\ 
 
ESSAYS AND POEMS OF 
 
 j^.., ......xu. EMERSON 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 BY 
 
 STUART P. SHERMAN 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
 ^'A man is a fagot of thunderbolts J' 
 
 H 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 
 
 1921 
 
COPYRIGHT • 1921 • BY 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. 
 
 DEC 17 71 
 
 g)C!.A6531,48 
 

 "All young persons thirst for a real existence for an object, — for 
 something great arid good which they shall do with their heart." 
 
 — Emerson's Journals 
 
 "They shall find that they cannot get to the point which they would 
 reach without passing over that highway which you have made." 
 
 — Emerson's Journals 
 

 *?> 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 Introduction vii 
 
 I. Life and times viii 
 
 II. Character of his influence xii 
 
 III. Religion xvii 
 
 IV. Philosophy . xxi 
 
 V. Morals xxiv 
 
 VI. Politics . xxix 
 
 VII. Literature and art xxxvi 
 
 Of the Sources of Power 
 
 I. Nature 1 
 
 II. The Over-Soul 44 
 
 III. History 63 
 
 IV. Experience 86 
 
 V. Uses of Great Men 110 
 
 Of Morals and Arts 
 
 VI. Spiritual Laws 129 
 
 VII. Self-Reliance 150 
 
 VIII. Compensation 177 
 
 IX. Heroism 197 
 
 X. Friendship 209 
 
 ^I. Manners 225 
 
 XII. Politics 247 
 
 XIII. Art 261 
 
 XIV. Beauty 272 
 
 Of Men in Action 
 
 The American Scholar 287 «x^ 
 
 Man the Reformer 307 
 
 The Conservative 324 
 
 The Transcendentahst 342 
 
 Montaigne or, The Skeptic 360 
 
 Napoleon or, The Man of the World 382 
 
 The Poet ; 402 
 
 The Young American 425 
 
vi LIST OF POEMS 
 
 V, Page 
 
 iDays 445 
 
 Good-Bye 445 
 
 The Rhodora 446 
 
 The Humble-Bee 447 
 
 Each and All 448 
 
 The Problem 450 
 
 Forbearance 452 
 
 From: Wood Notes 452 
 
 Monadnoc 457 
 
 Fable 468 
 
 The Snow-Storm 469 
 
 Brahma 470 
 
 The Sphinx 470 
 
 The Visit 474 
 
 The World-Soul 475 
 
 To J. W 478 
 
 Hamatreya 479 
 
 Threnody 481 
 
 Ode to Beauty 489 
 
 Give All to Love 491 
 
 Initial, Daemonic, and Celestial Love 493 
 
 The Apology 504 
 
 Merlin 505 
 
 Bacchus 509 
 
 Grace 511 
 
 Merops 511 
 
 Hymn Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monu- 
 ment 512 
 
 Ode Inscribed to W. H. Channing 512 
 
 Freedom 515 
 
 Ode Sung in the Town Hall 516 
 
 Boston Hymn 517 
 
 Voluntaries 520 
 
 Musketaquid 521 
 
 The Test 523 
 
 Forerunners 524 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Some books, like some persons, convey to us all that they 
 will ever have to give at a single sitting. Others hold our 
 attention profitably through two or three encounters. But 
 the books to be shipwrecked with, the great books into 
 which rich and substantial lives have been distilled and 
 packed — the Dialogues of Plato, Montaigne's Essays, Bos- 
 well's Johnson, the Essays and Journals of Emerson — these 
 are to be lived with and returned to and made the com- 
 panions of hours and days and moods as various as those in 
 w^hich they were written. You cannot discover what Emer- 
 son has been to others or what he may be to you by any 
 cursory turning of his pages. Still less can you "get him 
 up" by studying any summary of his philosophical system. 
 Philosophers tell us indeed that his philosophical system is 
 hopelessly antiquated, and fancy that they have disposed 
 of him. But Emerson himself remarked: "I need hardly 
 say to anyone acquainted with my thoughts that I have no 
 system." The value of his thoughts dej^ends scarcely more 
 upon the metaphysical filaments among them than the value 
 of a string of alternating beads of gold and pearl depends 
 upon the string. The figure has a momentary illustrative 
 force but is very inadequate. Emerson lives, still speaks 
 pertinently of our current affairs, and tomorrow we shall 
 still find him commenting with equal pertinency on tomor- 
 row's affairs. To know him is not mere knowledge. It is 
 an experience; for he is a dynamic personality, addressing 
 the will, the emotions, the imagination, no less than the in- 
 tellect. His value escapes the merely intellectual appraiser. 
 Analysis cannot deal properly with his pungent wdt — it 
 must be savored; nor with the impetus that he gives to the 
 will — it must be felt; nor with the purgation and serene 
 
viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 rapture of the mind towards which his noble discipHne 
 tends — this rapture must be attained as a state of grace 
 by imitation of those who have attained it, by hfelong inter- 
 course with men whose tone and habit of hfe is noble. 
 
 Since we are to consider him primarily as an unspent 
 force in our own times, what it most concerns us to inquire 
 about him is what he can do for us. If we approach him 
 with that question, we need not tarry long over bio- 
 graphical details, interesting and rewarding as they may be 
 to the student of literary history We pretty well sum up 
 his external career when we say that he was a New Eng- 
 lander of Boston, where he was born in 1803, and of Con- 
 cord, where he died in 1882, after a studious hfe of irre- 
 proachable purity, dignity, and simplicity becoming the 
 descendant of several generations of New England gentle- 
 men and scholars. His formal education he received at the 
 Boston Latin School and at Harvard College, from which 
 he was graduated in 1821, with a well-formed bias towards 
 an intellectual hfe. The son of a Unitarian minister, he 
 inherited an ethical impulse which directed him to the 
 Harvard Divinity School in 1825-6. In 1829 he was ap- 
 pointed pastor of the Second Unitarian Church of Boston. 
 He was married in the same year to Ellen Tucker, who 
 died two years later, leaving him a sweet and unfading 
 memory of her fragile loveliness. After he had served his 
 parish acceptably for three years, he felt obliged to an- 
 nounce, in 1832, that he was no longer able to administer 
 the sacrament of communion in the general sense of his con- 
 gregation, and resigned his charge. In December of that 
 year he visited Europe and made acquaintance with three 
 or four men whose residence in Europe constituted for him 
 the chief reason for going abroad: Landor in Italy, Carlyle 
 at Craigenputtock, and Coleridge and Wordsworth in Eng- 
 land. He returned to America in October 1833, and in the 
 following year settled permanently in Concord. In 1835 he 
 married his second wife, Lydia Jackson. For three or 
 four years he preached with some regularity in various pul- 
 
INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 pits, but he gradually abandoned the church for the lyceum, 
 which invited him as far west as Wisconsin and Illinois. He 
 made a second visit to England in 1848. He was an active 
 pa rticipant in the anti-slavpry mov fr'Qy^^- But, for the 
 ^ most part, barrmg liis wmter ieciuring tours and an occa- 
 sional excursion to deli\^er a commencement address or a 
 Phi Beta Kappa oration, he Uved placidly in Concord, read- 
 ing, meditating, writing, editing the short-lived Transcen- 
 (lejital Dial, looking amusedly askance upon the Brook 
 Farm experiment, and walking and talking with his 
 famous fellow-villagers, the Alcotts, the Hawthornes, 
 Margaret Fuller, Ellery Channing, and Thoreau. 
 
 What ferment of radical thought went on beneath the de- 
 corous exterior of that quiet scholar's life we know with 
 remarkable fullness and accuracy. From early boyhood 
 Emerson kept a journal — a habit, in his case, denoting a 
 mind disposed to make unusual exactions of the "hypocritic 
 Days." At first, he is much occupied with what he has read 
 or proposes to read; but presently his note-book becomes a 
 kind of storehouse for mellowing the fruits of his daily medi- 
 tations, and an experimental garden for planting the seeds 
 of new thoughts gathered on his intellectual adventures. 
 The Journals, now published in twelve volumes, give us an 
 invaluable commentary upon the long-familiar essays, and 
 they enrich greatly our sense of the personality behind 
 them. Especially they illuminate the turning point in 
 Emerson's life, when he abandoned the pulpit and became a 
 wholly free thinker and speaker. With their help, one per- 
 ceives that for years before the open break, the inner eman- 
 cipation had been proceeding. One observes the young 
 thinker expanding beyond the formulas of his parish, reach- 
 ing out towards the life of his nation, feeling his way into the 
 higher spirit of his times, daily becoming more eager to ex- 
 change messages and comi)are visions with the leaders of 
 his generation. 
 
 It is a vulgar error of our day to think of Em^erson and 
 his friends as living in a rude and mentallj^ poverty-stricken 
 era. In his formative period, say from 1820 to 1832, 
 society around the Golden G-ite and along the southern 
 
X INTRODUCTION 
 
 margin of Lake Michigan was indeed in a somewhat more 
 [trimitive state than at present. But in compensation, such 
 civilized society as the country possessed was concentrated 
 in a smaller geographieciii- area. -To reside in Boston or New 
 York was not then, as now, to live on the rim but at the 
 center of population, within reach of the molding pressure 
 ol' all the great Americans of one's time. The "moment," 
 furthermore, was peculiar^ rich in the presence of eminent 
 men who had been shaped by the Revolution, and in the 
 l)resence of men who were to become eminent in the move- 
 ment which led to the Civil War. To a young man of Emer- 
 son's quality, the period of the Adamses, Jefferson, Ran- 
 dolph, and Jackson, the period of Webster, Clay, Calhoun, 
 Everett, and Garrison, was not a dull period, not a dead 
 interval, but a most stirring and exciting time between two 
 epoch-making crises, with the thunder of a political Niagara 
 at one's back, and the roar of wild rapids ahead. The 
 air was full of j^romise and of peril and of conflicting meas- 
 ures for avoiding the one and fulfilling the other. 
 
 Politically-minded men, the Jacksons, the Clays, the Cal- 
 houns, brought to the problems of the hour political solu- 
 tions. But the more sensitive spirits among the younger 
 generation in New England had already experienced a cer- 
 tain reaction against the political faith and enthusiasms of 
 their fathers. Already they heard the ominous creaking of 
 democratic machinery under the manipulation of unskilful 
 and unscrupulous hands. To them it began to appear that 
 the next great improvement in the condition of society must 
 depend less upon the alteration of laws and institutions 
 than upon the intellectual and moral regeneration of men. 
 The new movement w\as genuinely Puritan by its inwardness, 
 by its earnest passion for cleansing the inside of the cup, 
 and by its protest against external powers which thwarted 
 or retarded the efforts of the individual soul to move for- 
 ward and upward by light from within. Looking back in 
 1S44 over the multifarious projects for "the salvation of the 
 world" unfolded by reformers in his part of the country, 
 Emerson remarks: 'There was in all the practical activities 
 of New England, for the last quarter of a centurj^, a grad- 
 
INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 ual withdrawal of tender consciences from the social organ- 
 ization. There is observable throughout, the contest be- 
 tween mechanical and spiritual methods, but with a steady 
 tendency of the thoughtful and virtuous to a deeper belief 
 and reliance on spiritual facts." 
 
 Those who place their reliance on spiritual facts have 
 always been thought a little queer and rather dangerous by 
 those who do not. Nor can it be denied that the radical 
 protestantism of the Puritans, which Emerson inherited, 
 has contained from the time of Wycliff an anarchical germ, 
 a latent suspicion of church and state, a tendency towards 
 ''coming out," till one shall stand alone in utter freedom 
 and coimt for one and nothing more. It is hardly possible 
 to exaggerate the individualism which characterized the 
 m.ovement in New England. For Emerson above all, the 
 very rapture of the time rose from its challenge to a per- 
 fectly independent, a perfectly fearless, scrutiny and testing 
 of received values in every field — religion, philosophy, 
 morals, politics, literature and art. 
 
 Emerson was preserved from the fanaticism of a secession 
 from "the social organization" partly by his culture. A 
 moral reformation which undertakes to investigate the bases 
 of morals will develop and transform itself into an intellec- 
 tual renascence as soon as those who are conducting it per- 
 ceive that everything in heaven and earth has a bearing on 
 moral questions. Emerson discovered early that the first 
 step towards thinking greatly and freely on moral matters 
 is to consult the world's accumulated wisdom. Hasty 
 writers speak of his "jaunty" attitude towards the past. If 
 he is jaunty about the past, it is because he is very famihar 
 with it. What impresses the thoughtful student of his jour- 
 nals is his steady effort to hold himself and his contempo- 
 raries under the searching cross-lights of human experience. 
 He reads Plato, Cicero, Hafiz, Confucius, Buddha, Mahomet, 
 Dante, Montaigne, Milton, Voltaire, Kant, Goethe, Na- 
 poleon, Coleridge, Carlyle, because that, he finds, is the 
 effective way to set his own intelligence free, and because 
 freedom, he finds, means ability to move at ease and as an 
 equal among such minds as these. 
 
xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 But Emerson was also preserved from excessive individ- 
 ualism by a passion which, properly elevated and directed, 
 may be a young man's guardian angel, the passion of am- 
 bition. "All young persons," he observes, "thirst for a real 
 existence for a real object, — for something great and good 
 which they shall do with their heart. Meanwhile they all 
 pack gloves, or keep books, or travel, or draw indentures, or 
 cajole old women." By habitual imaginative association 
 with great men, he had assimilated their thoughts and vir- 
 tues, and had accustomed himself to look forward with an 
 almost Miltonic assurance to playing a part above the 
 ordinary in the life of his countr5^ At the age of twenty- 
 one he is sketching a series of papers on the improvement 
 of the nation. He thinks the demand for a moral education 
 the best sign of the times, and deems the exploration of the 
 field a task fit for a new Columbus. He queries whether it 
 were not an "heroic adventure" for him to "insist on being 
 a popular speaker." And with perceptible elation at the 
 prospect he concludes: "To address a great nation risen 
 from the dust and sitting in absolute judgment on the 
 merits of men, ready to hear if any one offers good counsel, 
 may rouse the ambition and exercise the judgment of a 
 man." 
 
 II 
 
 There is some disposition at present to look upon Emer- 
 son's ambition as extravagant and to regard his work as a 
 closed chapter in the intellectual life of America. It is even 
 asserted that he never much affected the thinking of his 
 countrymen. Says a recent WTiter, "What one notices about 
 him chiefly is his lack of influence upon the main stream 
 of American thought, such as it is. He had admirers and 
 even worshippers, but no apprentices." Bs.t this judgment 
 will not stand examination. Emerson had Thoreau for an 
 apprentice; and between them they established relations 
 with the natural world, which successive poet-naturalists 
 have maintained and broadened to the dimensions of a 
 national tradition. He had Whitman for a disciple; and a 
 large part of what passes with us as poetry today is ulti- 
 
INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 mately traceable to their inspiration. He left the imprint 
 of his spirit upon Lowell, who said, "There is no man hving 
 to whom, as a writer, so many of us feel and thankfully 
 acknowledge so great an indebtedness for ennobling im- 
 pulses." Whatever is finely academic, highbred, and dis- 
 tinguished in our critical literature today has felt the in- 
 fluence of Emerson. "To him," according to Lowell, "more 
 than to all other causes together did the young martyrs 
 of our civil war owe the sustaining strength of thoughtful 
 heroism that is so touching in every record of their lives." 
 By his aid innumerable clergymen have found a way to 
 translate the message of ancient scriptures into the language 
 of modern men. Every American who pretends to know 
 anything whatever of the American classics has at one time 
 or another read the ''Essays"; and the "idealism" which is 
 thought to be characteristic of the American people is most 
 readily formulated in a half dozen of his "familiar quota- 
 tions," which every one knows, whether he has read a line 
 of Emerson or not. Directly and indirectly Emerson prob- 
 ably did as much as any other writer in our history to 
 establish what we mean by "a good American"; and that, 
 in ithe long run, is the most important sort of influence that 
 can be exerted by any writer in any country. 
 
 That his influence abroad has been considerable may be 
 briefly suggested by the reminder that he touched deeply 
 such various men as Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, Nietzsche, 
 and M. Maeterlinck. When Arnold visited America in 
 1883, he lectured on Emerson, on whom thirty years earlier 
 he had written a sonnet of ardent admiration and homage. 
 The lecture, the fruit of his ripest critical reflection, was 
 not altogether satisfactory to his American audience. It 
 impressed them as quite inadequately appreciative of their 
 chief literary luminary. For Arnold very firmly declared 
 that Emerson is not to be ranked with the great poets, nor 
 with the great writers of prose, nor with the great makers 
 of philosophical systems. These limitations of Emerson's 
 power are commonly quoted as if detraction were the main 
 burden of Arnold's message. As a matter of fact they are 
 preliminary to his dehberate and remarkable declaration 
 
xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 that in his judgment Emerson's Essays are the most im- 
 portant work done in prose in our language during the nine- 
 teenth century. This is high praise from an exacting critic 
 who was httle given to the use of superlatives in any case 
 least of all in the case of American authors. 
 
 For what merit does Emerson deserve this preeminem 
 place? Because, says Arnold, in a phrase full of significance 
 because "he is the friend and aider of those who would liv( 
 in the spirit.^' Let us unfold a little the implications oi 
 this phrase and make its application more precise. Impor- 
 tant as Emerson may have been to young Englishmen ir 
 the first half of the last century, he was still more importani 
 to young Americans. Helpful as he may become to Euro- 
 pean minds, he will always remain peculiarly the friend anc 
 aider of those who would live in the spirit amid an environ- 
 ment which, as is generally thought, tends powerfully tc 
 confirm on the one hand the hard and merely practica 
 genius of the Yankee and, on the other hand, the narrovA 
 and inflexible righteousness of the merely traditional Puri- 
 tan, the Puritan who feels no longer the urgency and pro- 
 gressive force of new moral life within him. To the pos- 
 terity of Franklin and Edwards, Emerson is the destinec 
 and appropriate counsellor because he brings them undi- 
 minished the vital force of their great traditions, while a^ 
 the same time he emancipates them from the "dead hand,' 
 the cramping and lifeless part of their past. To childrei 
 of the new world, Emerson is a particularly inspiring friend 
 because with deep indigenous voice he frees them from un 
 manly fear of their elders, lifts from their minds the over- 
 awing prestige of Europe, liberates the powers and faith o: 
 the individual man and makes him at home in his own tim( 
 and place. 
 
 A great part of our lives, as we all recognize in what w( 
 call our educational period, is occupied with learning how t( 
 do and to be what others have been and have done before us 
 We come abreast of our predecessors by imitating them 
 and are grateful to the masters when they reveal to us theii 
 secrets, to the older men when they give us the benefit o 
 their experience. But presently we discover that the work 
 
INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 is changing around us, and that the secrets of the masters 
 and the experience of our elders do not wholly suffice — 
 much though they aid us — to establish us effectively in our 
 younger world. We discover within us needs, aspirations, 
 powers of which the generation that educated us seems un- 
 aware, or towards which it appears to be indifferent, un- 
 sympathetic, or even actively hostile. We perceive gradu- 
 ally or with successive shocks of surprise that many tilings 
 which our fathers declared were true and satisfactory are 
 not at all satisfactory, are by no means true, for us. Then it 
 dawns upon us, perhaps as an exhilarating opportunity, per- 
 haps as a grave and sobering necessity, that in a little while 
 we ourselves shall be the elders, the responsible generation. 
 Our salvation in the day when we take command will de- 
 pend, we are constrained to believe, upon our disentangle- 
 ment from the lumber of heirlooms and hereditary devices, 
 and upon the discovery and free wise use of our own fac- 
 ulties. The vital part of education begins in the hour when 
 consciousness of self-dependence breaks upon the mind. 
 That is the hour for Emerson. 
 
 He appeals to unfolding minds because he is profoundly 
 in sympathy with the modern spirit. By this j^hrase we 
 mean primarily the disposition to accept nothing on author- 
 ity but to bring all reports to the test of experience. The 
 modern spirit is first of all a free spirit, open on all sides to 
 the influx of truth. But freedom is not its only character- 
 istic. The modern spirit is marked further by an active 
 curiosity which grows by what it feeds upon, and goes ever 
 inquiring for fresher and sounder information, not content 
 till it has the best information to be had anywhere. But 
 since it seeks the best, it is, by necessity, also a critical 
 spirit, constantly sifting, discriminating, rejecting, and hold- 
 ing fast that which is good, only till that which is better is 
 within reach. This endless quest, when it becomes central 
 in a life, requires labor, requires pain, requires a measure 
 of courage; and so the modern spirit, with its other vir- 
 tues is an heroic spirit. As a reward for difficulties gal- 
 lantly undertaken, the gods bestow on the modern spirit a 
 kind of eternal j'outh with unfailing powers of recuperation 
 
xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 and growth. This spirit — free, actively curious, upward- 
 striving, critical, courageous, and self -renewing — Emerson 
 richly possesses; and that is why he is so happily qualified 
 to be a counsellor of youth in the period of intellectual 
 emancipation. 
 
 There are many prophets abroad in the land today, 
 offering themselves as emancipators, who have only very 
 partially comprehended their task. By the incompleteness 
 of their message they bring the modern spirit itself into 
 disrepute. They understand and declare that the modern 
 spirit is free and curious. They fail to recognize that it is 
 also critical and upward-striving. When the well-born soul 
 discards "old clothes," it seeks instinctively for fresh 
 raiment; but these Adamites would persuade it to rejoice 
 in nakedness and seek no further. They know that man is 
 an animal; but it escapes their notice that man is an 
 animal constituted and destined by his nature to make pil- 
 grimages in search for a shrine, and to worship, till he finds 
 it, the Unknown God. Because they understand so ill the 
 needs and cravings of man, they go about eagerly hurrying 
 him from a predicament into a disaster. They conceive 
 that they have properly performed the emancipative func- 
 tion when they have cut the young generation loose from 
 the old moorings, and set it adrift at the mercy of wmd 
 and tide. 
 
 It is these partial liberators who produce in our young 
 people that false and bewildering sense of illumination, so 
 eloquently described by John Henry Newman. Says that 
 penetrating analyst of modern libertinism : "When the mind 
 throws off as so much prejudice what it has hitherto held, 
 and, as if waking from a dream, begins to realize to its 
 imagination that there is no such thing as law and the 
 transgression of law, that sin is a phantom, and punishment 
 a bugbear, that it is free to sin, free to enjoy the world 
 and the flesh; and still further, when it does enjoy them, 
 and reflects that it may think and hold just wdiat it will, 
 that Hhe world is all before it where to choose/ and what 
 system to build up as its own private persuasion; when 
 this torrent of wilful thoughts rushes over and inundates 
 
INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 it, who will deny that the fruit of the tree of knowledge,- 
 or what the mind takes for knowledge, has made it one of 
 the gods, with a sense of expansion and elevation, — an in- 
 toxication in reality, still, so far as the subjective state of 
 the mind goes, an illumination?" 
 
 /The true emancijiiator, the man who has entered fully 
 4nto the modern spirit, is ahvays a reconstructionist. The 
 enlargement of mind which he offers is always, to modify 
 shghtly the words of Newman, an enlargement not of tumult 
 and intoxication, but of clearer vision and fruitful peace. 
 In our Civil War slaves set free by proclamation flung up 
 their caps and shouted with a vague joy. But shortly 
 afterwards, we are told, many of them returned to their 
 old masters and sought re-employment at their former 
 tasks. So little was their undirected freedom worth. The 
 true liberator strikes off the old shackles but immediately 
 he suggests new service, a fuller use of our powers. He 
 cuts us loose from the old moorings; but then he comes 
 aboard like a good pilot, and while we trim our sails, he 
 takes the wheel and lays our course for a fresh voyage. His 
 message when he leaves us is not, "Henceforth be master- 
 less," but "Bear thou henceforth the sceptre of thine own 
 control through life and the passion of life." 
 
 Ill 
 
 Religious emancipation as conducted by Emerson makes 
 a man not less but more religious. It frees the restless mod- 
 ern soul from ancient sectarian fetters, from ceremonial 
 that has become empty, and from the litter of meaningless 
 creeds. But straightway it re-establishes the soul in a new 
 doctrine of "continuous revelation" and in works and con- 
 duct proper to those who have been freshly insi^ired. There 
 is an element that looks like mystical experience underlying 
 this fundamental part of Emerson's religious teaching. But 
 since mysticism constitutes a difficulty and an obstacle to 
 the average modern mind, let us reduce as much as possible 
 the irrational or superrational element. Let us explain 
 what we can. 
 
 Emerson's behef in continuous revelation is clearly ascrib- 
 
xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 able in large measure to the breadth of his spiritual culture. 
 Throughout his life he was a student of the religions of the 
 world. With free and open mind he compared the teachings 
 of Plato, Confucius, Jesus, Buddha, Mahomet, seeking the 
 spirit beneath the letter transmitted by each. This com- 
 parison did not bring him to the hasty thinker's conclusion 
 that the Bible of Christians is an uninspired book but rather 
 to the conclusion that all the bibles are inspired books. 
 The further he pressed his studies in religion, in philosophy, 
 in poetry, the more obvious it became to him that elevated 
 thought and noble emotion are not the exclusive endow- 
 ment of any special period or joerson but are common to 
 the highest representatives of all great peoples in all the 
 great ages. 
 
 How account for that undeniable and really very insi~)irit- 
 ing fact? Emerson explained it by what might be called 
 the law of the conservation of spiritual energy. The mortal 
 forms, momentarily fixed in the shape of Plato or Confucius, 
 decay and are dispersed, yet their elemental force, as modern 
 science teaches us, is not destroyed but resumed and con- 
 served in the all-encompassing energy of the universe, and 
 is recreated forever and ever in new shapes of men and 
 things. In like fashion, as it appeared to Emerson, the 
 thought and feeling of men, since thought and feeling are 
 also forms of energy, must be resumed and conserved in- 
 destructibly in the general reservoir of moral energy, the 
 "over-soul," from which they flow again into individuals, 
 generations, races, with such sustaining recurrence as the 
 vernal sap observes. 
 
 The vividness of his belief in this inflowing power may be 
 ascribed to certain personal experiences, emotional and 
 exalting, for which the entire discipline of his life had pre- 
 pared him. From his youth up he had conversed in his 
 reading with strong-souled men, with the saints, heroes, and 
 sages. He had meditated on their counsels not occasionally 
 but daily, persistently, for hours together, till the bounds 
 between their minds and his disappeared, and their thoughts 
 actually became his thoughts and their temper his temper. 
 It is a discipline which breaks down the walls of personality 
 
INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 and merges the individual with the over-soul. By books, he 
 writes in his journal in 1824 at the age of twenty-one, "my 
 memory goes back to a past immortality, and I almost 
 realize the perfection of a spiritual intercourse which gains 
 all the good, and lacks all the inconvenience and disgust 
 of close society of imperfect beings. We are then hkest to 
 the image of God, for in this grateful rapidity of thought 
 a thousand years become one day." 
 
 A mind thus stored and sensitized will respond now and 
 then to an apparently slight stimulus with an extraordinary 
 excitement and something in the nature of 'Vision" and 
 "illumination." The young man reads in quiet solitude one 
 of the more poetical dialogues of Plato, or he walks in flow- 
 ering fields communing with his thoughts, or he lifts his 
 head from his sick-bed at sunrise and beholds "the spotless 
 orange light of the morning streaming up from the dark hills 
 into the wide Universe." Suddenly, to him unaccountably^, 
 there is a profound stirring of his emotional deeps. A sense 
 of sublimity fills his consciousness. His will appears to him 
 godlike, invincible. He is elate wdth benign resolution. In 
 a delighted ecstasy he feels streaming through his being 
 eternal forces, all the wisdom and all the virtues that have 
 ever been in the world. However we may attempt to explain, 
 or to explain av/ay, his sensations, he himself is incontro- 
 vertibly convinced that he has been visited and breathed 
 upon by a power-not-himself. He has been but a passive 
 vessel filled to the brim by an inrush of energy from the 
 Over-Soul, from the circumfluent seas of moral power. 
 
 Such inspiration, Emerson holds, is natural to man. It 
 is probably open to everyone who will subject himself to the 
 requisite preliminary discipline — who will live steadily 
 with such thoughts as Emerson entertained. Record of 
 these visitations one may find here and there in the Journals 
 in such statements as this : "I am surrounded by messengers 
 of God who send me credentials day by day" — statements 
 which an intelligent reader may accept as substantially true 
 and^ essentially verifiable by the method just indicated. 
 
 This personal and direct relationship which he cultivated 
 with the Over-Soul had a two-fold effect. On the one hand, 
 
XX INTRODUCTION 
 
 it quite indisposed him to render allegiance to intermediate 
 powers. Thus he declares in a poem of 1833, "Sell-Re- 
 liance" : 
 
 Henceforth, please God, forever I forego 
 The yoke of men's opinions. I will be 
 Light-hearted as a bird, and hve with God. 
 I find him in the bottom of my heart, 
 I hear continually his voice therein. 
 
 On the other hand, this direct relationship with the source 
 of moral power made him joyfully obedient to the impulses 
 of what he at various times designated as the heavenly 
 vision, the divine necessity, or the overlord of his soul. A 
 certain levity, almost a frivolity, which he exhibits now 
 and then in the presence of creeds, churches, pious organi- 
 zations, is actually the consequence of his entire reverence 
 in the presence of every unmistakable manifestation of 
 spiritual life. Like his friend Carlyle, he feels that the 
 religious edifices of the day are become uninhabitable; the 
 religious spirit is seeking a new house. "Religion," he re- 
 marks, "does not seem to me to tend now to a cultus as 
 heretofore but to a heroic life. We find extreme difficulty in 
 conceiving any church, any liturgy, any rite that would be 
 genuine." 
 
 This sounds like a radical utterance. It is radical with 
 the root and branch thoroughness of Emerson's inherited 
 Puritanism, a vital Puritanism urgent with fresh power, 
 impatient of a corrupted tradition and a conformity that 
 withholds one from the living truth. The tendency of the 
 traditional religious culture, he criticizes as indifferent to 
 aesthetic development; as narrowly and incompletely moral; 
 and as averse from the wide reaches of living truth which 
 are open to the modern mind in the domains of science. He 
 holds that the founder of the faith in which most of his 
 countrymen were bred was indeed a "pure beam of truth," 
 whose ethical utterances cannot be overprized, yet that he 
 exhibited a "very exclusive and partial development of the 
 moral element. ... A perfect man should exhibit all the 
 traits of humanity, and should expressly recognize intel- 
 
INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 lectuul nature. [Italics mine.] Socrates I call a complete, 
 uln^'el•sal man." 
 
 That Emerson's is the radicalism of a conservative, bent 
 upon holding fast that which is good, is indicated by many 
 other references to the character and teaching of Jesus, to 
 whom he returns again and again with perceptions quick- 
 ened and sharpened by his secular culture. ''How strange," 
 he exclaims, ''that Jesus should stand at the head of history, 
 the first character of the world without doubt, but the un- 
 likeliest of all men, one would say, to take such a rank in 
 the world." Approaching the subject from a quite different 
 quarter, he says, "I think the true poetry which mankind 
 craves is that Moral Poem of which Jesus chanted to the 
 ages stanzas so celestial, yet only stanzas." And finally 
 fiom still another angle: "The heart of Christianity is the 
 heart of all philosophy." 
 
 IV 
 
 Much has been written of Emerson's philosophical in- 
 debtedness to Kant and his German followers, and to Cole- 
 ridge and Carlyle and Madame de Stael, who were interme- 
 diaries between the German and the New England trans- 
 cendentalists. It is not in my power, happily it is not much 
 to our purpose, to enter into the details of this discussion. 
 Briefly speaking, it may be said that the German thinkers 
 and their interpreters by their combined influence did 
 undoubtedly strengthen Emerson's instinctive reaction 
 against the dry and incomplete rationalism of the eighteenth 
 century and against the Utilitarians of the nineteenth 
 century, who to his nostrils brought a pecuHarly repug- 
 nant odor of "profit and loss." But Emerson was no sys- 
 tematic student of metaphysics, and most of such general 
 impulses as he was capable of receiving from the German 
 system-makers, he had perhaps encountered in Plato and 
 Berkeley and the seventeenth century divines before he had 
 much cultivated his German. He ultimately made his way 
 through Goethe, but he never became intimately attached 
 to him or even quite reconciled to him, finding him and his 
 aesthetic friends, deficient in "moral life," 
 
xxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 What is still more to the point, the vital features of 
 Emerson's philosophy are due less immediately to his read- 
 ing than to that religious illumination of which we have 
 already spoken. He arrived at the center of his beliefs by 
 intuition. From the mechanical conception of the universe 
 which reduced Carlyle almost to despair, Emerson emanci- 
 pated himself, or rather he perfected his emancipation, by 
 a critical examination of his own experience. This scrutiny 
 disclosed a real world, the world of things, moved by physi- 
 cal energies in accordance with the laws of things. But it 
 disclosed also an equally real world; the world of ideas, 
 moved by moral energies in accordance with the laws, per- 
 haps less clearly understood, of ideas. One world is asso- 
 ciated with the other as the eye is associated with seeing; 
 yet seeing, not the instrument of sight, is the sovereign mat- 
 ter. An important continuator of the Emersonian influence 
 in our times. Professor Irving Babbitt, takes as the point of 
 departure for his own developments these lines from Emer- 
 son's Ode to W. H. Channing: 
 
 There are two laws discrete, 
 
 Not reconciled, — 
 
 Law for man, and law for thing; 
 
 The last builds town and fleet, 
 
 But it runs wild, and doth the man unking. 
 
 As philosopher, Emerson conceives it his chief business 
 to explore the "law for man," to formulate it, and to ob- 
 tain recognition of it as the supreme authority in human 
 relationships. His entire effort aims at establishing human 
 independence and a human mastership. Man liberates him- 
 self and exchanges servitude for mastery in proportion as he 
 obeys the "law for man" and learns to make the "law for 
 things" serve him. In thus firmly insisting upon a radical 
 distinction between the two parallel planes of experience, 
 Emerson is in accord with the wisdom of the ages and at 
 variance with the folly of the times, which tended to ob- 
 hterate distinctions and, surrendering to a physical fatalism, 
 to accept the law for things as also the law for man. Those 
 who still contend for the identity of the two laws, like to 
 speak of their view as "realistic." It is a word to conjure 
 
INTRODUCTION xxiij 
 
 with. Emerson's view will prevail against theirs only when 
 it is finally established as more realistic than theirs, as more 
 accurately and adequately descripitive of the facts of 
 nature, the experience of men. 
 
