Alexander Crummell, Prophets, and Destiny
This planet was built for the growth of manhood. Everything on earth and in the sea, above, beneath, like the geist in Goethe’s Faust, plies at the whizzing loom of time to weave for humanity the garments of nobler manhood. No man can degrade the manhood of another without doing violence to his Maker. No man can surrender his manhood to another without dishonoring God. To know this is to know the meaning of life and of the world.—Reverdy C. Ransom1
Scholars who have written on The Souls of Black Folk regularly take special note of Du Bois’ chapter on Alexander Crummell. Some of the most useful discussions explore the intellectual links between the two men, recognizing Crummell as a mentor, a role model, even a father figure to Du Bois. Other interpreters read political motives into the chapter, one concluding that through it Du Bois castigated Booker T. Washington perhaps even more than through the earlier chapter that focused on him. And, in one instance, the ascribed motives behind the chapter appear more self serving and designed by Du Bois to situate himself in a lineage of great black men, of which Crummell was the patriarch.2
Certainly, Du Bois’ veneration of Crummell is obvious in Souls, and all of the above conclusions provide insight into the chapter on him. But as clear as Du Bois’ admiration, even adoration, of Crummell is in Souls, as much as Du Bois feared the potential consequences of Washington’s program (and his power to implement it beyond Tuskegee), and as highly as Du Bois might have thought of himself, none of these conclusions fully explains the chapter on Crummell. What remains missing from these careful and useful analyses is a discussion that focuses on the chapter as an intellectual exercise, a literary accomplishment, and a philosophical statement. If we are able to see the story of John Jones as Du Bois’ rendition of a fable and his Talented Tenth as analogous to Plato’s Philosopher Rulers, then the life of Alexander Crummell, as Du Bois presented it, might similarly speak to us allegorically and philosophically and as another intellectual exercise, in this case, about destiny and spirit in the case of truly special people.
Consider, first of all, the manner in which Du Bois wrote of his and Crummell’s meeting.
I spoke to him politely, then curiously, then eagerly, as I began to feel the fineness of his character,—his calm courtesy, the sweetness of his strength, and his fair blending of the hope and truth of life. Instinctively I bowed before this man, as one bows before the prophets of the world.
In that passage alone, Du Bois provided a powerful image, that of a prophet. The passages that precede it, beginning with the first sentence of the chapter, make the significance of the above sentences even more poignant.
This is the story of a human heart,—the tale of a black boy who many long years ago began to struggle with life that he might know the world and know himself. Three temptations he met on those dark dunes that lay gray and dismal before the wonder-eyes of the child: the temptation of Hate, that stood out against the red dawn; the temptation of Despair, that darkened noonday; and the temptation of Doubt, that ever steals along the twilight. Above all, you must hear of the vales he crossed,—the Valley of Humiliation and the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Terri Hume Oliver relate Du Bois’ “geographical language” in these sentences to “the spiritual struggle” embodied in “John Bunyan’s classical allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress.”3 Du Bois was, without a doubt, outlining Crummell’s spiritual struggle for the reader, and Bunyan’s classic work would have been a good model. But not only did the language embedded in the opening paragraph of the chapter reflect traditions that were much older and deeper than Bunyan’s seventeenth-century work, it simultaneously reflected intellectual traditions that were much more recent.
David L. Lewis, more than anyone else, has articulated both the literary and intellectual traditions Du Bois deployed in the chapter on Crummell. Lewis wrote:
In “Alexander Crummell” Du Bois offers a secular parable that mimics the Calvary—a moral and racial instruction in which the anointed messenger is tested, forsaken, rebuked, and allegorically sacrificed in order to redeem a people. However, the unmistakable New Testament imagery no longer represented deeply held religious convictions. By the time he reached Wilberforce, Du Bois’s religious views were wholly decoupled from orthodox Christianity and from any notion of a personal deity. At best, he recognized a vague presence manifesting itself in laws slowly revealed through science—a force best expressed in Hegelianisms such as Weltgeist (world spirit) or Dasein (presence) and above all in private and without emotion. But although he had relinquished the Bible’s theology, Du Bois would hold in reserve the language of the King James Version whenever, as with the import of Crummell, he strove to give an idea maximum emotional force.4
As clearly and aptly as Lewis articulates Du Bois’ literary (theological/allegorical) and intellectual (philosophical) reference points, it is possible to “unpack” the rich meaning of Du Bois’ words in even more detail.
Much of the unpacking of the literary contribution revolves around the image of a prophet.5 Because Du Bois was reared in a Christian environment (if not in a strictly orthodox Christian tradition), attended Christian schools (and churches), and associated with and even adored at least one Christian minister (Crummell), the Christian tradition provides one window through which to view Du Bois’ chapter. But despite his deploying “wilderness” motifs and describing various “temptations,” which we might correctly associate with Jesus, the New Testament (Matthew 4), and Christianity, the rendering of Crummell as a prophet makes it equally useful to view the image of him that Du Bois constructed in the context of the Old Testament and especially its stories about Moses. After all, all seventeen major and minor prophets of the Bible are Old Testament prophets; the highest standard among the men accepted as prophets was a Hebrew; and many of the images presented in the chapter on Crummell, including the now almost- cliché “Valley of the Shadow of Death” remark, are Old Testament rather than New (Psalms 23:4).
And so, our effort to comprehend more fully the import of Du Bois’ characterization of Crummell as a prophet should begin, at least, by accepting Du Bois at his word, not assuming that he used his genius simply to beguile us. Because he told us that he saluted Crummell as one might a “prophet of the world,” we should, even if only as an intellectual exercise, consider the Crummell chapter in that light. Then, given that the biblical prophets were (overwhelmingly) Old Testament prophets, we must acknowledge that perhaps Du Bois’ inclinations were, as Lewis suggests, not particularly Christian. Even though Du Bois was paying tribute to a high-church Episcopal priest, the Old Testament is, largely, a collection of writing about a pre-Christian era. And then we should consider who the “prophets of the world” might have been to a turn-of-the-century intellectual. The point is not to establish Crummell as a true prophet, the equal of Moses or Jesus or Mohammad.6 The intention here is simply to see, in detail, the particular literary contribution present in Du Bois’ construction of Crummell’s life in the prophetic tradition.7 And, in such a context, rather than seeing Du Bois as having abandoned (or accepted) “orthodox Christianity,” we might see the depiction of Crummell as a literary example that transcended orthodox Christianity to reflect a very important aspect of all the major religions of the world. That is to say that all the best-known “prophets of the world” were, to borrow Lewis’s words, “tested, forsaken, rebuked, and allegorically sacrificed in order to redeem a people.”8
The literary form of the Crummell chapter—allegory—is thus especially clear. The chapter is an “extended metaphor, in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative, are equated with the meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. The underlying meaning has moral, social, religious, or political significance, and characters are often personifications of abstract ideas. . . . Thus an allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.”9 The literal story here is obviously the reconstruction of Crummell’s life—a biography. The symbolic representation is that of Crummell as a prophet. This study maintains that the abstract idea, which heretofore has remained largely hidden, is the use of Crummell’s life to talk about Spirit in the tradition of nineteenth-century philosophical discussions.10 The philosophical principle of Spirit is, however, not abstract at all. Indeed, reading the chapter as a philosophical discourse makes the details of Crummell’s life more real.
