- Eliot Clark, N.A., History of the National
Academy of Design 1825-1953, Columbia University Press, New York, 1954,
p. 43 ff.
- That section
of Main Street is now part of Mass. Ave. It was on the opposite side of
Main Street across from where Judge Dana's mansion had been, which had
burned down in 1839. Dana Street was the dividing line between "The
Village" and "Cambridgeport" sections of Cambridge.
- Downes, p.
24.
- Richardson,
p. 134.
- The population
of Cambridge in 1810 was 2323, 1840 was 8409, and 1850 was 15,215. figures
from Arthur Gilman, The Cambridge of Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-Six,
Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1896, p. 32.
- . Morse was
President of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1845 and again
in 1861 to 1862.
- William M.
Flowler, Jr., William Ellery, Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, New Jersey,
1973, p. 178.
- Hunter, p.
22.
- Dana, p.
174.
- Gerdts and
Stebbins, p. 164.
- The only
route would have been down Main St. past the Homer house. Dana Jr., Journal,
p. 175.
- Elizabeth
Peabody was an assistant to Allston's brother-in-law William Ellery Channing.
Her sister married Nathaniel Hawthorne. She published a magazine in 1847
called Aesthetic Papers, published her recollections of Allston
and other articles reprinted in her 1886 book Last Evening with Allston.
She also introduced the Froebel kindergarten methods to America (which
are known to have influenced Frank Lloyd Wright).
- William
Gerdts & Theodore Stebbins, p. 169.
- It is also
interesting to note that Homer's great-grandmother was Abiah Flagg. Winslow
would have known of his relationship to the Flagg family for one of his
father's brother's was William Flagg Homer. Geneological research
that I have done shows some Abiah Flagg's related to Allston's step-father,
but I have yet to confirm the specific relationship. Therefore Winslow
may have been related to the Flagg's of New Haven, who were decended from
Allston's half-brother, including Jared B. Flagg who wrote the 1892 Life
and Letters of Washington Allston. Charles Noel Flagg of New Haven
is listed in Arthur Patch Homer's address book. (Bowdoin Collection, Archives
of American Art, Smithsonian Institution). In any event, this would not
suggest that Homer was related to Allston, only to his stepfather and the
other Flaggs.
The two major sources were: Biography
of Arthur Bartlett Homer in the National Cyclopedia of American Biography
which provides the link back from Winslow's grandparents Eleazer Homer/Mary
Bartlett back to Jacob Homer/Abiah Flagg. On the Flagg side there is a
book on the Flagg family in the LDS Los Angeles Geneological Library. Also
interesting to note from microfishe, a marriage at Boston of a Jacob Homer
to a Tabitha Dana (23 April 1801). Who they were and whether
they have any significance, I have not determined.
- Gordon Hendricks,
The Life and Work of Winslow Homer, Abrams, New York, 1979, p. 12
ff.
- ibid.
- Arthru Gilman,
editor, The Cambridge of Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-Six, Riverside
Press, Cambridge, 1896, page 234.
- The Cambridge of Eighteen
Hundred and Ninety-six, Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1896, p. 238.
- The Dana family went out with the pastor also.
This was "...a church they build on the northwest corner of Mt. Auburn
Street [and Holyoke], just below the site of the first schoolhouse. The
land was a gift of a member of the Dana family, an heiress of one of Cambridge's
large land owners, Judge Edmund Trowbridge..." from John Harris, The
Boston Globe Historic Walks in Cambridge, Globe Pequot Press, Chester,
CT, 1986, p. 125.
- Moses F. Sweetser, Allston, Boston, Houghton
Osgood, 1879, p. 133 ff.
- J. Shawcross, editor, S. T. Coleridge, Biographia
Literaria, Oxford University Press, London, 1958, Volume I, p. lxxxii.
- quoted in William Dunlap, History of the
Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States (originally
published 1834), Benjamin Blom, New York, 1965, Volume II, p. 296 ff.
- ibid, p. 297.
- I have added the underlining.
- ibid, p. 303 ff.
- Again, I have added the underlining to the text.
- Washington Allston, Lectures on Art and Poems,
Baker and Scribner, New York, 1850, reprinted by Scholars' Facsimilies
& Reprints with an introduction by Nathalia Wright, 1967, p. vi.
