumption that, as he puts it, attempting to make statements about an entire way of life,
"were the laws, the government, in good order, all were a complex wh ich embraces all the behavior of Englishmen
well with us; the rest would care for itself!" -their physical activities, their work, their institutions,
In philosophy this mechanistic spirit is reflected in the and, above all, their inner lives. In using the machine as a
still high reputation of J ohn Locke. "His whole doctrine," symbol of the age, he is saying that neither the causes nor
says Carlyle, "is mechanical, in its aim and origin, in its the consequences of mechanization can be confined to the
method and its results." When Locke makes the contents "outer" or physical world. The onset of machine power,
The Machine
174 THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN 1 75
he says, means "a mighty change in our whole manner of without limit. This is as it should be; for not in turning
existence." This is the insight which would lead him to bad:., not in resisting, but only in resolutely struggling
f0rward, does our life consist.
use the new word "industrialism," and it helps to explain
why, from the beginning, the very idea of an industrial Where then, we may well ask, is the ground for his at-
society as a unique phenomenon has been tinged by a tack upon the new industrial order? If he accepts the
strong critical animus. The machine represents a change value of machine technology, if he believes that there is
in our whole way of life, Carlyle argues, because "the no turning back, why does he have this animus? In part
same habit regulates not our modes of action alone, but the answer lies in his commitment to a traditional hu-
our modes of thought and feeling. Men are grown me- manist idea of a proper balance of human life. To say
chanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand." that men have grown "mechanical" in head and heart is
To a democratic moralist the chief difficulty in Carlyle's to say that they now over-value those aspects of life which
argument would be immediately obvious. In taking a are calculable and manipulatable and, by the same token,
critical attitude toward the new technology he· seems to that they neglect the whole sphere of the spontaneous,
deny the working mass of mankind its unique opportunity the imaginative- all that springs from the inner re-
to escape lives of dull, repetitive labor. This point was sources of the psyche: "the primary, unmodified forces and
particularly striking to a young American, Timothy energies of man, the mysterious springs of Love, and Fear,
Walker, who soon attacked the essay in the pages of the and Wonder, of Enthusiasm, Poetry, Religion, all which
North American Review. Before considering Walker's re· have a truly vital and infinite character. . . ." Carlyle
ply. however, we must distinguish Carlyle's position as calls this neglected province (the antithesis of the mechani·
sharply as possible from the aesthete's nostalgic and facile cal) the dynamical, and his entire argument must finally
rejection of industrialism with which we now are so fa- be said to rest upon the proposition that "only in the
miliar. For one thing, Carlyle does not deny the genuine right coordination of the two, and the vigorous forward-
advantages of machine production. He is not a reactionary ing of both, does our true line of action lie."
in the strict sense of calling for a return to an earlier,
Undue cultivation of the inward or Dynamical province
simpler society. In fact, he ends his essay with an affirma- leads to idle, visionary, impracticable courses, and, espe-
tion of the long-range progress of the race. It is, he says, cially in rude eras, to Superstition and Fanaticism, with
"a well-ascertained fact, that . . . the happiness and their long train of baleful and well-known evils. Undue
greatness of mankind at large have been continually cultivation of the outward, again, though less immedi-
progressive." ately prejudicial, and even for the time productive of
Doubtless this age also is advancing. Its very unrest, iu many palpable benefits, must, in the long-run, by de-
ceaseless activity, its discontent contains matter of prom- stroying Moral Force, which is the parent of all other
ise. Knowledge, education are opening the eyes of the Force, prove not less certainly, and perhaps still more
humblest; are increasing the number of thinking minds hopelessly, pernicious. This, we take it, is the grand
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN Th e Machine 177
characteristic of our age. By our skill in Mechanism, "self-estrangement," thereby implying a conflict between
it has come to pass, that in the management of external the "social" and the "natural" self. Later Karl Marx was
things we excel all other ages; while in whatever re· to make a more explicit connection between this inward
spects the pure moral nature, in true dignity of soul state and the conditions of life in the new industrial
and character, we are perhaps inferior to most civilised
society. He noted that within capitalist relations of pro-
ages. duction, accompanying the division of labor and mass
Though he is using a novel vocabulary, Carlyle is in- manufacturing, the working man's product may well be-
voking a traditional morality. T o speak of coordinating come his "enemy." The more he produces, in other words,
the mechanical and dynamical provinces of human be· the more danger there is that the market will be glutted
havior is, after all, but another way of describing the de- and that he will lose his job. H ence machine technology
sire for a proper balance of man's outer and inner, mate· is instrumental in creating what Marx calls "alienated
rial and psychic, selves. Carlyle is affirming an ideal akin labor." • Although it is morally neutral, the machine in
to the "ethic of the middle link" and to the norm implicit a capitalist setting helps to transform the worker into a
in the pastoral image of America. It is a variant of Jef· commodity for sale on the labor market. His work takes
ferson's hope that the new R epublic would subordinate on a mechanical, meaningless character. It bears lit·
economic ambition to the "pursuit of happiness." All of tie or no relation to his own purposes. The result is the
which accounts for the fact that in America Carlyle's typical psychic set of industrial man which Marx calls
critique of the new industrial order was so readily adapted alienation. In Erich Fromm's words, the alienated man is
to the pastoral idiom. In his view the new power is to be one for whom "the world (nature, others, and he himself)
feared, not as inherently evil, but rather as a threat to the remain alien . . . . They stand above and against him as
necessary balance in the human situation. By placing objects, even though they may be objects of his own crea-
undue emphasis upon the external environment, the new tion. Alienation is essentially experiencing the world and
technology threatens to destroy moral force. oneself passively, receptively, as the subject separated from
the object." 22
What Carlyle intends by "destruction of moral force" is Describing in 1844 the situation which gives rise to
akin to what soon would be known as "alienation." This alienation, Marx uses a language strikingly similar to
seminal idea, then emerging out of the stream of post· Carlyle's in "Signs of the Times." "The devaluation of the
Kantian idealism, has dominated the criticism of indus- human world," he says, "increases in direct relation with
trial society ever since. When Carlyle speaks of men hav- the increase in value of the world of things. " During the
ing grown "mechanical in head and heart," he means that • H e fint developed the concept in the economic and p hilo$0phical
their behavior is increasingly determined externally, which manuscripts he wrote in 1844. These ea rly manuscripts, which were not
is to say, by invisible, abstract, social forces unrelated (or published until 1932, and not translated into English until 1959. establish
even more clearly tha n before th e humanist core of the Marxia n critique
alien) to their inward impulses. Hegel had called this state of capitalism.
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN The Machine
184o's variants of this idea swept through the intellectual Times," unfortunately, Carlyle lacked the systematic
community on both sides of the Atlantic. Three years theory of the mind and the relatively unambiguous vo-
after Marx's paper on alienation, Emerson wrote these cabulary of depth psychology. It is now obvious that his
familiar lines: work, like much of the nineteenth century's criticism of
th.e ~ew industrial order, was vitiated by the inadequacy
Things are in the saddle, o£ h1s old vocabulary. Unable to describe man's emo-
And ride mankind. tional needs in any other terms, writers often fell back
upon an outworn collection of religious and moral count-
There are two laws discrete,
Not reconciled, - ers. In "Signs of the Times," however, Carlyle is reaching
Law for man, and law for thing; toward something like the post-Freudian view when he
The last builds town and fleet, speaks of "mechanism" as stifling the " primary, unmodi-
But it runs wild, fied forces and energies of man," or aga in when he sets
And doth the man unking. the machine in opposition to the "mysterious springs of
Years later, in describing the intellectual climate of this Love." That he appreciated the connection between the
period, Emerson stressed the pervasive sense of "detach- typical emotional crises of the age and industrialization
ment." He found it reflected everywhere: in Kant, becomes most obvious in Sartor Resartus (1833-34). This
Goethe's Faust, and in the mood generated by the advance book, which Emerson read just before writing Nature,
of capitalist power. "Instead of the social existence which and which Melville read not long before writing Moby-
all shared," he wrote, "was now separation." He saw a Dick, was to have an immense influence in America.
connection, moreover, between this feeling of "separa- Although not written in the pastoral mode, it embodies
tion" and the widespread emotional instability of the in- attitudes which were easily assimilated to American pas-
tellectuals. The young men of the time, he said, were toralism. At the cl imax Professor T eufelsdrockh, a semi-
born with knives in their brains.23 autobiographical figure, is overwhelmed by the meaning-
When Carlyle speaks of the subordination of the "dy- lessness of his life. He can establish no contact with a
namical" to the "mechanical" aspects of life, he antici- reality beyond himsel f. Doubtless such depressed states are
pates the post-Freudian version of alienation. In a recent not peculiar to industrial societies, but Carlyle imparts a
book (Eros and Civilization), Herbert Marcuse attributes distinctively modern aspect to Teufe lsdrockh's depression
this state of psychic powerlessness to the increasing repres- by the image he uses to evoke the moment of total despair:
sion of instinctual drives made necessary by a more and To me [says Professor Teufelsdrockh) the Universe was
more complicated technological order. To satisfy the im- all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility:
peratives of the mechanized society, men are called upon it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, roll-
to endure an intolerable curbing of their spontaneous, ing on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from
erotic, and passional selves. In writing "Signs of the limb.2•
t8o THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN The Machine
4 theory of society capable of enlisting effective political
support. By 182g, in fact, Coxe's notion that the aims of
By 1829, when "Signs of the Times" appeared in the the Republic would be realized through the power of
Edinburgh R eview, machine power had begun to play machine production was evolving into what can only be
the part in American life that Tench Coxe had foreseen called the official American ideology of industrialism: a
in 1787. A profitable factory system was firmly established loosely composed scheme of meaning and value so widely
in New England; new roads and canals and cities were accepted that it seldom required precise formulation. In
transforming the landscape; on rivers and in ocean harbors the written record it appears chiefly as rhetoric in homage
the steamboat was proving the superiority of mechanized to "progress." With this word the age expr~ssed a fai.th i~
transport, and outside Baltimore the revolutionary ma- man's capacity to understand and control history wh1ch 1S
chine of the age was being made ready for use: thirteen now difficult to recapture. And it was the miraculous
miles of the first important American railroad, the Balti· machinery of the age, beyond all else, which made it ob-
more and Ohio, were under construction. As Coxe had vious that things were getting better all the time. It is not
foreseen, the conditions once regarded as obstacles to surprising, then, that Carlyle's passionate attack upon the
America's economic growth had become stimulants. So "Age of Machinery" soon provoked an Amencan · r~p1y.26
far from rpetuating the "backwardness" of the economy, Nor is it surprising that the reply appeared m the
the abundance o land and thescarcit of labor had in- North American Review. Under the editorship of Alex·
tensified the de~and f~achinery. Between 1830 and ander Hill Everett, brother of Edward, this journal was
186o the nation was to put down more than 30,000 miles a vehicle for the rational and, in the main, politically
of railroad track, pivot of the transportation revolution conservative, theologically liberal opinion of the New
which in tum quickened industrialization. By the time England Establishment. Its contributors, many ~f whom
Carlyle's essay was read in America the economy was ex- were Unitarian ministers or Harvard professors, mcluded
panding at a remarkable rate, the new technology was George Bancroft, Orville Dewey, Samuel Eliot, Edward
proving itself indispensable, and the nation was on the Everett, William Prescott, Jared Sparks, and Joseph Story.
verge of the "take-off" into the era of rapid industriaJiza. The young man who answered Carlyle, Timothy Walker,
tion. had been well trained for membership in this solid, pro-
On the plane of ideas, meanwhile, the views of Tench fessional elite. After a proper education at Harvard, where
Coxe had been widely accepted. Apologists for the south- he graduated first in the class of 1826, Walker had taught
em slavery system aside, there was not (nor would there school under George Bancroft and later had returned to
be) any effective opposition to industrialization. This is Harvard to prepare for the law with Justice Story. When
not to deny that there were impulses to resist. But on the his reply to Carlyle was published in 1831, he had begun
whole they were sporadic, ineffectual impulse.s; they pro- to practice law in Cincinnati.28
voked a number of vivid, symbolic gestures (chiefly of a Walker, casting himself as America's attorney, calls the
nostalgic cast), but they did not produce an alternative essay in which he answers Carlyle a "Defence of Mechani-
182 T HE MACHI NE IN THE GARDEN
The Machine
cal Philosophy." It is a concise, lucid, and well-organized dren, Mechanism has encouraged them to step across.
As if her earth were not good enough for wheels,
brief on behalf of technological progress. Unlike Coxe or
Mechanism travels it upon iron pathways.
Hamilton, Walker makes no effort to reconcile the new
power with the pastoral ideal of economic sufficiency. But Now where, asks Walker, "is the harm and danger of this?"
then neither does he acknowledge that any change has oc- Since Carlyle had not grounded his critique of mechaniza-
curred in the aims of the Republic. He expounds the doc- tion in sentiment for the countryside, the point of Walk-
trine of unlimited economic development as if the Ameri- er's rhetorical question is a bit obscure. But it allows
can people always had been committed to it, as if there Walker to inject a cherished American image into the
always had been a place for the machine in the myth of record: the machine as a "supplier" of rivers, a "roller"
the garden. Although it contains little, if anything, that smoothing over what is "uncomfortably rough" in nature.
is original, Walker's "Defence" makes a fine exhibit of The machine, in short, is an instrument for making what
pervasive attitudes toward the new machine power. the age calls "improvements." With its help, a waste land
At the outset Walker announces that Carlyle has raised can be transformed into a garden. Yet the capacity of tech-
a "grave and solemn" question, namely, "whether man- n ology to transform the landscape, however much it may
kind are advancing or not, in moral and intellectual at- en~g~ the native imagination, scarcely meets Carlyle's
tainments." Q uickly reviewing his adversary's "cheerless Objectwns- and Walker admits as much. What troubles
conclusions" about the new "Age of Machinery," Walker Carlyle, he says, is not that "Nature will be dethroned,
asserts that he can find in these views nothing but and Art set up in her place . . . . " Or at least, Walker
"phantoms." And yet Carlyle's skepticism is profoundly adds, "not exactly this" - an astute reservation indicating
disturbing to him; it irks him because Carlyle manifestly that if Carlyle is concerned about the effect of technology
repudiates Walker's faith, and that of the society for which upon "Nature," the "Nature" in question is not primarily
he speaks, as a hollow faith. Incredulity is the dominant the physical, or external, nature associated with landscape.
note of the opening section: what possible injury can But then precisely what is threatened by Mechanism?
"Mechanism" have done to man? "Some liberties," Walker It is typical of Walker's side in this familiar debate that
agrees, " . . . have been taken with Nature by this . . . he adopts the condescending tone of a no-nonsense em-
presumptuous intermeddler," and he describes them with piricist trying valiantly to fathom the mind of a hopeless
heavy courtroom irony: obscurantist. What worries Carlyle, he says ("if we rightl y
Where she [Nature] denied us rivers, Mechanism haJ apprehend his meaning"), is that "mind will become sub-
supplied them. Where she left our planet uncomfortably jected to the laws of matter; that physical science will be
rough. Mechanism has applied the roller. Where her built up on the ruins of our spiritual nature; that in our
mountains have been found in the way, Mechanism has rage for machinery, we shall ourselves become machines."
boldly levelled or cut through them. Even the ocean, by By using these commonplaces Walker intends to convey
which she thought to have parted her quarrelsome chil- th e spuriousness of Carlyle's argumen t. (At points he in-
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN The Machine 185
the work of ten. . It is needless to follow the deduc-
sinuates that Carlyle is a devious exponent of some name·
tion farther.
less "Mysticism.") These phrases are stock expressions of
the widespread and largely impotent anxiety generated by Proceeding from these postulates, Walker lines up the
mechanization; no doubt the most popular, closely akin rest of his argument like a mathematical proof. (He was
to the "men-will-become-machines" trope, was the Frank- a master of simple linear logic, and in fact he had re-
enstein fable: the story of the robot that destroys its heart- cently published a geometry textbook.) With perfect as-
less creator. Back of these cliches, as the twentieth century surance he concludes that the "cultivation of the intellect"
has discovered, there was a not wholly fanciful premoni- is "altogether the result of Mechanism, forcing inert mat-
tion of mankind's improving capacity for self-destruction. ter to toil for man," and, therefore, he looks "with un-
But Walker did not take that possibility seriously. As he mixed delight at the triumphant march of Mechanism.
phrases the issue, he intends only to expose the melo- So far from enslaving, it has emancipated the mind, in the
dramatic hollowness of Carlyle's concern, which is (in most glorious sense." What freedom man achieves is the
Walker's words) whether or not "mechanical ingenuity direct result of mechanical inventions. Walker's theory of
is suicidal in its efforts." the technological basis of culture leads him to a simple
To answer the rhetorical question Walker quickly re- formula for the advance of civilization. That nation, he
views the contribution of technology to cultural evolution. says, "will make the greatest intellectual progress, in which
"In the first ages of the world," he says, "when Mechanism the greatest number of labor-saving machines has been de-
was not yet known, and human hands were the only in- vised." In 1831 Walker envisages an Automated Utopia
struments, the mind scarcely exhibited even the feeblest in which. "mac.hines are to perform all the drudgery of
manifestations of its power." (Although Walker is capable man, while he IS to look on in self-complacent ease."
of extending the meaning of "Mechanism" almost in- . T o lend an ultimate sanction to technology, Walker,
definitely, so that it finally threatens to swallow up science hke Tench Coxe in 1787, brings in the metaphysical over-
and, for that matter, Being itself, here it chiefly means tones the machine image had carried over from Newtonian
technology both as a reservoir of knowledge and as me- sci~nce. His cosmos is constructed according to a knowable,
chanical apparatus.) Without technology there would be ratwnal, and mathematically precise blueprint. "When we
no culture. Only after the "first rudiments of Mechanism attempt to convey an idea of the infinite attributes of the
made their appearance" did men have enough time to Supr~me Being," says Walker, "we point to the stupendous
think. ~achm~ry of the universe." A new power machine, then,
Leisure gave rise to thought, refiection, investigation; Is not srmply a useful implement, it is a kind of totem.
and these, in tum, produced new inventions and facili- This attitude no doubt explains the extreme repugnance
ties. Mechanism grew by exercise. Machines became that Carl~le's essay arouses in Walker. Since he regards
more numerous and more complete. The result was a technologtcal progress as evidence that man is gaining
still greater abridgment of labor. One could now do access to the divine plan, a kind of gradual revelation,
t86 THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN The M achine
Carlyle's attack is blasphemy. Technology supplants man's beings" because, he explains, even though man may not
animal functions, thereby making possible the liberation re-create the golden age, such places "are types and shad-
of mind. From Walker's "Defence" one gets the impres· ows of a higher and better condition of human nature,
sion that mankind is destined to arrive at a state, like that towards which we are surely though slowly tending."
enjoyed by the ruler of a universe which operates like But the most important value that Walker attaches to
clockwork, of divine immobility or pure consciousness. the image of the machine is political. He regards the new
"From a ministering servant to matter," Walker explains, technology as the instrument appointed to fulfill the
"mind has become the powerful lord of matter. Having egalitarian aims of the American people. He expounds the
put myriads of wheels in motion by laws of its own dis- same explosive idea implicit in the irrepressible epithet
covering, it rests, like the Omnipotent Mind, of which it "industrial revolution." • Coined in France sometime
is the image, from its work of creation, and pronounces around 1810, the phrase expresses the close kinship be-
it good." tween the two new forces, political and technological,
Although many of Walker's ideas had been anticipated which were to threaten the old order everywhere during
by Tench Coxe, his tone and attitude are quite different. the next 150 years. The feature common to this double
Whereas Coxe had proposed, with some caution, that the "revolution" was the unprecedented claim of the property-
machine could change the fortunes of the Republic, less, working masses for a fair share of the necessities and
Walker discusses technology in the accent of a true be· perhaps even the felicities of life. What now made the
liever. He declares "an unfaltering belief in the permanent claim reasonable for the first time was science and tech-
and continued improvement of the human race"- of nology. In America the plausibility of this novel idea was
which improvement, he says, "no small portion .. . [is] reinforced by natural abundance. So much so, indeed, that
the result of mechanical invention." He invests the ma- Walker honors the egalitarian implications of the new
chine with the ebullience- the singular, not to say manic, power without a hint of political radicalism. It does not
millennialist spirit- which was widespread at the time. occur to him that a basic change in the structure of society,
At moments he sounds like an inspired, transcendentalist
• In recent years the epithet has been the subject of an endless and
prophet. But Walker fancies himself a realist, and- often silly scholarly controversy. Economic historians, in particular, have
charming commentary on this era - he draws a fine line quarreled about its validity as a descriptive term. For them, the issue
between foolhardy optimists who believe that man may ~ms to be whether there was a break, during the eighteenth century,
10 .the. economic and technological development of England so severe as
arrive at perfection and more sensible people, like him- to JUStify the name "revolution." But the whole issue becomes irrelevant
self, who only credit the perfectibility of man. Having ?nee we recognize that we are dealing with a metaphor, and that its
made this reservation, he unashamedly joins those who tmmense appeal rests, not on its capacity to describe the actual character
"see Atlantis, Utopia, and the Isles of the Blest, nearer of industrialization, but rather on its vivid suggestiveness. It evokes the
~n~quen~sS. of the n~w way of life, as experienced, and, most important,
than those who first descried them." He delights in con- It ~~.a V1v1d ex~resston of the affinity between technology and the great
templating "these imaginary abodes of pure and happy pohucal revolution of modern times.
J88 THE MACHINE IN TH.E GARDEN The Machine
18g
either its social or its property relations, will be required to his own question is simple, stunning, and tinged With
to achieve an economy of abundance. To Walker the rna· just enough sans-culottish impertinence to give it bite:
chine represents the possibility of plenty shared by al1.~7
On this native political ground Walker develops h1s The answer ... is ready. The Greeks themselves did
most effective answer to Carlyle. Not that Carlyle had not toil. Every reader of their history knows, that labor,
denied the machine's power to improve the physical con- physical labor, was stigmatized as a disgrace. Their wanta
were supplied by levying tribute upon all other nations,
ditions of life: indeed , he had conceded that the nascent ;"'\ and keeping slaves to perform their drudgery at home.
industrial society probably would excel all others ~n the ,tl-''\., Hence their leisure. Force did for them, what machinery
"management of external things." But for him this was ' ,'f 0~) ~oes for us. B~t what .was the condition of the surround-
not a damaging concession; he was convinced that the ~...,/ mg world? It IS explamed in a word. All other men had
material gains would be offset by "moral"}osses, a.n~ th~t , e' / to labor for them; and as these derived no helps from
the new system (which he would name mdustnahsm ) Mechanism, manual labor consumed their whole lives.
threatened to be the worst ever known with respect to And hence their spiritual acquisitions have left no trace
"pure moral nature," or "true dignity of soul and charac· in history.
ter." But, to repeat, Carlyle's language was not adequ~te To the proposition that the new industrial order defiles
to his thought. In retrospect we can see that he was trymg the soul, Walker in effect is asking: whose soul, whose
to describe a condition of man's inner life, later to be moral nature will be defiled? Would the souls of Greek
called alienation, which he regarded as characteristic of ~laves or ~nglish wage-laborers be threatened by labor-sav-
the new, industrial environment. In any case, all of this mg machmes? All of which is a way of saying that men re-
was lost upon Walker, who thought Carlyle's argument spond to change according to their social and economic
typical of the pettifogging of pious reactionaries. ~rspective. Unlike Carlyle, the young American recog-
The distinction between the "external" and "internal" mzes that mechanization will hardly seem a menace to
consequences of mechanization, moreover, gave Walker those upon whom society confers little dignity of soul (or
just the opening he needed. To the bright young lawyer, status) m the first place. To them the alternative is a life
it sounded like obfuscation or "mysticism," the weakest of drud~ery o~ tedious, repetitive labor. On this point
spot in his adversary's position. And so, in a sense, it was. W:Uker IS at hiS best. He addresses Carlyle in the manly
To support his charge that science and technology were VOice of a humane, resolute, and thoroughly committed
producing a moral and spiritual decline, Carlyle (like democrat.. His political convictions in tum are supported
Schiller before him) had compared the quality of con- by the scientific, humanistic faith of the Enlightenment.
temporary culture with that of ancient Greece. Walker Like Jefferson, he assumes that knowledge can make us
firmly rejects the comparison. True, he says, the Greeks free, and not just some of us. It is all very well for Carlyle,
had achieved "h igh intellectual supremacy" without the or a~y European traditionalist, to compare the coming
help of mechanism. But how had they done it? His reply machme-based culture with ancient Athens, but let it be
TliE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN The Machine
190
191
borne in mind, says Walker, "that we are speaking of of implication, thought, and feeling far beyond that borne
society in the mass, and that our doctrine is, that m~n by a simple reference. Although it is not easy to draw a
must be released from the bondage of perpetual bodlly sharp line between image and symbol, there can be no
toil, before they can make great spiritual at~ain~e~ts." doubt about the status of the machine in Timothy Walk-
To have freedom of mind, Walker is saymg, tt ts first er's "D.efence." There it is clearly, unmistakably, blatantly
necessary to have freedom from want. It is to his credit, a cardmal symbol of value. It is not Walker's private
moreover that he does not shy away from the criticism symbol, but a property of <the general culture. Within a
usually le~eled against egalitarians on this point..He fre~ly few years it was to be as omnipresent as the image of the
admits that the intellectual caliber of the mass, mdustnal garden.
culture, particularly at the higher levels, may well prov.e . By 1844 .the m~chine had captured the public imagina-
to be inferior to that of traditional cultures. But he 1s tion .. The mve?t10n of the steamboat had been exciting,
willing to take that risk. The kind of community he wants but tt was nothmg compared to the railroad. In the 183o's
"may not produce a Newton, Milton, or Shaks~eare," he t~e locomot~ve, an iron horse or fire-Titan, is becoming a
says, "but it will have a mass of thought, reAect~on, study, kmd of nat10nal obsession. It is the embodiment of the
and contemplation perpetually at work all over tts surface age, an instrument of power, speed, noise, fire, iron, smoke
and producing all the fruits of mental activity." To the \ -at once a testament to the will of man rising over natu-
[American lawyer, the machine is a token of the pos- 1 ral obstacles, and, yet, confined by its iron rails to a pre-
I sibilities of democracy. It promises unbelievable ~bun- 1 determined path, it suggests a new sort of fate. The "in-
' dance, hence a more harmonious and just way of hfe- dustrial revolution incarnate" one economic historian has
including the life of the mind- than mankind ever has called it. Stories about railroad projects, railroad accidents,
enjoyed. v rail:oad.profits, railroad speed fill the press; the fascinating
•
s~bJect ~ taken up in songs, political speeches, and maga-
zme a.rttcles, .both factual and fictional. In the leading
5 magazmes, writers elaborate upon the themes of Walker's
Between 1786, when Thomas Jefferson described the new essay. !hey ~dduce the power of machines (steam engines,
mill at Blackfriar's Bridge, and t831, when Timothy factor~e~, ratlroa.ds, and, after 1844, the telegraph) as the
Walker defended mechanization against Carlyle's attack, concl~stve sanctt~n for faith in the unceasing progress of
the image of the machine had become a major symbol of mankmd. Assoctated with what seemed a world-wide
value. We call Jefferson's reference to the Boulton-Watt surge of the poor and propertyless, with democratic
engine an "image" because it conveys little more than a egalitarianism, the machine is used to figure an un-
sense perception. But in the speeches of T ench Coxe, the precedented release of human energy in science, politics,
following year, the image is well on its way to becoming ~nd everyday life. Armed with this new power, mankind
a new sort of "symbol." There it is made to carry a burden ts now able, for the first time, to realize the dream of
1 92 THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN
Th e Machine
1 93
___...,
abundance. The entire corpus of intoxicated prose seems I modern, and disrespect for ancient times, down even to
to rest on the simple but irresistible logic of first things ', the wholly uneducated classes." During the nineteenth
first: all other hopes, for peace, equality, freedom, and-' century, therefore, no one needs to spell out the idea of
happiness, are fel t to rest upon technology. The fable of progress to Americans. They can see it, hear it, and, in a
Prometheus is invoked on all sides. In his essay on " His- manner of speaking, feel it as the idea of history most
tory" ( 184 1), Emerson uses the example of the fire-stealer nearly analogous to the rising tempo of life.2e
to suggest how "advancing man" unveils the authentic ~uch the same feeling surrounds the symbol of the ma-
facts, such as the "invention of the mechanic arts," beneath chme when it is put into words. That is why it is not
the surface of ancient myth. "What a range of meanings enough to sum up the "ideas" embodied in the symbol if
and what perpetual pertinence," he says, "has the story of we are to appreciate its impact upon the serious writers
Prometheus!" 28 of th~ age. For its meaning is carried not so much by ex-
But no summary in paraphrase will convey the subtle pre.ss Ideas as by the evocative quality of the language, by
influence of industrialization upon mass consciousness. attitude and tone. All of the writers of our first significant
Not that this familiar and all-too-simple body of ideas re- literary generation- that of Emerson and Hawthorne_
quires further elucidation. Anyone can understand it, and, knew .this tone. It was the dominant tone of public
of course, that is just the point: it is the obviousness and\ rheto.nc. They grew up with it; it was in their heads;
~mplicity of the machine as a symbol of progress that a<;;.J and m o~e way or another they all responded to it. It
counts for its astonishing power. With the possible excep- fo~s a kmd of undertone for the serious writing of the
'on of Henry Adams, no one grasped this fact so firmly pe~10d, sometimes rising to the surface spontaneously, the
as John Stuart Mill. In his brilliant comments (1840) on wrtter. momentarily sharing the prevail ing ebullience,
Tocqueville's D emocracy in America, he argues that ma- somet1mes brought there by design for satiric or ironic
chine technology inculcates its message directly, imagis- \ pur.poses. In its purest f~rm we hear the tone in Emer-
tically, wordlessly. A locomotive is a perfect symbol be- son s m~re ~xuberant. flights; but it also turns up in
cause its meaning need not be attached to it by a poet; it !horeau s Witty parodies, in Melville's (Ahab's) bombast
J is inherent in its physical attributes. To see a powerful. ·~ Hawthorne's satires on the age, and in Whitman's strut~
efficient machine in the landscape is to know the supe- tmg gab and brag. To say this is not enough, however; one
riority of the present to the past. If the landscape happens must hear the words~ f~r their meaning is inseparable from
to be wild or uncultivated, and if the observer is a man the texture - the dxct10n, cadence, imagery or, in a word
who knows what it means to live by physical labor, the from the "Iangu.age." H ere, then, are some passages culled'
effect will be even more dramatic and the meaning more from ~e magazmes of the period; they are offered not ~ s
obvious. "The mere visible fruits of scientific progress," a prec~se gauge of opinion, but rather as a sampl~ o1 t
says Mill, " ... the mechanical improvements, the steam-
engines, the railroads, carry the feeling of admiration for f
rhetonc of progt'ess surrounding the symbol of theiiia:"
cIne. . - -- _
194 THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN The Machine 1 95
x. The machine and nature. We live in an age marked The entire relation between man and nature is being
by the "successful culture of physical science and . . . ex- transformed. Discussing the moral and other indirect in·
traordinary triumphs in mechanism." Man has arrrived. fluences of the new railroads in 1832, one writer foresees
"Indeed it would almost seem as though he were now but an unprecedented harmony between art and nature, city
just entering on that dominion over the earth, which was and country. The American population of the future, he
assigned to him at the beginning. No longer, as once, does says, will "possess a large share of the knowledge, refine·
he stand trembling amid the forces of nature. . .." To ment, and polish of a city, united to the virtue and purity
understand the American consciousness in this period the of the country." It is the new mechanized landscape itself
key image, as Tocqueville noted, is the "march" of the which may be expected to induce this ideal state of mind.
nation across the wilds, "draining swamps, turning the In explaining how the sight of a railroad will inspire fu-
course of rivers, peopling solitudes, and subduing nature." ture generations, this writer reveals the assumptions lying
Or, in the words of the writer quoted above: back of the progr~t-er-ie;-w~ o m_;y--beSaUe !!-
The wide air and deep waters, the tall mountains, the the rhetoric o :he technological sublime: ~1 CL.
outstretched plains and the earth's deep caverns, are be- Objects of exalted power and grandeur elevate md
come parcel of his [man's] domain and yield freely of that seriously dwells on them, and impart to it greater
their treasures to his researches and toils. The terrible compass and strength. Alpine scenery and an embattled
ocean ... conveys ... [him] submissively.... He has al· ocean deepen contemplation, and give their own sub-
most annihilated space and time. He yokes to his car limity to the conceptions of beholders. The same will be
fire and water, those unappeasable foes, and flying from true of our system of Rail-roads. Its vastness and mag-
place to place with the speed of thought carries with nificence will prove communicable, and add to the stand·
him, in one mass, commodities for supplying a province. ard of the intellect of our country.sl
No stock phrase in the entire lexicon of progress appears Even the animals seem to recognize that a radical change
more often than the "annihilation of space and time," bor- is in store. Just back from an excursion on a new section
rowed from one of Pope's relatively obscure poems ("Ye of railroad, the editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer reports,
Gods! annihilate but space and time, j And make two in 1846, that he saw "herds of cattle, sheep, and horses,
lovers happy."). The extravagance of this sentiment ap· stand for a few seconds and gaze at the passing train, then
parently is felt to match the sublimity of technological turn and run for a few rods with all possible speed, stop
progress. "There appears to be something in the pursuit and look again with eyes distended, and head and ears
of mechanical invention," says one writer for the Scientific erect, seemingly so frightened at the tramp of the iron
American, "which has a reaching up after our divine title, horse as to have lost the power of locomotion." People, he
'lords of the creation.' . . . It is truly a sublime sight to says, also were "dumfounded at the strange and unusual
behold a machine performing nearly all the functions of spectacle," and he often saw them rushing from their
a rational being. . . . "so houses and "gaping with wonder and astonishment at the
Th e Machine 197
tg6 THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN
2. The machine and history. The idea that history is a
new, and to them grand and terrfic [sic] sight." ~ncredu
,' lity is a recurrent note. As if keyed to the subject, the
record of more or less continuous progress had become
popular during the eighteenth century, but chiefly among
rhetoric rises with man's power over nature. the educated. Associated with achievements of Newtonian
Steam is annihilating space. . . . Travelling is changed mechanics, the idea remained abstract and relatively in-
from an isolated pilgrimage to a kind of triumphal accessible. But with rapid industrialization, the notion of
procession. . .. Caravans of voyagers are now winding progress became palpable; "improvements" were visible
as it were, on the wings of the wind, round the habitable to everyone. During the nineteenth century, accordingly,
globe. Here they glide over cultivated acres on rods of the awe and reverence once reserved for the Deity and
iron, and there they rise and fall on the bosom of the later bestowed upon the visible la ndscape is directed to-
deep, leaving behind them a foaming wheel-track like
ward technology or, rather, the technological conquest of
the chariot-path of a sea-god. . . .
~atter.
Written in 1844, this passage, with its image of the ship's
wake as a "foaming wheel-track," anticipates the scene in The progress of human knowledge has accomplished
Moby-Dick where Ahab, having asserted his dominion within a century revolutions in the character and condi·
tion of the human race so beautiful and sublime as
over the crew, identifies his will with the power of ma-
to excite in every observing mind feelings mingled with
chines: he gazes astern and the Pequod's wake seems to
the deepest admiration and astonishment. No age has
him the track of a railroad crossing the continent. His illustrated so strongly as the present the empire of mind
feeling for machines is not unlike that expressed by this over matter- and the ability of man to rise ... above
writer for a businessman's magazine in 1840: the obstacles with which nature has surrounded him... .
We believe that the steam engine, upon land, is to be It is a happy privilege we enjoy of living in an age, which
one of the most valuable agents of the present age, be· for its inventions and discoveries, its improvement in
cause it is swifter than the greyhound, and powerful as intelligence and virtue, stands without a rival in the
a thousand horses; because it has no passions and no history of the world. . . . Look at our splendid steam·
motives; because it is guided by its directors; because boats.. . .
it runs and never tires; because it may be applied to so To look at a steamboat, in other words, is to see the
many uses, and expanded to any strength.82 sublime progress of the race. Variations on the theme are
On every hand man is displaying titanic powers. The endless; only the sllgti est suggestion is needed to elevate
sight of a new bridge provokes one writer to ask, "What a machine into a "type" of progress. Thus George Ripley
is there yet to be done upon the face of the earth, that m 1846:
cannot be effected by the powers of the human mind . . .?" The age that is to witness a rail road between the At·
The answer is that man " . .. is indeed, 'lord of crea- !antic and Pacific, as a grand material type of the unity
tion'; and all nature, as though daily more sensible of the of nations. will also behold a social organization, pro-
conquest, is progressively making less and less resistance ductive of moral and spiritual results, whose sublime
to his dominion." as
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN The Machine 199
and beneficent character will eclipse even the glory of atmosphere, and imbibed that vigor which has since char-
those colossal achievements which send messengers of acterised his labors and his triumphs." The main point of
fire over the mountain tops, and connect ocean with the essay is that steam power, by relieving man from physi-
ocean by iron and granite bands.a• cal work, will upset the "moral economy of the world":
But if the artifacts are new, the underlying assumptions
... it is now universally employed as the great motive
rerli'liiiithose of the Enlightenment. Handbooks of intel- agent in machinery, triumphing over time and space,
lectual htstory neglect the fact that the "romantic reac- outstripping the winds in speed, annihilating every ob-
tion" against scientific rationalism, the attitude of Poe, stacle by sea or land, and almost defying the organic
Hawthorne, or Melville, is directed not only against the influences which regulate the surface of our globe. Nor
dominant ideas of the previous age, but also against their is it only over matter that it exercises this control; for
omnipresence in contemporary culture. In the period be- so wonderfully does it relieve the necessity of physical
tween 1830 and t86o popular discussions of technological exertion, that it seems destined, in its future action and
progress assume that inventors are uncovering the ulti- developments, to disturb the moral economy of the
mate structural principles of the universe. In 1850 a writer world, by opposing that great law of the universe, which
inspired by a new telescope says: "How wonderful the makes labor the portion of man, and condemns him to
process by which the human brain, in its casket of earn his bread by the sweat of his brow....ae
bone, can alone establish such remote and transcendental Inventors, accordingly, are the intellectual heroes of the
truths." The overblown, exclamatory tone of so much of age. Speaking of Eli Whitney's contribution, a visitor to
this writing arises from an intoxicated feeling of unlimited Yale in 1831 attacks those who feel that it "ought not to
possibility. History has a meaning, a purpose, and a reach- be compared with what has been done by the intellectual
able goal: it is nothing less than man's acquisition of the benefactors of mankind; the Miltons, the Shakspeares,
absolute truth. Can we doubt, asks the same writer, that and the Newtons."
it is "the Divine plan, that man shall yet discover the But is it quite certain, that any thing short of the highest
whole scheme of the visible universe . . . ?" Of course, intellectual vigor,- the brightest genius, - is sufficient to
it may be said that in this case the language is not entirely invent one of these extraordinary machines? Place a
inappropriate, since the subject is an astronomical dis- common mind before an oration of Cicero, and a steam
covery. But the hyperbolic rhetoric was not reserved for engine, and it will despair of rivalling the latter as much
new penetrations of the heavens, as the following question, as the former. . . . And then, as to the effect on society,
provoked by the appearance of an improved haymaker, so the machine, it is true, operates, in the first instance, on
el~que.ntly attests: "Are not our inventors absolutely ush- mere physical elements. . . . But do not all the arts of
enng m the very dawn of the millennium?" s11 civilization follow in the train?
