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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/2944-0.txt b/2944-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1c0becc --- /dev/null +++ b/2944-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7238 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook of Essays, First Series, by Ralph Waldo Emerson + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you +will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before +using this eBook. + +Title: Essays, First Series + +Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson + +Release Date: December, 2001 [eBook #2944] +[Most recently updated: February 10, 2021] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +Produced by: Tony Adam and David Widger + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS, FIRST SERIES *** + + + + +ESSAYS, FIRST SERIES + +By Ralph Waldo Emerson + + +Contents + + I. HISTORY + II. SELF-RELIANCE + III. COMPENSATION + IV. SPIRITUAL LAWS + V. LOVE + VI. FRIENDSHIP + VII. PRUDENCE + VIII. HEROISM + IX. THE OVER-SOUL + X. CIRCLES + XI. INTELLECT + XII. ART + + + Next Volume + + + + +I. +HISTORY + + +There is no great and no small +To the Soul that maketh all: +And where it cometh, all things are +And it cometh everywhere. + + +I am owner of the sphere, +Of the seven stars and the solar year, +Of Cæsar’s hand, and Plato’s brain, +Of Lord Christ’s heart, and Shakspeare’s strain. + + + + +HISTORY + + +There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet +to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the +right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has +thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any +time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this +universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is +the only and sovereign agent. + +Of the works of this mind history is the record. Its genius is +illustrated by the entire series of days. Man is explicable by nothing +less than all his history. Without hurry, without rest, the human +spirit goes forth from the beginning to embody every faculty, every +thought, every emotion, which belongs to it, in appropriate events. But +the thought is always prior to the fact; all the facts of history +preexist in the mind as laws. Each law in turn is made by circumstances +predominant, and the limits of nature give power to but one at a time. +A man is the whole encyclopaedia of facts. The creation of a thousand +forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, +America, lie folded already in the first man. Epoch after epoch, camp, +kingdom, empire, republic, democracy, are merely the application of his +manifold spirit to the manifold world. + +This human mind wrote history, and this must read it. The Sphinx must +solve her own riddle. If the whole of history is in one man, it is all +to be explained from individual experience. There is a relation between +the hours of our life and the centuries of time. As the air I breathe +is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light on my book +is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise +of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal +forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages and the ages +explained by the hours. Of the universal mind each individual man is +one more incarnation. All its properties consist in him. Each new fact +in his private experience flashes a light on what great bodies of men +have done, and the crises of his life refer to national crises. Every +revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind, and when the same +thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era. Every reform +was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion +again it will solve the problem of the age. The fact narrated must +correspond to something in me to be credible or intelligible. We, as we +read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and +executioner; must fasten these images to some reality in our secret +experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly. What befell Asdrubal or +Cæsar Borgia is as much an illustration of the mind’s powers and +depravations as what has befallen us. Each new law and political +movement has meaning for you. Stand before each of its tablets and say, +‘Under this mask did my Proteus nature hide itself.’ This remedies the +defect of our too great nearness to ourselves. This throws our actions +into perspective; and as crabs, goats, scorpions, the balance and the +waterpot lose their meanness when hung as signs in the zodiac, so I can +see my own vices without heat in the distant persons of Solomon, +Alcibiades, and Catiline. + +It is the universal nature which gives worth to particular men and +things. Human life, as containing this, is mysterious and inviolable, +and we hedge it round with penalties and laws. All laws derive hence +their ultimate reason; all express more or less distinctly some command +of this supreme, illimitable essence. Property also holds of the soul, +covers great spiritual facts, and instinctively we at first hold to it +with swords and laws and wide and complex combinations. The obscure +consciousness of this fact is the light of all our day, the claim of +claims; the plea for education, for justice, for charity; the +foundation of friendship and love and of the heroism and grandeur which +belong to acts of self-reliance. It is remarkable that involuntarily we +always read as superior beings. Universal history, the poets, the +romancers, do not in their stateliest pictures,—in the sacerdotal, the +imperial palaces, in the triumphs of will or of genius,—anywhere lose +our ear, anywhere make us feel that we intrude, that this is for better +men; but rather is it true that in their grandest strokes we feel most +at home. All that Shakspeare says of the king, yonder slip of a boy +that reads in the corner feels to be true of himself. We sympathize in +the great moments of history, in the great discoveries, the great +resistances, the great prosperities of men;—because there law was +enacted, the sea was searched, the land was found, or the blow was +struck, _for us_, as we ourselves in that place would have done or +applauded. + +We have the same interest in condition and character. We honor the rich +because they have externally the freedom, power, and grace which we +feel to be proper to man, proper to us. So all that is said of the wise +man by Stoic or Oriental or modern essayist, describes to each reader +his own idea, describes his unattained but attainable self. All +literature writes the character of the wise man. Books, monuments, +pictures, conversation, are portraits in which he finds the lineaments +he is forming. The silent and the eloquent praise him and accost him, +and he is stimulated wherever he moves, as by personal allusions. A +true aspirant therefore never needs look for allusions personal and +laudatory in discourse. He hears the commendation, not of himself, but, +more sweet, of that character he seeks, in every word that is said +concerning character, yea further in every fact and circumstance,—in +the running river and the rustling corn. Praise is looked, homage +tendered, love flows, from mute nature, from the mountains and the +lights of the firmament. + +These hints, dropped as it were from sleep and night, let us use in +broad day. The student is to read history actively and not passively; +to esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary. Thus +compelled, the Muse of history will utter oracles, as never to those +who do not respect themselves. I have no expectation that any man will +read history aright who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by +men whose names have resounded far, has any deeper sense than what he +is doing to-day. + +The world exists for the education of each man. There is no age or +state of society or mode of action in history to which there is not +somewhat corresponding in his life. Every thing tends in a wonderful +manner to abbreviate itself and yield its own virtue to him. He should +see that he can live all history in his own person. He must sit solidly +at home, and not suffer himself to be bullied by kings or empires, but +know that he is greater than all the geography and all the government +of the world; he must transfer the point of view from which history is +commonly read, from Rome and Athens and London, to himself, and not +deny his conviction that he is the court, and if England or Egypt have +any thing to say to him he will try the case; if not, let them for ever +be silent. He must attain and maintain that lofty sight where facts +yield their secret sense, and poetry and annals are alike. The instinct +of the mind, the purpose of nature, betrays itself in the use we make +of the signal narrations of history. Time dissipates to shining ether +the solid angularity of facts. No anchor, no cable, no fences avail to +keep a fact a fact. Babylon, Troy, Tyre, Palestine, and even early Rome +are passing already into fiction. The Garden of Eden, the sun standing +still in Gibeon, is poetry thenceforward to all nations. Who cares what +the fact was, when we have made a constellation of it to hang in heaven +an immortal sign? London and Paris and New York must go the same way. +“What is history,” said Napoleon, “but a fable agreed upon?” This life +of ours is stuck round with Egypt, Greece, Gaul, England, War, +Colonization, Church, Court and Commerce, as with so many flowers and +wild ornaments grave and gay. I will not make more account of them. I +believe in Eternity. I can find Greece, Asia, Italy, Spain and the +Islands,—the genius and creative principle of each and of all eras, in +my own mind. + +We are always coming up with the emphatic facts of history in our +private experience and verifying them here. All history becomes +subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only +biography. Every mind must know the whole lesson for itself,—must go +over the whole ground. What it does not see, what it does not live, it +will not know. What the former age has epitomized into a formula or +rule for manipular convenience, it will lose all the good of verifying +for itself, by means of the wall of that rule. Somewhere, sometime, it +will demand and find compensation for that loss, by doing the work +itself. Ferguson discovered many things in astronomy which had long +been known. The better for him. + +History must be this or it is nothing. Every law which the state enacts +indicates a fact in human nature; that is all. We must in ourselves see +the necessary reason of every fact,—see how it could and must be. So +stand before every public and private work; before an oration of Burke, +before a victory of Napoleon, before a martyrdom of Sir Thomas More, of +Sidney, of Marmaduke Robinson; before a French Reign of Terror, and a +Salem hanging of witches; before a fanatic Revival and the Animal +Magnetism in Paris, or in Providence. We assume that we under like +influence should be alike affected, and should achieve the like; and we +aim to master intellectually the steps and reach the same height or the +same degradation that our fellow, our proxy has done. + +All inquiry into antiquity, all curiosity respecting the Pyramids, the +excavated cities, Stonehenge, the Ohio Circles, Mexico, Memphis,—is the +desire to do away this wild, savage, and preposterous There or Then, +and introduce in its place the Here and the Now. Belzoni digs and +measures in the mummy-pits and pyramids of Thebes, until he can see the +end of the difference between the monstrous work and himself. When he +has satisfied himself, in general and in detail, that it was made by +such a person as he, so armed and so motived, and to ends to which he +himself should also have worked, the problem is solved; his thought +lives along the whole line of temples and sphinxes and catacombs, +passes through them all with satisfaction, and they live again to the +mind, or are now. + +A Gothic cathedral affirms that it was done by us and not done by us. +Surely it was by man, but we find it not in our man. But we apply +ourselves to the history of its production. We put ourselves into the +place and state of the builder. We remember the forest-dwellers, the +first temples, the adherence to the first type, and the decoration of +it as the wealth of the nation increased; the value which is given to +wood by carving led to the carving over the whole mountain of stone of +a cathedral. When we have gone through this process, and added thereto +the Catholic Church, its cross, its music, its processions, its Saints’ +days and image-worship, we have as it were been the man that made the +minster; we have seen how it could and must be. We have the sufficient +reason. + +The difference between men is in their principle of association. Some +men classify objects by color and size and other accidents of +appearance; others by intrinsic likeness, or by the relation of cause +and effect. The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of +causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the +philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all +events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is +fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. Every chemical +substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity +of cause, the variety of appearance. + +Upborne and surrounded as we are by this all-creating nature, soft and +fluid as a cloud or the air, why should we be such hard pedants, and +magnify a few forms? Why should we make account of time, or of +magnitude, or of figure? The soul knows them not, and genius, obeying +its law, knows how to play with them as a young child plays with +graybeards and in churches. Genius studies the causal thought, and far +back in the womb of things sees the rays parting from one orb, that +diverge, ere they fall, by infinite diameters. Genius watches the monad +through all his masks as he performs the metempsychosis of nature. +Genius detects through the fly, through the caterpillar, through the +grub, through the egg, the constant individual; through countless +individuals the fixed species; through many species the genus; through +all genera the steadfast type; through all the kingdoms of organized +life the eternal unity. Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and +never the same. She casts the same thought into troops of forms, as a +poet makes twenty fables with one moral. Through the bruteness and +toughness of matter, a subtle spirit bends all things to its own will. +The adamant streams into soft but precise form before it, and whilst I +look at it its outline and texture are changed again. Nothing is so +fleeting as form; yet never does it quite deny itself. In man we still +trace the remains or hints of all that we esteem badges of servitude in +the lower races; yet in him they enhance his nobleness and grace; as +Io, in Æschylus, transformed to a cow, offends the imagination; but how +changed when as Isis in Egypt she meets Osiris-Jove, a beautiful woman +with nothing of the metamorphosis left but the lunar horns as the +splendid ornament of her brows! + +The identity of history is equally intrinsic, the diversity equally +obvious. There is, at the surface, infinite variety of things; at the +centre there is simplicity of cause. How many are the acts of one man +in which we recognize the same character! Observe the sources of our +information in respect to the Greek genius. We have the _civil history_ +of that people, as Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plutarch have +given it; a very sufficient account of what manner of persons they were +and what they did. We have the same national mind expressed for us +again in their _literature_, in epic and lyric poems, drama, and +philosophy; a very complete form. Then we have it once more in their +_architecture_, a beauty as of temperance itself, limited to the +straight line and the square,—a builded geometry. Then we have it once +again in _sculpture_, the “tongue on the balance of expression,” a +multitude of forms in the utmost freedom of action and never +transgressing the ideal serenity; like votaries performing some +religious dance before the gods, and, though in convulsive pain or +mortal combat, never daring to break the figure and decorum of their +dance. Thus of the genius of one remarkable people we have a fourfold +representation: and to the senses what more unlike than an ode of +Pindar, a marble centaur, the peristyle of the Parthenon, and the last +actions of Phocion? + +Every one must have observed faces and forms which, without any +resembling feature, make a like impression on the beholder. A +particular picture or copy of verses, if it do not awaken the same +train of images, will yet superinduce the same sentiment as some wild +mountain walk, although the resemblance is nowise obvious to the +senses, but is occult and out of the reach of the understanding. Nature +is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums +the old well-known air through innumerable variations. + +Nature is full of a sublime family likeness throughout her works, and +delights in startling us with resemblances in the most unexpected +quarters. I have seen the head of an old sachem of the forest which at +once reminded the eye of a bald mountain summit, and the furrows of the +brow suggested the strata of the rock. There are men whose manners have +the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the +friezes of the Parthenon and the remains of the earliest Greek art. And +there are compositions of the same strain to be found in the books of +all ages. What is Guido’s Rospigliosi Aurora but a morning thought, as +the horses in it are only a morning cloud? If any one will but take +pains to observe the variety of actions to which he is equally inclined +in certain moods of mind, and those to which he is averse, he will see +how deep is the chain of affinity. + +A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort +becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form +merely,—but, by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter +enters into his nature and can then draw him at will in every attitude. +So Roos “entered into the inmost nature of a sheep.” I knew a +draughtsman employed in a public survey who found that he could not +sketch the rocks until their geological structure was first explained +to him. In a certain state of thought is the common origin of very +diverse works. It is the spirit and not the fact that is identical. By +a deeper apprehension, and not primarily by a painful acquisition of +many manual skills, the artist attains the power of awakening other +souls to a given activity. + +It has been said that “common souls pay with what they do, nobler souls +with that which they are.” And why? Because a profound nature awakens +in us by its actions and words, by its very looks and manners, the same +power and beauty that a gallery of sculpture or of pictures addresses. + +Civil and natural history, the history of art and of literature, must +be explained from individual history, or must remain words. There is +nothing but is related to us, nothing that does not interest +us,—kingdom, college, tree, horse, or iron shoe,—the roots of all +things are in man. Santa Croce and the Dome of St. Peter’s are lame +copies after a divine model. Strasburg Cathedral is a material +counterpart of the soul of Erwin of Steinbach. The true poem is the +poet’s mind; the true ship is the ship-builder. In the man, could we +lay him open, we should see the reason for the last flourish and +tendril of his work; as every spine and tint in the sea-shell preexists +in the secreting organs of the fish. The whole of heraldry and of +chivalry is in courtesy. A man of fine manners shall pronounce your +name with all the ornament that titles of nobility could ever add. + +The trivial experience of every day is always verifying some old +prediction to us and converting into things the words and signs which +we had heard and seen without heed. A lady with whom I was riding in +the forest said to me that the woods always seemed to her to wait, as +if the genii who inhabit them suspended their deeds until the wayfarer +had passed onward; a thought which poetry has celebrated in the dance +of the fairies, which breaks off on the approach of human feet. The man +who has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds at midnight, has +been present like an archangel at the creation of light and of the +world. I remember one summer day in the fields my companion pointed out +to me a broad cloud, which might extend a quarter of a mile parallel to +the horizon, quite accurately in the form of a cherub as painted over +churches,—a round block in the centre, which it was easy to animate +with eyes and mouth, supported on either side by wide-stretched +symmetrical wings. What appears once in the atmosphere may appear +often, and it was undoubtedly the archetype of that familiar ornament. +I have seen in the sky a chain of summer lightning which at once showed +to me that the Greeks drew from nature when they painted the +thunderbolt in the hand of Jove. I have seen a snow-drift along the +sides of the stone wall which obviously gave the idea of the common +architectural scroll to abut a tower. + +By surrounding ourselves with the original circumstances we invent anew +the orders and the ornaments of architecture, as we see how each people +merely decorated its primitive abodes. The Doric temple preserves the +semblance of the wooden cabin in which the Dorian dwelt. The Chinese +pagoda is plainly a Tartar tent. The Indian and Egyptian temples still +betray the mounds and subterranean houses of their forefathers. “The +custom of making houses and tombs in the living rock,” says Heeren in +his Researches on the Ethiopians, “determined very naturally the +principal character of the Nubian Egyptian architecture to the colossal +form which it assumed. In these caverns, already prepared by nature, +the eye was accustomed to dwell on huge shapes and masses, so that when +art came to the assistance of nature it could not move on a small scale +without degrading itself. What would statues of the usual size, or neat +porches and wings have been, associated with those gigantic halls +before which only Colossi could sit as watchmen or lean on the pillars +of the interior?” + +The Gothic church plainly originated in a rude adaptation of the forest +trees, with all their boughs, to a festal or solemn arcade; as the +bands about the cleft pillars still indicate the green withes that tied +them. No one can walk in a road cut through pine woods, without being +struck with the architectural appearance of the grove, especially in +winter, when the barrenness of all other trees shows the low arch of +the Saxons. In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily +the origin of the stained glass window, with which the Gothic +cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through +the bare and crossing branches of the forest. Nor can any lover of +nature enter the old piles of Oxford and the English cathedrals, +without feeling that the forest overpowered the mind of the builder, +and that his chisel, his saw and plane still reproduced its ferns, its +spikes of flowers, its locust, elm, oak, pine, fir and spruce. + +The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone subdued by the insatiable +demand of harmony in man. The mountain of granite blooms into an +eternal flower, with the lightness and delicate finish as well as the +aerial proportions and perspective of vegetable beauty. + +In like manner all public facts are to be individualized, all private +facts are to be generalized. Then at once History becomes fluid and +true, and Biography deep and sublime. As the Persian imitated in the +slender shafts and capitals of his architecture the stem and flower of +the lotus and palm, so the Persian court in its magnificent era never +gave over the nomadism of its barbarous tribes, but travelled from +Ecbatana, where the spring was spent, to Susa in summer and to Babylon +for the winter. + +In the early history of Asia and Africa, Nomadism and Agriculture are +the two antagonist facts. The geography of Asia and of Africa +necessitated a nomadic life. But the nomads were the terror of all +those whom the soil or the advantages of a market had induced to build +towns. Agriculture therefore was a religious injunction, because of the +perils of the state from nomadism. And in these late and civil +countries of England and America these propensities still fight out the +old battle, in the nation and in the individual. The nomads of Africa +were constrained to wander, by the attacks of the gad-fly, which drives +the cattle mad, and so compels the tribe to emigrate in the rainy +season and to drive off the cattle to the higher sandy regions. The +nomads of Asia follow the pasturage from month to month. In America and +Europe the nomadism is of trade and curiosity; a progress, certainly, +from the gad-fly of Astaboras to the Anglo and Italo-mania of Boston +Bay. Sacred cities, to which a periodical religious pilgrimage was +enjoined, or stringent laws and customs, tending to invigorate the +national bond, were the check on the old rovers; and the cumulative +values of long residence are the restraints on the itineracy of the +present day. The antagonism of the two tendencies is not less active in +individuals, as the love of adventure or the love of repose happens to +predominate. A man of rude health and flowing spirits has the faculty +of rapid domestication, lives in his wagon and roams through all +latitudes as easily as a Calmuc. At sea, or in the forest, or in the +snow, he sleeps as warm, dines with as good appetite, and associates as +happily as beside his own chimneys. Or perhaps his facility is deeper +seated, in the increased range of his faculties of observation, which +yield him points of interest wherever fresh objects meet his eyes. The +pastoral nations were needy and hungry to desperation; and this +intellectual nomadism, in its excess, bankrupts the mind through the +dissipation of power on a miscellany of objects. The home-keeping wit, +on the other hand, is that continence or content which finds all the +elements of life in its own soil; and which has its own perils of +monotony and deterioration, if not stimulated by foreign infusions. + +Every thing the individual sees without him corresponds to his states +of mind, and every thing is in turn intelligible to him, as his onward +thinking leads him into the truth to which that fact or series belongs. + +The primeval world,—the Fore-World, as the Germans say,—I can dive to +it in myself as well as grope for it with researching fingers in +catacombs, libraries, and the broken reliefs and torsos of ruined +villas. + +What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in Greek history, +letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods from the Heroic or Homeric +age down to the domestic life of the Athenians and Spartans, four or +five centuries later? What but this, that every man passes personally +through a Grecian period. The Grecian state is the era of the bodily +nature, the perfection of the senses,—of the spiritual nature unfolded +in strict unity with the body. In it existed those human forms which +supplied the sculptor with his models of Hercules, Phœbus, and Jove; +not like the forms abounding in the streets of modern cities, wherein +the face is a confused blur of features, but composed of incorrupt, +sharply defined and symmetrical features, whose eye-sockets are so +formed that it would be impossible for such eyes to squint and take +furtive glances on this side and on that, but they must turn the whole +head. The manners of that period are plain and fierce. The reverence +exhibited is for personal qualities; courage, address, self-command, +justice, strength, swiftness, a loud voice, a broad chest. Luxury and +elegance are not known. A sparse population and want make every man his +own valet, cook, butcher and soldier, and the habit of supplying his +own needs educates the body to wonderful performances. Such are the +Agamemnon and Diomed of Homer, and not far different is the picture +Xenophon gives of himself and his compatriots in the Retreat of the Ten +Thousand. “After the army had crossed the river Teleboas in Armenia, +there fell much snow, and the troops lay miserably on the ground +covered with it. But Xenophon arose naked, and taking an axe, began to +split wood; whereupon others rose and did the like.” Throughout his +army exists a boundless liberty of speech. They quarrel for plunder, +they wrangle with the generals on each new order, and Xenophon is as +sharp-tongued as any and sharper-tongued than most, and so gives as +good as he gets. Who does not see that this is a gang of great boys, +with such a code of honor and such lax discipline as great boys have? + +The costly charm of the ancient tragedy, and indeed of all the old +literature, is that the persons speak simply,—speak as persons who have +great good sense without knowing it, before yet the reflective habit +has become the predominant habit of the mind. Our admiration of the +antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural. The Greeks +are not reflective, but perfect in their senses and in their health, +with the finest physical organization in the world. Adults acted with +the simplicity and grace of children. They made vases, tragedies, and +statues, such as healthy senses should,—that is, in good taste. Such +things have continued to be made in all ages, and are now, wherever a +healthy physique exists; but, as a class, from their superior +organization, they have surpassed all. They combine the energy of +manhood with the engaging unconsciousness of childhood. The attraction +of these manners is that they belong to man, and are known to every man +in virtue of his being once a child; besides that there are always +individuals who retain these characteristics. A person of childlike +genius and inborn energy is still a Greek, and revives our love of the +Muse of Hellas. I admire the love of nature in the Philoctetes. In +reading those fine apostrophes to sleep, to the stars, rocks, mountains +and waves, I feel time passing away as an ebbing sea. I feel the +eternity of man, the identity of his thought. The Greek had it seems +the same fellow-beings as I. The sun and moon, water and fire, met his +heart precisely as they meet mine. Then the vaunted distinction between +Greek and English, between Classic and Romantic schools, seems +superficial and pedantic. When a thought of Plato becomes a thought to +me,—when a truth that fired the soul of Pindar fires mine, time is no +more. When I feel that we two meet in a perception, that our two souls +are tinged with the same hue, and do as it were run into one, why +should I measure degrees of latitude, why should I count Egyptian +years? + +The student interprets the age of chivalry by his own age of chivalry, +and the days of maritime adventure and circumnavigation by quite +parallel miniature experiences of his own. To the sacred history of the +world he has the same key. When the voice of a prophet out of the deeps +of antiquity merely echoes to him a sentiment of his infancy, a prayer +of his youth, he then pierces to the truth through all the confusion of +tradition and the caricature of institutions. + +Rare, extravagant spirits come by us at intervals, who disclose to us +new facts in nature. I see that men of God have from time to time +walked among men and made their commission felt in the heart and soul +of the commonest hearer. Hence evidently the tripod, the priest, the +priestess inspired by the divine afflatus. + +Jesus astonishes and overpowers sensual people. They cannot unite him +to history, or reconcile him with themselves. As they come to revere +their intuitions and aspire to live holily, their own piety explains +every fact, every word. + +How easily these old worships of Moses, of Zoroaster, of Menu, of +Socrates, domesticate themselves in the mind. I cannot find any +antiquity in them. They are mine as much as theirs. + +I have seen the first monks and anchorets, without crossing seas or +centuries. More than once some individual has appeared to me with such +negligence of labor and such commanding contemplation, a haughty +beneficiary begging in the name of God, as made good to the nineteenth +century Simeon the Stylite, the Thebais, and the first Capuchins. + +The priestcraft of the East and West, of the Magian, Brahmin, Druid, +and Inca, is expounded in the individual’s private life. The cramping +influence of a hard formalist on a young child, in repressing his +spirits and courage, paralyzing the understanding, and that without +producing indignation, but only fear and obedience, and even much +sympathy with the tyranny,—is a familiar fact, explained to the child +when he becomes a man, only by seeing that the oppressor of his youth +is himself a child tyrannized over by those names and words and forms +of whose influence he was merely the organ to the youth. The fact +teaches him how Belus was worshipped and how the Pyramids were built, +better than the discovery by Champollion of the names of all the +workmen and the cost of every tile. He finds Assyria and the Mounds of +Cholula at his door, and himself has laid the courses. + +Again, in that protest which each considerate person makes against the +superstition of his times, he repeats step for step the part of old +reformers, and in the search after truth finds, like them, new perils +to virtue. He learns again what moral vigor is needed to supply the +girdle of a superstition. A great licentiousness treads on the heels of +a reformation. How many times in the history of the world has the +Luther of the day had to lament the decay of piety in his own +household! “Doctor,” said his wife to Martin Luther, one day, “how is +it that whilst subject to papacy we prayed so often and with such +fervor, whilst now we pray with the utmost coldness and very seldom?” + +The advancing man discovers how deep a property he has in +literature,—in all fable as well as in all history. He finds that the +poet was no odd fellow who described strange and impossible situations, +but that universal man wrote by his pen a confession true for one and +true for all. His own secret biography he finds in lines wonderfully +intelligible to him, dotted down before he was born. One after another +he comes up in his private adventures with every fable of Æsop, of +Homer, of Hafiz, of Ariosto, of Chaucer, of Scott, and verifies them +with his own head and hands. + +The beautiful fables of the Greeks, being proper creations of the +imagination and not of the fancy, are universal verities. What a range +of meanings and what perpetual pertinence has the story of Prometheus! +Beside its primary value as the first chapter of the history of Europe, +(the mythology thinly veiling authentic facts, the invention of the +mechanic arts and the migration of colonies,) it gives the history of +religion, with some closeness to the faith of later ages. Prometheus is +the Jesus of the old mythology. He is the friend of man; stands between +the unjust “justice” of the Eternal Father and the race of mortals, and +readily suffers all things on their account. But where it departs from +the Calvinistic Christianity and exhibits him as the defier of Jove, it +represents a state of mind which readily appears wherever the doctrine +of Theism is taught in a crude, objective form, and which seems the +self-defence of man against this untruth, namely a discontent with the +believed fact that a God exists, and a feeling that the obligation of +reverence is onerous. It would steal if it could the fire of the +Creator, and live apart from him and independent of him. The Prometheus +Vinctus is the romance of skepticism. Not less true to all time are the +details of that stately apologue. Apollo kept the flocks of Admetus, +said the poets. When the gods come among men, they are not known. Jesus +was not; Socrates and Shakspeare were not. Antaeus was suffocated by +the gripe of Hercules, but every time he touched his mother earth his +strength was renewed. Man is the broken giant, and in all his weakness +both his body and his mind are invigorated by habits of conversation +with nature. The power of music, the power of poetry, to unfix and as +it were clap wings to solid nature, interprets the riddle of Orpheus. +The philosophical perception of identity through endless mutations of +form makes him know the Proteus. What else am I who laughed or wept +yesterday, who slept last night like a corpse, and this morning stood +and ran? And what see I on any side but the transmigrations of Proteus? +I can symbolize my thought by using the name of any creature, of any +fact, because every creature is man agent or patient. Tantalus is but a +name for you and me. Tantalus means the impossibility of drinking the +waters of thought which are always gleaming and waving within sight of +the soul. The transmigration of souls is no fable. I would it were; but +men and women are only half human. Every animal of the barn-yard, the +field and the forest, of the earth and of the waters that are under the +earth, has contrived to get a footing and to leave the print of its +features and form in some one or other of these upright, heaven-facing +speakers. Ah! brother, stop the ebb of thy soul,—ebbing downward into +the forms into whose habits thou hast now for many years slid. As near +and proper to us is also that old fable of the Sphinx, who was said to +sit in the road-side and put riddles to every passenger. If the man +could not answer, she swallowed him alive. If he could solve the +riddle, the Sphinx was slain. What is our life but an endless flight of +winged facts or events? In splendid variety these changes come, all +putting questions to the human spirit. Those men who cannot answer by a +superior wisdom these facts or questions of time, serve them. Facts +encumber them, tyrannize over them, and make the men of routine, the +men of _sense_, in whom a literal obedience to facts has extinguished +every spark of that light by which man is truly man. But if the man is +true to his better instincts or sentiments, and refuses the dominion of +facts, as one that comes of a higher race; remains fast by the soul and +sees the principle, then the facts fall aptly and supple into their +places; they know their master, and the meanest of them glorifies him. + +See in Goethe’s Helena the same desire that every word should be a +thing. These figures, he would say, these Chirons, Griffins, Phorkyas, +Helen and Leda, are somewhat, and do exert a specific influence on the +mind. So far then are they eternal entities, as real to-day as in the +first Olympiad. Much revolving them he writes out freely his humor, and +gives them body to his own imagination. And although that poem be as +vague and fantastic as a dream, yet is it much more attractive than the +more regular dramatic pieces of the same author, for the reason that it +operates a wonderful relief to the mind from the routine of customary +images,—awakens the reader’s invention and fancy by the wild freedom of +the design, and by the unceasing succession of brisk shocks of +surprise. + +The universal nature, too strong for the petty nature of the bard, sits +on his neck and writes through his hand; so that when he seems to vent +a mere caprice and wild romance, the issue is an exact allegory. Hence +Plato said that “poets utter great and wise things which they do not +themselves understand.” All the fictions of the Middle Age explain +themselves as a masked or frolic expression of that which in grave +earnest the mind of that period toiled to achieve. Magic and all that +is ascribed to it is a deep presentiment of the powers of science. The +shoes of swiftness, the sword of sharpness, the power of subduing the +elements, of using the secret virtues of minerals, of understanding the +voices of birds, are the obscure efforts of the mind in a right +direction. The preternatural prowess of the hero, the gift of perpetual +youth, and the like, are alike the endeavour of the human spirit “to +bend the shows of things to the desires of the mind.” + +In Perceforest and Amadis de Gaul a garland and a rose bloom on the +head of her who is faithful, and fade on the brow of the inconstant. In +the story of the Boy and the Mantle even a mature reader may be +surprised with a glow of virtuous pleasure at the triumph of the gentle +Venelas; and indeed all the postulates of elfin annals,—that the +fairies do not like to be named; that their gifts are capricious and +not to be trusted; that who seeks a treasure must not speak; and the +like,—I find true in Concord, however they might be in Cornwall or +Bretagne. + +Is it otherwise in the newest romance? I read the Bride of Lammermoor. +Sir William Ashton is a mask for a vulgar temptation, Ravenswood Castle +a fine name for proud poverty, and the foreign mission of state only a +Bunyan disguise for honest industry. We may all shoot a wild bull that +would toss the good and beautiful, by fighting down the unjust and +sensual. Lucy Ashton is another name for fidelity, which is always +beautiful and always liable to calamity in this world. + +But along with the civil and metaphysical history of man, another +history goes daily forward,—that of the external world,—in which he is +not less strictly implicated. He is the compend of time; he is also the +correlative of nature. His power consists in the multitude of his +affinities, in the fact that his life is intertwined with the whole +chain of organic and inorganic being. In old Rome the public roads +beginning at the Forum proceeded north, south, east, west, to the +centre of every province of the empire, making each market-town of +Persia, Spain and Britain pervious to the soldiers of the capital: so +out of the human heart go as it were highways to the heart of every +object in nature, to reduce it under the dominion of man. A man is a +bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the +world. His faculties refer to natures out of him and predict the world +he is to inhabit, as the fins of the fish foreshow that water exists, +or the wings of an eagle in the egg presuppose air. He cannot live +without a world. Put Napoleon in an island prison, let his faculties +find no men to act on, no Alps to climb, no stake to play for, and he +would beat the air, and appear stupid. Transport him to large +countries, dense population, complex interests and antagonist power, +and you shall see that the man Napoleon, bounded that is by such a +profile and outline, is not the virtual Napoleon. This is but Talbot’s +shadow;— + +“His substance is not here. +For what you see is but the smallest part +And least proportion of humanity; +But were the whole frame here, +It is of such a spacious, lofty pitch, +Your roof were not sufficient to contain it.” +—Henry VI. + +Columbus needs a planet to shape his course upon. Newton and Laplace +need myriads of age and thick-strewn celestial areas. One may say a +gravitating solar system is already prophesied in the nature of +Newton’s mind. Not less does the brain of Davy or of Gay-Lussac, from +childhood exploring the affinities and repulsions of particles, +anticipate the laws of organization. Does not the eye of the human +embryo predict the light? the ear of Handel predict the witchcraft of +harmonic sound? Do not the constructive fingers of Watt, Fulton, +Whittemore, Arkwright, predict the fusible, hard, and temperable +texture of metals, the properties of stone, water, and wood? Do not the +lovely attributes of the maiden child predict the refinements and +decorations of civil society? Here also we are reminded of the action +of man on man. A mind might ponder its thought for ages and not gain so +much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach it in a day. Who +knows himself before he has been thrilled with indignation at an +outrage, or has heard an eloquent tongue, or has shared the throb of +thousands in a national exultation or alarm? No man can antedate his +experience, or guess what faculty or feeling a new object shall unlock, +any more than he can draw to-day the face of a person whom he shall see +to-morrow for the first time. + +I will not now go behind the general statement to explore the reason of +this correspondency. Let it suffice that in the light of these two +facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its +correlative, history is to be read and written. + +Thus in all ways does the soul concentrate and reproduce its treasures +for each pupil. He too shall pass through the whole cycle of +experience. He shall collect into a focus the rays of nature. History +no longer shall be a dull book. It shall walk incarnate in every just +and wise man. You shall not tell me by languages and titles a catalogue +of the volumes you have read. You shall make me feel what periods you +have lived. A man shall be the Temple of Fame. He shall walk, as the +poets have described that goddess, in a robe painted all over with +wonderful events and experiences;—his own form and features by their +exalted intelligence shall be that variegated vest. I shall find in him +the Foreworld; in his childhood the Age of Gold, the Apples of +Knowledge, the Argonautic Expedition, the calling of Abraham, the +building of the Temple, the Advent of Christ, Dark Ages, the Revival of +Letters, the Reformation, the discovery of new lands, the opening of +new sciences and new regions in man. He shall be the priest of Pan, and +bring with him into humble cottages the blessing of the morning stars, +and all the recorded benefits of heaven and earth. + +Is there somewhat overweening in this claim? Then I reject all I have +written, for what is the use of pretending to know what we know not? +But it is the fault of our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one +fact without seeming to belie some other. I hold our actual knowledge +very cheap. Hear the rats in the wall, see the lizard on the fence, the +fungus under foot, the lichen on the log. What do I know +sympathetically, morally, of either of these worlds of life? As old as +the Caucasian man,—perhaps older,—these creatures have kept their +counsel beside him, and there is no record of any word or sign that has +passed from one to the other. What connection do the books show between +the fifty or sixty chemical elements and the historical eras? Nay, what +does history yet record of the metaphysical annals of man? What light +does it shed on those mysteries which we hide under the names Death and +Immortality? Yet every history should be written in a wisdom which +divined the range of our affinities and looked at facts as symbols. I +am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. +How many times we must say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What +does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to +these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or +succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, for the Kanaka in his +canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter? + +Broader and deeper we must write our annals,—from an ethical +reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative +conscience,—if we would trulier express our central and wide-related +nature, instead of this old chronology of selfishness and pride to +which we have too long lent our eyes. Already that day exists for us, +shines in on us at unawares, but the path of science and of letters is +not the way into nature. The idiot, the Indian, the child and +unschooled farmer’s boy stand nearer to the light by which nature is to +be read, than the dissector or the antiquary. + + + + +II. +SELF-RELIANCE + + +“Ne te quæsiveris extra.” + +“Man is his own star; and the soul that can +Render an honest and a perfect man, +Commands all light, all influence, all fate; +Nothing to him falls early or too late. +Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, +Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.” + +_Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher’s Honest Man’s Fortune._ + + +Cast the bantling on the rocks, +Suckle him with the she-wolf’s teat, +Wintered with the hawk and fox. +Power and speed be hands and feet. + + + + +SELF-RELIANCE + + +I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which +were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition +in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they +instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe +your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private +heart is true for all men,—that is genius. Speak your latent +conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due +time becomes the outmost, and our first thought is rendered back to us +by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind +is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is +that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, +but what _they_ thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that +gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the +lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without +notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we +recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a +certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting +lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous +impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry +of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with +masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the +time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from +another. + +There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the +conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he +must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the +wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to +him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given +to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and +none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until +he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes +much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory +is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray +should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half +express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us +represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good +issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work +made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his +heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done +otherwise shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not +deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no +invention, no hope. + +Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the +place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your +contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done +so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, +betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated +at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their +being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same +transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected +corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers +and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort and advancing on Chaos and +the Dark. + +What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in the face and +behavior of children, babes, and even brutes! That divided and rebel +mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed +the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their +mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in +their faces we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody; all +conform to it; so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the +adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty +and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it +enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand +by itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak +to you and me. Hark! in the next room his voice is sufficiently clear +and emphatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries. +Bashful or bold then, he will know how to make us seniors very +unnecessary. + +The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as +much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy +attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlor what the pit is in the +playhouse; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on +such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their +merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, +silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about +consequences, about interests; he gives an independent, genuine +verdict. You must court him; he does not court you. But the man is as +it were clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once +acted or spoken with _éclat_ he is a committed person, watched by the +sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter +into his account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass +again into his neutrality! Who can thus avoid all pledges and, having +observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, +unaffrighted innocence,—must always be formidable. He would utter +opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private but +necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men and put them in +fear. + +These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and +inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in +conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is +a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better +securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and +culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. +Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but +names and customs. + +Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather +immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must +explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity +of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the +suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I +was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me +with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, “What have I +to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?” +my friend suggested,—“But these impulses may be from below, not from +above.” I replied, “They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the +Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.” No law can be sacred +to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily +transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my +constitution; the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry +himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were +titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we +capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead +institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways +me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the +rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of +philanthropy, shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful +cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes, +why should I not say to him, ‘Go love thy infant; love thy +wood-chopper; be good-natured and modest; have that grace; and never +varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible +tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite +at home.’ Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is +handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some +edge to it,—else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached, +as the counteraction of the doctrine of love, when that pules and +whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius +calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, _Whim_. I hope +it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in +explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude +company. Then again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my +obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they _my_ poor? +I tell thee thou foolish philanthropist that I grudge the dollar, the +dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I +do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual +affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison if need be; +but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of +fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now +stand; alms to sots, and the thousand-fold Relief Societies;—though I +confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a +wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold. + +Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the +rule. There is the man _and_ his virtues. Men do what is called a good +action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a +fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are +done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world,—as +invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I +do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for +a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it +be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I +wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask +primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the +man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference +whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I +cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few +and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own +assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony. + +What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This +rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for +the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder +because you will always find those who think they know what is your +duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the +world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the +great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect +sweetness the independence of solitude. + +The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is +that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the +impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute +to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the +government or against it, spread your table like base +housekeepers,—under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the +precise man you are: and of course so much force is withdrawn from your +proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and +you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a +blindman’s-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I +anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and +topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not +know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous +word? Do I not know that with all this ostentation of examining the +grounds of the institution he will do no such thing? Do I not know that +he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, the permitted +side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained +attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. +Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, +and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. +This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a +few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite +true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so +that every word they say chagrins us and we know not where to begin to +set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the +prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut +of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine +expression. There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does +not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean “the +foolish face of praise,” the forced smile which we put on in company +where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not +interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved but moved by a low +usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face with the +most disagreeable sensation. + +For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And +therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers +look askance on him in the public street or in the friend’s parlor. If +this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own +he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the +multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on +and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the +discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and +the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to +brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and +prudent, for they are timid, as being very vulnerable themselves. But +when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, +when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent +brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and +mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike +as a trifle of no concernment. + +The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a +reverence for our past act or word because the eyes of others have no +other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath +to disappoint them. + +But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about +this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have +stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict +yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on +your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring +the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in +a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the +Deity, yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them +heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. +Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and +flee. + +A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by +little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great +soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his +shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and +to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it +contradict every thing you said to-day.—‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be +misunderstood.’—Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was +misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and +Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took +flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. + +I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will +are rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andes +and Himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it +matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or +Alexandrian stanza;—read it forward, backward, or across, it still +spells the same thing. In this pleasing contrite wood-life which God +allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect +or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, +though I mean it not and see it not. My book should smell of pines and +resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window should +interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web +also. We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men +imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt +actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment. + +There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be +each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions +will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost +sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One +tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line +of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it +straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will +explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. Your +conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done +singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can +be firm enough to-day to do right and scorn eyes, I must have done so +much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. +Always scorn appearances and you always may. The force of character is +cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue work their health into +this. What makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, +which so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a train of great +days and victories behind. They shed an united light on the advancing +actor. He is attended as by a visible escort of angels. That is it +which throws thunder into Chatham’s voice, and dignity into +Washington’s port, and America into Adams’s eye. Honor is venerable to +us because it is no ephemera. It is always ancient virtue. We worship +it to-day because it is not of to-day. We love it and pay it homage +because it is not a trap for our love and homage, but is +self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old immaculate +pedigree, even if shown in a young person. + +I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and +consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward. +Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan +fife. Let us never bow and apologize more. A great man is coming to eat +at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to +please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it +kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth +mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face +of custom and trade and office, the fact which is the upshot of all +history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working +wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or +place, but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. He +measures you and all men and all events. Ordinarily, every body in +society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other person. +Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the +whole creation. The man must be so much that he must make all +circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an +age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish +his design;—and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of +clients. A man Cæsar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman +Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his +genius that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An +institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as, Monachism, of the +Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; +Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called +“the height of Rome”; and all history resolves itself very easily into +the biography of a few stout and earnest persons. + +Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him +not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, +a bastard, or an interloper in the world which exists for him. But the +man in the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the +force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when +he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, or a costly book have an +alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seem to say +like that, ‘Who are you, Sir?’ Yet they all are his, suitors for his +notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out and take +possession. The picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, +but I am to settle its claims to praise. That popular fable of the sot +who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke’s +house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke’s bed, and, on his +waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured +that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it +symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, +but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a +true prince. + +Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history our imagination +plays us false. Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier +vocabulary than private John and Edward in a small house and common +day’s work; but the things of life are the same to both; the sum total +of both is the same. Why all this deference to Alfred and Scanderbeg +and Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue? As +great a stake depends on your private act to-day, as followed their +public and renowned steps. When private men shall act with original +views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to +those of gentlemen. + +The world has been instructed by its kings, who have so magnetized the +eyes of nations. It has been taught by this colossal symbol the mutual +reverence that is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which +men have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the great +proprietor to walk among them by a law of his own, make his own scale +of men and things and reverse theirs, pay for benefits not with money +but with honor, and represent the law in his person, was the +hieroglyphic by which they obscurely signified their consciousness of +their own right and comeliness, the right of every man. + +The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we +inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the +aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is +the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, +without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into +trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? +The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of +virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote +this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are +tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis +cannot go, all things find their common origin. For the sense of being +which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse +from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with +them and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and +being also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist and +afterwards see them as appearances in nature and forget that we have +shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here +are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom and which +cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of +immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs +of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do +nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask +whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all +philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can +affirm. Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind +and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary +perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of +them, but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to +be disputed. My wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving;—the +idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and +respect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of +perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for they do +not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose +to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. +If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of +time all mankind,—although it may chance that no one has seen it before +me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun. + +The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure that it is +profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God speaketh +he should communicate, not one thing, but all things; should fill the +world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, +from the centre of the present thought; and new date and new create the +whole. Whenever a mind is simple and receives a divine wisdom, old +things pass away,—means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, +and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made +sacred by relation to it,—one as much as another. All things are +dissolved to their centre by their cause, and in the universal miracle +petty and particular miracles disappear. If therefore a man claims to +know and speak of God and carries you backward to the phraseology of +some old mouldered nation in another country, in another world, believe +him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness and +completion? Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast +his ripened being? Whence then this worship of the past? The centuries +are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul. Time and +space are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is +light: where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history is an +impertinence and an injury if it be any thing more than a cheerful +apologue or parable of my being and becoming. + +Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say +‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before +the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window +make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what +they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There +is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. +Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown +flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its +nature is satisfied and it satisfies nature in all moments alike. But +man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with +reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround +him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and +strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time. + +This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not +yet hear God himself unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what +David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price +on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote +the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the +men of talents and character they chance to see,—painfully recollecting +the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point +of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them +and are willing to let the words go; for at any time they can use words +as good when occasion comes. If we live truly, we shall see truly. It +is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be +weak. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory +of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his +voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of +the corn. + +And now at last the highest truth on this subject remains unsaid; +probably cannot be said; for all that we say is the far-off remembering +of the intuition. That thought by what I can now nearest approach to +say it, is this. When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, +it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the +footprints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall +not hear any name;—the way, the thought, the good shall be wholly +strange and new. It shall exclude example and experience. You take the +way from man, not to man. All persons that ever existed are its +forgotten ministers. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. There is +somewhat low even in hope. In the hour of vision there is nothing that +can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The soul raised over passion +beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence of +Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well. +Vast spaces of nature, the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea; long +intervals of time, years, centuries, are of no account. This which I +think and feel underlay every former state of life and circumstances, +as it does underlie my present, and what is called life, and what is +called death. + +Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of +repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new +state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one +fact the world hates; that the soul _becomes;_ for that for ever +degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a +shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas +equally aside. Why then do we prate of self-reliance? Inasmuch as the +soul is present there will be power not confident but agent. To talk of +reliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak rather of that which +relies because it works and is. Who has more obedience than I masters +me, though he should not raise his finger. Round him I must revolve by +the gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric when we speak of +eminent virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man +or a company of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the law of +nature must overpower and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, +poets, who are not. + +This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, as on +every topic, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed ONE. +Self-existence is the attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it +constitutes the measure of good by the degree in which it enters into +all lower forms. All things real are so by so much virtue as they +contain. Commerce, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war, eloquence, +personal weight, are somewhat, and engage my respect as examples of its +presence and impure action. I see the same law working in nature for +conservation and growth. Power is, in nature, the essential measure of +right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot +help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and +orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the +vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of +the self-sufficing and therefore self-relying soul. + +Thus all concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with the +cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books +and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the +invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. +Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law +demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside our native riches. + +But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his +genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with +the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the +urns of other men. We must go alone. I like the silent church before +the service begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, +how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or +sanctuary! So let us always sit. Why should we assume the faults of our +friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our +hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All men have my blood and I +have all men’s. Not for that will I adopt their petulance or folly, +even to the extent of being ashamed of it. But your isolation must not +be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At times the +whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic +trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all +knock at once at thy closet door and say,—‘Come out unto us.’ But keep +thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to +annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but +through my act. “What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave +ourselves of the love.” + +If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let +us at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war +and wake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. +This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check +this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to the +expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we +converse. Say to them, ‘O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O +friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward +I am the truth’s. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law +less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. I +shall endeavour to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the +chaste husband of one wife,—but these relations I must fill after a new +and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I +cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for +what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to +deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will +so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the +sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and the heart appoints. If you +are noble, I will love you: if you are not, I will not hurt you and +myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same +truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this +not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and +mine, and all men’s, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in +truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is +dictated by your nature as well as mine, and if we follow the truth it +will bring us out safe at last.’—But so may you give these friends +pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their +sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when +they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they justify +me and do the same thing. + +The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a +rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold +sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the +law of consciousness abides. There are two confessionals, in one or the +other of which we must be shriven. You may fulfil your round of duties +by clearing yourself in the _direct_, or in the _reflex_ way. Consider +whether you have satisfied your relations to father, mother, cousin, +neighbor, town, cat, and dog; whether any of these can upbraid you. But +I may also neglect this reflex standard and absolve me to myself. I +have my own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies the name of duty +to many offices that are called duties. But if I can discharge its +debts it enables me to dispense with the popular code. If any one +imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its commandment one day. + +And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the +common motives of humanity and has ventured to trust himself for a +taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that +he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a +simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others! + +If any man consider the present aspects of what is called by +distinction _society_, he will see the need of these ethics. The sinew +and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous, +desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, +afraid of death and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and +perfect persons. We want men and women who shall renovate life and our +social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot +satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to +their practical force and do lean and beg day and night continually. +Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our +marriages, our religion we have not chosen, but society has chosen for +us. We are parlor soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate, where +strength is born. + +If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises they lose all +heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is _ruined_. If the +finest genius studies at one of our colleges and is not installed in an +office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or +New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in +being disheartened and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy +lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the +professions, who _teams it, farms it, peddles_, keeps a school, +preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so +forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is +worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and +feels no shame in not ‘studying a profession,’ for he does not postpone +his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred +chances. Let a Stoic open the resources of man and tell men they are +not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with the +exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is the word +made flesh, born to shed healing to the nations; that he should be +ashamed of our compassion, and that the moment he acts from himself, +tossing the laws, the books, idolatries and customs out of the window, +we pity him no more but thank and revere him;—and that teacher shall +restore the life of man to splendor and make his name dear to all +history. + +It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution +in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their +education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; +in their property; in their speculative views. + +1. In what prayers do men allow themselves! That which they call a holy +office is not so much as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks +for some foreign addition to come through some foreign virtue, and +loses itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and +mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular commodity, +any thing less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation +of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the +soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God +pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private +end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature +and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not +beg. He will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer +kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with +the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature, though +for cheap ends. Caratach, in Fletcher’s Bonduca, when admonished to +inquire the mind of the god Audate, replies,— + + “His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors; + Our valors are our best gods.” + +Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want +of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities if you can +thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work and already the +evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come to +them who weep foolishly and sit down and cry for company, instead of +imparting to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting +them once more in communication with their own reason. The secret of +fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the +self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide; him all tongues +greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out +to him and embraces him because he did not need it. We solicitously and +apologetically caress and celebrate him because he held on his way and +scorned our disapprobation. The gods love him because men hated him. +“To the persevering mortal,” said Zoroaster, “the blessed Immortals are +swift.” + +As men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a +disease of the intellect. They say with those foolish Israelites, ‘Let +not God speak to us, lest we die. Speak thou, speak any man with us, +and we will obey.’ Everywhere I am hindered of meeting God in my +brother, because he has shut his own temple doors and recites fables +merely of his brother’s, or his brother’s brother’s God. Every new mind +is a new classification. If it prove a mind of uncommon activity and +power, a Locke, a Lavoisier, a Hutton, a Bentham, a Fourier, it imposes +its classification on other men, and lo! a new system. In proportion to +the depth of the thought, and so to the number of the objects it +touches and brings within reach of the pupil, is his complacency. But +chiefly is this apparent in creeds and churches, which are also +classifications of some powerful mind acting on the elemental thought +of duty, and man’s relation to the Highest. Such is Calvinism, +Quakerism, Swedenborgism. The pupil takes the same delight in +subordinating every thing to the new terminology as a girl who has just +learned botany in seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby. It will +happen for a time that the pupil will find his intellectual power has +grown by the study of his master’s mind. But in all unbalanced minds +the classification is idolized, passes for the end and not for a +speedily exhaustible means, so that the walls of the system blend to +their eye in the remote horizon with the walls of the universe; the +luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch their master built. +They cannot imagine how you aliens have any right to see,—how you can +see; ‘It must be somehow that you stole the light from us.’ They do not +yet perceive that light, unsystematic, indomitable, will break into any +cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call it their own. +If they are honest and do well, presently their neat new pinfold will +be too strait and low, will crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and +the immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, +million-colored, will beam over the universe as on the first morning. + +2. It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, +whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all +educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable +in the imagination did so by sticking fast where they were, like an +axis of the earth. In manly hours we feel that duty is our place. The +soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his +necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or +into foreign lands, he is at home still and shall make men sensible by +the expression of his countenance that he goes, the missionary of +wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign and not +like an interloper or a valet. + +I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe for +the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is +first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding +somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get +somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows +old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and +mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to +ruins. + +Travelling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the +indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can +be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, +embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, +and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, +identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the palaces. I +affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not +intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go. + +3. But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness +affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and +our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our +bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation +but the travelling of the mind? Our houses are built with foreign +taste; our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; our opinions, +our tastes, our faculties, lean, and follow the Past and the Distant. +The soul created the arts wherever they have flourished. It was in his +own mind that the artist sought his model. It was an application of his +own thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to be observed. +And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model? Beauty, +convenience, grandeur of thought and quaint expression are as near to +us as to any, and if the American artist will study with hope and love +the precise thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the soil, +the length of the day, the wants of the people, the habit and form of +the government, he will create a house in which all these will find +themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also. + +Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every +moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of +the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half +possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach +him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has +exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakspeare? +Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, +or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of +Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. Shakspeare will +never be made by the study of Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned +you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this +moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal +chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses or +Dante, but different from all these. Not possibly will the soul, all +rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat +itself; but if you can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can +reply to them in the same pitch of voice; for the ear and the tongue +are two organs of one nature. Abide in the simple and noble regions of +thy life, obey thy heart and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again. + +4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look abroad, so does our +spirit of society. All men plume themselves on the improvement of +society, and no man improves. + +Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on +the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is +civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this +change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given something is +taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts. What a +contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, +with a watch, a pencil and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the +naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat and an +undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of +the two men and you shall see that the white man has lost his +aboriginal strength. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage +with a broad axe and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as +if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send +the white to his grave. + +The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. +He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He +has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by +the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the +information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a +star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows +as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial +in his mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload +his wit; the insurance-office increases the number of accidents; and it +may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have +not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in +establishments and forms some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was +a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian? + +There is no more deviation in the moral standard than in the standard +of height or bulk. No greater men are now than ever were. A singular +equality may be observed between the great men of the first and of the +last ages; nor can all the science, art, religion, and philosophy of +the nineteenth century avail to educate greater men than Plutarch’s +heroes, three or four and twenty centuries ago. Not in time is the race +progressive. Phocion, Socrates, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, are great men, +but they leave no class. He who is really of their class will not be +called by their name, but will be his own man, and in his turn the +founder of a sect. The arts and inventions of each period are only its +costume and do not invigorate men. The harm of the improved machinery +may compensate its good. Hudson and Behring accomplished so much in +their fishing-boats as to astonish Parry and Franklin, whose equipment +exhausted the resources of science and art. Galileo, with an +opera-glass, discovered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena +than any one since. Columbus found the New World in an undecked boat. +It is curious to see the periodical disuse and perishing of means and +machinery which were introduced with loud laudation a few years or +centuries before. The great genius returns to essential man. We +reckoned the improvements of the art of war among the triumphs of +science, and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the bivouac, which +consisted of falling back on naked valor and disencumbering it of all +aids. The Emperor held it impossible to make a perfect army, says Las +Cases, “without abolishing our arms, magazines, commissaries and +carriages, until, in imitation of the Roman custom, the soldier should +receive his supply of corn, grind it in his hand-mill, and bake his +bread himself.” + +Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is +composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to +the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a +nation to-day, next year die, and their experience with them. + +And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments +which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. Men have looked away +from themselves and at things so long that they have come to esteem the +religious, learned and civil institutions as guards of property, and +they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults +on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, +and not by what each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his +property, out of new respect for his nature. Especially he hates what +he has if he see that it is accidental,—came to him by inheritance, or +gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it does not belong +to him, has no root in him and merely lies there because no revolution +or no robber takes it away. But that which a man is, does always by +necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is living property, which +does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or +storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever the man +breathes. “Thy lot or portion of life,” said the Caliph Ali, “is +seeking after thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it.” Our +dependence on these foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect for +numbers. The political parties meet in numerous conventions; the +greater the concourse and with each new uproar of announcement, The +delegation from Essex! The Democrats from New Hampshire! The Whigs of +Maine! the young patriot feels himself stronger than before by a new +thousand of eyes and arms. In like manner the reformers summon +conventions and vote and resolve in multitude. Not so, O friends! will +the God deign to enter and inhabit you, but by a method precisely the +reverse. It is only as a man puts off all foreign support and stands +alone that I see him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every +recruit to his banner. Is not a man better than a town? Ask nothing of +men, and, in the endless mutation, thou only firm column must presently +appear the upholder of all that surrounds thee. He who knows that power +is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for good out of him +and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his +thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, +commands his limbs, works miracles; just as a man who stands on his +feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head. + +So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain +all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful +these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. +In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of +Chance, and shalt sit hereafter out of fear from her rotations. A +political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick or the +return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event raises your +spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe +it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you +peace but the triumph of principles. + + + + +III. +COMPENSATION + + +The wings of Time are black and white, +Pied with morning and with night. +Mountain tall and ocean deep +Trembling balance duly keep. +In changing moon, in tidal wave, +Glows the feud of Want and Have. +Gauge of more and less through space +Electric star and pencil plays. +The lonely Earth amid the balls +That hurry through the eternal halls, +A makeweight flying to the void, +Supplemental asteroid, +Or compensatory spark, +Shoots across the neutral Dark. + + +Man’s the elm, and Wealth the vine, +Stanch and strong the tendrils twine: +Though the frail ringlets thee deceive, +None from its stock that vine can reave. +Fear not, then, thou child infirm, +There’s no god dare wrong a worm. +Laurel crowns cleave to deserts +And power to him who power exerts; +Hast not thy share? On winged feet, +Lo! it rushes thee to meet; +And all that Nature made thy own, +Floating in air or pent in stone, +Will rive the hills and swim the sea +And, like thy shadow, follow thee. + + + + +COMPENSATION + + +Ever since I was a boy I have wished to write a discourse on +Compensation; for it seemed to me when very young that on this subject +life was ahead of theology and the people knew more than the preachers +taught. The documents too from which the doctrine is to be drawn, +charmed my fancy by their endless variety, and lay always before me, +even in sleep; for they are the tools in our hands, the bread in our +basket, the transactions of the street, the farm and the +dwelling-house; greetings, relations, debts and credits, the influence +of character, the nature and endowment of all men. It seemed to me also +that in it might be shown men a ray of divinity, the present action of +the soul of this world, clean from all vestige of tradition; and so the +heart of man might be bathed by an inundation of eternal love, +conversing with that which he knows was always and always must be, +because it really is now. It appeared moreover that if this doctrine +could be stated in terms with any resemblance to those bright +intuitions in which this truth is sometimes revealed to us, it would be +a star in many dark hours and crooked passages in our journey, that +would not suffer us to lose our way. + +I was lately confirmed in these desires by hearing a sermon at church. +The preacher, a man esteemed for his orthodoxy, unfolded in the +ordinary manner the doctrine of the Last Judgment. He assumed that +judgment is not executed in this world; that the wicked are successful; +that the good are miserable; and then urged from reason and from +Scripture a compensation to be made to both parties in the next life. +No offence appeared to be taken by the congregation at this doctrine. +As far as I could observe when the meeting broke up they separated +without remark on the sermon. + +Yet what was the import of this teaching? What did the preacher mean by +saying that the good are miserable in the present life? Was it that +houses and lands, offices, wine, horses, dress, luxury, are had by +unprincipled men, whilst the saints are poor and despised; and that a +compensation is to be made to these last hereafter, by giving them the +like gratifications another day,—bank-stock and doubloons, venison and +champagne? This must be the compensation intended; for what else? Is it +that they are to have leave to pray and praise? to love and serve men? +Why, that they can do now. The legitimate inference the disciple would +draw was,—‘We are to have _such_ a good time as the sinners have +now’;—or, to push it to its extreme import,—‘You sin now; we shall sin +by and by; we would sin now, if we could; not being successful, we +expect our revenge to-morrow.’ + +The fallacy lay in the immense concession that the bad are successful; +that justice is not done now. The blindness of the preacher consisted +in deferring to the base estimate of the market of what constitutes a +manly success, instead of confronting and convicting the world from the +truth; announcing the presence of the soul; the omnipotence of the +will; and so establishing the standard of good and ill, of success and +falsehood. + +I find a similar base tone in the popular religious works of the day +and the same doctrines assumed by the literary men when occasionally +they treat the related topics. I think that our popular theology has +gained in decorum, and not in principle, over the superstitions it has +displaced. But men are better than their theology. Their daily life +gives it the lie. Every ingenuous and aspiring soul leaves the doctrine +behind him in his own experience, and all men feel sometimes the +falsehood which they cannot demonstrate. For men are wiser than they +know. That which they hear in schools and pulpits without afterthought, +if said in conversation would probably be questioned in silence. If a +man dogmatize in a mixed company on Providence and the divine laws, he +is answered by a silence which conveys well enough to an observer the +dissatisfaction of the hearer, but his incapacity to make his own +statement. + +I shall attempt in this and the following chapter to record some facts +that indicate the path of the law of Compensation; happy beyond my +expectation if I shall truly draw the smallest arc of this circle. + +Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature; in +darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in +male and female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and +animals; in the equation of quantity and quality in the fluids of the +animal body; in the systole and diastole of the heart; in the +undulations of fluids, and of sound; in the centrifugal and centripetal +gravity; in electricity, galvanism, and chemical affinity. Superinduce +magnetism at one end of a needle, the opposite magnetism takes place at +the other end. If the south attracts, the north repels. To empty here, +you must condense there. An inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that +each thing is a half, and suggests another thing to make it whole; as, +spirit, matter; man, woman; odd, even; subjective, objective; in, out; +upper, under; motion, rest; yea, nay. + +Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of its parts. The entire +system of things gets represented in every particle. There is somewhat +that resembles the ebb and flow of the sea, day and night, man and +woman, in a single needle of the pine, in a kernel of corn, in each +individual of every animal tribe. The reaction, so grand in the +elements, is repeated within these small boundaries. For example, in +the animal kingdom the physiologist has observed that no creatures are +favorites, but a certain compensation balances every gift and every +defect. A surplusage given to one part is paid out of a reduction from +another part of the same creature. If the head and neck are enlarged, +the trunk and extremities are cut short. + +The theory of the mechanic forces is another example. What we gain in +power is lost in time, and the converse. The periodic or compensating +errors of the planets is another instance. The influences of climate +and soil in political history are another. The cold climate +invigorates. The barren soil does not breed fevers, crocodiles, tigers +or scorpions. + +The same dualism underlies the nature and condition of man. Every +excess causes a defect; every defect an excess. Every sweet hath its +sour; every evil its good. Every faculty which is a receiver of +pleasure has an equal penalty put on its abuse. It is to answer for its +moderation with its life. For every grain of wit there is a grain of +folly. For every thing you have missed, you have gained something else; +and for every thing you gain, you lose something. If riches increase, +they are increased that use them. If the gatherer gathers too much, +Nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest; swells the +estate, but kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies and exceptions. +The waves of the sea do not more speedily seek a level from their +loftiest tossing than the varieties of condition tend to equalize +themselves. There is always some levelling circumstance that puts down +the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate, substantially on +the same ground with all others. Is a man too strong and fierce for +society and by temper and position a bad citizen,—a morose ruffian, +with a dash of the pirate in him?—Nature sends him a troop of pretty +sons and daughters who are getting along in the dame’s classes at the +village school, and love and fear for them smooths his grim scowl to +courtesy. Thus she contrives to intenerate the granite and felspar, +takes the boar out and puts the lamb in and keeps her balance true. + +The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But the President +has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his +peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short +time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to +eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne. Or, +do men desire the more substantial and permanent grandeur of genius? +Neither has this an immunity. He who by force of will or of thought is +great and overlooks thousands, has the charges of that eminence. With +every influx of light comes new danger. Has he light? he must bear +witness to the light, and always outrun that sympathy which gives him +such keen satisfaction, by his fidelity to new revelations of the +incessant soul. He must hate father and mother, wife and child. Has he +all that the world loves and admires and covets?—he must cast behind +him their admiration, and afflict them by faithfulness to his truth, +and become a byword and a hissing. + +This law writes the laws of cities and nations. It is in vain to build +or plot or combine against it. Things refuse to be mismanaged long. +_Res nolunt diu male administrari_. Though no checks to a new evil +appear, the checks exist, and will appear. If the government is cruel, +the governor’s life is not safe. If you tax too high, the revenue will +yield nothing. If you make the criminal code sanguinary, juries will +not convict. If the law is too mild, private vengeance comes in. If the +government is a terrific democracy, the pressure is resisted by an +over-charge of energy in the citizen, and life glows with a fiercer +flame. The true life and satisfactions of man seem to elude the utmost +rigors or felicities of condition and to establish themselves with +great indifferency under all varieties of circumstances. Under all +governments the influence of character remains the same,—in Turkey and +in New England about alike. Under the primeval despots of Egypt, +history honestly confesses that man must have been as free as culture +could make him. + +These appearances indicate the fact that the universe is represented in +every one of its particles. Every thing in nature contains all the +powers of nature. Every thing is made of one hidden stuff; as the +naturalist sees one type under every metamorphosis, and regards a horse +as a running man, a fish as a swimming man, a bird as a flying man, a +tree as a rooted man. Each new form repeats not only the main character +of the type, but part for part all the details, all the aims, +furtherances, hindrances, energies and whole system of every other. +Every occupation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of the world +and a correlative of every other. Each one is an entire emblem of human +life; of its good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its course and its +end. And each one must somehow accommodate the whole man and recite all +his destiny. + +The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The microscope cannot find +the animalcule which is less perfect for being little. Eyes, ears, +taste, smell, motion, resistance, appetite, and organs of reproduction +that take hold on eternity,—all find room to consist in the small +creature. So do we put our life into every act. The true doctrine of +omnipresence is that God reappears with all his parts in every moss and +cobweb. The value of the universe contrives to throw itself into every +point. If the good is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so the +repulsion; if the force, so the limitation. + +Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. That soul which +within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its +inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength. “It is +in the world, and the world was made by it.” Justice is not postponed. +A perfect equity adjusts its balance in all parts of life. Ἀεὶ γὰρ εὖ +πίπτουσιν οἱ Διὸς κύβοι,—The dice of God are always loaded. The world +looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, which, +turn it how you will, balances itself. Take what figure you will, its +exact value, nor more nor less, still returns to you. Every secret is +told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong +redressed, in silence and certainty. What we call retribution is the +universal necessity by which the whole appears wherever a part appears. +If you see smoke, there must be fire. If you see a hand or a limb, you +know that the trunk to which it belongs is there behind. + +Every act rewards itself, or, in other words integrates itself, in a +twofold manner; first in the thing, or in real nature; and secondly in +the circumstance, or in apparent nature. Men call the circumstance the +retribution. The causal retribution is in the thing and is seen by the +soul. The retribution in the circumstance is seen by the understanding; +it is inseparable from the thing, but is often spread over a long time +and so does not become distinct until after many years. The specific +stripes may follow late after the offence, but they follow because they +accompany it. Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is +a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which +concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot +be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end +preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed. + +Whilst thus the world will be whole and refuses to be disparted, we +seek to act partially, to sunder, to appropriate; for example,—to +gratify the senses we sever the pleasure of the senses from the needs +of the character. The ingenuity of man has always been dedicated to the +solution of one problem,—how to detach the sensual sweet, the sensual +strong, the sensual bright, etc., from the moral sweet, the moral deep, +the moral fair; that is, again, to contrive to cut clean off this upper +surface so thin as to leave it bottomless; to get a _one end_, without +an _other end_. The soul says, ‘Eat;’ the body would feast. The soul +says, ‘The man and woman shall be one flesh and one soul;’ the body +would join the flesh only. The soul says, ‘Have dominion over all +things to the ends of virtue;’ the body would have the power over +things to its own ends. + +The soul strives amain to live and work through all things. It would be +the only fact. All things shall be added unto it,—power, pleasure, +knowledge, beauty. The particular man aims to be somebody; to set up +for himself; to truck and higgle for a private good; and, in +particulars, to ride that he may ride; to dress that he may be dressed; +to eat that he may eat; and to govern, that he may be seen. Men seek to +be great; they would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. They think +that to be great is to possess one side of nature,—the sweet, without +the other side, the bitter. + +This dividing and detaching is steadily counteracted. Up to this day it +must be owned no projector has had the smallest success. The parted +water reunites behind our hand. Pleasure is taken out of pleasant +things, profit out of profitable things, power out of strong things, as +soon as we seek to separate them from the whole. We can no more halve +things and get the sensual good, by itself, than we can get an inside +that shall have no outside, or a light without a shadow. “Drive out +Nature with a fork, she comes running back.” + +Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which the unwise seek +to dodge, which one and another brags that he does not know, that they +do not touch him;—but the brag is on his lips, the conditions are in +his soul. If he escapes them in one part they attack him in another +more vital part. If he has escaped them in form and in the appearance, +it is because he has resisted his life and fled from himself, and the +retribution is so much death. So signal is the failure of all attempts +to make this separation of the good from the tax, that the experiment +would not be tried,—since to try it is to be mad,—but for the +circumstance, that when the disease began in the will, of rebellion and +separation, the intellect is at once infected, so that the man ceases +to see God whole in each object, but is able to see the sensual +allurement of an object and not see the sensual hurt; he sees the +mermaid’s head but not the dragon’s tail, and thinks he can cut off +that which he would have from that which he would not have. “How secret +art thou who dwellest in the highest heavens in silence, O thou only +great God, sprinkling with an unwearied providence certain penal +blindnesses upon such as have unbridled desires!”[1] + + [1] St. Augustine, Confessions, B. I. + +The human soul is true to these facts in the painting of fable, of +history, of law, of proverbs, of conversation. It finds a tongue in +literature unawares. Thus the Greeks called Jupiter, Supreme Mind; but +having traditionally ascribed to him many base actions, they +involuntarily made amends to reason by tying up the hands of so bad a +god. He is made as helpless as a king of England. Prometheus knows one +secret which Jove must bargain for; Minerva, another. He cannot get his +own thunders; Minerva keeps the key of them:— + + “Of all the gods, I only know the keys + That ope the solid doors within whose vaults + His thunders sleep.” + +A plain confession of the in-working of the All and of its moral aim. +The Indian mythology ends in the same ethics; and it would seem +impossible for any fable to be invented and get any currency which was +not moral. Aurora forgot to ask youth for her lover, and though +Tithonus is immortal, he is old. Achilles is not quite invulnerable; +the sacred waters did not wash the heel by which Thetis held him. +Siegfried, in the Nibelungen, is not quite immortal, for a leaf fell on +his back whilst he was bathing in the dragon’s blood, and that spot +which it covered is mortal. And so it must be. There is a crack in +every thing God has made. It would seem there is always this vindictive +circumstance stealing in at unawares even into the wild poesy in which +the human fancy attempted to make bold holiday and to shake itself free +of the old laws,—this back-stroke, this kick of the gun, certifying +that the law is fatal; that in nature nothing can be given, all things +are sold. + +This is that ancient doctrine of Nemesis, who keeps watch in the +universe and lets no offence go unchastised. The Furies they said are +attendants on justice, and if the sun in heaven should transgress his +path they would punish him. The poets related that stone walls and iron +swords and leathern thongs had an occult sympathy with the wrongs of +their owners; that the belt which Ajax gave Hector dragged the Trojan +hero over the field at the wheels of the car of Achilles, and the sword +which Hector gave Ajax was that on whose point Ajax fell. They recorded +that when the Thasians erected a statue to Theagenes, a victor in the +games, one of his rivals went to it by night and endeavored to throw it +down by repeated blows, until at last he moved it from its pedestal and +was crushed to death beneath its fall. + +This voice of fable has in it somewhat divine. It came from thought +above the will of the writer. That is the best part of each writer +which has nothing private in it; that which he does not know; that +which flowed out of his constitution and not from his too active +invention; that which in the study of a single artist you might not +easily find, but in the study of many you would abstract as the spirit +of them all. Phidias it is not, but the work of man in that early +Hellenic world that I would know. The name and circumstance of Phidias, +however convenient for history, embarrass when we come to the highest +criticism. We are to see that which man was tending to do in a given +period, and was hindered, or, if you will, modified in doing, by the +interfering volitions of Phidias, of Dante, of Shakspeare, the organ +whereby man at the moment wrought. + +Still more striking is the expression of this fact in the proverbs of +all nations, which are always the literature of reason, or the +statements of an absolute truth without qualification. Proverbs, like +the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions. +That which the droning world, chained to appearances, will not allow +the realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to say in +proverbs without contradiction. And this law of laws, which the pulpit, +the senate and the college deny, is hourly preached in all markets and +workshops by flights of proverbs, whose teaching is as true and as +omnipresent as that of birds and flies. + +All things are double, one against another.—Tit for tat; an eye for an +eye; a tooth for a tooth; blood for blood; measure for measure; love +for love.—Give and it shall be given you.—He that watereth shall be +watered himself.—What will you have? quoth God; pay for it and take +it.—Nothing venture, nothing have.—Thou shalt be paid exactly for what +thou hast done, no more, no less.—Who doth not work shall not eat.—Harm +watch, harm catch.—Curses always recoil on the head of him who +imprecates them.—If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the +other end fastens itself around your own.—Bad counsel confounds the +adviser.—The Devil is an ass. + +It is thus written, because it is thus in life. Our action is +overmastered and characterized above our will by the law of nature. We +aim at a petty end quite aside from the public good, but our act +arranges itself by irresistible magnetism in a line with the poles of +the world. + +A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will or against his +will he draws his portrait to the eye of his companions by every word. +Every opinion reacts on him who utters it. It is a thread-ball thrown +at a mark, but the other end remains in the thrower’s bag. Or rather it +is a harpoon hurled at the whale, unwinding, as it flies, a coil of +cord in the boat, and, if the harpoon is not good, or not well thrown, +it will go nigh to cut the steersman in twain or to sink the boat. + +You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. “No man had ever a point +of pride that was not injurious to him,” said Burke. The exclusive in +fashionable life does not see that he excludes himself from enjoyment, +in the attempt to appropriate it. The exclusionist in religion does not +see that he shuts the door of heaven on himself, in striving to shut +out others. Treat men as pawns and ninepins and you shall suffer as +well as they. If you leave out their heart, you shall lose your own. +The senses would make things of all persons; of women, of children, of +the poor. The vulgar proverb, “I will get it from his purse or get it +from his skin,” is sound philosophy. + +All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are speedily +punished. They are punished by fear. Whilst I stand in simple relations +to my fellow-man, I have no displeasure in meeting him. We meet as +water meets water, or as two currents of air mix, with perfect +diffusion and interpenetration of nature. But as soon as there is any +departure from simplicity, and attempt at halfness, or good for me that +is not good for him, my neighbor feels the wrong; he shrinks from me as +far as I have shrunk from him; his eyes no longer seek mine; there is +war between us; there is hate in him and fear in me. + +All the old abuses in society, universal and particular, all unjust +accumulations of property and power, are avenged in the same manner. +Fear is an instructor of great sagacity and the herald of all +revolutions. One thing he teaches, that there is rottenness where he +appears. He is a carrion crow, and though you see not well what he +hovers for, there is death somewhere. Our property is timid, our laws +are timid, our cultivated classes are timid. Fear for ages has boded +and mowed and gibbered over government and property. That obscene bird +is not there for nothing. He indicates great wrongs which must be +revised. + +Of the like nature is that expectation of change which instantly +follows the suspension of our voluntary activity. The terror of +cloudless noon, the emerald of Polycrates, the awe of prosperity, the +instinct which leads every generous soul to impose on itself tasks of a +noble asceticism and vicarious virtue, are the tremblings of the +balance of justice through the heart and mind of man. + +Experienced men of the world know very well that it is best to pay scot +and lot as they go along, and that a man often pays dear for a small +frugality. The borrower runs in his own debt. Has a man gained any +thing who has received a hundred favors and rendered none? Has he +gained by borrowing, through indolence or cunning, his neighbor’s +wares, or horses, or money? There arises on the deed the instant +acknowledgment of benefit on the one part and of debt on the other; +that is, of superiority and inferiority. The transaction remains in the +memory of himself and his neighbor; and every new transaction alters +according to its nature their relation to each other. He may soon come +to see that he had better have broken his own bones than to have ridden +in his neighbor’s coach, and that “the highest price he can pay for a +thing is to ask for it.” + +A wise man will extend this lesson to all parts of life, and know that +it is the part of prudence to face every claimant and pay every just +demand on your time, your talents, or your heart. Always pay; for first +or last you must pay your entire debt. Persons and events may stand for +a time between you and justice, but it is only a postponement. You must +pay at last your own debt. If you are wise you will dread a prosperity +which only loads you with more. Benefit is the end of nature. But for +every benefit which you receive, a tax is levied. He is great who +confers the most benefits. He is base,—and that is the one base thing +in the universe,—to receive favors and render none. In the order of +nature we cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or +only seldom. But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line +for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of too much +good staying in your hand. It will fast corrupt and worm worms. Pay it +away quickly in some sort. + +Labor is watched over by the same pitiless laws. Cheapest, say the +prudent, is the dearest labor. What we buy in a broom, a mat, a wagon, +a knife, is some application of good sense to a common want. It is best +to pay in your land a skilful gardener, or to buy good sense applied to +gardening; in your sailor, good sense applied to navigation; in the +house, good sense applied to cooking, sewing, serving; in your agent, +good sense applied to accounts and affairs. So do you multiply your +presence, or spread yourself throughout your estate. But because of the +dual constitution of things, in labor as in life there can be no +cheating. The thief steals from himself. The swindler swindles himself. +For the real price of labor is knowledge and virtue, whereof wealth and +credit are signs. These signs, like paper money, may be counterfeited +or stolen, but that which they represent, namely, knowledge and virtue, +cannot be counterfeited or stolen. These ends of labor cannot be +answered but by real exertions of the mind, and in obedience to pure +motives. The cheat, the defaulter, the gambler, cannot extort the +knowledge of material and moral nature which his honest care and pains +yield to the operative. The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you +shall have the Power; but they who do not the thing have not the power. + +Human labor, through all its forms, from the sharpening of a stake to +the construction of a city or an epic, is one immense illustration of +the perfect compensation of the universe. The absolute balance of Give +and Take, the doctrine that every thing has its price,—and if that +price is not paid, not that thing but something else is obtained, and +that it is impossible to get any thing without its price,—is not less +sublime in the columns of a leger than in the budgets of states, in the +laws of light and darkness, in all the action and reaction of nature. I +cannot doubt that the high laws which each man sees implicated in those +processes with which he is conversant, the stern ethics which sparkle +on his chisel-edge, which are measured out by his plumb and foot-rule, +which stand as manifest in the footing of the shop-bill as in the +history of a state,—do recommend to him his trade, and though seldom +named, exalt his business to his imagination. + +The league between virtue and nature engages all things to assume a +hostile front to vice. The beautiful laws and substances of the world +persecute and whip the traitor. He finds that things are arranged for +truth and benefit, but there is no den in the wide world to hide a +rogue. Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, +and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals +in the woods the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel and +mole. You cannot recall the spoken word, you cannot wipe out the +foot-track, you cannot draw up the ladder, so as to leave no inlet or +clew. Some damning circumstance always transpires. The laws and +substances of nature,—water, snow, wind, gravitation,—become penalties +to the thief. + +On the other hand the law holds with equal sureness for all right +action. Love, and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, +as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation. The good man has +absolute good, which like fire turns every thing to its own nature, so +that you cannot do him any harm; but as the royal armies sent against +Napoleon, when he approached cast down their colors and from enemies +became friends, so disasters of all kinds, as sickness, offence, +poverty, prove benefactors:— + + “Winds blow and waters roll + Strength to the brave, and power and deity, + Yet in themselves are nothing.” + +The good are befriended even by weakness and defect. As no man had ever +a point of pride that was not injurious to him, so no man had ever a +defect that was not somewhere made useful to him. The stag in the fable +admired his horns and blamed his feet, but when the hunter came, his +feet saved him, and afterwards, caught in the thicket, his horns +destroyed him. Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults. As +no man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against +it, so no man has a thorough acquaintance with the hindrances or +talents of men until he has suffered from the one and seen the triumph +of the other over his own want of the same. Has he a defect of temper +that unfits him to live in society? Thereby he is driven to entertain +himself alone and acquire habits of self-help; and thus, like the +wounded oyster, he mends his shell with pearl. + +Our strength grows out of our weakness. The indignation which arms +itself with secret forces does not awaken until we are pricked and +stung and sorely assailed. A great man is always willing to be little. +Whilst he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep. When he +is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he +has been put on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts; learns +his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got moderation +and real skill. The wise man throws himself on the side of his +assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak +point. The wound cicatrizes and falls off from him like a dead skin and +when they would triumph, lo! he has passed on invulnerable. Blame is +safer than praise. I hate to be defended in a newspaper. As long as all +that is said is said against me, I feel a certain assurance of success. +But as soon as honeyed words of praise are spoken for me I feel as one +that lies unprotected before his enemies. In general, every evil to +which we do not succumb is a benefactor. As the Sandwich Islander +believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into +himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist. + +The same guards which protect us from disaster, defect, and enmity, +defend us, if we will, from selfishness and fraud. Bolts and bars are +not the best of our institutions, nor is shrewdness in trade a mark of +wisdom. Men suffer all their life long under the foolish superstition +that they can be cheated. But it is as impossible for a man to be +cheated by any one but himself, as for a thing to be and not to be at +the same time. There is a third silent party to all our bargains. The +nature and soul of things takes on itself the guaranty of the +fulfilment of every contract, so that honest service cannot come to +loss. If you serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. Put God in +your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer The payment is +withholden, the better for you; for compound interest on compound +interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer. + +The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, +to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand. It makes no +difference whether the actors be many or one, a tyrant or a mob. A mob +is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason and +traversing its work. The mob is man voluntarily descending to the +nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are +insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would +whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and +outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It +resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the +ruddy aurora streaming to the stars. The inviolate spirit turns their +spite against the wrongdoers. The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every +lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison, a more illustrious +abode; every burned book or house enlightens the world; every +suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to +side. Hours of sanity and consideration are always arriving to +communities, as to individuals, when the truth is seen and the martyrs +are justified. + +Thus do all things preach the indifferency of circumstances. The man is +all. Every thing has two sides, a good and an evil. Every advantage has +its tax. I learn to be content. But the doctrine of compensation is not +the doctrine of indifferency. The thoughtless say, on hearing these +representations,—What boots it to do well? there is one event to good +and evil; if I gain any good I must pay for it; if I lose any good I +gain some other; all actions are indifferent. + +There is a deeper fact in the soul than compensation, to wit, its own +nature. The soul is not a compensation, but a life. The soul _is_. +Under all this running sea of circumstance, whose waters ebb and flow +with perfect balance, lies the aboriginal abyss of real Being. Essence, +or God, is not a relation or a part, but the whole. Being is the vast +affirmative, excluding negation, self-balanced, and swallowing up all +relations, parts and times within itself. Nature, truth, virtue, are +the influx from thence. Vice is the absence or departure of the same. +Nothing, Falsehood, may indeed stand as the great Night or shade on +which as a background the living universe paints itself forth, but no +fact is begotten by it; it cannot work, for it is not. It cannot work +any good; it cannot work any harm. It is harm inasmuch as it is worse +not to be than to be. + +We feel defrauded of the retribution due to evil acts, because the +criminal adheres to his vice and contumacy and does not come to a +crisis or judgment anywhere in visible nature. There is no stunning +confutation of his nonsense before men and angels. Has he therefore +outwitted the law? Inasmuch as he carries the malignity and the lie +with him he so far deceases from nature. In some manner there will be a +demonstration of the wrong to the understanding also; but, should we +not see it, this deadly deduction makes square the eternal account. + +Neither can it be said, on the other hand, that the gain of rectitude +must be bought by any loss. There is no penalty to virtue; no penalty +to wisdom; they are proper additions of being. In a virtuous action I +properly _am;_ in a virtuous act I add to the world; I plant into +deserts conquered from Chaos and Nothing and see the darkness receding +on the limits of the horizon. There can be no excess to love, none to +knowledge, none to beauty, when these attributes are considered in the +purest sense. The soul refuses limits, and always affirms an Optimism, +never a Pessimism. + +His life is a progress, and not a station. His instinct is trust. Our +instinct uses “more” and “less” in application to man, of the _presence +of the soul_, and not of its absence, the brave man is greater than the +coward; the true, the benevolent, the wise, is more a man and not less, +than the fool and knave. There is no tax on the good of virtue, for +that is the incoming of God himself, or absolute existence, without any +comparative. Material good has its tax, and if it came without desert +or sweat, has no root in me, and the next wind will blow it away. But +all the good of nature is the soul’s, and may be had if paid for in +nature’s lawful coin, that is, by labor which the heart and the head +allow. I no longer wish to meet a good I do not earn, for example to +find a pot of buried gold, knowing that it brings with it new burdens. +I do not wish more external goods,—neither possessions, nor honors, nor +powers, nor persons. The gain is apparent; the tax is certain. But +there is no tax on the knowledge that the compensation exists and that +it is not desirable to dig up treasure. Herein I rejoice with a serene +eternal peace. I contract the boundaries of possible mischief. I learn +the wisdom of St. Bernard,—“Nothing can work me damage except myself; +the harm that I sustain I carry about with me, and never am a real +sufferer but by my own fault.” + +In the nature of the soul is the compensation for the inequalities of +condition. The radical tragedy of nature seems to be the distinction of +More and Less. How can Less not feel the pain; how not feel indignation +or malevolence towards More? Look at those who have less faculty, and +one feels sad and knows not well what to make of it. He almost shuns +their eye; he fears they will upbraid God. What should they do? It +seems a great injustice. But see the facts nearly and these mountainous +inequalities vanish. Love reduces them as the sun melts the iceberg in +the sea. The heart and soul of all men being one, this bitterness of +_His_ and _Mine_ ceases. His is mine. I am my brother and my brother is +me. If I feel overshadowed and outdone by great neighbors, I can yet +love; I can still receive; and he that loveth maketh his own the +grandeur he loves. Thereby I make the discovery that my brother is my +guardian, acting for me with the friendliest designs, and the estate I +so admired and envied is my own. It is the nature of the soul to +appropriate all things. Jesus and Shakspeare are fragments of the soul, +and by love I conquer and incorporate them in my own conscious domain. +His virtue,—is not that mine? His wit,—if it cannot be made mine, it is +not wit. + +Such also is the natural history of calamity. The changes which break +up at short intervals the prosperity of men are advertisements of a +nature whose law is growth. Every soul is by this intrinsic necessity +quitting its whole system of things, its friends and home and laws and +faith, as the shell-fish crawls out of its beautiful but stony case, +because it no longer admits of its growth, and slowly forms a new +house. In proportion to the vigor of the individual these revolutions +are frequent, until in some happier mind they are incessant and all +worldly relations hang very loosely about him, becoming as it were a +transparent fluid membrane through which the living form is seen, and +not, as in most men, an indurated heterogeneous fabric of many dates +and of no settled character, in which the man is imprisoned. Then there +can be enlargement, and the man of to-day scarcely recognizes the man +of yesterday. And such should be the outward biography of man in time, +a putting off of dead circumstances day by day, as he renews his +raiment day by day. But to us, in our lapsed estate, resting, not +advancing, resisting, not cooperating with the divine expansion, this +growth comes by shocks. + +We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not +see that they only go out that archangels may come in. We are idolaters +of the old. We do not believe in the riches of the soul, in its proper +eternity and omnipresence. We do not believe there is any force in +to-day to rival or recreate that beautiful yesterday. We linger in the +ruins of the old tent where once we had bread and shelter and organs, +nor believe that the spirit can feed, cover, and nerve us again. We +cannot again find aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful. But we sit and +weep in vain. The voice of the Almighty saith, ‘Up and onward for +evermore!’ We cannot stay amid the ruins. Neither will we rely on the +new; and so we walk ever with reverted eyes, like those monsters who +look backwards. + +And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the +understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a +mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of +friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure +years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The +death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but +privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for +it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an +epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up +a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the +formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. It +permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances and the +reception of new influences that prove of the first importance to the +next years; and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny +garden-flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its +head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener is +made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide +neighborhoods of men. + + + + +IV. +SPIRITUAL LAWS + + +The living Heaven thy prayers respect, +House at once and architect, +Quarrying man’s rejected hours, +Builds therewith eternal towers; +Sole and self-commanded works, +Fears not undermining days, +Grows by decays, +And, by the famous might that lurks +In reaction and recoil, +Makes flame to freeze, and ice to boil; +Forging, through swart arms of Offence, +The silver seat of Innocence. + + + + +SPIRITUAL LAWS + + +When the act of reflection takes place in the mind, when we look at +ourselves in the light of thought, we discover that our life is +embosomed in beauty. Behind us, as we go, all things assume pleasing +forms, as clouds do far off. Not only things familiar and stale, but +even the tragic and terrible are comely as they take their place in the +pictures of memory. The river-bank, the weed at the water-side, the old +house, the foolish person, however neglected in the passing, have a +grace in the past. Even the corpse that has lain in the chambers has +added a solemn ornament to the house. The soul will not know either +deformity or pain. If in the hours of clear reason we should speak the +severest truth, we should say that we had never made a sacrifice. In +these hours the mind seems so great that nothing can be taken from us +that seems much. All loss, all pain, is particular; the universe +remains to the heart unhurt. Neither vexations nor calamities abate our +trust. No man ever stated his griefs as lightly as he might. Allow for +exaggeration in the most patient and sorely ridden hack that ever was +driven. For it is only the finite that has wrought and suffered; the +infinite lies stretched in smiling repose. + +The intellectual life may be kept clean and healthful if man will live +the life of nature and not import into his mind difficulties which are +none of his. No man need be perplexed in his speculations. Let him do +and say what strictly belongs to him, and though very ignorant of +books, his nature shall not yield him any intellectual obstructions and +doubts. Our young people are diseased with the theological problems of +original sin, origin of evil, predestination and the like. These never +presented a practical difficulty to any man,—never darkened across any +man’s road who did not go out of his way to seek them. These are the +soul’s mumps and measles and whooping-coughs, and those who have not +caught them cannot describe their health or prescribe the cure. A +simple mind will not know these enemies. It is quite another thing that +he should be able to give account of his faith and expound to another +the theory of his self-union and freedom. This requires rare gifts. Yet +without this self-knowledge there may be a sylvan strength and +integrity in that which he is. “A few strong instincts and a few plain +rules” suffice us. + +My will never gave the images in my mind the rank they now take. The +regular course of studies, the years of academical and professional +education have not yielded me better facts than some idle books under +the bench at the Latin School. What we do not call education is more +precious than that which we call so. We form no guess, at the time of +receiving a thought, of its comparative value. And education often +wastes its effort in attempts to thwart and balk this natural +magnetism, which is sure to select what belongs to it. + +In like manner our moral nature is vitiated by any interference of our +will. People represent virtue as a struggle, and take to themselves +great airs upon their attainments, and the question is everywhere vexed +when a noble nature is commended, whether the man is not better who +strives with temptation. But there is no merit in the matter. Either +God is there or he is not there. We love characters in proportion as +they are impulsive and spontaneous. The less a man thinks or knows +about his virtues the better we like him. Timoleon’s victories are the +best victories, which ran and flowed like Homer’s verses, Plutarch +said. When we see a soul whose acts are all regal, graceful and +pleasant as roses, we must thank God that such things can be and are, +and not turn sourly on the angel and say ‘Crump is a better man with +his grunting resistance to all his native devils.’ + +Not less conspicuous is the preponderance of nature over will in all +practical life. There is less intention in history than we ascribe to +it. We impute deep-laid far-sighted plans to Cæsar and Napoleon; but +the best of their power was in nature, not in them. Men of an +extraordinary success, in their honest moments, have always sung, ‘Not +unto us, not unto us.’ According to the faith of their times they have +built altars to Fortune, or to Destiny, or to St. Julian. Their success +lay in their parallelism to the course of thought, which found in them +an unobstructed channel; and the wonders of which they were the visible +conductors seemed to the eye their deed. Did the wires generate the +galvanism? It is even true that there was less in them on which they +could reflect than in another; as the virtue of a pipe is to be smooth +and hollow. That which externally seemed will and immovableness was +willingness and self-annihilation. Could Shakspeare give a theory of +Shakspeare? Could ever a man of prodigious mathematical genius convey +to others any insight into his methods? If he could communicate that +secret it would instantly lose its exaggerated value, blending with the +daylight and the vital energy the power to stand and to go. + +The lesson is forcibly taught by these observations that our life might +be much easier and simpler than we make it; that the world might be a +happier place than it is; that there is no need of struggles, +convulsions, and despairs, of the wringing of the hands and the +gnashing of the teeth; that we miscreate our own evils. We interfere +with the optimism of nature; for whenever we get this vantage-ground of +the past, or of a wiser mind in the present, we are able to discern +that we are begirt with laws which execute themselves. + +The face of external nature teaches the same lesson. Nature will not +have us fret and fume. She does not like our benevolence or our +learning much better than she likes our frauds and wars. When we come +out of the caucus, or the bank, or the Abolition-convention, or the +Temperance-meeting, or the Transcendental club into the fields and +woods, she says to us, ‘So hot? my little Sir.’ + +We are full of mechanical actions. We must needs intermeddle and have +things in our own way, until the sacrifices and virtues of society are +odious. Love should make joy; but our benevolence is unhappy. Our +Sunday-schools and churches and pauper-societies are yokes to the neck. +We pain ourselves to please nobody. There are natural ways of arriving +at the same ends at which these aim, but do not arrive. Why should all +virtue work in one and the same way? Why should all give dollars? It is +very inconvenient to us country folk, and we do not think any good will +come of it. We have not dollars; merchants have; let them give them. +Farmers will give corn; poets will sing; women will sew; laborers will +lend a hand; the children will bring flowers. And why drag this dead +weight of a Sunday-school over the whole Christendom? It is natural and +beautiful that childhood should inquire and maturity should teach; but +it is time enough to answer questions when they are asked. Do not shut +up the young people against their will in a pew and force the children +to ask them questions for an hour against their will. + +If we look wider, things are all alike; laws and letters and creeds and +modes of living seem a travesty of truth. Our society is encumbered by +ponderous machinery, which resembles the endless aqueducts which the +Romans built over hill and dale and which are superseded by the +discovery of the law that water rises to the level of its source. It is +a Chinese wall which any nimble Tartar can leap over. It is a standing +army, not so good as a peace. It is a graduated, titled, richly +appointed empire, quite superfluous when town-meetings are found to +answer just as well. + +Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. +When the fruit is ripe, it falls. When the fruit is despatched, the +leaf falls. The circuit of the waters is mere falling. The walking of +man and all animals is a falling forward. All our manual labor and +works of strength, as prying, splitting, digging, rowing and so forth, +are done by dint of continual falling, and the globe, earth, moon, +comet, sun, star, fall for ever and ever. + +The simplicity of the universe is very different from the simplicity of +a machine. He who sees moral nature out and out and thoroughly knows +how knowledge is acquired and character formed, is a pedant. The +simplicity of nature is not that which may easily be read, but is +inexhaustible. The last analysis can no wise be made. We judge of a +man’s wisdom by his hope, knowing that the perception of the +inexhaustibleness of nature is an immortal youth. The wild fertility of +nature is felt in comparing our rigid names and reputations with our +fluid consciousness. We pass in the world for sects and schools, for +erudition and piety, and we are all the time jejune babes. One sees +very well how Pyrrhonism grew up. Every man sees that he is that middle +point whereof every thing may be affirmed and denied with equal reason. +He is old, he is young, he is very wise, he is altogether ignorant. He +hears and feels what you say of the seraphim, and of the tin-peddler. +There is no permanent wise man except in the figment of the Stoics. We +side with the hero, as we read or paint, against the coward and the +robber; but we have been ourselves that coward and robber, and shall be +again,—not in the low circumstance, but in comparison with the +grandeurs possible to the soul. + +A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would +show us that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that +our painful labors are unnecessary and fruitless; that only in our +easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong, and by contenting +ourselves with obedience we become divine. Belief and love,—a believing +love will relieve us of a vast load of care. O my brothers, God exists. +There is a soul at the centre of nature and over the will of every man, +so that none of us can wrong the universe. It has so infused its strong +enchantment into nature that we prosper when we accept its advice, and +when we struggle to wound its creatures our hands are glued to our +sides, or they beat our own breasts. The whole course of things goes to +teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, +and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word. Why need you +choose so painfully your place and occupation and associates and modes +of action and of entertainment? Certainly there is a possible right for +you that precludes the need of balance and wilful election. For you +there is a reality, a fit place and congenial duties. Place yourself in +the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it +floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a +perfect contentment. Then you put all gainsayers in the wrong. Then you +are the world, the measure of right, of truth, of beauty. If we will +not be mar-plots with our miserable interferences, the work, the +society, letters, arts, science, religion of men would go on far better +than now, and the heaven predicted from the beginning of the world, and +still predicted from the bottom of the heart, would organize itself, as +do now the rose and the air and the sun. + +I say, _do not choose;_ but that is a figure of speech by which I would +distinguish what is commonly called _choice_ among men, and which is a +partial act, the choice of the hands, of the eyes, of the appetites, +and not a whole act of the man. But that which I call right or +goodness, is the choice of my constitution; and that which I call +heaven, and inwardly aspire after, is the state or circumstance +desirable to my constitution; and the action which I in all my years +tend to do, is the work for my faculties. We must hold a man amenable +to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an +excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. +What business has he with an evil trade? Has he not a _calling_ in his +character? + +Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one +direction in which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently +inviting him thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in a river; +he runs against obstructions on every side but one, on that side all +obstruction is taken away and he sweeps serenely over a deepening +channel into an infinite sea. This talent and this call depend on his +organization, or the mode in which the general soul incarnates itself +in him. He inclines to do something which is easy to him and good when +it is done, but which no other man can do. He has no rival. For the +more truly he consults his own powers, the more difference will his +work exhibit from the work of any other. His ambition is exactly +proportioned to his powers. The height of the pinnacle is determined by +the breadth of the base. Every man has this call of the power to do +somewhat unique, and no man has any other call. The pretence that he +has another call, a summons by name and personal election and outward +“signs that mark him extraordinary, and not in the roll of common men,” +is fanaticism, and betrays obtuseness to perceive that there is one +mind in all the individuals, and no respect of persons therein. + +By doing his work he makes the need felt which he can supply, and +creates the taste by which he is enjoyed. By doing his own work he +unfolds himself. It is the vice of our public speaking that it has not +abandonment. Somewhere, not only every orator but every man should let +out all the length of all the reins; should find or make a frank and +hearty expression of what force and meaning is in him. The common +experience is that the man fits himself as well as he can to the +customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as +a dog turns a spit. Then is he a part of the machine he moves; the man +is lost. Until he can manage to communicate himself to others in his +full stature and proportion, he does not yet find his vocation. He must +find in that an outlet for his character, so that he may justify his +work to their eyes. If the labor is mean, let him by his thinking and +character make it liberal. Whatever he knows and thinks, whatever in +his apprehension is worth doing, that let him communicate, or men will +never know and honor him aright. Foolish, whenever you take the +meanness and formality of that thing you do, instead of converting it +into the obedient spiracle of your character and aims. + +We like only such actions as have already long had the praise of men, +and do not perceive that any thing man can do may be divinely done. We +think greatness entailed or organized in some places or duties, in +certain offices or occasions, and do not see that Paganini can extract +rapture from a catgut, and Eulenstein from a jews-harp, and a +nimble-fingered lad out of shreds of paper with his scissors, and +Landseer out of swine, and the hero out of the pitiful habitation and +company in which he was hidden. What we call obscure condition or +vulgar society is that condition and society whose poetry is not yet +written, but which you shall presently make as enviable and renowned as +any. In our estimates let us take a lesson from kings. The parts of +hospitality, the connection of families, the impressiveness of death, +and a thousand other things, royalty makes its own estimate of, and a +royal mind will. To make habitually a new estimate,—that is elevation. + +What a man does, that he has. What has he to do with hope or fear? In +himself is his might. Let him regard no good as solid but that which is +in his nature and which must grow out of him as long as he exists. The +goods of fortune may come and go like summer leaves; let him scatter +them on every wind as the momentary signs of his infinite +productiveness. + +He may have his own. A man’s genius, the quality that differences him +from every other, the susceptibility to one class of influences, the +selection of what is fit for him, the rejection of what is unfit, +determines for him the character of the universe. A man is a method, a +progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to +him wherever he goes. He takes only his own out of the multiplicity +that sweeps and circles round him. He is like one of those booms which +are set out from the shore on rivers to catch drift-wood, or like the +loadstone amongst splinters of steel. Those facts, words, persons, +which dwell in his memory without his being able to say why, remain +because they have a relation to him not less real for being as yet +unapprehended. They are symbols of value to him as they can interpret +parts of his consciousness which he would vainly seek words for in the +conventional images of books and other minds. What attracts my +attention shall have it, as I will go to the man who knocks at my door, +whilst a thousand persons as worthy go by it, to whom I give no regard. +It is enough that these particulars speak to me. A few anecdotes, a few +traits of character, manners, face, a few incidents, have an emphasis +in your memory out of all proportion to their apparent significance if +you measure them by the ordinary standards. They relate to your gift. +Let them have their weight, and do not reject them and cast about for +illustration and facts more usual in literature. What your heart thinks +great is great. The soul’s emphasis is always right. + +Over all things that are agreeable to his nature and genius the man has +the highest right. Everywhere he may take what belongs to his spiritual +estate, nor can he take any thing else though all doors were open, nor +can all the force of men hinder him from taking so much. It is vain to +attempt to keep a secret from one who has a right to know it. It will +tell itself. That mood into which a friend can bring us is his dominion +over us. To the thoughts of that state of mind he has a right. All the +secrets of that state of mind he can compel. This is a law which +statesmen use in practice. All the terrors of the French Republic, +which held Austria in awe, were unable to command her diplomacy. But +Napoleon sent to Vienna M. de Narbonne, one of the old noblesse, with +the morals, manners and name of that interest, saying that it was +indispensable to send to the old aristocracy of Europe men of the same +connection, which, in fact, constitutes a sort of free-masonry. M. de +Narbonne in less than a fortnight penetrated all the secrets of the +imperial cabinet. + +Nothing seems so easy as to speak and to be understood. Yet a man may +come to find _that_ the strongest of defences and of ties,—that he has +been understood; and he who has received an opinion may come to find it +the most inconvenient of bonds. + +If a teacher have any opinion which he wishes to conceal, his pupils +will become as fully indoctrinated into that as into any which he +publishes. If you pour water into a vessel twisted into coils and +angles, it is vain to say, I will pour it only into this or that;—it +will find its level in all. Men feel and act the consequences of your +doctrine without being able to show how they follow. Show us an arc of +the curve, and a good mathematician will find out the whole figure. We +are always reasoning from the seen to the unseen. Hence the perfect +intelligence that subsists between wise men of remote ages. A man +cannot bury his meanings so deep in his book but time and like-minded +men will find them. Plato had a secret doctrine, had he? What secret +can he conceal from the eyes of Bacon? of Montaigne? of Kant? +Therefore, Aristotle said of his works, “They are published and not +published.” + +No man can learn what he has not preparation for learning, however near +to his eyes is the object. A chemist may tell his most precious secrets +to a carpenter, and he shall be never the wiser,—the secrets he would +not utter to a chemist for an estate. God screens us evermore from +premature ideas. Our eyes are holden that we cannot see things that +stare us in the face, until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened; +then we behold them, and the time when we saw them not is like a dream. + +Not in nature but in man is all the beauty and worth he sees. The world +is very empty, and is indebted to this gilding, exalting soul for all +its pride. “Earth fills her lap with splendors” _not_ her own. The vale +of Tempe, Tivoli and Rome are earth and water, rocks and sky. There are +as good earth and water in a thousand places, yet how unaffecting! + +People are not the better for the sun and moon, the horizon and the +trees; as it is not observed that the keepers of Roman galleries or the +valets of painters have any elevation of thought, or that librarians +are wiser men than others. There are graces in the demeanor of a +polished and noble person which are lost upon the eye of a churl. These +are like the stars whose light has not yet reached us. + +He may see what he maketh. Our dreams are the sequel of our waking +knowledge. The visions of the night bear some proportion to the visions +of the day. Hideous dreams are exaggerations of the sins of the day. We +see our evil affections embodied in bad physiognomies. On the Alps the +traveller sometimes beholds his own shadow magnified to a giant, so +that every gesture of his hand is terrific. “My children,” said an old +man to his boys scared by a figure in the dark entry, “my children, you +will never see any thing worse than yourselves.” As in dreams, so in +the scarcely less fluid events of the world every man sees himself in +colossal, without knowing that it is himself. The good, compared to the +evil which he sees, is as his own good to his own evil. Every quality +of his mind is magnified in some one acquaintance, and every emotion of +his heart in some one. He is like a quincunx of trees, which counts +five,—east, west, north, or south; or an initial, medial, and terminal +acrostic. And why not? He cleaves to one person and avoids another, +according to their likeness or unlikeness to himself, truly seeking +himself in his associates and moreover in his trade and habits and +gestures and meats and drinks, and comes at last to be faithfully +represented by every view you take of his circumstances. + +He may read what he writes. What can we see or acquire but what we are? +You have observed a skilful man reading Virgil. Well, that author is a +thousand books to a thousand persons. Take the book into your two hands +and read your eyes out, you will never find what I find. If any +ingenious reader would have a monopoly of the wisdom or delight he +gets, he is as secure now the book is Englished, as if it were +imprisoned in the Pelews’ tongue. It is with a good book as it is with +good company. Introduce a base person among gentlemen, it is all to no +purpose; he is not their fellow. Every society protects itself. The +company is perfectly safe, and he is not one of them, though his body +is in the room. + +What avails it to fight with the eternal laws of mind, which adjust the +relation of all persons to each other by the mathematical measure of +their havings and beings? Gertrude is enamored of Guy; how high, how +aristocratic, how Roman his mien and manners! to live with him were +life indeed, and no purchase is too great; and heaven and earth are +moved to that end. Well, Gertrude has Guy; but what now avails how +high, how aristocratic, how Roman his mien and manners, if his heart +and aims are in the senate, in the theatre and in the billiard-room, +and she has no aims, no conversation that can enchant her graceful +lord? + +He shall have his own society. We can love nothing but nature. The most +wonderful talents, the most meritorious exertions really avail very +little with us; but nearness or likeness of nature,—how beautiful is +the ease of its victory! Persons approach us, famous for their beauty, +for their accomplishments, worthy of all wonder for their charms and +gifts; they dedicate their whole skill to the hour and the +company,—with very imperfect result. To be sure it would be ungrateful +in us not to praise them loudly. Then, when all is done, a person of +related mind, a brother or sister by nature, comes to us so softly and +easily, so nearly and intimately, as if it were the blood in our proper +veins, that we feel as if some one was gone, instead of another having +come; we are utterly relieved and refreshed; it is a sort of joyful +solitude. We foolishly think in our days of sin that we must court +friends by compliance to the customs of society, to its dress, its +breeding, and its estimates. But only that soul can be my friend which +I encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which I do not +decline and which does not decline to me, but, native of the same +celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience. The scholar +forgets himself and apes the customs and costumes of the man of the +world to deserve the smile of beauty, and follows some giddy girl, not +yet taught by religious passion to know the noble woman with all that +is serene, oracular and beautiful in her soul. Let him be great, and +love shall follow him. Nothing is more deeply punished than the neglect +of the affinities by which alone society should be formed, and the +insane levity of choosing associates by others’ eyes. + +He may set his own rate. It is a maxim worthy of all acceptation that a +man may have that allowance he takes. Take the place and attitude which +belong to you, and all men acquiesce. The world must be just. It leaves +every man, with profound unconcern, to set his own rate. Hero or +driveller, it meddles not in the matter. It will certainly accept your +own measure of your doing and being, whether you sneak about and deny +your own name, or whether you see your work produced to the concave +sphere of the heavens, one with the revolution of the stars. + +The same reality pervades all teaching. The man may teach by doing, and +not otherwise. If he can communicate himself he can teach, but not by +words. He teaches who gives, and he learns who receives. There is no +teaching until the pupil is brought into the same state or principle in +which you are; a transfusion takes place; he is you and you are he; +then is a teaching, and by no unfriendly chance or bad company can he +ever quite lose the benefit. But your propositions run out of one ear +as they ran in at the other. We see it advertised that Mr. Grand will +deliver an oration on the Fourth of July, and Mr. Hand before the +Mechanics’ Association, and we do not go thither, because we know that +these gentlemen will not communicate their own character and experience +to the company. If we had reason to expect such a confidence we should +go through all inconvenience and opposition. The sick would be carried +in litters. But a public oration is an escapade, a non-committal, an +apology, a gag, and not a communication, not a speech, not a man. + +A like Nemesis presides over all intellectual works. We have yet to +learn that the thing uttered in words is not therefore affirmed. It +must affirm itself, or no forms of logic or of oath can give it +evidence. The sentence must also contain its own apology for being +spoken. + +The effect of any writing on the public mind is mathematically +measurable by its depth of thought. How much water does it draw? If it +awaken you to think, if it lift you from your feet with the great voice +of eloquence, then the effect is to be wide, slow, permanent, over the +minds of men; if the pages instruct you not, they will die like flies +in the hour. The way to speak and write what shall not go out of +fashion is to speak and write sincerely. The argument which has not +power to reach my own practice, I may well doubt will fail to reach +yours. But take Sidney’s maxim:—“Look in thy heart, and write.” He that +writes to himself writes to an eternal public. That statement only is +fit to be made public which you have come at in attempting to satisfy +your own curiosity. The writer who takes his subject from his ear and +not from his heart, should know that he has lost as much as he seems to +have gained, and when the empty book has gathered all its praise, and +half the people say, ‘What poetry! what genius!’ it still needs fuel to +make fire. That only profits which is profitable. Life alone can impart +life; and though we should burst we can only be valued as we make +ourselves valuable. There is no luck in literary reputation. They who +make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy +readers of the hour when it appears, but a court as of angels, a public +not to be bribed, not to be entreated and not to be overawed, decides +upon every man’s title to fame. Only those books come down which +deserve to last. Gilt edges, vellum and morocco, and +presentation-copies to all the libraries will not preserve a book in +circulation beyond its intrinsic date. It must go with all Walpole’s +Noble and Royal Authors to its fate. Blackmore, Kotzebue, or Pollok may +endure for a night, but Moses and Homer stand for ever. There are not +in the world at any one time more than a dozen persons who read and +understand Plato,—never enough to pay for an edition of his works; yet +to every generation these come duly down, for the sake of those few +persons, as if God brought them in his hand. “No book,” said Bentley, +“was ever written down by any but itself.” The permanence of all books +is fixed by no effort, friendly or hostile, but by their own specific +gravity, or the intrinsic importance of their contents to the constant +mind of man. “Do not trouble yourself too much about the light on your +statue,” said Michael Angelo to the young sculptor; “the light of the +public square will test its value.” + +In like manner the effect of every action is measured by the depth of +the sentiment from which it proceeds. The great man knew not that he +was great. It took a century or two for that fact to appear. What he +did, he did because he must; it was the most natural thing in the +world, and grew out of the circumstances of the moment. But now, every +thing he did, even to the lifting of his finger or the eating of bread, +looks large, all-related, and is called an institution. + +These are the demonstrations in a few particulars of the genius of +nature; they show the direction of the stream. But the stream is blood; +every drop is alive. Truth has not single victories; all things are its +organs,—not only dust and stones, but errors and lies. The laws of +disease, physicians say, are as beautiful as the laws of health. Our +philosophy is affirmative and readily accepts the testimony of negative +facts, as every shadow points to the sun. By a divine necessity every +fact in nature is constrained to offer its testimony. + +Human character evermore publishes itself. The most fugitive deed and +word, the mere air of doing a thing, the intimated purpose, expresses +character. If you act you show character; if you sit still, if you +sleep, you show it. You think because you have spoken nothing when +others spoke, and have given no opinion on the times, on the church, on +slavery, on marriage, on socialism, on secret societies, on the +college, on parties and persons, that your verdict is still expected +with curiosity as a reserved wisdom. Far otherwise; your silence +answers very loud. You have no oracle to utter, and your fellow-men +have learned that you cannot help them; for oracles speak. Doth not +Wisdom cry and Understanding put forth her voice? + +Dreadful limits are set in nature to the powers of dissimulation. Truth +tyrannizes over the unwilling members of the body. Faces never lie, it +is said. No man need be deceived who will study the changes of +expression. When a man speaks the truth in the spirit of truth, his eye +is as clear as the heavens. When he has base ends and speaks falsely, +the eye is muddy and sometimes asquint. + +I have heard an experienced counsellor say that he never feared the +effect upon a jury of a lawyer who does not believe in his heart that +his client ought to have a verdict. If he does not believe it his +unbelief will appear to the jury, despite all his protestations, and +will become their unbelief. This is that law whereby a work of art, of +whatever kind, sets us in the same state of mind wherein the artist was +when he made it. That which we do not believe we cannot adequately say, +though we may repeat the words never so often. It was this conviction +which Swedenborg expressed when he described a group of persons in the +spiritual world endeavoring in vain to articulate a proposition which +they did not believe; but they could not, though they twisted and +folded their lips even to indignation. + +A man passes for that he is worth. Very idle is all curiosity +concerning other people’s estimate of us, and all fear of remaining +unknown is not less so. If a man know that he can do any thing,—that he +can do it better than any one else,—he has a pledge of the +acknowledgment of that fact by all persons. The world is full of +judgment-days, and into every assembly that a man enters, in every +action he attempts, he is gauged and stamped. In every troop of boys +that whoop and run in each yard and square, a new-comer is as well and +accurately weighed in the course of a few days and stamped with his +right number, as if he had undergone a formal trial of his strength, +speed and temper. A stranger comes from a distant school, with better +dress, with trinkets in his pockets, with airs and pretensions; an +older boy says to himself, ‘It’s of no use; we shall find him out +to-morrow.’ ‘What has he done?’ is the divine question which searches +men and transpierces every false reputation. A fop may sit in any chair +of the world nor be distinguished for his hour from Homer and +Washington; but there need never be any doubt concerning the respective +ability of human beings. Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. +Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. Pretension never +wrote an Iliad, nor drove back Xerxes, nor christianized the world, nor +abolished slavery. + +As much virtue as there is, so much appears; as much goodness as there +is, so much reverence it commands. All the devils respect virtue. The +high, the generous, the self-devoted sect will always instruct and +command mankind. Never was a sincere word utterly lost. Never a +magnanimity fell to the ground, but there is some heart to greet and +accept it unexpectedly. A man passes for that he is worth. What he is +engraves itself on his face, on his form, on his fortunes, in letters +of light. Concealment avails him nothing, boasting nothing. There is +confession in the glances of our eyes, in our smiles, in salutations, +and the grasp of hands. His sin bedaubs him, mars all his good +impression. Men know not why they do not trust him, but they do not +trust him. His vice glasses his eye, cuts lines of mean expression in +his cheek, pinches the nose, sets the mark of the beast on the back of +the head, and writes O fool! fool! on the forehead of a king. + +If you would not be known to do any thing, never do it. A man may play +the fool in the drifts of a desert, but every grain of sand shall seem +to see. He may be a solitary eater, but he cannot keep his foolish +counsel. A broken complexion, a swinish look, ungenerous acts and the +want of due knowledge,—all blab. Can a cook, a Chiffinch, an Iachimo be +mistaken for Zeno or Paul? Confucius exclaimed,—“How can a man be +concealed? How can a man be concealed?” + +On the other hand, the hero fears not that if he withhold the avowal of +a just and brave act it will go unwitnessed and unloved. One knows +it,—himself,—and is pledged by it to sweetness of peace and to +nobleness of aim which will prove in the end a better proclamation of +it than the relating of the incident. Virtue is the adherence in action +to the nature of things, and the nature of things makes it prevalent. +It consists in a perpetual substitution of being for seeming, and with +sublime propriety God is described as saying, I AM. + +The lesson which these observations convey is, Be, and not seem. Let us +acquiesce. Let us take our bloated nothingness out of the path of the +divine circuits. Let us unlearn our wisdom of the world. Let us lie low +in the Lord’s power and learn that truth alone makes rich and great. + +If you visit your friend, why need you apologize for not having visited +him, and waste his time and deface your own act? Visit him now. Let him +feel that the highest love has come to see him, in thee its lowest +organ. Or why need you torment yourself and friend by secret +self-reproaches that you have not assisted him or complimented him with +gifts and salutations heretofore? Be a gift and a benediction. Shine +with real light and not with the borrowed reflection of gifts. Common +men are apologies for men; they bow the head, excuse themselves with +prolix reasons, and accumulate appearances because the substance is +not. + +We are full of these superstitions of sense, the worship of magnitude. +We call the poet inactive, because he is not a president, a merchant, +or a porter. We adore an institution, and do not see that it is founded +on a thought which we have. But real action is in silent moments. The +epochs of our life are not in the visible facts of our choice of a +calling, our marriage, our acquisition of an office, and the like, but +in a silent thought by the way-side as we walk; in a thought which +revises our entire manner of life and says,—‘Thus hast thou done, but +it were better thus.’ And all our after years, like menials, serve and +wait on this, and according to their ability execute its will. This +revisal or correction is a constant force, which, as a tendency, +reaches through our lifetime. The object of the man, the aim of these +moments, is to make daylight shine through him, to suffer the law to +traverse his whole being without obstruction, so that on what point +soever of his doing your eye falls it shall report truly of his +character, whether it be his diet, his house, his religious forms, his +society, his mirth, his vote, his opposition. Now he is not +homogeneous, but heterogeneous, and the ray does not traverse; there +are no thorough lights, but the eye of the beholder is puzzled, +detecting many unlike tendencies and a life not yet at one. + +Why should we make it a point with our false modesty to disparage that +man we are and that form of being assigned to us? A good man is +contented. I love and honor Epaminondas, but I do not wish to be +Epaminondas. I hold it more just to love the world of this hour than +the world of his hour. Nor can you, if I am true, excite me to the +least uneasiness by saying, ‘He acted and thou sittest still.’ I see +action to be good, when the need is, and sitting still to be also good. +Epaminondas, if he was the man I take him for, would have sat still +with joy and peace, if his lot had been mine. Heaven is large, and +affords space for all modes of love and fortitude. Why should we be +busybodies and superserviceable? Action and inaction are alike to the +true. One piece of the tree is cut for a weathercock and one for the +sleeper of a bridge; the virtue of the wood is apparent in both. + +I desire not to disgrace the soul. The fact that I am here certainly +shows me that the soul had need of an organ here. Shall I not assume +the post? Shall I skulk and dodge and duck with my unseasonable +apologies and vain modesty and imagine my being here impertinent? less +pertinent than Epaminondas or Homer being there? and that the soul did +not know its own needs? Besides, without any reasoning on the matter, I +have no discontent. The good soul nourishes me and unlocks new +magazines of power and enjoyment to me every day. I will not meanly +decline the immensity of good, because I have heard that it has come to +others in another shape. + +Besides, why should we be cowed by the name of Action? ’Tis a trick of +the senses,—no more. We know that the ancestor of every action is a +thought. The poor mind does not seem to itself to be any thing unless +it have an outside badge,—some Gentoo diet, or Quaker coat, or +Calvinistic prayer-meeting, or philanthropic society, or a great +donation, or a high office, or, any how, some wild contrasting action +to testify that it is somewhat. The rich mind lies in the sun and +sleeps, and is Nature. To think is to act. + +Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. All action is +of an infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with +the celestial air until it eclipses the sun and moon. Let us seek one +peace by fidelity. Let me heed my duties. Why need I go gadding into +the scenes and philosophy of Greek and Italian history before I have +justified myself to my benefactors? How dare I read Washington’s +campaigns when I have not answered the letters of my own +correspondents? Is not that a just objection to much of our reading? It +is a pusillanimous desertion of our work to gaze after our neighbors. +It is peeping. Byron says of Jack Bunting,— + + “He knew not what to say, and so he swore.” + +I may say it of our preposterous use of books,—He knew not what to do, +and so _he read_. I can think of nothing to fill my time with, and I +find the Life of Brant. It is a very extravagant compliment to pay to +Brant, or to General Schuyler, or to General Washington. My time should +be as good as their time,—my facts, my net of relations, as good as +theirs, or either of theirs. Rather let me do my work so well that +other idlers if they choose may compare my texture with the texture of +these and find it identical with the best. + +This over-estimate of the possibilities of Paul and Pericles, this +under-estimate of our own, comes from a neglect of the fact of an +identical nature. Bonaparte knew but one merit, and rewarded in one and +the same way the good soldier, the good astronomer, the good poet, the +good player. The poet uses the names of Cæsar, of Tamerlane, of +Bonduca, of Belisarius; the painter uses the conventional story of the +Virgin Mary, of Paul, of Peter. He does not therefore defer to the +nature of these accidental men, of these stock heroes. If the poet +write a true drama, then he is Cæsar, and not the player of Cæsar; then +the selfsame strain of thought, emotion as pure, wit as subtle, motions +as swift, mounting, extravagant, and a heart as great, self-sufficing, +dauntless, which on the waves of its love and hope can uplift all that +is reckoned solid and precious in the world,—palaces, gardens, money, +navies, kingdoms,—marking its own incomparable worth by the slight it +casts on these gauds of men;—these all are his, and by the power of +these he rouses the nations. Let a man believe in God, and not in names +and places and persons. Let the great soul incarnated in some woman’s +form, poor and sad and single, in some Dolly or Joan, go out to +service, and sweep chambers and scour floors, and its effulgent +daybeams cannot be muffled or hid, but to sweep and scour will +instantly appear supreme and beautiful actions, the top and radiance of +human life, and all people will get mops and brooms; until, lo! +suddenly the great soul has enshrined itself in some other form and +done some other deed, and that is now the flower and head of all living +nature. + +We are the photometers, we the irritable goldleaf and tinfoil that +measure the accumulations of the subtle element. We know the authentic +effects of the true fire through every one of its million disguises. + + + + +V. +LOVE + + +“I was as a gem concealed; +Me my burning ray revealed.” + _Koran_. + + + + +LOVE + + +Every promise of the soul has innumerable fulfilments; each of its joys +ripens into a new want. Nature, uncontainable, flowing, forelooking, in +the first sentiment of kindness anticipates already a benevolence which +shall lose all particular regards in its general light. The +introduction to this felicity is in a private and tender relation of +one to one, which is the enchantment of human life; which, like a +certain divine rage and enthusiasm, seizes on man at one period and +works a revolution in his mind and body; unites him to his race, +pledges him to the domestic and civic relations, carries him with new +sympathy into nature, enhances the power of the senses, opens the +imagination, adds to his character heroic and sacred attributes, +establishes marriage, and gives permanence to human society. + +The natural association of the sentiment of love with the heyday of the +blood seems to require that in order to portray it in vivid tints, +which every youth and maid should confess to be true to their throbbing +experience, one must not be too old. The delicious fancies of youth +reject the least savor of a mature philosophy, as chilling with age and +pedantry their purple bloom. And therefore I know I incur the +imputation of unnecessary hardness and stoicism from those who compose +the Court and Parliament of Love. But from these formidable censors I +shall appeal to my seniors. For it is to be considered that this +passion of which we speak, though it begin with the young, yet forsakes +not the old, or rather suffers no one who is truly its servant to grow +old, but makes the aged participators of it not less than the tender +maiden, though in a different and nobler sort. For it is a fire that +kindling its first embers in the narrow nook of a private bosom, caught +from a wandering spark out of another private heart, glows and enlarges +until it warms and beams upon multitudes of men and women, upon the +universal heart of all, and so lights up the whole world and all nature +with its generous flames. It matters not therefore whether we attempt +to describe the passion at twenty, at thirty, or at eighty years. He +who paints it at the first period will lose some of its later, he who +paints it at the last, some of its earlier traits. Only it is to be +hoped that by patience and the Muses’ aid we may attain to that inward +view of the law which shall describe a truth ever young and beautiful, +so central that it shall commend itself to the eye, at whatever angle +beholden. + +And the first condition is, that we must leave a too close and +lingering adherence to facts, and study the sentiment as it appeared in +hope and not in history. For each man sees his own life defaced and +disfigured, as the life of man is not, to his imagination. Each man +sees over his own experience a certain stain of error, whilst that of +other men looks fair and ideal. Let any man go back to those delicious +relations which make the beauty of his life, which have given him +sincerest instruction and nourishment, he will shrink and moan. Alas! I +know not why, but infinite compunctions embitter in mature life the +remembrances of budding joy and cover every beloved name. Every thing +is beautiful seen from the point of the intellect, or as truth. But all +is sour, if seen as experience. Details are melancholy; the plan is +seemly and noble. In the actual world—the painful kingdom of time and +place—dwell care, and canker, and fear. With thought, with the ideal, +is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Round it all the Muses sing. But +grief cleaves to names, and persons, and the partial interests of +to-day and yesterday. + +The strong bent of nature is seen in the proportion which this topic of +personal relations usurps in the conversation of society. What do we +wish to know of any worthy person so much, as how he has sped in the +history of this sentiment? What books in the circulating libraries +circulate? How we glow over these novels of passion, when the story is +told with any spark of truth and nature! And what fastens attention, in +the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between +two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before, and never shall meet +them again. But we see them exchange a glance, or betray a deep +emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We understand them, and take +the warmest interest in the development of the romance. All mankind +love a lover. The earliest demonstrations of complacency and kindness +are nature’s most winning pictures. It is the dawn of civility and +grace in the coarse and rustic. The rude village boy teases the girls +about the school-house door;—but to-day he comes running into the +entry, and meets one fair child disposing her satchel; he holds her +books to help her, and instantly it seems to him as if she removed +herself from him infinitely, and was a sacred precinct. Among the +throng of girls he runs rudely enough, but one alone distances him; and +these two little neighbors, that were so close just now, have learned +to respect each other’s personality. Or who can avert his eyes from the +engaging, half-artful, half-artless ways of school-girls who go into +the country shops to buy a skein of silk or a sheet of paper, and talk +half an hour about nothing with the broad-faced, good-natured shop-boy. +In the village they are on a perfect equality, which love delights in, +and without any coquetry the happy, affectionate nature of woman flows +out in this pretty gossip. The girls may have little beauty, yet +plainly do they establish between them and the good boy the most +agreeable, confiding relations, what with their fun and their earnest, +about Edgar and Jonas and Almira, and who was invited to the party, and +who danced at the dancing-school, and when the singing-school would +begin, and other nothings concerning which the parties cooed. By and by +that boy wants a wife, and very truly and heartily will he know where +to find a sincere and sweet mate, without any risk such as Milton +deplores as incident to scholars and great men. + +I have been told that in some public discourses of mine my reverence +for the intellect has made me unjustly cold to the personal relations. +But now I almost shrink at the remembrance of such disparaging words. +For persons are love’s world, and the coldest philosopher cannot +recount the debt of the young soul wandering here in nature to the +power of love, without being tempted to unsay, as treasonable to +nature, aught derogatory to the social instincts. For though the +celestial rapture falling out of heaven seizes only upon those of +tender age, and although a beauty overpowering all analysis or +comparison and putting us quite beside ourselves we can seldom see +after thirty years, yet the remembrance of these visions outlasts all +other remembrances, and is a wreath of flowers on the oldest brows. But +here is a strange fact; it may seem to many men, in revising their +experience, that they have no fairer page in their life’s book than the +delicious memory of some passages wherein affection contrived to give a +witchcraft, surpassing the deep attraction of its own truth, to a +parcel of accidental and trivial circumstances. In looking backward +they may find that several things which were not the charm have more +reality to this groping memory than the charm itself which embalmed +them. But be our experience in particulars what it may, no man ever +forgot the visitations of that power to his heart and brain, which +created all things anew; which was the dawn in him of music, poetry, +and art; which made the face of nature radiant with purple light, the +morning and the night varied enchantments; when a single tone of one +voice could make the heart bound, and the most trivial circumstance +associated with one form is put in the amber of memory; when he became +all eye when one was present, and all memory when one was gone; when +the youth becomes a watcher of windows and studious of a glove, a veil, +a ribbon, or the wheels of a carriage; when no place is too solitary +and none too silent, for him who has richer company and sweeter +conversation in his new thoughts than any old friends, though best and +purest, can give him; for the figures, the motions, the words of the +beloved object are not like other images written in water, but, as +Plutarch said, “enamelled in fire,” and make the study of midnight:— + + “Thou art not gone being gone, where’er thou art, + Thou leav’st in him thy watchful eyes, in him thy loving heart.” + +In the noon and the afternoon of life we still throb at the +recollection of days when happiness was not happy enough, but must be +drugged with the relish of pain and fear; for he touched the secret of +the matter who said of love,— + + “All other pleasures are not worth its pains:” + +and when the day was not long enough, but the night too must be +consumed in keen recollections; when the head boiled all night on the +pillow with the generous deed it resolved on; when the moonlight was a +pleasing fever and the stars were letters and the flowers ciphers and +the air was coined into song; when all business seemed an impertinence, +and all the men and women running to and fro in the streets, mere +pictures. + +The passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive +and significant. Nature grows conscious. Every bird on the boughs of +the tree sings now to his heart and soul. The notes are almost +articulate. The clouds have faces as he looks on them. The trees of the +forest, the waving grass and the peeping flowers have grown +intelligent; and he almost fears to trust them with the secret which +they seem to invite. Yet nature soothes and sympathizes. In the green +solitude he finds a dearer home than with men:— + + “Fountain-heads and pathless groves, + Places which pale passion loves, + Moonlight walks, when all the fowls + Are safely housed, save bats and owls, + A midnight bell, a passing groan,— + These are the sounds we feed upon.” + +Behold there in the wood the fine madman! He is a palace of sweet +sounds and sights; he dilates; he is twice a man; he walks with arms +akimbo; he soliloquizes; he accosts the grass and the trees; he feels +the blood of the violet, the clover and the lily in his veins; and he +talks with the brook that wets his foot. + +The heats that have opened his perceptions of natural beauty have made +him love music and verse. It is a fact often observed, that men have +written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write +well under any other circumstances. + +The like force has the passion over all his nature. It expands the +sentiment; it makes the clown gentle and gives the coward heart. Into +the most pitiful and abject it will infuse a heart and courage to defy +the world, so only it have the countenance of the beloved object. In +giving him to another it still more gives him to himself. He is a new +man, with new perceptions, new and keener purposes, and a religious +solemnity of character and aims. He does not longer appertain to his +family and society; _he_ is somewhat; _he_ is a person; _he_ is a soul. + +And here let us examine a little nearer the nature of that influence +which is thus potent over the human youth. Beauty, whose revelation to +man we now celebrate, welcome as the sun wherever it pleases to shine, +which pleases everybody with it and with themselves, seems sufficient +to itself. The lover cannot paint his maiden to his fancy poor and +solitary. Like a tree in flower, so much soft, budding, informing +loveliness is society for itself; and she teaches his eye why Beauty +was pictured with Loves and Graces attending her steps. Her existence +makes the world rich. Though she extrudes all other persons from his +attention as cheap and unworthy, she indemnifies him by carrying out +her own being into somewhat impersonal, large, mundane, so that the +maiden stands to him for a representative of all select things and +virtues. For that reason the lover never sees personal resemblances in +his mistress to her kindred or to others. His friends find in her a +likeness to her mother, or her sisters, or to persons not of her blood. +The lover sees no resemblance except to summer evenings and diamond +mornings, to rainbows and the song of birds. + +The ancients called beauty the flowering of virtue. Who can analyze the +nameless charm which glances from one and another face and form? We are +touched with emotions of tenderness and complacency, but we cannot find +whereat this dainty emotion, this wandering gleam, points. It is +destroyed for the imagination by any attempt to refer it to +organization. Nor does it point to any relations of friendship or love +known and described in society, but, as it seems to me, to a quite +other and unattainable sphere, to relations of transcendent delicacy +and sweetness, to what roses and violets hint and foreshow. We cannot +approach beauty. Its nature is like opaline doves’-neck lustres, +hovering and evanescent. Herein it resembles the most excellent things, +which all have this rainbow character, defying all attempts at +appropriation and use. What else did Jean Paul Richter signify, when he +said to music, “Away! away! thou speakest to me of things which in all +my endless life I have not found, and shall not find.” The same fluency +may be observed in every work of the plastic arts. The statue is then +beautiful when it begins to be incomprehensible, when it is passing out +of criticism and can no longer be defined by compass and +measuring-wand, but demands an active imagination to go with it and to +say what it is in the act of doing. The god or hero of the sculptor is +always represented in a transition _from_ that which is representable +to the senses, _to_ that which is not. Then first it ceases to be a +stone. The same remark holds of painting. And of poetry the success is +not attained when it lulls and satisfies, but when it astonishes and +fires us with new endeavors after the unattainable. Concerning it +Landor inquires “whether it is not to be referred to some purer state +of sensation and existence.” + +In like manner, personal beauty is then first charming and itself when +it dissatisfies us with any end; when it becomes a story without an +end; when it suggests gleams and visions and not earthly satisfactions; +when it makes the beholder feel his unworthiness; when he cannot feel +his right to it, though he were Cæsar; he cannot feel more right to it +than to the firmament and the splendors of a sunset. + +Hence arose the saying, “If I love you, what is that to you?” We say so +because we feel that what we love is not in your will, but above it. It +is not you, but your radiance. It is that which you know not in +yourself and can never know. + +This agrees well with that high philosophy of Beauty which the ancient +writers delighted in; for they said that the soul of man, embodied here +on earth, went roaming up and down in quest of that other world of its +own out of which it came into this, but was soon stupefied by the light +of the natural sun, and unable to see any other objects than those of +this world, which are but shadows of real things. Therefore the Deity +sends the glory of youth before the soul, that it may avail itself of +beautiful bodies as aids to its recollection of the celestial good and +fair; and the man beholding such a person in the female sex runs to her +and finds the highest joy in contemplating the form, movement, and +intelligence of this person, because it suggests to him the presence of +that which indeed is within the beauty, and the cause of the beauty. + +If however, from too much conversing with material objects, the soul +was gross, and misplaced its satisfaction in the body, it reaped +nothing but sorrow; body being unable to fulfil the promise which +beauty holds out; but if, accepting the hint of these visions and +suggestions which beauty makes to his mind, the soul passes through the +body and falls to admire strokes of character, and the lovers +contemplate one another in their discourses and their actions, then +they pass to the true palace of beauty, more and more inflame their +love of it, and by this love extinguishing the base affection, as the +sun puts out the fire by shining on the hearth, they become pure and +hallowed. By conversation with that which is in itself excellent, +magnanimous, lowly, and just, the lover comes to a warmer love of these +nobilities, and a quicker apprehension of them. Then he passes from +loving them in one to loving them in all, and so is the one beautiful +soul only the door through which he enters to the society of all true +and pure souls. In the particular society of his mate he attains a +clearer sight of any spot, any taint which her beauty has contracted +from this world, and is able to point it out, and this with mutual joy +that they are now able, without offence, to indicate blemishes and +hindrances in each other, and give to each all help and comfort in +curing the same. And beholding in many souls the traits of the divine +beauty, and separating in each soul that which is divine from the taint +which it has contracted in the world, the lover ascends to the highest +beauty, to the love and knowledge of the Divinity, by steps on this +ladder of created souls. + +Somewhat like this have the truly wise told us of love in all ages. The +doctrine is not old, nor is it new. If Plato, Plutarch and Apuleius +taught it, so have Petrarch, Angelo and Milton. It awaits a truer +unfolding in opposition and rebuke to that subterranean prudence which +presides at marriages with words that take hold of the upper world, +whilst one eye is prowling in the cellar; so that its gravest discourse +has a savor of hams and powdering-tubs. Worst, when this sensualism +intrudes into the education of young women, and withers the hope and +affection of human nature by teaching that marriage signifies nothing +but a housewife’s thrift, and that woman’s life has no other aim. + +But this dream of love, though beautiful, is only one scene in our +play. In the procession of the soul from within outward, it enlarges +its circles ever, like the pebble thrown into the pond, or the light +proceeding from an orb. The rays of the soul alight first on things +nearest, on every utensil and toy, on nurses and domestics, on the +house and yard and passengers, on the circle of household acquaintance, +on politics and geography and history. But things are ever grouping +themselves according to higher or more interior laws. Neighborhood, +size, numbers, habits, persons, lose by degrees their power over us. +Cause and effect, real affinities, the longing for harmony between the +soul and the circumstance, the progressive, idealizing instinct, +predominate later, and the step backward from the higher to the lower +relations is impossible. Thus even love, which is the deification of +persons, must become more impersonal every day. Of this at first it +gives no hint. Little think the youth and maiden who are glancing at +each other across crowded rooms with eyes so full of mutual +intelligence, of the precious fruit long hereafter to proceed from this +new, quite external stimulus. The work of vegetation begins first in +the irritability of the bark and leaf-buds. From exchanging glances, +they advance to acts of courtesy, of gallantry, then to fiery passion, +to plighting troth and marriage. Passion beholds its object as a +perfect unit. The soul is wholly embodied, and the body is wholly +ensouled:— + + “Her pure and eloquent blood + Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, + That one might almost say her body thought.” + +Romeo, if dead, should be cut up into little stars to make the heavens +fine. Life, with this pair, has no other aim, asks no more, than +Juliet,—than Romeo. Night, day, studies, talents, kingdoms, religion, +are all contained in this form full of soul, in this soul which is all +form. The lovers delight in endearments, in avowals of love, in +comparisons of their regards. When alone, they solace themselves with +the remembered image of the other. Does that other see the same star, +the same melting cloud, read the same book, feel the same emotion, that +now delight me? They try and weigh their affection, and adding up +costly advantages, friends, opportunities, properties, exult in +discovering that willingly, joyfully, they would give all as a ransom +for the beautiful, the beloved head, not one hair of which shall be +harmed. But the lot of humanity is on these children. Danger, sorrow, +and pain arrive to them, as to all. Love prays. It makes covenants with +Eternal Power in behalf of this dear mate. The union which is thus +effected and which adds a new value to every atom in nature—for it +transmutes every thread throughout the whole web of relation into a +golden ray, and bathes the soul in a new and sweeter element—is yet a +temporary state. Not always can flowers, pearls, poetry, protestations, +nor even home in another heart, content the awful soul that dwells in +clay. It arouses itself at last from these endearments, as toys, and +puts on the harness and aspires to vast and universal aims. The soul +which is in the soul of each, craving a perfect beatitude, detects +incongruities, defects and disproportion in the behavior of the other. +Hence arise surprise, expostulation and pain. Yet that which drew them +to each other was signs of loveliness, signs of virtue; and these +virtues are there, however eclipsed. They appear and reappear and +continue to attract; but the regard changes, quits the sign and +attaches to the substance. This repairs the wounded affection. +Meantime, as life wears on, it proves a game of permutation and +combination of all possible positions of the parties, to employ all the +resources of each and acquaint each with the strength and weakness of +the other. For it is the nature and end of this relation, that they +should represent the human race to each other. All that is in the +world, which is or ought to be known, is cunningly wrought into the +texture of man, of woman:— + + “The person love does to us fit, + Like manna, has the taste of all in it.” + +The world rolls; the circumstances vary every hour. The angels that +inhabit this temple of the body appear at the windows, and the gnomes +and vices also. By all the virtues they are united. If there be virtue, +all the vices are known as such; they confess and flee. Their once +flaming regard is sobered by time in either breast, and losing in +violence what it gains in extent, it becomes a thorough good +understanding. They resign each other without complaint to the good +offices which man and woman are severally appointed to discharge in +time, and exchange the passion which once could not lose sight of its +object, for a cheerful, disengaged furtherance, whether present or +absent, of each other’s designs. At last they discover that all which +at first drew them together,—those once sacred features, that magical +play of charms,—was deciduous, had a prospective end, like the +scaffolding by which the house was built; and the purification of the +intellect and the heart from year to year is the real marriage, +foreseen and prepared from the first, and wholly above their +consciousness. Looking at these aims with which two persons, a man and +a woman, so variously and correlatively gifted, are shut up in one +house to spend in the nuptial society forty or fifty years, I do not +wonder at the emphasis with which the heart prophesies this crisis from +early infancy, at the profuse beauty with which the instincts deck the +nuptial bower, and nature and intellect and art emulate each other in +the gifts and the melody they bring to the epithalamium. + +Thus are we put in training for a love which knows not sex, nor person, +nor partiality, but which seeks virtue and wisdom everywhere, to the +end of increasing virtue and wisdom. We are by nature observers, and +thereby learners. That is our permanent state. But we are often made to +feel that our affections are but tents of a night. Though slowly and +with pain, the objects of the affections change, as the objects of +thought do. There are moments when the affections rule and absorb the +man and make his happiness dependent on a person or persons. But in +health the mind is presently seen again,—its overarching vault, bright +with galaxies of immutable lights, and the warm loves and fears that +swept over us as clouds must lose their finite character and blend with +God, to attain their own perfection. But we need not fear that we can +lose any thing by the progress of the soul. The soul may be trusted to +the end. That which is so beautiful and attractive as these relations, +must be succeeded and supplanted only by what is more beautiful, and so +on for ever. + + + + +VI. +FRIENDSHIP + + +A ruddy drop of manly blood +The surging sea outweighs; +The world uncertain comes and goes, +The lover rooted stays. +I fancied he was fled, +And, after many a year, +Glowed unexhausted kindliness +Like daily sunrise there. +My careful heart was free again,— +O friend, my bosom said, +Through thee alone the sky is arched, +Through thee the rose is red, +All things through thee take nobler form +And look beyond the earth, +The mill-round of our fate appears +A sun-path in thy worth. +Me too thy nobleness has taught +To master my despair; +The fountains of my hidden life +Are through thy friendship fair. + + + + +FRIENDSHIP + + +We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. Maugre all the +selfishness that chills like east winds the world, the whole human +family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether. How many +persons we meet in houses, whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we +honor, and who honor us! How many we see in the street, or sit with in +church, whom, though silently, we warmly rejoice to be with! Read the +language of these wandering eye-beams. The heart knoweth. + +The effect of the indulgence of this human affection is a certain +cordial exhilaration. In poetry and in common speech, the emotions of +benevolence and complacency which are felt towards others are likened +to the material effects of fire; so swift, or much more swift, more +active, more cheering, are these fine inward irradiations. From the +highest degree of passionate love to the lowest degree of good-will, +they make the sweetness of life. + +Our intellectual and active powers increase with our affection. The +scholar sits down to write, and all his years of meditation do not +furnish him with one good thought or happy expression; but it is +necessary to write a letter to a friend,—and forthwith troops of gentle +thoughts invest themselves, on every hand, with chosen words. See, in +any house where virtue and self-respect abide, the palpitation which +the approach of a stranger causes. A commended stranger is expected and +announced, and an uneasiness betwixt pleasure and pain invades all the +hearts of a household. His arrival almost brings fear to the good +hearts that would welcome him. The house is dusted, all things fly into +their places, the old coat is exchanged for the new, and they must get +up a dinner if they can. Of a commended stranger, only the good report +is told by others, only the good and new is heard by us. He stands to +us for humanity. He is what we wish. Having imagined and invested him, +we ask how we should stand related in conversation and action with such +a man, and are uneasy with fear. The same idea exalts conversation with +him. We talk better than we are wont. We have the nimblest fancy, a +richer memory, and our dumb devil has taken leave for the time. For +long hours we can continue a series of sincere, graceful, rich +communications, drawn from the oldest, secretest experience, so that +they who sit by, of our own kinsfolk and acquaintance, shall feel a +lively surprise at our unusual powers. But as soon as the stranger +begins to intrude his partialities, his definitions, his defects, into +the conversation, it is all over. He has heard the first, the last and +best he will ever hear from us. He is no stranger now. Vulgarity, +ignorance, misapprehension are old acquaintances. Now, when he comes, +he may get the order, the dress and the dinner,—but the throbbing of +the heart and the communications of the soul, no more. + +What is so pleasant as these jets of affection which make a young world +for me again? What so delicious as a just and firm encounter of two, in +a thought, in a feeling? How beautiful, on their approach to this +beating heart, the steps and forms of the gifted and the true! The +moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed; there is +no winter and no night; all tragedies, all ennuis vanish,—all duties +even; nothing fills the proceeding eternity but the forms all radiant +of beloved persons. Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the +universe it should rejoin its friend, and it would be content and +cheerful alone for a thousand years. + +I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old +and the new. Shall I not call God the Beautiful, who daily showeth +himself so to me in his gifts? I chide society, I embrace solitude, and +yet I am not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, the lovely and the +noble-minded, as from time to time they pass my gate. Who hears me, who +understands me, becomes mine,—a possession for all time. Nor is Nature +so poor but she gives me this joy several times, and thus we weave +social threads of our own, a new web of relations; and, as many +thoughts in succession substantiate themselves, we shall by and by +stand in a new world of our own creation, and no longer strangers and +pilgrims in a traditionary globe. My friends have come to me unsought. +The great God gave them to me. By oldest right, by the divine affinity +of virtue with itself, I find them, or rather not I but the Deity in me +and in them derides and cancels the thick walls of individual +character, relation, age, sex, circumstance, at which he usually +connives, and now makes many one. High thanks I owe you, excellent +lovers, who carry out the world for me to new and noble depths, and +enlarge the meaning of all my thoughts. These are new poetry of the +first Bard,—poetry without stop,—hymn, ode and epic, poetry still +flowing, Apollo and the Muses chanting still. Will these too separate +themselves from me again, or some of them? I know not, but I fear it +not; for my relation to them is so pure, that we hold by simple +affinity, and the Genius of my life being thus social, the same +affinity will exert its energy on whomsoever is as noble as these men +and women, wherever I may be. + +I confess to an extreme tenderness of nature on this point. It is +almost dangerous to me to “crush the sweet poison of misused wine” of +the affections. A new person is to me a great event and hinders me from +sleep. I have often had fine fancies about persons which have given me +delicious hours; but the joy ends in the day; it yields no fruit. +Thought is not born of it; my action is very little modified. I must +feel pride in my friend’s accomplishments as if they were mine, and a +property in his virtues. I feel as warmly when he is praised, as the +lover when he hears applause of his engaged maiden. We over-estimate +the conscience of our friend. His goodness seems better than our +goodness, his nature finer, his temptations less. Every thing that is +his,—his name, his form, his dress, books and instruments,—fancy +enhances. Our own thought sounds new and larger from his mouth. + +Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not without their analogy +in the ebb and flow of love. Friendship, like the immortality of the +soul, is too good to be believed. The lover, beholding his maiden, half +knows that she is not verily that which he worships; and in the golden +hour of friendship we are surprised with shades of suspicion and +unbelief. We doubt that we bestow on our hero the virtues in which he +shines, and afterwards worship the form to which we have ascribed this +divine inhabitation. In strictness, the soul does not respect men as it +respects itself. In strict science all persons underlie the same +condition of an infinite remoteness. Shall we fear to cool our love by +mining for the metaphysical foundation of this Elysian temple? Shall I +not be as real as the things I see? If I am, I shall not fear to know +them for what they are. Their essence is not less beautiful than their +appearance, though it needs finer organs for its apprehension. The root +of the plant is not unsightly to science, though for chaplets and +festoons we cut the stem short. And I must hazard the production of the +bald fact amidst these pleasing reveries, though it should prove an +Egyptian skull at our banquet. A man who stands united with his thought +conceives magnificently of himself. He is conscious of a universal +success, even though bought by uniform particular failures. No +advantages, no powers, no gold or force, can be any match for him. I +cannot choose but rely on my own poverty more than on your wealth. I +cannot make your consciousness tantamount to mine. Only the star +dazzles; the planet has a faint, moon-like ray. I hear what you say of +the admirable parts and tried temper of the party you praise, but I see +well that for all his purple cloaks I shall not like him, unless he is +at last a poor Greek like me. I cannot deny it, O friend, that the vast +shadow of the Phenomenal includes thee also in its pied and painted +immensity,—thee also, compared with whom all else is shadow. Thou art +not Being, as Truth is, as Justice is,—thou art not my soul, but a +picture and effigy of that. Thou hast come to me lately, and already +thou art seizing thy hat and cloak. Is it not that the soul puts forth +friends as the tree puts forth leaves, and presently, by the +germination of new buds, extrudes the old leaf? The law of nature is +alternation for evermore. Each electrical state superinduces the +opposite. The soul environs itself with friends that it may enter into +a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for a +season, that it may exalt its conversation or society. This method +betrays itself along the whole history of our personal relations. The +instinct of affection revives the hope of union with our mates, and the +returning sense of insulation recalls us from the chase. Thus every man +passes his life in the search after friendship, and if he should record +his true sentiment, he might write a letter like this to each new +candidate for his love:— + +DEAR FRIEND, + +If I was sure of thee, sure of thy capacity, sure to match my mood with +thine, I should never think again of trifles in relation to thy comings +and goings. I am not very wise; my moods are quite attainable, and I +respect thy genius; it is to me as yet unfathomed; yet dare I not +presume in thee a perfect intelligence of me, and so thou art to me a +delicious torment. Thine ever, or never. + +Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are for curiosity and not for +life. They are not to be indulged. This is to weave cobweb, and not +cloth. Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we +have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibre +of the human heart. The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of +one web with the laws of nature and of morals. But we have aimed at a +swift and petty benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatch at the +slowest fruit in the whole garden of God, which many summers and many +winters must ripen. We seek our friend not sacredly, but with an +adulterate passion which would appropriate him to ourselves. In vain. +We are armed all over with subtle antagonisms, which, as soon as we +meet, begin to play, and translate all poetry into stale prose. Almost +all people descend to meet. All association must be a compromise, and, +what is worst, the very flower and aroma of the flower of each of the +beautiful natures disappears as they approach each other. What a +perpetual disappointment is actual society, even of the virtuous and +gifted! After interviews have been compassed with long foresight we +must be tormented presently by baffled blows, by sudden, unseasonable +apathies, by epilepsies of wit and of animal spirits, in the heyday of +friendship and thought. Our faculties do not play us true, and both +parties are relieved by solitude. + +I ought to be equal to every relation. It makes no difference how many +friends I have and what content I can find in conversing with each, if +there be one to whom I am not equal. If I have shrunk unequal from one +contest, the joy I find in all the rest becomes mean and cowardly. I +should hate myself, if then I made my other friends my asylum:— + + “The valiant warrior famoused for fight, + After a hundred victories, once foiled, + Is from the book of honor razed quite, + And all the rest forgot for which he toiled.” + +Our impatience is thus sharply rebuked. Bashfulness and apathy are a +tough husk in which a delicate organization is protected from premature +ripening. It would be lost if it knew itself before any of the best +souls were yet ripe enough to know and own it. Respect the +_naturlangsamkeit_ which hardens the ruby in a million years, and works +in duration in which Alps and Andes come and go as rainbows. The good +spirit of our life has no heaven which is the price of rashness. Love, +which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but for the total worth +of man. Let us not have this childish luxury in our regards, but the +austerest worth; let us approach our friend with an audacious trust in +the truth of his heart, in the breadth, impossible to be overturned, of +his foundations. + +The attractions of this subject are not to be resisted, and I leave, +for the time, all account of subordinate social benefit, to speak of +that select and sacred relation which is a kind of absolute, and which +even leaves the language of love suspicious and common, so much is this +purer, and nothing is so much divine. + +I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage. +When they are real, they are not glass threads or frostwork, but the +solidest thing we know. For now, after so many ages of experience, what +do we know of nature or of ourselves? Not one step has man taken toward +the solution of the problem of his destiny. In one condemnation of +folly stand the whole universe of men. But the sweet sincerity of joy +and peace which I draw from this alliance with my brother’s soul is the +nut itself whereof all nature and all thought is but the husk and +shell. Happy is the house that shelters a friend! It might well be +built, like a festal bower or arch, to entertain him a single day. +Happier, if he know the solemnity of that relation and honor its law! +He who offers himself a candidate for that covenant comes up, like an +Olympian, to the great games where the first-born of the world are the +competitors. He proposes himself for contests where Time, Want, Danger, +are in the lists, and he alone is victor who has truth enough in his +constitution to preserve the delicacy of his beauty from the wear and +tear of all these. The gifts of fortune may be present or absent, but +all the speed in that contest depends on intrinsic nobleness and the +contempt of trifles. There are two elements that go to the composition +of friendship, each so sovereign that I can detect no superiority in +either, no reason why either should be first named. One is truth. A +friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think +aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal +that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, +courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal +with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom +meets another. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and +authority, only to the highest rank; _that_ being permitted to speak +truth, as having none above it to court or conform unto. Every man +alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. +We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by +gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him +under a hundred folds. I knew a man who under a certain religious +frenzy cast off this drapery, and omitting all compliment and +commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, +and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and +all men agreed he was mad. But persisting—as indeed he could not help +doing—for some time in this course, he attained to the advantage of +bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. No +man would think of speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off +with any chat of markets or reading-rooms. But every man was +constrained by so much sincerity to the like plaindealing, and what +love of nature, what poetry, what symbol of truth he had, he did +certainly show him. But to most of us society shows not its face and +eye, but its side and its back. To stand in true relations with men in +a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not? We can seldom go +erect. Almost every man we meet requires some civility,—requires to be +humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or +philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils +all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not +my ingenuity, but me. My friend gives me entertainment without +requiring any stipulation on my part. A friend therefore is a sort of +paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose +existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold now the +semblance of my being, in all its height, variety, and curiosity, +reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend may well be reckoned the +masterpiece of nature. + +The other element of friendship is tenderness. We are holden to men by +every sort of tie, by blood, by pride, by fear, by hope, by lucre, by +lust, by hate, by admiration, by every circumstance and badge and +trifle,—but we can scarce believe that so much character can subsist in +another as to draw us by love. Can another be so blessed and we so pure +that we can offer him tenderness? When a man becomes dear to me I have +touched the goal of fortune. I find very little written directly to the +heart of this matter in books. And yet I have one text which I cannot +choose but remember. My author says,—“I offer myself faintly and +bluntly to those whose I effectually am, and tender myself least to him +to whom I am the most devoted.” I wish that friendship should have +feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. It must plant itself on the +ground, before it vaults over the moon. I wish it to be a little of a +citizen, before it is quite a cherub. We chide the citizen because he +makes love a commodity. It is an exchange of gifts, of useful loans; it +is good neighborhood; it watches with the sick; it holds the pall at +the funeral; and quite loses sight of the delicacies and nobility of +the relation. But though we cannot find the god under this disguise of +a sutler, yet on the other hand we cannot forgive the poet if he spins +his thread too fine and does not substantiate his romance by the +municipal virtues of justice, punctuality, fidelity and pity. I hate +the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and +worldly alliances. I much prefer the company of ploughboys and +tin-peddlers to the silken and perfumed amity which celebrates its days +of encounter by a frivolous display, by rides in a curricle and dinners +at the best taverns. The end of friendship is a commerce the most +strict and homely that can be joined; more strict than any of which we +have experience. It is for aid and comfort through all the relations +and passages of life and death. It is fit for serene days and graceful +gifts and country rambles, but also for rough roads and hard fare, +shipwreck, poverty, and persecution. It keeps company with the sallies +of the wit and the trances of religion. We are to dignify to each other +the daily needs and offices of man’s life, and embellish it by courage, +wisdom and unity. It should never fall into something usual and +settled, but should be alert and inventive and add rhyme and reason to +what was drudgery. + +Friendship may be said to require natures so rare and costly, each so +well tempered and so happily adapted, and withal so circumstanced (for +even in that particular, a poet says, love demands that the parties be +altogether paired), that its satisfaction can very seldom be assured. +It cannot subsist in its perfection, say some of those who are learned +in this warm lore of the heart, betwixt more than two. I am not quite +so strict in my terms, perhaps because I have never known so high a +fellowship as others. I please my imagination more with a circle of +godlike men and women variously related to each other and between whom +subsists a lofty intelligence. But I find this law of _one to one_ +peremptory for conversation, which is the practice and consummation of +friendship. Do not mix waters too much. The best mix as ill as good and +bad. You shall have very useful and cheering discourse at several times +with two several men, but let all three of you come together and you +shall not have one new and hearty word. Two may talk and one may hear, +but three cannot take part in a conversation of the most sincere and +searching sort. In good company there is never such discourse between +two, across the table, as takes place when you leave them alone. In +good company the individuals merge their egotism into a social soul +exactly co-extensive with the several consciousnesses there present. No +partialities of friend to friend, no fondnesses of brother to sister, +of wife to husband, are there pertinent, but quite otherwise. Only he +may then speak who can sail on the common thought of the party, and not +poorly limited to his own. Now this convention, which good sense +demands, destroys the high freedom of great conversation, which +requires an absolute running of two souls into one. + +No two men but being left alone with each other enter into simpler +relations. Yet it is affinity that determines _which_ two shall +converse. Unrelated men give little joy to each other, will never +suspect the latent powers of each. We talk sometimes of a great talent +for conversation, as if it were a permanent property in some +individuals. Conversation is an evanescent relation,—no more. A man is +reputed to have thought and eloquence; he cannot, for all that, say a +word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his silence with as much +reason as they would blame the insignificance of a dial in the shade. +In the sun it will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his thought he +will regain his tongue. + +Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and unlikeness that +piques each with the presence of power and of consent in the other +party. Let me be alone to the end of the world, rather than that my +friend should overstep, by a word or a look, his real sympathy. I am +equally balked by antagonism and by compliance. Let him not cease an +instant to be himself. The only joy I have in his being mine, is that +the _not mine_ is _mine_. I hate, where I looked for a manly +furtherance, or at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of +concession. Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his +echo. The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do +without it. That high office requires great and sublime parts. There +must be very two, before there can be very one. Let it be an alliance +of two large, formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, +before yet they recognize the deep identity which, beneath these +disparities, unites them. + +He only is fit for this society who is magnanimous; who is sure that +greatness and goodness are always economy; who is not swift to +intermeddle with his fortunes. Let him not intermeddle with this. Leave +to the diamond its ages to grow, nor expect to accelerate the births of +the eternal. Friendship demands a religious treatment. We talk of +choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected. Reverence is a +great part of it. Treat your friend as a spectacle. Of course he has +merits that are not yours, and that you cannot honor if you must needs +hold him close to your person. Stand aside; give those merits room; let +them mount and expand. Are you the friend of your friend’s buttons, or +of his thought? To a great heart he will still be a stranger in a +thousand particulars, that he may come near in the holiest ground. +Leave it to girls and boys to regard a friend as property, and to suck +a short and all-confounding pleasure, instead of the noblest benefit. + +Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long probation. Why should +we desecrate noble and beautiful souls by intruding on them? Why insist +on rash personal relations with your friend? Why go to his house, or +know his mother and brother and sisters? Why be visited by him at your +own? Are these things material to our covenant? Leave this touching and +clawing. Let him be to me a spirit. A message, a thought, a sincerity, +a glance from him, I want, but not news, nor pottage. I can get +politics and chat and neighborly conveniences from cheaper companions. +Should not the society of my friend be to me poetic, pure, universal +and great as nature itself? Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in +comparison with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the horizon, or that +clump of waving grass that divides the brook? Let us not vilify, but +raise it to that standard. That great defying eye, that scornful beauty +of his mien and action, do not pique yourself on reducing, but rather +fortify and enhance. Worship his superiorities; wish him not less by a +thought, but hoard and tell them all. Guard him as thy counterpart. Let +him be to thee for ever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, devoutly +revered, and not a trivial conveniency to be soon outgrown and cast +aside. The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be +seen if the eye is too near. To my friend I write a letter and from him +I receive a letter. That seems to you a little. It suffices me. It is a +spiritual gift worthy of him to give and of me to receive. It profanes +nobody. In these warm lines the heart will trust itself, as it will not +to the tongue, and pour out the prophecy of a godlier existence than +all the annals of heroism have yet made good. + +Respect so far the holy laws of this fellowship as not to prejudice its +perfect flower by your impatience for its opening. We must be our own +before we can be another’s. There is at least this satisfaction in +crime, according to the Latin proverb;—you can speak to your accomplice +on even terms. _Crimen quos inquinat, æquat_. To those whom we admire +and love, at first we cannot. Yet the least defect of self-possession +vitiates, in my judgment, the entire relation. There can never be deep +peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until in their +dialogue each stands for the whole world. + +What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur of +spirit we can. Let us be silent,—so we may hear the whisper of the +gods. Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should +say to the select souls, or how to say any thing to such? No matter how +ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. There are innumerable +degrees of folly and wisdom, and for you to say aught is to be +frivolous. Wait, and thy heart shall speak. Wait until the necessary +and everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves of +your lips. The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a +friend is to be one. You shall not come nearer a man by getting into +his house. If unlike, his soul only flees the faster from you, and you +shall never catch a true glance of his eye. We see the noble afar off +and they repel us; why should we intrude? Late,—very late,—we perceive +that no arrangements, no introductions, no consuetudes or habits of +society would be of any avail to establish us in such relations with +them as we desire,—but solely the uprise of nature in us to the same +degree it is in them; then shall we meet as water with water; and if we +should not meet them then, we shall not want them, for we are already +they. In the last analysis, love is only the reflection of a man’s own +worthiness from other men. Men have sometimes exchanged names with +their friends, as if they would signify that in their friend each loved +his own soul. + +The higher the style we demand of friendship, of course the less easy +to establish it with flesh and blood. We walk alone in the world. +Friends such as we desire are dreams and fables. But a sublime hope +cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the +universal power, souls are now acting, enduring, and daring, which can +love us and which we can love. We may congratulate ourselves that the +period of nonage, of follies, of blunders and of shame, is passed in +solitude, and when we are finished men we shall grasp heroic hands in +heroic hands. Only be admonished by what you already see, not to strike +leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where no friendship can be. +Our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no god +attends. By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the little you +gain the great. You demonstrate yourself, so as to put yourself out of +the reach of false relations, and you draw to you the first-born of the +world,—those rare pilgrims whereof only one or two wander in nature at +once, and before whom the vulgar great show as spectres and shadows +merely. + +It is foolish to be afraid of making our ties too spiritual, as if so +we could lose any genuine love. Whatever correction of our popular +views we make from insight, nature will be sure to bear us out in, and +though it seem to rob us of some joy, will repay us with a greater. Let +us feel if we will the absolute insulation of man. We are sure that we +have all in us. We go to Europe, or we pursue persons, or we read +books, in the instinctive faith that these will call it out and reveal +us to ourselves. Beggars all. The persons are such as we; the Europe, +an old faded garment of dead persons; the books, their ghosts. Let us +drop this idolatry. Let us give over this mendicancy. Let us even bid +our dearest friends farewell, and defy them, saying, ‘Who are you? +Unhand me: I will be dependent no more.’ Ah! seest thou not, O brother, +that thus we part only to meet again on a higher platform, and only be +more each other’s because we are more our own? A friend is Janus-faced; +he looks to the past and the future. He is the child of all my +foregoing hours, the prophet of those to come, and the harbinger of a +greater friend. + +I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them +where I can find them, but I seldom use them. We must have society on +our own terms, and admit or exclude it on the slightest cause. I cannot +afford to speak much with my friend. If he is great he makes me so +great that I cannot descend to converse. In the great days, +presentiments hover before me in the firmament. I ought then to +dedicate myself to them. I go in that I may seize them, I go out that I +may seize them. I fear only that I may lose them receding into the sky +in which now they are only a patch of brighter light. Then, though I +prize my friends, I cannot afford to talk with them and study their +visions, lest I lose my own. It would indeed give me a certain +household joy to quit this lofty seeking, this spiritual astronomy or +search of stars, and come down to warm sympathies with you; but then I +know well I shall mourn always the vanishing of my mighty gods. It is +true, next week I shall have languid moods, when I can well afford to +occupy myself with foreign objects; then I shall regret the lost +literature of your mind, and wish you were by my side again. But if you +come, perhaps you will fill my mind only with new visions; not with +yourself but with your lustres, and I shall not be able any more than +now to converse with you. So I will owe to my friends this evanescent +intercourse. I will receive from them not what they have but what they +are. They shall give me that which properly they cannot give, but which +emanates from them. But they shall not hold me by any relations less +subtile and pure. We will meet as though we met not, and part as though +we parted not. + +It has seemed to me lately more possible than I knew, to carry a +friendship greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on the +other. Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not +capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide +and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting +planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion. If he +is unequal he will presently pass away; but thou art enlarged by thy +own shining, and no longer a mate for frogs and worms, dost soar and +burn with the gods of the empyrean. It is thought a disgrace to love +unrequited. But the great will see that true love cannot be unrequited. +True love transcends the unworthy object and dwells and broods on the +eternal, and when the poor interposed mask crumbles, it is not sad, but +feels rid of so much earth and feels its independency the surer. Yet +these things may hardly be said without a sort of treachery to the +relation. The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity +and trust. It must not surmise or provide for infirmity. It treats its +object as a god, that it may deify both. + + + + +VII. +PRUDENCE + + +Theme no poet gladly sung, +Fair to old and foul to young; +Scorn not thou the love of parts, +And the articles of arts. +Grandeur of the perfect sphere +Thanks the atoms that cohere. + + + + +PRUDENCE + + +What right have I to write on Prudence, whereof I have Little, and that +of the negative sort? My prudence consists in avoiding and going +without, not in the inventing of means and methods, not in adroit +steering, not in gentle repairing. I have no skill to make money spend +well, no genius in my economy, and whoever sees my garden discovers +that I must have some other garden. Yet I love facts, and hate +lubricity and people without perception. Then I have the same title to +write on prudence that I have to write on poetry or holiness. We write +from aspiration and antagonism, as well as from experience. We paint +those qualities which we do not possess. The poet admires the man of +energy and tactics; the merchant breeds his son for the church or the +bar; and where a man is not vain and egotistic you shall find what he +has not by his praise. Moreover it would be hardly honest in me not to +balance these fine lyric words of Love and Friendship with words of +coarser sound, and whilst my debt to my senses is real and constant, +not to own it in passing. + +Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the science of appearances. +It is the outmost action of the inward life. It is God taking thought +for oxen. It moves matter after the laws of matter. It is content to +seek health of body by complying with physical conditions, and health +of mind by the laws of the intellect. + +The world of the senses is a world of shows; it does not exist for +itself, but has a symbolic character; and a true prudence or law of +shows recognizes the co-presence of other laws and knows that its own +office is subaltern; knows that it is surface and not centre where it +works. Prudence is false when detached. It is legitimate when it is the +Natural History of the soul incarnate, when it unfolds the beauty of +laws within the narrow scope of the senses. + +There are all degrees of proficiency in knowledge of the world. It is +sufficient to our present purpose to indicate three. One class live to +the utility of the symbol, esteeming health and wealth a final good. +Another class live above this mark to the beauty of the symbol, as the +poet and artist and the naturalist and man of science. A third class +live above the beauty of the symbol to the beauty of the thing +signified; these are wise men. The first class have common sense; the +second, taste; and the third, spiritual perception. Once in a long +time, a man traverses the whole scale, and sees and enjoys the symbol +solidly, then also has a clear eye for its beauty, and lastly, whilst +he pitches his tent on this sacred volcanic isle of nature, does not +offer to build houses and barns thereon,—reverencing the splendor of +the God which he sees bursting through each chink and cranny. + +The world is filled with the proverbs and acts and winkings of a base +prudence, which is a devotion to matter, as if we possessed no other +faculties than the palate, the nose, the touch, the eye and ear; a +prudence which adores the Rule of Three, which never subscribes, which +never gives, which seldom lends, and asks but one question of any +project,—Will it bake bread? This is a disease like a thickening of the +skin until the vital organs are destroyed. But culture, revealing the +high origin of the apparent world and aiming at the perfection of the +man as the end, degrades every thing else, as health and bodily life, +into means. It sees prudence not to be a several faculty, but a name +for wisdom and virtue conversing with the body and its wants. +Cultivated men always feel and speak so, as if a great fortune, the +achievement of a civil or social measure, great personal influence, a +graceful and commanding address, had their value as proofs of the +energy of the spirit. If a man lose his balance and immerse himself in +any trades or pleasures for their own sake, he may be a good wheel or +pin, but he is not a cultivated man. + +The spurious prudence, making the senses final, is the god of sots and +cowards, and is the subject of all comedy. It is nature’s joke, and +therefore literature’s. The true prudence limits this sensualism by +admitting the knowledge of an internal and real world. This recognition +once made, the order of the world and the distribution of affairs and +times, being studied with the co-perception of their subordinate place, +will reward any degree of attention. For our existence, thus apparently +attached in nature to the sun and the returning moon and the periods +which they mark,—so susceptible to climate and to country, so alive to +social good and evil, so fond of splendor and so tender to hunger and +cold and debt,—reads all its primary lessons out of these books. + +Prudence does not go behind nature and ask whence it is. It takes the +laws of the world whereby man’s being is conditioned, as they are, and +keeps these laws that it may enjoy their proper good. It respects space +and time, climate, want, sleep, the law of polarity, growth and death. +There revolve, to give bound and period to his being on all sides, the +sun and moon, the great formalists in the sky: here lies stubborn +matter, and will not swerve from its chemical routine. Here is a +planted globe, pierced and belted with natural laws and fenced and +distributed externally with civil partitions and properties which +impose new restraints on the young inhabitant. + +We eat of the bread which grows in the field. We live by the air which +blows around us and we are poisoned by the air that is too cold or too +hot, too dry or too wet. Time, which shows so vacant, indivisible and +divine in its coming, is slit and peddled into trifles and tatters. A +door is to be painted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood or oil, or +meal or salt; the house smokes, or I have a headache; then the tax, and +an affair to be transacted with a man without heart or brains, and the +stinging recollection of an injurious or very awkward word,—these eat +up the hours. Do what we can, summer will have its flies; if we walk in +the woods we must feed mosquitos; if we go a-fishing we must expect a +wet coat. Then climate is a great impediment to idle persons; we often +resolve to give up the care of the weather, but still we regard the +clouds and the rain. + +We are instructed by these petty experiences which usurp the hours and +years. The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitant of the +northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the +fixed smile of the tropics. The islander may ramble all day at will. At +night he may sleep on a mat under the moon, and wherever a wild +date-tree grows, nature has, without a prayer even, spread a table for +his morning meal. The northerner is perforce a householder. He must +brew, bake, salt and preserve his food, and pile wood and coal. But as +it happens that not one stroke can labor lay to without some new +acquaintance with nature, and as nature is inexhaustibly significant, +the inhabitants of these climates have always excelled the southerner +in force. Such is the value of these matters that a man who knows other +things can never know too much of these. Let him have accurate +perceptions. Let him, if he have hands, handle; if eyes, measure and +discriminate; let him accept and hive every fact of chemistry, natural +history and economics; the more he has, the less is he willing to spare +any one. Time is always bringing the occasions that disclose their +value. Some wisdom comes out of every natural and innocent action. The +domestic man, who loves no music so well as his kitchen clock and the +airs which the logs sing to him as they burn on the hearth, has solaces +which others never dream of. The application of means to ends insures +victory and the songs of victory not less in a farm or a shop than in +the tactics of party or of war. The good husband finds method as +efficient in the packing of fire-wood in a shed or in the harvesting of +fruits in the cellar, as in Peninsular campaigns or the files of the +Department of State. In the rainy day he builds a work-bench, or gets +his tool-box set in the corner of the barn-chamber, and stored with +nails, gimlet, pincers, screwdriver and chisel. Herein he tastes an old +joy of youth and childhood, the cat-like love of garrets, presses and +corn-chambers, and of the conveniences of long housekeeping. His garden +or his poultry-yard tells him many pleasant anecdotes. One might find +argument for optimism in the abundant flow of this saccharine element +of pleasure in every suburb and extremity of the good world. Let a man +keep the law,—any law,—and his way will be strown with satisfactions. +There is more difference in the quality of our pleasures than in the +amount. + +On the other hand, nature punishes any neglect of prudence. If you +think the senses final, obey their law. If you believe in the soul, do +not clutch at sensual sweetness before it is ripe on the slow tree of +cause and effect. It is vinegar to the eyes to deal with men of loose +and imperfect perception. Dr. Johnson is reported to have said,—“If the +child says he looked out of this window, when he looked out of +that,—whip him.” Our American character is marked by a more than +average delight in accurate perception, which is shown by the currency +of the byword, “No mistake.” But the discomfort of unpunctuality, of +confusion of thought about facts, of inattention to the wants of +to-morrow, is of no nation. The beautiful laws of time and space, once +dislocated by our inaptitude, are holes and dens. If the hive be +disturbed by rash and stupid hands, instead of honey it will yield us +bees. Our words and actions to be fair must be timely. A gay and +pleasant sound is the whetting of the scythe in the mornings of June, +yet what is more lonesome and sad than the sound of a whetstone or +mower’s rifle when it is too late in the season to make hay? +Scatter-brained and “afternoon” men spoil much more than their own +affair in spoiling the temper of those who deal with them. I have seen +a criticism on some paintings, of which I am reminded when I see the +shiftless and unhappy men who are not true to their senses. The last +Grand Duke of Weimar, a man of superior understanding, said,—“I have +sometimes remarked in the presence of great works of art, and just now +especially in Dresden, how much a certain property contributes to the +effect which gives life to the figures, and to the life an irresistible +truth. This property is the hitting, in all the figures we draw, the +right centre of gravity. I mean the placing the figures firm upon their +feet, making the hands grasp, and fastening the eyes on the spot where +they should look. Even lifeless figures, as vessels and stools—let them +be drawn ever so correctly—lose all effect so soon as they lack the +resting upon their centre of gravity, and have a certain swimming and +oscillating appearance. The Raphael in the Dresden gallery (the only +greatly affecting picture which I have seen) is the quietest and most +passionless piece you can imagine; a couple of saints who worship the +Virgin and Child. Nevertheless, it awakens a deeper impression than the +contortions of ten crucified martyrs. For beside all the resistless +beauty of form, it possesses in the highest degree the property of the +perpendicularity of all the figures.” This perpendicularity we demand +of all the figures in this picture of life. Let them stand on their +feet, and not float and swing. Let us know where to find them. Let them +discriminate between what they remember and what they dreamed, call a +spade a spade, give us facts, and honor their own senses with trust. + +But what man shall dare tax another with imprudence? Who is prudent? +The men we call greatest are least in this kingdom. There is a certain +fatal dislocation in our relation to nature, distorting our modes of +living and making every law our enemy, which seems at last to have +aroused all the wit and virtue in the world to ponder the question of +Reform. We must call the highest prudence to counsel, and ask why +health and beauty and genius should now be the exception rather than +the rule of human nature? We do not know the properties of plants and +animals and the laws of nature, through our sympathy with the same; but +this remains the dream of poets. Poetry and prudence should be +coincident. Poets should be lawgivers; that is, the boldest lyric +inspiration should not chide and insult, but should announce and lead +the civil code and the day’s work. But now the two things seem +irreconcilably parted. We have violated law upon law until we stand +amidst ruins, and when by chance we espy a coincidence between reason +and the phenomena, we are surprised. Beauty should be the dowry of +every man and woman, as invariably as sensation; but it is rare. Health +or sound organization should be universal. Genius should be the child +of genius and every child should be inspired; but now it is not to be +predicted of any child, and nowhere is it pure. We call partial +half-lights, by courtesy, genius; talent which converts itself to +money; talent which glitters to-day that it may dine and sleep well +to-morrow; and society is officered by _men of parts_, as they are +properly called, and not by divine men. These use their gifts to refine +luxury, not to abolish it. Genius is always ascetic, and piety, and +love. Appetite shows to the finer souls as a disease, and they find +beauty in rites and bounds that resist it. + +We have found out fine names to cover our sensuality withal, but no +gifts can raise intemperance. The man of talent affects to call his +transgressions of the laws of the senses trivial and to count them +nothing considered with his devotion to his art. His art never taught +him lewdness, nor the love of wine, nor the wish to reap where he had +not sowed. His art is less for every deduction from his holiness, and +less for every defect of common sense. On him who scorned the world as +he said, the scorned world wreaks its revenge. He that despiseth small +things will perish by little and little. Goethe’s Tasso is very likely +to be a pretty fair historical portrait, and that is true tragedy. It +does not seem to me so genuine grief when some tyrannous Richard the +Third oppresses and slays a score of innocent persons, as when Antonio +and Tasso, both apparently right, wrong each other. One living after +the maxims of this world and consistent and true to them, the other +fired with all divine sentiments, yet grasping also at the pleasures of +sense, without submitting to their law. That is a grief we all feel, a +knot we cannot untie. Tasso’s is no infrequent case in modern +biography. A man of genius, of an ardent temperament, reckless of +physical laws, self-indulgent, becomes presently unfortunate, +querulous, a “discomfortable cousin,” a thorn to himself and to others. + +The scholar shames us by his bifold life. Whilst something higher than +prudence is active, he is admirable; when common sense is wanted, he is +an encumbrance. Yesterday, Cæsar was not so great; to-day, the felon at +the gallows’ foot is not more miserable. Yesterday, radiant with the +light of an ideal world in which he lives, the first of men; and now +oppressed by wants and by sickness, for which he must thank himself. He +resembles the pitiful drivellers whom travellers describe as +frequenting the bazaars of Constantinople, who skulk about all day, +yellow, emaciated, ragged, sneaking; and at evening, when the bazaars +are open, slink to the opium-shop, swallow their morsel and become +tranquil and glorified seers. And who has not seen the tragedy of +imprudent genius struggling for years with paltry pecuniary +difficulties, at last sinking, chilled, exhausted and fruitless, like a +giant slaughtered by pins? + +Is it not better that a man should accept the first pains and +mortifications of this sort, which nature is not slack in sending him, +as hints that he must expect no other good than the just fruit of his +own labor and self-denial? Health, bread, climate, social position, +have their importance, and he will give them their due. Let him esteem +Nature a perpetual counsellor, and her perfections the exact measure of +our deviations. Let him make the night night, and the day day. Let him +control the habit of expense. Let him see that as much wisdom may be +expended on a private economy as on an empire, and as much wisdom may +be drawn from it. The laws of the world are written out for him on +every piece of money in his hand. There is nothing he will not be the +better for knowing, were it only the wisdom of Poor Richard, or the +State-Street prudence of buying by the acre to sell by the foot; or the +thrift of the agriculturist, to stick a tree between whiles, because it +will grow whilst he sleeps; or the prudence which consists in +husbanding little strokes of the tool, little portions of time, +particles of stock and small gains. The eye of prudence may never shut. +Iron, if kept at the ironmonger’s, will rust; beer, if not brewed in +the right state of the atmosphere, will sour; timber of ships will rot +at sea, or if laid up high and dry, will strain, warp and dry-rot; +money, if kept by us, yields no rent and is liable to loss; if +invested, is liable to depreciation of the particular kind of stock. +Strike, says the smith, the iron is white; keep the rake, says the +haymaker, as nigh the scythe as you can, and the cart as nigh the rake. +Our Yankee trade is reputed to be very much on the extreme of this +prudence. It takes bank-notes, good, bad, clean, ragged, and saves +itself by the speed with which it passes them off. Iron cannot rust, +nor beer sour, nor timber rot, nor calicoes go out of fashion, nor +money stocks depreciate, in the few swift moments in which the Yankee +suffers any one of them to remain in his possession. In skating over +thin ice our safety is in our speed. + +Let him learn a prudence of a higher strain. Let him learn that every +thing in nature, even motes and feathers, go by law and not by luck, +and that what he sows he reaps. By diligence and self-command let him +put the bread he eats at his own disposal, that he may not stand in +bitter and false relations to other men; for the best good of wealth is +freedom. Let him practise the minor virtues. How much of human life is +lost in waiting! let him not make his fellow-creatures wait. How many +words and promises are promises of conversation! Let his be words of +fate. When he sees a folded and sealed scrap of paper float round the +globe in a pine ship and come safe to the eye for which it was written, +amidst a swarming population, let him likewise feel the admonition to +integrate his being across all these distracting forces, and keep a +slender human word among the storms, distances and accidents that drive +us hither and thither, and, by persistency, make the paltry force of +one man reappear to redeem its pledge after months and years in the +most distant climates. + +We must not try to write the laws of any one virtue, looking at that +only. Human nature loves no contradictions, but is symmetrical. The +prudence which secures an outward well-being is not to be studied by +one set of men, whilst heroism and holiness are studied by another, but +they are reconcilable. Prudence concerns the present time, persons, +property and existing forms. But as every fact hath its roots in the +soul, and if the soul were changed, would cease to be, or would become +some other thing,—the proper administration of outward things will +always rest on a just apprehension of their cause and origin; that is, +the good man will be the wise man, and the single-hearted the politic +man. Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the +liar, but is a stab at the health of human society. On the most +profitable lie the course of events presently lays a destructive tax; +whilst frankness invites frankness, puts the parties on a convenient +footing and makes their business a friendship. Trust men and they will +be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great, +though they make an exception in your favor to all their rules of +trade. + +So, in regard to disagreeable and formidable things, prudence does not +consist in evasion or in flight, but in courage. He who wishes to walk +in the most peaceful parts of life with any serenity must screw himself +up to resolution. Let him front the object of his worst apprehension, +and his stoutness will commonly make his fear groundless. The Latin +proverb says, “In battles the eye is first overcome.” Entire +self-possession may make a battle very little more dangerous to life +than a match at foils or at football. Examples are cited by soldiers of +men who have seen the cannon pointed and the fire given to it, and who +have stepped aside from the path of the ball. The terrors of the storm +are chiefly confined to the parlor and the cabin. The drover, the +sailor, buffets it all day, and his health renews itself at as vigorous +a pulse under the sleet as under the sun of June. + +In the occurrence of unpleasant things among neighbors, fear comes +readily to heart and magnifies the consequence of the other party; but +it is a bad counsellor. Every man is actually weak and apparently +strong. To himself he seems weak; to others, formidable. You are afraid +of Grim; but Grim also is afraid of you. You are solicitous of the +good-will of the meanest person, uneasy at his ill-will. But the +sturdiest offender of your peace and of the neighborhood, if you rip up +_his_ claims, is as thin and timid as any, and the peace of society is +often kept, because, as children say, one is afraid, and the other +dares not. Far off, men swell, bully and threaten; bring them hand to +hand, and they are a feeble folk. + +It is a proverb that ‘courtesy costs nothing’; but calculation might +come to value love for its profit. Love is fabled to be blind, but +kindness is necessary to perception; love is not a hood, but an +eye-water. If you meet a sectary or a hostile partisan, never recognize +the dividing lines, but meet on what common ground remains,—if only +that the sun shines and the rain rains for both; the area will widen +very fast, and ere you know it, the boundary mountains on which the eye +had fastened have melted into air. If they set out to contend, Saint +Paul will lie and Saint John will hate. What low, poor, paltry, +hypocritical people an argument on religion will make of the pure and +chosen souls! They will shuffle and crow, crook and hide, feign to +confess here, only that they may brag and conquer there, and not a +thought has enriched either party, and not an emotion of bravery, +modesty, or hope. So neither should you put yourself in a false +position with your contemporaries by indulging a vein of hostility and +bitterness. Though your views are in straight antagonism to theirs, +assume an identity of sentiment, assume that you are saying precisely +that which all think, and in the flow of wit and love roll out your +paradoxes in solid column, with not the infirmity of a doubt. So at +least shall you get an adequate deliverance. The natural motions of the +soul are so much better than the voluntary ones that you will never do +yourself justice in dispute. The thought is not then taken hold of by +the right handle, does not show itself proportioned and in its true +bearings, but bears extorted, hoarse, and half witness. But assume a +consent and it shall presently be granted, since really and underneath +their external diversities, all men are of one heart and mind. + +Wisdom will never let us stand with any man or men on an unfriendly +footing. We refuse sympathy and intimacy with people, as if we waited +for some better sympathy and intimacy to come. But whence and when? +To-morrow will be like to-day. Life wastes itself whilst we are +preparing to live. Our friends and fellow-workers die off from us. +Scarcely can we say we see new men, new women, approaching us. We are +too old to regard fashion, too old to expect patronage of any greater +or more powerful. Let us suck the sweetness of those affections and +consuetudes that grow near us. These old shoes are easy to the feet. +Undoubtedly we can easily pick faults in our company, can easily +whisper names prouder, and that tickle the fancy more. Every man’s +imagination hath its friends; and life would be dearer with such +companions. But if you cannot have them on good mutual terms, you +cannot have them. If not the Deity but our ambition hews and shapes the +new relations, their virtue escapes, as strawberries lose their flavor +in garden-beds. + +Thus truth, frankness, courage, love, humility and all the virtues +range themselves on the side of prudence, or the art of securing a +present well-being. I do not know if all matter will be found to be +made of one element, as oxygen or hydrogen, at last, but the world of +manners and actions is wrought of one stuff, and begin where we will we +are pretty sure in a short space to be mumbling our ten commandments. + + + + +VIII. +HEROISM + + +“Paradise is under the shadow of swords.” + _Mahomet._ + +Ruby wine is drunk by knaves, +Sugar spends to fatten slaves, +Rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons; +Thunderclouds are Jove’s festoons, +Drooping oft in wreaths of dread +Lightning-knotted round his head; +The hero is not fed on sweets, +Daily his own heart he eats; +Chambers of the great are jails, +And head-winds right for royal sails. + + + + +HEROISM + + +In the elder English dramatists, and mainly in the plays Of Beaumont +and Fletcher, there is a constant recognition of gentility, as if a +noble behavior were as easily marked in the society of their age as +color is in our American population. When any Rodrigo, Pedro or Valerio +enters, though he be a stranger, the duke or governor exclaims, ‘This +is a gentleman,—and proffers civilities without end; but all the rest +are slag and refuse. In harmony with this delight in personal +advantages there is in their plays a certain heroic cast of character +and dialogue,—as in Bonduca, Sophocles, the Mad Lover, the Double +Marriage,—wherein the speaker is so earnest and cordial and on such +deep grounds of character, that the dialogue, on the slightest +additional incident in the plot, rises naturally into poetry. Among +many texts take the following. The Roman Martius has conquered +Athens,—all but the invincible spirits of Sophocles, the duke of +Athens, and Dorigen, his wife. The beauty of the latter inflames +Martius, and he seeks to save her husband; but Sophocles will not ask +his life, although assured that a word will save him, and the execution +of both proceeds:— + +_Valerius_. Bid thy wife farewell. + +_Sophocles_. No, I will take no leave. My Dorigen, +Yonder, above, ’bout Ariadne’s crown, +My spirit shall hover for thee. Prithee, haste. + +_Dorigen_. Stay, Sophocles,—with this tie up my sight; +Let not soft nature so transformed be, +And lose her gentler sexed humanity, +To make me see my lord bleed. So, ’tis well; +Never one object underneath the sun +Will I behold before my Sophocles: +Farewell; now teach the Romans how to die. + +_Martius_. Dost know what ’t is to die? + +_Sophocles_. Thou dost not, Martius, +And, therefore, not what ’tis to live; to die +Is to begin to live. It is to end +An old, stale, weary work, and to commence +A newer and a better. ’Tis to leave +Deceitful knaves for the society +Of gods and goodness. Thou thyself must part +At last from all thy garlands, pleasures, triumphs, +And prove thy fortitude what then ’t will do. + +_Valerius_. But art not grieved nor vexed to leave thy life thus? + +_Sophocles_. Why should I grieve or vex for being sent +To them I ever loved best? Now I’ll kneel, +But with my back toward thee; ’tis the last duty +This trunk can do the gods. + +_Martius_. Strike, strike, Valerius, +Or Martius’ heart will leap out at his mouth. +This is a man, a woman. Kiss thy lord, +And live with all the freedom you were wont. +O love! thou doubly hast afflicted me +With virtue and with beauty. Treacherous heart, +My hand shall cast thee quick into my urn, +Ere thou transgress this knot of piety. + +_Valerius_. What ails my brother? + +_Sophocles_. Martius, O Martius, +Thou now hast found a way to conquer me. + +_Dorigen_. O star of Rome! what gratitude can speak +Fit words to follow such a deed as this? + +_Martius_. This admirable duke, Valerius, +With his disdain of fortune and of death, +Captived himself, has captivated me, +And though my arm hath ta’en his body here, +His soul hath subjugated Martius’ soul. +By Romulus, he is all soul, I think; +He hath no flesh, and spirit cannot be gyved; +Then we have vanquished nothing; he is free, +And Martius walks now in captivity. + + +I do not readily remember any poem, play, sermon, novel, or oration +that our press vents in the last few years, which goes to the same +tune. We have a great many flutes and flageolets, but not often the +sound of any fife. Yet, Wordsworth’s “Laodamia,” and the ode of “Dion,” +and some sonnets, have a certain noble music; and Scott will sometimes +draw a stroke like the portrait of Lord Evandale given by Balfour of +Burley. Thomas Carlyle, with his natural taste for what is manly and +daring in character, has suffered no heroic trait in his favorites to +drop from his biographical and historical pictures. Earlier, Robert +Burns has given us a song or two. In the Harleian Miscellanies there is +an account of the battle of Lutzen which deserves to be read. And Simon +Ockley’s History of the Saracens recounts the prodigies of individual +valor, with admiration all the more evident on the part of the narrator +that he seems to think that his place in Christian Oxford requires of +him some proper protestations of abhorrence. But if we explore the +literature of Heroism we shall quickly come to Plutarch, who is its +Doctor and historian. To him we owe the Brasidas, the Dion, the +Epaminondas, the Scipio of old, and I must think we are more deeply +indebted to him than to all the ancient writers. Each of his “Lives” is +a refutation to the despondency and cowardice of our religious and +political theorists. A wild courage, a Stoicism not of the schools but +of the blood, shines in every anecdote, and has given that book its +immense fame. + +We need books of this tart cathartic virtue more than books of +political science or of private economy. Life is a festival only to the +wise. Seen from the nook and chimney-side of prudence, it wears a +ragged and dangerous front. The violations of the laws of nature by our +predecessors and our contemporaries are punished in us also. The +disease and deformity around us certify the infraction of natural, +intellectual, and moral laws, and often violation on violation to breed +such compound misery. A lock-jaw that bends a man’s head back to his +heels; hydrophobia that makes him bark at his wife and babes; insanity +that makes him eat grass; war, plague, cholera, famine, indicate a +certain ferocity in nature, which, as it had its inlet by human crime, +must have its outlet by human suffering. Unhappily no man exists who +has not in his own person become to some amount a stockholder in the +sin, and so made himself liable to a share in the expiation. + +Our culture therefore must not omit the arming of the man. Let him hear +in season that he is born into the state of war, and that the +commonwealth and his own well-being require that he should not go +dancing in the weeds of peace, but warned, self-collected and neither +defying nor dreading the thunder, let him take both reputation and life +in his hand, and, with perfect urbanity dare the gibbet and the mob by +the absolute truth of his speech and the rectitude of his behavior. + +Towards all this external evil the man within the breast assumes a +warlike attitude, and affirms his ability to cope single-handed with +the infinite army of enemies. To this military attitude of the soul we +give the name of Heroism. Its rudest form is the contempt for safety +and ease, which makes the attractiveness of war. It is a self-trust +which slights the restraints of prudence, in the plenitude of its +energy and power to repair the harms it may suffer. The hero is a mind +of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will, but pleasantly +and as it were merrily he advances to his own music, alike in frightful +alarms and in the tipsy mirth of universal dissoluteness. There is +somewhat not philosophical in heroism; there is somewhat not holy in +it; it seems not to know that other souls are of one texture with it; +it has pride; it is the extreme of individual nature. Nevertheless we +must profoundly revere it. There is somewhat in great actions which +does not allow us to go behind them. Heroism feels and never reasons, +and therefore is always right; and although a different breeding, +different religion and greater intellectual activity would have +modified or even reversed the particular action, yet for the hero that +thing he does is the highest deed, and is not open to the censure of +philosophers or divines. It is the avowal of the unschooled man that he +finds a quality in him that is negligent of expense, of health, of +life, of danger, of hatred, of reproach, and knows that his will is +higher and more excellent than all actual and all possible antagonists. + +Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in +contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism +is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual’s character. Now +to no other man can its wisdom appear as it does to him, for every man +must be supposed to see a little farther on his own proper path than +any one else. Therefore just and wise men take umbrage at his act, +until after some little time be past: then they see it to be in unison +with their acts. All prudent men see that the action is clean contrary +to a sensual prosperity; for every heroic act measures itself by its +contempt of some external good. But it finds its own success at last, +and then the prudent also extol. + +Self-trust is the essence of heroism. It is the state of the soul at +war, and its ultimate objects are the last defiance of falsehood and +wrong, and the power to bear all that can be inflicted by evil agents. +It speaks the truth and it is just, generous, hospitable, temperate, +scornful of petty calculations and scornful of being scorned. It +persists; it is of an undaunted boldness and of a fortitude not to be +wearied out. Its jest is the littleness of common life. That false +prudence which dotes on health and wealth is the butt and merriment of +heroism. Heroism, like Plotinus, is almost ashamed of its body. What +shall it say then to the sugar-plums and cats’-cradles, to the toilet, +compliments, quarrels, cards and custard, which rack the wit of all +society? What joys has kind nature provided for us dear creatures! +There seems to be no interval between greatness and meanness. When the +spirit is not master of the world, then it is its dupe. Yet the little +man takes the great hoax so innocently, works in it so headlong and +believing, is born red, and dies gray, arranging his toilet, attending +on his own health, laying traps for sweet food and strong wine, setting +his heart on a horse or a rifle, made happy with a little gossip or a +little praise, that the great soul cannot choose but laugh at such +earnest nonsense. “Indeed, these humble considerations make me out of +love with greatness. What a disgrace is it to me to take note how many +pairs of silk stockings thou hast, namely, these and those that were +the peach-colored ones; or to bear the inventory of thy shirts, as one +for superfluity, and one other for use!” + +Citizens, thinking after the laws of arithmetic, consider the +inconvenience of receiving strangers at their fireside, reckon narrowly +the loss of time and the unusual display; the soul of a better quality +thrusts back the unseasonable economy into the vaults of life, and +says, I will obey the God, and the sacrifice and the fire he will +provide. Ibn Hankal, the Arabian geographer, describes a heroic extreme +in the hospitality of Sogd, in Bukharia. “When I was in Sogd I saw a +great building, like a palace, the gates of which were open and fixed +back to the wall with large nails. I asked the reason, and was told +that the house had not been shut, night or day, for a hundred years. +Strangers may present themselves at any hour and in whatever number; +the master has amply provided for the reception of the men and their +animals, and is never happier than when they tarry for some time. +Nothing of the kind have I seen in any other country.” The magnanimous +know very well that they who give time, or money, or shelter, to the +stranger,—so it be done for love and not for ostentation,—do, as it +were, put God under obligation to them, so perfect are the +compensations of the universe. In some way the time they seem to lose +is redeemed and the pains they seem to take remunerate themselves. +These men fan the flame of human love and raise the standard of civil +virtue among mankind. But hospitality must be for service and not for +show, or it pulls down the host. The brave soul rates itself too high +to value itself by the splendor of its table and draperies. It gives +what it hath, and all it hath, but its own majesty can lend a better +grace to bannocks and fair water than belong to city feasts. + +The temperance of the hero proceeds from the same wish to do no +dishonor to the worthiness he has. But he loves it for its elegancy, +not for its austerity. It seems not worth his while to be solemn and +denounce with bitterness flesh-eating or wine-drinking, the use of +tobacco, or opium, or tea, or silk, or gold. A great man scarcely knows +how he dines, how he dresses; but without railing or precision his +living is natural and poetic. John Eliot, the Indian Apostle, drank +water, and said of wine,—“It is a noble, generous liquor and we should +be humbly thankful for it, but, as I remember, water was made before +it.” Better still is the temperance of King David, who poured out on +the ground unto the Lord the water which three of his warriors had +brought him to drink, at the peril of their lives. + +It is told of Brutus, that when he fell on his sword after the battle +of Philippi, he quoted a line of Euripides,—“O Virtue! I have followed +thee through life, and I find thee at last but a shade.” I doubt not +the hero is slandered by this report. The heroic soul does not sell its +justice and its nobleness. It does not ask to dine nicely and to sleep +warm. The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough. +Poverty is its ornament. It does not need plenty, and can very well +abide its loss. + +But that which takes my fancy most in the heroic class, is the +good-humor and hilarity they exhibit. It is a height to which common +duty can very well attain, to suffer and to dare with solemnity. But +these rare souls set opinion, success, and life at so cheap a rate that +they will not soothe their enemies by petitions, or the show of sorrow, +but wear their own habitual greatness. Scipio, charged with peculation, +refuses to do himself so great a disgrace as to wait for justification, +though he had the scroll of his accounts in his hands, but tears it to +pieces before the tribunes. Socrates’s condemnation of himself to be +maintained in all honor in the Prytaneum, during his life, and Sir +Thomas More’s playfulness at the scaffold, are of the same strain. In +Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Sea Voyage,” Juletta tells the stout captain +and his company,— + + _Juletta_. Why, slaves, ’tis in our power to hang ye. + _Master_. Very likely, + ’Tis in our powers, then, to be hanged, and scorn ye. + +These replies are sound and whole. Sport is the bloom and glow of a +perfect health. The great will not condescend to take any thing +seriously; all must be as gay as the song of a canary, though it were +the building of cities or the eradication of old and foolish churches +and nations which have cumbered the earth long thousands of years. +Simple hearts put all the history and customs of this world behind +them, and play their own game in innocent defiance of the Blue-Laws of +the world; and such would appear, could we see the human race assembled +in vision, like little children frolicking together, though to the eyes +of mankind at large they wear a stately and solemn garb of works and +influences. + +The interest these fine stories have for us, the power of a romance +over the boy who grasps the forbidden book under his bench at school, +our delight in the hero, is the main fact to our purpose. All these +great and transcendent properties are ours. If we dilate in beholding +the Greek energy, the Roman pride, it is that we are already +domesticating the same sentiment. Let us find room for this great guest +in our small houses. The first step of worthiness will be to disabuse +us of our superstitious associations with places and times, with number +and size. Why should these words, Athenian, Roman, Asia and England, so +tingle in the ear? Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods +sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut +River and Boston Bay you think paltry places, and the ear loves names +of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we will +tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it only +that thyself is here, and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, +angels and the Supreme Being shall not be absent from the chamber where +thou sittest. Epaminondas, brave and affectionate, does not seem to us +to need Olympus to die upon, nor the Syrian sunshine. He lies very well +where he is. The Jerseys were handsome ground enough for Washington to +tread, and London streets for the feet of Milton. A great man makes his +climate genial in the imagination of men, and its air the beloved +element of all delicate spirits. That country is the fairest which is +inhabited by the noblest minds. The pictures which fill the imagination +in reading the actions of Pericles, Xenophon, Columbus, Bayard, Sidney, +Hampden, teach us how needlessly mean our life is; that we, by the +depth of our living, should deck it with more than regal or national +splendor, and act on principles that should interest man and nature in +the length of our days. + +We have seen or heard of many extraordinary young men who never +ripened, or whose performance in actual life was not extraordinary. +When we see their air and mien, when we hear them speak of society, of +books, of religion, we admire their superiority; they seem to throw +contempt on our entire polity and social state; theirs is the tone of a +youthful giant who is sent to work revolutions. But they enter an +active profession and the forming Colossus shrinks to the common size +of man. The magic they used was the ideal tendencies, which always make +the Actual ridiculous; but the tough world had its revenge the moment +they put their horses of the sun to plough in its furrow. They found no +example and no companion, and their heart fainted. What then? The +lesson they gave in their first aspirations is yet true; and a better +valor and a purer truth shall one day organize their belief. Or why +should a woman liken herself to any historical woman, and think, +because Sappho, or Sévigné, or De Staël, or the cloistered souls who +have had genius and cultivation do not satisfy the imagination and the +serene Themis, none can,—certainly not she? Why not? She has a new and +unattempted problem to solve, perchance that of the happiest nature +that ever bloomed. Let the maiden, with erect soul, walk serenely on +her way, accept the hint of each new experience, search in turn all the +objects that solicit her eye, that she may learn the power and the +charm of her new-born being, which is the kindling of a new dawn in the +recesses of space. The fair girl who repels interference by a decided +and proud choice of influences, so careless of pleasing, so wilful and +lofty, inspires every beholder with somewhat of her own nobleness. The +silent heart encourages her; O friend, never strike sail to a fear! +Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas. Not in vain you +live, for every passing eye is cheered and refined by the vision. + +The characteristic of heroism is its persistency. All men have +wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have +chosen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile +yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the +common the heroic. Yet we have the weakness to expect the sympathy of +people in those actions whose excellence is that they outrun sympathy +and appeal to a tardy justice. If you would serve your brother, because +it is fit for you to serve him, do not take back your words when you +find that prudent people do not commend you. Adhere to your own act, +and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and +extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age. It was a high +counsel that I once heard given to a young person,—“Always do what you +are afraid to do.” A simple manly character need never make an apology, +but should regard its past action with the calmness of Phocion, when he +admitted that the event of the battle was happy, yet did not regret his +dissuasion from the battle. + +There is no weakness or exposure for which we cannot find consolation +in the thought—this is a part of my constitution, part of my relation +and office to my fellow-creature. Has nature covenanted with me that I +should never appear to disadvantage, never make a ridiculous figure? +Let us be generous of our dignity as well as of our money. Greatness +once and for ever has done with opinion. We tell our charities, not +because we wish to be praised for them, not because we think they have +great merit, but for our justification. It is a capital blunder; as you +discover when another man recites his charities. + +To speak the truth, even with some austerity, to live with some rigor +of temperance, or some extremes of generosity, seems to be an +asceticism which common good-nature would appoint to those who are at +ease and in plenty, in sign that they feel a brotherhood with the great +multitude of suffering men. And not only need we breathe and exercise +the soul by assuming the penalties of abstinence, of debt, of solitude, +of unpopularity,—but it behooves the wise man to look with a bold eye +into those rarer dangers which sometimes invade men, and to familiarize +himself with disgusting forms of disease, with sounds of execration, +and the vision of violent death. + +Times of heroism are generally times of terror, but the day never +shines in which this element may not work. The circumstances of man, we +say, are historically somewhat better in this country and at this hour +than perhaps ever before. More freedom exists for culture. It will not +now run against an axe at the first step out of the beaten track of +opinion. But whoso is heroic will always find crises to try his edge. +Human virtue demands her champions and martyrs, and the trial of +persecution always proceeds. It is but the other day that the brave +Lovejoy gave his breast to the bullets of a mob, for the rights of free +speech and opinion, and died when it was better not to live. + +I see not any road of perfect peace which a man can walk, but after the +counsel of his own bosom. Let him quit too much association, let him go +home much, and stablish himself in those courses he approves. The +unremitting retention of simple and high sentiments in obscure duties +is hardening the character to that temper which will work with honor, +if need be in the tumult, or on the scaffold. Whatever outrages have +happened to men may befall a man again; and very easily in a republic, +if there appear any signs of a decay of religion. Coarse slander, fire, +tar and feathers and the gibbet, the youth may freely bring home to his +mind and with what sweetness of temper he can, and inquire how fast he +can fix his sense of duty, braving such penalties, whenever it may +please the next newspaper and a sufficient number of his neighbors to +pronounce his opinions incendiary. + +It may calm the apprehension of calamity in the most susceptible heart +to see how quick a bound Nature has set to the utmost infliction of +malice. We rapidly approach a brink over which no enemy can follow us:— + + “Let them rave: + Thou art quiet in thy grave.” + +In the gloom of our ignorance of what shall be, in the hour when we are +deaf to the higher voices, who does not envy those who have seen safely +to an end their manful endeavor? Who that sees the meanness of our +politics but inly congratulates Washington that he is long already +wrapped in his shroud, and for ever safe; that he was laid sweet in his +grave, the hope of humanity not yet subjugated in him? Who does not +sometimes envy the good and brave who are no more to suffer from the +tumults of the natural world, and await with curious complacency the +speedy term of his own conversation with finite nature? And yet the +love that will be annihilated sooner than treacherous has already made +death impossible, and affirms itself no mortal but a native of the +deeps of absolute and inextinguishable being. + + + + +IX. +THE OVER-SOUL + + +“But souls that of his own good life partake, +He loves as his own self; dear as his eye +They are to Him: He’ll never them forsake: +When they shall die, then God himself shall die: +They live, they live in blest eternity.” + _Henry More_. + + +Space is ample, east and west, +But two cannot go abreast, +Cannot travel in it two: +Yonder masterful cuckoo +Crowds every egg out of the nest, +Quick or dead, except its own; +A spell is laid on sod and stone, +Night and Day ’ve been tampered with, +Every quality and pith +Surcharged and sultry with a power +That works its will on age and hour. + + + + +THE OVER-SOUL + + +There is a difference between one and another hour of life in their +authority and subsequent effect. Our faith comes in moments; our vice +is habitual. Yet there is a depth in those brief moments which +constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other +experiences. For this reason the argument which is always forthcoming +to silence those who conceive extraordinary hopes of man, namely the +appeal to experience, is for ever invalid and vain. We give up the past +to the objector, and yet we hope. He must explain this hope. We grant +that human life is mean, but how did we find out that it was mean? What +is the ground of this uneasiness of ours; of this old discontent? What +is the universal sense of want and ignorance, but the fine innuendo by +which the soul makes its enormous claim? Why do men feel that the +natural history of man has never been written, but he is always leaving +behind what you have said of him, and it becomes old, and books of +metaphysics worthless? The philosophy of six thousand years has not +searched the chambers and magazines of the soul. In its experiments +there has always remained, in the last analysis, a residuum it could +not resolve. Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being is +descending into us from we know not whence. The most exact calculator +has no prescience that somewhat incalculable may not balk the very next +moment. I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin +for events than the will I call mine. + +As with events, so is it with thoughts. When I watch that flowing +river, which, out of regions I see not, pours for a season its streams +into me, I see that I am a pensioner; not a cause, but a surprised +spectator of this ethereal water; that I desire and look up and put +myself in the attitude of reception, but from some alien energy the +visions come. + +The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the +only prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we +rest as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, +that Over-soul, within which every man’s particular being is contained +and made one with all other; that common heart of which all sincere +conversation is the worship, to which all right action is submission; +that overpowering reality which confutes our tricks and talents, and +constrains every one to pass for what he is, and to speak from his +character and not from his tongue, and which evermore tends to pass +into our thought and hand and become wisdom and virtue and power and +beauty. We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. +Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the +universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; +the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose +beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and +perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the +seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the +world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but +the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul. Only by +the vision of that Wisdom can the horoscope of the ages be read, and by +falling back on our better thoughts, by yielding to the spirit of +prophecy which is innate in every man, we can know what it saith. Every +man’s words who speaks from that life must sound vain to those who do +not dwell in the same thought on their own part. I dare not speak for +it. My words do not carry its august sense; they fall short and cold. +Only itself can inspire whom it will, and behold! their speech shall be +lyrical, and sweet, and universal as the rising of the wind. Yet I +desire, even by profane words, if I may not use sacred, to indicate the +heaven of this deity and to report what hints I have collected of the +transcendent simplicity and energy of the Highest Law. + +If we consider what happens in conversation, in reveries, in remorse, +in times of passion, in surprises, in the instructions of dreams, +wherein often we see ourselves in masquerade,—the droll disguises only +magnifying and enhancing a real element and forcing it on our distinct +notice,—we shall catch many hints that will broaden and lighten into +knowledge of the secret of nature. All goes to show that the soul in +man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs; is not +a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, +but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is not +the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and the +will; is the background of our being, in which they lie,—an immensity +not possessed and that cannot be possessed. From within or from behind, +a light shines through us upon things and makes us aware that we are +nothing, but the light is all. A man is the facade of a temple wherein +all wisdom and all good abide. What we commonly call man, the eating, +drinking, planting, counting man, does not, as we know him, represent +himself, but misrepresents himself. Him we do not respect, but the +soul, whose organ he is, would he let it appear through his action, +would make our knees bend. When it breathes through his intellect, it +is genius; when it breathes through his will, it is virtue; when it +flows through his affection, it is love. And the blindness of the +intellect begins when it would be something of itself. The weakness of +the will begins when the individual would be something of himself. All +reform aims in some one particular to let the soul have its way through +us; in other words, to engage us to obey. + +Of this pure nature every man is at some time sensible. Language cannot +paint it with his colors. It is too subtile. It is undefinable, +unmeasurable; but we know that it pervades and contains us. We know +that all spiritual being is in man. A wise old proverb says, “God comes +to see us without bell;” that is, as there is no screen or ceiling +between our heads and the infinite heavens, so is there no bar or wall +in the soul where man, the effect, ceases, and God, the cause, begins. +The walls are taken away. We lie open on one side to the deeps of +spiritual nature, to the attributes of God. Justice we see and know, +Love, Freedom, Power. These natures no man ever got above, but they +tower over us, and most in the moment when our interests tempt us to +wound them. + +The sovereignty of this nature whereof we speak is made known by its +independency of those limitations which circumscribe us on every hand. +The soul circumscribes all things. As I have said, it contradicts all +experience. In like manner it abolishes time and space. The influence +of the senses has in most men overpowered the mind to that degree that +the walls of time and space have come to look real and insurmountable; +and to speak with levity of these limits is, in the world, the sign of +insanity. Yet time and space are but inverse measures of the force of +the soul. The spirit sports with time,— + + “Can crowd eternity into an hour, + Or stretch an hour to eternity.” + +We are often made to feel that there is another youth and age than that +which is measured from the year of our natural birth. Some thoughts +always find us young, and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the +universal and eternal beauty. Every man parts from that contemplation +with the feeling that it rather belongs to ages than to mortal life. +The least activity of the intellectual powers redeems us in a degree +from the conditions of time. In sickness, in languor, give us a strain +of poetry or a profound sentence, and we are refreshed; or produce a +volume of Plato or Shakspeare, or remind us of their names, and +instantly we come into a feeling of longevity. See how the deep divine +thought reduces centuries and millenniums and makes itself present +through all ages. Is the teaching of Christ less effective now than it +was when first his mouth was opened? The emphasis of facts and persons +in my thought has nothing to do with time. And so always the soul’s +scale is one, the scale of the senses and the understanding is another. +Before the revelations of the soul, Time, Space and Nature shrink away. +In common speech we refer all things to time, as we habitually refer +the immensely sundered stars to one concave sphere. And so we say that +the Judgment is distant or near, that the Millennium approaches, that a +day of certain political, moral, social reforms is at hand, and the +like, when we mean that in the nature of things one of the facts we +contemplate is external and fugitive, and the other is permanent and +connate with the soul. The things we now esteem fixed shall, one by +one, detach themselves like ripe fruit from our experience, and fall. +The wind shall blow them none knows whither. The landscape, the +figures, Boston, London, are facts as fugitive as any institution past, +or any whiff of mist or smoke, and so is society, and so is the world. +The soul looketh steadily forwards, creating a world before her, +leaving worlds behind her. She has no dates, nor rites, nor persons, +nor specialties nor men. The soul knows only the soul; the web of +events is the flowing robe in which she is clothed. + +After its own law and not by arithmetic is the rate of its progress to +be computed. The soul’s advances are not made by gradation, such as can +be represented by motion in a straight line, but rather by ascension of +state, such as can be represented by metamorphosis,—from the egg to the +worm, from the worm to the fly. The growths of genius are of a certain +_total_ character, that does not advance the elect individual first +over John, then Adam, then Richard, and give to each the pain of +discovered inferiority,—but by every throe of growth the man expands +there where he works, passing, at each pulsation, classes, populations, +of men. With each divine impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the +visible and finite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires and +expires its air. It converses with truths that have always been spoken +in the world, and becomes conscious of a closer sympathy with Zeno and +Arrian than with persons in the house. + +This is the law of moral and of mental gain. The simple rise as by +specific levity not into a particular virtue, but into the region of +all the virtues. They are in the spirit which contains them all. The +soul requires purity, but purity is not it; requires justice, but +justice is not that; requires beneficence, but is somewhat better; so +that there is a kind of descent and accommodation felt when we leave +speaking of moral nature to urge a virtue which it enjoins. To the +well-born child all the virtues are natural, and not painfully +acquired. Speak to his heart, and the man becomes suddenly virtuous. + +Within the same sentiment is the germ of intellectual growth, which +obeys the same law. Those who are capable of humility, of justice, of +love, of aspiration, stand already on a platform that commands the +sciences and arts, speech and poetry, action and grace. For whoso +dwells in this moral beatitude already anticipates those special powers +which men prize so highly. The lover has no talent, no skill, which +passes for quite nothing with his enamoured maiden, however little she +may possess of related faculty; and the heart which abandons itself to +the Supreme Mind finds itself related to all its works, and will travel +a royal road to particular knowledges and powers. In ascending to this +primary and aboriginal sentiment we have come from our remote station +on the circumference instantaneously to the centre of the world, where, +as in the closet of God, we see causes, and anticipate the universe, +which is but a slow effect. + +One mode of the divine teaching is the incarnation of the spirit in a +form,—in forms, like my own. I live in society, with persons who answer +to thoughts in my own mind, or express a certain obedience to the great +instincts to which I live. I see its presence to them. I am certified +of a common nature; and these other souls, these separated selves, draw +me as nothing else can. They stir in me the new emotions we call +passion; of love, hatred, fear, admiration, pity; thence come +conversation, competition, persuasion, cities and war. Persons are +supplementary to the primary teaching of the soul. In youth we are mad +for persons. Childhood and youth see all the world in them. But the +larger experience of man discovers the identical nature appearing +through them all. Persons themselves acquaint us with the impersonal. +In all conversation between two persons tacit reference is made, as to +a third party, to a common nature. That third party or common nature is +not social; it is impersonal; is God. And so in groups where debate is +earnest, and especially on high questions, the company become aware +that the thought rises to an equal level in all bosoms, that all have a +spiritual property in what was said, as well as the sayer. They all +become wiser than they were. It arches over them like a temple, this +unity of thought in which every heart beats with nobler sense of power +and duty, and thinks and acts with unusual solemnity. All are conscious +of attaining to a higher self-possession. It shines for all. There is a +certain wisdom of humanity which is common to the greatest men with the +lowest, and which our ordinary education often labors to silence and +obstruct. The mind is one, and the best minds, who love truth for its +own sake, think much less of property in truth. They accept it +thankfully everywhere, and do not label or stamp it with any man’s +name, for it is theirs long beforehand, and from eternity. The learned +and the studious of thought have no monopoly of wisdom. Their violence +of direction in some degree disqualifies them to think truly. We owe +many valuable observations to people who are not very acute or +profound, and who say the thing without effort which we want and have +long been hunting in vain. The action of the soul is oftener in that +which is felt and left unsaid than in that which is said in any +conversation. It broods over every society, and they unconsciously seek +for it in each other. We know better than we do. We do not yet possess +ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more. I feel +the same truth how often in my trivial conversation with my neighbors, +that somewhat higher in each of us overlooks this by-play, and Jove +nods to Jove from behind each of us. + +Men descend to meet. In their habitual and mean service to the world, +for which they forsake their native nobleness, they resemble those +Arabian sheiks who dwell in mean houses and affect an external poverty, +to escape the rapacity of the Pacha, and reserve all their display of +wealth for their interior and guarded retirements. + +As it is present in all persons, so it is in every period of life. It +is adult already in the infant man. In my dealing with my child, my +Latin and Greek, my accomplishments and my money stead me nothing; but +as much soul as I have avails. If I am wilful, he sets his will against +mine, one for one, and leaves me, if I please, the degradation of +beating him by my superiority of strength. But if I renounce my will +and act for the soul, setting that up as umpire between us two, out of +his young eyes looks the same soul; he reveres and loves with me. + +The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we +see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose. Foolish people +ask you, when you have spoken what they do not wish to hear, ‘How do +you know it is truth, and not an error of your own?’ We know truth when +we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are +awake. It was a grand sentence of Emanuel Swedenborg, which would alone +indicate the greatness of that man’s perception,—“It is no proof of a +man’s understanding to be able to confirm whatever he pleases; but to +be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is +false,—this is the mark and character of intelligence.” In the book I +read, the good thought returns to me, as every truth will, the image of +the whole soul. To the bad thought which I find in it, the same soul +becomes a discerning, separating sword, and lops it away. We are wiser +than we know. If we will not interfere with our thought, but will act +entirely, or see how the thing stands in God, we know the particular +thing, and every thing, and every man. For the Maker of all things and +all persons stands behind us and casts his dread omniscience through us +over things. + +But beyond this recognition of its own in particular passages of the +individual’s experience, it also reveals truth. And here we should seek +to reinforce ourselves by its very presence, and to speak with a +worthier, loftier strain of that advent. For the soul’s communication +of truth is the highest event in nature, since it then does not give +somewhat from itself, but it gives itself, or passes into and becomes +that man whom it enlightens; or, in proportion to that truth he +receives, it takes him to itself. + +We distinguish the announcements of the soul, its manifestations of its +own nature, by the term _Revelation_. These are always attended by the +emotion of the sublime. For this communication is an influx of the +Divine mind into our mind. It is an ebb of the individual rivulet +before the flowing surges of the sea of life. Every distinct +apprehension of this central commandment agitates men with awe and +delight. A thrill passes through all men at the reception of new truth, +or at the performance of a great action, which comes out of the heart +of nature. In these communications the power to see is not separated +from the will to do, but the insight proceeds from obedience, and the +obedience proceeds from a joyful perception. Every moment when the +individual feels himself invaded by it is memorable. By the necessity +of our constitution a certain enthusiasm attends the individual’s +consciousness of that divine presence. The character and duration of +this enthusiasm varies with the state of the individual, from an +ecstasy and trance and prophetic inspiration,—which is its rarer +appearance,—to the faintest glow of virtuous emotion, in which form it +warms, like our household fires, all the families and associations of +men, and makes society possible. A certain tendency to insanity has +always attended the opening of the religious sense in men, as if they +had been “blasted with excess of light.” The trances of Socrates, the +“union” of Plotinus, the vision of Porphyry, the conversion of Paul, +the aurora of Behmen, the convulsions of George Fox and his Quakers, +the illumination of Swedenborg, are of this kind. What was in the case +of these remarkable persons a ravishment, has, in innumerable instances +in common life, been exhibited in less striking manner. Everywhere the +history of religion betrays a tendency to enthusiasm. The rapture of +the Moravian and Quietist; the opening of the internal sense of the +Word, in the language of the New Jerusalem Church; the _revival_ of the +Calvinistic churches; the _experiences_ of the Methodists, are varying +forms of that shudder of awe and delight with which the individual soul +always mingles with the universal soul. + +The nature of these revelations is the same; they are perceptions of +the absolute law. They are solutions of the soul’s own questions. They +do not answer the questions which the understanding asks. The soul +answers never by words, but by the thing itself that is inquired after. + +Revelation is the disclosure of the soul. The popular notion of a +revelation is that it is a telling of fortunes. In past oracles of the +soul the understanding seeks to find answers to sensual questions, and +undertakes to tell from God how long men shall exist, what their hands +shall do and who shall be their company, adding names and dates and +places. But we must pick no locks. We must check this low curiosity. An +answer in words is delusive; it is really no answer to the questions +you ask. Do not require a description of the countries towards which +you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to-morrow +you arrive there and know them by inhabiting them. Men ask concerning +the immortality of the soul, the employments of heaven, the state of +the sinner, and so forth. They even dream that Jesus has left replies +to precisely these interrogatories. Never a moment did that sublime +spirit speak in their _patois_. To truth, justice, love, the attributes +of the soul, the idea of immutableness is essentially associated. +Jesus, living in these moral sentiments, heedless of sensual fortunes, +heeding only the manifestations of these, never made the separation of +the idea of duration from the essence of these attributes, nor uttered +a syllable concerning the duration of the soul. It was left to his +disciples to sever duration from the moral elements, and to teach the +immortality of the soul as a doctrine, and maintain it by evidences. +The moment the doctrine of the immortality is separately taught, man is +already fallen. In the flowing of love, in the adoration of humility, +there is no question of continuance. No inspired man ever asks this +question or condescends to these evidences. For the soul is true to +itself, and the man in whom it is shed abroad cannot wander from the +present, which is infinite, to a future which would be finite. + +These questions which we lust to ask about the future are a confession +of sin. God has no answer for them. No answer in words can reply to a +question of things. It is not in an arbitrary “decree of God,” but in +the nature of man, that a veil shuts down on the facts of to-morrow; +for the soul will not have us read any other cipher than that of cause +and effect. By this veil which curtains events it instructs the +children of men to live in to-day. The only mode of obtaining an answer +to these questions of the senses is to forego all low curiosity, and, +accepting the tide of being which floats us into the secret of nature, +work and live, work and live, and all unawares the advancing soul has +built and forged for itself a new condition, and the question and the +answer are one. + +By the same fire, vital, consecrating, celestial, which burns until it +shall dissolve all things into the waves and surges of an ocean of +light, we see and know each other, and what spirit each is of. Who can +tell the grounds of his knowledge of the character of the several +individuals in his circle of friends? No man. Yet their acts and words +do not disappoint him. In that man, though he knew no ill of him, he +put no trust. In that other, though they had seldom met, authentic +signs had yet passed, to signify that he might be trusted as one who +had an interest in his own character. We know each other very +well,—which of us has been just to himself and whether that which we +teach or behold is only an aspiration or is our honest effort also. + +We are all discerners of spirits. That diagnosis lies aloft in our life +or unconscious power. The intercourse of society, its trade, its +religion, its friendships, its quarrels, is one wide, judicial +investigation of character. In full court, or in small committee, or +confronted face to face, accuser and accused, men offer themselves to +be judged. Against their will they exhibit those decisive trifles by +which character is read. But who judges? and what? Not our +understanding. We do not read them by learning or craft. No; the wisdom +of the wise man consists herein, that he does not judge them; he lets +them judge themselves and merely reads and records their own verdict. + +By virtue of this inevitable nature, private will is overpowered, and, +maugre our efforts or our imperfections, your genius will speak from +you, and mine from me. That which we are, we shall teach, not +voluntarily but involuntarily. Thoughts come into our minds by avenues +which we never left open, and thoughts go out of our minds through +avenues which we never voluntarily opened. Character teaches over our +head. The infallible index of true progress is found in the tone the +man takes. Neither his age, nor his breeding, nor company, nor books, +nor actions, nor talents, nor all together can hinder him from being +deferential to a higher spirit than his own. If he have not found his +home in God, his manners, his forms of speech, the turn of his +sentences, the build, shall I say, of all his opinions will +involuntarily confess it, let him brave it out how he will. If he have +found his centre, the Deity will shine through him, through all the +disguises of ignorance, of ungenial temperament, of unfavorable +circumstance. The tone of seeking is one, and the tone of having is +another. + +The great distinction between teachers sacred or literary,—between +poets like Herbert, and poets like Pope,—between philosophers like +Spinoza, Kant and Coleridge, and philosophers like Locke, Paley, +Mackintosh and Stewart,—between men of the world who are reckoned +accomplished talkers, and here and there a fervent mystic, prophesying +half insane under the infinitude of his thought,—is that one class +speak _from within_, or from experience, as parties and possessors of +the fact; and the other class _from without_, as spectators merely, or +perhaps as acquainted with the fact on the evidence of third persons. +It is of no use to preach to me from without. I can do that too easily +myself. Jesus speaks always from within, and in a degree that +transcends all others. In that is the miracle. I believe beforehand +that it ought so to be. All men stand continually in the expectation of +the appearance of such a teacher. But if a man do not speak from within +the veil, where the word is one with that it tells of, let him lowly +confess it. + +The same Omniscience flows into the intellect, and makes what we call +genius. Much of the wisdom of the world is not wisdom, and the most +illuminated class of men are no doubt superior to literary fame, and +are not writers. Among the multitude of scholars and authors, we feel +no hallowing presence; we are sensible of a knack and skill rather than +of inspiration; they have a light and know not whence it comes and call +it their own; their talent is some exaggerated faculty, some overgrown +member, so that their strength is a disease. In these instances the +intellectual gifts do not make the impression of virtue, but almost of +vice; and we feel that a man’s talents stand in the way of his +advancement in truth. But genius is religious. It is a larger imbibing +of the common heart. It is not anomalous, but more like and not less +like other men. There is in all great poets a wisdom of humanity which +is superior to any talents they exercise. The author, the wit, the +partisan, the fine gentleman, does not take place of the man. Humanity +shines in Homer, in Chaucer, in Spenser, in Shakspeare, in Milton. They +are content with truth. They use the positive degree. They seem frigid +and phlegmatic to those who have been spiced with the frantic passion +and violent coloring of inferior but popular writers. For they are +poets by the free course which they allow to the informing soul, which +through their eyes beholds again and blesses the things which it hath +made. The soul is superior to its knowledge, wiser than any of its +works. The great poet makes us feel our own wealth, and then we think +less of his compositions. His best communication to our mind is to +teach us to despise all he has done. Shakspeare carries us to such a +lofty strain of intelligent activity as to suggest a wealth which +beggars his own; and we then feel that the splendid works which he has +created, and which in other hours we extol as a sort of self-existent +poetry, take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow of a +passing traveller on the rock. The inspiration which uttered itself in +Hamlet and Lear could utter things as good from day to day for ever. +Why then should I make account of Hamlet and Lear, as if we had not the +soul from which they fell as syllables from the tongue? + +This energy does not descend into individual life on any other +condition than entire possession. It comes to the lowly and simple; it +comes to whomsoever will put off what is foreign and proud; it comes as +insight; it comes as serenity and grandeur. When we see those whom it +inhabits, we are apprised of new degrees of greatness. From that +inspiration the man comes back with a changed tone. He does not talk +with men with an eye to their opinion. He tries them. It requires of us +to be plain and true. The vain traveller attempts to embellish his life +by quoting my lord and the prince and the countess, who thus said or +did to _him_. The ambitious vulgar show you their spoons and brooches +and rings, and preserve their cards and compliments. The more +cultivated, in their account of their own experience, cull out the +pleasing, poetic circumstance,—the visit to Rome, the man of genius +they saw, the brilliant friend They know; still further on perhaps the +gorgeous landscape, the mountain lights, the mountain thoughts they +enjoyed yesterday,—and so seek to throw a romantic color over their +life. But the soul that ascends to worship the great God is plain and +true; has no rose-color, no fine friends, no chivalry, no adventures; +does not want admiration; dwells in the hour that now is, in the +earnest experience of the common day,—by reason of the present moment +and the mere trifle having become porous to thought and bibulous of the +sea of light. + +Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature looks like +word-catching. The simplest utterances are worthiest to be written, yet +are they so cheap and so things of course, that in the infinite riches +of the soul it is like gathering a few pebbles off the ground, or +bottling a little air in a phial, when the whole earth and the whole +atmosphere are ours. Nothing can pass there, or make you one of the +circle, but the casting aside your trappings, and dealing man to man in +naked truth, plain confession, and omniscient affirmation. + +Souls such as these treat you as gods would, walk as gods in the earth, +accepting without any admiration your wit, your bounty, your virtue +even,—say rather your act of duty, for your virtue they own as their +proper blood, royal as themselves, and over-royal, and the father of +the gods. But what rebuke their plain fraternal bearing casts on the +mutual flattery with which authors solace each other and wound +themselves! These flatter not. I do not wonder that these men go to see +Cromwell and Christina and Charles the Second and James the First and +the Grand Turk. For they are, in their own elevation, the fellows of +kings, and must feel the servile tone of conversation in the world. +They must always be a godsend to princes, for they confront them, a +king to a king, without ducking or concession, and give a high nature +the refreshment and satisfaction of resistance, of plain humanity, of +even companionship and of new ideas. They leave them wiser and superior +men. Souls like these make us feel that sincerity is more excellent +than flattery. Deal so plainly with man and woman as to constrain the +utmost sincerity and destroy all hope of trifling with you. It is the +highest compliment you can pay. Their “highest praising,” said Milton, +“is not flattery, and their plainest advice is a kind of praising.” + +Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the soul. The +simplest person who in his integrity worships God, becomes God; yet for +ever and ever the influx of this better and universal self is new and +unsearchable. It inspires awe and astonishment. How dear, how soothing +to man, arises the idea of God, peopling the lonely place, effacing the +scars of our mistakes and disappointments! When we have broken our god +of tradition and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the +heart with his presence. It is the doubling of the heart itself, nay, +the infinite enlargement of the heart with a power of growth to a new +infinity on every side. It inspires in man an infallible trust. He has +not the conviction, but the sight, that the best is the true, and may +in that thought easily dismiss all particular uncertainties and fears, +and adjourn to the sure revelation of time the solution of his private +riddles. He is sure that his welfare is dear to the heart of being. In +the presence of law to his mind he is overflowed with a reliance so +universal that it sweeps away all cherished hopes and the most stable +projects of mortal condition in its flood. He believes that he cannot +escape from his good. The things that are really for thee gravitate to +thee. You are running to seek your friend. Let your feet run, but your +mind need not. If you do not find him, will you not acquiesce that it +is best you should not find him? for there is a power, which, as it is +in you, is in him also, and could therefore very well bring you +together, if it were for the best. You are preparing with eagerness to +go and render a service to which your talent and your taste invite you, +the love of men and the hope of fame. Has it not occurred to you that +you have no right to go, unless you are equally willing to be prevented +from going? O, believe, as thou livest, that every sound that is spoken +over the round world, which thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate on +thine ear! Every proverb, every book, every byword that belongs to thee +for aid or comfort, shall surely come home through open or winding +passages. Every friend whom not thy fantastic will but the great and +tender heart in thee craveth, shall lock thee in his embrace. And this +because the heart in thee is the heart of all; not a valve, not a wall, +not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls +uninterruptedly an endless circulation through all men, as the water of +the globe is all one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one. + +Let man then learn the revelation of all nature and all thought to his +heart; this, namely; that the Highest dwells with him; that the sources +of nature are in his own mind, if the sentiment of duty is there. But +if he would know what the great God speaketh, he must ‘go into his +closet and shut the door,’ as Jesus said. God will not make himself +manifest to cowards. He must greatly listen to himself, withdrawing +himself from all the accents of other men’s devotion. Even their +prayers are hurtful to him, until he have made his own. Our religion +vulgarly stands on numbers of believers. Whenever the appeal is +made,—no matter how indirectly,—to numbers, proclamation is then and +there made that religion is not. He that finds God a sweet enveloping +thought to him never counts his company. When I sit in that presence, +who shall dare to come in? When I rest in perfect humility, when I burn +with pure love, what can Calvin or Swedenborg say? + +It makes no difference whether the appeal is to numbers or to one. The +faith that stands on authority is not faith. The reliance on authority +measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul. The +position men have given to Jesus, now for many centuries of history, is +a position of authority. It characterizes themselves. It cannot alter +the eternal facts. Great is the soul, and plain. It is no flatterer, it +is no follower; it never appeals from itself. It believes in itself. +Before the immense possibilities of man all mere experience, all past +biography, however spotless and sainted, shrinks away. Before that +heaven which our presentiments foreshow us, we cannot easily praise any +form of life we have seen or read of. We not only affirm that we have +few great men, but, absolutely speaking, that we have none; that we +have no history, no record of any character or mode of living that +entirely contents us. The saints and demigods whom history worships we +are constrained to accept with a grain of allowance. Though in our +lonely hours we draw a new strength out of their memory, yet, pressed +on our attention, as they are by the thoughtless and customary, they +fatigue and invade. The soul gives itself, alone, original and pure, to +the Lonely, Original and Pure, who, on that condition, gladly inhabits, +leads and speaks through it. Then is it glad, young and nimble. It is +not wise, but it sees through all things. It is not called religious, +but it is innocent. It calls the light its own, and feels that the +grass grows and the stone falls by a law inferior to, and dependent on, +its nature. Behold, it saith, I am born into the great, the universal +mind. I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect. I am somehow receptive of +the great soul, and thereby I do Overlook the sun and the stars and +feel them to be the fair accidents and effects which change and pass. +More and more the surges of everlasting nature enter into me, and I +become public and human in my regards and actions. So come I to live in +thoughts and act with energies which are immortal. Thus revering the +soul, and learning, as the ancient said, that “its beauty is immense,” +man will come to see that the world is the perennial miracle which the +soul worketh, and be less astonished at particular wonders; he will +learn that there is no profane history; that all history is sacred; +that the universe is represented in an atom, in a moment of time. He +will weave no longer a spotted life of shreds and patches, but he will +live with a divine unity. He will cease from what is base and frivolous +in his life and be content with all places and with any service he can +render. He will calmly front the morrow in the negligency of that trust +which carries God with it and so hath already the whole future in the +bottom of the heart. + + + + +X. +CIRCLES + + +Nature centres into balls, +And her proud ephemerals, +Fast to surface and outside, +Scan the profile of the sphere; +Knew they what that signified, +A new genesis were here. + + + + +CIRCLES + + +The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; +and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end. It +is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world. St. Augustine +described the nature of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere and +its circumference nowhere. We are all our lifetime reading the copious +sense of this first of forms. One moral we have already deduced, in +considering the circular or compensatory character of every human +action. Another analogy we shall now trace, that every action admits of +being outdone. Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around +every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but +every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on +mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens. + +This fact, as far as it symbolizes the moral fact of the Unattainable, +the flying Perfect, around which the hands of man can never meet, at +once the inspirer and the condemner of every success, may conveniently +serve us to connect many illustrations of human power in every +department. + +There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. +Permanence is but a word of degrees. Our globe seen by God is a +transparent law, not a mass of facts. The law dissolves the fact and +holds it fluid. Our culture is the predominance of an idea which draws +after it this train of cities and institutions. Let us rise into +another idea: they will disappear. The Greek sculpture is all melted +away, as if it had been statues of ice; here and there a solitary +figure or fragment remaining, as we see flecks and scraps of snow left +in cold dells and mountain clefts in June and July. For the genius that +created it creates now somewhat else. The Greek letters last a little +longer, but are already passing under the same sentence and tumbling +into the inevitable pit which the creation of new thought opens for all +that is old. The new continents are built out of the ruins of an old +planet; the new races fed out of the decomposition of the foregoing. +New arts destroy the old. See the investment of capital in aqueducts +made useless by hydraulics; fortifications, by gunpowder; roads and +canals, by railways; sails, by steam; steam by electricity. + +You admire this tower of granite, weathering the hurts of so many ages. +Yet a little waving hand built this huge wall, and that which builds is +better than that which is built. The hand that built can topple it down +much faster. Better than the hand and nimbler was the invisible thought +which wrought through it; and thus ever, behind the coarse effect, is a +fine cause, which, being narrowly seen, is itself the effect of a finer +cause. Every thing looks permanent until its secret is known. A rich +estate appears to women a firm and lasting fact; to a merchant, one +easily created out of any materials, and easily lost. An orchard, good +tillage, good grounds, seem a fixture, like a gold mine, or a river, to +a citizen; but to a large farmer, not much more fixed than the state of +the crop. Nature looks provokingly stable and secular, but it has a +cause like all the rest; and when once I comprehend that, will these +fields stretch so immovably wide, these leaves hang so individually +considerable? Permanence is a word of degrees. Every thing is medial. +Moons are no more bounds to spiritual power than bat-balls. + +The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, +he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his +facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea +which commands his own. The life of man is a self-evolving circle, +which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to +new and larger circles, and that without end. The extent to which this +generation of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, depends on the +force or truth of the individual soul. For it is the inert effort of +each thought, having formed itself into a circular wave of +circumstance,—as for instance an empire, rules of an art, a local +usage, a religious rite,—to heap itself on that ridge and to solidify +and hem in the life. But if the soul is quick and strong it bursts over +that boundary on all sides and expands another orbit on the great deep, +which also runs up into a high wave, with attempt again to stop and to +bind. But the heart refuses to be imprisoned; in its first and +narrowest pulses, it already tends outward with a vast force and to +immense and innumerable expansions. + +Every ultimate fact is only the first of a new series. Every general +law only a particular fact of some more general law presently to +disclose itself. There is no outside, no inclosing wall, no +circumference to us. The man finishes his story,—how good! how final! +how it puts a new face on all things! He fills the sky. Lo! on the +other side rises also a man and draws a circle around the circle we had +just pronounced the outline of the sphere. Then already is our first +speaker not man, but only a first speaker. His only redress is +forthwith to draw a circle outside of his antagonist. And so men do by +themselves. The result of to-day, which haunts the mind and cannot be +escaped, will presently be abridged into a word, and the principle that +seemed to explain nature will itself be included as one example of a +bolder generalization. In the thought of to-morrow there is a power to +upheave all thy creed, all the creeds, all the literatures of the +nations, and marshal thee to a heaven which no epic dream has yet +depicted. Every man is not so much a workman in the world as he is a +suggestion of that he should be. Men walk as prophecies of the next +age. + +Step by step we scale this mysterious ladder: the steps are actions; +the new prospect is power. Every several result is threatened and +judged by that which follows. Every one seems to be contradicted by the +new; it is only limited by the new. The new statement is always hated +by the old, and, to those dwelling in the old, comes like an abyss of +scepticism. But the eye soon gets wonted to it, for the eye and it are +effects of one cause; then its innocency and benefit appear, and +presently, all its energy spent, it pales and dwindles before the +revelation of the new hour. + +Fear not the new generalization. Does the fact look crass and material, +threatening to degrade thy theory of spirit? Resist it not; it goes to +refine and raise thy theory of matter just as much. + +There are no fixtures to men, if we appeal to consciousness. Every man +supposes himself not to be fully understood; and if there is any truth +in him, if he rests at last on the divine soul, I see not how it can be +otherwise. The last chamber, the last closet, he must feel was never +opened; there is always a residuum unknown, unanalyzable. That is, +every man believes that he has a greater possibility. + +Our moods do not believe in each other. To-day I am full of thoughts +and can write what I please. I see no reason why I should not have the +same thought, the same power of expression, to-morrow. What I write, +whilst I write it, seems the most natural thing in the world; but +yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this direction in which now I see +so much; and a month hence, I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was that +wrote so many continuous pages. Alas for this infirm faith, this will +not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast flow! I am God in nature; I am a +weed by the wall. + +The continual effort to raise himself above himself, to work a pitch +above his last height, betrays itself in a man’s relations. We thirst +for approbation, yet cannot forgive the approver. The sweet of nature +is love; yet, if I have a friend I am tormented by my imperfections. +The love of me accuses the other party. If he were high enough to +slight me, then could I love him, and rise by my affection to new +heights. A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his +friends. For every friend whom he loses for truth, he gains a better. I +thought as I walked in the woods and mused on my friends, why should I +play with them this game of idolatry? I know and see too well, when not +voluntarily blind, the speedy limits of persons called high and worthy. +Rich, noble and great they are by the liberality of our speech, but +truth is sad. O blessed Spirit, whom I forsake for these, they are not +thou! Every personal consideration that we allow costs us heavenly +state. We sell the thrones of angels for a short and turbulent +pleasure. + +How often must we learn this lesson? Men cease to interest us when we +find their limitations. The only sin is limitation. As soon as you once +come up with a man’s limitations, it is all over with him. Has he +talents? has he enterprise? has he knowledge? It boots not. Infinitely +alluring and attractive was he to you yesterday, a great hope, a sea to +swim in; now, you have found his shores, found it a pond, and you care +not if you never see it again. + +Each new step we take in thought reconciles twenty seemingly discordant +facts, as expressions of one law. Aristotle and Plato are reckoned the +respective heads of two schools. A wise man will see that Aristotle +platonizes. By going one step farther back in thought, discordant +opinions are reconciled by being seen to be two extremes of one +principle, and we can never go so far back as to preclude a still +higher vision. + +Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all +things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a +great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end. There +is not a piece of science but its flank may be turned to-morrow; there +is not any literary reputation, not the so-called eternal names of +fame, that may not be revised and condemned. The very hopes of man, the +thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the manners and morals +of mankind are all at the mercy of a new generalization. Generalization +is always a new influx of the divinity into the mind. Hence the thrill +that attends it. + +Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that a man cannot have +his flank turned, cannot be out-generalled, but put him where you will, +he stands. This can only be by his preferring truth to his past +apprehension of truth, and his alert acceptance of it from whatever +quarter; the intrepid conviction that his laws, his relations to +society, his Christianity, his world, may at any time be superseded and +decease. + +There are degrees in idealism. We learn first to play with it +academically, as the magnet was once a toy. Then we see in the heyday +of youth and poetry that it may be true, that it is true in gleams and +fragments. Then its countenance waxes stern and grand, and we see that +it must be true. It now shows itself ethical and practical. We learn +that God is; that he is in me; and that all things are shadows of him. +The idealism of Berkeley is only a crude statement of the idealism of +Jesus, and that again is a crude statement of the fact that all nature +is the rapid efflux of goodness executing and organizing itself. Much +more obviously is history and the state of the world at any one time +directly dependent on the intellectual classification then existing in +the minds of men. The things which are dear to men at this hour are so +on account of the ideas which have emerged on their mental horizon, and +which cause the present order of things, as a tree bears its apples. A +new degree of culture would instantly revolutionize the entire system +of human pursuits. + +Conversation is a game of circles. In conversation we pluck up the +_termini_ which bound the common of silence on every side. The parties +are not to be judged by the spirit they partake and even express under +this Pentecost. To-morrow they will have receded from this high-water +mark. To-morrow you shall find them stooping under the old +pack-saddles. Yet let us enjoy the cloven flame whilst it glows on our +walls. When each new speaker strikes a new light, emancipates us from +the oppression of the last speaker, to oppress us with the greatness +and exclusiveness of his own thought, then yields us to another +redeemer, we seem to recover our rights, to become men. O, what truths +profound and executable only in ages and orbs, are supposed in the +announcement of every truth! In common hours, society sits cold and +statuesque. We all stand waiting, empty,—knowing, possibly, that we can +be full, surrounded by mighty symbols which are not symbols to us, but +prose and trivial toys. Then cometh the god and converts the statues +into fiery men, and by a flash of his eye burns up the veil which +shrouded all things, and the meaning of the very furniture, of cup and +saucer, of chair and clock and tester, is manifest. The facts which +loomed so large in the fogs of yesterday,—property, climate, breeding, +personal beauty and the like, have strangely changed their proportions. +All that we reckoned settled shakes and rattles; and literatures, +cities, climates, religions, leave their foundations and dance before +our eyes. And yet here again see the swift circumspection! Good as is +discourse, silence is better, and shames it. The length of the +discourse indicates the distance of thought betwixt the speaker and the +hearer. If they were at a perfect understanding in any part, no words +would be necessary thereon. If at one in all parts, no words would be +suffered. + +Literature is a point outside of our hodiernal circle through which a +new one may be described. The use of literature is to afford us a +platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase +by which we may move it. We fill ourselves with ancient learning, +install ourselves the best we can in Greek, in Punic, in Roman houses, +only that we may wiselier see French, English and American houses and +modes of living. In like manner we see literature best from the midst +of wild nature, or from the din of affairs, or from a high religion. +The field cannot be well seen from within the field. The astronomer +must have his diameter of the earth’s orbit as a base to find the +parallax of any star. + +Therefore we value the poet. All the argument and all the wisdom is not +in the encyclopaedia, or the treatise on metaphysics, or the Body of +Divinity, but in the sonnet or the play. In my daily work I incline to +repeat my old steps, and do not believe in remedial force, in the power +of change and reform. But some Petrarch or Ariosto, filled with the new +wine of his imagination, writes me an ode or a brisk romance, full of +daring thought and action. He smites and arouses me with his shrill +tones, breaks up my whole chain of habits, and I open my eye on my own +possibilities. He claps wings to the sides of all the solid old lumber +of the world, and I am capable once more of choosing a straight path in +theory and practice. + +We have the same need to command a view of the religion of the world. +We can never see Christianity from the catechism:—from the pastures, +from a boat in the pond, from amidst the songs of wood-birds we +possibly may. Cleansed by the elemental light and wind, steeped in the +sea of beautiful forms which the field offers us, we may chance to cast +a right glance back upon biography. Christianity is rightly dear to the +best of mankind; yet was there never a young philosopher whose breeding +had fallen into the Christian church by whom that brave text of Paul’s +was not specially prized:—“Then shall also the Son be subject unto Him +who put all things under him, that God may be all in all.” Let the +claims and virtues of persons be never so great and welcome, the +instinct of man presses eagerly onward to the impersonal and +illimitable, and gladly arms itself against the dogmatism of bigots +with this generous word out of the book itself. + +The natural world may be conceived of as a system of concentric +circles, and we now and then detect in nature slight dislocations which +apprise us that this surface on which we now stand is not fixed, but +sliding. These manifold tenacious qualities, this chemistry and +vegetation, these metals and animals, which seem to stand there for +their own sake, are means and methods only,—are words of God, and as +fugitive as other words. Has the naturalist or chemist learned his +craft, who has explored the gravity of atoms and the elective +affinities, who has not yet discerned the deeper law whereof this is +only a partial or approximate statement, namely that like draws to +like, and that the goods which belong to you gravitate to you and need +not be pursued with pains and cost? Yet is that statement approximate +also, and not final. Omnipresence is a higher fact. Not through subtle +subterranean channels need friend and fact be drawn to their +counterpart, but, rightly considered, these things proceed from the +eternal generation of the soul. Cause and effect are two sides of one +fact. + +The same law of eternal procession ranges all that we call the virtues, +and extinguishes each in the light of a better. The great man will not +be prudent in the popular sense; all his prudence will be so much +deduction from his grandeur. But it behooves each to see, when he +sacrifices prudence, to what god he devotes it; if to ease and +pleasure, he had better be prudent still; if to a great trust, he can +well spare his mule and panniers who has a winged chariot instead. +Geoffrey draws on his boots to go through the woods, that his feet may +be safer from the bite of snakes; Aaron never thinks of such a peril. +In many years neither is harmed by such an accident. Yet it seems to me +that with every precaution you take against such an evil you put +yourself into the power of the evil. I suppose that the highest +prudence is the lowest prudence. Is this too sudden a rushing from the +centre to the verge of our orbit? Think how many times we shall fall +back into pitiful calculations before we take up our rest in the great +sentiment, or make the verge of to-day the new centre. Besides, your +bravest sentiment is familiar to the humblest men. The poor and the low +have their way of expressing the last facts of philosophy as well as +you. “Blessed be nothing” and “The worse things are, the better they +are” are proverbs which express the transcendentalism of common life. + +One man’s justice is another’s injustice; one man’s beauty another’s +ugliness; one man’s wisdom another’s folly; as one beholds the same +objects from a higher point. One man thinks justice consists in paying +debts, and has no measure in his abhorrence of another who is very +remiss in this duty and makes the creditor wait tediously. But that +second man has his own way of looking at things; asks himself Which +debt must I pay first, the debt to the rich, or the debt to the poor? +the debt of money, or the debt of thought to mankind, of genius to +nature? For you, O broker, there is no other principle but arithmetic. +For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, +the aspiration of man, these are sacred; nor can I detach one duty, +like you, from all other duties, and concentrate my forces mechanically +on the payment of moneys. Let me live onward; you shall find that, +though slower, the progress of my character will liquidate all these +debts without injustice to higher claims. If a man should dedicate +himself to the payment of notes, would not this be injustice? Does he +owe no debt but money? And are all claims on him to be postponed to a +landlord’s or a banker’s? + +There is no virtue which is final; all are initial. The virtues of +society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery +that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed +such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices:— + + “Forgive his crimes, forgive his virtues too, + Those smaller faults, half converts to the right.” + +It is the highest power of divine moments that they abolish our +contritions also. I accuse myself of sloth and unprofitableness day by +day; but when these waves of God flow into me I no longer reckon lost +time. I no longer poorly compute my possible achievement by what +remains to me of the month or the year; for these moments confer a sort +of omnipresence and omnipotence which asks nothing of duration, but +sees that the energy of the mind is commensurate with the work to be +done, without time. + +And thus, O circular philosopher, I hear some reader exclaim, you have +arrived at a fine Pyrrhonism, at an equivalence and indifferency of all +actions, and would fain teach us that _if we are true_, forsooth, our +crimes may be lively stones out of which we shall construct the temple +of the true God! + +I am not careful to justify myself. I own I am gladdened by seeing the +predominance of the saccharine principle throughout vegetable nature, +and not less by beholding in morals that unrestrained inundation of the +principle of good into every chink and hole that selfishness has left +open, yea into selfishness and sin itself; so that no evil is pure, nor +hell itself without its extreme satisfactions. But lest I should +mislead any when I have my own head and obey my whims, let me remind +the reader that I am only an experimenter. Do not set the least value +on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I +pretended to settle any thing as true or false. I unsettle all things. +No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an +endless seeker with no Past at my back. + +Yet this incessant movement and progression which all things partake +could never become sensible to us but by contrast to some principle of +fixture or stability in the soul. Whilst the eternal generation of +circles proceeds, the eternal generator abides. That central life is +somewhat superior to creation, superior to knowledge and thought, and +contains all its circles. For ever it labors to create a life and +thought as Large and excellent as itself, but in vain, for that which +is made instructs how to make a better. + +Thus there is no sleep, no pause, no preservation, but all things +renew, germinate and spring. Why should we import rags and relics into +the new hour? Nature abhors the old, and old age seems the only +disease; all others run into this one. We call it by many names,—fever, +intemperance, insanity, stupidity and crime; they are all forms of old +age; they are rest, conservatism, appropriation, inertia; not newness, +not the way onward. We grizzle every day. I see no need of it. Whilst +we converse with what is above us, we do not grow old, but grow young. +Infancy, youth, receptive, aspiring, with religious eye looking upward, +counts itself nothing and abandons itself to the instruction flowing +from all sides. But the man and woman of seventy assume to know all, +they have outlived their hope, they renounce aspiration, accept the +actual for the necessary and talk down to the young. Let them, then, +become organs of the Holy Ghost; let them be lovers; let them behold +truth; and their eyes are uplifted, their wrinkles smoothed, they are +perfumed again with hope and power. This old age ought not to creep on +a human mind. In nature every moment is new; the past is always +swallowed and forgotten; the coming only is sacred. Nothing is secure +but life, transition, the energizing spirit. No love can be bound by +oath or covenant to secure it against a higher love. No truth so +sublime but it may be trivial to-morrow in the light of new thoughts. +People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there +any hope for them. + +Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess to-day the mood, the +pleasure, the power of to-morrow, when we are building up our being. Of +lower states, of acts of routine and sense, we can tell somewhat; but +the masterpieces of God, the total growths and universal movements of +the soul, he hideth; they are incalculable. I can know that truth is +divine and helpful; but how it shall help me I can have no guess, for +_so to be_ is the sole inlet of _so to know_. The new position of the +advancing man has all the powers of the old, yet has them all new. It +carries in its bosom all the energies of the past, yet is itself an +exhalation of the morning. I cast away in this new moment all my once +hoarded knowledge, as vacant and vain. Now, for the first time seem I +to know any thing rightly. The simplest words,—we do not know what they +mean except when we love and aspire. + +The difference between talents and character is adroitness to keep the +old and trodden round, and power and courage to make a new road to new +and better goals. Character makes an overpowering present; a cheerful, +determined hour, which fortifies all the company by making them see +that much is possible and excellent that was not thought of. Character +dulls the impression of particular events. When we see the conqueror we +do not think much of any one battle or success. We see that we had +exaggerated the difficulty. It was easy to him. The great man is not +convulsible or tormentable; events pass over him without much +impression. People say sometimes, ‘See what I have overcome; see how +cheerful I am; see how completely I have triumphed over these black +events.’ Not if they still remind me of the black event. True conquest +is the causing the calamity to fade and disappear as an early cloud of +insignificant result in a history so large and advancing. + +The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget +ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our +sempiternal memory and to do something without knowing how or why; in +short to draw a new circle. Nothing great was ever achieved without +enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment. The +great moments of history are the facilities of performance through the +strength of ideas, as the works of genius and religion. “A man,” said +Oliver Cromwell, “never rises so high as when he knows not whither he +is going.” Dreams and drunkenness, the use of opium and alcohol are the +semblance and counterfeit of this oracular genius, and hence their +dangerous attraction for men. For the like reason they ask the aid of +wild passions, as in gaming and war, to ape in some manner these flames +and generosities of the heart. + + + + +XI. +INTELLECT + + +Go, speed the stars of Thought +On to their shining goals;— +The sower scatters broad his seed, +The wheat thou strew’st be souls. + + + + +INTELLECT + + +Every substance is negatively electric to that which stands above it in +the chemical tables, positively to that which stands below it. Water +dissolves wood and iron and salt; air dissolves water; electric fire +dissolves air, but the intellect dissolves fire, gravity, laws, method, +and the subtlest unnamed relations of nature in its resistless +menstruum. Intellect lies behind genius, which is intellect +constructive. Intellect is the simple power anterior to all action or +construction. Gladly would I unfold in calm degrees a natural history +of the intellect, but what man has yet been able to mark the steps and +boundaries of that transparent essence? The first questions are always +to be asked, and the wisest doctor is gravelled by the inquisitiveness +of a child. How can we speak of the action of the mind under any +divisions, as of its knowledge, of its ethics, of its works, and so +forth, since it melts will into perception, knowledge into act? Each +becomes the other. Itself alone is. Its vision is not like the vision +of the eye, but is union with the things known. + +Intellect and intellection signify to the common ear consideration of +abstract truth. The considerations of time and place, of you and me, of +profit and hurt tyrannize over most men’s minds. Intellect separates +the fact considered, from you, from all local and personal reference, +and discerns it as if it existed for its own sake. Heraclitus looked +upon the affections as dense and colored mists. In the fog of good and +evil affections it is hard for man to walk forward in a straight line. +Intellect is void of affection and sees an object as it stands in the +light of science, cool and disengaged. The intellect goes out of the +individual, floats over its own personality, and regards it as a fact, +and not as _I_ and _mine_. He who is immersed in what concerns person +or place cannot see the problem of existence. This the intellect always +ponders. Nature shows all things formed and bound. The intellect +pierces the form, overleaps the wall, detects intrinsic likeness +between remote things and reduces all things into a few principles. + +The making a fact the subject of thought raises it. All that mass of +mental and moral phenomena which we do not make objects of voluntary +thought, come within the power of fortune; they constitute the +circumstance of daily life; they are subject to change, to fear, and +hope. Every man beholds his human condition with a degree of +melancholy. As a ship aground is battered by the waves, so man, +imprisoned in mortal life, lies open to the mercy of coming events. But +a truth, separated by the intellect, is no longer a subject of destiny. +We behold it as a god upraised above care and fear. And so any fact in +our life, or any record of our fancies or reflections, disentangled +from the web of our unconsciousness, becomes an object impersonal and +immortal. It is the past restored, but embalmed. A better art than that +of Egypt has taken fear and corruption out of it. It is eviscerated of +care. It is offered for science. What is addressed to us for +contemplation does not threaten us but makes us intellectual beings. + +The growth of the intellect is spontaneous in every expansion. The mind +that grows could not predict the times, the means, the mode of that +spontaneity. God enters by a private door into every individual. Long +prior to the age of reflection is the thinking of the mind. Out of +darkness it came insensibly into the marvellous light of to-day. In the +period of infancy it accepted and disposed of all impressions from the +surrounding creation after its own way. Whatever any mind doth or saith +is after a law; and this native law remains over it after it has come +to reflection or conscious thought. In the most worn, pedantic, +introverted self-tormenter’s life, the greatest part is incalculable by +him, unforeseen, unimaginable, and must be, until he can take himself +up by his own ears. What am I? What has my will done to make me that I +am? Nothing. I have been floated into this thought, this hour, this +connection of events, by secret currents of might and mind, and my +ingenuity and wilfulness have not thwarted, have not aided to an +appreciable degree. + +Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot with your best +deliberation and heed come so close to any question as your spontaneous +glance shall bring you, whilst you rise from your bed, or walk abroad +in the morning after meditating the matter before sleep on the previous +night. Our thinking is a pious reception. Our truth of thought is +therefore vitiated as much by too violent direction given by our will, +as by too great negligence. We do not determine what we will think. We +only open our senses, clear away as we can all obstruction from the +fact, and suffer the intellect to see. We have little control over our +thoughts. We are the prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for moments +into their heaven and so fully engage us that we take no thought for +the morrow, gaze like children, without an effort to make them our own. +By and by we fall out of that rapture, bethink us where we have been, +what we have seen, and repeat as truly as we can what we have beheld. +As far as we can recall these ecstasies we carry away in the +ineffaceable memory the result, and all men and all the ages confirm +it. It is called Truth. But the moment we cease to report and attempt +to correct and contrive, it is not truth. + +If we consider what persons have stimulated and profited us, we shall +perceive the superiority of the spontaneous or intuitive principle over +the arithmetical or logical. The first contains the second, but virtual +and latent. We want in every man a long logic; we cannot pardon the +absence of it, but it must not be spoken. Logic is the procession or +proportionate unfolding of the intuition; but its virtue is as silent +method; the moment it would appear as propositions and have a separate +value it is worthless. + +In every man’s mind, some images, words and facts remain, without +effort on his part to imprint them, which others forget, and afterwards +these illustrate to him important laws. All our progress is an +unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an +opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud and fruit. Trust +the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. It is vain to +hurry it. By trusting it to the end, it shall ripen into truth and you +shall know why you believe. + +Each mind has its own method. A true man never acquires after college +rules. What you have aggregated in a natural manner surprises and +delights when it is produced. For we cannot oversee each other’s +secret. And hence the differences between men in natural endowment are +insignificant in comparison with their common wealth. Do you think the +porter and the cook have no anecdotes, no experiences, no wonders for +you? Every body knows as much as the savant. The walls of rude minds +are scrawled all over with facts, with thoughts. They shall one day +bring a lantern and read the inscriptions. Every man, in the degree in +which he has wit and culture, finds his curiosity inflamed concerning +the modes of living and thinking of other men, and especially of those +classes whose minds have not been subdued by the drill of school +education. + +This instinctive action never ceases in a healthy mind, but becomes +richer and more frequent in its informations through all states of +culture. At last comes the era of reflection, when we not only observe, +but take pains to observe; when we of set purpose sit down to consider +an abstract truth; when we keep the mind’s eye open whilst we converse, +whilst we read, whilst we act, intent to learn the secret law of some +class of facts. + +What is the hardest task in the world? To think. I would put myself in +the attitude to look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cannot. I +blench and withdraw on this side and on that. I seem to know what he +meant who said, No man can see God face to face and live. For example, +a man explores the basis of civil government. Let him intend his mind +without respite, without rest, in one direction. His best heed long +time avails him nothing. Yet thoughts are flitting before him. We all +but apprehend, we dimly forebode the truth. We say I will walk abroad, +and the truth will take form and clearness to me. We go forth, but +cannot find it. It seems as if we needed only the stillness and +composed attitude of the library to seize the thought. But we come in, +and are as far from it as at first. Then, in a moment, and unannounced, +the truth appears. A certain wandering light appears, and is the +distinction, the principle, we wanted. But the oracle comes because we +had previously laid siege to the shrine. It seems as if the law of the +intellect resembled that law of nature by which we now inspire, now +expire the breath; by which the heart now draws in, then hurls out the +blood,—the law of undulation. So now you must labor with your brains, +and now you must forbear your activity and see what the great Soul +showeth. + +The immortality of man is as legitimately preached from the +intellections as from the moral volitions. Every intellection is mainly +prospective. Its present value is its least. Inspect what delights you +in Plutarch, in Shakspeare, in Cervantes. Each truth that a writer +acquires is a lantern, which he turns full on what facts and thoughts +lay already in his mind, and behold, all the mats and rubbish which had +littered his garret become precious. Every trivial fact in his private +biography becomes an illustration of this new principle, revisits the +day, and delights all men by its piquancy and new charm. Men say, Where +did he get this? and think there was something divine in his life. But +no; they have myriads of facts just as good, would they only get a lamp +to ransack their attics withal. + +We are all wise. The difference between persons is not in wisdom but in +art. I knew, in an academical club, a person who always deferred to me; +who, seeing my whim for writing, fancied that my experiences had +somewhat superior; whilst I saw that his experiences were as good as +mine. Give them to me and I would make the same use of them. He held +the old; he holds the new; I had the habit of tacking together the old +and the new which he did not use to exercise. This may hold in the +great examples. Perhaps if we should meet Shakspeare we should not be +conscious of any steep inferiority; no, but of a great equality,—only +that he possessed a strange skill of using, of classifying, his facts, +which we lacked. For notwithstanding our utter incapacity to produce +anything like Hamlet and Othello, see the perfect reception this wit +and immense knowledge of life and liquid eloquence find in us all. + +If you gather apples in the sunshine, or make hay, or hoe corn, and +then retire within doors and shut your eyes and press them with your +hand, you shall still see apples hanging in the bright light with +boughs and leaves thereto, or the tasselled grass, or the corn-flags, +and this for five or six hours afterwards. There lie the impressions on +the retentive organ, though you knew it not. So lies the whole series +of natural images with which your life has made you acquainted, in your +memory, though you know it not; and a thrill of passion flashes light +on their dark chamber, and the active power seizes instantly the fit +image, as the word of its momentary thought. + +It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, +is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our +wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, +and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; +until by and by we begin to suspect that the biography of the one +foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature +paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History. + +In the intellect constructive, which we popularly designate by the word +Genius, we observe the same balance of two elements as in intellect +receptive. The constructive intellect produces thoughts, sentences, +poems, plans, designs, systems. It is the generation of the mind, the +marriage of thought with nature. To genius must always go two gifts, +the thought and the publication. The first is revelation, always a +miracle, which no frequency of occurrence or incessant study can ever +familiarize, but which must always leave the inquirer stupid with +wonder. It is the advent of truth into the world, a form of thought now +for the first time bursting into the universe, a child of the old +eternal soul, a piece of genuine and immeasurable greatness. It seems, +for the time, to inherit all that has yet existed and to dictate to the +unborn. It affects every thought of man and goes to fashion every +institution. But to make it available it needs a vehicle or art by +which it is conveyed to men. To be communicable it must become picture +or sensible object. We must learn the language of facts. The most +wonderful inspirations die with their subject if he has no hand to +paint them to the senses. The ray of light passes invisible through +space and only when it falls on an object is it seen. When the +spiritual energy is directed on something outward, then it is a +thought. The relation between it and you first makes you, the value of +you, apparent to me. The rich inventive genius of the painter must be +smothered and lost for want of the power of drawing, and in our happy +hours we should be inexhaustible poets if once we could break through +the silence into adequate rhyme. As all men have some access to primary +truth, so all have some art or power of communication in their head, +but only in the artist does it descend into the hand. There is an +inequality, whose laws we do not yet know, between two men and between +two moments of the same man, in respect to this faculty. In common +hours we have the same facts as in the uncommon or inspired, but they +do not sit for their portraits; they are not detached, but lie in a +web. The thought of genius is spontaneous; but the power of picture or +expression, in the most enriched and flowing nature, implies a mixture +of will, a certain control over the spontaneous states, without which +no production is possible. It is a conversion of all nature into the +rhetoric of thought, under the eye of judgment, with a strenuous +exercise of choice. And yet the imaginative vocabulary seems to be +spontaneous also. It does not flow from experience only or mainly, but +from a richer source. Not by any conscious imitation of particular +forms are the grand strokes of the painter executed, but by repairing +to the fountain-head of all forms in his mind. Who is the first +drawing-master? Without instruction we know very well the ideal of the +human form. A child knows if an arm or a leg be distorted in a picture; +if the attitude be natural or grand or mean; though he has never +received any instruction in drawing or heard any conversation on the +subject, nor can himself draw with correctness a single feature. A good +form strikes all eyes pleasantly, long before they have any science on +the subject, and a beautiful face sets twenty hearts in palpitation, +prior to all consideration of the mechanical proportions of the +features and head. We may owe to dreams some light on the fountain of +this skill; for as soon as we let our will go and let the unconscious +states ensue, see what cunning draughtsmen we are! We entertain +ourselves with wonderful forms of men, of women, of animals, of +gardens, of woods and of monsters, and the mystic pencil wherewith we +then draw has no awkwardness or inexperience, no meagreness or poverty; +it can design well and group well; its composition is full of art, its +colors are well laid on and the whole canvas which it paints is +lifelike and apt to touch us with terror, with tenderness, with desire +and with grief. Neither are the artist’s copies from experience ever +mere copies, but always touched and softened by tints from this ideal +domain. + +The conditions essential to a constructive mind do not appear to be so +often combined but that a good sentence or verse remains fresh and +memorable for a long time. Yet when we write with ease and come out +into the free air of thought, we seem to be assured that nothing is +easier than to continue this communication at pleasure. Up, down, +around, the kingdom of thought has no inclosures, but the Muse makes us +free of her city. Well, the world has a million writers. One would +think then that good thought would be as familiar as air and water, and +the gifts of each new hour would exclude the last. Yet we can count all +our good books; nay, I remember any beautiful verse for twenty years. +It is true that the discerning intellect of the world is always much in +advance of the creative, so that there are many competent judges of the +best book, and few writers of the best books. But some of the +conditions of intellectual construction are of rare occurrence. The +intellect is a whole and demands integrity in every work. This is +resisted equally by a man’s devotion to a single thought and by his +ambition to combine too many. + +Truth is our element of life, yet if a man fasten his attention on a +single aspect of truth and apply himself to that alone for a long time, +the truth becomes distorted and not itself but falsehood; herein +resembling the air, which is our natural element, and the breath of our +nostrils, but if a stream of the same be directed on the body for a +time, it causes cold, fever, and even death. How wearisome the +grammarian, the phrenologist, the political or religious fanatic, or +indeed any possessed mortal whose balance is lost by the exaggeration +of a single topic. It is incipient insanity. Every thought is a prison +also. I cannot see what you see, because I am caught up by a strong +wind and blown so far in one direction that I am out of the hoop of +your horizon. + +Is it any better if the student, to avoid this offence, and to +liberalize himself, aims to make a mechanical whole of history, or +science, or philosophy, by a numerical addition of all the facts that +fall within his vision? The world refuses to be analyzed by addition +and subtraction. When we are young we spend much time and pains in +filling our note-books with all definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry, +Politics, Art, in the hope that in the course of a few years we shall +have condensed into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theories +at which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tables get +no completeness, and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola, +whose arcs will never meet. + +Neither by detachment neither by aggregation is the integrity of the +intellect transmitted to its works, but by a vigilance which brings the +intellect in its greatness and best state to operate every moment. It +must have the same wholeness which nature has. Although no diligence +can rebuild the universe in a model by the best accumulation or +disposition of details, yet does the world reappear in miniature in +every event, so that all the laws of nature may be read in the smallest +fact. The intellect must have the like perfection in its apprehension +and in its works. For this reason, an index or mercury of intellectual +proficiency is the perception of identity. We talk with accomplished +persons who appear to be strangers in nature. The cloud, the tree, the +turf, the bird are not theirs, have nothing of them; the world is only +their lodging and table. But the poet, whose verses are to be spheral +and complete, is one whom Nature cannot deceive, whatsoever face of +strangeness she may put on. He feels a strict consanguinity, and +detects more likeness than variety in all her changes. We are stung by +the desire for new thought; but when we receive a new thought it is +only the old thought with a new face, and though we make it our own we +instantly crave another; we are not really enriched. For the truth was +in us before it was reflected to us from natural objects; and the +profound genius will cast the likeness of all creatures into every +product of his wit. + +But if the constructive powers are rare and it is given to few men to +be poets, yet every man is a receiver of this descending holy ghost, +and may well study the laws of its influx. Exactly parallel is the +whole rule of intellectual duty to the rule of moral duty. A +self-denial no less austere than the saint’s is demanded of the +scholar. He must worship truth, and forego all things for that, and +choose defeat and pain, so that his treasure in thought is thereby +augmented. + +God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take +which you please,—you can never have both. Between these, as a +pendulum, man oscillates. He in whom the love of repose predominates +will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political +party he meets,—most likely his father’s. He gets rest, commodity, and +reputation; but he shuts the door of truth. He in whom the love of +truth predominates will keep himself aloof from all moorings, and +afloat. He will abstain from dogmatism, and recognize all the opposite +negations between which, as walls, his being is swung. He submits to +the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion, but he is a +candidate for truth, as the other is not, and respects the highest law +of his being. + +The circle of the green earth he must measure with his shoes to find +the man who can yield him truth. He shall then know that there is +somewhat more blessed and great in hearing than in speaking. Happy is +the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man. As long as I hear truth I am +bathed by a beautiful element and am not conscious of any limits to my +nature. The suggestions are thousandfold that I hear and see. The +waters of the great deep have ingress and egress to the soul. But if I +speak, I define, I confine and am less. When Socrates speaks, Lysis and +Menexenus are afflicted by no shame that they do not speak. They also +are good. He likewise defers to them, loves them, whilst he speaks. +Because a true and natural man contains and is the same truth which an +eloquent man articulates; but in the eloquent man, because he can +articulate it, it seems something the less to reside, and he turns to +these silent beautiful with the more inclination and respect. The +ancient sentence said, Let us be silent, for so are the gods. Silence +is a solvent that destroys personality, and gives us leave to be great +and universal. Every man’s progress is through a succession of +teachers, each of whom seems at the time to have a superlative +influence, but it at last gives place to a new. Frankly let him accept +it all. Jesus says, Leave father, mother, house and lands, and follow +me. Who leaves all, receives more. This is as true intellectually as +morally. Each new mind we approach seems to require an abdication of +all our past and present possessions. A new doctrine seems at first a +subversion of all our opinions, tastes, and manner of living. Such has +Swedenborg, such has Kant, such has Coleridge, such has Hegel or his +interpreter Cousin seemed to many young men in this country. Take +thankfully and heartily all they can give. Exhaust them, wrestle with +them, let them not go until their blessing be won, and after a short +season the dismay will be overpast, the excess of influence withdrawn, +and they will be no longer an alarming meteor, but one more bright star +shining serenely in your heaven and blending its light with all your +day. + +But whilst he gives himself up unreservedly to that which draws him, +because that is his own, he is to refuse himself to that which draws +him not, whatsoever fame and authority may attend it, because it is not +his own. Entire self-reliance belongs to the intellect. One soul is a +counterpoise of all souls, as a capillary column of water is a balance +for the sea. It must treat things and books and sovereign genius as +itself also a sovereign. If Æschylus be that man he is taken for, he +has not yet done his office when he has educated the learned of Europe +for a thousand years. He is now to approve himself a master of delight +to me also. If he cannot do that, all his fame shall avail him nothing +with me. I were a fool not to sacrifice a thousand Æschyluses to my +intellectual integrity. Especially take the same ground in regard to +abstract truth, the science of the mind. The Bacon, the Spinoza, the +Hume, Schelling, Kant, or whosoever propounds to you a philosophy of +the mind, is only a more or less awkward translator of things in your +consciousness which you have also your way of seeing, perhaps of +denominating. Say then, instead of too timidly poring into his obscure +sense, that he has not succeeded in rendering back to you your +consciousness. He has not succeeded; now let another try. If Plato +cannot, perhaps Spinoza will. If Spinoza cannot, then perhaps Kant. +Anyhow, when at last it is done, you will find it is no recondite, but +a simple, natural, common state which the writer restores to you. + +But let us end these didactics. I will not, though the subject might +provoke it, speak to the open question between Truth and Love. I shall +not presume to interfere in the old politics of the skies;—“The +cherubim know most; the seraphim love most.” The gods shall settle +their own quarrels. But I cannot recite, even thus rudely, laws of the +intellect, without remembering that lofty and sequestered class of men +who have been its prophets and oracles, the high-priesthood of the pure +reason, the _Trismegisti_, the expounders of the principles of thought +from age to age. When at long intervals we turn over their abstruse +pages, wonderful seems the calm and grand air of these few, these great +spiritual lords who have walked in the world,—these of the old +religion,—dwelling in a worship which makes the sanctities of +Christianity look _parvenues_ and popular; for “persuasion is in soul, +but necessity is in intellect.” This band of grandees, Hermes, +Heraclitus, Empedocles, Plato, Plotinus, Olympiodorus, Proclus, +Synesius and the rest, have somewhat so vast in their logic, so primary +in their thinking, that it seems antecedent to all the ordinary +distinctions of rhetoric and literature, and to be at once poetry and +music and dancing and astronomy and mathematics. I am present at the +sowing of the seed of the world. With a geometry of sunbeams the soul +lays the foundations of nature. The truth and grandeur of their thought +is proved by its scope and applicability, for it commands the entire +schedule and inventory of things for its illustration. But what marks +its elevation and has even a comic look to us, is the innocent serenity +with which these babe-like Jupiters sit in their clouds, and from age +to age prattle to each other and to no contemporary. Well assured that +their speech is intelligible and the most natural thing in the world, +they add thesis to thesis, without a moment’s heed of the universal +astonishment of the human race below, who do not comprehend their +plainest argument; nor do they ever relent so much as to insert a +popular or explaining sentence, nor testify the least displeasure or +petulance at the dulness of their amazed auditory. The angels are so +enamored of the language that is spoken in heaven that they will not +distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but +speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not. + + + + +XII. +ART + + +Give to barrows trays and pans +Grace and glimmer of romance, +Bring the moonlight into noon +Hid in gleaming piles of stone; +On the city’s paved street +Plant gardens lined with lilac sweet, +Let spouting fountains cool the air, +Singing in the sun-baked square. +Let statue, picture, park and hall, +Ballad, flag and festival, +The past restore, the day adorn +And make each morrow a new morn +So shall the drudge in dusty frock +Spy behind the city clock +Retinues of airy kings, +Skirts of angels, starry wings, +His fathers shining in bright fables, +His children fed at heavenly tables. +’Tis the privilege of Art +Thus to play its cheerful part, +Man in Earth to acclimate +And bend the exile to his fate, +And, moulded of one element +With the days and firmament, +Teach him on these as stairs to climb +And live on even terms with Time; +Whilst upper life the slender rill +Of human sense doth overfill. + + + + +ART + + +Because the soul is progressive, it never quite repeats itself, but in +every act attempts the production of a new and fairer whole. This +appears in works both of the useful and the fine arts, if we employ the +popular distinction of works according to their aim either at use or +beauty. Thus in our fine arts, not imitation but creation is the aim. +In landscapes the painter should give the suggestion of a fairer +creation than we know. The details, the prose of nature he should omit +and give us only the spirit and splendor. He should know that the +landscape has beauty for his eye because it expresses a thought which +is to him good; and this because the same power which sees through his +eyes is seen in that spectacle; and he will come to value the +expression of nature and not nature itself, and so exalt in his copy +the features that please him. He will give the gloom of gloom and the +sunshine of sunshine. In a portrait he must inscribe the character and +not the features, and must esteem the man who sits to him as himself +only an imperfect picture or likeness of the aspiring original within. + +What is that abridgment and selection we observe in all spiritual +activity, but itself the creative impulse? for it is the inlet of that +higher illumination which teaches to convey a larger sense by simpler +symbols. What is a man but nature’s finer success in self-explication? +What is a man but a finer and compacter landscape than the horizon +figures,—nature’s eclecticism? and what is his speech, his love of +painting, love of nature, but a still finer success,—all the weary +miles and tons of space and bulk left out, and the spirit or moral of +it contracted into a musical word, or the most cunning stroke of the +pencil? + +But the artist must employ the symbols in use in his day and nation to +convey his enlarged sense to his fellow-men. Thus the new in art is +always formed out of the old. The Genius of the Hour sets his +ineffaceable seal on the work and gives it an inexpressible charm for +the imagination. As far as the spiritual character of the period +overpowers the artist and finds expression in his work, so far it will +retain a certain grandeur, and will represent to future beholders the +Unknown, the Inevitable, the Divine. No man can quite exclude this +element of Necessity from his labor. No man can quite emancipate +himself from his age and country, or produce a model in which the +education, the religion, the politics, usages and arts of his times +shall have no share. Though he were never so original, never so wilful +and fantastic, he cannot wipe out of his work every trace of the +thoughts amidst which it grew. The very avoidance betrays the usage he +avoids. Above his will and out of his sight he is necessitated by the +air he breathes and the idea on which he and his contemporaries live +and toil, to share the manner of his times, without knowing what that +manner is. Now that which is inevitable in the work has a higher charm +than individual talent can ever give, inasmuch as the artist’s pen or +chisel seems to have been held and guided by a gigantic hand to +inscribe a line in the history of the human race. This circumstance +gives a value to the Egyptian hieroglyphics, to the Indian, Chinese and +Mexican idols, however gross and shapeless. They denote the height of +the human soul in that hour, and were not fantastic, but sprung from a +necessity as deep as the world. Shall I now add that the whole extant +product of the plastic arts has herein its highest value, _as history;_ +as a stroke drawn in the portrait of that fate, perfect and beautiful, +according to whose ordinations all beings advance to their beatitude? + +Thus, historically viewed, it has been the office of art to educate the +perception of beauty. We are immersed in beauty, but our eyes have no +clear vision. It needs, by the exhibition of single traits, to assist +and lead the dormant taste. We carve and paint, or we behold what is +carved and painted, as students of the mystery of Form. The virtue of +art lies in detachment, in sequestering one object from the +embarrassing variety. Until one thing comes out from the connection of +things, there can be enjoyment, contemplation, but no thought. Our +happiness and unhappiness are unproductive. The infant lies in a +pleasing trance, but his individual character and his practical power +depend on his daily progress in the separation of things, and dealing +with one at a time. Love and all the passions concentrate all existence +around a single form. It is the habit of certain minds to give an +all-excluding fulness to the object, the thought, the word, they alight +upon, and to make that for the time the deputy of the world. These are +the artists, the orators, the leaders of society. The power to detach +and to magnify by detaching is the essence of rhetoric in the hands of +the orator and the poet. This rhetoric, or power to fix the momentary +eminency of an object,—so remarkable in Burke, in Byron, in +Carlyle,—the painter and sculptor exhibit in color and in stone. The +power depends on the depth of the artist’s insight of that object he +contemplates. For every object has its roots in central nature, and may +of course be so exhibited to us as to represent the world. Therefore +each work of genius is the tyrant of the hour and concentrates +attention on itself. For the time, it is the only thing worth naming to +do that,—be it a sonnet, an opera, a landscape, a statue, an oration, +the plan of a temple, of a campaign, or of a voyage of discovery. +Presently we pass to some other object, which rounds itself into a +whole as did the first; for example a well-laid garden; and nothing +seems worth doing but the laying out of gardens. I should think fire +the best thing in the world, if I were not acquainted with air, and +water, and earth. For it is the right and property of all natural +objects, of all genuine talents, of all native properties whatsoever, +to be for their moment the top of the world. A squirrel leaping from +bough to bough and making the Wood but one wide tree for his pleasure, +fills the eye not less than a lion,—is beautiful, self-sufficing, and +stands then and there for nature. A good ballad draws my ear and heart +whilst I listen, as much as an epic has done before. A dog, drawn by a +master, or a litter of pigs, satisfies and is a reality not less than +the frescoes of Angelo. From this succession of excellent objects we +learn at last the immensity of the world, the opulence of human nature, +which can run out to infinitude in any direction. But I also learn that +what astonished and fascinated me in the first work astonished me in +the second work also; that excellence of all things is one. + +The office of painting and sculpture seems to be merely initial. The +best pictures can easily tell us their last secret. The best pictures +are rude draughts of a few of the miraculous dots and lines and dyes +which make up the ever-changing “landscape with figures” amidst which +we dwell. Painting seems to be to the eye what dancing is to the limbs. +When that has educated the frame to self-possession, to nimbleness, to +grace, the steps of the dancing-master are better forgotten; so +painting teaches me the splendor of color and the expression of form, +and as I see many pictures and higher genius in the art, I see the +boundless opulence of the pencil, the indifferency in which the artist +stands free to choose out of the possible forms. If he can draw every +thing, why draw any thing? and then is my eye opened to the eternal +picture which nature paints in the street, with moving men and +children, beggars and fine ladies, draped in red and green and blue and +gray; long-haired, grizzled, white-faced, black-faced, wrinkled, giant, +dwarf, expanded, elfish,—capped and based by heaven, earth and sea. + +A gallery of sculpture teaches more austerely the same lesson. As +picture teaches the coloring, so sculpture the anatomy of form. When I +have seen fine statues and afterwards enter a public assembly, I +understand well what he meant who said, “When I have been reading +Homer, all men look like giants.” I too see that painting and sculpture +are gymnastics of the eye, its training to the niceties and curiosities +of its function. There is no statue like this living man, with his +infinite advantage over all ideal sculpture, of perpetual variety. What +a gallery of art have I here! No mannerist made these varied groups and +diverse original single figures. Here is the artist himself +improvising, grim and glad, at his block. Now one thought strikes him, +now another, and with each moment he alters the whole air, attitude and +expression of his clay. Away with your nonsense of oil and easels, of +marble and chisels; except to open your eyes to the masteries of +eternal art, they are hypocritical rubbish. + +The reference of all production at last to an aboriginal Power explains +the traits common to all works of the highest art,—that they are +universally intelligible; that they restore to us the simplest states +of mind, and are religious. Since what skill is therein shown is the +reappearance of the original soul, a jet of pure light, it should +produce a similar impression to that made by natural objects. In happy +hours, nature appears to us one with art; art perfected,—the work of +genius. And the individual, in whom simple tastes and susceptibility to +all the great human influences overpower the accidents of a local and +special culture, is the best critic of art. Though we travel the world +over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it +not. The best of beauty is a finer charm than skill in surfaces, in +outlines, or rules of art can ever teach, namely a radiation from the +work of art of human character,—a wonderful expression through stone, +or canvas, or musical sound, of the deepest and simplest attributes of +our nature, and therefore most intelligible at last to those souls +which have these attributes. In the sculptures of the Greeks, in the +masonry of the Romans, and in the pictures of the Tuscan and Venetian +masters, the highest charm is the universal language they speak. A +confession of moral nature, of purity, love, and hope, breathes from +them all. That which we carry to them, the same we bring back more +fairly illustrated in the memory. The traveller who visits the Vatican, +and passes from chamber to chamber through galleries of statues, vases, +sarcophagi and candelabra, through all forms of beauty cut in the +richest materials, is in danger of forgetting the simplicity of the +principles out of which they all sprung, and that they had their origin +from thoughts and laws in his own breast. He studies the technical +rules on these wonderful remains, but forgets that these works were not +always thus constellated; that they are the contributions of many ages +and many countries; that each came out of the solitary workshop of one +artist, who toiled perhaps in ignorance of the existence of other +sculpture, created his work without other model save life, household +life, and the sweet and smart of personal relations, of beating hearts, +and meeting eyes; of poverty and necessity and hope and fear. These +were his inspirations, and these are the effects he carries home to +your heart and mind. In proportion to his force, the artist will find +in his work an outlet for his proper character. He must not be in any +manner pinched or hindered by his material, but through his necessity +of imparting himself the adamant will be wax in his hands, and will +allow an adequate communication of himself, in his full stature and +proportion. He need not cumber himself with a conventional nature and +culture, nor ask what is the mode in Rome or in Paris, but that house +and weather and manner of living which poverty and the fate of birth +have made at once so odious and so dear, in the gray unpainted wood +cabin, on the corner of a New Hampshire farm, or in the log-hut of the +backwoods, or in the narrow lodging where he has endured the +constraints and seeming of a city poverty, will serve as well as any +other condition as the symbol of a thought which pours itself +indifferently through all. + +I remember when in my younger days I had heard of the wonders of +Italian painting, I fancied the great pictures would be great +strangers; some surprising combination of color and form; a foreign +wonder, barbaric pearl and gold, like the spontoons and standards of +the militia, which play such pranks in the eyes and imaginations of +school-boys. I was to see and acquire I knew not what. When I came at +last to Rome and saw with eyes the pictures, I found that genius left +to novices the gay and fantastic and ostentatious, and itself pierced +directly to the simple and true; that it was familiar and sincere; that +it was the old, eternal fact I had met already in so many forms,—unto +which I lived; that it was the plain _you and me_ I knew so well,—had +left at home in so many conversations. I had the same experience +already in a church at Naples. There I saw that nothing was changed +with me but the place, and said to myself—‘Thou foolish child, hast +thou come out hither, over four thousand miles of salt water, to find +that which was perfect to thee there at home?’ That fact I saw again in +the Academmia at Naples, in the chambers of sculpture, and yet again +when I came to Rome and to the paintings of Raphael, Angelo, Sacchi, +Titian, and Leonardo da Vinci. “What, old mole! workest thou in the +earth so fast?” It had travelled by my side; that which I fancied I had +left in Boston was here in the Vatican, and again at Milan and at +Paris, and made all travelling ridiculous as a treadmill. I now require +this of all pictures, that they domesticate me, not that they dazzle +me. Pictures must not be too picturesque. Nothing astonishes men so +much as common-sense and plain dealing. All great actions have been +simple, and all great pictures are. + +The Transfiguration, by Raphael, is an eminent example of this peculiar +merit. A calm benignant beauty shines over all this picture, and goes +directly to the heart. It seems almost to call you by name. The sweet +and sublime face of Jesus is beyond praise, yet how it disappoints all +florid expectations! This familiar, simple, home-speaking countenance +is as if one should meet a friend. The knowledge of picture-dealers has +its value, but listen not to their criticism when your heart is touched +by genius. It was not painted for them, it was painted for you; for +such as had eyes capable of being touched by simplicity and lofty +emotions. + +Yet when we have said all our fine things about the arts, we must end +with a frank confession, that the arts, as we know them, are but +initial. Our best praise is given to what they aimed and promised, not +to the actual result. He has conceived meanly of the resources of man, +who believes that the best age of production is past. The real value of +the Iliad or the Transfiguration is as signs of power; billows or +ripples they are of the stream of tendency; tokens of the everlasting +effort to produce, which even in its worst estate the soul betrays. Art +has not yet come to its maturity if it do not put itself abreast with +the most potent influences of the world, if it is not practical and +moral, if it do not stand in connection with the conscience, if it do +not make the poor and uncultivated feel that it addresses them with a +voice of lofty cheer. There is higher work for Art than the arts. They +are abortive births of an imperfect or vitiated instinct. Art is the +need to create; but in its essence, immense and universal, it is +impatient of working with lame or tied hands, and of making cripples +and monsters, such as all pictures and statues are. Nothing less than +the creation of man and nature is its end. A man should find in it an +outlet for his whole energy. He may paint and carve only as long as he +can do that. Art should exhilarate, and throw down the walls of +circumstance on every side, awakening in the beholder the same sense of +universal relation and power which the work evinced in the artist, and +its highest effect is to make new artists. + +Already History is old enough to witness the old age and disappearance +of particular arts. The art of sculpture is long ago perished to any +real effect. It was originally a useful art, a mode of writing, a +savage’s record of gratitude or devotion, and among a people possessed +of a wonderful perception of form this childish carving was refined to +the utmost splendor of effect. But it is the game of a rude and +youthful people, and not the manly labor of a wise and spiritual +nation. Under an oak-tree loaded with leaves and nuts, under a sky full +of eternal eyes, I stand in a thoroughfare; but in the works of our +plastic arts and especially of sculpture, creation is driven into a +corner. I cannot hide from myself that there is a certain appearance of +paltriness, as of toys and the trumpery of a theatre, in sculpture. +Nature transcends all our moods of thought, and its secret we do not +yet find. But the gallery stands at the mercy of our moods, and there +is a moment when it becomes frivolous. I do not wonder that Newton, +with an attention habitually engaged on the paths of planets and suns, +should have wondered what the Earl of Pembroke found to admire in +“stone dolls.” Sculpture may serve to teach the pupil how deep is the +secret of form, how purely the spirit can translate its meanings into +that eloquent dialect. But the statue will look cold and false before +that new activity which needs to roll through all things, and is +impatient of counterfeits and things not alive. Picture and sculpture +are the celebrations and festivities of form. But true art is never +fixed, but always flowing. The sweetest music is not in the oratorio, +but in the human voice when it speaks from its instant life tones of +tenderness, truth, or courage. The oratorio has already lost its +relation to the morning, to the sun, and the earth, but that persuading +voice is in tune with these. All works of art should not be detached, +but extempore performances. A great man is a new statue in every +attitude and action. A beautiful woman is a picture which drives all +beholders nobly mad. Life may be lyric or epic, as well as a poem or a +romance. + +A true announcement of the law of creation, if a man were found worthy +to declare it, would carry art up into the kingdom of nature, and +destroy its separate and contrasted existence. The fountains of +invention and beauty in modern society are all but dried up. A popular +novel, a theatre, or a ball-room makes us feel that we are all paupers +in the alms-house of this world, without dignity, without skill or +industry. Art is as poor and low. The old tragic Necessity, which +lowers on the brows even of the Venuses and the Cupids of the antique, +and furnishes the sole apology for the intrusion of such anomalous +figures into nature,—namely, that they were inevitable; that the artist +was drunk with a passion for form which he could not resist, and which +vented itself in these fine extravagances,—no longer dignifies the +chisel or the pencil. But the artist and the connoisseur now seek in +art the exhibition of their talent, or an asylum from the evils of +life. Men are not well pleased with the figure they make in their own +imaginations, and they flee to art, and convey their better sense in an +oratorio, a statue, or a picture. Art makes the same effort which a +sensual prosperity makes; namely to detach the beautiful from the +useful, to do up the work as unavoidable, and, hating it, pass on to +enjoyment. These solaces and compensations, this division of beauty +from use, the laws of nature do not permit. As soon as beauty is +sought, not from religion and love but for pleasure, it degrades the +seeker. High beauty is no longer attainable by him in canvas or in +stone, in sound, or in lyrical construction; an effeminate, prudent, +sickly beauty, which is not beauty, is all that can be formed; for the +hand can never execute any thing higher than the character can inspire. + +The art that thus separates is itself first separated. Art must not be +a superficial talent, but must begin farther back in man. Now men do +not see nature to be beautiful, and they go to make a statue which +shall be. They abhor men as tasteless, dull, and inconvertible, and +console themselves with color-bags and blocks of marble. They reject +life as prosaic, and create a death which they call poetic. They +despatch the day’s weary chores, and fly to voluptuous reveries. They +eat and drink, that they may afterwards execute the ideal. Thus is art +vilified; the name conveys to the mind its secondary and bad senses; it +stands in the imagination as somewhat contrary to nature, and struck +with death from the first. Would it not be better to begin higher +up,—to serve the ideal before they eat and drink; to serve the ideal in +eating and drinking, in drawing the breath, and in the functions of +life? Beauty must come back to the useful arts, and the distinction +between the fine and the useful arts be forgotten. If history were +truly told, if life were nobly spent, it would be no longer easy or +possible to distinguish the one from the other. In nature, all is +useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful because it is +alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful because it is +symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a +legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in +Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the +feet of brave and earnest men. It is in vain that we look for genius to +reiterate its miracles in the old arts; it is its instinct to find +beauty and holiness in new and necessary facts, in the field and +road-side, in the shop and mill. Proceeding from a religious heart it +will raise to a divine use the railroad, the insurance office, the +joint-stock company; our law, our primary assemblies, our commerce, the +galvanic battery, the electric jar, the prism, and the chemist’s +retort; in which we seek now only an economical use. Is not the selfish +and even cruel aspect which belongs to our great mechanical works, to +mills, railways, and machinery, the effect of the mercenary impulses +which these works obey? When its errands are noble and adequate, a +steamboat bridging the Atlantic between Old and New England and +arriving at its ports with the punctuality of a planet, is a step of +man into harmony with nature. The boat at St. Petersburg, which plies +along the Lena by magnetism, needs little to make it sublime. When +science is learned in love, and its powers are wielded by love, they +will appear the supplements and continuations of the material creation. + + + Next Volume + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS, FIRST SERIES *** + +***** This file should be named 2944-0.txt or 2944-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/4/2944/ + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the +United States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Essays, First Series</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: December, 2001 [eBook #2944]<br /> +[Most recently updated: February 10, 2021]</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Tony Adam and David Widger</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS, FIRST SERIES ***</div> + +<h1> +ESSAYS, FIRST SERIES +</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break"> +By Ralph Waldo Emerson +</h2> + +<hr /> + +<h3> +Contents +</h3> + +<table summary="" style=""> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> I. HISTORY</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> II. SELF-RELIANCE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> III. COMPENSATION</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> IV. SPIRITUAL LAWS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> V. LOVE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> VI. FRIENDSHIP</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VII. PRUDENCE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VIII. HEROISM</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> IX. THE OVER-SOUL</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> X. CIRCLES</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> XI. INTELLECT</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> XII. ART</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> +<p> +<br /> +</p> +<table summary="" border="3" cellpadding="4"> +<tbody> +<tr> +<td> + <a +href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2945/2945-h/2945-h.htm">Next +Volume</a> +</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"></a>I.<br /> +HISTORY</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +There is no great and no small<br /> +To the Soul that maketh all:<br /> +And where it cometh, all things are<br /> +And it cometh everywhere. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p class="poem"> +I am owner of the sphere,<br /> +Of the seven stars and the solar year,<br /> +Of Cæsar’s hand, and Plato’s brain,<br /> +Of Lord Christ’s heart, and Shakspeare’s strain. +</p> + +<h2>HISTORY</h2> + +<p> +There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the +same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is +made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what +a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can +understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or +can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent. +</p> + +<p> +Of the works of this mind history is the record. Its genius is illustrated by +the entire series of days. Man is explicable by nothing less than all his +history. Without hurry, without rest, the human spirit goes forth from the +beginning to embody every faculty, every thought, every emotion, which belongs +to it, in appropriate events. But the thought is always prior to the fact; all +the facts of history preexist in the mind as laws. Each law in turn is made by +circumstances predominant, and the limits of nature give power to but one at a +time. A man is the whole encyclopaedia of facts. The creation of a thousand +forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, America, lie +folded already in the first man. Epoch after epoch, camp, kingdom, empire, +republic, democracy, are merely the application of his manifold spirit to the +manifold world. +</p> + +<p> +This human mind wrote history, and this must read it. The Sphinx must solve her +own riddle. If the whole of history is in one man, it is all to be explained +from individual experience. There is a relation between the hours of our life +and the centuries of time. As the air I breathe is drawn from the great +repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred +millions of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium +of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed by the +ages and the ages explained by the hours. Of the universal mind each individual +man is one more incarnation. All its properties consist in him. Each new fact +in his private experience flashes a light on what great bodies of men have +done, and the crises of his life refer to national crises. Every revolution was +first a thought in one man’s mind, and when the same thought occurs to +another man, it is the key to that era. Every reform was once a private +opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again it will solve the problem +of the age. The fact narrated must correspond to something in me to be credible +or intelligible. We, as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and +king, martyr and executioner; must fasten these images to some reality in our +secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly. What befell Asdrubal or +Cæsar Borgia is as much an illustration of the mind’s powers and +depravations as what has befallen us. Each new law and political movement has +meaning for you. Stand before each of its tablets and say, ‘Under this +mask did my Proteus nature hide itself.’ This remedies the defect of our +too great nearness to ourselves. This throws our actions into perspective; and +as crabs, goats, scorpions, the balance and the waterpot lose their meanness +when hung as signs in the zodiac, so I can see my own vices without heat in the +distant persons of Solomon, Alcibiades, and Catiline. +</p> + +<p> +It is the universal nature which gives worth to particular men and things. +Human life, as containing this, is mysterious and inviolable, and we hedge it +round with penalties and laws. All laws derive hence their ultimate reason; all +express more or less distinctly some command of this supreme, illimitable +essence. Property also holds of the soul, covers great spiritual facts, and +instinctively we at first hold to it with swords and laws and wide and complex +combinations. The obscure consciousness of this fact is the light of all our +day, the claim of claims; the plea for education, for justice, for charity; the +foundation of friendship and love and of the heroism and grandeur which belong +to acts of self-reliance. It is remarkable that involuntarily we always read as +superior beings. Universal history, the poets, the romancers, do not in their +stateliest pictures,—in the sacerdotal, the imperial palaces, in the +triumphs of will or of genius,—anywhere lose our ear, anywhere make us +feel that we intrude, that this is for better men; but rather is it true that +in their grandest strokes we feel most at home. All that Shakspeare says of the +king, yonder slip of a boy that reads in the corner feels to be true of +himself. We sympathize in the great moments of history, in the great +discoveries, the great resistances, the great prosperities of +men;—because there law was enacted, the sea was searched, the land was +found, or the blow was struck, <i>for us</i>, as we ourselves in that place +would have done or applauded. +</p> + +<p> +We have the same interest in condition and character. We honor the rich because +they have externally the freedom, power, and grace which we feel to be proper +to man, proper to us. So all that is said of the wise man by Stoic or Oriental +or modern essayist, describes to each reader his own idea, describes his +unattained but attainable self. All literature writes the character of the wise +man. Books, monuments, pictures, conversation, are portraits in which he finds +the lineaments he is forming. The silent and the eloquent praise him and accost +him, and he is stimulated wherever he moves, as by personal allusions. A true +aspirant therefore never needs look for allusions personal and laudatory in +discourse. He hears the commendation, not of himself, but, more sweet, of that +character he seeks, in every word that is said concerning character, yea +further in every fact and circumstance,—in the running river and the +rustling corn. Praise is looked, homage tendered, love flows, from mute nature, +from the mountains and the lights of the firmament. +</p> + +<p> +These hints, dropped as it were from sleep and night, let us use in broad day. +The student is to read history actively and not passively; to esteem his own +life the text, and books the commentary. Thus compelled, the Muse of history +will utter oracles, as never to those who do not respect themselves. I have no +expectation that any man will read history aright who thinks that what was done +in a remote age, by men whose names have resounded far, has any deeper sense +than what he is doing to-day. +</p> + +<p> +The world exists for the education of each man. There is no age or state of +society or mode of action in history to which there is not somewhat +corresponding in his life. Every thing tends in a wonderful manner to +abbreviate itself and yield its own virtue to him. He should see that he can +live all history in his own person. He must sit solidly at home, and not suffer +himself to be bullied by kings or empires, but know that he is greater than all +the geography and all the government of the world; he must transfer the point +of view from which history is commonly read, from Rome and Athens and London, +to himself, and not deny his conviction that he is the court, and if England or +Egypt have any thing to say to him he will try the case; if not, let them for +ever be silent. He must attain and maintain that lofty sight where facts yield +their secret sense, and poetry and annals are alike. The instinct of the mind, +the purpose of nature, betrays itself in the use we make of the signal +narrations of history. Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of +facts. No anchor, no cable, no fences avail to keep a fact a fact. Babylon, +Troy, Tyre, Palestine, and even early Rome are passing already into fiction. +The Garden of Eden, the sun standing still in Gibeon, is poetry thenceforward +to all nations. Who cares what the fact was, when we have made a constellation +of it to hang in heaven an immortal sign? London and Paris and New York must go +the same way. “What is history,” said Napoleon, “but a fable +agreed upon?” This life of ours is stuck round with Egypt, Greece, Gaul, +England, War, Colonization, Church, Court and Commerce, as with so many flowers +and wild ornaments grave and gay. I will not make more account of them. I +believe in Eternity. I can find Greece, Asia, Italy, Spain and the +Islands,—the genius and creative principle of each and of all eras, in my +own mind. +</p> + +<p> +We are always coming up with the emphatic facts of history in our private +experience and verifying them here. All history becomes subjective; in other +words there is properly no history, only biography. Every mind must know the +whole lesson for itself,—must go over the whole ground. What it does not +see, what it does not live, it will not know. What the former age has +epitomized into a formula or rule for manipular convenience, it will lose all +the good of verifying for itself, by means of the wall of that rule. Somewhere, +sometime, it will demand and find compensation for that loss, by doing the work +itself. Ferguson discovered many things in astronomy which had long been known. +The better for him. +</p> + +<p> +History must be this or it is nothing. Every law which the state enacts +indicates a fact in human nature; that is all. We must in ourselves see the +necessary reason of every fact,—see how it could and must be. So stand +before every public and private work; before an oration of Burke, before a +victory of Napoleon, before a martyrdom of Sir Thomas More, of Sidney, of +Marmaduke Robinson; before a French Reign of Terror, and a Salem hanging of +witches; before a fanatic Revival and the Animal Magnetism in Paris, or in +Providence. We assume that we under like influence should be alike affected, +and should achieve the like; and we aim to master intellectually the steps and +reach the same height or the same degradation that our fellow, our proxy has +done. +</p> + +<p> +All inquiry into antiquity, all curiosity respecting the Pyramids, the +excavated cities, Stonehenge, the Ohio Circles, Mexico, Memphis,—is the +desire to do away this wild, savage, and preposterous There or Then, and +introduce in its place the Here and the Now. Belzoni digs and measures in the +mummy-pits and pyramids of Thebes, until he can see the end of the difference +between the monstrous work and himself. When he has satisfied himself, in +general and in detail, that it was made by such a person as he, so armed and so +motived, and to ends to which he himself should also have worked, the problem +is solved; his thought lives along the whole line of temples and sphinxes and +catacombs, passes through them all with satisfaction, and they live again to +the mind, or are now. +</p> + +<p> +A Gothic cathedral affirms that it was done by us and not done by us. Surely it +was by man, but we find it not in our man. But we apply ourselves to the +history of its production. We put ourselves into the place and state of the +builder. We remember the forest-dwellers, the first temples, the adherence to +the first type, and the decoration of it as the wealth of the nation increased; +the value which is given to wood by carving led to the carving over the whole +mountain of stone of a cathedral. When we have gone through this process, and +added thereto the Catholic Church, its cross, its music, its processions, its +Saints’ days and image-worship, we have as it were been the man that made +the minster; we have seen how it could and must be. We have the sufficient +reason. +</p> + +<p> +The difference between men is in their principle of association. Some men +classify objects by color and size and other accidents of appearance; others by +intrinsic likeness, or by the relation of cause and effect. The progress of the +intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface +differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are +friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For +the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. Every chemical +substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, +the variety of appearance. +</p> + +<p> +Upborne and surrounded as we are by this all-creating nature, soft and fluid as +a cloud or the air, why should we be such hard pedants, and magnify a few +forms? Why should we make account of time, or of magnitude, or of figure? The +soul knows them not, and genius, obeying its law, knows how to play with them +as a young child plays with graybeards and in churches. Genius studies the +causal thought, and far back in the womb of things sees the rays parting from +one orb, that diverge, ere they fall, by infinite diameters. Genius watches the +monad through all his masks as he performs the metempsychosis of nature. Genius +detects through the fly, through the caterpillar, through the grub, through the +egg, the constant individual; through countless individuals the fixed species; +through many species the genus; through all genera the steadfast type; through +all the kingdoms of organized life the eternal unity. Nature is a mutable cloud +which is always and never the same. She casts the same thought into troops of +forms, as a poet makes twenty fables with one moral. Through the bruteness and +toughness of matter, a subtle spirit bends all things to its own will. The +adamant streams into soft but precise form before it, and whilst I look at it +its outline and texture are changed again. Nothing is so fleeting as form; yet +never does it quite deny itself. In man we still trace the remains or hints of +all that we esteem badges of servitude in the lower races; yet in him they +enhance his nobleness and grace; as Io, in Æschylus, transformed to a cow, +offends the imagination; but how changed when as Isis in Egypt she meets +Osiris-Jove, a beautiful woman with nothing of the metamorphosis left but the +lunar horns as the splendid ornament of her brows! +</p> + +<p> +The identity of history is equally intrinsic, the diversity equally obvious. +There is, at the surface, infinite variety of things; at the centre there is +simplicity of cause. How many are the acts of one man in which we recognize the +same character! Observe the sources of our information in respect to the Greek +genius. We have the <i>civil history</i> of that people, as Herodotus, +Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plutarch have given it; a very sufficient account of +what manner of persons they were and what they did. We have the same national +mind expressed for us again in their <i>literature</i>, in epic and lyric +poems, drama, and philosophy; a very complete form. Then we have it once more +in their <i>architecture</i>, a beauty as of temperance itself, limited to the +straight line and the square,—a builded geometry. Then we have it once +again in <i>sculpture</i>, the “tongue on the balance of +expression,” a multitude of forms in the utmost freedom of action and +never transgressing the ideal serenity; like votaries performing some religious +dance before the gods, and, though in convulsive pain or mortal combat, never +daring to break the figure and decorum of their dance. Thus of the genius of +one remarkable people we have a fourfold representation: and to the senses what +more unlike than an ode of Pindar, a marble centaur, the peristyle of the +Parthenon, and the last actions of Phocion? +</p> + +<p> +Every one must have observed faces and forms which, without any resembling +feature, make a like impression on the beholder. A particular picture or copy +of verses, if it do not awaken the same train of images, will yet superinduce +the same sentiment as some wild mountain walk, although the resemblance is +nowise obvious to the senses, but is occult and out of the reach of the +understanding. Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few +laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations. +</p> + +<p> +Nature is full of a sublime family likeness throughout her works, and delights +in startling us with resemblances in the most unexpected quarters. I have seen +the head of an old sachem of the forest which at once reminded the eye of a +bald mountain summit, and the furrows of the brow suggested the strata of the +rock. There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the +simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon and the remains of +the earliest Greek art. And there are compositions of the same strain to be +found in the books of all ages. What is Guido’s Rospigliosi Aurora but a +morning thought, as the horses in it are only a morning cloud? If any one will +but take pains to observe the variety of actions to which he is equally +inclined in certain moods of mind, and those to which he is averse, he will see +how deep is the chain of affinity. +</p> + +<p> +A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a +tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form merely,—but, +by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter enters into his +nature and can then draw him at will in every attitude. So Roos “entered +into the inmost nature of a sheep.” I knew a draughtsman employed in a +public survey who found that he could not sketch the rocks until their +geological structure was first explained to him. In a certain state of thought +is the common origin of very diverse works. It is the spirit and not the fact +that is identical. By a deeper apprehension, and not primarily by a painful +acquisition of many manual skills, the artist attains the power of awakening +other souls to a given activity. +</p> + +<p> +It has been said that “common souls pay with what they do, nobler souls +with that which they are.” And why? Because a profound nature awakens in +us by its actions and words, by its very looks and manners, the same power and +beauty that a gallery of sculpture or of pictures addresses. +</p> + +<p> +Civil and natural history, the history of art and of literature, must be +explained from individual history, or must remain words. There is nothing but +is related to us, nothing that does not interest us,—kingdom, college, +tree, horse, or iron shoe,—the roots of all things are in man. Santa +Croce and the Dome of St. Peter’s are lame copies after a divine model. +Strasburg Cathedral is a material counterpart of the soul of Erwin of +Steinbach. The true poem is the poet’s mind; the true ship is the +ship-builder. In the man, could we lay him open, we should see the reason for +the last flourish and tendril of his work; as every spine and tint in the +sea-shell preexists in the secreting organs of the fish. The whole of heraldry +and of chivalry is in courtesy. A man of fine manners shall pronounce your name +with all the ornament that titles of nobility could ever add. +</p> + +<p> +The trivial experience of every day is always verifying some old prediction to +us and converting into things the words and signs which we had heard and seen +without heed. A lady with whom I was riding in the forest said to me that the +woods always seemed to her to wait, as if the genii who inhabit them suspended +their deeds until the wayfarer had passed onward; a thought which poetry has +celebrated in the dance of the fairies, which breaks off on the approach of +human feet. The man who has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds at +midnight, has been present like an archangel at the creation of light and of +the world. I remember one summer day in the fields my companion pointed out to +me a broad cloud, which might extend a quarter of a mile parallel to the +horizon, quite accurately in the form of a cherub as painted over +churches,—a round block in the centre, which it was easy to animate with +eyes and mouth, supported on either side by wide-stretched symmetrical wings. +What appears once in the atmosphere may appear often, and it was undoubtedly +the archetype of that familiar ornament. I have seen in the sky a chain of +summer lightning which at once showed to me that the Greeks drew from nature +when they painted the thunderbolt in the hand of Jove. I have seen a snow-drift +along the sides of the stone wall which obviously gave the idea of the common +architectural scroll to abut a tower. +</p> + +<p> +By surrounding ourselves with the original circumstances we invent anew the +orders and the ornaments of architecture, as we see how each people merely +decorated its primitive abodes. The Doric temple preserves the semblance of the +wooden cabin in which the Dorian dwelt. The Chinese pagoda is plainly a Tartar +tent. The Indian and Egyptian temples still betray the mounds and subterranean +houses of their forefathers. “The custom of making houses and tombs in +the living rock,” says Heeren in his Researches on the Ethiopians, +“determined very naturally the principal character of the Nubian Egyptian +architecture to the colossal form which it assumed. In these caverns, already +prepared by nature, the eye was accustomed to dwell on huge shapes and masses, +so that when art came to the assistance of nature it could not move on a small +scale without degrading itself. What would statues of the usual size, or neat +porches and wings have been, associated with those gigantic halls before which +only Colossi could sit as watchmen or lean on the pillars of the +interior?” +</p> + +<p> +The Gothic church plainly originated in a rude adaptation of the forest trees, +with all their boughs, to a festal or solemn arcade; as the bands about the +cleft pillars still indicate the green withes that tied them. No one can walk +in a road cut through pine woods, without being struck with the architectural +appearance of the grove, especially in winter, when the barrenness of all other +trees shows the low arch of the Saxons. In the woods in a winter afternoon one +will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which the +Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through +the bare and crossing branches of the forest. Nor can any lover of nature enter +the old piles of Oxford and the English cathedrals, without feeling that the +forest overpowered the mind of the builder, and that his chisel, his saw and +plane still reproduced its ferns, its spikes of flowers, its locust, elm, oak, +pine, fir and spruce. +</p> + +<p> +The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone subdued by the insatiable demand +of harmony in man. The mountain of granite blooms into an eternal flower, with +the lightness and delicate finish as well as the aerial proportions and +perspective of vegetable beauty. +</p> + +<p> +In like manner all public facts are to be individualized, all private facts are +to be generalized. Then at once History becomes fluid and true, and Biography +deep and sublime. As the Persian imitated in the slender shafts and capitals of +his architecture the stem and flower of the lotus and palm, so the Persian +court in its magnificent era never gave over the nomadism of its barbarous +tribes, but travelled from Ecbatana, where the spring was spent, to Susa in +summer and to Babylon for the winter. +</p> + +<p> +In the early history of Asia and Africa, Nomadism and Agriculture are the two +antagonist facts. The geography of Asia and of Africa necessitated a nomadic +life. But the nomads were the terror of all those whom the soil or the +advantages of a market had induced to build towns. Agriculture therefore was a +religious injunction, because of the perils of the state from nomadism. And in +these late and civil countries of England and America these propensities still +fight out the old battle, in the nation and in the individual. The nomads of +Africa were constrained to wander, by the attacks of the gad-fly, which drives +the cattle mad, and so compels the tribe to emigrate in the rainy season and to +drive off the cattle to the higher sandy regions. The nomads of Asia follow the +pasturage from month to month. In America and Europe the nomadism is of trade +and curiosity; a progress, certainly, from the gad-fly of Astaboras to the +Anglo and Italo-mania of Boston Bay. Sacred cities, to which a periodical +religious pilgrimage was enjoined, or stringent laws and customs, tending to +invigorate the national bond, were the check on the old rovers; and the +cumulative values of long residence are the restraints on the itineracy of the +present day. The antagonism of the two tendencies is not less active in +individuals, as the love of adventure or the love of repose happens to +predominate. A man of rude health and flowing spirits has the faculty of rapid +domestication, lives in his wagon and roams through all latitudes as easily as +a Calmuc. At sea, or in the forest, or in the snow, he sleeps as warm, dines +with as good appetite, and associates as happily as beside his own chimneys. Or +perhaps his facility is deeper seated, in the increased range of his faculties +of observation, which yield him points of interest wherever fresh objects meet +his eyes. The pastoral nations were needy and hungry to desperation; and this +intellectual nomadism, in its excess, bankrupts the mind through the +dissipation of power on a miscellany of objects. The home-keeping wit, on the +other hand, is that continence or content which finds all the elements of life +in its own soil; and which has its own perils of monotony and deterioration, if +not stimulated by foreign infusions. +</p> + +<p> +Every thing the individual sees without him corresponds to his states of mind, +and every thing is in turn intelligible to him, as his onward thinking leads +him into the truth to which that fact or series belongs. +</p> + +<p> +The primeval world,—the Fore-World, as the Germans say,—I can dive +to it in myself as well as grope for it with researching fingers in catacombs, +libraries, and the broken reliefs and torsos of ruined villas. +</p> + +<p> +What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in Greek history, letters, +art, and poetry, in all its periods from the Heroic or Homeric age down to the +domestic life of the Athenians and Spartans, four or five centuries later? What +but this, that every man passes personally through a Grecian period. The +Grecian state is the era of the bodily nature, the perfection of the +senses,—of the spiritual nature unfolded in strict unity with the body. +In it existed those human forms which supplied the sculptor with his models of +Hercules, Phœbus, and Jove; not like the forms abounding in the streets of +modern cities, wherein the face is a confused blur of features, but composed of +incorrupt, sharply defined and symmetrical features, whose eye-sockets are so +formed that it would be impossible for such eyes to squint and take furtive +glances on this side and on that, but they must turn the whole head. The +manners of that period are plain and fierce. The reverence exhibited is for +personal qualities; courage, address, self-command, justice, strength, +swiftness, a loud voice, a broad chest. Luxury and elegance are not known. A +sparse population and want make every man his own valet, cook, butcher and +soldier, and the habit of supplying his own needs educates the body to +wonderful performances. Such are the Agamemnon and Diomed of Homer, and not far +different is the picture Xenophon gives of himself and his compatriots in the +Retreat of the Ten Thousand. “After the army had crossed the river +Teleboas in Armenia, there fell much snow, and the troops lay miserably on the +ground covered with it. But Xenophon arose naked, and taking an axe, began to +split wood; whereupon others rose and did the like.” Throughout his army +exists a boundless liberty of speech. They quarrel for plunder, they wrangle +with the generals on each new order, and Xenophon is as sharp-tongued as any +and sharper-tongued than most, and so gives as good as he gets. Who does not +see that this is a gang of great boys, with such a code of honor and such lax +discipline as great boys have? +</p> + +<p> +The costly charm of the ancient tragedy, and indeed of all the old literature, +is that the persons speak simply,—speak as persons who have great good +sense without knowing it, before yet the reflective habit has become the +predominant habit of the mind. Our admiration of the antique is not admiration +of the old, but of the natural. The Greeks are not reflective, but perfect in +their senses and in their health, with the finest physical organization in the +world. Adults acted with the simplicity and grace of children. They made vases, +tragedies, and statues, such as healthy senses should,—that is, in good +taste. Such things have continued to be made in all ages, and are now, wherever +a healthy physique exists; but, as a class, from their superior organization, +they have surpassed all. They combine the energy of manhood with the engaging +unconsciousness of childhood. The attraction of these manners is that they +belong to man, and are known to every man in virtue of his being once a child; +besides that there are always individuals who retain these characteristics. A +person of childlike genius and inborn energy is still a Greek, and revives our +love of the Muse of Hellas. I admire the love of nature in the Philoctetes. In +reading those fine apostrophes to sleep, to the stars, rocks, mountains and +waves, I feel time passing away as an ebbing sea. I feel the eternity of man, +the identity of his thought. The Greek had it seems the same fellow-beings as +I. The sun and moon, water and fire, met his heart precisely as they meet mine. +Then the vaunted distinction between Greek and English, between Classic and +Romantic schools, seems superficial and pedantic. When a thought of Plato +becomes a thought to me,—when a truth that fired the soul of Pindar fires +mine, time is no more. When I feel that we two meet in a perception, that our +two souls are tinged with the same hue, and do as it were run into one, why +should I measure degrees of latitude, why should I count Egyptian years? +</p> + +<p> +The student interprets the age of chivalry by his own age of chivalry, and the +days of maritime adventure and circumnavigation by quite parallel miniature +experiences of his own. To the sacred history of the world he has the same key. +When the voice of a prophet out of the deeps of antiquity merely echoes to him +a sentiment of his infancy, a prayer of his youth, he then pierces to the truth +through all the confusion of tradition and the caricature of institutions. +</p> + +<p> +Rare, extravagant spirits come by us at intervals, who disclose to us new facts +in nature. I see that men of God have from time to time walked among men and +made their commission felt in the heart and soul of the commonest hearer. Hence +evidently the tripod, the priest, the priestess inspired by the divine +afflatus. +</p> + +<p> +Jesus astonishes and overpowers sensual people. They cannot unite him to +history, or reconcile him with themselves. As they come to revere their +intuitions and aspire to live holily, their own piety explains every fact, +every word. +</p> + +<p> +How easily these old worships of Moses, of Zoroaster, of Menu, of Socrates, +domesticate themselves in the mind. I cannot find any antiquity in them. They +are mine as much as theirs. +</p> + +<p> +I have seen the first monks and anchorets, without crossing seas or centuries. +More than once some individual has appeared to me with such negligence of labor +and such commanding contemplation, a haughty beneficiary begging in the name of +God, as made good to the nineteenth century Simeon the Stylite, the Thebais, +and the first Capuchins. +</p> + +<p> +The priestcraft of the East and West, of the Magian, Brahmin, Druid, and Inca, +is expounded in the individual’s private life. The cramping influence of +a hard formalist on a young child, in repressing his spirits and courage, +paralyzing the understanding, and that without producing indignation, but only +fear and obedience, and even much sympathy with the tyranny,—is a +familiar fact, explained to the child when he becomes a man, only by seeing +that the oppressor of his youth is himself a child tyrannized over by those +names and words and forms of whose influence he was merely the organ to the +youth. The fact teaches him how Belus was worshipped and how the Pyramids were +built, better than the discovery by Champollion of the names of all the workmen +and the cost of every tile. He finds Assyria and the Mounds of Cholula at his +door, and himself has laid the courses. +</p> + +<p> +Again, in that protest which each considerate person makes against the +superstition of his times, he repeats step for step the part of old reformers, +and in the search after truth finds, like them, new perils to virtue. He learns +again what moral vigor is needed to supply the girdle of a superstition. A +great licentiousness treads on the heels of a reformation. How many times in +the history of the world has the Luther of the day had to lament the decay of +piety in his own household! “Doctor,” said his wife to Martin +Luther, one day, “how is it that whilst subject to papacy we prayed so +often and with such fervor, whilst now we pray with the utmost coldness and +very seldom?” +</p> + +<p> +The advancing man discovers how deep a property he has in literature,—in +all fable as well as in all history. He finds that the poet was no odd fellow +who described strange and impossible situations, but that universal man wrote +by his pen a confession true for one and true for all. His own secret biography +he finds in lines wonderfully intelligible to him, dotted down before he was +born. One after another he comes up in his private adventures with every fable +of Æsop, of Homer, of Hafiz, of Ariosto, of Chaucer, of Scott, and verifies +them with his own head and hands. +</p> + +<p> +The beautiful fables of the Greeks, being proper creations of the imagination +and not of the fancy, are universal verities. What a range of meanings and what +perpetual pertinence has the story of Prometheus! Beside its primary value as +the first chapter of the history of Europe, (the mythology thinly veiling +authentic facts, the invention of the mechanic arts and the migration of +colonies,) it gives the history of religion, with some closeness to the faith +of later ages. Prometheus is the Jesus of the old mythology. He is the friend +of man; stands between the unjust “justice” of the Eternal Father +and the race of mortals, and readily suffers all things on their account. But +where it departs from the Calvinistic Christianity and exhibits him as the +defier of Jove, it represents a state of mind which readily appears wherever +the doctrine of Theism is taught in a crude, objective form, and which seems +the self-defence of man against this untruth, namely a discontent with the +believed fact that a God exists, and a feeling that the obligation of reverence +is onerous. It would steal if it could the fire of the Creator, and live apart +from him and independent of him. The Prometheus Vinctus is the romance of +skepticism. Not less true to all time are the details of that stately apologue. +Apollo kept the flocks of Admetus, said the poets. When the gods come among +men, they are not known. Jesus was not; Socrates and Shakspeare were not. +Antaeus was suffocated by the gripe of Hercules, but every time he touched his +mother earth his strength was renewed. Man is the broken giant, and in all his +weakness both his body and his mind are invigorated by habits of conversation +with nature. The power of music, the power of poetry, to unfix and as it were +clap wings to solid nature, interprets the riddle of Orpheus. The philosophical +perception of identity through endless mutations of form makes him know the +Proteus. What else am I who laughed or wept yesterday, who slept last night +like a corpse, and this morning stood and ran? And what see I on any side but +the transmigrations of Proteus? I can symbolize my thought by using the name of +any creature, of any fact, because every creature is man agent or patient. +Tantalus is but a name for you and me. Tantalus means the impossibility of +drinking the waters of thought which are always gleaming and waving within +sight of the soul. The transmigration of souls is no fable. I would it were; +but men and women are only half human. Every animal of the barn-yard, the field +and the forest, of the earth and of the waters that are under the earth, has +contrived to get a footing and to leave the print of its features and form in +some one or other of these upright, heaven-facing speakers. Ah! brother, stop +the ebb of thy soul,—ebbing downward into the forms into whose habits +thou hast now for many years slid. As near and proper to us is also that old +fable of the Sphinx, who was said to sit in the road-side and put riddles to +every passenger. If the man could not answer, she swallowed him alive. If he +could solve the riddle, the Sphinx was slain. What is our life but an endless +flight of winged facts or events? In splendid variety these changes come, all +putting questions to the human spirit. Those men who cannot answer by a +superior wisdom these facts or questions of time, serve them. Facts encumber +them, tyrannize over them, and make the men of routine, the men of +<i>sense</i>, in whom a literal obedience to facts has extinguished every spark +of that light by which man is truly man. But if the man is true to his better +instincts or sentiments, and refuses the dominion of facts, as one that comes +of a higher race; remains fast by the soul and sees the principle, then the +facts fall aptly and supple into their places; they know their master, and the +meanest of them glorifies him. +</p> + +<p> +See in Goethe’s Helena the same desire that every word should be a thing. +These figures, he would say, these Chirons, Griffins, Phorkyas, Helen and Leda, +are somewhat, and do exert a specific influence on the mind. So far then are +they eternal entities, as real to-day as in the first Olympiad. Much revolving +them he writes out freely his humor, and gives them body to his own +imagination. And although that poem be as vague and fantastic as a dream, yet +is it much more attractive than the more regular dramatic pieces of the same +author, for the reason that it operates a wonderful relief to the mind from the +routine of customary images,—awakens the reader’s invention and +fancy by the wild freedom of the design, and by the unceasing succession of +brisk shocks of surprise. +</p> + +<p> +The universal nature, too strong for the petty nature of the bard, sits on his +neck and writes through his hand; so that when he seems to vent a mere caprice +and wild romance, the issue is an exact allegory. Hence Plato said that +“poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves +understand.” All the fictions of the Middle Age explain themselves as a +masked or frolic expression of that which in grave earnest the mind of that +period toiled to achieve. Magic and all that is ascribed to it is a deep +presentiment of the powers of science. The shoes of swiftness, the sword of +sharpness, the power of subduing the elements, of using the secret virtues of +minerals, of understanding the voices of birds, are the obscure efforts of the +mind in a right direction. The preternatural prowess of the hero, the gift of +perpetual youth, and the like, are alike the endeavour of the human spirit +“to bend the shows of things to the desires of the mind.” +</p> + +<p> +In Perceforest and Amadis de Gaul a garland and a rose bloom on the head of her +who is faithful, and fade on the brow of the inconstant. In the story of the +Boy and the Mantle even a mature reader may be surprised with a glow of +virtuous pleasure at the triumph of the gentle Venelas; and indeed all the +postulates of elfin annals,—that the fairies do not like to be named; +that their gifts are capricious and not to be trusted; that who seeks a +treasure must not speak; and the like,—I find true in Concord, however +they might be in Cornwall or Bretagne. +</p> + +<p> +Is it otherwise in the newest romance? I read the Bride of Lammermoor. Sir +William Ashton is a mask for a vulgar temptation, Ravenswood Castle a fine name +for proud poverty, and the foreign mission of state only a Bunyan disguise for +honest industry. We may all shoot a wild bull that would toss the good and +beautiful, by fighting down the unjust and sensual. Lucy Ashton is another name +for fidelity, which is always beautiful and always liable to calamity in this +world. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +But along with the civil and metaphysical history of man, another history goes +daily forward,—that of the external world,—in which he is not less +strictly implicated. He is the compend of time; he is also the correlative of +nature. His power consists in the multitude of his affinities, in the fact that +his life is intertwined with the whole chain of organic and inorganic being. In +old Rome the public roads beginning at the Forum proceeded north, south, east, +west, to the centre of every province of the empire, making each market-town of +Persia, Spain and Britain pervious to the soldiers of the capital: so out of +the human heart go as it were highways to the heart of every object in nature, +to reduce it under the dominion of man. A man is a bundle of relations, a knot +of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world. His faculties refer to +natures out of him and predict the world he is to inhabit, as the fins of the +fish foreshow that water exists, or the wings of an eagle in the egg presuppose +air. He cannot live without a world. Put Napoleon in an island prison, let his +faculties find no men to act on, no Alps to climb, no stake to play for, and he +would beat the air, and appear stupid. Transport him to large countries, dense +population, complex interests and antagonist power, and you shall see that the +man Napoleon, bounded that is by such a profile and outline, is not the virtual +Napoleon. This is but Talbot’s shadow;— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“His substance is not here.<br /> +For what you see is but the smallest part<br /> +And least proportion of humanity;<br /> +But were the whole frame here,<br /> +It is of such a spacious, lofty pitch,<br /> +Your roof were not sufficient to contain it.”<br /> +—Henry VI. +</p> + +<p> +Columbus needs a planet to shape his course upon. Newton and Laplace need +myriads of age and thick-strewn celestial areas. One may say a gravitating +solar system is already prophesied in the nature of Newton’s mind. Not +less does the brain of Davy or of Gay-Lussac, from childhood exploring the +affinities and repulsions of particles, anticipate the laws of organization. +Does not the eye of the human embryo predict the light? the ear of Handel +predict the witchcraft of harmonic sound? Do not the constructive fingers of +Watt, Fulton, Whittemore, Arkwright, predict the fusible, hard, and temperable +texture of metals, the properties of stone, water, and wood? Do not the lovely +attributes of the maiden child predict the refinements and decorations of civil +society? Here also we are reminded of the action of man on man. A mind might +ponder its thought for ages and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion +of love shall teach it in a day. Who knows himself before he has been thrilled +with indignation at an outrage, or has heard an eloquent tongue, or has shared +the throb of thousands in a national exultation or alarm? No man can antedate +his experience, or guess what faculty or feeling a new object shall unlock, any +more than he can draw to-day the face of a person whom he shall see to-morrow +for the first time. +</p> + +<p> +I will not now go behind the general statement to explore the reason of this +correspondency. Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, +that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history is to be read +and written. +</p> + +<p> +Thus in all ways does the soul concentrate and reproduce its treasures for each +pupil. He too shall pass through the whole cycle of experience. He shall +collect into a focus the rays of nature. History no longer shall be a dull +book. It shall walk incarnate in every just and wise man. You shall not tell me +by languages and titles a catalogue of the volumes you have read. You shall +make me feel what periods you have lived. A man shall be the Temple of Fame. He +shall walk, as the poets have described that goddess, in a robe painted all +over with wonderful events and experiences;—his own form and features by +their exalted intelligence shall be that variegated vest. I shall find in him +the Foreworld; in his childhood the Age of Gold, the Apples of Knowledge, the +Argonautic Expedition, the calling of Abraham, the building of the Temple, the +Advent of Christ, Dark Ages, the Revival of Letters, the Reformation, the +discovery of new lands, the opening of new sciences and new regions in man. He +shall be the priest of Pan, and bring with him into humble cottages the +blessing of the morning stars, and all the recorded benefits of heaven and +earth. +</p> + +<p> +Is there somewhat overweening in this claim? Then I reject all I have written, +for what is the use of pretending to know what we know not? But it is the fault +of our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to belie +some other. I hold our actual knowledge very cheap. Hear the rats in the wall, +see the lizard on the fence, the fungus under foot, the lichen on the log. What +do I know sympathetically, morally, of either of these worlds of life? As old +as the Caucasian man,—perhaps older,—these creatures have kept +their counsel beside him, and there is no record of any word or sign that has +passed from one to the other. What connection do the books show between the +fifty or sixty chemical elements and the historical eras? Nay, what does +history yet record of the metaphysical annals of man? What light does it shed +on those mysteries which we hide under the names Death and Immortality? Yet +every history should be written in a wisdom which divined the range of our +affinities and looked at facts as symbols. I am ashamed to see what a shallow +village tale our so-called History is. How many times we must say Rome, and +Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are +Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food +or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, for the Kanaka +in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter? +</p> + +<p> +Broader and deeper we must write our annals,—from an ethical reformation, +from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative conscience,—if we would +trulier express our central and wide-related nature, instead of this old +chronology of selfishness and pride to which we have too long lent our eyes. +Already that day exists for us, shines in on us at unawares, but the path of +science and of letters is not the way into nature. The idiot, the Indian, the +child and unschooled farmer’s boy stand nearer to the light by which +nature is to be read, than the dissector or the antiquary. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"></a>II.<br /> +SELF-RELIANCE</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“Ne te quæsiveris extra.”<br /> +<br /> +“Man is his own star; and the soul that can<br /> +Render an honest and a perfect man,<br /> +Commands all light, all influence, all fate;<br /> +Nothing to him falls early or too late.<br /> +Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,<br /> +Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.”<br /> +<br /> +<i>Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher’s Honest Man’s Fortune.</i> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p class="poem"> +Cast the bantling on the rocks,<br /> +Suckle him with the she-wolf’s teat,<br /> +Wintered with the hawk and fox.<br /> +Power and speed be hands and feet. +</p> + +<h2>SELF-RELIANCE</h2> + +<p> +I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were +original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such +lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more +value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to +believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all +men,—that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the +universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, and our first +thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar +as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, +Plato and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not +what men, but what <i>they</i> thought. A man should learn to detect and watch +that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the +lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his +thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own +rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great +works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to +abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most +when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger +will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all +the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from +another. +</p> + +<p> +There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the +conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take +himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is +full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil +bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which +resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he +can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one +character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This +sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was +placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. +We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each +of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, +so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by +cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and +done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace. +It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts +him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope. +</p> + +<p> +Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the +divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the +connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves +childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the +absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, +predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the +highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a +protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, +redeemers and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort and advancing on Chaos +and the Dark. +</p> + +<p> +What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in the face and behavior of +children, babes, and even brutes! That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of +a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed the strength and means opposed +to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet +unconquered, and when we look in their faces we are disconcerted. Infancy +conforms to nobody; all conform to it; so that one babe commonly makes four or +five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and +puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it +enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by +itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and +me. Hark! in the next room his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic. It +seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold then, he +will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary. +</p> + +<p> +The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as +a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human +nature. A boy is in the parlor what the pit is in the playhouse; independent, +irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, +he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, +as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself +never about consequences, about interests; he gives an independent, genuine +verdict. You must court him; he does not court you. But the man is as it were +clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken +with <i>éclat</i> he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the +hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. There is +no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who can +thus avoid all pledges and, having observed, observe again from the same +unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence,—must always be +formidable. He would utter opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to +be not private but necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men and put +them in fear. +</p> + +<p> +These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and +inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy +against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock +company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to +each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue +in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not +realities and creators, but names and customs. +</p> + +<p> +Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal +palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be +goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve +you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an +answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who +was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my +saying, “What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live +wholly from within?” my friend suggested,—“But these impulses +may be from below, not from above.” I replied, “They do not seem to +me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the +Devil.” No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad +are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what +is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry +himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular and +ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and +names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken +individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and +vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat +of philanthropy, shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful +cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes, why +should I not say to him, ‘Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper; be +good-natured and modest; have that grace; and never varnish your hard, +uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand +miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home.’ Rough and graceless would be +such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your +goodness must have some edge to it,—else it is none. The doctrine of +hatred must be preached, as the counteraction of the doctrine of love, when +that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my +genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, <i>Whim</i>. I +hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in +explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company. +Then again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put +all poor men in good situations. Are they <i>my</i> poor? I tell thee thou +foolish philanthropist that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to +such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class +of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I +will go to prison if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the +education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end +to which many now stand; alms to sots, and the thousand-fold Relief +Societies;—though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the +dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to +withhold. +</p> + +<p> +Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There +is the man <i>and</i> his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some +piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of +daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or +extenuation of their living in the world,—as invalids and the insane pay +a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to +live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it +should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be +glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet +and bleeding. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal +from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference +whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot +consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my +gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the +assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony. +</p> + +<p> +What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, +equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole +distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will +always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know +it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy +in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of +the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. +</p> + +<p> +The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is that it +scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your +character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, +vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your +table like base housekeepers,—under all these screens I have difficulty +to detect the precise man you are: and of course so much force is withdrawn +from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, +and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a +blindman’s-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I +anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the +expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand +that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that +with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution he will +do no such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but +at one side, the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is +a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. +Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and +attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This +conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, +but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is +not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say +chagrins us and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature +is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. +We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest +asinine expression. There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does +not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean “the foolish +face of praise,” the forced smile which we put on in company where we do +not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The +muscles, not spontaneously moved but moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow +tight about the outline of the face with the most disagreeable sensation. +</p> + +<p> +For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man +must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in +the public street or in the friend’s parlor. If this aversation had its +origin in contempt and resistance like his own he might well go home with a sad +countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have +no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper +directs. Yet is the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of +the senate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the +world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and +prudent, for they are timid, as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to +their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant +and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the +bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity +and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment. +</p> + +<p> +The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence +for our past act or word because the eyes of others have no other data for +computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. +</p> + +<p> +But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this +corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or +that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems +to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in +acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed +present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied +personality to the Deity, yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield +to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. +Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee. +</p> + +<p> +A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little +statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has +simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the +wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow +thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said +to-day.—‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be +misunderstood.’—Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras +was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and +Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be +great is to be misunderstood. +</p> + +<p> +I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will are +rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh +are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge +and try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza;—read +it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this +pleasing contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my +honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be +found symmetrical, though I mean it not and see it not. My book should smell of +pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window should +interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also. We +pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they +communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that +virtue or vice emit a breath every moment. +</p> + +<p> +There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each +honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be +harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a +little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. +The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line +from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. +Your genuine action will explain itself and will explain your other genuine +actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have +already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I +can be firm enough to-day to do right and scorn eyes, I must have done so much +right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn +appearances and you always may. The force of character is cumulative. All the +foregone days of virtue work their health into this. What makes the majesty of +the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the imagination? The +consciousness of a train of great days and victories behind. They shed an +united light on the advancing actor. He is attended as by a visible escort of +angels. That is it which throws thunder into Chatham’s voice, and dignity +into Washington’s port, and America into Adams’s eye. Honor is +venerable to us because it is no ephemera. It is always ancient virtue. We +worship it to-day because it is not of to-day. We love it and pay it homage +because it is not a trap for our love and homage, but is self-dependent, +self-derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a +young person. +</p> + +<p> +I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let +the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong for +dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us never bow and +apologize more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to +please him; I wish that he should wish to please me. I will stand here for +humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront +and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and +hurl in the face of custom and trade and office, the fact which is the upshot +of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working +wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is +the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you and all men +and all events. Ordinarily, every body in society reminds us of somewhat else, +or of some other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it +takes place of the whole creation. The man must be so much that he must make +all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an +age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his +design;—and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients. A +man Cæsar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, +and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius that he is confounded +with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of +one man; as, Monachism, of the Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther; +Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton +called “the height of Rome”; and all history resolves itself very +easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons. +</p> + +<p> +Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep +or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an +interloper in the world which exists for him. But the man in the street, +finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force which built a tower +or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, +a statue, or a costly book have an alien and forbidding air, much like a gay +equipage, and seem to say like that, ‘Who are you, Sir?’ Yet they +all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they +will come out and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict; it is not +to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise. That popular fable of +the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke’s +house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke’s bed, and, on his waking, +treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had +been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the +state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, +exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince. +</p> + +<p> +Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history our imagination plays us +false. Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than +private John and Edward in a small house and common day’s work; but the +things of life are the same to both; the sum total of both is the same. Why all +this deference to Alfred and Scanderbeg and Gustavus? Suppose they were +virtuous; did they wear out virtue? As great a stake depends on your private +act to-day, as followed their public and renowned steps. When private men shall +act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of +kings to those of gentlemen. +</p> + +<p> +The world has been instructed by its kings, who have so magnetized the eyes of +nations. It has been taught by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that +is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which men have everywhere +suffered the king, the noble, or the great proprietor to walk among them by a +law of his own, make his own scale of men and things and reverse theirs, pay +for benefits not with money but with honor, and represent the law in his +person, was the hieroglyphic by which they obscurely signified their +consciousness of their own right and comeliness, the right of every man. +</p> + +<p> +The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the +reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which +a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that +science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which +shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark +of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the +essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or +Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later +teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis +cannot go, all things find their common origin. For the sense of being which in +calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, +from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds +obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed. We +first share the life by which things exist and afterwards see them as +appearances in nature and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the +fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which +giveth man wisdom and which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We +lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth +and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we +do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence +this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at +fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man +discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind and his involuntary +perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is +due. He may err in the expression of them, but he knows that these things are +so, like day and night, not to be disputed. My wilful actions and acquisitions +are but roving;—the idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command +my curiosity and respect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the +statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for they +do not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose to +see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a +trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time all +mankind,—although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my +perception of it is as much a fact as the sun. +</p> + +<p> +The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure that it is profane +to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God speaketh he should +communicate, not one thing, but all things; should fill the world with his +voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the centre of the +present thought; and new date and new create the whole. Whenever a mind is +simple and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away,—means, +teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into +the present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it,—one as +much as another. All things are dissolved to their centre by their cause, and +in the universal miracle petty and particular miracles disappear. If therefore +a man claims to know and speak of God and carries you backward to the +phraseology of some old mouldered nation in another country, in another world, +believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness and +completion? Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his +ripened being? Whence then this worship of the past? The centuries are +conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul. Time and space are +but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is light: where it +is, is day; where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and an +injury if it be any thing more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being +and becoming. +</p> + +<p> +Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say ‘I +think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed +before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make +no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; +they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; +it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, +its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless +root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied and it satisfies nature in all +moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, +but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that +surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and +strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time. +</p> + +<p> +This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not yet hear +God himself unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or +Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on +a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames +and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they +chance to see,—painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; +afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered +these sayings, they understand them and are willing to let the words go; for at +any time they can use words as good when occasion comes. If we live truly, we +shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for +the weak to be weak. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the +memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his +voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn. +</p> + +<p> +And now at last the highest truth on this subject remains unsaid; probably +cannot be said; for all that we say is the far-off remembering of the +intuition. That thought by what I can now nearest approach to say it, is this. +When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known +or accustomed way; you shall not discern the footprints of any other; you shall +not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name;—the way, the +thought, the good shall be wholly strange and new. It shall exclude example and +experience. You take the way from man, not to man. All persons that ever +existed are its forgotten ministers. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. There +is somewhat low even in hope. In the hour of vision there is nothing that can +be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The soul raised over passion beholds +identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence of Truth and +Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces of +nature, the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea; long intervals of time, years, +centuries, are of no account. This which I think and feel underlay every former +state of life and circumstances, as it does underlie my present, and what is +called life, and what is called death. +</p> + +<p> +Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; +it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the +shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one fact the world hates; +that the soul <i>becomes;</i> for that for ever degrades the past, turns all +riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the +rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside. Why then do we prate of +self-reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is present there will be power not +confident but agent. To talk of reliance is a poor external way of speaking. +Speak rather of that which relies because it works and is. Who has more +obedience than I masters me, though he should not raise his finger. Round him I +must revolve by the gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric when we speak +of eminent virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man or a +company of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the law of nature must +overpower and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not. +</p> + +<p> +This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, as on every topic, +the resolution of all into the ever-blessed O<small>NE</small>. Self-existence +is the attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it constitutes the measure of good +by the degree in which it enters into all lower forms. All things real are so +by so much virtue as they contain. Commerce, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war, +eloquence, personal weight, are somewhat, and engage my respect as examples of +its presence and impure action. I see the same law working in nature for +conservation and growth. Power is, in nature, the essential measure of right. +Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The +genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree +recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and +vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing and therefore self-relying +soul. +</p> + +<p> +Thus all concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause. Let +us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions, by +a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from +off their feet, for God is here within. Let our simplicity judge them, and our +docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside +our native riches. +</p> + +<p> +But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius +admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal +ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men. We +must go alone. I like the silent church before the service begins, better than +any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt each +one with a precinct or sanctuary! So let us always sit. Why should we assume +the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around +our hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All men have my blood and I +have all men’s. Not for that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even +to the extent of being ashamed of it. But your isolation must not be +mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At times the whole world +seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, +client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet +door and say,—‘Come out unto us.’ But keep thy state; come +not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a +weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act. “What we love +that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love.” +</p> + +<p> +If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at +least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war and wake Thor +and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in +our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying +affection. Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving +people with whom we converse. Say to them, ‘O father, O mother, O wife, O +brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. +Henceforward I am the truth’s. Be it known unto you that henceforward I +obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but +proximities. I shall endeavour to nourish my parents, to support my family, to +be the chaste husband of one wife,—but these relations I must fill after +a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I +cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I +am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that +you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what +is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly +rejoices me and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you: if you +are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are +true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek +my own. I do this not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike your +interest, and mine, and all men’s, however long we have dwelt in lies, to +live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is +dictated by your nature as well as mine, and if we follow the truth it will +bring us out safe at last.’—But so may you give these friends pain. +Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. +Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the +region of absolute truth; then will they justify me and do the same thing. +</p> + +<p> +The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of +all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name +of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. There +are two confessionals, in one or the other of which we must be shriven. You may +fulfil your round of duties by clearing yourself in the <i>direct</i>, or in +the <i>reflex</i> way. Consider whether you have satisfied your relations to +father, mother, cousin, neighbor, town, cat, and dog; whether any of these can +upbraid you. But I may also neglect this reflex standard and absolve me to +myself. I have my own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies the name of +duty to many offices that are called duties. But if I can discharge its debts +it enables me to dispense with the popular code. If any one imagines that this +law is lax, let him keep its commandment one day. +</p> + +<p> +And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common +motives of humanity and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be +his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be +doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as +strong as iron necessity is to others! +</p> + +<p> +If any man consider the present aspects of what is called by distinction +<i>society</i>, he will see the need of these ethics. The sinew and heart of +man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous, desponding whimperers. We +are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death and afraid of each +other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We want men and women who +shall renovate life and our social state, but we see that most natures are +insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all +proportion to their practical force and do lean and beg day and night +continually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our +marriages, our religion we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We +are parlor soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate, where strength is born. +</p> + +<p> +If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises they lose all heart. If +the young merchant fails, men say he is <i>ruined</i>. If the finest genius +studies at one of our colleges and is not installed in an office within one +year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his +friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened and in +complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, +who in turn tries all the professions, who <i>teams it, farms it, peddles</i>, +keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, +and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is +worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels +no shame in not ‘studying a profession,’ for he does not postpone +his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. Let +a Stoic open the resources of man and tell men they are not leaning willows, +but can and must detach themselves; that with the exercise of self-trust, new +powers shall appear; that a man is the word made flesh, born to shed healing to +the nations; that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and that the moment +he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries and customs out +of the window, we pity him no more but thank and revere him;—and that +teacher shall restore the life of man to splendor and make his name dear to all +history. +</p> + +<p> +It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all +the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in +their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in +their speculative views. +</p> + +<p> +1. In what prayers do men allow themselves! That which they call a holy office +is not so much as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks for some +foreign addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses itself in +endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and miraculous. +Prayer that craves a particular commodity, any thing less than all good, is +vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest +point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the +spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a +private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature +and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He +will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his +field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, +are true prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap ends. Caratach, in +Fletcher’s Bonduca, when admonished to inquire the mind of the god +Audate, replies,— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors;<br /> +Our valors are our best gods.” +</p> + +<p> +Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of +self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities if you can thereby +help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work and already the evil begins to +be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly +and sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and health +in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communication with their +own reason. The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods +and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide; him all +tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out +to him and embraces him because he did not need it. We solicitously and +apologetically caress and celebrate him because he held on his way and scorned +our disapprobation. The gods love him because men hated him. “To the +persevering mortal,” said Zoroaster, “the blessed Immortals are +swift.” +</p> + +<p> +As men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease +of the intellect. They say with those foolish Israelites, ‘Let not God +speak to us, lest we die. Speak thou, speak any man with us, and we will +obey.’ Everywhere I am hindered of meeting God in my brother, because he +has shut his own temple doors and recites fables merely of his brother’s, +or his brother’s brother’s God. Every new mind is a new +classification. If it prove a mind of uncommon activity and power, a Locke, a +Lavoisier, a Hutton, a Bentham, a Fourier, it imposes its classification on +other men, and lo! a new system. In proportion to the depth of the thought, and +so to the number of the objects it touches and brings within reach of the +pupil, is his complacency. But chiefly is this apparent in creeds and churches, +which are also classifications of some powerful mind acting on the elemental +thought of duty, and man’s relation to the Highest. Such is Calvinism, +Quakerism, Swedenborgism. The pupil takes the same delight in subordinating +every thing to the new terminology as a girl who has just learned botany in +seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby. It will happen for a time that the +pupil will find his intellectual power has grown by the study of his +master’s mind. But in all unbalanced minds the classification is +idolized, passes for the end and not for a speedily exhaustible means, so that +the walls of the system blend to their eye in the remote horizon with the walls +of the universe; the luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch their +master built. They cannot imagine how you aliens have any right to +see,—how you can see; ‘It must be somehow that you stole the light +from us.’ They do not yet perceive that light, unsystematic, indomitable, +will break into any cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call it +their own. If they are honest and do well, presently their neat new pinfold +will be too strait and low, will crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and the +immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, million-colored, will beam +over the universe as on the first morning. +</p> + +<p> +2. It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, whose +idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated +Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination +did so by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. In manly +hours we feel that duty is our place. The soul is no traveller; the wise man +stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him +from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still and shall make men +sensible by the expression of his countenance that he goes, the missionary of +wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign and not like an +interloper or a valet. +</p> + +<p> +I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe for the +purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first +domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater +than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does +not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old +things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and +dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins. +</p> + +<p> +Travelling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the +indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be +intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my +friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me +is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I +seek the Vatican and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and +suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go. +</p> + +<p> +3. But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting +the whole intellectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and our system of +education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to +stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind? +Our houses are built with foreign taste; our shelves are garnished with foreign +ornaments; our opinions, our tastes, our faculties, lean, and follow the Past +and the Distant. The soul created the arts wherever they have flourished. It +was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. It was an application of +his own thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to be observed. And +why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur +of thought and quaint expression are as near to us as to any, and if the +American artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by +him, considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants of the +people, the habit and form of the government, he will create a house in which +all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be +satisfied also. +</p> + +<p> +Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment +with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the +adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession. That +which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what +it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who +could have taught Shakspeare? Where is the master who could have instructed +Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The +Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. Shakspeare +will never be made by the study of Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned you, +and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you +an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or +trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses or Dante, but different from all +these. Not possibly will the soul, all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven +tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you can hear what these patriarchs say, +surely you can reply to them in the same pitch of voice; for the ear and the +tongue are two organs of one nature. Abide in the simple and noble regions of +thy life, obey thy heart and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again. +</p> + +<p> +4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look abroad, so does our spirit of +society. All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man +improves. +</p> + +<p> +Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the +other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is +christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not +amelioration. For every thing that is given something is taken. Society +acquires new arts and loses old instincts. What a contrast between the +well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil and a +bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property is +a club, a spear, a mat and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But +compare the health of the two men and you shall see that the white man has lost +his aboriginal strength. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with +a broad axe and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck +the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave. +</p> + +<p> +The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is +supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine +Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A +Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he +wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice +he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright +calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his +memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance-office increases the +number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not +encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity +entrenched in establishments and forms some vigor of wild virtue. For every +Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian? +</p> + +<p> +There is no more deviation in the moral standard than in the standard of height +or bulk. No greater men are now than ever were. A singular equality may be +observed between the great men of the first and of the last ages; nor can all +the science, art, religion, and philosophy of the nineteenth century avail to +educate greater men than Plutarch’s heroes, three or four and twenty +centuries ago. Not in time is the race progressive. Phocion, Socrates, +Anaxagoras, Diogenes, are great men, but they leave no class. He who is really +of their class will not be called by their name, but will be his own man, and +in his turn the founder of a sect. The arts and inventions of each period are +only its costume and do not invigorate men. The harm of the improved machinery +may compensate its good. Hudson and Behring accomplished so much in their +fishing-boats as to astonish Parry and Franklin, whose equipment exhausted the +resources of science and art. Galileo, with an opera-glass, discovered a more +splendid series of celestial phenomena than any one since. Columbus found the +New World in an undecked boat. It is curious to see the periodical disuse and +perishing of means and machinery which were introduced with loud laudation a +few years or centuries before. The great genius returns to essential man. We +reckoned the improvements of the art of war among the triumphs of science, and +yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the bivouac, which consisted of falling back +on naked valor and disencumbering it of all aids. The Emperor held it +impossible to make a perfect army, says Las Cases, “without abolishing +our arms, magazines, commissaries and carriages, until, in imitation of the +Roman custom, the soldier should receive his supply of corn, grind it in his +hand-mill, and bake his bread himself.” +</p> + +<p> +Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed +does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its +unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation to-day, next year +die, and their experience with them. +</p> + +<p> +And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which +protect it, is the want of self-reliance. Men have looked away from themselves +and at things so long that they have come to esteem the religious, learned and +civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, +because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of +each other by what each has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated man +becomes ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature. Especially +he hates what he has if he see that it is accidental,—came to him by +inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it does +not belong to him, has no root in him and merely lies there because no +revolution or no robber takes it away. But that which a man is, does always by +necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is living property, which does not +wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or +bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever the man breathes. +“Thy lot or portion of life,” said the Caliph Ali, “is +seeking after thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it.” Our +dependence on these foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect for numbers. +The political parties meet in numerous conventions; the greater the concourse +and with each new uproar of announcement, The delegation from Essex! The +Democrats from New Hampshire! The Whigs of Maine! the young patriot feels +himself stronger than before by a new thousand of eyes and arms. In like manner +the reformers summon conventions and vote and resolve in multitude. Not so, O +friends! will the God deign to enter and inhabit you, but by a method precisely +the reverse. It is only as a man puts off all foreign support and stands alone +that I see him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to +his banner. Is not a man better than a town? Ask nothing of men, and, in the +endless mutation, thou only firm column must presently appear the upholder of +all that surrounds thee. He who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak +because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, +throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands +in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles; just as a man who +stands on his feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head. +</p> + +<p> +So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain all, and +lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and +deal with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. In the Will work and +acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt sit hereafter out +of fear from her rotations. A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery +of your sick or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event +raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not +believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you +peace but the triumph of principles. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"></a>III.<br /> +COMPENSATION</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +The wings of Time are black and white,<br /> +Pied with morning and with night.<br /> +Mountain tall and ocean deep<br /> +Trembling balance duly keep.<br /> +In changing moon, in tidal wave,<br /> +Glows the feud of Want and Have.<br /> +Gauge of more and less through space<br /> +Electric star and pencil plays.<br /> +The lonely Earth amid the balls<br /> +That hurry through the eternal halls,<br /> +A makeweight flying to the void,<br /> +Supplemental asteroid,<br /> +Or compensatory spark,<br /> +Shoots across the neutral Dark. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p class="poem"> +Man’s the elm, and Wealth the vine,<br /> +Stanch and strong the tendrils twine:<br /> +Though the frail ringlets thee deceive,<br /> +None from its stock that vine can reave.<br /> +Fear not, then, thou child infirm,<br /> +There’s no god dare wrong a worm.<br /> +Laurel crowns cleave to deserts<br /> +And power to him who power exerts;<br /> +Hast not thy share? On winged feet,<br /> +Lo! it rushes thee to meet;<br /> +And all that Nature made thy own,<br /> +Floating in air or pent in stone,<br /> +Will rive the hills and swim the sea<br /> +And, like thy shadow, follow thee. +</p> + +<h2>COMPENSATION</h2> + +<p> +Ever since I was a boy I have wished to write a discourse on Compensation; for +it seemed to me when very young that on this subject life was ahead of theology +and the people knew more than the preachers taught. The documents too from +which the doctrine is to be drawn, charmed my fancy by their endless variety, +and lay always before me, even in sleep; for they are the tools in our hands, +the bread in our basket, the transactions of the street, the farm and the +dwelling-house; greetings, relations, debts and credits, the influence of +character, the nature and endowment of all men. It seemed to me also that in it +might be shown men a ray of divinity, the present action of the soul of this +world, clean from all vestige of tradition; and so the heart of man might be +bathed by an inundation of eternal love, conversing with that which he knows +was always and always must be, because it really is now. It appeared moreover +that if this doctrine could be stated in terms with any resemblance to those +bright intuitions in which this truth is sometimes revealed to us, it would be +a star in many dark hours and crooked passages in our journey, that would not +suffer us to lose our way. +</p> + +<p> +I was lately confirmed in these desires by hearing a sermon at church. The +preacher, a man esteemed for his orthodoxy, unfolded in the ordinary manner the +doctrine of the Last Judgment. He assumed that judgment is not executed in this +world; that the wicked are successful; that the good are miserable; and then +urged from reason and from Scripture a compensation to be made to both parties +in the next life. No offence appeared to be taken by the congregation at this +doctrine. As far as I could observe when the meeting broke up they separated +without remark on the sermon. +</p> + +<p> +Yet what was the import of this teaching? What did the preacher mean by saying +that the good are miserable in the present life? Was it that houses and lands, +offices, wine, horses, dress, luxury, are had by unprincipled men, whilst the +saints are poor and despised; and that a compensation is to be made to these +last hereafter, by giving them the like gratifications another +day,—bank-stock and doubloons, venison and champagne? This must be the +compensation intended; for what else? Is it that they are to have leave to pray +and praise? to love and serve men? Why, that they can do now. The legitimate +inference the disciple would draw was,—‘We are to have <i>such</i> +a good time as the sinners have now’;—or, to push it to its extreme +import,—‘You sin now; we shall sin by and by; we would sin now, if +we could; not being successful, we expect our revenge to-morrow.’ +</p> + +<p> +The fallacy lay in the immense concession that the bad are successful; that +justice is not done now. The blindness of the preacher consisted in deferring +to the base estimate of the market of what constitutes a manly success, instead +of confronting and convicting the world from the truth; announcing the presence +of the soul; the omnipotence of the will; and so establishing the standard of +good and ill, of success and falsehood. +</p> + +<p> +I find a similar base tone in the popular religious works of the day and the +same doctrines assumed by the literary men when occasionally they treat the +related topics. I think that our popular theology has gained in decorum, and +not in principle, over the superstitions it has displaced. But men are better +than their theology. Their daily life gives it the lie. Every ingenuous and +aspiring soul leaves the doctrine behind him in his own experience, and all men +feel sometimes the falsehood which they cannot demonstrate. For men are wiser +than they know. That which they hear in schools and pulpits without +afterthought, if said in conversation would probably be questioned in silence. +If a man dogmatize in a mixed company on Providence and the divine laws, he is +answered by a silence which conveys well enough to an observer the +dissatisfaction of the hearer, but his incapacity to make his own statement. +</p> + +<p> +I shall attempt in this and the following chapter to record some facts that +indicate the path of the law of Compensation; happy beyond my expectation if I +shall truly draw the smallest arc of this circle. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature; in darkness +and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male and female; +in the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals; in the equation of +quantity and quality in the fluids of the animal body; in the systole and +diastole of the heart; in the undulations of fluids, and of sound; in the +centrifugal and centripetal gravity; in electricity, galvanism, and chemical +affinity. Superinduce magnetism at one end of a needle, the opposite magnetism +takes place at the other end. If the south attracts, the north repels. To empty +here, you must condense there. An inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that +each thing is a half, and suggests another thing to make it whole; as, spirit, +matter; man, woman; odd, even; subjective, objective; in, out; upper, under; +motion, rest; yea, nay. +</p> + +<p> +Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of its parts. The entire system +of things gets represented in every particle. There is somewhat that resembles +the ebb and flow of the sea, day and night, man and woman, in a single needle +of the pine, in a kernel of corn, in each individual of every animal tribe. The +reaction, so grand in the elements, is repeated within these small boundaries. +For example, in the animal kingdom the physiologist has observed that no +creatures are favorites, but a certain compensation balances every gift and +every defect. A surplusage given to one part is paid out of a reduction from +another part of the same creature. If the head and neck are enlarged, the trunk +and extremities are cut short. +</p> + +<p> +The theory of the mechanic forces is another example. What we gain in power is +lost in time, and the converse. The periodic or compensating errors of the +planets is another instance. The influences of climate and soil in political +history are another. The cold climate invigorates. The barren soil does not +breed fevers, crocodiles, tigers or scorpions. +</p> + +<p> +The same dualism underlies the nature and condition of man. Every excess causes +a defect; every defect an excess. Every sweet hath its sour; every evil its +good. Every faculty which is a receiver of pleasure has an equal penalty put on +its abuse. It is to answer for its moderation with its life. For every grain of +wit there is a grain of folly. For every thing you have missed, you have gained +something else; and for every thing you gain, you lose something. If riches +increase, they are increased that use them. If the gatherer gathers too much, +Nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, +but kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies and exceptions. The waves of the +sea do not more speedily seek a level from their loftiest tossing than the +varieties of condition tend to equalize themselves. There is always some +levelling circumstance that puts down the overbearing, the strong, the rich, +the fortunate, substantially on the same ground with all others. Is a man too +strong and fierce for society and by temper and position a bad citizen,—a +morose ruffian, with a dash of the pirate in him?—Nature sends him a +troop of pretty sons and daughters who are getting along in the dame’s +classes at the village school, and love and fear for them smooths his grim +scowl to courtesy. Thus she contrives to intenerate the granite and felspar, +takes the boar out and puts the lamb in and keeps her balance true. +</p> + +<p> +The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But the President has paid +dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best +of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an +appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters +who stand erect behind the throne. Or, do men desire the more substantial and +permanent grandeur of genius? Neither has this an immunity. He who by force of +will or of thought is great and overlooks thousands, has the charges of that +eminence. With every influx of light comes new danger. Has he light? he must +bear witness to the light, and always outrun that sympathy which gives him such +keen satisfaction, by his fidelity to new revelations of the incessant soul. He +must hate father and mother, wife and child. Has he all that the world loves +and admires and covets?—he must cast behind him their admiration, and +afflict them by faithfulness to his truth, and become a byword and a hissing. +</p> + +<p> +This law writes the laws of cities and nations. It is in vain to build or plot +or combine against it. Things refuse to be mismanaged long. <i>Res nolunt diu +male administrari</i>. Though no checks to a new evil appear, the checks exist, +and will appear. If the government is cruel, the governor’s life is not +safe. If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing. If you make the +criminal code sanguinary, juries will not convict. If the law is too mild, +private vengeance comes in. If the government is a terrific democracy, the +pressure is resisted by an over-charge of energy in the citizen, and life glows +with a fiercer flame. The true life and satisfactions of man seem to elude the +utmost rigors or felicities of condition and to establish themselves with great +indifferency under all varieties of circumstances. Under all governments the +influence of character remains the same,—in Turkey and in New England +about alike. Under the primeval despots of Egypt, history honestly confesses +that man must have been as free as culture could make him. +</p> + +<p> +These appearances indicate the fact that the universe is represented in every +one of its particles. Every thing in nature contains all the powers of nature. +Every thing is made of one hidden stuff; as the naturalist sees one type under +every metamorphosis, and regards a horse as a running man, a fish as a swimming +man, a bird as a flying man, a tree as a rooted man. Each new form repeats not +only the main character of the type, but part for part all the details, all the +aims, furtherances, hindrances, energies and whole system of every other. Every +occupation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of the world and a +correlative of every other. Each one is an entire emblem of human life; of its +good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its course and its end. And each one +must somehow accommodate the whole man and recite all his destiny. +</p> + +<p> +The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The microscope cannot find the +animalcule which is less perfect for being little. Eyes, ears, taste, smell, +motion, resistance, appetite, and organs of reproduction that take hold on +eternity,—all find room to consist in the small creature. So do we put +our life into every act. The true doctrine of omnipresence is that God +reappears with all his parts in every moss and cobweb. The value of the +universe contrives to throw itself into every point. If the good is there, so +is the evil; if the affinity, so the repulsion; if the force, so the +limitation. +</p> + +<p> +Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. That soul which within us is +a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in +history we can see its fatal strength. “It is in the world, and the world +was made by it.” Justice is not postponed. A perfect equity adjusts its +balance in all parts of life. Ἀεὶ γὰρ +εὖ πίπτουσιν +οἱ Διὸς +κύβοι,—The dice of God are always loaded. The +world looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, which, +turn it how you will, balances itself. Take what figure you will, its exact +value, nor more nor less, still returns to you. Every secret is told, every +crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and +certainty. What we call retribution is the universal necessity by which the +whole appears wherever a part appears. If you see smoke, there must be fire. If +you see a hand or a limb, you know that the trunk to which it belongs is there +behind. +</p> + +<p> +Every act rewards itself, or, in other words integrates itself, in a twofold +manner; first in the thing, or in real nature; and secondly in the +circumstance, or in apparent nature. Men call the circumstance the retribution. +The causal retribution is in the thing and is seen by the soul. The retribution +in the circumstance is seen by the understanding; it is inseparable from the +thing, but is often spread over a long time and so does not become distinct +until after many years. The specific stripes may follow late after the offence, +but they follow because they accompany it. Crime and punishment grow out of one +stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the +pleasure which concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, +cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end +preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed. +</p> + +<p> +Whilst thus the world will be whole and refuses to be disparted, we seek to act +partially, to sunder, to appropriate; for example,—to gratify the senses +we sever the pleasure of the senses from the needs of the character. The +ingenuity of man has always been dedicated to the solution of one +problem,—how to detach the sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the sensual +bright, etc., from the moral sweet, the moral deep, the moral fair; that is, +again, to contrive to cut clean off this upper surface so thin as to leave it +bottomless; to get a <i>one end</i>, without an <i>other end</i>. The soul +says, ‘Eat;’ the body would feast. The soul says, ‘The man +and woman shall be one flesh and one soul;’ the body would join the flesh +only. The soul says, ‘Have dominion over all things to the ends of +virtue;’ the body would have the power over things to its own ends. +</p> + +<p> +The soul strives amain to live and work through all things. It would be the +only fact. All things shall be added unto it,—power, pleasure, knowledge, +beauty. The particular man aims to be somebody; to set up for himself; to truck +and higgle for a private good; and, in particulars, to ride that he may ride; +to dress that he may be dressed; to eat that he may eat; and to govern, that he +may be seen. Men seek to be great; they would have offices, wealth, power, and +fame. They think that to be great is to possess one side of nature,—the +sweet, without the other side, the bitter. +</p> + +<p> +This dividing and detaching is steadily counteracted. Up to this day it must be +owned no projector has had the smallest success. The parted water reunites +behind our hand. Pleasure is taken out of pleasant things, profit out of +profitable things, power out of strong things, as soon as we seek to separate +them from the whole. We can no more halve things and get the sensual good, by +itself, than we can get an inside that shall have no outside, or a light +without a shadow. “Drive out Nature with a fork, she comes running +back.” +</p> + +<p> +Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which the unwise seek to dodge, +which one and another brags that he does not know, that they do not touch +him;—but the brag is on his lips, the conditions are in his soul. If he +escapes them in one part they attack him in another more vital part. If he has +escaped them in form and in the appearance, it is because he has resisted his +life and fled from himself, and the retribution is so much death. So signal is +the failure of all attempts to make this separation of the good from the tax, +that the experiment would not be tried,—since to try it is to be +mad,—but for the circumstance, that when the disease began in the will, +of rebellion and separation, the intellect is at once infected, so that the man +ceases to see God whole in each object, but is able to see the sensual +allurement of an object and not see the sensual hurt; he sees the +mermaid’s head but not the dragon’s tail, and thinks he can cut off +that which he would have from that which he would not have. “How secret +art thou who dwellest in the highest heavens in silence, O thou only great God, +sprinkling with an unwearied providence certain penal blindnesses upon such as +have unbridled +desires!”<a href="#fn-3.1" name="fnref-3.1" id="fnref-3.1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn-3.1" id="fn-3.1"></a> <a href="#fnref-3.1">[1]</a> +St. Augustine, Confessions, B. I. +</p> + +<p> +The human soul is true to these facts in the painting of fable, of history, of +law, of proverbs, of conversation. It finds a tongue in literature unawares. +Thus the Greeks called Jupiter, Supreme Mind; but having traditionally ascribed +to him many base actions, they involuntarily made amends to reason by tying up +the hands of so bad a god. He is made as helpless as a king of England. +Prometheus knows one secret which Jove must bargain for; Minerva, another. He +cannot get his own thunders; Minerva keeps the key of them:— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Of all the gods, I only know the keys<br /> +That ope the solid doors within whose vaults<br /> +His thunders sleep.” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +A plain confession of the in-working of the All and of its moral aim. The +Indian mythology ends in the same ethics; and it would seem impossible for any +fable to be invented and get any currency which was not moral. Aurora forgot to +ask youth for her lover, and though Tithonus is immortal, he is old. Achilles +is not quite invulnerable; the sacred waters did not wash the heel by which +Thetis held him. Siegfried, in the Nibelungen, is not quite immortal, for a +leaf fell on his back whilst he was bathing in the dragon’s blood, and +that spot which it covered is mortal. And so it must be. There is a crack in +every thing God has made. It would seem there is always this vindictive +circumstance stealing in at unawares even into the wild poesy in which the +human fancy attempted to make bold holiday and to shake itself free of the old +laws,—this back-stroke, this kick of the gun, certifying that the law is +fatal; that in nature nothing can be given, all things are sold. +</p> + +<p> +This is that ancient doctrine of Nemesis, who keeps watch in the universe and +lets no offence go unchastised. The Furies they said are attendants on justice, +and if the sun in heaven should transgress his path they would punish him. The +poets related that stone walls and iron swords and leathern thongs had an +occult sympathy with the wrongs of their owners; that the belt which Ajax gave +Hector dragged the Trojan hero over the field at the wheels of the car of +Achilles, and the sword which Hector gave Ajax was that on whose point Ajax +fell. They recorded that when the Thasians erected a statue to Theagenes, a +victor in the games, one of his rivals went to it by night and endeavored to +throw it down by repeated blows, until at last he moved it from its pedestal +and was crushed to death beneath its fall. +</p> + +<p> +This voice of fable has in it somewhat divine. It came from thought above the +will of the writer. That is the best part of each writer which has nothing +private in it; that which he does not know; that which flowed out of his +constitution and not from his too active invention; that which in the study of +a single artist you might not easily find, but in the study of many you would +abstract as the spirit of them all. Phidias it is not, but the work of man in +that early Hellenic world that I would know. The name and circumstance of +Phidias, however convenient for history, embarrass when we come to the highest +criticism. We are to see that which man was tending to do in a given period, +and was hindered, or, if you will, modified in doing, by the interfering +volitions of Phidias, of Dante, of Shakspeare, the organ whereby man at the +moment wrought. +</p> + +<p> +Still more striking is the expression of this fact in the proverbs of all +nations, which are always the literature of reason, or the statements of an +absolute truth without qualification. Proverbs, like the sacred books of each +nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions. That which the droning world, +chained to appearances, will not allow the realist to say in his own words, it +will suffer him to say in proverbs without contradiction. And this law of laws, +which the pulpit, the senate and the college deny, is hourly preached in all +markets and workshops by flights of proverbs, whose teaching is as true and as +omnipresent as that of birds and flies. +</p> + +<p> +All things are double, one against another.—Tit for tat; an eye for an +eye; a tooth for a tooth; blood for blood; measure for measure; love for +love.—Give and it shall be given you.—He that watereth shall be +watered himself.—What will you have? quoth God; pay for it and take +it.—Nothing venture, nothing have.—Thou shalt be paid exactly for +what thou hast done, no more, no less.—Who doth not work shall not +eat.—Harm watch, harm catch.—Curses always recoil on the head of +him who imprecates them.—If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, +the other end fastens itself around your own.—Bad counsel confounds the +adviser.—The Devil is an ass. +</p> + +<p> +It is thus written, because it is thus in life. Our action is overmastered and +characterized above our will by the law of nature. We aim at a petty end quite +aside from the public good, but our act arranges itself by irresistible +magnetism in a line with the poles of the world. +</p> + +<p> +A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will or against his will he +draws his portrait to the eye of his companions by every word. Every opinion +reacts on him who utters it. It is a thread-ball thrown at a mark, but the +other end remains in the thrower’s bag. Or rather it is a harpoon hurled +at the whale, unwinding, as it flies, a coil of cord in the boat, and, if the +harpoon is not good, or not well thrown, it will go nigh to cut the steersman +in twain or to sink the boat. +</p> + +<p> +You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. “No man had ever a point of +pride that was not injurious to him,” said Burke. The exclusive in +fashionable life does not see that he excludes himself from enjoyment, in the +attempt to appropriate it. The exclusionist in religion does not see that he +shuts the door of heaven on himself, in striving to shut out others. Treat men +as pawns and ninepins and you shall suffer as well as they. If you leave out +their heart, you shall lose your own. The senses would make things of all +persons; of women, of children, of the poor. The vulgar proverb, “I will +get it from his purse or get it from his skin,” is sound philosophy. +</p> + +<p> +All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are speedily +punished. They are punished by fear. Whilst I stand in simple relations to my +fellow-man, I have no displeasure in meeting him. We meet as water meets water, +or as two currents of air mix, with perfect diffusion and interpenetration of +nature. But as soon as there is any departure from simplicity, and attempt at +halfness, or good for me that is not good for him, my neighbor feels the wrong; +he shrinks from me as far as I have shrunk from him; his eyes no longer seek +mine; there is war between us; there is hate in him and fear in me. +</p> + +<p> +All the old abuses in society, universal and particular, all unjust +accumulations of property and power, are avenged in the same manner. Fear is an +instructor of great sagacity and the herald of all revolutions. One thing he +teaches, that there is rottenness where he appears. He is a carrion crow, and +though you see not well what he hovers for, there is death somewhere. Our +property is timid, our laws are timid, our cultivated classes are timid. Fear +for ages has boded and mowed and gibbered over government and property. That +obscene bird is not there for nothing. He indicates great wrongs which must be +revised. +</p> + +<p> +Of the like nature is that expectation of change which instantly follows the +suspension of our voluntary activity. The terror of cloudless noon, the emerald +of Polycrates, the awe of prosperity, the instinct which leads every generous +soul to impose on itself tasks of a noble asceticism and vicarious virtue, are +the tremblings of the balance of justice through the heart and mind of man. +</p> + +<p> +Experienced men of the world know very well that it is best to pay scot and lot +as they go along, and that a man often pays dear for a small frugality. The +borrower runs in his own debt. Has a man gained any thing who has received a +hundred favors and rendered none? Has he gained by borrowing, through indolence +or cunning, his neighbor’s wares, or horses, or money? There arises on +the deed the instant acknowledgment of benefit on the one part and of debt on +the other; that is, of superiority and inferiority. The transaction remains in +the memory of himself and his neighbor; and every new transaction alters +according to its nature their relation to each other. He may soon come to see +that he had better have broken his own bones than to have ridden in his +neighbor’s coach, and that “the highest price he can pay for a +thing is to ask for it.” +</p> + +<p> +A wise man will extend this lesson to all parts of life, and know that it is +the part of prudence to face every claimant and pay every just demand on your +time, your talents, or your heart. Always pay; for first or last you must pay +your entire debt. Persons and events may stand for a time between you and +justice, but it is only a postponement. You must pay at last your own debt. If +you are wise you will dread a prosperity which only loads you with more. +Benefit is the end of nature. But for every benefit which you receive, a tax is +levied. He is great who confers the most benefits. He is base,—and that +is the one base thing in the universe,—to receive favors and render none. +In the order of nature we cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive +them, or only seldom. But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line +for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of too much good +staying in your hand. It will fast corrupt and worm worms. Pay it away quickly +in some sort. +</p> + +<p> +Labor is watched over by the same pitiless laws. Cheapest, say the prudent, is +the dearest labor. What we buy in a broom, a mat, a wagon, a knife, is some +application of good sense to a common want. It is best to pay in your land a +skilful gardener, or to buy good sense applied to gardening; in your sailor, +good sense applied to navigation; in the house, good sense applied to cooking, +sewing, serving; in your agent, good sense applied to accounts and affairs. So +do you multiply your presence, or spread yourself throughout your estate. But +because of the dual constitution of things, in labor as in life there can be no +cheating. The thief steals from himself. The swindler swindles himself. For the +real price of labor is knowledge and virtue, whereof wealth and credit are +signs. These signs, like paper money, may be counterfeited or stolen, but that +which they represent, namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be counterfeited or +stolen. These ends of labor cannot be answered but by real exertions of the +mind, and in obedience to pure motives. The cheat, the defaulter, the gambler, +cannot extort the knowledge of material and moral nature which his honest care +and pains yield to the operative. The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you +shall have the Power; but they who do not the thing have not the power. +</p> + +<p> +Human labor, through all its forms, from the sharpening of a stake to the +construction of a city or an epic, is one immense illustration of the perfect +compensation of the universe. The absolute balance of Give and Take, the +doctrine that every thing has its price,—and if that price is not paid, +not that thing but something else is obtained, and that it is impossible to get +any thing without its price,—is not less sublime in the columns of a +leger than in the budgets of states, in the laws of light and darkness, in all +the action and reaction of nature. I cannot doubt that the high laws which each +man sees implicated in those processes with which he is conversant, the stern +ethics which sparkle on his chisel-edge, which are measured out by his plumb +and foot-rule, which stand as manifest in the footing of the shop-bill as in +the history of a state,—do recommend to him his trade, and though seldom +named, exalt his business to his imagination. +</p> + +<p> +The league between virtue and nature engages all things to assume a hostile +front to vice. The beautiful laws and substances of the world persecute and +whip the traitor. He finds that things are arranged for truth and benefit, but +there is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime, and the +earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell +on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge and +fox and squirrel and mole. You cannot recall the spoken word, you cannot wipe +out the foot-track, you cannot draw up the ladder, so as to leave no inlet or +clew. Some damning circumstance always transpires. The laws and substances of +nature,—water, snow, wind, gravitation,—become penalties to the +thief. +</p> + +<p> +On the other hand the law holds with equal sureness for all right action. Love, +and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two +sides of an algebraic equation. The good man has absolute good, which like fire +turns every thing to its own nature, so that you cannot do him any harm; but as +the royal armies sent against Napoleon, when he approached cast down their +colors and from enemies became friends, so disasters of all kinds, as sickness, +offence, poverty, prove benefactors:— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Winds blow and waters roll<br /> +Strength to the brave, and power and deity,<br /> +Yet in themselves are nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +The good are befriended even by weakness and defect. As no man had ever a point +of pride that was not injurious to him, so no man had ever a defect that was +not somewhere made useful to him. The stag in the fable admired his horns and +blamed his feet, but when the hunter came, his feet saved him, and afterwards, +caught in the thicket, his horns destroyed him. Every man in his lifetime needs +to thank his faults. As no man thoroughly understands a truth until he has +contended against it, so no man has a thorough acquaintance with the hindrances +or talents of men until he has suffered from the one and seen the triumph of +the other over his own want of the same. Has he a defect of temper that unfits +him to live in society? Thereby he is driven to entertain himself alone and +acquire habits of self-help; and thus, like the wounded oyster, he mends his +shell with pearl. +</p> + +<p> +Our strength grows out of our weakness. The indignation which arms itself with +secret forces does not awaken until we are pricked and stung and sorely +assailed. A great man is always willing to be little. Whilst he sits on the +cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, +defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits, on +his manhood; he has gained facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of the +insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real skill. The wise man throws +himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is +theirs to find his weak point. The wound cicatrizes and falls off from him like +a dead skin and when they would triumph, lo! he has passed on invulnerable. +Blame is safer than praise. I hate to be defended in a newspaper. As long as +all that is said is said against me, I feel a certain assurance of success. But +as soon as honeyed words of praise are spoken for me I feel as one that lies +unprotected before his enemies. In general, every evil to which we do not +succumb is a benefactor. As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength +and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of +the temptation we resist. +</p> + +<p> +The same guards which protect us from disaster, defect, and enmity, defend us, +if we will, from selfishness and fraud. Bolts and bars are not the best of our +institutions, nor is shrewdness in trade a mark of wisdom. Men suffer all their +life long under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But it is as +impossible for a man to be cheated by any one but himself, as for a thing to be +and not to be at the same time. There is a third silent party to all our +bargains. The nature and soul of things takes on itself the guaranty of the +fulfilment of every contract, so that honest service cannot come to loss. If +you serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. Put God in your debt. Every +stroke shall be repaid. The longer The payment is withholden, the better for +you; for compound interest on compound interest is the rate and usage of this +exchequer. +</p> + +<p> +The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make +water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand. It makes no difference whether the +actors be many or one, a tyrant or a mob. A mob is a society of bodies +voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason and traversing its work. The mob is +man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity +is night. Its actions are insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes a +principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by +inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have +these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the +ruddy aurora streaming to the stars. The inviolate spirit turns their spite +against the wrongdoers. The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted +is a tongue of fame; every prison, a more illustrious abode; every burned book +or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates +through the earth from side to side. Hours of sanity and consideration are +always arriving to communities, as to individuals, when the truth is seen and +the martyrs are justified. +</p> + +<p> +Thus do all things preach the indifferency of circumstances. The man is all. +Every thing has two sides, a good and an evil. Every advantage has its tax. I +learn to be content. But the doctrine of compensation is not the doctrine of +indifferency. The thoughtless say, on hearing these representations,—What +boots it to do well? there is one event to good and evil; if I gain any good I +must pay for it; if I lose any good I gain some other; all actions are +indifferent. +</p> + +<p> +There is a deeper fact in the soul than compensation, to wit, its own nature. +The soul is not a compensation, but a life. The soul <i>is</i>. Under all this +running sea of circumstance, whose waters ebb and flow with perfect balance, +lies the aboriginal abyss of real Being. Essence, or God, is not a relation or +a part, but the whole. Being is the vast affirmative, excluding negation, +self-balanced, and swallowing up all relations, parts and times within itself. +Nature, truth, virtue, are the influx from thence. Vice is the absence or +departure of the same. Nothing, Falsehood, may indeed stand as the great Night +or shade on which as a background the living universe paints itself forth, but +no fact is begotten by it; it cannot work, for it is not. It cannot work any +good; it cannot work any harm. It is harm inasmuch as it is worse not to be +than to be. +</p> + +<p> +We feel defrauded of the retribution due to evil acts, because the criminal +adheres to his vice and contumacy and does not come to a crisis or judgment +anywhere in visible nature. There is no stunning confutation of his nonsense +before men and angels. Has he therefore outwitted the law? Inasmuch as he +carries the malignity and the lie with him he so far deceases from nature. In +some manner there will be a demonstration of the wrong to the understanding +also; but, should we not see it, this deadly deduction makes square the eternal +account. +</p> + +<p> +Neither can it be said, on the other hand, that the gain of rectitude must be +bought by any loss. There is no penalty to virtue; no penalty to wisdom; they +are proper additions of being. In a virtuous action I properly <i>am;</i> in a +virtuous act I add to the world; I plant into deserts conquered from Chaos and +Nothing and see the darkness receding on the limits of the horizon. There can +be no excess to love, none to knowledge, none to beauty, when these attributes +are considered in the purest sense. The soul refuses limits, and always affirms +an Optimism, never a Pessimism. +</p> + +<p> +His life is a progress, and not a station. His instinct is trust. Our instinct +uses “more” and “less” in application to man, of the +<i>presence of the soul</i>, and not of its absence, the brave man is greater +than the coward; the true, the benevolent, the wise, is more a man and not +less, than the fool and knave. There is no tax on the good of virtue, for that +is the incoming of God himself, or absolute existence, without any comparative. +Material good has its tax, and if it came without desert or sweat, has no root +in me, and the next wind will blow it away. But all the good of nature is the +soul’s, and may be had if paid for in nature’s lawful coin, that +is, by labor which the heart and the head allow. I no longer wish to meet a +good I do not earn, for example to find a pot of buried gold, knowing that it +brings with it new burdens. I do not wish more external goods,—neither +possessions, nor honors, nor powers, nor persons. The gain is apparent; the tax +is certain. But there is no tax on the knowledge that the compensation exists +and that it is not desirable to dig up treasure. Herein I rejoice with a serene +eternal peace. I contract the boundaries of possible mischief. I learn the +wisdom of St. Bernard,—“Nothing can work me damage except myself; +the harm that I sustain I carry about with me, and never am a real sufferer but +by my own fault.” +</p> + +<p> +In the nature of the soul is the compensation for the inequalities of +condition. The radical tragedy of nature seems to be the distinction of More +and Less. How can Less not feel the pain; how not feel indignation or +malevolence towards More? Look at those who have less faculty, and one feels +sad and knows not well what to make of it. He almost shuns their eye; he fears +they will upbraid God. What should they do? It seems a great injustice. But see +the facts nearly and these mountainous inequalities vanish. Love reduces them +as the sun melts the iceberg in the sea. The heart and soul of all men being +one, this bitterness of <i>His</i> and <i>Mine</i> ceases. His is mine. I am my +brother and my brother is me. If I feel overshadowed and outdone by great +neighbors, I can yet love; I can still receive; and he that loveth maketh his +own the grandeur he loves. Thereby I make the discovery that my brother is my +guardian, acting for me with the friendliest designs, and the estate I so +admired and envied is my own. It is the nature of the soul to appropriate all +things. Jesus and Shakspeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer +and incorporate them in my own conscious domain. His virtue,—is not that +mine? His wit,—if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit. +</p> + +<p> +Such also is the natural history of calamity. The changes which break up at +short intervals the prosperity of men are advertisements of a nature whose law +is growth. Every soul is by this intrinsic necessity quitting its whole system +of things, its friends and home and laws and faith, as the shell-fish crawls +out of its beautiful but stony case, because it no longer admits of its growth, +and slowly forms a new house. In proportion to the vigor of the individual +these revolutions are frequent, until in some happier mind they are incessant +and all worldly relations hang very loosely about him, becoming as it were a +transparent fluid membrane through which the living form is seen, and not, as +in most men, an indurated heterogeneous fabric of many dates and of no settled +character, in which the man is imprisoned. Then there can be enlargement, and +the man of to-day scarcely recognizes the man of yesterday. And such should be +the outward biography of man in time, a putting off of dead circumstances day +by day, as he renews his raiment day by day. But to us, in our lapsed estate, +resting, not advancing, resisting, not cooperating with the divine expansion, +this growth comes by shocks. +</p> + +<p> +We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not see +that they only go out that archangels may come in. We are idolaters of the old. +We do not believe in the riches of the soul, in its proper eternity and +omnipresence. We do not believe there is any force in to-day to rival or +recreate that beautiful yesterday. We linger in the ruins of the old tent where +once we had bread and shelter and organs, nor believe that the spirit can feed, +cover, and nerve us again. We cannot again find aught so dear, so sweet, so +graceful. But we sit and weep in vain. The voice of the Almighty saith, +‘Up and onward for evermore!’ We cannot stay amid the ruins. +Neither will we rely on the new; and so we walk ever with reverted eyes, like +those monsters who look backwards. +</p> + +<p> +And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding +also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel +disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid +loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that +underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which +seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or +genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an +epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted +occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new +ones more friendly to the growth of character. It permits or constrains the +formation of new acquaintances and the reception of new influences that prove +of the first importance to the next years; and the man or woman who would have +remained a sunny garden-flower, with no room for its roots and too much +sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the +gardener is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide +neighborhoods of men. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"></a>IV.<br /> +SPIRITUAL LAWS</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +The living Heaven thy prayers respect,<br /> +House at once and architect,<br /> +Quarrying man’s rejected hours,<br /> +Builds therewith eternal towers;<br /> +Sole and self-commanded works,<br /> +Fears not undermining days,<br /> +Grows by decays,<br /> +And, by the famous might that lurks<br /> +In reaction and recoil,<br /> +Makes flame to freeze, and ice to boil;<br /> +Forging, through swart arms of Offence,<br /> +The silver seat of Innocence. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>SPIRITUAL LAWS</h2> + +<p> +When the act of reflection takes place in the mind, when we look at ourselves +in the light of thought, we discover that our life is embosomed in beauty. +Behind us, as we go, all things assume pleasing forms, as clouds do far off. +Not only things familiar and stale, but even the tragic and terrible are comely +as they take their place in the pictures of memory. The river-bank, the weed at +the water-side, the old house, the foolish person, however neglected in the +passing, have a grace in the past. Even the corpse that has lain in the +chambers has added a solemn ornament to the house. The soul will not know +either deformity or pain. If in the hours of clear reason we should speak the +severest truth, we should say that we had never made a sacrifice. In these +hours the mind seems so great that nothing can be taken from us that seems +much. All loss, all pain, is particular; the universe remains to the heart +unhurt. Neither vexations nor calamities abate our trust. No man ever stated +his griefs as lightly as he might. Allow for exaggeration in the most patient +and sorely ridden hack that ever was driven. For it is only the finite that has +wrought and suffered; the infinite lies stretched in smiling repose. +</p> + +<p> +The intellectual life may be kept clean and healthful if man will live the life +of nature and not import into his mind difficulties which are none of his. No +man need be perplexed in his speculations. Let him do and say what strictly +belongs to him, and though very ignorant of books, his nature shall not yield +him any intellectual obstructions and doubts. Our young people are diseased +with the theological problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination +and the like. These never presented a practical difficulty to any +man,—never darkened across any man’s road who did not go out of his +way to seek them. These are the soul’s mumps and measles and +whooping-coughs, and those who have not caught them cannot describe their +health or prescribe the cure. A simple mind will not know these enemies. It is +quite another thing that he should be able to give account of his faith and +expound to another the theory of his self-union and freedom. This requires rare +gifts. Yet without this self-knowledge there may be a sylvan strength and +integrity in that which he is. “A few strong instincts and a few plain +rules” suffice us. +</p> + +<p> +My will never gave the images in my mind the rank they now take. The regular +course of studies, the years of academical and professional education have not +yielded me better facts than some idle books under the bench at the Latin +School. What we do not call education is more precious than that which we call +so. We form no guess, at the time of receiving a thought, of its comparative +value. And education often wastes its effort in attempts to thwart and balk +this natural magnetism, which is sure to select what belongs to it. +</p> + +<p> +In like manner our moral nature is vitiated by any interference of our will. +People represent virtue as a struggle, and take to themselves great airs upon +their attainments, and the question is everywhere vexed when a noble nature is +commended, whether the man is not better who strives with temptation. But there +is no merit in the matter. Either God is there or he is not there. We love +characters in proportion as they are impulsive and spontaneous. The less a man +thinks or knows about his virtues the better we like him. Timoleon’s +victories are the best victories, which ran and flowed like Homer’s +verses, Plutarch said. When we see a soul whose acts are all regal, graceful +and pleasant as roses, we must thank God that such things can be and are, and +not turn sourly on the angel and say ‘Crump is a better man with his +grunting resistance to all his native devils.’ +</p> + +<p> +Not less conspicuous is the preponderance of nature over will in all practical +life. There is less intention in history than we ascribe to it. We impute +deep-laid far-sighted plans to Cæsar and Napoleon; but the best of their power +was in nature, not in them. Men of an extraordinary success, in their honest +moments, have always sung, ‘Not unto us, not unto us.’ According to +the faith of their times they have built altars to Fortune, or to Destiny, or +to St. Julian. Their success lay in their parallelism to the course of thought, +which found in them an unobstructed channel; and the wonders of which they were +the visible conductors seemed to the eye their deed. Did the wires generate the +galvanism? It is even true that there was less in them on which they could +reflect than in another; as the virtue of a pipe is to be smooth and hollow. +That which externally seemed will and immovableness was willingness and +self-annihilation. Could Shakspeare give a theory of Shakspeare? Could ever a +man of prodigious mathematical genius convey to others any insight into his +methods? If he could communicate that secret it would instantly lose its +exaggerated value, blending with the daylight and the vital energy the power to +stand and to go. +</p> + +<p> +The lesson is forcibly taught by these observations that our life might be much +easier and simpler than we make it; that the world might be a happier place +than it is; that there is no need of struggles, convulsions, and despairs, of +the wringing of the hands and the gnashing of the teeth; that we miscreate our +own evils. We interfere with the optimism of nature; for whenever we get this +vantage-ground of the past, or of a wiser mind in the present, we are able to +discern that we are begirt with laws which execute themselves. +</p> + +<p> +The face of external nature teaches the same lesson. Nature will not have us +fret and fume. She does not like our benevolence or our learning much better +than she likes our frauds and wars. When we come out of the caucus, or the +bank, or the Abolition-convention, or the Temperance-meeting, or the +Transcendental club into the fields and woods, she says to us, ‘So hot? +my little Sir.’ +</p> + +<p> +We are full of mechanical actions. We must needs intermeddle and have things in +our own way, until the sacrifices and virtues of society are odious. Love +should make joy; but our benevolence is unhappy. Our Sunday-schools and +churches and pauper-societies are yokes to the neck. We pain ourselves to +please nobody. There are natural ways of arriving at the same ends at which +these aim, but do not arrive. Why should all virtue work in one and the same +way? Why should all give dollars? It is very inconvenient to us country folk, +and we do not think any good will come of it. We have not dollars; merchants +have; let them give them. Farmers will give corn; poets will sing; women will +sew; laborers will lend a hand; the children will bring flowers. And why drag +this dead weight of a Sunday-school over the whole Christendom? It is natural +and beautiful that childhood should inquire and maturity should teach; but it +is time enough to answer questions when they are asked. Do not shut up the +young people against their will in a pew and force the children to ask them +questions for an hour against their will. +</p> + +<p> +If we look wider, things are all alike; laws and letters and creeds and modes +of living seem a travesty of truth. Our society is encumbered by ponderous +machinery, which resembles the endless aqueducts which the Romans built over +hill and dale and which are superseded by the discovery of the law that water +rises to the level of its source. It is a Chinese wall which any nimble Tartar +can leap over. It is a standing army, not so good as a peace. It is a +graduated, titled, richly appointed empire, quite superfluous when +town-meetings are found to answer just as well. +</p> + +<p> +Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. When the +fruit is ripe, it falls. When the fruit is despatched, the leaf falls. The +circuit of the waters is mere falling. The walking of man and all animals is a +falling forward. All our manual labor and works of strength, as prying, +splitting, digging, rowing and so forth, are done by dint of continual falling, +and the globe, earth, moon, comet, sun, star, fall for ever and ever. +</p> + +<p> +The simplicity of the universe is very different from the simplicity of a +machine. He who sees moral nature out and out and thoroughly knows how +knowledge is acquired and character formed, is a pedant. The simplicity of +nature is not that which may easily be read, but is inexhaustible. The last +analysis can no wise be made. We judge of a man’s wisdom by his hope, +knowing that the perception of the inexhaustibleness of nature is an immortal +youth. The wild fertility of nature is felt in comparing our rigid names and +reputations with our fluid consciousness. We pass in the world for sects and +schools, for erudition and piety, and we are all the time jejune babes. One +sees very well how Pyrrhonism grew up. Every man sees that he is that middle +point whereof every thing may be affirmed and denied with equal reason. He is +old, he is young, he is very wise, he is altogether ignorant. He hears and +feels what you say of the seraphim, and of the tin-peddler. There is no +permanent wise man except in the figment of the Stoics. We side with the hero, +as we read or paint, against the coward and the robber; but we have been +ourselves that coward and robber, and shall be again,—not in the low +circumstance, but in comparison with the grandeurs possible to the soul. +</p> + +<p> +A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would show us +that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that our painful +labors are unnecessary and fruitless; that only in our easy, simple, +spontaneous action are we strong, and by contenting ourselves with obedience we +become divine. Belief and love,—a believing love will relieve us of a +vast load of care. O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the centre of +nature and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the +universe. It has so infused its strong enchantment into nature that we prosper +when we accept its advice, and when we struggle to wound its creatures our +hands are glued to our sides, or they beat our own breasts. The whole course of +things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance for each of +us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word. Why need you choose so +painfully your place and occupation and associates and modes of action and of +entertainment? Certainly there is a possible right for you that precludes the +need of balance and wilful election. For you there is a reality, a fit place +and congenial duties. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and +wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled +to truth, to right and a perfect contentment. Then you put all gainsayers in +the wrong. Then you are the world, the measure of right, of truth, of beauty. +If we will not be mar-plots with our miserable interferences, the work, the +society, letters, arts, science, religion of men would go on far better than +now, and the heaven predicted from the beginning of the world, and still +predicted from the bottom of the heart, would organize itself, as do now the +rose and the air and the sun. +</p> + +<p> +I say, <i>do not choose;</i> but that is a figure of speech by which I would +distinguish what is commonly called <i>choice</i> among men, and which is a +partial act, the choice of the hands, of the eyes, of the appetites, and not a +whole act of the man. But that which I call right or goodness, is the choice of +my constitution; and that which I call heaven, and inwardly aspire after, is +the state or circumstance desirable to my constitution; and the action which I +in all my years tend to do, is the work for my faculties. We must hold a man +amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not +an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. What +business has he with an evil trade? Has he not a <i>calling</i> in his +character? +</p> + +<p> +Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction +in which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently inviting him +thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in a river; he runs against +obstructions on every side but one, on that side all obstruction is taken away +and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea. This +talent and this call depend on his organization, or the mode in which the +general soul incarnates itself in him. He inclines to do something which is +easy to him and good when it is done, but which no other man can do. He has no +rival. For the more truly he consults his own powers, the more difference will +his work exhibit from the work of any other. His ambition is exactly +proportioned to his powers. The height of the pinnacle is determined by the +breadth of the base. Every man has this call of the power to do somewhat +unique, and no man has any other call. The pretence that he has another call, a +summons by name and personal election and outward “signs that mark him +extraordinary, and not in the roll of common men,” is fanaticism, and +betrays obtuseness to perceive that there is one mind in all the individuals, +and no respect of persons therein. +</p> + +<p> +By doing his work he makes the need felt which he can supply, and creates the +taste by which he is enjoyed. By doing his own work he unfolds himself. It is +the vice of our public speaking that it has not abandonment. Somewhere, not +only every orator but every man should let out all the length of all the reins; +should find or make a frank and hearty expression of what force and meaning is +in him. The common experience is that the man fits himself as well as he can to +the customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as a +dog turns a spit. Then is he a part of the machine he moves; the man is lost. +Until he can manage to communicate himself to others in his full stature and +proportion, he does not yet find his vocation. He must find in that an outlet +for his character, so that he may justify his work to their eyes. If the labor +is mean, let him by his thinking and character make it liberal. Whatever he +knows and thinks, whatever in his apprehension is worth doing, that let him +communicate, or men will never know and honor him aright. Foolish, whenever you +take the meanness and formality of that thing you do, instead of converting it +into the obedient spiracle of your character and aims. +</p> + +<p> +We like only such actions as have already long had the praise of men, and do +not perceive that any thing man can do may be divinely done. We think greatness +entailed or organized in some places or duties, in certain offices or +occasions, and do not see that Paganini can extract rapture from a catgut, and +Eulenstein from a jews-harp, and a nimble-fingered lad out of shreds of paper +with his scissors, and Landseer out of swine, and the hero out of the pitiful +habitation and company in which he was hidden. What we call obscure condition +or vulgar society is that condition and society whose poetry is not yet +written, but which you shall presently make as enviable and renowned as any. In +our estimates let us take a lesson from kings. The parts of hospitality, the +connection of families, the impressiveness of death, and a thousand other +things, royalty makes its own estimate of, and a royal mind will. To make +habitually a new estimate,—that is elevation. +</p> + +<p> +What a man does, that he has. What has he to do with hope or fear? In himself +is his might. Let him regard no good as solid but that which is in his nature +and which must grow out of him as long as he exists. The goods of fortune may +come and go like summer leaves; let him scatter them on every wind as the +momentary signs of his infinite productiveness. +</p> + +<p> +He may have his own. A man’s genius, the quality that differences him +from every other, the susceptibility to one class of influences, the selection +of what is fit for him, the rejection of what is unfit, determines for him the +character of the universe. A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a +selecting principle, gathering his like to him wherever he goes. He takes only +his own out of the multiplicity that sweeps and circles round him. He is like +one of those booms which are set out from the shore on rivers to catch +drift-wood, or like the loadstone amongst splinters of steel. Those facts, +words, persons, which dwell in his memory without his being able to say why, +remain because they have a relation to him not less real for being as yet +unapprehended. They are symbols of value to him as they can interpret parts of +his consciousness which he would vainly seek words for in the conventional +images of books and other minds. What attracts my attention shall have it, as I +will go to the man who knocks at my door, whilst a thousand persons as worthy +go by it, to whom I give no regard. It is enough that these particulars speak +to me. A few anecdotes, a few traits of character, manners, face, a few +incidents, have an emphasis in your memory out of all proportion to their +apparent significance if you measure them by the ordinary standards. They +relate to your gift. Let them have their weight, and do not reject them and +cast about for illustration and facts more usual in literature. What your heart +thinks great is great. The soul’s emphasis is always right. +</p> + +<p> +Over all things that are agreeable to his nature and genius the man has the +highest right. Everywhere he may take what belongs to his spiritual estate, nor +can he take any thing else though all doors were open, nor can all the force of +men hinder him from taking so much. It is vain to attempt to keep a secret from +one who has a right to know it. It will tell itself. That mood into which a +friend can bring us is his dominion over us. To the thoughts of that state of +mind he has a right. All the secrets of that state of mind he can compel. This +is a law which statesmen use in practice. All the terrors of the French +Republic, which held Austria in awe, were unable to command her diplomacy. But +Napoleon sent to Vienna M. de Narbonne, one of the old noblesse, with the +morals, manners and name of that interest, saying that it was indispensable to +send to the old aristocracy of Europe men of the same connection, which, in +fact, constitutes a sort of free-masonry. M. de Narbonne in less than a +fortnight penetrated all the secrets of the imperial cabinet. +</p> + +<p> +Nothing seems so easy as to speak and to be understood. Yet a man may come to +find <i>that</i> the strongest of defences and of ties,—that he has been +understood; and he who has received an opinion may come to find it the most +inconvenient of bonds. +</p> + +<p> +If a teacher have any opinion which he wishes to conceal, his pupils will +become as fully indoctrinated into that as into any which he publishes. If you +pour water into a vessel twisted into coils and angles, it is vain to say, I +will pour it only into this or that;—it will find its level in all. Men +feel and act the consequences of your doctrine without being able to show how +they follow. Show us an arc of the curve, and a good mathematician will find +out the whole figure. We are always reasoning from the seen to the unseen. +Hence the perfect intelligence that subsists between wise men of remote ages. A +man cannot bury his meanings so deep in his book but time and like-minded men +will find them. Plato had a secret doctrine, had he? What secret can he conceal +from the eyes of Bacon? of Montaigne? of Kant? Therefore, Aristotle said of his +works, “They are published and not published.” +</p> + +<p> +No man can learn what he has not preparation for learning, however near to his +eyes is the object. A chemist may tell his most precious secrets to a +carpenter, and he shall be never the wiser,—the secrets he would not +utter to a chemist for an estate. God screens us evermore from premature ideas. +Our eyes are holden that we cannot see things that stare us in the face, until +the hour arrives when the mind is ripened; then we behold them, and the time +when we saw them not is like a dream. +</p> + +<p> +Not in nature but in man is all the beauty and worth he sees. The world is very +empty, and is indebted to this gilding, exalting soul for all its pride. +“Earth fills her lap with splendors” <i>not</i> her own. The vale +of Tempe, Tivoli and Rome are earth and water, rocks and sky. There are as good +earth and water in a thousand places, yet how unaffecting! +</p> + +<p> +People are not the better for the sun and moon, the horizon and the trees; as +it is not observed that the keepers of Roman galleries or the valets of +painters have any elevation of thought, or that librarians are wiser men than +others. There are graces in the demeanor of a polished and noble person which +are lost upon the eye of a churl. These are like the stars whose light has not +yet reached us. +</p> + +<p> +He may see what he maketh. Our dreams are the sequel of our waking knowledge. +The visions of the night bear some proportion to the visions of the day. +Hideous dreams are exaggerations of the sins of the day. We see our evil +affections embodied in bad physiognomies. On the Alps the traveller sometimes +beholds his own shadow magnified to a giant, so that every gesture of his hand +is terrific. “My children,” said an old man to his boys scared by a +figure in the dark entry, “my children, you will never see any thing +worse than yourselves.” As in dreams, so in the scarcely less fluid +events of the world every man sees himself in colossal, without knowing that it +is himself. The good, compared to the evil which he sees, is as his own good to +his own evil. Every quality of his mind is magnified in some one acquaintance, +and every emotion of his heart in some one. He is like a quincunx of trees, +which counts five,—east, west, north, or south; or an initial, medial, +and terminal acrostic. And why not? He cleaves to one person and avoids +another, according to their likeness or unlikeness to himself, truly seeking +himself in his associates and moreover in his trade and habits and gestures and +meats and drinks, and comes at last to be faithfully represented by every view +you take of his circumstances. +</p> + +<p> +He may read what he writes. What can we see or acquire but what we are? You +have observed a skilful man reading Virgil. Well, that author is a thousand +books to a thousand persons. Take the book into your two hands and read your +eyes out, you will never find what I find. If any ingenious reader would have a +monopoly of the wisdom or delight he gets, he is as secure now the book is +Englished, as if it were imprisoned in the Pelews’ tongue. It is with a +good book as it is with good company. Introduce a base person among gentlemen, +it is all to no purpose; he is not their fellow. Every society protects itself. +The company is perfectly safe, and he is not one of them, though his body is in +the room. +</p> + +<p> +What avails it to fight with the eternal laws of mind, which adjust the +relation of all persons to each other by the mathematical measure of their +havings and beings? Gertrude is enamored of Guy; how high, how aristocratic, +how Roman his mien and manners! to live with him were life indeed, and no +purchase is too great; and heaven and earth are moved to that end. Well, +Gertrude has Guy; but what now avails how high, how aristocratic, how Roman his +mien and manners, if his heart and aims are in the senate, in the theatre and +in the billiard-room, and she has no aims, no conversation that can enchant her +graceful lord? +</p> + +<p> +He shall have his own society. We can love nothing but nature. The most +wonderful talents, the most meritorious exertions really avail very little with +us; but nearness or likeness of nature,—how beautiful is the ease of its +victory! Persons approach us, famous for their beauty, for their +accomplishments, worthy of all wonder for their charms and gifts; they dedicate +their whole skill to the hour and the company,—with very imperfect +result. To be sure it would be ungrateful in us not to praise them loudly. +Then, when all is done, a person of related mind, a brother or sister by +nature, comes to us so softly and easily, so nearly and intimately, as if it +were the blood in our proper veins, that we feel as if some one was gone, +instead of another having come; we are utterly relieved and refreshed; it is a +sort of joyful solitude. We foolishly think in our days of sin that we must +court friends by compliance to the customs of society, to its dress, its +breeding, and its estimates. But only that soul can be my friend which I +encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which I do not decline and +which does not decline to me, but, native of the same celestial latitude, +repeats in its own all my experience. The scholar forgets himself and apes the +customs and costumes of the man of the world to deserve the smile of beauty, +and follows some giddy girl, not yet taught by religious passion to know the +noble woman with all that is serene, oracular and beautiful in her soul. Let +him be great, and love shall follow him. Nothing is more deeply punished than +the neglect of the affinities by which alone society should be formed, and the +insane levity of choosing associates by others’ eyes. +</p> + +<p> +He may set his own rate. It is a maxim worthy of all acceptation that a man may +have that allowance he takes. Take the place and attitude which belong to you, +and all men acquiesce. The world must be just. It leaves every man, with +profound unconcern, to set his own rate. Hero or driveller, it meddles not in +the matter. It will certainly accept your own measure of your doing and being, +whether you sneak about and deny your own name, or whether you see your work +produced to the concave sphere of the heavens, one with the revolution of the +stars. +</p> + +<p> +The same reality pervades all teaching. The man may teach by doing, and not +otherwise. If he can communicate himself he can teach, but not by words. He +teaches who gives, and he learns who receives. There is no teaching until the +pupil is brought into the same state or principle in which you are; a +transfusion takes place; he is you and you are he; then is a teaching, and by +no unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever quite lose the benefit. But +your propositions run out of one ear as they ran in at the other. We see it +advertised that Mr. Grand will deliver an oration on the Fourth of July, and +Mr. Hand before the Mechanics’ Association, and we do not go thither, +because we know that these gentlemen will not communicate their own character +and experience to the company. If we had reason to expect such a confidence we +should go through all inconvenience and opposition. The sick would be carried +in litters. But a public oration is an escapade, a non-committal, an apology, a +gag, and not a communication, not a speech, not a man. +</p> + +<p> +A like Nemesis presides over all intellectual works. We have yet to learn that +the thing uttered in words is not therefore affirmed. It must affirm itself, or +no forms of logic or of oath can give it evidence. The sentence must also +contain its own apology for being spoken. +</p> + +<p> +The effect of any writing on the public mind is mathematically measurable by +its depth of thought. How much water does it draw? If it awaken you to think, +if it lift you from your feet with the great voice of eloquence, then the +effect is to be wide, slow, permanent, over the minds of men; if the pages +instruct you not, they will die like flies in the hour. The way to speak and +write what shall not go out of fashion is to speak and write sincerely. The +argument which has not power to reach my own practice, I may well doubt will +fail to reach yours. But take Sidney’s maxim:—“Look in thy +heart, and write.” He that writes to himself writes to an eternal public. +That statement only is fit to be made public which you have come at in +attempting to satisfy your own curiosity. The writer who takes his subject from +his ear and not from his heart, should know that he has lost as much as he +seems to have gained, and when the empty book has gathered all its praise, and +half the people say, ‘What poetry! what genius!’ it still needs +fuel to make fire. That only profits which is profitable. Life alone can impart +life; and though we should burst we can only be valued as we make ourselves +valuable. There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final +verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when +it appears, but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be +entreated and not to be overawed, decides upon every man’s title to fame. +Only those books come down which deserve to last. Gilt edges, vellum and +morocco, and presentation-copies to all the libraries will not preserve a book +in circulation beyond its intrinsic date. It must go with all Walpole’s +Noble and Royal Authors to its fate. Blackmore, Kotzebue, or Pollok may endure +for a night, but Moses and Homer stand for ever. There are not in the world at +any one time more than a dozen persons who read and understand +Plato,—never enough to pay for an edition of his works; yet to every +generation these come duly down, for the sake of those few persons, as if God +brought them in his hand. “No book,” said Bentley, “was ever +written down by any but itself.” The permanence of all books is fixed by +no effort, friendly or hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or the +intrinsic importance of their contents to the constant mind of man. “Do +not trouble yourself too much about the light on your statue,” said +Michael Angelo to the young sculptor; “the light of the public square +will test its value.” +</p> + +<p> +In like manner the effect of every action is measured by the depth of the +sentiment from which it proceeds. The great man knew not that he was great. It +took a century or two for that fact to appear. What he did, he did because he +must; it was the most natural thing in the world, and grew out of the +circumstances of the moment. But now, every thing he did, even to the lifting +of his finger or the eating of bread, looks large, all-related, and is called +an institution. +</p> + +<p> +These are the demonstrations in a few particulars of the genius of nature; they +show the direction of the stream. But the stream is blood; every drop is alive. +Truth has not single victories; all things are its organs,—not only dust +and stones, but errors and lies. The laws of disease, physicians say, are as +beautiful as the laws of health. Our philosophy is affirmative and readily +accepts the testimony of negative facts, as every shadow points to the sun. By +a divine necessity every fact in nature is constrained to offer its testimony. +</p> + +<p> +Human character evermore publishes itself. The most fugitive deed and word, the +mere air of doing a thing, the intimated purpose, expresses character. If you +act you show character; if you sit still, if you sleep, you show it. You think +because you have spoken nothing when others spoke, and have given no opinion on +the times, on the church, on slavery, on marriage, on socialism, on secret +societies, on the college, on parties and persons, that your verdict is still +expected with curiosity as a reserved wisdom. Far otherwise; your silence +answers very loud. You have no oracle to utter, and your fellow-men have +learned that you cannot help them; for oracles speak. Doth not Wisdom cry and +Understanding put forth her voice? +</p> + +<p> +Dreadful limits are set in nature to the powers of dissimulation. Truth +tyrannizes over the unwilling members of the body. Faces never lie, it is said. +No man need be deceived who will study the changes of expression. When a man +speaks the truth in the spirit of truth, his eye is as clear as the heavens. +When he has base ends and speaks falsely, the eye is muddy and sometimes +asquint. +</p> + +<p> +I have heard an experienced counsellor say that he never feared the effect upon +a jury of a lawyer who does not believe in his heart that his client ought to +have a verdict. If he does not believe it his unbelief will appear to the jury, +despite all his protestations, and will become their unbelief. This is that law +whereby a work of art, of whatever kind, sets us in the same state of mind +wherein the artist was when he made it. That which we do not believe we cannot +adequately say, though we may repeat the words never so often. It was this +conviction which Swedenborg expressed when he described a group of persons in +the spiritual world endeavoring in vain to articulate a proposition which they +did not believe; but they could not, though they twisted and folded their lips +even to indignation. +</p> + +<p> +A man passes for that he is worth. Very idle is all curiosity concerning other +people’s estimate of us, and all fear of remaining unknown is not less +so. If a man know that he can do any thing,—that he can do it better than +any one else,—he has a pledge of the acknowledgment of that fact by all +persons. The world is full of judgment-days, and into every assembly that a man +enters, in every action he attempts, he is gauged and stamped. In every troop +of boys that whoop and run in each yard and square, a new-comer is as well and +accurately weighed in the course of a few days and stamped with his right +number, as if he had undergone a formal trial of his strength, speed and +temper. A stranger comes from a distant school, with better dress, with +trinkets in his pockets, with airs and pretensions; an older boy says to +himself, ‘It’s of no use; we shall find him out to-morrow.’ +‘What has he done?’ is the divine question which searches men and +transpierces every false reputation. A fop may sit in any chair of the world +nor be distinguished for his hour from Homer and Washington; but there need +never be any doubt concerning the respective ability of human beings. +Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of +real greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nor drove back Xerxes, nor +christianized the world, nor abolished slavery. +</p> + +<p> +As much virtue as there is, so much appears; as much goodness as there is, so +much reverence it commands. All the devils respect virtue. The high, the +generous, the self-devoted sect will always instruct and command mankind. Never +was a sincere word utterly lost. Never a magnanimity fell to the ground, but +there is some heart to greet and accept it unexpectedly. A man passes for that +he is worth. What he is engraves itself on his face, on his form, on his +fortunes, in letters of light. Concealment avails him nothing, boasting +nothing. There is confession in the glances of our eyes, in our smiles, in +salutations, and the grasp of hands. His sin bedaubs him, mars all his good +impression. Men know not why they do not trust him, but they do not trust him. +His vice glasses his eye, cuts lines of mean expression in his cheek, pinches +the nose, sets the mark of the beast on the back of the head, and writes O +fool! fool! on the forehead of a king. +</p> + +<p> +If you would not be known to do any thing, never do it. A man may play the fool +in the drifts of a desert, but every grain of sand shall seem to see. He may be +a solitary eater, but he cannot keep his foolish counsel. A broken complexion, +a swinish look, ungenerous acts and the want of due knowledge,—all blab. +Can a cook, a Chiffinch, an Iachimo be mistaken for Zeno or Paul? Confucius +exclaimed,—“How can a man be concealed? How can a man be +concealed?” +</p> + +<p> +On the other hand, the hero fears not that if he withhold the avowal of a just +and brave act it will go unwitnessed and unloved. One knows +it,—himself,—and is pledged by it to sweetness of peace and to +nobleness of aim which will prove in the end a better proclamation of it than +the relating of the incident. Virtue is the adherence in action to the nature +of things, and the nature of things makes it prevalent. It consists in a +perpetual substitution of being for seeming, and with sublime propriety God is +described as saying, I AM. +</p> + +<p> +The lesson which these observations convey is, Be, and not seem. Let us +acquiesce. Let us take our bloated nothingness out of the path of the divine +circuits. Let us unlearn our wisdom of the world. Let us lie low in the +Lord’s power and learn that truth alone makes rich and great. +</p> + +<p> +If you visit your friend, why need you apologize for not having visited him, +and waste his time and deface your own act? Visit him now. Let him feel that +the highest love has come to see him, in thee its lowest organ. Or why need you +torment yourself and friend by secret self-reproaches that you have not +assisted him or complimented him with gifts and salutations heretofore? Be a +gift and a benediction. Shine with real light and not with the borrowed +reflection of gifts. Common men are apologies for men; they bow the head, +excuse themselves with prolix reasons, and accumulate appearances because the +substance is not. +</p> + +<p> +We are full of these superstitions of sense, the worship of magnitude. We call +the poet inactive, because he is not a president, a merchant, or a porter. We +adore an institution, and do not see that it is founded on a thought which we +have. But real action is in silent moments. The epochs of our life are not in +the visible facts of our choice of a calling, our marriage, our acquisition of +an office, and the like, but in a silent thought by the way-side as we walk; in +a thought which revises our entire manner of life and says,—‘Thus +hast thou done, but it were better thus.’ And all our after years, like +menials, serve and wait on this, and according to their ability execute its +will. This revisal or correction is a constant force, which, as a tendency, +reaches through our lifetime. The object of the man, the aim of these moments, +is to make daylight shine through him, to suffer the law to traverse his whole +being without obstruction, so that on what point soever of his doing your eye +falls it shall report truly of his character, whether it be his diet, his +house, his religious forms, his society, his mirth, his vote, his opposition. +Now he is not homogeneous, but heterogeneous, and the ray does not traverse; +there are no thorough lights, but the eye of the beholder is puzzled, detecting +many unlike tendencies and a life not yet at one. +</p> + +<p> +Why should we make it a point with our false modesty to disparage that man we +are and that form of being assigned to us? A good man is contented. I love and +honor Epaminondas, but I do not wish to be Epaminondas. I hold it more just to +love the world of this hour than the world of his hour. Nor can you, if I am +true, excite me to the least uneasiness by saying, ‘He acted and thou +sittest still.’ I see action to be good, when the need is, and sitting +still to be also good. Epaminondas, if he was the man I take him for, would +have sat still with joy and peace, if his lot had been mine. Heaven is large, +and affords space for all modes of love and fortitude. Why should we be +busybodies and superserviceable? Action and inaction are alike to the true. One +piece of the tree is cut for a weathercock and one for the sleeper of a bridge; +the virtue of the wood is apparent in both. +</p> + +<p> +I desire not to disgrace the soul. The fact that I am here certainly shows me +that the soul had need of an organ here. Shall I not assume the post? Shall I +skulk and dodge and duck with my unseasonable apologies and vain modesty and +imagine my being here impertinent? less pertinent than Epaminondas or Homer +being there? and that the soul did not know its own needs? Besides, without any +reasoning on the matter, I have no discontent. The good soul nourishes me and +unlocks new magazines of power and enjoyment to me every day. I will not meanly +decline the immensity of good, because I have heard that it has come to others +in another shape. +</p> + +<p> +Besides, why should we be cowed by the name of Action? ’Tis a trick of +the senses,—no more. We know that the ancestor of every action is a +thought. The poor mind does not seem to itself to be any thing unless it have +an outside badge,—some Gentoo diet, or Quaker coat, or Calvinistic +prayer-meeting, or philanthropic society, or a great donation, or a high +office, or, any how, some wild contrasting action to testify that it is +somewhat. The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature. To think is +to act. +</p> + +<p> +Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. All action is of an +infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with the celestial +air until it eclipses the sun and moon. Let us seek one peace by fidelity. Let +me heed my duties. Why need I go gadding into the scenes and philosophy of +Greek and Italian history before I have justified myself to my benefactors? How +dare I read Washington’s campaigns when I have not answered the letters +of my own correspondents? Is not that a just objection to much of our reading? +It is a pusillanimous desertion of our work to gaze after our neighbors. It is +peeping. Byron says of Jack Bunting,— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“He knew not what to say, and so he swore.” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +I may say it of our preposterous use of books,—He knew not what to do, +and so <i>he read</i>. I can think of nothing to fill my time with, and I find +the Life of Brant. It is a very extravagant compliment to pay to Brant, or to +General Schuyler, or to General Washington. My time should be as good as their +time,—my facts, my net of relations, as good as theirs, or either of +theirs. Rather let me do my work so well that other idlers if they choose may +compare my texture with the texture of these and find it identical with the +best. +</p> + +<p> +This over-estimate of the possibilities of Paul and Pericles, this +under-estimate of our own, comes from a neglect of the fact of an identical +nature. Bonaparte knew but one merit, and rewarded in one and the same way the +good soldier, the good astronomer, the good poet, the good player. The poet +uses the names of Cæsar, of Tamerlane, of Bonduca, of Belisarius; the painter +uses the conventional story of the Virgin Mary, of Paul, of Peter. He does not +therefore defer to the nature of these accidental men, of these stock heroes. +If the poet write a true drama, then he is Cæsar, and not the player of Cæsar; +then the selfsame strain of thought, emotion as pure, wit as subtle, motions as +swift, mounting, extravagant, and a heart as great, self-sufficing, dauntless, +which on the waves of its love and hope can uplift all that is reckoned solid +and precious in the world,—palaces, gardens, money, navies, +kingdoms,—marking its own incomparable worth by the slight it casts on +these gauds of men;—these all are his, and by the power of these he +rouses the nations. Let a man believe in God, and not in names and places and +persons. Let the great soul incarnated in some woman’s form, poor and sad +and single, in some Dolly or Joan, go out to service, and sweep chambers and +scour floors, and its effulgent daybeams cannot be muffled or hid, but to sweep +and scour will instantly appear supreme and beautiful actions, the top and +radiance of human life, and all people will get mops and brooms; until, lo! +suddenly the great soul has enshrined itself in some other form and done some +other deed, and that is now the flower and head of all living nature. +</p> + +<p> +We are the photometers, we the irritable goldleaf and tinfoil that measure the +accumulations of the subtle element. We know the authentic effects of the true +fire through every one of its million disguises. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"></a>V. <br /> +LOVE</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“I was as a gem concealed;<br /> +Me my burning ray revealed.”<br /> + <i>Koran</i>. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LOVE</h2> + +<p> +Every promise of the soul has innumerable fulfilments; each of its joys ripens +into a new want. Nature, uncontainable, flowing, forelooking, in the first +sentiment of kindness anticipates already a benevolence which shall lose all +particular regards in its general light. The introduction to this felicity is +in a private and tender relation of one to one, which is the enchantment of +human life; which, like a certain divine rage and enthusiasm, seizes on man at +one period and works a revolution in his mind and body; unites him to his race, +pledges him to the domestic and civic relations, carries him with new sympathy +into nature, enhances the power of the senses, opens the imagination, adds to +his character heroic and sacred attributes, establishes marriage, and gives +permanence to human society. +</p> + +<p> +The natural association of the sentiment of love with the heyday of the blood +seems to require that in order to portray it in vivid tints, which every youth +and maid should confess to be true to their throbbing experience, one must not +be too old. The delicious fancies of youth reject the least savor of a mature +philosophy, as chilling with age and pedantry their purple bloom. And therefore +I know I incur the imputation of unnecessary hardness and stoicism from those +who compose the Court and Parliament of Love. But from these formidable censors +I shall appeal to my seniors. For it is to be considered that this passion of +which we speak, though it begin with the young, yet forsakes not the old, or +rather suffers no one who is truly its servant to grow old, but makes the aged +participators of it not less than the tender maiden, though in a different and +nobler sort. For it is a fire that kindling its first embers in the narrow nook +of a private bosom, caught from a wandering spark out of another private heart, +glows and enlarges until it warms and beams upon multitudes of men and women, +upon the universal heart of all, and so lights up the whole world and all +nature with its generous flames. It matters not therefore whether we attempt to +describe the passion at twenty, at thirty, or at eighty years. He who paints it +at the first period will lose some of its later, he who paints it at the last, +some of its earlier traits. Only it is to be hoped that by patience and the +Muses’ aid we may attain to that inward view of the law which shall +describe a truth ever young and beautiful, so central that it shall commend +itself to the eye, at whatever angle beholden. +</p> + +<p> +And the first condition is, that we must leave a too close and lingering +adherence to facts, and study the sentiment as it appeared in hope and not in +history. For each man sees his own life defaced and disfigured, as the life of +man is not, to his imagination. Each man sees over his own experience a certain +stain of error, whilst that of other men looks fair and ideal. Let any man go +back to those delicious relations which make the beauty of his life, which have +given him sincerest instruction and nourishment, he will shrink and moan. Alas! +I know not why, but infinite compunctions embitter in mature life the +remembrances of budding joy and cover every beloved name. Every thing is +beautiful seen from the point of the intellect, or as truth. But all is sour, +if seen as experience. Details are melancholy; the plan is seemly and noble. In +the actual world—the painful kingdom of time and place—dwell care, +and canker, and fear. With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the +rose of joy. Round it all the Muses sing. But grief cleaves to names, and +persons, and the partial interests of to-day and yesterday. +</p> + +<p> +The strong bent of nature is seen in the proportion which this topic of +personal relations usurps in the conversation of society. What do we wish to +know of any worthy person so much, as how he has sped in the history of this +sentiment? What books in the circulating libraries circulate? How we glow over +these novels of passion, when the story is told with any spark of truth and +nature! And what fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any +passage betraying affection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them +before, and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance, or +betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We understand them, and +take the warmest interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a +lover. The earliest demonstrations of complacency and kindness are +nature’s most winning pictures. It is the dawn of civility and grace in +the coarse and rustic. The rude village boy teases the girls about the +school-house door;—but to-day he comes running into the entry, and meets +one fair child disposing her satchel; he holds her books to help her, and +instantly it seems to him as if she removed herself from him infinitely, and +was a sacred precinct. Among the throng of girls he runs rudely enough, but one +alone distances him; and these two little neighbors, that were so close just +now, have learned to respect each other’s personality. Or who can avert +his eyes from the engaging, half-artful, half-artless ways of school-girls who +go into the country shops to buy a skein of silk or a sheet of paper, and talk +half an hour about nothing with the broad-faced, good-natured shop-boy. In the +village they are on a perfect equality, which love delights in, and without any +coquetry the happy, affectionate nature of woman flows out in this pretty +gossip. The girls may have little beauty, yet plainly do they establish between +them and the good boy the most agreeable, confiding relations, what with their +fun and their earnest, about Edgar and Jonas and Almira, and who was invited to +the party, and who danced at the dancing-school, and when the singing-school +would begin, and other nothings concerning which the parties cooed. By and by +that boy wants a wife, and very truly and heartily will he know where to find a +sincere and sweet mate, without any risk such as Milton deplores as incident to +scholars and great men. +</p> + +<p> +I have been told that in some public discourses of mine my reverence for the +intellect has made me unjustly cold to the personal relations. But now I almost +shrink at the remembrance of such disparaging words. For persons are +love’s world, and the coldest philosopher cannot recount the debt of the +young soul wandering here in nature to the power of love, without being tempted +to unsay, as treasonable to nature, aught derogatory to the social instincts. +For though the celestial rapture falling out of heaven seizes only upon those +of tender age, and although a beauty overpowering all analysis or comparison +and putting us quite beside ourselves we can seldom see after thirty years, yet +the remembrance of these visions outlasts all other remembrances, and is a +wreath of flowers on the oldest brows. But here is a strange fact; it may seem +to many men, in revising their experience, that they have no fairer page in +their life’s book than the delicious memory of some passages wherein +affection contrived to give a witchcraft, surpassing the deep attraction of its +own truth, to a parcel of accidental and trivial circumstances. In looking +backward they may find that several things which were not the charm have more +reality to this groping memory than the charm itself which embalmed them. But +be our experience in particulars what it may, no man ever forgot the +visitations of that power to his heart and brain, which created all things +anew; which was the dawn in him of music, poetry, and art; which made the face +of nature radiant with purple light, the morning and the night varied +enchantments; when a single tone of one voice could make the heart bound, and +the most trivial circumstance associated with one form is put in the amber of +memory; when he became all eye when one was present, and all memory when one +was gone; when the youth becomes a watcher of windows and studious of a glove, +a veil, a ribbon, or the wheels of a carriage; when no place is too solitary +and none too silent, for him who has richer company and sweeter conversation in +his new thoughts than any old friends, though best and purest, can give him; +for the figures, the motions, the words of the beloved object are not like +other images written in water, but, as Plutarch said, “enamelled in +fire,” and make the study of midnight:— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Thou art not gone being gone, where’er thou art,<br /> +Thou leav’st in him thy watchful eyes, in him thy loving heart.” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +In the noon and the afternoon of life we still throb at the recollection of +days when happiness was not happy enough, but must be drugged with the relish +of pain and fear; for he touched the secret of the matter who said of +love,— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“All other pleasures are not worth its pains:” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +and when the day was not long enough, but the night too must be consumed in +keen recollections; when the head boiled all night on the pillow with the +generous deed it resolved on; when the moonlight was a pleasing fever and the +stars were letters and the flowers ciphers and the air was coined into song; +when all business seemed an impertinence, and all the men and women running to +and fro in the streets, mere pictures. +</p> + +<p> +The passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and +significant. Nature grows conscious. Every bird on the boughs of the tree sings +now to his heart and soul. The notes are almost articulate. The clouds have +faces as he looks on them. The trees of the forest, the waving grass and the +peeping flowers have grown intelligent; and he almost fears to trust them with +the secret which they seem to invite. Yet nature soothes and sympathizes. In +the green solitude he finds a dearer home than with men:— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Fountain-heads and pathless groves,<br /> +Places which pale passion loves,<br /> +Moonlight walks, when all the fowls<br /> +Are safely housed, save bats and owls,<br /> +A midnight bell, a passing groan,—<br /> +These are the sounds we feed upon.” +</p> + +<p> +Behold there in the wood the fine madman! He is a palace of sweet sounds and +sights; he dilates; he is twice a man; he walks with arms akimbo; he +soliloquizes; he accosts the grass and the trees; he feels the blood of the +violet, the clover and the lily in his veins; and he talks with the brook that +wets his foot. +</p> + +<p> +The heats that have opened his perceptions of natural beauty have made him love +music and verse. It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses +under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under any other +circumstances. +</p> + +<p> +The like force has the passion over all his nature. It expands the sentiment; +it makes the clown gentle and gives the coward heart. Into the most pitiful and +abject it will infuse a heart and courage to defy the world, so only it have +the countenance of the beloved object. In giving him to another it still more +gives him to himself. He is a new man, with new perceptions, new and keener +purposes, and a religious solemnity of character and aims. He does not longer +appertain to his family and society; <i>he</i> is somewhat; <i>he</i> is a +person; <i>he</i> is a soul. +</p> + +<p> +And here let us examine a little nearer the nature of that influence which is +thus potent over the human youth. Beauty, whose revelation to man we now +celebrate, welcome as the sun wherever it pleases to shine, which pleases +everybody with it and with themselves, seems sufficient to itself. The lover +cannot paint his maiden to his fancy poor and solitary. Like a tree in flower, +so much soft, budding, informing loveliness is society for itself; and she +teaches his eye why Beauty was pictured with Loves and Graces attending her +steps. Her existence makes the world rich. Though she extrudes all other +persons from his attention as cheap and unworthy, she indemnifies him by +carrying out her own being into somewhat impersonal, large, mundane, so that +the maiden stands to him for a representative of all select things and virtues. +For that reason the lover never sees personal resemblances in his mistress to +her kindred or to others. His friends find in her a likeness to her mother, or +her sisters, or to persons not of her blood. The lover sees no resemblance +except to summer evenings and diamond mornings, to rainbows and the song of +birds. +</p> + +<p> +The ancients called beauty the flowering of virtue. Who can analyze the +nameless charm which glances from one and another face and form? We are touched +with emotions of tenderness and complacency, but we cannot find whereat this +dainty emotion, this wandering gleam, points. It is destroyed for the +imagination by any attempt to refer it to organization. Nor does it point to +any relations of friendship or love known and described in society, but, as it +seems to me, to a quite other and unattainable sphere, to relations of +transcendent delicacy and sweetness, to what roses and violets hint and +foreshow. We cannot approach beauty. Its nature is like opaline +doves’-neck lustres, hovering and evanescent. Herein it resembles the +most excellent things, which all have this rainbow character, defying all +attempts at appropriation and use. What else did Jean Paul Richter signify, +when he said to music, “Away! away! thou speakest to me of things which +in all my endless life I have not found, and shall not find.” The same +fluency may be observed in every work of the plastic arts. The statue is then +beautiful when it begins to be incomprehensible, when it is passing out of +criticism and can no longer be defined by compass and measuring-wand, but +demands an active imagination to go with it and to say what it is in the act of +doing. The god or hero of the sculptor is always represented in a transition +<i>from</i> that which is representable to the senses, <i>to</i> that which is +not. Then first it ceases to be a stone. The same remark holds of painting. And +of poetry the success is not attained when it lulls and satisfies, but when it +astonishes and fires us with new endeavors after the unattainable. Concerning +it Landor inquires “whether it is not to be referred to some purer state +of sensation and existence.” +</p> + +<p> +In like manner, personal beauty is then first charming and itself when it +dissatisfies us with any end; when it becomes a story without an end; when it +suggests gleams and visions and not earthly satisfactions; when it makes the +beholder feel his unworthiness; when he cannot feel his right to it, though he +were Cæsar; he cannot feel more right to it than to the firmament and the +splendors of a sunset. +</p> + +<p> +Hence arose the saying, “If I love you, what is that to you?” We +say so because we feel that what we love is not in your will, but above it. It +is not you, but your radiance. It is that which you know not in yourself and +can never know. +</p> + +<p> +This agrees well with that high philosophy of Beauty which the ancient writers +delighted in; for they said that the soul of man, embodied here on earth, went +roaming up and down in quest of that other world of its own out of which it +came into this, but was soon stupefied by the light of the natural sun, and +unable to see any other objects than those of this world, which are but shadows +of real things. Therefore the Deity sends the glory of youth before the soul, +that it may avail itself of beautiful bodies as aids to its recollection of the +celestial good and fair; and the man beholding such a person in the female sex +runs to her and finds the highest joy in contemplating the form, movement, and +intelligence of this person, because it suggests to him the presence of that +which indeed is within the beauty, and the cause of the beauty. +</p> + +<p> +If however, from too much conversing with material objects, the soul was gross, +and misplaced its satisfaction in the body, it reaped nothing but sorrow; body +being unable to fulfil the promise which beauty holds out; but if, accepting +the hint of these visions and suggestions which beauty makes to his mind, the +soul passes through the body and falls to admire strokes of character, and the +lovers contemplate one another in their discourses and their actions, then they +pass to the true palace of beauty, more and more inflame their love of it, and +by this love extinguishing the base affection, as the sun puts out the fire by +shining on the hearth, they become pure and hallowed. By conversation with that +which is in itself excellent, magnanimous, lowly, and just, the lover comes to +a warmer love of these nobilities, and a quicker apprehension of them. Then he +passes from loving them in one to loving them in all, and so is the one +beautiful soul only the door through which he enters to the society of all true +and pure souls. In the particular society of his mate he attains a clearer +sight of any spot, any taint which her beauty has contracted from this world, +and is able to point it out, and this with mutual joy that they are now able, +without offence, to indicate blemishes and hindrances in each other, and give +to each all help and comfort in curing the same. And beholding in many souls +the traits of the divine beauty, and separating in each soul that which is +divine from the taint which it has contracted in the world, the lover ascends +to the highest beauty, to the love and knowledge of the Divinity, by steps on +this ladder of created souls. +</p> + +<p> +Somewhat like this have the truly wise told us of love in all ages. The +doctrine is not old, nor is it new. If Plato, Plutarch and Apuleius taught it, +so have Petrarch, Angelo and Milton. It awaits a truer unfolding in opposition +and rebuke to that subterranean prudence which presides at marriages with words +that take hold of the upper world, whilst one eye is prowling in the cellar; so +that its gravest discourse has a savor of hams and powdering-tubs. Worst, when +this sensualism intrudes into the education of young women, and withers the +hope and affection of human nature by teaching that marriage signifies nothing +but a housewife’s thrift, and that woman’s life has no other aim. +</p> + +<p> +But this dream of love, though beautiful, is only one scene in our play. In the +procession of the soul from within outward, it enlarges its circles ever, like +the pebble thrown into the pond, or the light proceeding from an orb. The rays +of the soul alight first on things nearest, on every utensil and toy, on nurses +and domestics, on the house and yard and passengers, on the circle of household +acquaintance, on politics and geography and history. But things are ever +grouping themselves according to higher or more interior laws. Neighborhood, +size, numbers, habits, persons, lose by degrees their power over us. Cause and +effect, real affinities, the longing for harmony between the soul and the +circumstance, the progressive, idealizing instinct, predominate later, and the +step backward from the higher to the lower relations is impossible. Thus even +love, which is the deification of persons, must become more impersonal every +day. Of this at first it gives no hint. Little think the youth and maiden who +are glancing at each other across crowded rooms with eyes so full of mutual +intelligence, of the precious fruit long hereafter to proceed from this new, +quite external stimulus. The work of vegetation begins first in the +irritability of the bark and leaf-buds. From exchanging glances, they advance +to acts of courtesy, of gallantry, then to fiery passion, to plighting troth +and marriage. Passion beholds its object as a perfect unit. The soul is wholly +embodied, and the body is wholly ensouled:— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Her pure and eloquent blood<br /> +Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought,<br /> +That one might almost say her body thought.” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +Romeo, if dead, should be cut up into little stars to make the heavens fine. +Life, with this pair, has no other aim, asks no more, than Juliet,—than +Romeo. Night, day, studies, talents, kingdoms, religion, are all contained in +this form full of soul, in this soul which is all form. The lovers delight in +endearments, in avowals of love, in comparisons of their regards. When alone, +they solace themselves with the remembered image of the other. Does that other +see the same star, the same melting cloud, read the same book, feel the same +emotion, that now delight me? They try and weigh their affection, and adding up +costly advantages, friends, opportunities, properties, exult in discovering +that willingly, joyfully, they would give all as a ransom for the beautiful, +the beloved head, not one hair of which shall be harmed. But the lot of +humanity is on these children. Danger, sorrow, and pain arrive to them, as to +all. Love prays. It makes covenants with Eternal Power in behalf of this dear +mate. The union which is thus effected and which adds a new value to every atom +in nature—for it transmutes every thread throughout the whole web of +relation into a golden ray, and bathes the soul in a new and sweeter +element—is yet a temporary state. Not always can flowers, pearls, poetry, +protestations, nor even home in another heart, content the awful soul that +dwells in clay. It arouses itself at last from these endearments, as toys, and +puts on the harness and aspires to vast and universal aims. The soul which is +in the soul of each, craving a perfect beatitude, detects incongruities, +defects and disproportion in the behavior of the other. Hence arise surprise, +expostulation and pain. Yet that which drew them to each other was signs of +loveliness, signs of virtue; and these virtues are there, however eclipsed. +They appear and reappear and continue to attract; but the regard changes, quits +the sign and attaches to the substance. This repairs the wounded affection. +Meantime, as life wears on, it proves a game of permutation and combination of +all possible positions of the parties, to employ all the resources of each and +acquaint each with the strength and weakness of the other. For it is the nature +and end of this relation, that they should represent the human race to each +other. All that is in the world, which is or ought to be known, is cunningly +wrought into the texture of man, of woman:— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“The person love does to us fit,<br /> +Like manna, has the taste of all in it.” +</p> + +<p> +The world rolls; the circumstances vary every hour. The angels that inhabit +this temple of the body appear at the windows, and the gnomes and vices also. +By all the virtues they are united. If there be virtue, all the vices are known +as such; they confess and flee. Their once flaming regard is sobered by time in +either breast, and losing in violence what it gains in extent, it becomes a +thorough good understanding. They resign each other without complaint to the +good offices which man and woman are severally appointed to discharge in time, +and exchange the passion which once could not lose sight of its object, for a +cheerful, disengaged furtherance, whether present or absent, of each +other’s designs. At last they discover that all which at first drew them +together,—those once sacred features, that magical play of +charms,—was deciduous, had a prospective end, like the scaffolding by +which the house was built; and the purification of the intellect and the heart +from year to year is the real marriage, foreseen and prepared from the first, +and wholly above their consciousness. Looking at these aims with which two +persons, a man and a woman, so variously and correlatively gifted, are shut up +in one house to spend in the nuptial society forty or fifty years, I do not +wonder at the emphasis with which the heart prophesies this crisis from early +infancy, at the profuse beauty with which the instincts deck the nuptial bower, +and nature and intellect and art emulate each other in the gifts and the melody +they bring to the epithalamium. +</p> + +<p> +Thus are we put in training for a love which knows not sex, nor person, nor +partiality, but which seeks virtue and wisdom everywhere, to the end of +increasing virtue and wisdom. We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. +That is our permanent state. But we are often made to feel that our affections +are but tents of a night. Though slowly and with pain, the objects of the +affections change, as the objects of thought do. There are moments when the +affections rule and absorb the man and make his happiness dependent on a person +or persons. But in health the mind is presently seen again,—its +overarching vault, bright with galaxies of immutable lights, and the warm loves +and fears that swept over us as clouds must lose their finite character and +blend with God, to attain their own perfection. But we need not fear that we +can lose any thing by the progress of the soul. The soul may be trusted to the +end. That which is so beautiful and attractive as these relations, must be +succeeded and supplanted only by what is more beautiful, and so on for ever. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"></a>VI.<br /> +FRIENDSHIP</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +A ruddy drop of manly blood<br /> +The surging sea outweighs;<br /> +The world uncertain comes and goes,<br /> +The lover rooted stays.<br /> +I fancied he was fled,<br /> +And, after many a year,<br /> +Glowed unexhausted kindliness<br /> +Like daily sunrise there.<br /> +My careful heart was free again,—<br /> +O friend, my bosom said,<br /> +Through thee alone the sky is arched,<br /> +Through thee the rose is red,<br /> +All things through thee take nobler form<br /> +And look beyond the earth,<br /> +The mill-round of our fate appears<br /> +A sun-path in thy worth.<br /> +Me too thy nobleness has taught<br /> +To master my despair;<br /> +The fountains of my hidden life<br /> +Are through thy friendship fair. +</p> + +<h2>FRIENDSHIP</h2> + +<p> +We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. Maugre all the +selfishness that chills like east winds the world, the whole human family is +bathed with an element of love like a fine ether. How many persons we meet in +houses, whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we honor, and who honor us! How +many we see in the street, or sit with in church, whom, though silently, we +warmly rejoice to be with! Read the language of these wandering eye-beams. The +heart knoweth. +</p> + +<p> +The effect of the indulgence of this human affection is a certain cordial +exhilaration. In poetry and in common speech, the emotions of benevolence and +complacency which are felt towards others are likened to the material effects +of fire; so swift, or much more swift, more active, more cheering, are these +fine inward irradiations. From the highest degree of passionate love to the +lowest degree of good-will, they make the sweetness of life. +</p> + +<p> +Our intellectual and active powers increase with our affection. The scholar +sits down to write, and all his years of meditation do not furnish him with one +good thought or happy expression; but it is necessary to write a letter to a +friend,—and forthwith troops of gentle thoughts invest themselves, on +every hand, with chosen words. See, in any house where virtue and self-respect +abide, the palpitation which the approach of a stranger causes. A commended +stranger is expected and announced, and an uneasiness betwixt pleasure and pain +invades all the hearts of a household. His arrival almost brings fear to the +good hearts that would welcome him. The house is dusted, all things fly into +their places, the old coat is exchanged for the new, and they must get up a +dinner if they can. Of a commended stranger, only the good report is told by +others, only the good and new is heard by us. He stands to us for humanity. He +is what we wish. Having imagined and invested him, we ask how we should stand +related in conversation and action with such a man, and are uneasy with fear. +The same idea exalts conversation with him. We talk better than we are wont. We +have the nimblest fancy, a richer memory, and our dumb devil has taken leave +for the time. For long hours we can continue a series of sincere, graceful, +rich communications, drawn from the oldest, secretest experience, so that they +who sit by, of our own kinsfolk and acquaintance, shall feel a lively surprise +at our unusual powers. But as soon as the stranger begins to intrude his +partialities, his definitions, his defects, into the conversation, it is all +over. He has heard the first, the last and best he will ever hear from us. He +is no stranger now. Vulgarity, ignorance, misapprehension are old +acquaintances. Now, when he comes, he may get the order, the dress and the +dinner,—but the throbbing of the heart and the communications of the +soul, no more. +</p> + +<p> +What is so pleasant as these jets of affection which make a young world for me +again? What so delicious as a just and firm encounter of two, in a thought, in +a feeling? How beautiful, on their approach to this beating heart, the steps +and forms of the gifted and the true! The moment we indulge our affections, the +earth is metamorphosed; there is no winter and no night; all tragedies, all +ennuis vanish,—all duties even; nothing fills the proceeding eternity but +the forms all radiant of beloved persons. Let the soul be assured that +somewhere in the universe it should rejoin its friend, and it would be content +and cheerful alone for a thousand years. +</p> + +<p> +I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the +new. Shall I not call God the Beautiful, who daily showeth himself so to me in +his gifts? I chide society, I embrace solitude, and yet I am not so ungrateful +as not to see the wise, the lovely and the noble-minded, as from time to time +they pass my gate. Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine,—a +possession for all time. Nor is Nature so poor but she gives me this joy +several times, and thus we weave social threads of our own, a new web of +relations; and, as many thoughts in succession substantiate themselves, we +shall by and by stand in a new world of our own creation, and no longer +strangers and pilgrims in a traditionary globe. My friends have come to me +unsought. The great God gave them to me. By oldest right, by the divine +affinity of virtue with itself, I find them, or rather not I but the Deity in +me and in them derides and cancels the thick walls of individual character, +relation, age, sex, circumstance, at which he usually connives, and now makes +many one. High thanks I owe you, excellent lovers, who carry out the world for +me to new and noble depths, and enlarge the meaning of all my thoughts. These +are new poetry of the first Bard,—poetry without stop,—hymn, ode +and epic, poetry still flowing, Apollo and the Muses chanting still. Will these +too separate themselves from me again, or some of them? I know not, but I fear +it not; for my relation to them is so pure, that we hold by simple affinity, +and the Genius of my life being thus social, the same affinity will exert its +energy on whomsoever is as noble as these men and women, wherever I may be. +</p> + +<p> +I confess to an extreme tenderness of nature on this point. It is almost +dangerous to me to “crush the sweet poison of misused wine” of the +affections. A new person is to me a great event and hinders me from sleep. I +have often had fine fancies about persons which have given me delicious hours; +but the joy ends in the day; it yields no fruit. Thought is not born of it; my +action is very little modified. I must feel pride in my friend’s +accomplishments as if they were mine, and a property in his virtues. I feel as +warmly when he is praised, as the lover when he hears applause of his engaged +maiden. We over-estimate the conscience of our friend. His goodness seems +better than our goodness, his nature finer, his temptations less. Every thing +that is his,—his name, his form, his dress, books and +instruments,—fancy enhances. Our own thought sounds new and larger from +his mouth. +</p> + +<p> +Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not without their analogy in the +ebb and flow of love. Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good +to be believed. The lover, beholding his maiden, half knows that she is not +verily that which he worships; and in the golden hour of friendship we are +surprised with shades of suspicion and unbelief. We doubt that we bestow on our +hero the virtues in which he shines, and afterwards worship the form to which +we have ascribed this divine inhabitation. In strictness, the soul does not +respect men as it respects itself. In strict science all persons underlie the +same condition of an infinite remoteness. Shall we fear to cool our love by +mining for the metaphysical foundation of this Elysian temple? Shall I not be +as real as the things I see? If I am, I shall not fear to know them for what +they are. Their essence is not less beautiful than their appearance, though it +needs finer organs for its apprehension. The root of the plant is not unsightly +to science, though for chaplets and festoons we cut the stem short. And I must +hazard the production of the bald fact amidst these pleasing reveries, though +it should prove an Egyptian skull at our banquet. A man who stands united with +his thought conceives magnificently of himself. He is conscious of a universal +success, even though bought by uniform particular failures. No advantages, no +powers, no gold or force, can be any match for him. I cannot choose but rely on +my own poverty more than on your wealth. I cannot make your consciousness +tantamount to mine. Only the star dazzles; the planet has a faint, moon-like +ray. I hear what you say of the admirable parts and tried temper of the party +you praise, but I see well that for all his purple cloaks I shall not like him, +unless he is at last a poor Greek like me. I cannot deny it, O friend, that the +vast shadow of the Phenomenal includes thee also in its pied and painted +immensity,—thee also, compared with whom all else is shadow. Thou art not +Being, as Truth is, as Justice is,—thou art not my soul, but a picture +and effigy of that. Thou hast come to me lately, and already thou art seizing +thy hat and cloak. Is it not that the soul puts forth friends as the tree puts +forth leaves, and presently, by the germination of new buds, extrudes the old +leaf? The law of nature is alternation for evermore. Each electrical state +superinduces the opposite. The soul environs itself with friends that it may +enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for a +season, that it may exalt its conversation or society. This method betrays +itself along the whole history of our personal relations. The instinct of +affection revives the hope of union with our mates, and the returning sense of +insulation recalls us from the chase. Thus every man passes his life in the +search after friendship, and if he should record his true sentiment, he might +write a letter like this to each new candidate for his love:— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +D<small>EAR</small> F<small>RIEND</small>, +</p> + +<p> +If I was sure of thee, sure of thy capacity, sure to match my mood with thine, +I should never think again of trifles in relation to thy comings and goings. I +am not very wise; my moods are quite attainable, and I respect thy genius; it +is to me as yet unfathomed; yet dare I not presume in thee a perfect +intelligence of me, and so thou art to me a delicious torment. Thine ever, or +never. +</p> + +<p> +Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are for curiosity and not for life. +They are not to be indulged. This is to weave cobweb, and not cloth. Our +friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have made them a +texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibre of the human heart. The +laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature +and of morals. But we have aimed at a swift and petty benefit, to suck a sudden +sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit in the whole garden of God, which +many summers and many winters must ripen. We seek our friend not sacredly, but +with an adulterate passion which would appropriate him to ourselves. In vain. +We are armed all over with subtle antagonisms, which, as soon as we meet, begin +to play, and translate all poetry into stale prose. Almost all people descend +to meet. All association must be a compromise, and, what is worst, the very +flower and aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful natures disappears as +they approach each other. What a perpetual disappointment is actual society, +even of the virtuous and gifted! After interviews have been compassed with long +foresight we must be tormented presently by baffled blows, by sudden, +unseasonable apathies, by epilepsies of wit and of animal spirits, in the +heyday of friendship and thought. Our faculties do not play us true, and both +parties are relieved by solitude. +</p> + +<p> +I ought to be equal to every relation. It makes no difference how many friends +I have and what content I can find in conversing with each, if there be one to +whom I am not equal. If I have shrunk unequal from one contest, the joy I find +in all the rest becomes mean and cowardly. I should hate myself, if then I made +my other friends my asylum:— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“The valiant warrior famoused for fight,<br /> +After a hundred victories, once foiled,<br /> +Is from the book of honor razed quite,<br /> +And all the rest forgot for which he toiled.” +</p> + +<p> +Our impatience is thus sharply rebuked. Bashfulness and apathy are a tough husk +in which a delicate organization is protected from premature ripening. It would +be lost if it knew itself before any of the best souls were yet ripe enough to +know and own it. Respect the <i>naturlangsamkeit</i> which hardens the ruby in +a million years, and works in duration in which Alps and Andes come and go as +rainbows. The good spirit of our life has no heaven which is the price of +rashness. Love, which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but for the +total worth of man. Let us not have this childish luxury in our regards, but +the austerest worth; let us approach our friend with an audacious trust in the +truth of his heart, in the breadth, impossible to be overturned, of his +foundations. +</p> + +<p> +The attractions of this subject are not to be resisted, and I leave, for the +time, all account of subordinate social benefit, to speak of that select and +sacred relation which is a kind of absolute, and which even leaves the language +of love suspicious and common, so much is this purer, and nothing is so much +divine. +</p> + +<p> +I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage. When +they are real, they are not glass threads or frostwork, but the solidest thing +we know. For now, after so many ages of experience, what do we know of nature +or of ourselves? Not one step has man taken toward the solution of the problem +of his destiny. In one condemnation of folly stand the whole universe of men. +But the sweet sincerity of joy and peace which I draw from this alliance with +my brother’s soul is the nut itself whereof all nature and all thought is +but the husk and shell. Happy is the house that shelters a friend! It might +well be built, like a festal bower or arch, to entertain him a single day. +Happier, if he know the solemnity of that relation and honor its law! He who +offers himself a candidate for that covenant comes up, like an Olympian, to the +great games where the first-born of the world are the competitors. He proposes +himself for contests where Time, Want, Danger, are in the lists, and he alone +is victor who has truth enough in his constitution to preserve the delicacy of +his beauty from the wear and tear of all these. The gifts of fortune may be +present or absent, but all the speed in that contest depends on intrinsic +nobleness and the contempt of trifles. There are two elements that go to the +composition of friendship, each so sovereign that I can detect no superiority +in either, no reason why either should be first named. One is truth. A friend +is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am +arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal that I may drop even +those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which +men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with +which one chemical atom meets another. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like +diadems and authority, only to the highest rank; <i>that</i> being permitted to +speak truth, as having none above it to court or conform unto. Every man alone +is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and +fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, +by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a +man who under a certain religious frenzy cast off this drapery, and omitting +all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he +encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, +and all men agreed he was mad. But persisting—as indeed he could not help +doing—for some time in this course, he attained to the advantage of +bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. No man +would think of speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat +of markets or reading-rooms. But every man was constrained by so much sincerity +to the like plaindealing, and what love of nature, what poetry, what symbol of +truth he had, he did certainly show him. But to most of us society shows not +its face and eye, but its side and its back. To stand in true relations with +men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not? We can seldom go +erect. Almost every man we meet requires some civility,—requires to be +humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy +in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation +with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me. My +friend gives me entertainment without requiring any stipulation on my part. A +friend therefore is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see +nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, +behold now the semblance of my being, in all its height, variety, and +curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend may well be reckoned +the masterpiece of nature. +</p> + +<p> +The other element of friendship is tenderness. We are holden to men by every +sort of tie, by blood, by pride, by fear, by hope, by lucre, by lust, by hate, +by admiration, by every circumstance and badge and trifle,—but we can +scarce believe that so much character can subsist in another as to draw us by +love. Can another be so blessed and we so pure that we can offer him +tenderness? When a man becomes dear to me I have touched the goal of fortune. I +find very little written directly to the heart of this matter in books. And yet +I have one text which I cannot choose but remember. My author +says,—“I offer myself faintly and bluntly to those whose I +effectually am, and tender myself least to him to whom I am the most +devoted.” I wish that friendship should have feet, as well as eyes and +eloquence. It must plant itself on the ground, before it vaults over the moon. +I wish it to be a little of a citizen, before it is quite a cherub. We chide +the citizen because he makes love a commodity. It is an exchange of gifts, of +useful loans; it is good neighborhood; it watches with the sick; it holds the +pall at the funeral; and quite loses sight of the delicacies and nobility of +the relation. But though we cannot find the god under this disguise of a +sutler, yet on the other hand we cannot forgive the poet if he spins his thread +too fine and does not substantiate his romance by the municipal virtues of +justice, punctuality, fidelity and pity. I hate the prostitution of the name of +friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances. I much prefer the company +of ploughboys and tin-peddlers to the silken and perfumed amity which +celebrates its days of encounter by a frivolous display, by rides in a curricle +and dinners at the best taverns. The end of friendship is a commerce the most +strict and homely that can be joined; more strict than any of which we have +experience. It is for aid and comfort through all the relations and passages of +life and death. It is fit for serene days and graceful gifts and country +rambles, but also for rough roads and hard fare, shipwreck, poverty, and +persecution. It keeps company with the sallies of the wit and the trances of +religion. We are to dignify to each other the daily needs and offices of +man’s life, and embellish it by courage, wisdom and unity. It should +never fall into something usual and settled, but should be alert and inventive +and add rhyme and reason to what was drudgery. +</p> + +<p> +Friendship may be said to require natures so rare and costly, each so well +tempered and so happily adapted, and withal so circumstanced (for even in that +particular, a poet says, love demands that the parties be altogether paired), +that its satisfaction can very seldom be assured. It cannot subsist in its +perfection, say some of those who are learned in this warm lore of the heart, +betwixt more than two. I am not quite so strict in my terms, perhaps because I +have never known so high a fellowship as others. I please my imagination more +with a circle of godlike men and women variously related to each other and +between whom subsists a lofty intelligence. But I find this law of <i>one to +one</i> peremptory for conversation, which is the practice and consummation of +friendship. Do not mix waters too much. The best mix as ill as good and bad. +You shall have very useful and cheering discourse at several times with two +several men, but let all three of you come together and you shall not have one +new and hearty word. Two may talk and one may hear, but three cannot take part +in a conversation of the most sincere and searching sort. In good company there +is never such discourse between two, across the table, as takes place when you +leave them alone. In good company the individuals merge their egotism into a +social soul exactly co-extensive with the several consciousnesses there +present. No partialities of friend to friend, no fondnesses of brother to +sister, of wife to husband, are there pertinent, but quite otherwise. Only he +may then speak who can sail on the common thought of the party, and not poorly +limited to his own. Now this convention, which good sense demands, destroys the +high freedom of great conversation, which requires an absolute running of two +souls into one. +</p> + +<p> +No two men but being left alone with each other enter into simpler relations. +Yet it is affinity that determines <i>which</i> two shall converse. Unrelated +men give little joy to each other, will never suspect the latent powers of +each. We talk sometimes of a great talent for conversation, as if it were a +permanent property in some individuals. Conversation is an evanescent +relation,—no more. A man is reputed to have thought and eloquence; he +cannot, for all that, say a word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his +silence with as much reason as they would blame the insignificance of a dial in +the shade. In the sun it will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his thought +he will regain his tongue. +</p> + +<p> +Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and unlikeness that piques +each with the presence of power and of consent in the other party. Let me be +alone to the end of the world, rather than that my friend should overstep, by a +word or a look, his real sympathy. I am equally balked by antagonism and by +compliance. Let him not cease an instant to be himself. The only joy I have in +his being mine, is that the <i>not mine</i> is <i>mine</i>. I hate, where I +looked for a manly furtherance, or at least a manly resistance, to find a mush +of concession. Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo. The +condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it. That high +office requires great and sublime parts. There must be very two, before there +can be very one. Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures, +mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep identity +which, beneath these disparities, unites them. +</p> + +<p> +He only is fit for this society who is magnanimous; who is sure that greatness +and goodness are always economy; who is not swift to intermeddle with his +fortunes. Let him not intermeddle with this. Leave to the diamond its ages to +grow, nor expect to accelerate the births of the eternal. Friendship demands a +religious treatment. We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are +self-elected. Reverence is a great part of it. Treat your friend as a +spectacle. Of course he has merits that are not yours, and that you cannot +honor if you must needs hold him close to your person. Stand aside; give those +merits room; let them mount and expand. Are you the friend of your +friend’s buttons, or of his thought? To a great heart he will still be a +stranger in a thousand particulars, that he may come near in the holiest +ground. Leave it to girls and boys to regard a friend as property, and to suck +a short and all-confounding pleasure, instead of the noblest benefit. +</p> + +<p> +Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long probation. Why should we +desecrate noble and beautiful souls by intruding on them? Why insist on rash +personal relations with your friend? Why go to his house, or know his mother +and brother and sisters? Why be visited by him at your own? Are these things +material to our covenant? Leave this touching and clawing. Let him be to me a +spirit. A message, a thought, a sincerity, a glance from him, I want, but not +news, nor pottage. I can get politics and chat and neighborly conveniences from +cheaper companions. Should not the society of my friend be to me poetic, pure, +universal and great as nature itself? Ought I to feel that our tie is profane +in comparison with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the horizon, or that +clump of waving grass that divides the brook? Let us not vilify, but raise it +to that standard. That great defying eye, that scornful beauty of his mien and +action, do not pique yourself on reducing, but rather fortify and enhance. +Worship his superiorities; wish him not less by a thought, but hoard and tell +them all. Guard him as thy counterpart. Let him be to thee for ever a sort of +beautiful enemy, untamable, devoutly revered, and not a trivial conveniency to +be soon outgrown and cast aside. The hues of the opal, the light of the +diamond, are not to be seen if the eye is too near. To my friend I write a +letter and from him I receive a letter. That seems to you a little. It suffices +me. It is a spiritual gift worthy of him to give and of me to receive. It +profanes nobody. In these warm lines the heart will trust itself, as it will +not to the tongue, and pour out the prophecy of a godlier existence than all +the annals of heroism have yet made good. +</p> + +<p> +Respect so far the holy laws of this fellowship as not to prejudice its perfect +flower by your impatience for its opening. We must be our own before we can be +another’s. There is at least this satisfaction in crime, according to the +Latin proverb;—you can speak to your accomplice on even terms. <i>Crimen +quos inquinat, æquat</i>. To those whom we admire and love, at first we cannot. +Yet the least defect of self-possession vitiates, in my judgment, the entire +relation. There can never be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual +respect, until in their dialogue each stands for the whole world. +</p> + +<p> +What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur of spirit we +can. Let us be silent,—so we may hear the whisper of the gods. Let us not +interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should say to the select souls, +or how to say any thing to such? No matter how ingenious, no matter how +graceful and bland. There are innumerable degrees of folly and wisdom, and for +you to say aught is to be frivolous. Wait, and thy heart shall speak. Wait +until the necessary and everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail +themselves of your lips. The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to +have a friend is to be one. You shall not come nearer a man by getting into his +house. If unlike, his soul only flees the faster from you, and you shall never +catch a true glance of his eye. We see the noble afar off and they repel us; +why should we intrude? Late,—very late,—we perceive that no +arrangements, no introductions, no consuetudes or habits of society would be of +any avail to establish us in such relations with them as we desire,—but +solely the uprise of nature in us to the same degree it is in them; then shall +we meet as water with water; and if we should not meet them then, we shall not +want them, for we are already they. In the last analysis, love is only the +reflection of a man’s own worthiness from other men. Men have sometimes +exchanged names with their friends, as if they would signify that in their +friend each loved his own soul. +</p> + +<p> +The higher the style we demand of friendship, of course the less easy to +establish it with flesh and blood. We walk alone in the world. Friends such as +we desire are dreams and fables. But a sublime hope cheers ever the faithful +heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal power, souls are now +acting, enduring, and daring, which can love us and which we can love. We may +congratulate ourselves that the period of nonage, of follies, of blunders and +of shame, is passed in solitude, and when we are finished men we shall grasp +heroic hands in heroic hands. Only be admonished by what you already see, not +to strike leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where no friendship can be. +Our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no god attends. +By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the little you gain the great. +You demonstrate yourself, so as to put yourself out of the reach of false +relations, and you draw to you the first-born of the world,—those rare +pilgrims whereof only one or two wander in nature at once, and before whom the +vulgar great show as spectres and shadows merely. +</p> + +<p> +It is foolish to be afraid of making our ties too spiritual, as if so we could +lose any genuine love. Whatever correction of our popular views we make from +insight, nature will be sure to bear us out in, and though it seem to rob us of +some joy, will repay us with a greater. Let us feel if we will the absolute +insulation of man. We are sure that we have all in us. We go to Europe, or we +pursue persons, or we read books, in the instinctive faith that these will call +it out and reveal us to ourselves. Beggars all. The persons are such as we; the +Europe, an old faded garment of dead persons; the books, their ghosts. Let us +drop this idolatry. Let us give over this mendicancy. Let us even bid our +dearest friends farewell, and defy them, saying, ‘Who are you? Unhand me: +I will be dependent no more.’ Ah! seest thou not, O brother, that thus we +part only to meet again on a higher platform, and only be more each +other’s because we are more our own? A friend is Janus-faced; he looks to +the past and the future. He is the child of all my foregoing hours, the prophet +of those to come, and the harbinger of a greater friend. +</p> + +<p> +I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can +find them, but I seldom use them. We must have society on our own terms, and +admit or exclude it on the slightest cause. I cannot afford to speak much with +my friend. If he is great he makes me so great that I cannot descend to +converse. In the great days, presentiments hover before me in the firmament. I +ought then to dedicate myself to them. I go in that I may seize them, I go out +that I may seize them. I fear only that I may lose them receding into the sky +in which now they are only a patch of brighter light. Then, though I prize my +friends, I cannot afford to talk with them and study their visions, lest I lose +my own. It would indeed give me a certain household joy to quit this lofty +seeking, this spiritual astronomy or search of stars, and come down to warm +sympathies with you; but then I know well I shall mourn always the vanishing of +my mighty gods. It is true, next week I shall have languid moods, when I can +well afford to occupy myself with foreign objects; then I shall regret the lost +literature of your mind, and wish you were by my side again. But if you come, +perhaps you will fill my mind only with new visions; not with yourself but with +your lustres, and I shall not be able any more than now to converse with you. +So I will owe to my friends this evanescent intercourse. I will receive from +them not what they have but what they are. They shall give me that which +properly they cannot give, but which emanates from them. But they shall not +hold me by any relations less subtile and pure. We will meet as though we met +not, and part as though we parted not. +</p> + +<p> +It has seemed to me lately more possible than I knew, to carry a friendship +greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on the other. Why should I +cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never +troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful +space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness +educate the crude and cold companion. If he is unequal he will presently pass +away; but thou art enlarged by thy own shining, and no longer a mate for frogs +and worms, dost soar and burn with the gods of the empyrean. It is thought a +disgrace to love unrequited. But the great will see that true love cannot be +unrequited. True love transcends the unworthy object and dwells and broods on +the eternal, and when the poor interposed mask crumbles, it is not sad, but +feels rid of so much earth and feels its independency the surer. Yet these +things may hardly be said without a sort of treachery to the relation. The +essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust. It must not +surmise or provide for infirmity. It treats its object as a god, that it may +deify both. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"></a>VII.<br /> +PRUDENCE</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Theme no poet gladly sung,<br /> +Fair to old and foul to young;<br /> +Scorn not thou the love of parts,<br /> +And the articles of arts.<br /> +Grandeur of the perfect sphere<br /> +Thanks the atoms that cohere. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>PRUDENCE</h2> + +<p> +What right have I to write on Prudence, whereof I have Little, and that of the +negative sort? My prudence consists in avoiding and going without, not in the +inventing of means and methods, not in adroit steering, not in gentle +repairing. I have no skill to make money spend well, no genius in my economy, +and whoever sees my garden discovers that I must have some other garden. Yet I +love facts, and hate lubricity and people without perception. Then I have the +same title to write on prudence that I have to write on poetry or holiness. We +write from aspiration and antagonism, as well as from experience. We paint +those qualities which we do not possess. The poet admires the man of energy and +tactics; the merchant breeds his son for the church or the bar; and where a man +is not vain and egotistic you shall find what he has not by his praise. +Moreover it would be hardly honest in me not to balance these fine lyric words +of Love and Friendship with words of coarser sound, and whilst my debt to my +senses is real and constant, not to own it in passing. +</p> + +<p> +Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the science of appearances. It is +the outmost action of the inward life. It is God taking thought for oxen. It +moves matter after the laws of matter. It is content to seek health of body by +complying with physical conditions, and health of mind by the laws of the +intellect. +</p> + +<p> +The world of the senses is a world of shows; it does not exist for itself, but +has a symbolic character; and a true prudence or law of shows recognizes the +co-presence of other laws and knows that its own office is subaltern; knows +that it is surface and not centre where it works. Prudence is false when +detached. It is legitimate when it is the Natural History of the soul +incarnate, when it unfolds the beauty of laws within the narrow scope of the +senses. +</p> + +<p> +There are all degrees of proficiency in knowledge of the world. It is +sufficient to our present purpose to indicate three. One class live to the +utility of the symbol, esteeming health and wealth a final good. Another class +live above this mark to the beauty of the symbol, as the poet and artist and +the naturalist and man of science. A third class live above the beauty of the +symbol to the beauty of the thing signified; these are wise men. The first +class have common sense; the second, taste; and the third, spiritual +perception. Once in a long time, a man traverses the whole scale, and sees and +enjoys the symbol solidly, then also has a clear eye for its beauty, and +lastly, whilst he pitches his tent on this sacred volcanic isle of nature, does +not offer to build houses and barns thereon,—reverencing the splendor of +the God which he sees bursting through each chink and cranny. +</p> + +<p> +The world is filled with the proverbs and acts and winkings of a base prudence, +which is a devotion to matter, as if we possessed no other faculties than the +palate, the nose, the touch, the eye and ear; a prudence which adores the Rule +of Three, which never subscribes, which never gives, which seldom lends, and +asks but one question of any project,—Will it bake bread? This is a +disease like a thickening of the skin until the vital organs are destroyed. But +culture, revealing the high origin of the apparent world and aiming at the +perfection of the man as the end, degrades every thing else, as health and +bodily life, into means. It sees prudence not to be a several faculty, but a +name for wisdom and virtue conversing with the body and its wants. Cultivated +men always feel and speak so, as if a great fortune, the achievement of a civil +or social measure, great personal influence, a graceful and commanding address, +had their value as proofs of the energy of the spirit. If a man lose his +balance and immerse himself in any trades or pleasures for their own sake, he +may be a good wheel or pin, but he is not a cultivated man. +</p> + +<p> +The spurious prudence, making the senses final, is the god of sots and cowards, +and is the subject of all comedy. It is nature’s joke, and therefore +literature’s. The true prudence limits this sensualism by admitting the +knowledge of an internal and real world. This recognition once made, the order +of the world and the distribution of affairs and times, being studied with the +co-perception of their subordinate place, will reward any degree of attention. +For our existence, thus apparently attached in nature to the sun and the +returning moon and the periods which they mark,—so susceptible to climate +and to country, so alive to social good and evil, so fond of splendor and so +tender to hunger and cold and debt,—reads all its primary lessons out of +these books. +</p> + +<p> +Prudence does not go behind nature and ask whence it is. It takes the laws of +the world whereby man’s being is conditioned, as they are, and keeps +these laws that it may enjoy their proper good. It respects space and time, +climate, want, sleep, the law of polarity, growth and death. There revolve, to +give bound and period to his being on all sides, the sun and moon, the great +formalists in the sky: here lies stubborn matter, and will not swerve from its +chemical routine. Here is a planted globe, pierced and belted with natural laws +and fenced and distributed externally with civil partitions and properties +which impose new restraints on the young inhabitant. +</p> + +<p> +We eat of the bread which grows in the field. We live by the air which blows +around us and we are poisoned by the air that is too cold or too hot, too dry +or too wet. Time, which shows so vacant, indivisible and divine in its coming, +is slit and peddled into trifles and tatters. A door is to be painted, a lock +to be repaired. I want wood or oil, or meal or salt; the house smokes, or I +have a headache; then the tax, and an affair to be transacted with a man +without heart or brains, and the stinging recollection of an injurious or very +awkward word,—these eat up the hours. Do what we can, summer will have +its flies; if we walk in the woods we must feed mosquitos; if we go a-fishing +we must expect a wet coat. Then climate is a great impediment to idle persons; +we often resolve to give up the care of the weather, but still we regard the +clouds and the rain. +</p> + +<p> +We are instructed by these petty experiences which usurp the hours and years. +The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitant of the northern +temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of +the tropics. The islander may ramble all day at will. At night he may sleep on +a mat under the moon, and wherever a wild date-tree grows, nature has, without +a prayer even, spread a table for his morning meal. The northerner is perforce +a householder. He must brew, bake, salt and preserve his food, and pile wood +and coal. But as it happens that not one stroke can labor lay to without some +new acquaintance with nature, and as nature is inexhaustibly significant, the +inhabitants of these climates have always excelled the southerner in force. +Such is the value of these matters that a man who knows other things can never +know too much of these. Let him have accurate perceptions. Let him, if he have +hands, handle; if eyes, measure and discriminate; let him accept and hive every +fact of chemistry, natural history and economics; the more he has, the less is +he willing to spare any one. Time is always bringing the occasions that +disclose their value. Some wisdom comes out of every natural and innocent +action. The domestic man, who loves no music so well as his kitchen clock and +the airs which the logs sing to him as they burn on the hearth, has solaces +which others never dream of. The application of means to ends insures victory +and the songs of victory not less in a farm or a shop than in the tactics of +party or of war. The good husband finds method as efficient in the packing of +fire-wood in a shed or in the harvesting of fruits in the cellar, as in +Peninsular campaigns or the files of the Department of State. In the rainy day +he builds a work-bench, or gets his tool-box set in the corner of the +barn-chamber, and stored with nails, gimlet, pincers, screwdriver and chisel. +Herein he tastes an old joy of youth and childhood, the cat-like love of +garrets, presses and corn-chambers, and of the conveniences of long +housekeeping. His garden or his poultry-yard tells him many pleasant anecdotes. +One might find argument for optimism in the abundant flow of this saccharine +element of pleasure in every suburb and extremity of the good world. Let a man +keep the law,—any law,—and his way will be strown with +satisfactions. There is more difference in the quality of our pleasures than in +the amount. +</p> + +<p> +On the other hand, nature punishes any neglect of prudence. If you think the +senses final, obey their law. If you believe in the soul, do not clutch at +sensual sweetness before it is ripe on the slow tree of cause and effect. It is +vinegar to the eyes to deal with men of loose and imperfect perception. Dr. +Johnson is reported to have said,—“If the child says he looked out +of this window, when he looked out of that,—whip him.” Our American +character is marked by a more than average delight in accurate perception, +which is shown by the currency of the byword, “No mistake.” But the +discomfort of unpunctuality, of confusion of thought about facts, of +inattention to the wants of to-morrow, is of no nation. The beautiful laws of +time and space, once dislocated by our inaptitude, are holes and dens. If the +hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands, instead of honey it will yield us +bees. Our words and actions to be fair must be timely. A gay and pleasant sound +is the whetting of the scythe in the mornings of June, yet what is more +lonesome and sad than the sound of a whetstone or mower’s rifle when it +is too late in the season to make hay? Scatter-brained and +“afternoon” men spoil much more than their own affair in spoiling +the temper of those who deal with them. I have seen a criticism on some +paintings, of which I am reminded when I see the shiftless and unhappy men who +are not true to their senses. The last Grand Duke of Weimar, a man of superior +understanding, said,—“I have sometimes remarked in the presence of +great works of art, and just now especially in Dresden, how much a certain +property contributes to the effect which gives life to the figures, and to the +life an irresistible truth. This property is the hitting, in all the figures we +draw, the right centre of gravity. I mean the placing the figures firm upon +their feet, making the hands grasp, and fastening the eyes on the spot where +they should look. Even lifeless figures, as vessels and stools—let them +be drawn ever so correctly—lose all effect so soon as they lack the +resting upon their centre of gravity, and have a certain swimming and +oscillating appearance. The Raphael in the Dresden gallery (the only greatly +affecting picture which I have seen) is the quietest and most passionless piece +you can imagine; a couple of saints who worship the Virgin and Child. +Nevertheless, it awakens a deeper impression than the contortions of ten +crucified martyrs. For beside all the resistless beauty of form, it possesses +in the highest degree the property of the perpendicularity of all the +figures.” This perpendicularity we demand of all the figures in this +picture of life. Let them stand on their feet, and not float and swing. Let us +know where to find them. Let them discriminate between what they remember and +what they dreamed, call a spade a spade, give us facts, and honor their own +senses with trust. +</p> + +<p> +But what man shall dare tax another with imprudence? Who is prudent? The men we +call greatest are least in this kingdom. There is a certain fatal dislocation +in our relation to nature, distorting our modes of living and making every law +our enemy, which seems at last to have aroused all the wit and virtue in the +world to ponder the question of Reform. We must call the highest prudence to +counsel, and ask why health and beauty and genius should now be the exception +rather than the rule of human nature? We do not know the properties of plants +and animals and the laws of nature, through our sympathy with the same; but +this remains the dream of poets. Poetry and prudence should be coincident. +Poets should be lawgivers; that is, the boldest lyric inspiration should not +chide and insult, but should announce and lead the civil code and the +day’s work. But now the two things seem irreconcilably parted. We have +violated law upon law until we stand amidst ruins, and when by chance we espy a +coincidence between reason and the phenomena, we are surprised. Beauty should +be the dowry of every man and woman, as invariably as sensation; but it is +rare. Health or sound organization should be universal. Genius should be the +child of genius and every child should be inspired; but now it is not to be +predicted of any child, and nowhere is it pure. We call partial half-lights, by +courtesy, genius; talent which converts itself to money; talent which glitters +to-day that it may dine and sleep well to-morrow; and society is officered by +<i>men of parts</i>, as they are properly called, and not by divine men. These +use their gifts to refine luxury, not to abolish it. Genius is always ascetic, +and piety, and love. Appetite shows to the finer souls as a disease, and they +find beauty in rites and bounds that resist it. +</p> + +<p> +We have found out fine names to cover our sensuality withal, but no gifts can +raise intemperance. The man of talent affects to call his transgressions of the +laws of the senses trivial and to count them nothing considered with his +devotion to his art. His art never taught him lewdness, nor the love of wine, +nor the wish to reap where he had not sowed. His art is less for every +deduction from his holiness, and less for every defect of common sense. On him +who scorned the world as he said, the scorned world wreaks its revenge. He that +despiseth small things will perish by little and little. Goethe’s Tasso +is very likely to be a pretty fair historical portrait, and that is true +tragedy. It does not seem to me so genuine grief when some tyrannous Richard +the Third oppresses and slays a score of innocent persons, as when Antonio and +Tasso, both apparently right, wrong each other. One living after the maxims of +this world and consistent and true to them, the other fired with all divine +sentiments, yet grasping also at the pleasures of sense, without submitting to +their law. That is a grief we all feel, a knot we cannot untie. Tasso’s +is no infrequent case in modern biography. A man of genius, of an ardent +temperament, reckless of physical laws, self-indulgent, becomes presently +unfortunate, querulous, a “discomfortable cousin,” a thorn to +himself and to others. +</p> + +<p> +The scholar shames us by his bifold life. Whilst something higher than prudence +is active, he is admirable; when common sense is wanted, he is an encumbrance. +Yesterday, Cæsar was not so great; to-day, the felon at the gallows’ foot +is not more miserable. Yesterday, radiant with the light of an ideal world in +which he lives, the first of men; and now oppressed by wants and by sickness, +for which he must thank himself. He resembles the pitiful drivellers whom +travellers describe as frequenting the bazaars of Constantinople, who skulk +about all day, yellow, emaciated, ragged, sneaking; and at evening, when the +bazaars are open, slink to the opium-shop, swallow their morsel and become +tranquil and glorified seers. And who has not seen the tragedy of imprudent +genius struggling for years with paltry pecuniary difficulties, at last +sinking, chilled, exhausted and fruitless, like a giant slaughtered by pins? +</p> + +<p> +Is it not better that a man should accept the first pains and mortifications of +this sort, which nature is not slack in sending him, as hints that he must +expect no other good than the just fruit of his own labor and self-denial? +Health, bread, climate, social position, have their importance, and he will +give them their due. Let him esteem Nature a perpetual counsellor, and her +perfections the exact measure of our deviations. Let him make the night night, +and the day day. Let him control the habit of expense. Let him see that as much +wisdom may be expended on a private economy as on an empire, and as much wisdom +may be drawn from it. The laws of the world are written out for him on every +piece of money in his hand. There is nothing he will not be the better for +knowing, were it only the wisdom of Poor Richard, or the State-Street prudence +of buying by the acre to sell by the foot; or the thrift of the agriculturist, +to stick a tree between whiles, because it will grow whilst he sleeps; or the +prudence which consists in husbanding little strokes of the tool, little +portions of time, particles of stock and small gains. The eye of prudence may +never shut. Iron, if kept at the ironmonger’s, will rust; beer, if not +brewed in the right state of the atmosphere, will sour; timber of ships will +rot at sea, or if laid up high and dry, will strain, warp and dry-rot; money, +if kept by us, yields no rent and is liable to loss; if invested, is liable to +depreciation of the particular kind of stock. Strike, says the smith, the iron +is white; keep the rake, says the haymaker, as nigh the scythe as you can, and +the cart as nigh the rake. Our Yankee trade is reputed to be very much on the +extreme of this prudence. It takes bank-notes, good, bad, clean, ragged, and +saves itself by the speed with which it passes them off. Iron cannot rust, nor +beer sour, nor timber rot, nor calicoes go out of fashion, nor money stocks +depreciate, in the few swift moments in which the Yankee suffers any one of +them to remain in his possession. In skating over thin ice our safety is in our +speed. +</p> + +<p> +Let him learn a prudence of a higher strain. Let him learn that every thing in +nature, even motes and feathers, go by law and not by luck, and that what he +sows he reaps. By diligence and self-command let him put the bread he eats at +his own disposal, that he may not stand in bitter and false relations to other +men; for the best good of wealth is freedom. Let him practise the minor +virtues. How much of human life is lost in waiting! let him not make his +fellow-creatures wait. How many words and promises are promises of +conversation! Let his be words of fate. When he sees a folded and sealed scrap +of paper float round the globe in a pine ship and come safe to the eye for +which it was written, amidst a swarming population, let him likewise feel the +admonition to integrate his being across all these distracting forces, and keep +a slender human word among the storms, distances and accidents that drive us +hither and thither, and, by persistency, make the paltry force of one man +reappear to redeem its pledge after months and years in the most distant +climates. +</p> + +<p> +We must not try to write the laws of any one virtue, looking at that only. +Human nature loves no contradictions, but is symmetrical. The prudence which +secures an outward well-being is not to be studied by one set of men, whilst +heroism and holiness are studied by another, but they are reconcilable. +Prudence concerns the present time, persons, property and existing forms. But +as every fact hath its roots in the soul, and if the soul were changed, would +cease to be, or would become some other thing,—the proper administration +of outward things will always rest on a just apprehension of their cause and +origin; that is, the good man will be the wise man, and the single-hearted the +politic man. Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the +liar, but is a stab at the health of human society. On the most profitable lie +the course of events presently lays a destructive tax; whilst frankness invites +frankness, puts the parties on a convenient footing and makes their business a +friendship. Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they +will show themselves great, though they make an exception in your favor to all +their rules of trade. +</p> + +<p> +So, in regard to disagreeable and formidable things, prudence does not consist +in evasion or in flight, but in courage. He who wishes to walk in the most +peaceful parts of life with any serenity must screw himself up to resolution. +Let him front the object of his worst apprehension, and his stoutness will +commonly make his fear groundless. The Latin proverb says, “In battles +the eye is first overcome.” Entire self-possession may make a battle very +little more dangerous to life than a match at foils or at football. Examples +are cited by soldiers of men who have seen the cannon pointed and the fire +given to it, and who have stepped aside from the path of the ball. The terrors +of the storm are chiefly confined to the parlor and the cabin. The drover, the +sailor, buffets it all day, and his health renews itself at as vigorous a pulse +under the sleet as under the sun of June. +</p> + +<p> +In the occurrence of unpleasant things among neighbors, fear comes readily to +heart and magnifies the consequence of the other party; but it is a bad +counsellor. Every man is actually weak and apparently strong. To himself he +seems weak; to others, formidable. You are afraid of Grim; but Grim also is +afraid of you. You are solicitous of the good-will of the meanest person, +uneasy at his ill-will. But the sturdiest offender of your peace and of the +neighborhood, if you rip up <i>his</i> claims, is as thin and timid as any, and +the peace of society is often kept, because, as children say, one is afraid, +and the other dares not. Far off, men swell, bully and threaten; bring them +hand to hand, and they are a feeble folk. +</p> + +<p> +It is a proverb that ‘courtesy costs nothing’; but calculation +might come to value love for its profit. Love is fabled to be blind, but +kindness is necessary to perception; love is not a hood, but an eye-water. If +you meet a sectary or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines, +but meet on what common ground remains,—if only that the sun shines and +the rain rains for both; the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it, +the boundary mountains on which the eye had fastened have melted into air. If +they set out to contend, Saint Paul will lie and Saint John will hate. What +low, poor, paltry, hypocritical people an argument on religion will make of the +pure and chosen souls! They will shuffle and crow, crook and hide, feign to +confess here, only that they may brag and conquer there, and not a thought has +enriched either party, and not an emotion of bravery, modesty, or hope. So +neither should you put yourself in a false position with your contemporaries by +indulging a vein of hostility and bitterness. Though your views are in straight +antagonism to theirs, assume an identity of sentiment, assume that you are +saying precisely that which all think, and in the flow of wit and love roll out +your paradoxes in solid column, with not the infirmity of a doubt. So at least +shall you get an adequate deliverance. The natural motions of the soul are so +much better than the voluntary ones that you will never do yourself justice in +dispute. The thought is not then taken hold of by the right handle, does not +show itself proportioned and in its true bearings, but bears extorted, hoarse, +and half witness. But assume a consent and it shall presently be granted, since +really and underneath their external diversities, all men are of one heart and +mind. +</p> + +<p> +Wisdom will never let us stand with any man or men on an unfriendly footing. We +refuse sympathy and intimacy with people, as if we waited for some better +sympathy and intimacy to come. But whence and when? To-morrow will be like +to-day. Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live. Our friends and +fellow-workers die off from us. Scarcely can we say we see new men, new women, +approaching us. We are too old to regard fashion, too old to expect patronage +of any greater or more powerful. Let us suck the sweetness of those affections +and consuetudes that grow near us. These old shoes are easy to the feet. +Undoubtedly we can easily pick faults in our company, can easily whisper names +prouder, and that tickle the fancy more. Every man’s imagination hath its +friends; and life would be dearer with such companions. But if you cannot have +them on good mutual terms, you cannot have them. If not the Deity but our +ambition hews and shapes the new relations, their virtue escapes, as +strawberries lose their flavor in garden-beds. +</p> + +<p> +Thus truth, frankness, courage, love, humility and all the virtues range +themselves on the side of prudence, or the art of securing a present +well-being. I do not know if all matter will be found to be made of one +element, as oxygen or hydrogen, at last, but the world of manners and actions +is wrought of one stuff, and begin where we will we are pretty sure in a short +space to be mumbling our ten commandments. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"></a>VIII.<br /> +HEROISM</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“Paradise is under the shadow of swords.”<br /> + <i>Mahomet.</i><br /> +<br /> +Ruby wine is drunk by knaves,<br /> +Sugar spends to fatten slaves,<br /> +Rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons;<br /> +Thunderclouds are Jove’s festoons,<br /> +Drooping oft in wreaths of dread<br /> +Lightning-knotted round his head;<br /> +The hero is not fed on sweets,<br /> +Daily his own heart he eats;<br /> +Chambers of the great are jails,<br /> +And head-winds right for royal sails. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>HEROISM</h2> + +<p> +In the elder English dramatists, and mainly in the plays Of Beaumont and +Fletcher, there is a constant recognition of gentility, as if a noble behavior +were as easily marked in the society of their age as color is in our American +population. When any Rodrigo, Pedro or Valerio enters, though he be a stranger, +the duke or governor exclaims, ‘This is a gentleman,—and proffers +civilities without end; but all the rest are slag and refuse. In harmony with +this delight in personal advantages there is in their plays a certain heroic +cast of character and dialogue,—as in Bonduca, Sophocles, the Mad Lover, +the Double Marriage,—wherein the speaker is so earnest and cordial and on +such deep grounds of character, that the dialogue, on the slightest additional +incident in the plot, rises naturally into poetry. Among many texts take the +following. The Roman Martius has conquered Athens,—all but the invincible +spirits of Sophocles, the duke of Athens, and Dorigen, his wife. The beauty of +the latter inflames Martius, and he seeks to save her husband; but Sophocles +will not ask his life, although assured that a word will save him, and the +execution of both proceeds:— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<i>Valerius</i>. Bid thy wife farewell.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Sophocles</i>. No, I will take no leave. My Dorigen,<br /> +Yonder, above, ’bout Ariadne’s crown,<br /> +My spirit shall hover for thee. Prithee, haste.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Dorigen</i>. Stay, Sophocles,—with this tie up my sight;<br /> +Let not soft nature so transformed be,<br /> +And lose her gentler sexed humanity,<br /> +To make me see my lord bleed. So, ’tis well;<br /> +Never one object underneath the sun<br /> +Will I behold before my Sophocles:<br /> +Farewell; now teach the Romans how to die.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Martius</i>. Dost know what ’t is to die?<br /> +<br /> +<i>Sophocles</i>. Thou dost not, Martius,<br /> +And, therefore, not what ’tis to live; to die<br /> +Is to begin to live. It is to end<br /> +An old, stale, weary work, and to commence<br /> +A newer and a better. ’Tis to leave<br /> +Deceitful knaves for the society<br /> +Of gods and goodness. Thou thyself must part<br /> +At last from all thy garlands, pleasures, triumphs,<br /> +And prove thy fortitude what then ’t will do.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Valerius</i>. But art not grieved nor vexed to leave thy life thus?<br /> +<br /> +<i>Sophocles</i>. Why should I grieve or vex for being sent<br /> +To them I ever loved best? Now I’ll kneel,<br /> +But with my back toward thee; ’tis the last duty<br /> +This trunk can do the gods.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Martius</i>. Strike, strike, Valerius,<br /> +Or Martius’ heart will leap out at his mouth.<br /> +This is a man, a woman. Kiss thy lord,<br /> +And live with all the freedom you were wont.<br /> +O love! thou doubly hast afflicted me<br /> +With virtue and with beauty. Treacherous heart,<br /> +My hand shall cast thee quick into my urn,<br /> +Ere thou transgress this knot of piety.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Valerius</i>. What ails my brother?<br /> +<br /> +<i>Sophocles</i>. Martius, O Martius,<br /> +Thou now hast found a way to conquer me.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Dorigen</i>. O star of Rome! what gratitude can speak<br /> +Fit words to follow such a deed as this?<br /> +<br /> +<i>Martius</i>. This admirable duke, Valerius,<br /> +With his disdain of fortune and of death,<br /> +Captived himself, has captivated me,<br /> +And though my arm hath ta’en his body here,<br /> +His soul hath subjugated Martius’ soul.<br /> +By Romulus, he is all soul, I think;<br /> +He hath no flesh, and spirit cannot be gyved;<br /> +Then we have vanquished nothing; he is free,<br /> +And Martius walks now in captivity.<br /> +</p> + +<p> +I do not readily remember any poem, play, sermon, novel, or oration that our +press vents in the last few years, which goes to the same tune. We have a great +many flutes and flageolets, but not often the sound of any fife. Yet, +Wordsworth’s “Laodamia,” and the ode of “Dion,” +and some sonnets, have a certain noble music; and Scott will sometimes draw a +stroke like the portrait of Lord Evandale given by Balfour of Burley. Thomas +Carlyle, with his natural taste for what is manly and daring in character, has +suffered no heroic trait in his favorites to drop from his biographical and +historical pictures. Earlier, Robert Burns has given us a song or two. In the +Harleian Miscellanies there is an account of the battle of Lutzen which +deserves to be read. And Simon Ockley’s History of the Saracens recounts +the prodigies of individual valor, with admiration all the more evident on the +part of the narrator that he seems to think that his place in Christian Oxford +requires of him some proper protestations of abhorrence. But if we explore the +literature of Heroism we shall quickly come to Plutarch, who is its Doctor and +historian. To him we owe the Brasidas, the Dion, the Epaminondas, the Scipio of +old, and I must think we are more deeply indebted to him than to all the +ancient writers. Each of his “Lives” is a refutation to the +despondency and cowardice of our religious and political theorists. A wild +courage, a Stoicism not of the schools but of the blood, shines in every +anecdote, and has given that book its immense fame. +</p> + +<p> +We need books of this tart cathartic virtue more than books of political +science or of private economy. Life is a festival only to the wise. Seen from +the nook and chimney-side of prudence, it wears a ragged and dangerous front. +The violations of the laws of nature by our predecessors and our contemporaries +are punished in us also. The disease and deformity around us certify the +infraction of natural, intellectual, and moral laws, and often violation on +violation to breed such compound misery. A lock-jaw that bends a man’s +head back to his heels; hydrophobia that makes him bark at his wife and babes; +insanity that makes him eat grass; war, plague, cholera, famine, indicate a +certain ferocity in nature, which, as it had its inlet by human crime, must +have its outlet by human suffering. Unhappily no man exists who has not in his +own person become to some amount a stockholder in the sin, and so made himself +liable to a share in the expiation. +</p> + +<p> +Our culture therefore must not omit the arming of the man. Let him hear in +season that he is born into the state of war, and that the commonwealth and his +own well-being require that he should not go dancing in the weeds of peace, but +warned, self-collected and neither defying nor dreading the thunder, let him +take both reputation and life in his hand, and, with perfect urbanity dare the +gibbet and the mob by the absolute truth of his speech and the rectitude of his +behavior. +</p> + +<p> +Towards all this external evil the man within the breast assumes a warlike +attitude, and affirms his ability to cope single-handed with the infinite army +of enemies. To this military attitude of the soul we give the name of Heroism. +Its rudest form is the contempt for safety and ease, which makes the +attractiveness of war. It is a self-trust which slights the restraints of +prudence, in the plenitude of its energy and power to repair the harms it may +suffer. The hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake his +will, but pleasantly and as it were merrily he advances to his own music, alike +in frightful alarms and in the tipsy mirth of universal dissoluteness. There is +somewhat not philosophical in heroism; there is somewhat not holy in it; it +seems not to know that other souls are of one texture with it; it has pride; it +is the extreme of individual nature. Nevertheless we must profoundly revere it. +There is somewhat in great actions which does not allow us to go behind them. +Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right; and although a +different breeding, different religion and greater intellectual activity would +have modified or even reversed the particular action, yet for the hero that +thing he does is the highest deed, and is not open to the censure of +philosophers or divines. It is the avowal of the unschooled man that he finds a +quality in him that is negligent of expense, of health, of life, of danger, of +hatred, of reproach, and knows that his will is higher and more excellent than +all actual and all possible antagonists. +</p> + +<p> +Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, +for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a +secret impulse of an individual’s character. Now to no other man can its +wisdom appear as it does to him, for every man must be supposed to see a little +farther on his own proper path than any one else. Therefore just and wise men +take umbrage at his act, until after some little time be past: then they see it +to be in unison with their acts. All prudent men see that the action is clean +contrary to a sensual prosperity; for every heroic act measures itself by its +contempt of some external good. But it finds its own success at last, and then +the prudent also extol. +</p> + +<p> +Self-trust is the essence of heroism. It is the state of the soul at war, and +its ultimate objects are the last defiance of falsehood and wrong, and the +power to bear all that can be inflicted by evil agents. It speaks the truth and +it is just, generous, hospitable, temperate, scornful of petty calculations and +scornful of being scorned. It persists; it is of an undaunted boldness and of a +fortitude not to be wearied out. Its jest is the littleness of common life. +That false prudence which dotes on health and wealth is the butt and merriment +of heroism. Heroism, like Plotinus, is almost ashamed of its body. What shall +it say then to the sugar-plums and cats’-cradles, to the toilet, +compliments, quarrels, cards and custard, which rack the wit of all society? +What joys has kind nature provided for us dear creatures! There seems to be no +interval between greatness and meanness. When the spirit is not master of the +world, then it is its dupe. Yet the little man takes the great hoax so +innocently, works in it so headlong and believing, is born red, and dies gray, +arranging his toilet, attending on his own health, laying traps for sweet food +and strong wine, setting his heart on a horse or a rifle, made happy with a +little gossip or a little praise, that the great soul cannot choose but laugh +at such earnest nonsense. “Indeed, these humble considerations make me +out of love with greatness. What a disgrace is it to me to take note how many +pairs of silk stockings thou hast, namely, these and those that were the +peach-colored ones; or to bear the inventory of thy shirts, as one for +superfluity, and one other for use!” +</p> + +<p> +Citizens, thinking after the laws of arithmetic, consider the inconvenience of +receiving strangers at their fireside, reckon narrowly the loss of time and the +unusual display; the soul of a better quality thrusts back the unseasonable +economy into the vaults of life, and says, I will obey the God, and the +sacrifice and the fire he will provide. Ibn Hankal, the Arabian geographer, +describes a heroic extreme in the hospitality of Sogd, in Bukharia. “When +I was in Sogd I saw a great building, like a palace, the gates of which were +open and fixed back to the wall with large nails. I asked the reason, and was +told that the house had not been shut, night or day, for a hundred years. +Strangers may present themselves at any hour and in whatever number; the master +has amply provided for the reception of the men and their animals, and is never +happier than when they tarry for some time. Nothing of the kind have I seen in +any other country.” The magnanimous know very well that they who give +time, or money, or shelter, to the stranger,—so it be done for love and +not for ostentation,—do, as it were, put God under obligation to them, so +perfect are the compensations of the universe. In some way the time they seem +to lose is redeemed and the pains they seem to take remunerate themselves. +These men fan the flame of human love and raise the standard of civil virtue +among mankind. But hospitality must be for service and not for show, or it +pulls down the host. The brave soul rates itself too high to value itself by +the splendor of its table and draperies. It gives what it hath, and all it +hath, but its own majesty can lend a better grace to bannocks and fair water +than belong to city feasts. +</p> + +<p> +The temperance of the hero proceeds from the same wish to do no dishonor to the +worthiness he has. But he loves it for its elegancy, not for its austerity. It +seems not worth his while to be solemn and denounce with bitterness +flesh-eating or wine-drinking, the use of tobacco, or opium, or tea, or silk, +or gold. A great man scarcely knows how he dines, how he dresses; but without +railing or precision his living is natural and poetic. John Eliot, the Indian +Apostle, drank water, and said of wine,—“It is a noble, generous +liquor and we should be humbly thankful for it, but, as I remember, water was +made before it.” Better still is the temperance of King David, who poured +out on the ground unto the Lord the water which three of his warriors had +brought him to drink, at the peril of their lives. +</p> + +<p> +It is told of Brutus, that when he fell on his sword after the battle of +Philippi, he quoted a line of Euripides,—“O Virtue! I have followed +thee through life, and I find thee at last but a shade.” I doubt not the +hero is slandered by this report. The heroic soul does not sell its justice and +its nobleness. It does not ask to dine nicely and to sleep warm. The essence of +greatness is the perception that virtue is enough. Poverty is its ornament. It +does not need plenty, and can very well abide its loss. +</p> + +<p> +But that which takes my fancy most in the heroic class, is the good-humor and +hilarity they exhibit. It is a height to which common duty can very well +attain, to suffer and to dare with solemnity. But these rare souls set opinion, +success, and life at so cheap a rate that they will not soothe their enemies by +petitions, or the show of sorrow, but wear their own habitual greatness. +Scipio, charged with peculation, refuses to do himself so great a disgrace as +to wait for justification, though he had the scroll of his accounts in his +hands, but tears it to pieces before the tribunes. Socrates’s +condemnation of himself to be maintained in all honor in the Prytaneum, during +his life, and Sir Thomas More’s playfulness at the scaffold, are of the +same strain. In Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Sea Voyage,” Juletta +tells the stout captain and his company,— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<i>Juletta</i>. Why, slaves, ’tis in our power to hang ye.<br /> +<i>Master</i>. Very likely,<br /> +’Tis in our powers, then, to be hanged, and scorn ye. +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +These replies are sound and whole. Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect +health. The great will not condescend to take any thing seriously; all must be +as gay as the song of a canary, though it were the building of cities or the +eradication of old and foolish churches and nations which have cumbered the +earth long thousands of years. Simple hearts put all the history and customs of +this world behind them, and play their own game in innocent defiance of the +Blue-Laws of the world; and such would appear, could we see the human race +assembled in vision, like little children frolicking together, though to the +eyes of mankind at large they wear a stately and solemn garb of works and +influences. +</p> + +<p> +The interest these fine stories have for us, the power of a romance over the +boy who grasps the forbidden book under his bench at school, our delight in the +hero, is the main fact to our purpose. All these great and transcendent +properties are ours. If we dilate in beholding the Greek energy, the Roman +pride, it is that we are already domesticating the same sentiment. Let us find +room for this great guest in our small houses. The first step of worthiness +will be to disabuse us of our superstitious associations with places and times, +with number and size. Why should these words, Athenian, Roman, Asia and +England, so tingle in the ear? Where the heart is, there the muses, there the +gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut +River and Boston Bay you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of +foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we will tarry a +little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it only that thyself is +here, and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels and the Supreme Being +shall not be absent from the chamber where thou sittest. Epaminondas, brave and +affectionate, does not seem to us to need Olympus to die upon, nor the Syrian +sunshine. He lies very well where he is. The Jerseys were handsome ground +enough for Washington to tread, and London streets for the feet of Milton. A +great man makes his climate genial in the imagination of men, and its air the +beloved element of all delicate spirits. That country is the fairest which is +inhabited by the noblest minds. The pictures which fill the imagination in +reading the actions of Pericles, Xenophon, Columbus, Bayard, Sidney, Hampden, +teach us how needlessly mean our life is; that we, by the depth of our living, +should deck it with more than regal or national splendor, and act on principles +that should interest man and nature in the length of our days. +</p> + +<p> +We have seen or heard of many extraordinary young men who never ripened, or +whose performance in actual life was not extraordinary. When we see their air +and mien, when we hear them speak of society, of books, of religion, we admire +their superiority; they seem to throw contempt on our entire polity and social +state; theirs is the tone of a youthful giant who is sent to work revolutions. +But they enter an active profession and the forming Colossus shrinks to the +common size of man. The magic they used was the ideal tendencies, which always +make the Actual ridiculous; but the tough world had its revenge the moment they +put their horses of the sun to plough in its furrow. They found no example and +no companion, and their heart fainted. What then? The lesson they gave in their +first aspirations is yet true; and a better valor and a purer truth shall one +day organize their belief. Or why should a woman liken herself to any +historical woman, and think, because Sappho, or Sévigné, or De Staël, or the +cloistered souls who have had genius and cultivation do not satisfy the +imagination and the serene Themis, none can,—certainly not she? Why not? +She has a new and unattempted problem to solve, perchance that of the happiest +nature that ever bloomed. Let the maiden, with erect soul, walk serenely on her +way, accept the hint of each new experience, search in turn all the objects +that solicit her eye, that she may learn the power and the charm of her +new-born being, which is the kindling of a new dawn in the recesses of space. +The fair girl who repels interference by a decided and proud choice of +influences, so careless of pleasing, so wilful and lofty, inspires every +beholder with somewhat of her own nobleness. The silent heart encourages her; O +friend, never strike sail to a fear! Come into port greatly, or sail with God +the seas. Not in vain you live, for every passing eye is cheered and refined by +the vision. +</p> + +<p> +The characteristic of heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering +impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have chosen your part, +abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The +heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic. Yet we have the +weakness to expect the sympathy of people in those actions whose excellence is +that they outrun sympathy and appeal to a tardy justice. If you would serve +your brother, because it is fit for you to serve him, do not take back your +words when you find that prudent people do not commend you. Adhere to your own +act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and +extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age. It was a high counsel +that I once heard given to a young person,—“Always do what you are +afraid to do.” A simple manly character need never make an apology, but +should regard its past action with the calmness of Phocion, when he admitted +that the event of the battle was happy, yet did not regret his dissuasion from +the battle. +</p> + +<p> +There is no weakness or exposure for which we cannot find consolation in the +thought—this is a part of my constitution, part of my relation and office +to my fellow-creature. Has nature covenanted with me that I should never appear +to disadvantage, never make a ridiculous figure? Let us be generous of our +dignity as well as of our money. Greatness once and for ever has done with +opinion. We tell our charities, not because we wish to be praised for them, not +because we think they have great merit, but for our justification. It is a +capital blunder; as you discover when another man recites his charities. +</p> + +<p> +To speak the truth, even with some austerity, to live with some rigor of +temperance, or some extremes of generosity, seems to be an asceticism which +common good-nature would appoint to those who are at ease and in plenty, in +sign that they feel a brotherhood with the great multitude of suffering men. +And not only need we breathe and exercise the soul by assuming the penalties of +abstinence, of debt, of solitude, of unpopularity,—but it behooves the +wise man to look with a bold eye into those rarer dangers which sometimes +invade men, and to familiarize himself with disgusting forms of disease, with +sounds of execration, and the vision of violent death. +</p> + +<p> +Times of heroism are generally times of terror, but the day never shines in +which this element may not work. The circumstances of man, we say, are +historically somewhat better in this country and at this hour than perhaps ever +before. More freedom exists for culture. It will not now run against an axe at +the first step out of the beaten track of opinion. But whoso is heroic will +always find crises to try his edge. Human virtue demands her champions and +martyrs, and the trial of persecution always proceeds. It is but the other day +that the brave Lovejoy gave his breast to the bullets of a mob, for the rights +of free speech and opinion, and died when it was better not to live. +</p> + +<p> +I see not any road of perfect peace which a man can walk, but after the counsel +of his own bosom. Let him quit too much association, let him go home much, and +stablish himself in those courses he approves. The unremitting retention of +simple and high sentiments in obscure duties is hardening the character to that +temper which will work with honor, if need be in the tumult, or on the +scaffold. Whatever outrages have happened to men may befall a man again; and +very easily in a republic, if there appear any signs of a decay of religion. +Coarse slander, fire, tar and feathers and the gibbet, the youth may freely +bring home to his mind and with what sweetness of temper he can, and inquire +how fast he can fix his sense of duty, braving such penalties, whenever it may +please the next newspaper and a sufficient number of his neighbors to pronounce +his opinions incendiary. +</p> + +<p> +It may calm the apprehension of calamity in the most susceptible heart to see +how quick a bound Nature has set to the utmost infliction of malice. We rapidly +approach a brink over which no enemy can follow us:— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Let them rave:<br /> +Thou art quiet in thy grave.” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +In the gloom of our ignorance of what shall be, in the hour when we are deaf to +the higher voices, who does not envy those who have seen safely to an end their +manful endeavor? Who that sees the meanness of our politics but inly +congratulates Washington that he is long already wrapped in his shroud, and for +ever safe; that he was laid sweet in his grave, the hope of humanity not yet +subjugated in him? Who does not sometimes envy the good and brave who are no +more to suffer from the tumults of the natural world, and await with curious +complacency the speedy term of his own conversation with finite nature? And yet +the love that will be annihilated sooner than treacherous has already made +death impossible, and affirms itself no mortal but a native of the deeps of +absolute and inextinguishable being. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"></a>IX.<br /> +THE OVER-SOUL</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“But souls that of his own good life partake,<br /> +He loves as his own self; dear as his eye<br /> +They are to Him: He’ll never them forsake:<br /> +When they shall die, then God himself shall die:<br /> +They live, they live in blest eternity.”<br /> + <i>Henry More</i>.<br /> +<br /> +Space is ample, east and west,<br /> +But two cannot go abreast,<br /> +Cannot travel in it two:<br /> +Yonder masterful cuckoo<br /> +Crowds every egg out of the nest,<br /> +Quick or dead, except its own;<br /> +A spell is laid on sod and stone,<br /> +Night and Day ’ve been tampered with,<br /> +Every quality and pith<br /> +Surcharged and sultry with a power<br /> +That works its will on age and hour. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>THE OVER-SOUL</h2> + +<p> +There is a difference between one and another hour of life in their authority +and subsequent effect. Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual. Yet +there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more +reality to them than to all other experiences. For this reason the argument +which is always forthcoming to silence those who conceive extraordinary hopes +of man, namely the appeal to experience, is for ever invalid and vain. We give +up the past to the objector, and yet we hope. He must explain this hope. We +grant that human life is mean, but how did we find out that it was mean? What +is the ground of this uneasiness of ours; of this old discontent? What is the +universal sense of want and ignorance, but the fine innuendo by which the soul +makes its enormous claim? Why do men feel that the natural history of man has +never been written, but he is always leaving behind what you have said of him, +and it becomes old, and books of metaphysics worthless? The philosophy of six +thousand years has not searched the chambers and magazines of the soul. In its +experiments there has always remained, in the last analysis, a residuum it +could not resolve. Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being is +descending into us from we know not whence. The most exact calculator has no +prescience that somewhat incalculable may not balk the very next moment. I am +constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the +will I call mine. +</p> + +<p> +As with events, so is it with thoughts. When I watch that flowing river, which, +out of regions I see not, pours for a season its streams into me, I see that I +am a pensioner; not a cause, but a surprised spectator of this ethereal water; +that I desire and look up and put myself in the attitude of reception, but from +some alien energy the visions come. +</p> + +<p> +The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only +prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest as the +earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-soul, +within which every man’s particular being is contained and made one with +all other; that common heart of which all sincere conversation is the worship, +to which all right action is submission; that overpowering reality which +confutes our tricks and talents, and constrains every one to pass for what he +is, and to speak from his character and not from his tongue, and which evermore +tends to pass into our thought and hand and become wisdom and virtue and power +and beauty. We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. +Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal +beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE. +And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to +us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing +and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are +one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the +tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul. Only by +the vision of that Wisdom can the horoscope of the ages be read, and by falling +back on our better thoughts, by yielding to the spirit of prophecy which is +innate in every man, we can know what it saith. Every man’s words who +speaks from that life must sound vain to those who do not dwell in the same +thought on their own part. I dare not speak for it. My words do not carry its +august sense; they fall short and cold. Only itself can inspire whom it will, +and behold! their speech shall be lyrical, and sweet, and universal as the +rising of the wind. Yet I desire, even by profane words, if I may not use +sacred, to indicate the heaven of this deity and to report what hints I have +collected of the transcendent simplicity and energy of the Highest Law. +</p> + +<p> +If we consider what happens in conversation, in reveries, in remorse, in times +of passion, in surprises, in the instructions of dreams, wherein often we see +ourselves in masquerade,—the droll disguises only magnifying and +enhancing a real element and forcing it on our distinct notice,—we shall +catch many hints that will broaden and lighten into knowledge of the secret of +nature. All goes to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and +exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of memory, of +calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, +but a light; is not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect +and the will; is the background of our being, in which they lie,—an +immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed. From within or from +behind, a light shines through us upon things and makes us aware that we are +nothing, but the light is all. A man is the facade of a temple wherein all +wisdom and all good abide. What we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, +planting, counting man, does not, as we know him, represent himself, but +misrepresents himself. Him we do not respect, but the soul, whose organ he is, +would he let it appear through his action, would make our knees bend. When it +breathes through his intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through his +will, it is virtue; when it flows through his affection, it is love. And the +blindness of the intellect begins when it would be something of itself. The +weakness of the will begins when the individual would be something of himself. +All reform aims in some one particular to let the soul have its way through us; +in other words, to engage us to obey. +</p> + +<p> +Of this pure nature every man is at some time sensible. Language cannot paint +it with his colors. It is too subtile. It is undefinable, unmeasurable; but we +know that it pervades and contains us. We know that all spiritual being is in +man. A wise old proverb says, “God comes to see us without bell;” +that is, as there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite +heavens, so is there no bar or wall in the soul where man, the effect, ceases, +and God, the cause, begins. The walls are taken away. We lie open on one side +to the deeps of spiritual nature, to the attributes of God. Justice we see and +know, Love, Freedom, Power. These natures no man ever got above, but they tower +over us, and most in the moment when our interests tempt us to wound them. +</p> + +<p> +The sovereignty of this nature whereof we speak is made known by its +independency of those limitations which circumscribe us on every hand. The soul +circumscribes all things. As I have said, it contradicts all experience. In +like manner it abolishes time and space. The influence of the senses has in +most men overpowered the mind to that degree that the walls of time and space +have come to look real and insurmountable; and to speak with levity of these +limits is, in the world, the sign of insanity. Yet time and space are but +inverse measures of the force of the soul. The spirit sports with time,— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Can crowd eternity into an hour,<br /> +Or stretch an hour to eternity.” +</p> + +<p> +We are often made to feel that there is another youth and age than that which +is measured from the year of our natural birth. Some thoughts always find us +young, and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal +beauty. Every man parts from that contemplation with the feeling that it rather +belongs to ages than to mortal life. The least activity of the intellectual +powers redeems us in a degree from the conditions of time. In sickness, in +languor, give us a strain of poetry or a profound sentence, and we are +refreshed; or produce a volume of Plato or Shakspeare, or remind us of their +names, and instantly we come into a feeling of longevity. See how the deep +divine thought reduces centuries and millenniums and makes itself present +through all ages. Is the teaching of Christ less effective now than it was when +first his mouth was opened? The emphasis of facts and persons in my thought has +nothing to do with time. And so always the soul’s scale is one, the scale +of the senses and the understanding is another. Before the revelations of the +soul, Time, Space and Nature shrink away. In common speech we refer all things +to time, as we habitually refer the immensely sundered stars to one concave +sphere. And so we say that the Judgment is distant or near, that the Millennium +approaches, that a day of certain political, moral, social reforms is at hand, +and the like, when we mean that in the nature of things one of the facts we +contemplate is external and fugitive, and the other is permanent and connate +with the soul. The things we now esteem fixed shall, one by one, detach +themselves like ripe fruit from our experience, and fall. The wind shall blow +them none knows whither. The landscape, the figures, Boston, London, are facts +as fugitive as any institution past, or any whiff of mist or smoke, and so is +society, and so is the world. The soul looketh steadily forwards, creating a +world before her, leaving worlds behind her. She has no dates, nor rites, nor +persons, nor specialties nor men. The soul knows only the soul; the web of +events is the flowing robe in which she is clothed. +</p> + +<p> +After its own law and not by arithmetic is the rate of its progress to be +computed. The soul’s advances are not made by gradation, such as can be +represented by motion in a straight line, but rather by ascension of state, +such as can be represented by metamorphosis,—from the egg to the worm, +from the worm to the fly. The growths of genius are of a certain <i>total</i> +character, that does not advance the elect individual first over John, then +Adam, then Richard, and give to each the pain of discovered +inferiority,—but by every throe of growth the man expands there where he +works, passing, at each pulsation, classes, populations, of men. With each +divine impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and finite, and +comes out into eternity, and inspires and expires its air. It converses with +truths that have always been spoken in the world, and becomes conscious of a +closer sympathy with Zeno and Arrian than with persons in the house. +</p> + +<p> +This is the law of moral and of mental gain. The simple rise as by specific +levity not into a particular virtue, but into the region of all the virtues. +They are in the spirit which contains them all. The soul requires purity, but +purity is not it; requires justice, but justice is not that; requires +beneficence, but is somewhat better; so that there is a kind of descent and +accommodation felt when we leave speaking of moral nature to urge a virtue +which it enjoins. To the well-born child all the virtues are natural, and not +painfully acquired. Speak to his heart, and the man becomes suddenly virtuous. +</p> + +<p> +Within the same sentiment is the germ of intellectual growth, which obeys the +same law. Those who are capable of humility, of justice, of love, of +aspiration, stand already on a platform that commands the sciences and arts, +speech and poetry, action and grace. For whoso dwells in this moral beatitude +already anticipates those special powers which men prize so highly. The lover +has no talent, no skill, which passes for quite nothing with his enamoured +maiden, however little she may possess of related faculty; and the heart which +abandons itself to the Supreme Mind finds itself related to all its works, and +will travel a royal road to particular knowledges and powers. In ascending to +this primary and aboriginal sentiment we have come from our remote station on +the circumference instantaneously to the centre of the world, where, as in the +closet of God, we see causes, and anticipate the universe, which is but a slow +effect. +</p> + +<p> +One mode of the divine teaching is the incarnation of the spirit in a +form,—in forms, like my own. I live in society, with persons who answer +to thoughts in my own mind, or express a certain obedience to the great +instincts to which I live. I see its presence to them. I am certified of a +common nature; and these other souls, these separated selves, draw me as +nothing else can. They stir in me the new emotions we call passion; of love, +hatred, fear, admiration, pity; thence come conversation, competition, +persuasion, cities and war. Persons are supplementary to the primary teaching +of the soul. In youth we are mad for persons. Childhood and youth see all the +world in them. But the larger experience of man discovers the identical nature +appearing through them all. Persons themselves acquaint us with the impersonal. +In all conversation between two persons tacit reference is made, as to a third +party, to a common nature. That third party or common nature is not social; it +is impersonal; is God. And so in groups where debate is earnest, and especially +on high questions, the company become aware that the thought rises to an equal +level in all bosoms, that all have a spiritual property in what was said, as +well as the sayer. They all become wiser than they were. It arches over them +like a temple, this unity of thought in which every heart beats with nobler +sense of power and duty, and thinks and acts with unusual solemnity. All are +conscious of attaining to a higher self-possession. It shines for all. There is +a certain wisdom of humanity which is common to the greatest men with the +lowest, and which our ordinary education often labors to silence and obstruct. +The mind is one, and the best minds, who love truth for its own sake, think +much less of property in truth. They accept it thankfully everywhere, and do +not label or stamp it with any man’s name, for it is theirs long +beforehand, and from eternity. The learned and the studious of thought have no +monopoly of wisdom. Their violence of direction in some degree disqualifies +them to think truly. We owe many valuable observations to people who are not +very acute or profound, and who say the thing without effort which we want and +have long been hunting in vain. The action of the soul is oftener in that which +is felt and left unsaid than in that which is said in any conversation. It +broods over every society, and they unconsciously seek for it in each other. We +know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the +same time that we are much more. I feel the same truth how often in my trivial +conversation with my neighbors, that somewhat higher in each of us overlooks +this by-play, and Jove nods to Jove from behind each of us. +</p> + +<p> +Men descend to meet. In their habitual and mean service to the world, for which +they forsake their native nobleness, they resemble those Arabian sheiks who +dwell in mean houses and affect an external poverty, to escape the rapacity of +the Pacha, and reserve all their display of wealth for their interior and +guarded retirements. +</p> + +<p> +As it is present in all persons, so it is in every period of life. It is adult +already in the infant man. In my dealing with my child, my Latin and Greek, my +accomplishments and my money stead me nothing; but as much soul as I have +avails. If I am wilful, he sets his will against mine, one for one, and leaves +me, if I please, the degradation of beating him by my superiority of strength. +But if I renounce my will and act for the soul, setting that up as umpire +between us two, out of his young eyes looks the same soul; he reveres and loves +with me. +</p> + +<p> +The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, +let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose. Foolish people ask you, when you +have spoken what they do not wish to hear, ‘How do you know it is truth, +and not an error of your own?’ We know truth when we see it, from +opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are awake. It was a grand +sentence of Emanuel Swedenborg, which would alone indicate the greatness of +that man’s perception,—“It is no proof of a man’s +understanding to be able to confirm whatever he pleases; but to be able to +discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false,—this +is the mark and character of intelligence.” In the book I read, the good +thought returns to me, as every truth will, the image of the whole soul. To the +bad thought which I find in it, the same soul becomes a discerning, separating +sword, and lops it away. We are wiser than we know. If we will not interfere +with our thought, but will act entirely, or see how the thing stands in God, we +know the particular thing, and every thing, and every man. For the Maker of all +things and all persons stands behind us and casts his dread omniscience through +us over things. +</p> + +<p> +But beyond this recognition of its own in particular passages of the +individual’s experience, it also reveals truth. And here we should seek +to reinforce ourselves by its very presence, and to speak with a worthier, +loftier strain of that advent. For the soul’s communication of truth is +the highest event in nature, since it then does not give somewhat from itself, +but it gives itself, or passes into and becomes that man whom it enlightens; +or, in proportion to that truth he receives, it takes him to itself. +</p> + +<p> +We distinguish the announcements of the soul, its manifestations of its own +nature, by the term <i>Revelation</i>. These are always attended by the emotion +of the sublime. For this communication is an influx of the Divine mind into our +mind. It is an ebb of the individual rivulet before the flowing surges of the +sea of life. Every distinct apprehension of this central commandment agitates +men with awe and delight. A thrill passes through all men at the reception of +new truth, or at the performance of a great action, which comes out of the +heart of nature. In these communications the power to see is not separated from +the will to do, but the insight proceeds from obedience, and the obedience +proceeds from a joyful perception. Every moment when the individual feels +himself invaded by it is memorable. By the necessity of our constitution a +certain enthusiasm attends the individual’s consciousness of that divine +presence. The character and duration of this enthusiasm varies with the state +of the individual, from an ecstasy and trance and prophetic +inspiration,—which is its rarer appearance,—to the faintest glow of +virtuous emotion, in which form it warms, like our household fires, all the +families and associations of men, and makes society possible. A certain +tendency to insanity has always attended the opening of the religious sense in +men, as if they had been “blasted with excess of light.” The +trances of Socrates, the “union” of Plotinus, the vision of +Porphyry, the conversion of Paul, the aurora of Behmen, the convulsions of +George Fox and his Quakers, the illumination of Swedenborg, are of this kind. +What was in the case of these remarkable persons a ravishment, has, in +innumerable instances in common life, been exhibited in less striking manner. +Everywhere the history of religion betrays a tendency to enthusiasm. The +rapture of the Moravian and Quietist; the opening of the internal sense of the +Word, in the language of the New Jerusalem Church; the <i>revival</i> of the +Calvinistic churches; the <i>experiences</i> of the Methodists, are varying +forms of that shudder of awe and delight with which the individual soul always +mingles with the universal soul. +</p> + +<p> +The nature of these revelations is the same; they are perceptions of the +absolute law. They are solutions of the soul’s own questions. They do not +answer the questions which the understanding asks. The soul answers never by +words, but by the thing itself that is inquired after. +</p> + +<p> +Revelation is the disclosure of the soul. The popular notion of a revelation is +that it is a telling of fortunes. In past oracles of the soul the understanding +seeks to find answers to sensual questions, and undertakes to tell from God how +long men shall exist, what their hands shall do and who shall be their company, +adding names and dates and places. But we must pick no locks. We must check +this low curiosity. An answer in words is delusive; it is really no answer to +the questions you ask. Do not require a description of the countries towards +which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to-morrow +you arrive there and know them by inhabiting them. Men ask concerning the +immortality of the soul, the employments of heaven, the state of the sinner, +and so forth. They even dream that Jesus has left replies to precisely these +interrogatories. Never a moment did that sublime spirit speak in their +<i>patois</i>. To truth, justice, love, the attributes of the soul, the idea of +immutableness is essentially associated. Jesus, living in these moral +sentiments, heedless of sensual fortunes, heeding only the manifestations of +these, never made the separation of the idea of duration from the essence of +these attributes, nor uttered a syllable concerning the duration of the soul. +It was left to his disciples to sever duration from the moral elements, and to +teach the immortality of the soul as a doctrine, and maintain it by evidences. +The moment the doctrine of the immortality is separately taught, man is already +fallen. In the flowing of love, in the adoration of humility, there is no +question of continuance. No inspired man ever asks this question or condescends +to these evidences. For the soul is true to itself, and the man in whom it is +shed abroad cannot wander from the present, which is infinite, to a future +which would be finite. +</p> + +<p> +These questions which we lust to ask about the future are a confession of sin. +God has no answer for them. No answer in words can reply to a question of +things. It is not in an arbitrary “decree of God,” but in the +nature of man, that a veil shuts down on the facts of to-morrow; for the soul +will not have us read any other cipher than that of cause and effect. By this +veil which curtains events it instructs the children of men to live in to-day. +The only mode of obtaining an answer to these questions of the senses is to +forego all low curiosity, and, accepting the tide of being which floats us into +the secret of nature, work and live, work and live, and all unawares the +advancing soul has built and forged for itself a new condition, and the +question and the answer are one. +</p> + +<p> +By the same fire, vital, consecrating, celestial, which burns until it shall +dissolve all things into the waves and surges of an ocean of light, we see and +know each other, and what spirit each is of. Who can tell the grounds of his +knowledge of the character of the several individuals in his circle of friends? +No man. Yet their acts and words do not disappoint him. In that man, though he +knew no ill of him, he put no trust. In that other, though they had seldom met, +authentic signs had yet passed, to signify that he might be trusted as one who +had an interest in his own character. We know each other very well,—which +of us has been just to himself and whether that which we teach or behold is +only an aspiration or is our honest effort also. +</p> + +<p> +We are all discerners of spirits. That diagnosis lies aloft in our life or +unconscious power. The intercourse of society, its trade, its religion, its +friendships, its quarrels, is one wide, judicial investigation of character. In +full court, or in small committee, or confronted face to face, accuser and +accused, men offer themselves to be judged. Against their will they exhibit +those decisive trifles by which character is read. But who judges? and what? +Not our understanding. We do not read them by learning or craft. No; the wisdom +of the wise man consists herein, that he does not judge them; he lets them +judge themselves and merely reads and records their own verdict. +</p> + +<p> +By virtue of this inevitable nature, private will is overpowered, and, maugre +our efforts or our imperfections, your genius will speak from you, and mine +from me. That which we are, we shall teach, not voluntarily but involuntarily. +Thoughts come into our minds by avenues which we never left open, and thoughts +go out of our minds through avenues which we never voluntarily opened. +Character teaches over our head. The infallible index of true progress is found +in the tone the man takes. Neither his age, nor his breeding, nor company, nor +books, nor actions, nor talents, nor all together can hinder him from being +deferential to a higher spirit than his own. If he have not found his home in +God, his manners, his forms of speech, the turn of his sentences, the build, +shall I say, of all his opinions will involuntarily confess it, let him brave +it out how he will. If he have found his centre, the Deity will shine through +him, through all the disguises of ignorance, of ungenial temperament, of +unfavorable circumstance. The tone of seeking is one, and the tone of having is +another. +</p> + +<p> +The great distinction between teachers sacred or literary,—between poets +like Herbert, and poets like Pope,—between philosophers like Spinoza, +Kant and Coleridge, and philosophers like Locke, Paley, Mackintosh and +Stewart,—between men of the world who are reckoned accomplished talkers, +and here and there a fervent mystic, prophesying half insane under the +infinitude of his thought,—is that one class speak <i>from within</i>, or +from experience, as parties and possessors of the fact; and the other class +<i>from without</i>, as spectators merely, or perhaps as acquainted with the +fact on the evidence of third persons. It is of no use to preach to me from +without. I can do that too easily myself. Jesus speaks always from within, and +in a degree that transcends all others. In that is the miracle. I believe +beforehand that it ought so to be. All men stand continually in the expectation +of the appearance of such a teacher. But if a man do not speak from within the +veil, where the word is one with that it tells of, let him lowly confess it. +</p> + +<p> +The same Omniscience flows into the intellect, and makes what we call genius. +Much of the wisdom of the world is not wisdom, and the most illuminated class +of men are no doubt superior to literary fame, and are not writers. Among the +multitude of scholars and authors, we feel no hallowing presence; we are +sensible of a knack and skill rather than of inspiration; they have a light and +know not whence it comes and call it their own; their talent is some +exaggerated faculty, some overgrown member, so that their strength is a +disease. In these instances the intellectual gifts do not make the impression +of virtue, but almost of vice; and we feel that a man’s talents stand in +the way of his advancement in truth. But genius is religious. It is a larger +imbibing of the common heart. It is not anomalous, but more like and not less +like other men. There is in all great poets a wisdom of humanity which is +superior to any talents they exercise. The author, the wit, the partisan, the +fine gentleman, does not take place of the man. Humanity shines in Homer, in +Chaucer, in Spenser, in Shakspeare, in Milton. They are content with truth. +They use the positive degree. They seem frigid and phlegmatic to those who have +been spiced with the frantic passion and violent coloring of inferior but +popular writers. For they are poets by the free course which they allow to the +informing soul, which through their eyes beholds again and blesses the things +which it hath made. The soul is superior to its knowledge, wiser than any of +its works. The great poet makes us feel our own wealth, and then we think less +of his compositions. His best communication to our mind is to teach us to +despise all he has done. Shakspeare carries us to such a lofty strain of +intelligent activity as to suggest a wealth which beggars his own; and we then +feel that the splendid works which he has created, and which in other hours we +extol as a sort of self-existent poetry, take no stronger hold of real nature +than the shadow of a passing traveller on the rock. The inspiration which +uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear could utter things as good from day to day +for ever. Why then should I make account of Hamlet and Lear, as if we had not +the soul from which they fell as syllables from the tongue? +</p> + +<p> +This energy does not descend into individual life on any other condition than +entire possession. It comes to the lowly and simple; it comes to whomsoever +will put off what is foreign and proud; it comes as insight; it comes as +serenity and grandeur. When we see those whom it inhabits, we are apprised of +new degrees of greatness. From that inspiration the man comes back with a +changed tone. He does not talk with men with an eye to their opinion. He tries +them. It requires of us to be plain and true. The vain traveller attempts to +embellish his life by quoting my lord and the prince and the countess, who thus +said or did to <i>him</i>. The ambitious vulgar show you their spoons and +brooches and rings, and preserve their cards and compliments. The more +cultivated, in their account of their own experience, cull out the pleasing, +poetic circumstance,—the visit to Rome, the man of genius they saw, the +brilliant friend They know; still further on perhaps the gorgeous landscape, +the mountain lights, the mountain thoughts they enjoyed yesterday,—and so +seek to throw a romantic color over their life. But the soul that ascends to +worship the great God is plain and true; has no rose-color, no fine friends, no +chivalry, no adventures; does not want admiration; dwells in the hour that now +is, in the earnest experience of the common day,—by reason of the present +moment and the mere trifle having become porous to thought and bibulous of the +sea of light. +</p> + +<p> +Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature looks like +word-catching. The simplest utterances are worthiest to be written, yet are +they so cheap and so things of course, that in the infinite riches of the soul +it is like gathering a few pebbles off the ground, or bottling a little air in +a phial, when the whole earth and the whole atmosphere are ours. Nothing can +pass there, or make you one of the circle, but the casting aside your +trappings, and dealing man to man in naked truth, plain confession, and +omniscient affirmation. +</p> + +<p> +Souls such as these treat you as gods would, walk as gods in the earth, +accepting without any admiration your wit, your bounty, your virtue +even,—say rather your act of duty, for your virtue they own as their +proper blood, royal as themselves, and over-royal, and the father of the gods. +But what rebuke their plain fraternal bearing casts on the mutual flattery with +which authors solace each other and wound themselves! These flatter not. I do +not wonder that these men go to see Cromwell and Christina and Charles the +Second and James the First and the Grand Turk. For they are, in their own +elevation, the fellows of kings, and must feel the servile tone of conversation +in the world. They must always be a godsend to princes, for they confront them, +a king to a king, without ducking or concession, and give a high nature the +refreshment and satisfaction of resistance, of plain humanity, of even +companionship and of new ideas. They leave them wiser and superior men. Souls +like these make us feel that sincerity is more excellent than flattery. Deal so +plainly with man and woman as to constrain the utmost sincerity and destroy all +hope of trifling with you. It is the highest compliment you can pay. Their +“highest praising,” said Milton, “is not flattery, and their +plainest advice is a kind of praising.” +</p> + +<p> +Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the soul. The simplest +person who in his integrity worships God, becomes God; yet for ever and ever +the influx of this better and universal self is new and unsearchable. It +inspires awe and astonishment. How dear, how soothing to man, arises the idea +of God, peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars of our mistakes and +disappointments! When we have broken our god of tradition and ceased from our +god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with his presence. It is the +doubling of the heart itself, nay, the infinite enlargement of the heart with a +power of growth to a new infinity on every side. It inspires in man an +infallible trust. He has not the conviction, but the sight, that the best is +the true, and may in that thought easily dismiss all particular uncertainties +and fears, and adjourn to the sure revelation of time the solution of his +private riddles. He is sure that his welfare is dear to the heart of being. In +the presence of law to his mind he is overflowed with a reliance so universal +that it sweeps away all cherished hopes and the most stable projects of mortal +condition in its flood. He believes that he cannot escape from his good. The +things that are really for thee gravitate to thee. You are running to seek your +friend. Let your feet run, but your mind need not. If you do not find him, will +you not acquiesce that it is best you should not find him? for there is a +power, which, as it is in you, is in him also, and could therefore very well +bring you together, if it were for the best. You are preparing with eagerness +to go and render a service to which your talent and your taste invite you, the +love of men and the hope of fame. Has it not occurred to you that you have no +right to go, unless you are equally willing to be prevented from going? O, +believe, as thou livest, that every sound that is spoken over the round world, +which thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate on thine ear! Every proverb, every +book, every byword that belongs to thee for aid or comfort, shall surely come +home through open or winding passages. Every friend whom not thy fantastic will +but the great and tender heart in thee craveth, shall lock thee in his embrace. +And this because the heart in thee is the heart of all; not a valve, not a +wall, not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls +uninterruptedly an endless circulation through all men, as the water of the +globe is all one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one. +</p> + +<p> +Let man then learn the revelation of all nature and all thought to his heart; +this, namely; that the Highest dwells with him; that the sources of nature are +in his own mind, if the sentiment of duty is there. But if he would know what +the great God speaketh, he must ‘go into his closet and shut the +door,’ as Jesus said. God will not make himself manifest to cowards. He +must greatly listen to himself, withdrawing himself from all the accents of +other men’s devotion. Even their prayers are hurtful to him, until he +have made his own. Our religion vulgarly stands on numbers of believers. +Whenever the appeal is made,—no matter how indirectly,—to numbers, +proclamation is then and there made that religion is not. He that finds God a +sweet enveloping thought to him never counts his company. When I sit in that +presence, who shall dare to come in? When I rest in perfect humility, when I +burn with pure love, what can Calvin or Swedenborg say? +</p> + +<p> +It makes no difference whether the appeal is to numbers or to one. The faith +that stands on authority is not faith. The reliance on authority measures the +decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul. The position men have given to +Jesus, now for many centuries of history, is a position of authority. It +characterizes themselves. It cannot alter the eternal facts. Great is the soul, +and plain. It is no flatterer, it is no follower; it never appeals from itself. +It believes in itself. Before the immense possibilities of man all mere +experience, all past biography, however spotless and sainted, shrinks away. +Before that heaven which our presentiments foreshow us, we cannot easily praise +any form of life we have seen or read of. We not only affirm that we have few +great men, but, absolutely speaking, that we have none; that we have no +history, no record of any character or mode of living that entirely contents +us. The saints and demigods whom history worships we are constrained to accept +with a grain of allowance. Though in our lonely hours we draw a new strength +out of their memory, yet, pressed on our attention, as they are by the +thoughtless and customary, they fatigue and invade. The soul gives itself, +alone, original and pure, to the Lonely, Original and Pure, who, on that +condition, gladly inhabits, leads and speaks through it. Then is it glad, young +and nimble. It is not wise, but it sees through all things. It is not called +religious, but it is innocent. It calls the light its own, and feels that the +grass grows and the stone falls by a law inferior to, and dependent on, its +nature. Behold, it saith, I am born into the great, the universal mind. I, the +imperfect, adore my own Perfect. I am somehow receptive of the great soul, and +thereby I do Overlook the sun and the stars and feel them to be the fair +accidents and effects which change and pass. More and more the surges of +everlasting nature enter into me, and I become public and human in my regards +and actions. So come I to live in thoughts and act with energies which are +immortal. Thus revering the soul, and learning, as the ancient said, that +“its beauty is immense,” man will come to see that the world is the +perennial miracle which the soul worketh, and be less astonished at particular +wonders; he will learn that there is no profane history; that all history is +sacred; that the universe is represented in an atom, in a moment of time. He +will weave no longer a spotted life of shreds and patches, but he will live +with a divine unity. He will cease from what is base and frivolous in his life +and be content with all places and with any service he can render. He will +calmly front the morrow in the negligency of that trust which carries God with +it and so hath already the whole future in the bottom of the heart. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"></a>X.<br /> +CIRCLES</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Nature centres into balls,<br /> +And her proud ephemerals,<br /> +Fast to surface and outside,<br /> +Scan the profile of the sphere;<br /> +Knew they what that signified,<br /> +A new genesis were here. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CIRCLES</h2> + +<p> +The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and +throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end. It is the +highest emblem in the cipher of the world. St. Augustine described the nature +of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere and its circumference nowhere. +We are all our lifetime reading the copious sense of this first of forms. One +moral we have already deduced, in considering the circular or compensatory +character of every human action. Another analogy we shall now trace, that every +action admits of being outdone. Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that +around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but +every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, +and under every deep a lower deep opens. +</p> + +<p> +This fact, as far as it symbolizes the moral fact of the Unattainable, the +flying Perfect, around which the hands of man can never meet, at once the +inspirer and the condemner of every success, may conveniently serve us to +connect many illustrations of human power in every department. +</p> + +<p> +There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence +is but a word of degrees. Our globe seen by God is a transparent law, not a +mass of facts. The law dissolves the fact and holds it fluid. Our culture is +the predominance of an idea which draws after it this train of cities and +institutions. Let us rise into another idea: they will disappear. The Greek +sculpture is all melted away, as if it had been statues of ice; here and there +a solitary figure or fragment remaining, as we see flecks and scraps of snow +left in cold dells and mountain clefts in June and July. For the genius that +created it creates now somewhat else. The Greek letters last a little longer, +but are already passing under the same sentence and tumbling into the +inevitable pit which the creation of new thought opens for all that is old. The +new continents are built out of the ruins of an old planet; the new races fed +out of the decomposition of the foregoing. New arts destroy the old. See the +investment of capital in aqueducts made useless by hydraulics; fortifications, +by gunpowder; roads and canals, by railways; sails, by steam; steam by +electricity. +</p> + +<p> +You admire this tower of granite, weathering the hurts of so many ages. Yet a +little waving hand built this huge wall, and that which builds is better than +that which is built. The hand that built can topple it down much faster. Better +than the hand and nimbler was the invisible thought which wrought through it; +and thus ever, behind the coarse effect, is a fine cause, which, being narrowly +seen, is itself the effect of a finer cause. Every thing looks permanent until +its secret is known. A rich estate appears to women a firm and lasting fact; to +a merchant, one easily created out of any materials, and easily lost. An +orchard, good tillage, good grounds, seem a fixture, like a gold mine, or a +river, to a citizen; but to a large farmer, not much more fixed than the state +of the crop. Nature looks provokingly stable and secular, but it has a cause +like all the rest; and when once I comprehend that, will these fields stretch +so immovably wide, these leaves hang so individually considerable? Permanence +is a word of degrees. Every thing is medial. Moons are no more bounds to +spiritual power than bat-balls. +</p> + +<p> +The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has +a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are +classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands +his own. The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring +imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, +and that without end. The extent to which this generation of circles, wheel +without wheel, will go, depends on the force or truth of the individual soul. +For it is the inert effort of each thought, having formed itself into a +circular wave of circumstance,—as for instance an empire, rules of an +art, a local usage, a religious rite,—to heap itself on that ridge and to +solidify and hem in the life. But if the soul is quick and strong it bursts +over that boundary on all sides and expands another orbit on the great deep, +which also runs up into a high wave, with attempt again to stop and to bind. +But the heart refuses to be imprisoned; in its first and narrowest pulses, it +already tends outward with a vast force and to immense and innumerable +expansions. +</p> + +<p> +Every ultimate fact is only the first of a new series. Every general law only a +particular fact of some more general law presently to disclose itself. There is +no outside, no inclosing wall, no circumference to us. The man finishes his +story,—how good! how final! how it puts a new face on all things! He +fills the sky. Lo! on the other side rises also a man and draws a circle around +the circle we had just pronounced the outline of the sphere. Then already is +our first speaker not man, but only a first speaker. His only redress is +forthwith to draw a circle outside of his antagonist. And so men do by +themselves. The result of to-day, which haunts the mind and cannot be escaped, +will presently be abridged into a word, and the principle that seemed to +explain nature will itself be included as one example of a bolder +generalization. In the thought of to-morrow there is a power to upheave all thy +creed, all the creeds, all the literatures of the nations, and marshal thee to +a heaven which no epic dream has yet depicted. Every man is not so much a +workman in the world as he is a suggestion of that he should be. Men walk as +prophecies of the next age. +</p> + +<p> +Step by step we scale this mysterious ladder: the steps are actions; the new +prospect is power. Every several result is threatened and judged by that which +follows. Every one seems to be contradicted by the new; it is only limited by +the new. The new statement is always hated by the old, and, to those dwelling +in the old, comes like an abyss of scepticism. But the eye soon gets wonted to +it, for the eye and it are effects of one cause; then its innocency and benefit +appear, and presently, all its energy spent, it pales and dwindles before the +revelation of the new hour. +</p> + +<p> +Fear not the new generalization. Does the fact look crass and material, +threatening to degrade thy theory of spirit? Resist it not; it goes to refine +and raise thy theory of matter just as much. +</p> + +<p> +There are no fixtures to men, if we appeal to consciousness. Every man supposes +himself not to be fully understood; and if there is any truth in him, if he +rests at last on the divine soul, I see not how it can be otherwise. The last +chamber, the last closet, he must feel was never opened; there is always a +residuum unknown, unanalyzable. That is, every man believes that he has a +greater possibility. +</p> + +<p> +Our moods do not believe in each other. To-day I am full of thoughts and can +write what I please. I see no reason why I should not have the same thought, +the same power of expression, to-morrow. What I write, whilst I write it, seems +the most natural thing in the world; but yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in +this direction in which now I see so much; and a month hence, I doubt not, I +shall wonder who he was that wrote so many continuous pages. Alas for this +infirm faith, this will not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast flow! I am God +in nature; I am a weed by the wall. +</p> + +<p> +The continual effort to raise himself above himself, to work a pitch above his +last height, betrays itself in a man’s relations. We thirst for +approbation, yet cannot forgive the approver. The sweet of nature is love; yet, +if I have a friend I am tormented by my imperfections. The love of me accuses +the other party. If he were high enough to slight me, then could I love him, +and rise by my affection to new heights. A man’s growth is seen in the +successive choirs of his friends. For every friend whom he loses for truth, he +gains a better. I thought as I walked in the woods and mused on my friends, why +should I play with them this game of idolatry? I know and see too well, when +not voluntarily blind, the speedy limits of persons called high and worthy. +Rich, noble and great they are by the liberality of our speech, but truth is +sad. O blessed Spirit, whom I forsake for these, they are not thou! Every +personal consideration that we allow costs us heavenly state. We sell the +thrones of angels for a short and turbulent pleasure. +</p> + +<p> +How often must we learn this lesson? Men cease to interest us when we find +their limitations. The only sin is limitation. As soon as you once come up with +a man’s limitations, it is all over with him. Has he talents? has he +enterprise? has he knowledge? It boots not. Infinitely alluring and attractive +was he to you yesterday, a great hope, a sea to swim in; now, you have found +his shores, found it a pond, and you care not if you never see it again. +</p> + +<p> +Each new step we take in thought reconciles twenty seemingly discordant facts, +as expressions of one law. Aristotle and Plato are reckoned the respective +heads of two schools. A wise man will see that Aristotle platonizes. By going +one step farther back in thought, discordant opinions are reconciled by being +seen to be two extremes of one principle, and we can never go so far back as to +preclude a still higher vision. +</p> + +<p> +Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things +are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and +no man knows what is safe, or where it will end. There is not a piece of +science but its flank may be turned to-morrow; there is not any literary +reputation, not the so-called eternal names of fame, that may not be revised +and condemned. The very hopes of man, the thoughts of his heart, the religion +of nations, the manners and morals of mankind are all at the mercy of a new +generalization. Generalization is always a new influx of the divinity into the +mind. Hence the thrill that attends it. +</p> + +<p> +Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that a man cannot have his +flank turned, cannot be out-generalled, but put him where you will, he stands. +This can only be by his preferring truth to his past apprehension of truth, and +his alert acceptance of it from whatever quarter; the intrepid conviction that +his laws, his relations to society, his Christianity, his world, may at any +time be superseded and decease. +</p> + +<p> +There are degrees in idealism. We learn first to play with it academically, as +the magnet was once a toy. Then we see in the heyday of youth and poetry that +it may be true, that it is true in gleams and fragments. Then its countenance +waxes stern and grand, and we see that it must be true. It now shows itself +ethical and practical. We learn that God is; that he is in me; and that all +things are shadows of him. The idealism of Berkeley is only a crude statement +of the idealism of Jesus, and that again is a crude statement of the fact that +all nature is the rapid efflux of goodness executing and organizing itself. +Much more obviously is history and the state of the world at any one time +directly dependent on the intellectual classification then existing in the +minds of men. The things which are dear to men at this hour are so on account +of the ideas which have emerged on their mental horizon, and which cause the +present order of things, as a tree bears its apples. A new degree of culture +would instantly revolutionize the entire system of human pursuits. +</p> + +<p> +Conversation is a game of circles. In conversation we pluck up the +<i>termini</i> which bound the common of silence on every side. The parties are +not to be judged by the spirit they partake and even express under this +Pentecost. To-morrow they will have receded from this high-water mark. +To-morrow you shall find them stooping under the old pack-saddles. Yet let us +enjoy the cloven flame whilst it glows on our walls. When each new speaker +strikes a new light, emancipates us from the oppression of the last speaker, to +oppress us with the greatness and exclusiveness of his own thought, then yields +us to another redeemer, we seem to recover our rights, to become men. O, what +truths profound and executable only in ages and orbs, are supposed in the +announcement of every truth! In common hours, society sits cold and statuesque. +We all stand waiting, empty,—knowing, possibly, that we can be full, +surrounded by mighty symbols which are not symbols to us, but prose and trivial +toys. Then cometh the god and converts the statues into fiery men, and by a +flash of his eye burns up the veil which shrouded all things, and the meaning +of the very furniture, of cup and saucer, of chair and clock and tester, is +manifest. The facts which loomed so large in the fogs of +yesterday,—property, climate, breeding, personal beauty and the like, +have strangely changed their proportions. All that we reckoned settled shakes +and rattles; and literatures, cities, climates, religions, leave their +foundations and dance before our eyes. And yet here again see the swift +circumspection! Good as is discourse, silence is better, and shames it. The +length of the discourse indicates the distance of thought betwixt the speaker +and the hearer. If they were at a perfect understanding in any part, no words +would be necessary thereon. If at one in all parts, no words would be suffered. +</p> + +<p> +Literature is a point outside of our hodiernal circle through which a new one +may be described. The use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we +may command a view of our present life, a purchase by which we may move it. We +fill ourselves with ancient learning, install ourselves the best we can in +Greek, in Punic, in Roman houses, only that we may wiselier see French, English +and American houses and modes of living. In like manner we see literature best +from the midst of wild nature, or from the din of affairs, or from a high +religion. The field cannot be well seen from within the field. The astronomer +must have his diameter of the earth’s orbit as a base to find the +parallax of any star. +</p> + +<p> +Therefore we value the poet. All the argument and all the wisdom is not in the +encyclopaedia, or the treatise on metaphysics, or the Body of Divinity, but in +the sonnet or the play. In my daily work I incline to repeat my old steps, and +do not believe in remedial force, in the power of change and reform. But some +Petrarch or Ariosto, filled with the new wine of his imagination, writes me an +ode or a brisk romance, full of daring thought and action. He smites and +arouses me with his shrill tones, breaks up my whole chain of habits, and I +open my eye on my own possibilities. He claps wings to the sides of all the +solid old lumber of the world, and I am capable once more of choosing a +straight path in theory and practice. +</p> + +<p> +We have the same need to command a view of the religion of the world. We can +never see Christianity from the catechism:—from the pastures, from a boat +in the pond, from amidst the songs of wood-birds we possibly may. Cleansed by +the elemental light and wind, steeped in the sea of beautiful forms which the +field offers us, we may chance to cast a right glance back upon biography. +Christianity is rightly dear to the best of mankind; yet was there never a +young philosopher whose breeding had fallen into the Christian church by whom +that brave text of Paul’s was not specially prized:—“Then +shall also the Son be subject unto Him who put all things under him, that God +may be all in all.” Let the claims and virtues of persons be never so +great and welcome, the instinct of man presses eagerly onward to the impersonal +and illimitable, and gladly arms itself against the dogmatism of bigots with +this generous word out of the book itself. +</p> + +<p> +The natural world may be conceived of as a system of concentric circles, and we +now and then detect in nature slight dislocations which apprise us that this +surface on which we now stand is not fixed, but sliding. These manifold +tenacious qualities, this chemistry and vegetation, these metals and animals, +which seem to stand there for their own sake, are means and methods +only,—are words of God, and as fugitive as other words. Has the +naturalist or chemist learned his craft, who has explored the gravity of atoms +and the elective affinities, who has not yet discerned the deeper law whereof +this is only a partial or approximate statement, namely that like draws to +like, and that the goods which belong to you gravitate to you and need not be +pursued with pains and cost? Yet is that statement approximate also, and not +final. Omnipresence is a higher fact. Not through subtle subterranean channels +need friend and fact be drawn to their counterpart, but, rightly considered, +these things proceed from the eternal generation of the soul. Cause and effect +are two sides of one fact. +</p> + +<p> +The same law of eternal procession ranges all that we call the virtues, and +extinguishes each in the light of a better. The great man will not be prudent +in the popular sense; all his prudence will be so much deduction from his +grandeur. But it behooves each to see, when he sacrifices prudence, to what god +he devotes it; if to ease and pleasure, he had better be prudent still; if to a +great trust, he can well spare his mule and panniers who has a winged chariot +instead. Geoffrey draws on his boots to go through the woods, that his feet may +be safer from the bite of snakes; Aaron never thinks of such a peril. In many +years neither is harmed by such an accident. Yet it seems to me that with every +precaution you take against such an evil you put yourself into the power of the +evil. I suppose that the highest prudence is the lowest prudence. Is this too +sudden a rushing from the centre to the verge of our orbit? Think how many +times we shall fall back into pitiful calculations before we take up our rest +in the great sentiment, or make the verge of to-day the new centre. Besides, +your bravest sentiment is familiar to the humblest men. The poor and the low +have their way of expressing the last facts of philosophy as well as you. +“Blessed be nothing” and “The worse things are, the better +they are” are proverbs which express the transcendentalism of common +life. +</p> + +<p> +One man’s justice is another’s injustice; one man’s beauty +another’s ugliness; one man’s wisdom another’s folly; as one +beholds the same objects from a higher point. One man thinks justice consists +in paying debts, and has no measure in his abhorrence of another who is very +remiss in this duty and makes the creditor wait tediously. But that second man +has his own way of looking at things; asks himself Which debt must I pay first, +the debt to the rich, or the debt to the poor? the debt of money, or the debt +of thought to mankind, of genius to nature? For you, O broker, there is no +other principle but arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, +faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred; nor can I +detach one duty, like you, from all other duties, and concentrate my forces +mechanically on the payment of moneys. Let me live onward; you shall find that, +though slower, the progress of my character will liquidate all these debts +without injustice to higher claims. If a man should dedicate himself to the +payment of notes, would not this be injustice? Does he owe no debt but money? +And are all claims on him to be postponed to a landlord’s or a +banker’s? +</p> + +<p> +There is no virtue which is final; all are initial. The virtues of society are +vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast +away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that +has consumed our grosser vices:— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Forgive his crimes, forgive his virtues too,<br /> +Those smaller faults, half converts to the right.” +</p> + +<p> +It is the highest power of divine moments that they abolish our contritions +also. I accuse myself of sloth and unprofitableness day by day; but when these +waves of God flow into me I no longer reckon lost time. I no longer poorly +compute my possible achievement by what remains to me of the month or the year; +for these moments confer a sort of omnipresence and omnipotence which asks +nothing of duration, but sees that the energy of the mind is commensurate with +the work to be done, without time. +</p> + +<p> +And thus, O circular philosopher, I hear some reader exclaim, you have arrived +at a fine Pyrrhonism, at an equivalence and indifferency of all actions, and +would fain teach us that <i>if we are true</i>, forsooth, our crimes may be +lively stones out of which we shall construct the temple of the true God! +</p> + +<p> +I am not careful to justify myself. I own I am gladdened by seeing the +predominance of the saccharine principle throughout vegetable nature, and not +less by beholding in morals that unrestrained inundation of the principle of +good into every chink and hole that selfishness has left open, yea into +selfishness and sin itself; so that no evil is pure, nor hell itself without +its extreme satisfactions. But lest I should mislead any when I have my own +head and obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am only an +experimenter. Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit +on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle any thing as true or false. I +unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply +experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at my back. +</p> + +<p> +Yet this incessant movement and progression which all things partake could +never become sensible to us but by contrast to some principle of fixture or +stability in the soul. Whilst the eternal generation of circles proceeds, the +eternal generator abides. That central life is somewhat superior to creation, +superior to knowledge and thought, and contains all its circles. For ever it +labors to create a life and thought as Large and excellent as itself, but in +vain, for that which is made instructs how to make a better. +</p> + +<p> +Thus there is no sleep, no pause, no preservation, but all things renew, +germinate and spring. Why should we import rags and relics into the new hour? +Nature abhors the old, and old age seems the only disease; all others run into +this one. We call it by many names,—fever, intemperance, insanity, +stupidity and crime; they are all forms of old age; they are rest, +conservatism, appropriation, inertia; not newness, not the way onward. We +grizzle every day. I see no need of it. Whilst we converse with what is above +us, we do not grow old, but grow young. Infancy, youth, receptive, aspiring, +with religious eye looking upward, counts itself nothing and abandons itself to +the instruction flowing from all sides. But the man and woman of seventy assume +to know all, they have outlived their hope, they renounce aspiration, accept +the actual for the necessary and talk down to the young. Let them, then, become +organs of the Holy Ghost; let them be lovers; let them behold truth; and their +eyes are uplifted, their wrinkles smoothed, they are perfumed again with hope +and power. This old age ought not to creep on a human mind. In nature every +moment is new; the past is always swallowed and forgotten; the coming only is +sacred. Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit. No love +can be bound by oath or covenant to secure it against a higher love. No truth +so sublime but it may be trivial to-morrow in the light of new thoughts. People +wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for +them. +</p> + +<p> +Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess to-day the mood, the pleasure, +the power of to-morrow, when we are building up our being. Of lower states, of +acts of routine and sense, we can tell somewhat; but the masterpieces of God, +the total growths and universal movements of the soul, he hideth; they are +incalculable. I can know that truth is divine and helpful; but how it shall +help me I can have no guess, for <i>so to be</i> is the sole inlet of <i>so to +know</i>. The new position of the advancing man has all the powers of the old, +yet has them all new. It carries in its bosom all the energies of the past, yet +is itself an exhalation of the morning. I cast away in this new moment all my +once hoarded knowledge, as vacant and vain. Now, for the first time seem I to +know any thing rightly. The simplest words,—we do not know what they mean +except when we love and aspire. +</p> + +<p> +The difference between talents and character is adroitness to keep the old and +trodden round, and power and courage to make a new road to new and better +goals. Character makes an overpowering present; a cheerful, determined hour, +which fortifies all the company by making them see that much is possible and +excellent that was not thought of. Character dulls the impression of particular +events. When we see the conqueror we do not think much of any one battle or +success. We see that we had exaggerated the difficulty. It was easy to him. The +great man is not convulsible or tormentable; events pass over him without much +impression. People say sometimes, ‘See what I have overcome; see how +cheerful I am; see how completely I have triumphed over these black +events.’ Not if they still remind me of the black event. True conquest is +the causing the calamity to fade and disappear as an early cloud of +insignificant result in a history so large and advancing. +</p> + +<p> +The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to +be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal memory and to do +something without knowing how or why; in short to draw a new circle. Nothing +great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful; it is +by abandonment. The great moments of history are the facilities of performance +through the strength of ideas, as the works of genius and religion. “A +man,” said Oliver Cromwell, “never rises so high as when he knows +not whither he is going.” Dreams and drunkenness, the use of opium and +alcohol are the semblance and counterfeit of this oracular genius, and hence +their dangerous attraction for men. For the like reason they ask the aid of +wild passions, as in gaming and war, to ape in some manner these flames and +generosities of the heart. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"></a>XI.<br /> +INTELLECT</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Go, speed the stars of Thought<br /> +On to their shining goals;—<br /> +The sower scatters broad his seed,<br /> +The wheat thou strew’st be souls. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>INTELLECT</h2> + +<p> +Every substance is negatively electric to that which stands above it in the +chemical tables, positively to that which stands below it. Water dissolves wood +and iron and salt; air dissolves water; electric fire dissolves air, but the +intellect dissolves fire, gravity, laws, method, and the subtlest unnamed +relations of nature in its resistless menstruum. Intellect lies behind genius, +which is intellect constructive. Intellect is the simple power anterior to all +action or construction. Gladly would I unfold in calm degrees a natural history +of the intellect, but what man has yet been able to mark the steps and +boundaries of that transparent essence? The first questions are always to be +asked, and the wisest doctor is gravelled by the inquisitiveness of a child. +How can we speak of the action of the mind under any divisions, as of its +knowledge, of its ethics, of its works, and so forth, since it melts will into +perception, knowledge into act? Each becomes the other. Itself alone is. Its +vision is not like the vision of the eye, but is union with the things known. +</p> + +<p> +Intellect and intellection signify to the common ear consideration of abstract +truth. The considerations of time and place, of you and me, of profit and hurt +tyrannize over most men’s minds. Intellect separates the fact considered, +from you, from all local and personal reference, and discerns it as if it +existed for its own sake. Heraclitus looked upon the affections as dense and +colored mists. In the fog of good and evil affections it is hard for man to +walk forward in a straight line. Intellect is void of affection and sees an +object as it stands in the light of science, cool and disengaged. The intellect +goes out of the individual, floats over its own personality, and regards it as +a fact, and not as <i>I</i> and <i>mine</i>. He who is immersed in what +concerns person or place cannot see the problem of existence. This the +intellect always ponders. Nature shows all things formed and bound. The +intellect pierces the form, overleaps the wall, detects intrinsic likeness +between remote things and reduces all things into a few principles. +</p> + +<p> +The making a fact the subject of thought raises it. All that mass of mental and +moral phenomena which we do not make objects of voluntary thought, come within +the power of fortune; they constitute the circumstance of daily life; they are +subject to change, to fear, and hope. Every man beholds his human condition +with a degree of melancholy. As a ship aground is battered by the waves, so +man, imprisoned in mortal life, lies open to the mercy of coming events. But a +truth, separated by the intellect, is no longer a subject of destiny. We behold +it as a god upraised above care and fear. And so any fact in our life, or any +record of our fancies or reflections, disentangled from the web of our +unconsciousness, becomes an object impersonal and immortal. It is the past +restored, but embalmed. A better art than that of Egypt has taken fear and +corruption out of it. It is eviscerated of care. It is offered for science. +What is addressed to us for contemplation does not threaten us but makes us +intellectual beings. +</p> + +<p> +The growth of the intellect is spontaneous in every expansion. The mind that +grows could not predict the times, the means, the mode of that spontaneity. God +enters by a private door into every individual. Long prior to the age of +reflection is the thinking of the mind. Out of darkness it came insensibly into +the marvellous light of to-day. In the period of infancy it accepted and +disposed of all impressions from the surrounding creation after its own way. +Whatever any mind doth or saith is after a law; and this native law remains +over it after it has come to reflection or conscious thought. In the most worn, +pedantic, introverted self-tormenter’s life, the greatest part is +incalculable by him, unforeseen, unimaginable, and must be, until he can take +himself up by his own ears. What am I? What has my will done to make me that I +am? Nothing. I have been floated into this thought, this hour, this connection +of events, by secret currents of might and mind, and my ingenuity and +wilfulness have not thwarted, have not aided to an appreciable degree. +</p> + +<p> +Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot with your best +deliberation and heed come so close to any question as your spontaneous glance +shall bring you, whilst you rise from your bed, or walk abroad in the morning +after meditating the matter before sleep on the previous night. Our thinking is +a pious reception. Our truth of thought is therefore vitiated as much by too +violent direction given by our will, as by too great negligence. We do not +determine what we will think. We only open our senses, clear away as we can all +obstruction from the fact, and suffer the intellect to see. We have little +control over our thoughts. We are the prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for +moments into their heaven and so fully engage us that we take no thought for +the morrow, gaze like children, without an effort to make them our own. By and +by we fall out of that rapture, bethink us where we have been, what we have +seen, and repeat as truly as we can what we have beheld. As far as we can +recall these ecstasies we carry away in the ineffaceable memory the result, and +all men and all the ages confirm it. It is called Truth. But the moment we +cease to report and attempt to correct and contrive, it is not truth. +</p> + +<p> +If we consider what persons have stimulated and profited us, we shall perceive +the superiority of the spontaneous or intuitive principle over the arithmetical +or logical. The first contains the second, but virtual and latent. We want in +every man a long logic; we cannot pardon the absence of it, but it must not be +spoken. Logic is the procession or proportionate unfolding of the intuition; +but its virtue is as silent method; the moment it would appear as propositions +and have a separate value it is worthless. +</p> + +<p> +In every man’s mind, some images, words and facts remain, without effort +on his part to imprint them, which others forget, and afterwards these +illustrate to him important laws. All our progress is an unfolding, like the +vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, +as the plant has root, bud and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you +can render no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By trusting it to the end, it +shall ripen into truth and you shall know why you believe. +</p> + +<p> +Each mind has its own method. A true man never acquires after college rules. +What you have aggregated in a natural manner surprises and delights when it is +produced. For we cannot oversee each other’s secret. And hence the +differences between men in natural endowment are insignificant in comparison +with their common wealth. Do you think the porter and the cook have no +anecdotes, no experiences, no wonders for you? Every body knows as much as the +savant. The walls of rude minds are scrawled all over with facts, with +thoughts. They shall one day bring a lantern and read the inscriptions. Every +man, in the degree in which he has wit and culture, finds his curiosity +inflamed concerning the modes of living and thinking of other men, and +especially of those classes whose minds have not been subdued by the drill of +school education. +</p> + +<p> +This instinctive action never ceases in a healthy mind, but becomes richer and +more frequent in its informations through all states of culture. At last comes +the era of reflection, when we not only observe, but take pains to observe; +when we of set purpose sit down to consider an abstract truth; when we keep the +mind’s eye open whilst we converse, whilst we read, whilst we act, intent +to learn the secret law of some class of facts. +</p> + +<p> +What is the hardest task in the world? To think. I would put myself in the +attitude to look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cannot. I blench and +withdraw on this side and on that. I seem to know what he meant who said, No +man can see God face to face and live. For example, a man explores the basis of +civil government. Let him intend his mind without respite, without rest, in one +direction. His best heed long time avails him nothing. Yet thoughts are +flitting before him. We all but apprehend, we dimly forebode the truth. We say +I will walk abroad, and the truth will take form and clearness to me. We go +forth, but cannot find it. It seems as if we needed only the stillness and +composed attitude of the library to seize the thought. But we come in, and are +as far from it as at first. Then, in a moment, and unannounced, the truth +appears. A certain wandering light appears, and is the distinction, the +principle, we wanted. But the oracle comes because we had previously laid siege +to the shrine. It seems as if the law of the intellect resembled that law of +nature by which we now inspire, now expire the breath; by which the heart now +draws in, then hurls out the blood,—the law of undulation. So now you +must labor with your brains, and now you must forbear your activity and see +what the great Soul showeth. +</p> + +<p> +The immortality of man is as legitimately preached from the intellections as +from the moral volitions. Every intellection is mainly prospective. Its present +value is its least. Inspect what delights you in Plutarch, in Shakspeare, in +Cervantes. Each truth that a writer acquires is a lantern, which he turns full +on what facts and thoughts lay already in his mind, and behold, all the mats +and rubbish which had littered his garret become precious. Every trivial fact +in his private biography becomes an illustration of this new principle, +revisits the day, and delights all men by its piquancy and new charm. Men say, +Where did he get this? and think there was something divine in his life. But +no; they have myriads of facts just as good, would they only get a lamp to +ransack their attics withal. +</p> + +<p> +We are all wise. The difference between persons is not in wisdom but in art. I +knew, in an academical club, a person who always deferred to me; who, seeing my +whim for writing, fancied that my experiences had somewhat superior; whilst I +saw that his experiences were as good as mine. Give them to me and I would make +the same use of them. He held the old; he holds the new; I had the habit of +tacking together the old and the new which he did not use to exercise. This may +hold in the great examples. Perhaps if we should meet Shakspeare we should not +be conscious of any steep inferiority; no, but of a great equality,—only +that he possessed a strange skill of using, of classifying, his facts, which we +lacked. For notwithstanding our utter incapacity to produce anything like +Hamlet and Othello, see the perfect reception this wit and immense knowledge of +life and liquid eloquence find in us all. +</p> + +<p> +If you gather apples in the sunshine, or make hay, or hoe corn, and then retire +within doors and shut your eyes and press them with your hand, you shall still +see apples hanging in the bright light with boughs and leaves thereto, or the +tasselled grass, or the corn-flags, and this for five or six hours afterwards. +There lie the impressions on the retentive organ, though you knew it not. So +lies the whole series of natural images with which your life has made you +acquainted, in your memory, though you know it not; and a thrill of passion +flashes light on their dark chamber, and the active power seizes instantly the +fit image, as the word of its momentary thought. +</p> + +<p> +It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite +tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run +back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up +some wonderful article out of that pond; until by and by we begin to suspect +that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing +less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal +History. +</p> + +<p> +In the intellect constructive, which we popularly designate by the word Genius, +we observe the same balance of two elements as in intellect receptive. The +constructive intellect produces thoughts, sentences, poems, plans, designs, +systems. It is the generation of the mind, the marriage of thought with nature. +To genius must always go two gifts, the thought and the publication. The first +is revelation, always a miracle, which no frequency of occurrence or incessant +study can ever familiarize, but which must always leave the inquirer stupid +with wonder. It is the advent of truth into the world, a form of thought now +for the first time bursting into the universe, a child of the old eternal soul, +a piece of genuine and immeasurable greatness. It seems, for the time, to +inherit all that has yet existed and to dictate to the unborn. It affects every +thought of man and goes to fashion every institution. But to make it available +it needs a vehicle or art by which it is conveyed to men. To be communicable it +must become picture or sensible object. We must learn the language of facts. +The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject if he has no hand to +paint them to the senses. The ray of light passes invisible through space and +only when it falls on an object is it seen. When the spiritual energy is +directed on something outward, then it is a thought. The relation between it +and you first makes you, the value of you, apparent to me. The rich inventive +genius of the painter must be smothered and lost for want of the power of +drawing, and in our happy hours we should be inexhaustible poets if once we +could break through the silence into adequate rhyme. As all men have some +access to primary truth, so all have some art or power of communication in +their head, but only in the artist does it descend into the hand. There is an +inequality, whose laws we do not yet know, between two men and between two +moments of the same man, in respect to this faculty. In common hours we have +the same facts as in the uncommon or inspired, but they do not sit for their +portraits; they are not detached, but lie in a web. The thought of genius is +spontaneous; but the power of picture or expression, in the most enriched and +flowing nature, implies a mixture of will, a certain control over the +spontaneous states, without which no production is possible. It is a conversion +of all nature into the rhetoric of thought, under the eye of judgment, with a +strenuous exercise of choice. And yet the imaginative vocabulary seems to be +spontaneous also. It does not flow from experience only or mainly, but from a +richer source. Not by any conscious imitation of particular forms are the grand +strokes of the painter executed, but by repairing to the fountain-head of all +forms in his mind. Who is the first drawing-master? Without instruction we know +very well the ideal of the human form. A child knows if an arm or a leg be +distorted in a picture; if the attitude be natural or grand or mean; though he +has never received any instruction in drawing or heard any conversation on the +subject, nor can himself draw with correctness a single feature. A good form +strikes all eyes pleasantly, long before they have any science on the subject, +and a beautiful face sets twenty hearts in palpitation, prior to all +consideration of the mechanical proportions of the features and head. We may +owe to dreams some light on the fountain of this skill; for as soon as we let +our will go and let the unconscious states ensue, see what cunning draughtsmen +we are! We entertain ourselves with wonderful forms of men, of women, of +animals, of gardens, of woods and of monsters, and the mystic pencil wherewith +we then draw has no awkwardness or inexperience, no meagreness or poverty; it +can design well and group well; its composition is full of art, its colors are +well laid on and the whole canvas which it paints is lifelike and apt to touch +us with terror, with tenderness, with desire and with grief. Neither are the +artist’s copies from experience ever mere copies, but always touched and +softened by tints from this ideal domain. +</p> + +<p> +The conditions essential to a constructive mind do not appear to be so often +combined but that a good sentence or verse remains fresh and memorable for a +long time. Yet when we write with ease and come out into the free air of +thought, we seem to be assured that nothing is easier than to continue this +communication at pleasure. Up, down, around, the kingdom of thought has no +inclosures, but the Muse makes us free of her city. Well, the world has a +million writers. One would think then that good thought would be as familiar as +air and water, and the gifts of each new hour would exclude the last. Yet we +can count all our good books; nay, I remember any beautiful verse for twenty +years. It is true that the discerning intellect of the world is always much in +advance of the creative, so that there are many competent judges of the best +book, and few writers of the best books. But some of the conditions of +intellectual construction are of rare occurrence. The intellect is a whole and +demands integrity in every work. This is resisted equally by a man’s +devotion to a single thought and by his ambition to combine too many. +</p> + +<p> +Truth is our element of life, yet if a man fasten his attention on a single +aspect of truth and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth +becomes distorted and not itself but falsehood; herein resembling the air, +which is our natural element, and the breath of our nostrils, but if a stream +of the same be directed on the body for a time, it causes cold, fever, and even +death. How wearisome the grammarian, the phrenologist, the political or +religious fanatic, or indeed any possessed mortal whose balance is lost by the +exaggeration of a single topic. It is incipient insanity. Every thought is a +prison also. I cannot see what you see, because I am caught up by a strong wind +and blown so far in one direction that I am out of the hoop of your horizon. +</p> + +<p> +Is it any better if the student, to avoid this offence, and to liberalize +himself, aims to make a mechanical whole of history, or science, or philosophy, +by a numerical addition of all the facts that fall within his vision? The world +refuses to be analyzed by addition and subtraction. When we are young we spend +much time and pains in filling our note-books with all definitions of Religion, +Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope that in the course of a few years we +shall have condensed into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theories +at which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tables get no +completeness, and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola, whose arcs +will never meet. +</p> + +<p> +Neither by detachment neither by aggregation is the integrity of the intellect +transmitted to its works, but by a vigilance which brings the intellect in its +greatness and best state to operate every moment. It must have the same +wholeness which nature has. Although no diligence can rebuild the universe in a +model by the best accumulation or disposition of details, yet does the world +reappear in miniature in every event, so that all the laws of nature may be +read in the smallest fact. The intellect must have the like perfection in its +apprehension and in its works. For this reason, an index or mercury of +intellectual proficiency is the perception of identity. We talk with +accomplished persons who appear to be strangers in nature. The cloud, the tree, +the turf, the bird are not theirs, have nothing of them; the world is only +their lodging and table. But the poet, whose verses are to be spheral and +complete, is one whom Nature cannot deceive, whatsoever face of strangeness she +may put on. He feels a strict consanguinity, and detects more likeness than +variety in all her changes. We are stung by the desire for new thought; but +when we receive a new thought it is only the old thought with a new face, and +though we make it our own we instantly crave another; we are not really +enriched. For the truth was in us before it was reflected to us from natural +objects; and the profound genius will cast the likeness of all creatures into +every product of his wit. +</p> + +<p> +But if the constructive powers are rare and it is given to few men to be poets, +yet every man is a receiver of this descending holy ghost, and may well study +the laws of its influx. Exactly parallel is the whole rule of intellectual duty +to the rule of moral duty. A self-denial no less austere than the saint’s +is demanded of the scholar. He must worship truth, and forego all things for +that, and choose defeat and pain, so that his treasure in thought is thereby +augmented. +</p> + +<p> +God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you +please,—you can never have both. Between these, as a pendulum, man +oscillates. He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first +creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets,—most +likely his father’s. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation; but he +shuts the door of truth. He in whom the love of truth predominates will keep +himself aloof from all moorings, and afloat. He will abstain from dogmatism, +and recognize all the opposite negations between which, as walls, his being is +swung. He submits to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion, but +he is a candidate for truth, as the other is not, and respects the highest law +of his being. +</p> + +<p> +The circle of the green earth he must measure with his shoes to find the man +who can yield him truth. He shall then know that there is somewhat more blessed +and great in hearing than in speaking. Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the +speaking man. As long as I hear truth I am bathed by a beautiful element and am +not conscious of any limits to my nature. The suggestions are thousandfold that +I hear and see. The waters of the great deep have ingress and egress to the +soul. But if I speak, I define, I confine and am less. When Socrates speaks, +Lysis and Menexenus are afflicted by no shame that they do not speak. They also +are good. He likewise defers to them, loves them, whilst he speaks. Because a +true and natural man contains and is the same truth which an eloquent man +articulates; but in the eloquent man, because he can articulate it, it seems +something the less to reside, and he turns to these silent beautiful with the +more inclination and respect. The ancient sentence said, Let us be silent, for +so are the gods. Silence is a solvent that destroys personality, and gives us +leave to be great and universal. Every man’s progress is through a +succession of teachers, each of whom seems at the time to have a superlative +influence, but it at last gives place to a new. Frankly let him accept it all. +Jesus says, Leave father, mother, house and lands, and follow me. Who leaves +all, receives more. This is as true intellectually as morally. Each new mind we +approach seems to require an abdication of all our past and present +possessions. A new doctrine seems at first a subversion of all our opinions, +tastes, and manner of living. Such has Swedenborg, such has Kant, such has +Coleridge, such has Hegel or his interpreter Cousin seemed to many young men in +this country. Take thankfully and heartily all they can give. Exhaust them, +wrestle with them, let them not go until their blessing be won, and after a +short season the dismay will be overpast, the excess of influence withdrawn, +and they will be no longer an alarming meteor, but one more bright star shining +serenely in your heaven and blending its light with all your day. +</p> + +<p> +But whilst he gives himself up unreservedly to that which draws him, because +that is his own, he is to refuse himself to that which draws him not, +whatsoever fame and authority may attend it, because it is not his own. Entire +self-reliance belongs to the intellect. One soul is a counterpoise of all +souls, as a capillary column of water is a balance for the sea. It must treat +things and books and sovereign genius as itself also a sovereign. If Æschylus +be that man he is taken for, he has not yet done his office when he has +educated the learned of Europe for a thousand years. He is now to approve +himself a master of delight to me also. If he cannot do that, all his fame +shall avail him nothing with me. I were a fool not to sacrifice a thousand +Æschyluses to my intellectual integrity. Especially take the same ground in +regard to abstract truth, the science of the mind. The Bacon, the Spinoza, the +Hume, Schelling, Kant, or whosoever propounds to you a philosophy of the mind, +is only a more or less awkward translator of things in your consciousness which +you have also your way of seeing, perhaps of denominating. Say then, instead of +too timidly poring into his obscure sense, that he has not succeeded in +rendering back to you your consciousness. He has not succeeded; now let another +try. If Plato cannot, perhaps Spinoza will. If Spinoza cannot, then perhaps +Kant. Anyhow, when at last it is done, you will find it is no recondite, but a +simple, natural, common state which the writer restores to you. +</p> + +<p> +But let us end these didactics. I will not, though the subject might provoke +it, speak to the open question between Truth and Love. I shall not presume to +interfere in the old politics of the skies;—“The cherubim know +most; the seraphim love most.” The gods shall settle their own quarrels. +But I cannot recite, even thus rudely, laws of the intellect, without +remembering that lofty and sequestered class of men who have been its prophets +and oracles, the high-priesthood of the pure reason, the <i>Trismegisti</i>, +the expounders of the principles of thought from age to age. When at long +intervals we turn over their abstruse pages, wonderful seems the calm and grand +air of these few, these great spiritual lords who have walked in the +world,—these of the old religion,—dwelling in a worship which makes +the sanctities of Christianity look <i>parvenues</i> and popular; for +“persuasion is in soul, but necessity is in intellect.” This band +of grandees, Hermes, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Plato, Plotinus, Olympiodorus, +Proclus, Synesius and the rest, have somewhat so vast in their logic, so +primary in their thinking, that it seems antecedent to all the ordinary +distinctions of rhetoric and literature, and to be at once poetry and music and +dancing and astronomy and mathematics. I am present at the sowing of the seed +of the world. With a geometry of sunbeams the soul lays the foundations of +nature. The truth and grandeur of their thought is proved by its scope and +applicability, for it commands the entire schedule and inventory of things for +its illustration. But what marks its elevation and has even a comic look to us, +is the innocent serenity with which these babe-like Jupiters sit in their +clouds, and from age to age prattle to each other and to no contemporary. Well +assured that their speech is intelligible and the most natural thing in the +world, they add thesis to thesis, without a moment’s heed of the +universal astonishment of the human race below, who do not comprehend their +plainest argument; nor do they ever relent so much as to insert a popular or +explaining sentence, nor testify the least displeasure or petulance at the +dulness of their amazed auditory. The angels are so enamored of the language +that is spoken in heaven that they will not distort their lips with the hissing +and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who +understand it or not. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"></a>XII.<br /> +ART</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Give to barrows trays and pans<br /> +Grace and glimmer of romance,<br /> +Bring the moonlight into noon<br /> +Hid in gleaming piles of stone;<br /> +On the city’s paved street<br /> +Plant gardens lined with lilac sweet,<br /> +Let spouting fountains cool the air,<br /> +Singing in the sun-baked square.<br /> +Let statue, picture, park and hall,<br /> +Ballad, flag and festival,<br /> +The past restore, the day adorn<br /> +And make each morrow a new morn<br /> +So shall the drudge in dusty frock<br /> +Spy behind the city clock<br /> +Retinues of airy kings,<br /> +Skirts of angels, starry wings,<br /> +His fathers shining in bright fables,<br /> +His children fed at heavenly tables.<br /> +’Tis the privilege of Art<br /> +Thus to play its cheerful part,<br /> +Man in Earth to acclimate<br /> +And bend the exile to his fate,<br /> +And, moulded of one element<br /> +With the days and firmament,<br /> +Teach him on these as stairs to climb<br /> +And live on even terms with Time;<br /> +Whilst upper life the slender rill<br /> +Of human sense doth overfill. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>ART</h2> + +<p> +Because the soul is progressive, it never quite repeats itself, but in every +act attempts the production of a new and fairer whole. This appears in works +both of the useful and the fine arts, if we employ the popular distinction of +works according to their aim either at use or beauty. Thus in our fine arts, +not imitation but creation is the aim. In landscapes the painter should give +the suggestion of a fairer creation than we know. The details, the prose of +nature he should omit and give us only the spirit and splendor. He should know +that the landscape has beauty for his eye because it expresses a thought which +is to him good; and this because the same power which sees through his eyes is +seen in that spectacle; and he will come to value the expression of nature and +not nature itself, and so exalt in his copy the features that please him. He +will give the gloom of gloom and the sunshine of sunshine. In a portrait he +must inscribe the character and not the features, and must esteem the man who +sits to him as himself only an imperfect picture or likeness of the aspiring +original within. +</p> + +<p> +What is that abridgment and selection we observe in all spiritual activity, but +itself the creative impulse? for it is the inlet of that higher illumination +which teaches to convey a larger sense by simpler symbols. What is a man but +nature’s finer success in self-explication? What is a man but a finer and +compacter landscape than the horizon figures,—nature’s eclecticism? +and what is his speech, his love of painting, love of nature, but a still finer +success,—all the weary miles and tons of space and bulk left out, and the +spirit or moral of it contracted into a musical word, or the most cunning +stroke of the pencil? +</p> + +<p> +But the artist must employ the symbols in use in his day and nation to convey +his enlarged sense to his fellow-men. Thus the new in art is always formed out +of the old. The Genius of the Hour sets his ineffaceable seal on the work and +gives it an inexpressible charm for the imagination. As far as the spiritual +character of the period overpowers the artist and finds expression in his work, +so far it will retain a certain grandeur, and will represent to future +beholders the Unknown, the Inevitable, the Divine. No man can quite exclude +this element of Necessity from his labor. No man can quite emancipate himself +from his age and country, or produce a model in which the education, the +religion, the politics, usages and arts of his times shall have no share. +Though he were never so original, never so wilful and fantastic, he cannot wipe +out of his work every trace of the thoughts amidst which it grew. The very +avoidance betrays the usage he avoids. Above his will and out of his sight he +is necessitated by the air he breathes and the idea on which he and his +contemporaries live and toil, to share the manner of his times, without knowing +what that manner is. Now that which is inevitable in the work has a higher +charm than individual talent can ever give, inasmuch as the artist’s pen +or chisel seems to have been held and guided by a gigantic hand to inscribe a +line in the history of the human race. This circumstance gives a value to the +Egyptian hieroglyphics, to the Indian, Chinese and Mexican idols, however gross +and shapeless. They denote the height of the human soul in that hour, and were +not fantastic, but sprung from a necessity as deep as the world. Shall I now +add that the whole extant product of the plastic arts has herein its highest +value, <i>as history;</i> as a stroke drawn in the portrait of that fate, +perfect and beautiful, according to whose ordinations all beings advance to +their beatitude? +</p> + +<p> +Thus, historically viewed, it has been the office of art to educate the +perception of beauty. We are immersed in beauty, but our eyes have no clear +vision. It needs, by the exhibition of single traits, to assist and lead the +dormant taste. We carve and paint, or we behold what is carved and painted, as +students of the mystery of Form. The virtue of art lies in detachment, in +sequestering one object from the embarrassing variety. Until one thing comes +out from the connection of things, there can be enjoyment, contemplation, but +no thought. Our happiness and unhappiness are unproductive. The infant lies in +a pleasing trance, but his individual character and his practical power depend +on his daily progress in the separation of things, and dealing with one at a +time. Love and all the passions concentrate all existence around a single form. +It is the habit of certain minds to give an all-excluding fulness to the +object, the thought, the word, they alight upon, and to make that for the time +the deputy of the world. These are the artists, the orators, the leaders of +society. The power to detach and to magnify by detaching is the essence of +rhetoric in the hands of the orator and the poet. This rhetoric, or power to +fix the momentary eminency of an object,—so remarkable in Burke, in +Byron, in Carlyle,—the painter and sculptor exhibit in color and in +stone. The power depends on the depth of the artist’s insight of that +object he contemplates. For every object has its roots in central nature, and +may of course be so exhibited to us as to represent the world. Therefore each +work of genius is the tyrant of the hour and concentrates attention on itself. +For the time, it is the only thing worth naming to do that,—be it a +sonnet, an opera, a landscape, a statue, an oration, the plan of a temple, of a +campaign, or of a voyage of discovery. Presently we pass to some other object, +which rounds itself into a whole as did the first; for example a well-laid +garden; and nothing seems worth doing but the laying out of gardens. I should +think fire the best thing in the world, if I were not acquainted with air, and +water, and earth. For it is the right and property of all natural objects, of +all genuine talents, of all native properties whatsoever, to be for their +moment the top of the world. A squirrel leaping from bough to bough and making +the Wood but one wide tree for his pleasure, fills the eye not less than a +lion,—is beautiful, self-sufficing, and stands then and there for nature. +A good ballad draws my ear and heart whilst I listen, as much as an epic has +done before. A dog, drawn by a master, or a litter of pigs, satisfies and is a +reality not less than the frescoes of Angelo. From this succession of excellent +objects we learn at last the immensity of the world, the opulence of human +nature, which can run out to infinitude in any direction. But I also learn that +what astonished and fascinated me in the first work astonished me in the second +work also; that excellence of all things is one. +</p> + +<p> +The office of painting and sculpture seems to be merely initial. The best +pictures can easily tell us their last secret. The best pictures are rude +draughts of a few of the miraculous dots and lines and dyes which make up the +ever-changing “landscape with figures” amidst which we dwell. +Painting seems to be to the eye what dancing is to the limbs. When that has +educated the frame to self-possession, to nimbleness, to grace, the steps of +the dancing-master are better forgotten; so painting teaches me the splendor of +color and the expression of form, and as I see many pictures and higher genius +in the art, I see the boundless opulence of the pencil, the indifferency in +which the artist stands free to choose out of the possible forms. If he can +draw every thing, why draw any thing? and then is my eye opened to the eternal +picture which nature paints in the street, with moving men and children, +beggars and fine ladies, draped in red and green and blue and gray; +long-haired, grizzled, white-faced, black-faced, wrinkled, giant, dwarf, +expanded, elfish,—capped and based by heaven, earth and sea. +</p> + +<p> +A gallery of sculpture teaches more austerely the same lesson. As picture +teaches the coloring, so sculpture the anatomy of form. When I have seen fine +statues and afterwards enter a public assembly, I understand well what he meant +who said, “When I have been reading Homer, all men look like +giants.” I too see that painting and sculpture are gymnastics of the eye, +its training to the niceties and curiosities of its function. There is no +statue like this living man, with his infinite advantage over all ideal +sculpture, of perpetual variety. What a gallery of art have I here! No +mannerist made these varied groups and diverse original single figures. Here is +the artist himself improvising, grim and glad, at his block. Now one thought +strikes him, now another, and with each moment he alters the whole air, +attitude and expression of his clay. Away with your nonsense of oil and easels, +of marble and chisels; except to open your eyes to the masteries of eternal +art, they are hypocritical rubbish. +</p> + +<p> +The reference of all production at last to an aboriginal Power explains the +traits common to all works of the highest art,—that they are universally +intelligible; that they restore to us the simplest states of mind, and are +religious. Since what skill is therein shown is the reappearance of the +original soul, a jet of pure light, it should produce a similar impression to +that made by natural objects. In happy hours, nature appears to us one with +art; art perfected,—the work of genius. And the individual, in whom +simple tastes and susceptibility to all the great human influences overpower +the accidents of a local and special culture, is the best critic of art. Though +we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we +find it not. The best of beauty is a finer charm than skill in surfaces, in +outlines, or rules of art can ever teach, namely a radiation from the work of +art of human character,—a wonderful expression through stone, or canvas, +or musical sound, of the deepest and simplest attributes of our nature, and +therefore most intelligible at last to those souls which have these attributes. +In the sculptures of the Greeks, in the masonry of the Romans, and in the +pictures of the Tuscan and Venetian masters, the highest charm is the universal +language they speak. A confession of moral nature, of purity, love, and hope, +breathes from them all. That which we carry to them, the same we bring back +more fairly illustrated in the memory. The traveller who visits the Vatican, +and passes from chamber to chamber through galleries of statues, vases, +sarcophagi and candelabra, through all forms of beauty cut in the richest +materials, is in danger of forgetting the simplicity of the principles out of +which they all sprung, and that they had their origin from thoughts and laws in +his own breast. He studies the technical rules on these wonderful remains, but +forgets that these works were not always thus constellated; that they are the +contributions of many ages and many countries; that each came out of the +solitary workshop of one artist, who toiled perhaps in ignorance of the +existence of other sculpture, created his work without other model save life, +household life, and the sweet and smart of personal relations, of beating +hearts, and meeting eyes; of poverty and necessity and hope and fear. These +were his inspirations, and these are the effects he carries home to your heart +and mind. In proportion to his force, the artist will find in his work an +outlet for his proper character. He must not be in any manner pinched or +hindered by his material, but through his necessity of imparting himself the +adamant will be wax in his hands, and will allow an adequate communication of +himself, in his full stature and proportion. He need not cumber himself with a +conventional nature and culture, nor ask what is the mode in Rome or in Paris, +but that house and weather and manner of living which poverty and the fate of +birth have made at once so odious and so dear, in the gray unpainted wood +cabin, on the corner of a New Hampshire farm, or in the log-hut of the +backwoods, or in the narrow lodging where he has endured the constraints and +seeming of a city poverty, will serve as well as any other condition as the +symbol of a thought which pours itself indifferently through all. +</p> + +<p> +I remember when in my younger days I had heard of the wonders of Italian +painting, I fancied the great pictures would be great strangers; some +surprising combination of color and form; a foreign wonder, barbaric pearl and +gold, like the spontoons and standards of the militia, which play such pranks +in the eyes and imaginations of school-boys. I was to see and acquire I knew +not what. When I came at last to Rome and saw with eyes the pictures, I found +that genius left to novices the gay and fantastic and ostentatious, and itself +pierced directly to the simple and true; that it was familiar and sincere; that +it was the old, eternal fact I had met already in so many forms,—unto +which I lived; that it was the plain <i>you and me</i> I knew so +well,—had left at home in so many conversations. I had the same +experience already in a church at Naples. There I saw that nothing was changed +with me but the place, and said to myself—‘Thou foolish child, hast +thou come out hither, over four thousand miles of salt water, to find that +which was perfect to thee there at home?’ That fact I saw again in the +Academmia at Naples, in the chambers of sculpture, and yet again when I came to +Rome and to the paintings of Raphael, Angelo, Sacchi, Titian, and Leonardo da +Vinci. “What, old mole! workest thou in the earth so fast?” It had +travelled by my side; that which I fancied I had left in Boston was here in the +Vatican, and again at Milan and at Paris, and made all travelling ridiculous as +a treadmill. I now require this of all pictures, that they domesticate me, not +that they dazzle me. Pictures must not be too picturesque. Nothing astonishes +men so much as common-sense and plain dealing. All great actions have been +simple, and all great pictures are. +</p> + +<p> +The Transfiguration, by Raphael, is an eminent example of this peculiar merit. +A calm benignant beauty shines over all this picture, and goes directly to the +heart. It seems almost to call you by name. The sweet and sublime face of Jesus +is beyond praise, yet how it disappoints all florid expectations! This +familiar, simple, home-speaking countenance is as if one should meet a friend. +The knowledge of picture-dealers has its value, but listen not to their +criticism when your heart is touched by genius. It was not painted for them, it +was painted for you; for such as had eyes capable of being touched by +simplicity and lofty emotions. +</p> + +<p> +Yet when we have said all our fine things about the arts, we must end with a +frank confession, that the arts, as we know them, are but initial. Our best +praise is given to what they aimed and promised, not to the actual result. He +has conceived meanly of the resources of man, who believes that the best age of +production is past. The real value of the Iliad or the Transfiguration is as +signs of power; billows or ripples they are of the stream of tendency; tokens +of the everlasting effort to produce, which even in its worst estate the soul +betrays. Art has not yet come to its maturity if it do not put itself abreast +with the most potent influences of the world, if it is not practical and moral, +if it do not stand in connection with the conscience, if it do not make the +poor and uncultivated feel that it addresses them with a voice of lofty cheer. +There is higher work for Art than the arts. They are abortive births of an +imperfect or vitiated instinct. Art is the need to create; but in its essence, +immense and universal, it is impatient of working with lame or tied hands, and +of making cripples and monsters, such as all pictures and statues are. Nothing +less than the creation of man and nature is its end. A man should find in it an +outlet for his whole energy. He may paint and carve only as long as he can do +that. Art should exhilarate, and throw down the walls of circumstance on every +side, awakening in the beholder the same sense of universal relation and power +which the work evinced in the artist, and its highest effect is to make new +artists. +</p> + +<p> +Already History is old enough to witness the old age and disappearance of +particular arts. The art of sculpture is long ago perished to any real effect. +It was originally a useful art, a mode of writing, a savage’s record of +gratitude or devotion, and among a people possessed of a wonderful perception +of form this childish carving was refined to the utmost splendor of effect. But +it is the game of a rude and youthful people, and not the manly labor of a wise +and spiritual nation. Under an oak-tree loaded with leaves and nuts, under a +sky full of eternal eyes, I stand in a thoroughfare; but in the works of our +plastic arts and especially of sculpture, creation is driven into a corner. I +cannot hide from myself that there is a certain appearance of paltriness, as of +toys and the trumpery of a theatre, in sculpture. Nature transcends all our +moods of thought, and its secret we do not yet find. But the gallery stands at +the mercy of our moods, and there is a moment when it becomes frivolous. I do +not wonder that Newton, with an attention habitually engaged on the paths of +planets and suns, should have wondered what the Earl of Pembroke found to +admire in “stone dolls.” Sculpture may serve to teach the pupil how +deep is the secret of form, how purely the spirit can translate its meanings +into that eloquent dialect. But the statue will look cold and false before that +new activity which needs to roll through all things, and is impatient of +counterfeits and things not alive. Picture and sculpture are the celebrations +and festivities of form. But true art is never fixed, but always flowing. The +sweetest music is not in the oratorio, but in the human voice when it speaks +from its instant life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage. The oratorio has +already lost its relation to the morning, to the sun, and the earth, but that +persuading voice is in tune with these. All works of art should not be +detached, but extempore performances. A great man is a new statue in every +attitude and action. A beautiful woman is a picture which drives all beholders +nobly mad. Life may be lyric or epic, as well as a poem or a romance. +</p> + +<p> +A true announcement of the law of creation, if a man were found worthy to +declare it, would carry art up into the kingdom of nature, and destroy its +separate and contrasted existence. The fountains of invention and beauty in +modern society are all but dried up. A popular novel, a theatre, or a ball-room +makes us feel that we are all paupers in the alms-house of this world, without +dignity, without skill or industry. Art is as poor and low. The old tragic +Necessity, which lowers on the brows even of the Venuses and the Cupids of the +antique, and furnishes the sole apology for the intrusion of such anomalous +figures into nature,—namely, that they were inevitable; that the artist +was drunk with a passion for form which he could not resist, and which vented +itself in these fine extravagances,—no longer dignifies the chisel or the +pencil. But the artist and the connoisseur now seek in art the exhibition of +their talent, or an asylum from the evils of life. Men are not well pleased +with the figure they make in their own imaginations, and they flee to art, and +convey their better sense in an oratorio, a statue, or a picture. Art makes the +same effort which a sensual prosperity makes; namely to detach the beautiful +from the useful, to do up the work as unavoidable, and, hating it, pass on to +enjoyment. These solaces and compensations, this division of beauty from use, +the laws of nature do not permit. As soon as beauty is sought, not from +religion and love but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker. High beauty is no +longer attainable by him in canvas or in stone, in sound, or in lyrical +construction; an effeminate, prudent, sickly beauty, which is not beauty, is +all that can be formed; for the hand can never execute any thing higher than +the character can inspire. +</p> + +<p> +The art that thus separates is itself first separated. Art must not be a +superficial talent, but must begin farther back in man. Now men do not see +nature to be beautiful, and they go to make a statue which shall be. They abhor +men as tasteless, dull, and inconvertible, and console themselves with +color-bags and blocks of marble. They reject life as prosaic, and create a +death which they call poetic. They despatch the day’s weary chores, and +fly to voluptuous reveries. They eat and drink, that they may afterwards +execute the ideal. Thus is art vilified; the name conveys to the mind its +secondary and bad senses; it stands in the imagination as somewhat contrary to +nature, and struck with death from the first. Would it not be better to begin +higher up,—to serve the ideal before they eat and drink; to serve the +ideal in eating and drinking, in drawing the breath, and in the functions of +life? Beauty must come back to the useful arts, and the distinction between the +fine and the useful arts be forgotten. If history were truly told, if life were +nobly spent, it would be no longer easy or possible to distinguish the one from +the other. In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore +beautiful because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful +because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a +legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It +will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and +earnest men. It is in vain that we look for genius to reiterate its miracles in +the old arts; it is its instinct to find beauty and holiness in new and +necessary facts, in the field and road-side, in the shop and mill. Proceeding +from a religious heart it will raise to a divine use the railroad, the +insurance office, the joint-stock company; our law, our primary assemblies, our +commerce, the galvanic battery, the electric jar, the prism, and the +chemist’s retort; in which we seek now only an economical use. Is not the +selfish and even cruel aspect which belongs to our great mechanical works, to +mills, railways, and machinery, the effect of the mercenary impulses which +these works obey? When its errands are noble and adequate, a steamboat bridging +the Atlantic between Old and New England and arriving at its ports with the +punctuality of a planet, is a step of man into harmony with nature. The boat at +St. Petersburg, which plies along the Lena by magnetism, needs little to make +it sublime. When science is learned in love, and its powers are wielded by +love, they will appear the supplements and continuations of the material +creation. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <table summary="" border="3" cellpadding="4"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td> + <a + href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2945/2945-h/2945-h.htm">Next + Volume</a> + </td> + </tr> + </tbody> + </table> + +<div style='display:block;margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS, FIRST SERIES ***</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0;'>This file should be named 2944-h.htm or 2944-h.zip</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0;'>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in https://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/4/2944/</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.07.00*END* + + + + + +This Project Gutenberg Etext Prepared by Tony Adam +anthony-adam@tamu.edu + + + + + +Essays, First Series + +by Ralph Waldo Emerson + + + + +HISTORY. + +There is no great and no small +To the Soul that maketh all: +And where it cometh, all things are +And it cometh everywhere. + +I am owner of the sphere, +Of the seven stars and the solar year, +Of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain, +Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakspeare's strain. + +I. +HISTORY. + +THERE is one mind common to all individual men. Every +man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He +that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a +freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, +he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what +at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. +Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to +all that is or can be done, for this is the only and +sovereign agent. + +Of the works of this mind history is the record. Its +genius is illustrated by the entire series of days. +Man is explicable by nothing less than all his +history. Without hurry, without rest, the human spirit +goes forth from the beginning to embody every faculty, +every thought, every emotion, which belongs to it, in +appropriate events. But the thought is always prior to +the fact; all the facts of history preexist in the +mind as laws. Each law in turn is made by circumstances +predominant, and the limits of nature give power to but +one at a time. A man is the whole encyclopaedia of facts. +The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn, and +Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, America, lie folded +already in the first man. Epoch after epoch, camp, +kingdom, empire, republic, democracy, are merely the +application of his manifold spirit to the manifold world. + +This human mind wrote history, and this must read it. +The Sphinx must solve her own riddle. If the whole of +history is in one man, it is all to be explained from +individual experience. There is a relation between the +hours of our life and the centuries of time. As the +air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of +nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a star a +hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise of my +body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and +centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed +by the ages and the ages explained by the hours. Of +the universal mind each individual man is one more +incarnation. All its properties consist in him. Each +new fact in his private experience flashes a light on +what great bodies of men have done, and the crises of +his life refer to national crises. Every revolution +was first a thought in one man's mind, and when the +same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to +that era. Every reform was once a private opinion, and +when it shall be a private opinion again it will solve +the problem of the age. The fact narrated must correspond +to something in me to be credible or intelligible. We, as +we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and +king, martyr and executioner; must fasten these images +to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall +learn nothing rightly. What befell Asdrubal or Caesar +Borgia is as much an illustration of the mind's powers +and depravations as what has befallen us. Each new law +and political movement has meaning for you. Stand before +each of its tablets and say, 'Under this mask did my +Proteus nature hide itself.' This remedies the defect +of our too great nearness to ourselves. This throws our +actions into perspective; and as crabs, goats, scorpions, +the balance and the waterpot lose their meanness when +hung as signs in the zodiac, so I can see my own vices +without heat in the distant persons of Solomon, Alcibiades, +and Catiline. + +It is the universal nature which gives worth to +particular men and things. Human life, as containing +this, is mysterious and inviolable, and we hedge it +round with penalties and laws. All laws derive hence +their ultimate reason; all express more or less +distinctly some command of this supreme, illimitable +essence. Property also holds of the soul, covers great +spiritual facts, and instinctively we at first hold to +it with swords and laws and wide and complex combinations. +The obscure consciousness of this fact is the light of +all our day, the claim of claims; the plea for education, +for justice, for charity; the foundation of friendship +and love and of the heroism and grandeur which belong to +acts of self-reliance. It is remarkable that involuntarily +we always read as superior beings. Universal history, the +poets, the romancers, do not in their stateliest pictures, +--in the sacerdotal, the imperial palaces, in the triumphs +of will or of genius,--anywhere lose our ear, anywhere make +us feel that we intrude, that this is for better men; but +rather is it true that in their grandest strokes we feel +most at home. All that Shakspeare says of the king, yonder +slip of a boy that reads in the corner feels to be true of himself. We sympathize in the great moments of history, in +the great discoveries, the great resistances, the great +prosperities of men;--because there law was enacted, the +sea was searched, the land was found, or the blow was +struck, for us, as we ourselves in that place would have +done or applauded. + +We have the same interest in condition and character. +We honor the rich because they have externally the +freedom, power, and grace which we feel to be proper +to man, proper to us. So all that is said of the wise +man by Stoic or Oriental or modern essayist, describes +to each reader his own idea, describes his unattained +but attainable self. All literature writes the character +of the wise man. Books, monuments, pictures, conversation, +are portraits in which he finds the lineaments he is +forming. The silent and the eloquent praise him and accost +him, and he is stimulated wherever he moves, as by personal allusions. A true aspirant therefore never needs look for +allusions personal and laudatory in discourse. He hears the commendation, not of himself, but, more sweet, of that +character he seeks, in every word that is said concerning character, yea further in every fact and circumstance,--in +the running river and the rustling corn. Praise is looked, +homage tendered, love flows, from mute nature, from the +mountains and the lights of the firmament. + +These hints, dropped as it were from sleep and night, +let us use in broad day. The student is to read +history actively and not passively; to esteem his own +life the text, and books the commentary. Thus +compelled, the Muse of history will utter oracles, as +never to those who do not respect themselves. I have +no expectation that any man will read history aright +who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by men +whose names have resounded far, has any deeper sense +than what he is doing to-day. + +The world exists for the education of each man. There +is no age or state of society or mode of action in +history to which there is not somewhat corresponding +in his life. Every thing tends in a wonderful manner +to abbreviate itself and yield its own virtue to him. +He should see that he can live all history in his own +person. He must sit solidly at home, and not suffer +himself to be bullied by kings or empires, but know +that he is greater than all the geography and all the +government of the world; he must transfer the point of +view from which history is commonly read, from Rome +and Athens and London, to himself, and not deny his +conviction that he is the court, and if England or +Egypt have any thing to say to him he will try the +case; if not, let them for ever be silent. He must +attain and maintain that lofty sight where facts yield +their secret sense, and poetry and annals are alike. +The instinct of the mind, the purpose of nature, +betrays itself in the use we make of the signal +narrations of history. Time dissipates to shining +ether the solid angularity of facts. No anchor, no +cable, no fences avail to keep a fact a fact. +Babylon, Troy, Tyre, Palestine, and even early Rome +are passing already into fiction. The Garden of Eden, +the sun standing still in Gibeon, is poetry +thenceforward to all nations. Who cares what the fact +was, when we have made a constellation of it to hang +in heaven an immortal sign? London and Paris and New +York must go the same way. "What is history," said +Napoleon, "but a fable agreed upon?" This life of ours +is stuck round with Egypt, Greece, Gaul, England, War, +Colonization, Church, Court and Commerce, as with so +many flowers and wild ornaments grave and gay. I will +not make more account of them. I believe in Eternity. +I can find Greece, Asia, Italy, Spain and the Islands, +--the genius and creative principle of each and of all +eras, in my own mind. + +We are always coming up with the emphatic facts of +history in our private experience and verifying them +here. All history becomes subjective; in other words +there is properly no history, only biography. Every +mind must know the whole lesson for itself,--must go +over the whole ground. What it does not see, what it +does not live, it will not know. What the former age +has epitomized into a formula or rule for manipular +convenience, it will lose all the good of verifying +for itself, by means of the wall of that rule. +Somewhere, sometime, it will demand and find +compensation for that loss, by doing the work itself. +Ferguson discovered many things in astronomy which had +long been known. The better for him. + +History must be this or it is nothing. Every law which +the state enacts indicates a fact in human nature; +that is all. We must in ourselves see the necessary +reason of every fact,--see how it could and must be. +So stand before every public and private work; before +an oration of Burke, before a victory of Napoleon, +before a martyrdom of Sir Thomas More, of Sidney, of +Marmaduke Robinson; before a French Reign of Terror, +and a Salem hanging of witches; before a fanatic +Revival and the Animal Magnetism in Paris, or in +Providence. We assume that we under like influence +should be alike affected, and should achieve the like; +and we aim to master intellectually the steps and +reach the same height or the same degradation that +our fellow, our proxy has done. + +All inquiry into antiquity, all curiosity respecting +the Pyramids, the excavated cities, Stonehenge, the +Ohio Circles, Mexico, Memphis,--is the desire to do +away this wild, savage, and preposterous There or Then, +and introduce in its place the Here and the Now. Belzoni +digs and measures in the mummy-pits and pyramids of +Thebes, until he can see the end of the difference between +the monstrous work and himself. When he has satisfied +himself, in general and in detail, that it was made by +such a person as he, so armed and so motived, and to ends +to which he himself should also have worked, the problem +is solved; his thought lives along the whole line of +temples and sphinxes and catacombs, passes through +them all with satisfaction, and they live again to the +mind, or are now. + +A Gothic cathedral affirms that it was done by us and +not done by us. Surely it was by man, but we find it +not in our man. But we apply ourselves to the history +of its production. We put ourselves into the place and +state of the builder. We remember the forest-dwellers, +the first temples, the adherence to the first type, +and the decoration of it as the wealth of the nation +increased; the value which is given to wood by carving +led to the carving over the whole mountain of stone of +a cathedral. When we have gone through this process, +and added thereto the Catholic Church, its cross, its +music, its processions, its Saints' days and image- +worship, we have as it were been the man that made the +minster; we have seen how it could and must be. We have +the sufficient reason. + +The difference between men is in their principle of +association. Some men classify objects by color and +size and other accidents of appearance; others by +intrinsic likeness, or by the relation of cause and +effect. The progress of the intellect is to the +clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface +differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the +saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events +profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye +is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. +Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in +its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of +appearance. + +Upborne and surrounded as we are by this all-creating +nature, soft and fluid as a cloud or the air, why +should we be such hard pedants, and magnify a few +forms? Why should we make account of time, or of +magnitude, or of figure? The soul knows them not, and +genius, obeying its law, knows how to play with them +as a young child plays with graybeards and in +churches. Genius studies the causal thought, and far +back in the womb of things sees the rays parting from +one orb, that diverge, ere they fall, by infinite +diameters. Genius watches the monad through all his +masks as he performs the metempsychosis of nature. +Genius detects through the fly, through the +caterpillar, through the grub, through the egg, the +constant individual; through countless individuals +the fixed species; through many species the genus; +through all genera the steadfast type; through all +the kingdoms of organized life the eternal unity. +Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never +the same. She casts the same thought into troops of +forms, as a poet makes twenty fables with one moral. +Through the bruteness and toughness of matter, a +subtle spirit bends all things to its own will. The +adamant streams into soft but precise form before it, +and whilst I look at it its outline and texture are +changed again. Nothing is so fleeting as form; yet +never does it quite deny itself. In man we still trace +the remains or hints of all that we esteem badges of +servitude in the lower races; yet in him they enhance +his nobleness and grace; as Io, in Aeschylus, +transformed to a cow, offends the imagination; but how +changed when as Isis in Egypt she meets Osiris-Jove, +a beautiful woman with nothing of the metamorphosis +left but the lunar horns as the splendid ornament of +her brows! + +The identity of history is equally intrinsic, the +diversity equally obvious. There is, at the surface, +infinite variety of things; at the centre there is +simplicity of cause. How many are the acts of one man +in which we recognize the same character! Observe the +sources of our information in respect to the Greek +genius. We have the civil history of that people, as +Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plutarch have +given it; a very sufficient account of what manner of +persons they were and what they did. We have the same +national mind expressed for us again in their +literature, in epic and lyric poems, drama, and +philosophy; a very complete form. Then we have it once +more in their architecture, a beauty as of temperance +itself, limited to the straight line and the square, +--a builded geometry. Then we have it once again in +sculpture, the "tongue on the balance of expression," +a multitude of forms in the utmost freedom of action +and never transgressing the ideal serenity; like +votaries performing some religious dance before the +gods, and, though in convulsive pain or mortal combat, +never daring to break the figure and decorum of their +dance. Thus of the genius of one remarkable people we +have a fourfold representation: and to the senses what +more unlike than an ode of Pindar, a marble centaur, +the peristyle of the Parthenon, and the last actions +of Phocion? + +Every one must have observed faces and forms which, +without any resembling feature, make a like impression +on the beholder. A particular picture or copy of +verses, if it do not awaken the same train of images, +will yet superinduce the same sentiment as some wild +mountain walk, although the resemblance is nowise +obvious to the senses, but is occult and out of the +reach of the understanding. Nature is an endless +combination and repetition of a very few laws. She +hums the old well-known air through innumerable +variations. + +Nature is full of a sublime family likeness throughout +her works, and delights in startling us with resemblances +in the most unexpected quarters. I have seen the head of +an old sachem of the forest which at once reminded the +eye of a bald mountain summit, and the furrows of the brow +suggested the strata of the rock. There are men whose +manners have the same essential splendor as the simple +and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon and +the remains of the earliest Greek art. And there are +compositions of the same strain to be found in the books +of all ages. What is Guido's Rospigliosi Aurora but a +morning thought, as the horses in it are only a morning +cloud? If any one will but take pains to observe the +variety of actions to which he is equally inclined in +certain moods of mind, and those to which he is averse, +he will see how deep is the chain of affinity. + +A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree +without in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child +by studying the outlines of its form merely,--but, +by watching for a time his motions and plays, the +painter enters into his nature and can then draw him +at will in every attitude. So Roos "entered into the +inmost nature of a sheep." I knew a draughtsman +employed in a public survey who found that he could +not sketch the rocks until their geological structure +was first explained to him. In a certain state of +thought is the common origin of very diverse works. It +is the spirit and not the fact that is identical. By a +deeper apprehension, and not primarily by a painful +acquisition of many manual skills, the artist attains +the power of awakening other souls to a given activity. + +It has been said that "common souls pay with what they +do, nobler souls with that which they are." And why? +Because a profound nature awakens in us by its actions +and words, by its very looks and manners, the same power +and beauty that a gallery of sculpture or of pictures +addresses. + +Civil and natural history, the history of art and of +literature, must be explained from individual history, +or must remain words. There is nothing but is related +to us, nothing that does not interest us,--kingdom, +college, tree, horse, or iron shoe,--the roots of all +things are in man. Santa Croce and the Dome of St. +Peter's are lame copies after a divine model. Strasburg +Cathedral is a material counterpart of the soul of Erwin +of Steinbach. The true poem is the poet's mind; the true +ship is the ship-builder. In the man, could we lay him +open, we should see the reason for the last flourish and +tendril of his work; as every spine and tint in the +sea-shell preexists in the secreting organs of the fish. +The whole of heraldry and of chivalry is in courtesy. A +man of fine manners shall pronounce your name with all +the ornament that titles of nobility could ever add. + +The trivial experience of every day is always verifying +some old prediction to us and converting into things the +words and signs which we had heard and seen without heed. +A lady with whom I was riding in the forest said to me +that the woods always seemed to her to wait, as if the +genii who inhabit them suspended their deeds until the +wayfarer had passed onward; a thought which poetry has +celebrated in the dance of the fairies, which breaks off +on the approach of human feet. The man who has seen the +rising moon break out of the clouds at midnight, has been +present like an archangel at the creation of light and of +the world. I remember one summer day in the fields my +companion pointed out to me a broad cloud, which might +extend a quarter of a mile parallel to the horizon, quite +accurately in the form of a cherub as painted over churches, +--a round block in the centre, which it was easy to animate +with eyes and mouth, supported on either side by wide- +stretched symmetrical wings. What appears once in the +atmosphere may appear often, and it was undoubtedly the +archetype of that familiar ornament. I have seen in the +sky a chain of summer lightning which at once showed to +me that the Greeks drew from nature when they painted the +thunderbolt in the hand of Jove. I have seen a snow-drift +along the sides of the stone wall which obviously gave the +idea of the common architectural scroll to abut a tower. + +By surrounding ourselves with the original circumstances +we invent anew the orders and the ornaments of architecture, +as we see how each people merely decorated its primitive +abodes. The Doric temple preserves the semblance of the +wooden cabin in which the Dorian dwelt. The Chinese pagoda +is plainly a Tartar tent. The Indian and Egyptian temples +still betray the mounds and subterranean houses of their +forefathers. "The custom of making houses and tombs in +the living rock," says Heeren in his Researches on the +Ethiopians, "determined very naturally the principal +character of the Nubian Egyptian architecture to the +colossal form which it assumed. In these caverns, already +prepared by nature, the eye was accustomed to dwell on +huge shapes and masses, so that when art came to the +assistance of nature it could not move on a small scale +without degrading itself. What would statues of the usual +size, or neat porches and wings have been, associated with +those gigantic halls before which only Colossi could sit +as watchmen or lean on the pillars of the interior?" + +The Gothic church plainly originated in a rude adaptation +of the forest trees, with all their boughs, to a festal +or solemn arcade; as the bands about the cleft pillars +still indicate the green withes that tied them. No one +can walk in a road cut through pine woods, without being +struck with the architectural appearance of the grove, +especially in winter, when the barrenness of all other +trees shows the low arch of the Saxons. In the woods in +a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of +the stained glass window, with which the Gothic cathedrals +are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through +the bare and crossing branches of the forest. Nor can any +lover of nature enter the old piles of Oxford and the +English cathedrals, without feeling that the forest +overpowered the mind of the builder, and that his chisel, +his saw and plane still reproduced its ferns, its spikes +of flowers, its locust, elm, oak, pine, fir and spruce. + +The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone subdued +by the insatiable demand of harmony in man. The +mountain of granite blooms into an eternal flower, +with the lightness and delicate finish as well as the +aerial proportions and perspective of vegetable beauty. + +In like manner all public facts are to be individualized, +all private facts are to be generalized. Then at once +History becomes fluid and true, and Biography deep and +sublime. As the Persian imitated in the slender shafts +and capitals of his architecture the stem and flower of +the lotus and palm, so the Persian court in its magnificent +era never gave over the nomadism of its barbarous tribes, +but travelled from Ecbatana, where the spring was spent, +to Susa in summer and to Babylon for the winter. + +In the early history of Asia and Africa, Nomadism and +Agriculture are the two antagonist facts. The geography +of Asia and of Africa necessitated a nomadic life. But +the nomads were the terror of all those whom the soil +or the advantages of a market had induced to build towns. +Agriculture therefore was a religious injunction, because +of the perils of the state from nomadism. And in these +late and civil countries of England and America these +propensities still fight out the old battle, in the nation +and in the individual. The nomads of Africa were constrained +to wander, by the attacks of the gad-fly, which drives the +cattle mad, and so compels the tribe to emigrate in the +rainy season and to drive off the cattle to the higher sandy +regions. The nomads of Asia follow the pasturage from month +to month. In America and Europe the nomadism is of trade and +curiosity; a progress, certainly, from the gad-fly of +Astaboras to the Anglo and Italo-mania of Boston Bay. Sacred +cities, to which a periodical religious pilgrimage was +enjoined, or stringent laws and customs, tending to invigorate +the national bond, were the check on the old rovers; and the +cumulative values of long residence are the restraints on the +itineracy of the present day. The antagonism of the two +tendencies is not less active in individuals, as the love of +adventure or the love of repose happens to predominate. A man +of rude health and flowing spirits has the faculty of rapid +domestication, lives in his wagon and roams through all +latitudes as easily as a Calmuc. At sea, or in the forest, or +in the snow, he sleeps as warm, dines with as good appetite, +and associates as happily as beside his own chimneys. Or +perhaps his facility is deeper seated, in the increased range +of his faculties of observation, which yield him points of +interest wherever fresh objects meet his eyes. The pastoral +nations were needy and hungry to desperation; and this +intellectual nomadism, in its excess, bankrupts the mind +through the dissipation of power on a miscellany of objects. +The home-keeping wit, on the other hand, is that continence +or content which finds all the elements of life in its own +soil; and which has its own perils of monotony and +deterioration, if not stimulated by foreign infusions. + +Every thing the individual sees without him corresponds to +his states of mind, and every thing is in turn intelligible +to him, as his onward thinking leads him into the truth to +which that fact or series belongs. + +The primeval world,--the Fore-World, as the Germans say, +--I can dive to it in myself as well as grope for it with +researching fingers in catacombs, libraries, and the broken +reliefs and torsos of ruined villas. + +What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in +Greek history, letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods +from the Heroic or Homeric age down to the domestic life of +the Athenians and Spartans, four or five centuries later? +What but this, that every man passes personally through a +Grecian period. The Grecian state is the era of the bodily +nature, the perfection of the senses,--of the spiritual +nature unfolded in strict unity with the body. In it existed +those human forms which supplied the sculptor with his +models of Hercules, Phoebus, and Jove; not like the forms +abounding in the streets of modern cities, wherein the face +is a confused blur of features, but composed of incorrupt, +sharply defined and symmetrical features, whose eye-sockets +are so formed that it would be impossible for such eyes to +squint and take furtive glances on this side and on that, but +they must turn the whole head. The manners of that period are +plain and fierce. The reverence exhibited is for personal +qualities; courage, address, self-command, justice, strength, +swiftness, a loud voice, a broad chest. Luxury and elegance +are not known. A sparse population and want make every man his +own valet, cook, butcher and soldier, and the habit of supplying +his own needs educates the body to wonderful performances. Such +are the Agamemnon and Diomed of Homer, and not far different is +the picture Xenophon gives of himself and his compatriots in the +Retreat of the Ten Thousand. "After the army had crossed the +river Teleboas in Armenia, there fell much snow, and the troops +lay miserably on the ground covered with it. But Xenophon arose +naked, and taking an axe, began to split wood; whereupon others +rose and did the like." Throughout his army exists a boundless +liberty of speech. They quarrel for plunder, they wrangle with +the generals on each new order, and Xenophon is as sharp-tongued +as any and sharper-tongued than most, and so gives as good as he +gets. Who does not see that this is a gang of great boys, with +such a code of honor and such lax discipline as great boys have? + +The costly charm of the ancient tragedy, and indeed of all the +old literature, is that the persons speak simply,--speak as +persons who have great good sense without knowing it, before +yet the reflective habit has become the predominant habit of +the mind. Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of +the old, but of the natural. The Greeks are not reflective, but +perfect in their senses and in their health, with the finest +physical organization in the world. Adults acted with the +simplicity and grace of children. They made vases, tragedies, +and statues, such as healthy senses should,--that is, in good +taste. Such things have continued to be made in all ages, and +are now, wherever a healthy physique exists; but, as a class, +from their superior organization, they have surpassed all. They +combine the energy of manhood with the engaging unconsciousness +of childhood. The attraction of these manners is that they +belong to man, and are known to every man in virtue of his +being once a child; besides that there are always individuals +who retain these characteristics. A person of childlike genius +and inborn energy is still a Greek, and revives our love of the +Muse of Hellas. I admire the love of nature in the Philoctetes. +In reading those fine apostrophes to sleep, to the stars, rocks, +mountains and waves, I feel time passing away as an ebbing sea. +I feel the eternity of man, the identity of his thought. The +Greek had it seems the same fellow-beings as I. The sun and moon, +water and fire, met his heart precisely as they meet mine. Then +the vaunted distinction between Greek and English, between Classic +and Romantic schools, seems superficial and pedantic. When a +thought of Plato becomes a thought to me,--when a truth that +fired the soul of Pindar fires mine, time is no more. When I +feel that we two meet in a perception, that our two souls are +tinged with the same hue, and do as it were run into one, why +should I measure degrees of latitude, why should I count +Egyptian years? + +The student interprets the age of chivalry by his own +age of chivalry, and the days of maritime adventure +and circumnavigation by quite parallel miniature +experiences of his own. To the sacred history of the +world he has the same key. When the voice of a prophet +out of the deeps of antiquity merely echoes to him a +sentiment of his infancy, a prayer of his youth, he then +pierces to the truth through all the confusion of +tradition and the caricature of institutions. + +Rare, extravagant spirits come by us at intervals, who +disclose to us new facts in nature. I see that men of +God have from time to time walked among men and made +their commission felt in the heart and soul of the +commonest hearer. Hence evidently the tripod, the +priest, the priestess inspired by the divine afflatus. + +Jesus astonishes and overpowers sensual people. They +cannot unite him to history, or reconcile him with +themselves. As they come to revere their intuitions +and aspire to live holily, their own piety explains +every fact, every word. + +How easily these old worships of Moses, of Zoroaster, +of Menu, of Socrates, domesticate themselves in the +mind. I cannot find any antiquity in them. They are +mine as much as theirs. + +I have seen the first monks and anchorets, without +crossing seas or centuries. More than once some +individual has appeared to me with such negligence of +labor and such commanding contemplation, a haughty +beneficiary begging in the name of God, as made good +to the nineteenth century Simeon the Stylite, the +Thebais, and the first Capuchins. + +The priestcraft of the East and West, of the Magian, +Brahmin, Druid, and Inca, is expounded in the individual's +private life. The cramping influence of a hard formalist +on a young child, in repressing his spirits and courage, +paralyzing the understanding, and that without producing +indignation, but only fear and obedience, and even much +sympathy with the tyranny,--is a familiar fact, explained +to the child when he becomes a man, only by seeing that +the oppressor of his youth is himself a child tyrannized +over by those names and words and forms of whose influence +he was merely the organ to the youth. The fact teaches him +how Belus was worshipped and how the Pyramids were built, +better than the discovery by Champollion of the names of +all the workmen and the cost of every tile. He finds +Assyria and the Mounds of Cholula at his door, and himself +has laid the courses. + +Again, in that protest which each considerate person +makes against the superstition of his times, he +repeats step for step the part of old reformers, and +in the search after truth finds, like them, new perils +to virtue. He learns again what moral vigor is needed +to supply the girdle of a superstition. A great +licentiousness treads on the heels of a reformation. +How many times in the history of the world has the +Luther of the day had to lament the decay of piety in +his own household! "Doctor," said his wife to Martin +Luther, one day, "how is it that whilst subject to +papacy we prayed so often and with such fervor, whilst +now we pray with the utmost coldness and very seldom?" + +The advancing man discovers how deep a property he has +in literature,--in all fable as well as in all history. +He finds that the poet was no odd fellow who described +strange and impossible situations, but that universal +man wrote by his pen a confession true for one and true +for all. His own secret biography he finds in lines +wonderfully intelligible to him, dotted down before he +was born. One after another he comes up in his private +adventures with every fable of Aesop, of Homer, of Hafiz, +of Ariosto, of Chaucer, of Scott, and verifies them with +his own head and hands. + +The beautiful fables of the Greeks, being proper +creations of the imagination and not of the fancy, are +universal verities. What a range of meanings and what +perpetual pertinence has the story of Prometheus! +Beside its primary value as the first chapter of the +history of Europe, (the mythology thinly veiling +authentic facts, the invention of the mechanic arts +and the migration of colonies,) it gives the history +of religion, with some closeness to the faith of later +ages. Prometheus is the Jesus of the old mythology. He +is the friend of man; stands between the unjust "justice" +of the Eternal Father and the race of mortals, and readily +suffers all things on their account. But where it departs +from the Calvinistic Christianity and exhibits him as the +defier of Jove, it represents a state of mind which readily +appears wherever the doctrine of Theism is taught in a +crude, objective form, and which seems the self-defence +of man against this untruth, namely a discontent with +the believed fact that a God exists, and a feeling +that the obligation of reverence is onerous. It would +steal if it could the fire of the Creator, and live +apart from him and independent of him. The Prometheus +Vinctus is the romance of skepticism. Not less true to +all time are the details of that stately apologue. +Apollo kept the flocks of Admetus, said the poets. +When the gods come among men, they are not known. +Jesus was not; Socrates and Shakspeare were not. +Antaeus was suffocated by the gripe of Hercules, but +every time he touched his mother earth his strength +was renewed. Man is the broken giant, and in all his +weakness both his body and his mind are invigorated +by habits of conversation with nature. The power of +music, the power of poetry, to unfix and as it were +clap wings to solid nature, interprets the riddle of +Orpheus. The philosophical perception of identity +through endless mutations of form makes him know the +Proteus. What else am I who laughed or wept yesterday, +who slept last night like a corpse, and this morning +stood and ran? And what see I on any side but the +transmigrations of Proteus? I can symbolize my thought +by using the name of any creature, of any fact, because +every creature is man agent or patient. Tantalus is +but a name for you and me. Tantalus means the +impossibility of drinking the waters of thought which +are always gleaming and waving within sight of the soul. +The transmigration of souls is no fable. I would it were; +but men and women are only half human. Every animal of +the barn-yard, the field and the forest, of the earth +and of the waters that are under the earth, has contrived +to get a footing and to leave the print of its features +and form in some one or other of these upright, heaven- +facing speakers. Ah! brother, stop the ebb of thy soul, +--ebbing downward into the forms into whose habits thou +hast now for many years slid. As near and proper to us +is also that old fable of the Sphinx, who was said to +sit in the road-side and put riddles to every passenger. +If the man could not answer, she swallowed him alive. If +he could solve the riddle, the Sphinx was slain. What is +our life but an endless flight of winged facts or events? +In splendid variety these changes come, all putting +questions to the human spirit. Those men who cannot answer +by a superior wisdom these facts or questions of time, +serve them. Facts encumber them, tyrannize over them, and +make the men of routine, the men of sense, in whom a +literal obedience to facts has extinguished every spark +of that light by which man is truly man. But if the man +is true to his better instincts or sentiments, and refuses +the dominion of facts, as one that comes of a higher race; +remains fast by the soul and sees the principle, then the +facts fall aptly and supple into their places; they know +their master, and the meanest of them glorifies him. + +See in Goethe's Helena the same desire that every word +should be a thing. These figures, he would say, these +Chirons, Griffins, Phorkyas, Helen and Leda, are +somewhat, and do exert a specific influence on the +mind. So far then are they eternal entities, as real +to-day as in the first Olympiad. Much revolving them +he writes out freely his humor, and gives them body +to his own imagination. And although that poem be as +vague and fantastic as a dream, yet is it much more +attractive than the more regular dramatic pieces of +the same author, for the reason that it operates a +wonderful relief to the mind from the routine of +customary images,--awakens the reader's invention +and fancy by the wild freedom of the design, and by +the unceasing succession of brisk shocks of surprise. + +The universal nature, too strong for the petty nature +of the bard, sits on his neck and writes through his +hand; so that when he seems to vent a mere caprice and +wild romance, the issue is an exact allegory. Hence +Plato said that "poets utter great and wise things +which they do not themselves understand." All the +fictions of the Middle Age explain themselves as a +masked or frolic expression of that which in grave +earnest the mind of that period toiled to achieve. +Magic and all that is ascribed to it is a deep +presentiment of the powers of science. The shoes of +swiftness, the sword of sharpness, the power of +subduing the elements, of using the secret virtues of +minerals, of understanding the voices of birds, are +the obscure efforts of the mind in a right direction. +The preternatural prowess of the hero, the gift of +perpetual youth, and the like, are alike the endeavour +of the human spirit "to bend the shows of things to +the desires of the mind." + +In Perceforest and Amadis de Gaul a garland and a +rose bloom on the head of her who is faithful, and +fade on the brow of the inconstant. In the story of +the Boy and the Mantle even a mature reader may be +surprised with a glow of virtuous pleasure at the +triumph of the gentle Venelas; and indeed all the +postulates of elfin annals,--that the fairies do not +like to be named; that their gifts are capricious and +not to be trusted; that who seeks a treasure must not +speak; and the like,--I find true in Concord, however +they might be in Cornwall or Bretagne. + +Is it otherwise in the newest romance? I read the +Bride of Lammermoor. Sir William Ashton is a mask for +a vulgar temptation, Ravenswood Castle a fine name for +proud poverty, and the foreign mission of state only a +Bunyan disguise for honest industry. We may all shoot +a wild bull that would toss the good and beautiful, by +fighting down the unjust and sensual. Lucy Ashton is +another name for fidelity, which is always beautiful +and always liable to calamity in this world. + + + +But along with the civil and metaphysical history of +man, another history goes daily forward,--that of +the external world,--in which he is not less strictly +implicated. He is the compend of time; he is also the +correlative of nature. His power consists in the +multitude of his affinities, in the fact that his life +is intertwined with the whole chain of organic and +inorganic being. In old Rome the public roads +beginning at the Forum proceeded north, south, east, +west, to the centre of every province of the empire, +making each market-town of Persia, Spain and Britain +pervious to the soldiers of the capital: so out of the +human heart go as it were highways to the heart of +every object in nature, to reduce it under the +dominion of man. A man is a bundle of relations, a +knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world. +His faculties refer to natures out of him and predict +the world he is to inhabit, as the fins of the fish +foreshow that water exists, or the wings of an eagle +in the egg presuppose air. He cannot live without a +world. Put Napoleon in an island prison, let his +faculties find no men to act on, no Alps to climb, no +stake to play for, and he would beat the air, and +appear stupid. Transport him to large countries, dense +population, complex interests and antagonist power, +and you shall see that the man Napoleon, bounded that +is by such a profile and outline, is not the virtual +Napoleon. This is but Talbot's shadow;-- + +"His substance is not here. +For what you see is but the smallest part +And least proportion of humanity; +But were the whole frame here, +It is of such a spacious, lofty pitch, +Your roof were not sufficient to contain it." +Henry VI. + +Columbus needs a planet to shape his course upon. +Newton and Laplace need myriads of age and thick-strewn +celestial areas. One may say a gravitating solar system +is already prophesied in the nature of Newton's mind. +Not less does the brain of Davy or of Gay-Lussac, from +childhood exploring the affinities and repulsions of +particles, anticipate the laws of organization. Does not +the eye of the human embryo predict the light? the ear of +Handel predict the witchcraft of harmonic sound? Do not +the constructive fingers of Watt, Fulton, Whittemore, +Arkwright, predict the fusible, hard, and temperable +texture of metals, the properties of stone, water, and +wood? Do not the lovely attributes of the maiden child +predict the refinements and decorations of civil society? +Here also we are reminded of the action of man on man. A +mind might ponder its thought for ages and not gain so +much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach it +in a day. Who knows himself before he has been thrilled +with indignation at an outrage, or has heard an eloquent +tongue, or has shared the throb of thousands in a national +exultation or alarm? No man can antedate his experience, +or guess what faculty or feeling a new object shall unlock, +any more than he can draw to-day the face of a person whom +he shall see to-morrow for the first time. + +I will not now go behind the general statement to explore +the reason of this correspondency. Let it suffice that in +the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, +and that nature is its correlative, history is to be read +and written. + +Thus in all ways does the soul concentrate and reproduce +its treasures for each pupil. He too shall pass through +the whole cycle of experience. He shall collect into a +focus the rays of nature. History no longer shall be a +dull book. It shall walk incarnate in every just and wise +man. You shall not tell me by languages and titles a +catalogue of the volumes you have read. You shall make me +feel what periods you have lived. A man shall be the Temple +of Fame. He shall walk, as the poets have described that +goddess, in a robe painted all over with wonderful events +and experiences;--his own form and features by their +exalted intelligence shall be that variegated vest. I +shall find in him the Foreworld; in his childhood the Age +of Gold, the Apples of Knowledge, the Argonautic Expedition, +the calling of Abraham, the building of the Temple, the +Advent of Christ, Dark Ages, the Revival of Letters, the +Reformation, the discovery of new lands, the opening of new +sciences and new regions in man. He shall be the priest of +Pan, and bring with him into humble cottages the blessing of +the morning stars, and all the recorded benefits of heaven +and earth. + +Is there somewhat overweening in this claim? Then I reject +all I have written, for what is the use of pretending to +know what we know not? But it is the fault of our rhetoric +that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to +belie some other. I hold our actual knowledge very cheap. +Hear the rats in the wall, see the lizard on the fence, the +fungus under foot, the lichen on the log. What do I know +sympathetically, morally, of either of these worlds of life? +As old as the Caucasian man,--perhaps older,--these creatures +have kept their counsel beside him, and there is no record of +any word or sign that has passed from one to the other. What +connection do the books show between the fifty or sixty +chemical elements and the historical eras? Nay, what does +history yet record of the metaphysical annals of man? What +light does it shed on those mysteries which we hide under the +names Death and Immortality? Yet every history should be +written in a wisdom which divined the range of our affinities +and looked at facts as symbols. I am ashamed to see what a +shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times +we must say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does +Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates +to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or +experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, +for the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, +the porter? + +Broader and deeper we must write our annals,--from an ethical +reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative +conscience,--if we would trulier express our central and wide- +related nature, instead of this old chronology of selfishness +and pride to which we have too long lent our eyes. Already that +day exists for us, shines in on us at unawares, but the path of +science and of letters is not the way into nature. The idiot, +the Indian, the child and unschooled farmer's boy stand nearer +to the light by which nature is to be read, than the dissector +or the antiquary. + + + + + +SELF-RELIANCE. + +"Ne te quaesiveris extra." + +"Man is his own star; and the soul that can +Render an honest and a perfect man, +Commands all light, all influence, all fate; +Nothing to him falls early or too late. +Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, +Our fatal shadows that walk by us still." + +Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune. + + + +Cast the bantling on the rocks, +Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat, +Wintered with the hawk and fox. +Power and speed be hands and feet. + + + +II. +SELF-RELIANCE. + +I READ the other day some verses written by an eminent +painter which were original and not conventional. The +soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the +subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of +more value than any thought they may contain. To believe +your own thought, to believe that what is true for you +in your private heart is true for all men,--that is genius. +Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal +sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, and +our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets +of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind +is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato +and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, +and spoke not what men, but what they thought. A man should +learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes +across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the +firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without +notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of +genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come +back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works +of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They +teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good- +humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices +is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say +with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and +felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame +our own opinion from another. + +There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at +the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is +suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as +his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, +no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his +toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to +till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and +none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he +know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, +one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This +sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. +The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might +testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, +and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. +It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, +so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work +made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has +put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has +said or done otherwise shall give him no peace. It is a +deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius +deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope. + +Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept +the place the divine providence has found for you, the society +of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men +have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the +genius of their age, betraying their perception that the +absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working +through their hands, predominating in all their being. And +we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same +transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected +corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, +redeemers and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort and +advancing on Chaos and the Dark. + +What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in the +face and behavior of children, babes, and even brutes! That +divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because +our arithmetic has computed the strength and means opposed to +our purpose, these have not. Their mind being whole, their +eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces we +are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to +it; so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the +adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and +puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, +and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put +by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no +force, because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next +room his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he +knows how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold then, +he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary. + +The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would +disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate +one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in +the parlor what the pit is in the playhouse; independent, +irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people +and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their +merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, +interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself +never about consequences, about interests; he gives an +independent, genuine verdict. You must court him; he does +not court you. But the man is as it were clapped into jail +by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken +with eclat he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy +or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter +into his account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he +could pass again into his neutrality! Who can thus avoid all +pledges and, having observed, observe again from the same +unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence,-- +must always be formidable. He would utter opinions on all +passing affairs, which being seen to be not private but +necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men and +put them in fear. + +These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they +grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society +everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one +of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the +members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each +shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. +The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its +aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and +customs. + +Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would +gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of +goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at +last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you +to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I +remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to +make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the +dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, "What have I +to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from +within?" my friend suggested,--"But these impulses may be from +below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to +be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from +the Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. +Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or +this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only +wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the +presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular and +ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate +to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. +Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me +more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak +the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat +of philanthropy, shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this +bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news +from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him, 'Go love thy infant; +love thy wood-chopper; be good-natured and modest; have that +grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with +this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. +Thy love afar is spite at home.' Rough and graceless would be +such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of +love. Your goodness must have some edge to it,--else it is none. +The doctrine of hatred must be preached, as the counteraction +of the doctrine of love, when that pules and whines. I shun +father and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls +me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, *Whim*. I +hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot +spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why +I seek or why I exclude company. Then again, do not tell me, +as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men +in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee thou foolish +philanthropist that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I +give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not +belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual +affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison +if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the +education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses +to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots, and the +thousand-fold Relief Societies;--though I confess with shame I +sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar +which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold. + +Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception +than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do +what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or +charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of +daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an +apology or extenuation of their living in the world,--as +invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are +penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is +for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it +should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than +that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be +sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask +primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal +from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes +no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which +are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege +where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, +I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the +assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony. + +What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people +think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual +life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness +and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find +those who think they know what is your duty better than you +know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's +opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but +the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with +perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. + +The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead +to you is that it scatters your force. It loses your time and +blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead +church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great +party either for the government or against it, spread your +table like base housekeepers,--under all these screens I have +difficulty to detect the precise man you are: and of course +so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your +work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce +yourself. A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this +game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your +argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the +expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not +know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous +word? Do I not know that with all this ostentation of examining +the grounds of the institution he will do no such thing? Do I +not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one +side, the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? +He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the +emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with +one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some +one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes +them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, +but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite +true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real +four; so that every word they say chagrins us and we know not +where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow +to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we +adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire +by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. There is a mortifying +experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself +also in the general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," +the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel +at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. +The muscles, not spontaneously moved but moved by a low +usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face +with the most disagreeable sensation. + +For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. +And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. +The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or +in the friend's parlor. If this aversation had its origin +in contempt and resistance like his own he might well go home +with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, +like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on +and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the +discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the +senate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who +knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. +Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid, as +being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine +rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant +and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force +that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, +it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it +godlike as a trifle of no concernment. + +The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our +consistency; a reverence for our past act or word because +the eyes of others have no other data for computing our +orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint +them. + +But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why +drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict +somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? +Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems +to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, +scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past +for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever +in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality +to the Deity, yet when the devout motions of the soul come, +yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God +with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat +in the hand of the harlot, and flee. + +A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, +adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. +With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. +He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. +Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak +what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it +contradict every thing you said to-day.--'Ah, so you shall +be sure to be misunderstood.'--Is it so bad then to be +misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, +and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and +Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. +To be great is to be misunderstood. + +I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies +of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, as the +inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the +curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and +try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian +stanza;--read it forward, backward, or across, it still +spells the same thing. In this pleasing contrite wood-life +which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest +thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, +it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not and see +it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the +hum of insects. The swallow over my window should interweave +that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also. +We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. +Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only +by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a +breath every moment. + +There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, +so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of +one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike +they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little +distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency +unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag +line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient +distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. +Your genuine action will explain itself and will explain +your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. +Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify +you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm +enough to-day to do right and scorn eyes, I must have done +so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, +do right now. Always scorn appearances and you always may. +The force of character is cumulative. All the foregone days +of virtue work their health into this. What makes the majesty +of the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the +imagination? The consciousness of a train of great days and +victories behind. They shed an united light on the advancing +actor. He is attended as by a visible escort of angels. That +is it which throws thunder into Chatham's voice, and dignity +into Washington's port, and America into Adams's eye. Honor +is venerable to us because it is no ephemera. It is always +ancient virtue. We worship it to-day because it is not of +to-day. We love it and pay it homage because it is not a +trap for our love and homage, but is self-dependent, self- +derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even +if shown in a young person. + +I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity +and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous +henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear +a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us never bow and +apologize more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. +I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to +please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I +would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront +and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment +of the times, and hurl in the face of custom and trade and +office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that +there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working +wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other +time or place, but is the centre of things. Where he is, +there is nature. He measures you and all men and all events. +Ordinarily, every body in society reminds us of somewhat +else, or of some other person. Character, reality, reminds +you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. +The man must be so much that he must make all circumstances +indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an +age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to +accomplish his design;--and posterity seem to follow his +steps as a train of clients. A man Caesar is born, and for +ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and +millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius that +he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An +institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as, +Monachism, of the Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther; +Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. +Scipio, Milton called "the height of Rome"; and all history +Resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout +and earnest persons. + +Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his +feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with +the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper in +the world which exists for him. But the man in the street, +finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force +which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor +when he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, or a +costly book have an alien and forbidding air, much like a +gay equipage, and seem to say like that, 'Who are you, Sir?' +Yet they all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners +to his faculties that they will come out and take possession. +The picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, +but I am to settle its claims to praise. That popular fable +of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, +carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in +the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious +ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, +owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well +the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now +and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a +true prince. + +Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history our +imagination plays us false. Kingdom and lordship, power +and estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than private John and +Edward in a small house and common day's work; but the things +of life are the same to both; the sum total of both is the +same. Why all this deference to Alfred and Scanderbeg and +Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out +virtue? As great a stake depends on your private act to-day, +as followed their public and renowned steps. When private men +shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred +from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen. + +The world has been instructed by its kings, who have so +magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been taught by this +colossal symbol the mutual reverence that is due from man +to man. The joyful loyalty with which men have everywhere +suffered the king, the noble, or the great proprietor to +walk among them by a law of his own, make his own scale of +men and things and reverse theirs, pay for benefits not +with money but with honor, and represent the law in his +person, was the hieroglyphic by which they obscurely +signified their consciousness of their own right and +comeliness, the right of every man. + +The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained +when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? +What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance +may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science- +baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, +which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure +actions, if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry +leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of +virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. +We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later +teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact +behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common +origin. For the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we +know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from +space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and +proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and +being also proceed. We first share the life by which things +exist and afterwards see them as appearances in nature and +forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain +of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration +which giveth man wisdom and which cannot be denied without +impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, +which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. +When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of +ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence +this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all +philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we +can affirm. Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts +of his mind and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to +his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err +in the expression of them, but he knows that these things are +so, like day and night, not to be disputed. My wilful actions +and acquisitions are but roving;--the idlest reverie, the +faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and respect. +Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of +perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for +they do not distinguish between perception and notion. They +fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception +is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children +will see it after me, and in course of time all mankind,-- +although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. +For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun. + +The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure +that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be +that when God speaketh he should communicate, not one thing, +but all things; should fill the world with his voice; should +scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the centre of +the present thought; and new date and new create the whole. +Whenever a mind is simple and receives a divine wisdom, old +things pass away,--means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it +lives now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour. +All things are made sacred by relation to it,--one as much +as another. All things are dissolved to their centre by their +cause, and in the universal miracle petty and particular +miracles disappear. If therefore a man claims to know and +speak of God and carries you backward to the phraseology of +some old mouldered nation in another country, in another world, +believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its +fulness and completion? Is the parent better than the child +into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence then this +worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against +the sanity and authority of the soul. Time and space are but +physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is +light: where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history +is an impertinence and an injury if it be any thing more than +a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming. + +Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he +dares not say 'I think,' 'I am,' but quotes some saint or +sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing +rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former +roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they +exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is +simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its +existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; +in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless +root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied and it +satisfies nature in all moments alike. But man postpones or +remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted +eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround +him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy +and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above +time. + +This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects +dare not yet hear God himself unless he speak the phraseology +of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not +always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. +We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of +grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of +talents and character they chance to see,--painfully recollecting +the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the +point of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they +understand them and are willing to let the words go; for at any +time they can use words as good when occasion comes. If we live +truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to +be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new +perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded +treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice +shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of +the corn. + +And now at last the highest truth on this subject remains +unsaid; probably cannot be said; for all that we say is +the far-off remembering of the intuition. That thought by +what I can now nearest approach to say it, is this. When +good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not +by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the +footprints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; +you shall not hear any name;--the way, the thought, the good +shall be wholly strange and new. It shall exclude example +and experience. You take the way from man, not to man. All +persons that ever existed are its forgotten ministers. Fear +and hope are alike beneath it. There is somewhat low even +in hope. In the hour of vision there is nothing that can +be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The soul raised over +passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives +the self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms itself +with knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces of nature, +the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea; long intervals of time, +years, centuries, are of no account. This which I think and +feel underlay every former state of life and circumstances, +as it does underlie my present, and what is called life, +and what is called death. + +Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the +instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition +from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in +the darting to an aim. This one fact the world hates; that +the soul becomes; for that for ever degrades the past, turns +all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds +the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally +aside. Why then do we prate of self-reliance? Inasmuch as +the soul is present there will be power not confident but +agent. To talk of reliance is a poor external way of speaking. +Speak rather of that which relies because it works and is. +Who has more obedience than I masters me, though he should +not raise his finger. Round him I must revolve by the +gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric when we speak +of eminent virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is Height, +and that a man or a company of men, plastic and permeable to +principles, by the law of nature must overpower and ride all +cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not. + +This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, +as on every topic, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed +ONE. Self-existence is the attribute of the Supreme Cause, +and it constitutes the measure of good by the degree in which +it enters into all lower forms. All things real are so by so +much virtue as they contain. Commerce, husbandry, hunting, +whaling, war, eloquence, personal weight, are somewhat, and +engage my respect as examples of its presence and impure +action. I see the same law working in nature for conservation +and growth. Power is, in nature, the essential measure of right. +Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot +help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise +and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong +wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are +demonstrations of the self-sufficing and therefore self-relying +soul. + +Thus all concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home +with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding +rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple +declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the +shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. Let our +simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law +demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside our +native riches. + +But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor +is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in +communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad +to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men. We must go +alone. I like the silent church before the service begins, +better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste +the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary! +So let us always sit. Why should we assume the faults of our +friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around +our hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All men have +my blood and I have all men's. Not for that will I adopt their +petulance or folly, even to the extent of being ashamed of it. +But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that +is, must be elevation. At times the whole world seems to be in +conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, +client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once +at thy closet door and say,--'Come out unto us.' But keep thy +state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to +annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near +me but through my act. "What we love that we have, but by +desire we bereave ourselves of the love." + +If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and +faith, let us at least resist our temptations; let us enter +into the state of war and wake Thor and Woden, courage and +constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our +smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying +hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to the +expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with +whom we converse. Say to them, 'O father, O mother, O wife, +O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances +hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto +you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal +law. I will have no covenants but proximities. I shall +endeavour to nourish my parents, to support my family, to +be the chaste husband of one wife,--but these relations I +must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from +your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any +longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, +we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek +to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or +aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that +I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly +rejoices me and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will +love you: if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by +hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same +truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. +I do this not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike your +interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt +in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? You +will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as +mine, and if we follow the truth it will bring us out safe at +last.'--But so may you give these friends pain. Yes, but I +cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. +Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they +look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they +justify me and do the same thing. + +The populace think that your rejection of popular standards +is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and +the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild +his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. There are +two confessionals, in one or the other of which we must be +shriven. You may fulfil your round of duties by clearing +yourself in the direct, or in the reflex way. Consider +whether you have satisfied your relations to father, mother, +cousin, neighbor, town, cat, and dog; whether any of these +can upbraid you. But I may also neglect this reflex standard +and absolve me to myself. I have my own stern claims and +perfect circle. It denies the name of duty to many offices +that are called duties. But if I can discharge its debts it +enables me to dispense with the popular code. If any one +imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its commandment +one day. + +And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast +off the common motives of humanity and has ventured to trust +himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his +will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, +society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him +as strong as iron necessity is to others! + +If any man consider the present aspects of what is called +by distinction society, he will see the need of these +ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, +and we are become timorous, desponding whimperers. We are +afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death and +afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect +persons. We want men and women who shall renovate life and +our social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent, +cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all +proportion to their practical force and do lean and beg day +and night continually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our +arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion we have +not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are parlor +soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate, where strength +is born. + +If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises they +lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is +ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges +and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards +in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to +his friends and to himself that he is right in being +disheartened and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy +lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the +professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, +preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, +and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls +on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks +abreast with his days and feels no shame in not 'studying a +profession,' for he does not postpone his life, but lives +already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. Let a +Stoic open the resources of man and tell men they are not +leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with +the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a man +is the word made flesh, born to shed healing to the nations; +that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and that the +moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, +idolatries and customs out of the window, we pity him no more +but thank and revere him;--and that teacher shall restore the +life of man to splendor and make his name dear to all history. + +It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a +revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their +religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes +of living; their association; in their property; in their +speculative views. + +1. In what prayers do men allow themselves! That which they +call a holy office is not so much as brave and manly. Prayer +looks abroad and asks for some foreign addition to come +through some foreign virtue, and loses itself in endless +mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and +miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular commodity, +any thing less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the +contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point +of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant +soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. +But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness +and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and +consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he +will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action. The +prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the +prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, +are true prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap +ends. Caratach, in Fletcher's Bonduca, when admonished to +inquire the mind of the god Audate, replies,-- + + "His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors; + Our valors are our best gods." + +Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent +is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. +Regret calamities if you can thereby help the sufferer; +if not, attend your own work and already the evil begins +to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come to +them who weep foolishly and sit down and cry for company, +instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough +electric shocks, putting them once more in communication +with their own reason. The secret of fortune is joy in our +hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping +man. For him all doors are flung wide; him all tongues +greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our +love goes out to him and embraces him because he did not +need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and +celebrate him because he held on his way and scorned our +disapprobation. The gods love him because men hated him. +"To the persevering mortal," said Zoroaster, "the blessed +Immortals are swift." + +As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their +creeds a disease of the intellect. They say with those +foolish Israelites, 'Let not God speak to us, lest we die. +Speak thou, speak any man with us, and we will obey.' +Everywhere I am hindered of meeting God in my brother, +because he has shut his own temple doors and recites +fables merely of his brother's, or his brother's brother's +God. Every new mind is a new classification. If it prove a +mind of uncommon activity and power, a Locke, a Lavoisier, a +Hutton, a Bentham, a Fourier, it imposes its classification +on other men, and lo! a new system. In proportion to the +depth of the thought, and so to the number of the objects +it touches and brings within reach of the pupil, is his +complacency. But chiefly is this apparent in creeds and +churches, which are also classifications of some powerful +mind acting on the elemental thought of duty, and man's +relation to the Highest. Such is Calvinism, Quakerism, +Swedenborgism. The pupil takes the same delight in +subordinating every thing to the new terminology as a +girl who has just learned botany in seeing a new earth +and new seasons thereby. It will happen for a time that +the pupil will find his intellectual power has grown by +the study of his master's mind. But in all unbalanced +minds the classification is idolized, passes for the end +and not for a speedily exhaustible means, so that the +walls of the system blend to their eye in the remote +horizon with the walls of the universe; the luminaries +of heaven seem to them hung on the arch their master +built. They cannot imagine how you aliens have any right +to see,--how you can see; 'It must be somehow that you +stole the light from us.' They do not yet perceive that +light, unsystematic, indomitable, will break into any +cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call +it their own. If they are honest and do well, presently +their neat new pinfold will be too strait and low, will +crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and the immortal +light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, million- +colored, will beam over the universe as on the first +morning. + +2. It is for want of self-culture that the superstition +of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, +retains its fascination for all educated Americans. They +who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the +imagination did so by sticking fast where they were, like +an axis of the earth. In manly hours we feel that duty +is our place. The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays +at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any +occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, +he is at home still and shall make men sensible by the +expression of his countenance that he goes, the missionary +of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a +sovereign and not like an interloper or a valet. + +I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the +globe for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, +so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad +with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He +who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does +not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in +youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and +mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries +ruins to ruins. + +Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover +to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at +Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose +my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on +the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me +is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that +I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the palaces. I affect to +be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not +intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go. + +3. But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper +unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The +intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters +restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced +to stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but the +travelling of the mind? Our houses are built with foreign +taste; our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; +our opinions, our tastes, our faculties, lean, and follow +the Past and the Distant. The soul created the arts wherever +they have flourished. It was in his own mind that the artist +sought his model. It was an application of his own thought +to the thing to be done and the conditions to be observed. +And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model? Beauty, +convenience, grandeur of thought and quaint expression are +as near to us as to any, and if the American artist will +study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by +him, considering the climate, the soil, the length of the +day, the wants of the people, the habit and form of the +government, he will create a house in which all these will +find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be +satisfied also. + +Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can +present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole +life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another +you have only an extemporaneous half possession. That which +each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man +yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited +it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakspeare? +Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or +Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. +The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not +borrow. Shakspeare will never be made by the study of +Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot +hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for +you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal +chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen +of Moses or Dante, but different from all these. Not possibly +will the soul, all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven +tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you can hear what +these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in the +same pitch of voice; for the ear and the tongue are two +organs of one nature. Abide in the simple and noble regions +of thy life, obey thy heart and thou shalt reproduce the +Foreworld again. + +4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look abroad, so +does our spirit of society. All men plume themselves on the +improvement of society, and no man improves. + +Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as +it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it +is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is +rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. +For every thing that is given something is taken. Society +acquires new arts and loses old instincts. What a contrast +between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, +with a watch, a pencil and a bill of exchange in his pocket, +and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a +spear, a mat and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep +under! But compare the health of the two men and you shall +see that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength. If +the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad +axe and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if +you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall +send the white to his grave. + +The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use +of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much +support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails +of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical +almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he +wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the +sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows +as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is +without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory; +his libraries overload his wit; the insurance-office increases +the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether +machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by +refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in +establishments and forms some vigor of wild virtue. For +every Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the +Christian? + +There is no more deviation in the moral standard than in +the standard of height or bulk. No greater men are now +than ever were. A singular equality may be observed between +the great men of the first and of the last ages; nor can +all the science, art, religion, and philosophy of the +nineteenth century avail to educate greater men than +Plutarch's heroes, three or four and twenty centuries ago. +Not in time is the race progressive. Phocion, Socrates, +Anaxagoras, Diogenes, are great men, but they leave no +class. He who is really of their class will not be called +by their name, but will be his own man, and in his turn the +founder of a sect. The arts and inventions of each period +are only its costume and do not invigorate men. The harm of +the improved machinery may compensate its good. Hudson and +Behring accomplished so much in their fishing-boats as to +astonish Parry and Franklin, whose equipment exhausted the +resources of science and art. Galileo, with an opera-glass, +discovered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena +than any one since. Columbus found the New World in an +undecked boat. It is curious to see the periodical disuse +and perishing of means and machinery which were introduced +with loud laudation a few years or centuries before. The +great genius returns to essential man. We reckoned the +improvements of the art of war among the triumphs of science, +and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the bivouac, which +consisted of falling back on naked valor and disencumbering +it of all aids. The Emperor held it impossible to make a +perfect army, says Las Cases, "without abolishing our arms, +magazines, commissaries and carriages, until, in imitation +of the Roman custom, the soldier should receive his supply +of corn, grind it in his hand-mill, and bake his bread +himself." + +Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water +of which it is composed does not. The same particle does +not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only +phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation to-day, next +year die, and their experience with them. + +And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance +on governments which protect it, is the want of self- +reliance. Men have looked away from themselves and at things +so long that they have come to esteem the religious, learned +and civil institutions as guards of property, and they +deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be +assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other +by what each has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated +man becomes ashamed of his property, out of new respect for +his nature. Especially he hates what he has if he see that it +is accidental,--came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; +then he feels that it is not having; it does not belong to him, +has no root in him and merely lies there because no revolution +or no robber takes it away. But that which a man is, does +always by necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is +living property, which does not wait the beck of rulers, or +mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but +perpetually renews itself wherever the man breathes. "Thy lot +or portion of life," said the Caliph Ali, "is seeking after +thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it." Our +dependence on these foreign goods leads us to our slavish +respect for numbers. The political parties meet in numerous +conventions; the greater the concourse and with each new +uproar of announcement, The delegation from Essex! The +Democrats from New Hampshire! The Whigs of Maine! the young +patriot feels himself stronger than before by a new thousand +of eyes and arms. In like manner the reformers summon +conventions and vote and resolve in multitude. Not so, O +friends! will the God deign to enter and inhabit you, but +by a method precisely the reverse. It is only as a man puts +off all foreign support and stands alone that I see him to +be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to +his banner. Is not a man better than a town? Ask nothing of +men, and, in the endless mutation, thou only firm column must +presently appear the upholder of all that surrounds thee. He +who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak because he has +looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, +throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights +himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, +works miracles; just as a man who stands on his feet is +stronger than a man who stands on his head. + +So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with +her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But +do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with +Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. In the Will work +and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance, and +shalt sit hereafter out of fear from her rotations. A +political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick +or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable +event raises your spirits, and you think good days are +preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you +peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the +triumph of principles. + + + + +COMPENSATION. + +The wings of Time are black and white, +Pied with morning and with night. +Mountain tall and ocean deep +Trembling balance duly keep. +In changing moon, in tidal wave, +Glows the feud of Want and Have. +Gauge of more and less through space +Electric star and pencil plays. +The lonely Earth amid the balls +That hurry through the eternal halls, +A makeweight flying to the void, +Supplemental asteroid, +Or compensatory spark, +Shoots across the neutral Dark. + +Man's the elm, and Wealth the vine, +Stanch and strong the tendrils twine: +Though the frail ringlets thee deceive, +None from its stock that vine can reave. +Fear not, then, thou child infirm, +There's no god dare wrong a worm. +Laurel crowns cleave to deserts +And power to him who power exerts; +Hast not thy share? On winged feet, +Lo! it rushes thee to meet; +And all that Nature made thy own, +Floating in air or pent in stone, +Will rive the hills and swim the sea +And, like thy shadow, follow thee. + +III. +COMPENSATION. + +Ever since I was a boy I have wished to write a discourse +on Compensation; for it seemed to me when very young that +on this subject life was ahead of theology and the people +knew more than the preachers taught. The documents too +from which the doctrine is to be drawn, charmed my fancy +by their endless variety, and lay always before me, even +in sleep; for they are the tools in our hands, the bread +in our basket, the transactions of the street, the farm +and the dwelling-house; greetings, relations, debts and +credits, the influence of character, the nature and +endowment of all men. It seemed to me also that in it +might be shown men a ray of divinity, the present action of +the soul of this world, clean from all vestige of tradition; +and so the heart of man might be bathed by an inundation of +eternal love, conversing with that which he knows was always +and always must be, because it really is now. It appeared +moreover that if this doctrine could be stated in terms with +any resemblance to those bright intuitions in which this +truth is sometimes revealed to us, it would be a star in many +dark hours and crooked passages in our journey, that would +not suffer us to lose our way. + +I was lately confirmed in these desires by hearing a sermon +at church. The preacher, a man esteemed for his orthodoxy, +unfolded in the ordinary manner the doctrine of the Last +Judgment. He assumed that judgment is not executed in this +world; that the wicked are successful; that the good are +miserable; and then urged from reason and from Scripture a +compensation to be made to both parties in the next life. +No offence appeared to be taken by the congregation at this +doctrine. As far as I could observe when the meeting broke +up they separated without remark on the sermon. + +Yet what was the import of this teaching? What did the +preacher mean by saying that the good are miserable in +the present life? Was it that houses and lands, offices, +wine, horses, dress, luxury, are had by unprincipled men, +whilst the saints are poor and despised; and that a +compensation is to be made to these last hereafter, by +giving them the like gratifications another day,--bank- +stock and doubloons, venison and champagne? This must be +the compensation intended; for what else? Is it that they +are to have leave to pray and praise? to love and serve +men? Why, that they can do now. The legitimate inference +the disciple would draw was,--'We are to have such a good +time as the sinners have now';--or, to push it to its +extreme import,--'You sin now; we shall sin by and by; we +would sin now, if we could; not being successful, we +expect our revenge to-morrow.' + +The fallacy lay in the immense concession that the bad are +successful; that justice is not done now. The blindness of +the preacher consisted in deferring to the base estimate +of the market of what constitutes a manly success, instead +of confronting and convicting the world from the truth; +announcing the presence of the soul; the omnipotence of +the will; and so establishing the standard of good and +ill, of success and falsehood. + +I find a similar base tone in the popular religious works +of the day and the same doctrines assumed by the literary +men when occasionally they treat the related topics. I +think that our popular theology has gained in decorum, and +not in principle, over the superstitions it has displaced. +But men are better than their theology. Their daily life +gives it the lie. Every ingenuous and aspiring soul leaves +the doctrine behind him in his own experience, and all men +feel sometimes the falsehood which they cannot demonstrate. +For men are wiser than they know. That which they hear in +schools and pulpits without afterthought, if said in +conversation would probably be questioned in silence. If a +man dogmatize in a mixed company on Providence and the +divine laws, he is answered by a silence which conveys well +enough to an observer the dissatisfaction of the hearer, but +his incapacity to make his own statement. + +I shall attempt in this and the following chapter to record +some facts that indicate the path of the law of Compensation; +happy beyond my expectation if I shall truly draw the +smallest arc of this circle. + +POLARITY, or action and reaction, we meet in every part +of nature; in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in +the ebb and flow of waters; in male and female; in the +inspiration and expiration of plants and animals; in the +equation of quantity and quality in the fluids of the +animal body; in the systole and diastole of the heart; +in the undulations of fluids, and of sound; in the +centrifugal and centripetal gravity; in electricity, +galvanism, and chemical affinity. Superinduce magnetism +at one end of a needle, the opposite magnetism takes +place at the other end. If the south attracts, the north +repels. To empty here, you must condense there. An +inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that each thing +is a half, and suggests another thing to make it whole; +as, spirit, matter; man, woman; odd, even; subjective, +objective; in, out; upper, under; motion, rest; yea, nay. + +Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of its parts. +The entire system of things gets represented in every particle. +There is somewhat that resembles the ebb and flow of the sea, +day and night, man and woman, in a single needle of the pine, +in a kernel of corn, in each individual of every animal tribe. +The reaction, so grand in the elements, is repeated within +these small boundaries. For example, in the animal kingdom +the physiologist has observed that no creatures are favorites, +but a certain compensation balances every gift and every defect. +A surplusage given to one part is paid out of a reduction from +another part of the same creature. If the head and neck are +enlarged, the trunk and extremities are cut short. + +The theory of the mechanic forces is another example. What +we gain in power is lost in time, and the converse. The +periodic or compensating errors of the planets is another +instance. The influences of climate and soil in political +history are another. The cold climate invigorates. The +barren soil does not breed fevers, crocodiles, tigers or +scorpions. + +The same dualism underlies the nature and condition of man. +Every excess causes a defect; every defect an excess. Every +sweet hath its sour; every evil its good. Every faculty +which is a receiver of pleasure has an equal penalty put on +its abuse. It is to answer for its moderation with its life. +For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly. For every +thing you have missed, you have gained something else; and +for every thing you gain, you lose something. If riches +increase, they are increased that use them. If the gatherer +gathers too much, Nature takes out of the man what she puts +into his chest; swells the estate, but kills the owner. +Nature hates monopolies and exceptions. The waves of the sea +do not more speedily seek a level from their loftiest tossing +than the varieties of condition tend to equalize themselves. +There is always some levelling circumstance that puts down +the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate, +substantially on the same ground with all others. Is a man +too strong and fierce for society and by temper and position +a bad citizen,--a morose ruffian, with a dash of the pirate +in him?--Nature sends him a troop of pretty sons and daughters +who are getting along in the dame's classes at the village +school, and love and fear for them smooths his grim scowl to +courtesy. Thus she contrives to intenerate the granite and +felspar, takes the boar out and puts the lamb in and keeps +her balance true. + +The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But +the President has paid dear for his White House. It has +commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly +attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an +appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust +before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne. +Or, do men desire the more substantial and permanent +grandeur of genius? Neither has this an immunity. He who +by force of will or of thought is great and overlooks +thousands, has the charges of that eminence. With every +influx of light comes new danger. Has he light? he must +bear witness to the light, and always outrun that sympathy +which gives him such keen satisfaction, by his fidelity to +new revelations of the incessant soul. He must hate father +and mother, wife and child. Has he all that the world loves +and admires and covets?--he must cast behind him their +admiration, and afflict them by faithfulness to his truth, +and become a byword and a hissing. + +This law writes the laws of cities and nations. It is in +vain to build or plot or combine against it. Things refuse +to be mismanaged long. Res nolunt diu male administrari. +Though no checks to a new evil appear, the checks exist, +and will appear. If the government is cruel, the governor's +life is not safe. If you tax too high, the revenue will +yield nothing. If you make the criminal code sanguinary, +juries will not convict. If the law is too mild, private +vengeance comes in. If the government is a terrific democracy, +the pressure is resisted by an over-charge of energy in the +citizen, and life glows with a fiercer flame. The true life +and satisfactions of man seem to elude the utmost rigors or +felicities of condition and to establish themselves with +great indifferency under all varieties of circumstances. +Under all governments the influence of character remains +the same,--in Turkey and in New England about alike. Under +the primeval despots of Egypt, history honestly confesses +that man must have been as free as culture could make him. + +These appearances indicate the fact that the universe is +represented in every one of its particles. Every thing in +nature contains all the powers of nature. Every thing is +made of one hidden stuff; as the naturalist sees one type +under every metamorphosis, and regards a horse as a running +man, a fish as a swimming man, a bird as a flying man, a +tree as a rooted man. Each new form repeats not only the +main character of the type, but part for part all the +details, all the aims, furtherances, hindrances, energies +and whole system of every other. Every occupation, trade, +art, transaction, is a compend of the world and a +correlative of every other. Each one is an entire emblem of +human life; of its good and ill, its trials, its enemies, +its course and its end. And each one must somehow accommodate +the whole man and recite all his destiny. + +The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The microscope +cannot find the animalcule which is less perfect for being +little. Eyes, ears, taste, smell, motion, resistance, +appetite, and organs of reproduction that take hold on +eternity,--all find room to consist in the small creature. +So do we put our life into every act. The true doctrine of +omnipresence is that God reappears with all his parts in +every moss and cobweb. The value of the universe contrives +to throw itself into every point. If the good is there, so +is the evil; if the affinity, so the repulsion; if the +force, so the limitation. + +Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. That soul +which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We +feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its +fatal strength. "It is in the world, and the world was made +by it." Justice is not postponed. A perfect equity adjusts +its balance in all parts of life. Hoi kuboi Dios aei +eupiptousi,--The dice of God are always loaded. The world +looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, +which, turn it how you will, balances itself. Take what +figure you will, its exact value, nor more nor less, still +returns to you. Every secret is told, every crime is punished, +every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and +certainty. What we call retribution is the universal necessity +by which the whole appears wherever a part appears. If you see +smoke, there must be fire. If you see a hand or a limb, you +know that the trunk to which it belongs is there behind. + +Every act rewards itself, or, in other words integrates +itself, in a twofold manner; first in the thing, or in +real nature; and secondly in the circumstance, or in +apparent nature. Men call the circumstance the retribution. +The causal retribution is in the thing and is seen by the +soul. The retribution in the circumstance is seen by the +understanding; it is inseparable from the thing, but is +often spread over a long time and so does not become +distinct until after many years. The specific stripes may +follow late after the offence, but they follow because +they accompany it. Crime and punishment grow out of one +stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within +the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and +effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; +for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end +preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed. + +Whilst thus the world will be whole and refuses to be +disparted, we seek to act partially, to sunder, to +appropriate; for example,--to gratify the senses we sever +the pleasure of the senses from the needs of the character. +The ingenuity of man has always been dedicated to the +solution of one problem,--how to detach the sensual sweet, +the sensual strong, the sensual bright, etc., from the +moral sweet, the moral deep, the moral fair; that is, again, +to contrive to cut clean off this upper surface so thin as +to leave it bottomless; to get a one end, without an other +end. The soul says, 'Eat;' the body would feast. The soul +says, 'The man and woman shall be one flesh and one soul;' +the body would join the flesh only. The soul says, 'Have +dominion over all things to the ends of virtue;' the body +would have the power over things to its own ends. + +The soul strives amain to live and work through all things. +It would be the only fact. All things shall be added unto +it,--power, pleasure, knowledge, beauty. The particular +man aims to be somebody; to set up for himself; to truck +and higgle for a private good; and, in particulars, to ride +that he may ride; to dress that he may be dressed; to eat +that he may eat; and to govern, that he may be seen. Men +seek to be great; they would have offices, wealth, power, +and fame. They think that to be great is to possess one side +of nature,--the sweet, without the other side, the bitter. + +This dividing and detaching is steadily counteracted. Up +to this day it must be owned no projector has had the +smallest success. The parted water reunites behind our +hand. Pleasure is taken out of pleasant things, profit +out of profitable things, power out of strong things, as +soon as we seek to separate them from the whole. We can +no more halve things and get the sensual good, by itself, +than we can get an inside that shall have no outside, or +a light without a shadow. "Drive out Nature with a fork, +she comes running back." + +Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which +the unwise seek to dodge, which one and another brags +that he does not know, that they do not touch him;--but +the brag is on his lips, the conditions are in his soul. +If he escapes them in one part they attack him in another +more vital part. If he has escaped them in form and in +the appearance, it is because he has resisted his life +and fled from himself, and the retribution is so much +death. So signal is the failure of all attempts to make +this separation of the good from the tax, that the +experiment would not be tried,--since to try it is to be +mad,--but for the circumstance, that when the disease +began in the will, of rebellion and separation, the +intellect is at once infected, so that the man ceases to +see God whole in each object, but is able to see the +sensual allurement of an object and not see the sensual +hurt; he sees the mermaid's head but not the dragon's +tail, and thinks he can cut off that which he would have +from that which he would not have. "How secret art thou +who dwellest in the highest heavens in silence, O thou +only great God, sprinkling with an unwearied providence +certain penal blindnesses upon such as have unbridled +desires!"1 + +1 St. Augustine, Confessions, B. I. + +The human soul is true to these facts in the painting of +fable, of history, of law, of proverbs, of conversation. +It finds a tongue in literature unawares. Thus the Greeks +called Jupiter, Supreme Mind; but having traditionally +ascribed to him many base actions, they involuntarily made +amends to reason by tying up the hands of so bad a god. He +is made as helpless as a king of England. Prometheus knows +one secret which Jove must bargain for; Minerva, another. +He cannot get his own thunders; Minerva keeps the key of +them:-- + +"Of all the gods, I only know the keys + That ope the solid doors within whose vaults + His thunders sleep." + +A plain confession of the in-working of the All and of +its moral aim. The Indian mythology ends in the same +ethics; and it would seem impossible for any fable to be +invented and get any currency which was not moral. Aurora +forgot to ask youth for her lover, and though Tithonus is +immortal, he is old. Achilles is not quite invulnerable; +the sacred waters did not wash the heel by which Thetis +held him. Siegfried, in the Nibelungen, is not quite +immortal, for a leaf fell on his back whilst he was +bathing in the dragon's blood, and that spot which it +covered is mortal. And so it must be. There is a crack +in every thing God has made. It would seem there is always +this vindictive circumstance stealing in at unawares even +into the wild poesy in which the human fancy attempted to +make bold holiday and to shake itself free of the old laws, +--this back-stroke, this kick of the gun, certifying that +the law is fatal; that in nature nothing can be given, all +things are sold. + +This is that ancient doctrine of Nemesis, who keeps watch +in the universe and lets no offence go unchastised. The +Furies they said are attendants on justice, and if the sun +in heaven should transgress his path they would punish him. +The poets related that stone walls and iron swords and +leathern thongs had an occult sympathy with the wrongs of +their owners; that the belt which Ajax gave Hector dragged +the Trojan hero over the field at the wheels of the car of +Achilles, and the sword which Hector gave Ajax was that on +whose point Ajax fell. They recorded that when the Thasians +erected a statue to Theagenes, a victor in the games, one +of his rivals went to it by night and endeavored to throw +it down by repeated blows, until at last he moved it from +its pedestal and was crushed to death beneath its fall. + +This voice of fable has in it somewhat divine. It came +from thought above the will of the writer. That is the +best part of each writer which has nothing private in +it; that which he does not know; that which flowed out +of his constitution and not from his too active invention; +that which in the study of a single artist you might not +easily find, but in the study of many you would abstract +as the spirit of them all. Phidias it is not, but the +work of man in that early Hellenic world that I would know. +The name and circumstance of Phidias, however convenient +for history, embarrass when we come to the highest +criticism. We are to see that which man was tending to do +in a given period, and was hindered, or, if you will, +modified in doing, by the interfering volitions of Phidias, +of Dante, of Shakspeare, the organ whereby man at the moment +wrought. + +Still more striking is the expression of this fact in the +proverbs of all nations, which are always the literature +of reason, or the statements of an absolute truth without +qualification. Proverbs, like the sacred books of each +nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions. That which +the droning world, chained to appearances, will not allow +the realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to +say in proverbs without contradiction. And this law of laws, +which the pulpit, the senate and the college deny, is hourly +preached in all markets and workshops by flights of proverbs, +whose teaching is as true and as omnipresent as that of birds +and flies. + +All things are double, one against another.--Tit for tat; +an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth; blood for blood; +measure for measure; love for love.--Give and it shall be +given you.--He that watereth shall be watered himself.-- +What will you have? quoth God; pay for it and take it.-- +Nothing venture, nothing have.--Thou shalt be paid exactly +for what thou hast done, no more, no less.--Who doth not +work shall not eat.--Harm watch, harm catch. --Curses always +recoil on the head of him who imprecates them.--If you put +a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens +itself around your own.--Bad counsel confounds the adviser. +--The Devil is an ass. + +It is thus written, because it is thus in life. Our action +is overmastered and characterized above our will by the law +of nature. We aim at a petty end quite aside from the public +good, but our act arranges itself by irresistible magnetism +in a line with the poles of the world. + +A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will +or against his will he draws his portrait to the eye of +his companions by every word. Every opinion reacts on him +who utters it. It is a thread-ball thrown at a mark, but +the other end remains in the thrower's bag. Or rather it +is a harpoon hurled at the whale, unwinding, as it flies, +a coil of cord in the boat, and, if the harpoon is not +good, or not well thrown, it will go nigh to cut the +steersman in twain or to sink the boat. + +You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. "No man had +ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him," said +Burke. The exclusive in fashionable life does not see that +he excludes himself from enjoyment, in the attempt to +appropriate it. The exclusionist in religion does not see +that he shuts the door of heaven on himself, in striving +to shut out others. Treat men as pawns and ninepins and you +shall suffer as well as they. If you leave out their heart, +you shall lose your own. The senses would make things of all +persons; of women, of children, of the poor. The vulgar +proverb, "I will get it from his purse or get it from his +skin," is sound philosophy. + +All infractions of love and equity in our social relations +are speedily punished. They are punished by fear. Whilst +I stand in simple relations to my fellow-man, I have no +displeasure in meeting him. We meet as water meets water, +or as two currents of air mix, with perfect diffusion and +interpenetration of nature. But as soon as there is any +departure from simplicity, and attempt at halfness, or good +for me that is not good for him, my neighbor feels the wrong; +he shrinks from me as far as I have shrunk from him; his +eyes no longer seek mine; there is war between us; there is +hate in him and fear in me. + +All the old abuses in society, universal and particular, +all unjust accumulations of property and power, are avenged +in the same manner. Fear is an instructor of great sagacity +and the herald of all revolutions. One thing he teaches, +that there is rottenness where he appears. He is a carrion +crow, and though you see not well what he hovers for, there +is death somewhere. Our property is timid, our laws are +timid, our cultivated classes are timid. Fear for ages has +boded and mowed and gibbered over government and property. +That obscene bird is not there for nothing. He indicates +great wrongs which must be revised. + +Of the like nature is that expectation of change which +instantly follows the suspension of our voluntary activity. +The terror of cloudless noon, the emerald of Polycrates, +the awe of prosperity, the instinct which leads every +generous soul to impose on itself tasks of a noble +asceticism and vicarious virtue, are the tremblings of +the balance of justice through the heart and mind of man. + +Experienced men of the world know very well that it is +best to pay scot and lot as they go along, and that a +man often pays dear for a small frugality. The borrower +runs in his own debt. Has a man gained any thing who has +received a hundred favors and rendered none? Has he gained +by borrowing, through indolence or cunning, his neighbor's +wares, or horses, or money? There arises on the deed the +instant acknowledgment of benefit on the one part and of +debt on the other; that is, of superiority and inferiority. +The transaction remains in the memory of himself and his +neighbor; and every new transaction alters according to +its nature their relation to each other. He may soon come +to see that he had better have broken his own bones than +to have ridden in his neighbor's coach, and that "the +highest price he can pay for a thing is to ask for it." + +A wise man will extend this lesson to all parts of life, +and know that it is the part of prudence to face every +claimant and pay every just demand on your time, your +talents, or your heart. Always pay; for first or last +you must pay your entire debt. Persons and events may +stand for a time between you and justice, but it is only +a postponement. You must pay at last your own debt. If +you are wise you will dread a prosperity which only loads +you with more. Benefit is the end of nature. But for every +benefit which you receive, a tax is levied. He is great +who confers the most benefits. He is base,--and that is +the one base thing in the universe,--to receive favors +and render none. In the order of nature we cannot render +benefits to those from whom we receive them, or only seldom. +But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for +line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of +too much good staying in your hand. It will fast corrupt and +worm worms. Pay it away quickly in some sort. + +Labor is watched over by the same pitiless laws. Cheapest, +say the prudent, is the dearest labor. What we buy in a +broom, a mat, a wagon, a knife, is some application of +good sense to a common want. It is best to pay in your +land a skilful gardener, or to buy good sense applied to +gardening; in your sailor, good sense applied to navigation; +in the house, good sense applied to cooking, sewing, serving; +in your agent, good sense applied to accounts and affairs. +So do you multiply your presence, or spread yourself throughout +your estate. But because of the dual constitution of things, +in labor as in life there can be no cheating. The thief steals +from himself. The swindler swindles himself. For the real price +of labor is knowledge and virtue, whereof wealth and credit are +signs. These signs, like paper money, may be counterfeited or +stolen, but that which they represent, namely, knowledge and +virtue, cannot be counterfeited or stolen. These ends of labor +cannot be answered but by real exertions of the mind, and in +obedience to pure motives. The cheat, the defaulter, the +gambler, cannot extort the knowledge of material and moral +nature which his honest care and pains yield to the operative. +The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall have the +Power; but they who do not the thing have not the power. + +Human labor, through all its forms, from the sharpening +of a stake to the construction of a city or an epic, is +one immense illustration of the perfect compensation of +the universe. The absolute balance of Give and Take, the +doctrine that every thing has its price,--and if that +price is not paid, not that thing but something else is +obtained, and that it is impossible to get any thing +without its price,--is not less sublime in the columns +of a leger than in the budgets of states, in the laws of +light and darkness, in all the action and reaction of +nature. I cannot doubt that the high laws which each man +sees implicated in those processes with which he is +conversant, the stern ethics which sparkle on his chisel- +edge, which are measured out by his plumb and foot-rule, +which stand as manifest in the footing of the shop-bill +as in the history of a state,--do recommend to him his +trade, and though seldom named, exalt his business to his +imagination. + +The league between virtue and nature engages all things +to assume a hostile front to vice. The beautiful laws and +substances of the world persecute and whip the traitor. +He finds that things are arranged for truth and benefit, +but there is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. +Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. Commit a +crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, +such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge +and fox and squirrel and mole. You cannot recall the spoken +word, you cannot wipe out the foot-track, you cannot draw +up the ladder, so as to leave no inlet or clew. Some +damning circumstance always transpires. The laws and +substances of nature,--water, snow, wind, gravitation,-- +become penalties to the thief. + +On the other hand the law holds with equal sureness for +all right action. Love, and you shall be loved. All love +is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an +algebraic equation. The good man has absolute good, which +like fire turns every thing to its own nature, so that you +cannot do him any harm; but as the royal armies sent against +Napoleon, when he approached cast down their colors and from +enemies became friends, so disasters of all kinds, as +sickness, offence, poverty, prove benefactors:-- + + "Winds blow and waters roll + Strength to the brave, and power and deity, + Yet in themselves are nothing." + +The good are befriended even by weakness and defect. As no +man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him, +so no man had ever a defect that was not somewhere made +useful to him. The stag in the fable admired his horns and +blamed his feet, but when the hunter came, his feet saved +him, and afterwards, caught in the thicket, his horns +destroyed him. Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his +faults. As no man thoroughly understands a truth until he +has contended against it, so no man has a thorough acquaintance +with the hindrances or talents of men until he has suffered +from the one and seen the triumph of the other over his own +want of the same. Has he a defect of temper that unfits him +to live in society? Thereby he is driven to entertain himself +alone and acquire habits of self-help; and thus, like the +wounded oyster, he mends his shell with pearl. + +Our strength grows out of our weakness. The indignation +which arms itself with secret forces does not awaken +until we are pricked and stung and sorely assailed. A +great man is always willing to be little. Whilst he sits +on the cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep. When he +is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn +something; he has been put on his wits, on his manhood; +he has gained facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of +the insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real +skill. The wise man throws himself on the side of his +assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs +to find his weak point. The wound cicatrizes and falls +off from him like a dead skin and when they would triumph, +lo! he has passed on invulnerable. Blame is safer than +praise. I hate to be defended in a newspaper. As long as +all that is said is said against me, I feel a certain +assurance of success. But as soon as honeyed words of +praise are spoken for me I feel as one that lies +unprotected before his enemies. In general, every evil +to which we do not succumb is a benefactor. As the Sandwich +Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy +he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the +temptation we resist. + +The same guards which protect us from disaster, defect, +and enmity, defend us, if we will, from selfishness and +fraud. Bolts and bars are not the best of our institutions, +nor is shrewdness in trade a mark of wisdom. Men suffer +all their life long under the foolish superstition that +they can be cheated. But it is as impossible for a man +to be cheated by any one but himself, as for a thing to +be and not to be at the same time. There is a third silent +party to all our bargains. The nature and soul of things +takes on itself the guaranty of the fulfilment of every +contract, so that honest service cannot come to loss. If +you serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. Put +God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer +The payment is withholden, the better for you; for compound +interest on compound interest is the rate and usage of this +exchequer. + +The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to +cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope +of sand. It makes no difference whether the actors be many +or one, a tyrant or a mob. A mob is a society of bodies +voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason and traversing +its work. The mob is man voluntarily descending to the +nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. +Its actions are insane like its whole constitution. It +persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would +tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage +upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It +resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to +put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars. The +inviolate spirit turns their spite against the wrongdoers. +The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a +tongue of fame; every prison, a more illustrious abode; +every burned book or house enlightens the world; every +suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth +from side to side. Hours of sanity and consideration are +always arriving to communities, as to individuals, when the +truth is seen and the martyrs are justified. + +Thus do all things preach the indifferency of circumstances. +The man is all. Every thing has two sides, a good and an +evil. Every advantage has its tax. I learn to be content. +But the doctrine of compensation is not the doctrine of +indifferency. The thoughtless say, on hearing these +representations,--What boots it to do well? there is one +event to good and evil; if I gain any good I must pay for +it; if I lose any good I gain some other; all actions are +indifferent. + +There is a deeper fact in the soul than compensation, to +wit, its own nature. The soul is not a compensation, but +a life. The soul is. Under all this running sea of +circumstance, whose waters ebb and flow with perfect +balance, lies the aboriginal abyss of real Being. Essence, +or God, is not a relation or a part, but the whole. Being +is the vast affirmative, excluding negation, self-balanced, +and swallowing up all relations, parts and times within +itself. Nature, truth, virtue, are the influx from thence. +Vice is the absence or departure of the same. Nothing, +Falsehood, may indeed stand as the great Night or shade on +which as a background the living universe paints itself +forth, but no fact is begotten by it; it cannot work, for +it is not. It cannot work any good; it cannot work any harm. +It is harm inasmuch as it is worse not to be than to be. + +We feel defrauded of the retribution due to evil acts, +because the criminal adheres to his vice and contumacy +and does not come to a crisis or judgment anywhere in +visible nature. There is no stunning confutation of his +nonsense before men and angels. Has he therefore outwitted +the law? Inasmuch as he carries the malignity and the lie +with him he so far deceases from nature. In some manner +there will be a demonstration of the wrong to the +understanding also; but, should we not see it, this deadly +deduction makes square the eternal account. + +Neither can it be said, on the other hand, that the gain +of rectitude must be bought by any loss. There is no +penalty to virtue; no penalty to wisdom; they are proper +additions of being. In a virtuous action I properly am; +in a virtuous act I add to the world; I plant into deserts +conquered from Chaos and Nothing and see the darkness +receding on the limits of the horizon. There can be no +excess to love, none to knowledge, none to beauty, when +these attributes are considered in the purest sense. The +soul refuses limits, and always affirms an Optimism, never +a Pessimism. + +His life is a progress, and not a station. His instinct is +trust. Our instinct uses "more" and "less" in application +to man, of the presence of the soul, and not of its absence, +the brave man is greater than the coward; the true, the +benevolent, the wise, is more a man and not less, than the +fool and knave. There is no tax on the good of virtue, for +that is the incoming of God himself, or absolute existence, +without any comparative. Material good has its tax, and if +it came without desert or sweat, has no root in me, and the +next wind will blow it away. But all the good of nature is +the soul's, and may be had if paid for in nature's lawful +coin, that is, by labor which the heart and the head allow. +I no longer wish to meet a good I do not earn, for example +to find a pot of buried gold, knowing that it brings with it +new burdens. I do not wish more external goods,--neither +possessions, nor honors, nor powers, nor persons. The gain +is apparent; the tax is certain. But there is no tax on the +knowledge that the compensation exists and that it is not +desirable to dig up treasure. Herein I rejoice with a serene +eternal peace. I contract the boundaries of possible mischief. +I learn the wisdom of St. Bernard,--"Nothing can work me +damage except myself; the harm that I sustain I carry about +with me, and never am a real sufferer but by my own fault." + +In the nature of the soul is the compensation for the +inequalities of condition. The radical tragedy of nature +seems to be the distinction of More and Less. How can +Less not feel the pain; how not feel indignation or +malevolence towards More? Look at those who have less +faculty, and one feels sad and knows not well what to +make of it. He almost shuns their eye; he fears they will +upbraid God. What should they do? It seems a great injustice. +But see the facts nearly and these mountainous inequalities +vanish. Love reduces them as the sun melts the iceberg in +the sea. The heart and soul of all men being one, this +bitterness of His and Mine ceases. His is mine. I am my +brother and my brother is me. If I feel overshadowed and +outdone by great neighbors, I can yet love; I can still +receive; and he that loveth maketh his own the grandeur +he loves. Thereby I make the discovery that my brother is +my guardian, acting for me with the friendliest designs, +and the estate I so admired and envied is my own. It is +the nature of the soul to appropriate all things. Jesus +and Shakspeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I +conquer and incorporate them in my own conscious domain. +His virtue,--is not that mine? His wit,--if it cannot be +made mine, it is not wit. + +Such also is the natural history of calamity. The changes +which break up at short intervals the prosperity of men +are advertisements of a nature whose law is growth. Every +soul is by this intrinsic necessity quitting its whole +system of things, its friends and home and laws and faith, +as the shell-fish crawls out of its beautiful but stony +case, because it no longer admits of its growth, and slowly +forms a new house. In proportion to the vigor of the +individual these revolutions are frequent, until in some +happier mind they are incessant and all worldly relations +hang very loosely about him, becoming as it were a +transparent fluid membrane through which the living form +is seen, and not, as in most men, an indurated heterogeneous +fabric of many dates and of no settled character, in which +the man is imprisoned. Then there can be enlargement, and +the man of to-day scarcely recognizes the man of yesterday. +And such should be the outward biography of man in time, a +putting off of dead circumstances day by day, as he renews +his raiment day by day. But to us, in our lapsed estate, +resting, not advancing, resisting, not cooperating with the +divine expansion, this growth comes by shocks. + +We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels +go. We do not see that they only go out that archangels +may come in. We are idolaters of the old. We do not believe +in the riches of the soul, in its proper eternity and +omnipresence. We do not believe there is any force in +to-day to rival or recreate that beautiful yesterday. We +linger in the ruins of the old tent where once we had bread +and shelter and organs, nor believe that the spirit can +feed, cover, and nerve us again. We cannot again find aught +so dear, so sweet, so graceful. But we sit and weep in vain. +The voice of the Almighty saith, 'Up and onward for evermore!' +We cannot stay amid the ruins. Neither will we rely on the +new; and so we walk ever with reverted eyes, like those +monsters who look backwards. + +And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent +to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. +A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of +wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid +loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep +remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a +dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing +but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a +guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in +our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of +youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted +occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows +the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of +character. It permits or constrains the formation of new +acquaintances and the reception of new influences that +prove of the first importance to the next years; and the +man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden-flower, +with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its +head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the +gardener is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade +and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men. + + + + +SPIRITUAL LAWS. + +The living Heaven thy prayers respect, +House at once and architect, +Quarrying man's rejected hours, +Builds therewith eternal towers; +Sole and self-commanded works, +Fears not undermining days, +Grows by decays, +And, by the famous might that lurks +In reaction and recoil, +Makes flame to freeze, and ice to boil; +Forging, through swart arms of Offence, +The silver seat of Innocence. + +IV +SPIRITUAL LAWS. + +When the act of reflection takes place in the mind, +when we look at ourselves in the light of thought, we +discover that our life is embosomed in beauty. Behind +us, as we go, all things assume pleasing forms, as +clouds do far off. Not only things familiar and stale, +but even the tragic and terrible are comely as they +take their place in the pictures of memory. The river- +bank, the weed at the water-side, the old house, the +foolish person, however neglected in the passing, have +a grace in the past. Even the corpse that has lain in +the chambers has added a solemn ornament to the house. +The soul will not know either deformity or pain. If in +the hours of clear reason we should speak the severest +truth, we should say that we had never made a sacrifice. +In these hours the mind seems so great that nothing can +be taken from us that seems much. All loss, all pain, is +particular; the universe remains to the heart unhurt. +Neither vexations nor calamities abate our trust. No man +ever stated his griefs as lightly as he might. Allow for +exaggeration in the most patient and sorely ridden hack +that ever was driven. For it is only the finite that has +wrought and suffered; the infinite lies stretched in +smiling repose. + +The intellectual life may be kept clean and healthful if +man will live the life of nature and not import into his +mind difficulties which are none of his. No man need be +perplexed in his speculations. Let him do and say what +strictly belongs to him, and though very ignorant of +books, his nature shall not yield him any intellectual +obstructions and doubts. Our young people are diseased +with the theological problems of original sin, origin of +evil, predestination and the like. These never presented +a practical difficulty to any man,--never darkened across +any man's road who did not go out of his way to seek them. +These are the soul's mumps and measles and whooping-coughs, +and those who have not caught them cannot describe their +health or prescribe the cure. A simple mind will not know +these enemies. It is quite another thing that he should be +able to give account of his faith and expound to another +the theory of his self-union and freedom. This requires +rare gifts. Yet without this self-knowledge there may be +a sylvan strength and integrity in that which he is. "A +few strong instincts and a few plain rules" suffice us. + +My will never gave the images in my mind the rank they +now take. The regular course of studies, the years of +academical and professional education have not yielded +me better facts than some idle books under the bench at +the Latin School. What we do not call education is more +precious than that which we call so. We form no guess, +at the time of receiving a thought, of its comparative +value. And education often wastes its effort in attempts +to thwart and balk this natural magnetism, which is sure +to select what belongs to it. + +In like manner our moral nature is vitiated by any +interference of our will. People represent virtue as a +struggle, and take to themselves great airs upon their +attainments, and the question is everywhere vexed when +a noble nature is commended, whether the man is not +better who strives with temptation. But there is no +merit in the matter. Either God is there or he is not +there. We love characters in proportion as they are +impulsive and spontaneous. The less a man thinks or +knows about his virtues the better we like him. +Timoleon's victories are the best victories, which ran +and flowed like Homer's verses, Plutarch said. When we +see a soul whose acts are all regal, graceful and pleasant +as roses, we must thank God that such things can be and +are, and not turn sourly on the angel and say 'Crump is +a better man with his grunting resistance to all his +native devils.' + +Not less conspicuous is the preponderance of nature over +will in all practical life. There is less intention in +history than we ascribe to it. We impute deep-laid far- +sighted plans to Caesar and Napoleon; but the best of +their power was in nature, not in them. Men of an +extraordinary success, in their honest moments, have +always sung, 'Not unto us, not unto us.' According to +the faith of their times they have built altars to +Fortune, or to Destiny, or to St. Julian. Their success +lay in their parallelism to the course of thought, which +found in them an unobstructed channel; and the wonders +of which they were the visible conductors seemed to the +eye their deed. Did the wires generate the galvanism? It +is even true that there was less in them on which they +could reflect than in another; as the virtue of a pipe +is to be smooth and hollow. That which externally seemed +will and immovableness was willingness and self-annihilation. +Could Shakspeare give a theory of Shakspeare? Could ever a +man of prodigious mathematical genius convey to others any +insight into his methods? If he could communicate that +secret it would instantly lose its exaggerated value, +blending with the daylight and the vital energy the +power to stand and to go. + +The lesson is forcibly taught by these observations that +our life might be much easier and simpler than we make +it; that the world might be a happier place than it is; +that there is no need of struggles, convulsions, and +despairs, of the wringing of the hands and the gnashing +of the teeth; that we miscreate our own evils. We interfere +with the optimism of nature; for whenever we get this +vantage-ground of the past, or of a wiser mind in the +present, we are able to discern that we are begirt with +laws which execute themselves. + +The face of external nature teaches the same lesson. +Nature will not have us fret and fume. She does not +like our benevolence or our learning much better than +she likes our frauds and wars. When we come out of the +caucus, or the bank, or the Abolition-convention, or +the Temperance-meeting, or the Transcendental club into +the fields and woods, she says to us, 'So hot? my little +Sir.' + +We are full of mechanical actions. We must needs +intermeddle and have things in our own way, until the +sacrifices and virtues of society are odious. Love +should make joy; but our benevolence is unhappy. Our +Sunday-schools and churches and pauper-societies are +yokes to the neck. We pain ourselves to please nobody. +There are natural ways of arriving at the same ends at +which these aim, but do not arrive. Why should all +virtue work in one and the same way? Why should all give +dollars? It is very inconvenient to us country folk, and +we do not think any good will come of it. We have not +dollars; merchants have; let them give them. Farmers will +give corn; poets will sing; women will sew; laborers will +lend a hand; the children will bring flowers. And why drag +this dead weight of a Sunday-school over the whole +Christendom? It is natural and beautiful that childhood +should inquire and maturity should teach; but it is time +enough to answer questions when they are asked. Do not +shut up the young people against their will in a pew and +force the children to ask them questions for an hour +against their will. + +If we look wider, things are all alike; laws and letters +and creeds and modes of living seem a travesty of truth. +Our society is encumbered by ponderous machinery, which +resembles the endless aqueducts which the Romans built +over hill and dale and which are superseded by the +discovery of the law that water rises to the level of +its source. It is a Chinese wall which any nimble Tartar +can leap over. It is a standing army, not so good as a +peace. It is a graduated, titled, richly appointed empire, +quite superfluous when town-meetings are found to answer +just as well. + +Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by +short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls. When the +fruit is despatched, the leaf falls. The circuit of the +waters is mere falling. The walking of man and all animals +is a falling forward. All our manual labor and works of +strength, as prying, splitting, digging, rowing and so +forth, are done by dint of continual falling, and the +globe, earth, moon, comet, sun, star, fall for ever and ever. + +The simplicity of the universe is very different from +the simplicity of a machine. He who sees moral nature +out and out and thoroughly knows how knowledge is acquired +and character formed, is a pedant. The simplicity of nature +is not that which may easily be read, but is inexhaustible. +The last analysis can no wise be made. We judge of a man's +wisdom by his hope, knowing that the perception of the +inexhaustibleness of nature is an immortal youth. The wild +fertility of nature is felt in comparing our rigid names +and reputations with our fluid consciousness. We pass in +the world for sects and schools, for erudition and piety, +and we are all the time jejune babes. One sees very well +how Pyrrhonism grew up. Every man sees that he is that +middle point whereof every thing may be affirmed and denied +with equal reason. He is old, he is young, he is very wise, +he is altogether ignorant. He hears and feels what you say +of the seraphim, and of the tin-peddler. There is no +permanent wise man except in the figment of the Stoics. We +side with the hero, as we read or paint, against the coward +and the robber; but we have been ourselves that coward and +robber, and shall be again,--not in the low circumstance, +but in comparison with the grandeurs possible to the soul. + +A little consideration of what takes place around us +every day would show us that a higher law than that +of our will regulates events; that our painful labors +are unnecessary and fruitless; that only in our easy, +simple, spontaneous action are we strong, and by +contenting ourselves with obedience we become divine. +Belief and love,--a believing love will relieve us of +a vast load of care. O my brothers, God exists. There +is a soul at the centre of nature and over the will of +every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe. +It has so infused its strong enchantment into nature +that we prosper when we accept its advice, and when we +struggle to wound its creatures our hands are glued to +our sides, or they beat our own breasts. The whole course +of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. +There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening +we shall hear the right word. Why need you choose so +painfully your place and occupation and associates and +modes of action and of entertainment? Certainly there is +a possible right for you that precludes the need of +balance and wilful election. For you there is a reality, +a fit place and congenial duties. Place yourself in the +middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates +all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled +to truth, to right and a perfect contentment. Then you +put all gainsayers in the wrong. Then you are the world, +the measure of right, of truth, of beauty. If we will not +be mar-plots with our miserable interferences, the work, +the society, letters, arts, science, religion of men would +go on far better than now, and the heaven predicted from +the beginning of the world, and still predicted from the +bottom of the heart, would organize itself, as do now the +rose and the air and the sun. + +I say, do not choose; but that is a figure of speech +by which I would distinguish what is commonly called +choice among men, and which is a partial act, the +choice of the hands, of the eyes, of the appetites, +and not a whole act of the man. But that which I call +right or goodness, is the choice of my constitution; +and that which I call heaven, and inwardly aspire after, +is the state or circumstance desirable to my constitution; +and the action which I in all my years tend to do, is the +work for my faculties. We must hold a man amenable to +reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. +It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they +are the custom of his trade. What business has he with +an evil trade? Has he not a calling in his character? + +Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. +There is one direction in which all space is open to +him. He has faculties silently inviting him thither +to endless exertion. He is like a ship in a river; he +runs against obstructions on every side but one, on +that side all obstruction is taken away and he sweeps +serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea. +This talent and this call depend on his organization, +or the mode in which the general soul incarnates itself +in him. He inclines to do something which is easy to him +and good when it is done, but which no other man can do. +He has no rival. For the more truly he consults his own +powers, the more difference will his work exhibit from +the work of any other. His ambition is exactly proportioned +to his powers. The height of the pinnacle is determined by +the breadth of the base. Every man has this call of the +power to do somewhat unique, and no man has any other call. +The pretence that he has another call, a summons by name +and personal election and outward "signs that mark him +extraordinary, and not in the roll of common men," is +fanaticism, and betrays obtuseness to perceive that there +is one mind in all the individuals, and no respect of +persons therein. + +By doing his work he makes the need felt which he can +supply, and creates the taste by which he is enjoyed. +By doing his own work he unfolds himself. It is the +vice of our public speaking that it has not abandonment. +Somewhere, not only every orator but every man should +let out all the length of all the reins; should find or +make a frank and hearty expression of what force and +meaning is in him. The common experience is that the +man fits himself as well as he can to the customary +details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends +it as a dog turns a spit. Then is he a part of the +machine he moves; the man is lost. Until he can manage +to communicate himself to others in his full stature +and proportion, he does not yet find his vocation. He +must find in that an outlet for his character, so that +he may justify his work to their eyes. If the labor is +mean, let him by his thinking and character make it +liberal. Whatever he knows and thinks, whatever in his +apprehension is worth doing, that let him communicate, +or men will never know and honor him aright. Foolish, +whenever you take the meanness and formality of that +thing you do, instead of converting it into the obedient +spiracle of your character and aims. + +We like only such actions as have already long had the +praise of men, and do not perceive that any thing man +can do may be divinely done. We think greatness entailed +or organized in some places or duties, in certain offices +or occasions, and do not see that Paganini can extract +rapture from a catgut, and Eulenstein from a jews-harp, +and a nimble-fingered lad out of shreds of paper with his +scissors, and Landseer out of swine, and the hero out of +the pitiful habitation and company in which he was hidden. +What we call obscure condition or vulgar society is that +condition and society whose poetry is not yet written, but +which you shall presently make as enviable and renowned as +any. In our estimates let us take a lesson from kings. The +parts of hospitality, the connection of families, the +impressiveness of death, and a thousand other things, +royalty makes its own estimate of, and a royal mind will. +To make habitually a new estimate,--that is elevation. + +What a man does, that he has. What has he to do with +hope or fear? In himself is his might. Let him regard +no good as solid but that which is in his nature and +which must grow out of him as long as he exists. The +goods of fortune may come and go like summer leaves; +let him scatter them on every wind as the momentary +signs of his infinite productiveness. + +He may have his own. A man's genius, the quality that +differences him from every other, the susceptibility +to one class of influences, the selection of what is +fit for him, the rejection of what is unfit, determines +for him the character of the universe. A man is a method, +a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, +gathering his like to him wherever he goes. He takes only +his own out of the multiplicity that sweeps and circles +round him. He is like one of those booms which are set +out from the shore on rivers to catch drift-wood, or like +the loadstone amongst splinters of steel. Those facts, +words, persons, which dwell in his memory without his +being able to say why, remain because they have a relation +to him not less real for being as yet unapprehended. They +are symbols of value to him as they can interpret parts +of his consciousness which he would vainly seek words for +in the conventional images of books and other minds. What +attracts my attention shall have it, as I will go to the +man who knocks at my door, whilst a thousand persons as +worthy go by it, to whom I give no regard. It is enough +that these particulars speak to me. A few anecdotes, a +few traits of character, manners, face, a few incidents, +have an emphasis in your memory out of all proportion to +their apparent significance if you measure them by the +ordinary standards. They relate to your gift. Let them +have their weight, and do not reject them and cast about +for illustration and facts more usual in literature. What +your heart thinks great is great. The soul's emphasis is +always right. + +Over all things that are agreeable to his nature and +genius the man has the highest right. Everywhere he +may take what belongs to his spiritual estate, nor can +he take any thing else though all doors were open, nor +can all the force of men hinder him from taking so much. +It is vain to attempt to keep a secret from one who has +a right to know it. It will tell itself. That mood into +which a friend can bring us is his dominion over us. To +the thoughts of that state of mind he has a right. All +the secrets of that state of mind he can compel. This is +a law which statesmen use in practice. All the terrors +of the French Republic, which held Austria in awe, were +unable to command her diplomacy. But Napoleon sent to +Vienna M. de Narbonne, one of the old noblesse, with the +morals, manners and name of that interest, saying that it +was indispensable to send to the old aristocracy of Europe +men of the same connection, which, in fact, constitutes a +sort of free-masonry. M. de Narbonne in less than a +fortnight penetrated all the secrets of the imperial +cabinet. + +Nothing seems so easy as to speak and to be understood. +Yet a man may come to find that the strongest of defences +and of ties,--that he has been understood; and he who +has received an opinion may come to find it the most +inconvenient of bonds. + +If a teacher have any opinion which he wishes to conceal, +his pupils will become as fully indoctrinated into that +as into any which he publishes. If you pour water into +a vessel twisted into coils and angles, it is vain to +say, I will pour it only into this or that;--it will find +its level in all. Men feel and act the consequences of +your doctrine without being able to show how they follow. +Show us an arc of the curve, and a good mathematician will +find out the whole figure. We are always reasoning from +the seen to the unseen. Hence the perfect intelligence +that subsists between wise men of remote ages. A man +cannot bury his meanings so deep in his book but time and +like-minded men will find them. Plato had a secret doctrine, +had he? What secret can he conceal from the eyes of Bacon? +of Montaigne? of Kant? Therefore, Aristotle said of his +works, "They are published and not published." + +No man can learn what he has not preparation for learning, +however near to his eyes is the object. A chemist may +tell his most precious secrets to a carpenter, and he +shall be never the wiser,--the secrets he would not utter +to a chemist for an estate. God screens us evermore from +premature ideas. Our eyes are holden that we cannot see +things that stare us in the face, until the hour arrives +when the mind is ripened; then we behold them, and the +time when we saw them not is like a dream. + +Not in nature but in man is all the beauty and worth +he sees. The world is very empty, and is indebted to +this gilding, exalting soul for all its pride. "Earth +fills her lap with splendors" not her own. The vale of +Tempe, Tivoli and Rome are earth and water, rocks and +sky. There are as good earth and water in a thousand +places, yet how unaffecting! + +People are not the better for the sun and moon, the +horizon and the trees; as it is not observed that the +keepers of Roman galleries or the valets of painters +have any elevation of thought, or that librarians are +wiser men than others. There are graces in the demeanor +of a polished and noble person which are lost upon the +eye of a churl. These are like the stars whose light has +not yet reached us. + +He may see what he maketh. Our dreams are the sequel of +our waking knowledge. The visions of the night bear some +proportion to the visions of the day. Hideous dreams are +exaggerations of the sins of the day. We see our evil +affections embodied in bad physiognomies. On the Alps +the traveller sometimes beholds his own shadow magnified +to a giant, so that every gesture of his hand is terrific. +"My children," said an old man to his boys scared by a +figure in the dark entry, "my children, you will never +see any thing worse than yourselves." As in dreams, so in +the scarcely less fluid events of the world every man sees +himself in colossal, without knowing that it is himself. +The good, compared to the evil which he sees, is as his +own good to his own evil. Every quality of his mind is +magnified in some one acquaintance, and every emotion of +his heart in some one. He is like a quincunx of trees, +which counts five,--east, west, north, or south; or an +initial, medial, and terminal acrostic. And why not? He +cleaves to one person and avoids another, according to +their likeness or unlikeness to himself, truly seeking +himself in his associates and moreover in his trade and +habits and gestures and meats and drinks, and comes at +last to be faithfully represented by every view you take +of his circumstances. + +He may read what he writes. What can we see or acquire +but what we are? You have observed a skilful man reading +Virgil. Well, that author is a thousand books to a +thousand persons. Take the book into your two hands and +read your eyes out, you will never find what I find. If +any ingenious reader would have a monopoly of the wisdom +or delight he gets, he is as secure now the book is +Englished, as if it were imprisoned in the Pelews' tongue. +It is with a good book as it is with good company. Introduce +a base person among gentlemen, it is all to no purpose; he +is not their fellow. Every society protects itself. The +company is perfectly safe, and he is not one of them, +though his body is in the room. + +What avails it to fight with the eternal laws of mind, +which adjust the relation of all persons to each other +by the mathematical measure of their havings and beings? +Gertrude is enamored of Guy; how high, how aristocratic, +how Roman his mien and manners! to live with him were +life indeed, and no purchase is too great; and heaven and +earth are moved to that end. Well, Gertrude has Guy; but +what now avails how high, how aristocratic, how Roman his +mien and manners, if his heart and aims are in the senate, +in the theatre and in the billiard-room, and she has no +aims, no conversation that can enchant her graceful lord? + +He shall have his own society. We can love nothing but +nature. The most wonderful talents, the most meritorious +exertions really avail very little with us; but nearness +or likeness of nature,--how beautiful is the ease of its +victory! Persons approach us, famous for their beauty, +for their accomplishments, worthy of all wonder for their +charms and gifts; they dedicate their whole skill to the +hour and the company,--with very imperfect result. To be +sure it would be ungrateful in us not to praise them +loudly. Then, when all is done, a person of related mind, +a brother or sister by nature, comes to us so softly and +easily, so nearly and intimately, as if it were the blood +in our proper veins, that we feel as if some one was gone, +instead of another having come; we are utterly relieved +and refreshed; it is a sort of joyful solitude. We foolishly +think in our days of sin that we must court friends by +compliance to the customs of society, to its dress, its +breeding, and its estimates. But only that soul can be my +friend which I encounter on the line of my own march, that +soul to which I do not decline and which does not decline +to me, but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats +in its own all my experience. The scholar forgets himself +and apes the customs and costumes of the man of the world +to deserve the smile of beauty, and follows some giddy +girl, not yet taught by religious passion to know the noble +woman with all that is serene, oracular and beautiful in her +soul. Let him be great, and love shall follow him. Nothing +is more deeply punished than the neglect of the affinities +by which alone society should be formed, and the insane +levity of choosing associates by others' eyes. + +He may set his own rate. It is a maxim worthy of all +acceptation that a man may have that allowance he takes. +Take the place and attitude which belong to you, and all +men acquiesce. The world must be just. It leaves every +man, with profound unconcern, to set his own rate. Hero +or driveller, it meddles not in the matter. It will +certainly accept your own measure of your doing and being, +whether you sneak about and deny your own name, or whether +you see your work produced to the concave sphere of the +heavens, one with the revolution of the stars. + +The same reality pervades all teaching. The man may +teach by doing, and not otherwise. If he can communicate +himself he can teach, but not by words. He teaches who +gives, and he learns who receives. There is no teaching +until the pupil is brought into the same state or +principle in which you are; a transfusion takes place; +he is you and you are he; then is a teaching, and by no +unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever quite lose +the benefit. But your propositions run out of one ear +as they ran in at the other. We see it advertised that +Mr. Grand will deliver an oration on the Fourth of July, +and Mr. Hand before the Mechanics' Association, and we +do not go thither, because we know that these gentlemen +will not communicate their own character and experience +to the company. If we had reason to expect such a +confidence we should go through all inconvenience and +opposition. The sick would be carried in litters. But +a public oration is an escapade, a non-committal, an +apology, a gag, and not a communication, not a speech, +not a man. + +A like Nemesis presides over all intellectual works. We +have yet to learn that the thing uttered in words is +not therefore affirmed. It must affirm itself, or no +forms of logic or of oath can give it evidence. The +sentence must also contain its own apology for being +spoken. + +The effect of any writing on the public mind is +mathematically measurable by its depth of thought. How +much water does it draw? If it awaken you to think, if +it lift you from your feet with the great voice of +eloquence, then the effect is to be wide, slow, permanent, +over the minds of men; if the pages instruct you not, +they will die like flies in the hour. The way to speak +and write what shall not go out of fashion is to speak +and write sincerely. The argument which has not power +to reach my own practice, I may well doubt will fail +to reach yours. But take Sidney's maxim:--"Look in thy +heart, and write." He that writes to himself writes to +an eternal public. That statement only is fit to be made +public which you have come at in attempting to satisfy +your own curiosity. The writer who takes his subject from +his ear and not from his heart, should know that he has +lost as much as he seems to have gained, and when the +empty book has gathered all its praise, and half the +people say, 'What poetry! what genius!' it still needs +fuel to make fire. That only profits which is profitable. +Life alone can impart life; and though we should burst we +can only be valued as we make ourselves valuable. There +is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the +final verdict upon every book are not the partial and +noisy readers of the hour when it appears, but a court as +of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated +and not to be overawed, decides upon every man's title to +fame. Only those books come down which deserve to last. +Gilt edges, vellum and morocco, and presentation-copies +to all the libraries will not preserve a book in circulation +beyond its intrinsic date. It must go with all Walpole's +Noble and Royal Authors to its fate. Blackmore, Kotzebue, +or Pollok may endure for a night, but Moses and Homer stand +for ever. There are not in the world at any one time more +than a dozen persons who read and understand Plato,--never +enough to pay for an edition of his works; yet to every +generation these come duly down, for the sake of those few +persons, as if God brought them in his hand. "No book," said +Bentley, "was ever written down by any but itself." The +permanence of all books is fixed by no effort, friendly or +hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or the intrinsic +importance of their contents to the constant mind of man. +"Do not trouble yourself too much about the light on your +statue," said Michael Angelo to the young sculptor; "the +light of the public square will test its value." + +In like manner the effect of every action is measured +by the depth of the sentiment from which it proceeds. +The great man knew not that he was great. It took a +century or two for that fact to appear. What he did, +he did because he must; it was the most natural thing +in the world, and grew out of the circumstances of the +moment. But now, every thing he did, even to the lifting +of his finger or the eating of bread, looks large, all- +related, and is called an institution. + +These are the demonstrations in a few particulars of +the genius of nature; they show the direction of the +stream. But the stream is blood; every drop is alive. +Truth has not single victories; all things are its +organs,--not only dust and stones, but errors and lies. +The laws of disease, physicians say, are as beautiful +as the laws of health. Our philosophy is affirmative +and readily accepts the testimony of negative facts, as +every shadow points to the sun. By a divine necessity +every fact in nature is constrained to offer its testimony. + +Human character evermore publishes itself. The most +fugitive deed and word, the mere air of doing a thing, +the intimated purpose, expresses character. If you act +you show character; if you sit still, if you sleep, you +show it. You think because you have spoken nothing when +others spoke, and have given no opinion on the times, +on the church, on slavery, on marriage, on socialism, +on secret societies, on the college, on parties and +persons, that your verdict is still expected with +curiosity as a reserved wisdom. Far otherwise; your +silence answers very loud. You have no oracle to utter, +and your fellow-men have learned that you cannot help +them; for oracles speak. Doth not Wisdom cry and +Understanding put forth her voice? + +Dreadful limits are set in nature to the powers of +dissimulation. Truth tyrannizes over the unwilling +members of the body. Faces never lie, it is said. No +man need be deceived who will study the changes of +expression. When a man speaks the truth in the spirit +of truth, his eye is as clear as the heavens. When he +has base ends and speaks falsely, the eye is muddy and +sometimes asquint. + +I have heard an experienced counsellor say that he +never feared the effect upon a jury of a lawyer who +does not believe in his heart that his client ought +to have a verdict. If he does not believe it his +unbelief will appear to the jury, despite all his +protestations, and will become their unbelief. This +is that law whereby a work of art, of whatever kind, +sets us in the same state of mind wherein the artist +was when he made it. That which we do not believe we +cannot adequately say, though we may repeat the words +never so often. It was this conviction which Swedenborg +expressed when he described a group of persons in the +spiritual world endeavoring in vain to articulate a +proposition which they did not believe; but they could +not, though they twisted and folded their lips even to +indignation. + +A man passes for that he is worth. Very idle is all +curiosity concerning other people's estimate of us, +and all fear of remaining unknown is not less so. If +a man know that he can do any thing,--that he can do +it better than any one else,--he has a pledge of the +acknowledgment of that fact by all persons. The world +is full of judgment-days, and into every assembly that +a man enters, in every action he attempts, he is gauged +and stamped. In every troop of boys that whoop and run +in each yard and square, a new-comer is as well and +accurately weighed in the course of a few days and +stamped with his right number, as if he had undergone +a formal trial of his strength, speed and temper. A +stranger comes from a distant school, with better dress, +with trinkets in his pockets, with airs and pretensions; +an older boy says to himself, 'It's of no use; we shall +find him out to-morrow.' 