Because of Du Bois’ philosophical training, he did not need to be a traditionally religious man to write the essay he wrote. Nor was it necessary for him to believe, literally, the religious stories that gave the Crummell essay its form. Nineteenth-century training in philosophy began with the study of the Bible, and religion was always central to the study of philosophy. Not only were the two areas not clearly separate until the seventeenth century, but even Bible scholars recognize that “[t]he appreciation of the relationship between Christ, who is fully the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and other noble ways, truths, and lives, is a vital part of the theologian’s task, and the Bible itself . . . does not so much forbid this wider theological exploration as emphatically demand it. To repudiate philosophy and the comparative study of religion is not truly biblical, but narrowly Biblicist” (emphasis added).11 Du Bois’ knowledge of the Bible easily enabled him to use well-known religious images to make a statement about Spirit and destiny that simultaneously supported his philosophical interests in Soul.12 Indeed, given the relationship between traditional religious and philosophical concerns, an analysis of Du Bois’ use of both, together, will reveal more about his intellectual accomplishment than efforts to define either orientation alone can.
The different views of philosophers and theologians are nevertheless important to note. Modern discussions range from a complaint among theologians that there is not enough religion in philosophy and from philosophers that there is not enough science in religion to the more explicit charge from theologians that there is not enough faith in philosophy and the countercharge from philosophers that there is not enough reason (thought/intelligence) in religion.13
What might be more important is that serious thinkers in religion and philosophy are very much concerned with spirit. And both groups of scholars are ultimately concerned with what a being has to do to fulfill his/her being—destiny. Because Du Bois viewed Crummell as a person of Spirit, evidence of the most complete development of the soul, there was no better way to evoke this special character than to cast Crummell as a prophet. And casting Crummell’s spiritual journey in allegorical form made the story especially accessible for any reader who possessed the most basic knowledge of religious history, regardless of the orthodoxy. But readers who had a general knowledge of the history of philosophy undoubtedly gained a much deeper understanding of Du Bois’ tribute to Crummell.
When Du Bois introduced Crummell to us, through his report of their meeting, he provided as many explicit pointers to his philosophical interests as he provided to his theological effort. First, he recognized in Crummell “the fair blending of the hope and truth of life” (emphasis added). The wording suggests the primary interest and scholarly concern of any philosopher. Second, Du Bois’ characterization of Crummell as “a human heart” was an allusion to his humanity, Soul. And third, when Du Bois noted Crummell’s mighty struggle to “know the world and know himself” (emphasis added), Du Bois not only framed concerns with both the material and spiritual worlds, he did so in a way that also reflected the dual perspectives of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. To “know the world” suggests Hegel’s experience of consciousness, which situates the development of consciousness (soul) in the context of the phenomenal/the world. And the words “know himself” evoke Hegel’s philosophy of spirit in which conscious’s objective is to know itself (as spirit).14
The remainder of this chapter is written in two substantial parts. In order to demonstrate as fully as possible the allegorical nature of Du Bois’ construction of Crummell’s biography, the first part pays particular attention to aspects of the lives, journeys, temptations, and failures of the great prophets of various “world religions” juxtaposed with Du Bois’ rendering of Crummell’s life. Part II focuses on Du Bois’ chapter as a philosophical exposition. This section moves from Du Bois’ general use of classical philosophy (in my first three chapters) to his more explicit use of modern (nineteenth-century) philosophy as it draws out the parallels between Du Bois’ characterization of Crummell’s life and Hegel’s “shapes” (or “forms”) of consciousness in the philosophic journey of individual consciousness toward spirit. The conclusion to this chapter attempts to bring together Du Bois’ framing of Crummell’s life through both a theological and philosophical commentary on spirit—the “developed energy of the soul” (emphasis added)—the actualization of potential, or destiny.
Ultimately, Du Bois’ chapter on Crummell is much more than a biographical tribute, a eulogy, and/or a celebration of Crummell’s life; more than a snipe at Booker T. Washington; and more than simple self-aggrandizement. In a rather significant way, in the chapter on Crummell Du Bois provided two distinct but equally important discussions of Soul—one allegorical, situated in theology in the literary tradition of innumerable religion-based stories, and the other based on philosophy in the Hegelian tradition that pays particular attention to the development of consciousness. In both cases, Du Bois illustrated an individual’s journey toward spirit—destiny. And, ultimately, whether one reads the spiritual journey represented in Du Bois’ chapter as sacred or secular, Du Bois logically cast Crummell as a prophet because only a prophet is ever trusted with the destiny of a people.
As Old Testament literary analyst Dewey M. Beegle put it, “a person of destiny must have . . . a remarkable beginning.”15 And the birth stories of the true prophets are indeed remarkable. Mohammad was born clean and circumcised. His mother never felt the discomfort of being pregnant, and because soon after Mohammad’s birth he was (despite his family’s poverty) placed in the care of an unlikely nurse who successfully reared him in the desert, he thrived as a child.16 The story of Moses’s infancy and childhood is equally remarkable. After an order from the Pharaoh to drown all male Israelite babies, Moses’s mother carefully placed him in a river in a waterproofed basket. He was not only rescued by the daughter of the Pharaoh who had ordered the killings, but this princess called on Moses’s natural mother to take care of him (Exod. 1, 2:1–10).17 Jesus was born of a virgin, in an animal shed, and cribbed in a feed trough. Although Herod sent for the baby with the intention of killing him, the family escaped to Egypt (Matthew 1:18–25, 2; Luke 2:1–7).