3· The machine and mind. Describing the "Moral In- Later the rhetoric of progress becomes less diffident. One
fluence of Steam" in 1846, a writer notes that it is "in the recurrent assertion is that all the other arts rest upon the
United States that the infant Hercules found a congenial mechanic arts. Another is that mechanism is, in itself, as
200 THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN The Machin e 201
worthy as the fine arts: "inventions are the poetry of physi- mond Williams has noted that the words "art" and "cul-
cal science, and inventors are the poets." To counter the ture," as we use them, were in large measure formed in
sneers of literary traditionalists these writers develop reaction against industrialization, and they still carry a
ingenious turns. A favorite tactic is to borrow literary strong negative bias. But not all literary intellectuals
language, thereby producing such popular figures as "epic adopted the snobbish attitude. Emerson's essay on "Art"
of machinery." "Who can tell of the dreamings- the ( 1841) is written against it, and contributors to the Dial,
wakeful nightly dreamings of inventors, their abstrac- in this case, Theodore Parker, often speak in this vein:
tions and enthusiastic reveries, to create some ballad or
The head saves the hands. It invents machines, which,
produce some epic in machinery."
doing the work of many hands, will at last set free a
A writer on the steam-engine ... declared that it re- large portion of leisure time from slavery to the ele-
quired very much the same kind of genius and intellect ments. The brute forces of nature lie waiting man's com-
to invent a new machine, as was necessary for the inspira- mand, and ready to serve him.
tion of a poem. and whether a man be a poet or inventor
Parker continues, offering what is probably the most
of machinery, is more the result of circumstances, or the
age in which he chances to live, than in a difference of popular conceit of the progressive vocabulary:
mental organization.sT At the voice of Genius, the river consents to turn his
A similar campaign is conducted on behalf of the ma- wheel, and weave and spin for the antipodes. The mine
sends him iron Vassals, to toil in cold and heat. Fire
chines themselves. Some people, one writer observes, re-
and Water embrace at his bidding, and a new servant is
gard the "mechanic arts as something undignified and born, which will fetch and carry at his command; will
degrading. . . ." face down all the storms of the Atlantic; will forge
Reader, if ever you have such feelings, go to Matteawan anchors, and spin gossamer threads, and run errands
to be cured of them. When you enter the machine shop, up and down the continent with men and women on his
you will understand why the Greeks, with their fine back. This last child of Science, though yet a stripling
imagination, wedded Venus the beautiful to Vulcan of and in leading strings, is already a stout giant. The Fable
the hammer and the dusky brow. We always feel an un- of Orpheus is a true story in our times.as
utterable pleasure in looking upon the operations of fine
machinery. . . . The idea that machine power is fulfilling an ancient
mythic prophecy evokes some of the most exuberant writ-
There is a defensive tone about much of this writing, in ing. Under the improbable title "Statistics and Specula-
part a resistance to the exclusion of the "mechanic arts" tions Concerning the Pacific Railroad," we hear this ex-
from the general category of the "uts," which formerly cited voice: "'By a horse shall Ilium perish/ ran the
~a~ indu~ed all skills but in the early nineteenth century prophecy in Old World times. 'By a horse America shall
1S mcreasmgly reserved for the polite or "fine" arts. Ray- live,' saith the Oracle to the New World." The rhetoric
202 THE MACHINE JN THE GARDEN The Machine 203
often reaches its highest pitch when the machine is de- sharp note of anti-intellectualism gets into the industrial
scribed hurtling in triumph across the landscape: celebration in the 185o's, and the Commissioner of Patents,
Thomas Ewbank, gives the doctrine of utility an official
And the Iron Horse, the earth-shaker, the fire-breather, stamp. Indeed, nothing sums up the metaphysic of indus-
which tramples down the hills, which outruns the lag- trialism so well as a statement of his, quoted in this in-
gard winds, which leaps over the riven, which grinds stance under the heading "Civilization, Inventors, Inven-
the rods to powder and breaks down the gate.s of the
tion and the Arts": "'His works proclaim his preference
mountains, he too shall build an empire and an epic.
Shall not solitudes and waste places cry for gladness at for the useful to the merely imaginative, and in truth it
his coming? is in such, that the truly beautiful or sublime is to be
found. A steamer is a mightier epic than the llliad,- and
Or, in an essay on the coal business of the United Whitney, Jacquard and Blanchard might laugh even
States, we are told that civilized society is indebted to fire Virgil, Milton and Tasso to scorn.' " 40
"for the greatest portion of its superiority over savage 4· The machine and America. There is a special affinity
life." To indicate the importance of fire the WTiter notes between the machine and the new Republic. In the first
that "in the Grecian mythology . . . the daring theft of place, the raw landscape is an ideal setting for techno-
Prometheus" was so resented by the gods that the "punish- lOgicarp;ogress. In 1850 an Amencan magazine reprints
ment of its author was destined to be eternal, and terrible, an English writer's explanation for the greater success of
in sublime horror, above all the retributive punishments technology, especially the telegraph, in the New World.
of paganism." s11 Only half a century before, he says, "wild beasts, and still
By the 185o's the celebrants of the machine take the of- wilder Indians, wandered over the lands now traversed in
fensive. Parity is not enough. A writer for the Scientific perfect security by these frail wires. . . .'' In some not
American regrets the "mass of thought and intelligence wholly explicable way the backwardness of the country
. . . expended by those who are termed the 'most highly gives the progressive impulse an electric charge; hence
educated,' upon subjects which have no practical bearing the "transition from a wild and barbarous condition to
on the welfare of man or the advancement of the useful that of the most elaborate civilization ... [is not] grad-
arts." What is striking here is that the complaint is di- ual, but instantaneous.'' In America progress is a kind of
rected not only against classical education, but against explosion. Civilization "has at one bound leaped into life,
theoretical science as well. What good are long-winded surrounded with every appliance . .. which the existing
studies of the age of the earth? No good at all! Academic knowledge of man has devised for ministering to his wants
interests of this kind explain the fact that "men from and his enjoyment." Never has there been anything
the workshop" (he mentions Watt, Fulton, Bell, and like the violent coming together of advanced art and sav-
Stevenson) "have turned the world upside down by their age nature. Nor is the singularity of this clash lost upon
inventions, while the sages of Oxford and Cambridge Americans. In the words of George Perkins Marsh, speak-
have but added some new theorems to the Principia." A ing to the Rutland County Agricultural Society in 1847.
204 THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN The Machine 205
America is the "first example of the struggle between civil- citizen of a democracy inventions are vehicles for the
ized man and barbarous uncultivated nature." Elsewhere pursuit of happiness. 42
the earth has been subdued slowly, but here for the first The result is that Americans have seized upon the
time "the full energies of advanced European civilization, machine as their birthright. Granted that the best of the
stimulated by its artificial wants and guided by its accumu- fine arts- statuary, painting, and architecture- is still
lated intelligence, were brought to bear at once on a desert to be found in the Old World, "there is one agent which
continent...." 41 we can call peculiarly our own, and in the application of
But there is an equally important political reason for which, the nation is destined to excel." What is more, the
the astonishing success of mechanism in the New World. agent has appeared at a providential moment, just when
After all, well-trained, ingenious minds had confronted our manifest destiny requires it.
barbarous conditions before. Consider the ancients, the
Just as we are prepared to go forward in building the
exemplary Greeks and Romans. Although they had had frame of our national enterprise, a new power presents
brilliant, inventive minds, their inventiveness was "wrongly itself! The spirit of the republic grasps it, ... hails the
directed." They were not interested in the useful arts, agency of steam as the benefactor of man, and the power
chiefly because of what a twentieth-century social scientist which stamps the character of the present age.
would call their "value system," but what this writer in
1847 refers to as a "philosophy ... repugnant to any The new power, this benefactor of man, is not to be self-
invention which had for its object the benefit of the mass ishly guarded as an American possession. (The European
of mankind." origins of industrial technology often are neglected.) Even
This very element in ancient polity and ancient phi- now, in 1847, the inventive genius of the Republic is
losophy, was the very cause which prevented in the spreading its blessings in Europe. In Russia go,ooo men
working classes of those days that developement [sic] of are building railroads under American supervision. Look-
mechanical genius, which by the construction of ma- ing forward to the completion of this project, a writer
chines . . . might have elevated both Greece and Rome extends the grand conceit of the progressive rhetoric, the
to that pinnacle of greatness on which some . .. mod- image of a Promethean fire-machine sweeping across the
ern nations now stand. . .. Every effort of genius is continent and even beyond national frontiers, back to the
prostituted, unless directed for the purpose of benefitting Old World. He envisages the moment when, "across the
the human family.
Steppes of the Volga and through the Passes of the Ural
To account for the progress of American technology it is Mountains, will yet roll the swift American locomotive,
not enough to talk about geography, or even the combined pealing notes of nobler victories than those of the reddest
effect of the virgin land and Yankee inventive skill. One warfare-the triumphs of American mechanical genius."
must also recognize the incentives which call forth that
skill. They are provided by a democracy which invites Who knows now what great and good influence in
every man to enhance his own comfort and status. To the the cause of Freedom and Reform is exercised by the
206 THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN The Machine
mingling of our mechanics with the peasantry of the much energy so soon to be released. But this is not to
Russian empire.- Who knows but in a few years the deny the intellectual hollowness of the rhetoric. The stock
now Russian serf, may stand a freeman at his own cot- response to the panorama of progress, as Mill observed,
tage door, and as he beholds the locomotive fleeting past, by-passes ideas; it is essentially a buoyant feeling generated
will take off his cap ... and bless God that the Me- without words or thought. The same may be said of the
chanics of Washington's land were permitted to scatter rhetoric. It rises like froth on a tide of exuberant self-
the seeds of social freedom in benighted Russia.4a regard, sweeping over all misgivings, problems, and con-
This little fantasy, which concludes our sample of pro- tradictions.
gressive rhetoric, is a projection of feelings that pervade And there were misgivings. Quite apart from any overt
the whole grandiloquent litany. By now the image of the criticism of the new power, it is possible to detect tremors
American machine has become a transcendent symbol: a of doubt within the rhetoric of praise. Often writers use
physical object invested with political and metaphysical imagery which belies their arguments. In 1840 James H.
ideality. It rolls across Europe and Asia, liberating the Lanman made what seems on first inspection to be a
oppressed people of the Old World- a signal, in fact, for wholly affirmative survey of the "Railroads of the United
the salvation of mankind. It fulfills, as Walt Whitman States." Adopting the booster tone of Hunt's Merchants'
later would put it, the old yearning for a "Passage to Magazine, he praises the new machines as "the triumphs
India." Above all, the rhetoric conveys that sense of unlim· of our own age, the laurels of mechanical philosophy, of
ited possibility which seizes the American imagination at untrammeled mind, and a liberal commerce!" It is clear,
this remarkable juncture. Before coming down on the he says of the railroads, "that all patriotic and right-
meretriciousness of the language, we need to remind our· minded men have concurred in the propriety of their
selves how remarkable, in truth, the circumstances were. construction." Nevertheless, he manages to convey some-
Consider how the spectacle of the machine in a virgin thing less than full confidence in the benign influence of
land must have struck the mind. Like nothing ever seen machines. They are, he says, "iron monsters," "dragons of
under the sun, it appears when needed most: when the mightier power, with iron muscles that never tire, breath·
great west finally is open to massive settlement, when ~ng smoke and flame through their blackened lungs, feed-
democracy is triumphant and gold is discovered in Cali- mg upon wood and water, outrunning the race horse... ."
fornia, here- as if by design - comes a new power com- At one point he describes a train "leaping forward like
mensurate with the golden opportunity of all history. Is some black monster, upon its iron path, by the light of
it any wonder that the prospect arouses awe and reverence? the fire and smoke which it vomits forth." All of these
Back of the stock epithets and the pious, oracular tone, images, which associate technology with the destructive
there are emotions which cannot be dismissed as mere and repulsive, are in marked contrast to Lanman's mani-
hokum: a plausible incredulity, wonder, elation, and fest theme. They communicate a sense of anxiety and
pride; a generous, humane delight at the promise of so dread. It may be significant that he manages to make
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN The Machine
208
technology seem most loathsome in describing the effect way that reconciliation was accomplished, let us consider
of a "steam screw" upon the landscape. It is an instru- an episode in the life of the nation's foremost political
ment, he says, which "should tear up by the roots the rhetorician."~~
present monarchs of the forest, and open the ample
bosom of the soil to the genial beams of the fertilizing
sun." 44 6
But aside from such covert expressions of ambivalence, Because he owned a farm nearby, Daniel Webster hap-
everyone knows that the great majority of Americans wel- pened to be in Grafton, New Hampshire, on August 28,
comed the new technology. As Perry Miller said, wel- 1847, the day the Northern Railroad was opened. A large
comed is too weak a verb: they grasped and panted and crowd from neighboring farms and villages had gathered
cried for it. Again and again, foreign travelers in this for the ceremonies. When the great orator's presence be-
period testify to the nation's obsessive interest in power came known, he was called upon- spontaneously and
machinery. The typical American, says Michael Chevalier, with enthusiasm, we are told- and Mr. Webster "readily
"has a perfect passion for railroads; he loves them . . . complied." Three months later, on November 17, another
as a lover loves his mistress." In the words of another · stretch of the railroad was opened in Lebanon. To cele-
Frenchman, Guillaume Poussin, "the railroad, animated brate this event a more formal entertainment, including
by its powerful locomotive, appears to be the personifica- a "collation," was prepared. Several distinguished guests
tion of the American. The one seems to hear and under- were brought by rail all the way from Boston. When the
stand the other- to have been made for the other - to official train reached South Franklin, it stopped to "take
be indispensable to the other." Perhaps the most inter- in" Mr. Webster. Later that day the assembly once again
esting comment, like a report of an informal projective demanded a speech. "Thus called upon to speak," he said
test, comes from Frederika Bremer. When the boys in a to the crowd, "I cannot disregard the summons." A master
schoolroom she is visiting are told to amuse themselves of language, keen politician, his ear nicely tuned to the
drawing on their slates, the Swedish novelist notices that prevailing mood, Webster knew exactly what was wanted.
most of them draw "smoking steam-engines, or steam- Taken together, these ceremonial speeches exhibit one
boats, all in movement." As if endorsing Carlyle's notion way of neutralizing the conflict between the machine and
that mechanism is taking possession of mind, Miss Bremer the rural idea}.46
concludes that "interest in locomotive machinery has a Webster's major theme, needless to say, is the progress
rofound connection with life in this country." So pro~ \ exemplified by the railroad. At first he dwells upon the
found indeed was the connection that Americans had little changes in the countryside since his youth, when there
I
difficulty in reconciling their passion for machine power
with the immensely popular Jeffersonian ideal of rural
peace, simplicity, and contentment. As an example of the
were no roads between the river valleys. "At that day,"
he says, "steam, as a motive power, acting on water and
land, was thought of by nobody. . . ." Then came the
210 THE MACHINE IN THF. GARDEN The Machine 211
..-
remarkable series of internal improvements, first roads, a railway cannot be a road upon which every man may
then turnpikes and canals, and now, vastly greater, "the drive his own carriage.'' As for the danger of infringing
invention which distinguishes this age." The railroad on the rights of private property, that is easily avoided by
"towers above all other inventions of this or the preceding ensuring ample compensation to landowners. Such tech-
age," he says, "as the Cardigan Mountain now before us nical problems apparently do not concern him. What does
lifts itself above the little hillocks at its base. Fellow-citi- interest him, however, is a less easily defined way in which
zens, can we without wonder consider where we are, and the railroads "interrupt or annoy" people:
what has brought us here?"
In answer to his own question, Webster brings on the When the directors of the road resolved to lay it out
upon the river (as I must say they were very wise in
familiar homage to progress. The railroad breaks down
doing), they showed themselves a little too loving to
regional barriers. Those who came from Boston might me, coming so near my farm-house, that the thunder of
have brought along "fish taken out of the sea at sunrise." their engines and the screams of their steam-whistles, to
Imagine, says Webster, eating as good a fish dinner in the say nothing of other inconveniences, not a little dis-
mountains of New Hampshire as on the beach at Nahant! turbed the peace and repose of its occupants.
The new inventions hold the promise of national unity
and, even more exciting, social equality. Nothing could As the diction plainly indicates, Webster is aware of
be as important to the "great mass of the community" as certain far-reaching if unspoken implications of the event.
this innovation "calculated . . . to equalize the condition He heightens the emotional charge by employing the stock
of men." It is a mode of conveyance available to rich and device of the monstrous machine with its "thunder" and
poor alike, and he is pleased to report that the people "screams," and by setting it against the conventionally
regard it as their own. Upon asking one of his tenants pastoral "peace and repose" of the farm. Then, as if the
("my farmer") the meaning of a "line of shingles" across train roaring past his rural retreat were not inconvenience
his fields, the man had replied, " 'It is the line of our enough, he tells how the landscape is being desecrated.
railroad.' Our railroad!" Webster exclaims, "That is the "There is, beside," he says, "an awkward and ugly embank-
way the people talked about it. . . . It is the spirit and ment thrown up across my meadows. It injures the look
influence of free labor, it is the indomitable industry of of the fields." For a moment at least the audience may
a free people, that has done all this." well have been puzzled. What is he saying? Is he really
But Webster is not satisfied to rehearse these stock annoyed? Does this monster threaten the American way
themes; he also feels a responsibility to dispose of certain of life? Webster continues:
"idle prejudices" against railroads. Some he dismisses It injures the look of the fields. But I have observed,
quickly. In one sentence he brushes aside the charge that ~ellow-citizens, that ~ilroad directors and railroad pro-
the new companies are undemocratic, monopolistic, closed Jectors are no enthusiastic lovers of landscape beauty; a
corporations. What else could they be?- "the track of handsome field or lawn, beautiful copses, and aU the
THE MACHI NE lN THE CA~EN The Ma chine 213
gorgeousness of forest scenery, pass for little in their Pastoral poetry and the beauty of the landscape belong
eyes. Their business is to cut and slash, to level or deface in one category, along with the peace and repose of rural
a finely rounded field, and fill up beautifully winding life, but they are not to interfere with serious enter-
valleys. 'I11ey are quite utilitarian in their creed and in prises, with the activity of railroad promoters, men in
their practice. Their business is to make a good road. touch with reality, whose "business is to make a good
They look upon a well-constructed embankment as an road." When Webster says, "To be serious, Gentlemen,"
agreeable work of art; they behold with delight a long,
it is with the serene assurance that his audience shares his
deep cut through hard pan and rock, such as we have
just passed; and if they can find a fair reason to run a definition of what is serious. "To be serious, Gentlemen,"
tunnel under a deep mountain, they are hal£ in raptures. he explains, "I must say I admire the skill, the enter-
To be serious, Gentlemen . . . prise, and that rather bold defiance of expense . . . [of]
the directors of this road.... "
The last, transitional phrase is the key to Webster's With impressive oratorical craft, Webster has made an
strategy. Without it, in fact, we might have some difficulty example of himself in order to display the proper response
imagining his tone of voice. But it announces that the to the "inconveniences" attendant upon industrial prog·
offended sensibility of lovers of landscape, for whom he ress. His trick is reduction in the technical literary sense
had pretended to speak, is not to be taken seriously. of giving in to a feeling or idea in order, eventually, to
Chances are that the note of injury in this plaint was take it back. By bringing it out into the open, he helps
delivered as mock injury. In any case, he is saying that assuage that inchoate, hovering anxiety about change
it is foolish to deplore the cutting and slashing. From an which often expresses itself obliquely, in moral or aesthetic
eminence high a hove the offended and the offenders, language, and in a revulsion against the machine as a
Webster speaks as one who sees all around the situation; physical object. Actually, this feeling is grounded in the
he sees the ugly scar cut into the green hills of New Hamp- older, pastoral conception of American society associated
shire, and he sees the forces represented by the railroad, with Jefferson's noble husbandman. By treating it as triv-
and he knows beyond any possible doubt that to those ial, effete, and literary, Webster reduces the psychic dis-
forces Americans must and will pay homage. Within view, sonance generated by industrialization. To be truly serious,
as he speaks, there is a locomotive embodying the domi- he says, is to put such feelings aside and rejoice in the
nant impulse of the society: "a zealous determination to changes wrought by the machine. Each speech, accord-
improve and profit by labor .... " He admits that in their ingly, ends on a note of high praise. At Grafton, in August,
zeal Americans may seem to neglect impulses other than he urges that the policy which led to the building of the
those resulting in profit or improvement. "New Hamp- road be pursued "till internal improvement in some really
shire, it is true," he says, "is no classic ground. She has no and intrinsically useful form shall reach every glen and
Virgil and no Eclogues." But the common-sense doctrine every mountain-side of the State." At Lebanon, in Novem-
of first things first tacitly controls the entire discourse. ber, a more formal occasion for which he is better pre-
214 THE MACHINE IN THE C~EN The Machine
pared, Webster ends with a Ciceronian tribute to the That the Senator knew his countrymen is beyond ques-
mechanized sublime:
It is an extraordinary era in which we live. It is al-
tion. Consider the increase in the nation's total railroad
mileage before 186o: in 1830, 73 miles had been laid, in
1840, 3,328 miles, in 1850, 8,879 miles, and in 186o,
I
together new. The world has seen nothing like it before. 30,636 miles. But the contradiction between the feverish •
I will not pretend, no one can pretend, to discern the activity represented here and the pastoral ideal did not
end; but every body knows that the age is remarkable go undetected. Indeed, we shall be in a better position
for scientific research into the heavens, the earth, and to appreciate the representative character of Webster's
what is beneath the earth; and perhaps more remark-
attitude if we set it beside its opposite. Consider, for exam-
able still for the application of this scientific research
to the pursuits of life. The ancients saw nothing like it. ple, a description of industrialization in Vermont printed
The moderns have seen nothing like it till the present in the Fourierist journal, the Harbinger, in 1847, the
generation. . . . We see the ocean navigated and the year of Webster's tributes to the Northern Railroad. The
solid land traversed by steam power, and intelligence writer, who uses a pseudonym, almost certainly is one
communicated by electricity. Truly this is almost a John Orvis, a recent resident of Brook Farm and a social-
miraculous era. What is before us no one can say, what ist lecturer. Just returned from a trip through his native
is upon us no one can hardly realize. The progress of state, Orvis begins with an apostrophe to the beauty of
the age has almost outstripped human belief; the future the scenery (the "luxuriant growth of grass upon the
is known only to Omniscience. meadows . .. the freshest green upon the hill-side pas-
Now, in the end, the orotund language oven vhelms any tures"), and, in fact, he says, there is "no describing the
lingering trace of uncertainty. The stately cadence of the picturesque harmony of the landscapes," which he there-
peroration, a cliche the audience surely expects, lends the upon describes:
Senator's argument an aura of priestly assurance. The The countenance of these hills is of inimitable softness,
occasion has a certain ritual aspect to begin with, but now whilst the numberless flocks and herds that animate
the rhetoric of the technological sublime heightens it, them, prove how wisely use is married with beauty. It is
bringing in a sense of cosmic harmony, suggesting an sublime, to stand in the mighty bowling alley which
obscure kinship between Webster, the spirit of the Repub- these mountains form . . .
lic, the machine power, and the progressive forces of
history. Everything, it says, is working out according to a The terrain , in short, fi gures an ideal bl ending of art and
nature; it is a version of the pastora l middle landscape.47
divine plan. Now the disturbing images of change, the /
screaming monster and the defacer of landscape, seem But in the last fifteen years, alas, this Virgilian country-
( embarrassingly squeamish, effeminate, and trivial. The side has been the scene of a technological and social revo-
noise and smoke, the discomfort and visual ugliness, even lution. First came the textile mills. They attracted cheap
I the loss of peace and repose- these things, the rich voice, Canadian labor, and now even the daughters of native
proclaims, are of little consequence to true Americans. farmers "throng the factories . . . where they are al-
216 THE MACHINE IN TH£ GARDEN The Machine
217
lowed but ten minutes to eat their dinners, and forced to ~hat needs emphasis here is that Orvis is insisting upon
sleep in brick pens. . . ." What follows is a Dickensian preclSely. the metaphor Webster casually dismisses; he
picture of calamitous industrialization- the girls "with- uses the Image of the machine in the native landscape to
out home, friends or counseling, wearing life to decay, figure a dangerous contradiction of social value and pur-
and weaving themselves shrouds whilst earning a gown" pose. But_Webste:, knowing his audience, brings in the
-but the worst is yet to come. Until now lack of trans- technological sublime to neutralize the dissonance gener:-
portation has prevented the use of the state's magnificent ared by mdustnalizahon. I he rhetonc forms an emotional
factory sites; but that impediment soon is to be removed. barra etween the orator and the public. It puts him in
The great topic of excitement everywhere is railroad build- touch with the mass surge toward comfort, status, wealth,
ing. Within ten years, Orvis predicts, the "wild picturesque and power that rules the society. If Orvis is correct when
waterfalls . .. will be deformed by the ugly presence of h_e argues the patent inconsistency between industrializa-
mills, and their voices, that now sing to their mountain ~IOn and pasto:al ideal.s, Webster is correct when he says,
dance, will then groan at the slavish wheel." The trans- ~n effect, that 1t doesn t matter. Orvis has got hold of an
formation of visible nature prefigures a social transforma- Intellectual, logical, and literary truth, but Webster under-
tion; soon, he says, the "beautiful pastoral life of the inhab- stands the practical political truth- the facts of power.
itants will give place to oppressive factory life- quiet, . The contrast, a case example in the politics of Amer-
rural pursuits will be absorbed in the din, conflict and Ican culture, roughly indicates the relative force exerted
degradation of manufacturing and mechanical busines.i. by th~ opposed symbols of the machine upon the native
. . ." Dire political changes will follow, the "golden consciOusness. It is fitting that the apostrophe to the new
equality which now exists, will precipitate into rigorous P_Ower sh?uld be offered by a national hero, closely asso-
forms of caste, of capitalist and laborer." We may pause Ciated Wlt~ the nation's dominant political, industrial,
a moment to notice how the suggestion of a golden age and financ_1a1 groups, and speaking under the auspices of
helps to fix egalitarian social principles in a pre-industrial a _corpor~twn: Webster represents the organized commu-
landscape. The point is, says Orvis, that Vermont soon will ~lty. It 1s fitting, _too, that the essay that calls into ques-
cease to be the "Evergreen State," and a "false society will tiOn the assumptiOns governing capitalist industrialism
have blasted its beauty and dried up the blood of its should be written by a little-known reformer under an
vigor and prosperity." (The blasting which destroys the assumed name in an ephemeral, obscure organ of the
beauty of the state is the blasting which clears a path for Brook Farm Associationists. In the public view he appears
the new railroad.) Mechanization, both literally and meta- as on~ of ~hose queer intellectuals who flaunt their dis-
phorically, means disharmony. It separates the people from a_ffectwn w~th gest~res of withdrawal and, indeed, by quite
the lovely green landscape which has, or ought to have, hter~lly Withdrawmg from ordinary social life to rustic
a primary place in their thought and feeling. Between utopian communities, pastoral oases. (An .. . . . 1-11 USIOn
. , a
man and nature it threatens to impose an ugly, depress- masquerade, a pastoral, a counterfeit Arcadia," says Haw-
ing, and inhumane community. thorne's narrator, Coverdale, of the fictive Brook Farm in
218 THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN The Machin e
219
The Blithedale Romance.) If Webster stands forth as the of the "mechanists," but the nation's favorite philosopher
type of solid Yankee gentility, property, elo<!uence, and remained, well into the nineteenth century, "the Great
position, Orvis brings to mind a small cult of literary Mr. Locke." All of which helps to explain the superb
dreamers beyond the fringe. 48 confidence of Daniel Webster, patriot and native Demos-
The invidious comparison is further heightened by thenes, who keeps alive the neo-classic image of the Amer-
what might be called the public personality of the two ican statesman.~u
ideologies, or world views, represented here. In the idiom Given the political and ideological climate, it is not sur-
of the 184o's, Orvis's attitude inevitably will be taken for prising that the pastoral ideal is invoked against indus-
another of the wild, "Germanic" theories to which the trialization chiefly by those who, like Orvis, are radically
effete and the literary are said to be vulnerable. The disaffected. • Aside from apologists fo'r Southern slavery,
epithet is calculated to evoke memories of Goethe and these dissidents belong to small, ineffectual groups-
other vaguely disreputable poets with curious manners socialist, transcendentalist, literary, religious -far from
and an unrealistic, freewheeling, metaphysical turn of the centers of influence and power. Outside the South the
mind. It means, in a word, romantic Weltschmerz, a state pastoral ideal has little or no practical value as a political
of feeling thought to be basically subversive yet in most weapon against industrialism. Even the Jacksonians, who
cases, like "beat" rebelliousness today, adolescent and have deep misgivings about what is happening to the
harmless. To respectable, middle-class Americans who ad- nation, adopt an attitude much closer to Webster's. To
mire Daniel Webster, the viewpoint adopted by Orvis be sure, they attack the Bank as a monstrous piece of
seems as mystical and un-American as Carlyle's "Signs of financial machinery (Jefferson had referred to the Hamil-
the Times" had seemed to Timothy Walker. Not that the tonian system as a machine), and they attempt in various
difference between the two views is in any important ways to stay the centripetal forces at work in the economy.
sense an international difference; in England the division • Y~t the ov~rt negative response to industrialization is not nearly as
between the general culture and the intellectual, or liter- rare, m the written record, as one might expect. That is because it has a
ary, culture conforms to much the same pattern. In both s~ecial appeal for the more literate and literary, hence it appears in print
With a frequency out of all proportion to its apparent popularity with
countries the critical animus of men like Orvis or Carlyle the ~ublic. ?~e might easily cull an impressive exhibit of passages dis-
was dismissed as the product of alien, European influences. playmg hosultty to the new technology (a kind of composite image of
But the case was stronger in America. Having been carried th~ menacing machine to set beside the sublime machine) from the peri·
across the Atlantic on a wave of avant-garde, romantic odtcals of the day. But a merely quantitative sample of periodical litera-
ture would be misleading. By and large the negative response appears in
thought, the new attitude seemed even more exotic in newspapers like the Harbinger, organs of small organized minorities. On
Vermont than in the Lake District. Here, after all, was ~he other hand, the rhetoric of the technological sublime appears chiefly
a young Republic whose ideological underpinnings h:-HI m. ~uch rcspec_table magazines as Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, Littell's
Lwmg Age, Ntles' R egister, the North American Review and the Scie11·
been firmly set in the Enlightenment. Not only did th e tific American, journals which on the whole represent ;he views of the
Constitution incorporate many of the basic assumptions governmental, business, and professional elites.
.•.
220 THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN "·
':::
PLATE 2 E t:
But in politics, the swelling, surging demand for every- "'::: . . .
thing that technology promises is irresistible. The result, "'~
as John William Ward and Marvin Meyers demonstrate,
is that the Jacksonian "persuasion" embraces a typically
-
~ _]
~
j
-=
:....
.-. ~
'-"
J' l." n ;1 of Walden , the springtime thawing of the sand in the rail-
mad bank, Inness's painting seems to say that "there is
nothing inorganic." Instead of causing disharmony, the
train is a unifying device. The hifls in the background
and the trees of the middle distance gently envelop the
industrial buildings and artifacts. No sharp lines set off
the man-made from the natural terrain. Nor is the Lacka-
wanna's smoke unpleasant. The cottony puffs that rise
from the engine and the roundhouse are merely duplicates
of a puff that rises from behind the church- an ingenious
touch! Instead of cutting the space into sharp, rectilinear
segments as railroad tracks often do, the right-of-way
curves gracefully across the center of the canvas where it
divides in two, forming the delicately touching ovals that
dominate the middle plane. It is noteworthy, too, that the
animals in the pasture continue to graze or rest peacefully
as the tidy, diminutive train approaches. Still, this is not
a lament for Goldsmith's cherished land; the stumps indi-
cate that the pasture has just been hewn out of a wilder-
ness. But, of course, it is the solitary figure reclining
beneath the dominant vertical, the tree in the foreground,
who fin ally establishes the quiet, relaxed mood. He holds
no crook, but he contemplates the sight in the serene pos-
ture of the good shepherd looking out across Arcadia.ll1
$ In t 855, the year that Inness completed his painting,
,
Thomas Buchanan Read, a Connecticut poetaster, pub-
~
.<, lished his long poem, Th e New Pastoral. H e begins with
"~ an invocation to the land, and especially to
0
..
;;;
0
... that pastoral phase,
Where man is native to his sphere, which shows
The simple ligh t of nature, fresh from God! -
That middle life, between the hut and palace,
'Twixt squalid ignorance and splendid vice; -
,
e
E
8
Th e Machin e
T HE MAC HI NE IN 1'HE GARU~N
222 H ere, as elsewhere, the American scene induces an exu-
Above, by many roods of moral moves, berance in Whitman's hero that rises above all possible
The Indian's want, and happily below- doubts.
If the superior may be called below- Although it comes after the Civil War, Whitman's "Pas·
The purple and fine linen. . . . sage to India" ( 1868) probably is the purest, most poetic
He sings of "iron men who build the g?lden future:" use of the progressive idiom in our literature. It begins:
men with "heroic wills, .. . I ... to whtch I The Wtl-
Singing my days,
demess, the rank and noxious swamps, I . . . bow an? Singing the great achievements of the present,
bear 1 The burthen of the harvest." Like Inness, R ead ts Singing the strong light works of engineers,
invoking the image of the middle landscape, a versio? of Our modem wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven
the pastoral ideal which continues to engage the ~menc~n outvied,)
imagination long after the "take-off" into the mdustnal In the Old World the east the Suez Canal,
age.G2 The New by its mighty railroad spann'd,
Of American writers with authentic gifts, Emerson and The seas inlaid with eloquent gentle wires;
Whitman pay the most direct, wholehear~ed tribu~e to Yet first to sound, and ever sound, the cry with thee
this industrialized version of the pastoral tdeal. It 1s fit- 0 soul,
ting to consider Whitman here because he c~mes clo~est The Past! the Past! the Past!
to transmuting the rhetoric of the technologtcal subhme Against the forward thrust of mechanized change, the mild
into poetry. Although the career of his mythic American. "yet" counters a yearning for the past. But this feeling is
the "I" of "Song of Myself," begins with the contempla- soon overwhelmed by the sense of buoyant power that
tion of a simplified, stripped·down natural landscape ("I arises from the sight of the machine's motion across the
lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer landscape:
grass"), he has no difficulty assimilating the forces repre- I see over my own continent the Pacific railroad
sented by the machine. In "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" there surmounting every barrier,
is a moment of hesitation , just a touch of doubt, as he I see continual trains of cars winding along the
notes the black and red lights cast by the foundry chimneys Platte carrying freight and passengers,
over the houses and streets. Later in the poem the indus- I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring, and the
trial blackness is linked to an inward state, the "dark shrill steam-whistle,
patches" of evil he discovers within himself. But the con- I hear the echoes reverberate through the grandest
flict is easily resolved, and in the final stanza the speaker scenery in the world. . . .
confidently returns to the theme in the imperative voice: And so on. Like the writers for the popular magazines,
Bum high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black the poet foresees all the continents spanned, connected
shadows at nightfall! cast red and yellow light by one network, "welded together," and the globe one
over the tops of the houses!
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Th e Machine 225
.. . vast Rondure, swimming in space, resolve on the plane of ordinary experience, lends a par-
Cover'd all over with visible power and beauty. . .. ticular impetus to this declamatory manner.
As for the "yet," the speaker's sense of separation from In "Passage to India" Whitman is expressing attitudes
the past, his fear that he will forget his origins (most that dominated the general culture at the time. So far
forcibly expressed as a cry out of the "dark unfathom'd from causing serious concern, the new power often is inter-
retrospect"), it is dissolved by the familiar, all-answering preted as a means of realizing the classical, eighteenth·
logic of first things first. century aims of the Republic. According to a writer for a
business magazine, factory labor is not "pursued here as
After the seas are all cross'd, (as they seem already in England." There it is "a continuous business for life,"
cross'd,)
but here the young men and women enter factories "not
After the great captains and engineers have accomplish'd
their work, as a main object of pursuit, but as a stepping-stone to a
After the noble inventors, after the scientists, future settlement. . . ." After they have earned a small
the chemist, the geologist, ethnologist, sum they are likely to "emigrate to the broad and rich
Finally shall come the poet worthy that name, fields of the west, where the soil, like a kind mother, opens
The true son of God shall come singing his songs. its arms to receive them, and where they settle down per-
manent freeholders, perhaps the future legislators of the
In "Passage to India" the machine power is a precursor
country." It is technology, indeed, that is creating the
of a higher, spiritual power. After it has done its work the
new garden of the world. "The great Mississippi valley,"
d ivine bard will arrive to announce that "Nature and
says a writer in DeBow's Review in 18so, "may emphat-
Man shall be disjoin'd and diffused no more." His songs
ically be said to be the creation of the steam engine) for
will confirm the speaker's prevision of history as an up-
without its magic power . . . what centuries must have
ward spiral, a movement that dispels all doubt, carrying
elapsed before the progress of arts and of enterprise could
mankind back, full circle, to the simple vitality of "primal
have swept away the traces of savage life." The railroad
thought," above the "gardens of Asia" where history
is the chosen vehicle for bringing America into its own as
began:
a pastoral utopia. That it also means planting Kansas City
... the voyage of his mind's return, where the garden was supposed to be does not often occur
To reason's early paradise, to the popular rhetoricians.113
Back, back to wisdom's birth, to innocent intuitions, No one captures the dominant mood so well as a writer
Again with fair creation.
for the Scientific American in 1849· Addressing himself
It should be said that "Passage to India" lacks the sharp to the question, "What Is the Golden Age," he begins by
particularity which redeems the bombast in much of Whit- attacking those whose "affections are all with the past."
man's early work. Perhaps the hinted conflict between Then, in the familiar idiom, he reviews the progress of
technological progress and the garden ideal, impossible to the arts and sciences. They are doing more than has ever
226 THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN
I Ir
THE MACHINE lN THE GARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force 233
cryptic statement, quoted in its entirety from his journal because a more or less untouched landscape provides hints
(1843): "Machinery and Transcendentalism agree well. of an "occult relation" with external nature. In such
serts but exemplifies the possibility of harmony. When this affirmation. Because Thoreau takes seriously what
he assimilates new and seemingly artificial facts into the Emerson calls the "method of nature" - more seriously
texture of a poem, he provides an example for all men. than the master himself- the book has a strong con-
What he achieves in art they can achieve in life. trapuntal theme. Assuming that natural facts properly
perceived and accurately transcribed must yield the truth,
Thoreau adopts the tone of a hard-headed empiricist. At
2 the outset he makes it clear that he will tell exactly what
Soon after Emerson had set forth his program for Young happened. He claims to have a craving for reality (be it
Americans, his young disciple Henry Thoreau put it to life or death), and he would have us believe him capable
a test. He began his stay at Walden Pond in the spring of of reporting the negative evidence. Again and again he
f 1845, and the book he eventually wrote about it (Walden allows the facts to play against his desire, so that his prose
I was not published until 1854) may be read as the report at its best acquires a distinctively firm, cross-grained tex-
( of an experiment in transcendental pastoralism. The or-
ganizing design is like that of many American fables:
ture. Though the dominant tone is affirmative, the under-
tone is skeptical, and it qualifies the import of episode
\ Walden begins with the hero's withdrawal from society
in the direction of nature. The main portion of the book
after episode. For this reason Walden belongs among the
first in a long series of American books which, taken to-
244 THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force 245
gether, have had the effect of circumscribing the pastoral Thoreau; skilled in the national art of disguising art,
hope, much as Virgil circumscribes it in his eclogues. In in Walden he succeeds in obscuring the traditional, literary
form and feeling, indeed, Thoreau's book has much in character of the pastoral withdrawal. Instead of writing
common with the classic Virgilian mode. about it- or merely writing about it- he tries it. By
Although the evidence is abundant, it is easy to miss telling his tale in the first person, he endows the mode
the conventional aspect of Walden. In the second chapter with a credibility it had seldom, if ever, possessed. Be-
Thoreau describes the site as an ideal pasture, a real place cause the "I" who addresses us in Walden is describing
which he transforms into an unbounded, timeless land- the way he had lived, taking pains to supply plenty of
scape of the mind. And he identifies himself with Dam- hard facts ("Yes, I did eat $8.74, all told. . . ."), we
odara (Krishna) in his r<Jle as shepherd, and with a scarcely notice that all the while he had been playing the
shepherd in a Jacobean song: shepherd's venerable r<Jle. He refuses to say whether the
book is an explicit guide for living or an exercise in
There was a shepherd that did live, imaginative perception. We are invited to take it as either
And held his thoughts as high or both. Convinced that effective symbols can be derived
As were the mounts whereon his flocks
only from natural facts, Thoreau had moved to the pond
Did hourly feed him by.
so that he might make a symbol of his life. If we miss the
Nevertheless, the serious affinity between Walden and the affinity with the Virgilian mode, then, it is partly because
convention is disguised by certain peculiarities of Ameri- we are dealing with a distinctively American version of
can pastoralism, the most obvious being the literalness romantic pastoral. &
with which Thoreau approaches the ideal of the simple No. feature of Walden makes this truth more apparent
life. For centuries writers working in the mode had been than Its topography. The seemingly realistic setting may
playing with the theme, suggesting that men might enrich not be a land of fantasy like Arcadia, yet neither is it Mas-
their contemplative experience by simplifying their house- sachusetts. On inspection it proves to be another embodi-
keeping. (The shepherd's ability to reduce his material ment of the American moral geography - a native blend
needs to a minimum had been one of his endearing of myth and reality. The hut beside the pond stands at
traits.) Yet it generally had been assumed that the simple the center of a symbolic landscape in which the village of
life was a poetic theme, not to be confused with the way Concord appears on one side and a vast reach of un-
poets did in fact live. In the main, writers who took the m~ified nature on the other. As if no organized society
felicity of shepherds in green pastures as their subject had existed to the west, the mysterious, untrammeled, primal
been careful to situate themselves near wealth and power. world seems to begin at the village limits. As in most
The effect of the American environment, however, was to American fables, the wilderness is an indispensable fea-
break down common-sense distinctions between art and ture of this terrain, and the hero's initial recoil from
life. No one understood this more clearly than Henry everydar life carries him to the verge of anarchic primi-
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force
246
247
. . • "We need the tonic of wildness," Thoreau are drawn from the circumstances of life in nineteenth-
tlvlsm. ' ld ex-
plains, using the word "pasture" to e~c~mpass w1 na- century America. By 1845· according to Thoreau, a de-
pressing state of mind- he calls it "quiet desperation"_
ture.. "We need to witness our own hmlts transgressed, d "
and some life pasturing freely where we never wan er: has seized the people of Concord. The opening chapter, \
(The combined influence of geography an~ the ron_tanuc "Economy," is a diagnosis of this cultural malady. Re- I
idea of nature- sublime Nature- gives nse to attitudes signed to a pointless, dull, routinized existence, Thoreau'sJ
held by a long line of American literary hero~s from fellow-townsmen perform the daily round without joy or
Natty Bumppo to Ike McCaslin.) But Thoreau lS not. a anger or genuine exercise of will. As if their minds were
primitivist. True, he implies that he would have no dif- mirrors, able only to reflect the external world, they are
ficulty choosing between Concord ~nd the w~l~e:ness. satisfied to cope with things as they are. In Emerson's lan-
What really engages him, however, 1s the poss1b1hty ~f guage, they live wholly on the plane of the Understand-
avoiding that choice. Qefferson had taken the same P?Sl- ing. Rather than design houses to fulfill the purpose of
tion.) In Walden, accordingly, he keeps o~r attention their lives, they accommodate their lives to the standard
focused upon the middle ground where he butlds a house, design of houses. Thoreau discovers the same pattern of
raises beans, reads the Iliad, and searches the depths ~f acquiescence, a dehumanizing reversal of ends and means,
the pond. Like the "navel of the earth" ~n the archaic in all of their behavior. He finds it in their pretentious
myths studied by Mircea Eliade, the pond 1s the absolute furnishings, their uncomfortable clothing, their grim fac-
center- the axis mundi- of Thoreau 's cosmos. If an tories, the dispirited way they eat and farm the land and
alternative to the ways of Concord is to be found any- work from dawn to dusk. He locates it, above all, in their
where, it will be found on the shore of Walden Pond -
near the mystic center. 10
And it had best be found quickly. The drama of Walden
economy- a system within which they work endlessly,
not to reach a goal of their own choosing but to satisfy
the demands of the market mechanism. The moral, in
j
is intensified by Thoreau's acute sense of having been short, is that here "men have become the tools of their
born in the nick of time. Though the book resembles the tools."
classic pastoral in form and feeling, its facts and images The omnipresence of tools, gadgets, instruments is
• The difference between the typical American hero and the shepherd
symptomatic of the Concord way. Like Carlyle, Thoreau
in traditional versions of pastoral iJ suggested by Renato Poggioli's ac- uses technological imagery to represent more than indus-
count of that archetypal figure a.s one who "lives a sedentary life even in trialization in the narrow, economic sense. It accompanies
the open, since he prefers to linger in a grove's shade rather than to a mode of perception, an emergent system of meaning
wander in the woods. He n ever confronts the true wild, and this is why
he never becomes even a part-time hunter." Given the circumstances of and value- a culture. In fact his overdrawn indictment
American life, our heroes do confront the true wild, and they often be· of the Concord "economy" might have been written to
come hunters. But it is striking to notice how often they are Impelled document Carlyle's dark view of industrialism. Thoreau
to restrict or even renounce their hunting. I am thinking of Natty
Bumppo, Melville's Ishmael, Faulkner's Ike McCaslin, and Thoreau him·
feels no simple-minded Luddite hostility toward the new
lei f. inventions; they are, he says, "but improved means to an
248 THE MACHINE IN THE GARDE~' Two Kingdoms of Force
249
unimproved end. ."What he is attacking is the popular Concord environment, accordingly, it is an instrument of )
illusion that improving the means is enough, that if the oppression: "We do not ride upon the railroad; it rides
machinery of society is put in good order (as Carlyle had upon us." But later, when seen from the Walden perspec-
said) "all were well with us; the rest would care for itself!" tive, the railroad's significance becomes quite different.n
He is contending against a culture pervaded by this Thoreau's denunciation of the Concord "economy" pre·
mechanistic outlook. It may well be conducive to material figures the complex version of the Sleepy H ollow episode
progress, but it also engenders deadly fatalism and despair. in the fourth chapter, "Sounds." The previous chapter is
At the outset, then, Thoreau invokes the image of the about "Reading," or what he calls the language of meta·
machine to represent the whole tone and quality of Con· phor. Now he sh ifts to sounds, "the language which all
cord life or, to be more precise, anti-life: things and events speak without metaphor, which alone is
Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true in· copious and standard." The implication is that he is turn-
tegrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the man- ing from the conventional language of art to the spon-
liest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in taneous language of nature. What concerns him is the
the market. He has no time to be anything but a hope of making the word one with the thing, the notion
machine. that the naked fact of sensation, if described with sufficient
The clock, favorite "machine" of the Enlightenment, is a precision, can be made to yield its secret- its absolute
master machine in Thoreau's model of the capitalist econ- meaning. This is another way of talking about the capacity
omy. Its function is decisive because it links the indus- of nature to "produce delight"- to supply value and
trial apparatus with consciousness. The laboring man be- meaning. It is the crux of transcendental pastoralism.
comes a machine in the sense that his life becomes more Hence Thoreau begins with an account of magnificent
closely geared to an impersonal and seemingly autonomous summer days when, like Hawthorne at the Hollow, he
system.• If the advent of power technology is alarming, it does nothing but sit "rapt in a revery, amidst the pines
is because it occurs within this cultural context. When and .. . sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness."
