Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Capítulo 1

1907

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

LIFE OF EMERSON

CRITICAL OPINIONS

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF PRINCIPAL WORKS

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

COMPENSATION

SELF RELIANCE

FRIENDSHIP

HEROISM

MANNERS

GIFTS

NATURE

SHAKESPEARE; OR, THE POET

PRUDENCE

CIRCLES

NOTES

PUBLISHERS' NOTE

Merrill's English Texts

This series of books will include in complete editions those

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will characterize the editing of every book in the series.

In connection with each text, a critical and historical introduction,

including a sketch of the life of the author and his relation to the

thought of his time, critical opinions of the work in question chosen

from the great body of English criticism, and, where possible, a

portrait of the author, will be given. Ample explanatory notes of such

passages in the text as call for special attention will be supplied,

but irrelevant annotation and explanations of the obvious will be

rigidly excluded.

CHARLES E. MERRILL CO.

LIFE OF EMERSON

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, May 25, 1803. He was descended

from a long line of New England ministers, men of refinement and

education. As a school-boy he was quiet and retiring, reading a great

deal, but not paying much attention to his lessons. He entered Harvard

at the early age of fourteen, but never attained a high rank there,

although he took a prize for an essay on Socrates, and was made class

poet after several others had declined. Next to his reserve and the

faultless propriety of his conduct, his contemporaries at college

seemed most impressed by the great maturity of his mind. Emerson

appears never to have been really a boy. He was always serene and

thoughtful, impressing all who knew him with that spirituality which

was his most distinguishing characteristic.

After graduating from college he taught school for a time, and then

entered the Harvard Divinity School under Dr. Channing, the great

Unitarian preacher. Although he was not strong enough to attend all

the lectures of the divinity course, the college authorities deemed

the name Emerson sufficient passport to the ministry. He was

accordingly "approbated to preach" by the Middlesex Association of

Ministers on October 10, 1826. As a preacher, Emerson was interesting,

though not particularly original. His talent seems to have been in

giving new meaning to the old truths of religion. One of his hearers

has said: "In looking back on his preaching I find he has impressed

truths to which I always assented in such a manner as to make them

appear new, like a clearer revelation." Although his sermons were

always couched in scriptural language, they were touched with the

light of that genius which avoids the conventional and commonplace. In

his other pastoral duties Emerson was not quite so successful. It is

characteristic of his deep humanity and his dislike for all fuss and

commonplace that he appeared to least advantage at a funeral. A

connoisseur in such matters, an old sexton, once remarked that on such

occasions "he did not appear at ease at all. To tell the truth, in my

opinion, that young man was not born to be a minister."

Emerson did not long remain a minister. In 1832 he preached a sermon

in which he announced certain views in regard to the communion service

which were disapproved by a large part of his congregation. He found

it impossible to continue preaching, and, with the most friendly

feelings on both sides, he parted from his congregation.

A few months later (1833) he went to Europe for a short year of

travel. While abroad, he visited Walter Savage Landor, Coleridge and

Wordsworth, and Thomas Carlyle. This visit to Carlyle was to both men

a most interesting experience. They parted feeling that they had much

intellectually in common. This belief fostered a sympathy which, by

the time they had discovered how different they really were, had grown

so strong a habit that they always kept up their intimacy. This year

of travel opened Emerson's eyes to many things of which he had

previously been ignorant; he had profited by detachment from the

concerns of a limited community and an isolated church.

After his return he began to find his true field of activity in the

lecture-hall, and delivered a number of addresses in Boston and its

vicinity. While thus coming before the open public on the lecture

platform, he was all the time preparing the treatise which was to

embody all the quintessential elements of his philosophical doctrine.

This was the essay Nature, which was published in 1836. By its

conception of external Nature as an incarnation of the Divine Mind it

struck the fundamental principle of Emerson's religious belief. The

essay had a very small circulation at first, though later it became

widely known.

In the winter of 1836 Emerson followed up his discourse on Nature by a

course of twelve lectures on the "Philosophy of History," a

considerable portion of which eventually became embodied in his

essays. The next year (1837) was the year of the delivery of the Man

Thinking, or the American Scholar address before the Phi Beta Kappa

Society at Cambridge.

This society, composed of the first twenty-five men in each class

graduating from college, has annual meetings which have called forth

the best efforts of many distinguished scholars and thinkers.

Emerson's address was listened to with the most profound interest. It

declared a sort of intellectual independence for America. Henceforth

we were to be emancipated from clogging foreign influences, and a

national literature was to expand under the fostering care of the

Republic.

These two discourses, Nature and The American Scholar, strike the

keynote of Emerson's philosophical, poetical, and moral teachings. In

fact he had, as every great teacher has, only a limited number of

principles and theories to teach. These principles of life can all be

enumerated in twenty words--self-reliance, culture, intellectual and

moral independence, the divinity of nature and man, the necessity of

labor, and high ideals.

Emerson spent the latter part of his life in lecturing and in literary

work. His son, Dr. Edward Emerson, gave an interesting account of how

these lectures were constructed. "All through his life he kept a

journal. This book, he said, was his 'Savings Bank.' The thoughts thus

received and garnered in his journals were indexed, and a great many

of them appeared in his published works. They were religiously set

down just as they came, in no order except chronological, but later

they were grouped, enlarged or pruned, illustrated, worked into a

lecture or discourse, and, after having in this capacity undergone

repeated testing and rearranging, were finally carefully sifted and

more rigidly pruned, and were printed as essays."

Besides his essays and lectures Emerson left some poetry in which is

embodied those thoughts which were to him too deep for prose

expression. Oliver Wendell Holmes in speaking of this says: "Emerson

wrote occasionally in verse from his school-days until he had reached

the age which used to be known as the grand climacteric,

sixty-three.... His poems are not and hardly can become popular; they

are not meant to be liked by the many, but to be dearly loved and

cherished by the few.... His occasional lawlessness in technical

construction, his somewhat fantastic expressions, his enigmatic

obscurities hardly detract from the pleasant surprise his verses so

often bring with them.... The poetic license which we allow in the

verse of Emerson is more than excused by the noble spirit which makes

us forget its occasional blemishes, sometimes to be pleased with them

as characteristic of the writer."

Emerson was always a striking figure in the intellectual life of

America. His discourses were above all things inspiring. Through them

many were induced to strive for a higher self-culture. His influence

can be discerned in all the literary movements of the time. He was the

central figure of the so-called transcendental school which was so

prominent fifty years ago, although he always rather held aloof from

any enthusiastic participation in the movement.

Emerson lived a quiet life in Concord, Massachusetts. "He was a

first-rate neighbor and one who always kept his fences up." He

traveled extensively on his lecturing tours, even going as far as

England. In English Traits he has recorded his impressions of what

he saw of English life and manners.

Oliver Wendell Holmes has described him in this wise: "His personal

appearance was that of the typical New Englander of college-bred

ancestry. Tall, spare, slender, with sloping shoulders, slightly

stooping in his later years, with light hair and eyes, the scholar's

complexion, the prominent, somewhat arched nose which belongs to many

of the New England sub-species, thin lips, suggestive of delicacy, but

having nothing like primness, still less of the rigidity which is

often noticeable in the generation succeeding next to that of the men

in their shirt-sleeves, he would have been noticed anywhere as one

evidently a scholarly thinker astray from the alcove or the study,

which were his natural habitats. His voice was very sweet, and

penetrating without any loudness or mark of effort. His enunciation

was beautifully clear, but he often hesitated as if waiting for the

right word to present itself. His manner was very quiet, his smile was

pleasant, but he did not like explosive laughter any better than

Hawthorne did. None who met him can fail to recall that serene and

kindly presence, in which there was mingled a certain spiritual

remoteness with the most benignant human welcome to all who were

privileged to enjoy his companionship."

Emerson died April 27, 1882, after a few days' illness from pneumonia.

Dr. Garnett in his excellent biography says: "Seldom had 'the reaper

whose name is Death' gathered such illustrious harvest as between

December 1880 and April 1882. In the first month of this period George

Eliot passed away, in the ensuing February Carlyle followed; in April

Lord Beaconsfield died, deplored by his party, nor unregretted by his

country; in February of the following year Longfellow was carried to

the tomb; in April Rossetti was laid to rest by the sea, and the

pavement of Westminster Abbey was disturbed to receive the dust of

Darwin. And now Emerson lay down in death beside the painter of man

and the searcher of nature, the English-Oriental statesman, the poet

of the plain man and the poet of the artist, and the prophet whose

name is indissolubly linked with his own. All these men passed into

eternity laden with the spoils of Time, but of none of them could it

be said, as of Emerson, that the most shining intellectual glory and

the most potent intellectual force of a continent had departed along

with him."

CRITICAL OPINIONS OF EMERSON AND HIS WRITINGS.

Matthew Arnold, in an address on Emerson delivered in Boston, gave

an excellent estimate of the rank we should accord to him in the great

hierarchy of letters. Some, perhaps, will think that Arnold was

unappreciative and cold, but dispassionate readers will be inclined to

agree with his judgment of our great American.

After a review of the poetical works of Emerson the English critic

draws his conclusions as follows:

"I do not then place Emerson among the great poets. But I go farther,

and say that I do not place him among the great writers, the great men

of letters. Who are the great men of letters? They are men like

Cicero, Plato, Bacon, Pascal, Swift, Voltaire--writers with, in the

first place, a genius and instinct for style.... Brilliant and

powerful passages in a man's writings do not prove his possession of

it. Emerson has passages of noble and pathetic eloquence; he has

passages of shrewd and felicitous wit; he has crisp epigram; he has

passages of exquisitely touched observation of nature. Yet he is not a

great writer.... Carlyle formulates perfectly the defects of his

friend's poetic and literary productions when he says: 'For me it is

too ethereal, speculative, theoretic; I will have all things condense

themselves, take shape and body, if they are to have my sympathy.' ...

".... Not with the Miltons and Grays, not with the Platos and Spinozas,

not with the Swifts and Voltaires, not with the Montaignes and

Addisons, can we rank Emerson. No man could see this clearer than

Emerson himself. 'Alas, my friend,' he writes in reply to Carlyle, who

had exhorted him to creative work,--'Alas, my friend, I can do no such

gay thing as you say. I do not belong to the poets, but only to a low

department of literature,--the reporters; suburban men.' He deprecated

his friend's praise; praise 'generous to a fault' he calls it; praise

'generous to the shaming of me,--cold, fastidious, ebbing person that

I am.'"

After all this unfavorable criticism Arnold begins to praise. Quoting

passages from the Essays, he adds:

"This is tonic indeed! And let no one object that it is too general;

that more practical, positive direction is what we want.... Yes,

truly, his insight is admirable; his truth is precious. Yet the secret

of his effect is not even in these; it is in his temper. It is in the

hopeful, serene, beautiful temper wherewith these, in Emerson, are

indissolubly united; in which they work and have their being.... One

can scarcely overrate the importance of holding fast to happiness and

hope. It gives to Emerson's work an invaluable virtue. As Wordsworth's

poetry is, in my judgment, the most important done in verse, in our

language, during the present century, so Emerson's Essays are, I

think, the most important work done in prose.... But by his conviction

that in the life of the spirit is happiness, and by his hope that this

life of the spirit will come more and more to be sanely understood,

and to prevail, and to work for happiness,--by this conviction and

hope Emerson was great, and he will surely prove in the end to have

been right in them.... You cannot prize him too much, nor heed him too

diligently."

Herman Grimm, a German critic of great influence in his own country,

did much to obtain a hearing for Emerson's works in Germany. At first

the Germans could not understand the unusual English, the unaccustomed

turns of phrase which are so characteristic of Emerson's style.

"Macaulay gives them no difficulty; even Carlyle is comprehended. But

in Emerson's writings the broad turnpike is suddenly changed into a

hazardous sandy foot-path. His thoughts and his style are American. He

is not writing for Berlin, but for the people of Massachusetts.... It

is an art to rise above what we have been taught.... All great men are

seen to possess this freedom. They derive their standard from their

own natures, and their observations on life are so natural and

spontaneous that it would seem as if the most illiterate person with a

scrap of common-sense would have made the same.... We become wiser

with them, and know not how the difficult appears easy and the

involved plain.

"Emerson possesses this noble manner of communicating himself. He

inspires me with courage and confidence. He has read and seen but

conceals the labor. I meet in his works plenty of familiar facts, but

he does not employ them to figure up anew the old worn-out problems:

each stands on a new spot and serves for new combinations. From

everything he sees the direct line issuing which connects it with the

focus of life....

".... Emerson's theory is that of the 'sovereignty of the individual.'

To discover what a young man is good for, and to equip him for the

path he is to strike out in life, regardless of any other

consideration, is the great duty to which he calls attention. He makes

men self-reliant. He reveals to the eyes of the idealist the

magnificent results of practical activity, and unfolds before the

realist the grandeur of the ideal world of thought. No man is to allow

himself, through prejudice, to make a mistake in choosing the task to

which he will devote his life. Emerson's essays are, as it were,

printed sermons--all having this same text.... The wealth and harmony

of his language overpowered and entranced me anew. But even now I

cannot say wherein the secret of his influence lies. What he has

written is like life itself--the unbroken thread ever lengthened

through the addition of the small events which make up each day's

experience."

Froude in his famous "Life of Carlyle" gives an interesting description

of Emerson's visit to the Carlyles in Scotland:

"The Carlyles were sitting alone at dinner on a Sunday afternoon at

the end of August when a Dumfries carriage drove to the door, and

there stepped out of it a young American then unknown to fame, but

whose influence in his own country equals that of Carlyle in ours, and

whose name stands connected with his wherever the English language is

spoken. Emerson, the younger of the two, had just broken his Unitarian

fetters, and was looking out around him like a young eagle longing for

light. He had read Carlyle's articles and had discerned with the

instinct of genius that here was a voice speaking real and fiery

convictions, and no longer echoes and conventionalisms. He had come to

Europe to study its social and spiritual phenomena; and to the young

Emerson as to the old Goethe, the most important of them appeared to

be Carlyle.... The acquaintance then begun to their mutual pleasure

ripened into a deep friendship, which has remained unclouded in spite

of wide divergences of opinion throughout their working lives."

Carlyle wrote to his mother after Emerson had left:

"Our third happiness was the arrival of a certain young unknown friend

named Emerson, from Boston, in the United States, who turned aside so

far from his British, French, and Italian travels to see me here! He

had an introduction from Mill and a Frenchman (Baron d'Eichthal's

nephew) whom John knew at Rome. Of course, we could do no other than

welcome him; the rather as he seemed to be one of the most lovable

creatures in himself we had ever looked on. He stayed till next day

with us, and talked and heard to his heart's content, and left us all

really sad to part with him."

In 1841 Carlyle wrote to John Sterling a few words apropos of the

recent publication of Emerson's essays in England:

"I love Emerson's book, not for its detached opinions, not even for

the scheme of the general world he has framed for himself, or any

eminence of talent he has expressed that with, but simply because it

is his own book; because there is a tone of veracity, an unmistakable

air of its being his, and a real utterance of a human soul, not a

mere echo of such. I consider it, in that sense, highly remarkable,

rare, very rare, in these days of ours. Ach Gott! It is frightful to

live among echoes. The few that read the book, I imagine, will get

benefit of it. To America, I sometimes say that Emerson, such as he

is, seems to me like a kind of New Era."

John Morley, the acute English critic, has made an analytic study of

Emerson's style, which may reconcile the reader to some of its

exasperating peculiarities.

"One of the traits that every critic notes in Emerson's writing is

that it is so abrupt, so sudden in its transitions, so discontinuous,

so inconsecutive. Dislike of a sentence that drags made him

unconscious of the quality that French critics name coulant.

Everything is thrown in just as it comes, and sometimes the pell-mell

is enough to persuade us that Pope did not exaggerate when he said

that no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer as the

power of rejecting his own thoughts.... Apart from his difficult

staccato, Emerson is not free from secondary faults. He uses words

that are not only odd, but vicious in construction; he is sometimes

oblique and he is often clumsy; and there is a visible feeling after

epigrams that do not always come. When people say that Emerson's style

must be good and admirable because it fits his thought, they forget

that though it is well that a robe should fit, there is still

something to be said about its cut and fashion.... Yet, as happens to

all fine minds, there came to Emerson ways of expression deeply marked

with character. On every page there is set the strong stamp of

sincerity, and the attraction of a certain artlessness; the most

awkward sentence rings true; and there is often a pure and simple note

that touches us more than if it were the perfection of elaborated

melody. The uncouth procession of the periods discloses the travail of

the thought, and that, too, is a kind of eloquence. An honest reader

easily forgives the rude jolt or unexpected start when it shows a

thinker faithfully working his way along arduous and unworn tracks.

Even at the roughest, Emerson often interjects a delightful cadence.

As he says of Landor, his sentences are cubes which will stand firm,

place them how or where you will. He criticised Swedenborg for being

superfluously explanatory, and having an exaggerated feeling of the

ignorance of men. 'Men take truths of this nature,' said Emerson,

'very fast;' and his own style does no doubt very boldly take this

capacity for granted in us. In 'choice and pith of diction,' again, of

which Mr. Lowell speaks, he hits the mark with a felicity that is

almost his own in this generation. He is terse, concentrated, and free

from the important blunder of mistaking intellectual dawdling for

meditation. Nor in fine does his abruptness ever impede a true

urbanity. The accent is homely and the apparel plain, but his bearing

has a friendliness, a courtesy, a hospitable humanity, which goes

nearer to our hearts than either literary decoration or rhetorical

unction. That modest and lenient fellow-feeling which gave such charm

to his companionship breathes in his gravest writing, and prevents us

from finding any page of it cold or hard or dry."

E.P. Whipple, the well-known American critic, wrote soon after Emerson's

death:

"But 'sweetness and light' are precious and inspiring only so far as

they express the essential sweetness of the disposition of the

thinker, and the essential illuminating power of his intelligence.

Emerson's greatness came from his character. Sweetness and light

streamed from him because they were in him. In everything he

thought, wrote, and did, we feel the presence of a personality as

vigorous and brave as it was sweet, and the particular radical thought

he at any time expressed derived its power to animate and illuminate

other minds from the might of the manhood, which was felt to be within

and behind it. To 'sweetness and light' he therefore added the prime

quality of fearless manliness.