 It is important to note that what Emerson contends for 
 as the realistic view is the "twoness" of the universe. He 
 does not oppose a physical monism with a spiritual monism 
 but with a fairly clean-cut dualism. It is a man asserting 
 the equal realness but radical dissimilarity of things and 
 ideas wdio remarks in his Journal, "Realist seems the true 
 name for the movement party among our Scholars here. 
 I at least endeavor to make the exchange evermore of a 
 reality for a name." When the "solid men" of his day 
 complain that his way of thinking neglects the fundamental 
 facts, he replies that their way of thinking neglects the 
 hypaethral facts, but that his way of thinking takes due 
 cognizance of both: "Turnpike is one thing and blue sky 
 another." "The poet complains that the solid men leave out 
 the sky." This is the sunny mockery of one who was both a 
 poet and a solid man. Emerson wove a net for casting in 
 fathomless seas and brought home his catches by ways un- 
 known to the fishermen; but this did not prevent his rais- 
 ing good apples in his Concord orchard and taking the 
 customary road to market. 
 
 His philosophical emphasis is, however, of course upon the 
 order of facts most likely to be ignored by the "solid men"; 
 and because of his emphasis upon this order of facts we 
 speak of him as an idealist and as a great fountain of Amer- 
 ican idealism. What idealism meant to him is expressed in 
 his Journal in words which Moliere's cook might have 
 understood: "We are idealists whenever we prefer an idea 
 to a sensation. . . . The physical sciences are only well 
 studied when they are explored for ideas. . . . The book 
 is always dear which has made us for moments idealists. 
 That which can dissipate this block of earth into shining 
 ether is genius. I have no hatred to the round earth and 
 its grey mountains. I see well enough the sandhill oppo- 
 site my window. Their phenomenal being I no more dis- 
 pute than I do my own. . . . ReUgion makes us idealists. 
 
xxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 Any strong passion does. The best, the happiest moments 
 of life, are these dehcious awakenings of the higher powers 
 and the reverential withdrawing of nature before its 
 God. . . . We are all aiming to be idealists, and covet the 
 society of those who make us so, as the sweet singer, the 
 orator, the ideal painter." 
 
 It is commonly said that Emerson's interest in morals is 
 his inheritance from the Puritans. In this connection it is 
 interesting to find him in the Journals connecting himself 
 consciously with the loftiest Puritan of the seventeenth 
 century, John Milton, of whom he writes: "Milton de- 
 scribes himself to Diodati as enamored of moral perfection. 
 He did not love it more than I." Here indeed is a visible 
 link in what we have grown accustomed to call the Puritan 
 tradition. But, as a matter of fact, were Emerson and 
 Milton more in love with moral perfection than Spenser, 
 or was Spenser more in love with it than Dante, or Dante 
 than Augustine, or Augustine than the Emperor Marcus 
 Aurelius, or the Emperor than Socrates? There is a great 
 community of minds enamored of moral perfection. It is 
 no novel passion originating in New England or among the 
 English Puritans. How explain the antiquity of the tradi- 
 tion? Dante, following Aristotle, explains it by declaring 
 that "all things, by an intuition of their own nature, seek 
 perfection." Emerson then, rediscovered what Aristotle 
 had observed, that the impulse to self-perfection is a ten- 
 dency in the constitution of man. 
 
 In America, the most important predecessor of Emerson 
 in this rediscovery was a free-thinking man of the world, 
 entirely out of sympathy with strait-laced and stiff-necked 
 performers of barren rites and observances. I refer to the 
 greatest liberalizing force in eighteenth-century America, 
 Benjamin Franklin. Was he a Puritan? No one thinks of 
 him as such, yet in truth he represents the normal reaction 
 of a radical protestantism, of a living Puritanism, to an 
 "Age of Enlightenment." By the courage of his moral 
 realism he prepares the way for Emerson. He, too, begin? 
 
INTRODUCTION xxv 
 
 his independent studies after a revolt against ecclesiastical 
 authority, as narrow and unrealistic. The course of his 
 emancipation is set forth in the Autobiography, where he 
 relates his disgust at a sermon on the great text in Phil- 
 hpians: "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, 
 honest, just, pure, lovely, or of good report, if there be any 
 virtue, or any praise, think on these things." In expounding 
 this text, the clergyman confined himself to enjoining scru- 
 pulous Sabbath observances, respect to ministers, etc., etc. 
 "These might," says Franklin, "be all good things; but, 
 as they were not the kind of good things that I expected 
 from the text, I despaired of ever meeting with them from 
 any other, was disgusted, and attended his preaching no 
 more." 
 
 Franklin attended that preaching no more. But note 
 what follows, apparently as the consequence of his break 
 with the church: "It was about this time that I conceived 
 the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfec- 
 tion. I wished to live without committing any fault at any 
 time, and to conquer all that either natural inclination, 
 custom or company might lead me into." Everyone will 
 recall how Franklin drew up his table of thirteen moral 
 virtues, and how he studied the means for putting them 
 into effect. But for us the most significant feature of this 
 enterprise and of his proposed Art of Virtue was the real- 
 istic spirit in which they were conceived, the bold attempt 
 to ground the virtues upon experience rather than upon 
 authority, the assertion of the doctrine, "that vicious 
 actions are not hurtful because they are forbidden, but 
 forbidden because they are hurtful, the nature of man 
 alone considered." 
 
 Emerson as moralist takes up the work which Frank- 
 lin's poHtical duties prevented him from carrying out. He 
 repeats Franklin's revolt in the name of sincerity, truth, 
 actuahty. "Whoso would be a man," he declares in "Self- 
 Reliance," "must be a nonconformist. He who would 
 gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of 
 goodness, but must explore if it be goodness." He does 
 not take up the virtues so methodically and exhaustively 
 
xxvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 as Franklin does. That is mainly because he conceives mor- 
 ality to lie in a right condition and attitude of the whole self, 
 from which particular acts will result with a kind of in- 
 stinctive and inevitable Tightness. "The less a man thinks 
 or knows about his virtues," he says in ''Spiritual Laws," 
 "the better we hke him." He concerns himself less with 
 particular acts than many less exacting moralists, because 
 he demands as the evidence of goodness that one's en- 
 tire life shall be "an alms, a battle, a conquest, a med- 
 icine." The grand business of the moral explorer, as 
 he understands it, is to push past conduct to the springs of 
 conduct, to blaze a path behind the virtues to that general 
 moral power which is the source of all the virtues. 
 
 There is a familiar saying of Emerson's which would 
 epitomize, if it were understood, most of what is important 
 in all the Emersonian messages. Taken from its context in 
 the essay on "Civilization," it has perhaps been more widely 
 quoted than anything else that he uttered. Unfortunately, 
 one never hears it quoted with any sense of what it means 
 in the thought of Emerson, where its position is absolutely 
 central. The saying is this: "Hitch your wagon to a star." 
 If one asks a man from whose lips it has glibly slipped what 
 "Hitch your wagon to a star" means, he replies "Aim high," 
 a useful enough maxim of archery, but as a moral precept 
 dreadfully trite and unproductive. What Emerson really 
 means is : Put yourself in connection with irresistible power. 
 In the physical world, let water turn your mill, let steam 
 pull your cars, let the atmospheric electricity carry your 
 words around the world. "That is the way we are strong, by 
 borrowing the might of the elements." Likewise in the moral 
 world, go where the gods are going, take the direction of 
 all good men and let them bear you along, strike into the 
 current of the great human traditions, discover the law of 
 your higher nature and act with it. Presently you will 
 notice that you are no longer fuming at obstacles and fret- 
 ting at your personal impotence but are borne forward like 
 one destined. 
 
 At just tliis pomt, many stern critics have cried out 
 against Emerson as a moral teacher, and have charged him 
 
INTRODUCTION xxvii 
 
 with counselling an optimistic passivity. Emerson bids us 
 go with the current. The stern critic snatches at a figure 
 and comes away with an error. Have not all the orthodox 
 doctors taught that the good man goes against the current ? 
 Such misapprehension is the penalty for being a poet — 
 for not sticking faithfully to the technical jargon. Without 
 resorting to that medium, however, it should be possible to 
 clear Emerson of the charge of counselling a foolish opti- 
 mism, an indiscreet or base passivity. It should, at any 
 rate, be possible to clear him in the eyes of any one whose 
 morals have, like his, a religious basis — for example, in the 
 eyes of the sad and strenuous author of that great line: 
 ''In la sua vohmtade e nostra pace — In his will is our 
 peace." The point is, that Emerson does not urge us to 
 confide in all currents, to yield to all tendencies. It is only 
 after we have arrived by high thinking at a proud defini- 
 tion of man, that we are to take for our motto: "I dare do 
 all that may become a man." It is only after we have dis- 
 covered by severe inquisition the instincts of our higher 
 nature, that we are to trust our instincts, and follow our 
 nature. We are to be confident and passive. Yes: when 
 we are doing the will of God. 
 
 What made Emerson's teaching take hold of his contem- 
 poraries, what should commend it to us today is just its 
 unfailingly positive character, the way it supplements our 
 gospel of long-suffering by the restoration of classical vir- 
 tues. There is a welcome in it for life, even before the qual- 
 ity is disclosed: ''Virtue is uneducated power." There is a 
 place in it for manly resistance: "Be as beneficent as the 
 sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are 
 trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory." There 
 is the strong man's relish of difficulty and hostility: "We 
 must have antagonisms in the tough world for all the va- 
 riety of our spiritual faculties or they will not be born." 
 There is precept for use of the spur: "He that rides his 
 hobby gently must always give way to him that rides his 
 hobby hard." There is warrant for choosing one's path: 
 It is a man's "essential virtue to carry out into action his 
 own dearest ends, to dare to do what he believes and' loves. 
 
xxviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 If he thinks a sonnet the flower and result of the world, let 
 him sacrifice all to the sonnet." Even in his definition of 
 friendship, Emerson drives at action: ''He is my friend 
 who makes me do what I can." It is obvious that he re- 
 stores ambition, an aspect of magnanimity, to its proper 
 place in the formation of the manly character, ambition 
 to bring one's life to its fullest fruit. 
 
 This accounts for his extraordinary emphasis upon the 
 virtue of courage : "It may be safely trusted — God will not 
 have his work made manifest by cowards." Read from that 
 cue, and presently you fancy that all forms of virtue ap- 
 peared to him as aspects and phases of courage. He has 
 praise for the courage of non-conformity, the courage of in- 
 consistency, the courage of veracity, the courage to mix 
 with men, the courage to be alone, the courage to treat all 
 men as equals — but at this thought, he remembers his 
 proud conception of man, his imagination kindles, and he 
 cries: "Shall I not treat all men as gods?" and, elsewhere, 
 "God defend me from ever looking at a man as an animal." 
 It sounds like extravagance. It may turn out to be a 
 maxim of the higher prudence. Treating men like worms 
 has been tried — without particularly gratifying results. 
 Why not explore the consequences of assuming that men 
 have a nobler destiny? If you are educating a prince, all 
 the classical manuals enjoin it upon you to treat him like a 
 prince. Why should not this hold of uncrowned sovereigns 
 in general? Courage to do these extraordinary things 
 Emerson learned of his aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, who 
 taught him in his boyhood to face whatever he feared. 
 Courage he praised in his last word on Carlyle, "He never 
 feared the face of man." 
 
 Moralists present to us in general three distinguishable 
 sanctions for the virtuous life, or as Emerson would have 
 preferred to call it, the heroic life. They may commend 
 conduct as conducive to happiness in the future world — 
 the theological sanction. They may commend it as con- 
 ducive to pleasure or happiness or convenience on earth — 
 the utilitarian sanction. Or finally they may commend it as 
 in accordance with the proper nature of man — the human- 
 
INTRODUCTION xxix 
 
 istic sanction. This is the position taken by Marcus Aure- 
 hus in a passage extolled by Matthew Arnold. Which of 
 these is Emerson's sanction? In the essay on "Compensa- 
 tion," which he thought one of his prime contributions, he 
 argues that divine justice executes itself in this world in 
 accordance with inevitable laws. It is essentially the argu- 
 ment of Franklin; one is still concerned with reward and 
 punishment. But the general tenor of Emerson's hfe and 
 teaching rise above this level. Habitually he speaks in the 
 spirit of the Roman Emperor, so deeply appealing to the 
 well-born soul: "A third in a manner does not even know 
 what he has done, but he is like a vine which has produced 
 grapes, and seeks for nothing more after it has once pro- 
 duced its proper fruit. As a horse when he has run, a dog 
 when he has caught the game, a bee when it has made its 
 honey, so a man when he has done a good act, does not call 
 out for others to come and see, but he goes on to another 
 act, as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in 
 season." 
 
 VI 
 
 Though Emerson had thought much about the relation 
 of the individual to society and to the state, he was not in 
 any practical diurnal sense of the word a politically-minded 
 man. Politics is the art and science of governing masses. 
 The art and science which appealed to his ambition are 
 those which enable the individual to govern himself. So far 
 as he was concerned, he felt little need of external govern- 
 ment. Indeed, like many of the saints and sages, conscious 
 that he himself was actuated by the purest internal motives, 
 he looked with wary and somewhat jealous eye upon the 
 existence of an external controlling power in the state, 
 which might be actuated by motives far less pure and, in the 
 exercise of its constituted authority, warp him from the bias 
 of his soul. In this respect, he was distinctly a child of 
 the time-spirit which followed the Revolution and preceded 
 the Civil War, that period when the first dire need of a 
 powerful union had passed and the second chre need of it 
 had not yet been fully manifested. He could sympathize 
 
XXX INTRODUCTION 
 
 with his friend Thoreaii, who withdrew from the social or- 
 ganization to the extent of refusing to pay his taxes. But 
 Emerson's Yankee common sense preserved him from imi- 
 tating this fanaticism of individuahsm. He perceived, as 
 every inteUigent lover of freedom does, that a decent con- 
 formity is the very secret of freedom. 
 
 He loved freedom too much to coquet with anarchy. The 
 imaginative masters of his political speculations, Plato, 
 More, Milton, Burke, Montesquieu, had confirmed him, 
 furthermore, in the conviction that "politics rest on neces- 
 sary foundations, and cannot be treated with levity." The 
 foundation of government, he recognized, is in the constitu- 
 tion of man: "Every human society wants to be officered 
 by the best class, who shall be masters instructed in all the 
 great arts of life; shall be wise, temperate, brave, public 
 men, adorned with dignity and accomplishments." He per- 
 ceived that it was no true function of the philosopher to 
 bring into contempt even imperfect instruments of order 
 and liberty. 
 
 Like most Americans, however, he had pretty much lost 
 respect for government by an hereditary aristocracy. He 
 acknowledges the virtues of the hereditary principle but 
 with a touch of disdain : it has "secured permanence of fam- 
 ilies, firmness of customs, a certain external culture and 
 good taste; gratified the ear with historic names." Its de- 
 fect was its failure to make the laws of nature serve it. 
 Nature did not co-operate with the system: "the heroic 
 father did not surely have heroic sons, and still less heroic 
 grandsons; wealth and ease corrupted the race." 
 
 He goes a long way towards accepting the principles of 
 the French Revolution. His respect for efficient power 
 makes him betray, in "Representative Men," a great ad- 
 miration for Napoleon Bonaparte, qualified by grave reser- 
 vations. He desires, with Carlyle, to bring forward a 
 natural aristocracy, an aristocracy of talent. He would 
 like to believe that democracy is the means for recruiting 
 that talent, for organizing the superior class by which so- 
 ciety needs to be officered. But his study of the tjTannies 
 of an, "efficient state" administered by Napoleonic officers, 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxi 
 
 to whose talents a career was opened, has awakened in him, 
 as it never did in Carlyle, a deep suspicion of the ''natural 
 method," has put him on a criticism of democracy, which 
 is the most valuable element in his political writing. 
 
 Might with right, Emerson never confused as Carlyle 
 confused them — hopelessly; as democracies may, at any 
 time, under bad leadership, confuse them. "Our institutions," 
 he declares in his ''Politics," "though in coincidence with 
 the spirit of the age, have not any exemption from the 
 practical defects w^hich have discredited other forms. Every 
 actual State is corrupt. Good inen must not obey the laws 
 too loell!' His patriotism was free, emancipated. In the 
 year when he became of age, 1824, he wrote in his Journal: 
 "1 confess I am a little cynical on some topics, and when 
 a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I 
 am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity 
 of its heart." In his Journal of 1S33-5 he wrote: "The 
 life of this world has a limited worth in my eyes, and really 
 is not worth such a price as the toleration of slavery." He 
 cried out at the land-grabbing of the Mexican War. He 
 spoke repeatedly between 1837 and 1861 in behalf of free 
 speech, in behalf of emancipating the slaves, and in favor 
 of violating the Fugitive Slave Law. Against the 
 howling of mobs, as Mr. Woodberry shows in an 
 admirable summary of his participation in the anti- 
 slavery movement, "his civic courage was flawless." He 
 interrupted his lecture on Heroism in 1S3S to praise the 
 brave Lovejoy, "who 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." He received John Brown 
 in Concord, and when two years later the law doomed 
 him to die, he declared publicly in Boston that the new 
 saint would "make the gallows glorious like the cross." 
 
 Efficient nature herself requires to be checked. Where 
 is the check to be found? "The wise man is to settle it 
 immovably in his mind, that he only is fit to decide on his 
 best action; he only is fit to praise it; his verdict is praise 
 enough, and as to society, 'their hiss is thine applause.' " 
 {Journals, 1833-5.) The contention of parties cannot be 
 
xxxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 trusted to guard the interests of truth. Emerson has no 
 naive respect for numbers. He has looked with disilhisioned 
 eye upon the wisdom of majorities. He confides to his 
 Journal, for example, that if Jackson is elected "we shall 
 all feel dirty." He says that if he were unduly in love with 
 life, he would attend a Jackson caucus, and "I doubt not 
 the unmixed malignity, the withering selfishness, the impu- 
 dent vulgarity, that mark those meetings would speedily 
 cure me of my appetite for longevity." Yet despite this 
 bitterness, the Jackson party was, as he himself recognized, 
 that towards which his own principles and sympathies — 
 in theory, broadly popular — should have inclined him. 
 Speaking for publication, in his essay on "Politics," he re- 
 veals, with less asperity, the fact that he is not captivated 
 by either party. The paragraph that follows might have 
 been written by a disappointed independent of 1920: 
 
 "The vice of our leading parties in this country ... is 
 that they do not plant themselves on the deep and neces- 
 sary grounds to which they are respectively entitled. . . . 
 Of the two great parties which, at this hour, almost share 
 the nation between them, I should say that the one has 
 the best cause, and the other contains the best men. The 
 philosopher, the i:»oet, or the religious man will, of course, 
 wish to cast his vote with the democrat, for free-trade, for 
 wide suffrage, for the abolition of legal cruelties in the 
 penal code, and for facilitating in every manner the access 
 of the young and the poor to the sources of wealth and 
 power. [My italics.] But he can rarely accept the persons 
 whom the so-called popular party proposes to him as rep- 
 resentatives of these liberalities. They have not at heart 
 the ends which give to the name of democracy what hope 
 and virtue are in it." 
 
 Possibly Emerson's concern for the "unwashed masses" 
 forged a bit ahead of his sympathies as a man of flesh and 
 blood. Theoretically, he was not afraid of dirt. Before 
 Whitman bade us shun "delicatesse," Emerson had per- 
 ceived that the effective democrat must not be a "high 
 priest of the kid-glove persuasion." Writing in his Journal 
 at the age of thirty-two, he says: "I would not have a 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxiii 
 
 man dainty in his conduct. Let him not be afraid of being 
 besmirched by being advertised in the newspapers, or by 
 going into Atiienaeums or town-meetings or by making 
 speeches in pubhc. Let his chapel of private thoughts be so 
 holy that it shall perfume and separate him unto the Lord, 
 though he lay in a kennel." 
 
 It ought to be possible to feel "inwardly perfumed and 
 separated unto the Lord" without either showing or feeling 
 that Brahminical spirit of exclusiveness which men hke 
 Holmes and Lowell exhibited, and of which they were ob- 
 viously proud. Emerson was quite earnestly opposed to 
 the celebrated Brahminism of Boston and Cambridge. As 
 Mr. Brownell has finely said: "A constituent of his refine- 
 ment was an instinctive antipathy to ideas of dominance, 
 chctation, patronage, caste, and material sujDeriority whose 
 essential grossness repelled him and whose ultimate origin 
 in contemptuousness — probably the one moral state except 
 cravenness that chiefly he deemed contemptible — was plain 
 enough to his penetration." Henry Adams suggests, indeed, 
 with a touch of characteristic humor, that Emerson, from 
 the spiritual altitude of Concord, probably looked down 
 on the Brahmins themselves, looked down, for instance, on 
 the Adamses, as worldhngs. 
 
 Now there is interesting evidence in the Journals that 
 Emerson might have looked down on Henry Adams, but 
 from a point of view remote from that indicated by Adams ; 
 
 "I do not forgive in any man this forlorn pride, as if he 
 were an Ultim.us Romanorura. I am more American in my 
 feelings. This country is full of people whose fathers were 
 judges, generals, and bank presidents, and if all their boys 
 should give themselves airs thereon and rest henceforth on 
 the oars of their fathers' merit, we should be a sad hungry 
 generation. Moreover, I esteem it my best birthright that 
 our people are not crippled by family and official pride, 
 that the best broadcloth coat in the country is put off to put 
 on a blue frock, that the best man in town may steer his 
 plough-tail or may drive a milk-cart. There is a great deal of 
 work ni our men, and a false pride has not yet made them 
 idle or ashamed. Moreover I am more philosophical than 
 
xxxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 to love this retrospect. I believe in the being God, not in 
 the God that has been. I work; my fathers may have 
 wrought or rested. What have I to do with them, or with 
 the Fellatahs, or the great Khan! I know a worthy man 
 who walks the streets with silent indignation as a last of his 
 race, quite contemj^tuously eyeing the passing multitude." 
 
 Emerson goes further than that in welcoming the "new 
 man,'^ the power without known antecedents. In a notable 
 passage of his Journal for 1845, one sees him, as it were, 
 shaking off the dust of the house of his fathers, breaking 
 out of the old New England, in order to enter America, to 
 participate in that national spirit which we know today 
 must learn to enfold and assimilate men of all races : 
 
 'T hate the narrowness of the Native American Party. It 
 is the dog in the manger. It is precisely opposite to all 
 the dictates of love and magnanimity; and therefore, of 
 course, opposite to true wisdom. . . . Man is the most 
 composite of all creatures. . . . Well, as in the old burning 
 of the Temple at Corinth, by the melting and intermixture 
 of silver and gold and other metals a new compound more 
 precious than any, called Corinthian brass, was formed; so 
 in this continent, — asylum of all nations, — the energy of 
 Irish, Germans, Swedes, Poles, and Cossacks, and all the 
 European tribes, — of the Africans, and of the Polynesians, 
 — will construct a new race, a new religion, a new state, a 
 new literature, which will be as vigorous as the new Europe 
 which came out of the smelting-pot of the Dark Ages, or 
 that which earlier emerged from the Pelasgic and Etruscan 
 barbarism. La Nature aime les croisements" 
 
 No man who honestly and earnestly contemplates the 
 making of a nation out of such heterogeneous elements as 
 Emerson here enumerates, no man who truly cherishes the 
 potentialities of human power, wherever they lie, is dis- 
 posed to assign to political agencies an undue part in shap- 
 ing the product of the melting-pot. Emerson chd not. If 
 we were to sum up his attitude towards the state in a 
 single sentence, it would take some such form as this: The 
 State exists for the benefit of all the individuals in it: and 
 its stability and its welfare depend primarily on the effort 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxv 
 
 of each individual in it. All concrete advance towards social 
 regeneration, he beheved, is accomplished by minorities — 
 by minorities of one! In a comitry with a strong inchna- 
 tion towards beginning all efforts for moral reformation by 
 the election of a president and a secretary, he proposes this 
 modest method: ''Count from yourself m order the persons 
 that have near relation to you up to ten or fifteen, and 
 see if you can consider your whole relation to each without 
 squirming. That will be something." Commenting, in 
 "Life and Letters in New England," on a socialistic scheme 
 for imposing economic salvation on the world from No. 200 
 Broadway, he surmises that it would be better to say: "Let 
 us be lovers and servants of that which is just, and straight- 
 way every man becomes a center of a holy and beneficent 
 republic, which he sees to include all men in its law, like that 
 of Plato and Christ." Let the great state arch above us, 
 but let it beware of pressing too near, lest it crush more 
 natural and vital powers — the power of the individual over 
 himself; the power of the family, the neighborhood, the 
 town-meeting, the local enterprise; the "atmospheric" 
 power of culture, the gradual and beneficent pressure of a 
 natural society steadily growing stronger by the diffusion of 
 science and humane learning. 
 
 The Emersonian doctrine of democratic individualism has 
 its defects. In these days it appears rather homely and 
 old-fashioned. Yet it has merits towards which one occa- 
 sionally turns with nostalgic yearnings, merits which may 
 yet restore it to some of its former favor. After many a 
 popular election, is it not still the chief available consolation 
 to go quietly home and close the door and reflect that the 
 wise man "occupies all the space between God and the 
 mob?" And in spite of all the allurement of centralized power, 
 with its promise of prompt and "nation-wide" progress in 
 the sense of the men at Washington, shall we not find in the 
 years to come that the preservation of individuahty in the 
 private citizen and of pride and initiative in the "parish," 
 the province, and the separate states, are as vital to the 
 health of the far-flung nation as the use of hands and feet? 
 
xxxvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 VII 
 
 It has ordinarily been assumed and asserted that Emer- 
 son was very httle developed on the aesthetic side. This 
 assumption is intimately associated with two other popular 
 errors, which, in the light of our examination, we may now 
 dismiss. We may first dismiss the popular error which 
 holds that the center of his being was ethical; for we have 
 seen that the center of his being was rehgious. We may 
 dismiss, also, the popular error of regarding him as a rep- 
 resentative of Puritan decadence; for we have seen that he 
 represents rather a renascence and fresh flowering of the 
 ancient passion for perfection. We think rightly of 
 Emerson when we think of him as a humanist bent upon 
 liberating and developing not some but all of the properly 
 human powers. He builds his many-chambered house of 
 life around a private oratory, because, like every success- 
 fully exploring humanist, he finds a private oratory at the 
 center of his heart. But this innermost shrine of religious 
 inspiration is emphatically not a Calvinistic chapel, hostile 
 to the arts. It is a retreat friendly to all the Muses that 
 ever haunted "Siloa's brook" or Heliconian springs. 
 
 Emerson believed, indeed, like his great predecessor of 
 the seventeenth century, that the pulsing spirit which "vol- 
 untary moves harmonious numbers" prefers before all tem- 
 ples "the upright heart and pure." But no one who has ap- 
 proached that inner shrine will ever picture him as sum- 
 m.oning the Sacred Nine about him in order to give them a 
 lesson in conduct. No one understands Emerson who fails 
 to perceive that he trusts his inspiration, hke a Pythian 
 prophet, like a celebrant of Dionysian mysteries. "If I am 
 the devil's child," he defiantly retorted in his youth to one 
 who had urged him to beware of his instincts, "I will live 
 from the devil." Well assured that he was not the devil's 
 child, he opened communication with his sources of power, 
 resolute to receive and utter whatever they sent, though it 
 might sound like blasphemy, though it might whiff received 
 ethics down the wind. Through a great part of his prose 
 and verse, there is the peculiar beat and throb which marks 
 work conceived in creative heat, under the sway of the 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxvii 
 
 "divine madness." Some of the friends who came closest to 
 him testified to receiving from him not counsel but a sheer 
 access of vital energy exhilarating to the verge of intoxica- 
 tion. It is above all a generative and fecundating impulse 
 that he seeks for himself. It is above all that he desires 
 to impart to others. 
 
 We all tend to shp at times into colorless and meaningless 
 routme, into lives of grey commonplace and insignificance. 
 Emerson seems to have apprehended this as a peril to which 
 our democratic society is peculiarly exposed. He cultivates 
 the means of combating it. He cultivates, for example, the 
 color of Oriental poetry. He follows Hafiz, this Unitarian 
 in revolt against the tedium and dead level of the cold New 
 England virtue, and cries: "Let us be crowned with roses, 
 let us drink wine, and break up the tiresome old roof of 
 heaven into new forms." He writes an essay on "Inspira- 
 tion," which is a study under ten headings of the technique 
 of exaltation, of ecstasy. He chants an ode to Bacchus, 
 calling for 
 
 Wine of wine, 
 
 Blood of the world. 
 
 Form of forms, and mold of statures, 
 
 That I intoxicated 
 
 And by the draught assimilated. 
 
 May float at pleasure through all natures. 
 
 Under the heading "Morals" in his discourse on "Poetry 
 and Imagination," he comes to the conclusion, entirely char- 
 acteristic of him, that "Power, new power, is the good 
 which the soul seeks." On this theme Emerson writes 
 occasionally with a recklessness not often associated with 
 the "Victorian" period in America. For power, he intimates 
 in "Mithridates," a poet may perhaps well pay with his 
 soul: 
 
 Too long shut in strait and few, 
 
 Thinly dieted on dew, 
 
 I will use the world, r nd sift it, 
 
 To a thousand humors shift it, 
 
 As you spin a cherry. 
 
 O doleful ghosts, and goblins merry! 
 
 O all you virtues, methods, mights, 
 
 Means, appliances, delights, 
 
xxxviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 Reputed wrongs and braggart rights, 
 Smug routine, and things allowed, 
 Minorities, things under cloud! 
 Hither! take me, use me, fill me, 
 Vein and artery, though ye kill me! 
 
 As a priest of the "being God, not the God that has 
 been," Emerson finds that even the greatest of the old poets 
 do not wholly content him. As a believer in the doctrine 
 of continuous revelation, he demands a new revelation. "In 
 a cotillon," he declares in "Poetry and Imagination," "some 
 persons dance and others await their turn when the music 
 and the figure come to them. In the dance of God there is 
 not one of the chorus but can and will begin to spin, monu- 
 mental as he now looks, whenever the music and figure 
 reach his place and duty. celestial Bacchus! drive them 
 mad, — this multitude of vagabonds, hungry for eloquence, 
 hungry for poetry, starving for symbols, perishing for 
 want of electricity to vitalize tliis too much pasture, and 
 in the long delay indemnifying themselves with the false 
 wine of alcohol, of poHtics, or of money." 
 
 Emerson knew pretty well what he wanted in the way of 
 a new poet. He was not in the least interested in the pro- 
 duction of more "parlor or piano verse." He wanted such 
 utterance as could come only from a great and noble soul 
 immersed in the realities and filled with the spirit of the 
 modern world. His poet must be radical, revolutionary, 
 formative: "Bring us the bards who shall sing all our old 
 ideas out of our heads, and new ones in; men-making 
 poets. . . . poetry which finds its rhymes and cadences in 
 the rhymes and iterations of nature, and is the gift to men 
 of new images and symbols, each the ensign and oracle of 
 an age; that shall assimilate men to it, mould itself into 
 religions and mythologies, and impart its quality to cen- 
 turies." In his essay on "The Poet" he regrets that "we 
 have 5^et had no genius in America, with tyrannous eye, 
 which knew the value of our incomparable materials, and 
 saw, in the barbarism and materialism of the times, another 
 carnival of the same gods whose picture it so much admires 
 in Homer; then in the middle age; then in Calvinism. . . . 
 Our log-rolling, our stumps and their politics, our fisheries, 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxix 
 
 our Negroes, and Indians, our boats, and our repudiations, 
 the wrath of rogues, and the pusillanimity of honest men, 
 the northern trade, the southern planting, the western 
 clearing, Oregon and Texas, are yet unsung. Yet America 
 is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the 
 imagination, and it will not wait long for metres." Clearly, 
 Emerson was calling for a singer in many important re- 
 spects resembling Whitman; and Whitrnan answered. 
 
 It is not yet adequately recognized to what extent Emer- 
 son anticipated not only Whitman but also the poets of 
 tjie present hour. He anticipates their desire to strike up 
 for the new world a new tune. He thinks that we leaned 
 too much in the past upon England. Our literature has 
 become lifelessly traditional through uninspired imitation. 
 We require some sort of break and shock to liberate our 
 own native talents. In an extremely interesting passage of 
 the third volume of the Journals, he records the surmise 
 that salvation may come from that very element which, in 
 politics, he thought of as constituting the party of unkempt 
 pioneers, barbarians, slave-holders, and corruptionists : "I 
 suppose the evil may be cured by this rank rabble party, 
 the Jacksonism of the country, heedless of English and of all 
 literature — a stone cut out of the ground without hands — 
 they may root out the hollow dilettantism of our cultiva- 
 tion in the coarsest way, and the new born may begin again 
 to frame their own world with greater advantage." 
 
 As literary critic, Emerson has, with only an occasional 
 trace of reluctance, the courage of his free religion, his 
 philosophy, his politics. His thought in these matters un- 
 derhes and supports his Poetics and his Rhetoric. Mystic, 
 sj^mbolist, and democrat, he is constrained to declare that 
 there is no vulgar life save that of which the poetry has not 
 yet been written. He urges us bravely to paint the pros- 
 pect from our doors, wherever they open. He asserts the 
 possibility of all subjects: "A dog drawn by a master, or a 
 litter of pigs, satisfies, and is a reality not less than the 
 frescoes of Angelo." He detests a bookish and fossilized 
 phrase and diction: "He only is a good writer who keeps one 
 eye on his page, and with the other sweeps over things; so 
 that every sentence brings in a new contribution of obser- 
 
xl INTRODUCTION 
 
 vation." He has meditated deeply on image, rhyme, and 
 rhythm; and has discovered the hterary value of colloquial 
 cadence, the picturesque language of children, the scoff and 
 violence of the *'yeoman," the pungency of natural persons 
 expressing their mother- wit. His essays contain as much 
 great "free verse" as any one has written since. Poems,such 
 as "Hamatreya," "Woodnotes," "Monadnoc," and "Musketa- 
 quid" prove his possession of senses tinglingly responsive to 
 the touches of native color, scent, and sound; show a poeti- 
 cal nature that has struck root and has been richly nour- 
 ished "in haunts which others scorned." As for his general 
 theory of art, in his more sanguine and exalted moments he 
 goes beyond our most radical leaders in his passion for rec- 
 onciling art with nature and restoring it to "all the people," 
 so that the ultimate phase of artistic development would 
 be an habitual happy improvisation. 
 