Thoreau depicts the machine as it functions within the These days, unlike days in Concord, are not "minced into
hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock." H ere is an-
• Thoreau's respo~ to the mechanization of time reflects the height.
ened aignificance of the clock in the period of the " take·off" into full-scale
other pastoral interlude, a celebration of idleness and that
industrialism . With the building of factories and railroads it became nee· sense of relaxed solidarity with the universe that presum-
essary, as never before, to provide the population with access to the exact ably comes with close attention to the language of nature.
time. This was made possible, in New England, by the transformation of For a moment Thoreau allows us to imagine that he has
t~e clockma~ing industry. Before a8oo clocks had been relatively expen·
save .luxury Hems made only by master craf tsmen. Significantly enough, escaped the clock, the Concord definition of time and
~he mdustry was among the fint to use machines and the principle of indeed, the dominion of the machine. But then, withou~
tnterchangcable part manufacture. By 18o7, in Connecticut, Eli Terry had raising his voice, he reports the "rattle of railroad cars" in
begun to produce wooden clocks in large numben, and before he died in the woods.
1852 he was making between 10,000 and 12,000 clocks a year sold at
$5.00 each. At first the sound is scarcely audible. Thoreau casually
250 THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force
mentions it at the end of a long sentence in which he de- the cotton, down goes the woven cloth; up comes the
scribes a series of sights and sounds: hawks circling the silk, down goes the woollen; up come the books, but
clearing, a tantivy of wild pigeons, a mink stealing out of down goes the wit that writes them.
the marsh, the sedge bending under the weight of reed- What are we to make of this double image of the rail-
birds, and then, as if belonging to the very tissue of na- road? First it is like a partridge, then a hawk; first it
ture: "and for the last half-hour I have heard the rattle of blends into the landscape like the industrial images in the
railroad cars, now dying away and then reviving like Inness painting, but then, a moment later, it becomes the
the beat of a partridge, conveying travellers from Boston discordant machine of the Sleepy Hollow notes. What
to the country." It would have been difficult to contrive a does the railroad signify here? On inspection the passage ~
quieter entrance, which may seem curious in view of the proves to be a sustained evocation of the ambiguous
fact that Thoreau then devotes nine long paragraphs to meaning of the machine and its relation to nature. Every
the subject. Besides, he insists upon the importance of the significant image is yoked to an alternate:
Fitchburg Railroad in the Walden scene; it "touches the
1-' thing to do, is get off the track. Not that one need resign
oneself, like the men of Concord, to the dominion of the
mechanical philosophy. But how is the alternative to be
presence and influence is seen in these bean leaves. . . .
As he _describes himself at work among his beans,
Thoreau 1s the American husbandman. Like the central
256 THE MACHI NE IN THE GARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force 257
figure of the Jeffersonian idyll, his vocation has a moral noon, and commonly spent the rest of the day about
and spiritual as well as economic significance. And his other affairs. Consider the intimate and curious acquaint-
fi eld bears a special relation to American circumstances. ance one makes with various kinds of weeds,-it will bear
It produces beans which resemble neither English hay, some iteration in the account, for there was no little
with its synthetic quality (a result of precise, calculating, iteration in the labor,-disturbing their delicate organiza-
scientific methods), nor the rich and various crop pro- tions so ruthlessly, and making such invidious distinc-
tions with his hoe, levelling whole ranks of one species,
duced spontaneously in the surrounding woods, pastures,
and sedulously cultivating another. That's Roman worm-
and swamps. "Mine was, as it were, the connecting link wood,- that's pigweed,-tha t's sorrel,-that's piper-grass,
between wild and cultivated fields; as some states are -have at him, chop him up, turn his roots upward to
civilized, and others half-civilized, and others savage or the sun, don't let him have a fibre in the shade, if you
barbarous, so my field was, though not in a bad sense, a do he'll turn himself t'other side up and be as green as
half-cultivated field." But Thoreau's husbandman cannot a leek in two days. A long war, not with cranes, but with
be characterized simply by his location in the middle land- weeds, those Trojans who had sun and rain and dews
scape. Like Emerson's Young American, he blends Jef- on their side. Daily the beans saw me come to their
fersonian and romantic attitudes toward nature. When rescue armed with a hoe, and thin the ranks of their
Thoreau describes the purpose of his bean-raising activity, enemies, filling up the trenches with weedy dead. Many
accordingly, he falls into a comic idiom- a strange com- a lusty crest-waving Hector, that towered a whole foot
pound of practical, Yankee vernacular and transcendental above his crowding comrades, fell before my weapon
and rolled in the dust.
philosophizing:
In part Thoreau's irony can be attributed to the out-
It was a singular experience that long acquaintance
come of his bean venture. Although he does not call it a
which I cultivated with beans, what with planting, and
failure, the fact is clear enough. The cost of the operation
hoeing, and harvesting, and threshing. and picking over
and selling them,- the last was the hardest of all, - I was $14.72Yz (he had hired a man to help with the plow-
might add eating, for I did taste. I was determined to ing), the gross income $23.44, and the net profit $8.7IYz.
know beans. This sum barely paid for the rest of his food, and to make
ends meet he had hired himself out as a day laborer. In
The better he had come to "know beans," the less seriously other words, the bean crop did not provide an adequate
he had been able to take the role of noble husbandman. economic base for the life of an independent husband·
As the writer's account of that "singular experience" de- man. His own experience comports with what he observes
velops, he moves further and further from the r everential, of American farmers throughout the book. So far from
solemn tone of popular pastoralism, until he finally adopts representing a "pastoral life," a desirable alternative to
a mock-heroic attitude: the ways of Concord and the market economy, the typical
I was determined to know beans. When they were grow- farmer in Wal den is narrow-minded and greedy. The de-
ing, I used to hoe from five o'clock in the morning tilt scription of the ice crews stripping the pond in winter, as
258 Two Kingdoms of Force
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN 259
if they were hooking up "the virgin mould itself," is a it, has nothing to do with the alleged virtue of the Ameri-
bitter comment on the methods of capitalist "husband- can husbandman or the merits of any institution or "way
men." Thoreau has no use for the cant about the nobility of life"; nor can it be located in the material or economic
of the farmer. ("I respect not his labors, his farm where facts, where Concord, operating on the plane of the Under-
everything has its price, who would carry the landscape, standing, locates meaning and value. Thoreau has quite
who ~ould ca~ry his God, to market, if he could get another sort of meaning in view, as he admits when be
anythmg for htm; who goes to market for his god as it says that he raised beans, not because he wanted beans to
is. : ..") In c~ncluding "The Bean-Field" he strips native eat, "but, perchance, as some must work in fields if only
agrtculture of tts meretricious rhetorical disguise: for the sake of tropes and expression, to serve a parable-
maker one day."
Ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at least, that This idea, which contains the gist of Thoreau's ultimate
~usbandry was once a sacred art; but it is pursued with argument, also is implicit in the outcome of other epi-
Irreverent haste and heedlessness by us, our object being sodes. It is implied by his account of fishing at night-a
to have large farms and large crops merely. We have no tantalizing effort to get at the "dull uncertain blundering
festival, nor procession, nor ceremony, not excepting our
purpose" he detects at the end of his line beneath the
cattle-shows and so-called Thanksgivings, by which the
~armcr. expresses a sense of the sacredness of his calling, or
pond's opaque surface; and by that incomparable satire on
IS remmded of its sacred origin. It is the premium and
the transcendental quest, the chase of the loon who
the feast which tempt him. He sacrifices not to Ceres ''laughed in derision" at his efforts; and by his painstaking
and the Terrestrial Jove, but to the infernal Plutus investigation of the pond's supposed " bottomlessness":
rather. B! avarice and se~fishness, and a grovelling habit, " . . . I can assure my readers that \\'alden has a reasona-
from wh1ch none of us IS free, of regarding the soil as bly tight bottom at a not unreasonable . .. depth." In
property, o.r the means of acquiring property chiefly, the each case, as in "The Bean-Field," the bare, empirical evi-
landscape IS deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, dence proves inadequate to his purpose. Of themselves the
and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows facts do not, cannot, flower into truth; they do not show
Nature but as a robber.12
forth a meaning, which is to say, the kind of meaning the
The result of the venture in husbandry prefigures the experiment had been designed to establish. If the promise
result o~ the Walden e.xperiment as a whole. Judged by a of romantic pastoralism is to be fulfi lled, nothing less than
conventiOnal (economtc) standard, it is true, the enter- an alternative to the Concord way will suffice. Although his
prise had been a failure. But that judgment is irrelevant tone generally is confident, T horeau cunningly keeps the
to Thoreau's purpose, as his dominant tone, the tone of issue in doubt until the end. By cheerfu lly, enigmatically
success, plainly indicates. It is irrelevant because his aim reiterating his failure to extract an "answer" - a coherent
had been to know beans: to get at the essential meaning world-view - from the fa cts, he moves the drama toward a
of labor in the bean-field · And "meant'ng" climax. Not until the pen ultimate chapter, "Spring," does
, as he concetves
·
260 THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force 261
he disclose a way of coping with the forces represented by Walden has been made to conform to the design of nature
the encroaching machine power.13 itself; like Spenser's arrangement of his eclogues in The
At the same time, however, he carefully nurtures an Shepheards Calendar, the sequence of Thoreau's final
awareness of the railroad's presence in the Concord woods. chapters follows the sequence of months and seasons. This
(The account of the interrupted idyll in "Sounds" is only device affirms the possibility of redemption from time, the
the most dramatic of its many appearances.) There is movement away from Concord time, defined by the clock,
scarcely a chapter in which he does not mention seeing or toward nature's time, the daily and seasonal life cycle. It is
hearing the engine, or walking "over the long causeway also the movement that redeems machine power. In the
made for the railroad through the meadows. . . . " When spring the ice, sand, and clay of the railroad causeway
the crew arrives to strip the ice from the pond, it is "with thaws. The wet stuff flows down the banks, assumes
a peculiar shriek from the locomotive." And Thoreau myriad forms, and arouses in Thoreau a delight approach-
takes special pains to impress us with the "cut" in the ing religious ecstasy. The event provides this parable- )
landscape made by the embankment. He introduces the maker with his climactic trope: a visual image that figures
motif in the first chapter, after describing his initial visit the realization of the pastoral ideal in the age of machines. ,
to the Walden site: The description of the melting railroad bank is an in-
tricately orchestrated paean to the power of the imagina-
. . . I came out on to the railroad, on my way home,
its yellow sand-heap stretched away gleaming in the hazy tion. Although the sand remains mere sand, the warming )
atmosphere, and the rails shone in the spring sun influence of the sun causes it to assume forms like lava,
leaves, vines, coral, leopards' paws, birds' feet, stalactites,
And he returns to it in "The Ponds": blood vessels, brains, bowels, and excrement. It is a
That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is pageant evoking the birth of life out of inorganic matter.
heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Watching the sandy rupture exhilarates Thoreau, affect-
Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off ing him as if, he says, "I stood in the laboratory of the
all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with Artist who made the world and me, - had come to where
a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary he was still at work, sporting on this bank, and with excess
Greeks! Where is the country's champion, the Moore of of energy strewing his fresh designs about." The scene
Moore Hall, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an illustrates the principle in all the operations of Nature: \
avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest? an urge toward organization, form, design. Every detail
The Deep Cut is a wound inflicted upon the land by confirms the endless creation of new forms. Out of win-
man's meddling, aggressive, rational intellect, and it is ter's frost com~s spring; out of an excrementous flow,
not healed until the book's climax, the resurgence of newborn creatures; out of the landscape eroded by men
life in "Spring." By that point the organizing design of and machines, these forms of the molten earth. "There is
/; 262 T ilE J\'IAOIJNE IN THE GARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force 263
V nothing inorganic." The sight inspires Thoreau with a work of a tough, unillusioned empiricist. • They are con·
sense of infinite possibility. "The very globe continually sistent with Thoreau's unsparing analysis of the Concord
transcends and translates itself. . .." And not only the "economy" and with the knowledge that industrial prog-
earth, he says, "but the institutions upon it are plastic
like clay in the hands of the potter." • In fairneu to Emerson it ahould be said that by the late 1840'1 he,
too, had become more skeptical about t.he compatibility of the putoral
Thoreau's study of the melting bank is a figurative rc· ideal and industrial progress. H is second visit to England in 1847 was in
storation of the fonn and unity severed by the mechanized many ways a turning point in his intellectual development, and English
forces of history. Out of the ugly "cut" in the landscape Traits (1856) is one of our first and most penetrating studies of the new
culture of industrialism. Ostensibly about England, the book manifestly
he fashions an image of a new beginning. Order, fonn,
was written with America's future economic development in view. Both
and meaning are restored, but it is a blatantly, un- the structure and the content of the book are governed by the machine·
equivocally figurative restoration. The whole force of the in-the-garden figure. "England is a garden," says Emerson in "Land"
passage arises from its extravagantly metaphoric, poetic, (Ch. 5), and in the first half of the book the rising power of Britain is
treated affirmatively. But the argument pivots on "Wealth," the tenth of
literary character. At no point does Thoreau impute nineteen chapters, and "Wealth" Itself is divided in two. It begins with
material reality to the notion of sand being transformed a tribute to the industrial revolution, to that "marvellous machinery which
into, say, leopards' paws. It assumes a form that looks like differences this age f.rom any other age." Both the chapter and the book
"break," as it were, on the theme "the machine unmans the user."
leopards' paws, but the fonn exists only so far as it is per·
Machinery, Emerson argues, has proved unmanageable. "Steam from the
ceived. The same may be said of his alternative to the first hissed and screamed to warn him; it was dreadful with its explosion,
Concord way. Shortly after the episode of the thawing and crushed the engineer." He therefore turns, in the second half, to
sand, the account of the coming of spring reaches a mo· an accoun t of the "civility of trifles, of money and expense, an erudition
of sensation [that] takes place, and the putting of as many impediments
mcnt of "seemingly instantaneous" change. A sudden in- as ... [possible] between the man and his objects." In the second ball
flux of light fills his house; he looks out of the window, of English TTaits technological development is a cause of alienation. In
and where the day before there had been cold gray ice the chapter "Literature" (Ch. 14). Emerson finally attempts to locate the
source of England's failure to realize its promise. He identifies the "inAux
there lies the calm transparent pond; he hears a robin
of decomposition" with J ohn Locke. Bacon. who "held of the analogists,"
singing in the distance and honking geese flying low over be says, had been "capable of ideas, yet devoted to ends." But Locke was
the woods. It is spring. Its coming, says Thoreau, is "like the exemplar of a "so-called" scientific tendency, a negative and poisonous
the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization mode of thought. Like Carlyle, Emerson sees the empirical philosophy as
the root of modern powerlessness. The book ends with a speech in which
of the Golden Age." Emerson announces his confidence in Britain's capacity to regain control
This reaffirmation of the pastoral ideal is not at all like of her economic affairs. But the final sentences strike this characteristically
Emerson's prophecy, in "The Young American," of a American chord: "If it be not so, if the courage of England goes with
the chances of a commercial crisis, I will go back to the capes of Massa·
time "when the whole land is a garden, and the people
chusetts and my own Indian stream, and say to my countrymen, the old
have grown up in the bowers of a paradise." By com- race are all gone, and the elasticity and hope of mankind must henceforth
parison, the findings of the Walden experiment seem the remain on the Alleghany ranges, or nowhere."
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN Tw o Kingdoms of Force 265
ress is making nonsense of the popular notion of a "pas- thoughtfully while it goes by. What are men celebrating?
toral life." The melting of the bank and the coming of They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly
spring is only "like" a realization of the golden age. It is expect a speech from somebody. God is only the pres-
ident of the day, and Webster is his orator.
a poetic figure. In Walden Thoreau is clear, as Emerson
seldom was, about the location of meaning and value. He In the end Thoreau restores the pastoral hope to its tradi-
is saying that it does not reside in the n atural facts or in tional location. He removes it from history, where it is
social institutions or in anything "out there," but in con- manifestly unrealizable, and relocates it in literature,
, - . sciousness. It is a product of imaginative perception, of the which is to say, in his own consciousness, in his craft, in
I analogy-perceiving, metaphor-making, mythopoeic power Walden.
of the human mind. For Thoreau the realization of the
golden age is, finally, a matter of private and, in fact,
3
literary experience. Since it has nothing to do with the
environment, with social institutions or material reality Hawthorne and Melville match the machine-in-the-garden
(any facts will melt if the heat of imaginative passion is motif to a darker view of life than Thoreau's. In their
sufficient), then the writer's physical location is of no great work, the design also conveys a sense of the widening gap
moment. At the end of the chapter on "Spring," accord- between the facts and the ideals of American life, but the
ingly, Thoreau suddenly drops the language of metaphor implications are more ominous. A n ice illustration is
and reverts to a direct, matter-of-fact, referential idiom: H awthorne's "Ethan Brand" ( 1850). This short story is
"Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and particularly usefu l for an understanding of complex pas-
the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden toralism and the experience that generates it, in spite of
September 6th, 1847." the fact that - or perhaps because - it exhibits only part
There is a world of meaning in the casual tone. If of the motif. The pastoral ideal figures prominently in
the book ended here, indeed, one might conclude that the tale, but the new technology does not. On the sur-
Thoreau, like Prospera at the end of Th e Tempest, was face, at least, there is no indication that "Ethan Brand"
absolu tely confident about his impending return to soci- embodies a sign ificant response to the transformation of
ety. (Concord is the Milan of Walden .) But the book does life associated with machine power. In fact, Hawthorne
not end with "Spring." Thoreau finds it n ecessary to add conceived of this fable as a variant of the Faust legend.
a didactic conclusion, as if he did not fully trust the power Four years before writing it, in 1844. he had entered his
of metaphor after all. And he betrays his uneasiness, fi- donnee in his notebook. (It appears on the page immedi-
nally, in the arrogance with which he announces his dis- ately following the Sleepy Hollow episode.) "The search
dain for the common life: of an investigator for the Unpardonable Sin;- he at last
I delight . . . not to live in this restless, nervous, bus- finds it in his own heart and practice. " And then, again,
tling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit on the same page:
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force
the kiln reviewing his melancholy career. The coznp 1 ~
67
The Unpardonable Sin might consist in a want of
.. .. . h u stve
love and reverence for the Human Soul; in consequence quest has b een a success m more t an one sense N
only has he found what he was seeking, but the ~ ~
0
of which, the investigator pried into its dark depths, not
with a hope or purpose of making it better, but from a had been a means of education: Brand ha~ becor:;c a
cold philosophical curiosity,- content that it should be world-renowned scholar. But he also recogmzea that h
wicked in what ever kind or degree, and only desiring has been transformed in the process. Once a simple ma e
to study it out. Would not this, in other words, be the capable of tenderness and pity, he is now an unfeelinn,
separation of the intellect from the heart? 14 . 1 "fi end" wh o has 1ost h'ts hold upon "the g.
monomamaca
The tale is set on a lonely hillside in the Berkshires. magnetic chain of humanity." With a cry of despair he
Bartram, a doltish lime-burner, is sitting with his son at throws himself into the fire. The next morning Banram
nightfall watching his kiln. They hear a roar of laughter and his boy awake to a magnificent dawn. (A description
- a chilling, mirthless laugh- and it frightens the child. of the landscape revealed by the early morning sun oc-
We learn that the kiln formerly had belonged to one cupies two long paragraphs.) The mood of anxiety and
Ethan Brand, who, after gazing too long into the fire, had gloom has been dispelled. As the boy suggests, the very
become possessed. A monomaniacal compulsion to seize sky and mountains seem to be rejoicing in Brand's dis-
an absolute truth had taken hold of him, and he had appearance. In the kiln they find his skeleton, convened
conducted a world-wide search for the Unpardonable Sin. into lime, though the shape of a human heart (was it
He now appears, and with his bitter, self-mocking laugh made of marble?) remains visible between the ribs.
announces the successful completion of his quest. He has Taken by itself, the fable reveals no link between
found the worst of all sins in his own heart. An ironic Brand's fate and Hawthorne's attitude toward industrial-
circularity invests Brand's fate. Not only has he sought ization. On the other hand, certa in facts about the genesis
throughout the world for what was closest to himself, but, of the story are suggestive. For many of the details, espe-
as it turns out, the Unpardonable Sin resides in the very cially the setting and the portraits of several minor char-
principle for which he undertook the quest: the desire acters, Hawthorne drew upon notes he had made during
for knowledge as an end in itself. a vacation journey in the Berkshires in 1838. At that time
At his father's behest, meanwhile, the boy has gone off a small-scale industrial revolution was under way in the
to tell the "jolly fellows" in the tavern of Brand's return. area. Textile production was increasing at a rapid rate,
Soon a whole shiftless regiment of drunks and derelicts and near North Adams Hawthorne's stage-coach passed
appears on the mountain. Several of these worthies greet several new factories, ". . . the machinery whizzing, and
Brand and earnestly invite him to share their bottle, but girls looking out of the windows. . .." Apparently fasci-
he coldly rejects them. A series of minor incidents (a dog nated by the sight, he took elaborate notes:
~adly chasing its tail, as in Faust) underscores the tragic There are several factories in different parts of North-
trony of Brand's life. After the crowd leaves and Bartram Adatru, along the banks of a stream, a wild highland
and his son have gone off to sleep, Brand sits alone beside rivulet, which, however, does vast work of a civilized
THE MACH INE IN THE CARDEN T wo Kingdoms of Force 69
2
nature. It is strange to see such a rough and untamed off; seizes another by the coa t-tai ls, and almost grapples
stream as it looks to be, so tamed down to the purposes him bodily;- catches a girl by the hair, and scalps her; _
of man, and making cottons, woollens &c - sawing boards, and finally draws a man, and crushes him to death.
marbles, and giving employment to so many men and
So far as we know, Hawthorne never developed this idea.
girls; and there is a sort of picturesqueness in finding
these fa ctories, supremely artificial establishments, in the And when he mined his Berkshire notes for "Ethan
midst of such wild scenery. For now the stream will be Brand," some ten years later, he passed over most of the
flowing through a rude forest, with the trees erect and economic and social data he had recorded. The factories
dark, as when the Indians fished there; and it brawls, do not appear in the story. Nor does it conta in any ex-
and tumbles, and eddies, over its rock-strewn current. plicit reference to the changing condit ions of life- to
Perhaps there is a precipice hundreds of feet high, beside industrialization . And yet there are more important ways
it, down which, by heavy rains or the melting of snows, in which the presence of the "machine" makes itself felt
great pine-trees have slid or tumbled headlong, and lie in the tale.18
at the bottom or half-way down ; while their brethren A sense of loss, anxiety, and dislocation overshadows the
seem to be gazing at their fall from the summit, and world of "Ethan Brand." Initially, Hawthorne invests this
anticipating a like fate. And taking a turn in the road, feeling in his account of the lonesome lives of lime-
behold these factories and their range of boarding- burners and of the desolate, Gothic landscape. We are
houses, with the girls looking out of the window as afore-
told that many of the kilns in this tract of country have
said. And perhaps the wild scenery is all around the very
site of the factory, and mingles its impression strangely been " long deserted," and that the wi.Jd flowers growing in
with those opposite ones. 111 the chinks make them look like "relics of antiquity. " • A
similar air of obsolescence cl ings to the villagers who
The scene impresses Hawthorne with the sudden, violent
climb the hillside to see Brand. All three selected for spe-
character of change. In a single stroke a rude forest is
cial mention are broken, un fulfi lled men. O ne, formerly
being supplanted by "supremely artificial esta blishments,"
a successful doctor with a rare gift of hea ling, has become
and all of nature seems poised, like the majestic pines, at
the abyss. H ere, as in the Berkshire notes generally, there • Ethan's kiln, later called a " furnace,'' is a link in a chain of virtually
free association. II conneCLs Haw thorne's response to the factories wi th
is no place for a Sleepy Hollow, nor any time in which to h is feelings about science and, more specifically. the revol utionary steam
realize the ideal middle landscape. Hawthorne traveled in technology of the age. That the associa rion transcends ordinary common-
the area for several days, and his observations, random sense perception is indicated, for one thing, by the fact that the actual
mills he saw near North Adams were operated by water- not steam-
sketches of places and people (including several "remark-
power. For another, the kilns in the tale serve as a curiously blended
able characters" who reappear in " Ethan Brand"), convey token of advancing technology and a mode of production rendered obso·
his sense of unreality and disorientation. One of the most Jete by that advance. The process of combining opposi te meanings in a
revealing is th is idea for a story: aingte image is akin to the "condensation" Freud discovers in dream sym·
bois. The technological symbolism o£ "Ethan Brand" foreshadows the
A steam engine in a factory to be supposed to possess a ex traordinary fusion, in the whaling lore of M o by·Diclr , of the most
malignant spirit; it catches one man's arm, and pulls it primitive hun ting methods with advanced technical skills.
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force 271
270
an alcoholic; another, "a wilted and smoke-dried man," nology. The garden contained only such tools "as art yet
representative of a vocation "once ubiquit~us ... now rude, j Guiltless of fire had form ed." After the expul-
almost extinct," is the stage-agent; and a thnd, who also sion, however, Adam and Eve were grateful for the gift
has known better days, is a lawyer who has come to be of fire.n
"but the fragment of a human being, a part of one foot But if the contrast between fire and sun was conven-
having been chopped off by an axe, and an entire hand tional, it also was particularly meaningful to an age that
torn away by the devilish grip of a steam-engine." All of called itself the "Age of Steam." William Blake had be-
these people, along with a Wandering Jew and ~ f~rlorn gun to exploit the new industrial associations of satanic
old man searching for his lost daughter, are v1ct1ms of fire in his Milt on (1804- 8), and later John Martin brought
change. Like the monomaniac Brand, whose "bleak and them into the pictures of hell he did for an illustrated
terrible loneliness" the young boy recognizes, each in his edition of Paradise Lost (1827) .• And it can be shown
way is a maimed, alienated man. The center of the story that Hawthorne uses the same images, words, and phrases
is Brand's "cold philosophical curiosity," a disorder which to describe the fire in "Ethan Brand" that he uses else-
finally results in a fatal "separation of the intellect from where for direct reference to industrialization. A whole
the heart." cluster of images surrounding the word "iron," including
But what is the cause of Brand's alienation? Of the two "fire," "smoke," "furnace," and "forge," serves to blend
explanations Hawthorne provides, the first is mythic. Ac- his feelings about his own age with the culture's dominant
cording to local legend, Brand's intellectual obsession religious and literary tradition. As the Berkshire notes
emanated from the fire. We learn that he "had been ac- suggest, moreover, the introduction of industrial power
customed to evoke a fiend from the hot furnace of the in the American setting imparts a peculiar intensity to
lime-kiln," and that together they spent many nights the dialectic of art versus nature. In this case the fire-sun
evolving the idea of the quest. But the fiend, who may antithesis provides the symbolic frame for the entire story:
have been Satan himself, always retreated through the "Ethan Brand" begins at sundown and ends at dawn.
"iron door" of the furnace at the first glimmer of sun- During the long night the action centers upon the kiln,
light. Hawthorne manifestly borrows this image of fire, or "furnace," which replaces the sun as the origin of
and the conventional contrast between fire and sun, from warmth, light, and (indirectly) sustenance. The fire
the literary tradition he knows best. The opposition be-
tween Satanic fire and life-giving sun, light of divine truth • This edition had a direct influence on the pastoral strain in Amer·
ican painting. Thomas Cole·s The Expulsion from the Carden of Eden
and righteousness, is a recurrent device in the work of ( 1828) vi rtually was plagiarized from one of the illustrations. A sense of
Dante, Spenser, Milton, and Bunyan. The association of the opposition between industrial lire and pastoral sun makes itself felt
fire with technology, which goes back to Prometheus and in Cole·s influential series, "The Course of Empire." The second ca nvas
in the series, representi ng an explicitly pastoral state of social de"clop·
Vulcan, also forms a part of the Christian myth. Before men!, portrays the era of harmony and tranq uillity just before the decline
the fall, according to Milton, there was no need of tech- of civilization begi ns.
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force 273
272
imagery aligns Ethan's fate simultaneously with the Chris- of the "Age of Machinery.") The Unpardonable Sin is
tian doctrine of sin and with the scientific-industrial revo- the great sin of the Enlightenment- the idea of knowl-
lution. Only when the fire has been extinguished does edge as an end in itself. Now he recognizes the destruc-
Hawthorne introduce a vision of the garden. 18 tiveness of the idea. Lonely, desperate, alienated from
That fire is a surrogate for the "machine" in this variant nature and mankind, he plunges to his death in the kiln.
of the Sleepy Hollow motif becomes more apparent as the During the night the fire goes out, and this is the scene
story nears its climax. In describing Ethan's reflections when Bartram and his son arise at daybreak:
while he sits alone beside the kiln, Hawthorne supplies
a second (h istorical) explanation for his fall. This version The early sunshine was already pouring its gold upon
the mountain-tops, and though the valleys were still in
makes the protagonist an embodiment of a changing
shadow, they smiled cheerfully in the promise of lhe
America. It recalls the view of history put forward by
bright day that was hastening onward. The village, com-
Jefferson when, speaking of the War of I8I2 , he had pletely shut in by hills, which swelled away gently about
awarded the British enemy the "consolation of Satan" for it, looked as if it had rested peacefully in the hollow of
helping to transform a peaceable, agricultural nation into the great hand of Providence. Every dwelling was dis-
a military and manufacturing one. Now Ethan Brand (an tinctly visible; the little spires of the two churches
archetypal Yankee name joined to an image of burning po!nted upwards, and caught a fore-glimmering of
and infamy) sees it all clearly. Once, when "the dark forest bnghtness from the sun-gilt skies upon their gilded
had whispered to him," he had been "a simple and loving weather-cocks. The tavern was astir, and the figure of
man." He had felt tenderness and sympathy for mankind. the old, smoke-dried stage-agent, cigar in mouth, was
But then - here is the point, presumably, when the fiend seen beneath the stoop. Old Craylock was glorified with
had emerged from the fire- he had begun, with the a golden cloud upon his head. Scattered likewise over
highest humanitarian motives, "to contemplate those ideas the breasts of the surrounding mountains, there were
which afterwards became the inspiration of his life." In heaps of hoary mist, in fantastic shapes, some of them
far down into the valley. others high up towards the
this telling Hawthorne abandons the language of myth.
summits, and still olhers, of the same family of mist or
Alluding to neither fiend nor fire, he now attributes cloud, hovering in lhe gold radiance of the upper atmos-
Ethan's obsession to a "vast intellectual development, phere. Stepping from one to another of the clouds that
which . . . disturbed the counterpoise between his mind rested on the hills, and thence to the loftier brotherhood
and heart." With the weakening of his moral nature he that sailed in air, it seemed almost as if a mortal man
had become "a cold observer, looking on mankind as the might thus ascend into the heavenly regions. Earth was
subject of his experiment." In other words, Ethan is at so mingled with sky that it was a day-dream to look at it.
once an agent and a victim of scientific empiricism or :o surply that charm of the familiar and homely,
"mechanism." (The etiology of his obsession resembles wh1ch Nature so readily adopts into a scene like this,
Carlyle's account of the characteristic psychic imbalance the stage-coach was rattling down the mountain-road,
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force 275
274
and the driver sounded his hom, while Echo caught up skimmer of pages." One has only to sample the fiction in
the notes, and intertwined them into a rich and varied contemporary magazines, especially the ladies books for
and elaborate harmony, of which the original performer which he often WTOte, to see how perfectly Hawthorne
could lay claim to little share. The great hills played a
has caught the sickly sweet, credulous tone of sentimental
concert among themselves, each contributing a strain of
pastoralism. In fact, he has assembled a splendid exhibit
airy sweetness.
of bucolic cliches. They are all here, the gold laid on
The immediate effect of this radiant prospect is to thick, the hills swelling gently, the heaps of hoary mist
heighten the sense of evil surrounding Ethan Brand and on breasts of mountains, the charms that "Nature . . .
his quest. It all too abundantly represents the American adopts into a scene like this" - "it was a day-dream to
Eden from which he has fallen. Hawthorne plays every look at it" -and, dominating the whole glorious pano-
detail against the preceding Walpurgisnacht. Instead of rama, the rich, varied, elaborate harmony of Echo. • Re-
fire and smoke, there is perfect sunlit visibility; instead moved from its dramatic context this set piece reads like
of anxiety and gloom, the countryside is invested with or- parody: "The great hills played a concert among them-
der, peace, and permanence, and the image of a stepladder selves, each contributing a strain of airy sweetness." 111
into the heavens projects the harmony between man and But what, then, is the relation between the subtle mere-
nature beyond nature. No traces of the "machine" remain. triciousness of the pastoral moment and the suicide of
Having referred to the imminent disappearance of the Ethan Brand? That Hawthorne means the juxtaposition
stagecoach, Hawthorne now restores that picturesque vehi- to be ironic is evident. On the basis of the tale alone,
cle to its proper place in the New England landscape. Like
• It is fitting that Hawthorne by·passea the relatively fresh and vigoroua
the coming of spring at the end of Walden, this eigh- rhetorical mode of Thoreau, Emerson, and Wordsworth. The moribund
teenth-century tableau figures a "realization of the Golden idiom he uses may be traced from American popular culture baclc, by
Age. " With the elimination of Ethan Brand and every- way of writers like Irving, to Goldsmith, Gray, and, for that matter, u
far baclc as Thomson's "Spring" (1728) -the poem admired by young
thing that he represents, Hawthorne seems to be saying. Jefferson. Consider, for example, this passage:
the pastoral ideal has been realized.
Harmonioua Nature too look'd amiling on.
But it is apparent that the perceptive reader is not ex- Clear shone the skies, cool'd with eternal gales,
pected to take this grand picture of the morning sun And balmy spirit alJ. The youthful sun
"pouring its gold" upon the land entirely at face value. Shot his best rays, and still the gracious clouds
For a moment, to be sure, Hawthorne may seem to be in- Dropp'd fatness down; u o'er the awelling mead
The herds and Boc.ks, commixing, play'd aecure.
viting the obvious response. But the florid, unabashedly . .
trite language should make us wary. What Melville said For music held the whole in perfect peace:
of other aspects of Hawthorne's stories may be applied to Soh sigh'd the Bute; the tender voice was heard,
Warbling the varied heart; the woodlanda round
his narrative voice: it seems to have been "directly calcu- Applied their choir; and winds and waters flow'd
lated to deceive- egregiously deceive- the superficial In consonance.