There was no reasonable way for Du Bois to write a birth story for Crummell that compared in its drama to those of the true prophets without turning the story into fiction, but he did manage to draw at least the image of a parallel, though very unequal, in the issuance of the various edicts. The Pharaoh ordered the death of all male Jewish babies born in Egypt. Herod commanded the killing of male children under the age of two in Bethlehem. America issued the Missouri Compromise. Despite the compromise’s ban on slavery above the 36° 30’ north latitude line, and despite the ongoing gradual abolition of slavery in the North, the Missouri Compromise made it clear that American slavery was not going away. The Missouri Compromise was not the Compromise of 1850, however, whose Fugitive Slave Act directly and profoundly imperiled the freedom of all black people, including (perhaps especially) those in the North. But Souls is a work of literature, and writers are allowed some license. And so Crummell, if not born in the imminent danger that Du Bois suggested in his “born with the Missouri Compromise” passage, was at least born into inherent difficulty just because he was a black child living in America during the slavery era. And so, Du Bois informed us, Crummell’s mother kept a close watch over his whereabouts and constantly fretted over his safety.
Not surprisingly, those who would become prophets manifested special attributes early in their lives. Although Du Bois’ description of Crummell’s childhood suggests a special character in development, the description is, nevertheless, much more enigmatic than, for example, Jesus’s stunning rebuke of his mother when she chastised him for not staying with their caravan after the Feast of the Passover. Jesus informed her that he was attending to his father’s business (Luke 2:41–50). Du Bois’ characterization of Crummell does not reveal this kind of audaciousness, but there is still evidence of a special character in development. As a child Crummell “paused over his mud and marbles” and “saw puzzling vistas as he looked down the world.” “[H]is young mind worked and winced and shaped curiously a vision of Life.” And while his father’s presence was always evident, so was “a form that fell in vast and shapeless folds.” Because much of Du Bois’ brief discussion relates to groaning slave ships and “faint cries [that] burdened the Southern breeze,” one can easily surmise that, even as a child, Crummell, partly as a consequence of his father’s stories to him but also because of his own special character, possessed some vague understanding of the barbarism of enslavement and the oppression of his people. This construction, an important part of Du Bois’ situating Crummell in the prophetic tradition, established Crummell as one who knew, saw, heard, felt, and experienced things that ordinary children did not. Because Du Bois never suggested that Crummell was born with a veil, we should interpret Crummell’s visions as the suggestion of the kind of supernatural experience that prophets regularly reported. Du Bois was sensitive (careful) enough not to claim explicitly a relationship to God for Crummell like that of the true prophets, but it is still extremely important that early in his life Du Bois’ Crummell experienced visions.
The visions of the true prophets were unmistakable, direct communications from God. Moses’s most important instructions commanded him to return to Egypt (which he had fled after killing a man) and to bring the children of Israel out (Ex. 2:11–16; 3:1–10). Jesus and Mohammad also experienced mysterious visions: Jesus after being baptized by John the Baptist (Matt.3:16–17), and Mohammad initially while tending his foster family’s sheep and, later, while tending his father-in-law’s herds.18 Rather than symbolizing some sort of psychosis, visions in the prophetic tradition suggest that something else very important is on the horizon. It is at this point in the literary construction that Du Bois achieved the most success in planting Crummell’s life in the prophetic tradition.
Visions often presaged, or occurred in the middle of, a wilderness experience. Wilderness experiences were periods filled with chaos, confusion, gloom, and a sense of being lost or adrift. The wilderness provides an opportunity for the prophet to discover his true self, and if he is to survive and take up his true mantle (fulfill his destiny), he has no choice. Prophets encounter snares or challenges (temptations) in the wilderness. Overcoming or defeating these temptations is the process of overcoming potential personal weaknesses or deficiencies, which is important in proving one’s leadership capacity to oneself and to those whom one is to lead. Because the wilderness experience is brutal, it strips away all the illusions of personal power and status and allows (perhaps forces) the development of humility (especially important for a true leader) and the emergence of the true self, stripped of all the external content that is ultimately a source of self-deception. Thus, the wilderness experience provides an opportunity for purging oneself of doubt, fear, self-loathing, and material trappings, and it forces one, in the religious tradition, to depend on God. The survivor emerges from the wilderness clear about his purpose and better prepared to fulfill his destiny.
Jesus’s wilderness experience, accompanied by a fast, lasted forty days. Almost as soon as he emerged from it, he faced three very serious challenges (“temptations”).19 First, Satan tempted Jesus to use his power, since he was the Son of God, to turn stone into bread. Then, in Jerusalem, at the highest point of a temple, Satan goaded Jesus: “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. For it is written: ‘He shall give His angels charge concerning you,’ and ‘In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone.” And, finally, Satan offered Jesus control of “all the kingdoms of the world” in exchange for worshipping him instead of God. Jesus rejected all three temptations, and the devil left (Matt. 4:1–11).
Succumbing to any of these temptations could have fulfilled an immediate need or desire. Turning the stone into bread, for example, would have provided Jesus something to eat when he was clearly hungry. Throwing himself from the rooftop could have satisfied his ego, allowing him to prove his special relationship with God. And the offer of a kingdom provided a quick and easy way for Jesus to fulfill his destiny as a leader of people. But during these particularly earthly and human experiences (temptations), he had to make important decisions about priorities and destiny and endure these trials without losing the original commitments. Enduring the kinds of temptations that men regularly face (of the body, mind, and soul), made it possible to begin his ministry, sure of his mission, his faith, and himself.
Du Bois’ characterization of Crummell’s life has an explicit New Testament–like element in that Crummell also faced three highly personal, and equally human, temptations—Hate, Despair, and Doubt. The first temptation, Hate, developed during Crummell’s childhood, in the shadow of slavery. Hate “glid[ed] stealthily into his laughter, fad[ed] into his play, and seiz[ed] his dreams by day and night with rough, rude turbulence.” When Crummell went to New Hampshire—Canaan, no less—to pursue his education, townspeople tore down the school rather than allow black children to attend. But after Beriah Green admitted several black boys, including Crummell, to his school in Oneida County, New York, “[t]he shadowy, formless thing—the temptation of Hate, that hovered between him and the world—grew fainter and less sinister.”
Crummell’s struggle for education and the temptations it elicited were very important biblical allusions. The first one seems somewhat ambiguous:
A vision of life came to the growing boy,—mystic, wonderful. He raised his head, stretched himself, breathed deep of the fresh new air. Yonder, behind the forest, he heard strange sounds; then glinting through the trees he saw, far, far away, the bronzed hosts of a nation calling,—calling faintly, calling loudly. He heard the hateful clank of their chains, he felt them cringe and grovel, and there rose within him a protest and prophecy. And he girded himself to walk down the world.
Crummell’s act of girding himself “to walk down the world” (to be distinguished clearly from his earlier act of having “looked down the world”) alludes to more than his pursuit of education; it also suggests certain well-known New Testament scriptures. The short book of Ephesians offers the clearest instructions about walking in the spirit in a mean, wicked world. One had to “take up the whole armor of God” for protection. Those who were “girded” with the “waist of truth,” the “breastplate of righteousness,” shoes prepared with the “gospel of peace,” the “shield of faith,” the “helmet of salvation,” and the “sword of Spirit,” would be able to defeat the wicked.20
Crummell was in the process of girding himself properly when he experienced another vision, this time accompanied by a calling that also led him to his second temptation.