"If the force of Emerson's character was thus inextricably blended

with the force of all his faculties of intellect and imagination, and

the refinement of all his sentiments, we have still to account for the

peculiarities of his genius, and to answer the question, why do we

instinctively apply the epithet 'Emersonian' to every characteristic

passage in his writings? We are told that he was the last in a long

line of clergymen, his ancestors, and that the modern doctrine of

heredity accounts for the impressive emphasis he laid on the moral

sentiment; but that does not solve the puzzle why he unmistakably

differed in his nature and genius from all other Emersons. An

imaginary genealogical chart of descent connecting him with Confucius

or Gautama would be more satisfactory.

"What distinguishes the Emerson was his exceptional genius and

character, that something in him which separated him from all other

Emersons, as it separated him from all other eminent men of letters,

and impressed every intelligent reader with the feeling that he was

not only 'original but aboriginal.' Some traits of his mind and

character may be traced back to his ancestors, but what doctrine of

heredity can give us the genesis of his genius? Indeed, the safest

course to pursue is to quote his own words, and despairingly confess

that it is the nature of genius 'to spring, like the rainbow daughter

of Wonder, from the invisible, to abolish the past, and refuse all

history.'"

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF EMERSON'S PRINCIPAL WORKS.

Nature 1836

Essays (First Series) 1841

Essays (Second Series) 1844

Poems 1847

Miscellanies 1849

Representative Men 1850

English Traits 1856

Conduct of Life 1860

Society and Solitude 1870

Correspondence of Thomas

Carlyle and R.W. Emerson 1883

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR.

This address was delivered at Cambridge in 1837, before the

Harvard Chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, a college

fraternity composed of the first twenty-five men in each

graduating class. The society has annual meetings, which

have been the occasion for addresses from the most

distinguished scholars and thinkers of the day.

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN,

I greet you on the recommencement of our literary year. Our

anniversary is one of hope, and, perhaps, not enough of labor. We do

not meet for games of strength[1] or skill, for the recitation of

histories, tragedies, and odes, like the ancient Greeks; for

parliaments of love and poesy, like the Troubadours;[2] nor for the

advancement of science, like our co-temporaries in the British and

European capitals. Thus far, our holiday has been simply a friendly

sign of the survival of the love of letters amongst a people too busy

to give to letters any more. As such it is precious as the sign of an

indestructible instinct. Perhaps the time is already come when it

ought to be, and will be, something else; when the sluggard intellect

of this continent will look from under its iron lids and fill the

postponed expectation of the world with something better than the

exertions of mechanical skill. Our day of dependence, our long

apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. The

millions that around us are rushing into life cannot always be fed on

the sere remains of foreign harvests.[3] Events, actions arise that

must be sung, that will sing themselves. Who can doubt that poetry

will revive and lead in a new age, as the star in the constellation

Harp, which now flames in our zenith, astronomers announce, shall one

day be the pole-star[4] for a thousand years?

In the light of this hope I accept the topic which not only usage but

the nature of our association seem to prescribe to this day,--the

AMERICAN SCHOLAR. Year by year we come up hither to read one

more chapter of his biography. Let us inquire what new lights, new

events, and more days have thrown on his character, his duties, and

his hopes.

It is one of those fables which out of an unknown antiquity convey an

unlooked-for wisdom, that the gods, in the beginning, divided Man into

men, that he might be more helpful to himself; just as the hand was

divided into fingers, the better to answer its end.[5]

The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sublime; that there is

One Man,--present to all particular men only partially, or through one

faculty; and that you must take the whole society to find the whole

man. Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is

all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and

soldier. In the divided or social state these functions are parceled

out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint[6] of the joint

work, whilst each other performs his. The fable implies that the

individual, to possess himself, must sometimes return from his own

labor to embrace all the other laborers. But, unfortunately, this

original unit, this fountain of power, has been so distributed to

multitudes, has been so minutely subdivided and peddled out, that it

is spilled into drops, and cannot be gathered. The state of society is

one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk and

strut about so many walking monsters,--a good finger, a neck, a

stomach, an elbow, but never a man.

Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. The planter,

who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered

by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel

and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead

of Man on the farm. The tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal worth

to his work, but is ridden[7] by the routine of his craft, and the

soul is subject to dollars. The priest becomes a form; the attorney a

statute-book; the mechanic a machine; the sailor a rope of the ship.

In this distribution of functions the scholar is the delegated

intellect. In the right state he is Man Thinking. In the degenerate

state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker,

or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.

In this view of him, as Man Thinking, the whole theory of his office

is contained. Him Nature solicits with all her placid, all her

monitory pictures.[8] Him the past instructs. Him the future invites.

Is not indeed every man a student, and do not all things exist for the

student's behoof? And, finally, is not the true scholar the only true

master? But as the old oracle said, "All things have two handles:

Beware of the wrong one."[9] In life, too often, the scholar errs with

mankind and forfeits his privilege. Let us see him in his school, and

consider him in reference to the main influences he receives.

* * * * *

I. The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon

the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun;[10] and, after sunset,

Night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows. Every

day, men and women, conversing, beholding and beholden.[11] The scholar

must needs stand wistful and admiring before this great spectacle.

He

must settle its value in his mind. What is nature to him? There is never

a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of

this web of God, but always circular power returning into itself.[12]

Therein it resembles his own spirit, whose beginning, whose ending, he

never can find,--so entire, so boundless. Far too as her splendors

shine, system on system shooting like rays, upward, downward, without

center, without circumference,--in the mass and in the particle, Nature

hastens to render account of herself to the mind. Classification begins.

To the young mind everything is individual, stands by itself. By and by

it finds how to join two things and see in them one nature; then three,

then three thousand; and so, tyrannized over by its own unifying

instinct, it goes on tying things together, diminishing anomalies,

discovering roots running under ground whereby contrary and remote

things cohere and flower out from one stem. It presently learns that

since the dawn of history there has been a constant accumulation and

classifying of facts. But what is classification but the perceiving that

these objects are not chaotic, and are not foreign, but have a law which

is also a law of the human mind? The astronomer discovers that geometry,

a pure abstraction of the human mind, is the measure of planetary

motion. The chemist finds proportions and intelligible method throughout

matter; and science is nothing but the finding of analogy, identity, in

the most remote parts. The ambitious soul sits down before each

refractory fact; one after another reduces all strange constitutions,

all new powers, to their class and their law, and goes on forever to

animate the last fiber of organization, the outskirts of nature, by

insight.

Thus to him, to this school-boy under the bending dome of day, is

suggested that he and it proceed from one Root; one is leaf and one is

flower; relation, sympathy, stirring in every vein. And what is that

root? Is not that the soul of his soul?--A thought too bold?--A dream

too wild? Yet when this spiritual light shall have revealed the law of

more earthly natures,--when he has learned to worship the soul, and to

see that the natural philosophy that now is, is only the first

gropings of its gigantic hand,--he shall look forward to an

ever-expanding knowledge as to a becoming creator.[13] He shall see

that nature is the opposite of the soul, answering to it part for

part. One is seal and one is print. Its beauty is the beauty of his

own mind. Its laws are the laws of his own mind. Nature then becomes

to him the measure of his attainments. So much of nature as he is

ignorant of, so much of his own mind does he not yet possess. And, in

fine, the ancient precept, "Know thyself,"[14] and the modern precept,

"Study nature," become at last one maxim.

* * * * *

II. The next great influence into the spirit of the scholar is the

mind of the Past,--in whatever form, whether of literature, of art, of

institutions, that mind is inscribed. Books are the best type of the

influence of the past, and perhaps we shall get at the truth,--learn

the amount of this influence more conveniently,--by considering their

value alone.

The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the first age received

into him the world around; brooded thereon; gave it the new

arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. It came into him

life; it went out from him truth. It came to him short-lived actions;

it went out from him immortal thoughts. It came to him business; it

went from him poetry. It was dead fact; now, it is quick thought. It

can stand, and it can go. It now endures, it now flies, it now

inspires.[15] Precisely in proportion to the depth of mind from which

it issued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing.

Or, I might say, it depends on how far the process had gone, of

transmuting life into truth. In proportion to the completeness of the

distillation, so will the purity and imperishableness of the product

be. But none is quite perfect. As no air-pump can by any means make a

perfect vacuum,[16] so neither can any artist entirely exclude the

conventional, the local, the perishable from his book, or write a book

of pure thought, that shall be as efficient, in all respects, to a

remote posterity, as to contemporaries, or rather to the second age.

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each

generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will

not fit this.

Yet hence arises a grave mischief. The sacredness which attaches to

the act of creation, the act of thought, is instantly transferred to

the record. The poet chanting was felt to be a divine man. Henceforth

the chant is divine also. The writer was a just and wise spirit.

Henceforward it is settled the book is perfect; as love of the hero

corrupts into worship of his statue. Instantly the book becomes

noxious.[17] The guide is a tyrant. We sought a brother, and lo, a

governor. The sluggish and perverted mind of the multitude, always

slow to open to the incursions of Reason, having once so opened,

having once received this book, stands upon it, and makes an outcry if

it is disparaged. Colleges are built on it. Books are written on it by

thinkers, not by Man Thinking, by men of talent, that is, who start

wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of

principles. Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their

duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke,[18] which

Bacon,[19] have given; forgetful that Cicero, Locke and Bacon were

only young men in libraries when they wrote these books.

Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. Hence the

book-learned class, who value books, as such; not as related to nature

and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate[20]

with the world and soul. Hence the restorers of readings,[21] the

emendators,[22] the bibliomaniacs[23] of all degrees. This is bad;

this is worse than it seems.

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What

is the right use? What is the one end which all means go to effect?

They are for nothing but to inspire.[24] I had better never see a book

than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and

made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world of

value is the active soul,--the soul, free, sovereign, active. This

every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although

in almost all men obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul active sees

absolute truth and utters truth, or creates. In this action it is

genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound

estate of every man.[25] In its essence it is progressive. The book,

the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with

some past utterance of genius. This is good, say they,--let us hold by

this. They pin me down.[26] They look backward and not forward. But

genius always looks forward. The eyes of man are set in his forehead,

not in his hindhead. Man hopes. Genius creates. To create,--to

create,--is the proof of a divine presence. Whatever talents may be,

if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not

his;[27]--cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame. There are

creative manners, there are creative actions, and creative words;

manners, actions, words, that is, indicative of no custom or

authority, but springing spontaneous from the mind's own sense of good

and fair.

On the other part, instead of being its own seer, let it receive

always from another mind its truth, though it were in torrents of

light, without periods of solitude, inquest, and self-recovery; and a

fatal disservice[28] is done. Genius is always sufficiently the enemy

of genius by over-influence.[29] The literature of every nation bear

me witness. The English dramatic poets have Shakespearized now for two

hundred years.[30]

Undoubtedly there is a right way of reading, so it be sternly

subordinated. Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments.

Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly,

the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of

their readings.[31] But when the intervals of darkness come, as come

they must,--when the soul seeth not, when the sun is hid and the stars

withdraw their shining,--we repair to the lamps which were kindled by

their ray, to guide our steps to the East again, where the dawn

is.[32] We hear, that we may speak. The Arabian proverb says, "A

fig-tree, looking on a fig-tree, becometh fruitful."

It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we derive from the

best books. They impress us ever with the conviction that one nature

wrote and the same reads. We read the verses of one of the great

English poets, of Chaucer,[33] of Marvell,[34] of Dryden,[35] with the

most modern joy,--with a pleasure, I mean, which is in great part

caused by the abstraction of all time from their verses. There is

some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived

in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which

lies close to my own soul, that which I also had well-nigh thought and

said. But for the evidence thence afforded to the philosophical

doctrine of the identity of all minds, we should suppose some

pre-established harmony, some foresight of souls that were to be, and

some preparation of stores for their future wants, like the fact

observed in insects, who lay up food before death for the young grub

they shall never see.

I would not be hurried by any love of system, by any exaggeration of

instincts, to underrate the Book. We all know that as the human body

can be nourished on any food, though it were boiled grass and the

broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed by any knowledge. And

great and heroic men have existed who had almost no other information

than by the printed page. I only would say that it needs a strong head

to bear that diet. One must be an inventor to read well. As the

proverb says, "He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies must

carry out the wealth of the Indies." There is then creative reading as

well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and

invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with

manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense

of our author is as broad as the world. We then see, what is always

true, that as the seer's hour of vision is short and rare among heavy

days and months, so is its record, perchance, the least part of his

volume. The discerning will read, in his Plato[36] or Shakespeare,

only that least part,--only the authentic utterances of the

oracle;--all the rest he rejects, were it never so many times Plato's

and Shakespeare's.

Of course there is a portion of reading quite indispensable to a wise

man. History and exact science he must learn by laborious reading.

Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office,--to teach

elements. But they can only highly serve us when they aim not to

drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various

genius to their hospitable halls, and by the concentrated fires set

the hearts of their youth on flame. Thought and knowledge are natures

in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns[37] and

pecuniary foundations,[38] though of towns of gold, can never

countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit.[39] Forget this,

and our American colleges will recede in their public importance,

whilst they grow richer every year.

* * * * *

III. There goes in the world a notion that the scholar should be a

recluse, a valetudinarian,[40]--as unfit for any handiwork or public

labor as a penknife for an axe. The so-called "practical men" sneer at

speculative men, as if, because they speculate or see, they could do

nothing. I have heard it said that the clergy--who are always, more

universally than any other class, the scholars of their day--are

addressed as women; that the rough, spontaneous conversation of men

they do not hear, but only a mincing[41] and diluted speech. They are

often virtually disfranchised; and indeed there are advocates for

their celibacy. As far as this is true of the studious classes, it is

not just and wise. Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is

essential. Without it he is not yet man. Without it thought can never

ripen into truth. Whilst the world hangs before the eye as a cloud of

beauty, we cannot even see its beauty. Inaction is cowardice, but

there can be no scholar without the heroic mind. The preamble[42] of

thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious

to the conscious, is action. Only so much do I know, as I have lived.

Instantly we know whose words are loaded with life, and whose not.

The world--this shadow of the soul, or other me, lies wide around.

Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me

acquainted with myself. I launch eagerly into this resounding tumult.

I grasp the hands of those next me, and take my place in the ring to

suffer and to work, taught by an instinct that so shall the dumb

abyss[43] be vocal with speech. I pierce its order; I dissipate its

fear;[44] I dispose of it within the circuit of my expanding life. So

much only of life as I know by experience, so much of the wilderness

have I vanquished and planted, or so far have I extended my being, my

dominion. I do not see how any man can afford, for the sake of his

nerves and his nap, to spare any action in which he can partake. It is

pearls and rubies to his discourse. Drudgery, calamity, exasperation,

want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom. The true scholar

grudges every opportunity of action passed by, as a loss of power.

It is the raw material out of which the intellect molds her splendid

products. A strange process too, this by which experience is converted

into thought, as a mulberry-leaf is converted into satin.[45] The

manufacture goes forward at all hours.

The actions and events of our childhood and youth are now matters of

calmest observation. They lie like fair pictures in the air. Not so

with our recent actions,--with the business which we now have in hand.

On this we are quite unable to speculate. Our affections as yet

circulate through it. We no more feel or know it than we feel the

feet, or the hand, or the brain of our body. The new deed is yet a

part of life,--remains for a time immersed in our unconscious life. In

some contemplative hour it detaches itself from the life like a ripe

fruit,[46] to become a thought of the mind. Instantly it is raised,

transfigured; the corruptible has put on incorruption.[47] Henceforth

it is an object of beauty, however base its origin and neighborhood.

Observe, too, the impossibility of antedating this act. In its grub

state it cannot fly, it cannot shine, it is a dull grub. But suddenly,

without observation, the selfsame thing unfurls beautiful wings, and

is an angel of wisdom. So is there no fact, no event, in our private

history, which shall not, sooner or later, lose its adhesive, inert

form, and astonish us by soaring from our body into the empyrean.[48]

Cradle and infancy, school and playground, the fear of boys, and dogs,

and ferules,[49] the love of little maids and berries, and many

another fact that once filled the whole sky, are gone already; friend

and relative, profession and party, town and country, nation and

world, must also soar and sing.[50]

Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions has

the richest return of wisdom. I will not shut myself out of this globe

of action, and transplant an oak into a flower-pot, there to hunger

and pine; nor trust the revenue of some single faculty, and exhaust

one vein of thought, much like those Savoyards,[51] who, getting their

livelihood by carving shepherds, shepherdesses, and smoking Dutchmen,

for all Europe, went out one day to the mountain to find stock, and

discovered that they had whittled up the last of their pine-trees.

Authors we have, in numbers, who have written out their vein, and who,

moved by a commendable prudence, sail for Greece or Palestine, follow

the trapper into the prairie, or ramble round Algiers, to replenish

their merchantable stock.

If it were only for a vocabulary, the scholar would be covetous of

action. Life is our dictionary.[52] Years are well spent in country

labors; in town; in the insight into trades and manufactures; in frank

intercourse with many men and women; in science; in art; to the one

end of mastering in all their facts a language by which to illustrate

and embody our perceptions. I learn immediately from any speaker how

much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his

speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and

copestones for the masonry of to-day. This is the way to learn

grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and

the work-yard made.

But the final value of action, like that of books, and better than

books, is that it is a resource. That great principle of Undulation in

nature, that shows itself in the inspiring and expiring of the breath;

in desire and satiety; in the ebb and flow of the sea; in day and night;

in heat and cold; and, as yet more deeply ingrained in every atom and

every fluid, is known to us under the name of Polarity,--these "fits of

easy transmission and reflection," as Newton[53] called them, are the

law of nature because they are the law of spirit.

The mind now thinks, now acts, and each fit reproduces the other. When

the artist has exhausted his materials, when the fancy no longer

paints, when thoughts are no longer apprehended and books are a

weariness,--he has always the resource to live. Character is higher

than intellect. Thinking is the function. Living is the functionary.