 That aspiration, as Emerson would have been the first to 
 admit, was ideal, was Utopian. It could be realized onlj^ in 
 a profoundly regenerated and enriched society. In this 
 world as it is at present, he recognized that great poetry, 
 for example, must be the result of special culture and aus- 
 tere discipline. It must therefore be submitted for judg- 
 ment to the cultivated and the disciplined. He has no im- 
 mediate intention of accepting the standards of the mob. 
 Our radical anti-academic friends would indeed dispose of 
 him as "academic." For he comforts himself, in the absence 
 of a national Academy, with this reflection, in the second vol- 
 ume of the Journals: "Consider the permanence of the best 
 opinion: the certainty with which a good book acquires 
 fame, though a bad book succeeds better at first. Consider 
 the natural academy which the best heads of the time con- 
 stitute, and which 'tis pleasant to see, act almost as har- 
 moniously and efficiently, as if they were organized and 
 acted by vote." 
 
 For a writer who is often classified nowadays as a "mere 
 morahst," Emerson hberated an extraordinary number of 
 ideas about both the major and the minor problems of the 
 literary art. You may say, if you like, that his literary 
 scrupulousness is but an aspect of his moral rectitude; but 
 
INTRODUCTION xli 
 
 any other writer of his exacting artistic conscience would 
 be saluted by all the anti-Puritans as a ''lover of beauty," 
 a ''martyr of style." In 1831, long before Flaubert or 
 Pater had announced it, he committed to his Journal the 
 doctrine of the "unique word": "No man can write well 
 who thinks there is any choice of words for him. The laws 
 of composition are as strict as those of sculpture and archi- 
 tecture. There is always one line that ought to be drawn, 
 or one proportion that should be kept, and every other line 
 or proportion is wrong, and so far wrong as it deviates from 
 this. So in writing, there is always a right word, and every 
 other than that is wrong. There is no beauty in words 
 except in their collocation. The effect of a fanciful word 
 misplaced, is like that of a horn of exquisite polish growing 
 on a human head." 
 
 Economy, Emerson regards as the poet's chastity: "Let 
 the poet, of all men, stop with his inspiration. The inex- 
 orable rule in the muses' court, either inspiration or silence, 
 compels the bard to report only his supreme mo- 
 ments. It teaches the enormous force of a few words and in 
 proportion to the inspiration checks loquacity." Despite 
 his desire for fresh beginnings in America, he finds it neces- 
 sary to turn back to the old English writers, "not because 
 they are old, but simply because they wrote well If we 
 write as well, we may deviate from them and our devia- 
 tions shall be classical." Every one, it is to be hoped, re- 
 members the little poem called "The Test," in which Emer- 
 son challenges his reader to find the "five lines" in his 
 verses which outlasted five hundred. It is a virtue in him, 
 which our present loquacity should some day make 
 esteemed, that he so often anticipates the winnowing of 
 time, as in the firm Landorian car\ing of the "Concord 
 Hymn" with its cumulative solemnity, reaching its climax 
 in the breathless pause of the flawless final stanza, before 
 the ultimate foot: 
 
 Spirit, that made those heroes dare 
 To die, and leave their children free, 
 Bid Time and Nature gently spare 
 The shaft we raise to them and thee. 
 
xlii INTRODUCTION 
 
 The popular taste in poetry, as is proved by many of 
 the great reputations, is a little waterish. Emerson served 
 "wine of wine." He has been underrated as a poet because 
 he did not understand, or would not practice, dilution. One 
 suspects that he might be reinstated, if some student of 
 Japanese verse would display in a wide-margined volume 
 some fifty or a hundred of his "images," selected here and 
 there from his basket of cut gems, for example: 
 
 I am a willow of the wilderness 
 Loving the wind that bent me 
 
 Or possibly the reviver of Emerson should remind the 
 Chicago School of these fines: 
 
 Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Merriam, Flint, 
 Possessed the land which rendered to their toil 
 Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood. 
 
 Critics have sufficiently harped upon certain defects in 
 the prose style of Emerson: the apparent lack of firm de- 
 sign and evolution in the larger divisions of his discourse; 
 the difficult transitions, the imperfect coherence, within the 
 paragraphs. It is perhaps worth observing that some of 
 these faults are closely connected with his characteristic 
 virtues, and are truly due to the excess of these virtues. 
 Emerson is characteristically rich and economical. He is so 
 rich that he can put into a sentence as much as another 
 would put into a paragraph, and as much into a paragraph 
 as another would put into his entire discourse. He is so 
 economical of space, so bent on filling every inch with 
 solid matter, that he deliberately prunes away what is 
 merely explanatory and transitional. If one compares 
 passages in the Journals with parafiel passages in the essays, 
 one remarks at first with surprise that the superiority on the 
 side of fluency and texture is frequently with the Journals. 
 The superiority of the essays is in condensation and in- 
 tensity. 
 
 It should be observed, furthermore, that in the prose 
 which Emerson himself published the degree of fluency and 
 stylistic coherence varies greatly with the subject. The 
 moral essays, such as "Self-Reliance" and "Compensation," 
 are written more or less in the manner of the Book of 
 
INTRODUCTION xliii 
 
 Proverbs or the Essays of Bacon. They are built of dis- 
 tinct injunctions, maxims, and fragments of wisdom, twenty 
 or thirty of them to a paragraph. "Solid bags of duckshot," 
 Carlyle called these paragraphs, and urged Emerson to fuse 
 them into a solid luminous bar. They are close packed 
 enough, in all conscience, without fusion. There is stuff 
 enough for a morning's meditation in any half-dozen of the 
 hundreds of maxims which make up the essay on Self-Re- 
 iiance. But no ordinary mind can read easily page after 
 page of epitomized moral experience: ''Be 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." Before such 
 matter can be made to flow, it must be diluted. Read in 
 youth and for the first time, a page of such writing seems 
 pebbly and difficult. But at each re-reading one discovers 
 more pebbles that are interestingly translucent, opalescent, 
 with a fire at the lieart of them. Returning later in life, 
 after perhaps the twentieth reading, one may discover that 
 the pattern in the page comes out, that the gaps are bridged 
 by one's own experience, that each sentence is illustrated 
 by one's own verification of it, and that somehow this 
 swift "saltation" from epitome to epitome of moral wisdom 
 makes all other moral writing seem thin and fiat. 
 
 But Emerson has many other prose manners, to whicli 
 the stock criticisms and the traditional jests are not at all 
 applicable. Turn, for example, to his 'Thoreau," a bio- 
 graphical portrait executed in the firm objective manner of 
 Suetonius yet with the gusto of Plutarch — a superbly 
 vital piece of characterization, unsurpassed if not unequalled 
 by anything of Uke scope in American literature. Or con- 
 sider the flow of his reminiscences of Brook Farm and his 
 bland comment on Fourierism in ''Life and Letters in New 
 England"; it is beautiful writing, urbane, luminous, ex- 
 quisitely ironical. Or for still another vein, turn the pages 
 in "English Traits" where he describes meeting Thomas 
 Carlyle, with something of the Scotch master's graphic 
 force : 
 
xliv INTRODUCTION 
 
 On my return, I came from Glasgow to Dumfries, and being in- 
 tent on delivering a letter which I had brought from Rome, inquired 
 for Craigenputtock. It was a farm in Nithdale, in the parish of 
 Dumscore, sixteen miles distant. No pubhc coach passed near it, 
 so I took a private carriage from the inn. I found the house amid 
 heathery hills, where the lonely scholar nourished his mighty heart. 
 Carlyle was a man from his youth, an author who did not need to 
 hide from his readers, and as absolute a man of the world, unknown 
 and exiled on that hill-farm as if holding on his own terms what is 
 best in London. He was tall and gaunt, with a cliff-like brow, self- 
 possessed and holding his extraordinary powers of conversation in 
 easy command; clinging to his northern accent with evident relish; 
 full of lively anecdote, and with a streaming humor, which floated 
 everything he looked upon. 
 
 If Emerson writes comparatively little in the descriptive 
 and narrative veins, it is neither from impotence nor by 
 chance but on consideration. "Do you see," he asks himself, 
 "what we preserve of history? a few anecdotes of a moral 
 quality of some momentary act or word." The word of 
 Canute on the sea-shore, he observes, is all the world re- 
 members of the Danish conquest. Under the influence of 
 this thought, he seems, for a time, to have meditated com- 
 posing "a modern Plutarch," British and American, — in 
 which his "Thoreau" would well have taken the place of 
 Cato, and his "Lincoln" a place of its own. His "Repre- 
 sentative Men" was a partial fulfilment of the design. But 
 quite early in life Emerson was much occupied by a rival 
 thought, thus recorded in the fourth volume of the Jour- 
 nals: "I said to Bryant and to these young people, that the 
 high poetry of the world from the beginning has been 
 ethical, and it is the tendency of the ripe modern mind to 
 produce it. . . . As I think, no man could be better occu- 
 pied than in making up his own bible by hearkening to all 
 those sentences which now here, now there, now in nursery 
 rhymes, now in Hebrew, now in English bards, thrill him 
 like the sound of a trumpet," In fulfilment of that design 
 Emerson wrote his great essays. 
 
 To many a lonely student, obscure and friendless, medi- 
 tating in the long cold spring and adolescence of his talent 
 on his untried powers, Emerson has come as with the sound 
 of a magical trumpet, shattering the dungeons of fear, send- 
 
INTRODUCTION xlv 
 
 ing the young knight on his quest inwardly fortified and 
 resolute to give soul and body to that undertaking, what- 
 ever it be, for wliich he was sent into the world. Such is 
 the primary function of the religious and democratic ethos 
 with which he sought to impregnate American letters. He, 
 too, had been lonely, obscure, uncertain of his way, feeble, 
 and prone to husband his strength and his gifts. But when 
 he found which way the planets are going and the well 
 where the gods drink, he faltered no longer. "What a dis- 
 covery I made one day, that the more I spent the more I 
 grew, that it was as easy to occupy a large place and do 
 much work as an obscure place to do little; and that in the 
 winter in which I communicated all my results to classes, I 
 was full of new thoughts." To this, let us add that other 
 thought, so precious to him that it appears repeatedly in 
 various forms in the Journals and in the Essays: "If a man 
 knows the law, he may settle himself in a shanty in a pine 
 forest, and men will and must find their way to him as 
 readily as it he lived in the City Hall." We shall keep near 
 the main stream of the Emersonian virtue, if we close with 
 a variation and enlargement of the same theme : "Penetrate 
 to the bottom of the fact which draws you, although no 
 newspaper, no poet, no man, has ever yet found Ufe and 
 beauty in that region, and presently when men are whis- 
 pered by the gods to go and hunt in that direction, they 
 shall find that they cannot get to the point which they 
 would reach without passing over that highway which you 
 have built. Your hermit's lodge shall be the Holy City and 
 the Fair of the whole world." 
 
ESSAYS OF EMERSON 
 I 
 
 NATURE 
 
 A subtle chain of countless rings 
 The next unto the farthest brings; 
 The eye reads omens where it goes, 
 And speaks all languages the rose; 
 And, striving to be man, the worm 
 Mounts through all the spires of form. 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the 
 fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. 
 The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face 
 to fece; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also 
 enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should 
 not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not 
 of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not 
 the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, 
 whose floods of life stream around and through us, and 
 invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned 
 to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of 
 the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out 
 of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There 
 is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, 
 new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works 
 and laws and worship. 
 
 Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are 
 unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the crea- 
 tion so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order 
 
 1 
 
2 NATURE 
 
 of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things 
 can satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in hiero- 
 glyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as 
 life, before he apprehends it as truth. In like manner, 
 nature is already, in its forms and tendencies, describing 
 its own deoign. Let us interrogate the great apparition 
 that shines so peacefully around us. Let us inquire, to 
 what end is nature? 
 
 All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of 
 nature. We have theories of races and of functions, but 
 scarcely yet a remote apjDroach to an idea of creation. 
 We are now so far from the road to truth that religious 
 teachers dispute and hate each other, and speculative men 
 are esteemed unsound and frivolous. But to a sound judg- 
 ment, the most abstract truth is the most practical. When- 
 ever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. 
 Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena. Now many 
 are thought not only unexplained but inexplicable; as lan- 
 guage, sleep, madness, dreams, beasts, sex. 
 
 Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of 
 Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all 
 that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes 
 as the NOT me, that is, both nature and art, all other fhen 
 and my own body, must be ranked under this name, 
 Nature. In enumerating the values' of nature and casting 
 up their sum, I shall use the word in both senses; — in its 
 common and in its philosophical import. In inquiries so 
 general as our present one, the inaccuracy is not material; 
 no confusion of thought will occur. Nature, in the com- 
 mon sense, refers to essences unchanged by man; space, 
 the air, the river, the leaf. Art is applied to the mixture 
 of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a 
 statue, a picture. But his operations taken together are 
 so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, patching, and 
 washing, that in an impression so grand as that of the 
 world on the human mind, they do not vary the result. 
 
NATURE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from 
 his chamber as from society. I am not sohtary whilst 
 1 read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a 
 man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays 
 that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between 
 him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere 
 was made transparent with this design, to give man, m the 
 heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. 
 Seen m the streets of cities, how great they are! If the 
 stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how 
 would men beheve and adore; and preserve for many 
 generations the remembrance of the city of God which had 
 been shown! But every night come out these envoys of 
 beauty, and hght the universe with their admonishing 
 smile. 
 
 The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though 
 alwaj's present, they are maccessible; but all natural ob- 
 jects make a kindred impression,. when the mind is open 
 to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appear- 
 ance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and 
 lose his curiosity by findmg out all her perfection. Nature 
 never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the 
 animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best 
 hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his 
 childhood. 
 
 When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a 
 distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean 
 the integrity of impression made by manifold natural ob- 
 jects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of timber of 
 the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet. The charming 
 landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made 
 up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, 
 Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none 
 of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the 
 horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate 
 all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of 
 
4 NATURE 
 
 these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give 
 no title. 
 
 To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most 
 persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very 
 superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the 
 man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. 
 The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses 
 are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the 
 spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His inter- 
 course with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily 
 food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through 
 the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says — he is 
 my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he 
 shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, 
 but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; 
 for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes 
 a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grim- 
 mest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well 
 a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is 
 a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, 
 in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without 
 having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good 
 fortune, I have enjoj^ed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad 
 to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off 
 his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever 
 of life, alwaj^s is a child. In the woods, is perpetual 
 youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and 
 sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest 
 sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. 
 In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel 
 that nothing can befall me in life — no chsgrace, no calamity 
 (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair. Stand- 
 ing on the bare ground — my head bathed by the blithe 
 air, and uplifted into infinite space — all mean egotism 
 vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; 
 I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate 
 through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of 
 the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to 
 be brothers, to be acquaintances — master or servant, is 
 
COMMODITY 5 
 
 then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncon- 
 tained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find 
 something more dear and connate than in streets or vil- 
 lages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the 
 distant line of the -'horizon, man beholds somewhat as 
 beautiful as his own nature. 
 
 The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, 
 is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the 
 vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They 
 nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in 
 the storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, 
 and yet is not unknown. Its effect is hke that of a higher 
 thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I 
 deemed I was thinking justly or doing right. 
 
 Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, 
 does not reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of 
 both. It is necessary to use these pleasures with great 
 temperance. For, nature is not always tricked in holiday 
 attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed per- 
 fume and glittered as for the frolic of the n^^mphs, is over- 
 spread with melancholy to-da}^ Nature always wears the 
 colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity, 
 the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then, there 
 is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has 
 just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as 
 is shuts down over less worth in the population. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 COMMODITY 
 
 Whoever considers the final cause of the world will 
 discern a multitude of uses that enter as parts into that 
 result. They all admit of being thrown into one of the 
 following classes; Commodity; Beauty; Language; and 
 Disciphne. 
 
 Under the general name of Commodity, I rank all those 
 advantages which our senses owe to nature. This, of 
 
6 NATURE 
 
 course, is a benefit which is temporary and mediate, not 
 ultimate, hke its service to the soul. Yet although low, it 
 is perfect in its kind, and is the only use of nature which 
 all men apprehend. The misery of man appears like child- 
 ish petulance, when we explore the steady and prodigal 
 provision that has been made for his support and dehght 
 on this green ball which floats him through the heavens. 
 What angels invented these splendid ornaments, these rich 
 conveniences, this ocean of air above, this ocean of water 
 beneath, this firmament of earth between, this zodiac of 
 lights, this tent of dropping clouds, this striped coat of 
 climates, this fourfold year? Beasts, fire, water, stones, and 
 corn serve him. The field is at once his floor, his work- 
 yard, his play-ground, his garden, and his bed. 
 
 "More servants wait on man 
 Than he'll take notice of." — 
 
 Nature, in its ministry to man, is not only the material, 
 but is also the process and the result. All the parts 
 incessantly work into each other's hands for the profit of 
 man. The wind sows the seed; the sun evaporates the 
 sea; the wind blows the vapor to the field; the ice, on 
 the other side of the planet, condenses rain on this; the 
 rain feeds the plant; the plant feeds the animal; and thus 
 the endless circulations of the divine charity nourish man. 
 
 The useful arts are reproductions or new combinations 
 by the wit of man, of the same natural benefactors. He 
 no longer waits for favoring gales, but by means of steam, 
 he reahzes the fable of bolus's bag, and carries the two 
 and thirty winds in the boiler of his boat. To diminish 
 friction, he paves the road with iron bars, and, mounting 
 a coach with a ship-load of men, animals, and merchandise 
 behind him, he darts through the country, from town to 
 town, like an eagle or a swallow through the air. By the 
 aggregate of these aids, how is the face of the world changed 
 from the era of Noah to that of Napoleon! The private 
 poor man hath cities, ships, canals, bridges, built for him. 
 He goes to the post-office, and the human race run on his 
 errands; to the book-shop, and the human race read and 
 
BEAUTY 7 
 
 write of all that happens, for him; to the court-house, and 
 nations repair his wrongs. He sets his house upon the 
 road, and the human race go forth every morning, and 
 shovel out the snow, and cut a path for him. 
 
 But there is no need of specifying particulars in this 
 class of uses. The catalogue is endless, and the examples 
 so obvious, that I shall leave them to the reader's re- 
 flection, with the general remark, that this mercenary bene- 
 fit is one which has respect to a farther good. A man is. 
 fed, not t|]/i,t h^ m^v be fed, but that he mav work. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 BEAUTY 
 
 A NOBLER want of man is served by nature, namely, the 
 love of Beauty. 
 
 The ancient Greeks called the world xoo-/xos, beauty. 
 Such is the constitution of all things, or such the plastic 
 power of the human eye, that the primary forms, as the 
 sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight 
 in and for themselves; a pleasure arising from outline, 
 color, motion, and grouping. This seems partly owing to 
 the eye itself. The eye is the best of artists. By the 
 mutual action of its structure and of the laws of light, per- 
 spective is produced, which integrates every mass of ob- 
 jects, of what character soever, into a well colored and 
 shaded globe, so that where the particular objects are mean 
 and unaffecting, the landscape which they compose, is round 
 and symmetrical. And as the eye is the best composer, 
 so light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul 
 that intense light will not make beautiful. And the stimu- 
 lus it affords to the sense, and a sort of infinitude which 
 it hath, like space and time, make all matter gay. Even 
 the corpse has its own beauty. But beside this general 
 grace diffused over nature, almost all the individual forms 
 are agreeable to the eye, as is proved by our endless imita- 
 
8 NATURE 
 
 tions of some of them, as the acorn, the grape, the pme- 
 cone, the wheat-ear, the egg, the wings and forms of most 
 birds, the hon's claw, the serpent, the butterfly, sea-shells, 
 flames, clouds, buds, leaves, and the forms of many trees, as 
 the palm. 
 
 For better consideration, we may distribute the aspects 
 of Beauty in a threefold manner. 
 
 1. First, the simple perception of natural forms is a de- 
 light. The influence of the forms and actions in nature, is so 
 needful to man, that, in its lowest functions, it seems to lie 
 on the conflncs of commodity and beauty. To the body 
 and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or 
 company, nature is mecUcinal and restores their tone. The 
 tradesman, the attorney comes out of the chn and craft 
 of the street, and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man 
 again. In their eternal calm, he finds himself. The health 
 of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, 
 so long as we can see far enough. 
 
 But in other hours, Nature satisfies by its loveliness, and 
 without any mixture of corporeal benefit. I see the spec- 
 tacle of morning from the hilltop over against my house, 
 from daybreak to sunrise, with emotions which an angel 
 might share. The long slender bars of cloud float like fishes 
 in the sea of crimson light. From the earth as a shore, 
 I look out into that silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid 
 transformations: the active enchantment reaches my dust, 
 and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind. How 
 does Nature deify us with a few and cheap elements ? Give 
 me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of em- 
 perors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria; the sun-set 
 and moon-rise my Paphos, and unimaginable realms of 
 faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and 
 the understanding; the night shall be my Germany of mystic 
 philosophy and dreams. 
 
 Not less excellent, except for our less susceptibility in the 
 afternoon, was the charm, last evening, of a January sun- 
 set. The western clouds cUvided and subdivided themselves 
 into pink flakes modulated with tints of unspeakable soft- 
 ness; and the air had so much life and sweetness, that it 
 was a pain to come within doors. What was it that nature 
 
BEAUTY 9 
 
 would say? Was there no meaning in the hve repose of 
 the valley behind the mill, and which Homer or Shake- 
 speare could not re-form for me in words? The leafless 
 trees become spires of flame in the sunset, with the blue 
 east for their back-ground, and the stars of the dead calices 
 of flowers, and every withered stem and stubble rimed with 
 frost, contribute something to the mute music. 
 
 The inhabitants of cities sujopose that the country land- 
 scape is pleasant only half the year. I jolease myself with 
 the graces of the winter scenery, and believe that we are 
 as much touched by it as by the genial influences of summer. 
 To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its 
 own beauty, and in the same field, it beholds, every 
 hour, a picture which was never seen before, and 
 which shall never be seen again. The heavens change 
 every moment, and reflect their glory or gloom on 
 the plains beneath. The state of the crop in the 
 surrounding farms alters the expression of the earth 
 from week to week. The succession of native plants in 
 the pastures and roadside, which makes the silent clock by 
 which time tells the summer hours, will make even the 
 divisions of the day sensible to a keen observer. The 
 tribes of birds and insects, like the plants punctual to their 
 time, follow each other, and the year has room for all. 
 By water courses, the variety is greater. In July, the 
 blue pontederia, or pickerel-weed blooms in large beds in 
 the shallow parts of our pleasant river, and swarms with 
 yellow butterflies in continual motion. Art cannot rival 
 this pomp of purple and gold. Indeed the river is a per- 
 petual gala, and boasts each month a new ornament. 
 
 But this beauty of Nature which is seen and felt as 
 beauty, is the least part. The shows of day, the dewy 
 morning, the rainbow, mountains, orchards in blossom, stars, 
 moonlight, shadows in still water, and the like, if too eagerly 
 hunted, become shows merely, and mock us with their 
 unreality. Go out of the house to see the moon, and 't is 
 mere tinsel; it will not please as when its light shines upon 
 your necessary journey. The beauty that shimmers in the 
 yellow afternoons of October, who ever could clutch it? 
 
10 NATURE 
 
 Go forth to find it, and it is gone: 't is only a mirage as 
 you look from the windows of dihgence. 
 
 2. The presence of a higher, namely, of the spiritual ele- 
 ment is essential to its perfection. The high and divine 
 beauty which can be loved without effeminacy, is that 
 which is found in combination with the human will. Beauty 
 is the mark God sets upon virtue. Every natural action 
 is graceful. Every heroic act is also decent, and causes 
 the place and the bystanders to shine. We are taught by 
 great actions that the universe is the property of every 
 individual in it. Every rational creature has all nature 
 for his dowry and estate. It is his, if he will. He may 
 divest himself of it, he may creep into a corner, and abdi- 
 cate his kingdom, as most men do, but he is entitled to the 
 world by his constitution. In proportion to the energy of 
 his thought and will, he takes up the world into himself. 
 "All those things for which men plough, build, or sail, 
 obey virtue"; said Sallust. "The winds and waves," said 
 Gibbon, "are always on the side of the ablest navigators." 
 So are the sun and moon and all the stars of heaven. 
 When a noble act is done — perchance in a scene of great 
 natural beauty; when Leonidas and his three hundred 
 martyrs consume one day in dying, and the sun and moon 
 come each and look at them once in the steep defile 
 of Thermopylae; when Arnold Winkelried, in the high 
 Alps, under the shadow of the avalanche, gathers in his 
 side a sheaf of Austrian spears to break the line for his 
 comrades; are not these heroes entitled to add the beauty 
 of the scene to the beauty of the deed? When the bark ol 
 Columbus nears the shore of America; before it, the beach 
 lined with savages, fleeing out of all their huts of cane; 
 the sea behind; and the purple mountains of the Indian 
 Archipelago around, can we separate the man from the liv- 
 ing picture? Does not the New World clothe his form with 
 her palm-groves and savannahs as fit drapery? Ever does 
 natural beauty steal in like air, and envelop great actions. 
 When Sir Harry Vane was dragged up the Tower-hill, sit- 
 ting on a sled, to suffer death, as the champion of the 
 Enghsh laws, one of the multitude cried out to him, "You 
 
BEAUTY 11 
 
 never sate on so glorious a seat." Charles II., to intimidate 
 the citizens of London, caused the patriot Lord Russel to 
 be drawn in an open coach, through the principal streets 
 of the city, on his way to the scaffold. ''But," his biog- 
 rapher says, ''the multitude imagined they saw liberty and 
 virtue sitting by his side." In private places, among sordid 
 objects, an act of truth or heroism seems at once to draw 
 to itself the sky as its temple, the sun as its candle. Nature 
 stretcheth out her arms to embrace man, only let his 
 thoughts be of equal greatness. Wilhngly does she follow 
 I his steps with the rose and the violet, and bend her lines 
 I of grandeur and grace to the decoration of her darhng 
 ! child. Only let his thoughts be of equal scope, and the 
 frame will suit the picture. A virtuo us man is in unison^ 
 with her w orks, and mak"es th6 "central figure ofj he^-^ 
 visible sp liere. Homer, Pindar, Socrates, Phocion, associate 
 'themselves ntly m our memory with the geography and 
 chmate of Greece. The visible heavens and earth sympa- 
 thize with Jesus. And in common life, whosoever has seen 
 a person of powerful character and happy genius, will 
 have remarked how easily he took all things along with 
 him, — the persons, the opinions, and the day, and nature 
 became ancillary to a man. 
 
 3. There is still another aspect under which the beauty 
 of the world may be viewed, namely, as it becomes an 
 object of the intellect. Beside the relation of things to 
 virtue, they have a relation to thought. The intellect 
 searches out the absolute order of things as they stand in 
 the mind of God, and without the colors of affection. The 
 intellectual and the active powers seem to succeed each 
 other, and the exclusive activity of the one, generates the 
 exclusive activity of the other. There is something un- 
 friendly in each to the other, but they are like the alter- 
 nate periods of feeding and working in animals; each pre- 
 pares and will be followed by the other. Therefore does 
 beauty, which, in relation to actions, as we have seen, comes 
 unsought, and comes because it is unsought, remain for 
 the apprehension and pursuit of the intellect; and then 
 again, in its turn, of the active power. Nothing divine dies. 
 
i^ NATURE 
 
 All good is feternally reproductive. The beauty of nature 
 re-forftis itself in the mind, and not for barren contempla- 
 tion, but for new creation. 
 
 All men are in some degree impressed by the face of the 
 world; some men even to dehght. This love of beauty is 
 Taste. Others have the same love in such excess, that, 
 not content with admiring, they seek to embody it in 
 new forms. The creation of beauty is Art. 
 
 The production of a work of art throws a hght upon the 
 mystery of humanity. ^ .^ynrk ol^arL-is an abstract or 
 epitome of the world. It is the result or exp ression^ of 
 n ature, in miniature^ For, although the works of nature are 
 'mnumerable and alf different, the result or the expression 
 of them all is similar and single. Nature is a sea of forms 
 radically alike and even unique. A leaf, a sun-beam, a 
 landscape, the ocean, make an analogous impression on the 
 mind. What is common to them all — that perfectness 
 and harmony, is beauty. The standard of beauty is the 
 entire circuit of natural forms — the totality of nature; 
 which the Italians expressed by defining beauty "il piu nell' 
 uno." Nothing is quite beautiful alone: nothing but is 
 beautiful in the whole. A single object is only so far beau- 
 tifu.l as it suggests this universal grace. The poet, the 
 painter, the sculptor, the musician, the architect, seek each 
 to concentrate this radiance of the world on one point, and 
 each in his several work to satisfy the love of beauty which 
 stimulates him to i^roduce. Thus is Art, a nature passed 
 through the alembic of man. Thus in art, does nature work 
 through the will of a man filled with the beauty of her 
 first works. 
 
 The world thus exists to the soul to satisfy the desire 
 of beauty. This element I call an ultimate end. No 
 reason can be asked or given why the soul seeks beauty. 
 Beauty, in its largest and profoundest sense, is one expres- 
 sion for the universe. God is the all-fair. Truth, and 
 goodness, and beauty, are but different faces of the same 
 All. But beauty in nature is not ultimate. It is the herald 
 of inward and eternal beauty, and is not alone a solid and 
 satisfactory good. It must stand as a part, and not as yet 
 the last or highest expression of the final cause of Nature. 
 
LANGUAGE 13 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 LANGUAGE 
 
 Language is a third use which Nature subserves to 
 man. Nature is the ^'ehicle of thought, and in a simple, 
 double, and threefold degree. 
 
 1. Words are signs of natural facts. 
 
 2. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular 
 spiritual facts. 
 
 3. Nature is the symbol of spirit. 
 
 1. Words are signs of natural facts. The use of natural 
 history is to give us aid in sui:>ernatural history: the use 
 of the outer creation, to give us language for the beings 
 and changes of the inward creation. Every word which 
 is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced 
 to its root, is found to be borrov/ed from some material 
 appearance. Right means straight; wrong means twisted. 
 Spirit primarily means wind; transgression, the crossing 
 of a line; supercilious, the raising of the eyebrow. We say 
 the heart to express emotion, the head to denote thought; 
 and thought and emotion are words borrowed from sensible 
 things, and now appropriated to spiritual nature. Most of 
 the process by which this transformation is made, is hidden 
 from us in the remote time when language was framed; but 
 the same tendency may be daily observed in children. 
 Children and savages use only nouns or names of things, 
 which they convert into verbs, and apply to analogous 
 mental acts. 
 
 2. But this origin of all words that convey a spiritual 
 import — so conspicuous a fact in the history of language 
 — is our least debt to nature. It is not words only that 
 are emblematic; it is things which are emblematic. Every 
 natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every 
 appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, 
 and that state of the mind can only be described by pre- 
 senting that natural appearance as its picture. An en- 
 raged man is a lion, a cunning man is a fox, a firm man is 
 
14 NATURE 
 
 a rock, a learned man is a torch. A lamb is innocence; a 
 snake is subtle spite; flowers express to us the delicate 
 affections. Light and darkness are our famiUar expression 
 for knowledge and ignorance; and heat for love. Visible 
 distance behind and before us, is respectively our image of 
 memory and ho2:)e. 
 
 Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour, and is 
 not reminded of the flux of all things? Throw a stone 
 into the stream, and the circles that propagate themselves 
 are the beautiful type of all influence. Man is conscious 
 of a universal soul within or behind his individual life, 
 wherein, as in a firmament, the natures of Justice, Truth, 
 Love, Freedom, arise and shine. This universal soul, he 
 calls Reason: it" is not mine, or thine, or his, but we are 
 its; we are its property and men. And the blue sky in which 
 the private earth is buried, the sky with its eternal calm, 
 and full of everlasting orbs, is the type of Reason. That 
 which, intellectually considered, we call Reason, considered 
 in relation to nature, we cafl Spirit. Spirit is the Creator. 
 Spirit hath hfe in itself. And man in all ages and countries, 
 embodies it in his language, as the Father. 
 
 It is easily seen that there is nothing lucky or capricious 
 in these analogies, but that they are constant, and joervade 
 nature. These are not the dreams of a few poets, here and 
 there, but man is an analogist, and studies relations in all- 
 objects. He is placed in the center of beings, and a ray 
 of relations passes from every other being to him. And 
 neither can man be understood without these objects, 
 nor these objects without man. All the facts in ^ natural 
 history taken by themselves, have no value, but are barren,^ 
 like a single sex. But marry it to human history, and^ 
 it is full of Hfe. Whole Floras, aU Linnseus's and Buffon's 
 volumes, are dry catalogues of facts; but the most trivial 
 of these facts, the habit of a plant, the organs, or work, 
 or noise of an insect, applied to the illustration of a fact 
 in intellectual philosophy, or in any way associated to 
 human nature, affects us in the most lively and agreeable 
 manner. The seed of a plant — to what affecting analogies 
 in the nature of man, is that little fruit made use of, in 
 
LANGUAGE 15 
 
 all discourse, up to the voice of Paul, who calls the human 
 corpse a seed — "It is sown a natural body; it is raised a 
 spiritual body." The motion of the earth round its axis, 
 and round the sun, makes the day, and the year. These 
 are certain amounts of brute light and heat. But is there 
 no intent of an analogy between man s life and the seasons? 
 And do the seasons gain no grandeur or pathos from that 
 analogy? The instincts of the ant are very unimportant, 
 considered as the ant's: but the moment a ray of relation 
 is seen to extend from it to man, and the little drudge is 
 seen to be a monitor, a little body with a mighty heart, 
 then all its habits, even that said to be recently observed, 
 that it never sleeps, become sublime. 
 
