And men and women blithely play their part;
Yet still my heart is sad. . . . (Commager 1936, 34)
So, the greatest paradox of all: despite the difficulty, discouragement, and even depression that were often with him, Theodore Parker was a man of courage. We have seen that Parker represents paradox as an individual and in his relations to others. The third general paradox of Theodore Parker is that adversity served only to summon his courage, which in turn underlies his greatness.
He would lift himself from depths of depression and declare, “What a fool I am to be no happier. . . . I have sterner deeds to do, greater dangers to dare, I must be about my work” (Frothingham 1874, 110, 68). When going to Boston, where he knew he would for the most part stand alone, Parker said, “I feel that I have a great work to do; I think I shall not fail in it” (Frothingham 1874, 217). And when in the midst of controversy with pulpits closed against him, he proclaimed:
I will go about, and preach and lecture in city and glen, by the roadside and field-side, and wherever men and women can be found. I will go eastward and westward, and southward and northward, and make the land ring. (Weiss 1864, I:184)
Parker’s courage is evident in his personal discipline, his fearless scholarship and his pioneering in Unitarianism, but is perhaps most apparent in his fight against slavery. Slavery was to Parker “the sum of all villainies,” and his struggle against it absorbed the last ten years of his life and over-shadowed even his activity in Unitarianism.
Parker never forgot his grandfather, Captain John Parker of the Minute Men, who precipitated the Revolution by bravely facing the redcoats on the Lexington Green. Parker needed the same courage to speak against slavery in a Boston that had mobbed Garrison and which greeted the Fugitive Slave Bill with a salute of one hundred guns.
When the Fugitive Slave Bill was passed on September 18, 1850, Parker became chairman of the unpopular Vigilance Committee, dedicated to protecting fugitive slaves. In this position Parker penned a bold letter to President Fillmore:
I will do all in my power to rescue any fugitive slave from the hands of any officer who attempts to return him to bondage. I will resist him as gently as I know how, but with such strength as I can command; I will ring the bells and alarm the town; I will serve as head, as foot, or as hand to any body of serious and earnest men who will go with me. . . . (Weiss 1864, II:102)
This was no idle boast. Parker’s courage was not reserved for speaking and writing against the Fugitive Slave Bill: he armed himself and took a dramatic part in the rescues of Shadrach and the Crafts, as well as the attempted rescues of Thomas Simms and Anthony Burns. “I have had to arm myself,” he said, “I have written my sermons with a pistol in my desk, loaded, a cap on the nipple, and ready for action. Yea, with a drawn sword within reach of my right hand” (Parrington 1927, II:415).
The greatness of Parker grows from his courage as a man. Curious and sympathetic throngs came from everywhere to hear the brave prophet. While lecturing Parker spoke to sixty or a hundred thousand people a year. When preaching in the great Music Hall of Boston, butchers, bakers, small-tradesmen and farmers came from hundreds of miles in such garments as they had, sat in such seats as were vacant, and listened attentively to sermons that were seldom less than an hour and sometimes as long as three hours. These were the people he wanted, for Parker had said, “My chosen walk will be with the humble” (Weiss 1864, II:211). He consistently commanded weekly audiences of 3,000, and there were 7,000 names on his parish register! Nor was this all. Parker achieved national, even international, fame. Little did he exaggerate one Sunday when he remarked:
I know well the responsibility of the place I occupy this morning. Tomorrow’s sun shall carry my words to all America. They will be read on both sides of the continent. They will cross the ocean. (Parker 1867, II:86)
Parker’s fearless adherence to principle brought congressmen, governors, and even presidents to rely on him. William Seward, who came to Boston and canvassed the political situation with Parker, remembered his “restless and sagacious and vigorous ability” (Commager 1936, 258). Henry Wilson could not come immediately to Boston, but wrote, “I want to see you some day when you can give me an hour or two, for the purpose of consultation in regard to affairs” (McCall 1936, 28). Charles Sumner affectionately wrote, “I shall always be glad to hear from you, and shall value your counsels” (McCall 1936, 28). Parker’s picture occupied a prominent position in the home of Ohio’s Governor Chase, who wrote Parker, “I always like to read your heroic utterances” (Commager 1936, 258).
The most dramatic instance of Parker’s influence, however, was on Lincoln. Parker sent Lincoln’s junior law partner, William Herndon, a copy of his sermon, “The Effect of Slavery on the American People.” Henry Steele Commager describes the effect:
. . . Herndron read it eagerly. “Democracy is direct self-government, over all the people, for all the people, by all the people,” Parker said. It was a good definition, thought Herndon, and he underscored that passage. It might interest Mr. Lincoln. (Commager 1936, 266)
The paradox of Theodore Parker, then, is seen in three spheres: Parker’s individual intellectual and physical being, his relation to others and religious truth, and the courage underlying his greatness as a response to adversity. When Parker was dying in Florence, Italy, he summoned his friend, Frances P. Cobbe, to his bedside and gathering breath uttered a final paradox:
I have something to tell you—there are two Theodore Parkers now. One is dying here in Italy, the other I have planted in America. He will live there, and finish my work. (Weiss 1864, II:438)
The Theodore Parker planted in America has taken root and grown. Slavery has disappeared, although racial discrimination continues. Unitarianism has unfolded in freedom and tolerance, although many religions still cling to the past. The significance of Theodore Parker, however, is not just in what he did, as our significance does not lie only in what we accomplish. The significance of Theodore Parker is in his quality as a human being: in his strength and weakness, in his personality and life of paradox, and in the triumph of what was great in him.
5. Sermon delivered by the author at the Church of the Reconciliation Unitarian Universalist, Utica, New York; the Unitarian Church of Cortland, New York; the Unitarian Fellowship of Gainesville, Florida; the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Detroit, Michigan; and the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles, California. Reprinted as “The Paradox of Theodore Parker,” The Crane Review (Spring 1959), 111–20.
6
Do We Have Two Selves?6
In 1886 when Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Stevenson 1886), he had no medical or psychiatric aspirations, yet his fictional account has been found to have surprising insight into psychic and personality phenomena and has been a classic precursor of such contemporary studies as The Three Faces of Eve (Thigpen and Cleckley 1983). Stevenson’s story depicts in extreme and violent form the emergence of a second personality in the mild Dr. Jekyll—it took me a good while to connect the name of Jekyll with the good side of the personality. The second personality, Mr. Hyde, is released or induced by a drug and takes complete charge of Jekyll’s body. In Stevenson’s account, not only does personality change occur, but a physical transformation reportedly takes place.
I have sometimes wondered how much truth there is in the story. Do we have two selves, even if they do not emerge in such a dramatic and literal form? When the question is put to psychology, as I recently put it to an editor of a psychiatric journal, the answer was, “Yes, at least two!” I have long been under the impression that split personality was what is referred to as schizophrenia. Upon exploration, however, I found that schizophrenia refers less to the emergence of additional selves, and more to the split within a single personality of emotional from rational functions. Although it is characterized by delusions and hallucinations, schizophrenia is usually in the form of inappropriate or irrational behavior