The stream retreats to its source. A great soul will be strong to

live, as well as strong to think. Does he lack organ or medium to

impart his truth? He can still fall back on this elemental force of

living them. This is a total act. Thinking is a partial act. Let the

grandeur of justice shine in his affairs. Let the beauty of affection

cheer his lowly roof. Those "far from fame," who dwell and act with

him, will feel the force of his constitution in the doings and

passages of the day better than it can be measured by any public and

designed display. Time shall teach him that the scholar loses no hour

which the man lives. Herein he unfolds the sacred germ of his

instinct, screened from influence. What is lost in seemliness is

gained in strength. Not out of those on whom systems of education have

exhausted their culture comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or

to build the new, but out of unhandselled[54] savage nature; out of

terrible Druids[55] and Berserkers[56] come at last Alfred[57] and

Shakespeare. I hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning to be

said of the dignity and necessity of labor to every citizen. There is

virtue yet in the hoe and the spade,[58] for learned as well as for

unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; always we are

invited to work; only be this limitation observed, that a man shall

not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion to the

popular judgments and modes of action.

* * * * *

I have now spoken of the education of the scholar by nature, by books,

and by action. It remains to say somewhat of his duties.

They are such as become Man Thinking. They may all be comprised in

self-trust. The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to

guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances. He plies the slow,

unhonored, and unpaid task of observation. Flamsteed[59] and

Herschel,[60] in their glazed observatories, may catalogue the stars

with the praise of all men, and, the results being splendid and

useful, honor is sure. But he, in his private observatory, cataloguing

obscure and nebulous[61] stars of the human mind, which as yet no man

has thought of as such,--watching days and months sometimes for a few

facts; correcting still his old records,--must relinquish display and

immediate fame. In the long period of his preparation he must betray

often an ignorance and shiftlessness in popular arts, incurring the

disdain of the able who shoulder him aside. Long he must stammer in

his speech; often forego the living for the dead. Worse yet, he must

accept--how often!--poverty and solitude. For the ease and pleasure of

treading the old road, accepting the fashions, the education, the

religion of society, he takes the cross of making his own, and, of

course, the self-accusation, the faint heart, the frequent uncertainty

and loss of time, which are the nettles and tangling vines in the way

of the self-relying and self-directed; and the state of virtual

hostility in which he seems to stand to society, and especially to

educated society. For all this loss and scorn, what offset? He is to

find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature.

He is one who raises himself from private considerations and breathes

and lives on public and illustrious thoughts. He is the world's eye.

He is the world's heart. He is to resist the vulgar prosperity that

retrogrades ever to barbarism, by preserving and communicating heroic

sentiments, noble biographies, melodious verse, and the conclusions of

history. Whatsoever oracles the human heart, in all emergencies, in

all solemn hours, has uttered as its commentary on the world of

actions,--these he shall receive and impart. And whatsoever new

verdict Reason from her inviolable seat pronounces on the passing men

and events of to-day,--this he shall hear and promulgate.

These being his functions, it becomes him to feel all confidence in

himself, and to defer never to the popular cry. He and he only knows

the world. The world of any moment is the merest appearance. Some

great decorum, some fetich[62] of a government, some ephemeral trade,

or war, or man, is cried up[63] by half mankind and cried down by the

other half, as if all depended on this particular up or down. The odds

are that the whole question is not worth the poorest thought which the

scholar has lost in listening to the controversy. Let him not quit his

belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and honorable[64]

of the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom. In silence, in

steadiness, in severe abstraction, let him hold by himself; add

observation to observation, patient of neglect, patient of reproach,

and bide his own time,--happy enough if he can satisfy himself alone

that this day he has seen something truly. Success treads on every

right step. For the instinct is sure that prompts him to tell his

brother what he thinks. He then learns that in going down into the

secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all

minds. He learns that he who has mastered any law in his private

thoughts is master to that extent of all men whose language he speaks,

and of all into whose language his own can be translated. The poet, in

utter solitude remembering his spontaneous thoughts and recording

them, is found to have recorded that which men in cities vast find

true for them also. The orator distrusts at first the fitness of his

frank confessions, his want of knowledge of the persons he addresses,

until he finds that he is the complement[65] of his hearers;--that

they drink his words because he fulfills for them their own nature;

the deeper he dives into his privatest, secretest presentiment, to his

wonder he finds this is the most acceptable, most public and

universally true. The people delight in it; the better part of every

man feels--This is my music; this is myself.

In self-trust all the virtues are comprehended. Free should the

scholar be,--free and brave. Free even to the definition of freedom,

"without any hindrance that does not arise out of his own

constitution." Brave; for fear is a thing which a scholar by his very

function puts behind him. Fear always springs from ignorance. It is a

shame to him if his tranquility, amid dangerous times, arise from the

presumption that like children and women his is a protected class; or

if he seek a temporary peace by the diversion of his thoughts from

politics or vexed questions, hiding his head like an ostrich in the

flowering bushes, peeping into microscopes, and turning rhymes, as a

boy whistles to keep his courage up. So is the danger a danger still;

so is the fear worse. Manlike let him turn and face it. Let him look

into its eye and search its nature, inspect its origin,--see the

whelping of this lion,--which lies no great way back; he will then

find in himself a perfect comprehension of its nature and extent; he

will have made his hands meet on the other side, and can henceforth

defy it and pass on superior. The world is his who can see through its

pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown

error you behold is there only by sufferance,--by your sufferance. See

it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow.

Yes, we are the cowed,--we the trustless. It is a mischievous notion

that we are come late into nature; that the world was finished a long

time ago. As the world was plastic and fluid in the hands of God, so

it is ever to so much of his attributes as we bring to it. To

ignorance and sin it is flint. They adapt themselves to it as they

may; but in proportion as a man has any thing in him divine, the

firmament flows before him and takes his signet[66] and form. Not he

is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.

They are the kings of the world who give the color of their present

thought to all nature and all art, and persuade men, by the cheerful

serenity of their carrying the matter, that this thing which they do

is the apple which the ages have desired to pluck, now at last ripe,

and inviting nations to the harvest. The great man makes the great

thing. Wherever Macdonald[67] sits, there is the head of the table.

Linnæus[68] makes botany the most alluring of studies, and wins it

from the farmer and the herb-woman: Davy,[69] chemistry; and

Cuvier,[70] fossils. The day is always his who works in it with

serenity and great aims. The unstable estimates of men crowd to him

whose mind is filled with a truth, as the heaped waves of the Atlantic

follow the moon.[71]

For this self-trust, the reason is deeper than can be fathomed,--darker

than can be enlightened. I might not carry with me the feeling of my

audience in stating my own belief. But I have already shown the ground

of my hope, in adverting to the doctrine that man is one. I believe man

has been wronged; he has wronged himself. He has almost lost the light

that can lead him back to his prerogatives. Men are become of no

account. Men in history, men in the world of to-day, are bugs, are

spawn, and are called "the mass" and "the herd." In a century, in a

millennium, one or two men;[72] that is to say, one or two

approximations to the right state of every man. All the rest behold in

the hero or the poet their own green and crude being,--ripened; yes, and

are content to be less, so that may attain to its full stature. What a

testimony, full of grandeur, full of pity, is borne to the demands of

his own nature, by the poor clansman, the poor partisan, who rejoices in

the glory of his chief! The poor and the low find some amends to their

immense moral capacity, for their acquiescence in a political and social

inferiority.[73] They are content to be brushed like flies from the path

of a great person, so that justice shall be done by him to that common

nature which it is the dearest desire of all to see enlarged and

glorified. They sun themselves in the great man's light, and feel it to

be their own element. They cast the dignity of man from their downtrod

selves upon the shoulders of a hero, and will perish to add one drop of

blood to make that great heart beat, those giant sinews combat and

conquer. He lives for us, and we live in him.

Men such as they[74] are very naturally seek money or power; and power

because it is as good as money,--the "spoils," so called, "of office."

And why not? For they aspire to the highest, and this, in their

sleep-walking, they dream is highest. Wake them and they shall quit

the false good and leap to the true, and leave governments to clerks

and desks. This revolution is to be wrought by the gradual

domestication of the idea of Culture. The main enterprise of the world

for splendor, for extent, is the upbuilding of a man. Here are the

materials strewn along the ground. The private life of one man shall

be a more illustrious monarchy, more formidable to its enemy, more

sweet and serene in its influence to its friend, than any kingdom in

history. For a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth[75] the particular

natures of all men. Each philosopher, each bard, each actor has only

done for me, as by a delegate, what one day I can do for myself. The

books which once we valued more than the apple of the eye, we have

quite exhausted. What is that but saying that we have come up with the

point of view which the universal mind took through the eyes of one

scribe; we have been that man, and have passed on. First, one, then

another, we drain all cisterns, and waxing greater by all these

supplies, we crave a better and a more abundant food. The man has

never lived that can feed us ever. The human mind cannot be enshrined

in a person who shall set a barrier on any one side to this unbounded,

unboundable empire. It is one central fire, which, flaming now out of

the lips of Etna, lightens the capes of Sicily, and now out of the

throat of Vesuvius, illuminates the towers and vineyards of Naples. It

is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which

animates all men.

* * * * *

But I have dwelt perhaps tediously upon this abstraction of the

Scholar.

I ought not to delay longer to add what I have to say of

nearer reference to the time and to this country.

Historically, there is thought to be a difference in the ideas which

predominate over successive epochs, and there are data for marking the

genius of the Classic, of the Romantic, and now of the Reflective or

Philosophical age.[76] With the views I have intimated of the oneness

or the identity of the mind through all individuals, I do not much

dwell on these differences. In fact, I believe each individual passes

through all three. The boy is a Greek; the youth, romantic; the

adult, reflective. I deny not, however, that a revolution in the

leading idea may be distinctly enough traced.

Our age is bewailed as the age of Introversion.[77] Must that needs be

evil? We, it seems, are critical. We are embarrassed with second

thoughts.[78] We cannot enjoy anything for hankering to know whereof

the pleasure consists. We are lined with eyes. We see with our feet.

The time is infected with Hamlet's unhappiness,--

"Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."[79]

Is it so bad then? Sight is the last thing to be pitied. Would we be

blind? Do we fear lest we should outsee nature and God, and drink

truth dry? I look upon the discontent of the literary class as a mere

announcement of the fact that they find themselves not in the state of

mind of their fathers, and regret the coming state as untried; as a

boy dreads the water before he has learned that he can swim. If there

is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of

Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side and admit of

being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and

by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by

the rich possibilities of the new era? This time, like all times, is a

very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

I read with some joy of the auspicious signs of the coming days, as

they glimmer already through poetry and art, through philosophy and

science, through church and state.

One of these signs is the fact that the same movement[80] which

effected the elevation of what was called the lowest class in the

state assumed in literature a very marked and as benign an aspect.

Instead of the sublime and beautiful, the near, the low, the common,

was explored and poetized. That which had been negligently trodden

under foot by those who were harnessing and provisioning themselves

for long journeys into far countries, is suddenly found to be richer

than all foreign parts. The literature of the poor, the feelings of

the child, the philosophy of the street, the meaning of household

life, are the topics of the time. It is a great stride. It is a

sign--is it not?--of new vigor when the extremities are made active,

when currents of warm life run into the hands and the feet. I ask not

for the great, the remote, the romantic; what is doing in Italy or

Arabia; what is Greek art, or Provençal minstrelsy; I embrace the

common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give

me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future

worlds. What would we really know the meaning of? The meal in the

firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the

boat; the glance of the eye; the form and the gait of the body;--show

me the ultimate reason of these matters; show me the sublime presence

of the highest spiritual cause lurking, as always it does lurk, in

these suburbs and extremities of nature; let me see every trifle

bristling with the polarity that ranges it instantly on an eternal

law;[81] and the shop, the plow, and the ledger referred to the like

cause by which light undulates and poets sing;--and the world lies no

longer a dull miscellany and lumber-room, but has form and order:

there is no trifle, there is no puzzle, but one design unites and

animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench.

This idea has inspired the genius of Goldsmith,[82] Burns,[83]

Cowper,[84] and, in a newer time, of Goethe,[85] Wordsworth,[86] and

Carlyle.[87] This idea they have differently followed and with various

success. In contrast with their writing, the style of Pope,[88] of

Johnson,[89] of Gibbon,[90] looks cold and pedantic. This writing is

blood-warm. Man is surprised to find that things near are not less

beautiful and wondrous than things remote. The near explains the far.

The drop is a small ocean. A man is related to all nature. This

perception of the worth of the vulgar is fruitful in discoveries.

Goethe, in this very thing the most modern of the moderns, has shown

us, as none ever did, the genius of the ancients.

There is one man of genius who has done much for this philosophy of

life, whose literary value has never yet been rightly estimated:--I

mean Emanuel Swedenborg.[91] The most imaginative of men, yet writing

with the precision of a mathematician, he endeavored to engraft a

purely philosophical Ethics on the popular Christianity of his time.

Such an attempt of course must have difficulty which no genius could

surmount. But he saw and showed the connexion between nature and the

affections of the soul. He pierced the emblematic or spiritual

character of the visible, audible, tangible world. Especially did his

shade-loving muse hover over and interpret the lower parts of nature;

he showed the mysterious bond that allies moral evil to the foul

material forms, and has given in epical parables a theory of insanity,

of beasts, of unclean and fearful things.

Another sign of our times, also marked by an analogous political

movement, is the new importance given to the single person. Everything

that tends to insulate the individual--to surround him with barriers

of natural respect, so that each man shall feel the world is his, and

man shall treat with man as a sovereign state with a sovereign

state--tends to true union as well as greatness. "I learned," said the

melancholy Pestalozzi,[92] "that no man in God's wide earth is either

willing or able to help any other man." Help must come from the bosom

alone. The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the

ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes

of the future. He must be an university of knowledges. If there be one

lesson more than another that should pierce his ear, it is--The world

is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and

you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers

the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all; it is for you to dare

all. Mr. President and Gentlemen, this confidence in the unsearched

might of man belongs, by all motives, by all prophecy, by all

preparation, to the American Scholar. We have listened too long to the

courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of the American freeman is already

suspected to be timid, imitative, tame. Public and private avarice

make the air we breathe thick and fat. The scholar is decent,

indolent, complaisant. See already the tragic consequence. The mind of

this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. There is

no work for any one but the decorous and the complaisant. Young men of

the fairest promise, who begin life upon our shores, inflated by the

mountain winds, shined upon by all the stars of God, find the earth

below not in unison with these, but are hindered from action by the

disgust which the principles on which business is managed inspire, and

turn drudges, or die of disgust, some of them suicides. What is the

remedy? They did not yet see, and thousands of young men as hopeful

now crowding to the barriers for the career do not yet see, that if

the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there

abide, the huge world will come round to him. Patience,--patience;

with the shades of all the good and great for company; and for solace

the perspective of your own infinite life; and for work the study and

the communication of principles, the making those instincts prevalent,

the conversion of the world. Is it not the chief disgrace in the

world, not to be an unit; not to be reckoned one character; not to

yield that peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear, but to

be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of the

party, the section, to which we belong; and our opinion predicted

geographically, as the north, or the south? Not so, brothers and

friends,--please God, ours shall not be so. We will walk on our own

feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds.

Then shall man be no longer a name for pity, for doubt, and for

sensual indulgence. The dread of man and the love of man shall be a

wall of defense and a wreath of joy around all. A nation of men will

for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by

the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.

COMPENSATION.[93]

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;

Through 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.

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,[94] 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;[95] and then urged from

reason and from Scripture a compensation to be made to both parties in

the next life. No offense 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,[96]

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 revenue 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 this 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,[97] 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[98] 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 is 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 everything you have missed, you have gained something

else; and for everything you gain, you lose something. If riches

increase, they are increased[99] 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 leveling 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[100] 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.[101] It has commonly cost him all

his peace, and the best of his many attributes. To preserve for a

short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is

content to eat dust[102] 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[103] 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 by-word 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.[104] 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 overcharge 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. Everything in nature contains all the

powers of nature. Everything 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.[105] The microscope cannot

find the animalcule which is less perfect for being little.[106] 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.[107] 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.

[Greek: Hoi kyboi Dios aei eupiptousi],[108]--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 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 offense, 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 preëxists 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[109] 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 have 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."[110]

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!"[111]

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,[112] Supreme

Mind; but having traditionally ascribed to him many base actions, they

involuntarily made amends to reason, by tying up the hands[113] of so

bad a god. He is made as helpless as a king of England.[114]

Prometheus[115] knows one secret which Jove must bargain for;

Minerva,[116] 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 to get any currency which was

not moral. Aurora[117] forgot to ask youth for her lover, and though

Tithonus is immortal, he is old, Achilles[118] is not quite

invulnerable; the sacred waters did not wash the heel by which Thetis

held him. Siegfried,[119] in the Niebelungen, 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 everything 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,[120] who keeps watch in the

universe, and lets no offense go unchastised. The Furies,[121] 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[122] 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[123]

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;[124] 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[125] 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 Shakespeare, 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;[126] 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.[127] 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[128] 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[129]

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,[130] 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[131] 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

anything 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.[132] 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.[133] 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 skillful 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 everything 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 anything without its price,--is not less

sublime in the columns of a ledger 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,[134] 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,[135] 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 everything 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, offense,

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[136] 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 punished, 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 anyone but himself,[137] 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

fulfillment 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,[138] 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[139] 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. Everything 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,[140] never a Pessimism.

Man's 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,[141]--"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[142] and

Shakespeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer and

incorporate them in my own conscious domain. His[143] 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 shellfish 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

coöperating with the divine expansion, this growth comes by shocks.

We cannot part with our friend. 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 forevermore!" 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 banyan[144] of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to

wide neighborhoods of men.

SELF-RELIANCE

"Ne te quæsiveris extra."[145]

"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."[146]

* * * * *

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.[147]

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 instill 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.[148]

Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal

sense;[149] 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,[150] and Milton[151] 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 luster

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:[152] 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[153] 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;[154]

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 preëstablished harmony.

The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of

that particular ray. We but half express ourselves,[155] 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:[156] 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[157] 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[158] 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[159]

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[160] 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;[161] 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[162] 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[163] for this. Ah,

that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who[164] 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.[165] He who would gather

immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must

explore if it be goodness.[166] Nothing is at last sacred but the

integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall

have the suffrage[167] 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;[168] 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

everything 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,[169] 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.[170] 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.[171] 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.[172]

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[173] man you are. And, of course, so much force is withdrawn

from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you.[174] 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[175] 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[176] are the emptiest

affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another

handkerchief,[177] and attached themselves to some one of these

communities of opinion.[178] 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 willfulness, grow

tight about the outline of the face with the most disagreeable

sensation.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.[179] And

therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The bystanders

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.[180] 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[181] that scares us from self-trust is our

consistency;[182] a reverence for our past act or word, because the

eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit[183] than

our past acts, and we are loth 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[184] 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.[185]

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 the 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 everything you said to-day.--"Ah, so you shall be sure

to be misunderstood."--Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood?