 Because of this radical corres2:»ondence between visible 
 things and human thoughts, savages, who have only what is 
 necessary, converse in figures. As we go back in history, 
 language becomes more picturesque, until its infancy, when 
 it is all poetry; or all spiritual facts are represented by 
 natural symbols. The same symbols are found to make 
 the original elements of all languages. It has moreover 
 been observed, that the idioms of all languages approach 
 each other in passages of the greatest eloquence and power. 
 And as this is the first language, so is it the last. This 
 immediate dependence of language upon nature, this con- 
 version of an outward phenomenon into a type of somewhat 
 in human life, never loses its power to affect us. It is this 
 which gives that piquancy to the conversation of a strong- 
 natured farmer or back-woodsman, which all men relish. 
 
 A man's power to connect his thought with its proper 
 symbol, and so to utter it, depends on the simphcity of his 
 character, that is, upon his love of truth, and his desire to 
 communicate it without loss. The corruption of man is 
 followed by the corruption of language. When simplicity 
 of character and the sovereignty of ideas is broken up 
 by the prevalence of secondary desires, the desire of riches, 
 of pleasure, of power, and of praise — and duplicity and 
 falsehood take place of simplicity and truth, the power 
 over nature as an interpreter of the will, is in a degree 
 lost; new imagery ceases to be created, and old words are 
 
16 NATURE 
 
 perverted to stand for things which are not; a paper cur- 
 rency is employed, when there is no buUion in the vaults. 
 In due time, the fraud is manifest, and words lose all power 
 to stimulate the understanding or the affections. Hundreds 
 of writers may be found in every long-civilized nation, who 
 for a short time believe, and make others believe, that 
 they see and utter truths, who do not of themselves clothe 
 one thought in its natural garment, but who feed uncon- 
 sciously on the language created by the primary writers of 
 the country, those, namely, who hold primarily on nature. 
 
 But wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten words 
 again to visible things; so that picturesque language is at 
 once a commanding certificate that he who employs it, is 
 a man in alliance with truth and God. The moment our 
 discourse rises above the ground line of familiar facts, J 
 and is inflamed with passion or exalted by thought, it " 
 clothes itself in images. A man conversing in earnest, if 
 he watch his intellectual processes, will find that a material 
 image, more or less luminous, arises in his mind, cotempora- 
 neous with every thought, which furnishes the vestment 
 of the thought. Hence, good writing and brilliant dis- 
 course are perpetual allegories. This imagery is sponta- 
 neous. It is the blending of experience with the present 
 action of the mind. It is proper creation. It is the work- 
 ing of the Original Cause through the instruments he has 
 already made. 
 
 These facts may suggest the advantage which the country- 
 life possesses for a powerful mind, over the artificial and 
 curtailed life of cities. We know more from nature than 
 we can at will communicate. Its light flows into the mind 
 evermore, and we forget its presence. The poet, the orator, 
 bred in the woods, whose senses have been nourished by 
 their fair and appeasing changes, year after year, without 
 design and without heed — shall not lose their lesson 
 altogether, in the roar of cities or the broil of politics. 
 Long hereafter, amidst agitation and terror in natural 
 councils — in the hour of revolution — these solemn images 
 shall reappear in their morning lustre, as fit symbols and 
 words of the thoughts which the passing events shall 
 
LANGUAGE 17 
 
 awaken. At the call of a noble sentiment, again the woods 
 wave, the pines murmur, the river rolls and shines, and the 
 cattle low upon the mountains, as he saw and heard them in 
 his infancy. And with these forms, the spells of persua- 
 sion, the keys of power are put into his hands. 
 
 3. We are thus assisted by natural objects in the expres- 
 sion of particular meanings. But how great a language to 
 convey such pepper-corn informations! Did it need such 
 noble races of creatures, this profusion of forms, this host 
 of orbs in heaven, to furnish man with the dictionary and 
 grammar of his municipal speech? Whilst we use this 
 grand cipher to expedite the affairs of our pot and kettle, 
 we feel that we have not yet put it to its use, neither are 
 able. We are like travelers using the cinders of a volcano 
 to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that it always stands 
 ready to clothe what we would say, we cannot avoid the 
 question, whether the characters are not significant of them- 
 selves. Have mountains, and waves, and skies, no signifi- 
 cance but what we consciously give them, when we employ 
 them as emblems of our thoughts? The world is emblem- 
 atic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole 
 of nature is a metaphor, of the human mind. The laws 
 of moral nature answer to those of matter as face to face 
 in a glass. "The visible world and the relation of its 
 parts, is the dial plate of the invisible." The axioms of 
 physics translate the laws of ethics. Thus, "the whole is 
 greater than its part"; "reaction is equal to action"; "the 
 smallest weight may be made to lift the greatest, the differ- 
 ence of weight being compensated by time"; and many 
 the like propositions, which have an ethical as well as 
 phj^sical sense. These propositions have a much more ex- 
 tensive and universal sense when applied to human life, 
 than when confined to technical use. 
 
 In like manner, the memorable words of history, and 
 the proverbs of nations, consist usually of a natural fact, 
 selected as a picture or parable of a moral truth. Thus; 
 A rolling stone gathers no moss ; A bird in the hand is worth 
 two in the bush; A cripple in the right way, will beat a 
 racer in the wrong; Make hay while the sun shines; 'T is 
 
18 NATURE 
 
 hard to carry a full cup even; Vinegar is the son of wine; 
 The last ounce broke the camel's back; Long-lived trees 
 make roots first; — and the like. In their primary sense 
 these are trivial facts, but we repeat them for the value 
 of their analogical import. What is true of proverbs, is 
 true of all fables, parables, and allegories. 
 
 This relation iDetween the mind and matter is not fan- 
 cied by some poet, but stands in the will of God, and so 
 is free to be known by all men. It appears to men, or it 
 does not appear. When in fortunate hours we ponder this 
 miracle, the wise man doubts, if, at all other times, he is 
 not blind and deaf; 
 
 "Can these things be, 
 
 And overcome us like a summer's cloud 
 Without our special wonder?" 
 
 for the universe becomes transparent, and the light of 
 higher laws than its own, shines through it. It is the 
 standing problem which has exercised the wonder and the 
 study of every fine genius since the world began; from 
 the era of the Egyptians and the Brahmins, to that of 
 Pythagoras, of Plato, of Bacon, of Leibnitz, of Sweden- 
 borg. There sits the Sphinx at the roadside, and from 
 age to age, as each prophet comes by, he tries his fortune 
 at reading her riddle. There seems to be a necessity in 
 spirit to manifest itself in material forms; and day and night, 
 river and storm, beast and bird, acid and alkali, pre-exist 
 in necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and are what they 
 are by virtue of preceding affections, in the world of 
 spirit. A Fact is the end or last issue of spirit. The 
 visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of 
 the invisible world. "Material objects," said a French 
 philosopher, "are necessarily kinds of sconce of the sub- 
 stantial thoughts of the Creator, which must always pre- 
 serve an exact relation to their first origin; in other words, 
 visible nature must have a spiritual and moral side." 
 
 This doctrine is abstruse, and though the images of 
 garments, "scoriae," "mirror," etc., may stimulate the fancy, 
 we must summon the aid of subtler and more vital ex- 
 
DISCIPLINE 10 
 
 positors to make it plain. ''Every scripture is to be inter- 
 preted by the same spirit whicli gave it forth" — is the 
 fundamental law of criticism. A life in harmony with 
 nature, the love of truth and of virtue, will purge the eyes 
 to understand her text. By degrees we may come to know 
 the primitive sense of the permanent objects of nature, so 
 that the world shall be to us an open book, and every form 
 significant of its hidden life and final cause. 
 
 A new interest surprises us, whilst, under the view now 
 suggested, we contemplate the fearful extent and multitude 
 of objects; since "every object rightly seen, unlocks a new 
 faculty of the soul." That which was unconscious truth, 
 becomes, when interpreted and defined in an object, a part 
 of the domain of knowledge — a new weapon in the maga- 
 zine of power. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 DISCIPLINE 
 
 In view of the significance of nature, we arrive at once 
 at a new fact, that nature is a discipline. This use of the 
 w^orld includes the preceding uses, as parts of itself. 
 
 Space, time, society, labor, climate, food, locomotion, the 
 animals, the mechanical forces, give us sincerest lessons, day 
 by day, whose meaning is unlimited. They educate both 
 the Understanding and the Reason. Every property of 
 matter is a school for the understancUng — its solidity or 
 resistance, its inertia, its extension, its figure, its divisibility. 
 The understanding adds, divides, combines, measures, and 
 finds nutriment and room for its activity in this worthy 
 scene. Meantime, Reason transfers all these lessons into 
 its own world of thought, by perceiving the analogy that 
 marries Matter and Mind. 
 
 1. Nature is a discipline of the understanding in intellec- 
 tual truths. Our deahng with sensible objects is a constant 
 exercise in the necessary lessons of difference, of likeness, 
 of order, of being and seeming, of progressive arrangement; 
 
20 NATURE 
 
 of ascent from particular to general; of combination to 
 one end of manifold forces. Proportioned to the impor- 
 tance of the organ to be formed, is the extreme care with 
 which its tuition is provided — a care pretermitted in no 
 single case. What tedious training, day after day, year 
 after year, never ending, to form the common sense; what 
 continual reproduction of annoyances, inconveniences, di- 
 lemmas; what rejoicing over us of little men; what dis- 
 puting of prices, what reckonings of interest — and all to 
 form the Hand of the mind — to instruct us that "good 
 thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be 
 executed ! " 
 
 The same good office is performed by Property and its 
 filial systems of debt and credit. Debt, grinding debt, 
 whose iron face the widow, the orphan, and the sons of 
 genius fear and hate — debt, which consumes so much time, 
 which so cripples and disheartens a great spirit with cares 
 that seems so base, is a preceptor whose lessons cannot be 
 foregone, and is needed most by those who suffer from it 
 most. Moreover, projoerty, which has been well compared 
 to snow — "if it fall level to-day, it will be blown into 
 drifts to-morrow" — is the surface action of internal ma- 
 chinery, like the index on the face of a clock. Whilst now 
 it is the gymnastics of the understanding, it is hiving in 
 the foresight of the spirit, experience in profounder lav/s. 
 
 The whole character and fortune of the individual are 
 affected by the least inequalities in the culture of the 
 understanding; for example, in the perception of differences. 
 Therefore is Space, and therefore Time, that man may know 
 that things are not huddled and lumped, but sundered and 
 incHvidual. A bell and a plough have each their use, and 
 neither can do the office of the other. Water is good to 
 drink, coal to burn, wool to wear; but wool cannot be 
 drunk, nor water spun, nor coal eaten. The wise man 
 shows his wisdom in separation, in gradation, and his scale 
 of creatures and of merits is as wide as nature. The foolish 
 have no range in their scale, but suppose every man is 
 as every other man. What is not good they call the worst, 
 and what is not hateful they call the best. 
 
DISCIPLINE 21 
 
 In like manner, what good heed, nature forms in us! 
 She pardons no mistakes. Her yea is yea, and her nay, 
 nay. 
 
 The first steps in Agriculture, Astronomy, Zoology (those 
 first steps which the farmer, the hunter, and the sailor 
 take), teach that nature's dice are always loaded; that 
 in her heaps and rubbish are concealed sure and useful 
 results. 
 
 How calmly and genially the mind apprehends one after 
 another the laws of physics! What noble emotions dilate 
 the mortal as he enters into the counsels of the creation, 
 and feels by knowledge the privilege to Be! His insight 
 refines him. The beauty of nature shines in his own breast. 
 Man is greater that he can see this, and the universe less, 
 because Time and Space relations vanish as laws are known. 
 
 Here again we are impressed and even daunted by the 
 immense Universe to be explored. '^What we know, is a 
 point to what we do not know." Open any recent journal 
 of science, and weigh the problems suggested concerning 
 Light, Heat, Electricity, Magnetism, Physiology, Geology, 
 and judge wdiether the interest of natural science is likely 
 to be soon exhausted. 
 
 Passing by many particulars of the discipline of nature, 
 we must not omit to specify two. 
 
 The exercise of the Will or the lesson of power is taught 
 in every event. From the child's successive possession of 
 his several senses up to the hour when he saith, "Thy will 
 be done!" he is learning the secret, that he can reduce 
 under his will, not only particular events, but great classes, 
 nay the whole series of events, and so conform all facts 
 to his character. Nature is thoroughly mediate. It is 
 made to serve. It receives the dominion of man as meekly 
 as the ass on which the Saviour rode. It offers all its 
 kingdoms to man as the raw material which he may mould 
 into what is useful. Man is never weary of working it up. 
 He forges the subtile and delicate air into wise and melodi- 
 ous words, and gives them wing as angels of persuasion 
 and command. One after another, his victorious thought 
 comes up with and reduces all things, until the world be- 
 
22 NATURE | 
 
 come Sj at last, only a realized will — the double of the Tr>^p 
 — ST^ensible objects conform to the premonitions of Rea- jj 
 son and reflect the conscience. All things are moral; and 
 in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to 
 spiritual nature. Therefore is nature glorious with form, 
 color, and motion, that every globe in the remotest heaven; 
 every chemical change from the rudest crystal up to the 
 laws of hfe; every change of vegetation from the first 
 principle of growth in the eye of a leaf, to the tropical 
 forest and antediluvian coal-mine; every animal function 
 from the sponge up to Hercules, shall hint or thunder to 
 man the laws of right and wrong, and echo the Ten Com- 
 mandments. Therefore is nature ever the ally of Religion: 
 lends all her pomp and riches to the religious sentiment. 
 Prophet and priest, David, Isaiah, Jesus, have drawn deeply 
 from this source. This ethical character so penetrates the 
 bone and marrow of nature, as to seem the end for which 
 it was made. Whatever private purpose is answered by 
 any member or part, this is its public and universal func- 
 tion, and is never omitted. Nothing in nature is exhausted 
 in its first use. When a thing has served an end to the 
 uttermost, it is wholly new for an ulterior service. In God, 
 every end is converted into a new means. Thus the use 
 of commodity, regarded by itself, is mean and squalid. 
 But it is to the mind an education in the doctrine of Use, 
 namely, that a thing is good only so far as it serves; 
 that a conspiring of parts and efforts to the production of 
 an end, is essential to any being. The first and gross 
 manifestation of this truth, is our inevitable and hated train- 
 ing in values and wants, in corn and meat. 
 
 It has already been illustrated, that every natural process 
 is a version of a moral sentence. The moral law lies at 
 the center of nature and radiates to the circumference. 
 It is the pith and marrow of every substance, every rela- 
 tion, and every process. All things with which we deal, 
 preach to us. What is a farm but a mute gospel? The 
 chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, Wight, rain, insects, 
 sun — it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring 
 to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in 
 
DISCIPLINE 23 
 
 the fields. But the sailor, the shepherd, the miner, the 
 merchant, in their several resorts, have each an experience 
 precisely parallel, and leading to the same conclusion: be- 
 cause all organizations are radically alike. Nor can it be 
 doubted that this moral sentiment which thus scents the 
 air, grows in the grain, and impregnates the waters of 
 the world, is caught by man and sinks into his soul. The 
 moral influence of nature upon every individual is that 
 amount of truth which it illustrates to him. Who can 
 estimate this? Who can guess how much firmness the 
 sea-beaten rock has taught the fisherman? how much tran- 
 quillity has been reflected to man from the azure sky, over 
 whose unspotted deeps the winds forevermore drive flocks 
 of stormy clouds, and leave no wrinkle or stain? how much 
 industry and pro^ddence and affection we have caught 
 from the pantomime of brutes? What a searching preacher 
 of self-command is the varying phenomenon of Health! 
 
 Herein is especiafly apprehended the unity of Nature — 
 the unity in variety — which meets us everywhere. All 
 ]e endless variet y of tilings make an i dentical impressioiL , 
 Xenophanes complamed in his old age, that, look where 
 he would, all thing hastened back to Unity. He was weary 
 of seeing the same entity in the tedious variety of forms. 
 The fable of Proteus has a cordial truth. A leaf, a drop, 
 a crystal; a moment of time is related to the whole, and 
 partakes of the perfection of the whole. Each particle is 
 a microcosm, and faithfully renders the likeness of the 
 world. 
 
 Not only resemblances exist in things whose analogy is 
 obvious, as when we detect the type of the human hand 
 in the flipper of the fossil saurus, but also in objects wherein 
 there is great superficial unlikeness. Thus architecture is 
 called "frozen music," by De Stael and Goethe. Vitruvius 
 thought an architect should be a musician. "A Gothic 
 church," said Coleridge, "is a petrified rehgion." Michael 
 Angelo maintained, that, to an architect, a knowledge of 
 anatomy is essential. In Haydn's oratorios, the notes pre- 
 sent to the imagination not only motions, as of the snake, 
 the stag, and the elephant, but colors also; as the green 
 
24 NATURE 
 
 grass. The law of harmonic sounds reappears in the har- 
 monic colors. The granite is differenced in its laws only 
 by the more or less of heat, from the river that wears it 
 away. The river, as it flows, resembles the air that flows 
 over it; the air resembles the hght which traverses it with 
 more subtle currents; the light resembles the heat which 
 rides with it through Space. Each creature is only a modifi- 
 cation of the other; the likeness in them is more than the 
 difference, and their radical law is one and the same. A 
 rule of one art, or a law of one organization, holds true 
 throughout nature. So intimate is this Unity, that, it is 
 easily seen, it lies under the undermost garment of nature, 
 and betrays its source in Universal Spirit. For, it pervades 
 Thought also. Every universal truth which we express in 
 words, implies or supposes every other truth. Omne verum 
 vero consonat. It is like a great circle on a sphere, com- 
 prising all possible circles; which however, may be drawn, 
 and comprise it, in like manner. Every such truth is the 
 absolute Ens seen from one side. But it has innumerable 
 sides. 
 
 The central Unity is still more conspicuous in actions. 
 Words are finite organs of the infinite mind. They can- 
 not cc"-- ^'- ''- ■ . ^ • • 
 
 chop, 
 
 public a oeems to lUi liic 
 
 and to . xiie wise man, 'v> ''•■ 
 
 one thin^ one thinp' bf» does rip;' 
 
 sees the h oness of ail whicii is dune ..j,L..^. 
 
 Words and actions are not the attributes of brute nature. 
 They introduce us to the human form, of which all other 
 organizations appear to be degradations. When this ap- 
 pears among so many that surround it, the spirit prefers 
 it to all others. It says, 'From such as this, have I drawn 
 joy and knowledge; in such as this, have I found and 
 beheld myself; I will speak to it; it can speak again; it 
 can yield me thought already formed and ^hve.' In fact, 
 the eye — the mind — is always accompanied by these 
 forms, male and female; and these are incomparably the 
 richest informations of the power and order that he at 
 
 I 
 
IDEALISM 25 
 
 the heart of things. Unfortunately, every one of them bears 
 the marks as of some injury; is marred and superficially 
 defective. Nevertheless, far different from the deaf and 
 dumb nature around them, these all rest like fountain-pipes 
 on the unfathomed sea of thought and virtue whereto they 
 alone, of all organizations, are the entrances. 
 
 It were a jolcasant inquiry to follow into detail their 
 ministry to our education, but where would it stop? We 
 are associated in adolescent and adult life with some friends, 
 who, like skies and waters, are coextensive with our idea; 
 who, answering each to a certain affection of the soul, 
 satisfy our desire on that side; whom we lack i^ower to 
 put at such focal distance from us, that we can mend or 
 even analyze them. We cannot choose but love them. 
 When much intercourse with a friend has supplied us with 
 a standard of excellence, and has increased our respect for 
 the resources of God who thus sends a real person to outgo 
 our ideal; when he has, moreover, become an object of 
 thought, and, whilst his character retains all its uncon- 
 scious effect, is converted in the mind into solid and sweet 
 wisdom — it is a sign to us that his office is closing, and 
 he is commonly withdrawn from our sight in a short time. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 IDEALISM 
 
 Thus is the unspeakable but intelhgible and practicable 
 meaning of the world conveyed to man, the immortal pupil, 
 in every object of sense. To this one end of Discipline, all 
 parts of nature conspire. 
 
 A noble doubt perpetually suggests itself, whether this 
 end be not the Final Cause of the Universe; and whether 
 nature outwardly exists. It is a sufficient account of that 
 Appearance we call the World, that God will teach a human 
 mind, and so makes it the receiver of a certain number 
 of congruent sensations, which we call sun and moon, man 
 and woman, house and trade. In my utter impotence to 
 
26 NATURE 
 
 test the authenticity of the report of my senses, to know 
 whether the impressions they make on me correspond with 
 outlying objects, what difference does it make, whether 
 Orion is up there in heaven, or some god paints the image 
 in the firmament of the soul? The relations of parts and 
 the end of the whole remaining the same, what is the differ- 
 ence, whether land and sea interact, and worlds revolve 
 and intermingle without number or end, — deep yawning 
 under deep, and galaxy balancing galaxy, throughout abso- 
 lute space, — or, whether, without relations of time and 
 space, the same appearances are inscribed in the constant 
 faith of man? Whether nature enjoy a substantial exist- 
 ence without, or is only in the apocalypse of the mind, it 
 is alike useful and alike venerable to me. Be it what it 
 may, it is ideal to me, so long as I cannot try the accuracy 
 of my senses. 
 
 The frivolous make themselves merry with the Ideal 
 theory, as if its consequences were burlesque; as if it 
 affected the stability of nature. It surely does not. God 
 never jests with us, and will not compromise the end of 
 nature, by permitting any inconsequence in its procession. 
 Any distrust of the permanence of laws, would paralyze 
 the faculties of man. Their permanence is sacredly re- 
 spected, and his faith therein is perfect. The wheels and 
 springs of man are all set to the hypothesis of the per- 
 manence of nature. We are not built like a ship to be 
 tossed, but like a house to stand. It is a natural conse- 
 quence of the structure, that, so long as the active powers 
 predominate over the reflective, we resist with indignation 
 any hint that nature is more short-lived or mutable than 
 spirit. The broker, the wheelwright, the carpenter, the 
 tollman, are much displeased at the intimation. 
 
 But whilst we acquiese entirely in the permanence of 
 natural laws, the question of the absolute existence of 
 nature still remains open. It is the uniform effect of 
 culture on the human mind, not to shake our faith in the 
 stability of particular phenomena, as of heat, water, azote; 
 but to lead us to regard nature as a phenomenon, not a 
 substance; to attribute necessary existence to spirit; to 
 
IDEALISM 27 
 
 esteem nature as an accident and an effect. 
 
 To the senses and the unrenewed understanding, belongs 
 a sort of instinctive behef in the absolute existence of 
 nature. In their view, man and nature are indissolubly 
 joined. Things are ultimates, and they never look beyond 
 their sphere. The presence of Reason mars this faith. The 
 first effort of thought tends to relax this despotism of the 
 senses, which binds us to nature as if we were a part of it, 
 and shows us nature aloof, and, as it were, afloat. Until 
 this higher agency intervened, the animal eye sees, with 
 wonderful accuracy, sharp outhnes and colored surfaces. 
 When the eye of Reason opens, to outline and surface are 
 at once added, grace and expression. These proceed from 
 imagination and affection, and abate somewhat of the angu- 
 lar distinctness of objects. If the Reason be stimulated to 
 more earnest vision, outlines and surface become trans- 
 parent, and are no longer seen; causes and spirits are seen 
 through them. The best moments of life are these de- 
 licious awakenings of the higher powers, and the reverential 
 withdrawing of nature before its God. 
 
 Let us proceed to indicate the effects of culture. 1. Our 
 first institution in the Ideal philosophy is a hint from 
 nature herself. 
 
 Nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us. 
 Certain mechanical changes, a small alteration in our local 
 position apprises us of a dualism. We are strangely 
 affected by seeing the shore from a moving sliip, from a 
 balloon, or through the tints of an unusual sky. The least 
 change in our point of view, gives the whole world a pic- 
 torial air. A man who seldom rides, needs only to get into 
 a coach and traverse his own town, to turn the street into a 
 puppet show. The men, the women, — talking, running, 
 bartering, fighting, — the earnest mechanic, the lounger, 
 the beggar, the boys, the dogs, are unreahzed at once, or, 
 at least, wholly detached from all relation to the observer, 
 and seen as apparent, not substantial beings. What new 
 thoughts are suggested by seeing a face of country quite 
 familiar, in the rapid movement of the railroad car! Nay, 
 the most wonted objects (make a very sUght change in 
 
28 NATURE 
 
 the point of vision) please us most. In a camera obscura, 
 the butcher's cart, and the figure of one of our own family 
 amuse us. So a portrait of a well-known face gratifies us. 
 Turn the eyes upside dow^n, by looking at the landscape 
 through your legs, and how agreeable is the picture, though 
 you have seen it any time these twenty years! 
 
 In these cases, by mechanical means, is suggested the 
 difference between the observer and the spectacle, — between 
 man and nature. Hence arises a pleasure mixed with awe; 
 I may say, a low degree of the sublime is felt from the fact, 
 probably, that man is hereby apprised, that, whilst the 
 world is a spectacle, something in himself is stable. 
 
 2. In a higher manner, the poet communicates the same 
 pleasure. By a few strokes, he delineates, as on air, the 
 mountain, the camp, the city, the hero, the maiden, not 
 different from what we know them, but only lifted from the 
 ground and afloat before the eye. He unfixes the land and 
 the sea, makes them revolve around the axis of his i:)rimary 
 thought, and disposes them anew. Possessed himself by a 
 heroic passion, he uses matter as symbols of it. The sen- 
 sual man conforms thoughts to things; the poet conforms 
 things to his thoughts. The one esteems nature as rooted 
 and fast; the other, as fluid, and impresses his being 
 thereon. To him, the refractory world is ductile and flex- 
 ible, he invests dust and stones with humanity, and makes 
 them the words of the Reason. The Imagination may be 
 defined to be, the use which the Reason makes of the ma- 
 terial world. Shakespeare possesses the power of subor- 
 chnating nature for the purposes of expression, beyond all 
 poets. His imperial muse tosses the creation like a baubU 
 from hand to hand, and uses it to embody any caprice oi 
 thought that is uppermost in his mind. The remotest 
 spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered' 
 things are brought together, by a subtle spiritual connec- 
 tion. We are made aware that magnitude of material 
 things is relative, and all objects shrink and expand to 
 serve the passion of the poet. Thus, in his sonnets, the 
 lays of birds, the scents and dyes of flowers, he finds to 
 be the shadow of his beloved; time, which keeps her from 
 
IDEALISM 29 
 
 him, is his chest; the suspicion she has awakened, is her 
 ornament ; 
 
 The ornament of beauty is Suspect, 
 
 A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air. 
 
 His passion is not the fruit of chance; it swells, as he 
 speaks, to a city, or a state. 
 
 No, it was builded far from accident; 
 
 It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls 
 
 Under the brow of thralling discontent; 
 
 It fears not policy, that heretic. 
 
 That works on leases of short numbered hours, 
 
 But all alone stands hugely politic. 
 
 In the strength of his constancy, the Pyramids seem to 
 him recent and transitory. The freshness of youth and 
 love dazzles him with its resemblance to morning. 
 
 Take those lips away 
 Which so sw^eetly were forsworn; 
 And those eyes, — the l^reak of day, 
 Lights that do mislead the morn. 
 
 The wild beauty of this hyi:)erbole, I may say, in passing, 
 it would not be easy to match in literature. 
 
 This transfiguration which all material objects undergo 
 through the passion of the poet, — this power which he 
 exerts to dwarf the great, to magnify the small, — might be 
 illustrated by a thousand examples from his Plays. I have 
 before me the Tempest, and will cite only these few lines. 
 
 Ariel. The strong based promontory 
 
 Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up 
 The pine and cedar. 
 
 Prospero calls for music to soothe the frantic Alonzo, and 
 his companions; 
 
 A solemn air, and the best comforter 
 To an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains 
 Now useless, boiled within thy skull. 
 
 Again; 
 
 The charm dissolves apace, 
 And, as the morning steals upon the night, 
 Melting the darkness, so their rising senses 
 
30 NATURE 
 
 Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle 
 Their clearer reason. 
 
 Their understanding 
 Begins to swell: and the approaching tide 
 Will shortly fill the reasonable shores 
 That now lie foul and muddy. 
 
 The perception of real affinities between events, (that is 
 to say, of ideal affinities, for those only are real,) enables 
 the poet thus to make free with the most imposing forms 
 and phenomena of the world, and to assert the predom- 
 inance of the soul. 
 
 3. Whilst thus the poet animates nature with his own 
 thoughts, he differs from the philosopher only herein, that 
 the one proposes Beauty as his main end; the other, Truth. 
 But the philosopher, not less than the poet, postjoones the 
 apparent order and relations of things to the empire of 
 thought. "The problem of philosophy," according to Plato, 
 "is, for all that exists conditionally, to find a ground un- 
 conditioned and absolute." It proceeds on the faith that 
 a law determines all phenomena, which being known, the 
 phenomena can be predicted. That law, when in the mind, 
 is an idea. Its beauty is infinite. The true philosopher 
 and the true poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth, 
 and a truth, which is beauty, is the aim of both. Is not the 
 charm of one of Plato's or Aristotle's definitions, strictly like 
 that of the Antigone of Sophocles ? It is, in both cases, that 
 a spiritual life has been imparted to nature; that the solid 
 seeming block of matter has been pervaded and dissolved 
 by a thought; that this feeble human being has penetrated 
 the vast masses of nature with an informing soul, and 
 recognized itself in their harmony, that is, seized their law. 
 In Physics, when this is attained, the memory disburthens 
 itself of its cumbrous catalogues of particulars and carries 
 centuries of observation in a single formula. 
 
 Thus even in physics, the material is degraded before the 
 spiritual. The astronomer, the geometer, rely, on their 
 irrefragable analysis, and disdain the results of observation. 
 The sublime remark of Euler on his law of arches, "This will 
 be found contrary to all experience, yet is true," had 
 
 I 
 
IDEALISM 31 
 
 already transferred nature into the mind, and left matter 
 like an outcast corpse. 
 
 4. Intellectual science has been observed to beget in- 
 variably a doubt of the existence of matter. Turgot said, 
 "He that has never doubted the existence of matter, may 
 be assured he has no aptitude for metaphysical inquiries." 
 It fastens the attention upon immortal necessary uncreated 
 natures, that is, upon Ideas; and in their presence, we feel 
 that the outward circumstance is a dream and a shade. 
 Whilst we wait in this Olympus of gods, we think of nature 
 as an appendix to the soul. We ascend into their region, 
 and know that these are the thoughts of the Supreme Be- 
 ing. "These are they who were set up from everlasting, 
 from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When he pre- 
 pard the heavens, they were there; when he established the 
 clouds above, when he strengthened the fountains of the 
 deep, then they were by him, as one brought up with him. 
 Of them took he counsel." 
 
 Their influence is proportionate. As objects of science, 
 they are accessible to few men. Yet all men are capable 
 of being raised by piety or by passion, into their region. 
 And no man touches these divine natures, without becom- 
 ing, in some degree, himself divine. Like a new soul, they 
 renew the body. We become physically nimble and hght- 
 some; we tread on air; hfe is no longer irksome, and we 
 think it will never be so. No man fears age or misfortune 
 or death, in their serene company, for he is transported out 
 of the district of change. Whilst we behold unveiled the 
 nature of Justice and Truth, we learn the difference between 
 the absolute and the conditional or relative. We appre- 
 hend the absolute. As it were, for the first time, we exist. 
 We become immortal, for we learn that time and space are 
 relations of matter; that, with a perception of truth, or a 
 virtuous will, they have no affinity. 
 
 5. Finally, religion and ethics, which may be fitly called, 
 — the practice of ideas, or the introduction of ideas into 
 life, — have an analogous effect with all lower culture, in 
 degrading nature and suggesting its dependence on spirit. 
 Ethics and religion differ herein; that the one is the system 
 
32 NATURE 
 
 of human duties commencing from man; the other, from 
 God. Rehgion includes the personahty of God; Ethics does 
 not. They are one to our present design. They both put 
 nature under foot. The first and last lesson of religion 
 is, 'The things that are seen, are temporal; the things that 
 are unseen, are eternal." It puts an affront upon nature. 
 It does that for the unschooled, which philosophy does for 
 Berkeley and Viasa. The uniform language that may be 
 heard in the churches of the most ignorant sects, is, — 
 ''Contemn the unsusbstantial shows of the world; they are 
 vanities, dreams, shadows, unrealities; seek the realities of 
 rehgion." The devotee flouts nature. Some theosophists 
 have arrived at a certain hostihty and indignation towards 
 matter, as the Manichean and Plotinus. They chstrusted 
 in themselves any looking back to these flesh-pots of Egypt. 
 Plotinus was ashamed of his body. In short, they might 
 all say of matter, what Michael Angelo said of external 
 beauty, "it is the frail and weary weed, in which God 
 dresses the soul, which he has called into time." 
 
 It appears that motion, poetry, physical and intellectual 
 science, and rehgion, all tend to affect our convictions of 
 the reality of the external world. But I own there is 
 something ungrateful in expanding too curiously the par- 
 ticulars of the general i^roposition, that all culture tends 
 to imbue us with idealism. I have no hostility to nature, 
 but a child's love to it. I expand and live in the warm 
 day like corn and melons. Let us speak her fair. I do 
 not wish to fling stones at my beautiful mother, nor soil 
 my gentle nest. I only wish to indicate the true position 
 of nature in regard to man, wherein to establish man, all 
 right education tends; as the ground which to attain is 
 the object of human life, that is, of man's connection with 
 nature. Culture inverts the vulgar views of nature, and 
 brings the mind to call that apparent, which it uses to call 
 real, and that real, which it uses to call visionary. Chil- 
 dren, it is true, believe in the external world. The belief 
 that it appears only, is an afterthought, but with culture, 
 this faith will as surely arise on the mind as did the first. 
 