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force 2 77
however, it is difficult to know what the irony signifies. ciou~ idylli: vision that follows his death. Having observed
Perhaps because the author himself was uncertain , or the 1ll~sonness _of the middle landscape ideal in reality
because he wanted it to work both ways, the ending is un- (the wilderness lS to be supplanted by factories, not gar-
usually muted. For that matter the entire story gives an dens), H awthorne now accomplishes its restoration in fic-
impression of constricted thought. Of all Hawthorne's tion. Needless to say, the restoration is ironic. As the
well-known stories, "Ethan Brand" is the least polished: the hollow rhetoric indicates, this stock eighteenth-century
action is spasmodic; the texture jagged; the irony severely tableau serves as an oblique comment upon the fate of
understated; the conclusion elliptical. In places one can the Yan~ee hero. It says that the dream of pastoral har -
see where passages from the notebooks have been imper- mony will be easy to realize as soon as the Faustian drive
fectly joined. Yet the story is crammed with unrealized of m~nkind- the Brand element- has been extirpated.
power- fairly bursting with it, like the synopsis of a Nor 1s the perfervid idiom of sentimental pastoralism the
Wagnerian libretto. Perhaps this is because it was written only clue to the irony. It is reinforced by such details as
at a turning point in Hawthorne's career, when he was the histrionic stagecoach, a vehicle supplied, absurdly
about to shift from the short story to the novel-length enough, by "Nature." To fulfill the pastoral hope, in
romance. In fact, there are good reasons for thinking that other words, nothing less is required than a reversal of
it was intended as a longer work. (He gave it the subtitle, history. "Ethan Brand" conveys Hawthorne's inchoate
"A Chapter from an Abortive Romance.") At any rate, sense of the doom awaiting the self-contained village cul-
the constrained, fettered manner reflects Hawthorne's state ture, not the institutions alone, but the whole quasi-
of mind at the time. In 1848, apparently referring to religi~us ide~logy that rests, finally, upon the hope that
"Ethan Brand," he told a New York editor: "At last, by Amencans wlll subordinate their burning desire for knowl-
main strength, I have wrenched and torn an idea out of edge, wealth, and p~wer to the pursuit of rural happiness.
my miserable brain; or rather, the fragment of an idea, !:ence ~he pretty p1cture that accompanies Ethan's death.
like a tooth ill-drawn, and leaving the roots to torture The v1llage, completely shut in by hills, which swelled
me." 20 ~way gently about it, looked as if it had rested peacefu lly
The meaning of H awthorne's complex version of pas· m the hollow of the great hand of Providence."
toral is to be found among the torn r oots of his ideas. In
writing "Ethan Brand," he had left behind the manifestly "In a week or so," Melville wrote to Hawthorne in June
topical content of his 1838 Berkshire notes, but he had 1851 , "I go to New York, to bury myself in a third-story
transferred certain ideas and emotions once attached to ~oom, and work and slave on my 'Whale' wh ile it is driv-
that material to other themes and images. Although the :.ng through th~ press. " And then , in the next paragraph:
striking sight of factories in the wilderness does not appear By the way, m the last 'Dollar Magazine' I read 'The
in the tale, Hawthorne's feelings about it do. Ethan is Unpardonable Sin.' He was a sad fellow, that Ethan Brand.
destroyed by the fires of change associated with factories, I have no doubt you are by this time responsible for many
and nothing confirms this fact as forcibly as the meretri- a shake and tremor of the tribe of 'general readers.' "21
278 TH£ MACH INE IN THE CARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force 7
9 2
Melville's response to Hawthorne's story deserves atten- ment, and that is followed by a tribute to the wisdom of
tion because, for one thing, Ethan's fire reappears in the Solomon (also to reappear in "The Try-Works"), and the
brick and mortar fireplaces, or try-works, aboard the letter concludes with a superbly cogent statement of his
Pequod. Speaking of these "furnaces," the industrial cen- complicated attitude toward the transcendental idea of
ter of the whaling enterprise and a distinguishing feature nature: In a half-conscious way, Melville apparently is
of American whalers, Ishmael says, "It is as if from the followmg the obscure logic at work in Hawthorne's tragic
open field a brick-kiln were transported to her planks." In pastoral. At least this much is clear: an awareness of the
composing "The Try-Works," a decisive chapter in Ish- opposition between head and heart, fire and sun, leads
mael's repudiation of Ahab's quest, Melville incorporates him to reconsider the claims of contemporary pastoralism:
the opposition between fire and sun- and with it a sense -.In rea~ing some of Goethe's sayings, so worshipped by
of the transformation of American society- into the pat- h1s votanes, I came across this, "Live in the all." That
tern of contradiction that controls the meanings of Moby- is to say, your separate identity is but a wretched one, -
Dick. His reaction to Hawthorne's story is typical of his good; but g~t out of yourself, spread and expand your-
high-keyed, impressionable state of mind during the spring self, and bnng to yourself the tinglings of life that are
and summer of 185 1. In this remarkable letter he is mani- felt in the flowers and the woods, that are felt in the
festly assimilating ideas he finds in "Ethan Brand" into planets Saturn and Venus, and the Fixed Stars. What
the complex pastoral design in Moby-Dick. The letter nonsense! Here is a fellow with a raging toothache. "My
continues: d~ar boy," Goethe says to him, "you are sorely afflicted
With ~at tooth; but you must live in the all, and then
It is a frightful poetical creed that the cultivation o£ the you. Will be happy!" As with all great genius, there is
brain eats out the heart. But it's my prose opinion that a.n Immense deal of flummery in Goethe, and in propor-
in most cases, in those men who have fine brains and tiOn to my own contact with him, a monstrous deal of
work them well, the heart extends down to hams. And it in me.
though you smoke them with the fire o£ tribulation, yet, H. Melville.
like veritable hams, the head only gives the richer and P.S. "Amen!" saith Hawthorne.
the better flavor. I stand for the heart. To the dogs with N.B. This "all" feeling, though, there is some truth in.
the head! I had rather be a fool with a heart, than You must often have felt it, lying on the grass on a warm
Jupiter Olympus with his head. The reason the mass of summer's day. Your legs seem to send out shoots into the
men fear God, and at bottom dislike Him, is because ~arth. Your hair feels like leaves upon your head. This
they rather distrust His heart, and fancy Him all brain ts the all feeling. But what plays the mischief with the
like a watch. ~th is that men will insist upon the universal applica-
In the next sentence Melville changes the subject, and tion of a temporary feeling or opinion.
then he changes it again and again in a stunning spiral This incandescent letter lights up the relation between
of associations. A comment upon H awthorne's growing Moby-Dick and t~e s~u.rious pastoralism of the age. Like
fame leads to a summary of his own intellectual develop- Hawthorne, Melville 1s m effect obeying Emerson's injunc-
:z8o TH£ MACHINE I N THE GARDEN T wo Kingdoms of Force .28 1
tion to wise men to " pierce this rotten diction and fasten universal condition of things. H e does not deny the signifi-
words again to visible things." • But Melville is bolder cance of that religious emotion as a gauge of man's inner
and more subversive than Hawthorne. While H awthorne needs; what he does attack is the m istake of projecting it
hints guardedly at the false character of the essentially upon the universe. The letter is a treatise in small against
moribund, Augustan pastoralism of the dominant culture, excessive trust in what Freud ca lls the "oceanic feeling."
Melville's witty attack embraces the flummery of the With one clean, surgical stroke Melville severs the nine-
romantic avant-garde as well - including. to a degree, teenth century's burgeoning, transcendental metaphysic
himself. Indeed, what enables him to write this astonish- from its psych ic roots. 2 ~
ing letter is unsparing self-knowledge; he is exposing the Melville's insight was, of course, not the product of
basis of pastOral fantasying in himself, a nd his insight sudden inspiration . Granted that his encounter with Haw-
illuminates M oby-Dick. The final sentence alone, which thorne and with Hawthorne's writing in 1850 had had a
contains the gist of what Ishmael learns aboard the catalytic effect, the truth is that he had been wor king
Pequod, neatly circumscribes the romantic pastoralism, toward this moment of creative equilibrium ever since
always verging upon pantheism, of Goethe, Wordsworth, his r eturn from the Pacific in 1844. Until that year, he
and Emerson. The extravagant claims of that doctrine, writes in a now familiar passage from the same letter, "I
Melville is saying, stem from a tendency to confuse a had no development a t all. From my twenty-fifth year I
transitory state of mind - the "all" feeling- with the date my life. Three weeks have scarcely passed, at any
time between then a nd now, that I have not u nfolded
• Emerson's remark occu rs in a seminal passage in Nature (t836; ch.
within myself. But I feel that I am now come to the
IV) which looks forward to George Orwcll"s demonstration of the recipro·
cal relation between corrupt politics and corrupt langu age. Emerson inmost leaf of the bulb, and that shortly the flower must
argues that t" c "corruption of man is followed by the corruption of fall to t~1e mould." In 1846 he had begu n his literary
language," and he goes on to indicate why a particular idiom - a pastoral career wtth T ypee and (though the fact is obscured by the
idiom, we might say- can be adequate to one age and corrupt in the
next. "When simplicity of character . . . is broken up by the prevalence
genre of the travel romance) with an expression of the
of secondary desires,- the desire of riches, of pleasure, of power, and of pastoral impulse. At the outset the narrator, Tommo, has
praise,- and duplicity and falsehood take place of simplicity and truth, been at sea for six months without a sight of land: " Oh!
the power over nature as an interpreter of the will is in a degree lost;
new imagery ceases to be created, and old words are perverted to stand
for a refreshing glimpse of one blade of grass- for a snuff
for things which are not; a paper currency is employed, when there is no at the fragrance of a handful of the loamy ear th!" he
bullion in the vaults. I n due time the fraud is manifest, and words lose excla ims; "Is there no green thing to be seen?" Ishmael,
all power to stimulate the understandi ng or the affections. Hund reds of
the narr~tor, asks a similar question at the begin ning of
writers may be found in every long·civilized nation who for a short time
believe and make othen believe that they see and utter truth s. who do Moby-Dzck. H e is explaining his decision to embark upon
not of themselves clothe one thought in its natural garment, but who a n ocea n voyage. At the t ime he had been in a bleak
feed unconsciousl y on the language created by the primary writen of the depressed mood, a nd going to sea, he admits, had bee~
country, those, namely, who hold pri marily on nature.
But wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten words again to
his substitute fo r suicide. He thinks that most people (if
visible things. . . ." they but knew it) cherish similar feelings about the ocean.
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force 2 s3
On a dreamy Sabbath afternoon, he says, you will see hero's retreat carries him directly into primal nature. With
clusters of men standing all around Manhattan, fixed like a friend, Tommo jumps ship in the Marquesas and, after
sentinels in ocean reveries. Yet there is something puzzling certain trials, finds himself living among the primitive
about their behavior. Why are they attracted to the Typees. In spite of a reputation for savagery, these hand-
water? After all, they are landsmen "of week days pent up some, easy-going people strike him as charming. They
in lath and plaster- tied to counters, nailed to benches, charm him in the same way that the Virginia Indians had
clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields charmed Robert Beverley: by their capacity for joy. They
gone?" enjoy life in a Gauguin world of eternal summer and
Melville's development between T ypee and Moby-Dick natural abundance. And so for awhile does Tommo. There
may be described as an unfolding of the ideas and emo- are no calendars or timetables or clocks in the valley, and
tions packed into this question. It is Ishmael who will the hours (as at Walden or aboard Huck Finn's raft) trip
enact the final unfolding. Even before going to sea, it along "as gaily as the laughing couples down a country
appears, he had had an intimation of the kinship between dance." At every turn T ommo is reminded of other items
his feeling for the ocean and a sense of green fields gone; of American life whose absence means pleasure. There is
but it had been a mere intimation, and only his part in no money, no business, no poverty- "none of those thou-
Ahab's quest enables him, finally, to grasp its meaning. sand sources of irritation that the ingenuity of civilized
Thus, at the beginning of Mo by-Dick, Melville restates the man has created to mar his own felicity." And most de-
lament with which he had begun Typee. Although lightful, there is scarcely any work. "The penalty of the
Tommo is aboard ship and Ishmael on shore, each nar- Fall," says Tommo, "presses very lightly upon the valley of
ra tor is introduced at the moment his yearning for green- Typee . . . ." This " paradisiaca l abode" is not to be con-
ness impels him to forsake an organized community. fused with the cultivated, bucolic domain of the Jeffer-
In each case, moreover, the lament is put in the form of sonian myth. The garden Tommo has discovered is a
a question, so that even as the narrator surrenders to the primitive, prelapsarian garden: no property, no letters, no
escapist impulse he is uncertain about its validity. A hint work- "no occupation; all men idle, all." It very nearly
of the complex pastoral motive in Moby-Dick is implicit fulfills Gonzalo's requirements for a model plantation:
in Tommo's situation on the first page of Melville's first All things in common Nature should produce
book. He is an alienated American seafarer aboard a Without sweat or endeavor: treason, felony,
whaling ship; the ship, an extension of Western civiliza- Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,
tion, is moving across an inscrutable Pacific wilderness, Would I not have; but Nature should bring forth,
and the hero's dream of felicity is made manifest in images Of it own kind, all faison, all abundance,
of an evanescent green land. To feed my innocent people.
Melville's distance from the soft pastoralism of the age The extravagance of Tommo's fantasies, their resemblance
is implicit in this spatial scheme: it excludes the middle to those of an Elizabethan voyager, is a gauge of Melville's
landscape as a token of a realizable ideal. In Typee the prescient historical imagination. At a time when the Amer-
THE l\fACHIN E IN TH E CARDEN Two K ingdoms of Force 285
284
ican Republic remains, quite literally, a half vacant land ingenuous book that falls somewhere between fiction and
of green fields, his hero sounds less like a hopeful , Emer- autobiographical confession, and Melvill e may be observed
sonian Young American than like a fugitive from a highly in the process of discovering an equivalence between the
developed, not to say over-developed, civilization . The exterior and the psychic landscapes. At the cl imax T om-
United States, Melville writes in h is 1850 essay on Haw- rna's manhood is threatened by "cannibalism" in both
thorne, is "rapidly preparing for that political supremacy terrains: the ferocity of flesh-eating natives is matched by
among the nations, which prophetically awaits . . . [it) a nameless aggressive force within himself. In the end he
at the close of the present century. . . ." 23 commits an act of violence to escape from the "freedom"
In T ypee, as in T he T empest, the movement toward of nature. 24
nature is checked by Caliban- by a Melvillean counter- The question Tommo had posed in the beginning -
part, that is, to Shakespeare's "thing of dar kness." The "Is there no green thing to be seen ?"- is not fully an-
turning point is T ommo's discovery that the T ypees are swered in T ypee, nor is it answered with anything like
in fact cannibals. In a series of quiet but sinister episodes finality in the other oceanic pastorals that Melville writes
Melville leads his hero to the edge of primitive terror. before M oby-D ick. But its implications are enriched, and
The natives become increasingly possessive. They try to by 1850 it has come to mean something like this: can
tattoo his face. They guard him like a captive. As his men hope to find a green field, a place or condition in
suspicions rise, the utter mindlessness of his existence, the which they are not in danger of being nail ed to work-
absence of anyone with whom he can talk (his shipmate benches or cooked in fleshpots? Is it possible to mediate
having gone off and not returned), intensifies his despera- the claims of our coll ective, insti tutional life and the
tion. Pleasant as they are, his relations with the natives claims of nature? Here greenness is a token of earthly
are merely externa l. H e does not, cannot, know their felicity akin to the pastoral hope. But its meaning can-
minds. He is alone. Besides, upon arriving in the valley not be understood apart from the rest of the Melvillean
he had had a mysterious ailment in his leg, and now, as world. By the time he begins work on "The Whale," Mel-
fear grows upon him, the symptoms recur with more vio- ville has delineated a symbol ic setting adequate to the
lence than ever. In view of the overtones with which Mel- c~~p lexity and clarity of his thought. It is divided, pro-
ville later surrounds Ahab's loss of a leg, Tommo's illness VlSlonally at least, into three realms: ( 1) a ship, mobi le
strongly suggests a conflict involving sexual guilt, repres- replica of a technically advanced, complex society; (2) an
sion, and impotence. It "nearly unmanned me," he says idyllic domain, a lovely green land that figures a simpl e,
of the pain in his leg. In this primitive garden he has harmonious accommodation to the cond itions of nature
enjoyed an erotic freedom unthinkable in nineteenth- and (3) a hideous, menaci ng wilderness, habitat of cann i:
century America; the psychosomatic consequence of the bals and sharks located beyond (or hidden benea th the su r-
retreat into nature is to accentuate his need for the heal- face of) the bland green pastures. To answer his question
ing power of art- in this case, medical art. Typee is an ("A re the gTeen fields gone?") Ishmael must reconcile the
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN T wo Kingdoms of Force 2 87
apparent contradiction between these two states of nature. izes that the whaler has been transformed into a "fire-
Like Shakespeare's American fable, Moby-Dick is an ex- ship," the "material counterpart of her monomaniac com-
ploration of the nature of nature. mander's soul." And by the second day of the chase the
In this fictive world the ship occupies a place like that crew has become a pliant, disciplined, committed, totali -
of "Concord" in Walden. Even in Typee, where Melville tarian unit. "They were one man, not thirty . . . all
does not develop the device of the ship as a small-scale varieties . . . welded into oneness, and . . . all directed
social mechanism, shipboard life is joyless, routinized, dull. to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did
Tommo's longing for a sight of green grass is a reaction point to." 26
to the "privations and hardships" aboard the whaler. Later, All are directed toward Ahab's goal, that is, except l sh-
Melville self-consciously exploits the trope of the ship as m.ael. ~n the en~ he alone is saved, a fact that comports
a social microcosm. H e gives W hite-j acket (185o) the sub- w1th hlS success m establishing a position independent of
title, "The World in a Man-of.'\Var," and toward the end Ahab and the fiery quest. The significance that Melville
he introduces an image of collective power that was to attaches to Ishmael's survival is indicated by the line from
have a decisive function in Moby-Dick: "The whole body Job he takes as the motto of the Epilogue: "And I onl y
of this discipline," says the narrator, summing up his im- am escaped alone to tell thee." In other words Ishmael's
pressions of life aboard an American frigate, "is emphat- relation to us, the readers of M oby-Dick, is like that of
ically a system of cruel cogs and wheels, systematically Job's messengers to Job. The calamity he r ecounts is a
grinding up in one common hopper all that might min- portent of further trials to come: we too may expect our
ister to the moral well-being of the crew." In Moby-Dick integrity and faith to be tested. Ishmael's surv ival - the
he uses the image of an implacable mach ine to express contrast between his attitude and Ahab's- is the root of
Ahab's pride in dominating the Pequod's crew. In this he the matter. But the contrast develops only in the course
reflects the attitude of Carlyle and the romantics. (During of the voyage: earlier, Ishmael tells us, his views had had
the summer of 1850 Melville apparently read Carlyle.) a good deal in common with Ahab's. His "splintered heart
The creed of the Age of Machinery, Carlyle had said in and maddened hand" also had been "turned against the
"Signs of the Times," is Fatalism: by insisting upon the wolfish world," and his chief motive for undertakin(T the
0
force of circumstances, men argue away all force from voyage, moreover, had been "the overwhelming idea of
themselves, until they "stand lashed together, uniform in the great whale himself. " Long before he encountered
dress and movement, like the rowers of some boundless Ahab, that "portentous and mysterious monster" had
galley." By the time Ahab sights the white whale, the roused all. his curiosity; he had been swayed to the pur-
Pequod has become such a fated ship. It is Ahab's ship in pose by wlld conceits, "endless processions of the whale
every possible sense. He helps to create the "circumstances" a_nd, mid most of them all, one grand hooded phantom:
which in turn form the crew into an instrument of his hke a snow hill in the air." And when the crew, roused
metaphysical intent. In the try-works episode Ishmael real- by the eloquence of Ahab's quarter-deck speech, swears
288 THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Two Kingdoms of For ce 289
death to Moby Dick, Ishmael's shouts go up with the r est; the absolute. "Talk not to me of blasphemy, man," he
his oath is "welded" with theirs. Before the end, however, replies to Starbuck. ''I'd strike the sun if it insulted me."
he changes his mind. He discovers that the "green fields," But as Ahab's heart hardens aga inst the world, Ishmael
although they do not signify the literal possibility of a undergoes a "melting within." T o point the contrast Mel-
pastoral life, are not gone. Ishmael's rediscovery of green- ville withholds Ahab's version of Ishmael's opening lament
ness is of a piece with his repudiation of the "horrible until the end. Only in "The Symphony," the elegiac inter-
oath ": the action tha t leads to the Pequod's doom re ults lude on the eve of the chase, does Ahab fully grasp the
in his "salvation." 28 relation between his seafaring life and his monomania.
As the movement toward tragedy gains momentum, all ~fea n whil e, Ishmael has freed himself of despa ir: he has
meanings are polarized, so that we are left, finall y, with located the "green fi elds"- the germ of truth in the "all"
the ir reconcilable views of Ahab and Ishmael. Their con- feeling.
trasting ideas of man's relation to nature correspond to The sea change that Ishmael suffers, played aga inst
the conflicting attitudes which Melville had expressed, the opposite change in Ahab, is the narrative key to the
along with his reaction to " Ethan Brand," in the letter pastoral design in Moby-Dich. T elling his stor y in retro-
to H awthorne. His initial scorn of romantic pastoral ism spect, Melville's narrator spea ks as one who has avoided
as a ludicrously feeble defense aga inst despair is embod ied the trap of sentimental pastoralism. Before the voyage
in Aha b. T o a man as angry as Ahab- a desperate, in- he had been a typica l young romantic with an itch for
complete, morta lly wounded ("unmanned") man, a man remote places and a tendency to pan theistica l revery.
who suffers the pain of unbelief - the "all" principl e H e tells us that he had embarked in search of "an asylum
hardly provid es consolation. But if the Pequocl's captai n . . . (from] the ca rking cares of earth, and seeking
represents the side of Melville that says "what nonsense!" sentiment in tar and blubber. " Instead of an asylum,
Ishmael lends expression to the second thoughts of his he had found a hideous wilderness. His violent r ecoil from
postscript: "This 'all ' feeling, though, there is some truth society, like Tommo's, had been checked only at the brink
in. You must often have felt it, lying on the grass on a of primitive mindlessness. Unable to locate a haven at
warm summer's day. " sea or on land, Ishmael had been impelled toward a
The course of Ishmael's inner development, which is new definition of felicity or greenness. It is in dramatizing
d iametrically opposed to Ahab's, leads to the discovery of this process that Melville introduces a version of the de-
that truth. Melville underscores the divergence by intro- sign Hawthorne had used in his Sleepy Hollow notes. At
ducing the two characters in contrasting situations. \Vhen three decisive points he incorporates the device into the
the narrative begins, Ishmael's sense of alienation from larger, tragic pattern of contradiction.27
greenness is most acute: he is a desperate man. On the
other hand , when Ahab announces his purpose he is at
the height of his powers, master of the ship and of the Melville's first significant use of the design occurs in the
crew. seeming master of himself, a Titan prepared to defy juxtaposition of two important episodes in chapters 35
\
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN Two Kingdo ms o f Force 29 1
through 37· Ishmael's account of his first masthead watch, tude toward external nature is finally narctsststtc. This
when he discovered the dangers of romantic pastoralism, point, Ishmael then had suggested, is more clearly revealed
is followed immediately by Ahab's ringing announcement by our responses to "watery pastures" than to ordinary
of the quest for the white whale, and by the soliloquy in landscapes. Continuing his attempt to account for the
which he exults in his power over the crew. In this ironic fascination exercised upon mankind by the ocean, Ishmael
counterpoint of scenes Melville relies upon two images: had proposed the theory that water is the telltale element
the ocean's surface pictured as an endless series of "watery in our relation with visible nature. To clinch the argu-
pastures" and an invincible locomotive conquering the ment he had introduced the example of a painter of pas-
landscape. toral landscapes:
In "The Mast-Head" Ishmael describes his momentary He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quiet-
surrender to the "all" feeling. It was his first watch aloft. est, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape... .
Standing high above the deck on a serene, tropical day, What is the chief element he employs? There stand his
one is likely to become lost, he says, in the infinite series trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a
of the sea. A "sublime uneventfulness invests you" as you crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and
gaze out across the undulating "watery pastures." Lulled there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes
into "an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a
revery . . . by the blending cadence of waves with mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains
thoughts," you soon lose your identity. What Melville is bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture
lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down
d:scribing, of course, is a consummate Emersonian expe-
its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all
n ence of nature. Natural facts are blended with Ishmael's were vain, unleM the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the
thoughts by the rhythm of the sea, and so he merges with magic stream before him.
the all. "In this enchanted mood," he says, "thy spirit
e~bs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through The shepherd's eye should be fixed upon the "magic
ttme and space. . . ." Or, as Emerson had said of a simi- stream," Ishmael is saying, because that image typifies our
lar experience, "I am nothing; I see all; the currents of endless fascination with visible nature. He singles out
the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or water for its "magical" properties: at times transparent,
parcel of God." In Melville's case, however, the interlude at others a mirror, water bemuses us with the possibility
does not lead to an affirmation of a transcendent meaning. of penetrating the surface of nature, yet it flatters and dis-
On the contrary, "The Mast-Head" is designed to show turbs us by casting back our own image. What do we
that such fantasies may end in horror.28 actually see- the object or ourselves? A shepherd gazing
Melville's theme, which he had introduced at the very at the water thus epitomizes the exasperating, yet perhaps
beginning of the book- shortly after Ishmael's query, unavoidable, mingling of the " I" with the object in the
"are the green fields gone?"- is that the romantic atti- act of perception. All of which is illustrated, Ishmael says,
292 THE M ACH INE IN THE GARDEN Two Ki77gdoms of Force 293
by the story of Narcissus, who, because he could not grasp nouncement of Ahab's purpose. Assembling the entire
the tormenting image he saw in the fountain , plunged ship's company one late afternoon, Ahab shows a gold
into it and was drowned. What makes water the telltale doubloon to the men. He now displays a curious affinity
element in landscape is that it so clearly elicits the narcis- with the " machinery" of motivation in this acquisitive
sistic response. Th e image that Narcissus saw in the foun- society. While waiting for Starbuck to get a hammer, Ahab
tain, Ishmael concludes, "we ourse lves see in all rivers and hums to himself, "producing a sound so stra ngely muffied
ocea ns. It is the image of the ungraspable ph antom of life; and inarticulate that it seemed the mechanical humming
and thi s is the key to it al l. " of the wheels of his vitality in him." Then, announcing
In "T he Mast-H ead" Ishmael describes how danger- that the doubloon is for the man who first raises the white
ously close he had come to repeating the fata l plunge of whale, Ahab nails the coin to the mast. Only Starbuck
Narcissus. H e had been one of those "romantic, melan- objects: " .. . I came here to hunt whales, not my com-
choly, and absent-minded young men " - an emulator of mander's vengeance. How many barrels will thy vengeance
Childe Harold- who are useless as look-outs. While yield . . .?" In putting down the recalcitrant mate, Ahab
perched high above the sea, taking "the mystic ocean at makes the electrifying speech that so vividly expresses his
his feet for the visible image of that deep, b lue, bottomless Faustian compulsion to impose his will upon the cosmos.
sou l, pervading mankind and nature," Ishmael had for- In Melville's hero the thrust of Western man for ultimate
gotten the wh ales and other monsters swimm ing beneath knowledge a nd power is sinewed with hatred . Ignorance
him. As the closing sentences of the chapter reveal, how- of the absolute, for Ahab, is a humiliation; he equates
ever, the voyage of th e Pequod had taught hi m the peril - not knowing with being senselessly dismembered or im-
ousness of such transcendental moments: prisoned. (Here, in rapid succession, he speaks of the
But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot whale as a malicious dismemberer, a prison wall , a mask
or hand an inch; slip your hold a t all; and your identity concealing the ultimate secret .) Nothing could be further
comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. from the quiet tenderness associated with the pastoral
And perhaps, at mid-day, in the fa irest weather, with one feeling for nature; Ahab's vengeful drive is directed not
half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent toward but through the visible universe. In one unforget-
air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed table metaphor he sums up the reckless, violent irrevere nce
it well, ye Pantheists! implicit in the " progress" of "advanced" civilization. "All
The horrifying idea of a fall from the heights of pas- visible objects, man," he cries, "are but as pasteboard
toral revery into the undersea vortex of material reality masks. ... If man will strike, strike through the mask!"
is the counterpart, in this variant of the motif, to the Then, his eloquence having roused the fervor of the crew,
railroad's sudden incursion in Sleepy Hollow. "Heed it and even the bewitched, tacit acquiescence of Starbuck,
well , ye Pa ntheists!" is Ahab's cue; it provides the transi- Ahab retires to his cab in.
tion to "T he Quarter-Deck" and the long-delayed an- The chapter that follows, "Sunset," is a brie~ poetic
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force 295
soliloquy on power. Ahab is sitting alone beside the stern through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents'
beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's
windows, and as he gazes out the Pequod's wake is trans-
an angle to the iron way!
formed, in his mind's eye, into the "track" of a nameless,
inexorable force cutting through the sea. "I leave a white The effect of these counterpointed episodes- Ishmael's
and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where'er I sail. daydream and the sudden explosion of Ahab's muffled
The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track; aggression- is to sharpen the border line between illu-
let them; but first I pass." No visible objects, no physical sion and reality in Melville's fictive world. On the mast-
reality, can deter him. But the sun is setting, and Ahab's head, Ishmael, forgetting about the undersea wilderness
dream of power is a reminder of his incapacity for pleasure. of sharks and whales, had lost his identity in the "upper
air" of pure consciousness. But Ahab's charismatic speech
Ohl time was, when as the sunrise nobly spurred me, so had brought him back to material reality. "For one," he
the sunset soothed. No more. This lovely light, it lights admits, "I gave myself up to the abandonment of the time
not me; all loveliness is anguish to me, since I can ne'er and the place; but while yet a-rush to encounter the whale,
enjoy. Gifted with the high perception, I lack the low,
could see naught in that brute but the deadliest ill." Feel-
enjoying power; damned, most subtly and most malig-
nantly! damned in the midst of Paradise! ing a "vague, nameless horror" concerning the whale, and
conscious of his responsibility to make credible the fiery
Only the thought of dominion eases the pain, and he calls hunt (he is, after all, the narrator of this incredible story),
up the sweet memory of Starbuck's capitu lation: "I Ishmael turns his attention to the hard facts. He under-
though t to find one stubborn, at the least; but my one takes a systematic study of the entire whaling enterprise.
cogged circle fits into all their various wheels, and they In Moby-Dick the governing metaphor of reality is the
revolve." T hen, again, he sees himself as igniting a fiery violent encounter with the whale. 29
explosion, the crew "like so many ant-hills of powder, they
all stand before me; and I their match." The thought of In a whaling world, Ishmael discovers, man 's primary
being consumed in the act provokes a reassertion of his relation to nature is technological. No detail figures this
will; he vows to "dismember my dismemberer," and as truth more clearly than the "magical, sometimes horrible
fanatic determination rises in him, he defies the gods to whale-line" he discusses in "The Line" (Chapter 6o). This
come out of their hiding places, taunts them in the rhetoric relatively insignificant passage - insignificant so far as the
of the technological sublime: action is concerned - illustrates the astonishing range of
insight released by Melville's whaling trope. By describ-
Come, Ahab's compliments to ye; come and see if ye
ing the line that follows the harpoon, he discloses the
can swerve me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye
swerve yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The elemental aspect of physical dependence, plunder, and ex-
path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon ploit that underlies the deceptively mild, abstract quality
my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, of life in our technical civil ization. H ere the simple
Ttl £ MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force 297
Manila rope is made to seem an archetype of the physical age" is attacking a beast, yet as Ishmael describes the scene
bond between man and nature, whether industrial or it presages the release of explosive, uncontrollable energy
primitive. Although whaling is a rationalized, collective in the era of steam power:
operation , based on a strict division of labor , it remains
a bloody, murderous hunt. Playing this fa ct against the A short rushing sound leaped out of the boat; it was
illusion that civilized man has won his freedom from the darted iron of Queequeg. Then all in one welded
commotion came an invisible push from astern, while
physical nature, Melville transforms the line into an
fonvard the boat seemed striking on a ledge; the sail
emblem of our a nimal fate. It signifies that we are bound collapsed and exploded; a gush of scalding vapor shot
to the whal e by the needs and limitations of all living up near by; something rolled and tumbled like an earth-
things, as, for example, hunger and death. Our precarious quake beneath us.
situation is illustrated by a man sitting in a whale boat.
Technological progress does not alter the fa ct that his The whale-line, to be sure, is only one of many lines of
life remains enveloped in whal e lines; at any moment the fate that crisscross the world of Moby-Dick. The line reap-
line may snatch him out of the boat. " For, when the line pears on the charts, in the sword-mat that strikes Ishmael
is darting out, to be seated th en in the boat, is like being as the Loom of Time, in the "monkey-rope" that ties him
seated in the midst of the manifold whizzings of a steam- to Queequeg, on the brow ("pleated with riddles") of the
engine in full play, when every flying beam, and shaft, whale and in the "crucifixion" on Ahab's ravaged face. In
and wheel, is gTazing you." the end, however, the whale line is the decisive line. On
Throughout Moby-Dick Melville uses machin e imagery the third day of the chase, after Ahab darts the harpoon
to rela te the undisguised killing and butchery of whaling toward the white whale, the line mns foul; he stoops to
to the coucealed violence of "civilized" \Vestern society. clear it, clears it, but as he does the flying tum catches him
In fa ct the primitive urge back of the machine is what round the neck and silently whisks him out of the boat.
seems to invest it with a sense of fatality. ("\Ve have con- "Next instant . . . the rope's final end flew out of the
stntcted a fate, " Thoreau says of the railroad, "an Atropos, stark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting
that never turns aside. ") T o Ishmael the line is at once the sea, disappeared in its depths." so
a token of man 's inesca pable need to consume the whale A whaling captain's life, as Ishmael sees it, is peculiarly
and of the whale's deadly hold upon him. Even as it lies conducive to illusions of Promethean power. Ahab's voca-
in graceful repose, the soft, golden-haired Manila spells tion endows him with a mastery of what Carlyle had called
fatal power: "as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen the "machinery" of the age- in both senses of the word.
before being brought into a c tu:-~1 play-this is a thing which As captain he is, of course, master of an intricate piece of
ca rries more of true terror than any other aspect of this machinery in the literal sense. More important, however,
dangerous affair." Th e reason for terror becomes evident is the mechanistic habit of mind, which Carlyle had attrib-
the first time Queequeg throws his harpoon. Here a "sav- uted to modern man and which enables Ahab to control
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force 299
the consciousness of his men. He assumes that their minds to maintain a normal whaling routine until the last
function according to simple, mechanical principles, which moment.
is to say that they are essentially passive before experience.
In this respect they might be inhabitants of Thoreau's I will not strip these men, thought Ahab, of all hopes of
cash- aye, cash. They may scorn cash now; but let some
"Concord." When Ahab sums up the results of his quarter-
months go by, and no prospective promise of it to them,
deck speech ("my one cogged circle fits into all their vari-
and then this same quiescent cash all at once mutinying
ous wheels, and they revolve") the metaphor defines the in them, this same cash would soon cashier Ahab.
subtle, complementary relation between his mind and
theirs: he supplies the motive power- the ends- for Nowhere does Melville display greater political acu-
which they are the means. A similar premise underlies the men than in defining the paradoxical affinity between
ingenious "political" strategy he formulates in "Surmises" Ahab and the mechanistic view of life. As the Pequod
(Chapter 46). approaches the white whale, Ahab's preoccupation with
Ahab's concern here is the crew's morale, or, as he sees power becomes obsessive. Images of machinery, iron,
it, keeping his human tools in order: "To accomplish forges, wheels, fire , and smoke fill his speech. In a fit of
his object Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used in manic inspiration he "orders" from the blacksmith, whom
the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of he calls Prometheus, a "complete man" fifty feet high
order." His special problem is that he cannot hope to with a chest modelled after the Thames Tunnel, no heart
hold the men only to that "one final and romantic object" at all, and about a quarter of an acre of brains. But Ahab
he had proclaimed on the quarter-deck.That speech had feels an affinity with the new power only as a means-
confirmed his power to inspire men, but Ahab is too an instrument of his own wild, metaphysical purpose. He
experienced to imagine that he can sustain such fervor does not share the cloudy vision of material happiness that
until he locates Moby Dick. " In times of strong emotion," is the ostensible goal of industrial progress in America
he knows, "mankind disdain all base considerations; but and- though probably with fewer illusions- through-
such times are evanescent." How, then, to keep the men out Western society. He cares nothing for wealth or
satisfied until the critical moment? Ahab's solution is worldly satisfactions (he lacks "the low, enjoying power"),
based on the idea, advanced by Carlyle, Marx, Emerson, but he knows how to manipulate those who do care. His
and Thoreau (among others), that the Age of Machinery ability to complement their limited perceptions is a sav-
transforms men into objects: "The permanent constitu- age comment upon a culture obsessed with the technical,
tional condition of the manufactured man, thought Ahab, external arrangements of life. Ahab's "cogged circle" syn-
is sordidness." Under the circumstances, he concludes, his chronizes with their various wheels because he provides
best hope is to exploit the simple, quantitative, acquisitive what they so conspicuously lack: a passionate sense of
system of value honored by a capitalist society. H ence the common purpose. The shattering fact is that his madness
nailing of the doubloon to the mast; hence the decision fits the needs of this technically proficient society. "Now,
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force
300 301
in his heart, Ahab had some glimpse of this, namely: all knowledge
. . pursu ed by men, and so his voyage of ....-· n d
my means are sane, my motive and my object mad." Ruth· ep1tomues the attempt to know the nature of natu
Af I . re.
Jess insight combined with burning purpose is what en - ter cata ogumg the associations of whiteness, positive
ables Ahab to gain a total dominion over the officers, men, and negative, he discovers that his response is attributabl
ne1t'h er to beneficent nor to abhorrent associations. Indeede
and owners • of the Pequod - over everyone, finally, but
Ishmael.81 he is unable to trace the terror he feels to any specifi~
In addition to Ahab's monomania, which is in some meaning, benign or repellent, or to any value, good or
measure a product of the whaling life, Ishmael extends evil, and he fin ally is drawn to the conclusion that it is
his inquiry to the object of the vengeful quest- the larg- precisely the indefini teness of this fact, its hospitality to
est of living creatures, the great whale. Even as he sur- contradictory meanings and values, that causes fear. And
renders to Ahab's oratory, he vows to explain the "mystical then he adds the reflection that all colors, even "the sweet
and well-nigh ineffable" horror the whale arouses in him. ting~s of sunset skies and woods," are not "actually inher-
And he goes to the heart of the matter at once. "It was ent m substances, but only laid on from without; so that
the whiteness of the whale," he says, "that above all things all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose
appalled me." In discussing that unusual color Ishmael allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house with-
addresses the reader with offstage candor, not as an ordi- in . . . ." In the end Ishmael decides that what strikes
nary character, but in his r6le as a narrator, poet, and terror to the soul is not the object at all , but rather its
symbol-maker whose only hope of making the quest cred- unknowability. Is not the essence of whiteness, he asks,
ible is to account, first, for his own seemingly unaccount· that "dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide land-
able response to whiteness: " . . . explain myself I must," scape of snows- a colorless, all-color of atheism from
he concedes, "else all these chapters might be naught." which ~e shrink?" The ambiguity evoked by the white
Ishmael's analysis of the whiteness of the whale (Chapter whale 1s what accounts for Ishmael's ineffable horror.