- George W. Peck, "Allston's Lectures on
Art," Bulletin of the American Art Union, June, 1850, p. 39.
- There is
much, much more in Allston than even begins to be represented here. The
background relationships to Berkeley and Johnson are provided so the reader
can more completely see the common roots of Allston's perspective and that
of Pragmatism which followed with Charles Sanders Pierce and William James.
- Coleridge, Biographia Literaria Volume I,
p. 202.
- The ideas
of both Berkeley and Kant, whose works Coleridge had studied, are reflected
in these distinctions. Coleridge had studied Kant in Germany and named
his second child "Berkeley." It is not within the scope of my
objectives here to show how the ideas of Coleridge and Allston may be viewed
as a synthesis of Kant, Berkeley, and platonists including Plotinus, Henry
More, Norris, and Fenelon).
- This process
was discussed in the previous paper.
- See Berkeley's
Siris for a complete history of the concept.
- see Chapter
8 "Ideas and Archetypes" in Joseph J. Ellis, The New England
Mind in Transition, Yale University Press, 1973, Chapter 8, p. 145
ff.
- Samuel Hopkins
was pastor of the First Church (Congregational) in Newport, Rhode Island
from 1770 to 1803.
- Samuel Johnson
anticipates George Herbert Mead in this, see Noetica in Elementia
Philosophia, Chapter II, section 25, where Johnson writes of signs,
"agreed upon."
- "Intellectual
light" may be seen as an underlying assumption in America thought,
and a requisite for democracy. This is not to suggest that Americans held
any monopoly on the concept. See Berkeley's Siris for a complete
review of "Intellectual Light," ibid, p. 88 ff, (paragraph 171
ff). Berkeley puts to rest the issue of first cause in Siris,
When therefore force, power, virtue,
or action are mentioned as subsisting in an extended and corporeal or mechanical
being, this is not to be taken in a true, genuine and real, but only in
a gross and popular sense, which sticks in appearances, and doth not analyse
things to their first principles. In compliance with established language
and the use of the world, we must employ the popular current phrase. But
then in regard to truth we ought to distinguish its meaning. It may suffice
to have made this declaration once for all, in order to avoid mistakes.
(George Berkeley, "Siris," The Works of George Berkeley Bishop
of Cloyne," Thomas Nelson & Sons, London, 1948, Volume 5,
p. 83, paragraph 155.)
Thus, when Samuel Johnson reads
like George Herbert Mead (when he speaks of "signs agreed upon"
in Elementia Philosophica, Noetica, Chapter II, paragraph 25, p.
42 ff.), that does not undermine his larger perspective.
- The computer
chip was just as possible 100 million years ago as today. It could have
been made by some other advanced civilization somewhere in the Universe.
The brain, which each of us uses to varying degrees, is still more advanced
than any computer chip, and our never ending human desire for knowledge
will eventually allow us to replicate its biochemical processes. The physical
universe also contained the possibility of a human brain 100 million years
ago. There is little difference between the process of the development
of the human brain and the development of the computer chip, except that
the chip is the product of secondary imagination. The "creations"
of man are produced through conscious reflection, which is how some believe
the Universe came to be, by God doing the same sort of thing, using what
for us is "secondary imagination." Thus, the secondary imagination
is the greatest process we possess, for it is one of sublime imitation.
- . Elizabeth P. Peabody, Last Evening with Allston,
D. Lothrop, Boston, 1886, p. 4.
- The ideas
of man are but imperfect copies of the ideas of God, in the same way that
scientific theories, a subset of human ideas, are always subject to refinement.
The theories, attempting to copy the "true" laws of nature, are
but useful approximations, striving towards perfection. Thus, my statement
that our ideas are built upon the ideas of man, not the ideas of God. See
also Samuel Johnson's letter to George Berkeley at Newport, September 10,
1729, in which he wrote,
"Now I understand you, that
there is a two-fold existence of things or ideas, one in the divine mind,
and the other in created minds; the one archetypal, and the other ectypal;
that, therefore, the real original and permanent existence of things is
archetypal, being ideas in mente Divinâ, and that our ideas
are copies of them..." (Career of Johnson, Vol II, p. 266.)