 The advantage of the ideal theory over the popular 
 
SPIRIT 33 
 
 faith, is this, that it presents the world in precisplv thpt ^ 
 view which is most desirable to th e nii^irl- it is, in fact, 
 'UlB view which Keason, both speculative and practical, 
 that is, philosophy and virtue, take. For, seen in the light 
 of thought, the world always i-s phenomenal; and virtue 
 subordinates it to the mind. Idealism sees the v/orld in 
 God. It beholds the whole circle of persons and things, of 
 actions and events, of country and religion, not as painfully 
 accumulated, atom after atom, act after act, in an aged 
 creeping Past, but as one vast picture, which God paints 
 on the instant eternity, for the contemplation of the soul. 
 Therefore the soul holds itself off from a too trivial and 
 microscopic study of the universal tablet. It respects the 
 end too much, to immerse itself in the means. It sees 
 something more important in Christianity, than the scandals 
 of ecclesiastical history, or the niceties of criticism; and, 
 very incurious concerning persons or miracles, and not at 
 all disturbed by chasms of historical evidence, it accepts 
 ;from God the phenomenon, as it finds it, as the pure and 
 lawful form of religion in the world. It is not hot and 
 passionate at the appearance of what it calls its own good 
 Dr bad fortune, at the union or opposition of other persons. 
 No man is its enemy. It accepts whatsoever befalls, as 
 part of its lesson. It is a watcher more than a doer, and 
 it is a doer, only that it may the better watch. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 SPIRIT 
 
 It is essential to a true theory of nature and of man, 
 :hat it should contain somewhat progressive. Uses that 
 ire exhausted or that may be, and facts that end in the 
 statement, cannot be all that is true of this brave lodging 
 vherein man is harbored, and wherein all his faculties find 
 ippropriate and endless exercise. And all the uses of nature 
 idmit of being summed in one, which yields the activity of 
 nan an infinite scope. Through all its kingdoms, to the 
 
34 NATURE 
 
 suburbs and outskirts of things, it is faithful to the caus 
 whence it had its origin. It always speaks of Spirit. I 
 suggests the absolute. It is a perpetual effect. It is 
 great shadow pointing always to the sun behind us. 
 
 The aspect of nature is devout. Like the figure of 
 Jesus, she stands with bended head, and hands folded upon 
 the breast. The happiest man is he who learns from nature 
 the lesson of worship. 
 
 Of that ineffable essence which we call Spirit, he tha 
 thinks most, will say least. We can foresee God in thi 
 coarse, and, as it were, distant phenomena of matter; bu^ 
 when we try to define and describe liimself, both language' 
 and thought desert us, and we are as helpless as fools and 
 savages. That essence refuses to be recorded in proposi- 
 tions, but when man has worshipped him intellectually, 
 the noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the appari- 
 tion of God. It is the organ through which the universal i 
 spirit speaks to the individual, and strives to lead back* 
 the individual to it. 
 
 When we consider Spirit, we see that the views already 
 presented do not include the whole circumference of man.i 
 We must add some related thoughts. 
 
 Three problems are put by nature to the mind; What 
 
 is matter? Whence is it? and Whereto? The first of 
 
 these questions only, the ideal theory answers. Idealism 
 
 saith* matter is a phenomenon, not a substance. Idean 
 
 ism acquaints us with the total disparity between the 
 
 evidence of our own being, and the evidence of the worlds 
 
 beinrr The one is perfect; the other, incapable of any 
 
 assurance; the mind is a part of the nature of thmgs; 
 
 the world is a divine dream, from which we may presently 
 
 awake to the glories and certainties of day. Idealism u 
 
 a hypothesis to account for nature by other prmciplei 
 
 than those of carpentry and chemistry. Yet, if it onl} 
 
 deny the existence of matter, it does not satisfy the de 
 
 mands of the spirit. It leaves God out of me. It leave 
 
 me in the splendid labyrinth of my perceptions, to wani 
 
 der without end. Then the heart resists it, because i 
 
 balks the affections in denying substantive being to mei 
 
 and women. Nature is so pervaded with human hf( 
 
 _,d 
 
SPIRIT 35 
 
 that there is something of humanity in all, and in every 
 particular. But this theory makes nature foreign to me, 
 and does not account for that consanguinity which we 
 acknowledge to it. 
 
 Let it stand, then, in the present state of our knowledge, 
 merely as a useful introductory hypothesis, serving to 
 apprise us of the eternal distinction between the soul and 
 the world. 
 
 But when following the invisible steps of thought, we 
 come to inquire. Whence is matter? and Whereto? many 
 truths arise to us out of the recesses of consciousness. We 
 learn that the highest is present to the soul of man, that 
 the dread universal essence, which is not wisdom, or love, 
 or power, but all in one, and each entirely, is that for 
 which all things exist, and that by which they are; that 
 spirit creates; that behind nature, throughout nature, 
 spirit is present; one and not compound, it does not act 
 upon us from without, that is, in space and time, but 
 spiritually, or through ourselves: therefore, that spirit, 
 that is, the Supreme Being, does not build up nature 
 around us, but puts it forth through us, as the life of the 
 tree puts forth new branches and leaves through the pores 
 of the old. As a plant unon the earth, so a man rests 
 upon the bbsom of God; h e_Ja-- aQurished by unfailing 
 fountains .^ ..ai Ld draws, at Insneed, inexhaustible power.^ 
 
 ".10 can set bounds to the possibilities of man? Once 
 inhale the upper air, being admitted to behold the abso- 
 lute natures of justice and truth, and we learn that man 
 has access to the entire mind of the Creator, is himself 
 the creator in the finite. This view, which admonishes 
 me where the sources of wisdom and power he, and points 
 to virtue as to 
 
 "The golden key 
 Which opes the palace of eternity," 
 
 carries upon its face the highest certificate of truth, be- 
 cause it animates me to create my own world througli 
 the purification of my soul 
 The world proceeds from the same spirit as the body 
 
36 NATURE 
 
 of man. Is is a remoter and inferior incarnation of God, 
 a projection of God in the unconscious. But it differs 
 from the body in one important respect. It is not, hke 
 that, now subjected to the human will. Its serene order 
 is inviolable by us. Jt is. therefore, to us, the pre sent 
 exioositor of the divine mind, it is a nxed pomt wne'reT 
 ^we may measure our departure. As we degenerate, the 
 contrast between us and our house is more evident. We 
 are as much strangers in nature, as we are ahens from 
 God. We do not understand the notes of birds. The 
 fox and the deer run away from us; the bear and tiger 
 rend us. We do not know the uses of more than a few 
 plants, as corn and the apple, the potato and the vine. 
 Is not the landscape, every glimpse of which hath a gran- 
 deur, a face of him? Yet this may show us what discord 
 is between man and nature, for you cannot freely admire 
 a noble landscape, if laborers are digging in the field 
 hard by. The poet finds something ridiculous in his de- 
 light, until he is out of the sight of men. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 PROSPECTS 
 
 In inquiries respecting the laws of the world and the 
 frame of things, the highest reason is always the truest. 
 That which seems faintly possible — it is so refined, is 
 often faint and dim because it is deepest seated in the 
 mind among the eternal verities. Empirical science is apt 
 to cloud the sight, and, by the very knowledge of func- 
 tions and processes, to bereave the student of the manly 
 contemplation of the whole. The savant becomes unpoetic. 
 But the best read naturalist who lends an entire and 
 devout attention to truth, will see that there remains 
 much to learn of his relation to the world, and that it is 
 not to be learned by any addition or subtraction or other 
 comparison of known quantities, but is arrived at by un- 
 taught saUies of the spirit, by a continual self-recovery, 
 
PROSPECTS 37 
 
 and by entire humility. He will perceive that there are 
 far more excellent qualities in the student than precise- 
 ness and infallibility; that a guess is often more fruitful 
 than an indisputable affirmation, and that a dream may 
 let us deeper into the secret of nature than a hundred 
 concerted experiments. 
 
 For, the problems to be solved are precisely those which 
 the physiologist and the naturalist omit to state. It is 
 not so pertinent to man to know all the individuals of 
 the animal kingdom, as it is to know whence and whereto 
 is this tyrannizing unity in his constitution, which ever- 
 more separates and classifies things, endeavoring to reduce 
 the most diverse to one form. When I behold a rich 
 landscape, it is less to my purpose to recite correctly the 
 order and superposition of the strata, than to know why all 
 thought of multitude is lost in a tranquil sense of unity. 
 I cannot greatly honor minuteness in details, so long as 
 there is no hint to explain the relation between things 
 and thoughts; no ray upon the metaphysics of conchology, 
 of botany, of the arts, to show the relation of the forms of 
 flowers, shells, animals, architecture, to the mind, and 
 build science upon ideas. In a cabinet of natural his- 
 tory, we become sensible of a certain occult recognition 
 and sympathy in regard to the most unwieldy and eccen- 
 tric forms of beast, fish, and insect. The American who 
 has l^een confined, in his own country, to the sight of 
 buildings designed after foreign models, is surprised on 
 entering York Minster or St. Peter's at Rome, by the feel- 
 ing that these structures are imitations also, — faint copies 
 of an invisible archetype. Nor has science sufficient hu- 
 manity, so long as the naturalist overlooks that wonderful 
 congniity which subsists between man and the world; of 
 which he is lord, not because he is the most subtile in- 
 habitant, but because he is its head and heart, and finds 
 something of himself in every great and small thing, in 
 every mountain stratum, in every new law of color, fact 
 of astronomy, or atmospheric influence which observation 
 or analj'sis lay open. A perception of this mystery in- 
 spires the muse of George Herbert, the beautiful psalmist 
 
38 NATURE 
 
 of the seventeenth century. The following lines are part 
 of his little poem on Man. 
 
 "Man is all symmetry, 
 Full of proportions, one limb to another, 
 
 And to all the world besides. 
 
 Each part may call the farthest, brother; 
 For head with foot hath private amity, 
 
 And both with moons and tides. 
 
 "Nothing hath got so far 
 But man hath caught and kept it as his prey; 
 
 His eyes dismount the highest star; 
 
 He is in httle all the sphere. 
 Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they 
 
 Find their acquaintance there. 
 
 "For us, the winds do blow, 
 The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow; 
 
 Nothing we see, but means our good. 
 
 As our delight, or as our treasure; 
 The whole is either our cupboard of food, 
 
 Or cabinet of pleasure. 
 
 "The stars have us to bed: 
 Night draws the curtain; which the sun withdraws. 
 
 Music and light attend our head. 
 
 All things unto our flesh are kind. 
 In their descent and being; to our mind, 
 
 In their ascent and cause. 
 
 "More servants wait on man 
 Than he'll take notice of. In every path. 
 
 He treads down that which doth befriend him 
 
 When sickness makes him pale and wan. 
 Oh mighty love! Man is one world, and hath 
 
 Another to attend him." 
 
 The perception of this class of truths makes the attrac- 
 tion which draws men to science, but the end is lost' 
 sight of in attention to the means. In view of this- 
 half-sight of science, we accept the sentence of Plato, that, 
 "poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history." Every^ 
 surmise and vaticination of the mind is entitled to a cer-' 
 tain respect, and we learn to prefer imperfect theoriesJ 
 and sentences, which contain glimpses of truth, to digested] 
 
PROSPECTS 39 
 
 systems which have no one valuable suggestion. A wise 
 writer will feel that the ends of study and composition 
 are best answered by announcing undiscovered regions of 
 thought, and so communicating, through hope, new ac- 
 tivity to the torpid spirit. 
 
 I shall therefore conclude this essay with some tradi- 
 tions of man and nature, which a certain poet sang to 
 me; and which, as they have always been in the world, 
 and perhaps reappear to every bard, may be both history 
 and prophecy. 
 
 "The foundations of man are not in matter, but m spirit. 
 But the element of spirit is eternity. To it, therefore, the 
 longest series of events, the oldest chronologies are young 
 and recent. In the cycle of the universal man, from whom 
 the known individuals proceed, centuries are points, and 
 all history is but the epoch of one degradation. 
 
 "We distrust and deny inwardly our sympathy with 
 nature. We own and disown our relation to it, by turns. 
 We are, like Nebuchadnezzar, dethroned, bereft of reason, 
 and eating grass like an ox. But who can set limits to the 
 remedial force of spirit? 
 
 "A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, 
 hfe shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as 
 gently as we awake from dreams. Now, the world would 
 be insane and rabid, if these disorganizations should last 
 for hundreds of years. It is kept in check by death and 
 infancy. Infancy is the perpetual Messiah, which comes 
 into the arms of fallen men, and pleads with them to 
 return to paradise. 
 
 "Man is the dwarf of himself. Once he was permeated 
 and dissolved by spirit. He filled nature with his over- 
 flowing currents. Out from him sprang the sun and moon; 
 from man, the sun; from woman, the moon. The laws of 
 his mind, the periods of his actions externized themselves 
 into day and night, into the year and the seasons. But, 
 having made for himself this huge shell, his waters re- 
 tired; he no longer fills the veins and veinlets; he is shrunk 
 to a drop. He sees, that the structure still fits him, but 
 fits him colossally. Say, rather, once it fitted him, now 
 
40 NATURE 
 
 it corresponds to him from far and on high. He adores 
 timidly his own work. Now is man the follower of the 
 sun, and woman the follower of the moon. Yet some- 
 times he starts in his slumber, and wonders at himself and 
 his house, and muses strangely at the resemblance betwixt 
 him and it. He perceives that if his law is still paramount, 
 if still he have elemental power, if his word is sterling yet 
 in nature, it is not conscious power, it is not inferior 
 but superior to his will. It is Instinct." Thus my Orphic 
 poet sang. 
 
 At present, man applies to nature but half his force. 
 He works on the world with his understanding alone. He 
 lives in it, and masters it by a penny-wisdom; and he 
 that works most in it, is but a half-man, and whilst 
 his arms are strong and his digestion good, his mind is 
 imbruted, and he is a selfish savage. His relation to 
 nature, his power over it, is through the understanding; 
 as by manure; the economic use of fire, wind, water, and 
 the mariner's needle; steam, coal, chemical agriculture; 
 the repairs of the human body by the dentist and the 
 surgeon. This is such a resumption of power, as if a 
 banished king should buy his territories inch by inch, 
 instead of vaulting at once into his throne. Meantime, 
 in the thick darkness, there are not wanting gleams of a 
 better light, — occasional examples of the action of man 
 upon nature with his entire force, — with reason as well 
 as understanding. Such examples are; the traditions of 
 miracles in the earliest antiquity of all nations; the history 
 of Jesus Christ; the achievements of a principle, as in 
 rehgious and political revolutions, and in the abolition 
 of the Slave-trade; the miracles of enthusiasm, as those 
 reported of Swedenborg, Hohenlohe, and the Shakers; 
 many obscure and j^et contested facts, now arranged under 
 the name of Animal Magnetism; praj^er; eloquence; self- 
 healing; and the wisdom of children. These are examples 
 of Reason's momentary grasp of the sceptre; the exer- 
 tions of a power which exists not in time or space, but 
 an instantaneous in-streaming causing power. The differ- 
 ence between the actual and the ideal force of man is 
 
PROSPECTS 4f 
 
 happily figured by the schoolmen, in saying, that the 
 knowledge of man is an evening knowledge, vespertina 
 cognitio, but that of God is a morning knowledge, matu- 
 tina cognitio. 
 
 The problem of restoring to the world original and 
 eternal beauty, is solved by the redemption of the soul. 
 The ruin or the blank, that we see wdien we look at 
 nature, is in our own eye. The axis of vision is not co- 
 incident with the axis of things, and so they appear not 
 transparent but opaque. The reason why the world lacks 
 unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is 
 disunited with himself. He cannot be a naturalist, until 
 he satisfies all the demands of the spirit. Love is as much 
 its demand, as perception. Indeed, neither can be perfect 
 Vv^ithout the other. In the uttermost meaning of the words, 
 thought is devout, and devotion is thought. Deep calls 
 unto deep. But in actual life, the marriage is not cele- 
 brated. There are innocent men who worship God after 
 the tradition of their fathers, but their sense of duty has 
 not yet extended to the use of all their faculties. And 
 there are patient naturalists, but they freeze their subject 
 under the wintry light of the understanding. Is not prayer 
 also a study of truth, — a sally of the soul into the unfound 
 infinite? No man ever prayed heartily, without learning 
 something. But when a faithful thinker, resolute to de- 
 tach every object from personal relations, and see it in the 
 light of thought, shall, at the same time, kindle science 
 with the fire of the holiest affections, then will God go 
 forth anew into the creation. 
 
 It will not need, when the mind is prepared for study, 
 to search for objects. The invariable mark of wisdom is 
 to see the miraculous in the common. What is a day? 
 What is a year? What is summer? What is woman? 
 What is a child? What is sleep? To our bhndness, these 
 things seem unaffected. We make fables to hide the bald- 
 ness of the fact and conform it, as we say, to the higher 
 law of the mind. But when the fact is seen under the 
 light of an idea, the gaudy fable fades and shrivels. We 
 behold the real higher law. To the wise, therefore, a fact 
 
42 NATURE 
 
 is true poetry, and the most beautiful of fables. These 
 wonders are brought to our own door. You also are a 
 man. Man and woman, and their social hfe, poverty, 
 labor, sleep, fear, fortune, are known to you. Learn that 
 none of these things is superficial, but that each phenome- 
 non has its roots in the faculties and affections of the 
 mind. Whilst the abstract question occupies your intel- 
 lect, nature brings it in the concrete to be solved by your 
 hands. It were a wise inquiry for the closet, to compare, 
 point by point, especially at remarkable crises in hfe, our 
 daily history, with the rise and progress of ideas in the 
 mind. 
 
 So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. 
 It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, — What 
 is truth? and of the affections, — What is good? by yield- 
 ing itself passive to the educated Will. Then shall come ■ 
 to pass what my poet said; "Nature is not fixed but fluid. 
 Spirit alters, moulds, makes it. The immobility or brute- 
 ness of nature, is the absence of spirit; to pure spirit, it is 
 fluid, it is volatile, it is obedient. Every spirit builds 
 itself a house; and beyond its house a world; and beyond 
 its world a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for 
 you. For you is the phonemenon perfect. What we are, 
 that only can we see. All that Adam had, all that Caesar 
 could, you have and can do. Adam called his house, 
 heaven and earth; Caesar called his house, Rome; you 
 perhaps call yours, a cobbler's trade; a hundred acres 
 of ploughed land; or a scholar's garret. Yet line for 
 line and point for point, your dominion is as great as 
 theirs, though without fine names. Build, therefore, your 
 own world. As fast as you conform your life to the 
 pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great propor- 
 tions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend 
 the influx of the spirit. So fast will disagreeable appear- 
 ances, swine, spiders, snakes, pets, madhouses, prisons, 
 enemies, vanish ; they are temporary and shall be no more 
 seen. The sordor and filths of nature, the sun shall dry 
 up, and the wind exhale. As when the summer comes 
 from the south; the snow-banks melt, and the face of 
 
I PROSPECTS 43 
 
 the earth becomes green before it, so shall the advancing 
 spirit create its ornaments along its path, and carry with 
 it the beauty it visits, and the song which enchants it; 
 it shall draw beautiful faces, warm hearts, wise discourse, 
 and heroic acts, around its way, until evil is no more seen. 
 The kingdom of man over nature, which cometh not with 
 observation, — a dominion such as now is beyond his dream 
 of God, — he shall enter without more wonder than the 
 blind man feels who is gradually restored to perfect 
 sight." 
 
II 
 
 THE OVER-SOUL . 
 
 "But souls that of liis own good life partake 
 He loves as his own self; dear as his eye 
 They are to Him: He'll never them forsake: 
 When they shall die, then God himself shall die: 
 They live, they live in blest eternity." — Henry More. 
 
 There is a difference between one and another hour 
 of hfe in their authority and subsequent effect. Our faith 
 comes in moments; our vice is habitual. Yet is there a 
 deptn m those brief moments, which constrains us to 
 ascribe more reahty to them than to all other experiences. 
 For this reason, the argument, which is always forth- 
 coming to silence those who conceive extraordinary hopes 
 of man, namely, the appeal to experience, is forever invalid 
 and vain. A mightier hope abolishes despair. We give 
 up the past to the objector, and yet we hope. He must 
 explain this hope. We grant that human life is mean; 
 but how did we find out that it was mean? What is 
 the ground of this uneasiness of ours, of this old dis- 
 content? What is the universal sense of want and ignor- 
 ance, but the fine innuendo by which the great soul makes 
 its enormous claim? Why do men feel that the natural 
 history of man has never been written, but always he is 
 leaving behind what you have said of him, and it becomes 
 old, and books of metaphysics worthless? The philosophy 
 of six thousand years has not searched the chambers and 
 magazines of the soul. In its experiments there has always 
 remained in the last analysis a residuum it could not re- 
 solve. Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Always 
 our being is descending into us from we know not whence. 
 The most exact calculator has no prescience that some- 
 what incalculable may not baulk the very next moment. 
 I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher 
 
 44 
 
THE OVER-SOUL 45 
 
 origin for events than the will I call mine. 
 
 As with events, so is it with thoughts. When I watch 
 that flowing river, which, out of regions I see not, pours 
 for a season its streams into me, — I see that I am a 
 pensioner, — not a cause, but a surprised spectator of this 
 ethereal water; that I desire and look up, and put myself 
 in the attitude of reception, but from some ahen energy 
 the visions come. 
 
 The Supreme Critic on all the errors of the past and 
 the present, and the only prophet of that which must 
 be, is that great nature in which we rest, as the earth lies 
 in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Tlnitv^ thn.t 
 Over-I^joul, within which every m an's particu lar being is 
 contained and made one with aiJ nthP|-; that mmmnn 
 iieart, ol wnicn all sincere conversation is the worship, to 
 which all right action is submission; that overpowering 
 reality which confutes our tricks and talents, and con- 
 strains every one to pass for what he is, and to speak 
 from his character and not from his tongue; and which 
 evermore tends and aims to pass into our thought and 
 hand, and become wisdom, and virtue, and power, and 
 beauty. We live in succession, in division, in parts, in 
 particles. Meantime, within man is the soul of the 
 whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which 
 every part and particle is equally related; the eternal 
 One. And this deep power in which we exist, and whose 
 beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing 
 and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the 
 thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the 
 ! object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as 
 I the sun. the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, 
 of which these are the shining parts, is the soul. It is 
 only by the vision of that Wisdom, that the horoscope of 
 the ages can be read, and it is only by falling back on our 
 better thoughts, by yielding to the spirit of prophecy which 
 is innate in every man, that we can know what it saith. 
 Every man's words, who speaks from that life, must sound 
 vain to those who do not dwell m the same thought on 
 their own part. I dare not speak for it. My words do 
 
46 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 not carry its august sense; they fall short and cold. Only 
 itself can inspire whom it will, and, behold, their speech 
 shall be lyrical, and sweet, and universal as the rising of 
 the wind. Yet I desire, even by profane words, if sacred 
 I may not use, to indicate the heaven of this deity, and 
 to report what hints I have collected of the transcendent 
 simplicity and energy of the Highest Law. 
 
 If we consider what happens in conversation, in 
 reveries, in remorse, in times of passion, in surprises, in 
 the instructions of dreams, wherein often we see ourselves 
 in masquerade, — the droll disguises only magnifying and 
 enhancing a real element, and forcing it on our distinct 
 notice, — we shall catch many hints that will broaden and 
 lighten into knowledge of the secret of nature. All goes 
 to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but 
 animates and exercises all the organs; is not a function, 
 hke the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, 
 — but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but 
 a light; is not the intellect or the will, but the master of 
 the intellect and the will; is the vast background of our 
 being, in which they lie, — an immensity not possessed 
 and that cannot be possessed. From within or from 
 behind, a light shines through us upon things, and 
 makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all. 
 A man is the facade of a temple, wherein all wisdom and 
 all good abide. What we commonly call man, — the eat- 
 ing, drinking, planting, countmg man, — does not, as we 
 know him, represent himself, but misrepresents himself. 
 Him we do not respect; but the soul, whose organ he is, 
 would he let it appear through his action, would make 
 our knees bend. When it breathes through his intellect, 
 it is genius; when it breathes through his will, it is virtue; 
 when it flows through his affection, it is love. And the 
 blindness of the intellect begins, when it would be some- 
 thing of itself. The weakness of the will begins, when the 
 individual would be something of himself. All reform 
 aims, in some one particular, to let the great soul have its 
 way through us; in other words, to engage us to obey. 
 Of this pure nature every man is at some |,imp sensible. 
 
THE OVER-SOUL 47 
 
 Language cannot paint it with his colors. It is too subtle. 
 It is undefinable, unmeasurable; but we know that it 
 pervades and contains us. We know that all spiritual 
 bei ng is in man. A wise old proverb says, ^'(iod comes 
 to see us without bell:" that is, there is no screen or 
 ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so is 
 there no bar or wall in the soul where man, the eifect, 
 ceases, and God, the cause, begins. The walls are taken 
 away. We lie open on one side to the deeps of spiritual 
 nature, to all the attributes of God. Justice we see and 
 know, Love, Freedom, Power. These natures no man 
 ever got above, but always they tower over us, and most 
 in the moment when our interests tempt us to wound 
 them. 
 
 The sovereignty of this nature whereof we speak is 
 made known bj^ its independency of those Hmitations which 
 circumscribe us on every hand. The soul circumscribeth 
 all things. As I have said, it contradicts all experience. 
 In like manner it abolishes time and space. The influence 
 of the senses has, in most men, overpowered the mind 
 to that degree, that the walls of time and space have come 
 to look solid, real, and insurmountable; and to speak with 
 levity of these limits is, in the world, the sign of insanity. 
 Yet time and space are but inverse measures of the force 
 of the soul. A man is capable of abolishing them both. 
 The spirit sports with time — 
 
 "Can crowd eternity into an hour, 
 Or stretch an hour to eternity." 
 
 We are often made to feel that there is another youth 
 and age than that which is measured from the year of 
 our natural birth. Some thoughts always find us young, 
 and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the uni- 
 versal and eternal beauty. Every man parts from that 
 contemplation with the feeling that it rather belongs to 
 ages than to mortal life. The least activity of the intel- 
 lectual powers redeems us in a degree from the influences 
 of time. In sickness, in languor, give us a strain of poetry 
 or a profound sentence, and we are refreshed; or produce 
 
48 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 a volume of Plato or Shakespeare, or remind us of their 
 names, and instantly we come into a feeling of longevity. 
 See how the deep, divine thought demolishes centuries 
 and millenniums, and makes itself present through all ages. 
 Is the teaching of Christ less effective how than it was 
 when first his mouth was opened? The emphasis of facts 
 and persons to my soul has nothing to do with time. And 
 so, always, the soul's scale is one; the scale of the senses 
 and the understanding is another. Before the great revela- 
 tions of the soul. Time, Space, and Nature shrink away. 
 In common speech, we refer all things to time, as we 
 habitually refer the immensely sundered stars to one con- 
 cave sphere. And so we say that the Judgment is distant 
 or near; that the Millennium approaches; that a day of 
 certain political, moral, social reforms is at hand; and the 
 like; when we mean, that in the nature of things, one of 
 the facts we contemplate is external and fugitive, and the 
 other is permanent and connate with the soul. The things 
 we now esteem fixed shall, one by one, detach themselves, 
 like ripe fruit, from our experience, and fall. The wind 
 shall blow them none knows whither. The landscape, the 
 figures, Boston, London, are facts as fugitive as any insti- 
 tution past, or any whiff of mist or smoke, and so is society, 
 and so is the world. The soul looketh steadily forwards, 
 creating a world alway before her, and leaving worlds 
 alway behind her. She has no dates, nor rites, nor persons, 
 nor specialties, nor men. The soul knows only the soul, 
 All else is idle weeds for her wearing. 
 
 After its own law, and not by arithmetic, is the rate of 
 its progress to be computed. The soul's advances are 
 not made by gradation, such as can be represented by 
 motion in a straight line; but rather by ascension of 
 state, such as can be represented by metamorphosis, — 
 from the egg to the worm, from the worm to the fly. The 
 growths of genius are of a certain total character, that 
 does not advance the elect individual first over John, 
 then Adam, then Richard, and give to each the pain 
 of discovered inferiority, but by every throe of growth 
 the man expands there where he works, passing, at each 
 
THE OVER-SOUL 49 
 
 pulsation, classes, populations of men. With each divine 
 impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and 
 finite; and comes out into eternity, and inspires and ex- 
 pires its air. It converses with truths that have always 
 been spoken in the world, and becomes conscious of a 
 closer sympathy with Zeno and Arrian than with persons 
 in the house. 
 
 This is the law of moral and of mental gain. The simple 
 rise as by specific levity, not into a particular virtue, but 
 into the region of all the virtues. They are in the spirit 
 which contains them all. The soul is superior to all the 
 particulars of merit. The soul requires purity, but purity 
 is not it; requires justice, but justice is not that; requires 
 beneficence, but is somewhat better; so that there is a 
 kind of descent and accommodation felt when we leave 
 speaking of moral nature, to urge a virtue which it 
 enjoins. For to the soul in her pure action all the virtues 
 are natural, and not painfully acquired. Speak to his 
 heart, and the man becomes suddenly virtuous. 
 
 Within the same sentiment is the germ of intellectual 
 growth, which obeys the same law. Those who are cap- 
 able of humility, of justice, of love, of aspiration, are 
 already on a platform that commands the sciences and 
 arts, speech and poetry, action and grace. For whoso 
 dwells in this moral beatitude does already anticipate 
 those special powers which men prize so highly; just as 
 love does justice to all the gifts of the object beloved. 
 The lover has no talent, no skill, which passes for quite 
 nothing with his enamored maiden, however little she 
 may possess of related faculty. And the heart, which 
 abandons itself to the Supreme Mind, finds itself related 
 to all its works, and will travel a royal road to particular 
 knowledges and powers. For in ascending to this primary 
 and aboriginal sentiment, we have come from our re- 
 mote station on the circumference instantaneously to the 
 center of the world, where, as in the closet of God, we see 
 causes, and anticipate the universe, which is but a slow 
 efi"ect. 
 
 One mode of the divine teaching is the incarnation of 
 
50 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 the spirit in a form, — in forms like my own. I live in 
 society; with persons who answer to thoughts in my own 
 mind, or outwardly express to me a certain obedience to 
 the great instincts to which I live. I see its presence to 
 them. I am certified of a common nature; and so these 
 other souls, these separated selves, draw me as nothing 
 else can. They stir in me the new emotions we call 
 passion; of love, hatred, fear, admiration, pity; thence 
 comes conversation, competition, persuasion, cities, and 
 war. Persons are supplementary to the primary teach- 
 ing of the soul. In youth we are mad for persons. 
 Childhood and youth see all the world in them. But the 
 larger experience of man discovers the identical nature 
 appearing through them all. Persons themselves acquaint 
 us with the impersonal. In all conversation between two 
 persons, tacit reference is made as to a third party, to a 
 common nature. That third party or common nature is 
 not social; it is impersonal, is God. And so in groups 
 where debate is earnest, and especially on great questions 
 of thought, the company become aware of their unity; 
 aware that the thought rises to an equal height in all 
 bosoms, that all have a spiritual property in what was 
 said, as well as the sayer. They all wax wiser than they 
 were. It arches over them like a temple, this unity of 
 thought, in which every heart beats with nobler sense of 
 power and duty, and thinks and acts with unusual solemn- 
 ity. All are conscious of attaining to a higher self-posses- 
 sion. It shines for all. There is a certain wisdom of 
 humanity which is common to the greatest men with the 
 lowest, and which our ordinary education often labors to 
 silence and obstruct. The mind is one; and the best minds, 
 who love truth for its own sake, think much less of prop- 
 erty in truth. Thankfully they accept it everywhere, and 
 do not label or stamp it with any man's name, for it is 
 theirs long beforehand. It is theirs from eternity. The 
 learned and the studious of thought have no monopoly of 
 wisdom. Their violence of direction in some degree dis- 
 quahfies them to think truly. We owe many valuable 
 observations to people who are not very acute or pro- 
 
THE OVER-SOUL 51 
 
 found, and who say the thing without effort, which we 
 want and have long been hunting in vain. The action of 
 the soul is oftener in that which is felt and left unsaid, 
 than in that which is said in any conversation. It broods 
 over every society, and they unconsciously seek for it in 
 each other. We know better than we do. We do not yet 
 possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we 
 are much more. I feel the same truth how often in my 
 trivial conversation with my neighbors, that somewhat 
 higher in each of us overlooks this by-play, and Jove 
 nods to Jove from behind each of us. 
 
 Men descend to meet. In their habitual and mean 
 service to the world, for which they forsake their native 
 nobleness, they resemble those Arabian Sheikhs, who dwell 
 in mean houses, and affect an eternal poverty, to escape 
 the rapacity of the Pasha, and reserve all their display of 
 wealth for their interior and guarded retirements. 
 
 As it is present in all persons, so it is in every period 
 of life. It is adult already in the infant man. In my 
 deahng with my child, my Latin and Greek, my accom- 
 plishments and my money, stead me nothing. They are 
 all lost on him: but as much soul as I have avails. If I 
 am merely wilful, he gives me a Rowland for an Oliver, 
 sets his will against mine, one for one, and leaves me, if 
 I please, the degradation of beating him by my superiority 
 of strength. But if I renounce my will, and act for the 
 soul, setting that up as umpire between us two, out of his 
 young eyes looks the same soul; he reveres and loves 
 with me. 
 
 The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We 
 know truth when we see it, let sceptic and scoffer say 
 what they choose. Foohsh people ask you, when you have 
 spoken what they do not wish to hear, "How do you 
 know it is truth, and not an error of your own?" We 
 know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know 
 when we are awake that we are awake. It was a grand 
 sentence of Emanuel Swedenborg, which would alone in- 
 dicate the greatness of that man's perception, — "It is 
 no proof of a man's understanding to be able to affirm 
 
52 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 whatever he pleases; but to be able to discern that what 
 is true is true, and that what is false is false, this is the 
 mark and character of intelligence." In the book I read, 
 the good thought returns to me, as every truth will, the 
 image of the whole soul. To the bad thought which I 
 find in it, the same soul becomes a discerning, separating 
 sword, and lops it away. We are wiser than we know. If 
 we will not interfere with our thought, but will act entirely, 
 or see how the thing stands in God, we know the par- 
 ticular thing, and every thing, and every man. For the 
 Maker of all things and all persons stands behind us, 
 and casts his dread omniscience through us over things. 
 
 But beyond this recognition of its own in particular 
 passages of the individual's experience, it also reveals truth. 
 And here we should seek to reinforce ourselves by its very 
 presence, and to speak with a worthier, loftier strain of that 
 advent. For the soul's communication of truth is the 
 highest event in nature; for it then does not give some- 
 what from itself, but it gives itself, or passes into and be- 
 comes that man w^hom it enlightens; or in proportion to 
 that truth he receives, it takes him to itself. 
 