Pythagoras[186] was misunderstood, and Socrates,[187] and Jesus, and

Luther,[188] and Copernicus,[189] and Galileo,[190] and Newton,[191]

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[192] and Himmaleh[193] 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;[194]--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.[195] 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,[196] 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[197] voice, and dignity

into Washington's port, and America into Adams's[198] eye. Honor is

venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. 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[199] 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 center of things. Where he is, there

is nature. He measures you, and all men, and all events. Ordinarily,

everybody 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[200] 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;[201] the Reformation, of

Luther; Quakerism, of Fox;[202] Methodism, of Wesley;[203] Abolition,

of Clarkson.[204] Scipio,[205] 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, 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,[206] 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,[207] and

Scanderbeg,[208] and Gustavus?[209] 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 luster 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[210] 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,[211] 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 willful 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, it is 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 center 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 center 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 moldered nation in another country, in another

world, believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its

fullness and completion? Is the parent better than the child into whom

he has cast his ripened being?[212] Whence, then, this worship of the

past?[213] 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 anything 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 a 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.[214] We are like children who

repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they

grow older, of the men and talents and characters 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

those saying, 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 forever

degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to

shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas[215]

equally aside. Why, then, do we prate of self-reliance? Inasmuch as

the soul is present, there will be power not confident but agent.[216]

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.[217] 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.[218] 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 men, 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,[219] 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.[220] I shall endeavor 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.[221] 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.[222] 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;[223] 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 fulfill 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,[224] 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,[225] 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[226] 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,[227] born to shed healing to the

nations,[228] 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![229] 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,--anything 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.[230] 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,[231] 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,[232] "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."[233] 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,[234] a Lavoisier,[235] a Hutton,[236] a Betham,[237] a

Fourier,[238] 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,[239] Quakerism,[240] Swedenborgism.[241] The pupil takes the

same delight in subordinating everything 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 Traveling,

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 traveler; 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,[242] travels away from himself, and

grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes,[243] in

Palmyra,[244] his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as

they. He carries ruins to ruins.

Traveling 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.[245] I seek the Vatican,[246] 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 traveling 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 traveling 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[247] or the

Gothic[248] 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.[249] 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

Shakespeare?[250] Where is the master who could have instructed

Franklin,[251] or Washington, or Bacon,[252] or Newton?[253] Every great

man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio[254] is precisely that part he

could not borrow. Shakespeare will never be made by the study of

Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned to 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,[255] or

trowel of the Egyptians,[256] or the pen of Moses,[257] or Dante,[258]

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[259] 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 everything 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,[260] 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 traveler tell us truly, strike the

savage with a broad ax, 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[261] watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the

hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac[262] 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[263] 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 notebooks 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 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[264] heroes, three or four and twenty centuries ago. Not in

time is the race progressive. Phocion,[265] Socrates, Anaxagoras,[266]

Diogenes,[267] 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[268] and Bering[269] accomplished so much in their fishing

boats, as to astonish Parry[270] and Franklin,[271] 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[272] 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[273] 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

Casas,[274] "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 handmill, 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,[275] "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![276] 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.[277] 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

chancelors 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.

FRIENDSHIP.[278]

1. We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. Barring 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 eyebeams. The heart knoweth.

2. 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 toward 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.

3. 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 between 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.

4. What is so pleasant as these jets of affection which relume[279] a

young world for me again? What is 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.

5. 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.[280] 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

is a traditionary globe. My friends have come[281] 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, both deride and cancel the thick walls of individual

character, relation, age, sex and 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[282]--poetry without stop--hymn, ode and epic,[283] poetry

still flowing, Apollo[284] and the Muses[285] chanting still. Will these

two 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[286] 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.

6. I confess to an extreme tenderness of nature on this point. It is

almost dangerous to me to "crush the sweet poison,[287] of misused

wine" of the affections. A new person is to me a great event, and

hinders me from sleep. I have had such fine fancies lately about two

or three persons, as 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. Everything that is his,--his name, his form, his

dress, books and instruments,--fancy enhances. Our own thought sounds

new and larger from his mouth.

7. Yet the systole and diastole[288] of the heart are not without

their analogy in the ebb and flow of love. Friendship, like the

immortality[289] 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 afterward 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?[290] 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 amid

these pleasing reveries, though it should prove an Egyptian skull at

our banquet.[291] A man who stands united with his thought, conceives

magnificently to himself. He is conscious of a universal success,[292]

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 least 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. It is 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?[293] The law of nature

is alternation forevermore. 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.

8. 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,[294] instead

of the tough fiber of the human heart. The laws of friendship are

great, 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.

9. 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 instantly, 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[295] 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."

10.

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[296] 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.

11. 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.

12. I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest

courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work,

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,[297] to the great games,

where the first-born of the world are the competitors. He proposes

himself for contest 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 hap 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, but 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,[298] under a certain

religious frenzy, cast off this drapery, and omitting all compliments

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 plain

dealing 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[299] 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.

13. 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,[300]--"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.[301] 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 plow-boys and tin-peddlers, to the silken and perfumed

amity which only celebrates its days of encounter by a frivolous

display, by rides in a curricle,[302] 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.

14. 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,[303] 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 at

once 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.

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. 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 benefits.

18. 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 forever 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.

19. 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[304] 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.

20. 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 anything 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 catch never 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.

21. 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,[305] 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 specters and shadows merely.

22. 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:[306] 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[307] of a greater friend.

23. 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, far 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 lusters, 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.

24. 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.[308] 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.

HEROISM[309]

"Paradise is under the shadow of swords,"[310]

Mahomet.

1. In the elder English dramatists,[311] and mainly in the plays of

Beaumont and Fletcher,[312] 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[313] 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,[314]--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.[315]

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 'tis 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 'twill 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, oh 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 captived me,

And though my arm hath ta'en his body here,

His soul hath subjugated Martius' soul.

By Romulus,[316] 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."

2. 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,"[317] and some sonnets, have a certain noble music; and

Scott[318] will sometimes draw a stroke like the portrait of Lord

Evandale, given by Balfour of Burley.[319] Thomas Carlyle,[320] 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[321] has

given us a song or two. In the Harleian Miscellanies,[322] there is an

account of the battle of Lutzen,[323] which deserves to be read. And

Simon Ockley's[324] 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[325] requires of him some proper protestations of abhorrence.

But if we explore the literature of Heroism, we shall quickly come to

Plutarch,[326] who is its Doctor and historian. To him we owe the

Brasidas,[327] the Dion,[328] the Epaminondas,[329] the Scipio[330] 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[331] not of the schools, but of the blood,

shines in every anecdote, and has given that book its immense fame.

3. 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 lockjaw 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,

almost 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.

4. 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.

5. Toward 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.

6. 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[332] 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 further 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.

7. 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,[333] 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 human 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[334] 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!"

8. 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 unreasonable economy into the vaults

of life, and says, I will obey the God, and the sacrifice and the fire

he will provide. Ibn Hankal,[335] the Arabian geographer, describes a

heroic extreme in the hospitality of Sogd, in Bokhar,[336] "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[337] and fair water

than belong to city feasts.

9. 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,[338] 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[339] 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.

10. It is told of Brutus,[340] that when he fell on his sword, after

the battle of Philippi,[341] he quoted a line of Euripides,[342]--"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.

11. 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,[343] 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'[344]

condemnation of himself to be maintained in all honor in the

Prytaneum,[345] during his life, and Sir Thomas More's[346]

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 anything

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 play in innocent defiance of the

Blue-Laws[347] 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.

12. 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,[348]

brave and affectionate, does not seem to us to need Olympus[349] to

die upon, nor the Syrian sunshine. He lies very well where he is. The

Jerseys[350] were handsome ground enough for Washington to tread, and

London streets for the feet of Milton.[351] 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,[352] Xenophon,[353]

Columbus,[354] Bayard,[355] Sidney,[356] Hampden,[357] 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.

13. 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, or

books, or 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[358] 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 plow 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,[359] or Sévigné,[360] or De Staël,[361] or

the cloistered souls who have had genius and cultivation, do not

satisfy the imagination and the serene Themis,[362] 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.

14. The characteristic of a genuine 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[363] 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,[364] when he admitted that the

event of the battle was happy, yet did not regret his dissuasion from

the battle.

15. 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 forever 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.

16. 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.

17. 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 ax 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[365] 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.

18. I see not any road to perfect peace which a man can walk, but to

take counsel of his own bosom. Let him quit too much association, let

him go home much, and establish 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.

19. 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:[366]

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 them 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 forever 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.

MANNERS[367]

1. Half the world, it is said, knows not how the other half live. Our

Exploring Expedition saw the Feejee Islanders[368] getting their

dinner off human bones; and they are said to eat their own wives and

children. The husbandry of the modern inhabitants of Gournou[369]

(west of old Thebes) is philosophical to a fault. To set up their

housekeeping, nothing is requisite but two or three earthen pots, a

stone to grind meal, and a mat which is the bed. The house, namely, a

tomb, is ready without rent or taxes. No rain can pass through the

roof, and there is no door, for there is no want of one, as there is

nothing to lose. If the house do not please them, they walk out and

enter another, as there are several hundreds at their command. "It is

somewhat singular," adds Berzoni, to whom we owe this account, "to

talk of Happiness among people who live in sepulchers, among corpses

and rags of an ancient nation which they knew nothing of." In the

deserts of Borgoo[370] the rock-Tibboos still dwell in caves, like

cliff-swallows, and the language of these negroes is compared by their

neighbors to the shrieking of bats, and to the whistling of birds.

Again, the Bornoos[371] have no proper names; individuals are called

after their height, thickness, or other accidental quality, and have

nick-names merely. But the salt, the dates, the ivory, and the gold,

for which these horrible regions are visited, find their way into

countries, where the purchaser and consumer can hardly be ranked in

one race with these cannibals and man-stealers; countries where man

serves himself with metals, wood, stone, glass, gum, cotton, silk and

wool; honors himself with architecture;[372] writes laws, and

contrives to execute his will through the hands of many nations; and,

especially, establishes a select society, running through all the

countries of intelligent men, a self-constituted aristocracy, or

fraternity of the best, which, without written law, or exact usage of

any kind, perpetuates itself, colonizes every new-planted island, and

adopts and makes its own whatever personal beauty or extraordinary

native endowment anywhere appears.

2. What fact more conspicuous in modern history, than the creation of

the gentleman? Chivalry[373] is that, and loyalty is that, and, in

English literature, half the drama, and all the novels, from Sir

Philip Sidney[374] to Sir Walter Scott,[375] paint this figure. The

word gentleman, which, like the word Christian, must hereafter

characterize the present and the few preceding centuries, by the

importance attached to it, is a homage to personal and incommunicable

properties. Frivolous and fantastic additions have got associated with

the name, but the steady interest of mankind in it must be attributed

to the valuable properties which it designates. An element which

unites all the most forcible persons of every country; makes them

intelligible and agreeable to each other, and is somewhat so precise,

that it is at once felt if an individual lack the masonic sign,[376]

cannot be any casual product, but must be an average result of the

character and faculties universally found in men. It seems a certain

permanent average; as the atmosphere is a permanent composition,

whilst so many gases are combined only to be decompounded. Comme il

faut, is the Frenchman's description of good society, as we must

be. It is a spontaneous fruit of talents and feelings of precisely

that class who have most vigor, who take the lead in the world of this

hour, and, though far from pure, far from constituting the gladdest

and highest tone of human feeling, is as good as the whole society

permits it to be. It is made of the spirit, more than of the talent of

men, and is a compound result, into which every great force enters as

an ingredient, namely, virtue, wit, beauty, wealth, and power.

3. There is something equivocal in all the words in use to express the

excellence of manners and social cultivation, because the qualities

are fluxional, and the last effect is assumed by the senses as the

cause. The word gentleman has not any correlative abstract[377] to

express the quality. Gentility is mean, and gentilesse[378] is

obsolete. But we must keep alive in the vernacular the distinction

between fashion, a word of narrow and often sinister meaning, and

the heroic character which the gentleman imports. The usual words,

however, must be respected: they will be found to contain the root of

the matter. The point of distinction in all this class of names, as

courtesy, chivalry, fashion, and the like, is, that the flower and

fruit, not the grain of the tree, are contemplated. It is beauty which

is the aim this time, and not worth. The result is now in question,

although our words intimate well enough the popular feeling, that the

appearance supposes a substance. The gentleman is a man of truth, lord

of his own actions, and expressing that lordship in his behavior, not

in any manner dependent and servile either on persons, or opinions, or

possessions. Beyond this fact of truth and real force, the word

denotes good-nature and benevolence: manhood first, and then

gentleness. The popular notion certainly adds a condition of ease and

fortune; but that is a natural result of personal force and love, that

they should possess and dispense the goods of the world. In times of

violence, every eminent person must fall in with many opportunities to

approve his stoutness and worth; therefore every man's name that

emerged at all from the mass in the feudal ages,[379] rattles in our

ear like a flourish of trumpets. But personal force never goes out of

fashion. That is still paramount to-day, and, in the moving crowd of

good society, the men of valor and reality are known, and rise to

their natural place. The competition is transferred from war to

politics and trade, but the personal force appears readily enough in

these new arenas.

4. Power first, or no leading class. In politics and in trade,

bruisers and pirates are of better promise than talkers and clerks.

God knows[380] that all sorts of gentlemen knock at the door; but

whenever used in strictness, and with any emphasis, the name will be

found to point at original energy. It describes a man standing in his

own right, and working after untaught methods. In a good lord, there

must first be a good animal, at least to the extent of yielding the

incomparable advantage of animal spirits.[381] The ruling class must

have more, but they must have these, giving in every company the sense

of power,[382] which makes things easy to be done which daunt the

wise. The society of the energetic class, in their friendly and

festive meetings, is full of courage, and of attempts, which

intimidate the pale scholar. The courage which girls exhibit is like a

battle of Lundy's Lane,[383] or a sea-fight. The intellect relies on

memory to make some supplies to face these extemporaneous squadrons.

But memory is a base mendicant with basket and badge, in the presence

of these sudden masters. The rulers of society must be up to the work

of the world, and equal to their versatile office: men of the right

Cæsarian pattern,[384] who have great range of affinity. I am far from

believing the timid maxim[385] of Lord Falkland,[386] ("That for

ceremony there must go two to it; since a bold fellow will go through

the cunningest forms,") and am of opinion that the gentleman is the

bold fellow whose forms are not to be broken through; and only that

plenteous nature is rightful master, which is the complement of

whatever person it converses with. My gentleman gives the law where he

is; he will outpray saints in chapel, outgeneral veterans in the

field, and outshine all courtesy in the hall. He is good company for

pirates, and good with academicians; so that it is useless to fortify

yourself against him; he has the private entrance to all minds, and I

could as easily exclude myself as him. The famous gentlemen of Asia

and Europe have been of this strong type: Saladin,[387] Sapor,[388]

the Cid,[389] Julius Cæsar,[390] Scipio,[391] Alexander,[392]

Pericles,[393] and the lordliest personages. They sat very carelessly

in their chairs, and were too excellent themselves to value any

condition at a high rate.

5. A plentiful fortune is reckoned necessary, in the popular judgment,

to the completion of this man of the world: and it is a material deputy

which walks through the dance which the first has led. Money is not

essential, but this wide affinity is, which transcends the habits of

clique and caste, and makes itself felt by men of all classes. If the

aristocrat is only valid in fashionable circles, and not with truckmen,

he will never be a leader in fashion; and if the man of the people

cannot speak on equal terms with the gentleman, so that the gentleman

shall perceive that he is already really of his own order, he is not to

be feared. Diogenes,[394] Socrates,[395] and Epaminondas[396] are

gentlemen of the best blood, who have chosen the condition of poverty,

when that of wealth was equally open to them. I use these old names, but

the men I speak of are my contemporaries.[397] Fortune will not supply

to every generation one of these well-appointed knights, but every

collection of men furnishes some example of the class: and the politics

of this country, and the trade of every town, are controlled by these

hardy and irresponsible doers, who have invention to take the lead, and

a broad sympathy which puts them in fellowship with crowds, and makes

their action popular.

6. The manners of this class are observed and caught with devotion by

men of taste. The association of these masters with each other, and

with men intelligent of their merits, is mutually agreeable and

stimulating. The good forms, the happiest expressions of each, are

repeated and adopted. By swift consent, everything superfluous is

dropped, everything graceful is renewed. Fine manners[398] show

themselves formidable to the uncultivated man. They are a subtler

science of defence to parry and intimidate; but once matched by the

skill of the other party, they drop the point of the sword,--points

and fences disappear, and the youth finds himself in a more

transparent atmosphere, wherein life is a less troublesome game, and

not a misunderstanding rises between the players. Manners aim to

facilitate life, to get rid of impediments, and bring the man pure to

energize. They aid our dealing and conversation, as a railway aids

traveling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road,

and leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space. These forms very

soon become fixed, and a fine sense of propriety is cultivated with

more heed, that it becomes a badge of social and civil distinctions.

Thus grows up Fashion, an equivocal semblance, the most puissant, the

most fantastic and frivolous, the most feared and followed, and which

morals and violence assault in vain.

7. There exists a strict relation between the class of power, and the

exclusive and polished circles. The last are always filled or filling

from the first. The strong men usually give some allowance even to the

petulances of fashion, for that affinity they find in it.

Napoleon,[399] child of the revolution, destroyer of the old

noblesse,[400] never ceased to court the Faubourg St. Germain:[401]

doubtless with the feeling, that fashion is a homage to men of his

stamp. Fashion, though in a strange way, represents all manly virtue.