42) is a majestic rhetorical feat appropriate to a subject And ambiguity is the attribute of the physical universe
of ultimate concern: his own effort to apprehend one that matches the contradiction at the heart of a culture
natural object as it exists in itself- to isolate the naked, that would deify the Nature it is engaged in plundering.
irreducible fact responsible for his fear. He takes the mys- All Ishmael's other efforts to apprehend the whale bear
terious color of the whale as a token of all the objects of out these skeptical conclusions. In this respect his experi-
ence aboard the Pequod parallels T horeau 's experience
• Toward the absentee owners he adopts an idly cynical attitude,
encouraging them to th ink that he shares their interest in cash. In at the pond. Ishmael is determined to know whales. He
stating the case Melville anticipates the twentieth century's discovery that subjects the anatomy of the beast to a meticulous exam-
p rudent ial, rationalisti c cultu res are peculiarly vu lnerable to leaders of ination, but again and again he discovers, as Thoreau does,
mad purpose: "They were bent on profitable cruises, the profit to be
counted down ln dollars from the mint. He was intent on an audaclout, that the fact~ will not of themselves yield anything like a
Immitigable, and supernatural revenge." clear, unequivocal truth. After examining many pictures
302
THE MACHINE lN THE GARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force
303
of whales he decides that "the great Leviathan is that one tions, Melville expands the opposition between Ahab and
creature in the world which must remain unpainted to Ishmael into an all-engulfing metaphor of contradiction.
the last." No single portrait can possibly capture the truth, In "A Sq~eeze of the Hand" (Chapter 94), Ishmael again
Ishmael says, and so "there is no earthly way of finding abandons htmself to the "all" feeling. With several other
out precisely what the whale really looks like." But he ~ailo.rs he is seated before a tub fill ed with sperm oil; their
persists. The chapters dealing with parts of the whale's ~ob IS t~ s~ueeze the hardening lumps of spermaceti back
anatomy begin, typically, with a straightfonvard attempt m to Autd m preparation for the try-works. "A sweet and
to set forth the evidence, but in the end he often admits unctuous duty!" excla ims Ishmael, recalling the ancient
that the mere facts do not suffice: reputation of "sperm" as a cosmetic- an incomparable
The more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I clearer: S\~eetener, softener, mollifier. "After having my
deplore my inability to express it. At times there are ges- hand~ m 1t for only a few minutes," he says, "my fingers
tures in it, which, though they would well grace the hand fel~ ~~.e ~el~, and began, as it .were, to serpentine and spi-
of man, remain wholly inexplicable. . . . Dissect him rahze. Sittmg there all mornmg squeezing sperm induces
how I may, then, I but go skin deep; I know him not, a strange euphoria:
and never will. But if I know not even the tail of this
whale, how understand his head? much more, how com- As I sat .there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck;
prehend his face, when face he has none? aJter the bitter exertion at the windlass; under a blue
tranquil sky; the ship under indolent sail, and gliding so
When Ishmael's investigations of natural fact do not issue
serenely along; as I bathed my hands among those soft,
in confessions of failure they often turn, suddenly, into gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within
undisguised flights of poetic imagination. Like Thoreau, the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and dis-
he discovers that only the symbol-making power of mind ~arged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their
can induce a [act to flower into a truth. 32 wme; as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma -
literally and truly, like the smell of spring violets; I
As the voyage continues and Ishmael becomes increas- declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a musky
ingly skeptical about the possibility of apprehending the meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath· in that
whale, he is drawn into himself. For a time his voice is ine~pressible sperm, I washed my hands and :ny heart
muted. But his skepticism and his growing inwardness o~ ~t; I almost began to credit the old Paracelsan super-
express themselves, eventually, in the crisis of chapters stitiOn that s?erm is. of :are virtue in allaying the heat
94 through 96. H ere, for the second time, Melville uses a of anger: ~'>'hii~ bathmg m that bath, I felt divinely free
from all Ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any sort
variant of the machine-in-the-garden design to compose whatsoever.
an ironic juxtaposition of episodes. This time, however,
he probes more deeply into the psychic significance of the Though in many ways like the masthead episode, this is
contrast. Drawing insights from his own conflicting emo- a pastoral interlude with a difference. Here Melville
TH E MACHINE IN T I-l E CARDEN T wo Kingdoms of Force
3°5
leaves no doubt about the genesis of the "all" feel ing. has perceived, Ishmael says, "that in all cases man must
The fragrance of spring violets and the musky meadow eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable
figure in Ishmael's euphoria, it is true, but they exist felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the
wholly within his imagination. The external landscape is fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the
on the periphery, a source of remembered images, while saddle, the fire-side, the country . . . " !la
the center of the experience is unabashedly erotic: What is striking about this vision of rural tranquillity,
under the circumstances, is its irrelevance. It is totally,
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I
absurdly, not to say insanely irrelevant to Ishmael's life,
squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it;
I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came to the whaling enterprise or, in other words, to reality as
over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my defined by the governing metaphor of M oby-D ick. To
co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the forget the horrible oath is to forget the actual situation
gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, fri endly, aboard the Pequod. On this ship only Ahab determ ines
loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I the effective "conceit of attainable felicity." This is not
was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up to say that Ishmael's moment of loving transport was
into their eyes sentimentally.. . . u~rea~. It ~ad been genuine enough. But what plays the
In describing this spell Melville makes his deepest pene· mischtef Wtth the truth at such times, as Melville had
tration into the psychic sources of the "all" fee ling- and explained in h is letter to Hawthorne, is "that men will
of sentimental pastoralism generally. The profundity of ~nsist upo~ ~he .~miversal application of a temporary feel-
his insight is indicated by the brilliance of the clarifica· mg or opmton. Once again Melville places Ishmael on
tions that follow. H ere, for the first time, he actually the ver~e o.f a hideou s fall into the vor tex of reality. The
explains the redemptive process hitherto evoked by Ish· danger 1s hmted by the abrupt transition from the serene,
mael's "melting" figure. "I felt a melting in me," the sun-filled eroticism of "A Squeeze of the H and" to the
narrator had said of the emotions initially aroused in him violent, firelit passions of "The Try-Works." The distance
by his relation with Queequeg. "No more m y splintered between these two episodes is the unbrido-eable rrulf be-
heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish tween a childlike self, intoxicated by tho~tghts ~f inno-
world. This soothing savage had redeemed it." The basis c~nt love, and the outer world of ruthless, adult aggres-
of this feeling, it now appears, is what Freud no doubt Siveness. Between the two chapters Melville cunningly
would have called an infantile pleasure ego. Erotic fu). places "The Cassock" (Chapter 95). a brief Rabelaisian
fillment of a childish kind exposes the unshielded inner tribute to sexual energy as figured by the "grandissimus,"
self in all its innocent yearning. This experience issues or phallus, of the whale.
in a mild, submissive, feminine view of life, opposed in The try-works episode stands in the same relation to
every way to Ahab's irremediable aggressiveness. And it "A Squeeze of the H and" as the quarter-deck scene to
entails a renunciation, or lowering, of objectives. For he the masthead revery: it is an evocation of explosive power
306 THE 1\'lAC tll NE I N TtiE GARDEN T wo Kingdoms of Force 307
following a pastoral interlude. But here, presumabl.y as With huge pronged poles they pitched hissing masses of
a result of Ishmael's access to deeper levels of consctous- blubber into the scalding pots, or stirred up the fires
ness, Melville's narrator fuses into a single, compelling beneath, till the snaky flames darted, curling, out of the
image the inward and outward implications of man's doors to catch them by the feet. The smoke rolled away
assault upon nature. The ch apter begins, in a Aat, docu- in sullen heaps. . . . Their tawny features, now all be-
mentary style, with an account of the technical apparatus. grimed with smoke and sweat, their matted beards, and
the contrasting barbaric brilliancy of their teeth, all these
Ishmael describes the anomalous masonry "works," pecu-
were strangely revealed in the capacious emblazonings
liar to American whalers, which look like n othing so much of the works.
as a brick-kiln from an open field. T aken together, the
details form a composite image of industrial technology The men now tell each other their " unholy adventures,"
in the Age of Steam. Ishmael sketches the elaborate iron- and the excitement rises. What had begun as a routine
work, the iron mouths of the "furnaces," the heavy iron whaling operation becomes a weird, violent, orgiastic rite.
doors, and the water r eservoir needed to preserve the deck The scene provides a glimpse into both the past of West-
from the intense heat of the fire; the scraps of dried blub- ern civilization and its unconscious present. Almost im-
ber used for fuel (the whale, he notes, is "self-consuming") mediately, Melville shifts the focus again, the wild fire-ship
surround the whole operation in an unspeakable, stinking, now evoking Ahab's inner life - the frenzied, walled-in
horrible smoke. The factory aspect befits the renderi ng passion of an American captain "damned in the midst of
process, which is the industrial phase, after all , of the Paradise!"
whaling business. It also enables Melville to fashion a
metaphor of heedless, unbridled, nineteenth-century Amer- As they narrated to each other their unholy adventures,
ican capitalism. Extracting economic value from the whale their tales of terror told in words of mirth; as their
is, in theory at least, the command ing, official motive of uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them, like
the journey. All else is secondary. The try-works provide the flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their
an appropriate setting for the social action of M oby-Dick front, the harpooners wildly gesticulated wi th their huge
- the saga, as Thorstein Veblen might have put it, of a pronged forks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and
the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and yet
predatory culture.
steadfastly shot her red hell furth er and further into the
As Ishmael continues, describing the scene on deck the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully
first time the works were fired, the connotation shifts from champed the whi te bone in her mouth, and viciously
civilized industry to a primitive rite. It is midnight. T he spat round her on all sides; then the rushing Pequod,
pagan harpooners, who are always the "stokers," look like freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning
infernal shapes in the firelight. This fire illuminates the a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness,
primal energies at work back of the modern, seemingly seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac
rational, drive for profit and power. commander's soul.
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN Tw o Kingdoms of Force 309
go8
That night a strange thing happens to Ishmael. ~tan~ least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the
only true lamp- all others but liars!
in at the helm, watching the "fiend shapes" capermg. m
g k nd fire he is suddenly aware of somethmg In paying tribute to the sun, however, Ishmael does not
t h e smo ·e a • . .. £ d th"
fatally WTOng. A stark, bewildered ~eehng, as o . ea , regress to the sunlit dream world of "A Squeeze of the
comes over him. R each ing convulsively for the tlll~r, he Hand." Nor does he reaffirm the "conceit" which had
realizes in the nick of time that he had unconsciously caught his fancy in that intox icated moment when, having
turned himself around, and that in another mo~e~t he washed away the oath in inexpressible sperm, he had
might have capsized the ship. The incident is rem~mscent "lived as in a musky meadow." The vision he now gains is
of "Ethan Brand," and of the Faustian quest which had illuminated by the "natural sun," a mode of seeing that is
been inspired, initially, by a fiend evoked from the fi~es not, like the other, a half-sight. It does not mean averting
of a brick kiln. In Moby-Dick, of course, the mono~a~tac one's eyes from the dark side, from the suffering to which
committed to a fiery quest is Ahab. From the begmmn~, Ahab's grand, angry quest testifies.
however, Ishmael has acknowledged similar impulses m
Nevertheless, the sun hides not Virginia's Dismal
himself. And in this episode he comes ~losest to total Swamp, nor Rome's accursed Campagna, nor wide Sa-
capitulation. "Wrapped, for that interval, m darkness my· hara, nor all the millions of miles of deserts and of griefs
self, I but the better saw the redness, the madness, the beneath the moon. The sun hides not the ocean, which
ghastliness of others." While under the spell Ishmael ve~y is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds
nearly causes the catastrophe to which Ahab's monomama of this earth.
will lead.
But he comes back to his senses in time, and the upshot At this point Melville moves his narrator toward a sav-
is an explicit, rational repudiation of the quest- not. to ing resolution. If two-thirds of this earth is a dark, woeful,
be confused with the "forgetting" that had accompamed hideous wilderness, then, Ishmael reasons, the man who
the "all" feeling. Now, in glad, grateful relief from the has more of joy than sorrow in him cannot be a true
"unnatural hallucination of the night," he steps forth and man. (A true man is one whose responses match the
addresses us directly; he is a teacher pointing the lesson actual condition of things.) \Virh this perception Ishmael
in the manner of an Old Testament prophet: "Look ~ot fin ally has outgrown his proclivity to childish pleasure
too long in the face of the fire, 0 man! Never dream with fantasies. The true man, he concludes, is the man of
thy hand on the helm!" Then he enlarges upon the fire· sorrows, and the truest book, Ecclesiastes, cuts with an
sun antinomy: edge that has been hammered fine by woe. Ahab, ac-
cordingly, is a truer man than the Ishmael who dwelled
... believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes upon "watery pastures" and "musky meadows." And there
all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the ~atural. su~,
is a large truth, a two-thirds truth , as it were, in the ag·
the skies will be bright; those who glared hke devtls m
the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at gTessive Aha b whose sign is the doomed American whaler,
THE MACHINE lN THE GARDEN Tw o Kingdoms of Force 311
310
freighted with savages, laden with fire, burning a corpse, people a skeleton of a great sperm whale. It has been
and plunging into blackness. But it is only a partial truth, moved from the b~ach where it was fo und to a lush green
and here Ishm ael takes the final turn toward a third, ra- glen, where the pnests had converted it into a temple.
tional, and more complex position. The conclusion of
It was a wondrous sight. The wood was green as mosses
"The Try-Works" is at once a repudiation of the quest, a
reaffirmation of r eason, and a tribute to the man large
?£the ~cy ~~en; the trees stood high and haughty, feel-
mg thetr l1vmg sap; the industrious earth beneath was
enough to withstand the extremes of hope and fear: as a weaver's.loom, with a gorgeous carpet on it, whereof
But even Solomon, he says, "the man that wandereth the ~~und-vme tendrils formed the warp and woof, and
out of the way of understanding shall remain" (i.e. even the hvmg fl owers the figures.
while living) "in the congregation of the dead." Give
H~re inside the whale Ishmael is as close to the center of
not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden
thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that thmgs as he is likely to get. The skeleton is a primitive
is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there te~~le of nature. The pr iests keep a holy flame burning
is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down wtthm, and the "artificial smoke" pours out of the hole
into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and where the real watery jet once had come forth.
become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he . As Ish~ael moves further into the whale, however, the
for ever fli es within the gorge, that gorge is in the moun- u~age .shtfts. The bones of the skeleton are crisscrossed
tains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain Wtth vmes, a?d through them the sunlight seems "a Aying
eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, ~hu~tle weavmg the un wearied verdure." All at once the
even though they soar. t?tncate s~mcture of bones, the smoke pouring out, the
hgh~ wor~mg through the lacing of leaves - all combine
After Ishmael has described virtually every feature of to gtve htm .the impression that he is inside a textile fac-
the whale, he comes at last to the question of its innermost tory. The rmage makes possibl e a metaphoric flight.
structure; and here, in "A Bower in the Arsacides" (Chap- Wherefore, asks Ishmael, "these ceaseless ta ilings? Speak
ter 102) and "Measurement of the Whale's Skeleton" weaver! - stay thy hand!- but one single word wid~
(Chapter 103), Melville uses a third variant of the pas- thee!" ~u:suing the analogy between human and natural
toral design. It behooves me, Ishmael says, to "set him ~roducttvity, he in effect asks: what is the ceaseless striv-
before you in his ultimatum . . . his unconditional skele· mg for? why the endless production and reproduction?
ton ." Whereupon he tells of an adventure he had had But the weaver ignores his demand:
many years before the voyage of the Pequod. Nay- the shuttle flies- the figures float from fort h th
H aving been invited by Tranquo, king of T ranque (a loom; the £reshet-nash ing carpet for ever slides away. Th~
land of Melville's invention), to spend a holiday in a sea- weaver-god, he weaves; and by that weaving is he deaf-
side glen, he sees among the treasures of this primitive ened, that he hears no morta l voice; and by that hum-
THE MACHI NE IN THE GARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force
ming, we, too, who look on the loom are deafened; and rise to that sentimental state. Ahab also would make a
only when we escape it shall we hear the thousand voices
universal application of a limited experience. Toward the
that speak through it. For even so it is in all material
climax of the voyage, accordingly, Ishmael adopts a more
factories.
consistently skeptical attitude toward external nature. He
Here, growing in the whale's skeleton, is the greenness continues to enjoy moments of "dreamy quietude" (as in
Ishmael has been seeking, yet that same greenness has the "The Gilder," Chapter 11 4), when, he admits, a "filial,
aspect of a factory. It is a bold conceit, this green factory confident, land·like feeling towards the sea" has come
inside the whale - another vivid metaphor of American over him, and the ocean reminds him of "grassy glades,"
experience: Ishmael deliberately making his way to the and "ever vernal . . . landscapes in the soul"; but he re-
center of primal nature only to find, when he arrives, a minds himself of the danger inherent in such feelings, and
premonitory sign of industrial power. Art and nature are that "when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy
inextricably tangled at the center. Hence there is no way of the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants
to apprehend the absolute meaning of a natural fact, no beneath it." Here Ishmael is defining a complex pastoral-
way to seize the whale in his "ultimatum," that is, as he ism, a view of experience that matches the duality of
exists in himself, independent of a human perceiver. How nature. The possibility of joyous fulfillment exists; the
vain and foolish, says Ishmael, to try "to comprehend image of green fields is meaningful, but only so far as it is
aright this wondrous whale" by poring over his dead skele- joined to its opposite. In itself the image represents
ton "stretched in this peaceful wood." The answer is not neither a universal condition nor a set of values which
to be found by measuring specimens. "No. Only in the can be embodied in social institutions. In many ways
heart of quickest perils; only when within the eddyings of Ishmael's point of view is akin to Thoreau's at the end of
his angry flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea, Walden. In his r6le as ordinary seaman, therefore, Ishmael
can the fully invested whale be truly and livingly found virtually drops out of sight. The figure who is saved from
out." the wreck is the narrator and symbol-maker of Moby-Dick;
In the heart of the perils aboard the Pequod Ishmael re- he is Job's messenger.
discovers the green fields. But they do not signify what he
had allowed himself to imagine on the masthead or while ~ut Melville does not exaggerate the saving power of
squeezing spermaceti. On those occasions his sense of thts complex, literary vision. It may account for the rescue
reality had been restored by Ahab and his fiery hunt; of one man, but it is powerless to save the ship. Only Star-
after repeated experiences he had learned that the exist- buck tries to divert Ahab, and h is failure dramatizes the
ence of greenness does not justify the sentimental "all" weakness of sentimental pastoralism. Starbuck is a prudent
feeling. On the other hand, it does provide a warrant for man and temporizer whose very name suggests idealism
rejecting Ahab's quest. In fact, the captain's mad purpose joined with the "sordidness" of the cash-minded manufac-
results from an inversion of the same impulse that gives tured man. Although he fancies himself a realist, Starbuck
314 THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force
cannot face the brutal facts. In the same episode in which sions are traceable to his vocation. As he describes it, his
Ishmael recalls the tiger heart panting beneath the vernal life stands forth as a pathological instance of the traits
landscapes of the soul, Starbuck, "gazing far down from nurtured by a society obsessed with accumulation, com-
his boat's side into that same golden sea," murmured: petitive performance, and power. Ahab's mind has been
formed by the ch ase, a relation to "otherness" (or nature)
"Loveliness unfathomable, a.s ever lover saw in his that is almost wholly aggressive. The whal ing life has
young bride's eyel - Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered
maimed him, "unmanned" him, and provoked his mad
sharks, and thy kidnapping cannibal ways. Let faith oust
fact; let fancy oust memory; I look. deep down and do commitment to an unattainable, transcendent purpose.
believe." Earlier, on the quarter-deck, he had described the whale
as a wall shoved near; and now, speaking to Starbuck, he
Until the end Starbuck clings to the notion that Ahab pictures himself as a lifelong prisoner within the " 'walled-
can be deterred by a comparably sentimental faith. But town of a Captain's exclusiveness, which admits but small
that fallacy is exposed in "The Symphony," the last chap- entrance to any sympathy from the green country with-
ter before the sighting of the white whale, where Melville out . . .' " Here, drawing together the pastoral imagery
finally clarifies the relation between greenness and Ahab's developed by Ishmael, Melville imparts an astonishing
monomania.s• range of implication to Ahab's elegy. Estrangement from
What misleads Starbuck in this episode, quite apart greenness is symptomatic at once of a collective and an
from his habitual tendency to deny the cannibal under- individual illness. When Ahab considers the "dry salted
side of reality, is Ahab's momentary response to a lovely, fare" he has eaten, "fit emblem of the dry nourishment"
clear, calm, steel-blue day on the Pacific. It is one of those of his soul, and the facts about his marriage (he had mar-
days when the air seems "transparently pure and soft, ried past fifty and sailed the next day), and the mad frenzy
with a woman's look," and when it is easy to forget the of the endless chase, he concedes that he has become " 'more
mighty leviathans, sword-fish, sharks - the "strong, trou- a demon than a man! . . . a forty years' fool- fool-
bled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea" -rush- old fool. .. .' "
ing to and fro down in the bottomless ocean. Noticing that In "The Symphony" Melville joins the psychological,
Ahab is deeply affected, as if the mildness and beauty of political, and metaphysical explanations of Ahab's quest.
the day had dispelled the "cankerous thing" in his soul, A whaling society, dedicated to an unbridled assault upon
Starbuck approaches him. The captain turns and utters physical nature, selects and rewards men who adapt to the
what can only be described as Ahab's elegy for Ahab. It is demand for extreme repression. But here, in "The Sym-
his final effort to explain himself. The dominant theme phony," Ahab's repressed feelings suddenly rise to the sur-
of the lament is separation from greenness. First, Ahab face. A wave of tenderness overcomes him. "'By the green
summarizes his forty years at sea, forty years of privation, land,' " he says, gazing fondly into Starbuck's eyes, " 'by the
peril, and storm-time. To a remarkable degree his obses- bright hearth-stone! this is the magic glass, man; I see my
~16 THE MACHINE IN T HE CARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force
wife and my child in thine eye.' " Whereupon he orders Ahab's meditation on death, "rust amid greeness," Et in
the mate to stay aboard when he lowers to kill Moby Dick. A rcadia Ego. Before he is finished, Starbuck, "blanched
Now Starbuck becomes elated; he urges the captain not to a corpse's hue with despair," steals away. The next
to pursue the "hated fish," but to fly from these "deadly morning, at dawn, Ahab sights the white whale and the
waters" back to Nantucket, where, he says, they also have three-day chase begins. It is fitting that the prelude to
such mild blue days. Bu t Starbuck again has allowed Melville's American apocalypse should be an elegiac pas·
hope to oust fact ; he has mistaken a temporary emotion toral interlude directed against a sentimental trust in
of Ahab's for a permanent change of heart. (He is a per· nature.
feet embodiment of the popular American notion that the
drive for power can be assuaged by appeals to sentiment.) The closing action of Moby-Dick brings an impersonal,
A moment later Melville establishes, once and for all, the dramatic authority to Ishmael's idea of the whale, and of
impotence of Starbuck's faith. Ahab cannot turn back. He man's relation to it. Moby Dick is neither good nor evil.
acknowledges that the quest stems from motives he can When he slowly rises out of the water, his marbleized body
neither understand nor control. for an instant forming "a high arch, like Virginia's Natural
"What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly Bridge," he seems a grand god revealing himself. His at-
thing is it; what cozzening, hidden lord and master, and tributes invite contradictory interpretations like those
cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against evoked by the unspoiled terrain of the New World. At
all natural Iovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and first a "gentle joyousness - a mighty mildness of repose in
crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly swiftness" invests the gliding whale. But later, after three
making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural days of pursuit, he seems quite another creature : "Retri·
heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it bution, swift vengeance, eternal malice were in his whole
I , God, or who, that lifts this arm? ... " aspect . . . .'' The encounter between the Pequod and the
Ahab's compulsion arises in troubled depths of mind whale is cataclysmic, yet MelviLle's imagery tends to break
which are the psychic equivalent of the shark-like canni- down the usual distinction between art and nature.
balism of the sea. (At one point, here, he jocularly refers to T here is an almost mechanical predictability about Moby
himself as "cannibal old me.'') He is bound to the whale Dick's behavior, and Ahab is able to foretell h is course
by an invisible line, ghostly counterpart to the Manila from day to day as if it had been ra tionally plotted.
rope that binds mankind in a predatory relation to na- "And as the m ighty iron Leviathan of the modem rail-
ture. By the time of "The Symphony" it is too late to way is so familiarly known in its every pace, that, with
break through the wall that separates Ahab from green· watches in their hands, men t ime h is rate . . . even so,
ness. Lacking "the low, enjoying power," subtly, malig- almost, there are occasions when these Nantucketers time
nantly damned in the midst of paradise, his thoughts of that other Leviathan of the deep. . . ." But if there is a
love turn to thoughts of death. "The Symphony" ends with principle of order akin to scientific rationality in the
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force
whale, there is a wild, sharkish turbulence astir in Ahab's Ishmael with the wisd~m. Ishmael is saved as J ob's mes-
mind. "Seel" says Starbuck on the third day, "Moby Dick sengers had been saved, m order that he may deliver to us a
seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest himl" warning of disasters to come.
But no perception of the natural facts, no plea for survival,
no appeal to the heart, can touch Ahab. He is the per·
verted, monomaniac incarnation of the Age of Machinery,
4
as he himself had admitted earlier: "all my means are No book confirms the relevance of the pastoral design to
sane, my motive and my object mad. "all American experience as vividly as the Adventures of
When the last chip of the Pequod is carried, spinning Huckleberry Finn (t884). Here, for the first time, the
round and round, into the vortex, Ishmael is in the water. mode is wholly assimilated to a native idiom. Most of the
Shortly before he had been flung from Ahab's boat, "help- unique features of the novel follow from the inspired idea
lessly dropping astern, but still afloat and swimming." And of having the hero tell his own story in his own language.
when the white buttress of the whale's forehead had By committing himself to a vernacular narrator, Samuel
smashed into the ship, Ishmael was floating on the margin Clemens lends the sense of place a freshness and lyricism
of the scene, yet within full sight of it. In fact he had been unmatched in American writing. In this case, however, the
"drawn towards the closing vortex," almost suffering the presence of the machine-in-the-garden motif has as much
fate he had so narrowly escaped in the mast-head and to do with the defects as with the merits of the work. In
try-works episodes. Just as Ishmael reached the "vital H u ckleberry Finn the sudden incursion of the new power
centre" of the foaming pool, the black bubble burst and has the effect of a shattering childhood trauma; it is an
released the coffin life-buoy that kept him afloat on the aspect of a pattern of contradiction so nearly absolute
soft and dirge-like main. So Ishmael is saved. He has re- that the promised resolution of comedy ~s unconvincing,
located greenness, shifting it from the green fields of the and as a result Clemens's ingenious efforts to contrive an
Republic to a necessar y, but by no means sufficient, prin- affirmation virtually break his masterpiece in two.
ciple of survival. In accomplishing Ishmael's "salvation," That H uckleberry Fim1 initially was inspired by an af-
Melville in effect puts his blessing upon the Ishmaelian firmative impulse cannot be doubted. On the first page
view of life: a complex pastoralism in which the ideal is Clemens explains that the book is a sequel to his comic
inseparably yoked to its opposite. It is a doctrine that idy11 of boyhood, The Adventu1·es of Tom Sawyer (1876).
arises at the "vital centre" of experience. At the same In fact, the surge of literary activity of which Hu ckleberry
ti~e Melville acknowledges the political ineffectuality of Finn is the peak had begun, in 1874, as a deliberate effort
thts symbol-maker's truth. Ishmael survives, to be sure, to reclaim the past. What had set Clemens off at the time
but as an "orphan" floating helplessly on the margin of was the idea of recovering (as he puts it in a letter to Wil·
the scene as society founders. Of the qualities necessary liam Dean H owells) the "old Mississippi d ays of steam·
for survival, Melville endows Ahab with the power and boating glory & grandeur as I saw them (during 5 years)
320 THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force Sll
from the pilot house." With that object in view, he wrote knowledge forever distinguishes h ' initiated
. . . . the nt ·
the series of reminiscences, "Old Times on the Missis· T o t h e tramed pilot the nver IS a .1 \t·\'ers its
. that ue
sippi," which ran in the Atlantic Monthly in 1875 and most guarded secrets; but to Ignorant Dlloio._ . • only
. L . . .~gers t t 15
later was incorporated in Life on the Mississippi (1883).36 a pretty ptcture. earnmg the nver IS an -L ·l · ... ex·
· · - u aratlll-
Once the well of nostalgia had been opened, it kept penence, and m re-creating it Clemens mbb.- . p"rt
--.ea to 101 ••
filling. During the next ten years Clemens experienced a that. sense of freedom and power to his writlnD e·
(B y cot""..·
release of imaginative energy comparable to Melville's par.ISon, the se.cond volume of Life on the Afississippi,
"unfolding" between Typee and M oby-Dick. The success whtch lacks th1s theme, is dull and labored.) \"et _ and
of "Old Times" encouraged him to write Tom Sawyer, here a problem arises - Mark Twain admits that in ac-
and then, still riding the buoyant flood of memory, he quiring the new lore he loses something too: nothing less,
began Huckleberry Finn. At first the work went smoothly. in fact, than his sense of "the grace, the beauty, the poetry"
During July and August of 1876 he completed roughly of the majestic river. It is gone. In learning the matters of
four hundred manuscript pages (about a fourth of the fact necessary to his vocation the pilot loses, or so he thinks,
novel), up to the point at the end of Chapter 16 where the capacity to enjoy the beauty of the landscape. 38
the steamboat smashes the raft. But there he reached an By way of illustration, he compares two ways of ex-
impasse. He put the project aside for about three years; periencing a sunset on the river. First, he describes the
then, beginning in 1879, he worked on it intermittently, brilliant sunset as he once might have enjoyed it, in his
but did not complete it until 1883. His difficulty may be innocence:
described in several ways: it was at once a problem of at· A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in
titude and of technique, meaning and structure, and, as the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold,
he himself had defined it in "Old Times," it arose from through which a solitary log came floating, black and
a conflict at the center of American experience.sr conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay
The theme of "Old Times" is "learning the river." Here sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was
broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many·
the narrator, Mark Twain, tells of his initiation into a
tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was faintest,
unique American vocation: Mississippi piloting. H e insists was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles
that this job has to be learned by an apprentice on the and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore
spot; no books, no school, no theory can equip him. What on our left was densely wooded, and the somber shadow
he has to learn is a new language -nothing less than the that fell from this forest was broken in one place by a
language of nature. It is not simply the general technique long, ruffied trail that shone like silver; and high above
of piloting, but a particular piece of geography which he the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single
~ust possess. H e must "know the river" by day and by leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed
mght, summer and winter, heading upstream and heading splendor that was flowing from the sun. There were
downstream. He must memorize the landscape. And this graceful curves, reflected images, woody heights, soft dis·
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force 323
tances; and over the whole scene, far and near, the dis- like silver," he had stood "like one bewitched," drinking
solving lights drifted steadily, enriching it every passing it in, "in a speechless rapture." The calculated triteness of
moment with new marvels of coloring. the language, a literary equivalent to the painter's pic-
What he describes is in fact a landscape painting in the turesque, matches a trite view of nature. But that was the
received picturesque tradition: soft distances, dissolving pilot's feeling before his initiation. Afterwards,
lights, and graceful curves. In much of Clemens's early ... if that sunset scene had been repeated, I should have
work we find landscapes similarly composed, noble pic- looked upon it without rapture, and should have com-
tures seen through a "Claude glass." For instance, Venice, mented upon it, inwardly, after this fashion: "This sun
in Innocents A broad ( 186g), is like "a beautiful picture means that we are going to have wind to-morrow; that
-very soft and dreamy and beautiful." Or of Lake Tahoe, floating log means that the river is rising, small thanks
in Roughing It (1872), we are told that a "circling border to it; that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff
of mountain domes, clothed with forests, scarred with reef which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one of
landslides, cloven by canyons and valleys, and helmeted these nights ... ; those tumbling 'boils' show a dissolv-
with glittering snow, fitly framed and finished the noble ing bar and a changing channel there; the lines and
circles in the slick water over yonder are a warning that
picture." In these passages Clemens is working within an
that troublesome place is shoaling up dangerously; that
established literary convention; he recognizes its short-
silver streak in the shadow of the forest is the 'break'
comings, and he often gives it a comic turn. He carries a from a new snag, and he has located himself in the very
description of a Mediterranean vista in Inno cents A broad best place he could have found to fish for steam-
to grand rhetorical heights, then abruptly cuts it off with: boats ..."
" [Copyright secured according to law.]" Or a similar trick,
in Roughing It, follows an account of a "majestic pano- And so on. The beautiful view, it seems, is for those who
rama," when the narrator stops to eat, and "nothing," he see only the surface of nature. Behind every appearance
says, "helps scenery like ham and eggs." As a writer of of the beautiful there is a fact of another sort. "No," says
comic travel books, Clemens recognized that the stock the initiated pilot, "the romance and the beauty were all
language of landscape appreciation was easily deflated by gone from the river."
exposure to simple, everyday facts. But if that style was In spite of the false note here, a theatricality he found
ludicrous, how was a writer to convey a genuine feeling difficult to resist, Clemens has located a real problem. And
for scenery? What was the alternative to this elevated it is more than a problem of language. As he was to dem-
rhetoric? so onstrate, he longs to convey a joyous, even reverent feeling
The sunset in "Old Times" is a dramatization of this for the landscape of the Mississippi Valley as he had known
literary problem. Before "learning the river," he says, the it in his youth. Yet neither of the available modes- the
pilot had enjoyed the stock response. Seeing boughs that passengers' or the pilot's- will serve his purpose. What
"glowed like a flame" and trails on the water that "shone is more, the two ways of apprehending the river represent
L
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force ~25
opposed sets of values. One is identified with the passengers nipulate as a cool, professional craftsman. For him the
and the uninitiated, novice pilot, the other with the older, problem had an immediate, practical urgency: it was a
wiser narrator, Mark Twain. There are many differences problem of language, of style. If Hu ckleberry Finn is any
between these two points of view, but the most important indication, what Clemens wanted was to affirm the values
is the relation to nature each implies. The passengers are embodied in the landscape in its actuality. He wanted to
strangers to the river. They lack the exact, technical convey both the passengers' delight and the pilot's percep-
knowledge possessed by the trained pilot. Yet as spectators, tion. He had encountered the problem as a writer, and it
schooled in romantic landscape painting, they know what was as a writer (he was no theorist) that he finally came to
to look for. They enjoy the play of light on the water. grips with it. Beginning with "Old Times," he attempted
Their aesthetic response, given the American geography, in various ways to infuse the old mode with fresh feeling.
Clemens associates with the effete, cultivated, urban, privi- "I perhaps made a mistake," he remarked to Howells after
leged East. The pilot, on the other hand, is of the West, finishing Tom Sawyer, "in not writing it in the first per-
and in his calling he can scarcely afford to admire the son." Clemens's solution, if that is the correct word, is im-
break in the shadow that shines like silver. To him it is plicit in the choice of Huckleberry Finn as narrator of the
not merely a felicitous detail in a misted, beautiful pic- sequel.•0
ture. Responsible for the boat's safety, he must probe for
the real meaning of the silver streak: it is a "break" from Although published in 1884, Huckleberry Finn is set in
a new snag that might destroy a steamboat. (The snag the period of Hawthorne's Sleepy Hollow notes, on the eve
should be noted; it will reappear.) To do his job the pilot of the take-off into rapid industrialization. On the title-
must keep his mind upon the menacing "reality" masked page of the first edition, Clemens announces that he is
by the beautiful river. taking a backward look:
The pilot's dilemma is a variant of a theme central to
SCENE: THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.
Walden and Moby-Dick, and indeed it is omnipresent
TIME: FORTY TO FIFTY YEARS AGO.
in nineteenth-century culture. Like Melville's Ishmael,
Clemens's narrator is confronted with an impossible choice Except for this distinctively retrospective cast (Clemens
between two modes of perception: one is aesthetically and was nine years old in 1844), the organizing design is the
emotionally satisfying, yet illusive; the other is analytically familiar one. Like Walden or Moby-Dick, Huckleberry
and practically effective, copes with harsh realities, yet is Finn begins with the hero's urge to withdraw from a
devoid of all but utilitarian value and meaning. The repressive civilization. After an intolerably long, quiet,
choice is between the mawkish sentiments of the passengers dull evening with the Widow Douglas and Miss Wat-
and the bleak rnatter-of-factness of the pilot. For Samuel son, Huck retires disconsolately to his room and sits by
Clemens, to be sure, this was not an abstract issue. Yet the window. Here, in a hauntingly ambiguous passage,
neither was it simply another theme that he could rna- Clemens foreshadows the boy's movement from society
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force
toward nature. He is in a house filled with people who vernacular tradition in American landscape painting, and
presumably care for him, yet he is depressed. His atten· especially of Edward Hicks, who in the 184o's painted
tion is directed toward the dark woods, as if something many versions of his popular work "The Peaceable King·
out there were trying to communicate with him. dom":
I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stan Daytimes we paddled all over the island in the canoe.
was shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so It was mighty cool and shady in the deep woods even if
mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing the sun was blazing outside. We went winding in and
about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and out amongst the trees; and sometimes the vines hung so
a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and thick we had to back away and go some other way. Well,
the wind was trying to whisper something to me and I on every old broken-down tree, you could see the rabbits,
couldn't make out what it was, and so it made the cold and snakes, and such things; and when the island had
shivers run over me. Then away out in the woods I been overflowed a day or two, they got so tame, on
heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it account of being hungry, that you could paddle right
wants to tell about something that's on its mind and up and put your hand on them if you wanted to; but
can't make itself understood ... . •t not the snakes and turtles - they would slide off in the
water.4 2
Later Huck is impelled toward the source of this word·
less message. The brutality of his father, after the genteel The idyll is interrupted when Huck discovers that the
tyranny of Miss Watson, compels him to forsake the bene· villagers are about to search the island, and as a result he
fits of civilization. He flees to Jackson's Island, where he and Jim begin their downstream journey by raft. But the\
is joined by Jim, and everything is "dead quiet," and life idyll is not ended: the raft becomes a mobile extension of \
is lazy and comfortable. For a time the island is another the island. The fugitives continue to enjoy many of the
of those enchanting pastoral oases so endlessly fascinating delights they had known earlier, above all a sense of the
to the American imagination. • After a rise in the river, bounty, beauty, and harmony made possible by an accom-
Huck and Jim are able to penetrate the innermost recesses modation to nature. Floating quietly down stream, Huck
of the island. Clemens describes their dreamlike journey, and Jim attune themselves to the serene rhythm of the
canoeing among the trees, in a passage reminiscent of the great river.
• It il a mittake to think of Huck as an expositor of primitivist values. We catched fish, and talked, and we took a swim now
He has no illusions about noble tavagery. To get away from constraint. and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn,
bo~om, and cruelty he movea in the direction of, but by no meant all drifting down the big still river, laying on our backs
the way to, artleu natu re. He is appalled when Jim tells him that he has looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talk·
been living on beTTles. Untouched by romantic pieties about Nature,
Huck canies along a1 much equipment as possible when he escape. from
ing loud. . . . We had mighty good weather, as a gen-
Pap'• cabin: a frying-pan , a colfee·pot, tin cups, a knife, 6shhookt, and eral thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all, that
a gun. Notice, too, that the raft is made of cut lumber, not logs. night, nor the next, nor the next.
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force 329
The image of the quietly drifting raft is a realization of he reaffirms the code, the inadequacy of the raft as a refuge
freedom hom of sensuous delight and a liberation of in- from the aggressive adult world becomes apparent. Huck
stinct. "Other places do seem so cramperl up and discovers that during the night, in the fog, they had floated
smothery," Huck says, "but a raft don't. You feel mighty past Cairo. (This fog, incidentally, is a nother instance of
free and easy and comfortable on a raft." This rudi- the ambiguous influence of the landscape: in this case it
mentary society of two, one black and one white, is an literally obscures the road to freedom.) With the river
American Arcadia, an egalitarian wish-image: "what you carrying the raft deeper into slave territory, the eventual
want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be failure of the quest seems inevitable. The sense of im-
satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others." pending tragedy is quickened, the following night, by the
The river partly insulates Huck and Jim from the hostile ominous sound of a steamboat bearing down on them.
world of the shore. Yet Clemens is realistic enough, and "We could hear her pounding along," Huck explains,
faithful enough to the logic of his ruling metaphor, to "but we didn't see her good till she was close." And she
admit the limitations of the raft. It lacks power and didn't sheer off:
maneuverability. It can only move easily with the cur-
... all of a sudden she bulged out, big and scary, with
rent, that is, southward into slave territory.•a
a long row of wide-open furn ace doors shining like red-
The powerlessness of the raft comports with the un-
hot teeth, and her monstrous bows and guards hanging
shielded innocence of its passengers. As the fugitives drift right over us. There was a yell at us, and a jingling of
southward Clemens builds up the contrast between their bells to stop the engines, a pow-wow of cussing, and
affectionate relations and the brutality of a society based whistling of steam- and as Jim went overboard on one
on slavery. When the raft approaches Cairo, Illinois, the side and I on the other, she come smashing straight
confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers where Huck through the raft.
and Jim had planned to head north toward freedom, the
tension rises. At the same time Clemens grants the boy Here, at the end of Chapter 16, Clemens reached the
greater understanding. At the end of Chapter 15, after impasse that delayed work on the book for three years. He
having played a cheap trick on Jim (a trick predicated faced a number of difficulties. Having set out to write a
upon the slave's mental inferiority), Huck makes an af- funny, episodic sequel to Tom Sawyer, he had allowed
fecting apology. And when Jim describes his plan to himself to develop the theme of Jim's escape from slavery.