 We distinguish the announcements of the soul, its 
 manifestations of its own nature, by the term Revelation. 
 These are always attended by the emotion of the sublime. 
 For this communication is an influx of the Divine mind 
 into our mind. It is an ebb of the individual rivulet 
 before the flowing surges of the sea of life. Every distinct 
 apprehension of this central commandment agitates men 
 with awe and delight. A thrill passes through all men 
 at the reception of new truth, or at the performance of a 
 great action, which comes out of the heart of nature. In 
 these communications, the power to see is not separated 
 from the will to do, but the insight proceeds from obedi- 
 ence, and the obedience proceeds from a joyful percep- 
 tion. E^^ery moment when the individual feels himself 
 invaded by it is memorable. Always, I believe, by the 
 necessity of our constitution, a certain enthusiasm attends 
 the individual's consciousness of that divine presence. 
 The character and duration of this enthusiasm varies with 
 
THE OVER-SOUL 53 
 
 the state of the individual, from an ecstasy and trance and 
 prophetic inspiration, which is its rarer appearance, to the 
 faintest glow of virtuous emotion, in which form it warms, 
 like our household fires, all the families and associations 
 of men, and makes society possible. A certain tendency 
 to insanity has always attended the opening of the religious 
 sense in men, as if "blasted with excess of light." The 
 trances of Socrates; the "union" of Plotinus; the vision 
 'of Porphyry; the conversion of Paul; the aurora of 
 Behmen; the convulsions of George Fox and his Quakers; 
 the illumination of Swedenborg; are of this kind. What 
 was in the case of these remarkable persons a ravishment 
 \ has in innumerable instances in common Hfe been ex- 
 hibited in less striking manner. Everywhere the history 
 of religion betrays a tendency to enthusiasm. The rapture 
 of the Moravian and Quietest; the opening of the internal 
 sense of the Word, in the language of the New Jerusalem 
 Church; the revival of the Calvinistic Churches; the ex- 
 periences of the Methodists, — are varying forms of that 
 shudder of awe and delight with which the individual soul 
 always mingles with the universal soul. 
 
 The nature of these revelations is always the same. 
 They are perceptions of the absolute law: they are solu- 
 tions of the soul's own questions. They do not answer 
 the questions which the understanding asks. The soul 
 answers never by words, but by the thing itself that is 
 inquired after. 
 
 Revelation is the disclosure of the soul. The popular 
 notion of a revelation is, that it is a telling of fortunes. 
 In past oracles of the soul, the understanding seeks to find 
 answers to sensual questions, and undertakes to tell from 
 God how long men shall exist, what their hands shall do, 
 and who shall be their company, adding even names, 
 and dates and places. But we must pick no locks. We 
 must check this low curiosity. An answer in words is 
 delusive; it is really no answer to the questions you ask. 
 Do not ask a description of the countries towards which 
 you sail. The description does not describe them to you; 
 and to-morrow you arrive there, and know them by in- 
 
54 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 habiting them. Men ask of the immortahty of the soul, 
 and the employments of heaven, and the state of the 
 sinner, and so forth. They even dream that Jesus has 
 left replies to precisely these interrogatories. Never a 
 moment did that sublime spirit speak in their patois. ^To 
 truth, justice, love, the attributes of the soul, the idea 
 of immutableness is essentially associated. Jesus, hving 
 in these moral sentiments, heedless of sensual fortunes, 
 heeding only the manifestations of these, never made the 
 separation of the idea of duration from the essence of 
 these attributes; never uttered a syllable concerning the 
 duration of the soul. It was left to his cUsciples to sever 
 duration from the moral elements, and to teach the im- 
 mortahty of the soul as a doctrine, and maintain it by 
 evidences. The moment the doctrine of the immortality 
 is separately taught, man is already fallen. In the flowing 
 of love, in the adoration of humility, there is no question 
 of continuance. No inspired man ever asks this question, 
 or condescends to these evidences. For the soul is true 
 to itself; and the man in whom it is shed abroad cannot 
 wander from the present, which is infinite, to a future, 
 which would be finite. 
 
 These questions which we lust to ask about the future 
 are a confession of sin. God has no answer for them. 
 No answer in words can reply to a question of things. 
 It is not in an arbitrary "decree of God," but in the 
 nature of man, that a veil shuts down on the facts of 
 to-morrow: for the soul will not have us read any other 
 cipher but that of cause and effect. By this veil, which 
 curtains events, it instructs the children of men to live in 
 to-day. The only mode of obtaining an answer to these 
 questions of the senses, is to forego all low curiosity, 
 and accepting the tide of being which floats us into the 
 secret of nature, work and five, work and live, and all 
 unawares the advancing soul has built and forged for 
 itself a new condition, and the question and the answer 
 are one. 
 
 Thus is the soul the perceiver and revealer of truth. 
 By the same fire, serene, impersonal, perfect, which burns 
 
THE OVER-SOUL 55 
 
 until it shall dissolve all things into the waves and surges 
 of an ocean of hglit, — we see and know each other, and 
 what spirit each is of. Who can tell the grounds of his 
 knowledge of the character of the several individuals in 
 his circle of friends? No man. Yet their acts and words 
 do not disappoint him. In that man, though he knew no 
 ill of him, he put no trust. In that other, though they 
 had seldom met, authentic signs had yet passed to signify 
 that he might be trusted as one who had an interest in his 
 own character. We know each other very well, — which 
 of us has been just to himself, and whether that which we 
 teach or behold is only an inspiration, or is our honest 
 effort also. 
 
 We are all discerners of spirits. That diagnosis Hes 
 aloft in our life or unconscious power, not in the under- 
 standing. The whole intercourse of society, its trade, its 
 rehgion, its friendships, its quarrels, — is one wide judicial 
 investigation of character. In full court, or in small com- 
 mittee, or confronted face to face, accuser and accused, 
 men offer themselves to be judged. Against their will 
 they exliibit those decisive trifles by which character is 
 read. But who judges? and what? Not our understand- 
 ing. We do not read them by learning or craft. No; 
 the wisdom of the wise man consists herein, that he does 
 not judge them; he lets them judge themselves, and merely 
 reads and records their own verdict. 
 
 By virtue of this inevitable nature, private will is over- 
 powered, and, maugre our efforts or our imperfections, 
 your genius will speak from you, and mine from me. 
 That which we are, we shall teach, not voluntarily, but 
 involuntarily. Thoughts come into our mmds by avenues 
 which we never left open, and thoughts go out ot our 
 minds through avenues which we never voluntarily 
 opened. Character teaches over our head. The infallible 
 index of tr ue progress is found in thp tonp thp man takes. 
 "Neitner nis ag e, nor his breeding, nor compflnv, m^ :-^ 
 books, nor actions, nor talents, nor q^i tf,";^^^^^, ^n^ iiinr^o]^ — 
 him from being deterential to a his/her spirit than his own. _ 
 "TLi ne have not lound his home in (Jod, ins manners, his 
 
56 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 forms of speech, the turn of his sentences, the build, 
 shall I say, of all his opinions, will involuntarily confess 
 it, let him brave it out how he will. If he have found his 
 center, the Deity will shine through him, through all the 
 disguises of ignorance, of ungenial temi:)erament, of un- 
 favorable circumstance. The tone of seeking is one, and 
 the tone of having is another. 
 
 The great distinction between teachers sacred or literary, 
 between poets like Herbert, and poets like Pope; between 
 phi]osoi)hers like Spinoza, Kant, and Coleridge, — and phil- 
 osophers like Locke, Paley, Mackintosh, and Stewart; be- 
 tween men of the world who are reckoned accomplished 
 talkers, and here and there a fervent mystic, prophesying 
 half-insane under the infinitude of his thought, is, that 
 one class speak from within, or from experience, as parties 
 and possessors of the fact; and the other class, from with- 
 out, as spectators merely, or perhaps as acquainted with 
 the fact on the evidence of third persons. It is of no use 
 to preach to me from without. I can do that too easily 
 myself. Jesus speaks always from within, and in a degree 
 that transcends all others. In that is the miracle. That 
 includes the miracle. My soul believes beforehand that 
 it ought so to be. All men stand continually in the 
 expectation of the appearance of such a teacher. But if 
 a man do not speak from within the veil, where the word 
 is one with that it tells of, let him lowly confess it. 
 
 The same Omniscience flows into the intellect, and makes 
 what we call genius. Much of the wisdom of the world is 
 not wisdom, and the most illuminated class of men are 
 no doubt superior to literary fame, and are not writers. 
 Among the multitude of scholars and authors we feel no 
 hallowing presence; we are sensible of a knack and skill 
 rather than of inspiration; they have a light, and know 
 not whence it comes, and call it their own; their talent 
 is some exaggerated faculty, some overgrown member, 
 so that their strength is a disease. In these instances 
 the intellectual gifts do not make the impression of virtue, 
 but almost of vice; and we feel that a man's talents stand 
 in the way of his advancement in truth. But genius is 
 
THE OVER-SOUL 57 
 
 religious. It is a larger imbibing of the common heart. 
 It is not anomalous, but more like, and not less like, 
 other men. There is in all great poets a wisdom of hu- 
 manity, wliich is superior to any talents they exercise. 
 The author, the wit, the partisan, the fine gentleman, does 
 not take place of the man. Humanity shines in Homer, 
 in Chaucer, in Spenser, in Shakespeare, in iMilton. They 
 are content with truth. They use the positive degree. 
 They seem frigid and phlegmatic to those who have been 
 spiced with the frantic passion and violent coloring of 
 inferior, but popular writers. For they are poets by the 
 free course which they allow to the informing soul, which 
 through their ej-es beholdeth again, and blesseth the things 
 which it hath made. The soul is superior to its knowledge, 
 wiser than any of its works. The great poet makes us 
 feel our own wealth, and then we think less of his comj^o- 
 sitions. His greatest communication to our mind is, to 
 teach us to despise all he has done. Shakespeare carries 
 us to such a lofty strain of intelhgent activity, as to sug- 
 gest a wealth which beggars his own; and we then feel 
 that the splendid works which he has created, and which 
 in other hours we extol as a sort of self-existent poetry, 
 take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow of 
 a passing traveler on the rock. The inspiration which 
 uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear could utter things as 
 good from day to day forever. "Why then should I make 
 account of Hamlet and Lear, as if we had not the soul 
 from which they fell as syllables from the tongue? 
 
 This energy does not descend into individual life on any 
 other condition than entire possession. It comes to the 
 lowly and simple; it comes to whomsoever will put off 
 what is foreign and proud; it comes as insight; it comes 
 as serenity and grandeur. When we see those whom it 
 inhabits, we are apprised of new degrees of greatness. 
 From that inspiration the man comes back with a changed 
 tone. He does not talk \\'ith men with an eye to their 
 opinion. He tries them. It requires of us to be plain and 
 true. The vain traveler attempts to embelhsh his life 
 by quoting my Lord, and the Prince, and the Countess, 
 
58 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 who thus said or did to him. The ambitious vulgar show 
 you their spoons, and brooches, and rings, and preserve 
 their cards and compliments. The more cultivated, in 
 their account of their own experience, cull out the pleasing 
 poetic circumstance; the visit to Rome; the man of genius 
 they saw; the brilliant friend they know; still further 
 on, perhaps, the gorgeous landscape, the mountain lights, 
 the mountain thoughts, they enjoyed yesterday, — and 
 so seek to throw a romantic color over their life. But the 
 soul that ascendeth to worship the great God is plain and 
 true; has no rose-color; no fine friends; no chivalry; no 
 adventures; does not want admiration; dwells in the hour 
 that now is, in the earnest experience of the common day, 
 — by reason of the present moment and the mere trifle 
 having become porous to thought, and bibulous of the 
 sea of hght. 
 
 Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and 
 literature looks like word-catching. The simplest utter- 
 ances are worthiest to be written, yet are they so cheap, 
 and so things of course, that in the infinite riches of the 
 soul, it is like gathering a few pebbles off the ground, or 
 bottUng a Httle air in a phial, when the whole earth and 
 the whole atmosphere are ours. The mere author, in 
 such society, is like a pickpocket among gentlemen, who 
 has come in to steal a gold button or a pin. Nothing 
 can pass there, or make you one of the circle, but the 
 casting aside your trappings, and deahng man to man in 
 naked truth, plain confession and omniscient affirmation. 
 
 Souls such as these treat you as gods would; walk as 
 gods in the earth, accepting without any admiration your 
 wit, your bounty, your virtue even, say rather your act of 
 duty, — for your virtue they own as their proper blood, 
 royal as themselves, and over-royal, and the father of the 
 gods. But what rebuke their plain fraternal bearing casts 
 on the mutual flattery with which authors solace each 
 other, and wound themselves! These flatter not. I do not 
 wonder that these men go to see Cromwell, and Christina, 
 and Charles II., and James I., and the Grand Turk. For 
 they are in their own elevation the fellows of kings, and 
 
THE OVER-SOUL 59 
 
 must feel the servile tone of conversation in the world. 
 They must always be a godsend to princes, for they con- 
 front them, a king to a king, without ducking or con- 
 cession, and give a high nature the refreshment and satis- 
 faction of resistance, of plain humanity, of even compan- 
 ionship, and of new ideas. They leave them wiser and 
 superior men. Souls like these make us feel that sincerity 
 is more excellent than flattery. Deal so plainly with man 
 and woman, as to constrain the utmost sincerity, and destroy 
 all hope of trifling with you. It is the highest compliment 
 you can pay. Their "highest praising," said Milton, "is 
 not flattery; and their plainest advice is a kind of 
 praising." 
 
 Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act 
 of the soul. The simplest person, who in his integrity 
 w^orships God, becomes God; yet forever and ever the 
 influx of this better and universal self is new and un- 
 searchable; ever it aspires awe and astonishment. How 
 dear, how soothing to man, arises the idea of God peopling 
 the lonely place, effacing the scars of our mistakes and 
 disappointments! When we have broken our god of tra- 
 dition, and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God 
 fire the heart with his presence. It is the doubling of the 
 heart itself, nay, the infinite enlargement of the heart with 
 a power of growth to a new infinity on every side. It 
 inspires in man an infallible trust. He has not the con- 
 viction, but the sight that the best is the true, and may in 
 that thought easily dismiss all particular uncertainties and 
 fears, and adjourn to the sure revelation of time the solu- 
 tion of his private riddles. He is sure that his welfare is 
 dear to the heart of being. In the presence of law to his 
 mind, he is overflowed with a reliance so universal, that 
 it sweeps away all cherished hopes and the most stable 
 projects of mortal condition in its flood. He believes that 
 he cannot escape from his good. The things that are really 
 for thee gravitate to thee. You are running to seek your 
 friend. Let your feet run, but your mind need not. If 
 you do not find him, will j^ou not acquiesce that it is 
 best you should not find him? for there is a power, which, 
 
60 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 as it is in you, is in him also, and could therefore very 
 well bring you together, if it were for the best. You are 
 preparing with eagerness to go and render a service to 
 which your talent and your taste invite you, the love of 
 men, and the hope of fame. Has it not occurred to you, 
 that you have no right to go, unless you are equally 
 willing to be prevented from going? believe, as thou 
 livest, that every sound that is spoken over the round world, 
 which thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate on thine ear. 
 Every proverb, every book, every by-word that belongs 
 to thee for aid or comfort, shall surely come home through 
 open or winding jiassagcs. Every friend whom not thy 
 fantastic will, but the great and tender heart in thee 
 craveth, shall lock thee in his embrace. And this, be- 
 cause the heart in thee is the heart of all; not a valve, not 
 a wall, not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but 
 one blood rolls uninterruptedly, an endless circulation, 
 through all men, as the water of the globe is all one sea, 
 and, truly seen, its tide is one. 
 
 Let man, then, learn the revelation of all nature, and 
 all thought to his heart; this, namely, that the Highest 
 dwells with him; that the sources of nature are in his 
 own mind, if the sentiment of duty is there. But if he 
 would know what the great God speaketh, he must "go 
 into his closet and shut the door," as Jesus said. God 
 will not make himself manifest to cowards. He must 
 greatly listen to himself, withdrawing himself from all the 
 accents of other men's devotion. Their prayers even are 
 hurtful to him, until he have made his own. The soul 
 makes no appeal from itself. Our religion vulgarly 
 stands on numbers of believers. Whenever the appeal is 
 made, — no matter how indirectly, — to numbers, procla- 
 mation is then and there made, that rehgion is not. He 
 that finds God a sweet, enveloping thought to him, never 
 counts his company. When I sit in that presence, who 
 shall dare to come in? When I rest in perfect humility, 
 when I burn with pure love, what can Calvin or Sweden- 
 borg say? 
 
 It makes no difference whether the appeal is to numbers 
 
THE OVER-SOUL 61 
 
 or to one. The faith that stands on authority is not 
 faith. The rehance on authority measures the dechne of 
 religion, the withdrawal of the soul. The position men 
 have given to Jesus now for manj^ centuries of history is 
 a position of authority. It characterizes themselves. It 
 cannot alter the eternal facts. Great is the soul, and 
 plain. It is no flatterer, it is no follower; it never appeals 
 from itself. It always believes in itself. Before the 
 immense i:)0ssibilities of man, all mere exjoerience, all past 
 biography, however spotless and sainted, shrinks away. 
 Before that holy heaven which our presentiments 
 foreshew us, we cannot easily praise any form of life we 
 have seen or read of. We not only affirm that we have 
 few great men, but, absolutely speaking, that we have 
 none; thai we have no history, no record of any character 
 or mode of Uving that entirely contents us. The saints 
 and demigods whom history worships, we are constrained 
 to accept with a grain of allowance. Though in our 
 lonely hours we draw a new strength out of their memory, 
 yet pressed on our attention, as they are by the thought- 
 less and customary, they fatigue and invade. The soul 
 gives itself alone, original, and pure to the Lonely, 
 Original, and Pure, who, on that condition, gladly in- 
 habits, leads, and speaks through it. Then is it glad, 
 young, and nimble. It is not wise, but it sees through all 
 things. It is not called religious, but it is innocent. It 
 calls the light its own, and feels that the grass grows and 
 the stone falls by a law inferior to and dependent on its 
 nature. Behold, it saith, I am born into the great, the 
 universal mind. I the imperfect adore my own Perfect. 
 I am somehow receptive of the great soul, and thereby I 
 I do overlook the sun and the stars, and feel them to be 
 but the fair accidents and effects which change and pass. 
 More and more the surges of everlasting nature enter 
 into me, and I become public and human in my regards 
 ! and actions. So come I . to live in thoughts, and act with 
 energies which are immortal. Thus revering the soul, and 
 learning, as the ancient said, that "its beauty is immense," 
 man will come to see that the world is the perennial miracle ^ 
 
62 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 which the soul worketh, and be less astonished at particular 
 wonders; he will learn that there is no profane history; 
 that all history is sacred; that the universe is represented 
 in an atom, in a moment of time. He will weave no 
 longer a spotted life of shreds and patches, but he will 
 live with a divine unity. He will cease from what is base 
 and frivolous in his life, and be content with all 
 places and any service he can render. He will calmly front 
 the morrow in the negligency of that trust which carries 
 God with it, and so hath already the whole future in the 
 bottom of the heart. 
 
 I 
 
Ill 
 
 HISTORY 
 
 There is no great and no small 
 To the Soul that raaketh all. 
 And where it cometh, all things are; 
 And it cometh every where. 
 
 I am owner of the sphere, 
 
 Of the seven stare and the solar year, 
 
 Of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain, 
 
 Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain. 
 
 Tt^Itrt^ ig f^n^ minrl common to all indi viHiinl mpn, Every 
 man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He 
 that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a 
 freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he 
 may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what 
 at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. 
 Who hath access to this universal mind, is a party to all 
 that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign 
 agent. 
 
 Of the works of this mind history is the record. Its 
 genius is illustrated by the entire series of days. Man is 
 explicable by nothing less than all his history. Without 
 hurry, without rest, the human spirit goes forth from the 
 beginning to embody every faculty, every thought, every 
 emotion, which belongs to it, in appropriate events. But 
 always the thought is prior to the fact; all the facts of 
 history pre-exist in the mind as laws. Each law in turn 
 is made by circumstances predominant, and the limits of 
 nature give power to but one at a time. A man is the 
 whole encyclopaedia of facts. The creation of a thousand 
 forests is in one acorn; and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, 
 Britain, America, lie folded already in the first man. 
 Epoch after epoch, camp, kingdom, empire, republic, de- 
 mocracy, are merely the application of his manifold spirit 
 
 63 
 
64 HISTORY 
 
 to the manifold world. 
 
 This human mind wrote history, and this must read it. 
 The Sphinx must solve her own riddle. If the whole of 
 history is in one man, it is all lo be explained from indi- 
 vidual experience. There is a relation between the hours 
 of our life and the centuries of time. As the air I breathe 
 is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light 
 on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of 
 miles distant, as the poise of my body depends on the 
 equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the 
 hours should be instructed by the ages, and the ages 
 explained l)y the hours. Of the universal mind each in- 
 cUvidual man is one more incarnation. All its properties 
 consist in him. Every step in his private experience 
 flashes a light on what great bodies of men have done, 
 and the" crises of his life refer to national crises. Every 
 revolution was first a thought in one man's mind; and 
 when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the 
 key to that era. Every reform was once a private opin- 
 ion; and when it shall be a private opinion again, it 
 will solve the problem of the age. The fact narrated 
 must correspond to something in me to be credible or 
 intelligible. Vv^e as we read must become Greeks, Romans, 
 Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner, must 
 fasten these images to some reality in our secret ex- 
 perience, or we shall see nothing, learn nothing, keep 
 nothing. What befel Asdrubal or C«sar Borgia is as 
 much an illustration of the mind's powers and deprava- 
 tions as what has befallen us. Each new law and political 
 movement has meaning for you. Stand before each of 
 its tablets and say, "Here is one of my coverings. Under 
 this fantastic, or odious, or graceful mask did my Proteus 
 nature hide itself." This remedies the defect of our too 
 great nearness to ourselves. This throws our own actions 
 into perspective: and as crabs, goats, scorpions, th'^ 
 balance and the waterpot, lose all their meanness when 
 hung as signs in the zodiac, so I can see my own vices 
 without heat in the distant persons of Solomon, AlcibiadeSj 
 and Catiline. 
 
 I 
 
HISTORY 65 
 
 It is this universal nature which gives worth to par- 
 ticular men and things. Human hfe as containing this 
 is m\^sterious and inviolable, and we hedge it round with 
 penalties and laws. All uiws derive hence their ultimate 
 reason, all express at last reverence for some command 
 of this supreme illimitable essence. Property also holds 
 of the soul, covers great spiritual facts, and instinctively 
 we at first hold to it with swords and laws, and v/ide and 
 complex combinations. The obscure consciousness of this 
 fact is the hght of all our day, the claim of claims; the 
 plea for education, for justice, for charity, the foundation 
 of friendship and love, and of the heroism and grandeur 
 which belongs to acts of self-reliance. It is remarkable 
 that involuntarily we always read as superior beings. 
 Universal history, the poets, the romancers, do not in 
 their statehest pictures, — in the sacerdotal, the imperial 
 palaces, in the triumphs of will, or of genius, any where 
 lose our ear, any where make us feel that we intrude, 
 that this is for our betters; but rather is it true, that in 
 their grandest strokes, there we feel most at home. All 
 that Shakespeare says of the king, yonder slip of a boy 
 that reads in the corner feels to be true of himself. We 
 sympathize in the great moments of history, in the great 
 discoveries, the great resistances, the great prosperities, of 
 men; — because there law was enacted, the sea was searched, 
 the land was found, or the blow was struck for us, as we 
 ourselves in that place would have done or applauded. 
 
 So is it in respect to condition and character. We 
 tionor the rich, because they have externally the freedom, 
 power, and grace which we feel to be proper to man, 
 proper to us. So all that is said of the wise man by 
 stoic, or oriental or modern essayist, describes to each man 
 bis own idea, describes his unattained but attainable self. 
 All literature writes the character of the wise man. All 
 books, monuments, pictures, conversation, are portraits 
 in which the wise man finds the lineaments he is form- 
 ing. The silent and the loud praise him, and accost him, 
 and he is stimulated wherever he moves as by personal 
 allusions. A wise and good soul, therefore, never needs 
 
QQ HISTORY 
 
 look for aUusions personal and laudatory in discourse. 
 He hears the commendation, not of himself, but more 
 sweet of that character he seeks, in every word that 
 IS said concerning character, yea, further, m every fact 
 that befalls,-in the running river and the rustlmg corn. 
 Praise is looked, homage tendered, love flows from mute 
 nature from the mountains and the lights of the firmament. 
 These hints, dropped as it were from sleep and night, 
 let us use in broad day. The student is to read history 
 actively and not passively; to esteem his own life he 
 text and books the commentary. Thus compelled, the 
 muse of history will utter oracles, as never to those who 
 do not respect themselves. I have no expectation that 
 anv man will read history aright, who thinks that whatt 
 was done in a remote age, by men whose names have e 
 resounded far, has any deeper sense than what he is? 
 
 "^The world 'exists for the education of each man Therei 
 is no a-e or state of society, or mode of action in history, 
 to which there is not somewhat corresponding m his hte. 
 Every thing tends in a most wonderful naanner to abbre- 
 viate itself and yield its own virtue to him. He should 
 see that he can live all history in his own person. He 
 must sit at home with might and main, and not suffer 
 himself to be bullied by kings or empires, but know that 
 he is greater than all the geography and all the govern- 
 ment of the world; he must transfer the point of viexv 
 from which history is commonly read, from Rome and 
 Athens and London to himself, and ^^\^'Y ^V.Z 
 viction that he is the Court, and if England or EgypJ 
 have any thing to say to him, he will try the case; if not 
 let them forever be silent. He must attain and maintan 
 that lofty sight where facts yield their secret sense, anc 
 poetry and annals are alike. The instinct of the mmd 
 the purpose of nature betrays itself m the use we mak. 
 of the signal narrations of history. Time dissipates ti 
 shining ether the soUd angularity of facts No anchoi 
 no cable, no fences avail to keep a fact a fact. Babylo. 
 and Troy and Tyre, and even early Rome, are passin; 
 
HISTORY 67 
 
 already into fiction. Tlie Garden of Eden, the Sun stand- 
 ing still in Gibeon, is poetry thenceforward to all nations. 
 Who cares what the fact was, when we have thus made 
 a constellation of it to hang in heaven an immortal sign? 
 London and Paris and New York must go the same way. 
 ''What is history," said Napoleon, ''but a fable agreed 
 upon?" This life of ours is stuck round with Egypt, 
 
 , Greece, Gaul, England, War, Colonization, Church, Court, 
 
 land Commerce, as with so many flowers and wild orna- 
 ments grave and gay. I will not make more account of 
 
 >them. 1 beheve in Eternity. I can find Greece, Palestine, 
 Italy, Spain, and the Islands, — the genius and creative 
 
 I principle of each and of all eras in my own mind. 
 
 We are always coming up with the facts that have 
 moved us in history in our private experience, and veri- 
 ying them here. • All history becomes subjective; in other 
 words, there is properly no History; only Biography. 
 j]very soul must know the whole lesson for itself — must 
 go over the whole ground. What it does not see, what 
 It does not live, it will not know. What the former age 
 las epitomized into a formula or rule for manipular con- 
 venience, it will lose all the good of verifying for itself, 
 3y means of the wall of that rule. Somewhere or other, 
 i3ome time or other, it will demand and find compensa- 
 ion for that loss by doing the work itself. Ferguson 
 iiscovered manj^ things in astronomy which had long been 
 f^nown. The better for him. > 
 
 History must be this, or it is nothing. Every law 
 diich the state enacts indicates a fact in human nature; 
 hat is all. We must in our own nature see the necessary 
 ^son of every fact, — see how it could and must be. 
 ,50 stand before every public, every private work; before 
 m oration of Burke, before a victory of Napoleon, before 
 I martyrdom of Sir Thomas More, of Sidney, of Marma- 
 luke Pvobinson, before a French Reign of Terror, and a 
 ^jalem hanging of witches, before a fanatic Revival, and 
 he Animal Magnetism in Paris, or in Providence. We as- 
 ume that we under like influence should be alike affected, 
 nd should achieve the like; and we aim to master 
 
1 
 
 g8 HISTORY 
 
 inteUectuallv the steps, and reach the same height or the 
 same degradation that our fellow, our proxy has done 
 
 \11 inqmrv into antiqmty,-aU curiosity respectmg the 
 pvramicLs the excavated cities, Stonehenge, the Ohio 
 drr-les, :Mexico, ^lemphis, is the desire to do away this 
 ^^-lld, savage and preposterous There or Then, and intro- 
 duce m Its place the Here and the ^ow. I is to bamsh 
 the Xot me, and supply the Me. It is to abolish difference, 
 and restore unity. Belzoni digs and measures m the 
 mummv-pits and pyramids of Thebes, until he can see 
 the end of the difference between the monstrous work 
 and himself When he has satisfied himself, m general 
 and in detail, that it was made by such a person as him- 
 self so armed and so motived, and to ends to which he 
 hm^self in given circumstances should also have worked, 
 the ^problem is then solved; his thought lives along the 
 whole line of temples and sphinxes and catacombs passes ; 
 throucrh them all like a creative soul, with satisfaction,, 
 and they hve again to the mind, or are now. 
 
 \ Gothic cathedral affirms that it was done by us, and 
 not done by us. Surely it was by man, but we find I 
 it not in our man. But we apply ourselves to the history; 
 of its production. We put ourselves into the place and 
 hi^^torical state of the builder. We remember the forest- 
 dwellers, the first temples, the adherence to the first 
 type and the decoration of it as the- wealth of the nation in- 
 creased; the value which is given to wood by carving led 
 to the carvins over the whole mountain of stone ot a 
 cathedral When we have gone through this process, and 
 added thereto the Cathohc Church, its cross, its music, its 
 processions, its Saints' days and image-worship, we have, 
 as it were, been the man that made the minster; W6 
 have seen how it could and must be. We have the suffi- 
 cient reason. . . • • i «• 
 The difference between men is m their principle o. 
 association. Some men classify objects by color am; 
 size and other accidents of appearance; others by in 
 trin^ic likeness, or bv the relation of cause and effect, iti' 
 progress of the inteUect consists in the clearer ^-lSlon o 
 
HISTORY 69 
 
 causes, which over-looks surface-differences. To the poet, 
 to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are irienelly and 
 sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. 
 For the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circum- 
 stance. Every chemical substance, every plant, every an- 
 imal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of 
 appearance. 
 
 Why, being as we are surrounded by this all-creating 
 nature, soft and fluid as a cloud or the air, should we be 
 such hard pedants, and magnify a few forms? Why 
 should we make account of time, or of magnitude, or of 
 form? The soul knows them not, and genius, obeying 
 its law, knows how to play with them as a young child 
 plays with greybeards and in churches. Genius studies 
 the casual thought, and far back in the womb of things 
 sees the rays parting from one orb, that diverge ere they 
 fall by infinite diameters. Genius watches the monad 
 through all his masks as he performs the metempsychosis 
 of nature. Genius detects through the fly, through the 
 caterpillar, through the grub, through the egg, the constant 
 type of the individual; through countless individuals the 
 fixed species; through many species the genus; through 
 all genera the steadfast type; through all the kingdoms 
 of organized life the eternal unity. Nature is a mutable 
 cloud, which is always and never the same. She casts 
 the same thought into troops of forms, as a poet makes 
 twenty fables with one moral. Beautifully shines a spirit 
 through the bruteness and toughness of matter. Alone 
 omnipotent, it converts all things to its own end. The 
 adamant streams into softest but precise form before it, 
 but, whilst I look at it, its outUne and texture are changed 
 altogether. Nothing is so fleeting as form. Yet never 
 does it quite deny itself. In man we still trace the rudi- 
 ments or hints of all that we esteem badges of servitude 
 in the lower races, yet in him they enhance his nobleness 
 and grace; as lo, in ^schylus, transformed to a cow,, 
 offends the imagination, but how changed when as Isis; 
 in Eciypt she meets Jove, a beautiful woman, with nothing; 
 of the metamorphosis left but the lunar horns as the 
 
70 HISTORY 
 
 splendid ornament of her brows! 
 
 The identity of history is equally intrinsic, the diversity 
 equally obvious. There is at the surface infinite variety 
 of things; at the center there is simphcity and unity of 
 cause. How many are the acts of one man in which we 
 recognize the same character! See the variety of the 
 sources of our information in respect to the Greek 
 genius. Thus at first we have the civil history of that 
 people, as Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch 
 have given it — a very sufficient account of what manner 
 of persons they were, and what they did. Then we have 
 the same soul expressed for us again i n their literature; 
 in poems, drama, and philosophy: a very complete form. 
 Then we have it once more in their architecture, — the 
 purest sensuous beauty, — the perfect niedium" never 
 overstepping the limit of charming propriety and grace. 
 Then we have it once more in sculpture^ — ^^the tongue on 
 the balance of expression,'' tnosc forms in every action, 
 at every age of life, ranging through all the scale of con- 
 dition, from god to beast, and never transgressing the 
 ideal serenity, but in convulsive exertion the liege of order 
 and of law. Thus, of the genius of one remarkable people, 
 we have a fourfold representation, — the most various 
 expression of one moral thing: and to the senses what 
 more unlike than an ode of Pindar, a marble Centaur, 
 the Peristj'le of the Parthenon, and the last actions of 
 Phocion? Yet do these varied external expressions pro- 
 ceed from one national mind. 
 
 Every one must have observed faces and forms which, 
 without any resembfing feature, make a like impression 
 on the beholder. A particular picture or copy of verses, 
 if it do not awaken the same train of images, will yet 
 superinduce the same sentiment as some wild mountain 
 M'alk, although the resemblance is nowise obvious to the 
 senses, but is occult and out of the reach of the under- 
 standing. Nature is an endlesp cnrrib ination and ropetitiont 
 of a very l^ v laws.^^ie hums the old well-known airf 
 through mnumerablevariations. 
 
 Nature is full of a sublime family-hkeness throughout 
 
 i 
 
HISTORY 71 
 
 her works. She dehghts in starthng us with resemblances 
 in the most unexpected quarters. I have seen tlie head 
 of an old sachem of the forest, which at once reminded 
 the eye of a bald mountain summit, and the furrows of 
 the brow suggested the strata of the rock. There are 
 men whose manners have the same essential splendor 
 as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the 
 Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art. 
 And there are compositions of the same strain to be found 
 in the books of all ages. What is Guido's Rospighosi 
 Aurora but a morning thought, as the horses in it are 
 only a morning cloud. If any one will but take pains to 
 observe the variety of actions to which he is equally in- 
 clined in certain modes of mind, and those to which he is 
 averse, he will see how deep is the chain of affinity. 
 