'What has he done?' is the divine +question which searches men and transpierces every false +reputation. A fop may sit in any chair of the world nor +be distinguished for his hour from Homer and Washington; +but there need never be any doubt concerning the respective +ability of human beings. Pretension may sit still, but +cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real +greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nor drove back +Xerxes, nor christianized the world, nor abolished slavery. + +As much virtue as there is, so much appears; as much +goodness as there is, so much reverence it commands. +All the devils respect virtue. The high, the generous, +the self-devoted sect will always instruct and command +mankind. Never was a sincere word utterly lost. Never a +magnanimity fell to the ground, but there is some heart +to greet and accept it unexpectedly. A man passes for +that he is worth. What he is engraves itself on his face, +on his form, on his fortunes, in letters of light. +Concealment avails him nothing, boasting nothing. There +is confession in the glances of our eyes, in our smiles, +in salutations, and the grasp of hands. His sin bedaubs +him, mars all his good impression. Men know not why they +do not trust him, but they do not trust him. His vice +glasses his eye, cuts lines of mean expression in his +cheek, pinches the nose, sets the mark of the beast on +the back of the head, and writes O fool! fool! on the +forehead of a king. + +If you would not be known to do any thing, never do it. +A man may play the fool in the drifts of a desert, but +every grain of sand shall seem to see. He may be a +solitary eater, but he cannot keep his foolish counsel. +A broken complexion, a swinish look, ungenerous acts +and the want of due knowledge,--all blab. Can a cook, a +Chiffinch, an Iachimo be mistaken for Zeno or Paul? +Confucius exclaimed,--"How can a man be concealed? How +can a man be concealed?" + +On the other hand, the hero fears not that if he +withhold the avowal of a just and brave act it will +go unwitnessed and unloved. One knows it,--himself, +--and is pledged by it to sweetness of peace and to +nobleness of aim which will prove in the end a better +proclamation of it than the relating of the incident. +Virtue is the adherence in action to the nature of +things, and the nature of things makes it prevalent. +It consists in a perpetual substitution of being for +seeming, and with sublime propriety God is described +as saying, I AM. + +The lesson which these observations convey is, Be, and +not seem. Let us acquiesce. Let us take our bloated +nothingness out of the path of the divine circuits. Let +us unlearn our wisdom of the world. Let us lie low in +the Lord's power and learn that truth alone makes rich +and great. + +If you visit your friend, why need you apologize for +not having visited him, and waste his time and deface +your own act? Visit him now. Let him feel that the +highest love has come to see him, in thee its lowest +organ. Or why need you torment yourself and friend by +secret self-reproaches that you have not assisted him +or complimented him with gifts and salutations heretofore? +Be a gift and a benediction. Shine with real light and not +with the borrowed reflection of gifts. Common men are +apologies for men; they bow the head, excuse themselves +with prolix reasons, and accumulate appearances because +the substance is not. + +We are full of these superstitions of sense, the worship +of magnitude. We call the poet inactive, because he is +not a president, a merchant, or a porter. We adore an +institution, and do not see that it is founded on a +thought which we have. But real action is in silent +moments. The epochs of our life are not in the visible +facts of our choice of a calling, our marriage, our +acquisition of an office, and the like, but in a silent +thought by the way-side as we walk; in a thought which +revises our entire manner of life and says,--'Thus hast +thou done, but it were better thus.' And all our after +years, like menials, serve and wait on this, and according +to their ability execute its will. This revisal or +correction is a constant force, which, as a tendency, +reaches through our lifetime. The object of the man, the +aim of these moments, is to make daylight shine through +him, to suffer the law to traverse his whole being without +obstruction, so that on what point soever of his doing your +eye falls it shall report truly of his character, whether +it be his diet, his house, his religious forms, his society, +his mirth, his vote, his opposition. Now he is not homogeneous, +but heterogeneous, and the ray does not traverse; there are +no thorough lights, but the eye of the beholder is puzzled, +detecting many unlike tendencies and a life not yet at one. + +Why should we make it a point with our false modesty +to disparage that man we are and that form of being +assigned to us? A good man is contented. I love and +honor Epaminondas, but I do not wish to be Epaminondas. +I hold it more just to love the world of this hour than +the world of his hour. Nor can you, if I am true, excite +me to the least uneasiness by saying, 'He acted and thou +sittest still.' I see action to be good, when the need +is, and sitting still to be also good. Epaminondas, if +he was the man I take him for, would have sat still with +joy and peace, if his lot had been mine. Heaven is large, +and affords space for all modes of love and fortitude. +Why should we be busybodies and superserviceable? Action +and inaction are alike to the true. One piece of the tree +is cut for a weathercock and one for the sleeper of a +bridge; the virtue of the wood is apparent in both. + +I desire not to disgrace the soul. The fact that I am +here certainly shows me that the soul had need of an +organ here. Shall I not assume the post? Shall I skulk +and dodge and duck with my unseasonable apologies and +vain modesty and imagine my being here impertinent? +less pertinent than Epaminondas or Homer being there? +and that the soul did not know its own needs? Besides, +without any reasoning on the matter, I have no discontent. +The good soul nourishes me and unlocks new magazines of +power and enjoyment to me every day. I will not meanly +decline the immensity of good, because I have heard that +it has come to others in another shape. + +Besides, why should we be cowed by the name of Action? +'Tis a trick of the senses,--no more. We know that the +ancestor of every action is a thought. The poor mind does +not seem to itself to be any thing unless it have an +outside badge,--some Gentoo diet, or Quaker coat, or +Calvinistic prayer-meeting, or philanthropic society, or +a great donation, or a high office, or, any how, some wild +contrasting action to testify that it is somewhat. The rich +mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature. To think is +to act. + +Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. +All action is of an infinite elasticity, and the least +admits of being inflated with the celestial air until +it eclipses the sun and moon. Let us seek one peace +by fidelity. Let me heed my duties. Why need I go gadding +into the scenes and philosophy of Greek and Italian +history before I have justified myself to my benefactors? +How dare I read Washington's campaigns when I have not +answered the letters of my own correspondents? Is not +that a just objection to much of our reading? It is a +pusillanimous desertion of our work to gaze after our +neighbors. It is peeping. Byron says of Jack Bunting,-- + + "He knew not what to say, and so he swore." + +I may say it of our preposterous use of books,--He knew +not what to do, and so he read. I can think of nothing +to fill my time with, and I find the Life of Brant. It +is a very extravagant compliment to pay to Brant, or to +General Schuyler, or to General Washington. My time +should be as good as their time,--my facts, my net of +relations, as good as theirs, or either of theirs. Rather +let me do my work so well that other idlers if they choose +may compare my texture with the texture of these and find +it identical with the best. + +This over-estimate of the possibilities of Paul and +Pericles, this under-estimate of our own, comes from a +neglect of the fact of an identical nature. Bonaparte +knew but one merit, and rewarded in one and the same +way the good soldier, the good astronomer, the good +poet, the good player. The poet uses the names of Caesar, +of Tamerlane, of Bonduca, of Belisarius; the painter uses +the conventional story of the Virgin Mary, of Paul, of +Peter. He does not therefore defer to the nature of these +accidental men, of these stock heroes. If the poet write +a true drama, then he is Caesar, and not the player of +Caesar; then the selfsame strain of thought, emotion as +pure, wit as subtle, motions as swift, mounting, extravagant, +and a heart as great, self-sufficing, dauntless, which on +the waves of its love and hope can uplift all that is +reckoned solid and precious in the world,--palaces, gardens, +money, navies, kingdoms,--marking its own incomparable worth +by the slight it casts on these gauds of men;--these all are +his, and by the power of these he rouses the nations. Let a +man believe in God, and not in names and places and persons. +Let the great soul incarnated in some woman's form, poor and +sad and single, in some Dolly or Joan, go out to service, +and sweep chambers and scour floors, and its effulgent +daybeams cannot be muffled or hid, but to sweep and scour +will instantly appear supreme and beautiful actions, the top +and radiance of human life, and all people will get mops and +brooms; until, lo! suddenly the great soul has enshrined +itself in some other form and done some other deed, and that +is now the flower and head of all living nature. + +We are the photometers, we the irritable goldleaf and +tinfoil that measure the accumulations of the subtle +element. We know the authentic effects of the true fire +through every one of its million disguises. + + + + +Love. + +"I was as a gem concealed; +Me my burning ray revealed." + Koran . + +V. +Love. + +Every promise of the soul has innumerable fulfilments; +each of its joys ripens into a new want. Nature, +uncontainable, flowing, forelooking, in the first +sentiment of kindness anticipates already a benevolence +which shall lose all particular regards in its general +light. The introduction to this felicity is in a private +and tender relation of one to one, which is the enchantment +of human life; which, like a certain divine rage and +enthusiasm, seizes on man at one period and works a +revolution in his mind and body; unites him to his race, +pledges him to the domestic and civic relations, carries +him with new sympathy into nature, enhances the power of +the senses, opens the imagination, adds to his character +heroic and sacred attributes, establishes marriage, and +gives permanence to human society. + +The natural association of the sentiment of love with +the heyday of the blood seems to require that in order +to portray it in vivid tints, which every youth and maid +should confess to be true to their throbbing experience, +one must not be too old. The delicious fancies of youth +reject the least savor of a mature philosophy, as chilling +with age and pedantry their purple bloom. And therefore I +know I incur the imputation of unnecessary hardness and +stoicism from those who compose the Court and Parliament +of Love. But from these formidable censors I shall appeal +to my seniors. For it is to be considered that this passion +of which we speak, though it begin with the young, yet +forsakes not the old, or rather suffers no one who is truly +its servant to grow old, but makes the aged participators +of it not less than the tender maiden, though in a different +and nobler sort. For it is a fire that kindling its first +embers in the narrow nook of a private bosom, caught from +a wandering spark out of another private heart, glows and +enlarges until it warms and beams upon multitudes of men +and women, upon the universal heart of all, and so lights +up the whole world and all nature with its generous flames. +It matters not therefore whether we attempt to describe +the passion at twenty, at thirty, or at eighty years. He +who paints it at the first period will lose some of its +later, he who paints it at the last, some of its earlier +traits. Only it is to be hoped that by patience and the +Muses' aid we may attain to that inward view of the law +which shall describe a truth ever young and beautiful, so +central that it shall commend itself to the eye, at whatever +angle beholden. + +And the first condition is, that we must leave a too +close and lingering adherence to facts, and study the +sentiment as it appeared in hope and not in history. +For each man sees his own life defaced and disfigured, +as the life of man is not, to his imagination. Each man +sees over his own experience a certain stain of error, +whilst that of other men looks fair and ideal. Let any +man go back to those delicious relations which make the +beauty of his life, which have given him sincerest +instruction and nourishment, he will shrink and moan. +Alas! I know not why, but infinite compunctions embitter +in mature life the remembrances of budding joy and cover +every beloved name. Every thing is beautiful seen from the +point of the intellect, or as truth. But all is sour, if +seen as experience. Details are melancholy; the plan is +seemly and noble. In the actual world--the painful kingdom +of time and place--dwell care, and canker, and fear. With +thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of +joy. Round it all the Muses sing. But grief cleaves to +names, and persons, and the partial interests of to-day +and yesterday. + +The strong bent of nature is seen in the proportion +which this topic of personal relations usurps in the +conversation of society. What do we wish to know of +any worthy person so much, as how he has sped in the +history of this sentiment? What books in the circulating +libraries circulate? How we glow over these novels of +passion, when the story is told with any spark of truth +and nature! And what fastens attention, in the intercourse +of life, like any passage betraying affection between two +parties? Perhaps we never saw them before, and never shall +meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance, or +betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We +understand them, and take the warmest interest in the +development of the romance. All mankind love a lover. The +earliest demonstrations of complacency and kindness are +nature's most winning pictures. It is the dawn of civility +and grace in the coarse and rustic. The rude village boy +teases the girls about the school-house door;--but to-day +he comes running into the entry, and meets one fair child +disposing her satchel; he holds her books to help her, and +instantly it seems to him as if she removed herself from +him infinitely, and was a sacred precinct. Among the throng +of girls he runs rudely enough, but one alone distances him; +and these two little neighbors, that were so close just now, +have learned to respect each other's personality. Or who can +avert his eyes from the engaging, half-artful, half-artless +ways of school-girls who go into the country shops to buy a +skein of silk or a sheet of paper, and talk half an hour +about nothing with the broad-faced, good-natured shop-boy. +In the village they are on a perfect equality, which love +delights in, and without any coquetry the happy, affectionate +nature of woman flows out in this pretty gossip. The girls +may have little beauty, yet plainly do they establish between +them and the good boy the most agreeable, confiding relations, +what with their fun and their earnest, about Edgar and Jonas +and Almira, and who was invited to the party, and who danced +at the dancing-school, and when the singing-school would begin, +and other nothings concerning which the parties cooed. By and +by that boy wants a wife, and very truly and heartily will he +know where to find a sincere and sweet mate, without any risk +such as Milton deplores as incident to scholars and great men. + +I have been told that in some public discourses of mine +my reverence for the intellect has made me unjustly cold +to the personal relations. But now I almost shrink at the +remembrance of such disparaging words. For persons are +love's world, and the coldest philosopher cannot recount +the debt of the young soul wandering here in nature to +the power of love, without being tempted to unsay, as +treasonable to nature, aught derogatory to the social +instincts. For though the celestial rapture falling out +of heaven seizes only upon those of tender age, and +although a beauty overpowering all analysis or comparison +and putting us quite beside ourselves we can seldom see +after thirty years, yet the remembrance of these visions +outlasts all other remembrances, and is a wreath of flowers +on the oldest brows. But here is a strange fact; it may +seem to many men, in revising their experience, that they +have no fairer page in their life's book than the delicious +memory of some passages wherein affection contrived to give +a witchcraft, surpassing the deep attraction of its own +truth, to a parcel of accidental and trivial circumstances. +In looking backward they may find that several things which +were not the charm have more reality to this groping memory +than the charm itself which embalmed them. But be our +experience in particulars what it may, no man ever forgot +the visitations of that power to his heart and brain, which +created all things anew; which was the dawn in him of music, +poetry, and art; which made the face of nature radiant with +purple light, the morning and the night varied enchantments; +when a single tone of one voice could make the heart bound, +and the most trivial circumstance associated with one form +is put in the amber of memory; when he became all eye when +one was present, and all memory when one was gone; when the +youth becomes a watcher of windows and studious of a glove, +a veil, a ribbon, or the wheels of a carriage; when no place +is too solitary and none too silent, for him who has richer +company and sweeter conversation in his new thoughts than +any old friends, though best and purest, can give him; for +the figures, the motions, the words of the beloved object +are not like other images written in water, but, as Plutarch +said, "enamelled in fire," and make the study of midnight:-- + + "Thou art not gone being gone, where'er thou art, + Thou leav'st in him thy watchful eyes, in him thy + loving heart." + +In the noon and the afternoon of life we still throb at +the recollection of days when happiness was not happy +enough, but must be drugged with the relish of pain and +fear; for he touched the secret of the matter who said +of love,-- + + "All other pleasures are not worth its pains:" + +and when the day was not long enough, but the night too +must be consumed in keen recollections; when the head +boiled all night on the pillow with the generous deed +it resolved on; when the moonlight was a pleasing fever +and the stars were letters and the flowers ciphers and +the air was coined into song; when all business seemed +an impertinence, and all the men and women running to +and fro in the streets, mere pictures. + +The passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes +all things alive and significant. Nature grows conscious. +Every bird on the boughs of the tree sings now to his +heart and soul. The notes are almost articulate. The +clouds have faces as he looks on them. The trees of the +forest, the waving grass and the peeping flowers have +grown intelligent; and he almost fears to trust them with +the secret which they seem to invite. Yet nature soothes +and sympathizes. In the green solitude he finds a dearer +home than with men:-- + + "Fountain-heads and pathless groves, + Places which pale passion loves, + Moonlight walks, when all the fowls + Are safely housed, save bats and owls, + A midnight bell, a passing groan,-- + These are the sounds we feed upon." + +Behold there in the wood the fine madman! He is a +palace of sweet sounds and sights; he dilates; he is +twice a man; he walks with arms akimbo; he soliloquizes; +he accosts the grass and the trees; he feels the blood +of the violet, the clover and the lily in his veins; and +he talks with the brook that wets his foot. + +The heats that have opened his perceptions of natural +beauty have made him love music and verse. It is a +fact often observed, that men have written good verses +under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well +under any other circumstances. + +The like force has the passion over all his nature. It +expands the sentiment; it makes the clown gentle and +gives the coward heart. Into the most pitiful and abject +it will infuse a heart and courage to defy the world, so +only it have the countenance of the beloved object. In +giving him to another it still more gives him to himself. +He is a new man, with new perceptions, new and keener +purposes, and a religious solemnity of character and aims. +He does not longer appertain to his family and society; he +is somewhat; he is a person; he is a soul. + +And here let us examine a little nearer the nature of that +influence which is thus potent over the human youth. Beauty, +whose revelation to man we now celebrate, welcome as the +sun wherever it pleases to shine, which pleases everybody +with it and with themselves, seems sufficient to itself. +The lover cannot paint his maiden to his fancy poor and +solitary. Like a tree in flower, so much soft, budding, +informing loveliness is society for itself; and she teaches +his eye why Beauty was pictured with Loves and Graces +attending her steps. Her existence makes the world rich. +Though she extrudes all other persons from his attention +as cheap and unworthy, she indemnifies him by carrying out +her own being into somewhat impersonal, large, mundane, so +that the maiden stands to him for a representative of all +select things and virtues. For that reason the lover never +sees personal resemblances in his mistress to her kindred +or to others. His friends find in her a likeness to her +mother, or her sisters, or to persons not of her blood. The +lover sees no resemblance except to summer evenings and +diamond mornings, to rainbows and the song of birds. + +The ancients called beauty the flowering of virtue. Who +can analyze the nameless charm which glances from one +and another face and form? We are touched with emotions +of tenderness and complacency, but we cannot find whereat +this dainty emotion, this wandering gleam, points. It is +destroyed for the imagination by any attempt to refer it +to organization. Nor does it point to any relations of +friendship or love known and described in society, but, +as it seems to me, to a quite other and unattainable +sphere, to relations of transcendent delicacy and sweetness, +to what roses and violets hint and foreshow. We cannot +approach beauty. Its nature is like opaline doves'-neck +lustres, hovering and evanescent. Herein it resembles the +most excellent things, which all have this rainbow character, +defying all attempts at appropriation and use. What else +did Jean Paul Richter signify, when he said to music, "Away! +away! thou speakest to me of things which in all my endless +life I have not found, and shall not find." The same fluency +may be observed in every work of the plastic arts. The statue +is then beautiful when it begins to be incomprehensible, when +it is passing out of criticism and can no longer be defined +by compass and measuring-wand, but demands an active +imagination to go with it and to say what it is in the act of +doing. The god or hero of the sculptor is always represented +in a transition from that which is representable to the senses, +to that which is not. Then first it ceases to be a stone. The +same remark holds of painting. And of poetry the success is +not attained when it lulls and satisfies, but when it +astonishes and fires us with new endeavors after the +unattainable. Concerning it Landor inquires "whether it +is not to be referred to some purer state of sensation and +existence." + +In like manner, personal beauty is then first charming +and itself when it dissatisfies us with any end; when +it becomes a story without an end; when it suggests +gleams and visions and not earthly satisfactions; when +it makes the beholder feel his unworthiness; when he +cannot feel his right to it, though he were Caesar; he +cannot feel more right to it than to the firmament and +the splendors of a sunset. + +Hence arose the saying, "If I love you, what is that to +you?" We say so because we feel that what we love is not +in your will, but above it. It is not you, but your +radiance. It is that which you know not in yourself and +can never know. + +This agrees well with that high philosophy of Beauty +which the ancient writers delighted in; for they said +that the soul of man, embodied here on earth, went +roaming up and down in quest of that other world of +its own out of which it came into this, but was soon +stupefied by the light of the natural sun, and unable +to see any other objects than those of this world, +which are but shadows of real things. Therefore the +Deity sends the glory of youth before the soul, that +it may avail itself of beautiful bodies as aids to its +recollection of the celestial good and fair; and the +man beholding such a person in the female sex runs to +her and finds the highest joy in contemplating the form, +movement, and intelligence of this person, because it +suggests to him the presence of that which indeed is +within the beauty, and the cause of the beauty. + +If however, from too much conversing with material +objects, the soul was gross, and misplaced its +satisfaction in the body, it reaped nothing but +sorrow; body being unable to fulfil the promise +which beauty holds out; but if, accepting the hint +of these visions and suggestions which beauty makes +to his mind, the soul passes through the body and +falls to admire strokes of character, and the lovers +contemplate one another in their discourses and their +actions, then they pass to the true palace of beauty, +more and more inflame their love of it, and by this +love extinguishing the base affection, as the sun puts +out the fire by shining on the hearth, they become pure +and hallowed. By conversation with that which is in +itself excellent, magnanimous, lowly, and just, the +lover comes to a warmer love of these nobilities, and +a quicker apprehension of them. Then he passes from +loving them in one to loving them in all, and so is +the one beautiful soul only the door through which he +enters to the society of all true and pure souls. In +the particular society of his mate he attains a clearer +sight of any spot, any taint which her beauty has +contracted from this world, and is able to point it out, +and this with mutual joy that they are now able, without +offence, to indicate blemishes and hindrances in each +other, and give to each all help and comfort in curing +the same. And beholding in many souls the traits of the +divine beauty, and separating in each soul that which +is divine from the taint which it has contracted in the +world, the lover ascends to the highest beauty, to the +love and knowledge of the Divinity, by steps on this +ladder of created souls. + +Somewhat like this have the truly wise told us of love +in all ages. The doctrine is not old, nor is it new. If +Plato, Plutarch and Apuleius taught it, so have Petrarch, +Angelo and Milton. It awaits a truer unfolding in opposition +and rebuke to that subterranean prudence which presides at +marriages with words that take hold of the upper world, +whilst one eye is prowling in the cellar; so that its gravest +discourse has a savor of hams and powdering-tubs. Worst, when +this sensualism intrudes into the education of young women, +and withers the hope and affection of human nature by +teaching that marriage signifies nothing but a housewife's +thrift, and that woman's life has no other aim. + +But this dream of love, though beautiful, is only one +scene in our play. In the procession of the soul from +within outward, it enlarges its circles ever, like the +pebble thrown into the pond, or the light proceeding +from an orb. The rays of the soul alight first on things +nearest, on every utensil and toy, on nurses and +domestics, on the house and yard and passengers, on the +circle of household acquaintance, on politics and geography +and history. But things are ever grouping themselves +according to higher or more interior laws. Neighborhood, +size, numbers, habits, persons, lose by degrees their power +over us. Cause and effect, real affinities, the longing for +harmony between the soul and the circumstance, the progressive, +idealizing instinct, predominate later, and the step backward +from the higher to the lower relations is impossible. Thus +even love, which is the deification of persons, must become +more impersonal every day. Of this at first it gives no hint. +Little think the youth and maiden who are glancing at each +other across crowded rooms with eyes so full of mutual +intelligence, of the precious fruit long hereafter to +proceed from this new, quite external stimulus. The work +of vegetation begins first in the irritability of the bark +and leaf-buds. From exchanging glances, they advance to +acts of courtesy, of gallantry, then to fiery passion, to +plighting troth and marriage. Passion beholds its object as +a perfect unit. The soul is wholly embodied, and the body is +wholly ensouled:-- + + "Her pure and eloquent blood + Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, + That one might almost say her body thought." + +Romeo, if dead, should be cut up into little stars to +make the heavens fine. Life, with this pair, has no +other aim, asks no more, than Juliet,--than Romeo. +Night, day, studies, talents, kingdoms, religion, are +all contained in this form full of soul, in this soul +which is all form. The lovers delight in endearments, +in avowals of love, in comparisons of their regards. +When alone, they solace themselves with the remembered +image of the other. Does that other see the same star, +the same melting cloud, read the same book, feel the +same emotion, that now delight me? They try and weigh +their affection, and adding up costly advantages, friends, +opportunities, properties, exult in discovering that +willingly, joyfully, they would give all as a ransom for +the beautiful, the beloved head, not one hair of which +shall be harmed. But the lot of humanity is on these +children. Danger, sorrow, and pain arrive to them, as to +all. Love prays. It makes covenants with Eternal Power +in behalf of this dear mate. The union which is thus +effected and which adds a new value to every atom in +nature--for it transmutes every thread throughout the +whole web of relation into a golden ray, and bathes the +soul in a new and sweeter element--is yet a temporary +state. Not always can flowers, pearls, poetry, +protestations, nor even home in another heart, content +the awful soul that dwells in clay. It arouses itself +at last from these endearments, as toys, and puts on +the harness and aspires to vast and universal aims. The +soul which is in the soul of each, craving a perfect +beatitude, detects incongruities, defects and +disproportion in the behavior of the other. Hence arise +surprise, expostulation and pain. Yet that which drew +them to each other was signs of loveliness, signs of +virtue; and these virtues are there, however eclipsed. +They appear and reappear and continue to attract; but +the regard changes, quits the sign and attaches to the +substance. This repairs the wounded affection. Meantime, +as life wears on, it proves a game of permutation and +combination of all possible positions of the parties, +to employ all the resources of each and acquaint each +with the strength and weakness of the other. For it is +the nature and end of this relation, that they should +represent the human race to each other. All that is in +the world, which is or ought to be known, is cunningly +wrought into the texture of man, of woman:-- + + "The person love does to us fit, + Like manna, has the taste of all in it." + +The world rolls; the circumstances vary every hour. The +angels that inhabit this temple of the body appear at +the windows, and the gnomes and vices also. By all the +virtues they are united. If there be virtue, all the +vices are known as such; they confess and flee. Their +once flaming regard is sobered by time in either breast, +and losing in violence what it gains in extent, it becomes +a thorough good understanding. They resign each other +without complaint to the good offices which man and woman +are severally appointed to discharge in time, and exchange +the passion which once could not lose sight of its object, +for a cheerful, disengaged furtherance, whether present or +absent, of each other's designs. At last they discover that +all which at first drew them together,--those once sacred +features, that magical play of charms,--was deciduous, had +a prospective end, like the scaffolding by which the house +was built; and the purification of the intellect and the +heart from year to year is the real marriage, foreseen and +prepared from the first, and wholly above their consciousness. +Looking at these aims with which two persons, a man and a +woman, so variously and correlatively gifted, are shut up +in one house to spend in the nuptial society forty or fifty +years, I do not wonder at the emphasis with which the heart +prophesies this crisis from early infancy, at the profuse +beauty with which the instincts deck the nuptial bower, and +nature and intellect and art emulate each other in the gifts +and the melody they bring to the epithalamium. + +Thus are we put in training for a love which knows not +sex, nor person, nor partiality, but which seeks virtue +and wisdom everywhere, to the end of increasing virtue +and wisdom. We are by nature observers, and thereby +learners. That is our permanent state. But we are often +made to feel that our affections are but tents of a night. +Though slowly and with pain, the objects of the affections +change, as the objects of thought do. There are moments +when the affections rule and absorb the man and make his +happiness dependent on a person or persons. But in health +the mind is presently seen again,--its overarching vault, +bright with galaxies of immutable lights, and the warm +loves and fears that swept over us as clouds must lose +their finite character and blend with God, to attain their +own perfection. But we need not fear that we can lose any +thing by the progress of the soul. The soul may be trusted +to the end. That which is so beautiful and attractive as +these relations, must be succeeded and supplanted only by +what is more beautiful, and so on for ever. + + + + +FRIENDSHIP. + +A RUDDY drop of manly blood +The surging sea outweighs; +The world uncertain comes and goes, +The lover rooted stays. +I fancied he was fled, +And, after many a year, +Glowed unexhausted kindliness +Like daily sunrise there. +My careful heart was free again,-- +O friend, my bosom said, +Through thee alone the sky is arched, +Through thee the rose is red, +All things through thee take nobler form +And look beyond the earth, +The mill-round of our fate appears +A sun-path in thy worth. +Me too thy nobleness has taught +To master my despair; +The fountains of my hidden life +Are through thy friendship fair. + +VI. +FRIENDSHIP. + +We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. +Maugre all the selfishness that chills like east winds +the world, the whole human family is bathed with an +element of love like a fine ether. How many persons we +meet in houses, whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we +honor, and who honor us! How many we see in the street, +or sit with in church, whom, though silently, we warmly +rejoice to be with! Read the language of these wandering +eye-beams. The heart knoweth. + +The effect of the indulgence of this human affection is +a certain cordial exhilaration. In poetry and in common +speech, the emotions of benevolence and complacency which +are felt towards others are likened to the material +effects of fire; so swift, or much more swift, more active, +more cheering, are these fine inward irradiations. From +the highest degree of passionate love to the lowest degree +of good-will, they make the sweetness of life. + +Our intellectual and active powers increase with our +affection. The scholar sits down to write, and all his +years of meditation do not furnish him with one good +thought or happy expression; but it is necessary to +write a letter to a friend,--and forthwith troops of +gentle thoughts invest themselves, on every hand, with +chosen words. See, in any house where virtue and self- +respect abide, the palpitation which the approach of +a stranger causes. A commended stranger is expected +and announced, and an uneasiness betwixt pleasure and +pain invades all the hearts of a household. His arrival +almost brings fear to the good hearts that would welcome +him. The house is dusted, all things fly into their +places, the old coat is exchanged for the new, and they +must get up a dinner if they can. Of a commended stranger, +only the good report is told by others, only the good and +new is heard by us. He stands to us for humanity. He is +what we wish. Having imagined and invested him, we ask +how we should stand related in conversation and action +with such a man, and are uneasy with fear. The same idea +exalts conversation with him. We talk better than we are +wont. We have the nimblest fancy, a richer memory, and +our dumb devil has taken leave for the time. For long +hours we can continue a series of sincere, graceful, +rich communications, drawn from the oldest, secretest +experience, so that they who sit by, of our own kinsfolk +and acquaintance, shall feel a lively surprise at our +unusual powers. But as soon as the stranger begins to +intrude his partialities, his definitions, his defects, +into the conversation, it is all over. He has heard the +first, the last and best he will ever hear from us. He +is no stranger now. Vulgarity, ignorance, misapprehension +are old acquaintances. Now, when he comes, he may get the +order, the dress and the dinner,--but the throbbing of +the heart and the communications of the soul, no more. + +What is so pleasant as these jets of affection which +make a young world for me again? What so delicious +as a just and firm encounter of two, in a thought, in +a feeling? How beautiful, on their approach to this +beating heart, the steps and forms of the gifted and +the true! The moment we indulge our affections, the +earth is metamorphosed; there is no winter and no +night; all tragedies, all ennuis vanish,--all duties +even; nothing fills the proceeding eternity but the +forms all radiant of beloved persons. Let the soul be +assured that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin +its friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone +for a thousand years. + +I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my +friends, the old and the new. Shall I not call God +the Beautiful, who daily showeth himself so to me in +his gifts? I chide society, I embrace solitude, and +yet I am not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, the +lovely and the noble-minded, as from time to time they +pass my gate. Who hears me, who understands me, becomes +mine,--a possession for all time. Nor is Nature so poor +but she gives me this joy several times, and thus we +weave social threads of our own, a new web of relations; +and, as many thoughts in succession substantiate themselves, +we shall by and by stand in a new world of our own creation, +and no longer strangers and pilgrims in a traditionary globe. +My friends have come to me unsought. The great God gave them +to me. By oldest right, by the divine affinity of virtue +with itself, I find them, or rather not I but the Deity +in me and in them derides and cancels the thick walls of +individual character, relation, age, sex, circumstance, at +which he usually connives, and now makes many one. High +thanks I owe you, excellent lovers, who carry out the world +for me to new and noble depths, and enlarge the meaning of +all my thoughts. These are new poetry of the first Bard,-- +poetry without stop,--hymn, ode and epic, poetry still +flowing, Apollo and the Muses chanting still. Will these +too separate themselves from me again, or some of them? I +know not, but I fear it not; for my relation to them is so +pure, that we hold by simple affinity, and the Genius of my +life being thus social, the same affinity will exert its +energy on whomsoever is as noble as these men and women, +wherever I may be. + +I confess to an extreme tenderness of nature on this +point. It is almost dangerous to me to "crush the sweet +poison of misused wine" of the affections. A new person +is to me a great event and hinders me from sleep. I have +often had fine fancies about persons which have given me +delicious hours; but the joy ends in the day; it yields +no fruit. Thought is not born of it; my action is very +little modified. I must feel pride in my friend's +accomplishments as if they were mine, and a property in +his virtues. I feel as warmly when he is praised, as the +lover when he hears applause of his engaged maiden. We +over-estimate the conscience of our friend. His goodness +seems better than our goodness, his nature finer, his +temptations less. Every thing that is his,--his name, +his form, his dress, books and instruments,--fancy +enhances. Our own thought sounds new and larger from +his mouth. + +Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not +without their analogy in the ebb and flow of love. +Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too +good to be believed. The lover, beholding his maiden, +half knows that she is not verily that which he +worships; and in the golden hour of friendship we are +surprised with shades of suspicion and unbelief. We +doubt that we bestow on our hero the virtues in which +he shines, and afterwards worship the form to which we +have ascribed this divine inhabitation. In strictness, +the soul does not respect men as it respects itself. +In strict science all persons underlie the same +condition of an infinite remoteness. Shall we fear to +cool our love by mining for the metaphysical foundation +of this Elysian temple? Shall I not be as real as the +things I see? If I am, I shall not fear to know them +for what they are. Their essence is not less beautiful +than their appearance, though it needs finer organs +for its apprehension. The root of the plant is not +unsightly to science, though for chaplets and festoons +we cut the stem short. And I must hazard the production +of the bald fact amidst these pleasing reveries, though +it should prove an Egyptian skull at our banquet. A man +who stands united with his thought conceives magnificently +of himself. He is conscious of a universal success, even +though bought by uniform particular failures. No advantages, +no powers, no gold or force, can be any match for +him. I cannot choose but rely on my own poverty more than +on your wealth. I cannot make your consciousness tantamount +to mine. Only the star dazzles; the planet has a faint, +moon-like ray. I hear what you say of the admirable parts +and tried temper of the party you praise, but I see well +that for all his purple cloaks I shall not like him, +unless he is at last a poor Greek like me. I cannot deny +it, O friend, that the vast shadow of the Phenomenal +includes thee also in its pied and painted immensity,-- +thee also, compared with whom all else is shadow. Thou +art not Being, as Truth is, as Justice is,--thou art not +my soul, but a picture and effigy of that. Thou hast come +to me lately, and already thou art seizing thy hat and +cloak. Is it not that the soul puts forth friends as the +tree puts forth leaves, and presently, by the germination +of new buds, extrudes the old leaf? The law of nature is +alternation for evermore. Each electrical state superinduces +the opposite. The soul environs itself with friends that it +may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and +it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its conversation +or society. This method betrays itself along the whole history +of our personal relations. The instinct of affection revives +the hope of union with our mates, and the returning sense of +insulation recalls us from the chase. Thus every man passes +his life in the search after friendship, and if he should +record his true sentiment, he might write a letter like this +to each new candidate for his love:-- + +DEAR FRIEND, + +If I was sure of thee, sure of thy capacity, sure to match +my mood with thine, I should never think again of trifles +in relation to thy comings and goings. I am not very wise; +my moods are quite attainable, and I respect thy genius; +it is to me as yet unfathomed; yet dare I not presume in +thee a perfect intelligence of me, and so thou art to me +a delicious torment. Thine ever, or never. + +Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are for curiosity +and not for life. They are not to be indulged. This is to +weave cobweb, and not cloth. Our friendships hurry to short +and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture +of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibre of the human +heart. The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of +one web with the laws of nature and of morals. But we have +aimed at a swift and petty benefit, to suck a sudden +sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit in the whole garden +of God, which many summers and many winters must ripen. We +seek our friend not sacredly, but with an adulterate passion +which would appropriate him to ourselves. In vain. We are +armed all over with subtle antagonisms, which, as soon as +we meet, begin to play, and translate all poetry into stale +prose. Almost all people descend to meet. All association +must be a compromise, and, what is worst, the very flower +and aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful natures +disappears as they approach each other. What a perpetual +disappointment is actual society, even of the virtuous and +gifted! After interviews have been compassed with long +foresight we must be tormented presently by baffled blows, +by sudden, unseasonable apathies, by epilepsies of wit and +of animal spirits, in the heyday of friendship and thought. +Our faculties do not play us true, and both parties are +relieved by solitude. + +I ought to be equal to every relation. It makes no +difference how many friends I have and what content +I can find in conversing with each, if there be one +to whom I am not equal. If I have shrunk unequal from +one contest, the joy I find in all the rest becomes +mean and cowardly. I should hate myself, if then I +made my other friends my asylum:-- + + "The valiant warrior famoused for fight, + After a hundred victories, once foiled, + Is from the book of honor razed quite, + And all the rest forgot for which he toiled." + +Our impatience is thus sharply rebuked. Bashfulness and +apathy are a tough husk in which a delicate organization +is protected from premature ripening. It would be lost +if it knew itself before any of the best souls were yet +ripe enough to know and own it. Respect the naturlangsamkeit +which hardens the ruby in a million years, and works in +duration in which Alps and Andes come and go as rainbows. +The good spirit of our life has no heaven which is the +price of rashness. Love, which is the essence of God, is +not for levity, but for the total worth of man. Let us not +have this childish luxury in our regards, but the austerest +worth; let us approach our friend with an audacious trust +in the truth of his heart, in the breadth, impossible to +be overturned, of his foundations. + +The attractions of this subject are not to be resisted, +and I leave, for the time, all account of subordinate +social benefit, to speak of that select and sacred +relation which is a kind of absolute, and which even +leaves the language of love suspicious and common, so +much is this purer, and nothing is so much divine. + +I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with +roughest courage. When they are real, they are not +glass threads or frostwork, but the solidest thing we +know. For now, after so many ages of experience, what +do we know of nature or of ourselves? Not one step has +man taken toward the solution of the problem of his +destiny. In one condemnation of folly stand the whole +universe of men. But the sweet sincerity of joy and +peace which I draw from this alliance with my brother's +soul is the nut itself whereof all nature and all thought +is but the husk and shell. Happy is the house that +shelters a friend! It might well be built, like a festal +bower or arch, to entertain him a single day. Happier, +if he know the solemnity of that relation and honor its +law! He who offers himself a candidate for that covenant +comes up, like an Olympian, to the great games where the +first-born of the world are the competitors. He proposes +himself for contests where Time, Want, Danger, are in +the lists, and he alone is victor who has truth enough +in his constitution to preserve the delicacy of his +beauty from the wear and tear of all these. The gifts +of fortune may be present or absent, but all the speed +in that contest depends on intrinsic nobleness and the +contempt of trifles. There are two elements that go to +the composition of friendship, each so sovereign that +I can detect no superiority in either, no reason why +either should be first named. One is truth. A friend +is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I +may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence +of a man so real and equal that I may drop even those +undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and +second thought, which men never put off, and may deal +with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which +one chemical atom meets another. Sincerity is the luxury +allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest +rank; that being permitted to speak truth, as having +none above it to court or conform unto. Every man alone +is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy +begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man +by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We +cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I +knew a man who under a certain religious frenzy cast off +this drapery, and omitting all compliment and commonplace, +spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, +and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was +resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But persisting-- +as indeed he could not help doing--for some time in this +course, he attained to the advantage of bringing every +man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. No +man would think of speaking falsely with him, or of +putting him off with any chat of markets or reading-rooms. +But every man was constrained by so much sincerity to the +like plaindealing, and what love of nature, what poetry, +what symbol of truth he had, he did certainly show him. +But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but +its side and its back. To stand in true relations with +men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not? +We can seldom go erect. Almost every man we meet requires +some civility,--requires to be humored; he has some fame, +some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his +head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all +conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who +exercises not my ingenuity, but me. My friend gives me +entertainment without requiring any stipulation on my +part. A friend therefore is a sort of paradox in nature. +I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose +existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, +behold now the semblance of my being, in all its height, +variety, and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so +that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of +nature. + +The other element of friendship is tenderness. We are +holden to men by every sort of tie, by blood, by pride, +by fear, by hope, by lucre, by lust, by hate, by +admiration, by every circumstance and badge and trifle, +--but we can scarce believe that so much character can +subsist in another as to draw us by love. Can another +be so blessed and we so pure that we can offer him +tenderness? When a man becomes dear to me I have touched +the goal of fortune. I find very little written directly +to the heart of this matter in books. And yet I have one +text which I cannot choose but remember. My author says, +--"I offer myself faintly and bluntly to those whose I +effectually am, and tender myself least to him to whom I +am the most devoted." I wish that friendship should have +feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. It must plant itself +on the ground, before it vaults over the moon. I wish it +to be a little of a citizen, before it is quite a cherub. +We chide the citizen because he makes love a commodity. +It is an exchange of gifts, of useful loans; it is good +neighborhood; it watches with the sick; it holds the pall +at the funeral; and quite loses sight of the delicacies +and nobility of the relation. But though we cannot find +the god under this disguise of a sutler, yet on the other +hand we cannot forgive the poet if he spins his thread +too fine and does not substantiate his romance by the +municipal virtues of justice, punctuality, fidelity and +pity. I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship +to signify modish and worldly alliances. I much prefer +the company of ploughboys and tin-peddlers to the silken +and perfumed amity which celebrates its days of encounter +by a frivolous display, by rides in a curricle and dinners +at the best taverns. The end of friendship is a commerce +the most strict and homely that can be joined; more strict +than any of which we have experience. It is for aid and +comfort through all the relations and passages of life +and death. It is fit for serene days and graceful gifts +and country rambles, but also for rough roads and hard +fare, shipwreck, poverty, and persecution. It keeps company +with the sallies of the wit and the trances of religion. We +are to dignify to each other the daily needs and offices of +man's life, and embellish it by courage, wisdom and unity. +It should never fall into something usual and settled, but +should be alert and inventive and add rhyme and reason to +what was drudgery. + +Friendship may be said to require natures so rare and +costly, each so well tempered and so happily adapted, +and withal so circumstanced (for even in that particular, +a poet says, love demands that the parties be altogether +paired), that its satisfaction can very seldom be assured. +It cannot subsist in its perfection, say some of those +who are learned in this warm lore of the heart, betwixt +more than two. I am not quite so strict in my terms, +perhaps because I have never known so high a fellowship +as others. I please my imagination more with a circle of +godlike men and women variously related to each other and +between whom subsists a lofty intelligence. But I find +this law of one to one peremptory for conversation, which +is the practice and consummation of friendship. Do not +mix waters too much. The best mix as ill as good and bad. +You shall have very useful and cheering discourse at +several times with two several men, but let all three of +you come together and you shall not have one new and +hearty word. Two may talk and one may hear, but three +cannot take part in a conversation of the most sincere +and searching sort. In good company there is never such +discourse between two, across the table, as takes place +when you leave them alone. In good company the individuals +merge their egotism into a social soul exactly co-extensive +with the several consciousnesses there present. No +partialities of friend to friend, no fondnesses of brother +to sister, of wife to husband, are there pertinent, but +quite otherwise. Only he may then speak who can sail on +the common thought of the party, and not poorly limited +to his own. Now this convention, which good sense demands, +destroys the high freedom of great conversation, which +requires an absolute running of two souls into one. + +No two men but being left alone with each other enter +into simpler relations. Yet it is affinity that determines +which two shall converse. Unrelated men give little joy +to each other, will never suspect the latent powers of +each. We talk sometimes of a great talent for conversation, +as if it were a permanent property in some individuals. +Conversation is an evanescent relation,--no more. A man is +reputed to have thought and eloquence; he cannot, for all +that, say a word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse +his silence with as much reason as they would blame the +insignificance of a dial in the shade. In the sun it will +mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his thought he will +regain his tongue. + +Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and +unlikeness that piques each with the presence of power +and of consent in the other party. Let me be alone to +the end of the world, rather than that my friend should +overstep, by a word or a look, his real sympathy. I am +equally balked by antagonism and by compliance. Let him +not cease an instant to be himself. The only joy I have +in his being mine, is that the not mine is mine. I hate, +where I looked for a manly furtherance, or at least a +manly resistance, to find a mush of concession. Better +be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo. The +condition which high friendship demands is ability to do +without it. That high office requires great and sublime +parts. There must be very two, before there can be very +one. Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable +natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet +they recognize the deep identity which, beneath these +disparities, unites them. + +He only is fit for this society who is magnanimous; who +is sure that greatness and goodness are always economy; +who is not swift to intermeddle with his fortunes. Let +him not intermeddle with this. Leave to the diamond its +ages to grow, nor expect to accelerate the births of the +eternal. Friendship demands a religious treatment. We +talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected. +Reverence is a great part of it. Treat your friend as a +spectacle. Of course he has merits that are not yours, and +that you cannot honor if you must needs hold him close to +your person. Stand aside; give those merits room; let them +mount and expand. Are you the friend of your friend's +buttons, or of his thought? To a great heart he will still +be a stranger in a thousand particulars, that he may come +near in the holiest ground. Leave it to girls and boys to +regard a friend as property, and to suck a short and all- +confounding pleasure, instead of the noblest benefit. + +Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long probation. +Why should we desecrate noble and beautiful souls by +intruding on them? Why insist on rash personal relations +with your friend? Why go to his house, or know his mother +and brother and sisters? Why be visited by him at your +own? Are these things material to our covenant? Leave this +touching and clawing. Let him be to me a spirit. A message, +a thought, a sincerity, a glance from him, I want, but not +news, nor pottage. I can get politics and chat and neighborly +conveniences from cheaper companions. Should not the society +of my friend be to me poetic, pure, universal and great as +nature itself? Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in +comparison with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the +horizon, or that clump of waving grass that divides the +brook? Let us not vilify, but raise it to that standard. +That great defying eye, that scornful beauty of his mien +and action, do not pique yourself on reducing, but rather +fortify and enhance. Worship his superiorities; wish him +not less by a thought, but hoard and tell them all. Guard +him as thy counterpart. Let him be to thee for ever a sort +of beautiful enemy, untamable, devoutly revered, and not a +trivial conveniency to be soon outgrown and cast aside. +The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to +be seen if the eye is too near. To my friend I write a +letter and from him I receive a letter. That seems to you +a little. It suffices me. It is a spiritual gift worthy of +him to give and of me to receive. It profanes nobody. In +these warm lines the heart will trust itself, as it will +not to the tongue, and pour out the prophecy of a godlier +existence than all the annals of heroism have yet made good. + +Respect so far the holy laws of this fellowship as not +to prejudice its perfect flower by your impatience +for its opening. We must be our own before we can be +another's. There is at least this satisfaction in crime, +according to the Latin proverb;--you can speak to your +accomplice on even terms. Crimen quos inquinat, aequat. +To those whom we admire and love, at first we cannot. +Yet the least defect of self-possession vitiates, in my +judgment, the entire relation. There can never be deep +peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until +in their dialogue each stands for the whole world. + +What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what +grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be silent,--so we may +hear the whisper of the gods. Let us not interfere. Who +set you to cast about what you should say to the select +souls, or how to say any thing to such? No matter how +ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. There are +innumerable degrees of folly and wisdom, and for you to +say aught is to be frivolous. Wait, and thy heart shall +speak. Wait until the necessary and everlasting overpowers +you, until day and night avail themselves of your lips. +The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have +a friend is to be one. You shall not come nearer a man by +getting into his house. If unlike, his soul only flees the +faster from you, and you shall never catch a true glance +of his eye. We see the noble afar off and they repel us; +why should we intrude? Late,--very late,--we perceive that +no arrangements, no introductions, no consuetudes or habits +of society would be of any avail to establish us in such +relations with them as we desire,--but solely the uprise +of nature in us to the same degree it is in them; then +shall we meet as water with water; and if we should not +meet them then, we shall not want them, for we are already +they. In the last analysis, love is only the reflection of +a man's own worthiness from other men. Men have sometimes +exchanged names with their friends, as if they would +signify that in their friend each loved his own soul. + +The higher the style we demand of friendship, of course +the less easy to establish it with flesh and blood. We +walk alone in the world. Friends such as we desire are +dreams and fables. But a sublime hope cheers ever the +faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the +universal power, souls are now acting, enduring, and +daring, which can love us and which we can love. We may +congratulate ourselves that the period of nonage, of +follies, of blunders and of shame, is passed in solitude, +and when we are finished men we shall grasp heroic hands +in heroic hands. Only be admonished by what you already +see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap +persons, where no friendship can be. Our impatience +betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no god +attends. By persisting in your path, though you forfeit +the little you gain the great. You demonstrate yourself, +so as to put yourself out of the reach of false relations, +and you draw to you the first-born of the world,--those +rare pilgrims whereof only one or two wander in nature at +once, and before whom the vulgar great show as spectres +and shadows merely. + +It is foolish to be afraid of making our ties too +spiritual, as if so we could lose any genuine love. +Whatever correction of our popular views we make from +insight, nature will be sure to bear us out in, and +though it seem to rob us of some joy, will repay us +with a greater. Let us feel if we will the absolute +insulation of man. We are sure that we have all in us. +We go to Europe, or we pursue persons, or we read books, +in the instinctive faith that these will call it out and +reveal us to ourselves. Beggars all. The persons are such +as we; the Europe, an old faded garment of dead persons; +the books, their ghosts. Let us drop this idolatry. Let +us give over this mendicancy. Let us even bid our dearest +friends farewell, and defy them, saying, 'Who are you? +Unhand me: I will be dependent no more.' Ah! seest thou +not, O brother, that thus we part only to meet again on +a higher platform, and only be more each other's because +we are more our own? A friend is Janus-faced; he looks to +the past and the future. He is the child of all my +foregoing hours, the prophet of those to come, and the +harbinger of a greater friend. + +I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would +have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them. +We must have society on our own terms, and admit or +exclude it on the slightest cause. I cannot afford to +speak much with my friend. If he is great he makes me +so great that I cannot descend to converse. In the great +days, presentiments hover before me in the firmament. I +ought then to dedicate myself to them. I go in that I may +seize them, I go out that I may seize them. I fear only +that I may lose them receding into the sky in which now +they are only a patch of brighter light. Then, though I +prize my friends, I cannot afford to talk with them and +study their visions, lest I lose my own. It would indeed +give me a certain household joy to quit this lofty seeking, +this spiritual astronomy or search of stars, and come down +to warm sympathies with you; but then I know well I shall +mourn always the vanishing of my mighty gods. It is true, +next week I shall have languid moods, when I can well +afford to occupy myself with foreign objects; then I shall +regret the lost literature of your mind, and wish you were +by my side again. But if you come, perhaps you will fill +my mind only with new visions; not with yourself but with +your lustres, and I shall not be able any more than now to +converse with you. So I will owe to my friends this +evanescent intercourse. I will receive from them not what +they have but what they are. They shall give me that which +properly they cannot give, but which emanates from them. +But they shall not hold me by any relations less subtile +and pure. We will meet as though we met not, and part as +though we parted not. + +It has seemed to me lately more possible than I knew, +to carry a friendship greatly, on one side, without +due correspondence on the other. Why should I cumber +myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? +It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall +wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small +part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness +educate the crude and cold companion. If he is unequal +he will presently pass away; but thou art enlarged by +thy own shining, and no longer a mate for frogs and +worms, dost soar and burn with the gods of the empyrean. +It is thought a disgrace to love unrequited. But the +great will see that true love cannot be unrequited. +True love transcends the unworthy object and dwells and +broods on the eternal, and when the poor interposed mask +crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of so much earth +and feels its independency the surer. Yet these things +may hardly be said without a sort of treachery to the +relation. The essence of friendship is entireness, a +total magnanimity and trust. It must not surmise or +provide for infirmity. It treats its object as a god, +that it may deify both. + + + + +PRUDENCE. + +THEME no poet gladly sung, +Fair to old and foul to young; +Scorn not thou the love of parts, +And the articles of arts. +Grandeur of the perfect sphere +Thanks the atoms that cohere. + +VII. +PRUDENCE. + +What right have I to write on Prudence, whereof I have +Little, and that of the negative sort? My prudence +consists in avoiding and going without, not in the +inventing of means and methods, not in adroit steering, +not in gentle repairing. I have no skill to make money +spend well, no genius in my economy, and whoever sees +my garden discovers that I must have some other garden. +Yet I love facts, and hate lubricity and people without +perception. Then I have the same title to write on prudence +that I have to write on poetry or holiness. We write from +aspiration and antagonism, as well as from experience. We +paint those qualities which we do not possess. The poet +admires the man of energy and tactics; the merchant breeds +his son for the church or the bar; and where a man is not +vain and egotistic you shall find what he has not by his +praise. Moreover it would be hardly honest in me not to +balance these fine lyric words of Love and Friendship with +words of coarser sound, and whilst my debt to my senses is +real and constant, not to own it in passing. + +Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the science +of appearances. It is the outmost action of the inward +life. It is God taking thought for oxen. It moves matter +after the laws of matter. It is content to seek health +of body by complying with physical conditions, and health +of mind by the laws of the intellect. + +The world of the senses is a world of shows; it does not +exist for itself, but has a symbolic character; and a true +prudence or law of shows recognizes the co-presence of other +laws and knows that its own office is subaltern; knows that +it is surface and not centre where it works. Prudence is +false when detached. It is legitimate when it is the Natural +History of the soul incarnate, when it unfolds the beauty +of laws within the narrow scope of the senses. + +There are all degrees of proficiency in knowledge of the +world. It is sufficient to our present purpose to indicate +three. One class live to the utility of the symbol, +esteeming health and wealth a final good. Another class +live above this mark to the beauty of the symbol, as the +poet and artist and the naturalist and man of science. A +third class live above the beauty of the symbol to the +beauty of the thing signified; these are wise men. The +first class have common sense; the second, taste; and the +third, spiritual perception. Once in a long time, a man +traverses the whole scale, and sees and enjoys the symbol +solidly, then also has a clear eye for its beauty, and +lastly, whilst he pitches his tent on this sacred volcanic +isle of nature, does not offer to build houses and barns +thereon,--reverencing the splendor of the God which he +sees bursting through each chink and cranny. + +The world is filled with the proverbs and acts and +winkings of a base prudence, which is a devotion to +matter, as if we possessed no other faculties than +the palate, the nose, the touch, the eye and ear; a +prudence which adores the Rule of Three, which never +subscribes, which never gives, which seldom lends, +and asks but one question of any project,--Will it +bake bread? This is a disease like a thickening of +the skin until the vital organs are destroyed. But +culture, revealing the high origin of the apparent +world and aiming at the perfection of the man as the +end, degrades every thing else, as health and bodily +life, into means. It sees prudence not to be a several +faculty, but a name for wisdom and virtue conversing +with the body and its wants. Cultivated men always feel +and speak so, as if a great fortune, the achievement of +a civil or social measure, great personal influence, a +graceful and commanding address, had their value as +proofs of the energy of the spirit. If a man lose his +balance and immerse himself in any trades or pleasures +for their own sake, he may be a good wheel or pin, but +he is not a cultivated man. + +The spurious prudence, making the senses final, is the +god of sots and cowards, and is the subject of all +comedy. It is nature's joke, and therefore literature's. +The true prudence limits this sensualism by admitting +the knowledge of an internal and real world. This +recognition once made, the order of the world and the +distribution of affairs and times, being studied with +the co-perception of their subordinate place, will +reward any degree of attention. For our existence, thus +apparently attached in nature to the sun and the returning +moon and the periods which they mark,--so susceptible to +climate and to country, so alive to social good and evil, +so fond of splendor and so tender to hunger and cold and +debt,--reads all its primary lessons out of these books. + +Prudence does not go behind nature and ask whence it is. +It takes the laws of the world whereby man's being is +conditioned, as they are, and keeps these laws that it +may enjoy their proper good. It respects space and time, +climate, want, sleep, the law of polarity, growth and +death. There revolve, to give bound and period to his +being on all sides, the sun and moon, the great formalists +in the sky: here lies stubborn matter, and will not swerve +from its chemical routine. Here is a planted globe, pierced +and belted with natural laws and fenced and distributed +externally with civil partitions and properties which impose +new restraints on the young inhabitant. + +We eat of the bread which grows in the field. We live by +the air which blows around us and we are poisoned by the +air that is too cold or too hot, too dry or too wet. Time, +which shows so vacant, indivisible and divine in its coming, +is slit and peddled into trifles and tatters. A door is to +be painted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood or oil, or +meal or salt; the house smokes, or I have a headache; then +the tax, and an affair to be transacted with a man without +heart or brains, and the stinging recollection of an +injurious or very awkward word,--these eat up the hours. +Do what we can, summer will have its flies; if we walk in +the woods we must feed mosquitos; if we go a-fishing we +must expect a wet coat. Then climate is a great impediment +to idle persons; we often resolve to give up the care of the +weather, but still we regard the clouds and the rain. + +We are instructed by these petty experiences which usurp +the hours and years. The hard soil and four months of +snow make the inhabitant of the northern temperate zone +wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed +smile of the tropics. The islander may ramble all day +at will. At night he may sleep on a mat under the moon, +and wherever a wild date-tree grows, nature has, without +a prayer even, spread a table for his morning meal. The +northerner is perforce a householder. He must brew, bake, +salt and preserve his food, and pile wood and coal. But +as it happens that not one stroke can labor lay to without +some new acquaintance with nature, and as nature is +inexhaustibly significant, the inhabitants of these +climates have always excelled the southerner in force. +Such is the value of these matters that a man who knows +other things can never know too much of these. Let him +have accurate perceptions. Let him, if he have hands, +handle; if eyes, measure and discriminate; let him accept +and hive every fact of chemistry, natural history and +economics; the more he has, the less is he willing to +spare any one. Time is always bringing the occasions that +disclose their value. Some wisdom comes out of every +natural and innocent action. The domestic man, who loves +no music so well as his kitchen clock and the airs which +the logs sing to him as they burn on the hearth, has +solaces which others never dream of. The application of +means to ends insures victory and the songs of victory not +less in a farm or a shop than in the tactics of party or +of war. The good husband finds method as efficient in the +packing of fire-wood in a shed or in the harvesting of +fruits in the cellar, as in Peninsular campaigns or the +files of the Department of State. In the rainy day he +builds a work-bench, or gets his tool-box set in the corner +of the barn-chamber, and stored with nails, gimlet, pincers, +screwdriver and chisel. Herein he tastes an old joy of youth +and childhood, the cat-like love of garrets, presses and +corn-chambers, and of the conveniences of long housekeeping. +His garden or his poultry-yard tells him many pleasant +anecdotes. One might find argument for optimism in the +abundant flow of this saccharine element of pleasure in +every suburb and extremity of the good world. Let a man +keep the law,--any law,--and his way will be strown with +satisfactions. There is more difference in the quality of +our pleasures than in the amount. + +On the other hand, nature punishes any neglect of prudence. +If you think the senses final, obey their law. If you +believe in the soul, do not clutch at sensual sweetness +before it is ripe on the slow tree of cause and effect. +It is vinegar to the eyes to deal with men of loose and +imperfect perception. Dr. Johnson is reported to have said, +--"If the child says he looked out of this window, when he +looked out of that,--whip him." Our American character is +marked by a more than average delight in accurate perception, +which is shown by the currency of the byword, "No mistake." +But the discomfort of unpunctuality, of confusion of thought +about facts, of inattention to the wants of to-morrow, is +of no nation. The beautiful laws of time and space, once +dislocated by our inaptitude, are holes and dens. If the +hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands, instead of honey +it will yield us bees. Our words and actions to be fair must +be timely. A gay and pleasant sound is the whetting of the +scythe in the mornings of June, yet what is more lonesome +and sad than the sound of a whetstone or mower's rifle when +it is too late in the season to make hay? Scatter-brained +and "afternoon" men spoil much more than their own affair +in spoiling the temper of those who deal with them. I have +seen a criticism on some paintings, of which I am reminded +when I see the shiftless and unhappy men who are not true +to their senses. The last Grand Duke of Weimar, a man of +superior understanding, said,--"I have sometimes remarked +in the presence of great works of art, and just now +especially in Dresden, how much a certain property +contributes to the effect which gives life to the figures, +and to the life an irresistible truth. This property is +the hitting, in all the figures we draw, the right centre +of gravity. I mean the placing the figures firm upon their +feet, making the hands grasp, and fastening the eyes on +the spot where they should look. Even lifeless figures, as +vessels and stools--let them be drawn ever so correctly-- +lose all effect so soon as they lack the resting upon their +centre of gravity, and have a certain swimming and oscillating +appearance. The Raphael in the Dresden gallery (the only +greatly affecting picture which I have seen) is the quietest +and most passionless piece you can imagine; a couple of saints +who worship the Virgin and Child. Nevertheless, it awakens a +deeper impression than the contortions of ten crucified +martyrs. For beside all the resistless beauty of form, it +possesses in the highest degree the property of the +perpendicularity of all the figures." This perpendicularity +we demand of all the figures in this picture of life. Let +them stand on their feet, and not float and swing. Let us +know where to find them. Let them discriminate between what +they remember and what they dreamed, call a spade a spade, +give us facts, and honor their own senses with trust. + +But what man shall dare tax another with imprudence? +Who is prudent? The men we call greatest are least in +this kingdom. There is a certain fatal dislocation in +our relation to nature, distorting our modes of living +and making every law our enemy, which seems at last to +have aroused all the wit and virtue in the world to +ponder the question of Reform. We must call the highest +prudence to counsel, and ask why health and beauty and +genius should now be the exception rather than the rule +of human nature? We do not know the properties of plants +and animals and the laws of nature, through our sympathy +with the same; but this remains the dream of poets. Poetry +and prudence should be coincident. Poets should be +lawgivers; that is, the boldest lyric inspiration should +not chide and insult, but should announce and lead the +civil code and the day's work. But now the two things seem +irreconcilably parted. We have violated law upon law until +we stand amidst ruins, and when by chance we espy a +coincidence between reason and the phenomena, we are +surprised. Beauty should be the dowry of every man and +woman, as invariably as sensation; but it is rare. Health +or sound organization should be universal. Genius should +be the child of genius and every child should be inspired; +but now it is not to be predicted of any child, and nowhere +is it pure. We call partial half-lights, by courtesy, +genius; talent which converts itself to money; talent which +glitters to-day that it may dine and sleep well to-morrow; +and society is officered by men of parts, as they are properly +called, and not by divine men. These use their gifts to refine +luxury, not to abolish it. Genius is always ascetic, and piety, +and love. Appetite shows to the finer souls as a disease, and +they find beauty in rites and bounds that resist it. + +We have found out fine names to cover our sensuality +withal, but no gifts can raise intemperance. The man +of talent affects to call his transgressions of the +laws of the senses trivial and to count them nothing +considered with his devotion to his art. His art never +taught him lewdness, nor the love of wine, nor the +wish to reap where he had not sowed. His art is less +for every deduction from his holiness, and less for +every defect of common sense. On him who scorned the +world as he said, the scorned world wreaks its revenge. +He that despiseth small things will perish by little +and little. Goethe's Tasso is very likely to be a +pretty fair historical portrait, and that is true +tragedy. It does not seem to me so genuine grief when +some tyrannous Richard the Third oppresses and slays a +score of innocent persons, as when Antonio and Tasso, +both apparently right, wrong each other. One living +after the maxims of this world and consistent and true +to them, the other fired with all divine sentiments, +yet grasping also at the pleasures of sense, without +submitting to their law. That is a grief we all feel, +a knot we cannot untie. Tasso's is no infrequent case +in modern biography. A man of genius, of an ardent +temperament, reckless of physical laws, self-indulgent, +becomes presently unfortunate, querulous, a "discomfortable +cousin," a thorn to himself and to others. + +The scholar shames us by his bifold life. Whilst +something higher than prudence is active, he is +admirable; when common sense is wanted, he is an +encumbrance. Yesterday, Caesar was not so great; +to-day, the felon at the gallows' foot is not more +miserable. Yesterday, radiant with the light of an +ideal world in which he lives, the first of men; and +now oppressed by wants and by sickness, for which he +must thank himself. He resembles the pitiful drivellers +whom travellers describe as frequenting the bazaars of +Constantinople, who skulk about all day, yellow, +emaciated, ragged, sneaking; and at evening, when the +bazaars are open, slink to the opium-shop, swallow their +morsel and become tranquil and glorified seers. And who +has not seen the tragedy of imprudent genius struggling +for years with paltry pecuniary difficulties, at last +sinking, chilled, exhausted and fruitless, like a giant +slaughtered by pins? + +Is it not better that a man should accept the first +pains and mortifications of this sort, which nature +is not slack in sending him, as hints that he must +expect no other good than the just fruit of his own +labor and self-denial? Health, bread, climate, social +position, have their importance, and he will give them +their due. Let him esteem Nature a perpetual counsellor, +and her perfections the exact measure of our deviations. +Let him make the night night, and the day day. Let him +control the habit of expense. Let him see that as much +wisdom may be expended on a private economy as on an +empire, and as much wisdom may be drawn from it. The +laws of the world are written out for him on every +piece of money in his hand. There is nothing he will +not be the better for knowing, were it only the wisdom +of Poor Richard, or the State-Street prudence of buying +by the acre to sell by the foot; or the thrift of the +agriculturist, to stick a tree between whiles, because +it will grow whilst he sleeps; or the prudence which +consists in husbanding little strokes of the tool, +little portions of time, particles of stock and small +gains. The eye of prudence may never shut. Iron, if kept +at the ironmonger's, will rust; beer, if not brewed in +the right state of the atmosphere, will sour; timber of +ships will rot at sea, or if laid up high and dry, will +strain, warp and dry-rot; money, if kept by us, yields +no rent and is liable to loss; if invested, is liable to +depreciation of the particular kind of stock. Strike, +says the smith, the iron is white; keep the rake, says +the haymaker, as nigh the scythe as you can, and the cart +as nigh the rake. Our Yankee trade is reputed to be very +much on the extreme of this prudence. It takes bank-notes, +good, bad, clean, ragged, and saves itself by the speed +with which it passes them off. Iron cannot rust, nor beer +sour, nor timber rot, nor calicoes go out of fashion, nor +money stocks depreciate, in the few swift moments in which +the Yankee suffers any one of them to remain in his +possession. In skating over thin ice our safety is in our +speed. + +Let him learn a prudence of a higher strain. Let him +learn that every thing in nature, even motes and +feathers, go by law and not by luck, and that what he +sows he reaps. By diligence and self-command let him +put the bread he eats at his own disposal, that he may +not stand in bitter and false relations to other men; +for the best good of wealth is freedom. Let him practise +the minor virtues. How much of human life is lost in +waiting! let him not make his fellow-creatures wait. How +many words and promises are promises of conversation! +Let his be words of fate. When he sees a folded and sealed +scrap of paper float round the globe in a pine ship and +come safe to the eye for which it was written, amidst a +swarming population, let him likewise feel the admonition +to integrate his being across all these distracting forces, +and keep a slender human word among the storms, distances +and accidents that drive us hither and thither, and, by +persistency, make the paltry force of one man reappear to +redeem its pledge after months and years in the most distant +climates. + +We must not try to write the laws of any one virtue, +looking at that only. Human nature loves no contradictions, +but is symmetrical. The prudence which secures an outward +well-being is not to be studied by one set of men, whilst +heroism and holiness are studied by another, but they are +reconcilable. Prudence concerns the present time, persons, +property and existing forms. But as every fact hath its +roots in the soul, and if the soul were changed, would cease +to be, or would become some other thing,--the proper +administration of outward things will always rest on a just +apprehension of their cause and origin; that is, the good +man will be the wise man, and the single-hearted the politic +man. Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide +in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society. +On the most profitable lie the course of events presently +lays a destructive tax; whilst frankness invites frankness, +puts the parties on a convenient footing and makes their +business a friendship. Trust men and they will be true to +you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great, +though they make an exception in your favor to all their +rules of trade. + +So, in regard to disagreeable and formidable things, +prudence does not consist in evasion or in flight, but +in courage. He who wishes to walk in the most peaceful +parts of life with any serenity must screw himself up +to resolution. Let him front the object of his worst +apprehension, and his stoutness will commonly make his +fear groundless. The Latin proverb says, "In battles the +eye is first overcome." Entire self-possession may make +a battle very little more dangerous to life than a match +at foils or at football. Examples are cited by soldiers +of men who have seen the cannon pointed and the fire given +to it, and who have stepped aside from the path of the ball. +The terrors of the storm are chiefly confined to the parlor +and the cabin. The drover, the sailor, buffets it all day, +and his health renews itself at as vigorous a pulse under +the sleet as under the sun of June. + +In the occurrence of unpleasant things among neighbors, +fear comes readily to heart and magnifies the consequence +of the other party; but it is a bad counsellor. Every man +is actually weak and apparently strong. To himself he +seems weak; to others, formidable. You are afraid of Grim; +but Grim also is afraid of you. You are solicitous of the +good-will of the meanest person, uneasy at his ill-will. +But the sturdiest offender of your peace and of the +neighborhood, if you rip up his claims, is as thin and +timid as any, and the peace of society is often kept, +because, as children say, one is afraid, and the other +dares not. Far off, men swell, bully and threaten; bring +them hand to hand, and they are a feeble folk. + +It is a proverb that 'courtesy costs nothing'; but +calculation might come to value love for its profit. +Love is fabled to be blind, but kindness is necessary +to perception; love is not a hood, but an eye-water. +If you meet a sectary or a hostile partisan, never +recognize the dividing lines, but meet on what common +ground remains,--if only that the sun shines and the +rain rains for both; the area will widen very fast, +and ere you know it, the boundary mountains on which +the eye had fastened have melted into air. If they +set out to contend, Saint Paul will lie and Saint John +will hate. What low, poor, paltry, hypocritical people +an argument on religion will make of the pure and chosen +souls! They will shuffle and crow, crook and hide, feign +to confess here, only that they may brag and conquer +there, and not a thought has enriched either party, and +not an emotion of bravery, modesty, or hope. So neither +should you put yourself in a false position with your +contemporaries by indulging a vein of hostility and +bitterness. Though your views are in straight antagonism +to theirs, assume an identity of sentiment, assume that +you are saying precisely that which all think, and in the +flow of wit and love roll out your paradoxes in solid +column, with not the infirmity of a doubt. So at least +shall you get an adequate deliverance. The natural motions +of the soul are so much better than the voluntary ones that +you will never do yourself justice in dispute. The thought +is not then taken hold of by the right handle, does not show +itself proportioned and in its true bearings, but bears +extorted, hoarse, and half witness. But assume a consent and +it shall presently be granted, since really and underneath +their external diversities, all men are of one heart and +mind. + +Wisdom will never let us stand with any man or men on +an unfriendly footing. We refuse sympathy and intimacy +with people, as if we waited for some better sympathy +and intimacy to come. But whence and when? To-morrow +will be like to-day. Life wastes itself whilst we are +preparing to live. Our friends and fellow-workers die +off from us. Scarcely can we say we see new men, new +women, approaching us. We are too old to regard fashion, +too old to expect patronage of any greater or more powerful. +Let us suck the sweetness of those affections and consuetudes +that grow near us. These old shoes are easy to the feet. +Undoubtedly we can easily pick faults in our company, can +easily whisper names prouder, and that tickle the fancy more. +Every man's imagination hath its friends; and life would be +dearer with such companions. But if you cannot have them on +good mutual terms, you cannot have them. If not the Deity +but our ambition hews and shapes the new relations, their +virtue escapes, as strawberries lose their flavor in garden-beds. + +Thus truth, frankness, courage, love, humility and all +the virtues range themselves on the side of prudence, +or the art of securing a present well-being. I do not +know if all matter will be found to be made of one +element, as oxygen or hydrogen, at last, but the world +of manners and actions is wrought of one stuff, and +begin where we will we are pretty sure in a short space +to be mumbling our ten commandments. + + + + +HEROISM. + +"Paradise is under the shadow of swords." + Mahomet. + +RUBY wine is drunk by knaves, +Sugar spends to fatten slaves, +Rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons; +Thunderclouds are Jove's festoons, +Drooping oft in wreaths of dread +Lightning-knotted round his head; +The hero is not fed on sweets, +Daily his own heart he eats; +Chambers of the great are jails, +And head-winds right for royal sails. + + +VIII. +HEROISM. + +In the elder English dramatists, and mainly in the plays +Of Beaumont and Fletcher, there is a constant recognition +of gentility, as if a noble behavior were as easily marked +in the society of their age as color is in our American +population. When any Rodrigo, Pedro or Valerio enters, +though he be a stranger, the duke or governor exclaims, +'This is a gentleman,--and proffers civilities without +end; but all the rest are slag and refuse. In harmony +with this delight in personal advantages there is in +their plays a certain heroic cast of character and dialogue, +--as in Bonduca, Sophocles, the Mad Lover, the Double +Marriage,--wherein the speaker is so earnest and cordial +and on such deep grounds of character, that the dialogue, +on the slightest additional incident in the plot, rises +naturally into poetry. Among many texts take the following. +The Roman Martius has conquered Athens,--all but the +invincible spirits of Sophocles, the duke of Athens, and +Dorigen, his wife. The beauty of the latter inflames +Martius, and he seeks to save her husband; but Sophocles +will not ask his life, although assured that a word will +save him, and the execution of both proceeds:-- + +Valerius. Bid thy wife farewell. + +Soph_. No, I will take no leave. My Dorigen, +Yonder, above, 'bout Ariadne's crown, +My spirit shall hover for thee. Prithee, haste. + +Dor. Stay, Sophocles,--with this tie up my sight; +Let not soft nature so transformed be, +And lose her gentler sexed humanity, +To make me see my lord bleed. So, 'tis well; +Never one object underneath the sun +Will I behold before my Sophocles: +Farewell; now teach the Romans how to die. + +Mar. Dost know what 't is to die? + +Soph. Thou dost not, Martius, +And, therefore, not what 'tis to live; to die +Is to begin to live. It is to end +An old, stale, weary work, and to commence +A newer and a better. 'Tis to leave +Deceitful knaves for the society +Of gods and goodness. Thou thyself must part +At last from all thy garlands, pleasures, triumphs, +And prove thy fortitude what then 't will do. + +Val. But art not grieved nor vexed to leave thy life thus? + +Soph. Why should I grieve or vex for being sent +To them I ever loved best? Now I'll kneel, +But with my back toward thee; 'tis the last duty +This trunk can do the gods. + +Mar. Strike, strike, Valerius, +Or Martius' heart will leap out at his mouth. +This is a man, a woman. Kiss thy lord, +And live with all the freedom you were wont. +O love! thou doubly hast afflicted me +With virtue and with beauty. Treacherous heart, +My hand shall cast thee quick into my urn, +Ere thou transgress this knot of piety. + +Val. What ails my brother? + +Soph. Martius, O Martius, +Thou now hast found a way to conquer me. + +Dor. O star of Rome! what gratitude can speak +Fit words to follow such a deed as this? + +Mar. This admirable duke, Valerius, +With his disdain of fortune and of death, +Captived himself, has captivated me, +And though my arm hath ta'en his body here, +His soul hath subjugated Martius' soul. +By Romulus, he is all soul, I think; +He hath no flesh, and spirit cannot be gyved; +Then we have vanquished nothing; he is free, +And Martius walks now in captivity." + +I do not readily remember any poem, play, sermon, novel, +or oration that our press vents in the last few years, +which goes to the same tune. We have a great many flutes +and flageolets, but not often the sound of any fife. Yet, +Wordsworth's "Laodamia," and the ode of "Dion," and some +sonnets, have a certain noble music; and Scott will +sometimes draw a stroke like the portrait of Lord Evandale +given by Balfour of Burley. Thomas Carlyle, with his natural +taste for what is manly and daring in character, has suffered +no heroic trait in his favorites to drop from his biographical +and historical pictures. Earlier, Robert Burns has given us +a song or two. In the Harleian Miscellanies there is an +account of the battle of Lutzen which deserves to be read. +And Simon Ockley's History of the Saracens recounts the +prodigies of individual valor, with admiration all the more +evident on the part of the narrator that he seems to think +that his place in Christian Oxford requires of him some +proper protestations of abhorrence. But if we explore the +literature of Heroism we shall quickly come to Plutarch, +who is its Doctor and historian. To him we owe the Brasidas, +the Dion, the Epaminondas, the Scipio of old, and I must +think we are more deeply indebted to him than to all the +ancient writers. Each of his "Lives" is a refutation to the +despondency and cowardice of our religious and political +theorists. A wild courage, a Stoicism not of the schools +but of the blood, shines in every anecdote, and has given +that book its immense fame. + +We need books of this tart cathartic virtue more than +books of political science or of private economy. Life +is a festival only to the wise. Seen from the nook and +chimney-side of prudence, it wears a ragged and dangerous +front. The violations of the laws of nature by our +predecessors and our contemporaries are punished in us +also. The disease and deformity around us certify the +infraction of natural, intellectual, and moral laws, and +often violation on violation to breed such compound +misery. A lock-jaw that bends a man's head back to his +heels; hydrophobia that makes him bark at his wife and +babes; insanity that makes him eat grass; war, plague, +cholera, famine, indicate a certain ferocity in nature, +which, as it had its inlet by human crime, must have its +outlet by human suffering. Unhappily no man exists who +has not in his own person become to some amount a stockholder +in the sin, and so made himself liable to a share in the +expiation. + +Our culture therefore must not omit the arming of the +man. Let him hear in season that he is born into the +state of war, and that the commonwealth and his own +well-being require that he should not go dancing in +the weeds of peace, but warned, self-collected and +neither defying nor dreading the thunder, let him take +both reputation and life in his hand, and, with perfect +urbanity dare the gibbet and the mob by the absolute +truth of his speech and the rectitude of his behavior. + +Towards all this external evil the man within the breast +assumes a warlike attitude, and affirms his ability to +cope single-handed with the infinite army of enemies. To +this military attitude of the soul we give the name of +Heroism. Its rudest form is the contempt for safety and +ease, which makes the attractiveness of war. It is a +self-trust which slights the restraints of prudence, in +the plenitude of its energy and power to repair the harms +it may suffer. The hero is a mind of such balance that no +disturbances can shake his will, but pleasantly and as it +were merrily he advances to his own music, alike in +frightful alarms and in the tipsy mirth of universal +dissoluteness. There is somewhat not philosophical in +heroism; there is somewhat not holy in it; it seems not +to know that other souls are of one texture with it; it +has pride; it is the extreme of individual nature. +Nevertheless we must profoundly revere it. There is +somewhat in great actions which does not allow us to +go behind them. Heroism feels and never reasons, and +therefore is always right; and although a different +breeding, different religion and greater intellectual +activity would have modified or even reversed the +particular action, yet for the hero that thing he does +is the highest deed, and is not open to the censure of +philosophers or divines. It is the avowal of the unschooled +man that he finds a quality in him that is negligent of +expense, of health, of life, of danger, of hatred, of +reproach, and knows that his will is higher and more +excellent than all actual and all possible antagonists. + +Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind +and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the +great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret +impulse of an individual's character. Now to no other +man can its wisdom appear as it does to him, for every +man must be supposed to see a little farther on his own +proper path than any one else. Therefore just and wise +men take umbrage at his act, until after some little +time be past: then they see it to be in unison with their +acts. All prudent men see that the action is clean +contrary to a sensual prosperity; for every heroic act +measures itself by its contempt of some external good. +But it finds its own success at last, and then the +prudent also extol. + +Self-trust is the essence of heroism. It is the state +of the soul at war, and its ultimate objects are the +last defiance of falsehood and wrong, and the power to +bear all that can be inflicted by evil agents. It speaks +the truth and it is just, generous, hospitable, temperate, +scornful of petty calculations and scornful of being +scorned. It persists; it is of an undaunted boldness and +of a fortitude not to be wearied out. Its jest is the +littleness of common life. That false prudence which +dotes on health and wealth is the butt and merriment of +heroism. Heroism, like Plotinus, is almost ashamed of its +body. What shall it say then to the sugar-plums and +cats'-cradles, to the toilet, compliments, quarrels, cards +and custard, which rack the wit of all society? What joys +has kind nature provided for us dear creatures! There +seems to be no interval between greatness and meanness. +When the spirit is not master of the world, then it is +its dupe. Yet the little man takes the great hoax so +innocently, works in it so headlong and believing, is +born red, and dies gray, arranging his toilet, attending +on his own health, laying traps for sweet food and strong +wine, setting his heart on a horse or a rifle, made happy +with a little gossip or a little praise, that the great +soul cannot choose but laugh at such earnest nonsense. +"Indeed, these humble considerations make me out of love +with greatness. What a disgrace is it to me to take note +how many pairs of silk stockings thou hast, namely, these +and those that were the peach-colored ones; or to bear the +inventory of thy shirts, as one for superfluity, and one +other for use!" + +Citizens, thinking after the laws of arithmetic, +consider the inconvenience of receiving strangers at +their fireside, reckon narrowly the loss of time and +the unusual display; the soul of a better quality +thrusts back the unseasonable economy into the vaults +of life, and says, I will obey the God, and the +sacrifice and the fire he will provide. Ibn Hankal, +the Arabian geographer, describes a heroic extreme in +the hospitality of Sogd, in Bukharia. "When I was in +Sogd I saw a great building, like a palace, the gates +of which were open and fixed back to the wall with +large nails. I asked the reason, and was told that the +house had not been shut, night or day, for a hundred +years. Strangers may present themselves at any hour +and in whatever number; the master has amply provided +for the reception of the men and their animals, and is +never happier than when they tarry for some time. +Nothing of the kind have I seen in any other country." +The magnanimous know very well that they who give time, +or money, or shelter, to the stranger,--so it be done +for love and not for ostentation,--do, as it were, put +God under obligation to them, so perfect are the +compensations of the universe. In some way the time +they seem to lose is redeemed and the pains they seem +to take remunerate themselves. These men fan the flame +of human love and raise the standard of civil virtue +among mankind. But hospitality must be for service and +not for show, or it pulls down the host. The brave soul +rates itself too high to value itself by the splendor +of its table and draperies. It gives what it hath, and +all it hath, but its own majesty can lend a better grace +to bannocks and fair water than belong to city feasts. + +The temperance of the hero proceeds from the same wish +to do no dishonor to the worthiness he has. But he +loves it for its elegancy, not for its austerity. It +seems not worth his while to be solemn and denounce with +bitterness flesh-eating or wine-drinking, the use of +tobacco, or opium, or tea, or silk, or gold. A great man +scarcely knows how he dines, how he dresses; but without +railing or precision his living is natural and poetic. +John Eliot, the Indian Apostle, drank water, and said of +wine,--"It is a noble, generous liquor and we should be +humbly thankful for it, but, as I remember, water was +made before it." Better still is the temperance of King +David, who poured out on the ground unto the Lord the water +which three of his warriors had brought him to drink, at +the peril of their lives. + +It is told of Brutus, that when he fell on his sword +after the battle of Philippi, he quoted a line of +Euripides,--"O Virtue! I have followed thee through +life, and I find thee at last but a shade." I doubt +not the hero is slandered by this report. The heroic +soul does not sell its justice and its nobleness. It +does not ask to dine nicely and to sleep warm. The +essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is +enough. Poverty is its ornament. It does not need +plenty, and can very well abide its loss. + +But that which takes my fancy most in the heroic class, +is the good-humor and hilarity they exhibit. It is a +height to which common duty can very well attain, to +suffer and to dare with solemnity. But these rare souls +set opinion, success, and life at so cheap a rate that +they will not soothe their enemies by petitions, or the +show of sorrow, but wear their own habitual greatness. +Scipio, charged with peculation, refuses to do himself +so great a disgrace as to wait for justification, though +he had the scroll of his accounts in his hands, but tears +it to pieces before the tribunes. Socrates's condemnation +of himself to be maintained in all honor in the Prytaneum, +during his life, and Sir Thomas More's playfulness at the +scaffold, are of the same strain. In Beaumont and Fletcher's +"Sea Voyage," Juletta tells the stout captain and his +company,-- + + Jul. Why, slaves, 'tis in our power to hang ye. + Master. Very likely, + 'Tis in our powers, then, to be hanged, and scorn ye. + +These replies are sound and whole. Sport is the bloom +and glow of a perfect health. The great will not +condescend to take any thing seriously; all must be as +gay as the song of a canary, though it were the building +of cities or the eradication of old and foolish churches +and nations which have cumbered the earth long thousands +of years. Simple hearts put all the history and customs +of this world behind them, and play their own game in +innocent defiance of the Blue-Laws of the world; and such +would appear, could we see the human race assembled in +vision, like little children frolicking together, though +to the eyes of mankind at large they wear a stately and +solemn garb of works and influences. + +The interest these fine stories have for us, the power +of a romance over the boy who grasps the forbidden book +under his bench at school, our delight in the hero, is +the main fact to our purpose. All these great and +transcendent properties are ours. If we dilate in +beholding the Greek energy, the Roman pride, it is that +we are already domesticating the same sentiment. Let us +find room for this great guest in our small houses. The +first step of worthiness will be to disabuse us of our +superstitious associations with places and times, with +number and size. Why should these words, Athenian, Roman, +Asia and England, so tingle in the ear? Where the heart +is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in +any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River +and Boston Bay you think paltry places, and the ear loves +names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; +and, if we will tarry a little, we may come to learn that +here is best. See to it only that thyself is here, and art +and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels and the Supreme +Being shall not be absent from the chamber where thou +sittest. Epaminondas, brave and affectionate, does not +seem to us to need Olympus to die upon, nor the Syrian +sunshine. He lies very well where he is. The Jerseys were +handsome ground enough for Washington to tread, and London +streets for the feet of Milton. A great man makes his +climate genial in the imagination of men, and its air the +beloved element of all delicate spirits. That country is +the fairest which is inhabited by the noblest minds. The +pictures which fill the imagination in reading the actions +of Pericles, Xenophon, Columbus, Bayard, Sidney, Hampden, +teach us how needlessly mean our life is; that we, by the +depth of our living, should deck it with more than regal +or national splendor, and act on principles that should +interest man and nature in the length of our days. + +We have seen or heard of many extraordinary young men +who never ripened, or whose performance in actual life +was not extraordinary. When we see their air and mien, +when we hear them speak of society, of books, of religion, +we admire their superiority; they seem to throw contempt +on our entire polity and social state; theirs is the tone +of a youthful giant who is sent to work revolutions. But +they enter an active profession and the forming Colossus +shrinks to the common size of man. The magic they used +was the ideal tendencies, which always make the Actual +ridiculous; but the tough world had its revenge the +moment they put their horses of the sun to plough in its +furrow. They found no example and no companion, and their +heart fainted. What then? The lesson they gave in their +first aspirations is yet true; and a better valor and a +purer truth shall one day organize their belief. Or why +should a woman liken herself to any historical woman, +and think, because Sappho, or Sevigne, or De Stael, or +the cloistered souls who have had genius and cultivation +do not satisfy the imagination and the serene Themis, +none can,--certainly not she? Why not? She has a new and +unattempted problem to solve, perchance that of the +happiest nature that ever bloomed. Let the maiden, with +erect soul, walk serenely on her way, accept the hint of +each new experience, search in turn all the objects that +solicit her eye, that she may learn the power and the +charm of her new-born being, which is the kindling of a +new dawn in the recesses of space. The fair girl who +repels interference by a decided and proud choice of +influences, so careless of pleasing, so wilful and lofty, +inspires every beholder with somewhat of her own nobleness. +The silent heart encourages her; O friend, never strike +sail to a fear! Come into port greatly, or sail with God +the seas. Not in vain you live, for every passing eye is +cheered and refined by the vision. + +The characteristic of heroism is its persistency. All +men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of +generosity. But when you have chosen your part, abide +by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself +with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor +the common the heroic. Yet we have the weakness to +expect the sympathy of people in those actions whose +excellence is that they outrun sympathy and appeal to +a tardy justice. If you would serve your brother, +because it is fit for you to serve him, do not take +back your words when you find that prudent people do +not commend you. Adhere to your own act, and congratulate +yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant +and broken the monotony of a decorous age. It was a high +counsel that I once heard given to a young person,--"Always +do what you are afraid to do." A simple manly character +need never make an apology, but should regard its past +action with the calmness of Phocion, when he admitted that +the event of the battle was happy, yet did not regret his +dissuasion from the battle. + +There is no weakness or exposure for which we cannot +find consolation in the thought--this is a part of my +constitution, part of my relation and office to my +fellow-creature. Has nature covenanted with me that I +should never appear to disadvantage, never make a +ridiculous figure? Let us be generous of our dignity +as well as of our money. Greatness once and for ever +has done with opinion. We tell our charities, not +because we wish to be praised for them, not because we +think they have great merit, but for our justification. +It is a capital blunder; as you discover when another +man recites his charities. + +To speak the truth, even with some austerity, to live +with some rigor of temperance, or some extremes of +generosity, seems to be an asceticism which common +good-nature would appoint to those who are at ease and +in plenty, in sign that they feel a brotherhood with +the great multitude of suffering men. And not only need +we breathe and exercise the soul by assuming the penalties +of abstinence, of debt, of solitude, of unpopularity,--but +it behooves the wise man to look with a bold eye into +those rarer dangers which sometimes invade men, and to +familiarize himself with disgusting forms of disease, with +sounds of execration, and the vision of violent death. + +Times of heroism are generally times of terror, but the +day never shines in which this element may not work. The +circumstances of man, we say, are historically somewhat +better in this country and at this hour than perhaps ever +before. More freedom exists for culture. It will not now +run against an axe at the first step out of the beaten +track of opinion. But whoso is heroic will always find +crises to try his edge. Human virtue demands her champions +and martyrs, and the trial of persecution always proceeds. +It is but the other day that the brave Lovejoy gave his +breast to the bullets of a mob, for the rights of free +speech and opinion, and died when it was better not to +live. + +I see not any road of perfect peace which a man can walk, +but after the counsel of his own bosom. Let him quit too +much association, let him go home much, and stablish +himself in those courses he approves. The unremitting +retention of simple and high sentiments in obscure duties +is hardening the character to that temper which will work +with honor, if need be in the tumult, or on the scaffold. +Whatever outrages have happened to men may befall a man +again; and very easily in a republic, if there appear any +signs of a decay of religion. Coarse slander, fire, tar +and feathers and the gibbet, the youth may freely bring +home to his mind and with what sweetness of temper he can, +and inquire how fast he can fix his sense of duty, braving +such penalties, whenever it may please the next newspaper +and a sufficient number of his neighbors to pronounce his +opinions incendiary. + +It may calm the apprehension of calamity in the most +susceptible heart to see how quick a bound Nature has +set to the utmost infliction of malice. We rapidly +approach a brink over which no enemy can follow us:-- + + "Let them rave: + Thou art quiet in thy grave." + +In the gloom of our ignorance of what shall be, in the +hour when we are deaf to the higher voices, who does +not envy those who have seen safely to an end their +manful endeavor? Who that sees the meanness of our +politics but inly congratulates Washington that he is +long already wrapped in his shroud, and for ever safe; +that he was laid sweet in his grave, the hope of humanity +not yet subjugated in him? Who does not sometimes envy +the good and brave who are no more to suffer from the +tumults of the natural world, and await with curious +complacency the speedy term of his own conversation with +finite nature? And yet the love that will be annihilated +sooner than treacherous has already made death impossible, +and affirms itself no mortal but a native of the deeps of +absolute and inextinguishable being. + + + + +THE OVER-SOUL. + +"BUT souls that of his own good life partake, +He loves as his own self; dear as his eye +They are to Him: He'll never them forsake: +When they shall die, then God himself shall die: +They live, they live in blest eternity." + Henry More. + +Space is ample, east and west, +But two cannot go abreast, +Cannot travel in it two: +Yonder masterful cuckoo +Crowds every egg out of the nest, +Quick or dead, except its own; +A spell is laid on sod and stone, +Night and Day 've been tampered with, +Every quality and pith +Surcharged and sultry with a power +That works its will on age and hour. + +IX. +THE OVER-SOUL. + +THERE is a difference between one and another hour of +life in their authority and subsequent effect. Our faith +comes in moments; our vice is habitual. Yet there is a +depth in those brief moments which constrains us to +ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences. +For this reason the argument which is always forthcoming +to silence those who conceive extraordinary hopes of man, +namely the appeal to experience, is for ever invalid and +vain. We give up the past to the objector, and yet we hope. +He must explain this hope. We grant that human life is mean, +but how did we find out that it was mean? What is the ground +of this uneasiness of ours; of this old discontent? What is +the universal sense of want and ignorance, but the fine +innuendo by which the soul makes its enormous claim? Why +do men feel that the natural history of man has never been +written, but he is always leaving behind what you have said +of him, and it becomes old, and books of metaphysics +worthless? The philosophy of six thousand years has not +searched the chambers and magazines of the soul. In its +experiments there has always remained, in the last analysis, +a residuum it could not resolve. Man is a stream whose +source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from +we know not whence. The most exact calculator has no +prescience that somewhat incalculable may not balk the very +next moment. I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a +higher origin for events than the will I call mine. + +As with events, so is it with thoughts. When I watch +that flowing river, which, out of regions I see not, +pours for a season its streams into me, I see that I +am a pensioner; not a cause, but a surprised spectator +of this ethereal water; that I desire and look up and +put myself in the attitude of reception, but from some +alien energy the visions come. + +The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the +present, and the only prophet of that which must be, +is that great nature in which we rest as the earth +lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, +that Over-soul, within which every man's particular +being is contained and made one with all other; that +common heart of which all sincere conversation is the +worship, to which all right action is submission; that +overpowering reality which confutes our tricks and +talents, and constrains every one to pass for what he +is, and to speak from his character and not from his +tongue, and which evermore tends to pass into our +thought and hand and become wisdom and virtue and power +and beauty. We live in succession, in division, in parts, +in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the +whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which +every part and particle is equally related; the eternal +ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose +beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self- +sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of +seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, +the subject and the object, are one. We see the world +piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the +tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, +is the soul. Only by the vision of that Wisdom can the +horoscope of the ages be read, and by falling back on our +better thoughts, by yielding to the spirit of prophecy +which is innate in every man, we can know what it saith. +Every man's words who speaks from that life must sound +vain to those who do not dwell in the same thought on +their own part. I dare not speak for it. My words do not +carry its august sense; they fall short and cold. Only +itself can inspire whom it will, and behold! their speech +shall be lyrical, and sweet, and universal as the rising +of the wind. Yet I desire, even by profane words, if I +may not use sacred, to indicate the heaven of this deity +and to report what hints I have collected of the +transcendent simplicity and energy of the Highest Law. + +If we consider what happens in conversation, in reveries, +in remorse, in times of passion, in surprises, in the +instructions of dreams, wherein often we see ourselves +in masquerade,--the droll disguises only magnifying and +enhancing a real element and forcing it on our distinct +notice,--we shall catch many hints that will broaden and +lighten into knowledge of the secret of nature. All goes +to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates +and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the +power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses +these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light; +is not the intellect or the will, but the master of the +intellect and the will; is the background of our being, +in which they lie,--an immensity not possessed and that +cannot be possessed. From within or from behind, a light +shines through us upon things and makes us aware that we +are nothing, but the light is all. A man is the facade of +a temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide. What we +commonly call man, the eating, drinking, planting, counting +man, does not, as we know him, represent himself, but +misrepresents himself. Him we do not respect, but the soul, +whose organ he is, would he let it appear through his +action, would make our knees bend. When it breathes through +his intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through his +will, it is virtue; when it flows through his affection, it +is love. And the blindness of the intellect begins when it +would be something of itself. The weakness of the will begins +when the individual would be something of himself. All reform +aims in some one particular to let the soul have its way +through us; in other words, to engage us to obey. + +Of this pure nature every man is at some time sensible. +Language cannot paint it with his colors. It is too +subtile. It is undefinable, unmeasurable; but we know +that it pervades and contains us. We know that all +spiritual being is in man. A wise old proverb says, "God +comes to see us without bell;" that is, as there is no +screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite +heavens, so is there no bar or wall in the soul where +man, the effect, ceases, and God, the cause, begins. The +walls are taken away. We lie open on one side to the deeps +of spiritual nature, to the attributes of God. Justice we +see and know, Love, Freedom, Power. These natures no man +ever got above, but they tower over us, and most in the +moment when our interests tempt us to wound them. + +The sovereignty of this nature whereof we speak is made +known by its independency of those limitations which +circumscribe us on every hand. The soul circumscribes +all things. As I have said, it contradicts all experience. +In like manner it abolishes time and space. The influence +of the senses has in most men overpowered the mind to that +degree that the walls of time and space have come to look +real and insurmountable; and to speak with levity of these +limits is, in the world, the sign of insanity. Yet time and +space are but inverse measures of the force of the soul. +The spirit sports with time,-- + + "Can crowd eternity into an hour, + Or stretch an hour to eternity." + +We are often made to feel that there is another youth +and age than that which is measured from the year of +our natural birth. Some thoughts always find us young, +and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the +universal and eternal beauty. Every man parts from that +contemplation with the feeling that it rather belongs +to ages than to mortal life. The least activity of the +intellectual powers redeems us in a degree from the +conditions of time. In sickness, in languor, give us a +strain of poetry or a profound sentence, and we are +refreshed; or produce a volume of Plato or Shakspeare, +or remind us of their names, and instantly we come into +a feeling of longevity. See how the deep divine thought +reduces centuries and millenniums and makes itself +present through all ages. Is the teaching of Christ +less effective now than it was when first his mouth +was opened? The emphasis of facts and persons in my +thought has nothing to do with time. And so always the +soul's scale is one, the scale of the senses and the +understanding is another. Before the revelations of the +soul, Time, Space and Nature shrink away. In common +speech we refer all things to time, as we habitually +refer the immensely sundered stars to one concave sphere. +And so we say that the Judgment is distant or near, that +the Millennium approaches, that a day of certain political, +moral, social reforms is at hand, and the like, when we +mean that in the nature of things one of the facts we +contemplate is external and fugitive, and the other is +permanent and connate with the soul. The things we now +esteem fixed shall, one by one, detach themselves like +ripe fruit from our experience, and fall. The wind shall +blow them none knows whither. The landscape, the figures, +Boston, London, are facts as fugitive as any institution +past, or any whiff of mist or smoke, and so is society, +and so is the world. The soul looketh steadily forwards, +creating a world before her, leaving worlds behind her. +She has no dates, nor rites, nor persons, nor specialties +nor men. The soul knows only the soul; the web of events +is the flowing robe in which she is clothed. + +After its own law and not by arithmetic is the rate of +its progress to be computed. The soul's advances are not +made by gradation, such as can be represented by motion +in a straight line, but rather by ascension of state, +such as can be represented by metamorphosis,--from the +egg to the worm, from the worm to the fly. The growths +of genius are of a certain total character, that does +not advance the elect individual first over John, then +Adam, then Richard, and give to each the pain of +discovered inferiority,--but by every throe of growth +the man expands there where he works, passing, at each +pulsation, classes, populations, of men. With each divine +impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and +finite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires and +expires its air. It converses with truths that have always +been spoken in the world, and becomes conscious of a closer +sympathy with Zeno and Arrian than with persons in the house. + +This is the law of moral and of mental gain. The simple +rise as by specific levity not into a particular virtue, +but into the region of all the virtues. They are in the +spirit which contains them all. The soul requires purity, +but purity is not it; requires justice, but justice is +not that; requires beneficence, but is somewhat better; +so that there is a kind of descent and accommodation felt +when we leave speaking of moral nature to urge a virtue +which it enjoins. To the well-born child all the virtues +are natural, and not painfully acquired. Speak to his +heart, and the man becomes suddenly virtuous. + +Within the same sentiment is the germ of intellectual +growth, which obeys the same law. Those who are capable +of humility, of justice, of love, of aspiration, stand +already on a platform that commands the sciences and +arts, speech and poetry, action and grace. For whoso +dwells in this moral beatitude already anticipates those +special powers which men prize so highly. The lover has +no talent, no skill, which passes for quite nothing with +his enamoured maiden, however little she may possess of +related faculty; and the heart which abandons itself to +the Supreme Mind finds itself related to all its works, +and will travel a royal road to particular knowledges and +powers. In ascending to this primary and aboriginal +sentiment we have come from our remote station on the +circumference instantaneously to the centre of the world, +where, as in the closet of God, we see causes, and +anticipate the universe, which is but a slow effect. + +One mode of the divine teaching is the incarnation of +the spirit in a form,--in forms, like my own. I live +in society, with persons who answer to thoughts in my +own mind, or express a certain obedience to the great +instincts to which I live. I see its presence to them. +I am certified of a common nature; and these other souls, +these separated selves, draw me as nothing else can. +They stir in me the new emotions we call passion; of love, +hatred, fear, admiration, pity; thence come conversation, +competition, persuasion, cities and war. Persons are +supplementary to the primary teaching of the soul. In +youth we are mad for persons. Childhood and youth see +all the world in them. But the larger experience of man +discovers the identical nature appearing through them all. +Persons themselves acquaint us with the impersonal. In all +conversation between two persons tacit reference is made, +as to a third party, to a common nature. That third party +or common nature is not social; it is impersonal; is God. +And so in groups where debate is earnest, and especially +on high questions, the company become aware that the +thought rises to an equal level in all bosoms, that all +have a spiritual property in what was said, as well as +the sayer. They all become wiser than they were. It arches +over them like a temple, this unity of thought in which +every heart beats with nobler sense of power and duty, and +thinks and acts with unusual solemnity. All are conscious +of attaining to a higher self-possession. It shines for +all. There is a certain wisdom of humanity which is common +to the greatest men with the lowest, and which our ordinary +education often labors to silence and obstruct. The mind is +one, and the best minds, who love truth for its own sake, +think much less of property in truth. They accept it +thankfully everywhere, and do not label or stamp it with +any man's name, for it is theirs long beforehand, and from +eternity. The learned and the studious of thought have no +monopoly of wisdom. Their violence of direction in some +degree disqualifies them to think truly. We owe many +valuable observations to people who are not very acute or +profound, and who say the thing without effort which we want +and have long been hunting in vain. The action of the soul +is oftener in that which is felt and left unsaid than in +that which is said in any conversation. It broods over every +society, and they unconsciously seek for it in each other. +We know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves, +and we know at the same time that we are much more. I feel +the same truth how often in my trivial conversation with my +neighbors, that somewhat higher in each of us overlooks this +by-play, and Jove nods to Jove from behind each of us. + +Men descend to meet. In their habitual and mean service +to the world, for which they forsake their native +nobleness, they resemble those Arabian sheiks who dwell +in mean houses and affect an external poverty, to escape +the rapacity of the Pacha, and reserve all their display +of wealth for their interior and guarded retirements. + +As it is present in all persons, so it is in every +period of life. It is adult already in the infant man. +In my dealing with my child, my Latin and Greek, my +accomplishments and my money stead me nothing; but as +much soul as I have avails. If I am wilful, he sets his +will against mine, one for one, and leaves me, if I +please, the degradation of beating him by my superiority +of strength. But if I renounce my will and act for the +soul, setting that up as umpire between us two, out of +his young eyes looks the same soul; he reveres and loves +with me. + +The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know +truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what +they choose. Foolish people ask you, when you have spoken +what they do not wish to hear, 'How do you know it is +truth, and not an error of your own?' We know truth when +we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that +we are awake. It was a grand sentence of Emanuel Swedenborg, +which would alone indicate the greatness of that man's +perception,--"It is no proof of a man's understanding to +be able to confirm whatever he pleases; but to be able to +discern that what is true is true, and that what is false +is false,--this is the mark and character of intelligence." +In the book I read, the good thought returns to me, as +every truth will, the image of the whole soul. To the bad +thought which I find in it, the same soul becomes a +discerning, separating sword, and lops it away. We are wiser +than we know. If we will not interfere with our thought, but +will act entirely, or see how the thing stands in God, we +know the particular thing, and every thing, and every man. +For the Maker of all things and all persons stands behind +us and casts his dread omniscience through us over things. + +But beyond this recognition of its own in particular +passages of the individual's experience, it also reveals +truth. And here we should seek to reinforce ourselves by +its very presence, and to speak with a worthier, loftier +strain of that advent. For the soul's communication of +truth is the highest event in nature, since it then does +not give somewhat from itself, but it gives itself, or +passes into and becomes that man whom it enlightens; or, +in proportion to that truth he receives, it takes him to +itself. + +We distinguish the announcements of the soul, its +manifestations of its own nature, by the term Revelation. +These are always attended by the emotion of the sublime. +For this communication is an influx of the Divine mind +into our mind. It is an ebb of the individual rivulet +before the flowing surges of the sea of life. Every distinct +apprehension of this central commandment agitates men with +awe and delight. A thrill passes through all men at the +reception of new truth, or at the performance of a great +action, which comes out of the heart of nature. In these +communications the power to see is not separated from the +will to do, but the insight proceeds from obedience, and +the obedience proceeds from a joyful perception. Every +moment when the individual feels himself invaded by it is +memorable. By the necessity of our constitution a certain +enthusiasm attends the individual's consciousness of that +divine presence. The character and duration of this +enthusiasm varies with the state of the individual, from an +ecstasy and trance and prophetic inspiration,--which is its +rarer appearance,--to the faintest glow of virtuous emotion, +in which form it warms, like our household fires, all the +families and associations of men, and makes society possible. +A certain tendency to insanity has always attended the opening +of the religious sense in men, as if they had been "blasted +with excess of light." The trances of Socrates, the "union" +of Plotinus, the vision of Porphyry, the conversion of Paul, +the aurora of Behmen, the convulsions of George Fox and his +Quakers, the illumination of Swedenborg, are of this kind. +What was in the case of these remarkable persons a ravishment, +has, in innumerable instances in common life, been exhibited +in less striking manner. Everywhere the history of religion +betrays a tendency to enthusiasm. The rapture of the Moravian +and Quietist; the opening of the internal sense of the Word, +in the language of the New Jerusalem Church; the revival of +the Calvinistic churches; the experiences of the Methodists, +are varying forms of that shudder of awe and delight with +which the individual soul always mingles with the universal +soul. + +The nature of these revelations is the same; they are +perceptions of the absolute law. They are solutions +of the soul's own questions. They do not answer the +questions which the understanding asks. The soul +answers never by words, but by the thing itself that +is inquired after. + +Revelation is the disclosure of the soul. The popular +notion of a revelation is that it is a telling of +fortunes. In past oracles of the soul the understanding +seeks to find answers to sensual questions, and undertakes +to tell from God how long men shall exist, what their +hands shall do and who shall be their company, adding +names and dates and places. But we must pick no locks. +We must check this low curiosity. An answer in words is +delusive; it is really no answer to the questions you ask. +Do not require a description of the countries towards +which you sail. The description does not describe them to +you, and to-morrow you arrive there and know them by +inhabiting them. Men ask concerning the immortality of +the soul, the employments of heaven, the state of the +sinner, and so forth. They even dream that Jesus has left +replies to precisely these interrogatories. Never a moment +did that sublime spirit speak in their patois. To truth, +justice, love, the attributes of the soul, the idea of +immutableness is essentially associated. Jesus, living in +these moral sentiments, heedless of sensual fortunes, heeding +only the manifestations of these, never made the separation +of the idea of duration from the essence of these attributes, +nor uttered a syllable concerning the duration of the soul. +It was left to his disciples to sever duration from the +moral elements, and to teach the immortality of the soul +as a doctrine, and maintain it by evidences. The moment the +doctrine of the immortality is separately taught, man is +already fallen. In the flowing of love, in the adoration of +humility, there is no question of continuance. No inspired +man ever asks this question or condescends to these evidences. +For the soul is true to itself, and the man in whom it is +shed abroad cannot wander from the present, which is infinite, +to a future which would be finite. + +These questions which we lust to ask about the future +are a confession of sin. God has no answer for them. No +answer in words can reply to a question of things. It is +not in an arbitrary "decree of God," but in the nature +of man, that a veil shuts down on the facts of to-morrow; +for the soul will not have us read any other cipher than +that of cause and effect. By this veil which curtains +events it instructs the children of men to live in to-day. +The only mode of obtaining an answer to these questions +of the senses is to forego all low curiosity, and, +accepting the tide of being which floats us into the +secret of nature, work and live, work and live, and all +unawares the advancing soul has built and forged for +itself a new condition, and the question and the answer +are one. + +By the same fire, vital, consecrating, celestial, which +burns until it shall dissolve all things into the waves +and surges of an ocean of light, we see and know each +other, and what spirit each is of. Who can tell the +grounds of his knowledge of the character of the several +individuals in his circle of friends? No man. Yet their +acts and words do not disappoint him. In that man, though +he knew no ill of him, he put no trust. In that other, +though they had seldom met, authentic signs had yet passed, +to signify that he might be trusted as one who had an +interest in his own character. We know each other very well, +--which of us has been just to himself and whether that +which we teach or behold is only an aspiration or is our +honest effort also. + +We are all discerners of spirits. That diagnosis lies +aloft in our life or unconscious power. The intercourse +of society, its trade, its religion, its friendships, +its quarrels, is one wide, judicial investigation of +character. In full court, or in small committee, or +confronted face to face, accuser and accused, men offer +themselves to be judged. Against their will they exhibit +those decisive trifles by which character is read. But +who judges? and what? Not our understanding. We do not +read them by learning or craft. No; the wisdom of the +wise man consists herein, that he does not judge them; +he lets them judge themselves and merely reads and +records their own verdict. + +By virtue of this inevitable nature, private will +is overpowered, and, maugre our efforts or our +imperfections, your genius will speak from you, +and mine from me. That which we are, we shall teach, +not voluntarily but involuntarily. Thoughts come into +our minds by avenues which we never left open, and +thoughts go out of our minds through avenues which we +never voluntarily opened. Character teaches over our +head. The infallible index of true progress is found +in the tone the man takes. Neither his age, nor his +breeding, nor company, nor books, nor actions, nor +talents, nor all together can hinder him from being +deferential to a higher spirit than his own. If he +have not found his home in God, his manners, his +forms of speech, the turn of his sentences, the build, +shall I say, of all his opinions will involuntarily +confess it, let him brave it out how he will. If he +have found his centre, the Deity will shine through +him, through all the disguises of ignorance, of +ungenial temperament, of unfavorable circumstance. +The tone of seeking is one, and the tone of having +is another. + +The great distinction between teachers sacred or +literary,--between poets like Herbert, and poets +like Pope,--between philosophers like Spinoza, Kant +and Coleridge, and philosophers like Locke, Paley, +Mackintosh and Stewart,--between men of the world +who are reckoned accomplished talkers, and here and +there a fervent mystic, prophesying half insane under +the infinitude of his thought,--is that one class +speak from within, or from experience, as parties +and possessors of the fact; and the other class from +without, as spectators merely, or perhaps as acquainted +with the fact on the evidence of third persons. It is +of no use to preach to me from without. I can do that +too easily myself. Jesus speaks always from within, +and in a degree that transcends all others. In that is +the miracle. I believe beforehand that it ought so to +be. All men stand continually in the expectation of the +appearance of such a teacher. But if a man do not speak +from within the veil, where the word is one with that it +tells of, let him lowly confess it. + +The same Omniscience flows into the intellect, and makes +what we call genius. Much of the wisdom of the world is +not wisdom, and the most illuminated class of men are no +doubt superior to literary fame, and are not writers. +Among the multitude of scholars and authors, we feel no +hallowing presence; we are sensible of a knack and skill +rather than of inspiration; they have a light and know +not whence it comes and call it their own; their talent +is some exaggerated faculty, some overgrown member, so +that their strength is a disease. In these instances the +intellectual gifts do not make the impression of virtue, +but almost of vice; and we feel that a man's talents stand +in the way of his advancement in truth. But genius is +religious. It is a larger imbibing of the common heart. +It is not anomalous, but more like and not less like other +men. There is in all great poets a wisdom of humanity +which is superior to any talents they exercise. The author, +the wit, the partisan, the fine gentleman, does not take +place of the man. Humanity shines in Homer, in Chaucer, in +Spenser, in Shakspeare, in Milton. They are content with +truth. They use the positive degree. They seem frigid and +phlegmatic to those who have been spiced with the frantic +passion and violent coloring of inferior but popular +writers. For they are poets by the free course which they +allow to the informing soul, which through their eyes +beholds again and blesses the things which it hath made. +The soul is superior to its knowledge, wiser than any of +its works. The great poet makes us feel our own wealth, +and then we think less of his compositions. His best +communication to our mind is to teach us to despise all +he has done. Shakspeare carries us to such a lofty strain +of intelligent activity as to suggest a wealth which +beggars his own; and we then feel that the splendid works +which he has created, and which in other hours we extol +as a sort of self-existent poetry, take no stronger hold +of real nature than the shadow of a passing traveller on +the rock. The inspiration which uttered itself in Hamlet +and Lear could utter things as good from day to day for +ever. Why then should I make account of Hamlet and Lear, +as if we had not the soul from which they fell as syllables +from the tongue? + +This energy does not descend into individual life on +any other condition than entire possession. It comes +to the lowly and simple; it comes to whomsoever will +put off what is foreign and proud; it comes as insight; +it comes as serenity and grandeur. When we see those +whom it inhabits, we are apprised of new degrees of +greatness. From that inspiration the man comes back +with a changed tone. He does not talk with men with +an eye to their opinion. He tries them. It requires +of us to be plain and true. The vain traveller attempts +to embellish his life by quoting my lord and the prince +and the countess, who thus said or did to him. The +ambitious vulgar show you their spoons and brooches and +rings, and preserve their cards and compliments. The +more cultivated, in their account of their own experience, +cull out the pleasing, poetic circumstance,--the visit to +Rome, the man of genius they saw, the brilliant friend +They know; still further on perhaps the gorgeous landscape, +the mountain lights, the mountain thoughts they enjoyed +yesterday,--and so seek to throw a romantic color over +their life. But the soul that ascends to worship the +great God is plain and true; has no rose-color, no fine +friends, no chivalry, no adventures; does not want +admiration; dwells in the hour that now is, in the +earnest experience of the common day,--by reason of the +present moment and the mere trifle having become porous +to thought and bibulous of the sea of light. + +Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and +literature looks like word-catching. The simplest +utterances are worthiest to be written, yet are +they so cheap and so things of course, that in the +infinite riches of the soul it is like gathering a +few pebbles off the ground, or bottling a little +air in a phial, when the whole earth and the whole +atmosphere are ours. Nothing can pass there, or make +you one of the circle, but the casting aside your +trappings, and dealing man to man in naked truth, +plain confession, and omniscient affirmation. + +Souls such as these treat you as gods would, walk as +gods in the earth, accepting without any admiration +your wit, your bounty, your virtue even,--say rather +your act of duty, for your virtue they own as their +proper blood, royal as themselves, and over-royal, +and the father of the gods. But what rebuke their +plain fraternal bearing casts on the mutual flattery +with which authors solace each other and wound +themselves! These flatter not. I do not wonder that +these men go to see Cromwell and Christina and Charles +the Second and James the First and the Grand Turk. For +they are, in their own elevation, the fellows of kings, +and must feel the servile tone of conversation in the +world. They must always be a godsend to princes, for +they confront them, a king to a king, without ducking +or concession, and give a high nature the refreshment +and satisfaction of resistance, of plain humanity, of +even companionship and of new ideas. They leave them +wiser and superior men. Souls like these make us feel +that sincerity is more excellent than flattery. Deal so +plainly with man and woman as to constrain the utmost +sincerity and destroy all hope of trifling with you. It +is the highest compliment you can pay. Their "highest +praising," said Milton, "is not flattery, and their +plainest advice is a kind of praising." + +Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act +of the soul. The simplest person who in his integrity +worships God, becomes God; yet for ever and ever the +influx of this better and universal self is new and +unsearchable. It inspires awe and astonishment. How +dear, how soothing to man, arises the idea of God, +peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars of our +mistakes and disappointments! When we have broken our +god of tradition and ceased from our god of rhetoric, +then may God fire the heart with his presence. It is +the doubling of the heart itself, nay, the infinite +enlargement of the heart with a power of growth to a +new infinity on every side. It inspires in man an +infallible trust. He has not the conviction, but the +sight, that the best is the true, and may in that +thought easily dismiss all particular uncertainties +and fears, and adjourn to the sure revelation of time +the solution of his private riddles. He is sure that +his welfare is dear to the heart of being. In the +presence of law to his mind he is overflowed with a +reliance so universal that it sweeps away all cherished +hopes and the most stable projects of mortal condition +in its flood. He believes that he cannot escape from +his good. The things that are really for thee gravitate +to thee. You are running to seek your friend. Let your +feet run, but your mind need not. If you do not find +him, will you not acquiesce that it is best you should +not find him? for there is a power, which, as it is in +you, is in him also, and could therefore very well bring +you together, if it were for the best. You are preparing +with eagerness to go and render a service to which your +talent and your taste invite you, the love of men and +the hope of fame. Has it not occurred to you that you +have no right to go, unless you are equally willing to +be prevented from going? O, believe, as thou livest, that +every sound that is spoken over the round world, which +thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate on thine ear! Every +proverb, every book, every byword that belongs to thee +for aid or comfort, shall surely come home through open +or winding passages. Every friend whom not thy fantastic +will but the great and tender heart in thee craveth, +shall lock thee in his embrace. And this because the +heart in thee is the heart of all; not a valve, not a +wall, not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, +but one blood rolls uninterruptedly an endless circulation +through all men, as the water of the globe is all one sea, +and, truly seen, its tide is one. + +Let man then learn the revelation of all nature and +all thought to his heart; this, namely; that the +Highest dwells with him; that the sources of nature +are in his own mind, if the sentiment of duty is +there. But if he would know what the great God +speaketh, he must 'go into his closet and shut the +door,' as Jesus said. God will not make himself +manifest to cowards. He must greatly listen to himself, +withdrawing himself from all the accents of other men's +devotion. Even their prayers are hurtful to him, until +he have made his own. Our religion vulgarly stands on +numbers of believers. Whenever the appeal is made,--no +matter how indirectly,--to numbers, proclamation is then +and there made that religion is not. He that finds God a +sweet enveloping thought to him never counts his company. +When I sit in that presence, who shall dare to come in? +When I rest in perfect humility, when I burn with pure +love, what can Calvin or Swedenborg say? + +It makes no difference whether the appeal is to +numbers or to one. The faith that stands on authority +is not faith. The reliance on authority measures the +decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul. The +position men have given to Jesus, now for many centuries +of history, is a position of authority. It characterizes +themselves. It cannot alter the eternal facts. Great is +the soul, and plain. It is no flatterer, it is no +follower; it never appeals from itself. It believes in +itself. Before the immense possibilities of man all mere +experience, all past biography, however spotless and +sainted, shrinks away. Before that heaven which our +presentiments foreshow us, we cannot easily praise any +form of life we have seen or read of. We not only affirm +that we have few great men, but, absolutely speaking, +that we have none; that we have no history, no record of +any character or mode of living that entirely contents +us. The saints and demigods whom history worships we are +constrained to accept with a grain of allowance. Though +in our lonely hours we draw a new strength out of their +memory, yet, pressed on our attention, as they are by +the thoughtless and customary, they fatigue and invade. +The soul gives itself, alone, original and pure, to the +Lonely, Original and Pure, who, on that condition, gladly +inhabits, leads and speaks through it. Then is it glad, +young and nimble. It is not wise, but it sees through all +things. It is not called religious, but it is innocent. +It calls the light its own, and feels that the grass grows +and the stone falls by a law inferior to, and dependent +on, its nature. Behold, it saith, I am born into the great, +the universal mind. I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect. +I am somehow receptive of the great soul, and thereby I do +Overlook the sun and the stars and feel them to be the fair +accidents and effects which change and pass. More and more +the surges of everlasting nature enter into me, and I +become public and human in my regards and actions. So come +I to live in thoughts and act with energies which are +immortal. Thus revering the soul, and learning, as the +ancient said, that "its beauty is immense," man will come +to see that the world is the perennial miracle which the +soul worketh, and be less astonished at particular wonders; +he will learn that there is no profane history; that all +history is sacred; that the universe is represented in an +atom, in a moment of time. He will weave no longer a spotted +life of shreds and patches, but he will live with a divine +unity. He will cease from what is base and frivolous in his +life and be content with all places and with any service he +can render. He will calmly front the morrow in the negligency +of that trust which carries God with it and so hath already +the whole future in the bottom of the heart. + + + + +CIRCLES. + +NATURE centres into balls, +And her proud ephemerals, +Fast to surface and outside, +Scan the profile of the sphere; +Knew they what that signified, +A new genesis were here. + +X. +CIRCLES. + +The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it +forms is the second; and throughout nature this +primary figure is repeated without end. It is the +highest emblem in the cipher of the world. St. +Augustine described the nature of God as a circle +whose centre was everywhere and its circumference +nowhere. We are all our lifetime reading the copious +sense of this first of forms. One moral we have already +deduced, in considering the circular or compensatory +character of every human action. Another analogy we +shall now trace, that every action admits of being +outdone. Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth +that around every circle another can be drawn; that +there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; +that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, +and under every deep a lower deep opens. + +This fact, as far as it symbolizes the moral fact of +the Unattainable, the flying Perfect, around which the +hands of man can never meet, at once the inspirer and +the condemner of every success, may conveniently serve +us to connect many illustrations of human power in +every department. + +There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is +fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of +degrees. Our globe seen by God is a transparent +law, not a mass of facts. The law dissolves the +fact and holds it fluid. Our culture is the +predominance of an idea which draws after it this +train of cities and institutions. Let us rise into +another idea: they will disappear. The Greek +sculpture is all melted away, as if it had been +statues of ice; here and there a solitary figure or +fragment remaining, as we see flecks and scraps of +snow left in cold dells and mountain clefts in June +and July. For the genius that created it creates now +somewhat else. The Greek letters last a little longer, +but are already passing under the same sentence and +tumbling into the inevitable pit which the creation +of new thought opens for all that is old. The new +continents are built out of the ruins of an old planet; +the new races fed out of the decomposition of the +foregoing. New arts destroy the old. See the investment +of capital in aqueducts made useless by hydraulics; +fortifications, by gunpowder; roads and canals, by +railways; sails, by steam; steam by electricity. + +You admire this tower of granite, weathering the +hurts of so many ages. Yet a little waving hand +built this huge wall, and that which builds is +better than that which is built. The hand that +built can topple it down much faster. Better than +the hand and nimbler was the invisible thought +which wrought through it; and thus ever, behind +the coarse effect, is a fine cause, which, being +narrowly seen, is itself the effect of a finer +cause. Every thing looks permanent until its secret +is known. A rich estate appears to women a firm and +lasting fact; to a merchant, one easily created out +of any materials, and easily lost. An orchard, good +tillage, good grounds, seem a fixture, like a gold +mine, or a river, to a citizen; but to a large farmer, +not much more fixed than the state of the crop. Nature +looks provokingly stable and secular, but it has a +cause like all the rest; and when once I comprehend +that, will these fields stretch so immovably wide, +these leaves hang so individually considerable? +Permanence is a word of degrees. Every thing is medial. +Moons are no more bounds to spiritual power than bat-balls. + +The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying +though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is +the idea after which all his facts are classified. He +can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which +commands his own. The life of man is a self-evolving +circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes +on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and +that without end. The extent to which this generation +of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, depends on +the force or truth of the individual soul. For it is +the inert effort of each thought, having formed itself +into a circular wave of circumstance,--as for instance +an empire, rules of an art, a local usage, a religious +rite,--to heap itself on that ridge and to solidify and +hem in the life. But if the soul is quick and strong it +bursts over that boundary on all sides and expands +another orbit on the great deep, which also runs up into +a high wave, with attempt again to stop and to bind. But +the heart refuses to be imprisoned; in its first and +narrowest pulses, it already tends outward with a vast +force and to immense and innumerable expansions. + +Every ultimate fact is only the first of a new series. +Every general law only a particular fact of some more +general law presently to disclose itself. There is no +outside, no inclosing wall, no circumference to us. The +man finishes his story,--how good! how final! how it +puts a new face on all things! He fills the sky. Lo! +on the other side rises also a man and draws a circle +around the circle we had just pronounced the outline of +the sphere. Then already is our first speaker not man, +but only a first speaker. His only redress is forthwith +to draw a circle outside of his antagonist. And so men +do by themselves. The result of to-day, which haunts the +mind and cannot be escaped, will presently be abridged +into a word, and the principle that seemed to explain +nature will itself be included as one example of a bolder +generalization. In the thought of to-morrow there is a +power to upheave all thy creed, all the creeds, all the +literatures of the nations, and marshal thee to a heaven +which no epic dream has yet depicted. Every man is not +so much a workman in the world as he is a suggestion of +that he should be. Men walk as prophecies of the next age. + +Step by step we scale this mysterious ladder: the +steps are actions; the new prospect is power. Every +several result is threatened and judged by that which +follows. Every one seems to be contradicted by the +new; it is only limited by the new. The new statement +is always hated by the old, and, to those dwelling in +the old, comes like an abyss of scepticism. But the +eye soon gets wonted to it, for the eye and it are +effects of one cause; then its innocency and benefit +appear, and presently, all its energy spent, it pales +and dwindles before the revelation of the new hour. + +Fear not the new generalization. Does the fact look +crass and material, threatening to degrade thy theory +of spirit? Resist it not; it goes to refine and raise +thy theory of matter just as much. + +There are no fixtures to men, if we appeal to consciousness. +Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood; and +if there is any truth in him, if he rests at last on the +divine soul, I see not how it can be otherwise. The last +chamber, the last closet, he must feel was never opened; +there is always a residuum unknown, unanalyzable. That is, +every man believes that he has a greater possibility. + +Our moods do not believe in each other. To-day I am +full of thoughts and can write what I please. I see +no reason why I should not have the same thought, +the same power of expression, to-morrow. What I write, +whilst I write it, seems the most natural thing in the +world; but yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this +direction in which now I see so much; and a month hence, +I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was that wrote so +many continuous pages. Alas for this infirm faith, this +will not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast flow! I am +God in nature; I am a weed by the wall. + +The continual effort to raise himself above himself, +to work a pitch above his last height, betrays itself +in a man's relations. We thirst for approbation, yet +cannot forgive the approver. The sweet of nature is +love; yet, if I have a friend I am tormented by my +imperfections. The love of me accuses the other party. +If he were high enough to slight me, then could I love +him, and rise by my affection to new heights. A man's +growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends. +For every friend whom he loses for truth, he gains a +better. I thought as I walked in the woods and mused +on my friends, why should I play with them this game of +idolatry? I know and see too well, when not voluntarily +blind, the speedy limits of persons called high and +worthy. Rich, noble and great they are by the liberality +of our speech, but truth is sad. O blessed Spirit, whom +I forsake for these, they are not thou! Every personal +consideration that we allow costs us heavenly state. We +sell the thrones of angels for a short and turbulent +pleasure. + +How often must we learn this lesson? Men cease to +interest us when we find their limitations. The only +sin is limitation. As soon as you once come up with a +man's limitations, it is all over with him. Has he +talents? has he enterprise? has he knowledge? It boots +not. Infinitely alluring and attractive was he to you +yesterday, a great hope, a sea to swim in; now, you +have found his shores, found it a pond, and you care +not if you never see it again. + +Each new step we take in thought reconciles twenty +seemingly discordant facts, as expressions of one +law. Aristotle and Plato are reckoned the respective +heads of two schools. A wise man will see that +Aristotle platonizes. By going one step farther back +in thought, discordant opinions are reconciled by +being seen to be two extremes of one principle, and +we can never go so far back as to preclude a still +higher vision. + +Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this +planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a +conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no +man knows what is safe, or where it will end. There +is not a piece of science but its flank may be turned +to-morrow; there is not any literary reputation, not +the so-called eternal names of fame, that may not be +revised and condemned. The very hopes of man, the +thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the +manners and morals of mankind are all at the mercy of +a new generalization. Generalization is always a new +influx of the divinity into the mind. Hence the thrill +that attends it. + +Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so +that a man cannot have his flank turned, cannot be +out-generalled, but put him where you will, he stands. +This can only be by his preferring truth to his past +apprehension of truth, and his alert acceptance of it +from whatever quarter; the intrepid conviction that +his laws, his relations to society, his Christianity, +his world, may at any time be superseded and decease. + +There are degrees in idealism. We learn first to play +with it academically, as the magnet was once a toy. +Then we see in the heyday of youth and poetry that it +may be true, that it is true in gleams and fragments. +Then its countenance waxes stern and grand, and we see +that it must be true. It now shows itself ethical and +practical. We learn that God is; that he is in me; and +that all things are shadows of him. The idealism of +Berkeley is only a crude statement of the idealism of +Jesus, and that again is a crude statement of the fact +that all nature is the rapid efflux of goodness executing +and organizing itself. Much more obviously is history and +the state of the world at any one time directly dependent +on the intellectual classification then existing in the +minds of men. The things which are dear to men at this +hour are so on account of the ideas which have emerged +on their mental horizon, and which cause the present order +of things, as a tree bears its apples. A new degree of +culture would instantly revolutionize the entire system +of human pursuits. + +Conversation is a game of circles. In conversation +we pluck up the termini which bound the common of +silence on every side. The parties are not to be +judged by the spirit they partake and even express +under this Pentecost. To-morrow they will have receded +from this high-water mark. To-morrow you shall find +them stooping under the old pack-saddles. Yet let us +enjoy the cloven flame whilst it glows on our walls. +When each new speaker strikes a new light, emancipates +us from the oppression of the last speaker, to oppress +us with the greatness and exclusiveness of his own +thought, then yields us to another redeemer, we seem +to recover our rights, to become men. O, what truths +profound and executable only in ages and orbs, are +supposed in the announcement of every truth! In common +hours, society sits cold and statuesque. We all stand +waiting, empty,--knowing, possibly, that we can be full, +surrounded by mighty symbols which are not symbols to +us, but prose and trivial toys. Then cometh the god and +converts the statues into fiery men, and by a flash of +his eye burns up the veil which shrouded all things, +and the meaning of the very furniture, of cup and saucer, +of chair and clock and tester, is manifest. The facts +which loomed so large in the fogs of yesterday,--property, +climate, breeding, personal beauty and the like, have +strangely changed their proportions. All that we reckoned +settled shakes and rattles; and literatures, cities, +climates, religions, leave their foundations and dance +before our eyes. And yet here again see the swift +circumspection! Good as is discourse, silence is better, +and shames it. The length of the discourse indicates the +distance of thought betwixt the speaker and the hearer. +If they were at a perfect understanding in any part, no +words would be necessary thereon. If at one in all parts, +no words would be suffered. + +Literature is a point outside of our hodiernal circle +through which a new one may be described. The use of +literature is to afford us a platform whence we may +command a view of our present life, a purchase by +which we may move it. We fill ourselves with ancient +learning, install ourselves the best we can in Greek, +in Punic, in Roman houses, only that we may wiselier +see French, English and American houses and modes of +living. In like manner we see literature best from the +midst of wild nature, or from the din of affairs, or +from a high religion. The field cannot be well seen +from within the field. The astronomer must have his +diameter of the earth's orbit as a base to find the +parallax of any star. + +Therefore we value the poet. All the argument and all +the wisdom is not in the encyclopaedia, or the treatise +on metaphysics, or the Body of Divinity, but in the +sonnet or the play. In my daily work I incline to repeat +my old steps, and do not believe in remedial force, in +the power of change and reform. But some Petrarch or +Ariosto, filled with the new wine of his imagination, +writes me an ode or a brisk romance, full of daring +thought and action. He smites and arouses me with his +shrill tones, breaks up my whole chain of habits, and +I open my eye on my own possibilities. He claps wings +to the sides of all the solid old lumber of the world, +and I am capable once more of choosing a straight path +in theory and practice. + +We have the same need to command a view of the religion +of the world. We can never see Christianity from the +catechism:--from the pastures, from a boat in the pond, +from amidst the songs of wood-birds we possibly may. +Cleansed by the elemental light and wind, steeped in the +sea of beautiful forms which the field offers us, we may +chance to cast a right glance back upon biography. +Christianity is rightly dear to the best of mankind; yet +was there never a young philosopher whose breeding had +fallen into the Christian church by whom that brave text +of Paul's was not specially prized:--"Then shall also the +Son be subject unto Him who put all things under him, that +God may be all in all." Let the claims and virtues of +persons be never so great and welcome, the instinct of man +presses eagerly onward to the impersonal and illimitable, +and gladly arms itself against the dogmatism of bigots with +this generous word out of the book itself. + +The natural world may be conceived of as a system of +concentric circles, and we now and then detect in +nature slight dislocations which apprise us that this +surface on which we now stand is not fixed, but sliding. +These manifold tenacious qualities, this chemistry and +vegetation, these metals and animals, which seem to +stand there for their own sake, are means and methods +only,--are words of God, and as fugitive as other words. +Has the naturalist or chemist learned his craft, who +has explored the gravity of atoms and the elective +affinities, who has not yet discerned the deeper law +whereof this is only a partial or approximate statement, +namely that like draws to like, and that the goods which +belong to you gravitate to you and need not be pursued +with pains and cost? Yet is that statement approximate +also, and not final. Omnipresence is a higher fact. Not +through subtle subterranean channels need friend and fact +be drawn to their counterpart, but, rightly considered, +these things proceed from the eternal generation of the +soul. Cause and effect are two sides of one fact. + +The same law of eternal procession ranges all that +we call the virtues, and extinguishes each in the +light of a better. The great man will not be prudent +in the popular sense; all his prudence will be so much +deduction from his grandeur. But it behooves each to +see, when he sacrifices prudence, to what god he +devotes it; if to ease and pleasure, he had better +be prudent still; if to a great trust, he can well +spare his mule and panniers who has a winged chariot +instead. Geoffrey draws on his boots to go through +the woods, that his feet may be safer from the bite +of snakes; Aaron never thinks of such a peril. In many +years neither is harmed by such an accident. Yet it +seems to me that with every precaution you take against +such an evil you put yourself into the power of the evil. +I suppose that the highest prudence is the lowest prudence. +Is this too sudden a rushing from the centre to the verge +of our orbit? Think how many times we shall fall back into +pitiful calculations before we take up our rest in the +great sentiment, or make the verge of to-day the new +centre. Besides, your bravest sentiment is familiar to +the humblest men. The poor and the low have their way of +expressing the last facts of philosophy as well as you. +"Blessed be nothing" and "The worse things are, the better +they are" are proverbs which express the transcendentalism +of common life. + +One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's +beauty another's ugliness; one man's wisdom another's +folly; as one beholds the same objects from a higher +point. One man thinks justice consists in paying debts, +and has no measure in his abhorrence of another who is +very remiss in this duty and makes the creditor wait +tediously. But that second man has his own way of +looking at things; asks himself Which debt must I pay +first, the debt to the rich, or the debt to the poor? +the debt of money, or the debt of thought to mankind, +of genius to nature? For you, O broker, there is no +other principle but arithmetic. For me, commerce is of +trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the +aspiration of man, these are sacred; nor can I detach +one duty, like you, from all other duties, and concentrate +my forces mechanically on the payment of moneys. Let me +live onward; you shall find that, though slower, the +progress of my character will liquidate all these debts +without injustice to higher claims. If a man should +dedicate himself to the payment of notes, would not this +be injustice? Does he owe no debt but money? And are all +claims on him to be postponed to a landlord's or a banker's? + +There is no virtue which is final; all are initial. +The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The +terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast +away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed +such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser +vices:-- + + "Forgive his crimes, forgive his virtues too, + Those smaller faults, half converts to the right." + +It is the highest power of divine moments that they +abolish our contritions also. I accuse myself of sloth +and unprofitableness day by day; but when these waves +of God flow into me I no longer reckon lost time. I no +longer poorly compute my possible achievement by what +remains to me of the month or the year; for these moments +confer a sort of omnipresence and omnipotence which asks +nothing of duration, but sees that the energy of the mind +is commensurate with the work to be done, without time. + +And thus, O circular philosopher, I hear some reader +exclaim, you have arrived at a fine Pyrrhonism, at an +equivalence and indifferency of all actions, and would +fain teach us that if we are true, forsooth, our crimes +may be lively stones out of which we shall construct the +temple of the true God! + +I am not careful to justify myself. I own I am +gladdened by seeing the predominance of the saccharine +principle throughout vegetable nature, and not less by +beholding in morals that unrestrained inundation of +the principle of good into every chink and hole that +selfishness has left open, yea into selfishness and sin +itself; so that no evil is pure, nor hell itself without +its extreme satisfactions. But lest I should mislead any +when I have my own head and obey my whims, let me remind +the reader that I am only an experimenter. Do not set +the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on +what I do not, as if I pretended to settle any thing as +true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are to me +sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless +seeker with no Past at my back. + +Yet this incessant movement and progression which all +things partake could never become sensible to us but +by contrast to some principle of fixture or stability +in the soul. Whilst the eternal generation of circles +proceeds, the eternal generator abides. That central +life is somewhat superior to creation, superior to +knowledge and thought, and contains all its circles. +For ever it labors to create a life and thought as +Large and excellent as itself, but in vain, for that +which is made instructs how to make a better. + +Thus there is no sleep, no pause, no preservation, +but all things renew, germinate and spring. Why +should we import rags and relics into the new hour? +Nature abhors the old, and old age seems the only +disease; all others run into this one. We call it by +many names,--fever, intemperance, insanity, stupidity +and crime; they are all forms of old age; they are +rest, conservatism, appropriation, inertia; not newness, +not the way onward. We grizzle every day. I see no need +of it. Whilst we converse with what is above us, we do +not grow old, but grow young. Infancy, youth, receptive, +aspiring, with religious eye looking upward, counts +itself nothing and abandons itself to the instruction +flowing from all sides. But the man and woman of seventy +assume to know all, they have outlived their hope, they +renounce aspiration, accept the actual for the necessary +and talk down to the young. Let them, then, become organs +of the Holy Ghost; let them be lovers; let them behold +truth; and their eyes are uplifted, their wrinkles smoothed, +they are perfumed again with hope and power. This old age +ought not to creep on a human mind. In nature every moment +is new; the past is always swallowed and forgotten; the +coming only is sacred. Nothing is secure but life, +transition, the energizing spirit. No love can be bound +by oath or covenant to secure it against a higher love. +No truth so sublime but it may be trivial to-morrow in +the light of new thoughts. People wish to be settled; only +as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them. + +Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess to-day +the mood, the pleasure, the power of to-morrow, when we +are building up our being. Of lower states, of acts of +routine and sense, we can tell somewhat; but the +masterpieces of God, the total growths and universal +movements of the soul, he hideth; they are incalculable. +I can know that truth is divine and helpful; but how it +shall help me I can have no guess, for so to be is the +sole inlet of so to know. The new position of the +advancing man has all the powers of the old, yet has +them all new. It carries in its bosom all the energies +of the past, yet is itself an exhalation of the morning. +I cast away in this new moment all my once hoarded +knowledge, as vacant and vain. Now, for the first time +seem I to know any thing rightly. The simplest words,--we +do not know what they mean except when we love and aspire. + +The difference between talents and character is +adroitness to keep the old and trodden round, and +power and courage to make a new road to new and +better goals. Character makes an overpowering present; +a cheerful, determined hour, which fortifies all the +company by making them see that much is possible and +excellent that was not thought of. Character dulls +the impression of particular events. When we see the +conqueror we do not think much of any one battle or +success. We see that we had exaggerated the difficulty. +It was easy to him. The great man is not convulsible or +tormentable; events pass over him without much impression. +People say sometimes, 'See what I have overcome; see how +cheerful I am; see how completely I have triumphed over +these black events.' Not if they still remind me of the +black event. True conquest is the causing the calamity +to fade and disappear as an early cloud of insignificant +result in a history so large and advancing. + +The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to +forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, +to lose our sempiternal memory and to do something without +knowing how or why; in short to draw a new circle. Nothing +great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. The way of life +is wonderful; it is by abandonment. The great moments of +history are the facilities of performance through the +strength of ideas, as the works of genius and religion. +"A man" said Oliver Cromwell "never rises so high as when +he knows not whither he is going." Dreams and drunkenness, +the use of opium and alcohol are the semblance and counterfeit +of this oracular genius, and hence their dangerous attraction +for men. For the like reason they ask the aid of wild passions, +as in gaming and war, to ape in some manner these flames and +generosities of the heart. + + + + +INTELLECT. + +GO, speed the stars of Thought +On to their shining goals;-- +The sower scatters broad his seed, +The wheat thou strew'st be souls. + +XI. +INTELLECT. + +Every substance is negatively electric to that which +stands above it in the chemical tables, positively to +that which stands below it. Water dissolves wood and +iron and salt; air dissolves water; electric fire +dissolves air, but the intellect dissolves fire, +gravity, laws, method, and the subtlest unnamed relations +of nature in its resistless menstruum. Intellect lies +behind genius, which is intellect constructive. Intellect +is the simple power anterior to all action or construction. +Gladly would I unfold in calm degrees a natural history of +the intellect, but what man has yet been able to mark the +steps and boundaries of that transparent essence? The first +questions are always to be asked, and the wisest doctor is +gravelled by the inquisitiveness of a child. How can we +speak of the action of the mind under any divisions, as of +its knowledge, of its ethics, of its works, and so forth, +since it melts will into perception, knowledge into act? +Each becomes the other. Itself alone is. Its vision is not +like the vision of the eye, but is union with the things +known. + +Intellect and intellection signify to the common ear +consideration of abstract truth. The considerations of +time and place, of you and me, of profit and hurt +tyrannize over most men's minds. Intellect separates +the fact considered, from you, from all local and +personal reference, and discerns it as if it existed +for its own sake. Heraclitus looked upon the affections +as dense and colored mists. In the fog of good and +evil affections it is hard for man to walk forward in +a straight line. Intellect is void of affection and +sees an object as it stands in the light of science, +cool and disengaged. The intellect goes out of the +individual, floats over its own personality, and +regards it as a fact, and not as I and mine. He who +is immersed in what concerns person or place cannot +see the problem of existence. This the intellect always +ponders. Nature shows all things formed and bound. The +intellect pierces the form, overleaps the wall, detects +intrinsic likeness between remote things and reduces all +things into a few principles. + +The making a fact the subject of thought raises it. All +that mass of mental and moral phenomena which we do not +make objects of voluntary thought, come within the power +of fortune; they constitute the circumstance of daily +life; they are subject to change, to fear, and hope. +Every man beholds his human condition with a degree of +melancholy. As a ship aground is battered by the waves, +so man, imprisoned in mortal life, lies open to the mercy +of coming events. But a truth, separated by the intellect, +is no longer a subject of destiny. We behold it as a god +upraised above care and fear. And so any fact in our life, +or any record of our fancies or reflections, disentangled +from the web of our unconsciousness, becomes an object +impersonal and immortal. It is the past restored, but +embalmed. A better art than that of Egypt has taken fear +and corruption out of it. It is eviscerated of care. It +is offered for science. What is addressed to us for +contemplation does not threaten us but makes us intellectual +beings. + +The growth of the intellect is spontaneous in every +expansion. The mind that grows could not predict the +times, the means, the mode of that spontaneity. God +enters by a private door into every individual. Long +prior to the age of reflection is the thinking of the +mind. Out of darkness it came insensibly into the +marvellous light of to-day. In the period of infancy it +accepted and disposed of all impressions from the +surrounding creation after its own way. Whatever any mind +doth or saith is after a law; and this native law remains +over it after it has come to reflection or conscious thought. +In the most worn, pedantic, introverted self-tormenter's +life, the greatest part is incalculable by him, unforeseen, +unimaginable, and must be, until he can take himself up by +his own ears. What am I? What has my will done to make me +that I am? Nothing. I have been floated into this thought, +this hour, this connection of events, by secret currents of +might and mind, and my ingenuity and wilfulness have not +thwarted, have not aided to an appreciable degree. + +Our spontaneous action is always the best. You +cannot with your best deliberation and heed come +so close to any question as your spontaneous glance +shall bring you, whilst you rise from your bed, or +walk abroad in the morning after meditating the +matter before sleep on the previous night. Our +thinking is a pious reception. Our truth of thought +is therefore vitiated as much by too violent direction +given by our will, as by too great negligence. We do +not determine what we will think. We only open our +senses, clear away as we can all obstruction from the +fact, and suffer the intellect to see. We have little +control over our thoughts. We are the prisoners of +ideas. They catch us up for moments into their heaven +and so fully engage us that we take no thought for the +morrow, gaze like children, without an effort to make +them our own. By and by we fall out of that rapture, +bethink us where we have been, what we have seen, and +repeat as truly as we can what we have beheld. As far +as we can recall these ecstasies we carry away in the +ineffaceable memory the result, and all men and all the +ages confirm it. It is called Truth. But the moment we +cease to report and attempt to correct and contrive, it +is not truth. + +If we consider what persons have stimulated and +profited us, we shall perceive the superiority of +the spontaneous or intuitive principle over the +arithmetical or logical. The first contains the +second, but virtual and latent. We want in every man +a long logic; we cannot pardon the absence of it, but +it must not be spoken. Logic is the procession or +proportionate unfolding of the intuition; but its +virtue is as silent method; the moment it would appear +as propositions and have a separate value it is worthless. + +In every man's mind, some images, words and facts +remain, without effort on his part to imprint them, +which others forget, and afterwards these illustrate +to him important laws. All our progress is an unfolding, +like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then +an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud +and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can +render no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By trusting it +to the end, it shall ripen into truth and you shall know +why you believe. + +Each mind has its own method. A true man never +acquires after college rules. What you have aggregated +in a natural manner surprises and delights when it is +produced. For we cannot oversee each other's secret. +And hence the differences between men in natural endowment +are insignificant in comparison with their common wealth. +Do you think the porter and the cook have no anecdotes, +no experiences, no wonders for you? Every body knows as +much as the savant. The walls of rude minds are scrawled +all over with facts, with thoughts. They shall one day +bring a lantern and read the inscriptions. Every man, in +the degree in which he has wit and culture, finds his +curiosity inflamed concerning the modes of living and +thinking of other men, and especially of those classes +whose minds have not been subdued by the drill of school +education. + +This instinctive action never ceases in a healthy mind, +but becomes richer and more frequent in its informations +through all states of culture. At last comes the era of +reflection, when we not only observe, but take pains to +observe; when we of set purpose sit down to consider an +abstract truth; when we keep the mind's eye open whilst +we converse, whilst we read, whilst we act, intent to +learn the secret law of some class of facts. + +What is the hardest task in the world? To think. I would +put myself in the attitude to look in the eye an abstract +truth, and I cannot. I blench and withdraw on this side +and on that. I seem to know what he meant who said, No man +can see God face to face and live. For example, a man +explores the basis of civil government. Let him intend his +mind without respite, without rest, in one direction. His +best heed long time avails him nothing. Yet thoughts are +flitting before him. We all but apprehend, we dimly forebode +the truth. We say I will walk abroad, and the truth will +take form and clearness to me. We go forth, but cannot find +it. It seems as if we needed only the stillness and composed +attitude of the library to seize the thought. But we come in, +and are as far from it as at first. Then, in a moment, and +unannounced, the truth appears. A certain wandering light +appears, and is the distinction, the principle, we wanted. +But the oracle comes because we had previously laid siege +to the shrine. It seems as if the law of the intellect +resembled that law of nature by which we now inspire, now +expire the breath; by which the heart now draws in, then +hurls out the blood,--the law of undulation. So now you must +labor with your brains, and now you must forbear your +activity and see what the great Soul showeth. + +The immortality of man is as legitimately preached +from the intellections as from the moral volitions. +Every intellection is mainly prospective. Its present +value is its least. Inspect what delights you in +Plutarch, in Shakspeare, in Cervantes. Each truth that +a writer acquires is a lantern, which he turns full +on what facts and thoughts lay already in his mind, +and behold, all the mats and rubbish which had littered +his garret become precious. Every trivial fact in his +private biography becomes an illustration of this new +principle, revisits the day, and delights all men by +its piquancy and new charm. Men say, Where did he get +this? and think there was something divine in his life. +But no; they have myriads of facts just as good, would +they only get a lamp to ransack their attics withal. + +We are all wise. The difference between persons is +not in wisdom but in art. I knew, in an academical +club, a person who always deferred to me; who, seeing +my whim for writing, fancied that my experiences had +somewhat superior; whilst I saw that his experiences +were as good as mine. Give them to me and I would make +the same use of them. He held the old; he holds the +new; I had the habit of tacking together the old and +the new which he did not use to exercise. This may +hold in the great examples. Perhaps if we should meet +Shakspeare we should not be conscious of any steep +inferiority; no, but of a great equality,--only that +he possessed a strange skill of using, of classifying, +his facts, which we lacked. For notwithstanding our +utter incapacity to produce anything like Hamlet and +Othello, see the perfect reception this wit and immense +knowledge of life and liquid eloquence find in us all. + +If you gather apples in the sunshine, or make hay, or +hoe corn, and then retire within doors and shut your +eyes and press them with your hand, you shall still see +apples hanging in the bright light with boughs and leaves +thereto, or the tasselled grass, or the corn-flags, and +this for five or six hours afterwards. There lie the +impressions on the retentive organ, though you knew it +not. So lies the whole series of natural images with which +your life has made you acquainted, in your memory, though +you know it not; and a thrill of passion flashes light on +their dark chamber, and the active power seizes instantly +the fit image, as the word of its momentary thought. + +It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our +history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing +to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still +run back to the despised recollections of childhood, +and always we are fishing up some wonderful article +out of that pond; until by and by we begin to suspect +that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, +in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase +of the hundred volumes of the Universal History. + +In the intellect constructive, which we popularly +designate by the word Genius, we observe the same +balance of two elements as in intellect receptive. +The constructive intellect produces thoughts, sentences, +poems, plans, designs, systems. It is the generation of +the mind, the marriage of thought with nature. To genius +must always go two gifts, the thought and the publication. +The first is revelation, always a miracle, which no +frequency of occurrence or incessant study can ever +familiarize, but which must always leave the inquirer +stupid with wonder. It is the advent of truth into the +world, a form of thought now for the first time bursting +into the universe, a child of the old eternal soul, a +piece of genuine and immeasurable greatness. It seems, +for the time, to inherit all that has yet existed and +to dictate to the unborn. It affects every thought of +man and goes to fashion every institution. But to make +it available it needs a vehicle or art by which it is +conveyed to men. To be communicable it must become +picture or sensible object. We must learn the language +of facts. The most wonderful inspirations die with their +subject if he has no hand to paint them to the senses. +The ray of light passes invisible through space and +only when it falls on an object is it seen. When the +spiritual energy is directed on something outward, then +it is a thought. The relation between it and you first +makes you, the value of you, apparent to me. The rich +inventive genius of the painter must be smothered and +lost for want of the power of drawing, and in our happy +hours we should be inexhaustible poets if once we could +break through the silence into adequate rhyme. As all +men have some access to primary truth, so all have some +art or power of communication in their head, but only in +the artist does it descend into the hand. There is an +inequality, whose laws we do not yet know, between two +men and between two moments of the same man, in respect +to this faculty. In common hours we have the same facts +as in the uncommon or inspired, but they do not sit for +their portraits; they are not detached, but lie in a web. +The thought of genius is spontaneous; but the power of +picture or expression, in the most enriched and flowing +nature, implies a mixture of will, a certain control over +the spontaneous states, without which no production is +possible. It is a conversion of all nature into the +rhetoric of thought, under the eye of judgment, with a +strenuous exercise of choice. And yet the imaginative +vocabulary seems to be spontaneous also. It does not flow +from experience only or mainly, but from a richer source. +Not by any conscious imitation of particular forms are the +grand strokes of the painter executed, but by repairing to +the fountain-head of all forms in his mind. Who is the first +drawing-master? Without instruction we know very well the +ideal of the human form. A child knows if an arm or a leg +be distorted in a picture; if the attitude be natural or +grand or mean; though he has never received any instruction +in drawing or heard any conversation on the subject, nor +can himself draw with correctness a single feature. A good +form strikes all eyes pleasantly, long before they have any +science on the subject, and a beautiful face sets twenty +hearts in palpitation, prior to all consideration of the +mechanical proportions of the features and head. We may owe +to dreams some light on the fountain of this skill; for as +soon as we let our will go and let the unconscious states +ensue, see what cunning draughtsmen we are! We entertain +ourselves with wonderful forms of men, of women, of animals, +of gardens, of woods and of monsters, and the mystic pencil +wherewith we then draw has no awkwardness or inexperience, +no meagreness or poverty; it can design well and group well; +its composition is full of art, its colors are well laid on +and the whole canvas which it paints is lifelike and apt to +touch us with terror, with tenderness, with desire and with +grief. Neither are the artist's copies from experience ever +mere copies, but always touched and softened by tints from +this ideal domain. + +The conditions essential to a constructive mind do +not appear to be so often combined but that a good +sentence or verse remains fresh and memorable for a +long time. Yet when we write with ease and come out +into the free air of thought, we seem to be assured +that nothing is easier than to continue this +communication at pleasure. Up, down, around, the +kingdom of thought has no inclosures, but the Muse +makes us free of her city. Well, the world has a +million writers. One would think then that good thought +would be as familiar as air and water, and the gifts of +each new hour would exclude the last. Yet we can count +all our good books; nay, I remember any beautiful verse +for twenty years. It is true that the discerning intellect +of the world is always much in advance of the creative, +so that there are many competent judges of the best book, +and few writers of the best books. But some of the +conditions of intellectual construction are of rare +occurrence. The intellect is a whole and demands integrity +in every work. This is resisted equally by a man's devotion +to a single thought and by his ambition to combine too many. + +Truth is our element of life, yet if a man fasten his +attention on a single aspect of truth and apply himself +to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted +and not itself but falsehood; herein resembling the air, +which is our natural element, and the breath of our +nostrils, but if a stream of the same be directed on the +body for a time, it causes cold, fever, and even death. +How wearisome the grammarian, the phrenologist, the +political or religious fanatic, or indeed any possessed +mortal whose balance is lost by the exaggeration of a +single topic. It is incipient insanity. Every thought is +a prison also. I cannot see what you see, because I am +caught up by a strong wind and blown so far in one direction +that I am out of the hoop of your horizon. + +Is it any better if the student, to avoid this offence, +and to liberalize himself, aims to make a mechanical +whole of history, or science, or philosophy, by a +numerical addition of all the facts that fall within +his vision? The world refuses to be analyzed by addition +and subtraction. When we are young we spend much time +and pains in filling our note-books with all definitions +of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope +that in the course of a few years we shall have condensed +into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theories +at which the world has yet arrived. But year after year +our tables get no completeness, and at last we discover +that our curve is a parabola, whose arcs will never meet. + +Neither by detachment neither by aggregation is the +integrity of the intellect transmitted to its works, +but by a vigilance which brings the intellect in its +greatness and best state to operate every moment. It +must have the same wholeness which nature has. Although +no diligence can rebuild the universe in a model by +the best accumulation or disposition of details, yet +does the world reappear in miniature in every event, so +that all the laws of nature may be read in the smallest +fact. The intellect must have the like perfection in its +apprehension and in its works. For this reason, an index +or mercury of intellectual proficiency is the perception +of identity. We talk with accomplished persons who appear +to be strangers in nature. The cloud, the tree, the turf, +the bird are not theirs, have nothing of them; the world +is only their lodging and table. But the poet, whose verses +are to be spheral and complete, is one whom Nature cannot +deceive, whatsoever face of strangeness she may put on. +He feels a strict consanguinity, and detects more likeness +than variety in all her changes. We are stung by the desire +for new thought; but when we receive a new thought it is +only the old thought with a new face, and though we make +it our own we instantly crave another; we are not really +enriched. For the truth was in us before it was reflected +to us from natural objects; and the profound genius will +cast the likeness of all creatures into every product of +his wit. + +But if the constructive powers are rare and it is +given to few men to be poets, yet every man is a +receiver of this descending holy ghost, and may +well study the laws of its influx. Exactly parallel +is the whole rule of intellectual duty to the rule +of moral duty. A self-denial no less austere than +the saint's is demanded of the scholar. He must +worship truth, and forego all things for that, and +choose defeat and pain, so that his treasure in +thought is thereby augmented. + +God offers to every mind its choice between truth and +repose. Take which you please,--you can never have both. +Between these, as a pendulum, man oscillates. He in whom +the love of repose predominates will accept the first +creed, the first philosophy, the first political party +he meets,--most likely his father's. He gets rest, +commodity, and reputation; but he shuts the door of +truth. He in whom the love of truth predominates will +keep himself aloof from all moorings, and afloat. He +will abstain from dogmatism, and recognize all the +opposite negations between which, as walls, his being +is swung. He submits to the inconvenience of suspense +and imperfect opinion, but he is a candidate for truth, +as the other is not, and respects the highest law of +his being. + +The circle of the green earth he must measure with +his shoes to find the man who can yield him truth. +He shall then know that there is somewhat more blessed +and great in hearing than in speaking. Happy is the +hearing man; unhappy the speaking man. As long as I +hear truth I am bathed by a beautiful element and am +not conscious of any limits to my nature. The suggestions +are thousandfold that I hear and see. The waters of the +great deep have ingress and egress to the soul. But if I +speak, I define, I confine and am less. When Socrates +speaks, Lysis and Menexenus are afflicted by no shame +that they do not speak. They also are good. He likewise +defers to them, loves them, whilst he speaks. Because a +true and natural man contains and is the same truth which +an eloquent man articulates; but in the eloquent man, +because he can articulate it, it seems something the less +to reside, and he turns to these silent beautiful with the +more inclination and respect. The ancient sentence said, +Let us be silent, for so are the gods. Silence is a solvent +that destroys personality, and gives us leave to be great +and universal. Every man's progress is through a succession +of teachers, each of whom seems at the time to have a +superlative influence, but it at last gives place to a new. +Frankly let him accept it all. Jesus says, Leave father, +mother, house and lands, and follow me. Who leaves all, +receives more. This is as true intellectually as morally. +Each new mind we approach seems to require an abdication of +all our past and present possessions. A new doctrine seems +at first a subversion of all our opinions, tastes, and +manner of living. Such has Swedenborg, such has Kant, such +has Coleridge, such has Hegel or his interpreter Cousin +seemed to many young men in this country. Take thankfully +and heartily all they can give. Exhaust them, wrestle with +them, let them not go until their blessing be won, and after +a short season the dismay will be overpast, the excess of +influence withdrawn, and they will be no longer an alarming +meteor, but one more bright star shining serenely in your +heaven and blending its light with all your day. + +But whilst he gives himself up unreservedly to that +which draws him, because that is his own, he is to +refuse himself to that which draws him not, whatsoever +fame and authority may attend it, because it is not +his own. Entire self-reliance belongs to the intellect. +One soul is a counterpoise of all souls, as a capillary +column of water is a balance for the sea. It must treat +things and books and sovereign genius as itself also a +sovereign. If Aeschylus be that man he is taken for, he +has not yet done his office when he has educated the +learned of Europe for a thousand years. He is now to +approve himself a master of delight to me also. If he +cannot do that, all his fame shall avail him nothing +with me. I were a fool not to sacrifice a thousand +Aeschyluses to my intellectual integrity. Especially +take the same ground in regard to abstract truth, the +science of the mind. The Bacon, the Spinoza, the Hume, +Schelling, Kant, or whosoever propounds to you a philosophy +of the mind, is only a more or less awkward translator of +things in your consciousness which you have also your way +of seeing, perhaps of denominating. Say then, instead of +too timidly poring into his obscure sense, that he has not +succeeded in rendering back to you your consciousness. He +has not succeeded; now let another try. If Plato cannot, +perhaps Spinoza will. If Spinoza cannot, then perhaps Kant. +Anyhow, when at last it is done, you will find it is no +recondite, but a simple, natural, common state which the +writer restores to you. + +But let us end these didactics. I will not, though +the subject might provoke it, speak to the open +question between Truth and Love. I shall not presume +to interfere in the old politics of the skies;--"The +cherubim know most; the seraphim love most." The gods +shall settle their own quarrels. But I cannot recite, +even thus rudely, laws of the intellect, without +remembering that lofty and sequestered class of men +who have been its prophets and oracles, the high- +priesthood of the pure reason, the Trismegisti, the +expounders of the principles of thought from age to +age. When at long intervals we turn over their abstruse +pages, wonderful seems the calm and grand air of these +few, these great spiritual lords who have walked in the +world,--these of the old religion,--dwelling in a worship +which makes the sanctities of Christianity look parvenues +and popular; for "persuasion is in soul, but necessity is +in intellect." This band of grandees, Hermes, Heraclitus, +Empedocles, Plato, Plotinus, Olympiodorus, Proclus, +Synesius and the rest, have somewhat so vast in their +logic, so primary in their thinking, that it seems +antecedent to all the ordinary distinctions of rhetoric +and literature, and to be at once poetry and music and +dancing and astronomy and mathematics. I am present at +the sowing of the seed of the world. With a geometry of +sunbeams the soul lays the foundations of nature. The +truth and grandeur of their thought is proved by its scope +and applicability, for it commands the entire schedule and +inventory of things for its illustration. But what marks +its elevation and has even a comic look to us, is the +innocent serenity with which these babe-like Jupiters sit +in their clouds, and from age to age prattle to each other +and to no contemporary. Well assured that their speech is +intelligible and the most natural thing in the world, they +add thesis to thesis, without a moment's heed of the +universal astonishment of the human race below, who do not +comprehend their plainest argument; nor do they ever relent +so much as to insert a popular or explaining sentence, nor +testify the least displeasure or petulance at the dulness +of their amazed auditory. The angels are so enamored of +the language that is spoken in heaven that they will not +distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects +of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who +understand it or not. + + + + +ART. + +GIVE to barrows trays and pans +Grace and glimmer of romance, +Bring the moonlight into noon +Hid in gleaming piles of stone; +On the city's paved street +Plant gardens lined with lilac sweet, +Let spouting fountains cool the air, +Singing in the sun-baked square. +Let statue, picture, park and hall, +Ballad, flag and festival, +The past restore, the day adorn +And make each morrow a new morn +So shall the drudge in dusty frock +Spy behind the city clock +Retinues of airy kings, +Skirts of angels, starry wings, +His fathers shining in bright fables, +His children fed at heavenly tables. +'Tis the privilege of Art +Thus to play its cheerful part, +Man in Earth to acclimate +And bend the exile to his fate, +And, moulded of one element +With the days and firmament, +Teach him on these as stairs to climb +And live on even terms with Time; +Whilst upper life the slender rill +Of human sense doth overfill. + +XII. +ART. + +Because the soul is progressive, it never quite +repeats itself, but in every act attempts the +production of a new and fairer whole. This appears +in works both of the useful and the fine arts, if +we employ the popular distinction of works according +to their aim either at use or beauty. Thus in our +fine arts, not imitation but creation is the aim. In +landscapes the painter should give the suggestion of +a fairer creation than we know. The details, the prose +of nature he should omit and give us only the spirit +and splendor. He should know that the landscape has +beauty for his eye because it expresses a thought +which is to him good; and this because the same power +which sees through his eyes is seen in that spectacle; +and he will come to value the expression of nature and +not nature itself, and so exalt in his copy the features +that please him. He will give the gloom of gloom and the +sunshine of sunshine. In a portrait he must inscribe the +character and not the features, and must esteem the man +who sits to him as himself only an imperfect picture or +likeness of the aspiring original within. + +What is that abridgment and selection we observe +in all spiritual activity, but itself the creative +impulse? for it is the inlet of that higher +illumination which teaches to convey a larger sense +by simpler symbols. What is a man but nature's finer +success in self-explication? What is a man but a finer +and compacter landscape than the horizon figures,-- +nature's eclecticism? and what is his speech, his love +of painting, love of nature, but a still finer success, +--all the weary miles and tons of space and bulk left +out, and the spirit or moral of it contracted into a +musical word, or the most cunning stroke of the pencil? + +But the artist must employ the symbols in use in +his day and nation to convey his enlarged sense to +his fellow-men. Thus the new in art is always formed +out of the old. The Genius of the Hour sets his +ineffaceable seal on the work and gives it an +inexpressible charm for the imagination. As far as +the spiritual character of the period overpowers the +artist and finds expression in his work, so far it +will retain a certain grandeur, and will represent +to future beholders the Unknown, the Inevitable, the +Divine. No man can quite exclude this element of +Necessity from his labor. No man can quite emancipate +himself from his age and country, or produce a model +in which the education, the religion, the politics, +usages and arts of his times shall have no share. +Though he were never so original, never so wilful +and fantastic, he cannot wipe out of his work every +trace of the thoughts amidst which it grew. The very +avoidance betrays the usage he avoids. Above his will +and out of his sight he is necessitated by the air he +breathes and the idea on which he and his contemporaries +live and toil, to share the manner of his times, without +knowing what that manner is. Now that which is inevitable +in the work has a higher charm than individual talent can +ever give, inasmuch as the artist's pen or chisel seems +to have been held and guided by a gigantic hand to inscribe +a line in the history of the human race. This circumstance +gives a value to the Egyptian hieroglyphics, to the Indian, +Chinese and Mexican idols, however gross and shapeless. +They denote the height of the human soul in that hour, +and were not fantastic, but sprung from a necessity as +deep as the world. Shall I now add that the whole extant +product of the plastic arts has herein its highest value, +as history; as a stroke drawn in the portrait of that fate, +perfect and beautiful, according to whose ordinations all +beings advance to their beatitude? + +Thus, historically viewed, it has been the office +of art to educate the perception of beauty. We are +immersed in beauty, but our eyes have no clear vision. +It needs, by the exhibition of single traits, to assist +and lead the dormant taste. We carve and paint, or we +behold what is carved and painted, as students of the +mystery of Form. The virtue of art lies in detachment, +in sequestering one object from the embarrassing variety. +Until one thing comes out from the connection of things, +there can be enjoyment, contemplation, but no thought. +Our happiness and unhappiness are unproductive. The +infant lies in a pleasing trance, but his individual +character and his practical power depend on his daily +progress in the separation of things, and dealing with +one at a time. Love and all the passions concentrate +all existence around a single form. It is the habit of +certain minds to give an all-excluding fulness to the +object, the thought, the word, they alight upon, and +to make that for the time the deputy of the world. +These are the artists, the orators, the leaders of +society. The power to detach and to magnify by detaching +is the essence of rhetoric in the hands of the orator and +the poet. This rhetoric, or power to fix the momentary +eminency of an object,--so remarkable in Burke, in Byron, +in Carlyle,--the painter and sculptor exhibit in color +and in stone. The power depends on the depth of the +artist's insight of that object he contemplates. For +every object has its roots in central nature, and may of +course be so exhibited to us as to represent the world. +Therefore each work of genius is the tyrant of the hour +And concentrates attention on itself. For the time, it +is the only thing worth naming to do that,--be it a +sonnet, an opera, a landscape, a statue, an oration, +the plan of a temple, of a campaign, or of a voyage of +discovery. Presently we pass to some other object, which +rounds itself into a whole as did the first; for example +a well-laid garden; and nothing seems worth doing but the +laying out of gardens. I should think fire the best thing +in the world, if I were not acquainted with air, and water, +and earth. For it is the right and property of all natural +objects, of all genuine talents, of all native properties +whatsoever, to be for their moment the top of the world. +A squirrel leaping from bough to bough and making the +Wood but one wide tree for his pleasure, fills the eye +not less than a lion,--is beautiful, self-sufficing, and +stands then and there for nature. A good ballad draws my +ear and heart whilst I listen, as much as an epic has +done before. A dog, drawn by a master, or a litter of +pigs, satisfies and is a reality not less than the +frescoes of Angelo. From this succession of excellent +objects we learn at last the immensity of the world, +the opulence of human nature, which can run out to +infinitude in any direction. But I also learn that what +astonished and fascinated me in the first work astonished +me in the second work also; that excellence of all things +is one. + +The office of painting and sculpture seems to be +merely initial. The best pictures can easily tell +us their last secret. The best pictures are rude +draughts of a few of the miraculous dots and lines +and dyes which make up the ever-changing "landscape +with figures" amidst which we dwell. Painting seems +to be to the eye what dancing is to the limbs. When +that has educated the frame to self-possession, to +nimbleness, to grace, the steps of the dancing-master +are better forgotten; so painting teaches me the +splendor of color and the expression of form, and as +I see many pictures and higher genius in the art, I +see the boundless opulence of the pencil, the +indifferency in which the artist stands free to choose +out of the possible forms. If he can draw every thing, +why draw any thing? and then is my eye opened to the +eternal picture which nature paints in the street, with +moving men and children, beggars and fine ladies, draped +in red and green and blue and gray; long-haired, grizzled, +white-faced, black-faced, wrinkled, giant, dwarf, expanded, +elfish,--capped and based by heaven, earth and sea. + +A gallery of sculpture teaches more austerely the +same lesson. As picture teaches the coloring, so +sculpture the anatomy of form. When I have seen +fine statues and afterwards enter a public assembly, +I understand well what he meant who said, "When I +have been reading Homer, all men look like giants." +I too see that painting and sculpture are gymnastics +of the eye, its training to the niceties and curiosities +of its function. There is no statue like this living +man, with his infinite advantage over all ideal sculpture, +of perpetual variety. What a gallery of art have I here! +No mannerist made these varied groups and diverse original +single figures. Here is the artist himself improvising, +grim and glad, at his block. Now one thought strikes him, +now another, and with each moment he alters the whole air, +attitude and expression of his clay. Away with your +nonsense of oil and easels, of marble and chisels; except +to open your eyes to the masteries of eternal art, they +are hypocritical rubbish. + +The reference of all production at last to an +aboriginal Power explains the traits common to all +works of the highest art,--that they are universally +intelligible; that they restore to us the simplest +states of mind, and are religious. Since what skill +is therein shown is the reappearance of the original +soul, a jet of pure light, it should produce a similar +impression to that made by natural objects. In happy +hours, nature appears to us one with art; art perfected, +--the work of genius. And the individual, in whom simple +tastes and susceptibility to all the great human +influences overpower the accidents of a local and special +culture, is the best critic of art. Though we travel the +world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with +us, or we find it not. The best of beauty is a finer +charm than skill in surfaces, in outlines, or rules of +art can ever teach, namely a radiation from the work of +art of human character,--a wonderful expression through +stone, or canvas, or musical sound, of the deepest and +simplest attributes of our nature, and therefore most +intelligible at last to those souls which have these +attributes. In the sculptures of the Greeks, in the +masonry of the Romans, and in the pictures of the Tuscan +and Venetian masters, the highest charm is the universal +language they speak. A confession of moral nature, of +purity, love, and hope, breathes from them all. That +which we carry to them, the same we bring back more +fairly illustrated in the memory. The traveller who +visits the Vatican, and passes from chamber to chamber +through galleries of statues, vases, sarcophagi and +candelabra, through all forms of beauty cut in the +richest materials, is in danger of forgetting the +simplicity of the principles out of which they all +sprung, and that they had their origin from thoughts +and laws in his own breast. He studies the technical +rules on these wonderful remains, but forgets that +these works were not always thus constellated; that +they are the contributions of many ages and many +countries; that each came out of the solitary workshop +of one artist, who toiled perhaps in ignorance of the +existence of other sculpture, created his work without +other model save life, household life, and the sweet +and smart of personal relations, of beating hearts, and +meeting eyes; of poverty and necessity and hope and fear. +These were his inspirations, and these are the effects +he carries home to your heart and mind. In proportion to +his force, the artist will find in his work an outlet for +his proper character. He must not be in any manner pinched +or hindered by his material, but through his necessity +of imparting himself the adamant will be wax in his hands, +and will allow an adequate communication of himself, in +his full stature and proportion. He need not cumber himself +with a conventional nature and culture, nor ask what is the +mode in Rome or in Paris, but that house and weather and +manner of living which poverty and the fate of birth have +made at once so odious and so dear, in the gray unpainted +wood cabin, on the corner of a New Hampshire farm, or in +the log-hut of the backwoods, or in the narrow lodging +where he has endured the constraints and seeming of a city +poverty, will serve as well as any other condition as the +symbol of a thought which pours itself indifferently +through all. + +I remember when in my younger days I had heard of +the wonders of Italian painting, I fancied the great +pictures would be great strangers; some surprising +combination of color and form; a foreign wonder, +barbaric pearl and gold, like the spontoons and +standards of the militia, which play such pranks in +the eyes and imaginations of school-boys. I was to +see and acquire I knew not what. When I came at last +to Rome and saw with eyes the pictures, I found that +genius left to novices the gay and fantastic and +ostentatious, and itself pierced directly to the +simple and true; that it was familiar and sincere; +that it was the old, eternal fact I had met already +in so many forms,--unto which I lived; that it was +the plain you and me I knew so well,--had left at home +in so many conversations. I had the same experience +already in a church at Naples. There I saw that nothing +was changed with me but the place, and said to myself-- +'Thou foolish child, hast thou come out hither, over +four thousand miles of salt water, to find that which +was perfect to thee there at home?' That fact I saw +again in the Academmia at Naples, in the chambers of +sculpture, and yet again when I came to Rome and to +the paintings of Raphael, Angelo, Sacchi, Titian, and +Leonardo da Vinci. "What, old mole! workest thou in +the earth so fast?" It had travelled by my side; that +which I fancied I had left in Boston was here in the +Vatican, and again at Milan and at Paris, and made all +travelling ridiculous as a treadmill. I now require +this of all pictures, that they domesticate me, not +that they dazzle me. Pictures must not be too picturesque. +Nothing astonishes men so much as common-sense and +plain dealing. All great actions have been simple, and +all great pictures are. + +The Transfiguration, by Raphael, is an eminent +example of this peculiar merit. A calm benignant +beauty shines over all this picture, and goes +directly to the heart. It seems almost to call +you by name. The sweet and sublime face of Jesus +is beyond praise, yet how it disappoints all florid +expectations! This familiar, simple, home-speaking +countenance is as if one should meet a friend. The +knowledge of picture-dealers has its value, but +listen not to their criticism when your heart is +touched by genius. It was not painted for them, it +was painted for you; for such as had eyes capable +of being touched by simplicity and lofty emotions. + +Yet when we have said all our fine things about +the arts, we must end with a frank confession, that +the arts, as we know them, are but initial. Our best +praise is given to what they aimed and promised, not +to the actual result. He has conceived meanly of the +resources of man, who believes that the best age of +production is past. The real value of the Iliad or +the Transfiguration is as signs of power; billows or +ripples they are of the stream of tendency; tokens of +the everlasting effort to produce, which even in its +worst estate the soul betrays. Art has not yet come +to its maturity if it do not put itself abreast with +the most potent influences of the world, if it is not +practical and moral, if it do not stand in connection +with the conscience, if it do not make the poor and +uncultivated feel that it addresses them with a voice +of lofty cheer. There is higher work for Art than the +arts. They are abortive births of an imperfect or +vitiated instinct. Art is the need to create; but in +its essence, immense and universal, it is impatient of +working with lame or tied hands, and of making cripples +and monsters, such as all pictures and statues are. +Nothing less than the creation of man and nature is its +end. A man should find in it an outlet for his whole +energy. He may paint and carve only as long as he can +do that. Art should exhilarate, and throw down the +walls of circumstance on every side, awakening in the +beholder the same sense of universal relation and power +which the work evinced in the artist, and its highest +effect is to make new artists. + +Already History is old enough to witness the old +age and disappearance of particular arts. The art +of sculpture is long ago perished to any real effect. +It was originally a useful art, a mode of writing, a +savage's record of gratitude or devotion, and among +a people possessed of a wonderful perception of form +this childish carving was refined to the utmost +splendor of effect. But it is the game of a rude and +youthful people, and not the manly labor of a wise +and spiritual nation. Under an oak-tree loaded with +leaves and nuts, under a sky full of eternal eyes, I +stand in a thoroughfare; but in the works of our +plastic arts and especially of sculpture, creation +is driven into a corner. I cannot hide from myself +that there is a certain appearance of paltriness, as +of toys and the trumpery of a theatre, in sculpture. +Nature transcends all our moods of thought, and its +secret we do not yet find. But the gallery stands at +the mercy of our moods, and there is a moment when +it becomes frivolous. I do not wonder that Newton, +with an attention habitually engaged on the paths of +planets and suns, should have wondered what the Earl +of Pembroke found to admire in "stone dolls." Sculpture +may serve to teach the pupil how deep is the secret of +form, how purely the spirit can translate its meanings +into that eloquent dialect. But the statue will look +cold and false before that new activity which needs +to roll through all things, and is impatient of +counterfeits and things not alive. Picture and sculpture +are the celebrations and festivities of form. But true +art is never fixed, but always flowing. The sweetest music +is not in the oratorio, but in the human voice when it +speaks from its instant life tones of tenderness, truth, +or courage. The oratorio has already lost its relation to +the morning, to the sun, and the earth, but that persuading +voice is in tune with these. All works of art should not +be detached, but extempore performances. A great man is +a new statue in every attitude and action. A beautiful +woman is a picture which drives all beholders nobly mad. +Life may be lyric or epic, as well as a poem or a romance. + +A true announcement of the law of creation, if a +man were found worthy to declare it, would carry +art up into the kingdom of nature, and destroy its +separate and contrasted existence. The fountains +of invention and beauty in modern society are all +but dried up. A popular novel, a theatre, or a +ball-room makes us feel that we are all paupers in +the alms-house of this world, without dignity, +without skill or industry. Art is as poor and low. +The old tragic Necessity, which lowers on the brows +even of the Venuses and the Cupids of the antique, +and furnishes the sole apology for the intrusion of +such anomalous figures into nature,--namely, that +they were inevitable; that the artist was drunk with +a passion for form which he could not resist, and +which vented itself in these fine extravagances,--no +longer dignifies the chisel or the pencil. But the +artist and the connoisseur now seek in art the +exhibition of their talent, or an asylum from the +evils of life. Men are not well pleased with the +figure they make in their own imaginations, and they +flee to art, and convey their better sense in an +oratorio, a statue, or a picture. Art makes the same +effort which a sensual prosperity makes; namely to +detach the beautiful from the useful, to do up the +work as unavoidable, and, hating it, pass on to +enjoyment. These solaces and compensations, this +division of beauty from use, the laws of nature do +not permit. As soon as beauty is sought, not from +religion and love but for pleasure, it degrades the +seeker. High beauty is no longer attainable by him in +canvas or in stone, in sound, or in lyrical construction; +an effeminate, prudent, sickly beauty, which is not +beauty, is all that can be formed; for the hand can +never execute any thing higher than the character can +inspire. + +The art that thus separates is itself first separated. +Art must not be a superficial talent, but must begin +farther back in man. Now men do not see nature to be +beautiful, and they go to make a statue which shall +be. They abhor men as tasteless, dull, and inconvertible, +and console themselves with color-bags and blocks of +marble. They reject life as prosaic, and create a death +which they call poetic. They despatch the day's weary +chores, and fly to voluptuous reveries. They eat and +drink, that they may afterwards execute the ideal. Thus +is art vilified; the name conveys to the mind its +secondary and bad senses; it stands in the imagination +as somewhat contrary to nature, and struck with death +from the first. Would it not be better to begin higher +up,--to serve the ideal before they eat and drink; to +serve the ideal in eating and drinking, in drawing the +breath, and in the functions of life? Beauty must come +back to the useful arts, and the distinction between +the fine and the useful arts be forgotten. If history +were truly told, if life were nobly spent, it would be +no longer easy or possible to distinguish the one from +the other. In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. +It is therefore beautiful because it is alive, moving, +reproductive; it is therefore useful because it is +symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call +of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or +America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, +unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave +and earnest men. It is in vain that we look for genius +to reiterate its miracles in the old arts; it is its +instinct to find beauty and holiness in new and necessary +facts, in the field and road-side, in the shop and mill. +Proceeding from a religious heart it will raise to a +divine use the railroad, the insurance office, the joint- +stock company; our law, our primary assemblies, our +commerce, the galvanic battery, the electric jar, the +prism, and the chemist's retort; in which we seek now +only an economical use. Is not the selfish and even cruel +aspect which belongs to our great mechanical works, to +mills, railways, and machinery, the effect of the mercenary +impulses which these works obey? When its errands are noble +and adequate, a steamboat bridging the Atlantic between Old +and New England and arriving at its ports with the +punctuality of a planet, is a step of man into harmony with +nature. The boat at St. Petersburg, which plies along the +Lena by magnetism, needs little to make it sublime. When +science is learned in love, and its powers are wielded by +love, they will appear the supplements and continuations +of the material creation. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Essays, 1st Series, by Ralph Waldo Emerson + diff --git a/old/1srwe10.zip b/old/1srwe10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..5e2aef3 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/1srwe10.zip diff --git a/old/2944.txt b/old/2944.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ac604a6 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/2944.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7113 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Essays, First Series, by Ralph Waldo Emerson + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Essays, First Series + +Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson + +Posting Date: December 1, 2008 [EBook #2944] +Release Date: December, 2001 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS, FIRST SERIES *** + + + + +Produced by Tony Adam + + + + + +ESSAYS, FIRST SERIES + +By Ralph Waldo Emerson + + + + HISTORY. + + There is no great and no small + To the Soul that maketh all: + And where it cometh, all things are + And it cometh everywhere. + + I am owner of the sphere, + Of the seven stars and the solar year, + Of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain, + Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakspeare's strain. + + + + +I. HISTORY. + +THERE is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to +the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right +of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, +he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has +befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal +mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and +sovereign agent. + +Of the works of this mind history is the record. Its genius is +illustrated by the entire series of days. Man is explicable by nothing +less than all his history. Without hurry, without rest, the human spirit +goes forth from the beginning to embody every faculty, every thought, +every emotion, which belongs to it, in appropriate events. But the +thought is always prior to the fact; all the facts of history preexist +in the mind as laws. Each law in turn is made by circumstances +predominant, and the limits of nature give power to but one at a time. +A man is the whole encyclopaedia of facts. The creation of a thousand +forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, +America, lie folded already in the first man. Epoch after epoch, camp, +kingdom, empire, republic, democracy, are merely the application of his +manifold spirit to the manifold world. + +This human mind wrote history, and this must read it. The Sphinx must +solve her own riddle. If the whole of history is in one man, it is all +to be explained from individual experience. There is a relation between +the hours of our life and the centuries of time. As the air I breathe is +drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light on my book is +yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise +of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal +forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages and the ages +explained by the hours. Of the universal mind each individual man is one +more incarnation. All its properties consist in him. Each new fact in +his private experience flashes a light on what great bodies of men +have done, and the crises of his life refer to national crises. Every +revolution was first a thought in one man's mind, and when the same +thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era. Every reform +was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again +it will solve the problem of the age. The fact narrated must correspond +to something in me to be credible or intelligible. We, as we read, must +become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner; +must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we +shall learn nothing rightly. What befell Asdrubal or Caesar Borgia is as +much an illustration of the mind's powers and depravations as what has +befallen us. Each new law and political movement has meaning for you. +Stand before each of its tablets and say, 'Under this mask did my +Proteus nature hide itself.' This remedies the defect of our too great +nearness to ourselves. This throws our actions into perspective; and +as crabs, goats, scorpions, the balance and the waterpot lose their +meanness when hung as signs in the zodiac, so I can see my own vices +without heat in the distant persons of Solomon, Alcibiades, and +Catiline. + +It is the universal nature which gives worth to particular men and +things. Human life, as containing this, is mysterious and inviolable, +and we hedge it round with penalties and laws. All laws derive hence +their ultimate reason; all express more or less distinctly some command +of this supreme, illimitable essence. Property also holds of the soul, +covers great spiritual facts, and instinctively we at first hold to +it with swords and laws and wide and complex combinations. The obscure +consciousness of this fact is the light of all our day, the claim of +claims; the plea for education, for justice, for charity; the foundation +of friendship and love and of the heroism and grandeur which belong to +acts of self-reliance. It is remarkable that involuntarily we always +read as superior beings. Universal history, the poets, the romancers, +do not in their stateliest pictures,--in the sacerdotal, the imperial +palaces, in the triumphs of will or of genius,--anywhere lose our ear, +anywhere make us feel that we intrude, that this is for better men; but +rather is it true that in their grandest strokes we feel most at home. +All that Shakspeare says of the king, yonder slip of a boy that reads +in the corner feels to be true of himself. We sympathize in the great +moments of history, in the great discoveries, the great resistances, the +great prosperities of men;--because there law was enacted, the sea was +searched, the land was found, or the blow was struck, for us, as we +ourselves in that place would have done or applauded. + +We have the same interest in condition and character. We honor the rich +because they have externally the freedom, power, and grace which we feel +to be proper to man, proper to us. So all that is said of the wise man +by Stoic or Oriental or modern essayist, describes to each reader his +own idea, describes his unattained but attainable self. All literature +writes the character of the wise man. Books, monuments, pictures, +conversation, are portraits in which he finds the lineaments he is +forming. The silent and the eloquent praise him and accost him, and +he is stimulated wherever he moves, as by personal allusions. A true +aspirant therefore never needs look for allusions personal and laudatory +in discourse. He hears the commendation, not of himself, but, more +sweet, of that character he seeks, in every word that is said concerning +character, yea further in every fact and circumstance,--in the running +river and the rustling corn. Praise is looked, homage tendered, love +flows, from mute nature, from the mountains and the lights of the +firmament. + +These hints, dropped as it were from sleep and night, let us use in +broad day. The student is to read history actively and not passively; to +esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary. Thus compelled, +the Muse of history will utter oracles, as never to those who do not +respect themselves. I have no expectation that any man will read history +aright who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by men whose names +have resounded far, has any deeper sense than what he is doing to-day. + +The world exists for the education of each man. There is no age or state +of society or mode of action in history to which there is not somewhat +corresponding in his life. Every thing tends in a wonderful manner to +abbreviate itself and yield its own virtue to him. He should see that he +can live all history in his own person. He must sit solidly at home, and +not suffer himself to be bullied by kings or empires, but know that he +is greater than all the geography and all the government of the world; +he must transfer the point of view from which history is commonly read, +from Rome and Athens and London, to himself, and not deny his conviction +that he is the court, and if England or Egypt have any thing to say to +him he will try the case; if not, let them for ever be silent. He must +attain and maintain that lofty sight where facts yield their secret +sense, and poetry and annals are alike. The instinct of the mind, the +purpose of nature, betrays itself in the use we make of the signal +narrations of history. Time dissipates to shining ether the solid +angularity of facts. No anchor, no cable, no fences avail to keep a fact +a fact. Babylon, Troy, Tyre, Palestine, and even early Rome are passing +already into fiction. The Garden of Eden, the sun standing still in +Gibeon, is poetry thenceforward to all nations. Who cares what the +fact was, when we have made a constellation of it to hang in heaven an +immortal sign? London and Paris and New York must go the same way. "What +is history," said Napoleon, "but a fable agreed upon?" This life of ours +is stuck round with Egypt, Greece, Gaul, England, War, Colonization, +Church, Court and Commerce, as with so many flowers and wild ornaments +grave and gay. I will not make more account of them. I believe in +Eternity. I can find Greece, Asia, Italy, Spain and the Islands,--the +genius and creative principle of each and of all eras, in my own mind. + +We are always coming up with the emphatic facts of history in our +private experience and verifying them here. All history becomes +subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography. +Every mind must know the whole lesson for itself,--must go over the +whole ground. What it does not see, what it does not live, it will not +know. What the former age has epitomized into a formula or rule for +manipular convenience, it will lose all the good of verifying for +itself, by means of the wall of that rule. Somewhere, sometime, it will +demand and find compensation for that loss, by doing the work itself. +Ferguson discovered many things in astronomy which had long been known. +The better for him. + +History must be this or it is nothing. Every law which the state enacts +indicates a fact in human nature; that is all. We must in ourselves see +the necessary reason of every fact,--see how it could and must be. So +stand before every public and private work; before an oration of Burke, +before a victory of Napoleon, before a martyrdom of Sir Thomas More, of +Sidney, of Marmaduke Robinson; before a French Reign of Terror, and +a Salem hanging of witches; before a fanatic Revival and the Animal +Magnetism in Paris, or in Providence. We assume that we under like +influence should be alike affected, and should achieve the like; and we +aim to master intellectually the steps and reach the same height or the +same degradation that our fellow, our proxy has done. + +All inquiry into antiquity, all curiosity respecting the Pyramids, the +excavated cities, Stonehenge, the Ohio Circles, Mexico, Memphis,--is the +desire to do away this wild, savage, and preposterous There or Then, and +introduce in its place the Here and the Now. Belzoni digs and measures +in the mummy-pits and pyramids of Thebes, until he can see the end +of the difference between the monstrous work and himself. When he has +satisfied himself, in general and in detail, that it was made by such a +person as he, so armed and so motived, and to ends to which he himself +should also have worked, the problem is solved; his thought lives along +the whole line of temples and sphinxes and catacombs, passes through +them all with satisfaction, and they live again to the mind, or are now. + +A Gothic cathedral affirms that it was done by us and not done by +us. Surely it was by man, but we find it not in our man. But we apply +ourselves to the history of its production. We put ourselves into the +place and state of the builder. We remember the forest-dwellers, the +first temples, the adherence to the first type, and the decoration of it +as the wealth of the nation increased; the value which is given to wood +by carving led to the carving over the whole mountain of stone of a +cathedral. When we have gone through this process, and added thereto the +Catholic Church, its cross, its music, its processions, its Saints' +days and image-worship, we have as it were been the man that made the +minster; we have seen how it could and must be. We have the sufficient +reason. + +The difference between men is in their principle of association. +Some men classify objects by color and size and other accidents of +appearance; others by intrinsic likeness, or by the relation of cause +and effect. The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision +of causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the +philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all +events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is +fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. Every chemical +substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of +cause, the variety of appearance. + +Upborne and surrounded as we are by this all-creating nature, soft and +fluid as a cloud or the air, why should we be such hard pedants, +and magnify a few forms? Why should we make account of time, or of +magnitude, or of figure? The soul knows them not, and genius, obeying +its law, knows how to play with them as a young child plays with +graybeards and in churches. Genius studies the causal thought, and far +back in the womb of things sees the rays parting from one orb, that +diverge, ere they fall, by infinite diameters. Genius watches the monad +through all his masks as he performs the metempsychosis of nature. +Genius detects through the fly, through the caterpillar, through the +grub, through the egg, the constant individual; through countless +individuals the fixed species; through many species the genus; through +all genera the steadfast type; through all the kingdoms of organized +life the eternal unity. Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and +never the same. She casts the same thought into troops of forms, as +a poet makes twenty fables with one moral. Through the bruteness and +toughness of matter, a subtle spirit bends all things to its own will. +The adamant streams into soft but precise form before it, and whilst +I look at it its outline and texture are changed again. Nothing is so +fleeting as form; yet never does it quite deny itself. In man we still +trace the remains or hints of all that we esteem badges of servitude in +the lower races; yet in him they enhance his nobleness and grace; as +Io, in Aeschylus, transformed to a cow, offends the imagination; but how +changed when as Isis in Egypt she meets Osiris-Jove, a beautiful woman +with nothing of the metamorphosis left but the lunar horns as the +splendid ornament of her brows! + +The identity of history is equally intrinsic, the diversity equally +obvious. There is, at the surface, infinite variety of things; at the +centre there is simplicity of cause. How many are the acts of one man +in which we recognize the same character! Observe the sources of our +information in respect to the Greek genius. We have the civil history of +that people, as Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plutarch have given +it; a very sufficient account of what manner of persons they were and +what they did. We have the same national mind expressed for us again in +their literature, in epic and lyric poems, drama, and philosophy; a very +complete form. Then we have it once more in their architecture, a beauty +as of temperance itself, limited to the straight line and the square,--a +builded geometry. Then we have it once again in sculpture, the "tongue +on the balance of expression," a multitude of forms in the utmost +freedom of action and never transgressing the ideal serenity; like +votaries performing some religious dance before the gods, and, though in +convulsive pain or mortal combat, never daring to break the figure and +decorum of their dance. Thus of the genius of one remarkable people we +have a fourfold representation: and to the senses what more unlike than +an ode of Pindar, a marble centaur, the peristyle of the Parthenon, and +the last actions of Phocion? + +Every one must have observed faces and forms which, without any +resembling feature, make a like impression on the beholder. A particular +picture or copy of verses, if it do not awaken the same train of images, +will yet superinduce the same sentiment as some wild mountain walk, +although the resemblance is nowise obvious to the senses, but is +occult and out of the reach of the understanding. Nature is an endless +combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old +well-known air through innumerable variations. + +Nature is full of a sublime family likeness throughout her works, +and delights in startling us with resemblances in the most unexpected +quarters. I have seen the head of an old sachem of the forest which at +once reminded the eye of a bald mountain summit, and the furrows of the +brow suggested the strata of the rock. There are men whose manners have +the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the +friezes of the Parthenon and the remains of the earliest Greek art. And +there are compositions of the same strain to be found in the books of +all ages. What is Guido's Rospigliosi Aurora but a morning thought, +as the horses in it are only a morning cloud? If any one will but take +pains to observe the variety of actions to which he is equally inclined +in certain moods of mind, and those to which he is averse, he will see +how deep is the chain of affinity. + +A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort +becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form +merely,--but, by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter +enters into his nature and can then draw him at will in every +attitude. So Roos "entered into the inmost nature of a sheep." I knew +a draughtsman employed in a public survey who found that he could not +sketch the rocks until their geological structure was first explained to +him. In a certain state of thought is the common origin of very diverse +works. It is the spirit and not the fact that is identical. By a deeper +apprehension, and not primarily by a painful acquisition of many manual +skills, the artist attains the power of awakening other souls to a given +activity. + +It has been said that "common souls pay with what they do, nobler souls +with that which they are." And why? Because a profound nature awakens +in us by its actions and words, by its very looks and manners, the same +power and beauty that a gallery of sculpture or of pictures addresses. + +Civil and natural history, the history of art and of literature, must +be explained from individual history, or must remain words. There +is nothing but is related to us, nothing that does not interest +us,--kingdom, college, tree, horse, or iron shoe,--the roots of all +things are in man. Santa Croce and the Dome of St. Peter's are +lame copies after a divine model. Strasburg Cathedral is a material +counterpart of the soul of Erwin of Steinbach. The true poem is the +poet's mind; the true ship is the ship-builder. In the man, could we lay +him open, we should see the reason for the last flourish and tendril +of his work; as every spine and tint in the sea-shell preexists in the +secreting organs of the fish. The whole of heraldry and of chivalry is +in courtesy. A man of fine manners shall pronounce your name with all +the ornament that titles of nobility could ever add. + +The trivial experience of every day is always verifying some old +prediction to us and converting into things the words and signs which +we had heard and seen without heed. A lady with whom I was riding in the +forest said to me that the woods always seemed to her to wait, as if +the genii who inhabit them suspended their deeds until the wayfarer had +passed onward; a thought which poetry has celebrated in the dance of the +fairies, which breaks off on the approach of human feet. The man who +has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds at midnight, has been +present like an archangel at the creation of light and of the world. I +remember one summer day in the fields my companion pointed out to me +a broad cloud, which might extend a quarter of a mile parallel to +the horizon, quite accurately in the form of a cherub as painted over +churches,--a round block in the centre, which it was easy to animate +with eyes and mouth, supported on either side by wide-stretched +symmetrical wings. What appears once in the atmosphere may appear often, +and it was undoubtedly the archetype of that familiar ornament. I have +seen in the sky a chain of summer lightning which at once showed to me +that the Greeks drew from nature when they painted the thunderbolt in +the hand of Jove. I have seen a snow-drift along the sides of the stone +wall which obviously gave the idea of the common architectural scroll to +abut a tower. + +By surrounding ourselves with the original circumstances we invent anew +the orders and the ornaments of architecture, as we see how each people +merely decorated its primitive abodes. The Doric temple preserves the +semblance of the wooden cabin in which the Dorian dwelt. The Chinese +pagoda is plainly a Tartar tent. The Indian and Egyptian temples still +betray the mounds and subterranean houses of their forefathers. "The +custom of making houses and tombs in the living rock," says Heeren +in his Researches on the Ethiopians, "determined very naturally the +principal character of the Nubian Egyptian architecture to the colossal +form which it assumed. In these caverns, already prepared by nature, the +eye was accustomed to dwell on huge shapes and masses, so that when +art came to the assistance of nature it could not move on a small scale +without degrading itself. What would statues of the usual size, or neat +porches and wings have been, associated with those gigantic halls before +which only Colossi could sit as watchmen or lean on the pillars of the +interior?" + +The Gothic church plainly originated in a rude adaptation of the forest +trees, with all their boughs, to a festal or solemn arcade; as the bands +about the cleft pillars still indicate the green withes that tied them. +No one can walk in a road cut through pine woods, without being struck +with the architectural appearance of the grove, especially in winter, +when the barrenness of all other trees shows the low arch of the Saxons. +In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of +the stained glass window, with which the Gothic cathedrals are adorned, +in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing +branches of the forest. Nor can any lover of nature enter the old piles +of Oxford and the English cathedrals, without feeling that the forest +overpowered the mind of the builder, and that his chisel, his saw and +plane still reproduced its ferns, its spikes of flowers, its locust, +elm, oak, pine, fir and spruce. + +The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone subdued by the insatiable +demand of harmony in man. The mountain of granite blooms into an eternal +flower, with the lightness and delicate finish as well as the aerial +proportions and perspective of vegetable beauty. + +In like manner all public facts are to be individualized, all private +facts are to be generalized. Then at once History becomes fluid and +true, and Biography deep and sublime. As the Persian imitated in the +slender shafts and capitals of his architecture the stem and flower of +the lotus and palm, so the Persian court in its magnificent era never +gave over the nomadism of its barbarous tribes, but travelled from +Ecbatana, where the spring was spent, to Susa in summer and to Babylon +for the winter. + +In the early history of Asia and Africa, Nomadism and Agriculture +are the two antagonist facts. The geography of Asia and of Africa +necessitated a nomadic life. But the nomads were the terror of all those +whom the soil or the advantages of a market had induced to build towns. +Agriculture therefore was a religious injunction, because of the perils +of the state from nomadism. And in these late and civil countries of +England and America these propensities still fight out the old +battle, in the nation and in the individual. The nomads of Africa were +constrained to wander, by the attacks of the gad-fly, which drives the +cattle mad, and so compels the tribe to emigrate in the rainy season and +to drive off the cattle to the higher sandy regions. The nomads of Asia +follow the pasturage from month to month. In America and Europe the +nomadism is of trade and curiosity; a progress, certainly, from the +gad-fly of Astaboras to the Anglo and Italo-mania of Boston Bay. Sacred +cities, to which a periodical religious pilgrimage was enjoined, or +stringent laws and customs, tending to invigorate the national bond, +were the check on the old rovers; and the cumulative values of long +residence are the restraints on the itineracy of the present day. The +antagonism of the two tendencies is not less active in individuals, as +the love of adventure or the love of repose happens to predominate. +A man of rude health and flowing spirits has the faculty of rapid +domestication, lives in his wagon and roams through all latitudes as +easily as a Calmuc. At sea, or in the forest, or in the snow, he sleeps +as warm, dines with as good appetite, and associates as happily as +beside his own chimneys. Or perhaps his facility is deeper seated, in +the increased range of his faculties of observation, which yield him +points of interest wherever fresh objects meet his eyes. The pastoral +nations were needy and hungry to desperation; and this intellectual +nomadism, in its excess, bankrupts the mind through the dissipation of +power on a miscellany of objects. The home-keeping wit, on the other +hand, is that continence or content which finds all the elements of +life in its own soil; and which has its own perils of monotony and +deterioration, if not stimulated by foreign infusions. + +Every thing the individual sees without him corresponds to his states +of mind, and every thing is in turn intelligible to him, as his onward +thinking leads him into the truth to which that fact or series belongs. + +The primeval world,--the Fore-World, as the Germans say,--I can dive +to it in myself as well as grope for it with researching fingers in +catacombs, libraries, and the broken reliefs and torsos of ruined +villas. + +What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in Greek history, +letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods from the Heroic or Homeric +age down to the domestic life of the Athenians and Spartans, four or +five centuries later? What but this, that every man passes personally +through a Grecian period. The Grecian state is the era of the bodily +nature, the perfection of the senses,--of the spiritual nature unfolded +in strict unity with the body. In it existed those human forms which +supplied the sculptor with his models of Hercules, Phoebus, and Jove; +not like the forms abounding in the streets of modern cities, wherein +the face is a confused blur of features, but composed of incorrupt, +sharply defined and symmetrical features, whose eye-sockets are so +formed that it would be impossible for such eyes to squint and take +furtive glances on this side and on that, but they must turn the whole +head. The manners of that period are plain and fierce. The reverence +exhibited is for personal qualities; courage, address, self-command, +justice, strength, swiftness, a loud voice, a broad chest. Luxury and +elegance are not known. A sparse population and want make every man his +own valet, cook, butcher and soldier, and the habit of supplying his +own needs educates the body to wonderful performances. Such are the +Agamemnon and Diomed of Homer, and not far different is the picture +Xenophon gives of himself and his compatriots in the Retreat of the Ten +Thousand. "After the army had crossed the river Teleboas in Armenia, +there fell much snow, and the troops lay miserably on the ground covered +with it. But Xenophon arose naked, and taking an axe, began to split +wood; whereupon others rose and did the like." Throughout his army +exists a boundless liberty of speech. They quarrel for plunder, +they wrangle with the generals on each new order, and Xenophon is as +sharp-tongued as any and sharper-tongued than most, and so gives as good +as he gets. Who does not see that this is a gang of great boys, with +such a code of honor and such lax discipline as great boys have? + +The costly charm of the ancient tragedy, and indeed of all the old +literature, is that the persons speak simply,--speak as persons who have +great good sense without knowing it, before yet the reflective habit has +become the predominant habit of the mind. Our admiration of the antique +is not admiration of the old, but of the natural. The Greeks are not +reflective, but perfect in their senses and in their health, with +the finest physical organization in the world. Adults acted with the +simplicity and grace of children. They made vases, tragedies, and +statues, such as healthy senses should,--that is, in good taste. Such +things have continued to be made in all ages, and are now, wherever +a healthy physique exists; but, as a class, from their superior +organization, they have surpassed all. They combine the energy of +manhood with the engaging unconsciousness of childhood. The attraction +of these manners is that they belong to man, and are known to every +man in virtue of his being once a child; besides that there are always +individuals who retain these characteristics. A person of childlike +genius and inborn energy is still a Greek, and revives our love of +the Muse of Hellas. I admire the love of nature in the Philoctetes. In +reading those fine apostrophes to sleep, to the stars, rocks, mountains +and waves, I feel time passing away as an ebbing sea. I feel the +eternity of man, the identity of his thought. The Greek had it seems the +same fellow-beings as I. The sun and moon, water and fire, met his heart +precisely as they meet mine. Then the vaunted distinction between Greek +and English, between Classic and Romantic schools, seems superficial and +pedantic. When a thought of Plato becomes a thought to me,--when a truth +that fired the soul of Pindar fires mine, time is no more. When I feel +that we two meet in a perception, that our two souls are tinged with the +same hue, and do as it were run into one, why should I measure degrees +of latitude, why should I count Egyptian years? + +The student interprets the age of chivalry by his own age of chivalry, +and the days of maritime adventure and circumnavigation by quite +parallel miniature experiences of his own. To the sacred history of the +world he has the same key. When the voice of a prophet out of the deeps +of antiquity merely echoes to him a sentiment of his infancy, a prayer +of his youth, he then pierces to the truth through all the confusion of +tradition and the caricature of institutions. + +Rare, extravagant spirits come by us at intervals, who disclose to us +new facts in nature. I see that men of God have from time to time walked +among men and made their commission felt in the heart and soul of the +commonest hearer. Hence evidently the tripod, the priest, the priestess +inspired by the divine afflatus. + +Jesus astonishes and overpowers sensual people. They cannot unite him to +history, or reconcile him with themselves. As they come to revere their +intuitions and aspire to live holily, their own piety explains every +fact, every word. + +How easily these old worships of Moses, of Zoroaster, of Menu, of +Socrates, domesticate themselves in the mind. I cannot find any +antiquity in them. They are mine as much as theirs. + +I have seen the first monks and anchorets, without crossing seas or +centuries. More than once some individual has appeared to me with +such negligence of labor and such commanding contemplation, a haughty +beneficiary begging in the name of God, as made good to the nineteenth +century Simeon the Stylite, the Thebais, and the first Capuchins. + +The priestcraft of the East and West, of the Magian, Brahmin, Druid, +and Inca, is expounded in the individual's private life. The cramping +influence of a hard formalist on a young child, in repressing his +spirits and courage, paralyzing the understanding, and that without +producing indignation, but only fear and obedience, and even much +sympathy with the tyranny,--is a familiar fact, explained to the child +when he becomes a man, only by seeing that the oppressor of his youth +is himself a child tyrannized over by those names and words and forms of +whose influence he was merely the organ to the youth. The fact teaches +him how Belus was worshipped and how the Pyramids were built, better +than the discovery by Champollion of the names of all the workmen and +the cost of every tile. He finds Assyria and the Mounds of Cholula at +his door, and himself has laid the courses. + +Again, in that protest which each considerate person makes against the +superstition of his times, he repeats step for step the part of old +reformers, and in the search after truth finds, like them, new perils to +virtue. He learns again what moral vigor is needed to supply the girdle +of a superstition. A great licentiousness treads on the heels of a +reformation. How many times in the history of the world has the Luther +of the day had to lament the decay of piety in his own household! +"Doctor," said his wife to Martin Luther, one day, "how is it that +whilst subject to papacy we prayed so often and with such fervor, whilst +now we pray with the utmost coldness and very seldom?" + +The advancing man discovers how deep a property he has in +literature,--in all fable as well as in all history. He finds that the +poet was no odd fellow who described strange and impossible situations, +but that universal man wrote by his pen a confession true for one and +true for all. His own secret biography he finds in lines wonderfully +intelligible to him, dotted down before he was born. One after another +he comes up in his private adventures with every fable of Aesop, of +Homer, of Hafiz, of Ariosto, of Chaucer, of Scott, and verifies them +with his own head and hands. + +The beautiful fables of the Greeks, being proper creations of the +imagination and not of the fancy, are universal verities. What a range +of meanings and what perpetual pertinence has the story of Prometheus! +Beside its primary value as the first chapter of the history of Europe, +(the mythology thinly veiling authentic facts, the invention of the +mechanic arts and the migration of colonies,) it gives the history of +religion, with some closeness to the faith of later ages. Prometheus is +the Jesus of the old mythology. He is the friend of man; stands between +the unjust "justice" of the Eternal Father and the race of mortals, and +readily suffers all things on their account. But where it departs from +the Calvinistic Christianity and exhibits him as the defier of Jove, it +represents a state of mind which readily appears wherever the doctrine +of Theism is taught in a crude, objective form, and which seems the +self-defence of man against this untruth, namely a discontent with the +believed fact that a God exists, and a feeling that the obligation +of reverence is onerous. It would steal if it could the fire of the +Creator, and live apart from him and independent of him. The Prometheus +Vinctus is the romance of skepticism. Not less true to all time are the +details of that stately apologue. Apollo kept the flocks of Admetus, +said the poets. When the gods come among men, they are not known. Jesus +was not; Socrates and Shakspeare were not. Antaeus was suffocated by +the gripe of Hercules, but every time he touched his mother earth his +strength was renewed. Man is the broken giant, and in all his weakness +both his body and his mind are invigorated by habits of conversation +with nature. The power of music, the power of poetry, to unfix and as it +were clap wings to solid nature, interprets the riddle of Orpheus. The +philosophical perception of identity through endless mutations of +form makes him know the Proteus. What else am I who laughed or wept +yesterday, who slept last night like a corpse, and this morning stood +and ran? And what see I on any side but the transmigrations of Proteus? +I can symbolize my thought by using the name of any creature, of any +fact, because every creature is man agent or patient. Tantalus is but +a name for you and me. Tantalus means the impossibility of drinking the +waters of thought which are always gleaming and waving within sight of +the soul. The transmigration of souls is no fable. I would it were; but +men and women are only half human. Every animal of the barn-yard, the +field and the forest, of the earth and of the waters that are under +the earth, has contrived to get a footing and to leave the print of its +features and form in some one or other of these upright, heaven-facing +speakers. Ah! brother, stop the ebb of thy soul,--ebbing downward into +the forms into whose habits thou hast now for many years slid. As near +and proper to us is also that old fable of the Sphinx, who was said +to sit in the road-side and put riddles to every passenger. If the man +could not answer, she swallowed him alive. If he could solve the riddle, +the Sphinx was slain. What is our life but an endless flight of winged +facts or events? In splendid variety these changes come, all putting +questions to the human spirit. Those men who cannot answer by a superior +wisdom these facts or questions of time, serve them. Facts encumber +them, tyrannize over them, and make the men of routine, the men of +sense, in whom a literal obedience to facts has extinguished every spark +of that light by which man is truly man. But if the man is true to his +better instincts or sentiments, and refuses the dominion of facts, as +one that comes of a higher race; remains fast by the soul and sees the +principle, then the facts fall aptly and supple into their places; they +know their master, and the meanest of them glorifies him. + +See in Goethe's Helena the same desire that every word should be a +thing. These figures, he would say, these Chirons, Griffins, Phorkyas, +Helen and Leda, are somewhat, and do exert a specific influence on the +mind. So far then are they eternal entities, as real to-day as in the +first Olympiad. Much revolving them he writes out freely his humor, and +gives them body to his own imagination. And although that poem be as +vague and fantastic as a dream, yet is it much more attractive than the +more regular dramatic pieces of the same author, for the reason that it +operates a wonderful relief to the mind from the routine of customary +images,--awakens the reader's invention and fancy by the wild freedom of +the design, and by the unceasing succession of brisk shocks of surprise. + +The universal nature, too strong for the petty nature of the bard, sits +on his neck and writes through his hand; so that when he seems to vent +a mere caprice and wild romance, the issue is an exact allegory. Hence +Plato said that "poets utter great and wise things which they do not +themselves understand." All the fictions of the Middle Age explain +themselves as a masked or frolic expression of that which in grave +earnest the mind of that period toiled to achieve. Magic and all that +is ascribed to it is a deep presentiment of the powers of science. The +shoes of swiftness, the sword of sharpness, the power of subduing the +elements, of using the secret virtues of minerals, of understanding +the voices of birds, are the obscure efforts of the mind in a right +direction. The preternatural prowess of the hero, the gift of perpetual +youth, and the like, are alike the endeavour of the human spirit "to +bend the shows of things to the desires of the mind." + +In Perceforest and Amadis de Gaul a garland and a rose bloom on the head +of her who is faithful, and fade on the brow of the inconstant. In the +story of the Boy and the Mantle even a mature reader may be surprised +with a glow of virtuous pleasure at the triumph of the gentle Venelas; +and indeed all the postulates of elfin annals,--that the fairies do not +like to be named; that their gifts are capricious and not to be trusted; +that who seeks a treasure must not speak; and the like,--I find true in +Concord, however they might be in Cornwall or Bretagne. + +Is it otherwise in the newest romance? I read the Bride of Lammermoor. +Sir William Ashton is a mask for a vulgar temptation, Ravenswood Castle +a fine name for proud poverty, and the foreign mission of state only a +Bunyan disguise for honest industry. We may all shoot a wild bull that +would toss the good and beautiful, by fighting down the unjust and +sensual. Lucy Ashton is another name for fidelity, which is always +beautiful and always liable to calamity in this world. + + + +But along with the civil and metaphysical history of man, another +history goes daily forward,--that of the external world,--in which he is +not less strictly implicated. He is the compend of time; he is also +the correlative of nature. His power consists in the multitude of his +affinities, in the fact that his life is intertwined with the whole +chain of organic and inorganic being. In old Rome the public roads +beginning at the Forum proceeded north, south, east, west, to the centre +of every province of the empire, making each market-town of Persia, +Spain and Britain pervious to the soldiers of the capital: so out of +the human heart go as it were highways to the heart of every object in +nature, to reduce it under the dominion of man. A man is a bundle of +relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world. His +faculties refer to natures out of him and predict the world he is to +inhabit, as the fins of the fish foreshow that water exists, or the +wings of an eagle in the egg presuppose air. He cannot live without a +world. Put Napoleon in an island prison, let his faculties find no men +to act on, no Alps to climb, no stake to play for, and he would beat +the air, and appear stupid. Transport him to large countries, dense +population, complex interests and antagonist power, and you shall see +that the man Napoleon, bounded that is by such a profile and outline, is +not the virtual Napoleon. This is but Talbot's shadow;-- + + "His substance is not here. + For what you see is but the smallest part + And least proportion of humanity; + But were the whole frame here, + It is of such a spacious, lofty pitch, + Your roof were not sufficient to contain it." + --Henry VI. + +Columbus needs a planet to shape his course upon. Newton and Laplace +need myriads of age and thick-strewn celestial areas. One may say a +gravitating solar system is already prophesied in the nature of Newton's +mind. Not less does the brain of Davy or of Gay-Lussac, from childhood +exploring the affinities and repulsions of particles, anticipate the +laws of organization. Does not the eye of the human embryo predict the +light? the ear of Handel predict the witchcraft of harmonic sound? Do +not the constructive fingers of Watt, Fulton, Whittemore, Arkwright, +predict the fusible, hard, and temperable texture of metals, the +properties of stone, water, and wood? Do not the lovely attributes +of the maiden child predict the refinements and decorations of civil +society? Here also we are reminded of the action of man on man. A mind +might ponder its thought for ages and not gain so much self-knowledge as +the passion of love shall teach it in a day. Who knows himself before +he has been thrilled with indignation at an outrage, or has heard an +eloquent tongue, or has shared the throb of thousands in a national +exultation or alarm? No man can antedate his experience, or guess what +faculty or feeling a new object shall unlock, any more than he can draw +to-day the face of a person whom he shall see to-morrow for the first +time. + +I will not now go behind the general statement to explore the reason +of this correspondency. Let it suffice that in the light of these two +facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, +history is to be read and written. + +Thus in all ways does the soul concentrate and reproduce its treasures +for each pupil. He too shall pass through the whole cycle of experience. +He shall collect into a focus the rays of nature. History no longer +shall be a dull book. It shall walk incarnate in every just and wise +man. You shall not tell me by languages and titles a catalogue of the +volumes you have read. You shall make me feel what periods you have +lived. A man shall be the Temple of Fame. He shall walk, as the poets +have described that goddess, in a robe painted all over with wonderful +events and experiences;--his own form and features by their exalted +intelligence shall be that variegated vest. I shall find in him the +Foreworld; in his childhood the Age of Gold, the Apples of Knowledge, +the Argonautic Expedition, the calling of Abraham, the building of the +Temple, the Advent of Christ, Dark Ages, the Revival of Letters, the +Reformation, the discovery of new lands, the opening of new sciences and +new regions in man. He shall be the priest of Pan, and bring with him +into humble cottages the blessing of the morning stars, and all the +recorded benefits of heaven and earth. + +Is there somewhat overweening in this claim? Then I reject all I have +written, for what is the use of pretending to know what we know not? But +it is the fault of our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one fact +without seeming to belie some other. I hold our actual knowledge very +cheap. Hear the rats in the wall, see the lizard on the fence, +the fungus under foot, the lichen on the log. What do I know +sympathetically, morally, of either of these worlds of life? As old +as the Caucasian man,--perhaps older,--these creatures have kept their +counsel beside him, and there is no record of any word or sign that has +passed from one to the other. What connection do the books show between +the fifty or sixty chemical elements and the historical eras? Nay, what +does history yet record of the metaphysical annals of man? What light +does it shed on those mysteries which we hide under the names Death +and Immortality? Yet every history should be written in a wisdom which +divined the range of our affinities and looked at facts as symbols. I am +ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How +many times we must say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does +Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these +neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor +have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, for the Kanaka in his canoe, +for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter? + +Broader and deeper we must write our annals,--from an ethical +reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative +conscience,--if we would trulier express our central and wide-related +nature, instead of this old chronology of selfishness and pride to which +we have too long lent our eyes. Already that day exists for us, shines +in on us at unawares, but the path of science and of letters is not +the way into nature. The idiot, the Indian, the child and unschooled +farmer's boy stand nearer to the light by which nature is to be read, +than the dissector or the antiquary. + +***** + + + SELF-RELIANCE. + + "Ne te quaesiveris extra." + + "Man is his own star; and the soul that can + Render an honest and a perfect man, + Commands all light, all influence, all fate; + Nothing to him falls early or too late. + Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, + Our fatal shadows that walk by us still." + + Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune. + + + + Cast the bantling on the rocks, + Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat, + Wintered with the hawk and fox. + Power and speed be hands and feet. + + + + +II. SELF-RELIANCE. + +I READ the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which +were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition +in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil +is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own +thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is +true for all men,--that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and +it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the +outmost, and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets +of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the +highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is that they set +at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they +thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light +which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of +the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his +thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our +own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated +majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us +than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with +good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on +the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good +sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall +be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another. + +There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the +conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he +must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the +wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to +him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given +to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and +none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until +he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes +much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory +is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray +should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half +express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of +us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good +issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work +made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put +his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done +otherwise shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not +deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no +invention, no hope. + +Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the +place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your +contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, +and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying +their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their +heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. +And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same +transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, +not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers and +benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort and advancing on Chaos and the +Dark. + +What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in the face and +behavior of children, babes, and even brutes! That divided and rebel +mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed +the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their +mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in +their faces we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform +to it; so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults +who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty and +manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable +and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by +itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to +you and me. Hark! in the next room his voice is sufficiently clear and +emphatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful +or bold then, he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary. + +The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain +as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy +attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlor what the pit is in the +playhouse; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on +such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their +merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, +silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about +consequences, about interests; he gives an independent, genuine verdict. +You must court him; he does not court you. But the man is as it were +clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or +spoken with eclat he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy +or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his +account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into +his neutrality! Who can thus avoid all pledges and, having observed, +observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, +unaffrighted innocence,--must always be formidable. He would utter +opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private but +necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men and put them in +fear. + +These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint +and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in +conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a +joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing +of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture +of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance +is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and +customs. + +Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather +immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must +explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity +of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the +suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was +prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with +the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, "What have I to do +with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?" my +friend suggested,--"But these impulses may be from below, not from +above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the +Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil." No law can be sacred +to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily +transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my +constitution; the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry +himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular +and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to +badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent +and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I +ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If +malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass? If an +angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me +with his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him, 'Go love +thy infant; love thy wood-chopper; be good-natured and modest; have +that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this +incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar +is spite at home.' Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth +is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some +edge to it,--else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached, +as the counteraction of the doctrine of love, when that pules and +whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius +calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, _Whim_. I hope +it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day +in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude +company. Then again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my +obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? +I tell thee thou foolish philanthropist that I grudge the dollar, the +dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom +I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual +affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison if need be; +but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of +fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now +stand; alms to sots, and the thousand-fold Relief Societies;--though +I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a +wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold. + +Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the +rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good +action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a +fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are +done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world,--as +invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I +do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for +a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it +be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I +wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask +primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man +to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether +I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot +consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and +mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own +assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony. + +What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This +rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for +the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder +because you will always find those who think they know what is your +duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the +world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but +the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect +sweetness the independence of solitude. + +The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is +that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression +of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead +Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or +against it, spread your table like base housekeepers,--under all these +screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are: and of +course so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your +work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce +yourself. A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of +conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear a +preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the +institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly +can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that with all this +ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution he will do no +such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but +at one side, the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? +He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest +affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another +handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities +of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, +authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth +is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the +real four; so that every word they say chagrins us and we know not where +to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in +the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear +one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine +expression. There is a mortifying experience in particular, which +does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean "the +foolish face of praise," the forced smile which we put on in company +where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not +interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved but moved by a low +usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face with the +most disagreeable sensation. + +For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And +therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers +look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlor. If +this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own +he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the +multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on +and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent +of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the +college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook +the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, +for they are timid, as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to +their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the +ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force +that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs +the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of +no concernment. + +The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a +reverence for our past act or word because the eyes of others have no +other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath +to disappoint them. + +But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about +this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated +in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; +what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory +alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for +judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In +your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity, yet when the +devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though +they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as +Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee. + +A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little +statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul +has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow +on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak +what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict +every thing you said to-day.--'Ah, so you shall be sure to be +misunderstood.'--Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was +misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, +and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took +flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. + +I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will +are rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andes +and Himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it +matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or +Alexandrian stanza;--read it forward, backward, or across, it still +spells the same thing. In this pleasing contrite wood-life which God +allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect +or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though +I mean it not and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound +with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window should interweave +that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also. We pass +for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that +they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not +see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment. + +There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be +each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will +be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight +of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency +unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of +a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it +straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will +explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. Your +conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done +singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can +be firm enough to-day to do right and scorn eyes, I must have done so +much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. +Always scorn appearances and you always may. The force of character is +cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue work their health into this. +What makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which +so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a train of great days and +victories behind. They shed an united light on the advancing actor. He +is attended as by a visible escort of angels. That is it which throws +thunder into Chatham's voice, and dignity into Washington's port, and +America into Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us because it is no +ephemera. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it to-day because it +is not of to-day. We love it and pay it homage because it is not a +trap for our love and homage, but is self-dependent, self-derived, +and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young +person. + +I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and +consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward. +Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan +fife. Let us never bow and apologize more. A great man is coming to eat +at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to +please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it +kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth +mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face +of custom and trade and office, the fact which is the upshot of all +history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working +wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, +but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures +you and all men and all events. Ordinarily, every body in society +reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other person. Character, +reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole +creation. The man must be so much that he must make all circumstances +indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; +requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his +design;--and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients. A +man Caesar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is +born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius that he is +confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the +lengthened shadow of one man; as, Monachism, of the Hermit Antony; +the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; +Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called "the height of Rome"; +and all history Resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few +stout and earnest persons. + +Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him +not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a +bastard, or an interloper in the world which exists for him. But the +man in the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the +force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when +he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, or a costly book have an +alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seem to say like +that, 'Who are you, Sir?' Yet they all are his, suitors for his +notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out and take +possession. The picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, +but I am to settle its claims to praise. That popular fable of the sot +who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, +washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, +treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he +had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so +well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and +then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince. + +Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history our imagination +plays us false. Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier +vocabulary than private John and Edward in a small house and common +day's work; but the things of life are the same to both; the sum total +of both is the same. Why all this deference to Alfred and Scanderbeg and +Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue? As great +a stake depends on your private act to-day, as followed their public +and renowned steps. When private men shall act with original views, +the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of +gentlemen. + +The world has been instructed by its kings, who have so magnetized the +eyes of nations. It has been taught by this colossal symbol the mutual +reverence that is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which men +have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the great proprietor +to walk among them by a law of his own, make his own scale of men and +things and reverse theirs, pay for benefits not with money but with +honor, and represent the law in his person, was the hieroglyphic by +which they obscurely signified their consciousness of their own right +and comeliness, the right of every man. + +The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we +inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the +aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is +the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, +without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into +trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? +The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of +virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote +this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are +tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot +go, all things find their common origin. For the sense of being which +in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from +things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them +and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and +being also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist and +afterwards see them as appearances in nature and forget that we have +shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here +are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom and which +cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of +immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs +of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do +nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence +this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy +is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man +discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind and his involuntary +perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect +faith is due. He may err in the expression of them, but he knows that +these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. My wilful +actions and acquisitions are but roving;--the idlest reverie, the +faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and respect. Thoughtless +people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of +opinions, or rather much more readily; for they do not distinguish +between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose to see this +or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see +a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time all +mankind,--although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For +my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun. + +The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure that it is +profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God speaketh he +should communicate, not one thing, but all things; should fill the world +with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from +the centre of the present thought; and new date and new create the +whole. Whenever a mind is simple and receives a divine wisdom, old +things pass away,--means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, +and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are +made sacred by relation to it,--one as much as another. All things are +dissolved to their centre by their cause, and in the universal miracle +petty and particular miracles disappear. If therefore a man claims to +know and speak of God and carries you backward to the phraseology of +some old mouldered nation in another country, in another world, believe +him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness and +completion? Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast +his ripened being? Whence then this worship of the past? The centuries +are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul. Time and +space are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is +light: where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history is +an impertinence and an injury if it be any thing more than a cheerful +apologue or parable of my being and becoming. + +Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say +'I think,' 'I am,' but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before +the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make +no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they +are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is +simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before +a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower +there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature +is satisfied and it satisfies nature in all moments alike. But man +postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with +reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround +him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and +strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time. + +This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not +yet hear God himself unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what +David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on +a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the +sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men +of talents and character they chance to see,--painfully recollecting +the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of +view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them and +are willing to let the words go; for at any time they can use words as +good when occasion comes. If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as +easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. +When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its +hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice +shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn. + +And now at last the highest truth on this subject remains unsaid; +probably cannot be said; for all that we say is the far-off remembering +of the intuition. That thought by what I can now nearest approach to say +it, is this. When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, +it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the +footprints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall +not hear any name;--the way, the thought, the good shall be wholly +strange and new. It shall exclude example and experience. You take +the way from man, not to man. All persons that ever existed are its +forgotten ministers. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. There is +somewhat low even in hope. In the hour of vision there is nothing that +can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The soul raised over passion +beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence of +Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well. +Vast spaces of nature, the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea; long intervals +of time, years, centuries, are of no account. This which I think and +feel underlay every former state of life and circumstances, as it does +underlie my present, and what is called life, and what is called death. + +Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant +of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new +state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one +fact the world hates; that the soul becomes; for that for ever degrades +the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, +confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally +aside. Why then do we prate of self-reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is +present there will be power not confident but agent. To talk of reliance +is a poor external way of speaking. Speak rather of that which relies +because it works and is. Who has more obedience than I masters me, +though he should not raise his finger. Round him I must revolve by the +gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric when we speak of eminent +virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man or +a company of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the law of +nature must overpower and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, +poets, who are not. + +This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, as on every +topic, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed ONE. Self-existence +is the attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it constitutes the measure of +good by the degree in which it enters into all lower forms. All things +real are so by so much virtue as they contain. Commerce, husbandry, +hunting, whaling, war, eloquence, personal weight, are somewhat, and +engage my respect as examples of its presence and impure action. I see +the same law working in nature for conservation and growth. Power is, in +nature, the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain +in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of +a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from +the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are +demonstrations of the self-sufficing and therefore self-relying soul. + +Thus all concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with the +cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books +and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the +invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. Let +our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law demonstrate +the poverty of nature and fortune beside our native riches. + +But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his +genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with +the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the +urns of other men. We must go alone. I like the silent church before the +service begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how +chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary! +So let us always sit. Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or +wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are +said to have the same blood? All men have my blood and I have all men's. +Not for that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even to the extent +of being ashamed of it. But your isolation must not be mechanical, but +spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At times the whole world seems to +be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, +child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet +door and say,--'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into +their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak +curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act. "What we love +that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love." + +If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let +us at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war +and wake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. +This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this +lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to the expectation +of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. Say to +them, 'O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived +with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth's. Be +it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal +law. I will have no covenants but proximities. I shall endeavour to +nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the chaste husband of +one wife,--but these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented +way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself +any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall +be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you +should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that +what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon +whatever inly rejoices me and the heart appoints. If you are noble, +I will love you: if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by +hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth +with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not +selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and +all men's, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does +this sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dictated by your +nature as well as mine, and if we follow the truth it will bring us +out safe at last.'--But so may you give these friends pain. Yes, but I +cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, +all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the +region of absolute truth; then will they justify me and do the same +thing. + +The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a +rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold +sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the +law of consciousness abides. There are two confessionals, in one or the +other of which we must be shriven. You may fulfil your round of duties +by clearing yourself in the direct, or in the reflex way. Consider +whether you have satisfied your relations to father, mother, cousin, +neighbor, town, cat, and dog; whether any of these can upbraid you. But +I may also neglect this reflex standard and absolve me to myself. I have +my own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies the name of duty to +many offices that are called duties. But if I can discharge its debts it +enables me to dispense with the popular code. If any one imagines that +this law is lax, let him keep its commandment one day. + +And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the +common motives of humanity and has ventured to trust himself for a +taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that +he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a +simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others! + +If any man consider the present aspects of what is called by distinction +society, he will see the need of these ethics. The sinew and heart +of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous, desponding +whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death +and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. +We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state, but +we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, +have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force and do +lean and beg day and night continually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, +our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion we have not +chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are parlor soldiers. We shun +the rugged battle of fate, where strength is born. + +If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises they lose all +heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest +genius studies at one of our colleges and is not installed in an office +within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New +York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being +disheartened and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from +New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, +who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits +a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in +successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a +hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no +shame in not 'studying a profession,' for he does not postpone his life, +but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. Let +a Stoic open the resources of man and tell men they are not leaning +willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with the exercise of +self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is the word made flesh, +born to shed healing to the nations; that he should be ashamed of our +compassion, and that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, +the books, idolatries and customs out of the window, we pity him no more +but thank and revere him;--and that teacher shall restore the life of +man to splendor and make his name dear to all history. + +It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution +in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their +education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; +in their property; in their speculative views. + +1. In what prayers do men allow themselves! That which they call a holy +office is not so much as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks +for some foreign addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses +itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and +miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular commodity, any thing less +than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of +life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding +and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. +But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It +supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as +the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in +all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, +the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true +prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap ends. Caratach, in +Fletcher's Bonduca, when admonished to inquire the mind of the god +Audate, replies,-- + + "His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors; + Our valors are our best gods." + +Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want +of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities if you can +thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work and already the +evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come to +them who weep foolishly and sit down and cry for company, instead of +imparting to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting +them once more in communication with their own reason. The secret of +fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the +self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide; him all tongues +greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out +to him and embraces him because he did not need it. We solicitously and +apologetically caress and celebrate him because he held on his way and +scorned our disapprobation. The gods love him because men hated him. +"To the persevering mortal," said Zoroaster, "the blessed Immortals are +swift." + +As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a +disease of the intellect. They say with those foolish Israelites, 'Let +not God speak to us, lest we die. Speak thou, speak any man with us, and +we will obey.' Everywhere I am hindered of meeting God in my brother, +because he has shut his own temple doors and recites fables merely of +his brother's, or his brother's brother's God. Every new mind is a new +classification. If it prove a mind of uncommon activity and power, +a Locke, a Lavoisier, a Hutton, a Bentham, a Fourier, it imposes its +classification on other men, and lo! a new system. In proportion to the +depth of the thought, and so to the number of the objects it touches +and brings within reach of the pupil, is his complacency. But chiefly is +this apparent in creeds and churches, which are also classifications of +some powerful mind acting on the elemental thought of duty, and man's +relation to the Highest. Such is Calvinism, Quakerism, Swedenborgism. +The pupil takes the same delight in subordinating every thing to the new +terminology as a girl who has just learned botany in seeing a new earth +and new seasons thereby. It will happen for a time that the pupil will +find his intellectual power has grown by the study of his master's mind. +But in all unbalanced minds the classification is idolized, passes for +the end and not for a speedily exhaustible means, so that the walls of +the system blend to their eye in the remote horizon with the walls of +the universe; the luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch +their master built. They cannot imagine how you aliens have any right to +see,--how you can see; 'It must be somehow that you stole the light from +us.' They do not yet perceive that light, unsystematic, indomitable, +will break into any cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and +call it their own. If they are honest and do well, presently their neat +new pinfold will be too strait and low, will crack, will lean, will rot +and vanish, and the immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, +million-colored, will beam over the universe as on the first morning. + +2. It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, +whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all +educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in +the imagination did so by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of +the earth. In manly hours we feel that duty is our place. The soul is +no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his +duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, +he is at home still and shall make men sensible by the expression of +his countenance that he goes, the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and +visits cities and men like a sovereign and not like an interloper or a +valet. + +I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe for +the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first +domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat +greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat +which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even +in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have +become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins. + +Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the +indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can +be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace +my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there +beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, +that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the palaces. I affect to be +intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My +giant goes with me wherever I go. + +3. But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness +affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and +our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our +bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but +the travelling of the mind? Our houses are built with foreign taste; our +shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; our opinions, our tastes, +our faculties, lean, and follow the Past and the Distant. The soul +created the arts wherever they have flourished. It was in his own mind +that the artist sought his model. It was an application of his own +thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to be observed. And +why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, +grandeur of thought and quaint expression are as near to us as to any, +and if the American artist will study with hope and love the precise +thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the soil, the +length of the day, the wants of the people, the habit and form of +the government, he will create a house in which all these will find +themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also. + +Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every +moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but +of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half +possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can +teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has +exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakspeare? +Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, +or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of +Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. Shakspeare will never +be made by the study of Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned you, and +you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment +for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of +Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses or Dante, but +different from all these. Not possibly will the soul, all rich, all +eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if +you can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in +the same pitch of voice; for the ear and the tongue are two organs of +one nature. Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy +heart and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again. + +4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look abroad, so does our +spirit of society. All men plume themselves on the improvement of +society, and no man improves. + +Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains +on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is +civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this +change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given something +is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts. What a +contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, +with a watch, a pencil and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the +naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat and an +undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of +the two men and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal +strength. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad +axe and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck +the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his +grave. + +The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. +He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has +a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by +the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the +information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star +in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as +little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in +his mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his +wit; the insurance-office increases the number of accidents; and it may +be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have +not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in +establishments and forms some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was +a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian? + +There is no more deviation in the moral standard than in the standard +of height or bulk. No greater men are now than ever were. A singular +equality may be observed between the great men of the first and of the +last ages; nor can all the science, art, religion, and philosophy of the +nineteenth century avail to educate greater men than Plutarch's +heroes, three or four and twenty centuries ago. Not in time is the race +progressive. Phocion, Socrates, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, are great men, but +they leave no class. He who is really of their class will not be called +by their name, but will be his own man, and in his turn the founder of a +sect. The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume and +do not invigorate men. The harm of the improved machinery may compensate +its good. Hudson and Behring accomplished so much in their fishing-boats +as to astonish Parry and Franklin, whose equipment exhausted the +resources of science and art. Galileo, with an opera-glass, discovered a +more splendid series of celestial phenomena than any one since. Columbus +found the New World in an undecked boat. It is curious to see the +periodical disuse and perishing of means and machinery which were +introduced with loud laudation a few years or centuries before. The +great genius returns to essential man. We reckoned the improvements of +the art of war among the triumphs of science, and yet Napoleon conquered +Europe by the bivouac, which consisted of falling back on naked valor +and disencumbering it of all aids. The Emperor held it impossible to +make a perfect army, says Las Cases, "without abolishing our arms, +magazines, commissaries and carriages, until, in imitation of the Roman +custom, the soldier should receive his supply of corn, grind it in his +hand-mill, and bake his bread himself." + +Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is +composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley +to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a +nation to-day, next year die, and their experience with them. + +And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments +which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. Men have looked away +from themselves and at things so long that they have come to esteem the +religious, learned and civil institutions as guards of property, and +they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults +on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, +and not by what each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his +property, out of new respect for his nature. Especially he hates what +he has if he see that it is accidental,--came to him by inheritance, or +gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it does not belong +to him, has no root in him and merely lies there because no revolution +or no robber takes it away. But that which a man is, does always by +necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is living property, which +does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or +storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever the man +breathes. "Thy lot or portion of life," said the Caliph Ali, "is seeking +after thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it." Our dependence +on these foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect for numbers. +The political parties meet in numerous conventions; the greater the +concourse and with each new uproar of announcement, The delegation from +Essex! The Democrats from New Hampshire! The Whigs of Maine! the young +patriot feels himself stronger than before by a new thousand of eyes +and arms. In like manner the reformers summon conventions and vote and +resolve in multitude. Not so, O friends! will the God deign to enter and +inhabit you, but by a method precisely the reverse. It is only as a +man puts off all foreign support and stands alone that I see him to be +strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his banner. Is +not a man better than a town? Ask nothing of men, and, in the endless +mutation, thou only firm column must presently appear the upholder of +all that surrounds thee. He who knows that power is inborn, that he is +weak because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so +perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly +rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works +miracles; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than a man +who stands on his head. + +So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain +all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful +these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. +In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance, +and shalt sit hereafter out of fear from her rotations. A political +victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick or the return of +your absent friend, or some other favorable event raises your spirits, +and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. +Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace +but the triumph of principles. + +***** + + + COMPENSATION. + + The wings of Time are black and white, + Pied with morning and with night. + Mountain tall and ocean deep + Trembling balance duly keep. + In changing moon, in tidal wave, + Glows the feud of Want and Have. + Gauge of more and less through space + Electric star and pencil plays. + The lonely Earth amid the balls + That hurry through the eternal halls, + A makeweight flying to the void, + Supplemental asteroid, + Or compensatory spark, + Shoots across the neutral Dark. + + Man's the elm, and Wealth the vine, + Stanch and strong the tendrils twine: + Though the frail ringlets thee deceive, + None from its stock that vine can reave. + Fear not, then, thou child infirm, + There's no god dare wrong a worm. + Laurel crowns cleave to deserts + And power to him who power exerts; + Hast not thy share? On winged feet, + Lo! it rushes thee to meet; + And all that Nature made thy own, + Floating in air or pent in stone, + Will rive the hills and swim the sea + And, like thy shadow, follow thee. + + + + +III. COMPENSATION. + +Ever since I was a boy I have wished to write a discourse on +Compensation; for it seemed to me when very young that on this subject +life was ahead of theology and the people knew more than the preachers +taught. The documents too from which the doctrine is to be drawn, +charmed my fancy by their endless variety, and lay always before me, +even in sleep; for they are the tools in our hands, the bread in our +basket, the transactions of the street, the farm and the dwelling-house; +greetings, relations, debts and credits, the influence of character, the +nature and endowment of all men. It seemed to me also that in it might +be shown men a ray of divinity, the present action of the soul of this +world, clean from all vestige of tradition; and so the heart of man +might be bathed by an inundation of eternal love, conversing with that +which he knows was always and always must be, because it really is now. +It appeared moreover that if this doctrine could be stated in terms +with any resemblance to those bright intuitions in which this truth +is sometimes revealed to us, it would be a star in many dark hours and +crooked passages in our journey, that would not suffer us to lose our +way. + +I was lately confirmed in these desires by hearing a sermon at church. +The preacher, a man esteemed for his orthodoxy, unfolded in the ordinary +manner the doctrine of the Last Judgment. He assumed that judgment is +not executed in this world; that the wicked are successful; that the +good are miserable; and then urged from reason and from Scripture a +compensation to be made to both parties in the next life. No offence +appeared to be taken by the congregation at this doctrine. As far as I +could observe when the meeting broke up they separated without remark on +the sermon. + +Yet what was the import of this teaching? What did the preacher mean +by saying that the good are miserable in the present life? Was it that +houses and lands, offices, wine, horses, dress, luxury, are had by +unprincipled men, whilst the saints are poor and despised; and that a +compensation is to be made to these last hereafter, by giving them the +like gratifications another day,--bank-stock and doubloons, venison and +champagne? This must be the compensation intended; for what else? Is it +that they are to have leave to pray and praise? to love and serve men? +Why, that they can do now. The legitimate inference the disciple +would draw was,--'We are to have such a good time as the sinners have +now';--or, to push it to its extreme import,--'You sin now; we shall +sin by and by; we would sin now, if we could; not being successful, we +expect our revenge to-morrow.' + +The fallacy lay in the immense concession that the bad are successful; +that justice is not done now. The blindness of the preacher consisted in +deferring to the base estimate of the market of what constitutes a manly +success, instead of confronting and convicting the world from the truth; +announcing the presence of the soul; the omnipotence of the will; and so +establishing the standard of good and ill, of success and falsehood. + +I find a similar base tone in the popular religious works of the day and +the same doctrines assumed by the literary men when occasionally they +treat the related topics. I think that our popular theology has +gained in decorum, and not in principle, over the superstitions it has +displaced. But men are better than their theology. Their daily life +gives it the lie. Every ingenuous and aspiring soul leaves the doctrine +behind him in his own experience, and all men feel sometimes the +falsehood which they cannot demonstrate. For men are wiser than they +know. That which they hear in schools and pulpits without afterthought, +if said in conversation would probably be questioned in silence. If a +man dogmatize in a mixed company on Providence and the divine laws, he +is answered by a silence which conveys well enough to an observer +the dissatisfaction of the hearer, but his incapacity to make his own +statement. + +I shall attempt in this and the following chapter to record some facts +that indicate the path of the law of Compensation; happy beyond my +expectation if I shall truly draw the smallest arc of this circle. + +POLARITY, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature; in +darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; +in male and female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and +animals; in the equation of quantity and quality in the fluids of +the animal body; in the systole and diastole of the heart; in the +undulations of fluids, and of sound; in the centrifugal and centripetal +gravity; in electricity, galvanism, and chemical affinity. Superinduce +magnetism at one end of a needle, the opposite magnetism takes place at +the other end. If the south attracts, the north repels. To empty here, +you must condense there. An inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that +each thing is a half, and suggests another thing to make it whole; as, +spirit, matter; man, woman; odd, even; subjective, objective; in, out; +upper, under; motion, rest; yea, nay. + +Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of its parts. The entire +system of things gets represented in every particle. There is somewhat +that resembles the ebb and flow of the sea, day and night, man and +woman, in a single needle of the pine, in a kernel of corn, in each +individual of every animal tribe. The reaction, so grand in the +elements, is repeated within these small boundaries. For example, in +the animal kingdom the physiologist has observed that no creatures are +favorites, but a certain compensation balances every gift and every +defect. A surplusage given to one part is paid out of a reduction from +another part of the same creature. If the head and neck are enlarged, +the trunk and extremities are cut short. + +The theory of the mechanic forces is another example. What we gain in +power is lost in time, and the converse. The periodic or compensating +errors of the planets is another instance. The influences of climate and +soil in political history are another. The cold climate invigorates. The +barren soil does not breed fevers, crocodiles, tigers or scorpions. + +The same dualism underlies the nature and condition of man. Every excess +causes a defect; every defect an excess. Every sweet hath its sour; +every evil its good. Every faculty which is a receiver of pleasure has +an equal penalty put on its abuse. It is to answer for its moderation +with its life. For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly. For +every thing you have missed, you have gained something else; and for +every thing you gain, you lose something. If riches increase, they are +increased that use them. If the gatherer gathers too much, Nature takes +out of the man what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, but +kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies and exceptions. The waves of +the sea do not more speedily seek a level from their loftiest tossing +than the varieties of condition tend to equalize themselves. There is +always some levelling circumstance that puts down the overbearing, the +strong, the rich, the fortunate, substantially on the same ground with +all others. Is a man too strong and fierce for society and by temper and +position a bad citizen,--a morose ruffian, with a dash of the pirate +in him?--Nature sends him a troop of pretty sons and daughters who are +getting along in the dame's classes at the village school, and love and +fear for them smooths his grim scowl to courtesy. Thus she contrives to +intenerate the granite and felspar, takes the boar out and puts the lamb +in and keeps her balance true. + +The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But the President +has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his +peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short +time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat +dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne. Or, +do men desire the more substantial and permanent grandeur of genius? +Neither has this an immunity. He who by force of will or of thought is +great and overlooks thousands, has the charges of that eminence. With +every influx of light comes new danger. Has he light? he must bear +witness to the light, and always outrun that sympathy which gives +him such keen satisfaction, by his fidelity to new revelations of the +incessant soul. He must hate father and mother, wife and child. Has he +all that the world loves and admires and covets?--he must cast behind +him their admiration, and afflict them by faithfulness to his truth, and +become a byword and a hissing. + +This law writes the laws of cities and nations. It is in vain to build +or plot or combine against it. Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Res +nolunt diu male administrari. Though no checks to a new evil appear, +the checks exist, and will appear. If the government is cruel, the +governor's life is not safe. If you tax too high, the revenue will +yield nothing. If you make the criminal code sanguinary, juries will +not convict. If the law is too mild, private vengeance comes in. If +the government is a terrific democracy, the pressure is resisted by +an over-charge of energy in the citizen, and life glows with a fiercer +flame. The true life and satisfactions of man seem to elude the utmost +rigors or felicities of condition and to establish themselves with great +indifferency under all varieties of circumstances. Under all governments +the influence of character remains the same,--in Turkey and in New +England about alike. Under the primeval despots of Egypt, history +honestly confesses that man must have been as free as culture could make +him. + +These appearances indicate the fact that the universe is represented +in every one of its particles. Every thing in nature contains all +the powers of nature. Every thing is made of one hidden stuff; as the +naturalist sees one type under every metamorphosis, and regards a horse +as a running man, a fish as a swimming man, a bird as a flying man, a +tree as a rooted man. Each new form repeats not only the main +character of the type, but part for part all the details, all the aims, +furtherances, hindrances, energies and whole system of every other. +Every occupation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of the world +and a correlative of every other. Each one is an entire emblem of human +life; of its good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its course and its +end. And each one must somehow accommodate the whole man and recite all +his destiny. + +The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The microscope cannot find the +animalcule which is less perfect for being little. Eyes, ears, taste, +smell, motion, resistance, appetite, and organs of reproduction that +take hold on eternity,--all find room to consist in the small creature. +So do we put our life into every act. The true doctrine of omnipresence +is that God reappears with all his parts in every moss and cobweb. The +value of the universe contrives to throw itself into every point. If the +good is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so the repulsion; if the +force, so the limitation. + +Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. That soul which within +us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out +there in history we can see its fatal strength. "It is in the world, and +the world was made by it." Justice is not postponed. A perfect +equity adjusts its balance in all parts of life. Hoi kuboi Dios aei +eupiptousi,--The dice of God are always loaded. The world looks like a +multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you +will, balances itself. Take what figure you will, its exact value, nor +more nor less, still returns to you. Every secret is told, every crime +is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence +and certainty. What we call retribution is the universal necessity by +which the whole appears wherever a part appears. If you see smoke, there +must be fire. If you see a hand or a limb, you know that the trunk to +which it belongs is there behind. + +Every act rewards itself, or, in other words integrates itself, in a +twofold manner; first in the thing, or in real nature; and secondly in +the circumstance, or in apparent nature. Men call the circumstance the +retribution. The causal retribution is in the thing and is seen by the +soul. The retribution in the circumstance is seen by the understanding; +it is inseparable from the thing, but is often spread over a long time +and so does not become distinct until after many years. The specific +stripes may follow late after the offence, but they follow because they +accompany it. Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is +a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which +concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, +cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end +preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed. + +Whilst thus the world will be whole and refuses to be disparted, we seek +to act partially, to sunder, to appropriate; for example,--to gratify +the senses we sever the pleasure of the senses from the needs of +the character. The ingenuity of man has always been dedicated to the +solution of one problem,--how to detach the sensual sweet, the sensual +strong, the sensual bright, etc., from the moral sweet, the moral deep, +the moral fair; that is, again, to contrive to cut clean off this upper +surface so thin as to leave it bottomless; to get a one end, without an +other end. The soul says, 'Eat;' the body would feast. The soul says, +'The man and woman shall be one flesh and one soul;' the body would join +the flesh only. The soul says, 'Have dominion over all things to the +ends of virtue;' the body would have the power over things to its own +ends. + +The soul strives amain to live and work through all things. It would +be the only fact. All things shall be added unto it,--power, pleasure, +knowledge, beauty. The particular man aims to be somebody; to set up for +himself; to truck and higgle for a private good; and, in particulars, to +ride that he may ride; to dress that he may be dressed; to eat that he +may eat; and to govern, that he may be seen. Men seek to be great; they +would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. They think that to be great +is to possess one side of nature,--the sweet, without the other side, +the bitter. + +This dividing and detaching is steadily counteracted. Up to this day +it must be owned no projector has had the smallest success. The parted +water reunites behind our hand. Pleasure is taken out of pleasant +things, profit out of profitable things, power out of strong things, as +soon as we seek to separate them from the whole. We can no more halve +things and get the sensual good, by itself, than we can get an inside +that shall have no outside, or a light without a shadow. "Drive out +Nature with a fork, she comes running back." + +Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which the unwise seek to +dodge, which one and another brags that he does not know, that they do +not touch him;--but the brag is on his lips, the conditions are in his +soul. If he escapes them in one part they attack him in another more +vital part. If he has escaped them in form and in the appearance, it +is because he has resisted his life and fled from himself, and the +retribution is so much death. So signal is the failure of all attempts +to make this separation of the good from the tax, that the experiment +would not be tried,--since to try it is to be mad,--but for the +circumstance, that when the disease began in the will, of rebellion and +separation, the intellect is at once infected, so that the man ceases to +see God whole in each object, but is able to see the sensual allurement +of an object and not see the sensual hurt; he sees the mermaid's head +but not the dragon's tail, and thinks he can cut off that which he +would have from that which he would not have. "How secret art thou +who dwellest in the highest heavens in silence, O thou only great God, +sprinkling with an unwearied providence certain penal blindnesses upon +such as have unbridled desires!" {1} + + 1 St. Augustine, Confessions, B. I. + +The human soul is true to these facts in the painting of fable, of +history, of law, of proverbs, of conversation. It finds a tongue in +literature unawares. Thus the Greeks called Jupiter, Supreme Mind; +but having traditionally ascribed to him many base actions, they +involuntarily made amends to reason by tying up the hands of so bad a +god. He is made as helpless as a king of England. Prometheus knows one +secret which Jove must bargain for; Minerva, another. He cannot get his +own thunders; Minerva keeps the key of them:-- + + "Of all the gods, I only know the keys + That ope the solid doors within whose vaults + His thunders sleep." + +A plain confession of the in-working of the All and of its moral +aim. The Indian mythology ends in the same ethics; and it would seem +impossible for any fable to be invented and get any currency which was +not moral. Aurora forgot to ask youth for her lover, and though Tithonus +is immortal, he is old. Achilles is not quite invulnerable; the sacred +waters did not wash the heel by which Thetis held him. Siegfried, in the +Nibelungen, is not quite immortal, for a leaf fell on his back whilst +he was bathing in the dragon's blood, and that spot which it covered is +mortal. And so it must be. There is a crack in every thing God has made. +It would seem there is always this vindictive circumstance stealing in +at unawares even into the wild poesy in which the human fancy attempted +to make bold holiday and to shake itself free of the old laws,--this +back-stroke, this kick of the gun, certifying that the law is fatal; +that in nature nothing can be given, all things are sold. + +This is that ancient doctrine of Nemesis, who keeps watch in the +universe and lets no offence go unchastised. The Furies they said are +attendants on justice, and if the sun in heaven should transgress his +path they would punish him. The poets related that stone walls and iron +swords and leathern thongs had an occult sympathy with the wrongs of +their owners; that the belt which Ajax gave Hector dragged the Trojan +hero over the field at the wheels of the car of Achilles, and the sword +which Hector gave Ajax was that on whose point Ajax fell. They recorded +that when the Thasians erected a statue to Theagenes, a victor in the +games, one of his rivals went to it by night and endeavored to throw it +down by repeated blows, until at last he moved it from its pedestal and +was crushed to death beneath its fall. + +This voice of fable has in it somewhat divine. It came from thought +above the will of the writer. That is the best part of each writer +which has nothing private in it; that which he does not know; that which +flowed out of his constitution and not from his too active invention; +that which in the study of a single artist you might not easily find, +but in the study of many you would abstract as the spirit of them all. +Phidias it is not, but the work of man in that early Hellenic world that +I would know. The name and circumstance of Phidias, however convenient +for history, embarrass when we come to the highest criticism. We are +to see that which man was tending to do in a given period, and was +hindered, or, if you will, modified in doing, by the interfering +volitions of Phidias, of Dante, of Shakspeare, the organ whereby man at +the moment wrought. + +Still more striking is the expression of this fact in the proverbs +of all nations, which are always the literature of reason, or the +statements of an absolute truth without qualification. Proverbs, like +the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions. +That which the droning world, chained to appearances, will not allow the +realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to say in proverbs +without contradiction. And this law of laws, which the pulpit, the +senate and the college deny, is hourly preached in all markets and +workshops by flights of proverbs, whose teaching is as true and as +omnipresent as that of birds and flies. + +All things are double, one against another.--Tit for tat; an eye for an +eye; a tooth for a tooth; blood for blood; measure for measure; love +for love.--Give and it shall be given you.--He that watereth shall be +watered himself.--What will you have? quoth God; pay for it and take +it.--Nothing venture, nothing have.--Thou shalt be paid exactly for +what thou hast done, no more, no less.--Who doth not work shall not +eat.--Harm watch, harm catch.--Curses always recoil on the head of him +who imprecates them.--If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, +the other end fastens itself around your own.--Bad counsel confounds the +adviser.--The Devil is an ass. + +It is thus written, because it is thus in life. Our action is +overmastered and characterized above our will by the law of nature. +We aim at a petty end quite aside from the public good, but our act +arranges itself by irresistible magnetism in a line with the poles of +the world. + +A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will or against his +will he draws his portrait to the eye of his companions by every word. +Every opinion reacts on him who utters it. It is a thread-ball thrown at +a mark, but the other end remains in the thrower's bag. Or rather it is +a harpoon hurled at the whale, unwinding, as it flies, a coil of cord in +the boat, and, if the harpoon is not good, or not well thrown, it will +go nigh to cut the steersman in twain or to sink the boat. + +You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. "No man had ever a point +of pride that was not injurious to him," said Burke. The exclusive in +fashionable life does not see that he excludes himself from enjoyment, +in the attempt to appropriate it. The exclusionist in religion does not +see that he shuts the door of heaven on himself, in striving to shut out +others. Treat men as pawns and ninepins and you shall suffer as well as +they. If you leave out their heart, you shall lose your own. The senses +would make things of all persons; of women, of children, of the poor. +The vulgar proverb, "I will get it from his purse or get it from his +skin," is sound philosophy. + +All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are speedily +punished. They are punished by fear. Whilst I stand in simple relations +to my fellow-man, I have no displeasure in meeting him. We meet as water +meets water, or as two currents of air mix, with perfect diffusion and +interpenetration of nature. But as soon as there is any departure from +simplicity, and attempt at halfness, or good for me that is not good for +him, my neighbor feels the wrong; he shrinks from me as far as I have +shrunk from him; his eyes no longer seek mine; there is war between us; +there is hate in him and fear in me. + +All the old abuses in society, universal and particular, all unjust +accumulations of property and power, are avenged in the same manner. +Fear is an instructor of great sagacity and the herald of all +revolutions. One thing he teaches, that there is rottenness where he +appears. He is a carrion crow, and though you see not well what he +hovers for, there is death somewhere. Our property is timid, our laws +are timid, our cultivated classes are timid. Fear for ages has boded and +mowed and gibbered over government and property. That obscene bird is +not there for nothing. He indicates great wrongs which must be revised. + +Of the like nature is that expectation of change which instantly follows +the suspension of our voluntary activity. The terror of cloudless noon, +the emerald of Polycrates, the awe of prosperity, the instinct +which leads every generous soul to impose on itself tasks of a noble +asceticism and vicarious virtue, are the tremblings of the balance of +justice through the heart and mind of man. + +Experienced men of the world know very well that it is best to pay scot +and lot as they go along, and that a man often pays dear for a small +frugality. The borrower runs in his own debt. Has a man gained any thing +who has received a hundred favors and rendered none? Has he gained +by borrowing, through indolence or cunning, his neighbor's wares, or +horses, or money? There arises on the deed the instant acknowledgment +of benefit on the one part and of debt on the other; that is, of +superiority and inferiority. The transaction remains in the memory of +himself and his neighbor; and every new transaction alters according to +its nature their relation to each other. He may soon come to see that +he had better have broken his own bones than to have ridden in his +neighbor's coach, and that "the highest price he can pay for a thing is +to ask for it." + +A wise man will extend this lesson to all parts of life, and know that +it is the part of prudence to face every claimant and pay every just +demand on your time, your talents, or your heart. Always pay; for first +or last you must pay your entire debt. Persons and events may stand for +a time between you and justice, but it is only a postponement. You must +pay at last your own debt. If you are wise you will dread a prosperity +which only loads you with more. Benefit is the end of nature. But +for every benefit which you receive, a tax is levied. He is great who +confers the most benefits. He is base,--and that is the one base thing +in the universe,--to receive favors and render none. In the order of +nature we cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or +only seldom. But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for +line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of too much good +staying in your hand. It will fast corrupt and worm worms. Pay it away +quickly in some sort. + +Labor is watched over by the same pitiless laws. Cheapest, say the +prudent, is the dearest labor. What we buy in a broom, a mat, a wagon, a +knife, is some application of good sense to a common want. It is best +to pay in your land a skilful gardener, or to buy good sense applied +to gardening; in your sailor, good sense applied to navigation; in the +house, good sense applied to cooking, sewing, serving; in your agent, +good sense applied to accounts and affairs. So do you multiply your +presence, or spread yourself throughout your estate. But because of +the dual constitution of things, in labor as in life there can be no +cheating. The thief steals from himself. The swindler swindles himself. +For the real price of labor is knowledge and virtue, whereof wealth and +credit are signs. These signs, like paper money, may be counterfeited +or stolen, but that which they represent, namely, knowledge and virtue, +cannot be counterfeited or stolen. These ends of labor cannot be +answered but by real exertions of the mind, and in obedience to pure +motives. The cheat, the defaulter, the gambler, cannot extort the +knowledge of material and moral nature which his honest care and pains +yield to the operative. The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you +shall have the Power; but they who do not the thing have not the power. + +Human labor, through all its forms, from the sharpening of a stake to +the construction of a city or an epic, is one immense illustration of +the perfect compensation of the universe. The absolute balance of Give +and Take, the doctrine that every thing has its price,--and if that +price is not paid, not that thing but something else is obtained, and +that it is impossible to get any thing without its price,--is not less +sublime in the columns of a leger than in the budgets of states, in the +laws of light and darkness, in all the action and reaction of nature. I +cannot doubt that the high laws which each man sees implicated in those +processes with which he is conversant, the stern ethics which sparkle +on his chisel-edge, which are measured out by his plumb and foot-rule, +which stand as manifest in the footing of the shop-bill as in the +history of a state,--do recommend to him his trade, and though seldom +named, exalt his business to his imagination. + +The league between virtue and nature engages all things to assume a +hostile front to vice. The beautiful laws and substances of the world +persecute and whip the traitor. He finds that things are arranged for +truth and benefit, but there is no den in the wide world to hide a +rogue. Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, +and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals +in the woods the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel and mole. +You cannot recall the spoken word, you cannot wipe out the foot-track, +you cannot draw up the ladder, so as to leave no inlet or clew. Some +damning circumstance always transpires. The laws and substances of +nature,--water, snow, wind, gravitation,--become penalties to the thief. + +On the other hand the law holds with equal sureness for all right +action. Love, and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, +as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation. The good man has +absolute good, which like fire turns every thing to its own nature, so +that you cannot do him any harm; but as the royal armies sent against +Napoleon, when he approached cast down their colors and from enemies +became friends, so disasters of all kinds, as sickness, offence, +poverty, prove benefactors:-- + + "Winds blow and waters roll + Strength to the brave, and power and deity, + Yet in themselves are nothing." + +The good are befriended even by weakness and defect. As no man had ever +a point of pride that was not injurious to him, so no man had ever a +defect that was not somewhere made useful to him. The stag in the fable +admired his horns and blamed his feet, but when the hunter came, +his feet saved him, and afterwards, caught in the thicket, his horns +destroyed him. Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults. As +no man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it, +so no man has a thorough acquaintance with the hindrances or talents of +men until he has suffered from the one and seen the triumph of the other +over his own want of the same. Has he a defect of temper that unfits him +to live in society? Thereby he is driven to entertain himself alone and +acquire habits of self-help; and thus, like the wounded oyster, he mends +his shell with pearl. + +Our strength grows out of our weakness. The indignation which arms +itself with secret forces does not awaken until we are pricked and stung +and sorely assailed. A great man is always willing to be little. Whilst +he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep. When he is +pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has +been put on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts; learns his +ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got moderation and +real skill. The wise man throws himself on the side of his assailants. +It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point. The +wound cicatrizes and falls off from him like a dead skin and when they +would triumph, lo! he has passed on invulnerable. Blame is safer than +praise. I hate to be defended in a newspaper. As long as all that is +said is said against me, I feel a certain assurance of success. But as +soon as honeyed words of praise are spoken for me I feel as one that +lies unprotected before his enemies. In general, every evil to which we +do not succumb is a benefactor. As the Sandwich Islander believes that +the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we +gain the strength of the temptation we resist. + +The same guards which protect us from disaster, defect, and enmity, +defend us, if we will, from selfishness and fraud. Bolts and bars are +not the best of our institutions, nor is shrewdness in trade a mark of +wisdom. Men suffer all their life long under the foolish superstition +that they can be cheated. But it is as impossible for a man to be +cheated by any one but himself, as for a thing to be and not to be at +the same time. There is a third silent party to all our bargains. The +nature and soul of things takes on itself the guaranty of the fulfilment +of every contract, so that honest service cannot come to loss. If you +serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. Put God in your debt. +Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer The payment is withholden, the +better for you; for compound interest on compound interest is the rate +and usage of this exchequer. + +The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to +make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand. It makes no difference +whether the actors be many or one, a tyrant or a mob. A mob is a society +of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason and traversing its +work. The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. +Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole +constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would +tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses +and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys, +who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the +stars. The inviolate spirit turns their spite against the wrongdoers. +The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of +fame; every prison, a more illustrious abode; every burned book or house +enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates +through the earth from side to side. Hours of sanity and consideration +are always arriving to communities, as to individuals, when the truth is +seen and the martyrs are justified. + +Thus do all things preach the indifferency of circumstances. The man is +all. Every thing has two sides, a good and an evil. Every advantage has +its tax. I learn to be content. But the doctrine of compensation is +not the doctrine of indifferency. The thoughtless say, on hearing these +representations,--What boots it to do well? there is one event to good +and evil; if I gain any good I must pay for it; if I lose any good I +gain some other; all actions are indifferent. + +There is a deeper fact in the soul than compensation, to wit, its own +nature. The soul is not a compensation, but a life. The soul is. Under +all this running sea of circumstance, whose waters ebb and flow with +perfect balance, lies the aboriginal abyss of real Being. Essence, +or God, is not a relation or a part, but the whole. Being is the vast +affirmative, excluding negation, self-balanced, and swallowing up all +relations, parts and times within itself. Nature, truth, virtue, are +the influx from thence. Vice is the absence or departure of the same. +Nothing, Falsehood, may indeed stand as the great Night or shade on +which as a background the living universe paints itself forth, but no +fact is begotten by it; it cannot work, for it is not. It cannot work +any good; it cannot work any harm. It is harm inasmuch as it is worse +not to be than to be. + +We feel defrauded of the retribution due to evil acts, because the +criminal adheres to his vice and contumacy and does not come to a crisis +or judgment anywhere in visible nature. There is no stunning confutation +of his nonsense before men and angels. Has he therefore outwitted the +law? Inasmuch as he carries the malignity and the lie with him he so far +deceases from nature. In some manner there will be a demonstration of +the wrong to the understanding also; but, should we not see it, this +deadly deduction makes square the eternal account. + +Neither can it be said, on the other hand, that the gain of rectitude +must be bought by any loss. There is no penalty to virtue; no penalty +to wisdom; they are proper additions of being. In a virtuous action I +properly am; in a virtuous act I add to the world; I plant into deserts +conquered from Chaos and Nothing and see the darkness receding on +the limits of the horizon. There can be no excess to love, none to +knowledge, none to beauty, when these attributes are considered in the +purest sense. The soul refuses limits, and always affirms an Optimism, +never a Pessimism. + +His life is a progress, and not a station. His instinct is trust. Our +instinct uses "more" and "less" in application to man, of the presence +of the soul, and not of its absence, the brave man is greater than the +coward; the true, the benevolent, the wise, is more a man and not less, +than the fool and knave. There is no tax on the good of virtue, for +that is the incoming of God himself, or absolute existence, without any +comparative. Material good has its tax, and if it came without desert or +sweat, has no root in me, and the next wind will blow it away. But all +the good of nature is the soul's, and may be had if paid for in nature's +lawful coin, that is, by labor which the heart and the head allow. I no +longer wish to meet a good I do not earn, for example to find a pot of +buried gold, knowing that it brings with it new burdens. I do not wish +more external goods,--neither possessions, nor honors, nor powers, nor +persons. The gain is apparent; the tax is certain. But there is no +tax on the knowledge that the compensation exists and that it is not +desirable to dig up treasure. Herein I rejoice with a serene eternal +peace. I contract the boundaries of possible mischief. I learn the +wisdom of St. Bernard,--"Nothing can work me damage except myself; the +harm that I sustain I carry about with me, and never am a real sufferer +but by my own fault." + +In the nature of the soul is the compensation for the inequalities of +condition. The radical tragedy of nature seems to be the distinction of +More and Less. How can Less not feel the pain; how not feel indignation +or malevolence towards More? Look at those who have less faculty, and +one feels sad and knows not well what to make of it. He almost shuns +their eye; he fears they will upbraid God. What should they do? It +seems a great injustice. But see the facts nearly and these mountainous +inequalities vanish. Love reduces them as the sun melts the iceberg in +the sea. The heart and soul of all men being one, this bitterness of His +and Mine ceases. His is mine. I am my brother and my brother is me. If I +feel overshadowed and outdone by great neighbors, I can yet love; I can +still receive; and he that loveth maketh his own the grandeur he loves. +Thereby I make the discovery that my brother is my guardian, acting for +me with the friendliest designs, and the estate I so admired and envied +is my own. It is the nature of the soul to appropriate all things. Jesus +and Shakspeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer and +incorporate them in my own conscious domain. His virtue,--is not that +mine? His wit,--if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit. + +Such also is the natural history of calamity. The changes which break up +at short intervals the prosperity of men are advertisements of a nature +whose law is growth. Every soul is by this intrinsic necessity quitting +its whole system of things, its friends and home and laws and faith, as +the shell-fish crawls out of its beautiful but stony case, because it no +longer admits of its growth, and slowly forms a new house. In proportion +to the vigor of the individual these revolutions are frequent, until in +some happier mind they are incessant and all worldly relations hang +very loosely about him, becoming as it were a transparent fluid membrane +through which the living form is seen, and not, as in most men, +an indurated heterogeneous fabric of many dates and of no settled +character, in which the man is imprisoned. Then there can be +enlargement, and the man of to-day scarcely recognizes the man of +yesterday. And such should be the outward biography of man in time, a +putting off of dead circumstances day by day, as he renews his raiment +day by day. But to us, in our lapsed estate, resting, not advancing, +resisting, not cooperating with the divine expansion, this growth comes +by shocks. + +We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not +see that they only go out that archangels may come in. We are idolaters +of the old. We do not believe in the riches of the soul, in its proper +eternity and omnipresence. We do not believe there is any force in +to-day to rival or recreate that beautiful yesterday. We linger in the +ruins of the old tent where once we had bread and shelter and organs, +nor believe that the spirit can feed, cover, and nerve us again. We +cannot again find aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful. But we sit +and weep in vain. The voice of the Almighty saith, 'Up and onward for +evermore!' We cannot stay amid the ruins. Neither will we rely on the +new; and so we walk ever with reverted eyes, like those monsters who +look backwards. + +And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the +understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, +a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at +the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the +deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a dear +friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, +somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly +operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of +infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted +occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation +of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. It permits or +constrains the formation of new acquaintances and the reception of new +influences that prove of the first importance to the next years; and the +man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden-flower, with no room +for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the +walls and the neglect of the gardener is made the banian of the forest, +yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men. + +***** + + + + SPIRITUAL LAWS. + + The living Heaven thy prayers respect, + House at once and architect, + Quarrying man's rejected hours, + Builds therewith eternal towers; + Sole and self-commanded works, + Fears not undermining days, + Grows by decays, + And, by the famous might that lurks + In reaction and recoil, + Makes flame to freeze, and ice to boil; + Forging, through swart arms of Offence, + The silver seat of Innocence. + + + + +IV. SPIRITUAL LAWS. + +When the act of reflection takes place in the mind, when we look +at ourselves in the light of thought, we discover that our life is +embosomed in beauty. Behind us, as we go, all things assume pleasing +forms, as clouds do far off. Not only things familiar and stale, but +even the tragic and terrible are comely as they take their place in the +pictures of memory. The river-bank, the weed at the water-side, the +old house, the foolish person, however neglected in the passing, have +a grace in the past. Even the corpse that has lain in the chambers has +added a solemn ornament to the house. The soul will not know either +deformity or pain. If in the hours of clear reason we should speak the +severest truth, we should say that we had never made a sacrifice. In +these hours the mind seems so great that nothing can be taken from us +that seems much. All loss, all pain, is particular; the universe remains +to the heart unhurt. Neither vexations nor calamities abate our +trust. No man ever stated his griefs as lightly as he might. Allow for +exaggeration in the most patient and sorely ridden hack that ever was +driven. For it is only the finite that has wrought and suffered; the +infinite lies stretched in smiling repose. + +The intellectual life may be kept clean and healthful if man will live +the life of nature and not import into his mind difficulties which are +none of his. No man need be perplexed in his speculations. Let him do +and say what strictly belongs to him, and though very ignorant of books, +his nature shall not yield him any intellectual obstructions and doubts. +Our young people are diseased with the theological problems of original +sin, origin of evil, predestination and the like. These never presented +a practical difficulty to any man,--never darkened across any man's road +who did not go out of his way to seek them. These are the soul's mumps +and measles and whooping-coughs, and those who have not caught them +cannot describe their health or prescribe the cure. A simple mind will +not know these enemies. It is quite another thing that he should be able +to give account of his faith and expound to another the theory of his +self-union and freedom. This requires rare gifts. Yet without this +self-knowledge there may be a sylvan strength and integrity in that +which he is. "A few strong instincts and a few plain rules" suffice us. + +My will never gave the images in my mind the rank they now take. The +regular course of studies, the years of academical and professional +education have not yielded me better facts than some idle books under +the bench at the Latin School. What we do not call education is more +precious than that which we call so. We form no guess, at the time +of receiving a thought, of its comparative value. And education often +wastes its effort in attempts to thwart and balk this natural magnetism, +which is sure to select what belongs to it. + +In like manner our moral nature is vitiated by any interference of our +will. People represent virtue as a struggle, and take to themselves +great airs upon their attainments, and the question is everywhere vexed +when a noble nature is commended, whether the man is not better who +strives with temptation. But there is no merit in the matter. Either God +is there or he is not there. We love characters in proportion as they +are impulsive and spontaneous. The less a man thinks or knows about +his virtues the better we like him. Timoleon's victories are the best +victories, which ran and flowed like Homer's verses, Plutarch said. When +we see a soul whose acts are all regal, graceful and pleasant as roses, +we must thank God that such things can be and are, and not turn sourly +on the angel and say 'Crump is a better man with his grunting resistance +to all his native devils.' + +Not less conspicuous is the preponderance of nature over will in all +practical life. There is less intention in history than we ascribe to +it. We impute deep-laid far-sighted plans to Caesar and Napoleon; +but the best of their power was in nature, not in them. Men of an +extraordinary success, in their honest moments, have always sung, 'Not +unto us, not unto us.' According to the faith of their times they have +built altars to Fortune, or to Destiny, or to St. Julian. Their success +lay in their parallelism to the course of thought, which found in them +an unobstructed channel; and the wonders of which they were the visible +conductors seemed to the eye their deed. Did the wires generate the +galvanism? It is even true that there was less in them on which they +could reflect than in another; as the virtue of a pipe is to be smooth +and hollow. That which externally seemed will and immovableness was +willingness and self-annihilation. Could Shakspeare give a theory of +Shakspeare? Could ever a man of prodigious mathematical genius convey to +others any insight into his methods? If he could communicate that +secret it would instantly lose its exaggerated value, blending with the +daylight and the vital energy the power to stand and to go. + +The lesson is forcibly taught by these observations that our life might +be much easier and simpler than we make it; that the world might be +a happier place than it is; that there is no need of struggles, +convulsions, and despairs, of the wringing of the hands and the gnashing +of the teeth; that we miscreate our own evils. We interfere with the +optimism of nature; for whenever we get this vantage-ground of the past, +or of a wiser mind in the present, we are able to discern that we are +begirt with laws which execute themselves. + +The face of external nature teaches the same lesson. Nature will not +have us fret and fume. She does not like our benevolence or our learning +much better than she likes our frauds and wars. When we come out of +the caucus, or the bank, or the Abolition-convention, or the +Temperance-meeting, or the Transcendental club into the fields and +woods, she says to us, 'So hot? my little Sir.' + +We are full of mechanical actions. We must needs intermeddle and have +things in our own way, until the sacrifices and virtues of society +are odious. Love should make joy; but our benevolence is unhappy. Our +Sunday-schools and churches and pauper-societies are yokes to the neck. +We pain ourselves to please nobody. There are natural ways of arriving +at the same ends at which these aim, but do not arrive. Why should all +virtue work in one and the same way? Why should all give dollars? It is +very inconvenient to us country folk, and we do not think any good will +come of it. We have not dollars; merchants have; let them give them. +Farmers will give corn; poets will sing; women will sew; laborers will +lend a hand; the children will bring flowers. And why drag this dead +weight of a Sunday-school over the whole Christendom? It is natural and +beautiful that childhood should inquire and maturity should teach; but +it is time enough to answer questions when they are asked. Do not shut +up the young people against their will in a pew and force the children +to ask them questions for an hour against their will. + +If we look wider, things are all alike; laws and letters and creeds and +modes of living seem a travesty of truth. Our society is encumbered by +ponderous machinery, which resembles the endless aqueducts which +the Romans built over hill and dale and which are superseded by the +discovery of the law that water rises to the level of its source. It is +a Chinese wall which any nimble Tartar can leap over. It is a standing +army, not so good as a peace. It is a graduated, titled, richly +appointed empire, quite superfluous when town-meetings are found to +answer just as well. + +Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. +When the fruit is ripe, it falls. When the fruit is despatched, the leaf +falls. The circuit of the waters is mere falling. The walking of man +and all animals is a falling forward. All our manual labor and works of +strength, as prying, splitting, digging, rowing and so forth, are done +by dint of continual falling, and the globe, earth, moon, comet, sun, +star, fall for ever and ever. + +The simplicity of the universe is very different from the simplicity of +a machine. He who sees moral nature out and out and thoroughly knows how +knowledge is acquired and character formed, is a pedant. The simplicity +of nature is not that which may easily be read, but is inexhaustible. +The last analysis can no wise be made. We judge of a man's wisdom by his +hope, knowing that the perception of the inexhaustibleness of nature is +an immortal youth. The wild fertility of nature is felt in comparing our +rigid names and reputations with our fluid consciousness. We pass in the +world for sects and schools, for erudition and piety, and we are all the +time jejune babes. One sees very well how Pyrrhonism grew up. Every man +sees that he is that middle point whereof every thing may be affirmed +and denied with equal reason. He is old, he is young, he is very wise, +he is altogether ignorant. He hears and feels what you say of the +seraphim, and of the tin-peddler. There is no permanent wise man except +in the figment of the Stoics. We side with the hero, as we read or +paint, against the coward and the robber; but we have been ourselves +that coward and robber, and shall be again,--not in the low +circumstance, but in comparison with the grandeurs possible to the soul. + +A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would +show us that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that +our painful labors are unnecessary and fruitless; that only in our easy, +simple, spontaneous action are we strong, and by contenting ourselves +with obedience we become divine. Belief and love,--a believing love will +relieve us of a vast load of care. O my brothers, God exists. There is +a soul at the centre of nature and over the will of every man, so +that none of us can wrong the universe. It has so infused its strong +enchantment into nature that we prosper when we accept its advice, +and when we struggle to wound its creatures our hands are glued to our +sides, or they beat our own breasts. The whole course of things goes to +teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and +by lowly listening we shall hear the right word. Why need you choose so +painfully your place and occupation and associates and modes of action +and of entertainment? Certainly there is a possible right for you that +precludes the need of balance and wilful election. For you there is a +reality, a fit place and congenial duties. Place yourself in the middle +of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, +and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect +contentment. Then you put all gainsayers in the wrong. Then you are +the world, the measure of right, of truth, of beauty. If we will not +be mar-plots with our miserable interferences, the work, the society, +letters, arts, science, religion of men would go on far better than +now, and the heaven predicted from the beginning of the world, and still +predicted from the bottom of the heart, would organize itself, as do now +the rose and the air and the sun. + +I say, do not choose; but that is a figure of speech by which I would +distinguish what is commonly called choice among men, and which is a +partial act, the choice of the hands, of the eyes, of the appetites, and +not a whole act of the man. But that which I call right or goodness, +is the choice of my constitution; and that which I call heaven, and +inwardly aspire after, is the state or circumstance desirable to my +constitution; and the action which I in all my years tend to do, is the +work for my faculties. We must hold a man amenable to reason for the +choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer +for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. What business has +he with an evil trade? Has he not a calling in his character? + +Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one +direction in which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently +inviting him thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in a river; +he runs against obstructions on every side but one, on that side all +obstruction is taken away and he sweeps serenely over a deepening +channel into an infinite sea. This talent and this call depend on his +organization, or the mode in which the general soul incarnates itself in +him. He inclines to do something which is easy to him and good when it +is done, but which no other man can do. He has no rival. For the more +truly he consults his own powers, the more difference will his work +exhibit from the work of any other. His ambition is exactly proportioned +to his powers. The height of the pinnacle is determined by the breadth +of the base. Every man has this call of the power to do somewhat unique, +and no man has any other call. The pretence that he has another call, a +summons by name and personal election and outward "signs that mark him +extraordinary, and not in the roll of common men," is fanaticism, +and betrays obtuseness to perceive that there is one mind in all the +individuals, and no respect of persons therein. + +By doing his work he makes the need felt which he can supply, and +creates the taste by which he is enjoyed. By doing his own work he +unfolds himself. It is the vice of our public speaking that it has not +abandonment. Somewhere, not only every orator but every man should let +out all the length of all the reins; should find or make a frank and +hearty expression of what force and meaning is in him. The common +experience is that the man fits himself as well as he can to the +customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as a +dog turns a spit. Then is he a part of the machine he moves; the man is +lost. Until he can manage to communicate himself to others in his full +stature and proportion, he does not yet find his vocation. He must find +in that an outlet for his character, so that he may justify his work to +their eyes. If the labor is mean, let him by his thinking and character +make it liberal. Whatever he knows and thinks, whatever in his +apprehension is worth doing, that let him communicate, or men will never +know and honor him aright. Foolish, whenever you take the meanness +and formality of that thing you do, instead of converting it into the +obedient spiracle of your character and aims. + +We like only such actions as have already long had the praise of men, +and do not perceive that any thing man can do may be divinely done. +We think greatness entailed or organized in some places or duties, in +certain offices or occasions, and do not see that Paganini can +extract rapture from a catgut, and Eulenstein from a jews-harp, and +a nimble-fingered lad out of shreds of paper with his scissors, and +Landseer out of swine, and the hero out of the pitiful habitation and +company in which he was hidden. What we call obscure condition or vulgar +society is that condition and society whose poetry is not yet written, +but which you shall presently make as enviable and renowned as any. In +our estimates let us take a lesson from kings. The parts of hospitality, +the connection of families, the impressiveness of death, and a thousand +other things, royalty makes its own estimate of, and a royal mind will. +To make habitually a new estimate,--that is elevation. + +What a man does, that he has. What has he to do with hope or fear? In +himself is his might. Let him regard no good as solid but that which is +in his nature and which must grow out of him as long as he exists. The +goods of fortune may come and go like summer leaves; let him +scatter them on every wind as the momentary signs of his infinite +productiveness. + +He may have his own. A man's genius, the quality that differences him +from every other, the susceptibility to one class of influences, the +selection of what is fit for him, the rejection of what is unfit, +determines for him the character of the universe. A man is a method, a +progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to +him wherever he goes. He takes only his own out of the multiplicity that +sweeps and circles round him. He is like one of those booms which +are set out from the shore on rivers to catch drift-wood, or like the +loadstone amongst splinters of steel. Those facts, words, persons, which +dwell in his memory without his being able to say why, remain +because they have a relation to him not less real for being as yet +unapprehended. They are symbols of value to him as they can interpret +parts of his consciousness which he would vainly seek words for in the +conventional images of books and other minds. What attracts my attention +shall have it, as I will go to the man who knocks at my door, whilst +a thousand persons as worthy go by it, to whom I give no regard. It is +enough that these particulars speak to me. A few anecdotes, a few traits +of character, manners, face, a few incidents, have an emphasis in your +memory out of all proportion to their apparent significance if you +measure them by the ordinary standards. They relate to your gift. +Let them have their weight, and do not reject them and cast about for +illustration and facts more usual in literature. What your heart thinks +great is great. The soul's emphasis is always right. + +Over all things that are agreeable to his nature and genius the man has +the highest right. Everywhere he may take what belongs to his spiritual +estate, nor can he take any thing else though all doors were open, nor +can all the force of men hinder him from taking so much. It is vain to +attempt to keep a secret from one who has a right to know it. It will +tell itself. That mood into which a friend can bring us is his dominion +over us. To the thoughts of that state of mind he has a right. All +the secrets of that state of mind he can compel. This is a law which +statesmen use in practice. All the terrors of the French Republic, which +held Austria in awe, were unable to command her diplomacy. But Napoleon +sent to Vienna M. de Narbonne, one of the old noblesse, with the morals, +manners and name of that interest, saying that it was indispensable to +send to the old aristocracy of Europe men of the same connection, which, +in fact, constitutes a sort of free-masonry. M. de Narbonne in less than +a fortnight penetrated all the secrets of the imperial cabinet. + +Nothing seems so easy as to speak and to be understood. Yet a man may +come to find that the strongest of defences and of ties,--that he has +been understood; and he who has received an opinion may come to find it +the most inconvenient of bonds. + +If a teacher have any opinion which he wishes to conceal, his pupils +will become as fully indoctrinated into that as into any which he +publishes. If you pour water into a vessel twisted into coils and +angles, it is vain to say, I will pour it only into this or that;--it +will find its level in all. Men feel and act the consequences of your +doctrine without being able to show how they follow. Show us an arc of +the curve, and a good mathematician will find out the whole figure. +We are always reasoning from the seen to the unseen. Hence the perfect +intelligence that subsists between wise men of remote ages. A man cannot +bury his meanings so deep in his book but time and like-minded men +will find them. Plato had a secret doctrine, had he? What secret can +he conceal from the eyes of Bacon? of Montaigne? of Kant? Therefore, +Aristotle said of his works, "They are published and not published." + +No man can learn what he has not preparation for learning, however near +to his eyes is the object. A chemist may tell his most precious secrets +to a carpenter, and he shall be never the wiser,--the secrets he would +not utter to a chemist for an estate. God screens us evermore from +premature ideas. Our eyes are holden that we cannot see things that +stare us in the face, until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened; +then we behold them, and the time when we saw them not is like a dream. + +Not in nature but in man is all the beauty and worth he sees. The world +is very empty, and is indebted to this gilding, exalting soul for all +its pride. "Earth fills her lap with splendors" not her own. The vale of +Tempe, Tivoli and Rome are earth and water, rocks and sky. There are as +good earth and water in a thousand places, yet how unaffecting! + +People are not the better for the sun and moon, the horizon and the +trees; as it is not observed that the keepers of Roman galleries or the +valets of painters have any elevation of thought, or that librarians are +wiser men than others. There are graces in the demeanor of a polished +and noble person which are lost upon the eye of a churl. These are like +the stars whose light has not yet reached us. + +He may see what he maketh. Our dreams are the sequel of our waking +knowledge. The visions of the night bear some proportion to the visions +of the day. Hideous dreams are exaggerations of the sins of the day. We +see our evil affections embodied in bad physiognomies. On the Alps the +traveller sometimes beholds his own shadow magnified to a giant, so that +every gesture of his hand is terrific. "My children," said an old man +to his boys scared by a figure in the dark entry, "my children, you +will never see any thing worse than yourselves." As in dreams, so in +the scarcely less fluid events of the world every man sees himself in +colossal, without knowing that it is himself. The good, compared to the +evil which he sees, is as his own good to his own evil. Every quality of +his mind is magnified in some one acquaintance, and every emotion of +his heart in some one. He is like a quincunx of trees, which counts +five,--east, west, north, or south; or an initial, medial, and terminal +acrostic. And why not? He cleaves to one person and avoids another, +according to their likeness or unlikeness to himself, truly seeking +himself in his associates and moreover in his trade and habits and +gestures and meats and drinks, and comes at last to be faithfully +represented by every view you take of his circumstances. + +He may read what he writes. What can we see or acquire but what we are? +You have observed a skilful man reading Virgil. Well, that author is a +thousand books to a thousand persons. Take the book into your two +hands and read your eyes out, you will never find what I find. If any +ingenious reader would have a monopoly of the wisdom or delight he gets, +he is as secure now the book is Englished, as if it were imprisoned in +the Pelews' tongue. It is with a good book as it is with good company. +Introduce a base person among gentlemen, it is all to no purpose; he +is not their fellow. Every society protects itself. The company is +perfectly safe, and he is not one of them, though his body is in the +room. + +What avails it to fight with the eternal laws of mind, which adjust the +relation of all persons to each other by the mathematical measure of +their havings and beings? Gertrude is enamored of Guy; how high, how +aristocratic, how Roman his mien and manners! to live with him were life +indeed, and no purchase is too great; and heaven and earth are moved +to that end. Well, Gertrude has Guy; but what now avails how high, how +aristocratic, how Roman his mien and manners, if his heart and aims are +in the senate, in the theatre and in the billiard-room, and she has no +aims, no conversation that can enchant her graceful lord? + +He shall have his own society. We can love nothing but nature. The most +wonderful talents, the most meritorious exertions really avail very +little with us; but nearness or likeness of nature,--how beautiful is +the ease of its victory! Persons approach us, famous for their beauty, +for their accomplishments, worthy of all wonder for their charms +and gifts; they dedicate their whole skill to the hour and the +company,--with very imperfect result. To be sure it would be ungrateful +in us not to praise them loudly. Then, when all is done, a person of +related mind, a brother or sister by nature, comes to us so softly and +easily, so nearly and intimately, as if it were the blood in our proper +veins, that we feel as if some one was gone, instead of another having +come; we are utterly relieved and refreshed; it is a sort of joyful +solitude. We foolishly think in our days of sin that we must court +friends by compliance to the customs of society, to its dress, its +breeding, and its estimates. But only that soul can be my friend which +I encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which I do not +decline and which does not decline to me, but, native of the same +celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience. The scholar +forgets himself and apes the customs and costumes of the man of the +world to deserve the smile of beauty, and follows some giddy girl, not +yet taught by religious passion to know the noble woman with all that is +serene, oracular and beautiful in her soul. Let him be great, and love +shall follow him. Nothing is more deeply punished than the neglect of +the affinities by which alone society should be formed, and the insane +levity of choosing associates by others' eyes. + +He may set his own rate. It is a maxim worthy of all acceptation that a +man may have that allowance he takes. Take the place and attitude which +belong to you, and all men acquiesce. The world must be just. It +leaves every man, with profound unconcern, to set his own rate. Hero or +driveller, it meddles not in the matter. It will certainly accept your +own measure of your doing and being, whether you sneak about and deny +your own name, or whether you see your work produced to the concave +sphere of the heavens, one with the revolution of the stars. + +The same reality pervades all teaching. The man may teach by doing, and +not otherwise. If he can communicate himself he can teach, but not by +words. He teaches who gives, and he learns who receives. There is no +teaching until the pupil is brought into the same state or principle in +which you are; a transfusion takes place; he is you and you are he; then +is a teaching, and by no unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever +quite lose the benefit. But your propositions run out of one ear as they +ran in at the other. We see it advertised that Mr. Grand will deliver +an oration on the Fourth of July, and Mr. Hand before the Mechanics' +Association, and we do not go thither, because we know that these +gentlemen will not communicate their own character and experience to +the company. If we had reason to expect such a confidence we should go +through all inconvenience and opposition. The sick would be carried +in litters. But a public oration is an escapade, a non-committal, an +apology, a gag, and not a communication, not a speech, not a man. + +A like Nemesis presides over all intellectual works. We have yet to +learn that the thing uttered in words is not therefore affirmed. It must +affirm itself, or no forms of logic or of oath can give it evidence. The +sentence must also contain its own apology for being spoken. + +The effect of any writing on the public mind is mathematically +measurable by its depth of thought. How much water does it draw? If it +awaken you to think, if it lift you from your feet with the great voice +of eloquence, then the effect is to be wide, slow, permanent, over the +minds of men; if the pages instruct you not, they will die like flies in +the hour. The way to speak and write what shall not go out of fashion is +to speak and write sincerely. The argument which has not power to reach +my own practice, I may well doubt will fail to reach yours. But take +Sidney's maxim:--"Look in thy heart, and write." He that writes to +himself writes to an eternal public. That statement only is fit to be +made public which you have come at in attempting to satisfy your own +curiosity. The writer who takes his subject from his ear and not from +his heart, should know that he has lost as much as he seems to have +gained, and when the empty book has gathered all its praise, and half +the people say, 'What poetry! what genius!' it still needs fuel to make +fire. That only profits which is profitable. Life alone can impart life; +and though we should burst we can only be valued as we make ourselves +valuable. There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the +final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of +the hour when it appears, but a court as of angels, a public not to be +bribed, not to be entreated and not to be overawed, decides upon every +man's title to fame. Only those books come down which deserve to last. +Gilt edges, vellum and morocco, and presentation-copies to all the +libraries will not preserve a book in circulation beyond its intrinsic +date. It must go with all Walpole's Noble and Royal Authors to its fate. +Blackmore, Kotzebue, or Pollok may endure for a night, but Moses and +Homer stand for ever. There are not in the world at any one time more +than a dozen persons who read and understand Plato,--never enough to +pay for an edition of his works; yet to every generation these come duly +down, for the sake of those few persons, as if God brought them in +his hand. "No book," said Bentley, "was ever written down by any but +itself." The permanence of all books is fixed by no effort, friendly or +hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or the intrinsic importance +of their contents to the constant mind of man. "Do not trouble yourself +too much about the light on your statue," said Michael Angelo to the +young sculptor; "the light of the public square will test its value." + +In like manner the effect of every action is measured by the depth of +the sentiment from which it proceeds. The great man knew not that he was +great. It took a century or two for that fact to appear. What he did, +he did because he must; it was the most natural thing in the world, and +grew out of the circumstances of the moment. But now, every thing he +did, even to the lifting of his finger or the eating of bread, looks +large, all-related, and is called an institution. + +These are the demonstrations in a few particulars of the genius of +nature; they show the direction of the stream. But the stream is blood; +every drop is alive. Truth has not single victories; all things are +its organs,--not only dust and stones, but errors and lies. The laws +of disease, physicians say, are as beautiful as the laws of health. Our +philosophy is affirmative and readily accepts the testimony of negative +facts, as every shadow points to the sun. By a divine necessity every +fact in nature is constrained to offer its testimony. + +Human character evermore publishes itself. The most fugitive deed and +word, the mere air of doing a thing, the intimated purpose, expresses +character. If you act you show character; if you sit still, if you +sleep, you show it. You think because you have spoken nothing when +others spoke, and have given no opinion on the times, on the church, on +slavery, on marriage, on socialism, on secret societies, on the college, +on parties and persons, that your verdict is still expected with +curiosity as a reserved wisdom. Far otherwise; your silence answers very +loud. You have no oracle to utter, and your fellow-men have learned +that you cannot help them; for oracles speak. Doth not Wisdom cry and +Understanding put forth her voice? + +Dreadful limits are set in nature to the powers of dissimulation. Truth +tyrannizes over the unwilling members of the body. Faces never lie, +it is said. No man need be deceived who will study the changes of +expression. When a man speaks the truth in the spirit of truth, his eye +is as clear as the heavens. When he has base ends and speaks falsely, +the eye is muddy and sometimes asquint. + +I have heard an experienced counsellor say that he never feared the +effect upon a jury of a lawyer who does not believe in his heart that +his client ought to have a verdict. If he does not believe it his +unbelief will appear to the jury, despite all his protestations, and +will become their unbelief. This is that law whereby a work of art, of +whatever kind, sets us in the same state of mind wherein the artist was +when he made it. That which we do not believe we cannot adequately say, +though we may repeat the words never so often. It was this conviction +which Swedenborg expressed when he described a group of persons in the +spiritual world endeavoring in vain to articulate a proposition which +they did not believe; but they could not, though they twisted and folded +their lips even to indignation. + +A man passes for that he is worth. Very idle is all curiosity concerning +other people's estimate of us, and all fear of remaining unknown is +not less so. If a man know that he can do any thing,--that he can do it +better than any one else,--he has a pledge of the acknowledgment of that +fact by all persons. The world is full of judgment-days, and into every +assembly that a man enters, in every action he attempts, he is gauged +and stamped. In every troop of boys that whoop and run in each yard and +square, a new-comer is as well and accurately weighed in the course of +a few days and stamped with his right number, as if he had undergone a +formal trial of his strength, speed and temper. A stranger comes from +a distant school, with better dress, with trinkets in his pockets, with +airs and pretensions; an older boy says to himself, 'It's of no use; +we shall find him out to-morrow.' 'What has he done?' is the divine +question which searches men and transpierces every false reputation. A +fop may sit in any chair of the world nor be distinguished for his hour +from Homer and Washington; but there need never be any doubt concerning +the respective ability of human beings. Pretension may sit still, +but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. +Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nor drove back Xerxes, nor +christianized the world, nor abolished slavery. + +As much virtue as there is, so much appears; as much goodness as there +is, so much reverence it commands. All the devils respect virtue. The +high, the generous, the self-devoted sect will always instruct and +command mankind. Never was a sincere word utterly lost. Never a +magnanimity fell to the ground, but there is some heart to greet and +accept it unexpectedly. A man passes for that he is worth. What he is +engraves itself on his face, on his form, on his fortunes, in letters +of light. Concealment avails him nothing, boasting nothing. There is +confession in the glances of our eyes, in our smiles, in salutations, +and the grasp of hands. His sin bedaubs him, mars all his good +impression. Men know not why they do not trust him, but they do not +trust him. His vice glasses his eye, cuts lines of mean expression in +his cheek, pinches the nose, sets the mark of the beast on the back of +the head, and writes O fool! fool! on the forehead of a king. + +If you would not be known to do any thing, never do it. A man may play +the fool in the drifts of a desert, but every grain of sand shall seem +to see. He may be a solitary eater, but he cannot keep his foolish +counsel. A broken complexion, a swinish look, ungenerous acts and the +want of due knowledge,--all blab. Can a cook, a Chiffinch, an Iachimo +be mistaken for Zeno or Paul? Confucius exclaimed,--"How can a man be +concealed? How can a man be concealed?" + +On the other hand, the hero fears not that if he withhold the avowal +of a just and brave act it will go unwitnessed and unloved. One knows +it,--himself,--and is pledged by it to sweetness of peace and to +nobleness of aim which will prove in the end a better proclamation of it +than the relating of the incident. Virtue is the adherence in action to +the nature of things, and the nature of things makes it prevalent. It +consists in a perpetual substitution of being for seeming, and with +sublime propriety God is described as saying, I AM. + +The lesson which these observations convey is, Be, and not seem. Let us +acquiesce. Let us take our bloated nothingness out of the path of the +divine circuits. Let us unlearn our wisdom of the world. Let us lie low +in the Lord's power and learn that truth alone makes rich and great. + +If you visit your friend, why need you apologize for not having visited +him, and waste his time and deface your own act? Visit him now. Let +him feel that the highest love has come to see him, in thee its +lowest organ. Or why need you torment yourself and friend by secret +self-reproaches that you have not assisted him or complimented him with +gifts and salutations heretofore? Be a gift and a benediction. Shine +with real light and not with the borrowed reflection of gifts. Common +men are apologies for men; they bow the head, excuse themselves with +prolix reasons, and accumulate appearances because the substance is not. + +We are full of these superstitions of sense, the worship of magnitude. +We call the poet inactive, because he is not a president, a merchant, or +a porter. We adore an institution, and do not see that it is founded +on a thought which we have. But real action is in silent moments. The +epochs of our life are not in the visible facts of our choice of a +calling, our marriage, our acquisition of an office, and the like, +but in a silent thought by the way-side as we walk; in a thought which +revises our entire manner of life and says,--'Thus hast thou done, but +it were better thus.' And all our after years, like menials, serve and +wait on this, and according to their ability execute its will. This +revisal or correction is a constant force, which, as a tendency, reaches +through our lifetime. The object of the man, the aim of these moments, +is to make daylight shine through him, to suffer the law to traverse +his whole being without obstruction, so that on what point soever of his +doing your eye falls it shall report truly of his character, whether it +be his diet, his house, his religious forms, his society, his mirth, his +vote, his opposition. Now he is not homogeneous, but heterogeneous, and +the ray does not traverse; there are no thorough lights, but the eye of +the beholder is puzzled, detecting many unlike tendencies and a life not +yet at one. + +Why should we make it a point with our false modesty to disparage +that man we are and that form of being assigned to us? A good man +is contented. I love and honor Epaminondas, but I do not wish to be +Epaminondas. I hold it more just to love the world of this hour than +the world of his hour. Nor can you, if I am true, excite me to the least +uneasiness by saying, 'He acted and thou sittest still.' I see action +to be good, when the need is, and sitting still to be also good. +Epaminondas, if he was the man I take him for, would have sat still with +joy and peace, if his lot had been mine. Heaven is large, and affords +space for all modes of love and fortitude. Why should we be busybodies +and superserviceable? Action and inaction are alike to the true. One +piece of the tree is cut for a weathercock and one for the sleeper of a +bridge; the virtue of the wood is apparent in both. + +I desire not to disgrace the soul. The fact that I am here certainly +shows me that the soul had need of an organ here. Shall I not assume the +post? Shall I skulk and dodge and duck with my unseasonable apologies +and vain modesty and imagine my being here impertinent? less pertinent +than Epaminondas or Homer being there? and that the soul did not know +its own needs? Besides, without any reasoning on the matter, I have +no discontent. The good soul nourishes me and unlocks new magazines +of power and enjoyment to me every day. I will not meanly decline the +immensity of good, because I have heard that it has come to others in +another shape. + +Besides, why should we be cowed by the name of Action? 'Tis a trick of +the senses,--no more. We know that the ancestor of every action is a +thought. The poor mind does not seem to itself to be any thing unless it +have an outside badge,--some Gentoo diet, or Quaker coat, or Calvinistic +prayer-meeting, or philanthropic society, or a great donation, or a high +office, or, any how, some wild contrasting action to testify that it is +somewhat. The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature. To +think is to act. + +Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. All action is of +an infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with the +celestial air until it eclipses the sun and moon. Let us seek one peace +by fidelity. Let me heed my duties. Why need I go gadding into the +scenes and philosophy of Greek and Italian history before I have +justified myself to my benefactors? How dare I read Washington's +campaigns when I have not answered the letters of my own correspondents? +Is not that a just objection to much of our reading? It is a +pusillanimous desertion of our work to gaze after our neighbors. It is +peeping. Byron says of Jack Bunting,-- + + "He knew not what to say, and so he swore." + +I may say it of our preposterous use of books,--He knew not what to do, +and so he read. I can think of nothing to fill my time with, and I find +the Life of Brant. It is a very extravagant compliment to pay to Brant, +or to General Schuyler, or to General Washington. My time should be as +good as their time,--my facts, my net of relations, as good as theirs, +or either of theirs. Rather let me do my work so well that other idlers +if they choose may compare my texture with the texture of these and find +it identical with the best. + +This over-estimate of the possibilities of Paul and Pericles, this +under-estimate of our own, comes from a neglect of the fact of an +identical nature. Bonaparte knew but one merit, and rewarded in one and +the same way the good soldier, the good astronomer, the good poet, +the good player. The poet uses the names of Caesar, of Tamerlane, of +Bonduca, of Belisarius; the painter uses the conventional story of +the Virgin Mary, of Paul, of Peter. He does not therefore defer to the +nature of these accidental men, of these stock heroes. If the poet write +a true drama, then he is Caesar, and not the player of Caesar; then the +selfsame strain of thought, emotion as pure, wit as subtle, motions +as swift, mounting, extravagant, and a heart as great, self-sufficing, +dauntless, which on the waves of its love and hope can uplift all that +is reckoned solid and precious in the world,--palaces, gardens, money, +navies, kingdoms,--marking its own incomparable worth by the slight it +casts on these gauds of men;--these all are his, and by the power of +these he rouses the nations. Let a man believe in God, and not in names +and places and persons. Let the great soul incarnated in some woman's +form, poor and sad and single, in some Dolly or Joan, go out to service, +and sweep chambers and scour floors, and its effulgent daybeams cannot +be muffled or hid, but to sweep and scour will instantly appear supreme +and beautiful actions, the top and radiance of human life, and all +people will get mops and brooms; until, lo! suddenly the great soul has +enshrined itself in some other form and done some other deed, and that +is now the flower and head of all living nature. + +We are the photometers, we the irritable goldleaf and tinfoil that +measure the accumulations of the subtle element. We know the authentic +effects of the true fire through every one of its million disguises. + +***** + + + + LOVE. + + "I was as a gem concealed; + Me my burning ray revealed." + Koran. + + + + +V. LOVE. + +Every promise of the soul has innumerable fulfilments; each of its joys +ripens into a new want. Nature, uncontainable, flowing, forelooking, in +the first sentiment of kindness anticipates already a benevolence which +shall lose all particular regards in its general light. The introduction +to this felicity is in a private and tender relation of one to one, +which is the enchantment of human life; which, like a certain divine +rage and enthusiasm, seizes on man at one period and works a revolution +in his mind and body; unites him to his race, pledges him to the +domestic and civic relations, carries him with new sympathy into nature, +enhances the power of the senses, opens the imagination, adds to his +character heroic and sacred attributes, establishes marriage, and gives +permanence to human society. + +The natural association of the sentiment of love with the heyday of the +blood seems to require that in order to portray it in vivid tints, +which every youth and maid should confess to be true to their throbbing +experience, one must not be too old. The delicious fancies of youth +reject the least savor of a mature philosophy, as chilling with age and +pedantry their purple bloom. And therefore I know I incur the imputation +of unnecessary hardness and stoicism from those who compose the Court +and Parliament of Love. But from these formidable censors I shall appeal +to my seniors. For it is to be considered that this passion of which +we speak, though it begin with the young, yet forsakes not the old, or +rather suffers no one who is truly its servant to grow old, but makes +the aged participators of it not less than the tender maiden, though in +a different and nobler sort. For it is a fire that kindling its first +embers in the narrow nook of a private bosom, caught from a wandering +spark out of another private heart, glows and enlarges until it warms +and beams upon multitudes of men and women, upon the universal heart of +all, and so lights up the whole world and all nature with its generous +flames. It matters not therefore whether we attempt to describe the +passion at twenty, at thirty, or at eighty years. He who paints it at +the first period will lose some of its later, he who paints it at +the last, some of its earlier traits. Only it is to be hoped that by +patience and the Muses' aid we may attain to that inward view of the law +which shall describe a truth ever young and beautiful, so central that +it shall commend itself to the eye, at whatever angle beholden. + +And the first condition is, that we must leave a too close and lingering +adherence to facts, and study the sentiment as it appeared in hope and +not in history. For each man sees his own life defaced and disfigured, +as the life of man is not, to his imagination. Each man sees over his +own experience a certain stain of error, whilst that of other men looks +fair and ideal. Let any man go back to those delicious relations which +make the beauty of his life, which have given him sincerest instruction +and nourishment, he will shrink and moan. Alas! I know not why, but +infinite compunctions embitter in mature life the remembrances of +budding joy and cover every beloved name. Every thing is beautiful seen +from the point of the intellect, or as truth. But all is sour, if seen +as experience. Details are melancholy; the plan is seemly and noble. In +the actual world--the painful kingdom of time and place--dwell care, and +canker, and fear. With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, +the rose of joy. Round it all the Muses sing. But grief cleaves to +names, and persons, and the partial interests of to-day and yesterday. + +The strong bent of nature is seen in the proportion which this topic +of personal relations usurps in the conversation of society. What do +we wish to know of any worthy person so much, as how he has sped in +the history of this sentiment? What books in the circulating libraries +circulate? How we glow over these novels of passion, when the story is +told with any spark of truth and nature! And what fastens attention, in +the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between +two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before, and never shall meet them +again. But we see them exchange a glance, or betray a deep emotion, and +we are no longer strangers. We understand them, and take the warmest +interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a lover. +The earliest demonstrations of complacency and kindness are nature's +most winning pictures. It is the dawn of civility and grace in the +coarse and rustic. The rude village boy teases the girls about the +school-house door;--but to-day he comes running into the entry, and +meets one fair child disposing her satchel; he holds her books to help +her, and instantly it seems to him as if she removed herself from him +infinitely, and was a sacred precinct. Among the throng of girls he +runs rudely enough, but one alone distances him; and these two little +neighbors, that were so close just now, have learned to respect each +other's personality. Or who can avert his eyes from the engaging, +half-artful, half-artless ways of school-girls who go into the country +shops to buy a skein of silk or a sheet of paper, and talk half an +hour about nothing with the broad-faced, good-natured shop-boy. In the +village they are on a perfect equality, which love delights in, and +without any coquetry the happy, affectionate nature of woman flows out +in this pretty gossip. The girls may have little beauty, yet plainly +do they establish between them and the good boy the most agreeable, +confiding relations, what with their fun and their earnest, about Edgar +and Jonas and Almira, and who was invited to the party, and who danced +at the dancing-school, and when the singing-school would begin, and +other nothings concerning which the parties cooed. By and by that boy +wants a wife, and very truly and heartily will he know where to find +a sincere and sweet mate, without any risk such as Milton deplores as +incident to scholars and great men. + +I have been told that in some public discourses of mine my reverence for +the intellect has made me unjustly cold to the personal relations. But +now I almost shrink at the remembrance of such disparaging words. For +persons are love's world, and the coldest philosopher cannot recount the +debt of the young soul wandering here in nature to the power of +love, without being tempted to unsay, as treasonable to nature, aught +derogatory to the social instincts. For though the celestial rapture +falling out of heaven seizes only upon those of tender age, and although +a beauty overpowering all analysis or comparison and putting us +quite beside ourselves we can seldom see after thirty years, yet the +remembrance of these visions outlasts all other remembrances, and is a +wreath of flowers on the oldest brows. But here is a strange fact; it +may seem to many men, in revising their experience, that they have +no fairer page in their life's book than the delicious memory of some +passages wherein affection contrived to give a witchcraft, surpassing +the deep attraction of its own truth, to a parcel of accidental and +trivial circumstances. In looking backward they may find that several +things which were not the charm have more reality to this groping memory +than the charm itself which embalmed them. But be our experience in +particulars what it may, no man ever forgot the visitations of that +power to his heart and brain, which created all things anew; which was +the dawn in him of music, poetry, and art; which made the face of +nature radiant with purple light, the morning and the night varied +enchantments; when a single tone of one voice could make the heart +bound, and the most trivial circumstance associated with one form is put +in the amber of memory; when he became all eye when one was present, +and all memory when one was gone; when the youth becomes a watcher of +windows and studious of a glove, a veil, a ribbon, or the wheels of a +carriage; when no place is too solitary and none too silent, for him who +has richer company and sweeter conversation in his new thoughts than any +old friends, though best and purest, can give him; for the figures, +the motions, the words of the beloved object are not like other images +written in water, but, as Plutarch said, "enamelled in fire," and make +the study of midnight:-- + + "Thou art not gone being gone, where'er thou art, + Thou leav'st in him thy watchful eyes, in him thy + loving heart." + +In the noon and the afternoon of life we still throb at the recollection +of days when happiness was not happy enough, but must be drugged with +the relish of pain and fear; for he touched the secret of the matter who +said of love,-- + + "All other pleasures are not worth its pains:" + +and when the day was not long enough, but the night too must be consumed +in keen recollections; when the head boiled all night on the pillow +with the generous deed it resolved on; when the moonlight was a pleasing +fever and the stars were letters and the flowers ciphers and the air was +coined into song; when all business seemed an impertinence, and all the +men and women running to and fro in the streets, mere pictures. + +The passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive +and significant. Nature grows conscious. Every bird on the boughs of the +tree sings now to his heart and soul. The notes are almost articulate. +The clouds have faces as he looks on them. The trees of the forest, +the waving grass and the peeping flowers have grown intelligent; and he +almost fears to trust them with the secret which they seem to invite. +Yet nature soothes and sympathizes. In the green solitude he finds a +dearer home than with men:-- + + "Fountain-heads and pathless groves, + Places which pale passion loves, + Moonlight walks, when all the fowls + Are safely housed, save bats and owls, + A midnight bell, a passing groan,-- + These are the sounds we feed upon." + +Behold there in the wood the fine madman! He is a palace of sweet sounds +and sights; he dilates; he is twice a man; he walks with arms akimbo; he +soliloquizes; he accosts the grass and the trees; he feels the blood of +the violet, the clover and the lily in his veins; and he talks with the +brook that wets his foot. + +The heats that have opened his perceptions of natural beauty have made +him love music and verse. It is a fact often observed, that men have +written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write +well under any other circumstances. + +The like force has the passion over all his nature. It expands the +sentiment; it makes the clown gentle and gives the coward heart. Into +the most pitiful and abject it will infuse a heart and courage to defy +the world, so only it have the countenance of the beloved object. In +giving him to another it still more gives him to himself. He is a new +man, with new perceptions, new and keener purposes, and a religious +solemnity of character and aims. He does not longer appertain to his +family and society; he is somewhat; he is a person; he is a soul. + +And here let us examine a little nearer the nature of that influence +which is thus potent over the human youth. Beauty, whose revelation to +man we now celebrate, welcome as the sun wherever it pleases to shine, +which pleases everybody with it and with themselves, seems sufficient +to itself. The lover cannot paint his maiden to his fancy poor and +solitary. Like a tree in flower, so much soft, budding, informing +loveliness is society for itself; and she teaches his eye why Beauty was +pictured with Loves and Graces attending her steps. Her existence makes +the world rich. Though she extrudes all other persons from his attention +as cheap and unworthy, she indemnifies him by carrying out her own being +into somewhat impersonal, large, mundane, so that the maiden stands +to him for a representative of all select things and virtues. For that +reason the lover never sees personal resemblances in his mistress to her +kindred or to others. His friends find in her a likeness to her mother, +or her sisters, or to persons not of her blood. The lover sees no +resemblance except to summer evenings and diamond mornings, to rainbows +and the song of birds. + +The ancients called beauty the flowering of virtue. Who can analyze the +nameless charm which glances from one and another face and form? We are +touched with emotions of tenderness and complacency, but we cannot +find whereat this dainty emotion, this wandering gleam, points. It +is destroyed for the imagination by any attempt to refer it to +organization. Nor does it point to any relations of friendship or love +known and described in society, but, as it seems to me, to a quite +other and unattainable sphere, to relations of transcendent delicacy +and sweetness, to what roses and violets hint and foreshow. We cannot +approach beauty. Its nature is like opaline doves'-neck lustres, +hovering and evanescent. Herein it resembles the most excellent +things, which all have this rainbow character, defying all attempts at +appropriation and use. What else did Jean Paul Richter signify, when he +said to music, "Away! away! thou speakest to me of things which in all +my endless life I have not found, and shall not find." The same fluency +may be observed in every work of the plastic arts. The statue is then +beautiful when it begins to be incomprehensible, when it is passing out +of criticism and can no longer be defined by compass and measuring-wand, +but demands an active imagination to go with it and to say what it is in +the act of doing. The god or hero of the sculptor is always represented +in a transition from that which is representable to the senses, to that +which is not. Then first it ceases to be a stone. The same remark holds +of painting. And of poetry the success is not attained when it lulls and +satisfies, but when it astonishes and fires us with new endeavors after +the unattainable. Concerning it Landor inquires "whether it is not to be +referred to some purer state of sensation and existence." + +In like manner, personal beauty is then first charming and itself when +it dissatisfies us with any end; when it becomes a story without an end; +when it suggests gleams and visions and not earthly satisfactions; when +it makes the beholder feel his unworthiness; when he cannot feel his +right to it, though he were Caesar; he cannot feel more right to it than +to the firmament and the splendors of a sunset. + +Hence arose the saying, "If I love you, what is that to you?" We say so +because we feel that what we love is not in your will, but above it. It +is not you, but your radiance. It is that which you know not in yourself +and can never know. + +This agrees well with that high philosophy of Beauty which the ancient +writers delighted in; for they said that the soul of man, embodied here +on earth, went roaming up and down in quest of that other world of its +own out of which it came into this, but was soon stupefied by the light +of the natural sun, and unable to see any other objects than those of +this world, which are but shadows of real things. Therefore the Deity +sends the glory of youth before the soul, that it may avail itself of +beautiful bodies as aids to its recollection of the celestial good and +fair; and the man beholding such a person in the female sex runs to +her and finds the highest joy in contemplating the form, movement, and +intelligence of this person, because it suggests to him the presence of +that which indeed is within the beauty, and the cause of the beauty. + +If however, from too much conversing with material objects, the soul was +gross, and misplaced its satisfaction in the body, it reaped nothing but +sorrow; body being unable to fulfil the promise which beauty holds out; +but if, accepting the hint of these visions and suggestions which beauty +makes to his mind, the soul passes through the body and falls to admire +strokes of character, and the lovers contemplate one another in their +discourses and their actions, then they pass to the true palace of +beauty, more and more inflame their love of it, and by this love +extinguishing the base affection, as the sun puts out the fire by +shining on the hearth, they become pure and hallowed. By conversation +with that which is in itself excellent, magnanimous, lowly, and just, +the lover comes to a warmer love of these nobilities, and a quicker +apprehension of them. Then he passes from loving them in one to loving +them in all, and so is the one beautiful soul only the door through +which he enters to the society of all true and pure souls. In the +particular society of his mate he attains a clearer sight of any spot, +any taint which her beauty has contracted from this world, and is +able to point it out, and this with mutual joy that they are now able, +without offence, to indicate blemishes and hindrances in each other, and +give to each all help and comfort in curing the same. And beholding in +many souls the traits of the divine beauty, and separating in each +soul that which is divine from the taint which it has contracted in +the world, the lover ascends to the highest beauty, to the love and +knowledge of the Divinity, by steps on this ladder of created souls. + +Somewhat like this have the truly wise told us of love in all ages. +The doctrine is not old, nor is it new. If Plato, Plutarch and Apuleius +taught it, so have Petrarch, Angelo and Milton. It awaits a truer +unfolding in opposition and rebuke to that subterranean prudence which +presides at marriages with words that take hold of the upper world, +whilst one eye is prowling in the cellar; so that its gravest discourse +has a savor of hams and powdering-tubs. Worst, when this sensualism +intrudes into the education of young women, and withers the hope and +affection of human nature by teaching that marriage signifies nothing +but a housewife's thrift, and that woman's life has no other aim. + +But this dream of love, though beautiful, is only one scene in our +play. In the procession of the soul from within outward, it enlarges +its circles ever, like the pebble thrown into the pond, or the light +proceeding from an orb. The rays of the soul alight first on things +nearest, on every utensil and toy, on nurses and domestics, on the house +and yard and passengers, on the circle of household acquaintance, +on politics and geography and history. But things are ever grouping +themselves according to higher or more interior laws. Neighborhood, +size, numbers, habits, persons, lose by degrees their power over us. +Cause and effect, real affinities, the longing for harmony between +the soul and the circumstance, the progressive, idealizing instinct, +predominate later, and the step backward from the higher to the lower +relations is impossible. Thus even love, which is the deification of +persons, must become more impersonal every day. Of this at first it +gives no hint. Little think the youth and maiden who are glancing +at each other across crowded rooms with eyes so full of mutual +intelligence, of the precious fruit long hereafter to proceed from this +new, quite external stimulus. The work of vegetation begins first in the +irritability of the bark and leaf-buds. From exchanging glances, they +advance to acts of courtesy, of gallantry, then to fiery passion, to +plighting troth and marriage. Passion beholds its object as a perfect +unit. The soul is wholly embodied, and the body is wholly ensouled:-- + + "Her pure and eloquent blood + Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, + That one might almost say her body thought." + +Romeo, if dead, should be cut up into little stars to make the heavens +fine. Life, with this pair, has no other aim, asks no more, than +Juliet,--than Romeo. Night, day, studies, talents, kingdoms, religion, +are all contained in this form full of soul, in this soul which is +all form. The lovers delight in endearments, in avowals of love, in +comparisons of their regards. When alone, they solace themselves with +the remembered image of the other. Does that other see the same star, +the same melting cloud, read the same book, feel the same emotion, that +now delight me? They try and weigh their affection, and adding up costly +advantages, friends, opportunities, properties, exult in discovering +that willingly, joyfully, they would give all as a ransom for the +beautiful, the beloved head, not one hair of which shall be harmed. +But the lot of humanity is on these children. Danger, sorrow, and pain +arrive to them, as to all. Love prays. It makes covenants with Eternal +Power in behalf of this dear mate. The union which is thus effected and +which adds a new value to every atom in nature--for it transmutes every +thread throughout the whole web of relation into a golden ray, and +bathes the soul in a new and sweeter element--is yet a temporary state. +Not always can flowers, pearls, poetry, protestations, nor even home in +another heart, content the awful soul that dwells in clay. It arouses +itself at last from these endearments, as toys, and puts on the harness +and aspires to vast and universal aims. The soul which is in the soul +of each, craving a perfect beatitude, detects incongruities, defects +and disproportion in the behavior of the other. Hence arise surprise, +expostulation and pain. Yet that which drew them to each other was signs +of loveliness, signs of virtue; and these virtues are there, however +eclipsed. They appear and reappear and continue to attract; but the +regard changes, quits the sign and attaches to the substance. This +repairs the wounded affection. Meantime, as life wears on, it proves +a game of permutation and combination of all possible positions of the +parties, to employ all the resources of each and acquaint each with the +strength and weakness of the other. For it is the nature and end of this +relation, that they should represent the human race to each other. +All that is in the world, which is or ought to be known, is cunningly +wrought into the texture of man, of woman:-- + + "The person love does to us fit, + Like manna, has the taste of all in it." + +The world rolls; the circumstances vary every hour. The angels that +inhabit this temple of the body appear at the windows, and the gnomes +and vices also. By all the virtues they are united. If there be virtue, +all the vices are known as such; they confess and flee. Their once +flaming regard is sobered by time in either breast, and losing +in violence what it gains in extent, it becomes a thorough good +understanding. They resign each other without complaint to the good +offices which man and woman are severally appointed to discharge in +time, and exchange the passion which once could not lose sight of its +object, for a cheerful, disengaged furtherance, whether present or +absent, of each other's designs. At last they discover that all which at +first drew them together,--those once sacred features, that magical play +of charms,--was deciduous, had a prospective end, like the scaffolding +by which the house was built; and the purification of the intellect and +the heart from year to year is the real marriage, foreseen and prepared +from the first, and wholly above their consciousness. Looking at +these aims with which two persons, a man and a woman, so variously and +correlatively gifted, are shut up in one house to spend in the nuptial +society forty or fifty years, I do not wonder at the emphasis with which +the heart prophesies this crisis from early infancy, at the profuse +beauty with which the instincts deck the nuptial bower, and nature and +intellect and art emulate each other in the gifts and the melody they +bring to the epithalamium. + +Thus are we put in training for a love which knows not sex, nor person, +nor partiality, but which seeks virtue and wisdom everywhere, to the end +of increasing virtue and wisdom. We are by nature observers, and thereby +learners. That is our permanent state. But we are often made to feel +that our affections are but tents of a night. Though slowly and with +pain, the objects of the affections change, as the objects of thought +do. There are moments when the affections rule and absorb the man and +make his happiness dependent on a person or persons. But in health +the mind is presently seen again,--its overarching vault, bright with +galaxies of immutable lights, and the warm loves and fears that swept +over us as clouds must lose their finite character and blend with God, +to attain their own perfection. But we need not fear that we can lose +any thing by the progress of the soul. The soul may be trusted to the +end. That which is so beautiful and attractive as these relations, must +be succeeded and supplanted only by what is more beautiful, and so on +for ever. + +***** + + + + FRIENDSHIP. + + A RUDDY drop of manly blood + The surging sea outweighs; + The world uncertain comes and goes, + The lover rooted stays. + I fancied he was fled, + And, after many a year, + Glowed unexhausted kindliness + Like daily sunrise there. + My careful heart was free again,-- + O friend, my bosom said, + Through thee alone the sky is arched, + Through thee the rose is red, + All things through thee take nobler form + And look beyond the earth, + The mill-round of our fate appears + A sun-path in thy worth. + Me too thy nobleness has taught + To master my despair; + The fountains of my hidden life + Are through thy friendship fair. + + + + +VI. FRIENDSHIP. + +We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. Maugre all +the selfishness that chills like east winds the world, the whole human +family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether. How many +persons we meet in houses, whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we honor, +and who honor us! How many we see in the street, or sit with in church, +whom, though silently, we warmly rejoice to be with! Read the language +of these wandering eye-beams. The heart knoweth. + +The effect of the indulgence of this human affection is a certain +cordial exhilaration. In poetry and in common speech, the emotions of +benevolence and complacency which are felt towards others are likened to +the material effects of fire; so swift, or much more swift, more active, +more cheering, are these fine inward irradiations. From the highest +degree of passionate love to the lowest degree of good-will, they make +the sweetness of life. + +Our intellectual and active powers increase with our affection. The +scholar sits down to write, and all his years of meditation do not +furnish him with one good thought or happy expression; but it is +necessary to write a letter to a friend,--and forthwith troops of gentle +thoughts invest themselves, on every hand, with chosen words. See, in +any house where virtue and self-respect abide, the palpitation which +the approach of a stranger causes. A commended stranger is expected and +announced, and an uneasiness betwixt pleasure and pain invades all the +hearts of a household. His arrival almost brings fear to the good hearts +that would welcome him. The house is dusted, all things fly into their +places, the old coat is exchanged for the new, and they must get up a +dinner if they can. Of a commended stranger, only the good report is +told by others, only the good and new is heard by us. He stands to us +for humanity. He is what we wish. Having imagined and invested him, we +ask how we should stand related in conversation and action with such a +man, and are uneasy with fear. The same idea exalts conversation with +him. We talk better than we are wont. We have the nimblest fancy, a +richer memory, and our dumb devil has taken leave for the time. For +long hours we can continue a series of sincere, graceful, rich +communications, drawn from the oldest, secretest experience, so that +they who sit by, of our own kinsfolk and acquaintance, shall feel a +lively surprise at our unusual powers. But as soon as the stranger +begins to intrude his partialities, his definitions, his defects, into +the conversation, it is all over. He has heard the first, the last +and best he will ever hear from us. He is no stranger now. Vulgarity, +ignorance, misapprehension are old acquaintances. Now, when he comes, he +may get the order, the dress and the dinner,--but the throbbing of the +heart and the communications of the soul, no more. + +What is so pleasant as these jets of affection which make a young world +for me again? What so delicious as a just and firm encounter of two, +in a thought, in a feeling? How beautiful, on their approach to this +beating heart, the steps and forms of the gifted and the true! The +moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed; there is +no winter and no night; all tragedies, all ennuis vanish,--all duties +even; nothing fills the proceeding eternity but the forms all radiant of +beloved persons. Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe +it should rejoin its friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone +for a thousand years. + +I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old +and the new. Shall I not call God the Beautiful, who daily showeth +himself so to me in his gifts? I chide society, I embrace solitude, and +yet I am not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, the lovely and the +noble-minded, as from time to time they pass my gate. Who hears me, who +understands me, becomes mine,--a possession for all time. Nor is Nature +so poor but she gives me this joy several times, and thus we weave +social threads of our own, a new web of relations; and, as many thoughts +in succession substantiate themselves, we shall by and by stand in a +new world of our own creation, and no longer strangers and pilgrims in +a traditionary globe. My friends have come to me unsought. The great God +gave them to me. By oldest right, by the divine affinity of virtue with +itself, I find them, or rather not I but the Deity in me and in them +derides and cancels the thick walls of individual character, relation, +age, sex, circumstance, at which he usually connives, and now makes many +one. High thanks I owe you, excellent lovers, who carry out the world +for me to new and noble depths, and enlarge the meaning of all my +thoughts. These are new poetry of the first Bard,--poetry without +stop,--hymn, ode and epic, poetry still flowing, Apollo and the Muses +chanting still. Will these too separate themselves from me again, or +some of them? I know not, but I fear it not; for my relation to them +is so pure, that we hold by simple affinity, and the Genius of my life +being thus social, the same affinity will exert its energy on whomsoever +is as noble as these men and women, wherever I may be. + +I confess to an extreme tenderness of nature on this point. It is almost +dangerous to me to "crush the sweet poison of misused wine" of the +affections. A new person is to me a great event and hinders me from +sleep. I have often had fine fancies about persons which have given +me delicious hours; but the joy ends in the day; it yields no fruit. +Thought is not born of it; my action is very little modified. I must +feel pride in my friend's accomplishments as if they were mine, and a +property in his virtues. I feel as warmly when he is praised, as the +lover when he hears applause of his engaged maiden. We over-estimate the +conscience of our friend. His goodness seems better than our goodness, +his nature finer, his temptations less. Every thing that is his,--his +name, his form, his dress, books and instruments,--fancy enhances. Our +own thought sounds new and larger from his mouth. + +Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not without their analogy +in the ebb and flow of love. Friendship, like the immortality of the +soul, is too good to be believed. The lover, beholding his maiden, half +knows that she is not verily that which he worships; and in the golden +hour of friendship we are surprised with shades of suspicion and +unbelief. We doubt that we bestow on our hero the virtues in which he +shines, and afterwards worship the form to which we have ascribed this +divine inhabitation. In strictness, the soul does not respect men as +it respects itself. In strict science all persons underlie the same +condition of an infinite remoteness. Shall we fear to cool our love by +mining for the metaphysical foundation of this Elysian temple? Shall I +not be as real as the things I see? If I am, I shall not fear to know +them for what they are. Their essence is not less beautiful than their +appearance, though it needs finer organs for its apprehension. The +root of the plant is not unsightly to science, though for chaplets and +festoons we cut the stem short. And I must hazard the production of +the bald fact amidst these pleasing reveries, though it should prove an +Egyptian skull at our banquet. A man who stands united with his thought +conceives magnificently of himself. He is conscious of a universal +success, even though bought by uniform particular failures. No +advantages, no powers, no gold or force, can be any match for him. I +cannot choose but rely on my own poverty more than on your wealth. +I cannot make your consciousness tantamount to mine. Only the star +dazzles; the planet has a faint, moon-like ray. I hear what you say of +the admirable parts and tried temper of the party you praise, but I see +well that for all his purple cloaks I shall not like him, unless he is +at last a poor Greek like me. I cannot deny it, O friend, that the vast +shadow of the Phenomenal includes thee also in its pied and painted +immensity,--thee also, compared with whom all else is shadow. Thou art +not Being, as Truth is, as Justice is,--thou art not my soul, but a +picture and effigy of that. Thou hast come to me lately, and already +thou art seizing thy hat and cloak. Is it not that the soul puts forth +friends as the tree puts forth leaves, and presently, by the germination +of new buds, extrudes the old leaf? The law of nature is alternation +for evermore. Each electrical state superinduces the opposite. The +soul environs itself with friends that it may enter into a grander +self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for a season, that it +may exalt its conversation or society. This method betrays itself along +the whole history of our personal relations. The instinct of affection +revives the hope of union with our mates, and the returning sense of +insulation recalls us from the chase. Thus every man passes his life in +the search after friendship, and if he should record his true sentiment, +he might write a letter like this to each new candidate for his love:-- + +DEAR FRIEND, + +If I was sure of thee, sure of thy capacity, sure to match my mood with +thine, I should never think again of trifles in relation to thy comings +and goings. I am not very wise; my moods are quite attainable, and +I respect thy genius; it is to me as yet unfathomed; yet dare I not +presume in thee a perfect intelligence of me, and so thou art to me a +delicious torment. Thine ever, or never. + +Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are for curiosity and not +for life. They are not to be indulged. This is to weave cobweb, and not +cloth. Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we +have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibre +of the human heart. The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of +one web with the laws of nature and of morals. But we have aimed at a +swift and petty benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatch at the +slowest fruit in the whole garden of God, which many summers and +many winters must ripen. We seek our friend not sacredly, but with an +adulterate passion which would appropriate him to ourselves. In vain. We +are armed all over with subtle antagonisms, which, as soon as we meet, +begin to play, and translate all poetry into stale prose. Almost all +people descend to meet. All association must be a compromise, and, +what is worst, the very flower and aroma of the flower of each of +the beautiful natures disappears as they approach each other. What a +perpetual disappointment is actual society, even of the virtuous and +gifted! After interviews have been compassed with long foresight we +must be tormented presently by baffled blows, by sudden, unseasonable +apathies, by epilepsies of wit and of animal spirits, in the heyday +of friendship and thought. Our faculties do not play us true, and both +parties are relieved by solitude. + +I ought to be equal to every relation. It makes no difference how many +friends I have and what content I can find in conversing with each, if +there be one to whom I am not equal. If I have shrunk unequal from one +contest, the joy I find in all the rest becomes mean and cowardly. I +should hate myself, if then I made my other friends my asylum:-- + + "The valiant warrior famoused for fight, + After a hundred victories, once foiled, + Is from the book of honor razed quite, + And all the rest forgot for which he toiled." + +Our impatience is thus sharply rebuked. Bashfulness and apathy are a +tough husk in which a delicate organization is protected from premature +ripening. It would be lost if it knew itself before any of the +best souls were yet ripe enough to know and own it. Respect the +naturlangsamkeit which hardens the ruby in a million years, and works +in duration in which Alps and Andes come and go as rainbows. The good +spirit of our life has no heaven which is the price of rashness. Love, +which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but for the total worth +of man. Let us not have this childish luxury in our regards, but the +austerest worth; let us approach our friend with an audacious trust in +the truth of his heart, in the breadth, impossible to be overturned, of +his foundations. + +The attractions of this subject are not to be resisted, and I leave, for +the time, all account of subordinate social benefit, to speak of that +select and sacred relation which is a kind of absolute, and which even +leaves the language of love suspicious and common, so much is this +purer, and nothing is so much divine. + +I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage. +When they are real, they are not glass threads or frostwork, but the +solidest thing we know. For now, after so many ages of experience, what +do we know of nature or of ourselves? Not one step has man taken toward +the solution of the problem of his destiny. In one condemnation of folly +stand the whole universe of men. But the sweet sincerity of joy and +peace which I draw from this alliance with my brother's soul is the nut +itself whereof all nature and all thought is but the husk and shell. +Happy is the house that shelters a friend! It might well be built, like +a festal bower or arch, to entertain him a single day. Happier, if he +know the solemnity of that relation and honor its law! He who offers +himself a candidate for that covenant comes up, like an Olympian, to the +great games where the first-born of the world are the competitors. +He proposes himself for contests where Time, Want, Danger, are in the +lists, and he alone is victor who has truth enough in his constitution +to preserve the delicacy of his beauty from the wear and tear of all +these. The gifts of fortune may be present or absent, but all the speed +in that contest depends on intrinsic nobleness and the contempt +of trifles. There are two elements that go to the composition of +friendship, each so sovereign that I can detect no superiority in +either, no reason why either should be first named. One is truth. A +friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think +aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and +equal that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, +courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with +him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets +another. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, +only to the highest rank; that being permitted to speak truth, as having +none above it to court or conform unto. Every man alone is sincere. At +the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the +approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by +affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew +a man who under a certain religious frenzy cast off this drapery, and +omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of +every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At +first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But persisting--as +indeed he could not help doing--for some time in this course, he +attained to the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into +true relations with him. No man would think of speaking falsely with +him, or of putting him off with any chat of markets or reading-rooms. +But every man was constrained by so much sincerity to the like +plaindealing, and what love of nature, what poetry, what symbol of truth +he had, he did certainly show him. But to most of us society shows not +its face and eye, but its side and its back. To stand in true relations +with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not? We +can seldom go erect. Almost every man we meet requires some +civility,--requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, +some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be +questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is +a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me. My friend gives me +entertainment without requiring any stipulation on my part. A friend +therefore is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see +nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my +own, behold now the semblance of my being, in all its height, variety, +and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend may well +be reckoned the masterpiece of nature. + +The other element of friendship is tenderness. We are holden to men by +every sort of tie, by blood, by pride, by fear, by hope, by lucre, +by lust, by hate, by admiration, by every circumstance and badge and +trifle,--but we can scarce believe that so much character can subsist in +another as to draw us by love. Can another be so blessed and we so pure +that we can offer him tenderness? When a man becomes dear to me I have +touched the goal of fortune. I find very little written directly to the +heart of this matter in books. And yet I have one text which I cannot +choose but remember. My author says,--"I offer myself faintly and +bluntly to those whose I effectually am, and tender myself least to him +to whom I am the most devoted." I wish that friendship should have +feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. It must plant itself on the ground, +before it vaults over the moon. I wish it to be a little of a citizen, +before it is quite a cherub. We chide the citizen because he makes love +a commodity. It is an exchange of gifts, of useful loans; it is good +neighborhood; it watches with the sick; it holds the pall at the +funeral; and quite loses sight of the delicacies and nobility of the +relation. But though we cannot find the god under this disguise of a +sutler, yet on the other hand we cannot forgive the poet if he spins his +thread too fine and does not substantiate his romance by the municipal +virtues of justice, punctuality, fidelity and pity. I hate the +prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly +alliances. I much prefer the company of ploughboys and tin-peddlers to +the silken and perfumed amity which celebrates its days of encounter +by a frivolous display, by rides in a curricle and dinners at the best +taverns. The end of friendship is a commerce the most strict and homely +that can be joined; more strict than any of which we have experience. +It is for aid and comfort through all the relations and passages of +life and death. It is fit for serene days and graceful gifts and country +rambles, but also for rough roads and hard fare, shipwreck, poverty, +and persecution. It keeps company with the sallies of the wit and the +trances of religion. We are to dignify to each other the daily needs and +offices of man's life, and embellish it by courage, wisdom and unity. It +should never fall into something usual and settled, but should be alert +and inventive and add rhyme and reason to what was drudgery. + +Friendship may be said to require natures so rare and costly, each so +well tempered and so happily adapted, and withal so circumstanced (for +even in that particular, a poet says, love demands that the parties be +altogether paired), that its satisfaction can very seldom be assured. It +cannot subsist in its perfection, say some of those who are learned in +this warm lore of the heart, betwixt more than two. I am not quite +so strict in my terms, perhaps because I have never known so high a +fellowship as others. I please my imagination more with a circle of +godlike men and women variously related to each other and between +whom subsists a lofty intelligence. But I find this law of one to one +peremptory for conversation, which is the practice and consummation of +friendship. Do not mix waters too much. The best mix as ill as good and +bad. You shall have very useful and cheering discourse at several times +with two several men, but let all three of you come together and you +shall not have one new and hearty word. Two may talk and one may hear, +but three cannot take part in a conversation of the most sincere and +searching sort. In good company there is never such discourse between +two, across the table, as takes place when you leave them alone. In good +company the individuals merge their egotism into a social soul exactly +co-extensive with the several consciousnesses there present. No +partialities of friend to friend, no fondnesses of brother to sister, of +wife to husband, are there pertinent, but quite otherwise. Only he may +then speak who can sail on the common thought of the party, and not +poorly limited to his own. Now this convention, which good sense +demands, destroys the high freedom of great conversation, which requires +an absolute running of two souls into one. + +No two men but being left alone with each other enter into simpler +relations. Yet it is affinity that determines which two shall converse. +Unrelated men give little joy to each other, will never suspect +the latent powers of each. We talk sometimes of a great talent for +conversation, as if it were a permanent property in some individuals. +Conversation is an evanescent relation,--no more. A man is reputed to +have thought and eloquence; he cannot, for all that, say a word to his +cousin or his uncle. They accuse his silence with as much reason as they +would blame the insignificance of a dial in the shade. In the sun it +will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his thought he will regain his +tongue. + +Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and unlikeness +that piques each with the presence of power and of consent in the other +party. Let me be alone to the end of the world, rather than that my +friend should overstep, by a word or a look, his real sympathy. I am +equally balked by antagonism and by compliance. Let him not cease an +instant to be himself. The only joy I have in his being mine, is that +the not mine is mine. I hate, where I looked for a manly furtherance, or +at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of concession. Better be +a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo. The condition which +high friendship demands is ability to do without it. That high office +requires great and sublime parts. There must be very two, before there +can be very one. Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures, +mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep +identity which, beneath these disparities, unites them. + +He only is fit for this society who is magnanimous; who is sure +that greatness and goodness are always economy; who is not swift to +intermeddle with his fortunes. Let him not intermeddle with this. Leave +to the diamond its ages to grow, nor expect to accelerate the births +of the eternal. Friendship demands a religious treatment. We talk of +choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected. Reverence is a great +part of it. Treat your friend as a spectacle. Of course he has merits +that are not yours, and that you cannot honor if you must needs hold +him close to your person. Stand aside; give those merits room; let them +mount and expand. Are you the friend of your friend's buttons, or of +his thought? To a great heart he will still be a stranger in a thousand +particulars, that he may come near in the holiest ground. Leave it to +girls and boys to regard a friend as property, and to suck a short and +all-confounding pleasure, instead of the noblest benefit. + +Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long probation. Why should we +desecrate noble and beautiful souls by intruding on them? Why insist on +rash personal relations with your friend? Why go to his house, or know +his mother and brother and sisters? Why be visited by him at your own? +Are these things material to our covenant? Leave this touching and +clawing. Let him be to me a spirit. A message, a thought, a sincerity, +a glance from him, I want, but not news, nor pottage. I can get politics +and chat and neighborly conveniences from cheaper companions. Should not +the society of my friend be to me poetic, pure, universal and great as +nature itself? Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in comparison +with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the horizon, or that clump of +waving grass that divides the brook? Let us not vilify, but raise it to +that standard. That great defying eye, that scornful beauty of his mien +and action, do not pique yourself on reducing, but rather fortify and +enhance. Worship his superiorities; wish him not less by a thought, but +hoard and tell them all. Guard him as thy counterpart. Let him be to +thee for ever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, devoutly revered, +and not a trivial conveniency to be soon outgrown and cast aside. The +hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen if the +eye is too near. To my friend I write a letter and from him I receive +a letter. That seems to you a little. It suffices me. It is a spiritual +gift worthy of him to give and of me to receive. It profanes nobody. +In these warm lines the heart will trust itself, as it will not to the +tongue, and pour out the prophecy of a godlier existence than all the +annals of heroism have yet made good. + +Respect so far the holy laws of this fellowship as not to prejudice its +perfect flower by your impatience for its opening. We must be our own +before we can be another's. There is at least this satisfaction in +crime, according to the Latin proverb;--you can speak to your accomplice +on even terms. Crimen quos inquinat, aequat. To those whom we admire +and love, at first we cannot. Yet the least defect of self-possession +vitiates, in my judgment, the entire relation. There can never be deep +peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until in their dialogue +each stands for the whole world. + +What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur of +spirit we can. Let us be silent,--so we may hear the whisper of the +gods. Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should +say to the select souls, or how to say any thing to such? No matter +how ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. There are innumerable +degrees of folly and wisdom, and for you to say aught is to be +frivolous. Wait, and thy heart shall speak. Wait until the necessary and +everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves of your +lips. The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend +is to be one. You shall not come nearer a man by getting into his house. +If unlike, his soul only flees the faster from you, and you shall never +catch a true glance of his eye. We see the noble afar off and they +repel us; why should we intrude? Late,--very late,--we perceive that +no arrangements, no introductions, no consuetudes or habits of society +would be of any avail to establish us in such relations with them as we +desire,--but solely the uprise of nature in us to the same degree it is +in them; then shall we meet as water with water; and if we should not +meet them then, we shall not want them, for we are already they. In the +last analysis, love is only the reflection of a man's own worthiness +from other men. Men have sometimes exchanged names with their friends, +as if they would signify that in their friend each loved his own soul. + +The higher the style we demand of friendship, of course the less easy to +establish it with flesh and blood. We walk alone in the world. Friends +such as we desire are dreams and fables. But a sublime hope cheers ever +the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal +power, souls are now acting, enduring, and daring, which can love us +and which we can love. We may congratulate ourselves that the period of +nonage, of follies, of blunders and of shame, is passed in solitude, and +when we are finished men we shall grasp heroic hands in heroic hands. +Only be admonished by what you already see, not to strike leagues +of friendship with cheap persons, where no friendship can be. Our +impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no god +attends. By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the little you +gain the great. You demonstrate yourself, so as to put yourself out of +the reach of false relations, and you draw to you the first-born of the +world,--those rare pilgrims whereof only one or two wander in nature +at once, and before whom the vulgar great show as spectres and shadows +merely. + +It is foolish to be afraid of making our ties too spiritual, as if so we +could lose any genuine love. Whatever correction of our popular views we +make from insight, nature will be sure to bear us out in, and though it +seem to rob us of some joy, will repay us with a greater. Let us feel if +we will the absolute insulation of man. We are sure that we have all +in us. We go to Europe, or we pursue persons, or we read books, in +the instinctive faith that these will call it out and reveal us to +ourselves. Beggars all. The persons are such as we; the Europe, an old +faded garment of dead persons; the books, their ghosts. Let us drop this +idolatry. Let us give over this mendicancy. Let us even bid our dearest +friends farewell, and defy them, saying, 'Who are you? Unhand me: I will +be dependent no more.' Ah! seest thou not, O brother, that thus we part +only to meet again on a higher platform, and only be more each other's +because we are more our own? A friend is Janus-faced; he looks to the +past and the future. He is the child of all my foregoing hours, the +prophet of those to come, and the harbinger of a greater friend. + +I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where +I can find them, but I seldom use them. We must have society on our own +terms, and admit or exclude it on the slightest cause. I cannot afford +to speak much with my friend. If he is great he makes me so great that +I cannot descend to converse. In the great days, presentiments hover +before me in the firmament. I ought then to dedicate myself to them. I +go in that I may seize them, I go out that I may seize them. I fear only +that I may lose them receding into the sky in which now they are only +a patch of brighter light. Then, though I prize my friends, I cannot +afford to talk with them and study their visions, lest I lose my own. It +would indeed give me a certain household joy to quit this lofty seeking, +this spiritual astronomy or search of stars, and come down to warm +sympathies with you; but then I know well I shall mourn always the +vanishing of my mighty gods. It is true, next week I shall have languid +moods, when I can well afford to occupy myself with foreign objects; +then I shall regret the lost literature of your mind, and wish you were +by my side again. But if you come, perhaps you will fill my mind only +with new visions; not with yourself but with your lustres, and I shall +not be able any more than now to converse with you. So I will owe to my +friends this evanescent intercourse. I will receive from them not what +they have but what they are. They shall give me that which properly they +cannot give, but which emanates from them. But they shall not hold me by +any relations less subtile and pure. We will meet as though we met not, +and part as though we parted not. + +It has seemed to me lately more possible than I knew, to carry a +friendship greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on the +other. Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not +capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide +and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting +planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion. If he +is unequal he will presently pass away; but thou art enlarged by thy own +shining, and no longer a mate for frogs and worms, dost soar and +burn with the gods of the empyrean. It is thought a disgrace to love +unrequited. But the great will see that true love cannot be unrequited. +True love transcends the unworthy object and dwells and broods on the +eternal, and when the poor interposed mask crumbles, it is not sad, but +feels rid of so much earth and feels its independency the surer. Yet +these things may hardly be said without a sort of treachery to the +relation. The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity +and trust. It must not surmise or provide for infirmity. It treats its +object as a god, that it may deify both. + +***** + + + + PRUDENCE. + + THEME no poet gladly sung, + Fair to old and foul to young; + Scorn not thou the love of parts, + And the articles of arts. + Grandeur of the perfect sphere + Thanks the atoms that cohere. + + + + +VII. PRUDENCE. + +What right have I to write on Prudence, whereof I have Little, and +that of the negative sort? My prudence consists in avoiding and going +without, not in the inventing of means and methods, not in adroit +steering, not in gentle repairing. I have no skill to make money spend +well, no genius in my economy, and whoever sees my garden discovers that +I must have some other garden. Yet I love facts, and hate lubricity +and people without perception. Then I have the same title to write +on prudence that I have to write on poetry or holiness. We write from +aspiration and antagonism, as well as from experience. We paint those +qualities which we do not possess. The poet admires the man of energy +and tactics; the merchant breeds his son for the church or the bar; and +where a man is not vain and egotistic you shall find what he has not +by his praise. Moreover it would be hardly honest in me not to balance +these fine lyric words of Love and Friendship with words of coarser +sound, and whilst my debt to my senses is real and constant, not to own +it in passing. + +Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the science of appearances. +It is the outmost action of the inward life. It is God taking thought +for oxen. It moves matter after the laws of matter. It is content to +seek health of body by complying with physical conditions, and health of +mind by the laws of the intellect. + +The world of the senses is a world of shows; it does not exist for +itself, but has a symbolic character; and a true prudence or law of +shows recognizes the co-presence of other laws and knows that its own +office is subaltern; knows that it is surface and not centre where it +works. Prudence is false when detached. It is legitimate when it is the +Natural History of the soul incarnate, when it unfolds the beauty of +laws within the narrow scope of the senses. + +There are all degrees of proficiency in knowledge of the world. It is +sufficient to our present purpose to indicate three. One class live to +the utility of the symbol, esteeming health and wealth a final good. +Another class live above this mark to the beauty of the symbol, as the +poet and artist and the naturalist and man of science. A third +class live above the beauty of the symbol to the beauty of the thing +signified; these are wise men. The first class have common sense; the +second, taste; and the third, spiritual perception. Once in a long time, +a man traverses the whole scale, and sees and enjoys the symbol solidly, +then also has a clear eye for its beauty, and lastly, whilst he pitches +his tent on this sacred volcanic isle of nature, does not offer to build +houses and barns thereon,--reverencing the splendor of the God which he +sees bursting through each chink and cranny. + +The world is filled with the proverbs and acts and winkings of a base +prudence, which is a devotion to matter, as if we possessed no other +faculties than the palate, the nose, the touch, the eye and ear; a +prudence which adores the Rule of Three, which never subscribes, which +never gives, which seldom lends, and asks but one question of any +project,--Will it bake bread? This is a disease like a thickening of the +skin until the vital organs are destroyed. But culture, revealing the +high origin of the apparent world and aiming at the perfection of the +man as the end, degrades every thing else, as health and bodily life, +into means. It sees prudence not to be a several faculty, but a name for +wisdom and virtue conversing with the body and its wants. Cultivated men +always feel and speak so, as if a great fortune, the achievement of +a civil or social measure, great personal influence, a graceful and +commanding address, had their value as proofs of the energy of the +spirit. If a man lose his balance and immerse himself in any trades or +pleasures for their own sake, he may be a good wheel or pin, but he is +not a cultivated man. + +The spurious prudence, making the senses final, is the god of sots and +cowards, and is the subject of all comedy. It is nature's joke, and +therefore literature's. The true prudence limits this sensualism by +admitting the knowledge of an internal and real world. This recognition +once made, the order of the world and the distribution of affairs and +times, being studied with the co-perception of their subordinate place, +will reward any degree of attention. For our existence, thus apparently +attached in nature to the sun and the returning moon and the periods +which they mark,--so susceptible to climate and to country, so alive to +social good and evil, so fond of splendor and so tender to hunger and +cold and debt,--reads all its primary lessons out of these books. + +Prudence does not go behind nature and ask whence it is. It takes the +laws of the world whereby man's being is conditioned, as they are, and +keeps these laws that it may enjoy their proper good. It respects space +and time, climate, want, sleep, the law of polarity, growth and death. +There revolve, to give bound and period to his being on all sides, +the sun and moon, the great formalists in the sky: here lies stubborn +matter, and will not swerve from its chemical routine. Here is a planted +globe, pierced and belted with natural laws and fenced and distributed +externally with civil partitions and properties which impose new +restraints on the young inhabitant. + +We eat of the bread which grows in the field. We live by the air which +blows around us and we are poisoned by the air that is too cold or too +hot, too dry or too wet. Time, which shows so vacant, indivisible and +divine in its coming, is slit and peddled into trifles and tatters. A +door is to be painted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood or oil, or +meal or salt; the house smokes, or I have a headache; then the tax, and +an affair to be transacted with a man without heart or brains, and the +stinging recollection of an injurious or very awkward word,--these eat +up the hours. Do what we can, summer will have its flies; if we walk in +the woods we must feed mosquitos; if we go a-fishing we must expect a +wet coat. Then climate is a great impediment to idle persons; we often +resolve to give up the care of the weather, but still we regard the +clouds and the rain. + +We are instructed by these petty experiences which usurp the hours and +years. The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitant of the +northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the +fixed smile of the tropics. The islander may ramble all day at will. +At night he may sleep on a mat under the moon, and wherever a wild +date-tree grows, nature has, without a prayer even, spread a table for +his morning meal. The northerner is perforce a householder. He must +brew, bake, salt and preserve his food, and pile wood and coal. But +as it happens that not one stroke can labor lay to without some new +acquaintance with nature, and as nature is inexhaustibly significant, +the inhabitants of these climates have always excelled the southerner +in force. Such is the value of these matters that a man who knows +other things can never know too much of these. Let him have accurate +perceptions. Let him, if he have hands, handle; if eyes, measure and +discriminate; let him accept and hive every fact of chemistry, natural +history and economics; the more he has, the less is he willing to spare +any one. Time is always bringing the occasions that disclose their +value. Some wisdom comes out of every natural and innocent action. The +domestic man, who loves no music so well as his kitchen clock and the +airs which the logs sing to him as they burn on the hearth, has solaces +which others never dream of. The application of means to ends insures +victory and the songs of victory not less in a farm or a shop than +in the tactics of party or of war. The good husband finds method as +efficient in the packing of fire-wood in a shed or in the harvesting +of fruits in the cellar, as in Peninsular campaigns or the files of the +Department of State. In the rainy day he builds a work-bench, or gets +his tool-box set in the corner of the barn-chamber, and stored with +nails, gimlet, pincers, screwdriver and chisel. Herein he tastes an old +joy of youth and childhood, the cat-like love of garrets, presses and +corn-chambers, and of the conveniences of long housekeeping. His garden +or his poultry-yard tells him many pleasant anecdotes. One might find +argument for optimism in the abundant flow of this saccharine element of +pleasure in every suburb and extremity of the good world. Let a man keep +the law,--any law,--and his way will be strown with satisfactions. There +is more difference in the quality of our pleasures than in the amount. + +On the other hand, nature punishes any neglect of prudence. If you think +the senses final, obey their law. If you believe in the soul, do not +clutch at sensual sweetness before it is ripe on the slow tree of cause +and effect. It is vinegar to the eyes to deal with men of loose and +imperfect perception. Dr. Johnson is reported to have said,--"If +the child says he looked out of this window, when he looked out of +that,--whip him." Our American character is marked by a more than +average delight in accurate perception, which is shown by the currency +of the byword, "No mistake." But the discomfort of unpunctuality, +of confusion of thought about facts, of inattention to the wants of +to-morrow, is of no nation. The beautiful laws of time and space, +once dislocated by our inaptitude, are holes and dens. If the hive be +disturbed by rash and stupid hands, instead of honey it will yield +us bees. Our words and actions to be fair must be timely. A gay and +pleasant sound is the whetting of the scythe in the mornings of June, +yet what is more lonesome and sad than the sound of a whetstone +or mower's rifle when it is too late in the season to make hay? +Scatter-brained and "afternoon" men spoil much more than their own +affair in spoiling the temper of those who deal with them. I have seen +a criticism on some paintings, of which I am reminded when I see the +shiftless and unhappy men who are not true to their senses. The last +Grand Duke of Weimar, a man of superior understanding, said,--"I have +sometimes remarked in the presence of great works of art, and just now +especially in Dresden, how much a certain property contributes to the +effect which gives life to the figures, and to the life an irresistible +truth. This property is the hitting, in all the figures we draw, the +right centre of gravity. I mean the placing the figures firm upon their +feet, making the hands grasp, and fastening the eyes on the spot where +they should look. Even lifeless figures, as vessels and stools--let them +be drawn ever so correctly--lose all effect so soon as they lack the +resting upon their centre of gravity, and have a certain swimming and +oscillating appearance. The Raphael in the Dresden gallery (the only +greatly affecting picture which I have seen) is the quietest and most +passionless piece you can imagine; a couple of saints who worship the +Virgin and Child. Nevertheless, it awakens a deeper impression than +the contortions of ten crucified martyrs. For beside all the resistless +beauty of form, it possesses in the highest degree the property of the +perpendicularity of all the figures." This perpendicularity we demand of +all the figures in this picture of life. Let them stand on their feet, +and not float and swing. Let us know where to find them. Let them +discriminate between what they remember and what they dreamed, call a +spade a spade, give us facts, and honor their own senses with trust. + +But what man shall dare tax another with imprudence? Who is prudent? The +men we call greatest are least in this kingdom. There is a certain fatal +dislocation in our relation to nature, distorting our modes of living +and making every law our enemy, which seems at last to have aroused all +the wit and virtue in the world to ponder the question of Reform. We +must call the highest prudence to counsel, and ask why health and beauty +and genius should now be the exception rather than the rule of human +nature? We do not know the properties of plants and animals and the +laws of nature, through our sympathy with the same; but this remains the +dream of poets. Poetry and prudence should be coincident. Poets should +be lawgivers; that is, the boldest lyric inspiration should not chide +and insult, but should announce and lead the civil code and the day's +work. But now the two things seem irreconcilably parted. We have +violated law upon law until we stand amidst ruins, and when by chance we +espy a coincidence between reason and the phenomena, we are surprised. +Beauty should be the dowry of every man and woman, as invariably as +sensation; but it is rare. Health or sound organization should be +universal. Genius should be the child of genius and every child should +be inspired; but now it is not to be predicted of any child, and nowhere +is it pure. We call partial half-lights, by courtesy, genius; talent +which converts itself to money; talent which glitters to-day that it may +dine and sleep well to-morrow; and society is officered by men of parts, +as they are properly called, and not by divine men. These use their +gifts to refine luxury, not to abolish it. Genius is always ascetic, +and piety, and love. Appetite shows to the finer souls as a disease, and +they find beauty in rites and bounds that resist it. + +We have found out fine names to cover our sensuality withal, but no +gifts can raise intemperance. The man of talent affects to call his +transgressions of the laws of the senses trivial and to count them +nothing considered with his devotion to his art. His art never taught +him lewdness, nor the love of wine, nor the wish to reap where he had +not sowed. His art is less for every deduction from his holiness, and +less for every defect of common sense. On him who scorned the world as +he said, the scorned world wreaks its revenge. He that despiseth small +things will perish by little and little. Goethe's Tasso is very likely +to be a pretty fair historical portrait, and that is true tragedy. It +does not seem to me so genuine grief when some tyrannous Richard the +Third oppresses and slays a score of innocent persons, as when Antonio +and Tasso, both apparently right, wrong each other. One living after the +maxims of this world and consistent and true to them, the other fired +with all divine sentiments, yet grasping also at the pleasures of sense, +without submitting to their law. That is a grief we all feel, a knot we +cannot untie. Tasso's is no infrequent case in modern biography. A +man of genius, of an ardent temperament, reckless of physical +laws, self-indulgent, becomes presently unfortunate, querulous, a +"discomfortable cousin," a thorn to himself and to others. + +The scholar shames us by his bifold life. Whilst something higher than +prudence is active, he is admirable; when common sense is wanted, he is +an encumbrance. Yesterday, Caesar was not so great; to-day, the felon +at the gallows' foot is not more miserable. Yesterday, radiant with the +light of an ideal world in which he lives, the first of men; and now +oppressed by wants and by sickness, for which he must thank himself. He +resembles the pitiful drivellers whom travellers describe as frequenting +the bazaars of Constantinople, who skulk about all day, yellow, +emaciated, ragged, sneaking; and at evening, when the bazaars are open, +slink to the opium-shop, swallow their morsel and become tranquil and +glorified seers. And who has not seen the tragedy of imprudent genius +struggling for years with paltry pecuniary difficulties, at last +sinking, chilled, exhausted and fruitless, like a giant slaughtered by +pins? + +Is it not better that a man should accept the first pains and +mortifications of this sort, which nature is not slack in sending him, +as hints that he must expect no other good than the just fruit of his +own labor and self-denial? Health, bread, climate, social position, have +their importance, and he will give them their due. Let him esteem Nature +a perpetual counsellor, and her perfections the exact measure of our +deviations. Let him make the night night, and the day day. Let him +control the habit of expense. Let him see that as much wisdom may be +expended on a private economy as on an empire, and as much wisdom may +be drawn from it. The laws of the world are written out for him on every +piece of money in his hand. There is nothing he will not be the +better for knowing, were it only the wisdom of Poor Richard, or the +State-Street prudence of buying by the acre to sell by the foot; or the +thrift of the agriculturist, to stick a tree between whiles, because it +will grow whilst he sleeps; or the prudence which consists in husbanding +little strokes of the tool, little portions of time, particles of stock +and small gains. The eye of prudence may never shut. Iron, if kept at +the ironmonger's, will rust; beer, if not brewed in the right state of +the atmosphere, will sour; timber of ships will rot at sea, or if laid +up high and dry, will strain, warp and dry-rot; money, if kept by +us, yields no rent and is liable to loss; if invested, is liable to +depreciation of the particular kind of stock. Strike, says the smith, +the iron is white; keep the rake, says the haymaker, as nigh the scythe +as you can, and the cart as nigh the rake. Our Yankee trade is reputed +to be very much on the extreme of this prudence. It takes bank-notes, +good, bad, clean, ragged, and saves itself by the speed with which it +passes them off. Iron cannot rust, nor beer sour, nor timber rot, nor +calicoes go out of fashion, nor money stocks depreciate, in the few +swift moments in which the Yankee suffers any one of them to remain in +his possession. In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed. + +Let him learn a prudence of a higher strain. Let him learn that every +thing in nature, even motes and feathers, go by law and not by luck, and +that what he sows he reaps. By diligence and self-command let him put +the bread he eats at his own disposal, that he may not stand in bitter +and false relations to other men; for the best good of wealth is +freedom. Let him practise the minor virtues. How much of human life is +lost in waiting! let him not make his fellow-creatures wait. How many +words and promises are promises of conversation! Let his be words of +fate. When he sees a folded and sealed scrap of paper float round the +globe in a pine ship and come safe to the eye for which it was written, +amidst a swarming population, let him likewise feel the admonition to +integrate his being across all these distracting forces, and keep a +slender human word among the storms, distances and accidents that drive +us hither and thither, and, by persistency, make the paltry force of +one man reappear to redeem its pledge after months and years in the most +distant climates. + +We must not try to write the laws of any one virtue, looking at that +only. Human nature loves no contradictions, but is symmetrical. The +prudence which secures an outward well-being is not to be studied by one +set of men, whilst heroism and holiness are studied by another, but they +are reconcilable. Prudence concerns the present time, persons, property +and existing forms. But as every fact hath its roots in the soul, and +if the soul were changed, would cease to be, or would become some other +thing,--the proper administration of outward things will always rest +on a just apprehension of their cause and origin; that is, the good +man will be the wise man, and the single-hearted the politic man. Every +violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is +a stab at the health of human society. On the most profitable lie the +course of events presently lays a destructive tax; whilst frankness +invites frankness, puts the parties on a convenient footing and makes +their business a friendship. Trust men and they will be true to you; +treat them greatly and they will show themselves great, though they make +an exception in your favor to all their rules of trade. + +So, in regard to disagreeable and formidable things, prudence does not +consist in evasion or in flight, but in courage. He who wishes to walk +in the most peaceful parts of life with any serenity must screw himself +up to resolution. Let him front the object of his worst apprehension, +and his stoutness will commonly make his fear groundless. The +Latin proverb says, "In battles the eye is first overcome." Entire +self-possession may make a battle very little more dangerous to life +than a match at foils or at football. Examples are cited by soldiers of +men who have seen the cannon pointed and the fire given to it, and who +have stepped aside from the path of the ball. The terrors of the storm +are chiefly confined to the parlor and the cabin. The drover, the +sailor, buffets it all day, and his health renews itself at as vigorous +a pulse under the sleet as under the sun of June. + +In the occurrence of unpleasant things among neighbors, fear comes +readily to heart and magnifies the consequence of the other party; +but it is a bad counsellor. Every man is actually weak and apparently +strong. To himself he seems weak; to others, formidable. You are afraid +of Grim; but Grim also is afraid of you. You are solicitous of the +good-will of the meanest person, uneasy at his ill-will. But the +sturdiest offender of your peace and of the neighborhood, if you rip +up his claims, is as thin and timid as any, and the peace of society is +often kept, because, as children say, one is afraid, and the other dares +not. Far off, men swell, bully and threaten; bring them hand to hand, +and they are a feeble folk. + +It is a proverb that 'courtesy costs nothing'; but calculation might +come to value love for its profit. Love is fabled to be blind, but +kindness is necessary to perception; love is not a hood, but an +eye-water. If you meet a sectary or a hostile partisan, never recognize +the dividing lines, but meet on what common ground remains,--if only +that the sun shines and the rain rains for both; the area will widen +very fast, and ere you know it, the boundary mountains on which the eye +had fastened have melted into air. If they set out to contend, Saint +Paul will lie and Saint John will hate. What low, poor, paltry, +hypocritical people an argument on religion will make of the pure and +chosen souls! They will shuffle and crow, crook and hide, feign to +confess here, only that they may brag and conquer there, and not a +thought has enriched either party, and not an emotion of bravery, +modesty, or hope. So neither should you put yourself in a false +position with your contemporaries by indulging a vein of hostility and +bitterness. Though your views are in straight antagonism to theirs, +assume an identity of sentiment, assume that you are saying precisely +that which all think, and in the flow of wit and love roll out your +paradoxes in solid column, with not the infirmity of a doubt. So at +least shall you get an adequate deliverance. The natural motions of the +soul are so much better than the voluntary ones that you will never do +yourself justice in dispute. The thought is not then taken hold of by +the right handle, does not show itself proportioned and in its true +bearings, but bears extorted, hoarse, and half witness. But assume a +consent and it shall presently be granted, since really and underneath +their external diversities, all men are of one heart and mind. + +Wisdom will never let us stand with any man or men on an unfriendly +footing. We refuse sympathy and intimacy with people, as if we waited +for some better sympathy and intimacy to come. But whence and when? +To-morrow will be like to-day. Life wastes itself whilst we are +preparing to live. Our friends and fellow-workers die off from us. +Scarcely can we say we see new men, new women, approaching us. We are +too old to regard fashion, too old to expect patronage of any greater +or more powerful. Let us suck the sweetness of those affections and +consuetudes that grow near us. These old shoes are easy to the feet. +Undoubtedly we can easily pick faults in our company, can easily whisper +names prouder, and that tickle the fancy more. Every man's imagination +hath its friends; and life would be dearer with such companions. But if +you cannot have them on good mutual terms, you cannot have them. If +not the Deity but our ambition hews and shapes the new relations, their +virtue escapes, as strawberries lose their flavor in garden-beds. + +Thus truth, frankness, courage, love, humility and all the virtues range +themselves on the side of prudence, or the art of securing a present +well-being. I do not know if all matter will be found to be made of one +element, as oxygen or hydrogen, at last, but the world of manners and +actions is wrought of one stuff, and begin where we will we are pretty +sure in a short space to be mumbling our ten commandments. + +***** + + + + HEROISM. + + "Paradise is under the shadow of swords." + Mahomet. + + RUBY wine is drunk by knaves, + Sugar spends to fatten slaves, + Rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons; + Thunderclouds are Jove's festoons, + Drooping oft in wreaths of dread + Lightning-knotted round his head; + The hero is not fed on sweets, + Daily his own heart he eats; + Chambers of the great are jails, + And head-winds right for royal sails. + + + + +VIII. HEROISM. + +In the elder English dramatists, and mainly in the plays Of Beaumont and +Fletcher, there is a constant recognition of gentility, as if a noble +behavior were as easily marked in the society of their age as color is +in our American population. When any Rodrigo, Pedro or Valerio enters, +though he be a stranger, the duke or governor exclaims, 'This is a +gentleman,--and proffers civilities without end; but all the rest are +slag and refuse. In harmony with this delight in personal advantages +there is in their plays a certain heroic cast of character and +dialogue,--as in Bonduca, Sophocles, the Mad Lover, the Double +Marriage,--wherein the speaker is so earnest and cordial and on +such deep grounds of character, that the dialogue, on the slightest +additional incident in the plot, rises naturally into poetry. Among many +texts take the following. The Roman Martius has conquered Athens,--all +but the invincible spirits of Sophocles, the duke of Athens, and +Dorigen, his wife. The beauty of the latter inflames Martius, and he +seeks to save her husband; but Sophocles will not ask his life, although +assured that a word will save him, and the execution of both proceeds:-- + + Valerius. Bid thy wife farewell. + + Soph. No, I will take no leave. My Dorigen, + Yonder, above, 'bout Ariadne's crown, + My spirit shall hover for thee. Prithee, haste. + + Dor. Stay, Sophocles,--with this tie up my sight; + Let not soft nature so transformed be, + And lose her gentler sexed humanity, + To make me see my lord bleed. So, 'tis well; + Never one object underneath the sun + Will I behold before my Sophocles: + Farewell; now teach the Romans how to die. + + Mar. Dost know what 't is to die? + + Soph. Thou dost not, Martius, + And, therefore, not what 'tis to live; to die + Is to begin to live. It is to end + An old, stale, weary work, and to commence + A newer and a better. 'Tis to leave + Deceitful knaves for the society + Of gods and goodness. Thou thyself must part + At last from all thy garlands, pleasures, triumphs, + And prove thy fortitude what then 't will do. + + Val. But art not grieved nor vexed to leave thy life thus? + + Soph. Why should I grieve or vex for being sent + To them I ever loved best? Now I'll kneel, + But with my back toward thee; 'tis the last duty + This trunk can do the gods. + + Mar. Strike, strike, Valerius, + Or Martius' heart will leap out at his mouth. + This is a man, a woman. Kiss thy lord, + And live with all the freedom you were wont. + O love! thou doubly hast afflicted me + With virtue and with beauty. Treacherous heart, + My hand shall cast thee quick into my urn, + Ere thou transgress this knot of piety. + + Val. What ails my brother? + + Soph. Martius, O Martius, + Thou now hast found a way to conquer me. + + Dor. O star of Rome! what gratitude can speak + Fit words to follow such a deed as this? + + Mar. This admirable duke, Valerius, + With his disdain of fortune and of death, + Captived himself, has captivated me, + And though my arm hath ta'en his body here, + His soul hath subjugated Martius' soul. + By Romulus, he is all soul, I think; + He hath no flesh, and spirit cannot be gyved; + Then we have vanquished nothing; he is free, + And Martius walks now in captivity. + +I do not readily remember any poem, play, sermon, novel, or oration that +our press vents in the last few years, which goes to the same tune. We +have a great many flutes and flageolets, but not often the sound of +any fife. Yet, Wordsworth's "Laodamia," and the ode of "Dion," and some +sonnets, have a certain noble music; and Scott will sometimes draw a +stroke like the portrait of Lord Evandale given by Balfour of Burley. +Thomas Carlyle, with his natural taste for what is manly and daring in +character, has suffered no heroic trait in his favorites to drop from +his biographical and historical pictures. Earlier, Robert Burns has +given us a song or two. In the Harleian Miscellanies there is an account +of the battle of Lutzen which deserves to be read. And Simon Ockley's +History of the Saracens recounts the prodigies of individual valor, +with admiration all the more evident on the part of the narrator that he +seems to think that his place in Christian Oxford requires of him some +proper protestations of abhorrence. But if we explore the literature +of Heroism we shall quickly come to Plutarch, who is its Doctor and +historian. To him we owe the Brasidas, the Dion, the Epaminondas, the +Scipio of old, and I must think we are more deeply indebted to him than +to all the ancient writers. Each of his "Lives" is a refutation to the +despondency and cowardice of our religious and political theorists. A +wild courage, a Stoicism not of the schools but of the blood, shines in +every anecdote, and has given that book its immense fame. + +We need books of this tart cathartic virtue more than books of political +science or of private economy. Life is a festival only to the wise. +Seen from the nook and chimney-side of prudence, it wears a ragged +and dangerous front. The violations of the laws of nature by our +predecessors and our contemporaries are punished in us also. The disease +and deformity around us certify the infraction of natural, intellectual, +and moral laws, and often violation on violation to breed such +compound misery. A lock-jaw that bends a man's head back to his heels; +hydrophobia that makes him bark at his wife and babes; insanity that +makes him eat grass; war, plague, cholera, famine, indicate a certain +ferocity in nature, which, as it had its inlet by human crime, must have +its outlet by human suffering. Unhappily no man exists who has not in +his own person become to some amount a stockholder in the sin, and so +made himself liable to a share in the expiation. + +Our culture therefore must not omit the arming of the man. Let him +hear in season that he is born into the state of war, and that the +commonwealth and his own well-being require that he should not go +dancing in the weeds of peace, but warned, self-collected and neither +defying nor dreading the thunder, let him take both reputation and life +in his hand, and, with perfect urbanity dare the gibbet and the mob by +the absolute truth of his speech and the rectitude of his behavior. + +Towards all this external evil the man within the breast assumes a +warlike attitude, and affirms his ability to cope single-handed with the +infinite army of enemies. To this military attitude of the soul we give +the name of Heroism. Its rudest form is the contempt for safety and +ease, which makes the attractiveness of war. It is a self-trust which +slights the restraints of prudence, in the plenitude of its energy and +power to repair the harms it may suffer. The hero is a mind of such +balance that no disturbances can shake his will, but pleasantly and as +it were merrily he advances to his own music, alike in frightful alarms +and in the tipsy mirth of universal dissoluteness. There is somewhat not +philosophical in heroism; there is somewhat not holy in it; it seems not +to know that other souls are of one texture with it; it has pride; it is +the extreme of individual nature. Nevertheless we must profoundly revere +it. There is somewhat in great actions which does not allow us to go +behind them. Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always +right; and although a different breeding, different religion and +greater intellectual activity would have modified or even reversed the +particular action, yet for the hero that thing he does is the highest +deed, and is not open to the censure of philosophers or divines. It is +the avowal of the unschooled man that he finds a quality in him that +is negligent of expense, of health, of life, of danger, of hatred, of +reproach, and knows that his will is higher and more excellent than all +actual and all possible antagonists. + +Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in +contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism +is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual's character. Now to +no other man can its wisdom appear as it does to him, for every man must +be supposed to see a little farther on his own proper path than any one +else. Therefore just and wise men take umbrage at his act, until after +some little time be past: then they see it to be in unison with their +acts. All prudent men see that the action is clean contrary to a sensual +prosperity; for every heroic act measures itself by its contempt of +some external good. But it finds its own success at last, and then the +prudent also extol. + +Self-trust is the essence of heroism. It is the state of the soul at +war, and its ultimate objects are the last defiance of falsehood and +wrong, and the power to bear all that can be inflicted by evil agents. +It speaks the truth and it is just, generous, hospitable, temperate, +scornful of petty calculations and scornful of being scorned. It +persists; it is of an undaunted boldness and of a fortitude not to +be wearied out. Its jest is the littleness of common life. That false +prudence which dotes on health and wealth is the butt and merriment of +heroism. Heroism, like Plotinus, is almost ashamed of its body. What +shall it say then to the sugar-plums and cats'-cradles, to the toilet, +compliments, quarrels, cards and custard, which rack the wit of all +society? What joys has kind nature provided for us dear creatures! There +seems to be no interval between greatness and meanness. When the spirit +is not master of the world, then it is its dupe. Yet the little +man takes the great hoax so innocently, works in it so headlong and +believing, is born red, and dies gray, arranging his toilet, attending +on his own health, laying traps for sweet food and strong wine, setting +his heart on a horse or a rifle, made happy with a little gossip or +a little praise, that the great soul cannot choose but laugh at such +earnest nonsense. "Indeed, these humble considerations make me out of +love with greatness. What a disgrace is it to me to take note how many +pairs of silk stockings thou hast, namely, these and those that were the +peach-colored ones; or to bear the inventory of thy shirts, as one for +superfluity, and one other for use!" + +Citizens, thinking after the laws of arithmetic, consider the +inconvenience of receiving strangers at their fireside, reckon narrowly +the loss of time and the unusual display; the soul of a better quality +thrusts back the unseasonable economy into the vaults of life, and says, +I will obey the God, and the sacrifice and the fire he will provide. +Ibn Hankal, the Arabian geographer, describes a heroic extreme in the +hospitality of Sogd, in Bukharia. "When I was in Sogd I saw a great +building, like a palace, the gates of which were open and fixed back +to the wall with large nails. I asked the reason, and was told that the +house had not been shut, night or day, for a hundred years. Strangers +may present themselves at any hour and in whatever number; the master +has amply provided for the reception of the men and their animals, and +is never happier than when they tarry for some time. Nothing of the kind +have I seen in any other country." The magnanimous know very well that +they who give time, or money, or shelter, to the stranger,--so it be +done for love and not for ostentation,--do, as it were, put God under +obligation to them, so perfect are the compensations of the universe. In +some way the time they seem to lose is redeemed and the pains they seem +to take remunerate themselves. These men fan the flame of human love and +raise the standard of civil virtue among mankind. But hospitality must +be for service and not for show, or it pulls down the host. The brave +soul rates itself too high to value itself by the splendor of its table +and draperies. It gives what it hath, and all it hath, but its own +majesty can lend a better grace to bannocks and fair water than belong +to city feasts. + +The temperance of the hero proceeds from the same wish to do no dishonor +to the worthiness he has. But he loves it for its elegancy, not for its +austerity. It seems not worth his while to be solemn and denounce with +bitterness flesh-eating or wine-drinking, the use of tobacco, or opium, +or tea, or silk, or gold. A great man scarcely knows how he dines, how +he dresses; but without railing or precision his living is natural +and poetic. John Eliot, the Indian Apostle, drank water, and said of +wine,--"It is a noble, generous liquor and we should be humbly thankful +for it, but, as I remember, water was made before it." Better still is +the temperance of King David, who poured out on the ground unto the Lord +the water which three of his warriors had brought him to drink, at the +peril of their lives. + +It is told of Brutus, that when he fell on his sword after the battle +of Philippi, he quoted a line of Euripides,--"O Virtue! I have followed +thee through life, and I find thee at last but a shade." I doubt not +the hero is slandered by this report. The heroic soul does not sell its +justice and its nobleness. It does not ask to dine nicely and to sleep +warm. The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough. +Poverty is its ornament. It does not need plenty, and can very well +abide its loss. + +But that which takes my fancy most in the heroic class, is the +good-humor and hilarity they exhibit. It is a height to which common +duty can very well attain, to suffer and to dare with solemnity. But +these rare souls set opinion, success, and life at so cheap a rate that +they will not soothe their enemies by petitions, or the show of sorrow, +but wear their own habitual greatness. Scipio, charged with peculation, +refuses to do himself so great a disgrace as to wait for justification, +though he had the scroll of his accounts in his hands, but tears it to +pieces before the tribunes. Socrates's condemnation of himself to be +maintained in all honor in the Prytaneum, during his life, and Sir +Thomas More's playfulness at the scaffold, are of the same strain. In +Beaumont and Fletcher's "Sea Voyage," Juletta tells the stout captain +and his company,-- + + Jul. Why, slaves, 'tis in our power to hang ye. + Master. Very likely, + 'Tis in our powers, then, to be hanged, and scorn ye. + +These replies are sound and whole. Sport is the bloom and glow of +a perfect health. The great will not condescend to take any thing +seriously; all must be as gay as the song of a canary, though it were +the building of cities or the eradication of old and foolish churches +and nations which have cumbered the earth long thousands of years. +Simple hearts put all the history and customs of this world behind them, +and play their own game in innocent defiance of the Blue-Laws of the +world; and such would appear, could we see the human race assembled in +vision, like little children frolicking together, though to the eyes +of mankind at large they wear a stately and solemn garb of works and +influences. + +The interest these fine stories have for us, the power of a romance over +the boy who grasps the forbidden book under his bench at school, our +delight in the hero, is the main fact to our purpose. All these great +and transcendent properties are ours. If we dilate in beholding the +Greek energy, the Roman pride, it is that we are already domesticating +the same sentiment. Let us find room for this great guest in our small +houses. The first step of worthiness will be to disabuse us of our +superstitious associations with places and times, with number and size. +Why should these words, Athenian, Roman, Asia and England, so tingle in +the ear? Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, +and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River and +Boston Bay you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign +and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we will tarry a little, +we may come to learn that here is best. See to it only that thyself is +here, and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels and the +Supreme Being shall not be absent from the chamber where thou sittest. +Epaminondas, brave and affectionate, does not seem to us to need Olympus +to die upon, nor the Syrian sunshine. He lies very well where he is. The +Jerseys were handsome ground enough for Washington to tread, and London +streets for the feet of Milton. A great man makes his climate genial in +the imagination of men, and its air the beloved element of all delicate +spirits. That country is the fairest which is inhabited by the noblest +minds. The pictures which fill the imagination in reading the actions +of Pericles, Xenophon, Columbus, Bayard, Sidney, Hampden, teach us how +needlessly mean our life is; that we, by the depth of our living, should +deck it with more than regal or national splendor, and act on principles +that should interest man and nature in the length of our days. + +We have seen or heard of many extraordinary young men who never ripened, +or whose performance in actual life was not extraordinary. When we see +their air and mien, when we hear them speak of society, of books, of +religion, we admire their superiority; they seem to throw contempt on +our entire polity and social state; theirs is the tone of a youthful +giant who is sent to work revolutions. But they enter an active +profession and the forming Colossus shrinks to the common size of man. +The magic they used was the ideal tendencies, which always make the +Actual ridiculous; but the tough world had its revenge the moment they +put their horses of the sun to plough in its furrow. They found no +example and no companion, and their heart fainted. What then? The lesson +they gave in their first aspirations is yet true; and a better valor and +a purer truth shall one day organize their belief. Or why should a woman +liken herself to any historical woman, and think, because Sappho, or +Sevigne, or De Stael, or the cloistered souls who have had genius and +cultivation do not satisfy the imagination and the serene Themis, none +can,--certainly not she? Why not? She has a new and unattempted problem +to solve, perchance that of the happiest nature that ever bloomed. Let +the maiden, with erect soul, walk serenely on her way, accept the hint +of each new experience, search in turn all the objects that solicit her +eye, that she may learn the power and the charm of her new-born being, +which is the kindling of a new dawn in the recesses of space. The +fair girl who repels interference by a decided and proud choice of +influences, so careless of pleasing, so wilful and lofty, inspires every +beholder with somewhat of her own nobleness. The silent heart encourages +her; O friend, never strike sail to a fear! Come into port greatly, or +sail with God the seas. Not in vain you live, for every passing eye is +cheered and refined by the vision. + +The characteristic of heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering +impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have chosen your +part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the +world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic. Yet +we have the weakness to expect the sympathy of people in those actions +whose excellence is that they outrun sympathy and appeal to a tardy +justice. If you would serve your brother, because it is fit for you to +serve him, do not take back your words when you find that prudent people +do not commend you. Adhere to your own act, and congratulate yourself if +you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotony +of a decorous age. It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a +young person,--"Always do what you are afraid to do." A simple manly +character need never make an apology, but should regard its past action +with the calmness of Phocion, when he admitted that the event of the +battle was happy, yet did not regret his dissuasion from the battle. + +There is no weakness or exposure for which we cannot find consolation in +the thought--this is a part of my constitution, part of my relation +and office to my fellow-creature. Has nature covenanted with me that I +should never appear to disadvantage, never make a ridiculous figure? Let +us be generous of our dignity as well as of our money. Greatness once +and for ever has done with opinion. We tell our charities, not because +we wish to be praised for them, not because we think they have great +merit, but for our justification. It is a capital blunder; as you +discover when another man recites his charities. + +To speak the truth, even with some austerity, to live with some rigor +of temperance, or some extremes of generosity, seems to be an asceticism +which common good-nature would appoint to those who are at ease and in +plenty, in sign that they feel a brotherhood with the great multitude +of suffering men. And not only need we breathe and exercise the soul +by assuming the penalties of abstinence, of debt, of solitude, of +unpopularity,--but it behooves the wise man to look with a bold eye +into those rarer dangers which sometimes invade men, and to familiarize +himself with disgusting forms of disease, with sounds of execration, and +the vision of violent death. + +Times of heroism are generally times of terror, but the day never shines +in which this element may not work. The circumstances of man, we say, +are historically somewhat better in this country and at this hour than +perhaps ever before. More freedom exists for culture. It will not now +run against an axe at the first step out of the beaten track of opinion. +But whoso is heroic will always find crises to try his edge. Human +virtue demands her champions and martyrs, and the trial of persecution +always proceeds. It is but the other day that the brave Lovejoy gave +his breast to the bullets of a mob, for the rights of free speech and +opinion, and died when it was better not to live. + +I see not any road of perfect peace which a man can walk, but after the +counsel of his own bosom. Let him quit too much association, let him +go home much, and stablish himself in those courses he approves. The +unremitting retention of simple and high sentiments in obscure duties +is hardening the character to that temper which will work with honor, +if need be in the tumult, or on the scaffold. Whatever outrages have +happened to men may befall a man again; and very easily in a republic, +if there appear any signs of a decay of religion. Coarse slander, fire, +tar and feathers and the gibbet, the youth may freely bring home to his +mind and with what sweetness of temper he can, and inquire how fast +he can fix his sense of duty, braving such penalties, whenever it may +please the next newspaper and a sufficient number of his neighbors to +pronounce his opinions incendiary. + +It may calm the apprehension of calamity in the most susceptible heart +to see how quick a bound Nature has set to the utmost infliction of +malice. We rapidly approach a brink over which no enemy can follow us:-- + + "Let them rave: + Thou art quiet in thy grave." + +In the gloom of our ignorance of what shall be, in the hour when we are +deaf to the higher voices, who does not envy those who have seen safely +to an end their manful endeavor? Who that sees the meanness of our +politics but inly congratulates Washington that he is long already +wrapped in his shroud, and for ever safe; that he was laid sweet in +his grave, the hope of humanity not yet subjugated in him? Who does not +sometimes envy the good and brave who are no more to suffer from the +tumults of the natural world, and await with curious complacency the +speedy term of his own conversation with finite nature? And yet the love +that will be annihilated sooner than treacherous has already made death +impossible, and affirms itself no mortal but a native of the deeps of +absolute and inextinguishable being. + +***** + + + + THE OVER-SOUL. + + "BUT souls that of his own good life partake, + He loves as his own self; dear as his eye + They are to Him: He'll never them forsake: + When they shall die, then God himself shall die: + They live, they live in blest eternity." + Henry More. + + Space is ample, east and west, + But two cannot go abreast, + Cannot travel in it two: + Yonder masterful cuckoo + Crowds every egg out of the nest, + Quick or dead, except its own; + A spell is laid on sod and stone, + Night and Day 've been tampered with, + Every quality and pith + Surcharged and sultry with a power + That works its will on age and hour. + + + + +IX. THE OVER-SOUL. + +THERE is a difference between one and another hour of life in their +authority and subsequent effect. Our faith comes in moments; our vice is +habitual. Yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains +us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences. For +this reason the argument which is always forthcoming to silence +those who conceive extraordinary hopes of man, namely the appeal to +experience, is for ever invalid and vain. We give up the past to the +objector, and yet we hope. He must explain this hope. We grant that +human life is mean, but how did we find out that it was mean? What is +the ground of this uneasiness of ours; of this old discontent? What +is the universal sense of want and ignorance, but the fine innuendo +by which the soul makes its enormous claim? Why do men feel that the +natural history of man has never been written, but he is always leaving +behind what you have said of him, and it becomes old, and books of +metaphysics worthless? The philosophy of six thousand years has not +searched the chambers and magazines of the soul. In its experiments +there has always remained, in the last analysis, a residuum it could not +resolve. Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being is descending +into us from we know not whence. The most exact calculator has no +prescience that somewhat incalculable may not balk the very next moment. +I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events +than the will I call mine. + +As with events, so is it with thoughts. When I watch that flowing river, +which, out of regions I see not, pours for a season its streams into me, +I see that I am a pensioner; not a cause, but a surprised spectator of +this ethereal water; that I desire and look up and put myself in the +attitude of reception, but from some alien energy the visions come. + +The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the +only prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we +rest as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, +that Over-soul, within which every man's particular being is contained +and made one with all other; that common heart of which all sincere +conversation is the worship, to which all right action is submission; +that overpowering reality which confutes our tricks and talents, and +constrains every one to pass for what he is, and to speak from his +character and not from his tongue, and which evermore tends to pass into +our thought and hand and become wisdom and virtue and power and beauty. +We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime +within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal +beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal +ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all +accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, +but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, +the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as +the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these +are the shining parts, is the soul. Only by the vision of that Wisdom +can the horoscope of the ages be read, and by falling back on our better +thoughts, by yielding to the spirit of prophecy which is innate in every +man, we can know what it saith. Every man's words who speaks from that +life must sound vain to those who do not dwell in the same thought +on their own part. I dare not speak for it. My words do not carry its +august sense; they fall short and cold. Only itself can inspire whom +it will, and behold! their speech shall be lyrical, and sweet, and +universal as the rising of the wind. Yet I desire, even by profane +words, if I may not use sacred, to indicate the heaven of this deity and +to report what hints I have collected of the transcendent simplicity and +energy of the Highest Law. + +If we consider what happens in conversation, in reveries, in remorse, in +times of passion, in surprises, in the instructions of dreams, wherein +often we see ourselves in masquerade,--the droll disguises only +magnifying and enhancing a real element and forcing it on our distinct +notice,--we shall catch many hints that will broaden and lighten into +knowledge of the secret of nature. All goes to show that the soul in +man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs; is not +a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but +uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is not the +intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and the will; +is the background of our being, in which they lie,--an immensity not +possessed and that cannot be possessed. From within or from behind, +a light shines through us upon things and makes us aware that we are +nothing, but the light is all. A man is the facade of a temple wherein +all wisdom and all good abide. What we commonly call man, the eating, +drinking, planting, counting man, does not, as we know him, represent +himself, but misrepresents himself. Him we do not respect, but the soul, +whose organ he is, would he let it appear through his action, would make +our knees bend. When it breathes through his intellect, it is genius; +when it breathes through his will, it is virtue; when it flows through +his affection, it is love. And the blindness of the intellect begins +when it would be something of itself. The weakness of the will begins +when the individual would be something of himself. All reform aims in +some one particular to let the soul have its way through us; in other +words, to engage us to obey. + +Of this pure nature every man is at some time sensible. Language +cannot paint it with his colors. It is too subtile. It is undefinable, +unmeasurable; but we know that it pervades and contains us. We know that +all spiritual being is in man. A wise old proverb says, "God comes to +see us without bell;" that is, as there is no screen or ceiling between +our heads and the infinite heavens, so is there no bar or wall in the +soul where man, the effect, ceases, and God, the cause, begins. The +walls are taken away. We lie open on one side to the deeps of spiritual +nature, to the attributes of God. Justice we see and know, Love, +Freedom, Power. These natures no man ever got above, but they tower over +us, and most in the moment when our interests tempt us to wound them. + +The sovereignty of this nature whereof we speak is made known by its +independency of those limitations which circumscribe us on every hand. +The soul circumscribes all things. As I have said, it contradicts all +experience. In like manner it abolishes time and space. The influence of +the senses has in most men overpowered the mind to that degree that the +walls of time and space have come to look real and insurmountable; +and to speak with levity of these limits is, in the world, the sign of +insanity. Yet time and space are but inverse measures of the force of +the soul. The spirit sports with time,-- + + "Can crowd eternity into an hour, + Or stretch an hour to eternity." + +We are often made to feel that there is another youth and age than that +which is measured from the year of our natural birth. Some thoughts +always find us young, and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the +universal and eternal beauty. Every man parts from that contemplation +with the feeling that it rather belongs to ages than to mortal life. The +least activity of the intellectual powers redeems us in a degree from +the conditions of time. In sickness, in languor, give us a strain of +poetry or a profound sentence, and we are refreshed; or produce a volume +of Plato or Shakspeare, or remind us of their names, and instantly +we come into a feeling of longevity. See how the deep divine thought +reduces centuries and millenniums and makes itself present through all +ages. Is the teaching of Christ less effective now than it was when +first his mouth was opened? The emphasis of facts and persons in my +thought has nothing to do with time. And so always the soul's scale is +one, the scale of the senses and the understanding is another. Before +the revelations of the soul, Time, Space and Nature shrink away. In +common speech we refer all things to time, as we habitually refer the +immensely sundered stars to one concave sphere. And so we say that the +Judgment is distant or near, that the Millennium approaches, that a day +of certain political, moral, social reforms is at hand, and the +like, when we mean that in the nature of things one of the facts we +contemplate is external and fugitive, and the other is permanent and +connate with the soul. The things we now esteem fixed shall, one by one, +detach themselves like ripe fruit from our experience, and fall. The +wind shall blow them none knows whither. The landscape, the figures, +Boston, London, are facts as fugitive as any institution past, or any +whiff of mist or smoke, and so is society, and so is the world. The soul +looketh steadily forwards, creating a world before her, leaving worlds +behind her. She has no dates, nor rites, nor persons, nor specialties +nor men. The soul knows only the soul; the web of events is the flowing +robe in which she is clothed. + +After its own law and not by arithmetic is the rate of its progress to +be computed. The soul's advances are not made by gradation, such as can +be represented by motion in a straight line, but rather by ascension of +state, such as can be represented by metamorphosis,--from the egg to the +worm, from the worm to the fly. The growths of genius are of a certain +total character, that does not advance the elect individual first over +John, then Adam, then Richard, and give to each the pain of discovered +inferiority,--but by every throe of growth the man expands there where +he works, passing, at each pulsation, classes, populations, of men. With +each divine impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and +finite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires and expires its air. +It converses with truths that have always been spoken in the world, and +becomes conscious of a closer sympathy with Zeno and Arrian than with +persons in the house. + +This is the law of moral and of mental gain. The simple rise as by +specific levity not into a particular virtue, but into the region of all +the virtues. They are in the spirit which contains them all. The soul +requires purity, but purity is not it; requires justice, but justice is +not that; requires beneficence, but is somewhat better; so that there is +a kind of descent and accommodation felt when we leave speaking of moral +nature to urge a virtue which it enjoins. To the well-born child all the +virtues are natural, and not painfully acquired. Speak to his heart, and +the man becomes suddenly virtuous. + +Within the same sentiment is the germ of intellectual growth, which +obeys the same law. Those who are capable of humility, of justice, +of love, of aspiration, stand already on a platform that commands the +sciences and arts, speech and poetry, action and grace. For whoso dwells +in this moral beatitude already anticipates those special powers which +men prize so highly. The lover has no talent, no skill, which passes for +quite nothing with his enamoured maiden, however little she may possess +of related faculty; and the heart which abandons itself to the Supreme +Mind finds itself related to all its works, and will travel a royal road +to particular knowledges and powers. In ascending to this primary +and aboriginal sentiment we have come from our remote station on the +circumference instantaneously to the centre of the world, where, as in +the closet of God, we see causes, and anticipate the universe, which is +but a slow effect. + +One mode of the divine teaching is the incarnation of the spirit in a +form,--in forms, like my own. I live in society, with persons who answer +to thoughts in my own mind, or express a certain obedience to the great +instincts to which I live. I see its presence to them. I am certified of +a common nature; and these other souls, these separated selves, draw me +as nothing else can. They stir in me the new emotions we call passion; +of love, hatred, fear, admiration, pity; thence come conversation, +competition, persuasion, cities and war. Persons are supplementary +to the primary teaching of the soul. In youth we are mad for persons. +Childhood and youth see all the world in them. But the larger experience +of man discovers the identical nature appearing through them all. +Persons themselves acquaint us with the impersonal. In all conversation +between two persons tacit reference is made, as to a third party, to a +common nature. That third party or common nature is not social; it +is impersonal; is God. And so in groups where debate is earnest, and +especially on high questions, the company become aware that the thought +rises to an equal level in all bosoms, that all have a spiritual +property in what was said, as well as the sayer. They all become wiser +than they were. It arches over them like a temple, this unity of thought +in which every heart beats with nobler sense of power and duty, and +thinks and acts with unusual solemnity. All are conscious of attaining +to a higher self-possession. It shines for all. There is a certain +wisdom of humanity which is common to the greatest men with the lowest, +and which our ordinary education often labors to silence and obstruct. +The mind is one, and the best minds, who love truth for its own +sake, think much less of property in truth. They accept it thankfully +everywhere, and do not label or stamp it with any man's name, for it is +theirs long beforehand, and from eternity. The learned and the studious +of thought have no monopoly of wisdom. Their violence of direction +in some degree disqualifies them to think truly. We owe many valuable +observations to people who are not very acute or profound, and who say +the thing without effort which we want and have long been hunting in +vain. The action of the soul is oftener in that which is felt and left +unsaid than in that which is said in any conversation. It broods over +every society, and they unconsciously seek for it in each other. We know +better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the +same time that we are much more. I feel the same truth how often in my +trivial conversation with my neighbors, that somewhat higher in each of +us overlooks this by-play, and Jove nods to Jove from behind each of us. + +Men descend to meet. In their habitual and mean service to the world, +for which they forsake their native nobleness, they resemble those +Arabian sheiks who dwell in mean houses and affect an external poverty, +to escape the rapacity of the Pacha, and reserve all their display of +wealth for their interior and guarded retirements. + +As it is present in all persons, so it is in every period of life. It is +adult already in the infant man. In my dealing with my child, my Latin +and Greek, my accomplishments and my money stead me nothing; but as much +soul as I have avails. If I am wilful, he sets his will against mine, +one for one, and leaves me, if I please, the degradation of beating him +by my superiority of strength. But if I renounce my will and act for the +soul, setting that up as umpire between us two, out of his young eyes +looks the same soul; he reveres and loves with me. + +The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we +see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose. Foolish people +ask you, when you have spoken what they do not wish to hear, 'How do you +know it is truth, and not an error of your own?' We know truth when we +see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are awake. It +was a grand sentence of Emanuel Swedenborg, which would alone indicate +the greatness of that man's perception,--"It is no proof of a man's +understanding to be able to confirm whatever he pleases; but to be +able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is +false,--this is the mark and character of intelligence." In the book I +read, the good thought returns to me, as every truth will, the image +of the whole soul. To the bad thought which I find in it, the same soul +becomes a discerning, separating sword, and lops it away. We are wiser +than we know. If we will not interfere with our thought, but will act +entirely, or see how the thing stands in God, we know the particular +thing, and every thing, and every man. For the Maker of all things and +all persons stands behind us and casts his dread omniscience through us +over things. + +But beyond this recognition of its own in particular passages of the +individual's experience, it also reveals truth. And here we should +seek to reinforce ourselves by its very presence, and to speak with a +worthier, loftier strain of that advent. For the soul's communication +of truth is the highest event in nature, since it then does not give +somewhat from itself, but it gives itself, or passes into and becomes +that man whom it enlightens; or, in proportion to that truth he +receives, it takes him to itself. + +We distinguish the announcements of the soul, its manifestations of its +own nature, by the term Revelation. These are always attended by the +emotion of the sublime. For this communication is an influx of the +Divine mind into our mind. It is an ebb of the individual rivulet before +the flowing surges of the sea of life. Every distinct apprehension of +this central commandment agitates men with awe and delight. A thrill +passes through all men at the reception of new truth, or at the +performance of a great action, which comes out of the heart of nature. +In these communications the power to see is not separated from the +will to do, but the insight proceeds from obedience, and the obedience +proceeds from a joyful perception. Every moment when the individual +feels himself invaded by it is memorable. By the necessity of our +constitution a certain enthusiasm attends the individual's consciousness +of that divine presence. The character and duration of this enthusiasm +varies with the state of the individual, from an ecstasy and trance and +prophetic inspiration,--which is its rarer appearance,--to the faintest +glow of virtuous emotion, in which form it warms, like our household +fires, all the families and associations of men, and makes society +possible. A certain tendency to insanity has always attended the opening +of the religious sense in men, as if they had been "blasted with excess +of light." The trances of Socrates, the "union" of Plotinus, the +vision of Porphyry, the conversion of Paul, the aurora of Behmen, +the convulsions of George Fox and his Quakers, the illumination of +Swedenborg, are of this kind. What was in the case of these remarkable +persons a ravishment, has, in innumerable instances in common life, been +exhibited in less striking manner. Everywhere the history of religion +betrays a tendency to enthusiasm. The rapture of the Moravian and +Quietist; the opening of the internal sense of the Word, in the language +of the New Jerusalem Church; the revival of the Calvinistic churches; +the experiences of the Methodists, are varying forms of that shudder of +awe and delight with which the individual soul always mingles with the +universal soul. + +The nature of these revelations is the same; they are perceptions of the +absolute law. They are solutions of the soul's own questions. They do +not answer the questions which the understanding asks. The soul answers +never by words, but by the thing itself that is inquired after. + +Revelation is the disclosure of the soul. The popular notion of a +revelation is that it is a telling of fortunes. In past oracles of the +soul the understanding seeks to find answers to sensual questions, and +undertakes to tell from God how long men shall exist, what their hands +shall do and who shall be their company, adding names and dates and +places. But we must pick no locks. We must check this low curiosity. An +answer in words is delusive; it is really no answer to the questions +you ask. Do not require a description of the countries towards which you +sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to-morrow you +arrive there and know them by inhabiting them. Men ask concerning the +immortality of the soul, the employments of heaven, the state of the +sinner, and so forth. They even dream that Jesus has left replies to +precisely these interrogatories. Never a moment did that sublime spirit +speak in their patois. To truth, justice, love, the attributes of the +soul, the idea of immutableness is essentially associated. Jesus, living +in these moral sentiments, heedless of sensual fortunes, heeding only +the manifestations of these, never made the separation of the idea of +duration from the essence of these attributes, nor uttered a syllable +concerning the duration of the soul. It was left to his disciples to +sever duration from the moral elements, and to teach the immortality +of the soul as a doctrine, and maintain it by evidences. The moment the +doctrine of the immortality is separately taught, man is already fallen. +In the flowing of love, in the adoration of humility, there is no +question of continuance. No inspired man ever asks this question or +condescends to these evidences. For the soul is true to itself, and the +man in whom it is shed abroad cannot wander from the present, which is +infinite, to a future which would be finite. + +These questions which we lust to ask about the future are a confession +of sin. God has no answer for them. No answer in words can reply to a +question of things. It is not in an arbitrary "decree of God," but in +the nature of man, that a veil shuts down on the facts of to-morrow; for +the soul will not have us read any other cipher than that of cause and +effect. By this veil which curtains events it instructs the children +of men to live in to-day. The only mode of obtaining an answer to these +questions of the senses is to forego all low curiosity, and, accepting +the tide of being which floats us into the secret of nature, work and +live, work and live, and all unawares the advancing soul has built and +forged for itself a new condition, and the question and the answer are +one. + +By the same fire, vital, consecrating, celestial, which burns until +it shall dissolve all things into the waves and surges of an ocean of +light, we see and know each other, and what spirit each is of. Who +can tell the grounds of his knowledge of the character of the several +individuals in his circle of friends? No man. Yet their acts and words +do not disappoint him. In that man, though he knew no ill of him, he put +no trust. In that other, though they had seldom met, authentic signs +had yet passed, to signify that he might be trusted as one who had an +interest in his own character. We know each other very well,--which of +us has been just to himself and whether that which we teach or behold is +only an aspiration or is our honest effort also. + +We are all discerners of spirits. That diagnosis lies aloft in our +life or unconscious power. The intercourse of society, its trade, +its religion, its friendships, its quarrels, is one wide, judicial +investigation of character. In full court, or in small committee, or +confronted face to face, accuser and accused, men offer themselves to be +judged. Against their will they exhibit those decisive trifles by which +character is read. But who judges? and what? Not our understanding. We +do not read them by learning or craft. No; the wisdom of the wise +man consists herein, that he does not judge them; he lets them judge +themselves and merely reads and records their own verdict. + +By virtue of this inevitable nature, private will is overpowered, and, +maugre our efforts or our imperfections, your genius will speak +from you, and mine from me. That which we are, we shall teach, not +voluntarily but involuntarily. Thoughts come into our minds by avenues +which we never left open, and thoughts go out of our minds through +avenues which we never voluntarily opened. Character teaches over our +head. The infallible index of true progress is found in the tone the man +takes. Neither his age, nor his breeding, nor company, nor books, +nor actions, nor talents, nor all together can hinder him from being +deferential to a higher spirit than his own. If he have not found +his home in God, his manners, his forms of speech, the turn of +his sentences, the build, shall I say, of all his opinions will +involuntarily confess it, let him brave it out how he will. If he have +found his centre, the Deity will shine through him, through all +the disguises of ignorance, of ungenial temperament, of unfavorable +circumstance. The tone of seeking is one, and the tone of having is +another. + +The great distinction between teachers sacred or literary,--between +poets like Herbert, and poets like Pope,--between philosophers like +Spinoza, Kant and Coleridge, and philosophers like Locke, Paley, +Mackintosh and Stewart,--between men of the world who are reckoned +accomplished talkers, and here and there a fervent mystic, prophesying +half insane under the infinitude of his thought,--is that one class +speak from within, or from experience, as parties and possessors of the +fact; and the other class from without, as spectators merely, or perhaps +as acquainted with the fact on the evidence of third persons. It is of +no use to preach to me from without. I can do that too easily myself. +Jesus speaks always from within, and in a degree that transcends all +others. In that is the miracle. I believe beforehand that it ought so +to be. All men stand continually in the expectation of the appearance +of such a teacher. But if a man do not speak from within the veil, where +the word is one with that it tells of, let him lowly confess it. + +The same Omniscience flows into the intellect, and makes what we call +genius. Much of the wisdom of the world is not wisdom, and the most +illuminated class of men are no doubt superior to literary fame, and +are not writers. Among the multitude of scholars and authors, we feel no +hallowing presence; we are sensible of a knack and skill rather than of +inspiration; they have a light and know not whence it comes and call +it their own; their talent is some exaggerated faculty, some overgrown +member, so that their strength is a disease. In these instances the +intellectual gifts do not make the impression of virtue, but almost +of vice; and we feel that a man's talents stand in the way of his +advancement in truth. But genius is religious. It is a larger imbibing +of the common heart. It is not anomalous, but more like and not less +like other men. There is in all great poets a wisdom of humanity which +is superior to any talents they exercise. The author, the wit, the +partisan, the fine gentleman, does not take place of the man. Humanity +shines in Homer, in Chaucer, in Spenser, in Shakspeare, in Milton. They +are content with truth. They use the positive degree. They seem frigid +and phlegmatic to those who have been spiced with the frantic passion +and violent coloring of inferior but popular writers. For they are poets +by the free course which they allow to the informing soul, which through +their eyes beholds again and blesses the things which it hath made. +The soul is superior to its knowledge, wiser than any of its works. The +great poet makes us feel our own wealth, and then we think less of +his compositions. His best communication to our mind is to teach us to +despise all he has done. Shakspeare carries us to such a lofty strain of +intelligent activity as to suggest a wealth which beggars his own; and +we then feel that the splendid works which he has created, and which in +other hours we extol as a sort of self-existent poetry, take no stronger +hold of real nature than the shadow of a passing traveller on the rock. +The inspiration which uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear could utter +things as good from day to day for ever. Why then should I make account +of Hamlet and Lear, as if we had not the soul from which they fell as +syllables from the tongue? + +This energy does not descend into individual life on any other condition +than entire possession. It comes to the lowly and simple; it comes to +whomsoever will put off what is foreign and proud; it comes as insight; +it comes as serenity and grandeur. When we see those whom it inhabits, +we are apprised of new degrees of greatness. From that inspiration the +man comes back with a changed tone. He does not talk with men with an +eye to their opinion. He tries them. It requires of us to be plain and +true. The vain traveller attempts to embellish his life by quoting my +lord and the prince and the countess, who thus said or did to him. +The ambitious vulgar show you their spoons and brooches and rings, and +preserve their cards and compliments. The more cultivated, in their +account of their own experience, cull out the pleasing, poetic +circumstance,--the visit to Rome, the man of genius they saw, the +brilliant friend They know; still further on perhaps the gorgeous +landscape, the mountain lights, the mountain thoughts they enjoyed +yesterday,--and so seek to throw a romantic color over their life. But +the soul that ascends to worship the great God is plain and true; has no +rose-color, no fine friends, no chivalry, no adventures; does not want +admiration; dwells in the hour that now is, in the earnest experience +of the common day,--by reason of the present moment and the mere trifle +having become porous to thought and bibulous of the sea of light. + +Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature looks like +word-catching. The simplest utterances are worthiest to be written, yet +are they so cheap and so things of course, that in the infinite riches +of the soul it is like gathering a few pebbles off the ground, or +bottling a little air in a phial, when the whole earth and the whole +atmosphere are ours. Nothing can pass there, or make you one of the +circle, but the casting aside your trappings, and dealing man to man in +naked truth, plain confession, and omniscient affirmation. + +Souls such as these treat you as gods would, walk as gods in the earth, +accepting without any admiration your wit, your bounty, your virtue +even,--say rather your act of duty, for your virtue they own as their +proper blood, royal as themselves, and over-royal, and the father of the +gods. But what rebuke their plain fraternal bearing casts on the mutual +flattery with which authors solace each other and wound themselves! +These flatter not. I do not wonder that these men go to see Cromwell and +Christina and Charles the Second and James the First and the Grand Turk. +For they are, in their own elevation, the fellows of kings, and must +feel the servile tone of conversation in the world. They must always be +a godsend to princes, for they confront them, a king to a king, without +ducking or concession, and give a high nature the refreshment and +satisfaction of resistance, of plain humanity, of even companionship and +of new ideas. They leave them wiser and superior men. Souls like these +make us feel that sincerity is more excellent than flattery. Deal so +plainly with man and woman as to constrain the utmost sincerity and +destroy all hope of trifling with you. It is the highest compliment you +can pay. Their "highest praising," said Milton, "is not flattery, and +their plainest advice is a kind of praising." + +Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the soul. The +simplest person who in his integrity worships God, becomes God; yet for +ever and ever the influx of this better and universal self is new and +unsearchable. It inspires awe and astonishment. How dear, how soothing +to man, arises the idea of God, peopling the lonely place, effacing the +scars of our mistakes and disappointments! When we have broken our god +of tradition and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the +heart with his presence. It is the doubling of the heart itself, nay, +the infinite enlargement of the heart with a power of growth to a new +infinity on every side. It inspires in man an infallible trust. He has +not the conviction, but the sight, that the best is the true, and may in +that thought easily dismiss all particular uncertainties and fears, +and adjourn to the sure revelation of time the solution of his private +riddles. He is sure that his welfare is dear to the heart of being. +In the presence of law to his mind he is overflowed with a reliance so +universal that it sweeps away all cherished hopes and the most stable +projects of mortal condition in its flood. He believes that he cannot +escape from his good. The things that are really for thee gravitate to +thee. You are running to seek your friend. Let your feet run, but your +mind need not. If you do not find him, will you not acquiesce that it is +best you should not find him? for there is a power, which, as it is in +you, is in him also, and could therefore very well bring you together, +if it were for the best. You are preparing with eagerness to go and +render a service to which your talent and your taste invite you, the +love of men and the hope of fame. Has it not occurred to you that you +have no right to go, unless you are equally willing to be prevented from +going? O, believe, as thou livest, that every sound that is spoken over +the round world, which thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate on thine ear! +Every proverb, every book, every byword that belongs to thee for aid or +comfort, shall surely come home through open or winding passages. Every +friend whom not thy fantastic will but the great and tender heart in +thee craveth, shall lock thee in his embrace. And this because the +heart in thee is the heart of all; not a valve, not a wall, not +an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls +uninterruptedly an endless circulation through all men, as the water of +the globe is all one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one. + +Let man then learn the revelation of all nature and all thought to his +heart; this, namely; that the Highest dwells with him; that the sources +of nature are in his own mind, if the sentiment of duty is there. But if +he would know what the great God speaketh, he must 'go into his closet +and shut the door,' as Jesus said. God will not make himself manifest to +cowards. He must greatly listen to himself, withdrawing himself from all +the accents of other men's devotion. Even their prayers are hurtful to +him, until he have made his own. Our religion vulgarly stands on +numbers of believers. Whenever the appeal is made,--no matter how +indirectly,--to numbers, proclamation is then and there made that +religion is not. He that finds God a sweet enveloping thought to him +never counts his company. When I sit in that presence, who shall dare +to come in? When I rest in perfect humility, when I burn with pure love, +what can Calvin or Swedenborg say? + +It makes no difference whether the appeal is to numbers or to one. The +faith that stands on authority is not faith. The reliance on authority +measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul. The +position men have given to Jesus, now for many centuries of history, is +a position of authority. It characterizes themselves. It cannot alter +the eternal facts. Great is the soul, and plain. It is no flatterer, +it is no follower; it never appeals from itself. It believes in itself. +Before the immense possibilities of man all mere experience, all past +biography, however spotless and sainted, shrinks away. Before that +heaven which our presentiments foreshow us, we cannot easily praise any +form of life we have seen or read of. We not only affirm that we have +few great men, but, absolutely speaking, that we have none; that we have +no history, no record of any character or mode of living that entirely +contents us. The saints and demigods whom history worships we are +constrained to accept with a grain of allowance. Though in our lonely +hours we draw a new strength out of their memory, yet, pressed on our +attention, as they are by the thoughtless and customary, they fatigue +and invade. The soul gives itself, alone, original and pure, to the +Lonely, Original and Pure, who, on that condition, gladly inhabits, +leads and speaks through it. Then is it glad, young and nimble. It is +not wise, but it sees through all things. It is not called religious, +but it is innocent. It calls the light its own, and feels that the grass +grows and the stone falls by a law inferior to, and dependent on, its +nature. Behold, it saith, I am born into the great, the universal mind. +I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect. I am somehow receptive of the +great soul, and thereby I do Overlook the sun and the stars and feel +them to be the fair accidents and effects which change and pass. More +and more the surges of everlasting nature enter into me, and I become +public and human in my regards and actions. So come I to live in +thoughts and act with energies which are immortal. Thus revering the +soul, and learning, as the ancient said, that "its beauty is immense," +man will come to see that the world is the perennial miracle which the +soul worketh, and be less astonished at particular wonders; he will +learn that there is no profane history; that all history is sacred; that +the universe is represented in an atom, in a moment of time. He will +weave no longer a spotted life of shreds and patches, but he will live +with a divine unity. He will cease from what is base and frivolous in +his life and be content with all places and with any service he can +render. He will calmly front the morrow in the negligency of that trust +which carries God with it and so hath already the whole future in the +bottom of the heart. + + +***** + + + + CIRCLES. + + NATURE centres into balls, + And her proud ephemerals, + Fast to surface and outside, + Scan the profile of the sphere; + Knew they what that signified, + A new genesis were here. + + + + +X. CIRCLES. + +The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; +and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end. It is +the highest emblem in the cipher of the world. St. Augustine described +the nature of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere and its +circumference nowhere. We are all our lifetime reading the copious +sense of this first of forms. One moral we have already deduced, in +considering the circular or compensatory character of every human +action. Another analogy we shall now trace, that every action admits of +being outdone. Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around +every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but +every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on +mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens. + +This fact, as far as it symbolizes the moral fact of the Unattainable, +the flying Perfect, around which the hands of man can never meet, at +once the inspirer and the condemner of every success, may conveniently +serve us to connect many illustrations of human power in every +department. + +There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. +Permanence is but a word of degrees. Our globe seen by God is a +transparent law, not a mass of facts. The law dissolves the fact and +holds it fluid. Our culture is the predominance of an idea which draws +after it this train of cities and institutions. Let us rise into another +idea: they will disappear. The Greek sculpture is all melted away, as if +it had been statues of ice; here and there a solitary figure or fragment +remaining, as we see flecks and scraps of snow left in cold dells and +mountain clefts in June and July. For the genius that created it creates +now somewhat else. The Greek letters last a little longer, but are +already passing under the same sentence and tumbling into the inevitable +pit which the creation of new thought opens for all that is old. The new +continents are built out of the ruins of an old planet; the new races +fed out of the decomposition of the foregoing. New arts destroy the old. +See the investment of capital in aqueducts made useless by hydraulics; +fortifications, by gunpowder; roads and canals, by railways; sails, by +steam; steam by electricity. + +You admire this tower of granite, weathering the hurts of so many ages. +Yet a little waving hand built this huge wall, and that which builds is +better than that which is built. The hand that built can topple it down +much faster. Better than the hand and nimbler was the invisible thought +which wrought through it; and thus ever, behind the coarse effect, is a +fine cause, which, being narrowly seen, is itself the effect of a finer +cause. Every thing looks permanent until its secret is known. A rich +estate appears to women a firm and lasting fact; to a merchant, one +easily created out of any materials, and easily lost. An orchard, good +tillage, good grounds, seem a fixture, like a gold mine, or a river, to +a citizen; but to a large farmer, not much more fixed than the state +of the crop. Nature looks provokingly stable and secular, but it has +a cause like all the rest; and when once I comprehend that, will these +fields stretch so immovably wide, these leaves hang so individually +considerable? Permanence is a word of degrees. Every thing is medial. +Moons are no more bounds to spiritual power than bat-balls. + +The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, +he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his +facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new +idea which commands his own. The life of man is a self-evolving circle, +which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to +new and larger circles, and that without end. The extent to which this +generation of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, depends on the +force or truth of the individual soul. For it is the inert effort +of each thought, having formed itself into a circular wave of +circumstance,--as for instance an empire, rules of an art, a local +usage, a religious rite,--to heap itself on that ridge and to solidify +and hem in the life. But if the soul is quick and strong it bursts over +that boundary on all sides and expands another orbit on the great deep, +which also runs up into a high wave, with attempt again to stop and to +bind. But the heart refuses to be imprisoned; in its first and narrowest +pulses, it already tends outward with a vast force and to immense and +innumerable expansions. + +Every ultimate fact is only the first of a new series. Every general law +only a particular fact of some more general law presently to disclose +itself. There is no outside, no inclosing wall, no circumference to us. +The man finishes his story,--how good! how final! how it puts a new face +on all things! He fills the sky. Lo! on the other side rises also a man +and draws a circle around the circle we had just pronounced the outline +of the sphere. Then already is our first speaker not man, but only a +first speaker. His only redress is forthwith to draw a circle outside of +his antagonist. And so men do by themselves. The result of to-day, which +haunts the mind and cannot be escaped, will presently be abridged into +a word, and the principle that seemed to explain nature will itself be +included as one example of a bolder generalization. In the thought of +to-morrow there is a power to upheave all thy creed, all the creeds, all +the literatures of the nations, and marshal thee to a heaven which no +epic dream has yet depicted. Every man is not so much a workman in the +world as he is a suggestion of that he should be. Men walk as prophecies +of the next age. + +Step by step we scale this mysterious ladder: the steps are actions; the +new prospect is power. Every several result is threatened and judged by +that which follows. Every one seems to be contradicted by the new; it is +only limited by the new. The new statement is always hated by the old, +and, to those dwelling in the old, comes like an abyss of scepticism. +But the eye soon gets wonted to it, for the eye and it are effects of +one cause; then its innocency and benefit appear, and presently, all +its energy spent, it pales and dwindles before the revelation of the new +hour. + +Fear not the new generalization. Does the fact look crass and material, +threatening to degrade thy theory of spirit? Resist it not; it goes to +refine and raise thy theory of matter just as much. + +There are no fixtures to men, if we appeal to consciousness. Every man +supposes himself not to be fully understood; and if there is any truth +in him, if he rests at last on the divine soul, I see not how it can +be otherwise. The last chamber, the last closet, he must feel was never +opened; there is always a residuum unknown, unanalyzable. That is, every +man believes that he has a greater possibility. + +Our moods do not believe in each other. To-day I am full of thoughts and +can write what I please. I see no reason why I should not have the same +thought, the same power of expression, to-morrow. What I write, whilst I +write it, seems the most natural thing in the world; but yesterday I +saw a dreary vacuity in this direction in which now I see so much; and +a month hence, I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was that wrote so many +continuous pages. Alas for this infirm faith, this will not strenuous, +this vast ebb of a vast flow! I am God in nature; I am a weed by the +wall. + +The continual effort to raise himself above himself, to work a pitch +above his last height, betrays itself in a man's relations. We thirst +for approbation, yet cannot forgive the approver. The sweet of nature +is love; yet, if I have a friend I am tormented by my imperfections. The +love of me accuses the other party. If he were high enough to slight me, +then could I love him, and rise by my affection to new heights. A man's +growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends. For every friend +whom he loses for truth, he gains a better. I thought as I walked in the +woods and mused on my friends, why should I play with them this game +of idolatry? I know and see too well, when not voluntarily blind, the +speedy limits of persons called high and worthy. Rich, noble and great +they are by the liberality of our speech, but truth is sad. O blessed +Spirit, whom I forsake for these, they are not thou! Every personal +consideration that we allow costs us heavenly state. We sell the thrones +of angels for a short and turbulent pleasure. + +How often must we learn this lesson? Men cease to interest us when we +find their limitations. The only sin is limitation. As soon as you +once come up with a man's limitations, it is all over with him. Has he +talents? has he enterprise? has he knowledge? It boots not. Infinitely +alluring and attractive was he to you yesterday, a great hope, a sea to +swim in; now, you have found his shores, found it a pond, and you care +not if you never see it again. + +Each new step we take in thought reconciles twenty seemingly discordant +facts, as expressions of one law. Aristotle and Plato are reckoned the +respective heads of two schools. A wise man will see that Aristotle +platonizes. By going one step farther back in thought, discordant +opinions are reconciled by being seen to be two extremes of one +principle, and we can never go so far back as to preclude a still higher +vision. + +Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all +things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a +great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end. There +is not a piece of science but its flank may be turned to-morrow; there +is not any literary reputation, not the so-called eternal names of +fame, that may not be revised and condemned. The very hopes of man, the +thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the manners and morals +of mankind are all at the mercy of a new generalization. Generalization +is always a new influx of the divinity into the mind. Hence the thrill +that attends it. + +Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that a man cannot have +his flank turned, cannot be out-generalled, but put him where you +will, he stands. This can only be by his preferring truth to his past +apprehension of truth, and his alert acceptance of it from whatever +quarter; the intrepid conviction that his laws, his relations to +society, his Christianity, his world, may at any time be superseded and +decease. + +There are degrees in idealism. We learn first to play with it +academically, as the magnet was once a toy. Then we see in the heyday +of youth and poetry that it may be true, that it is true in gleams and +fragments. Then its countenance waxes stern and grand, and we see that +it must be true. It now shows itself ethical and practical. We learn +that God is; that he is in me; and that all things are shadows of him. +The idealism of Berkeley is only a crude statement of the idealism of +Jesus, and that again is a crude statement of the fact that all nature +is the rapid efflux of goodness executing and organizing itself. Much +more obviously is history and the state of the world at any one time +directly dependent on the intellectual classification then existing in +the minds of men. The things which are dear to men at this hour are so +on account of the ideas which have emerged on their mental horizon, and +which cause the present order of things, as a tree bears its apples. A +new degree of culture would instantly revolutionize the entire system of +human pursuits. + +Conversation is a game of circles. In conversation we pluck up the +termini which bound the common of silence on every side. The parties are +not to be judged by the spirit they partake and even express under this +Pentecost. To-morrow they will have receded from this high-water mark. +To-morrow you shall find them stooping under the old pack-saddles. Yet +let us enjoy the cloven flame whilst it glows on our walls. When each +new speaker strikes a new light, emancipates us from the oppression of +the last speaker, to oppress us with the greatness and exclusiveness of +his own thought, then yields us to another redeemer, we seem to recover +our rights, to become men. O, what truths profound and executable only +in ages and orbs, are supposed in the announcement of every truth! In +common hours, society sits cold and statuesque. We all stand waiting, +empty,--knowing, possibly, that we can be full, surrounded by mighty +symbols which are not symbols to us, but prose and trivial toys. Then +cometh the god and converts the statues into fiery men, and by a flash +of his eye burns up the veil which shrouded all things, and the meaning +of the very furniture, of cup and saucer, of chair and clock and +tester, is manifest. The facts which loomed so large in the fogs of +yesterday,--property, climate, breeding, personal beauty and the like, +have strangely changed their proportions. All that we reckoned settled +shakes and rattles; and literatures, cities, climates, religions, leave +their foundations and dance before our eyes. And yet here again see +the swift circumspection! Good as is discourse, silence is better, and +shames it. The length of the discourse indicates the distance of +thought betwixt the speaker and the hearer. If they were at a perfect +understanding in any part, no words would be necessary thereon. If at +one in all parts, no words would be suffered. + +Literature is a point outside of our hodiernal circle through which +a new one may be described. The use of literature is to afford us a +platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase by +which we may move it. We fill ourselves with ancient learning, install +ourselves the best we can in Greek, in Punic, in Roman houses, only that +we may wiselier see French, English and American houses and modes of +living. In like manner we see literature best from the midst of wild +nature, or from the din of affairs, or from a high religion. The field +cannot be well seen from within the field. The astronomer must have +his diameter of the earth's orbit as a base to find the parallax of any +star. + +Therefore we value the poet. All the argument and all the wisdom is not +in the encyclopaedia, or the treatise on metaphysics, or the Body of +Divinity, but in the sonnet or the play. In my daily work I incline to +repeat my old steps, and do not believe in remedial force, in the power +of change and reform. But some Petrarch or Ariosto, filled with the new +wine of his imagination, writes me an ode or a brisk romance, full of +daring thought and action. He smites and arouses me with his shrill +tones, breaks up my whole chain of habits, and I open my eye on my own +possibilities. He claps wings to the sides of all the solid old lumber +of the world, and I am capable once more of choosing a straight path in +theory and practice. + +We have the same need to command a view of the religion of the world. We +can never see Christianity from the catechism:--from the pastures, from +a boat in the pond, from amidst the songs of wood-birds we possibly +may. Cleansed by the elemental light and wind, steeped in the sea of +beautiful forms which the field offers us, we may chance to cast a right +glance back upon biography. Christianity is rightly dear to the best +of mankind; yet was there never a young philosopher whose breeding had +fallen into the Christian church by whom that brave text of Paul's was +not specially prized:--"Then shall also the Son be subject unto Him who +put all things under him, that God may be all in all." Let the claims +and virtues of persons be never so great and welcome, the instinct of +man presses eagerly onward to the impersonal and illimitable, and gladly +arms itself against the dogmatism of bigots with this generous word out +of the book itself. + +The natural world may be conceived of as a system of concentric circles, +and we now and then detect in nature slight dislocations which apprise +us that this surface on which we now stand is not fixed, but sliding. +These manifold tenacious qualities, this chemistry and vegetation, these +metals and animals, which seem to stand there for their own sake, are +means and methods only,--are words of God, and as fugitive as other +words. Has the naturalist or chemist learned his craft, who has explored +the gravity of atoms and the elective affinities, who has not yet +discerned the deeper law whereof this is only a partial or approximate +statement, namely that like draws to like, and that the goods which +belong to you gravitate to you and need not be pursued with pains +and cost? Yet is that statement approximate also, and not final. +Omnipresence is a higher fact. Not through subtle subterranean channels +need friend and fact be drawn to their counterpart, but, rightly +considered, these things proceed from the eternal generation of the +soul. Cause and effect are two sides of one fact. + +The same law of eternal procession ranges all that we call the virtues, +and extinguishes each in the light of a better. The great man will +not be prudent in the popular sense; all his prudence will be so much +deduction from his grandeur. But it behooves each to see, when he +sacrifices prudence, to what god he devotes it; if to ease and pleasure, +he had better be prudent still; if to a great trust, he can well spare +his mule and panniers who has a winged chariot instead. Geoffrey draws +on his boots to go through the woods, that his feet may be safer from +the bite of snakes; Aaron never thinks of such a peril. In many years +neither is harmed by such an accident. Yet it seems to me that with +every precaution you take against such an evil you put yourself into +the power of the evil. I suppose that the highest prudence is the lowest +prudence. Is this too sudden a rushing from the centre to the verge +of our orbit? Think how many times we shall fall back into pitiful +calculations before we take up our rest in the great sentiment, or make +the verge of to-day the new centre. Besides, your bravest sentiment is +familiar to the humblest men. The poor and the low have their way of +expressing the last facts of philosophy as well as you. "Blessed be +nothing" and "The worse things are, the better they are" are proverbs +which express the transcendentalism of common life. + +One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty another's +ugliness; one man's wisdom another's folly; as one beholds the same +objects from a higher point. One man thinks justice consists in paying +debts, and has no measure in his abhorrence of another who is very +remiss in this duty and makes the creditor wait tediously. But that +second man has his own way of looking at things; asks himself Which debt +must I pay first, the debt to the rich, or the debt to the poor? the +debt of money, or the debt of thought to mankind, of genius to nature? +For you, O broker, there is no other principle but arithmetic. For me, +commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the +aspiration of man, these are sacred; nor can I detach one duty, like +you, from all other duties, and concentrate my forces mechanically on +the payment of moneys. Let me live onward; you shall find that, though +slower, the progress of my character will liquidate all these debts +without injustice to higher claims. If a man should dedicate himself to +the payment of notes, would not this be injustice? Does he owe no debt +but money? And are all claims on him to be postponed to a landlord's or +a banker's? + +There is no virtue which is final; all are initial. The virtues of +society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery +that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed +such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices:-- + + "Forgive his crimes, forgive his virtues too, + Those smaller faults, half converts to the right." + +It is the highest power of divine moments that they abolish our +contritions also. I accuse myself of sloth and unprofitableness day by +day; but when these waves of God flow into me I no longer reckon lost +time. I no longer poorly compute my possible achievement by what remains +to me of the month or the year; for these moments confer a sort of +omnipresence and omnipotence which asks nothing of duration, but sees +that the energy of the mind is commensurate with the work to be done, +without time. + +And thus, O circular philosopher, I hear some reader exclaim, you have +arrived at a fine Pyrrhonism, at an equivalence and indifferency of +all actions, and would fain teach us that if we are true, forsooth, our +crimes may be lively stones out of which we shall construct the temple +of the true God! + +I am not careful to justify myself. I own I am gladdened by seeing the +predominance of the saccharine principle throughout vegetable nature, +and not less by beholding in morals that unrestrained inundation of the +principle of good into every chink and hole that selfishness has left +open, yea into selfishness and sin itself; so that no evil is pure, nor +hell itself without its extreme satisfactions. But lest I should mislead +any when I have my own head and obey my whims, let me remind the reader +that I am only an experimenter. Do not set the least value on what I do, +or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle +any thing as true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are to me +sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no +Past at my back. + +Yet this incessant movement and progression which all things partake +could never become sensible to us but by contrast to some principle +of fixture or stability in the soul. Whilst the eternal generation of +circles proceeds, the eternal generator abides. That central life is +somewhat superior to creation, superior to knowledge and thought, +and contains all its circles. For ever it labors to create a life and +thought as Large and excellent as itself, but in vain, for that which is +made instructs how to make a better. + +Thus there is no sleep, no pause, no preservation, but all things renew, +germinate and spring. Why should we import rags and relics into the new +hour? Nature abhors the old, and old age seems the only disease; +all others run into this one. We call it by many names,--fever, +intemperance, insanity, stupidity and crime; they are all forms of old +age; they are rest, conservatism, appropriation, inertia; not newness, +not the way onward. We grizzle every day. I see no need of it. Whilst +we converse with what is above us, we do not grow old, but grow young. +Infancy, youth, receptive, aspiring, with religious eye looking upward, +counts itself nothing and abandons itself to the instruction flowing +from all sides. But the man and woman of seventy assume to know all, +they have outlived their hope, they renounce aspiration, accept the +actual for the necessary and talk down to the young. Let them, then, +become organs of the Holy Ghost; let them be lovers; let them behold +truth; and their eyes are uplifted, their wrinkles smoothed, they are +perfumed again with hope and power. This old age ought not to creep on a +human mind. In nature every moment is new; the past is always swallowed +and forgotten; the coming only is sacred. Nothing is secure but life, +transition, the energizing spirit. No love can be bound by oath or +covenant to secure it against a higher love. No truth so sublime but it +may be trivial to-morrow in the light of new thoughts. People wish to be +settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them. + +Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess to-day the mood, the +pleasure, the power of to-morrow, when we are building up our being. Of +lower states, of acts of routine and sense, we can tell somewhat; but +the masterpieces of God, the total growths and universal movements of +the soul, he hideth; they are incalculable. I can know that truth is +divine and helpful; but how it shall help me I can have no guess, for so +to be is the sole inlet of so to know. The new position of the advancing +man has all the powers of the old, yet has them all new. It carries in +its bosom all the energies of the past, yet is itself an exhalation +of the morning. I cast away in this new moment all my once hoarded +knowledge, as vacant and vain. Now, for the first time seem I to know +any thing rightly. The simplest words,--we do not know what they mean +except when we love and aspire. + +The difference between talents and character is adroitness to keep the +old and trodden round, and power and courage to make a new road to new +and better goals. Character makes an overpowering present; a cheerful, +determined hour, which fortifies all the company by making them see that +much is possible and excellent that was not thought of. Character dulls +the impression of particular events. When we see the conqueror we do not +think much of any one battle or success. We see that we had exaggerated +the difficulty. It was easy to him. The great man is not convulsible or +tormentable; events pass over him without much impression. People say +sometimes, 'See what I have overcome; see how cheerful I am; see how +completely I have triumphed over these black events.' Not if they still +remind me of the black event. True conquest is the causing the calamity +to fade and disappear as an early cloud of insignificant result in a +history so large and advancing. + +The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget +ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal +memory and to do something without knowing how or why; in short to draw +a new circle. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. The +way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment. The great moments of +history are the facilities of performance through the strength of ideas, +as the works of genius and religion. "A man," said Oliver Cromwell, "never +rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going." Dreams +and drunkenness, the use of opium and alcohol are the semblance +and counterfeit of this oracular genius, and hence their dangerous +attraction for men. For the like reason they ask the aid of wild +passions, as in gaming and war, to ape in some manner these flames and +generosities of the heart. + +***** + + + + INTELLECT. + + GO, speed the stars of Thought + On to their shining goals;-- + The sower scatters broad his seed, + The wheat thou strew'st be souls. + + + + +XI. INTELLECT. + +Every substance is negatively electric to that which stands above it +in the chemical tables, positively to that which stands below it. Water +dissolves wood and iron and salt; air dissolves water; electric fire +dissolves air, but the intellect dissolves fire, gravity, laws, +method, and the subtlest unnamed relations of nature in its +resistless menstruum. Intellect lies behind genius, which is intellect +constructive. Intellect is the simple power anterior to all action or +construction. Gladly would I unfold in calm degrees a natural history +of the intellect, but what man has yet been able to mark the steps and +boundaries of that transparent essence? The first questions are always +to be asked, and the wisest doctor is gravelled by the inquisitiveness +of a child. How can we speak of the action of the mind under any +divisions, as of its knowledge, of its ethics, of its works, and so +forth, since it melts will into perception, knowledge into act? Each +becomes the other. Itself alone is. Its vision is not like the vision of +the eye, but is union with the things known. + +Intellect and intellection signify to the common ear consideration of +abstract truth. The considerations of time and place, of you and me, of +profit and hurt tyrannize over most men's minds. Intellect separates the +fact considered, from you, from all local and personal reference, and +discerns it as if it existed for its own sake. Heraclitus looked upon +the affections as dense and colored mists. In the fog of good and +evil affections it is hard for man to walk forward in a straight line. +Intellect is void of affection and sees an object as it stands in the +light of science, cool and disengaged. The intellect goes out of the +individual, floats over its own personality, and regards it as a fact, +and not as I and mine. He who is immersed in what concerns person or +place cannot see the problem of existence. This the intellect always +ponders. Nature shows all things formed and bound. The intellect pierces +the form, overleaps the wall, detects intrinsic likeness between remote +things and reduces all things into a few principles. + +The making a fact the subject of thought raises it. All that mass of +mental and moral phenomena which we do not make objects of voluntary +thought, come within the power of fortune; they constitute the +circumstance of daily life; they are subject to change, to fear, and +hope. Every man beholds his human condition with a degree of melancholy. +As a ship aground is battered by the waves, so man, imprisoned in mortal +life, lies open to the mercy of coming events. But a truth, separated by +the intellect, is no longer a subject of destiny. We behold it as a god +upraised above care and fear. And so any fact in our life, or any +record of our fancies or reflections, disentangled from the web of our +unconsciousness, becomes an object impersonal and immortal. It is the +past restored, but embalmed. A better art than that of Egypt has taken +fear and corruption out of it. It is eviscerated of care. It is offered +for science. What is addressed to us for contemplation does not threaten +us but makes us intellectual beings. + +The growth of the intellect is spontaneous in every expansion. The mind +that grows could not predict the times, the means, the mode of that +spontaneity. God enters by a private door into every individual. Long +prior to the age of reflection is the thinking of the mind. Out of +darkness it came insensibly into the marvellous light of to-day. In the +period of infancy it accepted and disposed of all impressions from the +surrounding creation after its own way. Whatever any mind doth or saith +is after a law; and this native law remains over it after it has come to +reflection or conscious thought. In the most worn, pedantic, introverted +self-tormenter's life, the greatest part is incalculable by him, +unforeseen, unimaginable, and must be, until he can take himself up by +his own ears. What am I? What has my will done to make me that I +am? Nothing. I have been floated into this thought, this hour, this +connection of events, by secret currents of might and mind, and my +ingenuity and wilfulness have not thwarted, have not aided to an +appreciable degree. + +Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot with your best +deliberation and heed come so close to any question as your spontaneous +glance shall bring you, whilst you rise from your bed, or walk abroad +in the morning after meditating the matter before sleep on the previous +night. Our thinking is a pious reception. Our truth of thought is +therefore vitiated as much by too violent direction given by our will, +as by too great negligence. We do not determine what we will think. +We only open our senses, clear away as we can all obstruction from the +fact, and suffer the intellect to see. We have little control over our +thoughts. We are the prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for moments +into their heaven and so fully engage us that we take no thought for the +morrow, gaze like children, without an effort to make them our own. By +and by we fall out of that rapture, bethink us where we have been, what +we have seen, and repeat as truly as we can what we have beheld. As +far as we can recall these ecstasies we carry away in the ineffaceable +memory the result, and all men and all the ages confirm it. It is called +Truth. But the moment we cease to report and attempt to correct and +contrive, it is not truth. + +If we consider what persons have stimulated and profited us, we shall +perceive the superiority of the spontaneous or intuitive principle over +the arithmetical or logical. The first contains the second, but virtual +and latent. We want in every man a long logic; we cannot pardon the +absence of it, but it must not be spoken. Logic is the procession or +proportionate unfolding of the intuition; but its virtue is as silent +method; the moment it would appear as propositions and have a separate +value it is worthless. + +In every man's mind, some images, words and facts remain, without effort +on his part to imprint them, which others forget, and afterwards these +illustrate to him important laws. All our progress is an unfolding, like +the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a +knowledge, as the plant has root, bud and fruit. Trust the instinct to +the end, though you can render no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By +trusting it to the end, it shall ripen into truth and you shall know why +you believe. + +Each mind has its own method. A true man never acquires after college +rules. What you have aggregated in a natural manner surprises and +delights when it is produced. For we cannot oversee each other's +secret. And hence the differences between men in natural endowment are +insignificant in comparison with their common wealth. Do you think the +porter and the cook have no anecdotes, no experiences, no wonders for +you? Every body knows as much as the savant. The walls of rude minds are +scrawled all over with facts, with thoughts. They shall one day bring a +lantern and read the inscriptions. Every man, in the degree in which he +has wit and culture, finds his curiosity inflamed concerning the modes +of living and thinking of other men, and especially of those classes +whose minds have not been subdued by the drill of school education. + +This instinctive action never ceases in a healthy mind, but becomes +richer and more frequent in its informations through all states of +culture. At last comes the era of reflection, when we not only observe, +but take pains to observe; when we of set purpose sit down to consider +an abstract truth; when we keep the mind's eye open whilst we converse, +whilst we read, whilst we act, intent to learn the secret law of some +class of facts. + +What is the hardest task in the world? To think. I would put myself +in the attitude to look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cannot. I +blench and withdraw on this side and on that. I seem to know what he +meant who said, No man can see God face to face and live. For example, +a man explores the basis of civil government. Let him intend his mind +without respite, without rest, in one direction. His best heed long time +avails him nothing. Yet thoughts are flitting before him. We all but +apprehend, we dimly forebode the truth. We say I will walk abroad, and +the truth will take form and clearness to me. We go forth, but cannot +find it. It seems as if we needed only the stillness and composed +attitude of the library to seize the thought. But we come in, and are as +far from it as at first. Then, in a moment, and unannounced, the truth +appears. A certain wandering light appears, and is the distinction, the +principle, we wanted. But the oracle comes because we had previously +laid siege to the shrine. It seems as if the law of the intellect +resembled that law of nature by which we now inspire, now expire the +breath; by which the heart now draws in, then hurls out the blood,--the +law of undulation. So now you must labor with your brains, and now you +must forbear your activity and see what the great Soul showeth. + +The immortality of man is as legitimately preached from the +intellections as from the moral volitions. Every intellection is mainly +prospective. Its present value is its least. Inspect what delights +you in Plutarch, in Shakspeare, in Cervantes. Each truth that a writer +acquires is a lantern, which he turns full on what facts and thoughts +lay already in his mind, and behold, all the mats and rubbish which had +littered his garret become precious. Every trivial fact in his private +biography becomes an illustration of this new principle, revisits the +day, and delights all men by its piquancy and new charm. Men say, Where +did he get this? and think there was something divine in his life. But +no; they have myriads of facts just as good, would they only get a lamp +to ransack their attics withal. + +We are all wise. The difference between persons is not in wisdom but in +art. I knew, in an academical club, a person who always deferred to +me; who, seeing my whim for writing, fancied that my experiences had +somewhat superior; whilst I saw that his experiences were as good as +mine. Give them to me and I would make the same use of them. He held the +old; he holds the new; I had the habit of tacking together the old and +the new which he did not use to exercise. This may hold in the great +examples. Perhaps if we should meet Shakspeare we should not be +conscious of any steep inferiority; no, but of a great equality,--only +that he possessed a strange skill of using, of classifying, his facts, +which we lacked. For notwithstanding our utter incapacity to produce +anything like Hamlet and Othello, see the perfect reception this wit and +immense knowledge of life and liquid eloquence find in us all. + +If you gather apples in the sunshine, or make hay, or hoe corn, and then +retire within doors and shut your eyes and press them with your hand, +you shall still see apples hanging in the bright light with boughs and +leaves thereto, or the tasselled grass, or the corn-flags, and this for +five or six hours afterwards. There lie the impressions on the retentive +organ, though you knew it not. So lies the whole series of natural +images with which your life has made you acquainted, in your memory, +though you know it not; and a thrill of passion flashes light on their +dark chamber, and the active power seizes instantly the fit image, as +the word of its momentary thought. + +It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, +is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser +years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and +always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until +by and by we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish +person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature +paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History. + +In the intellect constructive, which we popularly designate by the word +Genius, we observe the same balance of two elements as in intellect +receptive. The constructive intellect produces thoughts, sentences, +poems, plans, designs, systems. It is the generation of the mind, the +marriage of thought with nature. To genius must always go two gifts, the +thought and the publication. The first is revelation, always a +miracle, which no frequency of occurrence or incessant study can ever +familiarize, but which must always leave the inquirer stupid with +wonder. It is the advent of truth into the world, a form of thought +now for the first time bursting into the universe, a child of the old +eternal soul, a piece of genuine and immeasurable greatness. It seems, +for the time, to inherit all that has yet existed and to dictate to +the unborn. It affects every thought of man and goes to fashion every +institution. But to make it available it needs a vehicle or art by which +it is conveyed to men. To be communicable it must become picture or +sensible object. We must learn the language of facts. The most wonderful +inspirations die with their subject if he has no hand to paint them to +the senses. The ray of light passes invisible through space and only +when it falls on an object is it seen. When the spiritual energy is +directed on something outward, then it is a thought. The relation +between it and you first makes you, the value of you, apparent to me. +The rich inventive genius of the painter must be smothered and lost +for want of the power of drawing, and in our happy hours we should be +inexhaustible poets if once we could break through the silence into +adequate rhyme. As all men have some access to primary truth, so all +have some art or power of communication in their head, but only in the +artist does it descend into the hand. There is an inequality, whose laws +we do not yet know, between two men and between two moments of the same +man, in respect to this faculty. In common hours we have the same facts +as in the uncommon or inspired, but they do not sit for their portraits; +they are not detached, but lie in a web. The thought of genius is +spontaneous; but the power of picture or expression, in the most +enriched and flowing nature, implies a mixture of will, a certain +control over the spontaneous states, without which no production is +possible. It is a conversion of all nature into the rhetoric of thought, +under the eye of judgment, with a strenuous exercise of choice. And yet +the imaginative vocabulary seems to be spontaneous also. It does not +flow from experience only or mainly, but from a richer source. Not by +any conscious imitation of particular forms are the grand strokes of the +painter executed, but by repairing to the fountain-head of all forms in +his mind. Who is the first drawing-master? Without instruction we know +very well the ideal of the human form. A child knows if an arm or a leg +be distorted in a picture; if the attitude be natural or grand or mean; +though he has never received any instruction in drawing or heard any +conversation on the subject, nor can himself draw with correctness a +single feature. A good form strikes all eyes pleasantly, long before +they have any science on the subject, and a beautiful face sets twenty +hearts in palpitation, prior to all consideration of the mechanical +proportions of the features and head. We may owe to dreams some light +on the fountain of this skill; for as soon as we let our will go and let +the unconscious states ensue, see what cunning draughtsmen we are! We +entertain ourselves with wonderful forms of men, of women, of animals, +of gardens, of woods and of monsters, and the mystic pencil wherewith we +then draw has no awkwardness or inexperience, no meagreness or poverty; +it can design well and group well; its composition is full of art, its +colors are well laid on and the whole canvas which it paints is lifelike +and apt to touch us with terror, with tenderness, with desire and with +grief. Neither are the artist's copies from experience ever mere copies, +but always touched and softened by tints from this ideal domain. + +The conditions essential to a constructive mind do not appear to be +so often combined but that a good sentence or verse remains fresh and +memorable for a long time. Yet when we write with ease and come out into +the free air of thought, we seem to be assured that nothing is easier +than to continue this communication at pleasure. Up, down, around, the +kingdom of thought has no inclosures, but the Muse makes us free of her +city. Well, the world has a million writers. One would think then that +good thought would be as familiar as air and water, and the gifts of +each new hour would exclude the last. Yet we can count all our good +books; nay, I remember any beautiful verse for twenty years. It is true +that the discerning intellect of the world is always much in advance of +the creative, so that there are many competent judges of the best +book, and few writers of the best books. But some of the conditions of +intellectual construction are of rare occurrence. The intellect is a +whole and demands integrity in every work. This is resisted equally by +a man's devotion to a single thought and by his ambition to combine too +many. + +Truth is our element of life, yet if a man fasten his attention on a +single aspect of truth and apply himself to that alone for a long +time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself but falsehood; herein +resembling the air, which is our natural element, and the breath of +our nostrils, but if a stream of the same be directed on the body for +a time, it causes cold, fever, and even death. How wearisome the +grammarian, the phrenologist, the political or religious fanatic, or +indeed any possessed mortal whose balance is lost by the exaggeration +of a single topic. It is incipient insanity. Every thought is a prison +also. I cannot see what you see, because I am caught up by a strong +wind and blown so far in one direction that I am out of the hoop of your +horizon. + +Is it any better if the student, to avoid this offence, and to +liberalize himself, aims to make a mechanical whole of history, or +science, or philosophy, by a numerical addition of all the facts that +fall within his vision? The world refuses to be analyzed by addition and +subtraction. When we are young we spend much time and pains in filling +our note-books with all definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics, +Art, in the hope that in the course of a few years we shall have +condensed into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theories at +which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tables get +no completeness, and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola, +whose arcs will never meet. + +Neither by detachment neither by aggregation is the integrity of the +intellect transmitted to its works, but by a vigilance which brings the +intellect in its greatness and best state to operate every moment. It +must have the same wholeness which nature has. Although no diligence can +rebuild the universe in a model by the best accumulation or disposition +of details, yet does the world reappear in miniature in every event, +so that all the laws of nature may be read in the smallest fact. The +intellect must have the like perfection in its apprehension and in its +works. For this reason, an index or mercury of intellectual proficiency +is the perception of identity. We talk with accomplished persons who +appear to be strangers in nature. The cloud, the tree, the turf, the +bird are not theirs, have nothing of them; the world is only their +lodging and table. But the poet, whose verses are to be spheral +and complete, is one whom Nature cannot deceive, whatsoever face of +strangeness she may put on. He feels a strict consanguinity, and detects +more likeness than variety in all her changes. We are stung by the +desire for new thought; but when we receive a new thought it is only the +old thought with a new face, and though we make it our own we instantly +crave another; we are not really enriched. For the truth was in us +before it was reflected to us from natural objects; and the profound +genius will cast the likeness of all creatures into every product of his +wit. + +But if the constructive powers are rare and it is given to few men to +be poets, yet every man is a receiver of this descending holy ghost, +and may well study the laws of its influx. Exactly parallel is the whole +rule of intellectual duty to the rule of moral duty. A self-denial +no less austere than the saint's is demanded of the scholar. He must +worship truth, and forego all things for that, and choose defeat and +pain, so that his treasure in thought is thereby augmented. + +God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which +you please,--you can never have both. Between these, as a pendulum, man +oscillates. He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept +the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party +he meets,--most likely his father's. He gets rest, commodity, and +reputation; but he shuts the door of truth. He in whom the love of truth +predominates will keep himself aloof from all moorings, and afloat. He +will abstain from dogmatism, and recognize all the opposite negations +between which, as walls, his being is swung. He submits to the +inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion, but he is a candidate +for truth, as the other is not, and respects the highest law of his +being. + +The circle of the green earth he must measure with his shoes to find the +man who can yield him truth. He shall then know that there is somewhat +more blessed and great in hearing than in speaking. Happy is the hearing +man; unhappy the speaking man. As long as I hear truth I am bathed by a +beautiful element and am not conscious of any limits to my nature. The +suggestions are thousandfold that I hear and see. The waters of the +great deep have ingress and egress to the soul. But if I speak, I +define, I confine and am less. When Socrates speaks, Lysis and Menexenus +are afflicted by no shame that they do not speak. They also are good. +He likewise defers to them, loves them, whilst he speaks. Because a true +and natural man contains and is the same truth which an eloquent man +articulates; but in the eloquent man, because he can articulate it, +it seems something the less to reside, and he turns to these silent +beautiful with the more inclination and respect. The ancient sentence +said, Let us be silent, for so are the gods. Silence is a solvent that +destroys personality, and gives us leave to be great and universal. +Every man's progress is through a succession of teachers, each of whom +seems at the time to have a superlative influence, but it at last gives +place to a new. Frankly let him accept it all. Jesus says, Leave father, +mother, house and lands, and follow me. Who leaves all, receives more. +This is as true intellectually as morally. Each new mind we approach +seems to require an abdication of all our past and present possessions. +A new doctrine seems at first a subversion of all our opinions, tastes, +and manner of living. Such has Swedenborg, such has Kant, such has +Coleridge, such has Hegel or his interpreter Cousin seemed to many young +men in this country. Take thankfully and heartily all they can give. +Exhaust them, wrestle with them, let them not go until their blessing be +won, and after a short season the dismay will be overpast, the excess of +influence withdrawn, and they will be no longer an alarming meteor, but +one more bright star shining serenely in your heaven and blending its +light with all your day. + +But whilst he gives himself up unreservedly to that which draws him, +because that is his own, he is to refuse himself to that which draws him +not, whatsoever fame and authority may attend it, because it is not +his own. Entire self-reliance belongs to the intellect. One soul is a +counterpoise of all souls, as a capillary column of water is a balance +for the sea. It must treat things and books and sovereign genius as +itself also a sovereign. If Aeschylus be that man he is taken for, he +has not yet done his office when he has educated the learned of Europe +for a thousand years. He is now to approve himself a master of delight +to me also. If he cannot do that, all his fame shall avail him nothing +with me. I were a fool not to sacrifice a thousand Aeschyluses to my +intellectual integrity. Especially take the same ground in regard to +abstract truth, the science of the mind. The Bacon, the Spinoza, the +Hume, Schelling, Kant, or whosoever propounds to you a philosophy of +the mind, is only a more or less awkward translator of things in +your consciousness which you have also your way of seeing, perhaps of +denominating. Say then, instead of too timidly poring into his +obscure sense, that he has not succeeded in rendering back to you your +consciousness. He has not succeeded; now let another try. If Plato +cannot, perhaps Spinoza will. If Spinoza cannot, then perhaps Kant. +Anyhow, when at last it is done, you will find it is no recondite, but a +simple, natural, common state which the writer restores to you. + +But let us end these didactics. I will not, though the subject might +provoke it, speak to the open question between Truth and Love. I +shall not presume to interfere in the old politics of the skies;--"The +cherubim know most; the seraphim love most." The gods shall settle +their own quarrels. But I cannot recite, even thus rudely, laws of the +intellect, without remembering that lofty and sequestered class of men +who have been its prophets and oracles, the high-priesthood of the pure +reason, the Trismegisti, the expounders of the principles of thought +from age to age. When at long intervals we turn over their abstruse +pages, wonderful seems the calm and grand air of these few, these +great spiritual lords who have walked in the world,--these of the +old religion,--dwelling in a worship which makes the sanctities of +Christianity look parvenues and popular; for "persuasion is in soul, but +necessity is in intellect." This band of grandees, Hermes, Heraclitus, +Empedocles, Plato, Plotinus, Olympiodorus, Proclus, Synesius and +the rest, have somewhat so vast in their logic, so primary in their +thinking, that it seems antecedent to all the ordinary distinctions of +rhetoric and literature, and to be at once poetry and music and dancing +and astronomy and mathematics. I am present at the sowing of the seed of +the world. With a geometry of sunbeams the soul lays the foundations of +nature. The truth and grandeur of their thought is proved by its scope +and applicability, for it commands the entire schedule and inventory of +things for its illustration. But what marks its elevation and has even +a comic look to us, is the innocent serenity with which these babe-like +Jupiters sit in their clouds, and from age to age prattle to each other +and to no contemporary. Well assured that their speech is intelligible +and the most natural thing in the world, they add thesis to thesis, +without a moment's heed of the universal astonishment of the human race +below, who do not comprehend their plainest argument; nor do they +ever relent so much as to insert a popular or explaining sentence, +nor testify the least displeasure or petulance at the dulness of their +amazed auditory. The angels are so enamored of the language that is +spoken in heaven that they will not distort their lips with the hissing +and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any +who understand it or not. + +***** + + + + ART. + + GIVE to barrows trays and pans + Grace and glimmer of romance, + Bring the moonlight into noon + Hid in gleaming piles of stone; + On the city's paved street + Plant gardens lined with lilac sweet, + Let spouting fountains cool the air, + Singing in the sun-baked square. + Let statue, picture, park and hall, + Ballad, flag and festival, + The past restore, the day adorn + And make each morrow a new morn + So shall the drudge in dusty frock + Spy behind the city clock + Retinues of airy kings, + Skirts of angels, starry wings, + His fathers shining in bright fables, + His children fed at heavenly tables. + 'Tis the privilege of Art + Thus to play its cheerful part, + Man in Earth to acclimate + And bend the exile to his fate, + And, moulded of one element + With the days and firmament, + Teach him on these as stairs to climb + And live on even terms with Time; + Whilst upper life the slender rill + Of human sense doth overfill. + + + + +XII. ART. + +Because the soul is progressive, it never quite repeats itself, but +in every act attempts the production of a new and fairer whole. This +appears in works both of the useful and the fine arts, if we employ the +popular distinction of works according to their aim either at use or +beauty. Thus in our fine arts, not imitation but creation is the aim. In +landscapes the painter should give the suggestion of a fairer creation +than we know. The details, the prose of nature he should omit and give +us only the spirit and splendor. He should know that the landscape has +beauty for his eye because it expresses a thought which is to him good; +and this because the same power which sees through his eyes is seen in +that spectacle; and he will come to value the expression of nature and +not nature itself, and so exalt in his copy the features that please +him. He will give the gloom of gloom and the sunshine of sunshine. In a +portrait he must inscribe the character and not the features, and must +esteem the man who sits to him as himself only an imperfect picture or +likeness of the aspiring original within. + +What is that abridgment and selection we observe in all spiritual +activity, but itself the creative impulse? for it is the inlet of that +higher illumination which teaches to convey a larger sense by simpler +symbols. What is a man but nature's finer success in self-explication? +What is a man but a finer and compacter landscape than the horizon +figures,--nature's eclecticism? and what is his speech, his love of +painting, love of nature, but a still finer success,--all the weary +miles and tons of space and bulk left out, and the spirit or moral of +it contracted into a musical word, or the most cunning stroke of the +pencil? + +But the artist must employ the symbols in use in his day and nation +to convey his enlarged sense to his fellow-men. Thus the new in art +is always formed out of the old. The Genius of the Hour sets his +ineffaceable seal on the work and gives it an inexpressible charm +for the imagination. As far as the spiritual character of the period +overpowers the artist and finds expression in his work, so far it will +retain a certain grandeur, and will represent to future beholders the +Unknown, the Inevitable, the Divine. No man can quite exclude this +element of Necessity from his labor. No man can quite emancipate himself +from his age and country, or produce a model in which the education, +the religion, the politics, usages and arts of his times shall have no +share. Though he were never so original, never so wilful and fantastic, +he cannot wipe out of his work every trace of the thoughts amidst which +it grew. The very avoidance betrays the usage he avoids. Above his will +and out of his sight he is necessitated by the air he breathes and the +idea on which he and his contemporaries live and toil, to share the +manner of his times, without knowing what that manner is. Now that which +is inevitable in the work has a higher charm than individual talent can +ever give, inasmuch as the artist's pen or chisel seems to have been +held and guided by a gigantic hand to inscribe a line in the history +of the human race. This circumstance gives a value to the Egyptian +hieroglyphics, to the Indian, Chinese and Mexican idols, however gross +and shapeless. They denote the height of the human soul in that hour, +and were not fantastic, but sprung from a necessity as deep as the +world. Shall I now add that the whole extant product of the plastic +arts has herein its highest value, as history; as a stroke drawn in +the portrait of that fate, perfect and beautiful, according to whose +ordinations all beings advance to their beatitude? + +Thus, historically viewed, it has been the office of art to educate the +perception of beauty. We are immersed in beauty, but our eyes have no +clear vision. It needs, by the exhibition of single traits, to assist +and lead the dormant taste. We carve and paint, or we behold what is +carved and painted, as students of the mystery of Form. The virtue of +art lies in detachment, in sequestering one object from the embarrassing +variety. Until one thing comes out from the connection of things, there +can be enjoyment, contemplation, but no thought. Our happiness and +unhappiness are unproductive. The infant lies in a pleasing trance, but +his individual character and his practical power depend on his daily +progress in the separation of things, and dealing with one at a time. +Love and all the passions concentrate all existence around a single +form. It is the habit of certain minds to give an all-excluding fulness +to the object, the thought, the word, they alight upon, and to make +that for the time the deputy of the world. These are the artists, the +orators, the leaders of society. The power to detach and to magnify by +detaching is the essence of rhetoric in the hands of the orator and +the poet. This rhetoric, or power to fix the momentary eminency of an +object,--so remarkable in Burke, in Byron, in Carlyle,--the painter and +sculptor exhibit in color and in stone. The power depends on the depth +of the artist's insight of that object he contemplates. For every object +has its roots in central nature, and may of course be so exhibited to us +as to represent the world. Therefore each work of genius is the tyrant +of the hour and concentrates attention on itself. For the time, it is +the only thing worth naming to do that,--be it a sonnet, an opera, a +landscape, a statue, an oration, the plan of a temple, of a campaign, or +of a voyage of discovery. Presently we pass to some other object, which +rounds itself into a whole as did the first; for example a well-laid +garden; and nothing seems worth doing but the laying out of gardens. I +should think fire the best thing in the world, if I were not acquainted +with air, and water, and earth. For it is the right and property of +all natural objects, of all genuine talents, of all native properties +whatsoever, to be for their moment the top of the world. A squirrel +leaping from bough to bough and making the Wood but one wide tree +for his pleasure, fills the eye not less than a lion,--is beautiful, +self-sufficing, and stands then and there for nature. A good ballad +draws my ear and heart whilst I listen, as much as an epic has done +before. A dog, drawn by a master, or a litter of pigs, satisfies and is +a reality not less than the frescoes of Angelo. From this succession +of excellent objects we learn at last the immensity of the world, +the opulence of human nature, which can run out to infinitude in any +direction. But I also learn that what astonished and fascinated me in +the first work astonished me in the second work also; that excellence of +all things is one. + +The office of painting and sculpture seems to be merely initial. The +best pictures can easily tell us their last secret. The best pictures +are rude draughts of a few of the miraculous dots and lines and dyes +which make up the ever-changing "landscape with figures" amidst which +we dwell. Painting seems to be to the eye what dancing is to the limbs. +When that has educated the frame to self-possession, to nimbleness, to +grace, the steps of the dancing-master are better forgotten; so painting +teaches me the splendor of color and the expression of form, and as +I see many pictures and higher genius in the art, I see the boundless +opulence of the pencil, the indifferency in which the artist stands free +to choose out of the possible forms. If he can draw every thing, why +draw any thing? and then is my eye opened to the eternal picture which +nature paints in the street, with moving men and children, beggars and +fine ladies, draped in red and green and blue and gray; long-haired, +grizzled, white-faced, black-faced, wrinkled, giant, dwarf, expanded, +elfish,--capped and based by heaven, earth and sea. + +A gallery of sculpture teaches more austerely the same lesson. As +picture teaches the coloring, so sculpture the anatomy of form. When +I have seen fine statues and afterwards enter a public assembly, I +understand well what he meant who said, "When I have been reading Homer, +all men look like giants." I too see that painting and sculpture are +gymnastics of the eye, its training to the niceties and curiosities of +its function. There is no statue like this living man, with his infinite +advantage over all ideal sculpture, of perpetual variety. What a gallery +of art have I here! No mannerist made these varied groups and diverse +original single figures. Here is the artist himself improvising, grim +and glad, at his block. Now one thought strikes him, now another, and +with each moment he alters the whole air, attitude and expression of his +clay. Away with your nonsense of oil and easels, of marble and chisels; +except to open your eyes to the masteries of eternal art, they are +hypocritical rubbish. + +The reference of all production at last to an aboriginal Power explains +the traits common to all works of the highest art,--that they are +universally intelligible; that they restore to us the simplest states +of mind, and are religious. Since what skill is therein shown is the +reappearance of the original soul, a jet of pure light, it should +produce a similar impression to that made by natural objects. In happy +hours, nature appears to us one with art; art perfected,--the work of +genius. And the individual, in whom simple tastes and susceptibility to +all the great human influences overpower the accidents of a local and +special culture, is the best critic of art. Though we travel the world +over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not. +The best of beauty is a finer charm than skill in surfaces, in outlines, +or rules of art can ever teach, namely a radiation from the work of art +of human character,--a wonderful expression through stone, or canvas, or +musical sound, of the deepest and simplest attributes of our nature, +and therefore most intelligible at last to those souls which have these +attributes. In the sculptures of the Greeks, in the masonry of the +Romans, and in the pictures of the Tuscan and Venetian masters, the +highest charm is the universal language they speak. A confession of +moral nature, of purity, love, and hope, breathes from them all. That +which we carry to them, the same we bring back more fairly illustrated +in the memory. The traveller who visits the Vatican, and passes from +chamber to chamber through galleries of statues, vases, sarcophagi and +candelabra, through all forms of beauty cut in the richest materials, +is in danger of forgetting the simplicity of the principles out of which +they all sprung, and that they had their origin from thoughts and laws +in his own breast. He studies the technical rules on these wonderful +remains, but forgets that these works were not always thus constellated; +that they are the contributions of many ages and many countries; that +each came out of the solitary workshop of one artist, who toiled perhaps +in ignorance of the existence of other sculpture, created his work +without other model save life, household life, and the sweet and smart +of personal relations, of beating hearts, and meeting eyes; of poverty +and necessity and hope and fear. These were his inspirations, and these +are the effects he carries home to your heart and mind. In proportion +to his force, the artist will find in his work an outlet for his proper +character. He must not be in any manner pinched or hindered by his +material, but through his necessity of imparting himself the adamant +will be wax in his hands, and will allow an adequate communication of +himself, in his full stature and proportion. He need not cumber himself +with a conventional nature and culture, nor ask what is the mode in +Rome or in Paris, but that house and weather and manner of living which +poverty and the fate of birth have made at once so odious and so dear, +in the gray unpainted wood cabin, on the corner of a New Hampshire farm, +or in the log-hut of the backwoods, or in the narrow lodging where he +has endured the constraints and seeming of a city poverty, will serve +as well as any other condition as the symbol of a thought which pours +itself indifferently through all. + +I remember when in my younger days I had heard of the wonders of Italian +painting, I fancied the great pictures would be great strangers; some +surprising combination of color and form; a foreign wonder, barbaric +pearl and gold, like the spontoons and standards of the militia, which +play such pranks in the eyes and imaginations of school-boys. I was to +see and acquire I knew not what. When I came at last to Rome and saw +with eyes the pictures, I found that genius left to novices the gay and +fantastic and ostentatious, and itself pierced directly to the simple +and true; that it was familiar and sincere; that it was the old, eternal +fact I had met already in so many forms,--unto which I lived; that it +was the plain you and me I knew so well,--had left at home in so many +conversations. I had the same experience already in a church at Naples. +There I saw that nothing was changed with me but the place, and said +to myself--'Thou foolish child, hast thou come out hither, over four +thousand miles of salt water, to find that which was perfect to thee +there at home?' That fact I saw again in the Academmia at Naples, in +the chambers of sculpture, and yet again when I came to Rome and to the +paintings of Raphael, Angelo, Sacchi, Titian, and Leonardo da Vinci. +"What, old mole! workest thou in the earth so fast?" It had travelled +by my side; that which I fancied I had left in Boston was here in +the Vatican, and again at Milan and at Paris, and made all travelling +ridiculous as a treadmill. I now require this of all pictures, that +they domesticate me, not that they dazzle me. Pictures must not be too +picturesque. Nothing astonishes men so much as common-sense and plain +dealing. All great actions have been simple, and all great pictures are. + +The Transfiguration, by Raphael, is an eminent example of this peculiar +merit. A calm benignant beauty shines over all this picture, and goes +directly to the heart. It seems almost to call you by name. The sweet +and sublime face of Jesus is beyond praise, yet how it disappoints all +florid expectations! This familiar, simple, home-speaking countenance is +as if one should meet a friend. The knowledge of picture-dealers has its +value, but listen not to their criticism when your heart is touched by +genius. It was not painted for them, it was painted for you; for such as +had eyes capable of being touched by simplicity and lofty emotions. + +Yet when we have said all our fine things about the arts, we must +end with a frank confession, that the arts, as we know them, are but +initial. Our best praise is given to what they aimed and promised, not +to the actual result. He has conceived meanly of the resources of man, +who believes that the best age of production is past. The real value +of the Iliad or the Transfiguration is as signs of power; billows or +ripples they are of the stream of tendency; tokens of the everlasting +effort to produce, which even in its worst estate the soul betrays. Art +has not yet come to its maturity if it do not put itself abreast with +the most potent influences of the world, if it is not practical and +moral, if it do not stand in connection with the conscience, if it do +not make the poor and uncultivated feel that it addresses them with a +voice of lofty cheer. There is higher work for Art than the arts. They +are abortive births of an imperfect or vitiated instinct. Art is +the need to create; but in its essence, immense and universal, it is +impatient of working with lame or tied hands, and of making cripples and +monsters, such as all pictures and statues are. Nothing less than the +creation of man and nature is its end. A man should find in it an outlet +for his whole energy. He may paint and carve only as long as he can do +that. Art should exhilarate, and throw down the walls of circumstance +on every side, awakening in the beholder the same sense of universal +relation and power which the work evinced in the artist, and its highest +effect is to make new artists. + +Already History is old enough to witness the old age and disappearance +of particular arts. The art of sculpture is long ago perished to any +real effect. It was originally a useful art, a mode of writing, a +savage's record of gratitude or devotion, and among a people possessed +of a wonderful perception of form this childish carving was refined to +the utmost splendor of effect. But it is the game of a rude and youthful +people, and not the manly labor of a wise and spiritual nation. Under an +oak-tree loaded with leaves and nuts, under a sky full of eternal eyes, +I stand in a thoroughfare; but in the works of our plastic arts and +especially of sculpture, creation is driven into a corner. I cannot hide +from myself that there is a certain appearance of paltriness, as of toys +and the trumpery of a theatre, in sculpture. Nature transcends all our +moods of thought, and its secret we do not yet find. But the gallery +stands at the mercy of our moods, and there is a moment when it becomes +frivolous. I do not wonder that Newton, with an attention habitually +engaged on the paths of planets and suns, should have wondered what the +Earl of Pembroke found to admire in "stone dolls." Sculpture may serve +to teach the pupil how deep is the secret of form, how purely the spirit +can translate its meanings into that eloquent dialect. But the statue +will look cold and false before that new activity which needs to roll +through all things, and is impatient of counterfeits and things not +alive. Picture and sculpture are the celebrations and festivities of +form. But true art is never fixed, but always flowing. The sweetest +music is not in the oratorio, but in the human voice when it speaks from +its instant life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage. The oratorio +has already lost its relation to the morning, to the sun, and the earth, +but that persuading voice is in tune with these. All works of art should +not be detached, but extempore performances. A great man is a new statue +in every attitude and action. A beautiful woman is a picture which +drives all beholders nobly mad. Life may be lyric or epic, as well as a +poem or a romance. + +A true announcement of the law of creation, if a man were found worthy +to declare it, would carry art up into the kingdom of nature, and +destroy its separate and contrasted existence. The fountains of +invention and beauty in modern society are all but dried up. A popular +novel, a theatre, or a ball-room makes us feel that we are all paupers +in the alms-house of this world, without dignity, without skill or +industry. Art is as poor and low. The old tragic Necessity, which lowers +on the brows even of the Venuses and the Cupids of the antique, and +furnishes the sole apology for the intrusion of such anomalous figures +into nature,--namely, that they were inevitable; that the artist was +drunk with a passion for form which he could not resist, and which +vented itself in these fine extravagances,--no longer dignifies the +chisel or the pencil. But the artist and the connoisseur now seek in art +the exhibition of their talent, or an asylum from the evils of life. +Men are not well pleased with the figure they make in their own +imaginations, and they flee to art, and convey their better sense in +an oratorio, a statue, or a picture. Art makes the same effort which +a sensual prosperity makes; namely to detach the beautiful from the +useful, to do up the work as unavoidable, and, hating it, pass on to +enjoyment. These solaces and compensations, this division of beauty from +use, the laws of nature do not permit. As soon as beauty is sought, not +from religion and love but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker. High +beauty is no longer attainable by him in canvas or in stone, in sound, +or in lyrical construction; an effeminate, prudent, sickly beauty, which +is not beauty, is all that can be formed; for the hand can never execute +any thing higher than the character can inspire. + +The art that thus separates is itself first separated. Art must not be +a superficial talent, but must begin farther back in man. Now men do not +see nature to be beautiful, and they go to make a statue which shall +be. They abhor men as tasteless, dull, and inconvertible, and console +themselves with color-bags and blocks of marble. They reject life as +prosaic, and create a death which they call poetic. They despatch the +day's weary chores, and fly to voluptuous reveries. They eat and drink, +that they may afterwards execute the ideal. Thus is art vilified; the +name conveys to the mind its secondary and bad senses; it stands in the +imagination as somewhat contrary to nature, and struck with death from +the first. Would it not be better to begin higher up,--to serve the +ideal before they eat and drink; to serve the ideal in eating and +drinking, in drawing the breath, and in the functions of life? Beauty +must come back to the useful arts, and the distinction between the fine +and the useful arts be forgotten. If history were truly told, if life +were nobly spent, it would be no longer easy or possible to distinguish +the one from the other. In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It +is therefore beautiful because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it +is therefore useful because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will +not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or +America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and +spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men. It is in vain that +we look for genius to reiterate its miracles in the old arts; it is its +instinct to find beauty and holiness in new and necessary facts, in the +field and road-side, in the shop and mill. Proceeding from a religious +heart it will raise to a divine use the railroad, the insurance office, +the joint-stock company; our law, our primary assemblies, our commerce, +the galvanic battery, the electric jar, the prism, and the chemist's +retort; in which we seek now only an economical use. Is not the selfish +and even cruel aspect which belongs to our great mechanical works, to +mills, railways, and machinery, the effect of the mercenary impulses +which these works obey? When its errands are noble and adequate, a +steamboat bridging the Atlantic between Old and New England and arriving +at its ports with the punctuality of a planet, is a step of man into +harmony with nature. The boat at St. Petersburg, which plies along the +Lena by magnetism, needs little to make it sublime. When science is +learned in love, and its powers are wielded by love, they will appear +the supplements and continuations of the material creation. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Essays, First Series, by Ralph Waldo Emerson + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS, FIRST SERIES *** + +***** This file should be named 2944.txt or 2944.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/4/2944/ + +Produced by Tony Adam + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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