A voice and vision called him to be a priest,—a seer to lead the uncalled out of the house of bondage. He saw the headless host turn toward him like the whirling of mad waters,—he stretched forth his hands eagerly, and then, even as he stretched them, suddenly there swept across the vision the temptation of Despair.21
Crummell’s Despair was rooted in the refusal of the men of God, the church bishops, to admit him or any Negro student to the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church. He became so distressed that he was unable to distinguish “the kind hands that stretched themselves toward him” from the not so kind. But Crummell refocused his energy: “He would gather the best of his people into some little Episcopal chapel and there lead, teach, and inspire them, till the leaven spread, till the children grew, till the world hearkened.”
The renewed commitment did not forestall Crummell’s facing the third temptation. Despite much intensive labor, often at great personal sacrifice, his congregation not only did not grow, it dwindled. And Despair gave way to Doubt—in himself and his people. Du Bois wrote:
Of all the three temptations, this one struck the deepest. Hate? He had outgrown so childish a thing. Despair? He had steeled his right arm against it, and fought it with the vigor of determination. But to doubt the worth of his life-work,—to doubt the destiny and capability of the race his soul loved because it was his; to find listless squalor instead of eager endeavor; to hear his own lips whispering, ‘They do not care; they cannot know; they are dumb driven cattle,—why cast your pearls before swine?’—this, this seemed more than man could bear; and he closed the door, and sank upon the steps of the chancel, and cast his robe upon the floor and writhed.
Crummell eventually relocated to Philadelphia, but when Bishop Onderdonk offered him a church without the ability to participate in the church convention, Crummell declined the offer and went to New York, where he worked, mostly in poverty, for several years. Then, “[h]alf in despair, he wandered across the sea, a beggar with outstretched hands.” In England, Crummell found some physical and mental recovery. He completed his education at Queens’ College (Cambridge), and then he went to Africa, where he worked for most of the next twenty years, at the end of which he returned to America.
Du Bois’ depiction of the three temptations Crummell faced is an unmistakable New Testament–like construction. But because Du Bois blended into the story a decades-long wilderness experience filled with fear, doubt, and apparent leadership failure, we have to turn to the equally important Old Testament, Moses-like, elements of his chapter. Old Testament parallels concern the visions and the calling, the wilderness experience, and the outcome of the efforts.
As already noted, Moses was watching his father-in-law’s flock when an angel of God spoke to him from a burning bush. Moses was somewhat confused, and then God spoke directly, telling him: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows.” He then instructed Moses: “Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt” (Ex. 3:7, 10). Although there was neither a burning bush nor a recognizable angel in Du Bois’ depiction of Crummell’s visions, the similarities to those of Moses are too obvious to ignore. “Yonder, behind the forests, he heard strange sounds; then glinting through the trees he saw, far, far away, the bronzed hosts of a nation calling.” And then, “[a] voice and a vision called him to be a priest,—a seer to lead the uncalled out of the house of bondage.” And so it was a forest rather than a bush, a glinting rather than a flame. But in both instances, there was a calling, an enslaved nation, and a voice directing the called to break the nation’s bondage.
The most compelling parallel to the Moses tradition, however, is in the miserable, decades-long wilderness experience, characterized by dissention, fear, and doubt. Once Moses and the Israelites departed Egypt, they endured hunger, thirst, and war. Some people questioned Moses’s leadership; some reverted to idolatry; and many concluded that they would have been better off as slaves in Egypt than dying in the wilderness (Ex. 12–18). The strife and near rebellion among Moses’s followers was so great that he, too, began to complain to God and, perhaps, to doubt his destiny. “Why have You afflicted Your servant? And why have I not found favor in Your sight, that You have laid the burden of all these people on me?” (Numbers 11:11) Crummell’s congregants apparently did not face the threats of starvation, dehydration, or war, but they were, like the Israelites and their view of Moses, unimpressed by Crummell’s leadership. Unlike the Israelites, they had the ability to leave, and leave they did. Then Crummell, also questioning God (“‘What, in God’s name, am I on earth for?’”), understandably moved from Despair to Doubt. Crummell, like Moses, had to overcome these fears and doubts about his people, himself, and his God, if he/they would have any chance of fulfilling his/their destiny.
The Moses-like comparisons pertain until the end of Du Bois’ chapter on Crummell. First, when one considers that only two members of the original group that left Egypt entered Canaan, it is easy to argue that Moses failed in his ultimate mission. Before leaving for England, Crummell was similarly never able to inspire his congregants. He had “worked and toiled,” but “month by month the congregation dwindled, week by week the hollow walls echoed more sharply, day by day the calls came fewer and fewer.” And second, Moses was among those who did not enter Canaan; he died alone and was buried in an unknown grave (Numbers 20:12; Deut. 32:52; 34:5–6). Crummell, of course, did not die alone, nor is his gravesite unknown; the best parallel Du Bois could draw was that he died unknown.22
But ultimately Crummell did not fail. During his decades-long wilderness, he faced whatever fears and weaknesses he had, overcame the Hate, Despair, and Doubt that were triggered by various negative external conditions (the people and environment around him) but nevertheless conditions of his own mind, and realized the purpose of his life. And so, as Du Bois put it, although “the Valley of the Shadow of Death” usually swallowed up its victims, “Alexander Crummell it gave back. Out of the temptation of Hate, and burned by the fire of Despair, triumphant over Doubt, and steeled by Sacrifice against Humiliation, he turned at last home across the waters, humble and strong, gentle and determined. He bent to all the gibes and prejudices, to all hatred and discrimination, with that rare courtesy which is the armor of pure souls.”
Crummell, clearly preserved by his “armor,” was very different upon his return to America compared to his leaving. His having to fight “among his own, the low, the grasping, and the wicked,” evokes the traditional reaction even among the closest associates of the true prophets.23 Among Jesus’s closest followers was a famous “doubter” and an impossible-to-forget traitor. And Moses grappled constantly with “whisperers” and “murmurers.”24 Crummell, however, faced his trials “with that unbending righteousness which is the sword of the just.” And although just before he left America, full of doubt, he wondered, “‘What, in God’s name, am I on earth for?’” having earlier announced to the bishop, “‘I have failed,’” upon his return from Africa, “[H]e never faltered, he seldom complained; he simply worked, inspiring the young, rebuking the old, helping the weak, guiding the strong.” We can assume that, finally, Crummell had stopped thinking of himself, focused on his work, and trusted God.
