Orphic Sayings (1840-1842)

AUTHOR: Alcott, Amos Bronson

PUBLICATION: "Orphic Sayings." The Dial  Vol. I no. 1 (July 1840): 85-98; Vol. I no. 3 (January 1841): 351-361; Vol. II no. 4 (April 1842): 423–425. Collected at: www.alcott.net/cgi-bin/archive/alcott/Orphic_Sayings.html

SUMMARY (Bryn Skibo, revised Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

These short texts provide the metaphysical foundation of Alcott’s attitudes towards the natural world and other-than-human beings. Though he does not engage explicitly with non-humans, except in one simile that describes creeping “like a beast from his burrow,” Alcott does address the issue of matter and bodies. Nature, humans, and God are spiritually united, but the assumption of a hierarchy that extends from God to the Human to Nature persists. However, Alcott references nature in two distinct ways: one empirical and the other ideal. There is an ontological difference between empirical nature and ideal Nature (or God) to which corresponds, approximately, the difference between the human body and the soul. Hierarchy pertains only to the empirical realm and since all matter is ensouled, differences between humans and non-humans give way to spiritual  unity.

“Orphic Sayings” consists of a series of 100 titled aphorisms that offer a vitalist account of nature: “[A]ll is vital, nothing Godless” (OS I. 2) as Alcott makes clear in the very first aphorism. In this account, empirical nature or the “visible world” is the expression of ideal Nature or Spirit, which suffuses everything: “polarity resolved into unity” (OS XXXI) as Alcott writes. “[T]he all unfolds and reappears in each. Spirit is all in all”  (OS XXXIII) as another of his aphorisms has it. In this conception, science and philosophy pertain only to the empirical and cannot penetrate the spiritual realm. Doing so is the prerogative of “intuition,” “instinct,” “enthusiasm,” or “faith” (these terms are quasi-synonyms for Alcott). While formulating this ontological and epistemological program, the sayings explain the ethical and moral implications of“living and being in eternity with God [or Nature]”  (OS I. 9) both in general terms and with respect to everyday actions and practices. For example, Alcott prizes agricultural work (though not industrial farming): “Man discourses sublimely with the divinities over the plough, the spade, the sickle, marrying the soul and the soil by the rites of labor”  (OS LXVI). In this vein, one of the most important aspects of his thought is that nature only seems different and distinct if approached under the guidance of rational understanding (the senses, logic, analytic thinking). If contemplated aesthetically (through intuition or synthetic thinking), the identity of all with all becomes apparent: “[I]n moments of true life,” Alcott writes, “I feel my identity with her [nature]”  (OS XXXV). Alcott's philosophy is thus non-anthropocentric though, like his Transcendentalist peers, he believes that humans are a “nobler” expression of Spirit. But the difference between humans and non-humans is only one of degree, not of kind, and it only pertains to the level of the empirical. For ultimately, “[a]ll things are instinct with spirit”  (OS XXXVI). This also explains why to “[c]onceive of slaughter and flesh-eating in Eden” is Alcott's preferred image for carnage (the title of this aphorism, OS LXXXVI). Sustaining oneself by killing living beings in Eden is the pinnacle of immorality and the epitome of the unethical. Flesh-eating in Eden amounts to the negative inverse of Alcott's philosophy.