Starr King in California
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William Day Simonds >> Starr King in California
King also planned, when leisure should be afforded him, a work in
philosophy. Something of permanent value to all thinkers and students.
One needs but to read King's lecture on "Socrates" to understand how
rich and valuable such a work would have been. Indeed, here are
paragraphs that could have been written only by one of philosophic mood
and habit of mind. How much of modern "New Thought Philosophy" is
expressed in the following:
"Few acknowledge that thoughts are as substantial as things, that a
feeling is as real as a paving stone, that the soul is a congeries of
actual forces as truly as the body is, that a moral principle is as
persistent and fatal a thing as a chemical agent, and that, in the deeps
of the mind and of society, laws are at work as constant and stern as
those which spin the planets and heave the sea and poise the
firmaments."
Accepting as the ground work of his philosophy such principles as these
King tells us that "Socrates came to the conclusion that the stone which
his chisel chipped was less substantial than the soul in every human
form: and that the beauty which his cunning carved into the block was
less charming and permanent than the beauty of truth, temperance, and
holiness, which faith and culture could leave upon the invisible essence
of man. He therefore resolved to abandon the lower for the higher art of
Sculpture, and instead of being an artist in marble to be a fashioner of
men."
King's aptness for historical and philosophical generalization is quite
evident as we read:
"Socrates was the father of a new method of study. His thoughts were the
seed corn of systems. His pupils were the teachers of centuries. Each
bump of his brain was the nucleus of a philosophical school. Hardly had
he left the world, than the strong and simple light he shed was
scattered in various hues by the prismatic minds that had surrounded him
or that succeeded him; and in almost every case, - as so often happens
when the strands of the solar beam are brilliantly dishevelled, - the
actinic ray was lost."
In all our reading we have never met a description of the Grecian
philosopher so complete and accurate as one brief phrase in the lecture
from which these excerpts are taken, "Socrates, the slouchy ambassador
of reason." Or what could be truer of Socrates and Plato than to say
that "Arm in arm, the stately duke and the democrat of philosophy walk
down the lists of fame?"
Read and re-read the closing paragraph of King's "Socrates" impresses
the thoughtful mind more and more by its depth and beauty, and we ask, -
what might not this man in his full maturity and in scholarly leisure
have contributed to enrich the philosophy of our time?
"Down the River of Life, by its Athenian banks, he had floated upon his
raft of reason serene, in cloudy as in smiling weather, for seventy
years. And now the night is rushing down, and he has reached the mouth
of the stream, and the great ocean is before him, dim heaving in the
dusk. But he betrays no fear. There is land ahead, he thought; eternal
continents there are, that rise in constant light beyond the gloom. He
trusted still in the raft his soul had built, and with a brave farewell
to the few true friends who stood by him on the shore he put out into
the darkness, a moral Columbus, trusting in his haven on the faith of an
idea."
It was an open secret among King's friends in California that he
meditated writing of the Yosemite as he had written of the White Hills
of New Hampshire. Had he done so that region of incomparable beauty
would have been known to the people of our country at least twenty years
earlier. What a volume it would have been, "The Beauty and Glory of the
Yosemite" by Starr King! What a vision he would have given us of that
mighty gorge; of the crystal clearness of Mirror Lake; of the majesty of
Cathedral Rock, of Sentinel Dome, or El Capitan; of the bright
waterfalls, Vernal and the Bridal Veil; or in exquisite artistry of word
painting how he would have pictured for us the wonderful coloring of the
Yosemite, the morning tints of gray, the perfect white of noon shading
into blue, the afternoon tinge of silver and gold, the sunset's gauze of
crimson, and then the varying shades of approaching night. But our
artist never lived to paint the picture for us, and are we not the
poorer? Is there any such thing in this sad world as superfluous genius?
Let our philosophers answer. At all events these were the noble and the
unfulfilled ambitions of Starr King.
It would seem that of American statesmen Mr. King most admired Daniel
Webster. He never shared the feeling of his fellow abolitionists that
Webster's well-known longing to be President had caused him to be false
to liberty, but rather that the great "Defender of the Constitution"
endeavored to preserve the Union for the sake of liberty. As we have
already noted, when the Civil War broke out King found in the service
Webster had rendered the Nation some of his strongest arguments for the
Northern Cause. He was quite ready to accept the judgment of the English
publicist that "Webster was not only the greatest man of his age, - he
was the greatest man of any age." No doubt he had followed every stage
of that momentous career to the very end. All thoughtful Americans went
into retirement with Daniel Webster, and in his last sickness watched in
a kind of reverent awe as his life ebbed away. From the solemn death
chamber in Marshfield, his home by the stormy Atlantic, came tidings of
the great statesman's last moments, in which he repeated, again and
again, the Lord's Prayer and the Twenty-third Psalm. Loving friends bore
tearful witness to the pathos and heavenly beauty of the old words as
they fell from the trembling lips of the dying man, "Yea, though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou
art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me."
If it be a coincidence, it is one of striking appropriateness that when
the last hour came to our foremost "Defender of the Constitution and the
Union," that with unclouded mind, here by the Pacific Sea, he, too,
should have passed to his rest, even as the older patriot, whispering
with untroubled faith, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. Yea,
though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no
evil." "I will fear no evil," these were his last words, and it is good
to read that having so spoken, without a struggle or a pang, he entered
upon his exceeding great reward. His work on earth was done, and well
done.
Here ends Starr King in California, as written by Reverend William Day
Simonds, Published in book form by Paul Elder and Company, and seen
through their Tomoye Press by Ricardo J. Orozco in the city of San
Francisco, during the month of April, Nineteen Hundred and Seventeen