Before closing the chapter, Du Bois cast Crummell, yet again, in the Moses tradition, in a way that went beyond the obvious traditional prophetic framework of suffering and redemption. Du Bois wrote:
So he grew, and brought within his wide influence all that was best of those who walk within the Veil. They who live without knew not nor dreamed of that full power within, that mighty inspiration which the dull gauze of caste decreed that most men should not know. And now that he is gone, I sweep the Veil away and cry, Lo! the soul to whose dear memory I bring this little tribute.
The most obvious interpretation of this passage relates to race relations. Perhaps the first sentence of the passage, Crummell’s having “brought within his wide influence all that was best of those who walk within the Veil,” was an allusion to his work in/with the American Negro Academy, which aimed to harness the power of the best black minds to do battle in the cause of black progress. White America (“[t]hey who live without,” beyond the veil) needed to be introduced to this important and inspired man. And so Du Bois swept “the veil away” by writing this tribute.25 In this context, it appears that Du Bois harkened back to his original uses of the veil as a metaphor for color. The second line, however, also suggests other possibilities. It can also be read as an allusion to the folk tradition about the power of the veil that few are blessed to possess, or even the tradition of “second sight” among the biblical prophets.26 But in that same line, Du Bois’ calling the cover “gauze” suggests something different from or in addition to both the folk tradition and the idea of race, although his words evoke both ideas and reinforce biblical traditions. According to legend, after witnessing the burning bush and hearing from God, Moses’s face was never again seen directly by anyone but God. His face was, from that point, covered with a veil. Even if Moses’s face was covered because it was so bright (with light) after facing God that people could not look directly at him, as some literary analysts suggest,27 Paul wrote that Moses’s face was covered “because of the glory of his countenance, which glory was passing away” (2 Corinthians 3:7, 13). He was approaching death.28 But perhaps now that Du Bois has provided us his version of Crummell’s story, we can see this veil differently—in a more metaphorical way. After Moses witnessed the burning bush and spoke with God, Moses, now clearly identified as a prophet, could simply no longer be looked upon, in life, as an ordinary man.29 Du Bois’ narrative, likewise, would have us see Crummell first as something other than, as more than, a man. Du Bois’ Crummell was a prophet. But with his death (and Du Bois’ story), we also need to be reminded of and to see his humanness; that he was still just a man. And so Du Bois encouraged us to do just that: “And now that he is gone, I sweep the Veil away and cry, Lo! [Look!].”
Whichever explanation for Moses’s being veiled one accepts (and we could add the legend of Moses’s having horns after his vision, which he kept covered so as not to frighten people),30 and whether or not one accepts that Du Bois attempted to write Crummell’s biography in the prophetic tradition and to construct Crummell as a prophet, Du Bois further complicated the matter of Moses-as-model in his closing paragraph.
I wonder where he is to-day? I wonder if in that dim world beyond, as he came gliding in, there rose on some wan throne a King,—a dark and pierced Jew, who knows the writhings of the earthly damned, saying, as he laid those heart-wrung talents down, “Well done!” while round about the morning stars sat singing.
Although it is to the Hebrews that Christianity owes a debt for the prophetic tradition, and the “morning stars” passage is from the Old Testament book of Job (38:7), there is obviously no neat way to link Du Bois’ discussion exclusively to the Old Testament traditions. Even Jesus, in despair, asked, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” (Psalms 22:1) And, like Moses, he appeared to have failed in his mission as he was executed like and with criminals. But Du Bois’ closing paragraph of the Crummell chapter also reveals the Christian (New Testament) tradition in both clear and subtle ways. The obvious identity of the “dark and pierced Jew” certainly reflects an inclination toward Christian traditions. Less obvious, but equally important, the implied life after death, Crummell’s potential appearance before the “throne,” suggests the immortality of the soul. Hebrew thought characterized man “as an animated body” rather than “an incarnate ‘soul,’” and it was unthinkable in ancient Hebrew traditions that the body and the soul could be treated separately. (The Greeks introduced the idea of the immortal soul, which subsequently became a part of Christian thought.)31 Thus, it was the Christian (New Testament) tradition that made it possible for Crummell (his soul) to appear after his death before “a King.” Still, the fact that Du Bois wondered whether, but was not certain that, Crummell made it into heaven, suggests, as David Lewis and others have indicated, the knowledge of rather than a commitment to Christian tenets, for if Du Bois accepted that such a place existed, the biography he wrote suggests he would not have doubted it as Crummell’s ultimate destination.
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Wilson Jeremiah Moses has concluded that “Du Bois’s internal religious beliefs, like those of most complicated people, remain an unsearchable mystery, and his writings on religion always reflect the complexity of his ‘spiritual strivings.’”32 And Du Bois’ religious thought certainly appears to be messy. But as Eugene Wolfenstein recently wrote, while Du Bois was not “conventionally religious,” he “was born into a world where the Old and New Testaments provided a virtual second language, and he was both proficient and at home in the use of it.”33 Indeed, it is impossible to separate Du Bois’ characterization of Crummell from either Old or New Testament traditions and recognizable principles in other religious traditions as well. But if we consider Du Bois’ effort as an intellectual exercise as much as a biographical statement or eulogy, the major literary accomplishment of his rendering of Crummell’s life as allegory is clear and unmistakable; and the parallels need not be exact. Moreover, regardless of Du Bois’ personal beliefs, there was hardly a better way at the time to illustrate the struggles of a great man than through allegory, especially a man presumed to have been born, or subsequently endowed, with a special destiny.
Early in the Crummell chapter, Du Bois wrote:
The nineteenth was the first century of human sympathy,—the age when half wonderingly we began to descry in others that transfigured spark of divinity which we call Myself; when clodhoppers and peasants, and tramps and thieves, and millionaires and—sometimes—Negroes, became throbbing souls whose warm pulsing life touched us so nearly that we half gasped with surprise, crying, “Thou too! Hast Thou seen Sorrow and the dull waters of Hopelessness? Hast Thou known Life?” And then all helplessly we peered into those Other-worlds, and wailed, “O World of Worlds, how shall man make you one?”
Despite the “Progressive Era” social reforms well under way, especially in the United States and England at the time that Souls was published, and their underlying assumptions about the humanity of all people, Du Bois was probably alluding to the early nineteenth-century developments in philosophy centered especially in Germany (but also Britain) and known as Idealism.34 Fichte, Schelling, and, obviously, Hegel (and before them, Kant) were all concerned, to varying degrees, with the “I” and “thou,” or subjectivity; with self-consciousness and its being-for-self (Du Bois’ capitalized “Myself”); with the doctrine of Soul, which is implied in Du Bois’ capitalized “Life”; and with what Hegel labeled Spirit, which Du Bois characterized as man’s making worlds one.35 Du Bois’ whole description of Crummell’s life reflects all of these concerns while hearkening back to most of the themes repeatedly called up throughout The Souls of Black Folk: striving, soul, finding one’s purpose, being one’s self, the meaning of a life. He reminded us of them again as he encapsulated Crummell’s life near the close of the chapter.