It is a virtue gone to seed: it is a kind of posthumous honor. It does

not often caress the great, but the children of the great: it is a

hall of the Past. It usually sets its face against the great of this

hour. Great men are not commonly in its halls: they are absent in the

field: they are working, not triumphing. Fashion is made up of their

children; of those, who, through the value and virtue of somebody,

have acquired lustre to their name, marks of distinction, means of

cultivation and generosity, and, in their physical organization, a

certain health and excellence, which secures to them, if not the

highest power to work, yet high power to enjoy. The class of power,

the working heroes, the Cortez,[402] the Nelson,[403] the Napoleon,

see that this is the festivity and permanent celebration of such as

they; that fashion is funded talent; is Mexico,[404] Marengo,[405] and

Trafalgar[406][407] beaten out thin; that the brilliant names of

fashion run back to just such busy names as their own, fifty or sixty

years ago. They are the sowers, their sons shall be the reapers, and

their sons, in the ordinary course of things, must yield the

possession of the harvest, to new competitors with keener eyes and

stronger frames. The city is recruited from the country. In the year

1805, it is said, every legitimate monarch in Europe was imbecile. The

city would have died out, rotted, and exploded, long ago, but that it

was reinforced from the fields. It is only country which came to town

day before yesterday, that is city and court to-day.

8. Aristocracy and fashion are certain inevitable results. These

mutual selections are indestructible. If they provoke anger in the

least favored class, and the excluded majority revenge themselves on

the excluding minority, by the strong hand, and kill them, at once a

new class finds itself at the top, as certainly as cream rises in a

bowl of milk: and if the people should destroy class after class,

until two men only were left, one of these would be the leader, and

would be involuntarily served and copied by the other. You may keep

this minority out of sight and out of mind, but it is tenacious of

life, and is one of the estates of the realm.[408] I am the more

struck with this tenacity, when I see its work. It respects the

administration of such unimportant matters, that we should not look

for any durability in its rule. We sometimes meet men under some

strong moral influence, as a patriotic, a literary, a religious

movement, and feel that the moral sentiment rules man and nature. We

think all other distinctions and ties will be slight and fugitive,

this of caste or fashion, for example; yet come from year to year, and

see how permanent that is, in this Boston or New York life of man,

where, too, it has not the lease countenance from the law of the land.

Not in Egypt or in India a firmer or more impassable line. Here are

associations whose ties go over, and under, and through it, a meeting

of merchants, a military corps, a college-class, a fire-club, a

professional association, a political, a religious convention;--the

persons seem to draw inseparably near; yet that assembly once

dispersed, its members will not in the year meet again. Each returns

to his degree in the scale of good society, porcelain remains

porcelain, and earthen earthen. The objects of fashion may be

frivolous, or fashion may be objectless, but the nature of this union

and selection can be neither frivolous nor accidental. Each man's rank

in that perfect graduation depends on some symmetry in his structure,

or some agreement in his structure to the symmetry of society.

Its

doors unbar instantaneously to a natural claim of their own kind. A

natural gentleman finds his way in, and will keep the oldest patrician

out, who has lost his intrinsic rank. Fashion understands itself;

good-breeding and personal superiority of whatever country readily

fraternize with those of every other. The chiefs of savage tribes have

distinguished themselves in London and Paris, by the purity of their

tournure.[409]

9. To say what good of fashion we can,--it rests on reality, and hates

nothing so much as pretenders;--to exclude and mystify pretenders, and

send them into everlasting "Coventry,"[410] is its delight. We

contemn, in turn, every other gift of men of the world; but the habit,

even in little and the least matters, of not appealing to any but our

own sense of propriety, constitutes the foundation of all chivalry.

There is almost no kind of self-reliance, so it be sane and

proportioned, which fashion does not occasionally adopt, and give it

the freedom of its saloons. A sainted soul is always elegant, and, if

it will, passes unchallenged into the most guarded ring. But so will

Jock the teamster pass, in some crisis that brings him thither, and

find favor, as long as his head is not giddy with the new

circumstance, and the iron shoes do not wish to dance in waltzes and

cotillions. For there is nothing settled in manners, but the laws of

behavior yield to the energy of the individual. The maiden at her

first ball, the countryman at a city dinner, believes that there is a

ritual according to which every act and compliment must be performed,

or the failing party must be cast out of this presence. Later, they

learn that good sense and character make their own forms every moment,

and speak or abstain, to take wine or refuse it, stay or go, sit in a

chair or sprawl with children on the floor, or stand on their head, or

what else soever, in a new and aboriginal way: and that strong will is

always in fashion, let who will be unfashionable. All that fashion

demands is composure, and self-content. A circle of men perfectly

well-bred would be a company of sensible persons, in which every man's

native manners and character appear. If the fashionist have not this

quality, he is nothing. We are such lovers of self-reliance, that we

excuse in man many sins, if he will show us a complete satisfaction in

his position, which asks no leave to be of mine, or any man's good

opinion. But any deference to some eminent man or woman of the world,

forfeits all privilege of nobility. He is an underling: I have nothing

to do with him; I will speak with his master. A man should not go

where he cannot carry his whole sphere or society with him,--not

bodily, the whole circle of his friends, but atmospherically. He

should preserve in a new company the same attitude of mind and reality

of relation, which his daily associates draw him to, else he is shorn

of his best beams, and will be an orphan in the merriest club. "If you

could see Vich Ian Vohr with his tail on![411]--" But Vich Ian Vohr

must always carry his belongings in some fashion, if not added as

honor, then severed as disgrace.

10. There will always be in society certain persons who are

mercuries[412] of its approbation, and whose glance will at any time

determine for the curious their standing in the world. These are the

chamberlains of the lesser gods. Accept their coldness as an omen of

grace with the loftier deities, and allow them all their privilege.

They are clear in their office, nor could they be thus formidable,

without their own merits. But do not measure the importance of this

class by their pretension, or imagine that a fop can be the dispenser

of honor and shame. They pass also at their just rate; for how can

they otherwise, in circles which exist as a sort of herald's

office[413] for the sifting of character?

11. As the first thing man requires of man is reality, so that appears

in all the forms of society. We pointedly, and by name, introduce the

parties to each other. Know you before all heaven and earth, that this

is Andrew, and this is Gregory;--they look each other in the eye; they

grasp each other's hand, to identify and signalize each other. It is a

great satisfaction. A gentleman never dodges; his eyes look straight

forward, and he assures the other party, first of all, that he has

been met. For what is it that we seek, in so many visits and

hospitalities? Is it your draperies, pictures, and decorations? Or, do

we not insatiably ask. Was a man in the house? I may easily go into a

great household where there is much substance, excellent provision for

comfort, luxury, and taste, and yet not encounter there any

Amphitryon,[414] who shall subordinate these appendages. I may go into

a cottage, and find a farmer who feels that he is the man I have come

to see, and fronts me accordingly. It was therefore a very natural

point of old feudal etiquette, that a gentleman who received a visit,

though it were of his sovereign, should not leave his roof, but should

wait his arrival at the door of his house. No house, though it were

the Tuileries,[415] or the Escurial,[416] is good for anything without

a master. And yet we are not often gratified by this hospitality.

Everybody we know surrounds himself with a fine house, fine books,

conservatory, gardens, equipage, and all manner of toys, as screens to

interpose between himself and his guests. Does it not seem as if man

was of a very sly, elusive nature, and dreaded nothing so much as a

full renconter front to front with his fellow? It were unmerciful, I

know, quite to abolish the use of these screens, which are of eminent

convenience, whether the guest is too great, or too little. We call

together many friends who keep each other in play, or by luxuries and

ornaments we amuse the young people, and guard our retirement. Or if,

perchance, a searching realist comes to our gate, before whose eyes we

have no care to stand, then again we run to our curtain, and hide

ourselves as Adam[417] at the voice of the Lord God in the garden.

Cardinal Caprara,[418] the Pope's[419] legate at Paris, defended

himself from the glances of Napoleon, by an immense pair of green

spectacles. Napoleon remarked them, and speedily managed to rally them

off: and yet Napoleon, in his turn, was not great enough, with eight

hundred thousand troops at his back, to face a pair of free-born eyes,

but fenced himself with etiquette, and within triple barriers of

reserve: and, as all the world knows from Madame de Stael,[420] was

wont, when he found himself observed, to discharge his face of all

expression. But emperors and rich men are by no means the most

skillful masters of good manners. No rent roll nor army-list can

dignify skulking and dissimulations: and the first point of courtesy

must always be truth, as really all forms of good-breeding point that

way.

12. I have just been reading, in Mr. Hazlitt's[421] translation,

Montaigne's[422] account of his journey into Italy, and am struck with

nothing more agreeably than the self-respecting fashions of the time.

His arrival in each place, the arrival of a gentleman of France, is an

event of some consequence. Wherever he goes, he pays a visit to

whatever prince or gentleman of note resides upon his road, as a duty

to himself and to civilization. When he leaves any house in which he

has lodged for a few weeks, he causes his arms to be painted and hung

up as a perpetual sign to the house, as was the custom of gentlemen.

13. The complement of this graceful self-respect, and that of all the

points of good breeding I most require and insist upon, is deference.

I like that every chair should be a throne, and hold a king. I prefer

a tendency to stateliness, to an excess of fellowship. Let the

incommunicable objects of nature and the metaphysical isolation of man

teach us independence. Let us not be too much acquainted. I would have

a man enter his house through a hall filled with heroic and sacred

sculptures, that he might not want the hint of tranquillity and

self-poise.[423] We should meet each morning, as from foreign

countries, and spending the day together, should depart at night, as

into foreign countries. In all things I would have the island of a man

inviolate. Let us sit apart as the gods, talking from peak to peak all

round Olympus. No degree of affection need invade this religion. This

is myrrh and rosemary to keep the other sweet. Lovers should guard

their strangeness. If they forgive too much, all slides into confusion

and meanness. It is easy to push this deference to a Chinese

etiquette;[424] but coolness and absence of heat and haste indicate

fine qualities. A gentleman makes no noise: a lady is serene

Proportionate is our disgust at those invaders who fill a studious

house with blast and running, to secure some paltry convenience. Not

less I dislike a low sympathy of each with his neighbors's needs. Must

we have a good understanding with one another's palates? as foolish

people who have lived long together, know when each wants salt or

sugar. I pray my companion, if he wishes for bread, to ask me for

bread, and if he wishes for sassafras or arsenic, to ask me for them,

and not to hold out his plate, as if I knew already. Every natural

function can be dignified by deliberation and privacy. Let us leave

hurry to slaves. The compliments and ceremonies of our breeding should

recall,[425] however remotely, the grandeur of our destiny.

14. The flower of courtesy does not very well bide handling, but if we

dare to open another leaf, and explore what parts go to its

conformation, we shall find also an intellectual quality. To the

leaders of men, the brain as well as the flesh and the heart must

furnish a proportion. Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine

perceptions. Men are too coarsely made for the delicacy of beautiful

carriage and customs. It is not quite sufficient to good breeding, a

union of kindness and independence. We imperatively require a

perception of, and a homage to, beauty in our companions. Other

virtues are in request in the field and work yard, but a certain

degree of taste is not to be spared in those we sit with. I could

better eat with one who did not respect the truth or the laws, than

with a sloven and unpresentable person. Moral qualities rule the

world, but at short distances the senses are despotic. The same

discrimination of fit and fair runs out, if with less rigor, into all

parts of life. The average spirit of the energetic class is good

sense, acting under certain limitations and to certain ends. It

entertains every natural gift. Social in its nature, it respects

everything which tends to unite men. It delights in measure.[426] The

love of beauty is mainly the love of measure or proportion. The person

who screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat,

puts whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be loved, love

measure. You must have genius, or a prodigious usefulness, if you will

hide the want of measure. This perception comes in to polish and

perfect the parts of the social instrument. Society will pardon much

to genius and special gifts, but, being in its nature a convention, it

loves what is conventional, or what belongs to coming together. That

makes the good and bad of manners, namely, what helps or hinders

fellowship. For, fashion is not good sense absolute, but relative; not

good sense private, but good sense entertaining company. It hates

corners and sharp points of character, hates quarrelsome, egotistical,

solitary, and gloomy people; hates whatever can interfere with total

blending of parties; whilst it values all peculiarities as in the

highest degree refreshing, which can consist with good fellowship. And

besides the general infusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct

splendor of intellectual power is ever welcome in fine society as the

costliest addition to its rule and its credit.

15. The dry light must shine in to adorn our festival, but it must be

tempered and shaded, or that will also offend. Accuracy is essential

to beauty, and quick perceptions to politeness, but not too quick

perceptions. One may be too punctual and too precise. He must leave

the omniscience of business at the door, when he comes into the palace

of beauty. Society loves creole natures,[427] and sleepy, languishing

manners, so that they cover sense, grace, and good-will: the air of

drowsy strength, which disarms criticism; perhaps, because such a

person seems to reserve himself for the best of the game, and not

spend himself on surfaces; an ignoring eye, which does not see the

annoyances, shifts, and inconveniences, that cloud the brow and

smother the voice of the sensitive.

16. Therefore, besides personal force and so much perception as

constitutes unerring taste, society demands in its patrician class,

another element already intimated, which it significantly terms

good-nature, expressing all degrees of generosity, from the lowest

willingness and faculty to oblige, up to the heights of magnanimity

and love. Insight we must have, or we shall run against one another,

and miss the way to our food; but intellect is selfish and barren. The

secret of success in society, is a certain heartiness and sympathy. A

man who is not happy in the company, cannot find any word in his

memory that will fit the occasion. All his information is a little

impertinent. A man who is happy there, finds in every turn of the

conversation equally lucky occasions for the introduction of that

which he has to say. The favorites of society, and what it calls

whole souls, are able men, and of more spirit than wit, who have no

uncomfortable egotism, but who exactly fill the hour and the company,

contented and contenting, at a marriage or a funeral, a ball or a

jury, a water-party or a shooting-match. England, which is rich in

gentlemen, furnished, in the beginning of the present century, a good

model of that genius which the world loves, in Mr. Fox,[428] who

added to his great abilities the most social disposition, and real

love of men. Parliamentary history has few better passages than the

debate, in which Burke[429] and Fox separated in the House of Commons;

when Fox urged on his old friend the claims of old friendship with

such tenderness, that the house was moved to tears. Another anecdote

is so close to my matter, that I must hazard the story. A tradesman

who had long dunned him for a note of three hundred guineas, found him

one day counting gold, and demanded payment. "No," said Fox, "I owe

this money to Sheridan[430]: it is a debt of honor: if an accident

should happen to me, he has nothing to show." "Then," said the

creditor, "I change my debt into a debt of honor," and tore the note

in pieces. Fox thanked the man for his confidence, and paid him,

saying, "his debt was of older standing, and Sheridan must wait."

Lover of liberty, friend of the Hindoo, friend of the African slave,

he possessed a great personal popularity; and Napoleon said of him on

the occasion of his visit to Paris, in 1805, "Mr. Fox will always hold

the first place in an assembly at the Tuileries."

17. We may easily seem ridiculous in our eulogy of courtesy, whenever

we insist on benevolence as its foundation. The painted phantasm

Fashion rises to cast a species of derision on what we say. But I will

neither be driven from some allowance to Fashion as a symbolic

institution, nor from the belief that love is the basis of courtesy.

"We must obtain that, if we can; but by all means we must affirm

this. Life owes much of its spirit to these sharp contrasts. Fashion

which affects to be honor, is often, in all men's experience, only a

ballroom code. Yet, so long as it is the highest circle, in the

imagination of the best heads on the planet, there is something

necessary and excellent in it; for it is not to be supposed that men

have agreed to be the dupes of anything preposterous; and the respect

which these mysteries inspire in the most rude and sylvan characters,

and the curiosity with which details of high life are read, betray the

universality of the love of cultivated manners. I know that a comic

disparity would be felt, if we should enter the acknowledged 'first

circles,' and apply these terrific standards of justice, beauty, and

benefit, to the individuals actually found there. Monarchs and heroes,

sages and lovers, these gallants are not. Fashion has many classes and

many rules of probation and admission; and not the best alone. There

is not only the right of conquest, which genius pretends,--the

individual, demonstrating his natural aristocracy best of the

best;--but less claims will pass for the time; for Fashion loves

lions, and points, like Circe,[431] to her horned company. This

gentleman is this afternoon arrived from Denmark; and that is my Lord

Ride, who came yesterday from Bagdad; here is Captain Friese, from

Cape Turnagain, and Captain Symmes,[432] from the interior of the

earth; and Monsieur Jovaire, who came down this morning in a balloon;

Mr. Hobnail, the reformer; and Reverend Jul Bat, who has converted

the whole torrid zone in his Sunday school; and Signer Torre del

Greco, who extinguished Vesuvius by pouring into it the Bay of Naples;

Spahr, the Persian ambassador; and Tul Wil Shan, the exiled nabob of

Nepaul, whose saddle is the new moon.--But these are monsters of one

day, and to-morrow will be dismissed to their holes and dens; for, in

these rooms every chair is waited for. The artist, the scholar, and,

in general, the clerisy,[433] wins its way up into these places, and

gets represented here, somewhat on this footing of conquest. Another

mode is to pass through all the degrees, spending a year and a day in

St. Michael's Square,[434] being steeped in Cologne water,[435] and

perfumed, and dined, and introduced, and properly grounded in all the

biography, and politics, and anecdotes of the boudoirs.

18. Yet these fineries may have grace and wit. Let there be grotesque

sculpture about the gates and offices of temples. Let the creed and

commandments even have the saucy homage of parody. The forms of

politeness universally express benevolence in superlative degrees.

What if they are in the mouths of selfish men, and used as means of

selfishness? What if the false gentleman almost bows the true out of

the world? What if the false gentleman contrives so to address his

companion, as civilly to exclude all others from his discourse, and

also to make them feel excluded? Real service will not lose its

nobleness. All generosity is not merely French and sentimental; nor is

it to be concealed, that living blood and a passion of kindness does

at last distinguish God's gentleman from Fashion's. The epitaph of Sir

Jenkin Grout is not wholly unintelligible to the present age. "Here

lies Sir Jenkin Grout, who loved his friend, and persuaded his enemy:

what his mouth ate, his hand paid for: what his servants robbed, he

restored: if a woman gave him pleasure, he supported her in pain: he

never forgot his children: and whoso touched his finger, drew after it

his whole body." Even the line of heroes is not utterly extinct. There

is still ever some admirable person in plain clothes, standing on the

wharf, who jumps in to rescue a drowning man; there is still some

absurd inventor of charities; some guide and comforter of runaway

slaves; some friend of Poland;[436] some Philhellene;[437] some

fanatic who plants shade-trees for the second and third generation,

and orchards when he is grown old; some well-concealed piety; some

just man happy in an ill-fame; some youth ashamed of the favors of

fortune, and impatiently casting them on other shoulders. And these

are the centers of society, on which it returns for fresh impulses.