"steal" his family, Huck suddenly realizes the subversive Simply from a logical point of view, that idea was not easy
implications of his situation. "It most froze me to hear to reconcile with his initial plan: a picaresque journey
such talk," he says. One part of his mind, his "conscience," southward to the lower Mississippi. Then, too, as Henry
is indoctrinated with the values of the dominant white cul- Nash Smith has demonstrated, he had begun to discover
ture- but only one part, and shortly afterwards, when unsuspected depths of compassion and loyalty in the boy
faced with the immediate prospect of Jim's capture, he -emotional resources that exceeded the requirements of
scarcely hesitates before lying to save his friend. Even as the comic convention. But all of these difficulties were in
T H E MA CHI NE IN TliE GARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force
330 81P
fact aspects of one over-riding problem. Clemens had be- cruelt;- At the same time, however, Clemens resurrects the
gun to realize that the voyage, so far as it involved a search raft. Near the end of the Grangerford episode (in Cb
S) . . . . . apter
for a new and freer life, could not succeed. As he describes 1 , Huck dtscovers that Jtm has been htdmg in a nearb
it, freedom aboard the raft signifies much more than the swamp; when they meet, Jim tells him that he has b y ~
. th een \
absence of slavery in the narrow, institutional sense. It wor k mg on e raft. Huck is incredulous·· "'You m ean to
embraces all of the extravagant possibilities of sufficiency, say our old raft warn't smashed all to flinders?'" No th )
spontaneity, and joy that had been projected upon the ra f twas " ' tore up a good deal- one en' of her was_, bute
American landscape since the age of discovery. The dey. warn't no great _harm done. . . .' " With this simple
thought that this great promise was to be submerged in devt~e, Clemens revtves the idyll. The result is like the
history (in his view a dreary record of man's lost hopes) p~llmg apart of Ahab's and Ishmael's attitudes in Moby-
gave rise to the image of a monstrous steamboat that sud- Dtck; as Clemens's attack upon society becomes more
denly bulged out of the night, big, scary, inexorable, and savage, his treatment of the life identified with the raft
smashed straight through the raft. • 44 becomes more lyrical. In all of our literature, indeed there
is nothing_to ~ompare with Huck's incantatory description,
When Clemens resumed work on the book, three years at the begmnmg of Chapter tg, of the sunrise on the river.
later, he still had found no satisfactory way out of the Two or three days and nights went by; I reckon 1
quandary. His chosen mode, which called for a light-hearted might say they swum by, they slid along so quiet and
resolution, hardly was an appropriate vehicl e for all that smooth and lovely. Here is the way we put in the time.
was implied by the smashing of the raft. But he did con- It was a monstrous big river down there - sometimes a
trive various ways of by-passing the difficulty. Most im- ~ile and. a half wide; we run nights, and laid up and
portant, he shifted attent ion from Jim's flight, as the htd _day_-ttmes; s~n as night was most gone, we stopped
unifyi ng theme, to a satiric attack upon the hypocrisy of nav1gatmg and ued up - nearly always in the dead water
Southern life. Again and aga in, in this allegedly Christian, under a tow-head; and then cut young cottonwoods and
aristocratic, cultivated society, Huck meets unspeakable willows and hid the raft with them. Then we set out
the lines. Next we slid into the river and had a swim,
• Clemens makes even more explicit his sense of the opposition between so as to freshen up and cool off; then we set down on
the raft and the forces represented by machine technology in A Tram p
the sandy bottom where the water was about knee deep,
1lbroad ( a88o), one of the books he wrote during the hiatus in the com-
posi tion of Huck leberry Fir111: '" The motion of a rart ," he says. describ-
and watched the daylight come. Not a sound, anywheres
ing a journey down the Neckar. " ... is gentle, and gliding, and smooth, - perfectly still - just like the whole world was asleep,
and noiseless; it calms down all feverish activities, it soothes to sleep all only sometimes the bull-frogs a-cluttering, maybe. The
nervous hurry and impatience: under its restful influence all the troubles first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a
and vexations and sorrows that harass the mind van ish away, and exist- kind of dull line - that was the woods on t'other side-
ence becomes a dream, a charm, a deep and tranquil ecstasy. How it
contrasts with hot and perspiring pedestrianism, and dusty and deafening
~ou couldn't make nothing else out; then a pale place
railroad rush ... . " m the sky; then more paleness, spreading around; then
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force 333
the river softened up, away off, and warn't black any sions. And since all of his senses are alive, a highlight is
more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting thrown upon the minute particulars. The flu id situation
along, ever so far away -trading scows, and such things; adds to the feeling of immediacy. Nothing is fixed, ab-
and long black streaks- rafts; sometimes you could hear solute, or perfect. The passage gains immensely in veri-
a sweep screaking; or jumbled up voices, it was so still, similitude from his repeated approximations: "soon as
and sounds come so far; and by-and-by you could see n ight was most gone," unearly always in the dead water,"
a streak on the water which you know by the look of "a kind of dull line," ((somet imes you could hear," "but
the streak that there's a snag there in a swift current
sometimes not that way." He seems to recall the events
which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way;
and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east at the very instant of perception, and nature, too, is cap-
reddens up, and the river, and you make out a log tured in process: "the daylight come," "paleness, spread-
cabin in the edge of the woods, away on the bank on ing around," "river softened up," "mist curl up," "east
t'other side of the river, being a wood-yard, likely, and reddens up," " breeze springs up." Everything is alive,
piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it everything is changing; the locus of reality is neither the
anywheres; then the nice breeze springs up, and comes boy nor the river, neither language nor n ature, neither
fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh, and sweet the subject nor the object, but the unending interplay be-
to smell, on account of the woods and the flowers; but tween them.
sometimes not that way, because they've left dead fish Then, too, Huck "belongs" to the terrain in the sense
laying around, gars, and such, and they do get pretty that his language is native to it. This fact, probably more
rank; and next you've got the full day, and everything than any other, accounts for the astonishing freshness of
smiling in the sun, and the song-birds just going itl
the writing. Sunrises have not changed much since H omer
There are countless descriptions of the dawn in litera- sang of the rosy-fingered dawn, but here, no doubt, is the
ture, yet no substitute exists for this one: it is unique in firs~ on~ ever de~ib_ed in this idiom. Its distinctive quality
thought and feeling, in diction, rhythm, and tone of voice. restdes m the h1Stortcal distinctiveness of the narrator, his
And, above all, it is unique in point of view. Unlike the speech, an~ the culture from which both derive. But par-
passengers in "Old Times," or, for that matter, most tradi- ticularly h1s speech, for that is the raw material of this
tional observers of landscape, this narrator is part of the art, and we delight in the incomparable fitness of subject
scene he describes. (At the outset Huck and Jim are sitting and language. The lyrical intensity of Hu ckleberry Finn
in the river with water up to their waists.) H e brings to his may be ascribed to the voice of the narrator - the boy
account no abstract, a priori idea of beauty. He has no experi~ncing the event. Of course, no boy ever spoke such
school of painting in mind, nothing to prove, hence there a poetic language, but the illusion that we are hearing the
is r oom in his account for all the facts. "Here," he says, spoken word forms a large part of the total illusion of
"is the way we put in our time." He composes the scene reality. The words on the page direct our attention to life,
as he had experienced it, in a sequence of sense impres- not to other works of literature, which is only to say that
THE MACHINE lN THE GARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force
334 335
here art is disguised by originality. In adopting the method scow, you know; and maybe you could hear a fiddle or
of vernacular narration, Clemens had freed himself of cer- a song coming over from one of them crafts.
tain sterile notions of what a writer should write. He had
All the way down the river the boy had been remarking )
found an alternative to the rhetoric of both passengers and
the lights on the shore; now they form a continuum with _J
pilots. the stars, and his sense of solidarity with the physical uni-
While aiming to convey the beauty of the sunrise, ac·
verse acquires the intensity of a religious experience. The
cordingly, Clemens permits Huck to report that "by-and·
two on the raft face the mystery of the creation with the
by you could see a streak on the water which you know equanimity of saints:
by the look of the streak that there's a snag there in a
swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky, up there,
that way." The boy is endowed with a knowledge of pre· all speckled with stan, and we used to lay on our backs
cisely those matters of fact which had seemed to impair the and look up at them, and discuss about whether they
pilot's sense of beauty. H e recognizes the menacing princi· was made, or only just happened.
ple of nature that spells the destruction of steamboats and The passion we feel here can only be compared with love.
men. Mingled with the loveliness of the scene are things By adopting the point of view of the boy, for whom the
not so lovely: murderous snags, wood piled by cheats, and conflict described in "Old Times" does not exist, Clemens
-what could be less poetic?- the smell of dead fish. achieves a unified mode of perception. Now the steam- '
Huck is neither the innocent traveler nor the initiated boat, like the railroad at Walden Pond, is incorporated in j
pilot. He sees the snags but they do not interfere with his the vision of order. --..
pleasure. In his mind the two rivers are one. His willing-
Once or twice at night we would see a steamboat
ness to accept the world as he finds it, without anxiously slipping along in the dark, and now and then she would
forcing meanings upon it (his language is lacking in ab- belch a whole world of sparks up out of her chimbleys,
stractions), lends substance to the magical sense of peace and they would rain down in the river and look awful
the passage evokes. The sequence follows the diurnal cycle: pretty; then she would turn a corner and her lights
it begins with the sunrise, and it ends, as night falls, with would wink out and her pow-pow shut off and leave
an evocation of cosmic harmony. At evening the raft is in the river still again; and by-and-by her waves would get
midstream again, and a strain of music coming over the to us, a long time after she was gone, and joggle the
water does the work of a shepherd's flute: raft a bit, and after that you wouldn't hear nothing for
you couldn't tell how long. except maybe frogs or some-
Sometimes we'd have that whole river all to ourselves thing.
for the longest time. Yonder was the banks and the
islands, across the water; and maybe a spark - which Here, for a moment, Clemens restores the sense of
was a candle in a cabin window- and sometimes on the wholeness the steamboat had smashed. Harmony is
water you could see a spark or two- on a raft or a achieved, in the classic Virgilian manner, by withdrawal
TH E J\•JACHINE IN TH E GARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force 337
to a simpler world. From this vantage, power and com- the book. At first Huck listens to an inner voice using the
plexity are momentarily comprehended by unshielded in- pulpit rhetoric he equates with law-abiding respectability.
nocence. But Clemens is clear about the momentariness Here, the voice says, " . . . was the plain hand of Provi-
of this stay against confusion; in fact, the tension is not dence slapping me in the face and letting me know my
entirely relieved (the steamboat causes waves that "joggle wickedness was being watched all the time from up there
the raft a bit"), and the incantation is followed immedi- in heaven.. . ." Overborne, he decides to inform Miss
ately by another incursion of the great world, this time in Watson of her escaped slave's whereabouts. But then, hav-
the persons of those grandiloquent frauds, the Duke and ing written the note, he feels uneasy. He thinks about Jim,
the Dauphin. Their attitude toward the occupants of the and his memory goes to work:
raft is akin to that of the steamboatmen. "Of course," And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and
Huck had said, in describing what happened after the I see Jim before me, all the time, in the day, and in the
smashing of the raft, ". . . that boat started her engines night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes stonns, and
again ten seconds after she stopped them, for they never we a floa ting along, talking, and singing, and laughing.
cared much for raftsmen . . . . "The Duke and King don't But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to
care either, and, in fact, not caring about people is fairly harden me against l1im, but only the other kind. I'd see
typical of the population of this feuding, lynching, slave- him standing my watch on top of his'n, stead of calling
owning society along the banks of the lower Mississippi. me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad
Now, in the middle portion of Huckleberry Finn, Clemens he was when I come back out of the fog. . ..
sets up a rhythmic alternation between idyllic moments on The theme that connects these sharp pictures of Huck's
the river and perilous escapades on shore. With each new relation with Jim, setting them against the abstract moral
episode, as the raft moves southward, the contrast between code he feels obliged to honor, is caring. In caring for each
the two worlds becomes more nearly absolute, and the pos- other he and Jim had formed a bond whose strength is
sibility of imagining a comic resolution virtually disap- now put to a test. The pilot of the monstrous steamboat,
pears. In Chapter 31 he again places the raft in jeopardy, on the other hand, had used his power with an arrogant
and once more confronts the dilemma he had managed negligence- a care-lessness- typical of this raw Missis-
to by-pass earlier.45 sippi world. And here, in the crisis of Chapter 31, the boy
But this time the threat arises in the hero's mind. After himself is faced with the prospect of exercising power. Be-
the Wilks episode, when Huck discovers that Jim has been fore him is a letter capable- or so he thinks- of return-
betrayed and captured, he pauses to reconsider his situa- ing Jim to slavery. The longer he considers the matter,
tion. He now realizes that the long journey has "all come the more clearly he recognizes what is at stake. "It was a
to nothing," and this thought revives his "conscience." close place," he says. "I took it up, and held it in my hand.
How would the town interpret his behavior? "It would get I was a trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever,
all around, that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his betwixt two things, and I knowed it."
freedom. . . ." The conflict that follows is the climax of In pressing the trial of his hero to a final choice,
338 THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force 339
Clemens relinquishes the possibility, once and for all, of a But the prospect was disheartening, and it is significant
satisfactory comic resolution. Huck's decision to tear up that Huck now suffers a return of the dark mood that had
the letter (" 'All right, then, I'll go to hell' ") is justly seized him at the outset, in the Widow's house. It is as
recognized as an exalted moment in the record of the though Clemens, with little, if any, conscious awareness
American consciousness. It joins the pastoral ideal with of the convention, somehow had discovered the tragic
the revolutionary doctrine of fraternity. But it is a moment thread that invariably runs through the fabric of complex
achieved at the cost of literary consistency and order. The pastoralism. The mournful feeling that Huck brings to
boy's language, his knowledge that he is deciding "forever, the "faint dronings" of the insects is appropriate to the
betwixt two things," suggests an unqualified, irrevocable novel's final movement, beginning here, away from the
choice - a total repudiation of an oppressive society. Al- virtually Arcadian perfection of life aboard the raft.
though aiming at a joyous, affirmative outcome of the Throughout the book, to be sure, the boy has exhibited
journey, Clemens has committed his hero to the noble but a remarkable sensitivity to the limitations of ordinary hu-
extravagant ideal of freedom identified with the raft. It is man existence. But it was only in Chapter ~p, when he
extravagant in the sense that it cannot be reconciled with realizeci that the rogues had betrayed Jim, that he had
the facts tacitly acknowledged earlier, at the end of Chap- attached a tragic meaning to the voyage itself. "After all
ter I 6, in the smashing of the raft. It is extravagant be- this long journey," he had said, " . . . here was it all come
cause it is, in a word, unattainable. But then the entire to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined . . . ."
metaphoric structure of the fable, the raft fl oa ting help· Nowhere in Huckleberry Finn does Clemens come closer
lessly toward slave territory, has an essentially tragic im- to an explicit statement about the outcome of the Ameri-
port. Hence the somber undertones at the beginning of can idyll. His deepest feelings are registered by Huck,
the final "adventure"- the long, elaborate escapade at whose mind now turns to thoughts of death. Et in Arcadia
the Phelps farm that comprises the last fifth of the book. Ego. And here, paradoxically, Clemens begins the difficult,
When I got there it was all still and Sunday-like, and not to say impossible, task of pulling the novel back on its
hot and sunshiny- the hands was gone to the fields; original course.
and there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs and Hence the other, ironic meaning of Huck's premonition
flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and like of death. Shortly after his arrival at the Phelps farm, when
everybody's dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along he is mistaken for Tom Sawyer, Huck says that it was
and quivers the leaves, it makes you feel mournful, be- "like being born again." He might as well have said that
cause you feel like it's spirits whispering- spirits that's it was like being put to death. In order to contrive a resolu-
been dead ever so many years -and you always think tion compatible with the comic mode, Clemens in effect
they're talking about yott. As a general thing it makes kills his hero. Huck and Jim are reduced to subordinate
a body wish he was dead, too, and done with it all. 46 roles. From the time Tom reappears and takes command,
By this time Clemens had resigned himself to the aban- the book goes flat. When you read Huckleberry Finn,
donment of the raft and the boy's return to civilization. Ernest Hemingway said in 1935, "you must stop where the
THE MACHINE IN THE CAJU>EN Two Kingdoms of Force 341
Nigger Jim is stolen (Tom the boys. That is the real end. seq.uent history has compelled us to take the ironic impli-
The rest is just cheating." In spite of all the ingenious ef- catiOns of the fable more seriously: for a while, it is true,
forts to justify the final chapters, this judgment remains the Yankee's program for industrializing Arthur ia n Eng-
as sound as ever. "Cheating" may not be the correct word, l~nd se~ms to be. successful; but then a reaction against
but the "real end" does coincide with the crisis of Chap- his reg1me sets m, and the end of his experiment in
ter 31. And the reason, which Hemingway did not elabo- accelerated progress is gruesome. The Yankee "Boss" and
rate, is that the book drew its power from the contradiction ~is loy~l followers ta.ke refuge behind one of their proud
resolved in that scene. It is in essence the same conflict of mvent10ns, an electnfied fence. Soon they are surrounded
values that had made itself felt, earlier, when the steam- by a black mass of corpses-a deadly wa 11 of dead men.
boat had smashed the raft. In both episodes Clemens had As his friend Clarence puts it afterwards, in the "Post-
tacitly acknowledged the tragic import of the journey- a script," they had been caught in a trap of their own mak-
fact that he was unwilling, or unable, to accept, and that ing. "If we stayed where we were, our dead wou ld kill
the h igh jinks at the Phelps farm cannot disguise. In the us; .if l~e ~oved out of our defences, we should no longer
final sentences, however, the book is saved. When Huck be mvmc1ble. We had conquered; in turn we were con-
is faced with the prospect of being adopted and civilized, quered." In the closing years of his life Clemens became
the lost theme is recovered. And when he decides to as bitterly pessimistic as Henry Adams. One of his final
"light out for ,the Territory ahead of the rest," Clemens essays, ~hat Is Man? (published privately and anony-
seizes an elusive truth. The tension at the center of mously m 1906), begins with the subtitle: "a. Man the
this book, he now admits, is the very pulse of reality; Machine." •s
it may be suppressed, and it may, for a time, be re-
lieved, but eventually it is bound to reappear in a new 5
form. 47
By I884, to be sure, the idea of a refuge in the "Terri- During the past twenty years much has been written,
tory" was almost as tenuous as the idea of floating down- nota~ly by Lionel Trilling, Richard Chase, and R. w. B.
stream on a raft. Six years later the Superintendent of Lewis, ~b~ut . the .contradictions said to embody what is
the Census declared that the frontier no longer existed. m~~t diStinctive m American thought. Although these
After Huckleberry Finn, meanwhile, Clemens became cntics have been concerned chiefly with literature their
more fascinated by the dilemma of technological progress. method is i.nfor~ed by a comprehensive, or pote~tially
In A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (t88g), comprehensive, Idea of culture. Trilling made the idea
as if to test the promise of mechanization, he set an most explicit in his influential essay " Reality in America"
ingenious Yankee mechanic down in sixth-century Eng- (1940) . There, after rebuking V. L. Parrington for using
land. At the time, apparently, most readers interpreted the il:Oage. of fiowin~ currents to figure the history of
the book as an affirmation of progressive ideas. But sub- Amencan tdeas (Mam Currents in American Thought),
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force
343
Trilling asserts: "A culture is not a flow, nor even a con- propert~, cl~ss, and status that form the substance of the
fluence; the form of its existence is struggle, or at least great Vtc~onan .novel. .~u~ ~vriters, instead of being con-
debate- it is nothing if not a dialectic." What Trilling is cerned wtth soctal venstmthtude, with manners and cus-
proposing here may be called a dialectical theory of cul- toms~ have fashioned their own kind of melodramatic,
ture. The "very essence" of a culture, he says, resides in Ma.mchean, all-questioning fable, romance, or idyll, in
iu central conflicts, or contradictions, and its great artists whtch. they ~arry us, in a bold leap, beyond everyday social
are likely to be those who contain a large part of the expe~tence mto an abstract realm of morality and meta-
dialectic within themselves, "their meaning and power physics.
lying in their contradictions." Whatever its shortcomings . Nowhere in c~iticism is there a more persuasive defini-
as a universal theory, Trilling's definition has proven re- tiOn o.f that elustve quality of Americanness in our classic
markably useful in the interpretation of American writing ~mencan books. But if we want to know why these quali-
in the nineteenth century- a period when, as he says, ties are peculiar to our literature, Chase's book offers only
"an unusually large proportion of . . . notable writers a cursory_ answer. The. question, to be sure, did not really
. . . were such repositories of the dialectic of their engage hm~. He was m terested in literary consequences,
times...." •o not e.xtra-h~erary causes. Though he admitted that the
With brilliant effect, Chase later used this dialectical pecuhar_ traits of American writing must be traceable to
concept of culture to explain the special character of the t~e spectal ch~racter of the environment, he did not recog-
American novel. In The American Novel and Its Tradi- mze the _be~rm~ upon his theory of certain controlling
tion ( 1957), he begins with the assertion that the imagina- ~acts of hfe m m~eteenth-century America. Above all, he
tion responsible for the best and most characteristic Ameri- tgnored the unbehevably rapid industrialization of an "un-
can fiction "has been shaped by the contradictions and not derdev~loped" s~iety. Within the lifetime of a single
by the unities and harmonies of our culture." He admits generatiOn, a rusttc and in large part wild landscape was
that this may be true, in a sense, of all literatures of what- ~ransfo~med into the site of the world's most productive
ever time and place. But the issue is one of degree, and mdustnal machine. It would be difficult to imagine m
f d d' ore
the American novel "tends to rest in contradictions and pro oun ~antra tctions of value or meaning than those
among extreme ranges of experience. When it attempts made_ mamfest_ by this circumstance. Its in fluence upon
to resolve contradictions, it does so in oblique, morally our l ~ter.ature ts suggested by the recurrent image of the
equivocal ways. As a general rule it does so either in melo- machme s sudden entrance into the landscape.
dramatic actions or in pastoral idyls. . . . " Hence the dif- _By the turn of the century the device was becoming a
ference between American and English novels: the tend- chch~ of Am~rican wr~ting. In The Octopus ( tgo 1), Frank
ency in American writing toward abstraction, away from Norrts used ~t to provtde a dramatic, premonitory climax
the specification of social actualities, and away, above all, for _the ope_nmg chapter. Presley, a poet, is walking at sun-
from that preoccupation with those subtle relations of set m the n ch San Joaqu in Valley. lt is a lovely, mild eve-
~.
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force 345
344
ning. Everything is very still. He is in a revery. "All about, between radically opposed forces. No single work makes
the feeling of absolute peace and quiet and secur ity and this connection more explicit or dramatic than The Edu-
untroubled happiness and content seemed descending cation of H enry Adams (privately printed in 1907). A
from the stars like a benediction. The beauty of his poem, major theme of the book is the pulling apart, in Adams's
its idyl, came to him like a caress .. . . But suddenly there own experience as in the culture generally, of feeling and
was an interruption." By now it is dark, and the train, "its intellect, love and power. Adams adroitly builds the story
enonnous eye, Cyclopean , red, throwing a glare far in ad- up to 1900 and his discovery, in a moment of religious
vance," comes thundering down the track and smashes exaltation, of the relation between his two master symbols
into a herd of sheep. - the Dynamo and the Virgin . But in order to set his
theme, in the first chapter, Adams turns back to the year
The iron monster had charged full into the midst, merci-
less, inexorable. To the right and left, all the width of of the "little event" recorded by H awthorne in Sleepy
the right of way, the little bodies had been flung; backs H ollow. It was in 1844, as he sees it in retrospect, that
were snapped against the fence posts; brains knocked the forces of history bore down upon him and fixed his
out. Caught in the barbs of the wire, wedged in, the fate. That was the year, he says, when
bodies hung suspended. Under foot it was terrible. The . . . the old universe was thrown into the ash-heap and
black blood, winking in the starlight, seeped down into a new one created. He and his eighteenth-century, trog-
the clinkers between the ties with a prolonged sucking lodytic Boston were suddenly cut apart- separated for-
murmur. ever- in act if not in sentiment, by the opening of the
Sick with horror, Presley turns away. "The sweetness was Boston and Albany Railroad; the appearance of the first
gone from the evening, the sense of peace . . . stricken Cunard steamers in the bay; and the telegraphic mes-
from the landscape." Walking on, he hears the whistle of sages which carried from Baltimore to Washington the
the engine, faint and prolonged, reverberating across the news that Henry Clay and James K. Polk were nominated
sweep of land. He again sees the machine in his imagina- for the Presidency. This was in May, 1844; he was six
tion, a "terror of steel and steam," hurtling across the years old; his new world was ready for use, and only
fragments of the old met his eyes.
horizon; but now he sees it as "the symbol of a vast power,
huge, terrible, flinging the echo of its thunder over all the A sense of the transformation of life by technology
reaches of the valley . . . ; the leviathan, with tentacles of dominates The Education as it does no other book. This
steel clutching into the soil, the soulless Force, the iron- is partly because Adams comes at the theme with the com-
hearted Power, the monster, the Colossus, the Octopus." 110 ~ined techniques of the cool historian and the impas·
There is no point in piling up examples. The omni- s1oned poet. In the excerpt above, as in Th e Education
presence of the device is significant chiefly because it generally, we can distinguish two voices. The voice of the
relates the special conditions of life in America with historian tells us the news. H e regards industrial power
that tendency of mind to wh ich Richard Chase directed as an objective "cause" of change in American society. And
attention: a habit of defining r eality as a contradiction he is able to draw a direct line of connection from these
346 THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force 347
changes to his own life. It is technology (the new railroads, in volcanic craters." Above all, he stresses an acute sense
steamboats, and telegraph) that has separated Adams from of the "violent contrast between this dense, smoky, im-
his family's eighteenth·century tradition. Writing in ~his penetrable darkness, and the soft green charm that one
vein Adams virtually endorses a theory of technologtcal glided into, as one emerged. . . ." T he scene is England,
determinism. "As I understand it," he wrote to his brother but the sensibility is American. What strikes the American
while at work on the book, "the whole social, political and with particular force is the violence of the contrast be-
economical problem is the resultant of the mechanical de· tween the industrial and the natural landscapes. In the
velopment of power." Throughout The Education we work of Carlyle or Ruskin or Morris we may find similar
hear the voice of the historian calling attention to tech- passages, but in general the English writer is more likely
nology as an impersonal and largely uncontrolled force to regard the new power as a threat to some cherished
acting upon human events. The historian provides us with ideal of high civilization or art or craftsma n ship:~2
statistics on accelerating coal and steel production; he Adams's evocation of horror in the presence of the ma-
makes us aware of the impact of the new power upon chine reaches its climax in the account of the Paris Exposi-
society quite apart from the way it strikes him. But the tion of 1900 where "he fou nd himself lying in the Gallery
voice of the poet continually joins in. He charges historical of Machines ... , his historical neck broken by the sudden
fact with emotion by using such images as "thrown into irruption of forces totally new." Confronting the new
the ash-heap," and submerged metaphors: "suddenly cut dynamo he felt an impulse to pray to it, much as Chris-
apart- separated forever." The poet invests the statement tians prayed to the cross- or to the Vi rgin. Here all the
with traumatic overtones, so that the sudden appearance polarities of the book, among them the violent contrast
of the machine has the effect of irrevocable separation like between the weird, smoky gloom and the soft green charm
the cutting of an umbilical cord. The historian tells us of the landscape, culminate in a symbolic tableau depict-
what happened to America and to Adams, but the poet ing "two kingdoms of force which had nothing in common
tells us how we should feel about what happened.~ 1 but attraction": one represented by the Dynamo, the
Moving back and forth between conceptual statements other by the Virgin. If the tendency toward an abstract
about the growth of power and sensory impressions of the or dialectical view of life is a distinctive characteristic of
same process, Adams raises his theme to a melodramatic American culture, then The Education of Henry A dams
pitch. Machine imagery serves to convey both an inward is one of the most American of books. Adams uses the op-
and a historical contradiction. Early in the book he de- position between the Virgin and the Dynamo to figure an
scribes a journey he took in 1858 through the English all-embracing conflict : a clash between past and present,
"Black District" [sic]. It was, he writes, like a "plunge into unity and diversity, love and power. In his Manichean
darkness lurid with flames." There, in the center of in- fashion he marshals all conceivable values. On one side
dustrial England, Adams suddenly had a "sense of un- he lines up heaven, beauty, religion, and reproduction; on
known horror in . . . [the] weird gloom which then ex- the other : hell, utility, science, and production.11a
isted nowhere else, and never had existed before, except Although devoid of pastoral feelings, this melodramatic
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force g49
tableau is a characteristic product of complex, twentieth· division between its perplexing, warring, irreconcilable
century American pastoralism. It embodies a view of life problems, irreducible opposites, with growing emphasis
that may be traced to the Sleepy Hollow notes of 1844. to the last year of study. From earliest childhood the
To be sure, there is a world of difference between the boy was accustomed to feel that, for him, life was double.
highly wrought pattern contrived by Adams and the Winter and summer, town and country, law and liberty,
were hostile, and the man who pretended they were not.
sketchy impression of the new machine power set down
was in his eyes a schoolmaster - that is, a man employed
by Hawthorne. What had begun as a casual notation now to tell lies to little boys.
appears as an elaborate, tragic, and all-inclusive thematic
figure. And yet it is impossible to miss the continuity be- The apocalyptic image of the Dynamo and the Virgin
tween the two. In the first chapter of The Education is the ultimate expression of the tragic doubleness that
Adams introduces a variant of the pastoral design in Adams locates at the center of modern history. To be sure,
describing the rhythmic alternation between the seasonal the encounter with the machine is a portentous event in
attitudes toward nature and civilization he had known as earlier works of the American imagination. In Walden
a boy: and Moby-Dick and Huckleberry Finn it creates awe and
terror and a sense of powerlessness. And these fables do
Winter and summer, then, were two hostile lives, and
tend to "rest," as Richard Chase put it, "in contradictions
bred two separate natures. Winter was always the effort
to live; summer was tropical license. Whether the chil- and among extreme ranges of experience." Nevertheless,
dren rolled in the grass, or waded in the brook, or swam Adams imparts a new sense of violence, inclusiveness, and
in the salt ocean, or sailed in the bay, or fished for irreconcilability to the clash between the two kingdoms
smelts in the creeks, or netted minnows in the salt- of force. His Dynamo is the modern force most nearly
marshes, or took to the pine-woods and the granite quar- equivalent, in its command over human behavior, to the
ries, or chased muskrats and hunted snapping-turtles in sublimated sexual vitality that built Chartres. But in all
the swamps, or mushrooms or nuts on the autumn hills, other respects the two forces are radically, irrevocably
summer and country were always sensual living, while opposed. One resists, the other exalts, the dominion of
winter was always compulsory learning. Summer was the Eros. In the symbol of the Dynamo, Adams represents an
multiplicity of nature; winter was school. industrial society that threatens, as no previous society
By invoking the cycle of the seasons, Adams seems to point has threatened, to destroy the creative power embodied
toward an orthodox pastoral resolution. Yet even here, at in the Virgin. To him she represents "the highest energy
the outset, he stresses the ineradicable character of this ever kno·wn to man, the creator of four-fifths of his noblest
root conflict. The passage continues: art, exercising vastly more attraction over the human mind
The bearing of the two seasons on the education of than all the steam-engines and dynamos ever dreamed
Henry Adams was no fancy; it was the most decisive of.. . ."
force he ever knew; it ran through life, and made the In The Education of Henry Adams, then, the onset of
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force 35'
machine power initiates a fatal chain of events. The forces is something odd about using the word "rich" to describe
that came between young Adams and his "old universe" a vista of such manifest "poverties," James says that never-
in 1844, suddenly cutting them apart, separating them t~eless he uses the word without compunction, "caring
forever, were to produce the Dynamo and a nightmare httle that half the charm, or half the response to it, may
vision of race suicide. As early as 1862, in fact, Adams had have been shamelessly 'subjective' . . ." The light and
told his brother Charles: playful tone dismisses (or attempts to dismiss) the problem
that had tried the generation of Emerson, Thoreau, and
You may think all this nonsense, but I tell you these
Melville. Is James attributing to visible nature qualities
are great times. Man has mounted science and is now
which do not belong there? He says that he does not care
run away with. I firmly believe that before many cen-
turies more, science will be the master of man. The w~ether they are there or not, "since that but slightly
engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength sh1fts the ground ... of the impression." Perhaps the pas-
to control. Some day science may have the existence of toral aspect is in the eye of the beholder, but what if it is?
mankind in its power, and the human race commit "Wh~n you ~ande~. about in Arcadia," he explains, slyly
suicide by blowing up the world. dodg1~g the 1s~ue: you ask as few questions as possible.
To use the Adams idiom, the sound that Hawthorne had That lS Arcad1a m fact, and questions drop, or at least
heard in Sleepy Hollow in 1844 was a new, perhaps final, get themselves deferred and shiftlessly shirked .... " M
outbreak of the ancient war between the kingdom of love But ~e is too sanguine; the question will not drop. Alas,
and the kingdom of power, and it has been waged end- there 1s something "curious, unexpected, inscrutable"
lessly in American writing ever since.11• about the effect of this landscape. "Why," he asks, is the
"whole connotation so delicately Arcadian, like that of
In 1904, after a long absence in Europe, Henry James the A~cadia of an old tapestry, an old legend, an old love-
was impressed once again by the strangely persistent affin- s~ory m fifteen volumes . . . ?" He cannot shirk the ques-
ity between the American landscape and the pastoral ideal. tiOn after all, and he rephrases it: why, in the absence of
Having traveled to New Hampshire almost immediately other elements of the "higher finish," do these American
after landing in New York, the first thing that strikes him ~ie~s "in~ist ..on referring themselves to the idyllic type
(as he later explains in The American Scene, published m 1ts punty? What puzzles him, above all, is that a land-
in 1907) is the Arcadian aspect of his native land. He scape so raw and new should evoke connotations so refined
awakes in a place full of "the sweetness of belated recog- a:chaic, a~d, in a word, typical. It is as if, he says, "th;
nition, that of the sense of some bedimmed summer of higher fimsh, even at the hand of nature, were in some
the distant prime flushing back into life and asking to sort a.. perversion,'_' _and that _these fascinating landscapes
give again as much as possible of what it had given before seem more exqulSltely and 1deally Sicilian, Theocritan
- all in spite, too ... of the newness, to my eyes ... poetic, romantic, academic, from their not bearing th;
of the particular rich region." Admitting at once that there burden of too much history." Precisely because it is rela-
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN Two Kingdoms of Force 353
tively unformed, wild, and new, James is saying, the no standard, no institution - capable of standing up to
scenery of America is peculiarly hospitable to pastoral the forces of which the railroad is the symbol. As the work
illusions. It invites us to cross the commonsense boundary of Thoreau and Melville and Mark Twain had testified,
between art and reality, to impose literary ideas upon the the pastoral dream was no defense. "This look as of uni-
world. versal acquiescence," says James, "plays somehow through
How misleading this pastoral bent can be does not the visible vacancy- seems a part of the thinness, the
become evident until James explores the region near passivity, of that absence of the settled standard which
Farmington, Connecticut. Once again, the village scene contains . . . the germ of the most final of all my gen-
renews that ancient vision "of the social idyll, of the work- eralizations." 158
able, the expensively workable, American form of country What James sees in Farmington, then, is not one among
life; and, in especial, of a perfect consistency of surrender many American scenes, but a thematic or symbolic land-
to the argument of the verdurous vista." Here, says James, scape. It figures a controlling idea, the very marrow of his
is the American village at its best, where a "great elm- subject, which happens to be America. The contrast be-
gallery happens to be garnished with old houses, and the tween the machine and the pastoral ideal dramatizes the
old houses happen to show style and form and propor- great issue of our culture. It is the germ, as James puts it,
tion . . . ." What finally is most striking, however, about of the most final of all generalizations about America.
the picture of the white village with its high thin church
steeple, so archaic in modern America as to seem almost
a heraldic emblem, is another object close by. It is the
railway crossing. Out of the contrast James gains a new
perception. While the church now seems a mere monu-
ment embellishing some large white card, the railroad
becomes for him the "localization of possible death and
destruction," and, set against the rural scene as it is, the
industrial image evokes an over-all impression of a kind
of "monotony of acquiescence." By the look of "universal
acquiescence" he means, among other things, that there
is nothing in the scene capable of resisting the domination
of the machine. The "common man" and "common
woman," he says, with a superior tone, are defenseless.
"The bullying railway orders them off their own decent
avenue without a fear that they will 'stand up' to it...."
There is nothing in the visible landscape- no tradition,
Epilogue: The Garden of Ashes 355
that never will turn aside. And until we confront the
unalterable, he would add, there can be no redemption
from a system that makes men the tools of their tools. A
similar insight informs Moby-Dick. But in the penchant
for illusion Melville saw more dire implications. It is sui-
VI Epilogue: The Garden of Ashes cidal, Ishmael learns, to live "as in a musky meadow"
when in truth one is aboard a vessel plunging into dark-
ness. What was a grim possibility for Melville became a
In various quiet nooks and corners 1 had the beginnings of
all sorts of industries under way- nuclei of future vast fac· certainty for Mark Twain and Henry Adams; neither wa~
tories, the iron and steel missionaries of my future civilization. able to imagine a satisfactory resolution of the conflict
In these were gathered together the brightest young minds figured by the machine's incursion into the garden. By th
I could find, and I kept agents out raking the country for
more, all the time. I was training a crowd of ignorant folk
tum of the century they both envisaged the outcome a
into experts- experts in every sort of handiwork and acien· a vast explosion of new power. Power, Adams said, now
tific calling. These nurseries of mine went smoothly and pri· leaped from every atom. The closing chapters of The Edu·
vately along undisturbed in their obscure country retreats. cation of Henry Adams are filled with images of mankind
My works showed what a despot could do with the re· in the grip of uncontrollable forces. He pictured the forces
sources of a kingdom at his command. Unsuspected by this grasping the wrists of man and flinging him about "as
dark land, I had the civilization of the nineteenth century though he had hold of . . . a runaway automobile. . . ."
booming under its very nose! It was fenced away from the
public view, but there it was, a gigantic and unassailable fact
Adams was haunted by the notion that bombs were about
-and to be heard from, yet, if I lived and had luck. There to explode. "So long as the rates of progress held good,"
it was, as sure a fact and as substantial a fact as any serene he observed, "these bombs would double in force and
volcano, standing innocent with its smokeless summit in the
blue sky and giving no sign of the rising hell in its bowels.
number every ten years." 1
Mark Twain, A Connecticut YGnlte In But the ancient ideal still seizes the native imagination.
King AYthur's CouYt, 1889 Even those Americans who acknowledge the facts and
understand the fables seem to cling, after their fashion,
"So," say the parable-makers, "is your pastoral to the pastoral hope. This curious state of mind is pic-
life whirled past and away." We cannot deny the fact tured by Charles Sheeler in his "American Landscape"
without denying our history. When the Republic was (1930; plate 3). Here at first sight is an almost photographic
founded, nine out of ten Americans were husbandmen; image of our world as it is, or, rather, as we imagine it
today not one in ten lives on a farm. Ours is an intricately will be if we proceed without a change of direction. No
organized, urban, industrial, nuclear-armed society. For trace of untouched nature remains. Not a tree or a blade
more than a century our most gifted writers have dwelt of grass is in view. The water is enclosed by man-made
upon the contradiction between rural myth and techno- banks, and the sky is filling with smoke. Like the reflec-
logical fact. In the machinery of our collective existence,
Thoreau says, we have "constructed a fate, an Atropos"
!154
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Epilogue: The Garden of Ashes
357
tion upon the \Yater, every natural object represents some problem is akin to the one Shakespeare's Prospero had
aspect of the collective economic enterprise. Technological faced t~ree centuries before; to make sense of his experi-
power overwhelms the solitary man; the landscape con- ence Ntck must define the relative validity of the "gar-
vention calls for his presence to provide scale, but here den" and the "hideous wilderness" images of the New
the traditional figure acquires new meaning: in this mech- World; he must discriminate between Gatsby's image of
anized environment he seems forlorn and powerless. And felicity, represented by Daisy Buchanan and the "green
yet, somehow, this bleak vista conveys a strangely soft, light," and the industrial landscape of twentieth-century
tender feeling. On closer inspection, we observe that America.
Sheeler has eliminated all evidence of the frenzied move- From the beginning Nick is aware of something odd
ment and clamor we associate with the industrial scene. about the elegant green lawns of suburban Long Island.
The silence is awesome. The function of the ladder (an They are green enough, but somehow synthetic and de-
archaic implement) is not revealed; it points nowhere. lusive. "The lawn," says Nick, describing his first impres-
Only the minuscule human figure, the smoke, and the sion of the Buchanan's home, "started at the beach and
slight ripples on the water suggest motion. And the very ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping
faintness of these signs of life intensifies the eerie, static, over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens -
surrealist quality of the painting. This "American Land- finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in
scape" is the industrial landscape pastoralized. By super- bright vines as though from the momentum of its run."
imposing order, peace, and harmony upon our modem And then, in the next sentence, he introduces Tom
chaos, Sheeler represents the anomalous blend of illusion Buchanan: hard, supercilious, arrogant. "Not even the
and reality in the American consciousness. effeminate swank of his riding clothes," says Nick, "could
In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925), an- hide the enormous power of that body. . . ." Nick soon
other image of landscape provides the indispensable clue discovers that suburban greenness, like Tom's clothing, is
to the baffling career of an archetypal American. Like misleading. It too is a mask of power, and on the way to
the other major characters, James Gatz is a Westerner Manhattan he sees a more truly representative landscape
who has come East to make his fortune. (In this version of this rich and powerful society:
of the fable, as in the "international" novels of Henry About half way between West Egg and New York the
James, the direction of the journey is reversed: Gatsby motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it
moves from simplicity to sophistica·tion.) In the end, Fitz- for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a cer-
gerald's narrator, Nick Carraway, realizes that Gatsby can tain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes- a
be understood only in relation to the "last and greatest of fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges
all human dreams": the original European vision of the and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the
"fresh, green breast of the new world." It is Nick who forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and,
must decide, finally, upon the value of that dream. His finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN Epilogue: The Garden of Ashes 359
dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. stir the imagination. From the first moment Nick sees
Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invis· Gatsby, standing alone in the moonlight gazing across the
ible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, water at "nothing except a single green light," he is aware
and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden of a mysterious, indefinable, transcendent quality in the
spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens man. At the outset he describes this appealing trait in
their obscure operations from your sight.2 deliberately vague language: " . . . there was," he says,
This hideous, man-made wilderness is a product of thf' "something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensi-
technological power that also makes possible Gatsby's tivity to the promises of life . . . an extraordinary gift
wealth, his parties, his car. None of his possessions sums for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found
up the quality of life to which he aspires as well as the in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever
car. "It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen find again." Nick's job, as narrator, is to specify the exact
here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant nature of the "something"- to find out what it is and
hat-boxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced where it arises. But the more he learns about Gatsby the
with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen more difficult the job becomes. He can find no way to
suns." Sitting behind these many layers of glass, says Nick, reconcile the man's engaging qualities with the facts: the
was like being "in a sort of green leather conservatory." interminable, senseless parties in Gatsby's "blue gardens,"
As it happens, the car proves to be a murder weapon and his vulgar show of wealth, his bogus Norman mansion, his
the instrument of Gatsby's undoing. The car and the monstrous car, and, above all, his bland complicity in
garden of ashes belong to a world, like Ahab's, where crime. What mystifies Nick is the incongruity of the sordid
natural objects are of no value in themselves. Here all facts, combined as they are with Gatsby's unswerving devo-
of visible nature is as expendable as a pasteboard mask: tion to Daisy and the ideal of the green light. Only at
Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived the very end, when Nick returns to Long Island for the
from a fruiterer in New York-every Monday these same last time, does he find a wholly plausible explanation.
oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of And it is here, in the closing paragraphs, that Fitzgerald
pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen enlarges the meaning of his fable, extend ing it to an entire
which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in culture that is peculiarly susceptible, like J ay Gatsby, to
half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred pastoral illusions. One night, after Gatsby's death, Nick
times by a butler's thumb. comes back to Long Island. The summer is over. What
In The Great Gatsby, as in W alden, Moby-Dick, and he now sees, as he sprawls on the beach looking across
Huckleberry Finn, the machine represents the forces work· the water, enables him to place the events he has witnessed
ing against the dream of pastoral fulfillment.a in the context of history:
But in Fitzgerald's book, as in many American fables,
there is another turn to the story. Somehow, in spite of Most of the big shore places were closed now and there
the counterforce, the old dream retains its power to were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN Epilogue: Th e Garden of Ashes 361
of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose As Fitzgerald's narrator pieces it together, accordingly,
higher the inessential houses began to melt away until Gatsby's tragic career exemplifies the attenuation of the
gradually I became aware of the old island here that pastoral ideal in America. In the beginning Nick com-
flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes- a fresh, green pares Gatsby's "heightened sensitivity to the promises of
breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that life" to a seismograph- a delicate instrument peculiarly
had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in responsive to invisible signals emanating from the land.
whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; Gatsby's entire existence- not only the "romantic readi·
for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held ness" of his spirit, but also his Horatio Alger rise to afflu·
his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled
ence- had been shaped by the special conditions of
into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood
nor desired, face to face for the last time in history which the bountiful, green landscape is the token. Young
with something commensurate to his capacity for won- James Gatz got his start by using his intimate knowledge
der. of the Midwestern terrain to save a rich man's yacht.