- Coleridge
had read Berkeley, in fact, he named his second child Berkeley. These ideas
may be explicitely stated in Berkeley or some ancient writer, but that
does not matter as the point is sufficiently evidenced by what Johnson
wrote.
- from Logic published in 1720, Samuel
Johnson, His Career and Writings, edited by Herbert and Carol Schneider,
Columbia University Press, New York, 1929, Vol II, page 227.
- It would
not surprise me if quite similiar statements are in Berkeley's writing,
or if the ancients had said the same thing, for that is the point: such
descriptions are merely descriptions of the reality which surrounds us.
- Samuel Johnson, Elementa Philosophica: Noetica,
Samuel Johnson, p. 9 ff.
- The use
of the terms "primary" and "secondary" may have been
new, but the essence of the distinction was preceded in Johnson. Underlying
this point is another theme, which is contained in the task of assigning
patents to "original" ideas. Whenever there is a significant
invention, there is always a basis for some claim that the "invention"
"belonged" to someone earlier, for in a true sense, ideas are
never entirely original, but are "reflections," "echos"
of what already was. That this was so before Johnson, Coleridge, and Allston
is as true as the fact that there was gravity before Newton. Even Morse
had to fight his claim to the telegraph in the courts.
People deserve to be rewarded for
their intellectual property. Patent and copyright laws exist to protect
such rights, but notice that those laws place limits on the perpetuity
of those rights, precisely because of the public benefit. Thus, while one
might question the repackaging of the ideas of someone long since dead
without giving due credit, society benefits from the subsequent use without
that excess baggage. We are then sometimes surprised to find ideas, thought
to be of the current age, which are in fact products of times past.
- Allston,
p. 4.
- (Allston refers to New Testament, I Corinthians
2:14) Allston, p. 6.
- ibid.
- John LaFarge, S.J., An American Amen,
Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy, New York, 1958, p. 171 ff.
- Allston, p. 18.
- Samuel Johnson, Noetica, Elementa Philosophica,
B. Franklin & D. Hall, Philadelphia, 1752, p. 47, Chapter II, Section
27.
- Allston, p. 8.
- Hawthorne
was familiar with Allston. He visited the Allston exhibit in 1839. (see
H. W. L. Dana's "Allston in Cambridgeport" p.
42, note 36). Also, note that Elizabeth Peabody became Hawthorne's sister-in-law
when Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody July 9, 1842.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Artist and the
Beautiful," The Portable Hawthorne, Viking Press, New York,
1948, p. 221 ff.
- Allston, ibid., p. 80.
- Coleridge, Biographia Literaria. Volumn
I, Chapter IV, p. 64.
- Washington Allston quoted in William Dunlap,
ibid, volume II, p. 309.
- Allston, p. 60.
- Allston, p. 61.
- The advertising
industry of America has been referred to as "Madison Avenue,"
since this was the location of the firms in New York City which pioneered
modern advertising. The people of "Madison Avenue" share Allston's
knowledge. Perhaps the associationist ideas of Archibald Alison should
be mentioned, for they also seem quite relevant in this context. Alison's
ideas were known to Dana Sr. (see Doreen Hunter's Richard Henry Dana,
Sr.) and his friend William Cullen Bryant (see Charles H. Brown's William
Cullen Bryant, Scribner's, New York, 1971, p. 144 ff.).
- Allston, p. 115.
- Allston, p. 83.
- Elizabeth P. Peabody, Last Evening with Allston,
D. Lothrop, Boston, 1886, p. 4 ff.
- Richard
Henry Dana, Jr., The Journal of Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, 1968, Volume I, p. 174.
- Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow Dana, Jr., "Allston at Harvard 1796-1800," Cambridge
Historical Society, Publications, Volume 29, Proceedings for the Year
1943, p. 28.
- William
H. Gerdts & Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., "A Man of Genius"
The Art of Washington Allston, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1979, p.
28.
- Richard
Henry Dana, Jr., The Journal of Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, 1968, Volume I, p. 173-174.
- Benjamin Welles, "Remarker," Monthly
Anthology, June 1806, pages 285-288.
- Jonathan Edwards, Images or Shadows of Divine
Things, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1948, page 122.