These are the creators of Fashion, which is an attempt to organize

beauty of behavior. The beautiful and the generous are in the theory,

the doctors and apostles of this church: Scipio, and the Cid, and Sir

Philip Sidney, and Washington, and every pure and valiant heart, who

worshiped Beauty by word and by deed. The persons who constitute the

natural aristocracy, are not found in the actual aristocracy, or only

on its edge; as the chemical energy of the spectrum is found to be

greatest just outside of the spectrum. Yet that is the infirmity of

the seneschals, who do not know their sovereign, when he appears. The

theory of society supposes the existence and sovereignty of these. It

divines afar off their coming. It says with the elder gods,--

"As Heaven and Earth are fairer far[438]

Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs;

And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth,

In form and shape compact and beautiful;

So, on our heels a fresh perfection treads;

A power, more strong in beauty, born of us,

And fated to excel us, as we pass

In glory that old Darkness:

... for, 'tis the eternal law,

That first in beauty shall be first in might."

19. Therefore, within the ethnical circle of good society, there is a

narrower and higher circle, concentration of its light, and flower of

courtesy, to which there is always a tacit appeal of pride and

reference, as to its inner and imperial court, the parliament of love

and chivalry. And this is constituted of those persons in whom heroic

dispositions are native, with the love of beauty, the delight in

society, and the power to embellish the passing day. If the

individuals who compose the purest circles of aristocracy in Europe,

the guarded blood of centuries, should pass in review, in such manner

as that we could, leisurely and critically, inspect their behavior, we

might find no gentleman, and no lady; for although excellent specimens

of courtesy and high-breeding would gratify us in the assemblage, in

the particulars, we should detect offense. Because, elegance comes of

no breeding, but of birth. There must be romance of character, or the

most fastidious exclusion of impertinencies will not avail. It must be

genius which takes that direction: it must be not courteous, but

courtesy. High behavior is as rare in fiction as it is in fact. Scott

is praised for the fidelity with which he painted the demeanor and

conversation of the superior classes. Certainly, kings and queens,

nobles and great ladies, had some right to complain of the absurdity

that had been put in their mouths, before the days of Waverley;[439]

but neither does Scott's dialogue bear criticism. His lords brave each

other in smart epigrammatic speeches, but the dialogue is in costume,

and does not please on the second reading; it is not warm with life.

In Shakespeare alone, the speakers do not strut and bridle, the

dialogue is easily great, and he adds to so many titles that of being

the best-bred man in England, and in Christendom. Once or twice in a

lifetime we are permitted to enjoy the charm of noble manners, in the

presence of a man or woman who have no bar in their nature, but whose

character emanates freely in their word and gesture. A beautiful form

is better than a beautiful face: a beautiful behavior is better than a

beautiful form: it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures;

it is the finest of the fine arts. A man is but a little thing in the

midst of the objects of nature, yet, by the moral quality radiating

from his countenance, he may abolish all considerations of magnitude,

and in his manners equal the majesty of the world. I have seen an

individual whose manners though wholly within the conventions of

elegant society, were never learned there, but were original and

commanding, and held out protection and prosperity; one who did not

need the aid of a court-suit, but carried the holiday in his eye; who

exhilarated the fancy by flinging wide the doors of new modes of

existence; who shook off the captivity of etiquette, with happy,

spirited bearing, good-natured and free as Robin Hood;[440] yet with

the port of an emperor,--if need be, calm, serious, and fit to stand

the gaze of millions.

20. The open air and the fields, the street and public chambers, are

the places where Man executes his will; let him yield or divide the

scepter at the door of the house. Woman, with her instinct of

behavior, instantly detects in man a love of trifles, any coldness or

imbecility, or, in short, any want of that large, flowing, and

magnanimous deportment, which is indispensable as an exterior in the

hall. Our American institutions have been friendly to her, and at this

moment I esteem it a chief felicity of this country, that it excels in

women. A certain awkward consciousness of inferiority in the men, may

give rise to the new chivalry in behalf of Woman's Rights. Certainly,

let her be as much better placed in the laws and in social forms, as

the most zealous reformer can ask, but I confide so entirely in her

inspiring and musical nature, that I believe only herself can show us

how she shall be served. The wonderful generosity of her sentiments

raises her at times into heroical and godlike regions, and verifies

the pictures of Minerva,[441] Juno,[442] or Polymnia;[443] and, by the

firmness with which she treads her upward path, she convinces the

coarsest calculators that another road exists than that which their

feet know. But besides those who make good in our imagination the

place of muses and of Delphic Sibyls,[444] are there not women who

fill our vase with wine and roses to the brim, so that the wine runs

over and fills the house with perfume; who inspire us with courtesy;

who unloose our tongues, and we speak; who anoint our eyes, and we

see? We say things we never thought to have said; for once, our walls

of habitual reserve vanished, and left us at large; we were children

playing with children in a wide field of flowers. Steep us, we cried,

in these influences, for days, for weeks, and we shall be sunny poets,

and will write out in many-colored words the romance that you are. Was

it Hafiz[445] or Firdousi[446] that said of his Persian Lilla, "She

was an elemental force, and astonished me by her amount of life, when

I saw her day after day radiating, every instant, redundant joy and

grace on all around her.[447] She was a solvent powerful to reconcile

all heterogeneous persons into one society; like air or water, an

element of such a great range of affinities, that it combines readily

with a thousand substances. Where she is present, all others will be

more than they are wont. She was a unit and whole, so that whatsoever

she did, became her. She had too much sympathy and desire to please,

than that you could say, her manners were marked with dignity, yet no

princess could surpass her clear and erect demeanor on each occasion.

She did not study the Persian grammar, nor the books of the seven

poets, but all the poems of the seven seemed to be written upon her.

For, though the bias of her nature was not to thought, but to

sympathy, yet was she so perfect in her own nature, as to meet

intellectual persons by the fullness of her heart, warming them by her

sentiments; believing, as she did, that by dealing nobly with all, all

would show themselves noble."

21. I know that this Byzantine[448] pile of chivalry of Fashion, which

seems so fair and picturesque to those who look at the contemporary

facts for science or for entertainment, is not equally pleasant to all

spectators. The constitution of our society makes it a giant's castle

to the ambitious youth who have not found their names enrolled in its

Golden Book,[449] and whom it has excluded from its coveted honors and

privileges. They have yet to learn that its seeming grandeur is

shadowy and relative: it is great by their allowance: its proudest

gates will fly open at the approach of their courage and virtue. For

the present distress, however, of those who are predisposed to suffer

from the tyrannies of this caprice, there are easy remedies. To remove

your residence a couple of miles, or at most four, will commonly

relieve the most extreme susceptibility. For, the advantages which

fashion values are plants which thrive in very confined localities,

in a few streets, namely. Out of this precinct, they go for nothing;

are of no use in the farm, in the forest, in the market, in war, in

the nuptial society, in the literary or scientific circle, at sea, in

friendship, in the heaven of thought or virtue.

22. But we have lingered long enough in these painted courts. The

worth of the thing signified must vindicate our taste for the emblem.

Everything that is called fashion and courtesy humbles itself before

the cause and fountain of honor, creator of titles and dignities,

namely, the heart of love. This is the royal blood, this the fire,

which, in all countries and contingencies, will work after its kind

and conquer ind expand all that approaches it. This gives new meanings

to every fact. This impoverishes the rich, suffering no grandeur but

its own. What is rich? Are you rich enough to help anybody? to

succor the unfashionable and the eccentric? rich enough to make the

Canadian in his wagon, the itinerant with his consul's paper which

commends him "To the charitable," the swarthy Italian with his few

broken words of English, the lame pauper hunted by overseers from town

to town, even the poor insane or besotted wreck of man or woman, feel

the noble exception of your presence and your house, from the general

bleakness and stoniness; to make such feel that they were greeted with

a voice which made them both remember and hope? What is vulgar, but to

refuse the claim on acute and conclusive reasons? What is gentle, but

to allow it, and give their heart and yours lone holiday from the

national caution? Without the rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.

The king of Schiraz[450] could not afford to be so bountiful as the

poor Osman[451] who dwelt at his gate. Osman had a humanity so broad

and deep, that although his speech was so bold and free with the

Koran[452] as to disgust all the dervishes, yet was there never a poor

outcast, eccentric, or insane man, some fool who had cut off his

beard, or who had been mutilated under a vow, or had a pet madness in

his brain, but fled at once to him,--that great heart lay there so

sunny and hospitable in the center of the country,--that it seemed as

if the instinct of all sufferers drew them to his side.

And the

madness which he harbored, he did not share. Is not this to be rich?

this only to be rightly rich?

23. But I shall hear without pain, that I play the courtier very ill,

and talk of that which I do not well understand. It is easy to see,

that what is called by distinction society and fashion, has good laws

as well as bad, has much that is necessary, and much that is absurd.

Too good for banning, and too bad for blessing, it reminds us of a

tradition of the pagan mythology, in any attempt to settle its

character. "I overheard Jove,[453] one day," said Silenus,[454]

"talking of destroying the earth; he said, it had failed; they were

all rogues and vixens, who went from bad to worse, as fast as the days

succeeded each other. Minerva said, she hoped not; they were only

ridiculous little creatures, with this odd circumstance, that they had

a blur, or indeterminate aspect, seen far or seen near; if you called

them bad, they would appear so; if you called them good, they would

appear so; and there was no one person or action among them, which

would not puzzle her owl,[455] much more all Olympus, to know whether

it was fundamentally bad or good."

GIFTS[456]

Gifts of one who loved me--

'Twas high time they came;

When he ceased to love me,

Time they stopped for shame.

1. It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the

world owes the world more than the world can pay, and ought to go into

chancery,[457] and be sold. I do not think this general insolvency,

which involves in some sort all the population, to be the reason of

the difficulty experienced at Christmas and New Year, and other times,

in bestowing gifts; since it is always so pleasant to be generous,

though very vexatious to pay debts. But the impediment lies in the

choosing. If, at any time, it comes into my head that a present is due

from me to somebody, I am puzzled what to give, until the opportunity

is gone. Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because

they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the

utilities of the world. These gay natures contrast with the somewhat

stern countenance of ordinary nature: they are like music heard out of

a work-house. Nature does not cocker us:[458] we are children, not

pets: she is not fond: everything is dealt to us without fear or

favor, after severe universal laws. Yet these delicate flowers look

like the frolic and interference of love and beauty. Men use to tell

us that we love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it,

because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted.

Something like that pleasure, the flowers give us: what am I to whom

these sweet hints are addressed? Fruits are acceptable gifts,[459]

because they are the flower of commodities, and admit of fantastic

values being attached to them. If a man should send to me to come a

hundred miles to visit him, and should set before me a basket of fine

summer-fruit, I should think there was some proportion between the

labor and the reward.

2. For common gifts, necessity makes pertinences and beauty every day,

and one is glad when an imperative leaves him no option, since if the

man at the door have no shoes, you have not to consider whether you

could procure him a paint-box. And as it is always pleasing to see a

man eat bread or drink water, in the house or out of doors, so it is

always a great satisfaction to supply these first wants. Necessity

does everything well. In our condition of universal dependence, it

seems heroic to let the petitioner[460] be the judge of his necessity,

and to give all that is asked, though at great inconvenience. If it be

a fantastic desire, it is better to leave to others the office of

punishing him. I can think of many parts I should prefer playing to

that of the Furies.[461] Next to things of necessity, the rule for a

gift, which one of my friends prescribed, is that we might convey to

some person that which properly belonged to his character, and was

easily associated with him in thought. But our tokens of compliment

and love are for the most part barbarous. Rings and other jewels are

not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of

thyself. Thou must bleed for me. Therefore the poet brings his poem;

the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the

sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a

handkerchief of her own sewing. This is right and pleasing, for it

restores society in so far to its primary basis, when a man's

biography[462] is conveyed in his gift, and every man's wealth is an

index of his merit. But it is a cold lifeless business when you go to

the shops to buy me something which does not represent your life and

talent, but a goldsmith's. That is fit for kings, and rich men who

represent kings, and a false state of property, to make presents of

gold and silver stuffs, as a kind of symbolical sin-offering,[463] or

payment of blackmail.[464]

3. The law of benefits is a difficult channel, which requires careful

sailing, or rude boats. It is not the office of a man to receive

gifts. How dare you give them? We wish to be self-sustained. We do not

quite forgive a forgiver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of

being bitten. We can receive anything from love, for that is a way of

receiving it from ourselves; but not from any one who assumes to

bestow. We sometimes hate the meat which we eat, because there seems

something of degrading dependence in living by it.

"Brother, if Jove[465] to thee a present make,

Take heed that from his hands thou nothing take."

We ask the whole. Nothing less will content us. We arraign society, if

it do not give us besides earth, and fire, and water, opportunity,

love, reverence, and objects of veneration.

4. He is a good man, who can receive a gift well. We are either glad

or sorry at a gift, and both emotions are unbecoming. Some violence, I

think, is done, some degradation borne, when I rejoice or grieve at a

gift. I am sorry when my independence is invaded, or when a gift comes

from such as do not know my spirit, and so the act is not supported;

and if the gift pleases me overmuch, then I should be ashamed that the

donor should read my heart, and see that I love his commodity, and not

him. The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me,

correspondent to my flowing unto him. When the waters are at level,

then my goods pass to him, and his to me. All his are mine, all mine

his. I say to him, How can you give me this pot of oil, or this flagon

of wine, when all your oil and wine is mine, which belief of mine this

gift seems to deny? Hence the fitness of beautiful, not useful things

for gifts. This giving is flat usurpation, and therefore when the

beneficiary is ungrateful, as all beneficiaries hate all Timons,[466]

not at all considering the value of the gift, but looking back to the

greater store it was taken from, I rather sympathize with the

beneficiary, than with the anger of my lord, Timon. For, the

expectation of gratitude is mean, and is continually punished by the

total insensibility of the obliged person. It is a great happiness to

get off without injury and heart-burning, from one who has had the ill

luck to be served by you. It is a very onerous business,[467] this of

being served, and the debtor naturally wishes to give you a slap. A

golden text for these gentlemen is that which I admire in the

Buddhist,[468] who never thanks, and who says, "Do not flatter your

benefactors."

5. The reason of these discords I conceive to be, that there is no

commensurability between a man and any gift. You cannot give anything

to a magnanimous person. After you have served him, he at once puts

you in debt by his magnanimity. The service a man renders his friend

is trivial and selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend

stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve

his friend, and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my

friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small.

Besides, our action on each other, good as well as evil, is so

incidental and at random, that we can seldom hear the acknowledgments

of any person who would thank us for a benefit, without some shame and

humiliation. We can rarely strike a direct stroke, but must be content

with an oblique one; we seldom have the satisfaction of yielding a

direct benefit, which is directly received. But rectitude scatters

favors on every side without knowing it, and receives with wonder the

thanks of all people.

6. I fear to breathe any treason against the majesty of love, which is

the genius and god of gifts, and to whom we must not affect to

prescribe. Let him give kingdoms or flower-leaves indifferently. There

are persons from whom we always expect fairy tokens; let us not cease

to expect them. This is prerogative, and not to be limited by our

municipal rules. For the rest, I like to see that we cannot be bought

and sold. The best of hospitality and of generosity is also not in the

will, but in fate. I find that I am not much to you; you do not need

me; you do not feel me; then am I thrust out of doors, though you

proffer me house and lands. No services are of any value, but only

likeness. When I have attempted to join myself to others by services,

it proved an intellectual trick--no more. They eat your service like

apples, and leave you out. But love them, and they feel for you, and

delight in you all the time.

NATURE[469]

The rounded world is fair to see,

Nine times folded in mystery:

Though baffled seers cannot impart

The secret of its laboring heart,

Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast,

And all is clear from east to west.

Spirit that lurks each form within

Beckons to spirit of its kin;

Self-kindled every atom glows,

And hints the future which it owes.

1. There are days[470] which occur in this climate, at almost any

season of the year, wherein the world reaches its perfection, when the

air, the heavenly bodies, and the earth, make a harmony, as if nature

would indulge her offspring; when, in these bleak upper sides of the

planet, nothing is to desire that we have heard of the happiest

latitudes, and we bask in the shining hours of Florida and Cuba; when

everything that has life gives sign of satisfaction, and the cattle

that lie on the ground seem to have great and tranquil thoughts. These

halcyons[471] may be looked for with a little more assurance in that

pure October weather, which we distinguish by the name of Indian

Summer.[472] The day, immeasurably long, sleeps over the broad hills

and warm wide fields. To have lived through all its sunny hours,

seems longevity enough. The solitary places do not seem quite lonely.

At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is forced

to leave his city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish. The

knapsack of custom falls off his back with the first step he makes

into these precincts. Here is sanctity which shames our religions, and

reality which discredits our heroes. Here we find nature to be the

circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance, and judges like a

god all men that come to her. We have crept out of our close and

crowded houses into the night and morning, and we see what majestic

beauties daily wrap us in their bosom. How willingly we would escape

the barriers which render them comparatively impotent, escape the

sophistication and second thought, and suffer nature to entrance us.

The tempered light of the woods is like a perpetual morning, and is

stimulating and heroic. The anciently reported spells of these places

creep on us. The stems of pines, hemlocks, and oaks, almost gleam like

iron on the excited eye. The incommunicable trees begin to persuade us

to live with them, and quit our life of solemn trifles. Here no

history, or church, or state, is interpolated on the divine sky and

the immortal year. How easily we might walk onward into opening

landscape, absorbed by new pictures, and by thoughts fast succeeding

each other, until by degrees the recollection of home was crowded out

of the mind, all memory obliterated by the tyranny of the present,

and we were led in triumph by nature.

2. These enchantments are medicinal, they sober and heal us. These are

plain pleasures, kindly and native to us. We come to our own, and make

friends with matter, which the ambitious chatter of the schools would

persuade us to despise. We never can part with it; the mind loves its

old home: as water to our thirst, so is the rock, the ground, to our

eyes, and hands, and feet. It is firm water: it is cold flame: what

health, what affinity! Ever an old friend, ever like a dear friend and

brother, when we chat affectedly with strangers, comes in this honest

face, and takes a grave liberty with us, and shames us out of our

nonsense. Cities give not the human senses room enough. We go out

daily and nightly to feed the eyes on the horizon, and require so much

scope, just as we need water for our bath. There are all degrees of

natural influence, from these quarantine powers of nature, up to her

dearest and gravest ministrations to the imagination and the soul.