 A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree with- 
 out in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child by 
 studying the outhnes of its form merely, — but, by watch- 
 ing for a time his motions and plays, the painter enters 
 his nature, and can then draw him at will in every atti- 
 tude. So Roos "entered into the inmost nature of a 
 sheep." I knew a draughtsman employed in a pubUc 
 survey, who found that he could not sketch the rocks 
 until their geological structure was first explained to him. 
 
 What is to be inferred from these facts but this; that 
 in a certa in state of thought is the common origingj 
 've ry diverse ^mjrka?^ It lb Lhe suiilL and lioL the iact that, 
 IS identical!l3y "descending far down into the depths of 
 the soul, and not primarily by a painful acquisition of 
 many manual skills, the artist attains the power of awaken- 
 ing other souls to a given activity. 
 
 It has been said that "common souls pay with what 
 they do; nobler souls with that which they are." And 
 why? Because a soul, living from a great depth of being, 
 awakens in us by its actions and words, by its very looks 
 and manners, the same power and beauty that a gallery 
 of sculpture, or of pictures, are wont to animate. 
 
 Civil history, natural history, the history of art, and 
 the history of literature, — all must be explained from 
 
72 HISTORY 
 
 individual history, or must remain words. There is 
 nothing but is related to us, nothing that does not interest 
 us — kingdom, college, tree, horse, or iron shoe, the roots 
 of all things are in man. It is in the soul that archi- 
 tecture exists. Santa Croce and the Dome of St. Peter's 
 are lame copies after a divine model. Strasburg Cathe- 
 dral is a material counterpart of the soul of Erwin of 
 Steinbach. The true poem is the poet's mind; the true 
 ship is the ship-builder. In the man, could we lay him 
 open, we should see the suficient reason for the last flourish 
 and tendril of his work, as every spine and tint in the 
 sea-shell pre-exist in the secreting organs of the fish. The 
 whole of heraldry and of chivalry is in courtesy. A man 
 of fnie manners shall pronounce your name with all the 
 ornament that titles of nobility could ever add. 
 
 The tri\'ial experience of every day is always verifying 
 some old prctliction to us, and converting into things for 
 us also the words and signs wliich we had heard and seen 
 without heed. Let me add a few examples, such as fall 
 within the scope of every man's observation, of trivial 
 facts which go to illustrate great and consi:)icuous facts. 
 
 A lady, with whom I was riding in the forest, said to 
 me, that the woods always seemed to her to wait, as if 
 the genii who inhabit them suspended their deeds until 
 the wayfarer has passed onward. This is j^recisely the 
 thought which poetry has celebrated in the dance of the 
 fairies, which ]3reaks off on the approach of human feet. 
 The man who has seen the rising moon break out of the 
 clouds at midnight, has been present like an archangel 
 at the creation of light and of the world. I remember 
 that being abroad one summer day, my companion 
 pointed out to me a broad cloud, which might extend a 
 quarter of a mile parallel to the horizon, quite accurately 
 in the form of a cherub as painted over churches, — a 
 round block in the centre, which it was easy to animate 
 with eyes and mouth, supported on either side by wide- 
 stretched symmetrical wings. What appears once in the 
 atmosphere may appear often, and it was undoubtedly 
 the archetype of that familiar ornament. I have seen 
 
HISTORY 73 
 
 in the sky a chain of summer Ughtning which at once 
 revealed to me that tlie Greeks drew from nature when 
 they painted the thunderbolt in the hand of Jove. I 
 have seen a snow-drift along the sides of the stone wall 
 which obviously gave the idea of the common architectural 
 scroll to abut a tower. 
 
 By simply throwing ourselves into new circumstances we 
 do continually invent anew the orders and the ornaments 
 of architecture, as we see how each people merely decor- 
 ated its primitive abodes. The Doric temple still presents 
 the semblance of the wooden cabin in which the Dorian 
 dwelt. The Chinese pagoda is plainly a Tartar tent. 
 The Indian and Egyj^tian temples still betray the mounds 
 and subterranean houses of their forefathers. "The 
 custom of making houses and tombs in the living rock," 
 (says Heeren, in his Researches on the Ethiopians), 
 "determined very naturally the principal character of the 
 Nubian Egypjtian architecture to the colossal form which 
 it assumed. In these caverns already prepared by nature, 
 the eye was accustomed to dwell on huge shapes and 
 masses, so that when art came to the assistance of nature, 
 it could not move on a small scale without degrading 
 itself. What would statues of the usual size, or neat 
 porches and wings have been, associated with those gigantic 
 halls before which only Colossi could sit as watchmen, or 
 lean on the pillars of the interior?" 
 
 The Gothic church plainly originated in a rude adapta- 
 tion of the forest trees with all their boughs to a festal 
 or solemn arcade, as the bands about the cleft pillars still in- 
 dicate the green withes that tied them. No one can walk 
 in a road cut through pine woods, without being struck 
 v/ith the architectural appearance of the grove, especially 
 in winter, when the bareness of all other trees shows the 
 low arch of the Saxons. In the woods in a winter after- 
 noon one will see as readily the origin of the stained 
 glass window with which the Gothic cathedrals are adorned, 
 in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare 
 and crossing branches of the forest. Nor can any lover 
 of nature enter the old piles of Oxford and the Enghsh 
 
74 HISTORY 
 
 cathedrals without feehng that the forest overpowered 
 the mind of the builder, and that his chisel, his saw, and 
 plane still reproduced its ferns, its spikes of flowers, its 
 locust, its pine, its oak, its fir, its spruce. 
 
 The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone subdued 
 by the insatiable demand of harmony in man. The moun- 
 tain of granite blooms into an eternal flower with the 
 lightness and delicate finish as well as the aerial proportions 
 and perspective of vegetable beauty. 
 
 In like manner all public facts are to be individualized, 
 all private facts are to be generalized. Then at once 
 History becomes fluid and true, and Biography deep and 
 sublime. As the Persian imitated in the slender shafts 
 and capitals of his architecture the stem and flower of 
 the lotus and palm, so the Persian court in its magnificent 
 era never gave over the Nomadism of its barbarous tribes, 
 but traveled from Ecbatana, where the spring was spent, 
 to Susa in summer, and to Babylon for the winter. 
 
 In the early history of Asia and Africa^ Nomadism and 
 Agriculture are the two antagonistic facts. The geography 
 of Asia and of Africa necessitated a nomadic life. But 
 the nomads were the terror of all those whom the soil or 
 the advantages of a market had induced to build towns. 
 Agriculture therefore was a religious injunction because 
 of the perils of the state from nomadism. And in these 
 late and ci^'il countries of England and America, the 
 contest of these propensities still fights out the old battle 
 in each individual. "We are all rovers and all fixtures by 
 turns, and pretty rapid turns. The nomads of Africa are 
 constrained to wander by the attacks of the gad-fly, which 
 drives the cattle mad, and so compels the tribe to emigrate 
 in the rainy season and drive off the cattle to the higher 
 sandy regions. The nomads of Asia follow the pasturage 
 from month to month. In America and Europe the 
 nomadism is of trade and curiosity. A progress certainly- 
 from the gad-fly of Astaboras to the Angelo and Italomaniar 
 of Boston Bay. The difference between men in this 
 respect is the faculty of rapid domestication, the power 
 to find his chair and bed everywhere, which one man haSjj 
 
 1 
 
HISTORY 75 
 
 and another has not. Some men have so much of the 
 Indian left, have constitutionally such habits of accom- 
 modation, that at sea, or in the forest, or in the snow, 
 they sleep as warm, and dine with as good appetite, and 
 associate as happily, as in their own house. And to push 
 this old fact still one degree nearer, we may find it a 
 representative of a permanent fact in human nature. The 
 intellectual nomachsm is the faculty of objectiveness, or 
 of eyes which everywhere feed themselves. Who hath 
 such eyes, everywhere falls into easy relations with his 
 fellow-men. Every man, every thing is a prize, a study, 
 a property to him, and this love smooths his brow, joins 
 him to men, and makes him beautiful and beloved in 
 their sight. His house is a wagon; he roams through all 
 latitudes as easily as a Calmuc. 
 
 /^ Every thing the individual sees without him, correspond^ 
 to his states of mind, and every thing is in turn intelligible \ 
 to him, as his onward thinking leads him into the truth to/ 
 which that fact or series belongs. 
 
 The primeval world, the Fore-World, as the Germans 
 say, — I can dive to it in myself as wtII as grope for it 
 with researching fingers in catacombs, libraries, and the 
 broken reliefs and torsos of ruined villas. 
 
 What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in 
 Greek history, letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods, 
 from the heroic or Homeric age, down to the domestic 
 hfe of the Athenians and Spartans, four or five centuries 
 later? This period draws us because we are Greeks. It 
 is a state through which every man in some sort passes. 
 The Grecian state is the era of the bodily nature, the 
 perfection of the senses, — of the spiritual nature unfolded 
 in strict unity with the body. In it existed those human 
 forms which supphed the sculptor with his models of 
 Hercules, Phoebus, and Jove; not like the forms abound- 
 ing in the streets of modern cities, wherein the face is a 
 confused blur of features, but composed of incorrupt, 
 sharply defined and symmetrical features, whose eye- 
 sockets are so formed that it would be impossible for 
 such eyes to squint, and take furtive glances on this side 
 
76 HISTORY 
 
 and on that, but they must turn the whole head. 
 
 The manners of that period are plain and fierce. The 
 reverence exhibited is for personal qualities, courage, 
 address, self-command, justice, strength, swiftness, a loud 
 voice, a broad chest. Luxury is not known, nor elegance. 
 A sparse population and want make every man his own 
 valet, cook, butcher, and soldier; and the habit of 
 siii)plying his own needs educates the body to wonderful 
 performances. Such are the Agamemnon and Diomed of 
 Homer, and not far difi"erent is the picture Xenophon 
 gives of himself and his compatriots in the Retreat of the 
 Ten Thousand. ''After the army had crossed the river 
 Teleboas in Armenia, there fell much snow, and the 
 troops lay miserably on the ground, covered with it. But 
 Xenophon arose naked, and taking an axe, began to split 
 wood; whereupon others arose and did the like." Through- 
 out his army seemed to be a boundless liberty of speech. 
 They quarrel for plunder, they wrangle with the generals 
 on each new order, and Xenophon is as sharp-tongued as 
 any, and sharper-tongucd than most, and so gives as good 
 as he gets. Who does not see that this is a gang of 
 great boys, with such a code of honor and such lax disci- 
 pline as great boys have? 
 
 The costly charm of the ancient tragedy, and indeed 
 of all the old literature, is, that the persons speak simply 
 — speak as persons who have great good sense without 
 knowing it, before yet the reflective habit has become the 
 predominant habit of the mind. Our admiration of the 
 antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural. 
 The Greeks are not reflective but perfect in their senses, 
 perfect in their health, with the finest physical organiza- 
 tion in the world. Adults acted with the simpHcity and 
 grace of boys. They made vases, tragedies, and statues 
 such as healthy senses should — that is, in good taste. 
 Such things have continued to be made in all ages, and 
 are now, wherever a healthy physique exists; but, as a 
 class, from their superior organization, they have surpassed 
 all. They combine the energy of manh ood with the en^ 
 
 childhood. DTTT revsreiicewr 
 
HISTORY 77 
 
 them is our reverence for childhood. Nobody can reflect 
 upon an unconscious act with regret or contempt. Bard 
 or hero cannot look down on the word or gesture of a 
 child. It is as great as they. The attraction of these 
 manners is, that they belong to man, r^nd are known to 
 every man in virtue of his being once a child; beside that 
 always there are individuals who retain these character- 
 istics. A person of childlike genius and inborn energy is 
 still a Greek, and revives our love of the muse of Hellas. 
 A great boy, a great girl, with good sense, is a Greek. 
 Beautiful is the love of nature in the Philoctetes. But 
 in reading those fine apostrophes to sleep, to the stars, 
 rocks, mountains, and waves, I feel time passing away as 
 an ebbing sea. I feel the eternity of man, the identity of 
 his thought. The Greek had, it seems, the same fellow 
 beings as I. The sun and moon, water and fire, met his 
 heart i^recisely as they meet mine. Then the vaunted 
 distinction between Greek and English, between Classic 
 and Romantic schools, seems superficial and pedantic. 
 When a thought of Plato becomes a thought to me, — 
 when a truth that fired the soul of Pindar fires mine, time 
 is no more. When I feel that we two meet in a percep- 
 tion, that our two souls are tinged with the same hue, and 
 do, as it were, run into one, why should I measure degrees 
 of latitude, why should I count Egyptian years? 
 
 " Hie student interprets the age o f chivalry by his own 
 age of chiva lry, and the days o t maritime adventure andl 
 circumna vigation by quite par aIM''-mkffgture experiences 
 ot nis own. ^ To the sacred hist orv of the iVrrrM-lienias 
 
 le same key. When the voice of a prophet out of the 
 deeps of antiquity merely echoes to him a sentiment of 
 his own infancy, a prayer of his own youth, he then pierces 
 to the truth through all the confusion of tradition and 
 the caricature of institutions. 
 
 Rare, extravagant spirits come by us at intervals, who 
 disclose to us new facts in nature. I see that men of 
 God have always, from time to time, walked among men, 
 and made their commission felt in the heart and soul of 
 the commonest hearer. Hence, evidently, the tripod, the 
 
78 HISTORY 
 
 priest, the priestess inspired by the divine afflatus. 
 
 Jesus astonishes and overpowers sensual people. They 
 cannot unite him to history, or reconcile him with them- 
 selves. As they come to revere their intuitions and aspire 
 to live holily, thejr own piety explains every fact, every 
 word. 
 
 How easily these old worships of Moses, of Zoroaster, 
 of Menu, of Socrates, domesticate themselves in the 
 mind! I cannot find any antiquity in them. They are 
 mine as much as theirs. 
 
 Then I have seen the first monks and anchorets without 
 crossing seas or centuries. More than once some individ- 
 ual has appeared to me with such neghgence of labor and 
 such commanding contemplation, a haughty beneficiary, 
 beggmg in the name of God, as made good to the nine- 
 teenth century Simeon the Stylite, the Thebais, and the 
 first Capuchms. 
 
 The priestcraft of the East and West, of the Magian, 
 Brahmin, Druid and Inca, is expounded in the individual's 
 private life. The cramping influence of a hard formalist 
 on a young child in repressing his spirits and courage, 
 paralyzmg the understandmg, and that without producing 
 indignation, but only fear and obedience, and even much 
 sympathy with the tyranny, — is a familiar fact explained 
 to the child when he becomes a man, only by seeing that 
 the oppressor of his youth is himself a child tyrannized 
 over by those names and words and forms, of whose influ- 
 ence he was merely the organ to the youth. The fact 
 teaches him how Belus was worshipped, and how the 
 pyramids were built, better than the discovery by Cham- 
 pollion of the names of all the workmen and the cost of 
 every tile. He finds Assyria and the Mounds of Cholula 
 at his door, and himself has laid the courses. 
 
 Again, in that protest which each considerate person 
 makes against the superstition of his times, he reacts step 
 for step the part of old reformers, and in the search after 
 truth finds like them new perils to virtue. He learns 
 again what moral vigor is needed to supply the girdle 
 of a superstition. A great licentiousness treads on the 
 
HISTORY 79 
 
 aeels of a reformation. How many times in the history 
 Df the world has the Luther of the day had to lament 
 the decay of piety in his own household! "Doctor," said 
 ais wife to Martin Luther one day, ''how is it that whilst 
 subject to papacy we prayed so often and wiih such fer- 
 ^'our, whilst now we pray with the utmost coldness and 
 v^ery seldom?" , 
 
 The advancing man discovers how deep a property he 
 bath in all literature, — in all fable as well as in all history. 
 He finds that the poet was no odd fellow who described 
 strange and impossible situations, but that universal man 
 wrote by his pen a confession true for one and true for 
 all. His own secret biography he finds in lines wonder- 
 fully intelligible to him, yet dotted down before he was 
 born. One after another he comes up in his private ad- 
 ventures with every fable of ^sop, of Homer, of Hafiz, 
 of Ariosto, of Chaucer, of Scott, and verifies them with 
 his own head and hands. 
 
 The beautiful fables of the Greeks, being proper crea- 
 tions of the Imagination and not of the Fancy, are uni- 
 versal verities. What a range of meanings and what per- 
 petual pertinence has the story of Prometheus! Beside 
 its primary value as the first chapter of the history of 
 Europe (the mythology thinly veiling authentic facts, the 
 invention of the mechanic arts, and the migration of 
 colonies), it gives the history of rehgion with some close- 
 ness to the faith of later ages. Prometheus is the Jesus 
 of the old mythology. He is the friend of man; stands 
 between the unjust "justice" of the Eternal Father, and 
 the race of mortals; and readily suffers all things^ on their 
 account. But where it departs from the Calvinistic 
 Christianitv, and exhibits him as the defier of Jove, it 
 represents a state of mind which readily appears wherever 
 the doctrine of Theism is taught m a crude, objective 
 form, and which seems the self-defence of man against 
 ihis untruth, namely, a discontent with the beheved fact 
 that a God exists, and a feeling that the obligation of 
 reverence is onerous. It would steal, if it could, the fire 
 of the Creator, and live apart from him, and independent 
 
80 HISTORY 
 
 of him. The Prometheus Vinctus is the romance of 
 scepticism. Not less true to all time are all the details 
 of that stately apologue. Apollo kept the flocks of Admetus, 
 said the poets. Every man is a divinity in disguise, a 
 god playing the fool. It seems as if heaven had sent its 
 insane angels into our world as to an asylum, and here 
 they will break out into their native music and utter at 
 intervals the words they have heard in heaven; then the 
 mad fit returns, and they mope and wallow like dogs. 
 When the gods come among them, they are not known. 
 Jesus was not; Socrates and Shakespeare were not. 
 Antaeus was suffocated by the gripe of Hercules, but every 
 time he touched his mother earth, his strength was re- 
 newed. Man is the broken giant, and in all his weakness, 
 both his body and his mind are invigorated by habits of 
 conversation with nature. The power of music, the power 
 of poetry to unfix, and, as it were, clap wings to all solid 
 nature, interprets the riddle of Orpheus, which was to his 
 childhood an idle tale. The philosophical perception of 
 identity through endless mutations of form makes him 
 know the Proteus. What else am I who laughed or wept 
 yesterday, who slept last night like a corpse, and this 
 morning stood and ran? And what see I on any side 
 but the transmigrations of Proteus? I can symbolize my 
 thought by using the name of any creature, of any fact, 
 because every creature is man agent or patient. Tantalus 
 is but a name for 3'ou and me. Tantalus means the im- 
 possibility of drinking the waters of thought which are 
 always gleaming and waving within sight of the soul. The 
 transmigration of souls: that too is no fable. I would 
 it were; l)ut men and women are only half human. Every 
 animal of the l^arn-yard, the field and the forest, of the 
 earth and of the waters that are under the earth, has 
 contrived to get a footing, and to leave the print of its 
 features and form in some one or other of these upright, 
 heaven-facing speakers. Ah, brother, hold fast to 
 the man and awe the beast; stop the ebb of thy soul — 
 ebbing downward into the forms into whose habits thou 
 hast now for many years slid. As near and proper to us 
 
HISTORY 81 
 
 s also that old fable of the Sphinx, who was said to sit 
 n the roadside and put riddles to every passenger. If 
 :he man could not answer, she swallowed him ahve. If 
 le could solve the riddle, the Sphinx was slain. What 
 s our hfe but an endless flight of winged facts or events? 
 :n splendid variety these changes come, all putting ques- 
 ,ions to the human spirit. Those men who cannot answer 
 )y a superior wisdom these facts or questions of time, 
 serve them. Facts encumber them, tyrannize over them, 
 ind make the men of routine the men of sense, in whom 
 
 literal obedience to facts has extinguished every spark 
 )f that light by which man is truly man. But if the man 
 s true to his better instincts or sentiments, and refuses the 
 lominion of facts, as one that comes of a higher race, 
 remains fast by the soul and sees the principle, then the 
 ■acts fall aptly and supple into their places; they know 
 :heir master, and the meanest of them glorifies him. 
 
 See in Goethe's Helena the same desire that every word 
 should be a thing. These figures, he would say, these 
 Mrons, Griffins, Phorkyas, Helen, and Leda, are somewhat, 
 md do exert a specific influence on the mind. So far then 
 ire they eternal entities, as real to-day as in the first Olym- 
 piad. Much revolving them, he writes out freely his 
 tiumor, and gives them body to his own imagination. And 
 although that poem be as vague and fantastic as a dream, 
 ^et it is much more attractive than the more regular dram- 
 atic pieces of the same author, for the reason that it oper- 
 ates a wonderful rehef to the mind from the routine of 
 customary images, — awakens the reader's invention and 
 fancy by the wild freedom of the design, and by the unr 
 ceasing succession of brisk shocks of surprise. 
 
 The universal nature, too strong for the petty nature 
 of the bard, sits on his neck and writes through his hand; 
 30 that when he seems to vent a mere caprice and wild ro- 
 mance, the issue is an exact allegory. Hence Plato said 
 that "poets atter great and wise things which they do not 
 themselves understand.*' All the fictions of the Middle 
 Age explain themselves as a masked or frolic expresion of 
 that which, in grave earnest, the mind of that period 
 
82 HISTORY 
 
 toiled to achieve. Magic, and all that is ascribed to it, is 
 manifestly a deep presentiment of the powers of science. 
 The shoes of swiftness, the sword of sharpness, the power 
 of subduing the elements, of using the secret virtues of 
 minerals, of understanding the voices of birds, are the 
 obscure efforts of the mind in a right direction. The pre- 
 ternatural prowess of the hero, the gift of perpetual youth, 
 and the like, are alike the endeavor of the human spirit "to i 
 bend the shows of things to the desires of the mind." 
 
 In Perceforest and Amadis de Gaul, a garland and a rose 
 bloom on the head of her who is faithful, and fade on the ■ 
 brow of the inconstant. In the story of the Boy and the 
 Mantle, even a mature reader may be surprised with a 
 glow of virtuous pleasure at the triumph of the gentle 
 Genelas; and, indeed, all the postulates of elfin annals, , 
 that the Fairies do not like to be named; that their gifts ' 
 are capricious and not to be trusted; that who seeks a treas- 
 ure must not speak; and the hke, I find true in Concord, J 
 however they might be in Cornwall or Bretagne. 
 
 Is it otherwise in the newest romance? I read the 
 Bride of Lammermoor. Sir William Ashton is a mask for 
 a vulgar temptation, Ravenswood Castle, a fine name for 
 proud poverty, and the foreign mission of state only a 
 Bunyan disguise for honest industry. We may all shoot 
 a wild bull that would toss the good and beautiful, 
 by fighting down the unjust and sensual. Lucy Ashton is 
 another name for fidelity, which is always beautiful and 
 always liable to calamity in this world. 
 
 But along with the civil and metaphysical history of man, 
 another history goes daily forward — that of the external 
 world, — in which he is not less strictly imphcated. He is the 
 compend of time: he is also the correlative of nature. 
 The power of man consists in the multitude of his affinities, 
 in the fact that his life is intertwined with the whole chain 
 of organic and inorganic being. In the age of the Caesars, 
 out from the Forum at Rome proceeded the great high- 
 ways north, south, east, west, to the center of every pro- 
 vince of the empire, making each market-town of Persia, 
 Spain, and Britain, pervious to the soldiers of the capital: 
 
HISTORY 83 
 
 so out of the human heart go, as it were, highways to the 
 heart of every object in nature, to reduce it under the do- 
 minion of man. A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of 
 roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world. All his 
 faculties refer to natures out of him. All his faculties pre- 
 dict the world he is to inhabit, as the fins of the fish foreshow 
 that water exists, or the wings of an eagle in the egg pre- 
 suppose a medium like air. Insulate, and you destoy him. 
 He cannot live without a world. Put Napoleon in an island- 
 prison, let his faculties find no men to act on, no Alps to 
 climb, no stake to play for, and he would beat the air and 
 appear stupid. Transport him to large countries, dense 
 population, complex interests, and antagonist power, and 
 you shall see that the man Napoleon, bounded, that is, by 
 such a profile and outline, is not the virtual Napoleon. This 
 is but Talbot's shadow; 
 
 "His substance is not here: 
 For what you see is but the smallest part, 
 And least proportion of humanity; 
 But were the whole frame here, 
 It is of such a spacious, lofty pitch, 
 Your roof were not sufficient to contain it." — Henry VI. 
 
 Columbus needs a planet to shape his course upon. 
 Newton and Laplace need myriads of ages and thickstrown 
 celestial areas. One may say a gravitating solar system is 
 already prophesied in the nature of Newton's mind. Not 
 less does the brain of Davy and Gay-Lussac from childhood, 
 exploring always the affinities and repulsions of particles, 
 anticipate the laws of organization. Does not the eye of 
 the human embryo predict the light? the ear of Handel 
 predict the witchcraft of harmonic sound? Do not 
 the constructive fingers of Watt, Fulton, Whittemore, 
 Arkwright predict the fusible, hard, and temperable texture 
 of metals, the properties of stone, water, and wood ? the lovely 
 attributes of the maiden child predict the refinements 
 and decorations of civil society? Here also we are re- 
 minded of the action of man on man. A mind might ponder 
 its thought for ages, and not gain so much self-knowledge 
 as the passion of love shall teach it in a day. Who knows 
 
84 HISTORY 
 
 himself before he has been thrilled with indignation at 
 an outrage, or has heard an eloquent tongue, or has shared the 
 throb of thousands in a national exultation or alarm? No 
 man can antedate his experience, or guess what faculty or 
 feeling a new object shall unlock, any more than he can 
 draw to-day the face of a person whom he shall see to- 
 morrow for the first time. 
 
 I will not now go behind the general statement to ex- 
 plore the reason of this correspondency. Let it suffice 
 that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is 
 One, and that nature is its correlative, history is to be read 
 and written. 
 
 *Thus in all ways does the soul concentrate and reproduce 
 its treasures for each pupil, for each new-born man. He 
 too shall pass through the whole cycle of experience. He 
 shall collect into a focus the rays of nature. History no 
 longer shall be a dull book. It shall walk incarnate in every 
 just and wise man. You shall not tell me by languages and 
 titles a catalogue of the volumes you have read. You shall 
 make me feel what periods you have lived. A man shall 
 be the Temple of Fame. He shall walk, as the poets have 
 described that goddess, in a robe painted all over with won- 
 derful events and experiences; — his own form and features 
 by their exalted intelligence shall be that variegated vest. 
 I shall find in him the Foreworld; in his childhood the 
 Age of Gold; the Apples of Knowledge; the Argonautic 
 Expedition; the calling of Abraham; the building of the 
 Temple; the Advent of Christ; Dark Ages; the Revival of 
 Letters; the Reformation; the discovery of new lands, the 
 opening of new sciences, and new regions in man. He shall 
 be the priest of Pan, and bring with him into humble cot- 
 tages the blessing of the morning stars and all the recorded 
 benefits of heaven and earth. 
 
 Is there somewhat overweening in this claim? Then I 
 reject all I have written; for what is the use of pretending 
 to know what we know not? But it is the fault of our 
 rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one fact without 
 seeming to behe some other. I hold our actual knowledge 
 very cheap. Hear the rats in the wall, see the lizard on the 
 
HISTORY 85 
 
 fence, the fungus under foot, the Uchen on the log. What 
 do I know sympathetically, morally, of either of these 
 worlds of life? As long as the Caucasian man — perhaps 
 longer — these creatures have kept their counsel beside him, 
 and there is no record of any word or sign that has passed 
 from one to the other. Nay, what does history yet record 
 of the metaphysical annals of man? What hght does it 
 shed on those mysteries which we hide under the names 
 Death and Immortahty? Yet every history should be 
 written in a wisdom which divined the range of our affin- 
 ities, and looked at facts as symbols. I am ashamed to see 
 what a shallow village-tale our so-called History is. How 
 many times we must say Rome, and Paris, and Constanti- 
 nople. What does Rome know of rat and Hzard? What 
 are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems 
 ; of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they 
 for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, for the Kanaka in his 
 canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter? 
 
 Broader and deeper we must write our annals — from an 
 ethical reformation, from an influx of the ever-new, ever- 
 sanative" conscience — if we would trulier express our central 
 and wide-related nature, instead of this old chronology of 
 selfishness and pride to which we have too long lent our 
 eyes. Already that day exists for us, shines in on us at 
 unawares; but the path of science and of letters is not the 
 way into nature, but from it rather. The idiot, the Indian, 
 the child, and the unschooled farmer's boy, come much nearer 
 to these, — understand them better than the dissector or the 
 antiquary. 
 
 -1 
 
 Q 
 
IV 
 EXPEEIENCB 
 
 The lords of life, ihe lords of life, — 
 
 I saw them pass 
 
 In their own guise, 
 
 Like and unlike, 
 
 Portly and grim. 
 
 Use and Surprise, 
 
 Surface and Dream, 
 
 Succession swift, and spectral Wrong, 
 
 Temperament without a tongue. 
 
 And the inventor of the game 
 
 Omnipresent without name; — 
 
 Some to sec, some to be guessed. 
 
 They marched from east to west: 
 
 Little man, least of all, 
 
 Among the legs of his guardians tall, 
 
 Walked about with puzzled look: — 
 
 Him by the hand dear nature took; 
 
 Dearest nature, strong and kind. 
 
 Whispered, "Darling, never mind! 
 
 To-morrow they will wear another face. 
 
 The founder thou! these are thy race!" 
 
 Where do we find ourselves ? In a series, of which we do 
 not know the extremes, and believe that it has none. We 
 wake, and find ourselves on a stair: there are stairs below 
 us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above 
 us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight. But 
 the Genius which, according to the old belief, stands at the 
 door by which we enter, and gives us the lethe to drink, 
 that we may tell no tales, mixed the cup too strongly, and 
 w^e cannot shake off the lethargy now at noon-day. Sleep 
 lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all 
 day in the boughs of the fir-tree. All things swim and glim- 
 mer. Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. 
 Ghost-hke we gUde through nature, and should not know 
 
 86 
 
EXPERIENCE 87 
 
 our place again. Did our birth fall in some fit of indigence 
 and frugality in nature, that she was so sparing of her 
 fire and so liberal of her earth, that it appears to us that 
 we lack the affirmative principle, and though we have 
 health and reason, yet we have no superfluity of spirit for 
 new creation? We have enough to live and l3ring the year 
 about, but not an ounce to impart or to invest. Ah, that our 
 Genius were a little more of a genius! We are like 
 millers on the lower levels of a stream, when the factories 
 above them have exhausted the water. We, too, fancy 
 that the upper people must have raised their dams. 
 
 If any of us knew what we were doing, or where we are 
 going, then when we think we best know! We do not 
 know to-day whether we are busy or idle. In times, 
 when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards 
 discovered, that much was accomplished, and much was 
 begun in us. All our days are so unprofitable while they 
 pass, that 'tis wonderful where or when we ever got any 
 thing of this which we call wisdom, poetry, virtue. We 
 never got it on any dated calendar day. Some heavenly 
 days must have been intercalated somewhere, like those 
 that Hermes won with dice of the Moon, that Osiris might 
 be born. It is said, all martyrdoms looked mean when they 
 were suffered. Every ship is a romantic object, except 
 that we sail in. Embark, and the romance quits our vessel, 
 and hangs on every other sail in the horizon. Our life looks 
 trivial, and we shun to record it. Men seem to have learned 
 of the horizon the art of perpetual retreating and reference. 
 "Yonder uplands are rich pasturage, and my neighbor has 
 fertile meadow, but my field," says the querulous farmer, 
 'only holds the world together." I quote another man say- 
 ing; unluckily, that other withdraws himself in the same way, 
 and quotes me. 'Tis a trick of nature thus to degrade 
 to-day; a good deal of buzz, and somewhere a result 
 slipped magically in. Every roof is agreeable to the eye, 
 until it is lifted: then we find tragedy, and moaning 
 women, and hard-eyed husbands, and deluges of lethe, 
 and the men ask, "What's the news?" as if the old were 
 so bad. How many individuals can we count in society? 
 
88 EXPERIENCE 
 
 how many actions? how many opinions? So much of 
 our time is preparation, so much is routine, and so much 
 retrospect, that the pith of each man's genius contracts 
 itself to a very few hours. The history of Hterature — 
 take the net result of Tiraboschi, Warton, or Schlegel— 
 is a sum of very few ideas, and of very few original tales, — 
 all the rest being variations of these. So in this great 
 society wide lying around us, a critical analysis would find 
 very few spontaneous actions. It is almost all custom and 
 gross sense. There are even few opinions, and these seem 
 organic in the speakers, and do not disturb the universal 
 necessity. 
 
 What opium is instilled into all disaster! It shows 
 formidable as we approach it, but there is at last no rough 
 rasping friction, but the most slippery, sliding surfaces. 
 We fall soft on a thought. Ate Dea is gentle, 
 
 "Over men's heads walking aloft, 
 With tender feet treading so soft." 
 
 People grieve and bemoan themselves, but it is not half 
 so bad with them as they say. There are moods in which 
 we court suffering, in the hope that here, at least, we 
 shall find reality, sharp peaks and edges of truth. But 
 it turns out to be scene-painting, and counterfeit. The only 
 thing grief has taught me, is to know how shallow it is. 
 That, like all the rest, plays about the surface, and never 
 introduces me into the reality, for contact with which, we 
 would even pay the costly price of sons and lovers. Was 
 it Boscovich who found out that bodies never come in con- 
 tact? Well, souls never touch their objects. An in- 
 navigable sea washes with silent waves between us and the 
 things we aim at and converse with. Grief, too, will make 
 us idealists. In the death of my son, now more than two 
 years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate, — no more. 
 I cannot get it nearer to me. If to-morrow I should be in- 
 formed of the bankruptcy of my principal debtors, the loss 
 of my property would be a great inconvenience to me, 
 perhaps, for many years; but it would leave me as it found 
 me, — neither better nor worse. So it is with this calamity: 
 
EXPERIENCE 89 
 
 it does not touch me : something which I fancied was a part 
 of me, — which could not be torn away without tearing me, 
 nor enlarged without enriching me, falls off from me, and 
 leaves no scar. It was caducous. I grieve that grief can 
 teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature. 
 The Indian who was laid under a curse, that the wind should 
 not blow on him, nor water flow to him, nor fire burn him, is a 
 type of us all. The dearest events are summer rain, and 
 we the Para coats that shed every drop. Nothing is 
 left us now but death. We look to that with a grim satis- 
 faction, saying, there at least is reality that will not dodge 
 us. 
 