It was at that moment that Jay Gatsby sprang, like a son
Here, for the first time, Nick locates the origin of that of God, from his Platonic conception of himself. The
strange compound of sentiment and criminal aggressive· incident, a turning point in his life, marks the enlistment
ness in Gatsby. Although this vision of the American land· of native energies in the service of wealth, status, power,
scape reverses the temporal scheme of Sheeler's painting and, as Nick puts it, of "a vast, vulgar, and meretricious
(instead of imposing the abstract residuum of the pastoral beauty." Nick, the real hero of The Creal Galsby, is the
dream upon the industrial world, Nick's vision discloses only one, finally, to understand, but it takes him a long
the past by melting away the inessential present) -it while to grasp the subtle interplay between Gatsby's
serves much the same purpose. It also represents the curi- dream and his underworld life.•
ous state of the modern American consciousness. It re· In part Nick's difficulty arises from the fact that he
veals that Gatsby's uncommon "gift for hope" was born is so much like Gatsby. H e too is a Westerner, a simple
in that transitory, enchanted moment when Europeans man in a complex society, and when he pays his first
first came into the presence of the "fresh, green breast visit to the Buchanans, he admits, their acquired Eastern
of the new world." We are reminded of Shakespeare's manners make him uncomfortable. He feels like a rustic.
Gonzalo and Miranda, of Robert Beverley and Crevecceur "'You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,'" he said. "'Can't
and Jefferson: in America hopefulness had been incor- you talk about crops or something?' " And then, just
porated in a style of life, a culture, a national character. before describing the sordid, drunken brawl in Mrs. Wil·
Hence Gatsby's simple-minded notion that everything can son's apartment, N ick makes explicit his own propensity
be made right again. Daisy is for him what the green is· to Virgilian fantasies:
land once had been for Dutch sailors; like them he mis- We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft,
takes a temporary feeling for a lasting possibility. almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon that
...
Epilogue: The Garden of Ashes
THE l\·t ACHINE IN THE CARDEN
362
scape- a terrain either wild or, if cultivated, rural- as
I wouldn't have been surprised to see a great flock of
a symbolic repository of meaning and value. But at the
white sheep turn the comer.
same time they acknowledge the power of a counter·
The party, as Nick describes it, is a debased bucoli~ fes· force, a machine or some other symbol of the forces which
tival: the pathetic little dog at the center, the furmture have stripped the old ideal of most, if not all, of its mean-
tapestried with "scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens ing. Complex pastoralism, to put it another way, acknowl-
of Versailles," the brutal outburst of Buchanan's hate, and edges the reality of history. One of Nick Carraway's great
Nick's yearning, through it all, to get away: "I wanted moments of illumination occurs when he realizes that
to get out," he says, "and walk eastward toward ~he Park Gatsby wants nothing less of Daisy than that she should
through the soft twilight ...." Because he, too, lS drawn go to Tom and say, " 'I never loved you.' " And when
to images of pastoral felicity, Nick ~s pre~ared to. recog· Nick objects, observing that one cannot undo the past,
nize the connection between Gatsby s senumentallty and Gatsby is incredulous. Of course he can. " 'I'm going to fix
the sight that had greeted Dutch sailors three centuries everything,' " he says, " 'just the way it was before .. . .' "
before. Like Melville's Starbuck, Gatsby would let faith oust fact.
And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown He is another example of the modern primitive de-
world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked scribed by Ortega, the industrial Naturmensch who is
out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had blind to the complexity of modern civilization; he wants
come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must his automobile, enjoys it, yet regards it as "the spontane·
have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. ous fruit of an Edenic tree." Nick also is drawn to images
of pastoral felicity, but he learns how destructive they are
And here, at last, Nick pulls back, separating himself from
when cherished in lieu of reality. He realizes that Gatsby
his dead friend's dead dream.
is destroyed by his inability to distinguish between dreams
He [Gatsby) did not know that it was already behind and facts. In the characteristic pattern of complex pas·
him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the toralism, the fantasy of pleasure is checked by the facts
city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under of history.e
the night.0 But what, then, do our fabulists offer in place of the
ideal landscape? Nick Carraway's most significant response
The difference between Gatsby's point of view and to Gatsby's death is his decision, announced in the open·
Nick's illustrates the distinction, with which I began, be- ing pages of the book, to return to the West. (Like Tho·
tween sentimental and complex pastoralism. Fitzgerald, reau, Melville and Mark Twain, Fitzgerald tells his tale
through Nick, expresses a point of view typical of a from the viewpoint of a traveler returned from a voyage
great many twentieth-century American writers. The work of initiation.) In the closing pages Nick again explains
of Faulkner, Frost, Hemingway and West comes to mind. that the East was haunted for him after the murder; and
Again and again they invoke the image of a green land·
-
THE MACHINE IN THE CARDEN Epilogue: The Garden of Ashes
364
so, he says, "when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in of our writers to create a surrogate for the ideal of the )
the air . . . I decided to come back home." Nick's repudi- mid~le landsc~pe ~an ha:dty be accounted artistic failure.
ation of the East is a belated, ritualistic withdrawal in the By mcorporatmg m their ·work the root conflict of our
direction of "nature." It is ironically set against the fact, culture, they have clarified our situation. They have
which the entire novel makes plain, that the old distinc- served us well. To change the situation we require new
tion between East and West has all but disappeared. Nick's symbols of possibility, and although the creation of those
final gesture is a mere salute to the memory of a vanished symbols is in some measure the responsibility of artists,
America; and the book ends on a sadly enervated note of it is in greater measure the responsibility of society. The
romantic irony: "So," Nick says, "we beat on, boats against machine's s~dden entrance into the garden presents a prob-
the current, borne back ·,:e.selessly into the past." lem that ultimately belongs not to art but to politics.
The ending of The Great Gatsby reminds us that Amer-
ican writers seldom, if ever, have designed satisfactory
resolutions for their pastoral fables. The power of these
fables to move us derives from the magnitude of the pro-
tean conflict figured by the machine's increasing domina-
tion of the visible world. This recurrent metaphor of con-
tradiction makes vivid, as no other figure does, the bearing
of public events upon private lives. It discloses that our
inherited symbols of order and beauty have been divested
of meaning. It compels us to recognize that the aspirations
once represented by the symbol of an ideal landscape
have not, and probably cannot, be embodied in our tradi-
tional institutions. It means that an inspiriting vision of
a humane community has been reduced to a token of
individual survival. The outcome of Walden, Moby-Dick,
and Huckleberry Finn is repeated in the typical modern
version of the fable; in the end the American hero is either
dead or totally alienated from society, alone and power-
less, like the evicted shepherd of Virgil's eclogue. And if,
at the same time, he pays a tribute to the image of a green
landscape, it is likely to be ironic and bitter. The resolu-
tions of our pastoral fables are unsatisfactory because the
old symbol of reconciliation is obsolete. But the inability
Afterword
• I
•~ 1 11 E MAC III:-It:: IN T H E GARDEN Aflerwonl
37V :177
well to express the typically opposed , even irreconcilable responded to th e ·· econd Industrial Revolution·· with an
reactions of the dominant and the adversary cultures.) Of astonishing outburst of formal experime ntation . to have
course each image had had a rich history in its ow~ right .. ~levised a correspondingly novel set of expt·essh·e forms. As
The chief referent of the "machine," as I first conce1ved of 1t turned out, however, the adaptation of the pastoral
it, was simply the iron machinery o f the industrial revolu- mode was ideally suited to the expressive purposes of
tion. But that literal , workaday sense of mach in e had had a American writers.
semantic precurso r in the seventeenth-century trope of a Th e penincn ce t5f pastoral ism to their work is most
metaphysical Machine-emblem of a materi.alist and. me~h apparent in their delineatio ns of the native landscape. This
anistic cosmology-which had bee n pivotalm the sc1entJfic first beca~e eviden t when I juxtaposed th e design of the
an d ph ilosophic revolution associat~d with N~wton , l ~ndscape 111 passages by Hawthorne and Virgil. The sct-
Descartes, and Bacon. The dual meanmg of Machme-a tJng H awthorne creates for a casual notebook account of
cosmos as well as an industrial tool-would be countered , his ~wn experi e~ce o.f an interrupted idyll almost exactly
after the mid-eighteenth century, by the organic, biologic~! repl1ca tes the tnparute symbolk terrain of Virgil's first
images of nature favored by exponents of the RomantJc Eclogue. The poem 's topography is divided into: ( 1) an
recoil from triumphant "mechanism ," comprising the new off-s~age center of power in Rome ; (:.! ) an adj acent stretch
science, technology, and philosophic rationalism. It is not ?f w1.ld , untJ·~mmeled nature; and between the m (3) an
surprising, under the circumstances, that the sudden 1dealtzed "m1ddle landscape," neither wild nor overcivi-
appearance of the machine technology in the underdevel- lized, where the dream of harmo ny between humanity and
oped "new world " setting provided the sensory. compo- ~1aturc migh t be attainable. Each sector has its coun te rpart
nents of a-perhaps the-great central figu rauve con- m the Hawthorne passage and. as it wrned out, in many
ception of nineteenth-century Ame~~can cultur~. . works by man y Am erican writers. In the symbolic geogra-
In 1956 I published an essay, The Mach me m the phy of America embodied in such books as J efferson's
Garden " in which I summ arized the argument of my Noles on Virginia, Thoreau 's Waldm. Melville's Mob)'-Dick.
half-fini,shed book. IO By that time 1 also was becoming and Twain 's Hu ckleberry Finn. each sector o f the Latin poet's
aware of the intriguing affmities between the American characteristic landscape has its Euro-American counter-
works in which the interrupted idyll occurs and Virgilian part. Thus the Eastern seaboard of the Un ited States or
'
pasto ral. At first, admittedly, it seemed odd, even. paradoxi- some stereotypical American idea of Ew·ope, replaces Vir-
cal, that our gifted nineteenth-ce n tury wn ters had gil 's Rome as the emblematic locus of complexity, wealth
respo nded to the invention of the nove~ ar.tifa~ts of t~1e and p ower: the Western fromier stands in for the wild
Industrial Revolution by reverting to-or mstmctJvely rem- untamed border of Virgil's pasture; and Virginia (ot:
venting-the pastoral, one of Western ·cultur~ ·s oldest, Walden Po nd, o r the musky meadow Ishmael conjures on
most enduring modes of thought and expressiOn. They the deck of th e Pequod , or Huck and .Jim's raft on. th e Mis-
might have been expected, like the modernist artists and sissippi ) takes the place of the Latin poet's Arcadian pas-
writers at the turn of the twentieth cen tury, who had ture.
378 T HE Mt\CHI NF. IN THE GARDEN Afterword 379
The narratives of the hybrid genre, the American pas- notes on hearing the locomotive's shrill whistle in the
toral romance, typically are played out in some variant of Walden woods, 'We have constructed a fate, an Atropos,
this symbolic setting. The action is set in motion by a pas- that never turns asid e. "13
toral impulse- the protagonist's familiar urge, in the face When I began my research , I wanted to find out which
of the established order's growing complexity and power, American, if any, deserved credit for h aving been the first
to get away. "Back out of all this now too much for us," is to imagine the profundity of the change initiated by the
Robert Frost's unmatched evocation of the impulse. 11 The new industrial power. I eventually settled on two candi-
pastoral figure retreats from this alienating situation to a dates: Tench Coxe, Alexander Hamilton 's brillian t assis-
terrain marked by fewer signs of human intervention. tant at the Treasury who wrote much, perhaps most, of the
(The retreat also is a quest, a journey in search of an alter- prophetic 179 1 Report on Manufactures, and Thomas Jeffer-
native form of life "closer to nature.") In the ideal type of son. What particularly recommends J efferson's Query
this modern variant of the perilous journey, three d efining XJX, a chapter of his only book, Notes on Virginia ( 1785), is
episodes recur. One is a moment of ecstatic fulftllment, the distinctively pastoral cast of his argument against intro-
perhaps shared with a companion or lover, wh en the pro- ducing British-style manufacturing in the United States.
tagonist enj oys a feeling of transcendent harmony with his There he momentarily envisages (h e partly retracts it later )
surroundings; this epiphany, which often brings in aspects an American society based on three principles, at once pas-
of the Protestant conversion experience , is of course fleet- toral and ecological-principles wholly irreconcilable with
ing, and issues in what Frost calls "a momentary stay what even then was com ing to be the dominant American
against confusion. " 12 It is striking that so many of the con- ideology of material progress. Anticipating late twentieth-
spicuous voices and characters in American literature tend cen tury environmentalism, Jefferson envisions an America
to join the recovery of self with the recovery of the natural, which would ( 1) restrict its institutions and practices to
and to represent their deepest longings in numinous those consonant with the opportunities and constraints
visions of landscape. The second episode is the pastoral fig- inherent in nonhuman nature; (2) take as its primary eco-
ure 's thriiling, tonic, yet often terrifying encounter with nomic goal equitable sufficiency (rath er than the maxi-
wildness: some aspect, external or subj ective, of unmodi- mization of wealth and power); and which, in setting social
fied, intractable, or h ostile nature. Here, as in the idyll , the goals, would (3) subordinate econo mic to otl1er less tangi-
narrative in effect arrests the centrifugal impulse with ble, quality-of-life criteria of public well-being.l4
which it began. So does the third episode: the sudden From the time of its origin in the ancient Near East, the
appearance of the machine in the landscape. A distinctive hallmark of pastoral had been the contrast, explicit or
industrial-age feature of the pastoral mode, this intrusive tacit, between two ways of life: one complex and the other
artifact figures forth the u nprecedented power and simple; one oriented toward power, wealth, and status, the
dynamism of the oncoming order, and it exposes the illu- other toward love, ar t, and music; and each grounded in a
sor y character of the retreat to nature as a way of coping distinct set of relations with the natural world. T he singular
with the ineluctable advance of modernity. As Thoreau pertinence of the mode to the experience of Europeans in
;380 "II I E ~lAC IIIS~: I N T HE GA RDEN Ajlf'rword ;{8 1
coloni:ting re m ote lands was not lost on Sha kespear e, who explosio ns. In the body of th e book, however, she ma kes
conceived o f The 7i>mfJest as a version of pastoral. The paint DDT and othe r deadly pesticides, as well as the e ntire
of my c hapte r on tha t play, the n , was to esta blish the close che mical industry, exemplars of modern industrial soci-
affiniry between that a ncie nt but revitalized fo rm and the e ty's ''war again st nature." That the foundin g te xt of the
myth of America as a new beginning. In their contrasting e me rging e nviro nme n tal moveme nt was fra med in this way
,·iews, Prospe ra a nd Gonzalo prefigured the d ivergence suggests the pro mine nt role played by pastoral ideals in
between the progressive and pastoral responses of Am eri- general, and by the machine-in-the-garden trope in panic-
cans to the o nse t of industrialism . ular, in the rh etoric accompanying the immine nt explo-
sio n of counterCitltural activism.
Like most historical inquiries, 1'l1.e Machine in the Cardm At first Till' Mar/tine in l/U' Garden was well received inside
probably reveals as much abou t the e ra in which it was wri t- and outside th e academy. It was translated into se,·e ral lan-
ten as th e on e it was written about. In t g6 t , three years guages, and it was cited approvingly by scholars in fi elds
before it appeared, Rachel Carson published Silent Sfmng, a other than history and lite rature-notably an history, archi-
book sa id to ma rk the inception o f today's e nvironmental tecture, landscape architecture, and planning. Within
mo\'emc nt. Carson 's o pening sen tence introduces a quin- Ame rican studies, howeve r, it eventually came under seve re
tessemial American fable: "There was once a town in the attack. In 1972, Bruce Kuklic k, a philosopher and an Arner-
hean of Ame rica," she begins, "wh e re all life seemed to live icanist, condemned it along with several othe r books-
in ha rm ony with its surroundings." She lyrically describes Smith 's Vi1gin / .and ( 1950), R. W. B. Lewis's 77te AmPrimn
the sere ne seasonal round ("foxes barked in th e hills and Adam ( 1955), j o hn Willia m Ward 's Andrew j ackson: Sywbol
deer si le n tly crossed the fields, hau· hidde n in the mists of for an A~ ( 1955), a nd Alan Trachte nberg's Brookl)'ll Btirlge
fall morn ings''). and then , with a sha rp ch ange of mood , ( 1965)-as an example of the inexact scholarship prac-
the a brupt intrusion of a n exte rnal force: ticed by adhere n ts of wha t he called the "Myth a nd Symbo l"
schooJ. 1!1 KukJic k charged all of us, whose project he rightly
Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything identified as a kind of histor y, with generalizing about
hegan to change. Some evil spell had settled on the com- Ame rican th ought a nd be havior on th e basis of insuffi cie n t
mun ity; mysterious maladies.... Ever}'\vherc was a shadow e mpirical evide nce; with assuming a Cartesian split betwee n
o f death . ... There was a strange stillness. The birds, for thought and material reality; and with imputing excessive
example,- wherc had they gone? ... It was a spring witJ10ut causal efficacy to ideas, especially free-floating lite rar y sym-
voices. bo ls and myths. It was a tre nchant, plausible, influential cri-
tique. "M)1th and Symbol School'' caugh t on as a derogatory
In this varia nt o f th e machin e-in-the-garde n tro pe, the watchwo rd, a nd at least o ne scho lar accused its adhe re nts of
initial surrogate fo r the machin e is ··a white granular pow- mounting a conspiracy. IIi To this day e mbattled Ar11e rican-
der" falling from the sky, a substa nce Carson associates, a ists habitually invoke "myth -and-symbol" as a dismissive epi-
few pages later, with Stronti um go. a by-product of nuclear the t of self-evide nt validity.
:~82 T HE MAC HINE I N T H E GARDEN Ajlerword 383
In the event, Kuklick's essay proved to be the leading compel me to recognize. If I were to write a new version of
edge of a wave of revisionary criticism that engulfed Amer- th e boo k today, I surely would want to include the work of
ican studies, along with all the humanistic disciplines, later several talented but hitherto insufficiently valued practi-
in the 1970s. Partly due to the political frustration felt by tioners of the pastoral mode, such as Sarah Orne Jewett,
academic intellectuals after the dissipation-some would Willa Cather, and J ean Toomer.
say defeat--of the 1960s radical Movement, and partly in To many exponents of the new critical dispensation , The
keeping with the related philosophic "turn " to langu age, Machine in the Garden, like other books of its time, exempli-
deconstruction, critical theory, and postmodern multicul- fies an allegedly "holistic," universalizing tendency. They
turalism, books like The Machine in the Garden came to be charge us-their authors-with depicting American soci-
seen by a younger scholarly generation-with some jus- ety and culture as if it constituted a single unified whole.
tice- as the expression of a timid, elitist, white male men- This charge, in my opinion , is grossly overstated and fre-
tality in the service of an entrenched establishment. Since quently inaccurate. True, the divisions in American society
then scholarship in American studies has been dominated and culture highlighted by the earlier generation of schol-
by a commitment to the primacy, in the study of American ars were not those on which today's multiculturalist schol-
society and culture, of difference--of the marked differ- ars choose to focus. Nevertheless, The Machine in the Garden
ences, that is, in the experience of Americans as deter- emphasizes a fundam en tal divide in American culture and
mined by their class, ethnicity, race, gender, or sexual society. It separates the popular affirmation of industrial
preference. In my judgment, no fair-minded scholar could progress disseminated by spokesmen for the dominant
fail to acknowledge the enriching, liberating, and-all in econo mic and political e lites, and the disaffected, often
all-the largely salutary consequences of this in tellectual adversaria1 viewpoint of a minority of political radicals,
and moral turnabout. writers, artists, clergymen , and independent intellectuals.
The ideological swerve of the 1970s radically altered the It is a split between those who accept the primacy of mate-
standpoint from which scholars in American studies rial progress, and those who emphasize the less tangible
approach the past. It opened up vast, relatively unexplored aesthetic, moral, and environmental "qualities of life."
areas of knowledge about the history and the expressive Granted that I did not establish this distinction with social
life-in literature, art, music--of women, ethnic and racial scientifi c precision, its central place in my analysis surely
minorities, gays, and members of the working class. Books belies the charge that The Machine in the Garden advances a
written before, say, 1975, inevitably betray the limitations simplistic universalizing concept of American society and
of what now appears to have been a blinkered time. Today, culture.
for instance, it would not be possible for me to write cer- The fact is that I myself had underestimated tl1e depth
tain senten ces in The Machine in the Garden that tacitly gen- and durability of the conflict I wrote about. Though the
eralize about the thought or behavior of "Americans," chronological center of The Machine in the Garden is the mid-
unqualified by the explicit distinctions that an informed nineteenth cen tur y, I closed the book in the present tense
multicultural consciousness-and conscience-now would with the implication that today ( 1964), in the era of high
. ~
T il E MACI II I't: I N 1'111·: C.ARDt:l' AflPnuord ,1 f!.
·' !J
techno logy. t.he pastoral respo nse to indusu·ial society Reich in the inspired tille of his 1970 book, The Creming of
almost certainly had become anachron istic, and that it soon 1\nwrim.
might be expected to lose its ho ld on the minds of disaf- Since the Vietnam era, tl1is collective me n tality has
fected Americans. That tacit prediction hardly could have i~formed many of the disside nt moveme n ts adhered to by
been more quickly contradicted by events. On December 2, rltsconte nted Americans. I have in mind e nvironmental-
1964, a few weeks after the book was published , the B~rke ism, the antinuclear movements (against both nuclear
ley student re bellio n began . It was led by young rad1cals power a nd nuclear weaponry), the voluntary simpli city
who had been active in the Civil Rights campaign in the movement, as well as "green " te nde ncies within the fe mi-
South , and the manifest continuity be tween the rhe toric of nist, gay righ ts. Nati'f: American , African-American a nd
their spokesman , Mario Savio ("You 've got to put your bod- Hispanic movements.~imilar views find e xpressio n in th e
ies upon the [machine] and make it stop") and that of widespread inclina tion of privileged but morally tro ubled
He nry Thoreau in his 1849 essay on "Civil Disobedience" Americans to "recover the natural ," and to re pudiate the
("Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine") Calvinist work ethi c in favo r of a "new" set of rules-an
turned out to be the mere surface expression of a much e thic of "self-fulfillmentJ These political move me n ts and
d eeper ideological continuity between nineteenth-century te ndencies represent a marked de parture from th e d issi-
pastoralism and the radical Moveme nt (or counter-culture) dent politics characte ristic of the pre-World War II era.
of the 1g6os. They d iffe r from th e trade union , po pulist, progressive. or
Indeed, Savio's speech re kindled the c harged language New Deal movemen ts in that they d o no t arise from , or
of the conflict at th e heart of 1'lte Mn rhine in lhP Crmlm. He centrally involve, antagonistic economic interest'>. As no ted
inte nded h is image of a machine to conjure the military- by one promine nt student of th ese "new social move-
indusu·ial complex . and he in effect asked his fe llow snt- ments,'' the chief conflict they represent is not so much
dents to mobilize a force of nature-their own frail that which sets workers against owners, as that which sets a
bodies-in a last despe rate gesture aimed at restraining population against the ''appa ratus" which a ppears to dom i-
the misuse of organ ized power. During the next te n years, nate it. 1H Could it be th at this kind of oppositional politics
whil e the United States waged a high techno logy war is what th e future now holds in store? If so, it is e nlighte n-
against an Asian peasant socie ty, expression s of hostility ing to recall that its e m ergence was foretold by American
to the "machine"-and calls to "Stop the .\1achine!"- write rs in their initial responses to the a ppeara nce of the
re mained battle cries of the radical .\1ovement. It was new machine power in th e national landscape.
a nother su-iden t explosion o f the adversary culture wh ich
had survived , with occasional outbursts, sin ce its initial
appearance in Thoreau 's clay more than a century ear-
lie r.17 Revulsio n at the technocratic directio n of Am e rican
life was a pdmary spur to the radicals of the 196os. whose
aspira tions for their society were su mmed u p by Charles
Notes
CHAPTER 1
1. William Empson, Some Jlersions of Pastoral, London, 1950; for my
conception of pastoralism I also am indebted to: C. L. Barber, Shale·
speare's Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and Its Relation
to Social Custom, Princeton, 1959; Richard J. Cody, "The Pastoral
Element in Shakespeare'• Early Comedies," unpubl. diu., Univenity of
Minnesota, ag6a ; Walter W. Greg, Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama,
London, ago6; Frank Kermode, "Introduction," English Pastoral
Poetry: From the Befinnings to Maroell, London, 1951, and "Introduc·
tion," William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Arden Edition, 5th ed.
revised, London, 19~: Erwin Panofllty, "Et in Arcadia Ego: Pouuln
and the Elegiac Tradition," Meaning in the Jli.rual Arts: Papers in
and on Art History, New York, 1957: Adam Parry. "Landscape in
Greek Poetry," Yal1 Classical Studies, XV (1957). 5-t9; Renato Pogl·
31l7
KOTES Chapter II
is to be found among contemporary • , 3 9
oli. "The Oaten Flute," H arvard Library Bulletin, XI (Spring, 1957). it ~.supposed to have been realized a~va~e peo~les, whether or not
1•17- 84: H allett Smith, "Pastoral Poetry," Eliwbethan Poetry: A Study Civahzed man has been almost . so m the hfe of primeval man
in Conventions, Meaning, and Expression, Cambridge. Mass., 1951. against civilization which . conunuously subject to moods of revolt.
pp. 1-6~: Bruno Snell, "Arcadia: The Discovery of a Spiritual Land·
• . an some sense 11 · 10· d
trary to his nature·• and in th e serious preach • eed,f profoundly
. . con·
~Cape." The Discovery of the Mind: The Crull Origim of European TCYO t has been chronic and ' ers o pnmlt.ivism this
of h1 . . tntense. But the bel' f , h
Thought, trans. T . G. Rosenmeyer, Cambridge. Mass .• 1953. I e llmple life of 'nature' h '--- ae tn t e superiority
• d · · as v=n the manifest ·
1 . Richard Hobtadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R., New a rle ontsuc, sometimes of a ri gonsuc . . and even allon
· sometimes of
York, 1955; Marvin Meyers, The jacluonian Persuasion: Politics and e nature of the good d . · ascellc, conception of
th . • an someumes a mi t f ..
Belief, New York, 1g6o: Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The Amer· to Lois Whitney Primitivis d x ure o both. Foreword
ican West as Symbol and Myth, Cambridge, Mass., 1950. Pop u Iar L rll!rature
. ' of the E"'' htan the h Idea of P rogress '". English
3· Jo~ Ortega y Gasset. The R evolt of the Masses, trans. anon., London, xiv-xv. rg cent Century, Baltimore, 1 9~4• pp.
1931• P· 89.
Ill. Panofsky, "Et in Arcadia Ego ..
4· A General In troduction, trans. Joan Ri viere, New York, 1920, p. 325: •3· W . W . Rostow, The Stages ~f Econom·
Civiliwtion and Its Disconter1ts, trans. Joan Riviere. London, 1950, Manifesto, Cambridge lgOO I C Growth, A Non-Communist
14. Ralph Waldo Em • .. ' ~· 1· and chart, p . xii.
erson, Art Essays First S . .
5· P· «·
The American Noteboolts, ed. Randall Stewart, New Haven, 1931, pp. II vols., Boston, 188s, II. !l2B. ' erus, an Complete W orlts,
6. 101-5·
The Complete Stories of Herman Melville, ed. Jay Leyda, New York,
15· York,
Robert1949· p:
Frost vi.
"The r·lgure a Poem Makes," Complete Poems New
1949· P· 1gB.
7· journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. E. W. Emerson and W . E.
Forbes, Boston, 1gog-14, VI, 322: for the concept of convention used
here. see Harry Levin, "Notes on Convention," Perspectives of Crit·
CHAPTER 11
icism, Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, Cambridge, 1950.
8. "On the Projected Kend al and Windermere Railway.'' The Poetical I .For a general survey, sec Robert Ral
Eliwbethan Drama Bosto 8 ston Cawley, T he Voyagers and
Worlts of Wordsworth, ed. Thomas Hutchinson , London. 1904. PP· ' n, 193 : and the same a th • "Sh
U se o f the Voyagers in The Tern est.. u or s akespeare'a
more recently Frank. Kern od h p • . PMLA, XLI (1926), 68R-']a6·
9· 182-3·
The Poetical Worlts of William Blalte, ed. John Sampson. London. 'sed 1 c as rev1ewed th 'd . '
191 5, p . 570; Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, " Arden Edition of Th T e ev• ence 10 the re-
A1 · . .. e empest, London 19
ne · , u, 229. 1 am foil · • 54· PP· xxv-xxxiv;
New York, 1947• p. 158. 1 1
2 . "The first v owmg the Arden text.
10. Snell, "Arcadia"; Virgil, The Pastoral Poems, trans. E. V. Rieu, Pen· oyage made to the coasts of Am . .. . .
guin Books, H armondsworth. England, 1949· Quoted by permission of Haklu yt, The Principle Navigations Jl enca . . . m Richard
of the English Nation GJ oyages Traffiques and Discoveries
K • asgow, 1904 12 vols VIII
11 .
the publisher.
Arthur 0. Lovejoy, et al., A Documentary History of Primitivism and 3· ennet h Clark, Landscape . 1 A ' . ·• • 297-~10.
4· My discussio f . . m o rt, Edmburgh, 1956, Ch. I.
Related Ideas. Baltimore. 1935. p . 56g; Lovejoy saw the roots of cui· n o utoplamsm draws u n G
Its Enemies, New York . . po corge Kateb, Utopia and
tural primitivism as "various and incongruous." "Common to them
nomic Abundance and •t} 196;· 0 ~vld Potter, People of Plenty: Eco-
all, indeed, is the convicLion that the time- whatever time may, for S It n merrcan Characte Ch ·
a given writer, be in question- is out of joint; that what is wro ng 5· trachey, "A true reportory of lh . r, ICago, '954·
Thomas Gates Knight· e wracke, and redemption of Sir
with it is due to an abnormal complexity and sophistication in the
life of civilited man, to the pathological multiplicity and emulative· mudas .. . ," HaiJ/uyt~ u::s•;;. and from the llands of the Ber·
ness of his desires and the oppressive over-abundance of his belong· Samuel Purchas Clasao • o6 umw or Purchas H is Pi/grimes ed
' ,., w, 19 . 20 vols X IX 6 Ca ' •
ings. and to the factitiousness and want of inner spontaneity of his ngers, p. 3471f. and Richard Bernh .. , • . , 12; . wley, The Voy·
A ges: A Stlld)' in Art S ·, . enner, Wild Men in the Middle
emotions; that 'art.' the work. of man, has corrupted 'nature.' that it, 1952. ' m llll ent, and Demono/otro o;• Cambn'd ge, M au.,
man's own nature; and that the model of the normal individual life
and the normal social order, or at least a nearer approximation to it,
Chapter ll 39 1
NOTES
18. v, i, 64·
390 . 6- ed. William T . Dafll. 1g. II, ii, 58.
. f Plymouth Plantation, z6o I 646• ao. III, iii, 27-54; I, ii, ~47-50; I, ii, !15~-5·
6. Hastory o -6
New York. tgo8. PP· 94 • h .. 's developed by Stephen C. PeppeT aa . For the technological overtones of Prospero'a magic, ICC G. L. Kitt·
7· The concept of "root ~e~~~d;rin 1 £vidence, Berkele-y. 1941; Emerson. redge, "Introduction," The Tempest, Ginn and Co., Bolton, 195g, p.
in World Hypotheses, 88 V 51· xvill; Prospero, aaya IUttredge, usea art u "a method of controlling
Complete Wor~, I I vols., s:~~n., I n;;tu;ed the utilitarian genn at the forces of nature." To the Elizabethan audience he "wu u com·
8 For the way American con tuon P rry Miller The New England prehenalble in hia feau of magic as a cbemiat or an electrical engineer
· p ' tan thought ICC e • . •I·
the center of un , New York, tg5g, espeaally PP· ~g., , iJ to w modenu."
Mind· The Seventeenth Century, H . t ''Puritanism, the Wilder· u . III, ii, 89-9•: V, i, 15-'7: John Berryman called attention to Proepero
. ded by Alan amer • M t
Miller's views are exten ) 6t-81 ' Robert K. er on u the embodiment of Hamlet'a Ideal in a lecture, teveral yean age),
neu and the Frontier," N£Q, ~XVIbe ( tg55 • 5Engli~ Puritanism and at the Univenity of Minnesota.
' th necuons tween "Sci
hal demonstrated e con . d ced capitalitm in h!J • 25. Critics who deny the presence of a poaitive view of nature In the play
the development of teehnoi~callrn a s:::nteenth·Century England," include Elmer Edgar Stoll, "The Tempest," PMU, XLVII (tg51),
- Technology. and Society I 6gg·716, and T . P. Harrison, Jr., "Aspecu of Primitivism"; I, il, sgo-
en...... V II •
Osiris, Brugea, •gsa. I • · d ed Joseph Quincy Adams. Schola~ g6; II, i, 45, 51.
g A Di.scovery of the Barmu as, k PP 811 first published lD 14. Knight, The Shalcupearian Tempest, 5rd ed., London, 1g55, p. 17:
. Facsimiles and ReprinU, New Yor • t940• . •
Ill, ii, 1!1!1-6; II, ii, tlio--71.
"A Tn~e Declaration of •5· v. i, IH7.
1 6 10. .. ch XIX. 15; anon.,
to. "A tnle reportOty. Pu~ ·as.vi ' nia with a confutation of such scan· 16. IV, i, 6<H)s; IV, i, uo-17; II, i, 158-6o; V, i, 61; 68-g.
the estate of the Colorue ID rgt th• disgrace of so worthy an enter· 17. V, I, 181-4.
daloua reporu u have te~~ed to e d Othn Papers, ed. Peter Force, 28. The term " meliorbt" will serve to distinguish Prospero'a attitude
. London, t6to, Tracts an
pme ... ' III from that of the nineteenth-century "believer" in progresa- that Ia.
Washington, t8+l• 4 vols., , •4· one who believed in hiatory aa the record of Inevitable improvement
.
tt. 11, •· !14-St. Ch . t ~>her Columbus, The ntt
u · ed States Catholic in the condition of mankind. For the Baconian aspect, see J. B. Bury,
u The Voyages of ru Or 8 The Idea of Progress: An In quiry into Its O rigin and Growth, Lon·
· . . 1 .,~:ety New York, 18g1. P· 4 ·
Htstonca ""'"' • don, 1921, pp. so--6s.
I i 5-6o ed source for the play; 19. IV, i, 1U-4; the atage direction foUowa IV, i, 158; IV, i, 159-40.
15· 1 ' ' '.4 ' ·.. !bail" is the only undlsput . T p
•4· Montatgne • Of Ca:' relationship in his edition, PP: uxivll, Sh~ so. IV, i, 188-g; though we have no adequate study of Shakespearian
Kennode d iscusses e xts in detail, noung that pastoralism, aome uteful ldeaa may be found in: Edwin Greenlaw,
Harrison. J r., compares the two te accentuates the hollownesa of ~i• "Shakespeare'• Paatorala," SP, XIII (1g16), 111-54; Thomu P. Har·
"by a series of touches · · · and Spenser .. studau rison, Jr., "Aspecu of Primitivism"; Edgar C. Knowlton, "Nature and
epeare, f Primitlv!Jm in Shakespeare , . A 0
ideal," " Aip«U o f T xas Publlcation 4016 (tg4o), 57-'7'•, . . Shakespeare.'' PMU, U (1g56). 717-44; Richard Cody has begun what
in English, University o e. . .....;ve of " Shakespeare I own promisea to be the moat illuminating atudy (tee Ch. I, note 1 above).
zalo's vls1on as exp...- ' scrl · •
LoveJ'oy refen to Gon . e .. "On the Dt mana 51. T he Winter's Tale, Shaltespeore's Twenty-Three Plays and the Son·
. the [Monta1gne) passag • ti
extreme anupathy to . . h Histo"' of Ideas, Bal more, nets, ed. Thomu Marc Panott. New York, tg55. IV, iv, 85-97·
. . ms " Essays tn t e .' tal rim!
tlon of Romanuas ' bod' critique of sentlmen p • 51. V, I, 174~: Emerson, Journals, III (•B!Is). •07·
1g48• P· •s8n; that the play em to ;~I •Shakespeare's attitude '_'extreme
tivism Is beyond argument, but I e......,. a nmpatbellc figure.
ss· v, 1• • o&-, 5.
ation· Gonza o em •.,-- .,... 'd al 54· Boria Pasternak, "Tranllating Shakespeare," trana. Manya Harari, 1
antipathy" Is an exa~r. ' Sh kes..-.are h r eaffirming an t e Remember, Sketch for an Autobiography, New York, tgsg, p. 148.
' dence tndtcates that a r--
1 • 6
and all the ev . be n art and nature; Il, 1, ' 5-4.
resolution of the tens1on twee
•5· I , II, 149-5 1 •
16. I , i. ·· 8 •
.. ·6g· 1 il• 55~-4: I, 11 • • )-.,.
' 7· I , 11, .. • '
Chapter Ill
NOTES 393
in England, 1684-17¢. Gainesville, Florida, 1951; Philipa, "The Sixth
CHAPTER Ill Pastoral" (1709), lines 57-·44· EngliJh Poetry of the Eighteenth Cen-
tury, ed. Cecil A. Moor~. New York, 1955. p. 86.
. B Wright " Robert Beverley ll: Historian and Iconoclast," Tlhe 14. The Worlu of joseph Addison, New York, 1855, Vl, S•4·
1. LOUIS · • M . !)40 pp 2 86-511 ; ace a 10
Fint Gentlemen of Virginia, San ' annlo. 'Th~ Hlstory and Present 15. Worlu, VI, 557-8.
. h . · roduction to Robert Bever ey. f 16. Worlu, VI, 358-9·
Wng t s m.t . . . B Wright. Chapel Hill: Univenity o
State of J'Jrgrma, ed. LoUIS • • . I -16. 17. For the parallels between "The Sea10na" and Virgil's Eclogues ace
North Carolina Press. 1947, PP· Xl- xxxv, PP· 5 Elizabeth Nitchi~. Vergil and the English Poets, New York, 1919, pp.
a. Beverley. P· 17. 179-96: al10, Congl~ton , Theories of Pastoral, pp. 151- 1; Thom.on,
5· Beverley. P· 29~; P· [11~]; ~· :.ihe Anthropological Position of the "Spring," lin~• 95-107, English Poetry of the Eighteenth Century, ed.