There is the bucket of cold water from the spring, the wood-fire to

which the chilled traveler rushes for safety,--and there is the

sublime moral of autumn and of noon. We nestle in nature, and draw our

living as parasites from her roots and grains, and we receive glances

from the heavenly bodies, which call us to solitude, and foretell the

remotest future. The blue zenith is the point in which romance and

reality meet. I think, if we should be rapt away into all that we

dream of heaven, and should converse with Gabriel[473] and Uriel,[474]

the upper sky would be all that would remain of our furniture.

3. It seems as if the day was not wholly profane, in which we have

given heed to some natural object. The fall of snowflakes in a still

air, preserving to each crystal its perfect form; the blowing of sleet

over a wide sheet of water, and over plains; the waving rye-fields;

the mimic waving of acres of houstonia, whose innumerable florets

whiten and ripple before the eye; the reflections of trees and flowers

in glassy lakes; the musical steaming odorous south wind, which

converts all trees to wind-harps;[475] the crackling and spurting of

hemlock in the flames; or of pine-logs, which yield glory to the walls

and faces in the sitting-room,--these are the music and pictures of

the most ancient religion. My house stands in low land, with limited

outlook, and on the skirt of the village.[476] But I go with my

friend[477] to the shore of our little river,[478] and with one stroke

of the paddle, I leave the village politics and personalities, yes,

and the world of villages and personalities behind, and pass into a

delicate realm of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spotted

man to enter without novitiate and probation.[479] We penetrate bodily

this incredible beauty: we dip our hands in this painted element: our

eyes are bathed in these lights and forms. A holiday, a

villeggiatura,[480] a royal revel, the proudest, most heart-rejoicing

festival that valor and beauty, power and taste, ever decked and

enjoyed, establishes itself on the instant. These sunset clouds, these

delicately emerging stars, with their private and ineffable glances,

signify it and proffer it. I am taught the poorness of our invention,

the ugliness of towns and palaces. Art and luxury have early learned

that they must work as enhancement and sequel to this original beauty.

I am overinstructed for my return. Henceforth I shall be hard to

please. I cannot go back to toys. I am grown expensive and

sophisticated. I can no longer live without elegance: but a countryman

shall be my master of revels. He who knows the most, he who knows what

sweets and virtues are in the ground, the waters, the plants, the

heavens, and how to come at these enchantments, is the rich and royal

man. Only as far as masters of the world have called in nature to

their aid, can they reach the height of magnificence. This is the

meaning of their hanging-gardens,[481] villas, garden-houses, islands,

parks, and preserves, to back their faulty personality with these

strong accessories. I do not wonder that the landed interest should be

invincible in the state with these dangerous auxiliaries. These bribe

and invite; not kings, not palaces, not men, not women, but these

tender and poetic stars, eloquent of secret promises. We heard what

the rich man said, we knew of his villa, his grove, his wine, and his

company, but the provocation and point of the invitation came out of

these beguiling stars. In their soft glances, I see what men strove to

realize in some Versailles,[482] or Paphos,[483] or Ctesiphon.[484]

Indeed, it is the magical lights of the horizon, and the blue sky for

the background, which save all our works of art, which were otherwise

baubles. When the rich tax the poor with servility and obsequiousness,

they should consider the effect of man reputed to be the possessors of

nature, on imaginative minds. Ah! if the rich were rich as the poor

fancy riches! A boy hears a military band play on the field at night,

and he has kings and queens, and famous chivalry palpably before him.

He hears the echoes of a horn in a hill country, in the Notch

Mountains,[485] for example, which converts the mountains into an

Æolian harp,[486] and this supernatural tiralira restores to him the

Dorian[487] mythology, Apollo,[488] Diana,[489] and all divine hunters

and huntresses. Can a musical note be so lofty, so haughtily

beautiful! To the poor young poet, thus fabulous is his picture of

society; he is loyal; he respects the rich; they are rich for the sake

of his imagination; how poor his fancy would be, if they were not

rich! That they have some high-fenced grove, which they call a park;

that they live in larger and better-garnished saloons than he has

visited, and go in coaches, keeping only the society of the elegant,

to watering-places, and to distant cities, are the groundwork from

which he has delineated estates of romance, compared with which their

actual possessions are shanties and paddocks. The muse herself betrays

her son, and enhances the gift of wealthy and well-born beauty, by a

radiation out of the air, and clouds, and forests that skirt the

road,--a certain haughty favor, as if from patrician genii to

patricians, a kind of aristocracy in nature, a prince of the power of

the air.

4. The moral sensibility which makes Edens[490] and Tempes[491] so

easily, may not be always found, but the material landscape is never

far off. We can find these enchantments without visiting the Como

Lake,[492] or the Madeira Islands.[493] We exaggerate the praises of

local scenery. In every landscape, the point of astonishment is the

meeting of the sky and the earth, and that is seen from the first

hillock as well as from the top of the Alleghanies. The stars at night

stoop down over the brownest, homeliest common,[494] with all the

spiritual magnificence which they shed on the Campagna,[495] or on the

marble deserts of Egypt. The uprolled clouds and the colors of morning

and evening, will transfigure maples and alders. The difference

between landscape and landscape is small, but there is great

difference in the beholders. There is nothing so wonderful in any

particular landscape, as the necessity of being beautiful under which

every landscape lies. Nature cannot be surprised in undress. Beauty

breaks in everywhere.

5. But it is very easy to outrun the sympathy of readers on this

topic, which school-men called natura naturata, or nature passive.

One can hardly speak directly of it without excess. It is as easy to

broach in mixed companies what is called "the subject of religion." A

susceptible person does not like to indulge his tastes in this kind,

without the apology of some trivial necessity: he goes to see a

wood-lot, or to look at the crops, or to fetch a plant or a mineral

from a remote locality, or he carries a fowling-piece, or a

fishing-rod. I suppose this shame must have a good reason. A

dilettantism[496] in nature is barren and unworthy. The fop of fields

is no better than his brother of Broadway. Men are naturally hunters

and inquisitive of woodcraft and I suppose that such a gazetteer as

wood-cutters and Indians should furnish facts for would take place in

the most sumptuous drawing-rooms of all the "Wreaths" and "Flora's

chaplets"[497] of the book-shops; yet ordinarily, whether we are too

clumsy for so subtle a topic, or from whatever cause, as soon as men

begin to write on nature, they fall into euphuism. Frivolity is a most

unfit tribute to Pan,[498] who ought to be represented in the

mythology as the most continent of gods. I would not be frivolous

before the admirable reserve and prudence of time, yet I cannot

renounce the right of returning often to this old topic. The multitude

of false churches[499] accredits the true religion. Literature,

poetry, science, are the homage of man to this unfathomed secret,

concerning which no sane man can affect an indifference or

incuriosity. Nature is loved by what is best in us. It is loved as the

city of God, although, or rather because there is no citizen. The

sunset is unlike anything that is underneath it: it wants men. And the

beauty of nature must always seem unreal and mocking, until the

landscape has human figures, that are as good as itself. If there

were good men, there would never be this rapture in nature. If the

king is in the palace nobody looks at the walls. It is when he is

gone, and the house is filled with grooms and gazers, that we turn

from the people, to find relief in the majestic men that are suggested

by the pictures and architecture. The critics who complain of the

sickly separation of the beauty of nature from the thing to be done,

must consider that our hunting of the picturesque is inseparable from

our protest against false society. Man is fallen; nature is erect, and

serves as a differential thermometer, detecting the presence or

absence of the divine sentiment in man. By fault of our dulness and

selfishness, we are looking up to nature, but when we are

convalescent, nature will look up to us. We see the foaming brook with

compunction; if our own life flowed with the right energy, we should

shame the brook. The stream of zeal sparkles with real fire, and not

with reflex rays of sun and moon. Nature may be as selfishly studied

as trade. Astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology; psychology,

mesmerism (with intent to show where our spoons are gone); and anatomy

and physiology become phrenology and palmistry.

6. But taking timely warning, and leaving many things unsaid on this

topic, but not longer omit our homage to the Efficient Nature, natura

naturans, the quick cause, before which all forms flee as the driven

snows, itself secret, its works driven before it in flocks and

multitudes, (as the ancient represented nature by Proteus,[500] a

shepherd), and in undescribable variety. It publishes itself in

creatures, reaching from particles and spicula, through transformation

on transformation to the highest symmetries, arriving at consummate

results without a shock or a leap. A little heat, that is, a little

motion, is all that differences the bald, dazzling white, and deadly

cold poles of the earth from the prolific tropical climates. All changes

pass without violence, by reason of the two cardinal conditions of

boundless space and boundless time. Geology has initiated us into the

secularity of nature, and taught us to disuse our dame-school measures,

and exchange our Mosaic[501] and Ptolemaic schemes[502] for her large

style. We know nothing rightly, for want of perspective. Now we learn

what patient periods must round themselves before the rock is formed,

then before the rock is broken, and the first lichen race has

disintegrated the thinnest external plate into soil, and opened the door

for the remote Flora,[503] Fauna,[504] Ceres,[505] and Pomona,[506] to

come in. How far off yet is the trilobite! how far the quadruped! how

inconceivably remote is man! All duly arrive,[507] and then race after

race of men. It is a long way from granite to the oyster; farther yet to

Plato,[508] and the preaching of the immortality of the soul. Yet all

must come, as surely as the first atom has two sides.

7. Motion or change, and identity or rest, are the first and second

secrets of nature: Motion and Rest. The whole code of her laws may be

written on the thumb-nail, or the signet of a ring. The whirling

bubble on the surface of a brook, admits us to the secret of the

mechanics of the sky. Every shell on the beach is a key to it. A

little water made to rotate in a cup explains the formation of the

simpler shells; the addition of matter from year to year, arrives at

last at the most complex forms; and yet so poor is nature with all her

craft, that, from the beginning to the end of the universe, she has

but one stuff,--but one stuff with its two ends, to serve up all her

dream-like variety. Compound it how she will, star, sand, fire, water,

tree, man, it is still one stuff, and betrays the same properties.

8. Nature is always consistent, though she feigns to contravene her

own laws. She keeps her laws, and seems to transcend them. She arms

and equips an animal to find its place and living in the earth, and,

at the same time, she arms and equips another animal to destroy it.

Space exists to divide creatures; but by clothing the sides of a bird

with a few feathers, she gives him a petty omnipresence. The direction

is forever onward, but the artist still goes back for materials, and

begins again with the first elements on the most advanced stage:

otherwise, all goes to ruin. If we look at her work, we seem to catch

a glance of a system in transition. Plants are the young of the world,

vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upward toward

consciousness; the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their

imprisonment, rooted in the ground. The animal is the novice and

probationer of a more advanced order. The men, though young, having

tasted the first drop from the cup of thought, are already dissipated:

the maples and ferns are still uncorrupt; yet no doubt, when they come

to consciousness, they too will curse and swear. Flowers so strictly

belong to youth, that we adult men soon come to feel, that their

beautiful generations concern not us: we have had our day; now let the

children have theirs. The flowers jilt us, and we are old bachelors

with our ridiculous tenderness.

9. Things are so strictly related, that according to the skill of the

eye, from any one object the parts and properties of any other may be

predicted. If we had eyes to see it, a bit of stone from the city wall

would certify us of the necessity that man must exist, as readily as

the city. That identity makes us all one, and reduces to nothing great

intervals on our customary scale. We talk of deviations from natural

life, as if artificial life were not also natural. The smoothest

curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude

and aboriginal as a white bear, omnipotent to its own ends, and is

directly related, there amid essences and billets-doux, to Himalaya

mountain-chains[509] and the axis of the globe. If we consider how

much we are nature's, we need not be superstitious about towns, as if

that terrific or benefic force did not find us there also, and fashion

cities. Nature, who made the mason, made the house. We may easily hear

too much of rural influences. The cool, disengaged air of natural

objects, makes them enviable to us, chafed and irritable creatures

with red faces, and we think we shall be as grand as they, if we camp

out and eat roots, but let us be men instead of wood-chucks, and the

oak and the elm shall gladly serve us, though we sit in chairs of

ivory on carpets of silk.

10. This guiding identity runs through all the surprises and contrasts

of the piece, and characterizes every law. Man carries the world in

his head, the whole astronomy and chemistry suspended in a thought.

Because the history of nature is charactered in his brain, therefore

is he the prophet and discoverer of her secrets. Every known fact in

natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it

was actually verified. A man does not tie his shoe without recognizing

laws which bind the farthest regions of nature: moon, plant, gas,

crystal, are concrete geometry and numbers. Common sense knows its

own, and recognizes the fact at first sight in chemical experiment.

The common sense of Franklin,[510] Dalton,[511] Davy[512] and

Black,[513] is the same common sense which made the arrangements which

now it discovers.

11. If the identity expresses organized rest, the counter action runs

also into organization. The astronomers said,[514] "Give us matter,

and a little motion, and we will construct the universe. It is not

enough that we should have matter, we must also have a single impulse,

one shove to launch the mass, and generate the harmony of the

centrifugal and centripetal[515] forces. Once heave the ball from the

hand, and we can show how all this mighty order grew." "A very

unreasonable postulate," said the metaphysicians, "and a plain begging

of the question. Could you not prevail to know the genesis of

projection, as well as the continuation of it?" Nature, meanwhile, had

not waited for the discussion, but, right or wrong, bestowed the

impulse, and the balls rolled. It was no great affair, a mere push,

but the astronomers were right in making much of it, for there is no

end of the consequences of the act. That famous aboriginal push

propagates itself through all the balls of the system, and through

every atom of every ball, through all the races of creatures, and

through the history and performances of every individual. Exaggeration

is in the course of things. Nature sends no creature, no man into the

world, without adding a small excess of his proper quality.

Given the

planet, it is still necessary to add the impulse; so, to every

creature nature added a little violence of direction in its proper

path, a shove to put it on its way; in every instance, a slight

generosity, a drop too much. Without electricity the air would rot,

and without this violence of direction which men and women have,

without a spice of bigot and fanatic, no excitement, no efficiency. We

aim above the mark, to hit the mark. Every act hath some falsehood of

exaggeration in it. And when now and then comes along some sad,

sharp-eyed man, who sees how paltry a game is played, and refuses to

play, but blabs the secret;--how then? is the bird flown? O no, the

wary Nature sends a new troop of fairer forms, of lordlier youths,

with a little more excess of direction to hold them fast to their

several aims; makes them a little wrongheaded in that direction in

which they are rightest, and on goes the game again with new whirl,

for a generation or two more. The child with his sweet pranks, the

fool of his senses, commanded by every sight and sound, without any

power to compare and rank his sensations, abandoned to a whistle or a

painted chip, to a lead dragoon, or a ginger-bread dog,

individualizing everything, generalizing nothing, delighted with every

new thing, lies down at night overpowered by the fatigue, which this

day of continual petty madness has incurred. But Nature has answered

her purpose with the curly, dimpled lunatic. She has tasked every

faculty, and has secured the symmetrical growth of the bodily frame,

by all these attitudes and exertions,--an end of the first importance,

which could not be trusted to any care less perfect than her own. This

glitter, this opaline luster plays round the top of every toy to his

eye, to insure his fidelity, and he is deceived to his good. We are

made alive and kept alive by the same arts. Let the Stoics[516] say

what they please, we do not eat for the good of living, but because

the meat is savory and the appetite is keen. The vegetable life does

not content itself with casting from the flower or the tree a single

seed, but it fills the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds,

that if thousands perish, thousands may plant themselves, that

hundreds may come up, that tens may live to maturity, that, at least,

one may replace the parent. All things betray the same calculated

profusion. The excess of fear with which the animal frame is hedged

round, shrinking from cold, starting at sight of a snake, or a sudden

noise, protects us, through a multitude of groundless alarms, from

some one real danger at last. The lover seeks in marriage his private

felicity and perfection, with no prospective end; and nature hides in

his happiness her own end, namely, progeny, or the perpetuity of the

race.

12. But the craft with which the world is made runs also into the mind

and character of men. No man is quite sane; each has a vein of folly in

his composition, a slight determination of blood to the head, to make

sure of holding him hard to some one point which nature had taken to

heart. Great causes are never tried on their merits; but the cause is

reduced to particulars to suit the size of the partisans, and the

contention is ever hottest on minor matters. Not less remarkable is the

overfaith of each man in the importance of what he has to do or say. The

poet, the prophet, has a higher value for what he utters than any

hearer, and therefore it gets spoken. The strong, self-complacent

Luther[517] declares with an emphasis, not to be mistaken, that "God

himself cannot do without wise men." Jacob Behmen[518] and George

Fox[519] betray their egotism in the pertinacity of their controversial

tracts, and James Naylor[520] once suffered himself to be worshiped as

the Christ. Each prophet comes presently to identify himself with his

thought, and to esteem his hat and shoes sacred. However this may

discredit such persons with the judicious, it helps them with the

people, as it gives heat, pungency, and publicity to their words. A

similar experience is not infrequent in private life. Each young and

ardent person writes a diary, in which, when the hours of prayer and

penitence arrive, he inscribes his soul. The pages thus written are, to

him, burning and fragrant: he reads them on his knees by midnight and by

the morning star; he wets them with his tears: they are sacred; too good

for the world, and hardly yet to be shown to the dearest friend. This is

the man-child that is born to the soul, and her life still circulates in

the babe. The umbilical cord has not yet been cut. After some time has

elapsed, he begins to wish to admit his friend to this hallowed

experience, and with hesitation, yet with firmness, exposes the pages to

his eye. Will they not burn his eyes? The friend coldly turns them

over, and passes from the writing to conversation, with easy transition,

which strikes the other party with astonishment and vexation. He cannot

suspect the writing itself. Days and nights of fervid life, of communion

with angels of darkness and of light, have engraved their shadowy

characters on that tear-stained book. He suspects the intelligence or

the heart of his friend. Is there then no friend? He cannot yet credit

that one may have impressive experience, and yet may not know how to put

his private fact into literature; and perhaps the discovery that wisdom

has other tongues and ministers than we, that though we should hold our

peace, the truth would not the less be spoken, might check injuriously

the flames of our zeal. A man can only speak, so long as he does not

feel his speech to be partial and inadequate. It is partial, but he does

not see it to be so, whilst he utters it. As soon as he is released from

the instinctive and particular, and sees its partiality, he shuts his

mouth in disgust. For, no man can write anything, who does not think

that what he writes is for the time the history of the world; or do

anything well, who does not esteem his work to be of importance. My work

may be of none, but I must not think it is of none, or I shall not do it

with impunity.