So the man groped for light; all this was not Life,—it was the world-wandering of a soul in search of itself, the striving of one who vainly sought his place in the world, ever haunted by the shadow of a death that is more than death,—the passing of a soul that has missed its duty. Twenty years he wandered,—twenty years and more; and yet the hard rasping question kept gnawing within him, “What, in God’s name, am I on earth for?”
Indeed, within the discussions of the theologically rooted New Testament–like “temptations” and Old Testament–like “wilderness” that Crummell experienced was also evidence of the philosophical stages (or “shapes”) of consciousness that Hegel described in the process of conscious’s development (to Spirit). Perhaps Du Bois did not explicitly inform us of this concurrent meaning of his story of Crummell’s life because the conscious itself is not aware of the process it is undergoing. Thus, to have written about Crummell’s life explicitly as the journey of individual conscious to Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, Reason, and Spirit (knowledge) would have been a misrepresentation. It is, instead, up to us, the “phenomenological observers” as Hegel put it, to provide this analysis.36
The all-too-brief summary of Crummell’s life began, as noted above, with Du Bois’ informing us that “[t]he black-faced lad that paused over his mud and marbles . . . saw puzzling vistas as he looked down the world.” Later, Crummell’s “young mind worked and winced and shaped curiously a vision of Life.” In addition to the presence of a “bitter father” in his life, there was also “a form that fell in vast and shapeless folds.” The real content of these puzzles, shapes, and forms is not evident for a reason. At the level of Consciousness that Hegel characterized as sense-certainty, conscious is capable of recognizing “a thing” but has no way to make anything of it beyond the fact that it is a thing. Hegel called this sensual (perceptual) recognition “immediate knowledge”—the recognition of the thing as a thing. At this point, there is no analysis of what it is “in itself.” Consequently, the possibilities of what it is are infinite. This immediate knowledge, because it appears to be universal (the thing simply is), seems to be true. But this is, in fact, the most abstract and least true type of knowledge. Du Bois showed us that Crummell sensed something; it might even have been important. But there was no way for Crummell to understand it at that point, and no reason, in this light, for Du Bois to interpret it for us. At this point, it is important for us simply to witness/observe Crummell’s journey, which at this point was not even clear to him. Du Bois’ chapter begins with Crummell’s apprehending. Hegel’s discussion indicates that for the conscious (Crummell) to develop further, it (he) must comprehend rather than merely apprehend its (his) object.37
Upon Crummell’s eventually reaching the school at Oneida, Du Bois told us, “there came to those schoolboys a revelation of thought and longing beneath one black skin, of which they had not dreamed before.” The “sympathy and inspiration” that Crummell experienced at Oneida not only led to a reduction in the temptation of hate that once had overwhelmed him, but more important in this context, Crummell gained “a vision of life” that included his being called to become a priest. This point resembles the beginnings of Hegel’s stages of Self-Consciousness—“being-for-self.” In this stage, characterized by ego and desire, consciousness/Crummell begins to recognize contradictions in the object (thing), and because these contradictions are now evident, it is impossible to continue to view the thing simply as a thing. Consciousness at first blames itself for these contradictions but subsequently attributes the contradictions to the thing, whose contradictions are especially apparent in contact with other objects. Such contradictions could easily cause Crummell, or anyone, to ask, “‘Why should I strive by special grace when the way of the world is closed to me?’”38
Moving from Consciousness fully to Self-Consciousness is, according to Hegel, especially difficult because “the Notion of knowledge” (Crummell’s recognition of the contradictions) is often mistaken for real knowledge. Realizing that is it not real knowledge (which Crummell’s subsequent “failures” made apparent) can be devastating, but Hegel described it as a necessary “education of consciousness.” Hegel wrote: “The road [between Consciousness and Self-Consciousness] can therefore be regarded as the pathway of doubt, or more precisely as the way of despair,” in part because “[t]he skepticism that is directed against the whole range of phenomenal [natural, or the notion of] consciousness . . . renders the Spirit for the first time competent to examine what truth is. For it brings about a state of despair about all the so-called natural ideas, thoughts, and opinions, regardless of whether they are called one’s own or someone else’s, ideas with which the consciousness that sets about the examination [of truth] straight away is still filled and hampered, so that it is, in fact, incapable of carrying out what it wants to undertake” (PS §78).
Du Bois’ Crummell reached similar dangerous points. He experienced Despair when refused admission to the seminary. Nevertheless, Crummell resumed his work, focusing on the larger black community. But even in this stage that Hegel described as self-consciousness for others, Crummell’s churches not only did not grow, they shrank. When he sought a larger church but learned that it would not come with the usual privileges of membership, Crummell, now full of Doubt, reached the real crisis point between consciousness and self-consciousness, on Hegel’s pathway of potential devastation. Du Bois noted that we would have noticed Crummell’s physical frailty at this point—“the shattered frame and hacking cough; but in that soul lay deeper death than that.”
Hegel’s detailed illustration of the journey to self-consciousness—partly embedded in a discussion of “Lordship and Bondage” in which master and slave (or serf) both struggle for recognition from the other—provides an important perspective on Crummell’s journey. The bishops and priests in Du Bois’ chapter suggest Hegel’s lords or masters and self-consciousness’s independent being-for-self. Crummell in that context appears to be the independent self-consciousness’s dependent being-for-other, in bondage. To be sure, in the Hegel construct, both of the apparently opposing consciousnesses have to recognize the other, but Du Bois’ chapter is also about Crummell, and his own (internal) struggle. And so we may also think of the struggle as being between his own independent and dependent being (to make consciousness for both self and its own other). That is to say that in the Hegelian context, it is we, again, as phenomenological observers, who must recognize what Crummell could not at that point: in addition to the immediate struggle Crummell endured against bigotry and indifference, there is also a struggle between his own independent being (for-self) and his fear-filled, dependent being (for-other). Crummell had to reconcile the two as one—a single consciousness both for its self and for its other irrespective of external conditions. If he succeeded at this resolution, Crummell would no longer have had to ask why he should continue to strive given all the apparent obstacles in place; he would have known that the important thing was to continue to strive.39
Du Bois’ discussion of Crummell evokes all three of Hegel’s stages of self-consciousness. Stoicism, in which things become important because consciousness thinks they are, was evident when Crummell decided to become a priest. In making this decision, consciousness seems free because freedom is manifested in thought or self-will. But the stoic consciousness is ignoring the details of life. “[T]he General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church cannot admit a Negro.” When Crummell fought against this tradition, the priests simply saw “him as foolish, unreasonable, and injudicious, a vain rebel against God’s law.”