4· See, e.g.. Maunce A. oo •V' • . .. William and Mary Quarterly, Moore, p. 576; Joseph Warton, Essay on Pope, quoted in Robert
Indian Tribes of Tidewater, 1rg1ma, The Indians Kilburn Root, The Poetical Career of Alexander Pope, Princeton,
Xlll ( 1 ) 27 40 and John R. Swanton,
tnd series. X 94~ • - ' S ' thsonian Institution Bureau of 1958, p . 58; The Literary Bible of Thomas jefferson, His Common·
of the Southeastern Unated States, ml . . Olli 6 Roy place Boolt of Philosophers and Poets, ~d. Gilbert Chinard, Baltimore,
I · U S Pnnung ce, 194 ·
American Ethnology BuI eun 157• . . . d th Indians in The 1918, p . 174.
di sses Beverley's atutude towar e
Harvey Pea~ce . ~ ~ Stud" of the Indian and the Idea of Civiliw· 18. On the inftuence of acienoe upon attitudes toward landscape ace
Savages of nmenca. .... ~ . a· I I. Walt~r J . Hippl~. The Beautiful, the Sublime, and the Picturesque,
tion, Baltimore, 1955. PP· 42-5; Beverley, P· 51 ' P· 5 ' P· 7 Carbondal~. Illinois, 1957; Cecil A. Moore, "The R~tum to Nature
5· Beverley, p. 156. in English Poetry," BackgTounds of English Literature, 17Q0-176o,
6. Beverley, p. 156; P· 155; P· ag6. ld b bly established the idea of Minneapolis, 1955: Samuel H. Monk, The Sublime, A Study of Critical
ag8· Myra Reyno s pro a rd Theories in XJIJII-Century England, Ann Arbor, 1g6o; Marjorie Hope
7· BeverI ey, P· • t" of the new attitude towa
Thom.on as the "first. adequate e;r:n;~eatment of Nature in Englis11 Nicol110n, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory, Ithaca, 1959; Henry
nature in her pioneenng study, . . etp PP· V. S. and Margaret S. Ogden, English Taste in Landscape in the Sev·
p p nd Wordswortla, Cb1cago, 1gog. ace ·
Poetry, Between o e a . . lagged behind the British in ~teoenth Century. Ann Arbor, 1955; Ernest Lee Tuveson, The lmag·
8ff· for the idea that Amencan wnters f ination as a Means of Grace, Berkeley, 1g6o; Samuel Johnaon, Lives
5 • E W 1 "The Development of the Love o
this regard, see Ma~ · ~e.!· AHR Ill ( 1897), 56-67: Beverley. of the English Poets, ed. George Birkbeck Hill, Oxford, 1905. I, 165-4:
Romantic Scenery m Amenca, , Em~TIOn, "Nature," Complete Works, 11 vols., Boston, 1885, l , 68.
p. 198. 19. Paul H . Johnstone concisely summarizes th~ history of the agrarian
16 celebration in "In Praise of Husbandry," Agricultural H istory. XI
8. Beverley, P· ag&-g; P· 5 · . { p radise in Primitive Tradition,"
9· Mircea Eliade, "The Yearrung or a C d Histo .... · The (1957). 8o-g5: Hallett Smith takea Sidney'• couplet (from "Diaprayse
. ) PP 155-67 and osmos an ·~·
Daedalus (Spnng, 1959 • . W'll rd R Trask New York, 1959· of a Courtly Life," 16o1) as a paradigm of the "pastoral ~thic" in
Myth of the Eternal Retusrnu, ::;n~.aro;in: . (dated June I, 1710) Elit.abethan Poetry: A Study in Conventions, Meaning, and Expres·
Anon A Letter from o · · · d
10. Writ;;" by a Swiss Gentleman to Hi~ :rie~d at
and ed.), quoted by Michael Kraus, • menca an
!e:;:e(~~p;:;: ~J::i
sion, Cambridge, Mass., 1951, pp. 1o-11.
ao. William Emp110n, Some Versions of Pastoral, London, 1950, p . 11.
11. For the "ethic of the middle link" ace A. 0. Lov~joy, The Great
. the Eighteenth Century." MVHR, XXII (1956). P· 490· H Chain of Being, A Study of the History of an Idea, Cambridge, Mus.•
m f dscape see Christopher ussey.
II. For the idea of the single art 0 1an h
The Picturesque, London, 1927: Kennel
c; k Landscape into Art,
ar •
1941, esp. pp. 18g-t07.
u . Hoxi~ Neale Fairchild, The Noble Savage, A Study in Romantic Nat·
Edinburgh. 1956, PP· 77-8. d An Essay on Criticism, eda. uralism, New York, 1918, and A. 0 . Lovejoy, ·'The Temporalizing of
It Alexander Pope. Pastoral Poetry an g6 the Chain of Being," The Great Chain, pp. 1~-87 .
. Audra and Aubrey Williams, London and New Haven. I 1, PP·
23. In "The Supposed Primitivian of Rousseau 's Discourse on lnequal·
~~~; Spence. Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters of Boolu and ity," Essays in the H istory of Ideas, New York, 1g6o, p . 51 .
Men, London, 1820, P· 2. 1p t 24. Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, London, 1785, Ill, 117- 18:
h ideas in T heories of Pastora oe ry
15. J. E.Congleton summarizes t e
NOTES Chapter !V
394 395
for Blalr'a influence in America aee William Charvat, The Origins ~I 59· Letter to Peter Carr, Aug. 10, 1787, Papns, XII, 15•
American Critical Thought, r8ro-r8JJ, Philadelphia, 1956; Jetlenon I .o. Letter to John Bannister, Jr., Oct. 15, 17a5, Popns, VIII, 655-'7·
letter, Feb. ao, 178.f, in reaponae to Madi110n'a request of Feb. 11, The 41. Constance Rourke, .America n Humor, .4 Study of the National Char·
Papers of Thomas jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, et al., Princeton, 1951, ~tef', New York, 1951, p . 15; Lawrence to Amy Lowell, Aug. 15, 1g16,
VI, S57· s.u: hereafter, Papers. • &n S. Foster Damon, Amy Lowell, .A Chronicle, Botton, 1955, pp.
. Works of George HeYbert, ed. F. E. Hutchinaon, Oxford, 1941, P· 1g6, 57o-'[ J.
15
The Poems and Letters of .Andf'et.cl Marvell, ed. H . M. Margoliouth, ••· Letter from van Hogendorp, Sept. a, &7as. Papers, VIII, 501-5; Jetler·
Oxford, 1952 , I, 17; Price, Observotions on lhe lmpoYU!nce. of the aon'a reply, Oct. 15, ,,as. VIII, 6s&-4-
.American Revolution, London, 17a5, pp. 57-8; JeJienon to Pnce, Feb. 43· Hofstadter, The AmeYicon Political Tradition and the Men Who
•· , 7a5, Papers, VII, 6so. . . Made It, New York, 194a. pp. 14- 5·
t6. I am indebted to Professor Roben Elias of Cornell Umvemty for call· H· Van Zandt, The Metaph ysical Foundations of .Amnicon History, The
ing my attention to The Golden .Age. Hague, 1959, chs. VIII, IX.
17. "Letter 1," Letters from on .American Farmn, ed. Warren Banon 45· Letter to John Randolph, Aug. 15, 1775, Papers, I, 14o-41; letter, ad·
Blake, Everyman'• Library, London, 1911. dressee unknown, Mar. 1a, •795· The W ritings of Thomas Jefferson,
1a. Blake, " Introduction" to Cttvec:aur'a Letten, P· u. ed., Andrew A. Lipscom b, Washington, D.C., 1903. IX, .u-6; lette.r to
19. " Letter I," "Letter II." . . . Monsieur D'lvemois, Feb. 6, '795· Writings, IX, 197-501. For a more
0
In "Letter I" the minister defines the Farmer's mentahty m Lock1an complete survey of letters on this theme, see Van Zandt, Metaphysical
5 . "h ..
terms: "your mind is what we called at Yale College, e ~ya, a Foundations, pp. 18g-g4.
Tabula rasa, where spontaneous and strong impressions ~re delineated 46. Letter to Charles Wilson Peale, Aug. 10, aa1 1, Writings, XIII, 78-So.
with facility"; Lawrence, Studies in CltJSSic .American Literature, New 47· Le~ter to ~njamin Austin, Jan. 9· 1a16, Writings, XIV, 5s7-g,_
York, • 9~ •· ch. 111; "Letter 11." 4a. Gnswold dascusses Jetlerson's "incomplete" and "reluctant" conversion
51 . "Letter III"; Lawrence, Studies, ch. lll; "Letter II." .. to manufactures in Farming and Democracy, p. 55: see ai!O Van Zandt,
. "No great manufacturers" in "Letter III"; "Letter II"; "Letter V111. Metaphysical Foundations, pp. 205-57, and Joseph Dorfman, The Eco·
51
. The Natural Bridge Ia described in "Query V," Notes on the State of nomic Mind in American Ciuilitation, t6o6-1865, New York, 1946, I,
55
Virginia, ed. William Peden, Chapel Hill: University of North ~~ro· 435-46.
lina Preas, , 955, p. a4; Locke'• Essay Conceming th~ True. Onganol 49· Merrill D. Peter110n, The jefferson Image in the .American Mind, New
Extent and End of Civil Government, in The Engluh Ph•losophers York, ag6o, pp. 4<45-6.
from Bacon to Mill, ed. Edwin A. Burtt, New York, 1959, P· 411. so. Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The .America n West as Symbol ond
54· "Query XI.'' P· 95· Myth, Cambridge. Mass., •950, p. 123.
Jetler!On to Adams, Jan. u, 1a12, The Adllms·JeOerson Letters, The 51. The Selected Letters of john Keats, ed. Lionel Trilling, New York,
55
. Complete Correspondence Between Thomas JeDerson and .Abigail and 1951, p. 2a; J effer!On to William Short, Nov. a8, 11h4, Writings, XIV,
john .Adams, ed. Lester J . Cappon, 1 vols., Chapel Hill, •959• 11, 191; 214.
Adams to Jetlenon, Feb. 5, aau, ll, tg6 (". .. I would rather be the
poorest Man in Fra.nce or England . . . than the proudest King • • ·
of any Tribe of Savages in America"); "Query VI." CHAPTER IV
!6 Jetlenon to Adama, June 17, 1a15, .Adams-Jefferson Letters, II, 555·
: Renato Poggioll. "The Oaten Flute," Harvard Library Bulletin, XI I. James Boswell, Life of Johnson, Oxford Standard Authors Edition,
57 London, 1955• p. 704.
(Spring, 1957), 15o-55; aee al110 A. Whitney Griswold'• analysia of "The
Jefferson ian Ideal" in Forming ond Democracy, New H~ven, 1951, PP· 2 . Boulton's letter to Watt, H . W. Dickin110n, Matthew Boulton Cam·
1&-46; Griswold does not invoke the concep~. of pastora~&sm, .but he ar· bridge, •937· p. 11 5, quoted in lhe Papers of Thomas }effers~n, ed.
gues (p. 5o) that to Jelfenon agriculture had a aoc&ologtcal rather Juli an P. Boyd , et at., Princeton. 1952, IX. 401n; Jefferaon to Thorn-
than an economic value." liOn, Apr. 22, 1786, Papers, IX, 40<>-401.
sa. Emp!On, Some Yersions of Pastoral, p. II; p. 15· 3· Smilh, An Inquiry into the Nature at~d Causes of the Wealth of
NOTES
Clwptl'r IV
Nations, ed. Edwin Cannan, Modem Library Edition, New York, 1957, wu h'mgton, D.c., go XI 397
pp. 546-8; Adams letter to Franklin, Aug. 17, 178o, The Works of 1 5 . .
ners, and Politics in th; unit::~· M~chael Chevalier, Society, Man ·
john tfdam.s, Boston , a8sz. VII, 147·
John William Ward, New York ;tes. Letters on North America, ed.
4· On the state of American manufactures in •790• ICC the aurvey made
by Alexander Hamilton and Tench Coxe in preparation for the HRe· '5· For the deciaive place of th ' ' 1, P: 14J.
manticism aee M H Ab e mechanacal-organic distinction in ro·
port on the Subject of Manufactures," Industrial and Commercial ' . . rama, The Mirror and th L
Correspondence of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Arthur Harrison Cole, Th eory and the Critical Trad't· N e amp: Romantic
H rd ' ton, ew York 19
Chicago, 1918; Samuel Rezneck, "The Rise and Early Development owa M. Jones, "The Influence of Eur . ' 55· ~P· pp. •stiff;
of the Industrial Consciousneu In the United States, •76o-185o," ]our· Century America " AL VII ( ) opean Ideas 10 Nineteenth·
nal of Economic and Business History, IV (Aug., 1951), 784-811; a Theory of Ro~antldam," P~~A· ~~"J:; Morae Peckham, "Toward
Arthur M. Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants and the American Poem Sacred to the Memory of S.' I (l95l), 5-15; Thomaon, "A
pies, In The English Pht'l ph ar saac Newton"; Berkeley, Princi·
Revolution, 176J-1776, New York, 1918; George S. White, Memoir of oso ers from B t M '/
Burtt, New York 19• p aeon ° 1 I, ed. Edwin A.
Samuel Slater, Philadelphia, 1856. .. • .,9• . 577·
5· Jacob Bigelow, Elements of T echnology, Talten Chiefly from a Course •4· Art and Artists," reprinted from th B ltJ .
of Lectures . . . on the Application of the Sciences to the Useful 5· •Sst, in The Uncollected Pod e droo yo Datly Advertiser, April
Emory Holloway New York rylan Prose of Walt Whitman, ed.
Arts, Boston, 1819; on Bigelow's coinage, ICC Dirk J . Struik, Yanltee • • 19111, • 1141""7
Science in the Maling, Boston, 1948, pp. 16g-?o; for the word "in· •5· T homas Boyd, Poor John Fitch .
York, 1935· pp. •7S-g, and Merrilllnvmtor of the Stea~boat, New
dustrialism," ICC above, pp. 174ff.
6. The only detailed study of Coxe's thought is Harold Hutcheson's tory of the United States D . J ensen, The New Natton, A H is·
York, •9so. pp. 152-~. urang the Confederation, 1781- 1789, New
Tench Coxe, A Study in America n Economic Development, Johns H op·
kina Univenity Studies in Historical and Poli tica l Science, No. t6, 16. M oma · u· dtacuuing
· hia own resolu tion to restrict
Baltimore, 1958; Mem oirs of john Quincy Adams, ed. Charles F. holden; The Records of lh F d I C . the auffrage to free.
F d e e era onvenlton of 178 ed
Adams, IV, 570; Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American arran ' New Haven, 1911 , II, IIOtff. 7• . Max
Civiliuztion, r~I86J, New York. 1946, I , 154· •7· Bagnall, The Textile Industries I
7· For Coxe's rela tion to the Federal Constitution, see Hutcheton, Tench
tures," addreu delivered bef ' h 110; Everett, "American Manufac·
of New York, October •• to8re toe ~merican Inatitute of the City
Coxe, pp. 49-76, and the "introductory remarks" to Coxe's various 0 . ... 5•· rattans and sp h .
papers in his own collection, A Jliew of the United States, in a Series ccastons, Bolton 18so II . i thi . eec es on Jlanous
of Papers Written at Jlarious Times Between the Years 1787 and 1794• the parades in ceiebrati~n ~i"m' n f • add~eu Everett alao describes
Co , anu actu res m 1788 p 88
Philadelphia, •794· a8. xe • part in preparing th ' . .
e repor t may have been
8. tf Jliew, pp. 5S-41; unlesa otherwise noted all quotations from Coxe generally recognized· Julian p Bo d h greater than Is
are taken from A Jliew, pp. 1-56.
granted acoeu to
_,_
tb e
Co . y • t e only scholar who has been
xe manuscripts """'rts th .
g. Hugo Arthur Meier, "The Technological Concep t in American Social .....6 t in Coxe'a handwri tin H ' ·-r- e exutence of a
port on th S b' g ( utcheson, Tench Coxe, p. viii)· "Re·
History, t75o-t86o," unpubl. dias., U. of Wisconsin, 1950; J eannette e u Ject of Manufact ures" 1 d 1 · 1 '
Mirsky and Allan Nevins, The World of Eli Whitney, New York, 1951; Co~spondence ed Cole ' n us na and Commercial
in the respo~ t . H '.,P· 1.47:. the change in attitude ia reftected
Charles Sanford, The Quest for Paradise: Europe and the A merican o anu ton s tnquiry e g Elish Col
Moral Imagination, Urbana, 1961, pp. •55-75· on the conditions in the Co t' ' . ., . a t, reporting
use of Machines in En Jan nnec tcut ~oolen mdustry: "The present
10. "Letten of Phineas Bond, British Consul at Philadelphia, To the
vantages over us - Th' g d gave thear Manufacturers immense ad·
Foreign Offic~ of Great Britain, 1787, 1788, 178g." Annual Report of as we expect soon to rem d .. 1 d .
the America n Historical Association for the Year r8')6, Washington, Commercial Correspondence ed Col · e Y ; n ustraal and
19 lnd t . I ' . e, p. 10.
D.C., 18g7, I, 5 15~56 ; William R. Bagnall, The T extile Industries of . us na and Commercial Correspondence ed Col
the United States, Cambridge, Mass., 18g5. I, 70; White, Memoir of 10. "Letter VI," Essays A esthetical and Philos~phical eL p.das8.
57-"- ' on on, 19 10, pp.
Samuel Slater.
11. The journal of William Maclay, 1789-1791, New York, 1917, p . 151. II. Critical and Miscellaneous Essa s N
n.d., III, _ . y ' ew York (Belford, Clarke & Co.),
11. J efferson to Lithson, J an. 4· a8os. W ritings of Thomas jefferson, 5 50
II. For the development of the ~~ .
' .arxaan concept of alienation from
Clwpt,.r !V
110on:s 399
Hegel's theory (Entfremdung), sec Herbert Marcusc, Reason and 50. "Our T~m c:s," Dem. Rev., XVI (March, 1s 45), 155_41 ; Alexis de
Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, New York, pp. s•f T ocquevtlle, Democracy in America, ed. Phillips Bradley, New York,
and pp. 275f; Fromm, Ma rx's Concept of Man, with a translation ~946, II, ~~; Pope, " Martin Scriblc:rus, or, Of the Art of Sinking
from Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manwcripts by T. B. Bot· tn Poetry, ch. XI, published with the second volume of Pope'•
tomore, New York, tg6t, p . ._.. prose ~~rk•: but possibly written by john Arbuthnot; " Poor In·
15. Marx, "Alienated Labor," in Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man, p. 9.5; vcntors, Set. Am., II (Aug., 1847), 58g.
Emerson, "Ode, Inscribed to W. H. Channing," Complete Wor.ls, 11 5'· Charlea Caldwell, "Thought.a on the Moral and Other Indirect In·
vola., Boston, 1885, IX, 7!; Emerson, "Historic Note• of Life and Let· o~:_~cea of Rail·Roads," New England Magazine, II (April, 1851),
ten in New England," Wor.ls, X. s•o-11. tvv-,oo.
2•. Eros and Civiliz.ation, A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud, Boston, 52. "Excitement of Curiosi ty," Sci. Am., II (Oct., 1846). u; Henry
1955; Sartor Resortw, The L ife and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdroclth, T . Tuckerman, "The Philosophy of Travel," Dem. Rev., XIV
ed. Charlea Frederick Harrold, New York, •9!7• p. 164. (May, •844), 527-59: HWlt's Merchants' Magazine, III (Oct., 18 o),
4
15. There ia no adequate survey of the impact of industrialization upon 2 87·
American thought in the period before the Civil War; ace Arthur A. !5· Am. j. of Sci., XXXVUI ( t84o), 176-97.
Eldrch, Jr., The Idea of Proguss in America, z8rj- I86o, New York, S4- "'~ne U~Jit~ and Plcasurea of Science," Sci. Am., II (Aug., 1S.7), 5s 1;
1944 (although Eldrch'a evidcn.cc auggcsu a cloac aflinity between the .~•pley, Ratl Road to the Pacifi.e," Harbinger, IV (Dec.., 1846), 5o-5t.
idea of progress and technological development, he does not define 55· T_he Telescope," Sci. Am., V (Feb., 1850), 18•; "Improved Hay-Maker,"
the relationship); Marvin M. Fisher, "From Wilderness to Workshop: Set. Am., II (March, 186o, new seriea), 116.
The Response of Foreign Obscrven to American Industrialization, s6. Chari~ Fraser, "The Moral lnBuence of Steam," Hunt'a Merchants'
•Bso-186o," Wlpubl. dias., University of Minnesota, 1958, "The Icon· Magazme, XIV (June, 1846), 4gg-515•
ology of Industrialism, 18so-186o," AQ, XIII (Fall, 1g61), 547-64; 57· "The Commencement at Yale College," New England Mag., I (Nov.,
Hugo A. Meier, "American T echnology and the Nineteenth-Century •Bs t), 407- 14; "The Poetry of Discovery," Sci. Am., v (Nov., 18 g),
4
World," AQ, X (1958), u &-so: "Technology and Democracy, t8oo- 77: J.. ]. Greenough, "The New York Industrial Pala~;· Am. Poly·
186o," MJ'HR, XLIII (1957), 618-40; Cha.rles L. Sanford, "T he In· techmc journal, II (1855), 157-&.
tellectual Origins and New-Worldliness of American Industry," }EH, 58. "American Ma~hinery- Maueawan," Sci. Am., V (April, t8 o), 155;
6
XVlll (1958), 1- 16; J ohn E. Sawyer, "The Social Basil of the Ameri· .~aymond Wllhams, Culture and Society, 178o-r9J0, New York, 1g&;
can System of Man ufacturing," }EH, XIV (19.5.,, 56•-79; George .. Th~u~hu on Labor," The Dial, I (April, 18••). 497-5 1g.
Rogen Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, r8rj-r86o, New York, 59· Stausua and Speculations Concerning the Pacific Railroad " Put·
1951; Rush Welter, "The Idea of Progress in America: An Essay in na'?'s, II (Sept., 18.55), 170-77: J. Blunt, "Tbe Coal Buslne~~' of the
l deaa and Method," ]HI, XVI (1955), 401- 1,5. .~mted States," Hun t's Merchants' Magazine, IV (Jan., 1841 ), 6J-7t.
16. "Defence of Mechanical Philosophy," NAR, XXXIII (July, 1851), 40. Knowledge, Inventors and Inventions," Sci. Am., v (May, 18so).
111- 56. 285: ~wbanlt quoted in Sci. Am., V (Feb., t85o), '711·
17. Anna Bezanson, "The Early Usc of the Term ' Industrial Revolution,'" 41. Repn.nted from the Times,. Littell's Living Age, XXVII (Nov., 1sso),
Quarterly journal of Economics, XXXVI ( tgu), !45-9: George Nor· 355- 5. Marsh, Address Delrvered before the Agricultural Society of
man Clark, The Idea of the Indwtrial Revolution, Glasgow, 1955; Rutland County, Rutland, Vt., 1848.
Herbert Heaton, "Clio's New Overalls," Canadian journal of Eco· 41. "The Mechanical Genius of the Ancients Wrongly Directed," Sci. .tfm.
nomics and Political Science, XX (1954), 467-77· II (June, 1847), 501. '
.S. I believe that the phrase "the industrial revolution incarnate" is J. H . 45· Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, III (Oct., 184o), 295; "American Genlua
Clapham's, but I cannot now lind it in his An Economic History of and Enterprise," Sci. Am., 11 (Sept., 1s 47), 597.
Modern Britain, Cambridge, 1926-58; Emerson, Worlts, II, 55· 44· Lanman, Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, III (Oct., 184o), 175-g ; this
5
ag. " M. de T ocqueville on Democracy in America." Edinburgh Review, article (and other covert reactions to technological change) discussed
October, 184o, in Dissertations and Discwsions: Political, Philosophical, by Bernard Bowron, Leo Marx, and Arnold Rose In "Literature and
and Historical, Boston, 1865, II, 148. Covert Culture,'' AQ, IX (Winter, 1957), 577-86, reprin ted in some·
lo. I
NOTES ChapleT V
.,oo
what reviaed form in Studies in American Culture, eds. j oaeph J. !I· Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. E. W. Emenon and W. E.
Kwiat and Mary C. Turpie, Minneapoli~, 19~, PP· .8~-_95·. Forbes, Boston, 1!)09-l.f, IV (t857), 107; VI (t845), 397·
·ner "The Responsibility of Mmd m a Ctvthzauon of Ma· 4· Journals, IV ( t857), t88; Worlts, I , 14-17; Edwards, "Penonal Nar·
45• Perry MI ' h )"
chinea," American Scholar, XXXI (Winter, 1g61), 1- 19; C eva ter, rative," in jonathan Edwards, eda. Clarence H . Fault and Thomas H .
Pousain, Bremer, quoted by Marvin Fisher, '' From Wilderness to Work· Johnson, American Writen Seriea, New York, 1935. pp. 6o, 65: Perry
shop:' pp. 86-7: (aee note 15). Miller, "From Edwards to Emenon," Errand into the Wilderness,
6. "Opening of the Northern Railroad," remarks made at ?rafton and Cambridge, Ma•.• 1956, pp. t84-104: George H . Williama, Wilderness
4
Lebanon, N. H ., The Writings and Speeches of Dante/ Webster, and Paradise in Christian Thought, New York, 1g6t.
Bolton, 1go , IV, 105- 17; Clarence Mondale, "Dan iel Webster and 5· Worlts, I , 16; aee Journals, V (18!19), 31o-11 .
3
Technology," AQ, XIV (Spring: 1g61), 37-47. . .. . .. 6. Worlts, I, !14!1-?1: all quotationa that follow are from thia reviled
. Taylor, Transportation Revolutron, p . 79: Orvts, Tnp to Vermont, version of the lecture Emenon had read before the Mercantile Li·
47
Harbinger, V (July, 1847). 5<>-51. brary Aaoc:iation of Boston on February 7• 1844, and publiahed in the
8. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance, 1851, ch. III. final number of the Dial, April, 1844.
! 9
. Merle Curti, "The Great Mr. Locke: America's Philosoph~r, t783-
t86t," Hunt. Lib. Bulletin, XI (April, 1937), 107-51; Louts H~,
7· J ames. The American, The New York Edilion, 1907, ch. II.
8. Han Crane, " Modem Poetry," reprinted in The Collected Poems of
The Lil>nal Tradition in America, An Interpretation of Amencan Hart Crane, ed. Waldo Frank, New York, 1946, p . 177: G. Ferris
Political Thought Since the Revolution, New York, 1955. Cronkhite, "The Transcendental Railroad," NEQ, XXIV (1951), 3o6-
50. John W . Ward, Andrew ]acltson: Symbol. for an ~~e, New Yo~k, 1955;
:t8; Paul Ginestier, The Poet and the Machine, trana. Martin B. Fried·
Marvin Meyers, The ]acluonian Persuasron: Polrtrcs and Belref, New man, Chapel Hill, 1961; Peter Viereck, "The Poet in the Machine
York, 196o. . . Age," ]HI, X (1949), 88-10!1; Jeremy Warburg, "Poetry and Indus·
.. Bl>rn, American Landscape Painting, New Hav~n, 1948; Vugtl Barker: trialism: Some Refractory Material In Nineteenth-Century and Later
5
American Painting: History and Interpretation, New York, 1950, Engliah Verae," MLR, LIII (1958), 16o-']o: Emerson, Works, II, !125-
Elizabeth McCausland, George Inness, An American Landscape 4!1: Works, IU, 9-45: see eap. II, 541-5, III, 13.
Painter, r82J-IB94• New York, 1946. 9· The j acobean writer is unknown: Howard Schultz, "A Fragment of
51. Read, The New Pastoral, Philadelphia, 1855· ~ · vi. . J acobe.an Song in Tboreau'a Walden," MLN, LXIII (1948), 171-1;
. "American Manufactures," Hunt'a Merchants M_agazrne, V (1841), Thoreau'a itemized budget in "Economy."
55
141 ; "The Memphia Convention," DeBow's Revrew (March, 1850), to. Thoreau on wildness, "Spring": Mlrcea Eliade, Cosmos and History,
117- 3•· Th e Myth of the Eternal Return, trana. Willard R . Truk, New York,
54· "What II the Golden Age," Sci. Am., V (Dec., 1849), tog. 1959. pp. t&-1 7: note: Renato Poggioli, "The Oaten Flute," HarvtJrd
Library Bulletin, XI (Spring, 1957), p. 151.
11. Carlyle, "Signs of the Times," see above, pp. 170ff; Thoreau, " Economy":
for Eli Terry and the clockmaking industry, see Dirk .J. Struik, Yankee
Science in the Mailing, p. 147: for mechanization and concepts of time.
CHAPTER V
aee S. Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command, A Contribution to
1. Philip Young, "Fallen from Time: The Mythic Rip Van Winkle," Anonymous History, New York, 1948, pp. 77ff; Hans Meyerhoff, Time
TIN Kenyon Rntiew, XXII (Autumn, 1g6o). 551; Frederick I . Car· in Literature, Berkdey, 1g6o, esp. pp. 8&-ttg; Lewia Mumford, Tech·
penter wrveys variantl, " 'The American Myth': Paradile (To Be) nics and Civilization, New York, •934·
Regained," PMLA , LXXIV (Dec., 1959). 5gg-6o6: R . "'!:B. .Lewis, 11. For Thoreau's failure as a farmer, see Leo Stoller, ''Thoreau'a Doc·
The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy, and Trad1t1on m the trine of Simplicity:· NEQ, XXIX (Dec., 1956), 445-61; the ice crews,
Nineteenth Century, Chicago, 1955; F. 0 . Matthiessen, "The Need "The Pond in Winter"; "The Ponda."
for Mythology," American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the •!I· "The Ponds." "Brute Neighbors," "The Pond in Winter"; for Tho·
Age of Emerson and Whitman, New York, 1941, pp. 61&-!1'· reau's a ttiiUde toward "fact" and "truth," see Perry Miller, "Thoreau
t . Emenon, Complete Worlts, u vola., Bolton, 1815, I, 19, 45· in the Context of International Romantlciam," NEQ, XXXIV (June,
Chapter V
•J02 NOTES
19lh), 147- 59 and Shei'Uall Paul, The Shores of America, ThoreGu's Language," Shooting Gn Elephant, New Yorlt, 1950; Sigmund Freud,
Inward Exploration, Urbana, 1958. Civilization and Its Discontents, London, 1957. pp. Sf.
14. Hawthorne, The A merican Noteboolu, ed. Randall Stewart, New 15. Typee, ch. 16; "Hawthorne and His Moaaes," p. 415.
Haven, 1951, p. 1o6. 14. Tomrno "unmanned," ch. 5-1; the psychological implication• of Mel·
15. American Noteboolu, pp. 54- 5. ville'a aymbolism have been diacussed by a number of critics; I am
16. American N oteboolu, p. 41; for an earlier interpretation of "Ethan particularly indebted to H enry A. Murray, "In Nomine DiaboU,"
Brand" In relation to the Berkahire notel, lee Leo Marx, "The Ma· NEQ. XXIV (Dec., 1951), 4!15- 51, but I think Murray paya insufficient
chine in the Garden," NEQ. XXIX (Mar., 1956), •7-{1· attention to Iahmael'a rOle; see Newton Arvin, Herman Melville,
17. Paradise Lost, IX, 591-1, and X, ao6o-gs. The Poems of John M ilton, American Men of Letten Series, New York, 1950, for the fuUett
ed. Jamet Holly Hanford, New Yorlt, 1955; the fable of Prometheus, Freudian interpretation.
and especially the amtrut between Prometheua and Epimetheu1, of· 15. White·Jaclcet, ch. 8g; for Melville's reading in Carlyle, lee Merton B.
fera a striking analogue to th.e pastoral design. I:pimetheua, ~~ Sealts, " Melville'a Reading, A Checlt· Liat of Boob Owned and Bor-
name impliet a conoe.rn with the paat, waa comautted ~ ~rad1uon, rowed, III," HonHJrd Library Bulletin, Ill (1949), 119-!10, itema au-s.
to a passive and almolt feminine celebration of orgamc1sm. But 16. Moby-Diclc, cha. ao, 1, 41.
Prometheus, who stole lire from the gods, waa oriented toward the 17. Moby-Diclc, cha. 56, 35·
future and a technology in the service of man. His att.itude waa ag· 18. Emeraon, Works, I, a6.
gresaivcly humanistic; Epimetheua waa reverent toward the ~ The 19. Ch . 41; ch. 42.
modern interest in the Promethea.n myth must be undentood an rda· so. Cha. ,.a, 155.
tion to the development of technology in general and lire in particular. ,a. The "complete man," ch. 1o8; cb. 41.
The most atrilting parallel ia the contraat between Ahab and Iahmul 51· Cbs. 55· 86.
in Moby-Diclc; Ahab ia a perverted or, in Richard Chaae'1 phrase, a u Ch. lO.
"sick Prometheua"; Richard Chase, HermGn Melville, New York, 1949, 54· Ch. 114.
and M. 0 . Percival, A Reading of Moby-Diclc, Chicago, 1950. See alao 55· Chs. 154, 1!15· 156.
Gaston Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire, trans. Alan C. M. 56. Clement to Howells, Oct. 24, 1874, Ma rie Twain-Howells Letters, The
Ross. Boston, 1~. Correspondence of Samuel L. Clemens and W illiGm D. H owells, 1872-
18. Francis D. KJingender discu11e1 John Martin'a ioBuenoe in Art Gnd 1910, eda. Henry Naah Smith and William M. Gibson, Cambridge,
the lndwtrial Revolution, London, 1947, pp. ao~. 1ga-6; Cole'a Masa., 1g6o, I , 54·
"plagiarism" Ia deiCribed in Virgil Barker, AmericGn Painti~g:. History 57· For the chronology of composition I follow Walter Blair, "When
and lnter~>Tetation, New York, 1950, p. 417; for Hawthorne 1 Imagery. Was Huckleberry Finn Written?" AL, XXX (March, 1958), 1-15, and
see Leo Marx, "The Machine in the Garden," NEQ. p. 57n. . Marlt Twain and H uclc Finn, Berkeley, 196o.
19. Herman Melville, "Hawthorne and Hia Moaaes," 6nt published lD 58. Life on the Mississippi, ch. 9·
The Literary World, 1850, The Portable Melville, ed. Jay Leyda, New 59· Innocents, ch. u; Roul{hing It, ch. a~; Innocents, ch. 10; Roughing It,
Yorlt, 1951, p. 418; for a discussion of the cultural climate evoked by ch. 17; this is an abbreviated version of Leo Marx, "The Pilot and
Hawthorne's sentimental paatoraliJm, 1ee E. Dougla1 Branch, The the Passenger: Landscape Conventions and the Style of H uclckberry
Sentimental Years, 18J~I86o, New York, 1954. and Herbert R . Brown, Finn," AL, XXVIII (May, 1956), u g-46; for a aomewhat different
The SentimtntGl Novel in AmericG, 178~186o, Durham, N. C., 1940. interpretation, 1ee Roger B. Salomon, Twain and the 11714ge of His-
20. Quoted by Mark Van Doren, Nathaniel HGwthorne, American Men tory, New Haven, ag6a, esp. pp. 1~.
of Letten Series, New York, 1949, p. 158. 40. Clemena to Howells, July 5• 1875, Marlt Twain- Howells Letters, I, gt.
11. Melville to Hawthorne, .June a (?), 18!)1, The Letters of Herman Mel· 41. Ch. 1; thia reading of Huclcleberry Finn draws upon Henry Nash
ville, eds. Merrell R. Davia and William H . Gilman, New Haven, Smith, Marlt Twain, The Developm ent of a Writer, Cambridge,
1g6o, pp. 11~1. Copyright © 1g6o by Yale Univenity Pre:aa and uaed Masa., ag6t.
by pcrmiuion of the publisher. 41. Ch . g.
u . Emeraon, Worlu, I , 55~; George Orwell, " Politics and the English 43· Chs. 11, 18, 19.
404 N OTES Afln'1uortl
44· Smith, Mark Twain, ch. 6; A Tramp Abroad, ch. 14. AJoiE R WO RD
45· Ch. 16.
46. Ch. 31. 1. Leo Marx. "Hawtho m e and Eme t·son: Sllld ies in 1he Impact of the Mac hine
47· Hemingway, Green HilLs of Africa, New York, 1935, ch. 1; for a more Tech nolO!,')' o n tl te American Writer: Ph.D. di$S., l·l;trvard Uni•·ersit)'. t 9:;o.
complete statement of the case against the ending, see my essay, " Mr. Th e degree is in 1he "History of American Ci•~liL<IIion ." o r what is less grancily
Eliot, Mr. Trilling, and Huckleberry Finn," American Scholar, XXII called. :H mos1 uniw rsities, "Am<'rican studies."
(Autumn, 1953), 413- 40. 2. So far as I can recall. Mason did not take exception to the po int. nor did
48. Tony Tanner, "The Lost America - T he Despair of Henry Adams and Joseph Sc humpe te r, whn ctelivcred a gut'St lecture o n 1he "crcalive clesu·uc-
Mark Twain," Modem Age, V (Summer, 1961), 199-510, reprinted in tion " c haract.e tisti c of unco nsmti ned marke t econo mics.
Mark Twain, A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Henry Nash Smith, 3· Edm und Wi lson, rn1ew of 71~r Lost oftltr PrmJinl'inL<. b)• Ma.xwell Geismcr. T he
Englewood Cliffs. N. J ., 1g65. Nl'w Yorke~·, 23 ( t947). :>7·
49· Trilling, The Liberal Imagination, Essays on Literature and Society, 4· I am thinki ng of absu·acl te rms li ke industrialiwtion. industrial capitalism, mech·
New York, 1950; Chase, The American Novel and Its Tradition, New rmitntion. urlxmizatimt, mtiortalizatio11. modemization, tl'dmologi.wl iwtovtllioll,
York, 1957; Lewis, The American Adam. e tc.: here I want to acknuwleclgc a large de bt to Karl Polanyi. who made an
50. Ch. 1; Donald Pizer has criticized this interpretation of Norris in invaluable contribution I n my pr~ject du ring a week he spe nt l\1th our
"Synthetic Criticism and Frank Norris; Or, Mr. Marx, Mr. Taylor. research semi nar a t th e Universi tv of Minneso ta in t 953- 54, and for his
and The Octop us," AL, XXXIV Gan., 1963), 552- 41. extraordi nary book, ThP Grmt Tnmsfonnation, New Yo rk: Rine hart, t 94 7.
51. Henry to Brooks Adams, June 18, 1903· quoted in J. C. Levenson, .>· In elucidaling thL~ bc)dy of imagt>s. I found th e icono logical me tl1od devel-
The Mind and Art of Henry Adams, Botton, 1957, p . 500. oped by Erwin Panofsky imnt ensely suggestive. See Studies in lconologJ·;
5•· Ch. 5· Humanistic Themes in the Art ofthr Rm ais.mnce. New York: Oxford University
55· Ch. 15- Press, 1939. I also be nefited fro m tlw e xample of Francis D. Kli nge nder, Art
54· Henry to Charles F. Adams, Jr., quoted in Ernest Samuels, The Young and tiU! Industrial Revolution. London: Royle Publication s. 19-!7·
Henry Adams, Cambridge, Mass., 1948, p. 150. G. I la ter induded a ve rsion of this a nalysis in 71te Marlti11e i11 tltt Garden. p.265ff:
55· James, The Am erican Scene, ed. W. H . Auden, New York, 1946, for the link tO t\1/oby-Dick see p. :~ol:!.
PP· 15-18. 7· Brian Atte ber y has wrine n an cssar abou1 tl1 eo retical issues th at figure in my
56. American Scene, pp. 38-«. cor responde nce with Smith: "American Swdies: A Not So Unscie ntilic
Me tho d," Amniwtt Quartl'rly 4H ( I!J\)6) . 3 t6-43.
8. l linally categorized and compressed tn)' examples of this rhe toric-1 had col-
lected eno ugh to fill a srmt.ll mcmo).,rraph-in a twc m.y-pagt: segment ( pp.
CHAPTER VI
tg<>-:wg). follmvccl by a mo re thorough ana lysis (pp. 209-20) of Daniel We b-
1. Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, ch. 54· Quoted by permission st.er's strikinKl)' ambivale nt. use nf the rhewric.
of the Houghton Milllin Company. g. For the co ncept of ·•roo t metaphor" I was inde bted to Stephen C. Pepper.
1 . The Buchanan's lawn, ch. 1; the valley of ashes, ch. 1 . The quotations World Hypotheses, A Study iu E11idmu. Be rkeley: University of California Press.
from The Great Gatsby are by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons. 1!:)4.2.
3· Ch. •; cb. 3· to. It tirst appeared in the New England Quarterly, and is reprinted in Leo Marx,
4· Ch. 6. The Pilot Gild the Passenger: EsMzys 011 Litemturt , Technology, and Culture in the
5· Ch. 1; ch. 1; ch. 9· Unitnl State.!, New York: Oxfo rd University Press, t g!l8, pp. t 13-26.
6. Ch. 6. lt . ln the ope ning line of the pastOral pnt>m. "Direclive ...
t2. 1n the Preface to his collected poe ms. "The Figure a Poem Makes."
t :1.111 the ope ning c hapte r. "Econ(>tn)':· nf Waldm.
t-J. See a how. p.t 16 fT. Fo r a recent t' laboration of this a rgume nt see Leo Ma rx,
I • ~ 1 }(\ y ,1- 'The Do minatio n of Na wre ;mel the Redefinitio n of ProgTt>ss:· in Progres.r:
J·itrt or lllttSiou1 eds. Leo Marx a nd Bruct· Ma,dish. Ann Arbor: Uuiversity of
Michigan Press. t9g!:!, pp. 20 t- t 8.
I I
NOTES