13. In like manner, there is throughout nature something mocking,

something that leads us on and on, but arrives nowhere, keeps no faith

with us. All promise outruns the performance. We live in a system of

approximations. Every end is prospective of some other end, which is

also temporary; a round and final success nowhere. We are encamped in

nature, not domesticated. Hunger and thirst lead us on to eat and to

drink; but bread and wine, mix and cook them how you will, leave us

hungry and thirsty, after the stomach is full. It is the same with all

our arts and performances. Our music, our poetry, our language itself

are not satisfactions, but suggestions. The hunger for wealth, which

reduces the planet to a garden, fools the eager pursuer. What is the

end sought? Plainly to secure the ends of good sense and beauty, from

the intrusion of deformity or vulgarity of any kind. But what an

operose[521] method! What a train of means to secure a little

conversation! This palace of brick and stone, these servants, this

kitchen, these stables, horses and equipage, this bank-stock, and file

of mortgages; trade to all the world, country-house and cottage by the

water-side, all for a little conversation, high, clear, and spiritual!

Could it not be had as well by beggars on the highway? No, all these

things came from successive efforts of these beggars to remove

friction from the wheels of life, and give opportunity. Conversation,

character, were the avowed ends; wealth was good as it appeased the

animal cravings, cured the smoky chimney, silenced the creaking door,

brought friends together in a warm and quiet room, and kept the

children and the dinner-table in a different apartment. Thought,

virtue, beauty, were the ends; but it was known that men of thought

and virtue sometimes had the headache, or wet feet, or could lose good

time, whilst the room was getting warm in winter days. Unluckily, in

the exertions necessary to remove these inconveniences, the main

attention has been diverted to this object; the old aims have been

lost sight of, and to remove friction has come to be the end. That is

the ridicule of rich men, and Boston, London, Vienna, and now the

governments generally of the world, are cities and governments of the

rich, and the masses are not men, but poor men, that is, men who

would be rich; this is the ridicule of the class, that they arrive

with pains and sweat and fury nowhere; when all is done, it is for

nothing. They are like one who has interrupted the conversation of a

company to make his speech, and now has forgotten what he went to say.

The appearance strikes the eye everywhere of an aimless society, of

aimless nations. Were the ends of nature so great and cogent, as to

exact this immense sacrifice of men?

14. Quite analogous to the deceits in life, there is, as might be

expected, a similar effect on the eye from the face of external

nature. There is in woods and waters a certain enticement and

flattery, together with a failure to yield a present satisfaction.

This disappointment is felt in every landscape. I have seen the

softness and beauty of the summer clouds floating feathery overhead,

enjoying, as it seemed, their height and privilege of motion, whilst

yet they appeared not so much the drapery of this place and hour, as

fore-looking to such pavilions and gardens of festivity beyond. It is

an odd jealousy; but the poet finds himself not near enough to this

object. The pine tree, the river, the bank of flowers before him, does

not seem to be nature. Nature is still elsewhere. This or this is but

outskirt and far-off reflection[522] and echo of the triumph that has

passed by, and is now at its glancing splendor and heyday, perchance

in the neighboring fields, or, if you stand in the field, then in the

adjacent woods. The present object shall give you this sense of

stillness that follows a pageant which has just gone by. What splendid

distance, what recesses of ineffable pomp and loveliness in the

sunset! But who can go where they are, or lay his hand or plant his

foot thereon? Off they fall from the round world forever and ever. It

is the same among men and women as among the silent trees; always a

referred existence, an absence, never a presence and satisfaction. Is

it, that beauty can never be grasped? in persons and in landscapes is

equally inaccessible? The accepted and betrothed lover has lost the

wildest charm of his maiden in her acceptance of him. She was heaven

whilst he pursued her as a star: she cannot be heaven, if she stoops

to such a one as he.

15. What shall we say of this omnipresent appearance of that first

projectile impulse, of this flattery and balking of so many

well-meaning creatures? Must we not suppose somewhere in the universe

a slight treachery and derision? Are we not engaged to a serious

resentment of this use that is made of us? Are we tickled trout, and

fools of nature? One looks at the face of heaven and earth lays all

petulance at rest, and soothes us to wiser convictions. To the

intelligent, nature converts itself into a vast promise, and will not

be rashly explained. Her secret is untold. Many and many an

Oedipus[523] arrives: he has the whole mystery teeming in his brain.

Alas! the same sorcery has spoiled his skill; no syllable can he shape

on his lips. Her mighty orbit vaults like the fresh rainbow into the

deep, but no archangel's wing was yet strong enough to follow it, and

report of the return of the curve. But it also appears, that our

actions are seconded and disposed to greater conclusions than we

designed. We are escorted on every hand through life by spiritual

agents, and a beneficent purpose lies in wait for us. We cannot bandy

words with nature, or deal with her as we deal with persons. If we

measure our individual forces against hers, we may easily feel as if

we were the sport of an insuperable destiny. But if, instead of

identifying ourselves with the work, we feel that the soul of the

workman streams through us, we shall find the peace of the morning

dwelling first in our hearts, and the fathomless powers of gravity and

chemistry, and, over them, of life preëxisting within us in their

highest form.

16. The uneasiness which the thought of our helplessness in the chain

of causes occasions us, results from looking too much at one condition

of nature, namely, Motion. But the drag is never taken from the wheel.

Wherever the impulse exceeds the Rest or Identity insinuates its

compensation. All over the wide fields of earth grows the

prunella[524] or self-heal. After every foolish day we sleep off the

fumes and furies of its hours; and though we are always engaged with

particulars, and often enslaved to them, we bring with us to every

experiment the innate universal laws. These, while they exist in the

mind as ideas, stand around us in nature forever embodied, a present

sanity to expose and cure the insanity of men. Our servitude to

particulars betrays us into a hundred foolish expectations. We

anticipate a new era from the invention of a locomotive, or a balloon;

the new engine brings with it the old checks. They say that by

electro-magnetism, your salad shall be grown from the seed whilst your

fowl is roasting for dinner: it is a symbol of our modern aims and

endeavors,--of our condensation and acceleration of objects: but

nothing is gained: nature cannot be cheated: man's life is but seventy

salads long, grow they swift or grow they slow. In these checks and

impossibilities, however, we find our advantage, not less than in

impulses. Let the victory fall where it will, we are on that side. And

the knowledge that we traverse the whole scale of being, from the

center to the poles of nature, and have some stake in every

possibility, lends that sublime luster to death, which philosophy and

religion have too outwardly and literally striven to express in the

popular doctrine of the immortality of the soul. The reality is more

excellent than the report. Here is no ruin, no discontinuity, no spent

ball. The divine circulations never rest nor linger. Nature is the

incarnation of a thought, and turns to a thought again, as ice becomes

water and gas. The world is mind precipitated, and the volatile

essence is forever escaping again into the state of free thought.

Hence the virtue and pungency of the influence on the mind, of natural

objects, whether inorganic or organized. Man imprisoned, man

crystallized, man vegetative, speaks to man impersonated. That power

which does not respect quantity, which makes the whole and the

particle its equal channel, delegates its smile to the morning, and

distills its essence into every drop of rain. Every moment instructs

and every object: for wisdom is infused into every form. It has been

poured into us as blood; it convulsed us as pain; it slid into us as

pleasure; it enveloped us in dull, melancholy days, or in days of

cheerful labor; we did not guess its essence, until after a long

time.

SHAKSPEARE;[525] OR, THE POET

[Transcriber's Note: Shakspeare is spelled as "Shakspeare" as well as

"Shakespeare" in this book. The original spellings have been retained.]

1. Great men are more distinguished by range and extent, than by

originality. If we require the originality which consists in weaving,

like a spider, their web from their own bowels; in finding clay, and

making bricks, and building the house; no great men are original. Nor

does valuable originality consist in unlikeness to other men. The hero

is in the press of knights, and the thick of events; and, seeing what

men want, and sharing their desire, he adds the needful length of

sight and of arm, to come to the desired point. The greatest genius is

the most indebted man. A poet is no rattlebrain, saying what comes

uppermost and, because he says everything, saying, at last, something

good; but a heart in unison with his time and country. There is

nothing whimsical and fantastic in his production, but sweet and sad

earnest, freighted with the weightiest convictions, and pointed with

the most determined aim which any man or class knows of in his times.

2. The Genius[526] of our life is jealous of individuals and will not

have any individual great, except through the general. There is no

choice to genius. A great man does not wake up on some fine morning,

and say, "I am full of life, I will go to sea, and find an Antarctic

continent: to-day I will square the circle: I will ransack botany, and

find a new food for man: I have a new architecture in my mind: I

foresee a new mechanic power:" no, but he finds himself in the river

of the thoughts and events, forced onward by the ideas and necessities

of his contemporaries. He stands where all the eyes of men look one

way, and their hands all point in the direction in which he should go.

The church has reared him amidst rites and pomps, and he carries out

the advice which her music gave him, and builds a cathedral needed by

her chants and processions. He finds a war raging: it educates him, by

trumpet, in barracks, and he betters the instruction. He finds two

counties groping to bring coal, or flour, or fish, from the place of

production to the place of consumption, and he hits on a railroad.

Every master has found his materials collected, and his power lay in

his sympathy with his people, and in his love of the materials he

wrought in. What an economy of power! and what a compensation for the

shortness of life! All is done to his hand. The world has brought him

thus far on his way. The human race has gone out before him, sunk the

hills, filled the hollows, and bridged the rivers. Men, nations,

poets, artisans, women, all have worked for him, and he enters into

their labors. Choose any other thing, out of the line of tendency, out

of the national feeling and history, and he would have all to do for

himself: his powers would be expended in the first preparations. Great

genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at

all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and

suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the

mind.

3. Shakspeare's youth[527] fell in a time when the English people were

importunate for dramatic entertainments. The court took offense easily

at political allusions, and attempted to suppress them. The

Puritans,[528] a growing and energetic party and the religious among

the Anglican Church,[529] would suppress them. But the people wanted

them. Inn-yards, houses without roofs, and extemporaneous inclosures

at country fairs, were the ready theaters of strolling players. The

people had tasted this new joy; and, as we could not hope to suppress

newspapers now,--no, not by the strongest party,--neither then could

king, prelate, or puritan,--alone or united, suppress an organ, which

was ballad, epic, newspaper, caucus, lecture, Punch,[530] and library,

at the same time. Probably king, prelate, and puritan, all found their

own account in it. It had become, by all causes, a national

interest,--by no means conspicuous, so that some great scholar would

have thought of treating it in an English history,--but not a whit

less considerable, because it was cheap, and of no account, like a

baker's shop. The best proof of its vitality is the crowd of writers

which suddenly broke into this field; Kyd, Marlow, Greene,[531]

Jonson, Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Heywood, Middleton, Peele, Ford,

Massinger, Beaumont, and Fletcher.

4. The secure possession, by the stage, of the public mind, is of the

first importance to the poet who works for it. He loses no time in

idle experiments. Here is audience and expectation prepared. In the

case of Shakspeare there is much more. At the time when[532] he left

Stratford, and went up to London, a great body of stage-plays, of all

dates and writers, existed in manuscript, and were in turn produced on

the boards. Here is the Tale of Troy,[533] which the audience will

bear hearing some part of, every week; the Death of Julius Cæsar,[534]

and other stories out of Plutarch,[535] which they never tire of; a

shelf full of English history, from the chronicles of Brut[536] and

Arthur,[537] down to the royal Henries,[538] which men hear eagerly;

and a string of doleful tragedies, merry Italian tales,[539] and

Spanish voyages,[540] which all the London prentices know. All the

mass has been treated, with more or less skill, by every playwright,

and the prompter has the soiled and tattered manuscripts. It is now no

longer possible to say who wrote them first. They have been the

property of the Theater so long, and so many rising geniuses have

enlarged or altered them, inserting a speech, or a whole scene, or

adding a song, that no man can any longer claim copyright in this work

of numbers. Happily, no man wishes to. They are not yet desired in

that way. We have few readers, many spectators and hearers. They had

best lie where they are.

5. Shakspeare, in common with his comrades, esteemed the mass of old

plays, waste stock, in which any experiment could be freely tried.

Had the prestige[541] which hedges about a modern tragedy existed,

nothing could have been done. The rude warm blood of the living

England circulated in the play, as in street-ballads, and gave body

which he wanted to his airy and majestic fancy. The poet needs a

ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again,

may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the

people, supplies a foundation for his edifice; and, in furnishing so

much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full

strength for the audacities of his imagination. In short, the poet

owes to his legend what sculpture owed to the temple. Sculpture in

Egypt, and in Greece, grew up in subordination to architecture. It was

the ornament of the temple wall: at first, a rude relief carved on

pediments, then the relief became bolder, and a head or arm was

projected from the wall, the groups being still arranged with

reference to the building, which serves also as a frame to hold the

figures; and when, at last, the greatest freedom of style and

treatment was reached, the prevailing genius of architecture still

enforced a certain calmness and continence in the statue. As soon as

the statue was begun for itself, and with no reference to the temple

or palace, the art began to decline: freak, extravagance, and

exhibition, took the place of the old temperance. This balance-wheel,

which the sculptor found in architecture, the perilous irritability of

poetic talent found in the accumulated dramatic materials to which the

people were already wonted, and which had a certain excellence which

no single genius,[542] however extraordinary, could hope to create.

6. In point of fact, it appears that Shakspeare did owe debts in all

directions, and was able to use whatever he found; and the amount of

indebtedness may be inferred from Malone's[543] laborious computations

in regard to the First, Second, and Third parts of Henry VI., in

which, "out of 6043 lines, 1771 were written by some author preceding

Shakspeare; 2373 by him, on the foundation laid by his predecessors;

and 1899 were entirely his own." And the proceeding investigation

hardly leaves a single drama of his absolute invention. Malone's

sentence is an important piece of external history. In Henry VIII, I

think I see plainly the cropping out of the original rock on which his

own finer stratum was laid. The first play was written by a superior,

thoughtful man, with a vicious ear. I can mark his lines, and know

well their cadence. See Wolsey's soliloquy,[544] and the following

scene from Cromwell,[545] where,--instead of the meter of Shakspeare,

whose secret is, that the thought constructs the tune, so that reading

for the sense will best bring out the rhythm,--here the lines are

constructed on a given tune, and the verse has even a trace of pulpit

eloquence. But the play contains, through all its length, unmistakable

traits of Shakspeare's hand, and some passages, as the account of the

coronation,[546] are like autographs. What is odd, the compliment to

Queen Elizabeth[547] is in bad rhythm.[548]

7. Shakspeare knew that tradition supplies a better fable than any

invention can. If he lost any credit of design, he augmented his

resources; and, at that day, our petulant demand for originality was

not so much pressed. There was no literature for the million. The

universal reading, the cheap press, were unknown. A great poet, who

appears in illiterate times, absorbs into his sphere all the light

which is anywhere radiating. Every intellectual jewel, every flower of

sentiment, it is his fine office to bring to his people; and he comes

to value his memory[549] equally with his invention. He is therefore

little solicitous whence his thoughts have been derived; whether

through translation, whether through tradition, whether by travel in

distant countries, whether by inspiration; from whatever source, they

are equally welcome to his uncritical audience. Nay, he borrows very

near home. Other men say wise things as well as he; only they say a

good many foolish things, and do not know when they have spoken

wisely. He knows the sparkle of the true stone, and puts it in high

place, wherever he finds it. Such is the happy position of Homer,[550]

perhaps; of Chaucer,[551] of Saadi.[552] They felt that all wit was

their wit. And they are librarians and historiographers, as well as

poets. Each romancer was heir and dispenser of all the hundred tales

of the world,--

"Presenting Thebes'[553] and Pelops' line

And the tale of Troy divine."

The influence of Chaucer is conspicuous in all our early literature;

and, more recently, not only Pope[554] and Dryden[555] have been

beholden to him, but, in the whole society of English writers, a large

unacknowledged debt is easily traced. One is charmed with the opulence

which feeds so many pensioners. But Chaucer is a huge borrower.[556]

Chaucer, it seems, drew continually, through Lydgat[557] and

Caxton,[558] from Guido di Colonna,[559] whose Latin romance of the

Trojan war was in turn a compilation from Dares Phrygius,[560]

Ovid,[561] and Statius.[562] Then Petrarch,[563] Boccaccio,[564] and

the Provençal poets,[565] and his benefactors: the Romaunt of the

Rose[566] is only judicious translation from William of Lorris and

John of Meung: Troilus and Creseide,[567] from Lollius of Urbino: The

Cock and the Fox,[568] from the Lais of Marie: The House of

Fame,[569] from the French or Italian: and poor Gower[570] he uses as

if he were only a brick-kiln or stone-quarry, out of which to build

his house. He steals by this apology,--that what he takes has no worth

where he finds it, and the greatest where he leaves it. It has come to

be practically a sort of rule in literature, that a man, having once

shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to

steal from the writings of others at discretion. Thought is the

property of him who can entertain it; and of him who can adequately

place it. A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts;

but, as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our

own.

8. Thus, all originality is relative. Every thinker is retrospective.

The learned member of the legislature, at Westminister,[571] or at

Washington, speaks and votes for thousands. Show us the constituency,

and the now invisible channels by which the senator is made aware of

their wishes, the crowd of practical and knowing men, who, by

correspondence or conversation, are feeding him with evidence,

anecdotes, and estimates, and it will bereave his fine attitude and

resistance of something of their impressiveness. As Sir Robert

Peel[572] and Mr. Webster[573] vote, so Locke[574] and Rousseau[575]

think for thousands; and so there were foundations all around

Homer,[576] Menu,[577] Saada,[578] or Milton,[579] from which they

drew; friends, lovers, books, traditions, proverbs,--all