Crummell’s eventual ordination as a deacon, creating a reason for optimism, provided the foundation for his movement from stoicism to skeptical consciousness, Hegel’s second stage of self-consciousness. As Du Bois told us, Crummell “[s]lowly and more soberly . . . took up again his plan of life.” Upon studying the situation, he came to the conclusion that slavery had debased and degraded black people. And so, “[h]e would gather the best of his people into some little Episcopal chapel and there lead, teach, and inspire them, till the leaven spread, till the children grew, till the world hearkened.” Just as Hegel’s skeptical self-consciousness did, Crummell made his “other,” the priests, “vanish,” along with “[his] relationship to [them],” particularly after their half-hearted offer of a church. The skeptical self-conscious, “in the simple negativity of its own thinking,” simply ignored the world or rose above it. But as Findlay notes, this withdrawal was not evidence of freedom but an indication of “solitary sovereignty.” Although the work Crummell continued to do for “The True and Good” was still “uplifting,” it could only become tiresome, monotonous, and even life-draining because it was based on what Hegel described as empty scientific abstractions (“pure thought”) rather than the real (life) from which consciousness had actually withdrawn (PS §200–204).40
Not surprisingly, this “skeptical freedom” becomes enmeshed in an internal (self-generated) chaos of personal belief, which Hegel described as “absolute dialectical unrest.” At one point consciousness (Crummell) “rise[s] above all the confusion”; at another, it/he “relapse[s] into occupying itself [himself] with what is unessential” (PS §205). In this stage, there is still a division, but it resides in one individual instead of two. Until consciousness overcomes the idea of “self as a dual-natured, merely contradictory being” (Du Bois’ “double consciousness”) and becomes a real unity, there can only be an unhappy consciousness, bouncing back and forth between one extreme and the other (PS §206). This “unhappy; inwardly disrupted consciousness” is Hegel’s third state of self-consciousness, which he described further as “the gazing of one self-consciousness into another,” while “itself is both, and the unity of both is also its essential nature” (PS §207).
The unhappy consciousness results from viewing the two sides as opposites rather than the same, which forces it to distinguish between “the essential [unchangeable] Being” and “the protean [unessential] Changeable.” The unhappy consciousness identifies itself with the unreliable, shifting consciousness, the unessential being. Because the unhappy consciousness sees itself as the changeable, and true consciousness is actually unchangeable, the unhappy consciousness is constantly engaged in an internal battle to free itself (unessential changeable) from itself (essential unchangeable), which it has rendered alien. It is, in a way, a struggle to be what it already is (PS §§206, 208).41
The process of bridging this division and moving unhappy consciousness to Spirit involves work. Hegel described work as “formative activity” that dissolves fear and creates the circumstances that allow consciousness to move to reason (PS §§195–96). Thus, through work, the unhappy consciousness unites the pure thinking of stoicism and the fickleness of skepticism so that consciousness can know the one as the other, and in that unity the divided consciousness achieves Reason, “the certainty of consciousness that it is all reality” (PS §233). The discipline and service of work allow self-consciousness to rise “above petty finite [personal] interests.”42 The discipline of work, the surrender of any personal concerns about it, and the acceptance of the directions of consciousness, signals a united consciousness and the arrival at Reason.43
Having reason, consciousness has “a universal interest in the world” and knows it belongs there. To move from having reason to being reason, consciousness has to get beyond its self (the “superficial ‘mine’” or “pure ego”). In order to do so, consciousness embarks on a quest for truth—observing nature—seeking universal laws.44 When conscious observation results in an awareness that distinguishes between action and intention, that resists labeling or judging (labeling a thing denies the full range of its characteristics), and that sees the relation between the internal (inner/psychological) and external (outer/social/political) in the object, thus eliminating the contingent in the object (making it both universal and subject), it is possible for self-consciousness to recognize itself in another self-consciousness and to see itself, ethically, as a part of a social whole. At this point, consciousness has moved from having reason to being reason, which is Spirit (PS §436).45
Because Hegel told us that self-conscious reason can only be actualized “in the life of a people or a nation,” it is not difficult to imagine that it was this type of relationship to which Du Bois alluded in his description of Crummell’s work over nearly two decades in Africa and especially upon his return to America (PS §350). Crummell became a participant in a world that was no longer just an existent object upon which he imposed himself, and that world became a part of him. Crummell’s work, from the dictates (“law”) of his heart, demonstrated virtue or individual sacrifice rather than reflecting some externalized “duty” (PS §359). And, finally, Crummell has come to terms with alienation in which one might become a “beautiful soul” but ultimately an empty soul and in which conscience is a form of vanity or self-worship.46 Once Crummell resolved the (immediate) “otherness” that is suggested by each of the above intermediate (dichotomous) conditions, Reason’s “certainty of being all reality has been raised to truth, and it [Crummell] is conscious of itself [himself] as its [his] own world, and of the world as itself [himself]” and is, thus, Spirit (PS §438).47
Work provided the means by which self-consciousness discovered itself in otherness. Crummell could only doubt and despair so long as he continued to oppose otherness in the context of the thing—the school, the church, the bishops; “the low, the grasping and the wicked.” But in working anyway and enduring all sorts of conflicts and deprivation, Crummell/consciousness surrendered to the “middle term” (Hegel’s unhappy consciousness) (PS §227) that mediated the extremes of the unchangeable (essential) and the unessential (changeable) consciousness. This mediator made it possible for consciousness to relinquish its will and even the pleasure and enjoyment it normally derived from its work, its property, and its things, and simply to work, “divested . . . of its ‘I,’ and having turned its immediate self-consciousness into a Thing, into an objective existence” (PS §229). No longer being responsible for its work (it now being directed by the mediator rather than the self), consciousness/Crummell also no longer has to suffer the misery of it.
The extended discussions of work in Souls (and other Du Bois texts) easily remind us of the oppression and exploitation under which black folk worked. Aspects of the discussion also evoke the turn-of-the-twentieth-century obsessions with industrialization and the transformation of peasant people into clock-oriented, scientifically managed minions, an interpretation at least partly influenced by Karl Marx’s successful application of Hegel’s discussion of “Lordship and Bondage” to the alienated industrial proletariat. But Du Bois’ use of Cambridge-educated Crummell lifts the discussion of work out of the framework of retraining peasant/working-class populations. And if gaining “meat and raiment” was not the objective of work, not even for the poor, rural inhabitants of Dougherty County, what was the point? For Du Bois (and Hegel), one works to nurture Soul, to find oneself, to discover (to meet, to know, and to know oneself as) Spirit.