- Ralph Waldo
Emerson attended the lecture as a student and wrote of its effect on him.
Noted [with citation to The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of
Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. William H. Gilman et al., 16 vols. (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1960-82), 2:238] in David Robinson (Editor),
William Ellery Channing: Selected Writings, Paulist Press, New York,
1985, p. 122.
- Channing, "Evidences of Revealed Religion"
in Selected Writings p. 127.
- Channing, ibid. p. 130 ff.
- William Ellery Channing, "The True End
of Life," The Complete Works of William Ellery Channing, D.D.,
Christian Life, London, 1884, p. 33.
- Richard Henry Dana, Sr., Poems and Prose
Writings, Literature House, Gregg Press, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey,
1970 (reprint), Volume I, p. 436 ff.
- ibid, 440 ff.
- Richard Henry Dana, Sr., "The Past and
the Present," ibid, volume II, p. 19 ff.
- Richard Henry Dana, Sr., Poems and Prose
Writings, Baker and Scribner, 1850, p. 22 ff.
- This is
the house that stood "...near the corner of what would be today Pearl
Street and Allston Street." Allston lived there from his marriage
to Martha until H. W. L. Dana, "Allston in Cambridgeport", in
Cambridge Historical Society Publications: Proceedings for the Year
1943, Volume 29, [published in] 1948, p. 35, note 5.
- Richard Henry Dana, Jr., The Journal of Richard
Henry Dana, Jr., Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1968, Volume
?, p. 500.
- Edward Tyrell Channing (1790-1856) was Dana
Sr.'s cousin, brother of William Ellery Channing (1780-1842), and also
therefore another Allston's brother-in-law. After Dr. Channing died his
lectures were published under the title Lectures Read to the Seniors
in Harvard College. Dana Jr. wrote the biography of Dr. Channing printed
in the book.
- Charles Francis Adams, Richard Henry Dana:
A Biography in Two Volumes, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, 1890,
Volume I, p. 22.
- The ode was Wordsworth's "Ode on the Intimations
of Immortality." Richard Henry Dana, Jr., The Journal of Richard
Henry Dana, Jr., Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1968, Volume
I, p. 36.
- Richard Henry Dana, Jr., The Journal of Richard
Henry Dana, Jr., Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1968, p. 523
ff.
- Richard Henry Dana, Jr., The Journal of Richard
Henry Dana, Jr., Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1968, Volume
?, p. 835 ff.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, "The Dana
Saga," in Cambridge Historical Society Publications, Volume 26:
Proceedings for the Year 1940, Cambridge, Mass., 1941, p. 108 ff.
- Matthiessen, The James Family, p. 541.
- Agassiz, in One Hundred Years Ago, p.
202 ff.
- Lowell, Complete Poems, p. 442.
- Washington Allston, Lectures on Art,
ibid, page 46.
- Dr. Clarke
was a medical doctor, having been Professor of Materia Medica in the medical
school of Harvard University from 1855 until he resigned in 1872 because
of his own illness. His friend Oliver Wendall Holmes, M.D. (son of Dr.
Abiel Holmes discussed earlier) wrote, "It was left by Dr. Clarke
to my decision what disposition should be made of the manuscript. I had
heard many portions of it, and discussed many points involved in it with
him." Dr. Holmes had the book published and wrote the introduction.
The book is provides not only evidence that an interest in Visions, including
illusions, still existed in Cambridge, but provided a physiological analysis
of all aspects of the various forms of the phonemna of false sight (pseudopia).
- Edward Hammond Clarke, Visions: A Study of
False Sight (Pseudopia), Houghton Osgood, Boston, 1878, p. 5.
- William
James classified these as "illusions of the second kind." Please
refer to the previous paper for a discussion.
- Allston, "Monaldi," in ibid, p. 23
ff.
- reproduced
in Gordon Hendricks, The Life and Work of Winslow Homer, Abrams,
1979, p. 283.
- Eliot Clark, N.A., History of the National
Academy of Design 1825-1953, Columbia University Press, New York, 1954,
p. 95.
- What I had
seen in Homer's works was previously discussed in my 1988 paper "Some
New Discoveries about Winslow Homer." There is, however, much more
that I have seen since that paper was written.