The implication of Du Bois’ chapter is that Crummell did in fact achieve the “perfect freedom and independence” that is Spirit.48 As Du Bois noted, while “the Valley of the Shadow of Death” usually swallowed up “its Pilgrims,” it released Alexander Crummell. When he returned to the United States, faced with some of the same adversities that existed before he left, he no longer asked “‘What, in God’s name, am I on earth for?’” Instead, Du Bois says, Crummell was “humble and strong, gentle and determined.” He simply went to work. He sometimes fought against “the low, the grasping, and the wicked,” and he endured “the gibes and prejudices, . . . hatred and discrimination.” “[H]e worked alone, with so little human sympathy.” And he worked “nobly and well.” If Hegel’s model is an appropriate one for Du Bois’ Crummell chapter, we must assume that in working anyway, and enduring all sorts of conflicts and deprivation (in America and in Africa), Crummell/Consciousness moved from having to being reason, and thus to Spirit (PS §196).
Even though sparse, the details Du Bois provided about Crummell’s life helped to illustrate the process by which a “protean consciousness,” which is at first only able to distinguish “forms” and “shapes,” gains an education characterized by movement through a series of stages of consciousnesses. In this process, consciousness is ultimately relieved of the bondage of its reliance on what it learns through the senses. Thus, Crummell’s “education of consciousness” liberated him “from the dominance of naturalness,” which Werner Marx described as “the given circumstances, situation, habits, customs, religion and so forth” of a place, time, and/or people. Crummell ultimately “grasp[ed] the rationality of objecthood, of objectivity—whether it be that of nature or of the institutions and thought-habits of a people or epoch—and thus [became] aware of [his] identity with this objectivity.”49
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Hegel’s Phenomenology traced the movement of “the individual mind from its unscientific [natural] standpoint to that of science [knowledge].”50 Crummell’s life as Du Bois constructed it provides a useful example of that individual journey. In deference to Crummell’s life choices, Du Bois could hardly have done anything other than invoke the religious metaphors and theological images that we see in his chapter. But given Du Bois’ own training and probable inclinations it is equally likely that he could not ignore important philosophical concerns. In Du Bois’ rendition, because of the development of Crummell’s consciousness, his soul, Crummell was a prophet, whether we see him in the context of the seekers of truth and knowledge in the centuries before the Common Era when such seekers, philosophers, were prophets, or, if we prefer, after the likeness of some of the great leaders of world religions. Both pursued a united consciousness, whether one represents that consciousness as God or as Spirit, through a process of becoming in and for itself and in and for its other, and, particularly, through engaging, rather than withdrawing from, life.
Du Bois’ discussions of work in his presentation on Crummell’s life might have reflected a personal investment in ideas that we relate to the Protestant work ethic. As Wilson Moses has written,
A Calvinistic celebration of work and restraint was in evidence when Du Bois called for “work, continuous and intensive; work, although it be menial and poorly rewarded; work though done in travail of soul and sweat and brow, must be so impressed upon Negro children as the road to salvation that a child would feel it a greater disgrace to be idle than to do the humblest labor.”
Moses added, “the work ethic, what Cotton Mather called a Christian’s ‘calling,’ remained central to Du Bois’s religious spirit.”51 Although it is possible that “salvation” in the Du Bois quote relates to a religious experience of deliverance, this soul is also saved through the developing education of consciousness, which takes place in the process of working. Work served very different (somewhat opposing) purposes for colonial New England Calvinists and classical philosophers. For the former, work was necessary for controlling one’s (natural) darker side—“passions” and impulses, for example. Unlike Calvinists, philosophers assumed that man was not inherently bad but essentially good, and work nurtured that goodness.52 It is for this reason that work is so central to Du Bois’ entire discussion, not just the chapter on Crummell.
Another prayer that Du Bois wrote to deliver at an Atlanta University religious service also highlights his philosophical concerns with work.
God teach us to work. Herein alone do we approach our Creator when we stretch our arms with toil, and strain with eye and ear and brain to catch the thought and do the deed and create the things that make life worth living. Let us quickly learn in our youth, O Father, that in the very doing, the honest humbled determined striving, lies the realness of things, the great glory of life. Of all things there is fear and fading—beauty pales and hope disappoints; but blessed is the worker—his are the kingdoms of earth—Amen.53
Without a doubt, Du Bois’ words reflect well-known Calvinist or Protestant notions about work, but they also reflect aspects of the traditional philosophic journey of finding the meaning of one’s life, the journey to self-knowledge. Working, which allows one “to catch the thought and do the deed and create the things that make life worth living,” is one central component of a good, purposeful life, a philosophic life. It is evidence of striving and the path to the real (“essence”), as Du Bois noted in the remark.54 And most important and ironic, for Du Bois, it also leads to the “kingdoms of earth”(!). Through work, Consciousness becomes, in Hegel’s words and as already noted, “conscious of itself as its own world, and of the world as itself” and is, thus, (united) Spirit (PS §438).
When Hegel characterized work as a “formative activity” and the foundation and source of life, he was not talking about the kind of mind-wasting, numbing work that most of the black residents of Dougherty County had no choice but to do, or the compromise work that the artists, professionals, and craftspeople described in Du Bois’ first chapter settled for. Hegel was referring to the kind of work that allowed one to become “conscious of what he truly is.” To be sure, Hegel saw work as controlling impulse or desire, which was later an apparent obsession of people characterized as turn-of-the-century “uplifters.” Hegel wrote, “[w]ork . . . is desire held in check, fleetingness staved off.” But even more important, Hegel insisted that “work forms and shapes the thing” (PS §§195–96).
Throughout The Souls of Black Folk, the purpose of work was not merely to develop discipline, and certainly not to accumulate capital or even to eat (the immediate, determinate, and material objectives of labor), but to discover one’s self (self-consciousness), to realize the meaning of a life (reason), to arrive at true being (spirit). Du Bois could not have ignored the particular (unique) details of Crummell’s life story: it was without a doubt a Christian’s journey, and, consequently, the study easily took the literary form of allegory. But Du Bois, the philosopher-intellectual, was, himself, a phenomenological observer who saw Crummell’s life not only as a spiritual journey in which a Christian constantly searched for evidence of God’s presence, but also as a spiritual journey like that which Hegel characterized as consciousness’s seeking its wholeness of being. And in this context, too, Crummell’s life story provides a perfect example.