 I take this evanescence and lubricity of all objects, which 
 lets them slip through our fingers then when we clutch hard- 
 est, to be the most unhandsome part of our condition. 
 Nature does not like to be observed, and likes that we 
 should be her fools and playmates. We may have the 
 sphere for our cricket-ball, but not a berry for our phil- 
 osophy. Direct strokes she never gave us power to make; 
 all our blows glance, all our hits are accidents. Our re- 
 lations to each other are oblique and casual. 
 
 Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illu- 
 sion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, 
 as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored 
 lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows 
 only what lies in its focus. From the mountain you see 
 the mountain. We animate what we can, and we see only 
 what we animate. Nature and books belong to the eyes 
 that see them. It depends on the mood of the man, whether 
 he shall see the sunset or the fine poem. There are always 
 sunsets, and there is alwaj^s genius; but only a few hours so 
 serene that we can relish nature or criticsm. The more or 
 less depends on structure or temperament. Temperament 
 is the iron wire on which the beads are strung. Of what 
 use is fortune or talent to a cold and defective nature? 
 Who cares what sensibility or discrimination a man has at 
 some time shown, if he falls asleep in his chair? or if he 
 laugh and giggle? or if he apologize? or is affected with 
 
90 EXPERIENCE 
 
 egotism? or thinks of his dollar? or cannot go by food? or 
 has gotten a child in his bojiiod? Of what use is genius, 
 if the organ is too convex or too concave, and cannot find a 
 focal distance within the actual horizon of human life? 
 Of what use, if the brain is too cold or too hot, and the man 
 does not care enough for results, to stimulate liim to ex- 
 periment, and hold him up in it? or if the web is too finely 
 woven, too irritable by pleasure and pain, so that hfe stag- 
 nates from too much reception, without due outlet? Of 
 what use to make heroic vows of amendment, if the same 
 old law-breaker is to keep them? What cheer can the 
 religious sentiment yield, when that is suspected to be secretly 
 dependent on the seasons of the year, and the state of the 
 blood? I knew a witty physician who found theology in the 
 bihary duct, and used to affirm that if there was disease 
 in the liver, the man became a Calvinist, and if that organ 
 was sound he became a Unitarian. Very mortifying is the 
 reluctant experience that some unfriendly excess or im- 
 becility neutralizes the promise of genius. We see young 
 men who owe us a new world, so readily and lavishly they 
 promise, but they never acquit the debt; they die young 
 and dodge the account : or if they live, they lose themselves 
 in the crowd. 
 
 Temperament also enters fully into the system of illusions, 
 and shuts us in a prison of glass which we cannot see. 
 There is an optical illusion about every person we meet. In 
 truth, they are all creatures of given temperament, which 
 will appear in a given character, whose boundaries they 
 will never pass: but we look at them, they seem alive, and 
 we presume there is impulse in them. In the moment, it 
 seems impulse; in the year, in the hfetime, it turns out to 
 be a certain uniform tune which the revolving barrel of the 
 music-box must play. Men resist the conclusion in the 
 morning, but adopt it as the evening wears on, that temper 
 prevails over every thing of time, place, and condition, 
 and is inconsumable in the flames of religion. Some mod- 
 ifications the moral sentiment avails to impose, but the in- 
 dividual texture holds its dominion, if not to bias the 
 moral judgments, yet to fix the measure of activity and of 
 
EXPERIENCE 91 
 
 enjoyment. 
 
 I thus express the law as it is read from the platform 
 of ordinary hfe, but must not leave it without noticing the 
 capital exception. For temperament is a power which no 
 man willingly hears anyone praise but himself. On the 
 platform of physics, we cannot resist the contracting in- 
 fluences of so-called science. Temperament puts all div- 
 inity to rout. I know the mental proclivity of physicians. 
 I hear the chuckle of the phrenologists. Theoretic kid- 
 nappers and slave-drivers, they esteem each man the 
 victim of another, who winds him round his finger by 
 knowing the law of his being, and by such cheap sign- 
 boards as the color of his beard, or the slope of his 
 occiput, read the inventory of his fortunes and character. 
 The grossest ignorance does not disgust like this impudent 
 knowingness. The physicians say, they are not material- 
 ists; but they are: — Spirit is matter reduced to an extreme 
 thinness: so thin! — But the definition of spiritual should 
 be, that which is its own evidence. What notions do they 
 attach to love! what to rehgion! One would not willingly 
 pronounce these words in their hearing, and give them the 
 occasion to profane them. I saw a gracious gentleman 
 who adapts his conversation to the form of the head of the 
 man he talks with! I had fancied that the value of life 
 lay in its inscrutable possibilities; in the fact, that I never 
 know, in addressing myself to a new individual, what may 
 befall me. I carry the keys of my castle in my hand, 
 ready to throw them at the feet of my lord, whenever and 
 in what disguise soever he shall appear. I know he is in 
 the neighborhood, hidden among vagabonds. Shall I pre- 
 clude my future, by taking a high seat, and kindly adapt- 
 ing my conversation to the shape of heads? When I 
 come to that, the doctors shall buy me for a cent. — "But, 
 sir, medical history; the report to the Institute; the proven 
 facts!"— I distrust the facts and the inferences. Temper- 
 ament is the veto or limitation-power in the constitution, 
 very justly applied to restrain an opposite excess in the 
 constitution, but absurdly offered as a bar to original equity. 
 When virtue is in presence, all subordinate powers sleep. 
 
92 EXPERIENCE 
 
 On its own level, or in the view of nature, temperament is 
 final. I see not, if one be once caught in this trap of so- 
 called sciences, any escape for the man from the links of 
 the chain of physical necessity. Given such an embryo, 
 such a history must follow. On this platform, one lives 
 in a sty of sensualism, and would soon come to suicide. 
 But it is impossible that the creative power should exclude 
 itself. Into every inteUigence there is a door which is 
 never closed, through which the creator passes. The in- 
 tellect, seeker of absolute truth, or the heart, lover of ab- 
 solute good, intervenes for our succor, and at one whisper of 
 these high powers, we awake from ineffectual struggles 
 with this nightmare. We hurl it into its own hell, and 
 cannot again contract ourselves to so base a state. 
 
 The secret of the illusoriness is in the necessity of a suc- 
 cession of moods or objects. Gladly we would anchor, 
 but the anchorage is quicksand. This onward trick of 
 nature is too strong for us: Pero si muove. When, at night, 
 I look at the moon and stars, I seem stationary, and they 
 to hurry. Our love of the real draws us to permanence, 
 but health of body consists in circulation, and sanity of 
 mind in variety or facility of association. We need change 
 of objects. Dedication to one thought is quickly odious. 
 We house with the insane, and must humor them; then con- 
 versation dies out. Once I took such delight in Montaigne, 
 that I thought I should not need any other book; before 
 that, in Shakspeare; then in Plutarch; then in Plotinus; at 
 one time in Bacon; afterwards in Goethe; even in Bettine; 
 but now I turn the pages of either of them languidly, 
 w^hilst I still cherish their genius. So with pictures; each 
 w^ill bear an emphasis of attention once, which it cannot re- 
 tain, though we fain would continue to be pleased in that 
 manner. How strongly I have felt of pictures, that when 
 you have seen one well, you must take your leave of it; 
 you shall never see it again. I have had good lessons from 
 pictures, which I have since seen without emotion or remark. 
 A deduction must be made from the opinion, which even the 
 wise express of a new book or occurrence. Their opinion 
 gives me tidings of their mood, and some vague guess at 
 
EXPERIENCE 93 
 
 the new fact, but is nowise to be trusted as the lasting re- 
 lation between that intellect and that thing. The child asks, — 
 "Mama, why don't I like the story as well as when you told 
 it me yesterday?" Alas! child, it is even so with the oldest 
 cherubim of knowledge. But will it answer thy question to 
 say, — Because thou wert born to a whole, and this story 
 is a particular? The reason of the pain this discovery 
 causes us (and we make it late in respect to works of art 
 and intellect), is the plaint of tragedy which murmurs from 
 it in regard to persons, to friendship and love. 
 
 That immobility and absence of elasticity which we find 
 in the arts, we find with more pain in the artist. There is 
 no power of expansion in man. Our friends early appear 
 to us representatives of certain ideas, which they never 
 pass or exceed. They stand on the brink of the ocean of 
 thought and power, but they never take the single step 
 that would bring them there. A man is like a bit of Lab- 
 rador spar, which has no lustre as you turn it in your hand, 
 until you come to a particular angle; then it shows deep 
 and beautiful colors. There is no adaptation or universal 
 apphcability in men, but each has his special talent, and the 
 mastery of successful men consists in adroitly keeping 
 themselves where and when that turn shall be oftenest to be 
 practised. We do what we must, and call it by the best 
 names we can, and would fain have the praise of having 
 intended the result which ensues. I cannot recall any 
 form of man who is not superfluous sometimes. But is 
 not this pitiful? Life is not worth the taking, to do tricks 
 in. 
 
 Of course, it needs the whole society, to give the sym- 
 metry we seek. The parti-colored wheel must revolve very 
 fast to appear white. Something is learned too by con- 
 versing with so much folly and defect. In fine, whoever 
 loses, we are always of the gaining party. Divinity is 
 behind our failures and follies also. The plays of children 
 are nonsense, but very educative nonsense. So is it with the 
 largest and solemnest things, with commerce, government, 
 church, marriage, and so with the history of every man's 
 bread, and the ways by which he is to come by it. Like 
 
94 EXPERIENCE 
 
 a bird which ahghts nowhere, but hops perpetually from 
 bough to bough, is the Power which abides in no man and 
 in no woman, but for a moment speaks from this one, and 
 for another moment from that one. 
 
 But what help from these fineries or pedantries; What 
 help from thought? Life is not dialectics. We, I think, in 
 these times, have had lessons enough of the futility of 
 criticism. Our young people have thought and written 
 much on labor and reform, and for all that they have 
 written, neither the world nor themselves have got on a 
 step. Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular 
 activity. If a man should consider the nicety of the pass- 
 age of a piece of bread down his throat, he would starve. 
 At Education-Farm, the noblest theory of life sat on the 
 noblest figures of young men and maidens, quite power- 
 less and melancholy. It would not rake or pitch a ton of 
 hay; it would not rub down a horse; and the men and maid- 
 ens it left pale and hungry. A political orator wittily 
 compared our i)arty promises to western roads, which opened 
 stately enough, with planted trees on either side, to tempt 
 the traveller, but soon became narrow and narrower, and 
 ended in a squirrel-track, and ran up a tree. So does 
 culture with us; it ends in head-ache. Unspeakably sail 
 and barren does life look to those, who a few months ago 
 were dazzled with the splendor of the promise of the times. 
 "There is now no longer any right course of action, nor any 
 self-devotion left among the Iranis." Objections and 
 criticism we have had our fill of. There are objections to 
 every course of life and action, and the practical wisdom 
 infers an indifi'erency, from the omnipresence of objection. 
 The whole frame of things preaches indifferency. Do not 
 craze yourself with thinking, but go about your business 
 anywhere. Life is not intellectual or critical, but sturdy. 
 Its chief good is for well-mixed people who can enjoy what 
 they find without question. Nature hates peeping, and our 
 mothers speak her very sense when they say, "Children, 
 eat your victuals, and say.no more of it." To fill the hour, — 
 that is happines; to fill the hour, and leave no crevice for 
 a repentance or an approval. We five amid surfaces^ and 
 
EXPERIENCE 95 
 
 the true art of life is to skate well on them. Under the 
 oldest, mouldiest conventions, a man of native force prospers 
 just as well as in the newest world, and that by skill of 
 handhng and treatment. He can take hold anywhere. 
 Life itself is a mixture of power and form, and will not 
 bear the least excess of either. To finish the moment, to 
 find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live 
 the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. It is not 
 the part of men, but of fanatics, or of mathematicians, if 
 you will, to say, that, the shortness of life considered, it is 
 not worth caring whether for so short a duration we were 
 sprawling in want, or sitting high. Since our office is 
 with moments, let us husband them. Five minutes of to- 
 day are worth as much to me as five minutes in the next 
 millennium. Let us be poised, and wise, and our own to- 
 day. Let us treat the men and women well: treat them as 
 if they were real: perhaps they are. Men live in their 
 fancy, like drunkards whose hands are too soft and trem- 
 ulous for successful labor. It is a tempest of fancies, and 
 the only ballast I know, is a respect to the present hour. 
 Without any shadow of doubt, amidst this vertigo of shows 
 and politics, I settle myself ever the firmer in the creed, 
 that we should not postpone and refer and wish, but do 
 broad justice where we are, by whomsoever we deal with, 
 accepting our actual companions and circumstances, how- 
 ever humble or odious, as the mystic officials to whom the 
 universe has delegated its whole pleasure for us. If these 
 are mean and malignant, their contentment, which is the 
 last victory of justice, is a more satisfying echo to the heart, 
 than the voice of poets and the casual sympathy of admir- 
 able persons. I think that however a thoughtful man may 
 suffer from the defects and absurdities of his company, 
 he cannot without affectation deny to any set of men and 
 women, a sensibility to extraordinary merit. The coarse 
 and frivolous have an instinct of superiority, if they have 
 not a sympathy and honor it in their blind capricious way 
 with sincere homage. 
 
 The fine young people despise life, but in me, and in 
 such as with me are free from dyspepsia, and to whom a day 
 
96 EXPERIENCE 
 
 is a sound and solid good, it is a great excess of politeness to 
 look scornful and to cry for company. I am grown by 
 sympathy a little eager and sentimental, but leave me alone, 
 and I should relish every hour and what it brought me, the 
 pot-luck of the day, as heartily as the oldest gossip in the 
 bar-room. I am thankful for small mercies. I compared 
 notes with one of my friends who expects everything of 
 the universe, and is disappointed when anything is less 
 than the best, and I found that I begin at the other extreme, 
 expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moder- 
 ate goods. I accept the clangor and jangle of contrary 
 tendencies. I find my account in sots and bores also. 
 They give a reality to the circumjacent picture, which 
 such a vanishing meteorous appearance can ill spare. In 
 the morning I awake, and find the old world, wife, babes, 
 and mother. Concord and Boston, the dear old spiritual 
 world, and even the dear old devil not far off. If we 
 will take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall 
 have heaping measures. The great gifts are not got by 
 analysis. Every thing good is on the highway. The 
 middle region of our being is the temperate zone. We may 
 climb into the thin and cold realm of pure geometry and 
 lifeless science, or sink into that of sensation. Between 
 these extremes is the equator of life, of thought, of spirit, 
 of poetry — a narrow belt. Morever, in popular expe- 
 rience, every thing good is on the highway. A collector 
 peeps into all the picture-shops of Europe, for a land- 
 scape of Poussin, a crayon-sketch of Salvator; but the 
 Transfiguration, the Last Judgment, the Communion of 
 St. Jerome, and what are as transcendent as these, are on 
 the walls of the Vatican, the Uffizi, or the Louvre, where 
 every footman may see them; to say nothing of nature's 
 pictures in every street, of sunsets and sunrises every day, 
 and the sculpture of the human body never absent. A col- 
 lector recently bought at public auction, in London, for 
 one hundred and fifty-seven guineas, an autograph of 
 Shakspeare: but for nothing a school-boy can read Hamlet, 
 and can detect secrets of highest concernment yet unpub- 
 lished therein. I think I will never read any but the com- 
 
EXPERIENCE 97 
 
 monest books, — the Bible, Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, and 
 Milton. We grow impatient of so public a life and planet, 
 and run hither and thither for nooks and secrets. The im- 
 agination dehghts in the wood-craft of Indians, trappers, 
 and bee-hunters. We fancy that we are strangers, and 
 not so intimately domesticated in the planet as the wild 
 man, and the wild beast and bird. But the exclusion 
 reaches them also: reaches the climbing, flying, gliding, 
 feathered and four-footed man. Fox and woodchuck, hawk 
 and snipe, and bittern, when nearly seen, have no more root 
 in the deep world than man, and ar^ just such superficial 
 tenants of the globe. Then the new molecular philosophy 
 shows astronomical inter-spaces betwixt atom and atom, 
 shows that the world is all outside: it has no inside. 
 
 The mid-world is best. Nature, as we know her, is no 
 saint. The lights of the church, the ascetics, Gentoos and 
 Grahamites, she does not distinguish by any favor. She 
 comes eating and drinking and sinning. Her darlings, 
 the great, the strong, the beautiful, are not children of 
 our law, do not come out of the Sunday School, nor weigh 
 their food, nor punctually keep the commandments. If 
 we will be strong with her strength, we must not harbor 
 such disconsolate consciences, borrowed too from the con- 
 sciences of other nations. We must set up the strong 
 present tense against all the rumors of wrath, past or to 
 come. So many things are unsettled which it is of the first 
 importance to settle — and, pending their settlement, we 
 will do as we do. Whilst the debate goes forward on the 
 equity of commerce, and will not be closed for a century 
 or two, New and Old England may keep shop. Law of 
 copyright and international copyright is to be discussed, 
 and, in the interim, we will sell our books for the most we 
 can. Expediency of literature, reason of literature, law- 
 fulness of writing down a thought, is questioned; much is 
 to say on both sides, and while the fight waxes hot, thou, 
 dearest scholar, stick to thy foolish task, add a line every 
 hour, and between whiles add a line Right to hold land, 
 right of property, is disputed, and the conventions con- 
 vene, and before the vote is taken, dig away in your garden. 
 
98 EXPERIENCE 
 
 and spend your earnings as a waif or godsend to all serene 
 and beautiful purposes. Life itself is a bubble and a scepti- 
 cism, and a sleep within a sleep. Grant it, and as much 
 more as they will,— but thou, God's darling! heed thy 
 private dream: thou wilt not be missed in the scorning and 
 scepticism: there are enough of them: stay there in thy 
 closet, and toil, until the rest are agreed what to do about 
 it. Thy sickness, they say, and thy puny habit, require 
 that thou do this or avoid that, but know that thy life is a 
 flitting state, a tent for a night, and do thou, sick or well, 
 finish that stint. Thou art sick, but shalt not be worse, 
 and the universe, which holds thee dear, shall be the better. 
 Human Hfe is made up of the two elements, power and 
 form, and the proportion must be invariably kept, if we 
 would have it sweet and sound. Each of these elements in 
 excess makes a mischief as hurtful as its defect. Every- 
 thing runs to excess: every good quality is noxious, if un- 
 mixed, and, to carry the danger to the edge of ruin, nature 
 causes each man's peculiarity to superabound. Here, 
 among the farms, we adduce the scholars as examples of 
 this treachery. They are the victims of expression. 
 You who see the artist, the orator, the poet, too near, and 1 
 find their life no more excellent than that of mechanics 3 
 or farmers, and themselves victims of partiaUty, very hollow*' 
 and haggard, and pronounce them failures, — not heroes,-] 
 but qua'cks— conclude, very reasonably, that these arts aretj 
 not for man, but are disease. Yet nature will not bear you j 
 out. Irresistible nature made them such, and makes legions-^ 
 more of such every day. You love the boy reading in ai 
 book, gazing at a drawing, or a cast: yet what are these 
 miUions who read and behold, but incipient writers and 
 sculptors? Add a little more of that quality which now 
 reads and sees, and they will seize the pen and chisel. And 
 if one remembers how innocently he began to be an artist, 
 he perceives that nature joined with his enemy. A niar 
 is a golden impossibility. The line he must walk is a hair'j 
 breadth. The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool 
 How easily, if fate would suffer it, we might keep for ever: 
 these beautiful limits, and adjust ourselves, once for aUl 
 
 1 
 
EXPERIENCE 99 
 
 to the perfect calculation of the kingdom of known cause 
 and effect. In the street and in the newspapers, life appears 
 so plain a business, that manly resolution and adherence to 
 the multipHcation-table through all weathers, will ensure 
 success. But, ah! presently comes a day, or is it only a 
 half-hour, with its angel-whispering, — which discomfits the 
 conclusions of nations and of years! To-morrow, again, 
 every thing looks real and angular, the habitual standards 
 are reinstated, common-sense is as rare as genius, — is the 
 basis of genius, and experience is hands and feet to every 
 enterprise; — and yet, he who should do his business on this 
 understanding, would be quickly bankrupt. Power keeps 
 quite another road than the turnpikes of choice and will, 
 namely the subterranean and invisible tunnels and channels 
 of life. It is ridiculous that we are diplomatists, and 
 doctors, and considerate people: there are no dupes hke 
 these. Life is a series of surprises, and would not be 
 worth taking or keeping, if it were not. God delights to 
 isolate us every day, and hide from us the past and the fut- 
 ure. We would look about us, but with grand politeness he 
 draws down before us an impenetrable screen of purest sky, 
 and another behind us of purest sky. "You will not re- 
 member," he seems to say, "and you will not expect." All 
 good conversation, manners, and action, come from a spon- 
 taneity which forgets usages, and makes the moment great. 
 Nature hates calculators; her methods are saltatory and 
 impulsive. Man lives by pulses; our organic movements 
 are such; and the chemical and ethereal agents are un- 
 dulatory and alternate; and the mind goes antagonizing on, 
 and never prospers but by fits. We thrive by casualties. 
 Our chief experiences have been casual. The most attract- 
 ive class of people are those who are powerful obliquely, 
 and not by the direct stroke: men of genius, but not yet 
 accredited: one gets the cheer of their light without paying 
 too great a tax. Theirs is the beauty of the bird, or the 
 morning light, and not of art. In the thought of genius 
 there is always a surprise; and the moral sentiment is well 
 called "the newness," for it is never other; as new to the 
 oldest inteUigence as to the young child, — "the kingdom 
 
100 EXPERIENCE 
 
 that cometh without observation." In like manner, for 
 practical success, there must not be too much design. A 
 man will not be observed in doing that which he can do 
 best. There is a certain magic about his properest action 
 wdiich stupefies your powers of observation; so that, though 
 it is done before you, you wist not of it. The art of hfe 
 has a pudency, and will not be exposed. Every man is 
 an impossibiUty, until he is born; every thing impossible, 
 until we see a success. The ardors of piety agree at last 
 with the coldest scepticism, — that nothing is of us or our 
 works, — that all is of God. Nature will not spare us the 
 smallest leaf of laurel. All writing comes by the grace of 
 God, and all doing and having. I would gladly be moral, 
 and keep due metes and bounds, which I dearly love, 
 and allow the most to the will of man, but I have set my 
 heart on honesty in this chapter, and I can see nothing at 
 last, in success or failure, than more or less of vital force 
 supi^lied from the Eternal. The results of life are un- 
 calculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which 
 the days never know. The persons who compose our 
 company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute 
 many things, an(] somewhat comes of it all, but an un- 
 looked-for result. The indi\'idual is always mistaken. 
 He designed many things, and drew in other persons as co- 
 adjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blvmdered much, and 
 something is done; all are a little advanced, but the indi- 
 vidual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat new, 
 and very unlike what he promised himself. 
 
 The ancients, struck with this irreducibleness of the ele- 
 ments of human life to calculation, exalted Chance into 
 a divinity, but that is to stay too long at the spark,— 
 which glitters truly at one point,— but the universe is 
 warm with the latency of the same fire. The miracle of 
 life which will not be expounded, but will remain a miracle, 
 introduces a new element. In the growth of the embryo, 
 Sir Everard Home, I think, noticed that the evolution was 
 not from one central point, but co-active from three or 
 more points. Life has no memory. That which proceeds 
 
EXPERIENCE 101 
 
 in succession might be remembered, but that which is co- 
 existent, or ejaculated from a deeper cause, as yet far from 
 being conscious, knows not its own tendency. So is it with 
 us, now sceptical, or without unity, because immersed in 
 forms and effects all seeming to be of equal yet hostile value; 
 and now religious, whilst in the reception of spiritual law. 
 Bear with these distractions, with this coetaneous growth of 
 the parts: they will one day be members, and obey one 
 \vill. On that one will, on that secret cause, they nail 
 our attention and hope. Life is hereby melted into an ex- 
 pectation or a religion. Underneath the inharmonious and 
 trivial particulars, is a musical profession, the Ideal journey- 
 ing ahvays with us, — the heaven without rent or seam. Do 
 but observe the mode of our illumination. When I con- 
 verse with a profound mind, or if at any time, being alone, 
 I have good thoughts, I do not at once arrive at satisfaction, 
 as when, being thirsty, I drink water, or go to the fire, being 
 cold: no! but I am at first apprised of my vicinity to a 
 new and excellent region of hfe. By persisting to read or 
 to think, this region gives further sign of itself, as it were in 
 flashes of light, in sudden discoveries of its profound beauty 
 and repose, as if the clouds that covered it parted at int- 
 ervals, and showed the approaching traveller the inland 
 mountains, v\ith the tranquil, eternal meadows spread at 
 their base, whereon flocks graze, and shepherds pipe and 
 dance. But every insight from this realm of thought is 
 felt as initial, and promises a sequel. I do not make it; 
 I arrive there, and behold what was there already. I 
 make! no! I clap my hands in infantine joy and amaze- 
 ment, before the first opening to me of this august magni- 
 ficence, old with the love and homage of innumerable ages, 
 young with the life of life, the sunbright Mecca of the 
 desert. And what a future it opens! I feel a new heart 
 beating with the love of the new beauty. I am ready to 
 die out of nature, and be born again into this new, yet 
 unapproachable America I have found in the West. 
 
 Since neither now nor yesterday began 
 
 These thoughts, which have been ever, nor yet can 
 
 A man be found who their first entrance knew. 
 
102 EXPERIENCE 
 
 If I have described life as a flux of moods, I must now add, 
 that there is that in us which changes not, and which ranks 
 all sensations and states of mind. The consciousness in 
 each man is a sliding scale, which identifies him now with 
 the First Cause, and now with the flesh of his body; Ufe 
 above life, in infinite degrees. The sentiment from which 
 it sprung determines the dignity of any deed, and the question 
 ever is, not, what you have done or forborne, but at whose 
 command you have done or forborne it. 
 
 Fortune, Minerva, Muse, Holy Ghost, — these are quaint 
 names, too narrow to cover this unbounded substance. 
 The baffled intellect must still kneel before this cause, 
 which refuses to be named, — ineffable cause, which every 
 fine genius has essayed to represent by some emphatic 
 by (Nous) thought, Zoroaster by fire, Jesus and the mod- 
 erns by love: and the metaphor of each has become a 
 national religion. The Chinese Mencius has not been the 
 least successful in his generalization. *T fully understand 
 language," he said, "and nourish well my vast-flowing 
 vigor." — "I beg to ask, what you call vast-flowing vigor?" 
 said his companion. "The explanation," replied Mencius, 
 "is difficult. This vigor is su])remely great, and in the 
 highest degree unbending. Nourish it correctly, and do it 
 no injury, and it will fill the vacancy between heaven 
 and earth. This vigor accords with and assists justice and 
 reason and leaves no hunger." In our more correct writing, 
 we give to this generalization the name of Being, and there- 
 by confess that we have arrived as far as we can go. 
 Suffice it for the joy of the universe, that we have not 
 arrived at a wall, but at interminable oceans. Our life 
 seems not present, so much as prospective; not for the 
 affairs on wliich it is wasted, but as a hint of this vast- 
 flowing vigor. INIost of life seems to be mere advertisement 
 of faculty: information is given us not to sell ourselves 
 cheap; that we are very great. So, in particulars, our 
 greatness is always in a tendency or direction, not in 
 an action. It is for us to believe in the rule, not in the 
 exception. The noble are thus known from the ignoble. 
 
 ]| 
 
EXPERIENCE 103 
 
 So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what 
 we beheve concerning the immortahty of the soul, or the 
 like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is the ma- 
 terial circumstance, and is the principal fact in the history 
 of the globe. Shall we describe this cause as that which 
 works directly? The spirit is not helpless or needful of 
 mediate organs. It has plentiful powers and direct effects. 
 I am explained without explaining, I am felt without acting, 
 and where I am not. Therefore all just persons are satis- 
 fied with their own praise. They refuse to explain them- 
 selves, and are content that new actions should do them that 
 office. They believe that we communicate without speech, 
 and above speech, and that no right action of ours is 
 quite unaffecting to our friends at whatever distance; 
 for the influence of action is not to be measured by miles. 
 Why should I fret myself, because a circumstance has 
 occurred, which hinders my presence where I was ex- 
 pected? If I am not at the meeting, my presence where I 
 am, should be as useful to the commonwealth of friendship 
 and wisdom, as would be my presence in that place. I 
 exert the same quality of power in all places. Thus journeys 
 the mighty Ideal before us; it never was known to fall into 
 the rear. No man ever came to an experience which was 
 satiating, but his good is tidings of a better. Onward and 
 onward! In liberated moments, we know that a new picture 
 of life and duty is already possible; the elements already 
 exist in many minds around you, of a doctrine of life which 
 shall transcend any written record we have. The new 
 statement will comprise the scepticisms, as well as the faiths 
 of society, and out of unbehefs a creed shall be formed. 
 For scepticisms are not gratuitous or lawless, but are limit- 
 ations of the affirmative statement, and the new philoso- 
 phy must take them in, and make affirmations outside of 
 them, just as much as it must include the oldest beliefs. 
 
 It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the dis- 
 covery we have made, that we exist. That discovery is 
 called the Fall of Man. Ever afterwards, we suspect our 
 instruments. We have learned that we do not see directly. 
 
104 EXPERIENCE 
 
 but mediately, and that we have no means of correcting 
 these colored and distorted lenses which w^e are, or of com- 
 puting the amount of their errors. Perhaps these subject- 
 lenses have a creative power: perhaps there are no objects. 
 Once we lived in what we saw; now, the rapaciousness of 
 this new power, which threatens to absorb all things, en- 
 gages us. Nature, art, persons, letters, religions, objects, 
 successively tumble in, and God is but one of its ideas. 
 Nature and literature are subjective phenomena; every 
 evil and every good thing is a shadow which we cast. The 
 street is full of humiliations to the proud. As the fop con- 
 trived to dress his bailiffs in his livery, and make them wait 
 on his guests at table, so the chagrins which the bad heart 
 gives off as bubbles, at once take form as ladies and gentle- 
 men in the street, shopmen or bar-keepers in hotels, and 
 threaten or insult whatever is threatenable or insultable 
 in us. 'Tis the same with our idolatries. People forget 
 that it is the eye which makes the horizon, and the rounding 
 mind's eye which makes this or that man a type or represen- 
 tative of humanity with the name of hero or saint. Jesus, 
 the "providential man," is a good man, on whom many 
 people are agreed that these optical laws shall take effect. 
 By love on one part, and by forbearance to press ob- 
 jection on the other part, it is for a time settled, that we 
 will look at him in the center of the horizon, and ascribe 
 to him the properties that will attach to any man so seen. 
 But the longest love or aversion has a speedy term. The 
 great and crescive self, rooted in absolute nature, supplants 
 all relative existence, and ruins the kingdom of mortal 
 friendship and love. Marriage (in what is called the 
 spiritual world) is impossible, because of the inequality 
 between every subject and every object. The subject is 
 the receiver of Godhead, and at every comparison must 
 feel his being enhanced by that cryptic might. Though 
 not in energy, yet by presence, this magazine of substance 
 cannot be otherwise than felt: nor can any force of in- 
 tellect attribute to the object the proper deity which sleeps 
 or wakes for ever in every subject. Never can love make 
 consciousness and ascription equal in force. There will 
 
' EXPERIENCE 105 
 
 be the same gulf between every me and thee, as between 
 the original and the picture. The universe is the bride of 
 the soul. All private sympathy is partial. Two human 
 beings are like globes, which can touch only in a point, and, 
 whilst they remain in contact, all other points of each of 
 the spheres are inert; their turn must also come, and the 
 longer a particular union lasts, the more energy of appe- 
 tency the parts not in union acquire. 
 
 Life will be imaged, but cannot be divided nor doubled. 
 Any invasion of its unity would be chaos. The soul is 
 not twin-born, but the only begotten, and though reveahng 
 itself as child in time, child in appearance, is of a fatal and 
 universal power, admitting no co-life. Every day, every 
 act betrays the ill-concealed deity. We believe in ourselves 
 as we do not believe in others. We permit all things to our- 
 selves, and that which we call sin in others, is experiment 
 for us. It is an instance of our faith in ourselves, that 
 men never speak of crime as lightly as they think: or, 
 every man thinks a latitude safe for himself, which is 
 nowise to be indulged to another. The act looks very 
 chfferently on the inside, and on the outside; in its quality 
 and in its consequences, murder in the murderer is 
 no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it ; 
 it does not unsettle him, or fright him from his ordinary 
 notice of trifles: it is an act quite easy to be contemplated, 
 but in its sequel, it turns out to be a horrible jangle and 
 confounding of all relations. Especially the crimes that 
 spring from love, seem right and fair from the actor's 
 point of view, but, when acted, are found destructive of 
 society. No man at last believes that he can be lost, nor 
 that the crime in him is as black as in the felon ; because the 
 intellect qualifies in our own case the moral judgments. 
 For there is no crime to the intellect. That is antinomian 
 or hypernomian, and judges law as well as fact. 'Tt is 
 worse than crime, it is a blunder," said Napoleon, speaking 
 the language of the intellect. To it, the world is a problem 
 in mathem.atics or the science of quantity, and it leaves out 
 praise and blame, and all weak emotions. All stealing 
 is comparative. If you come to absolutes, pray who docs 
 
106 EXPERIENCE 
 
 not steal? Saints are sad, because they behold sin (even 
 when they speculate) from the point of view of the con- 
 science, and not of the intellect; a confusion of thought. 
 Sin seen from the thought, is a diminution or less : seen from 
 the conscience or will, it is pravity or bad. The intellect 
 names it shade, absence of light, and no essence. The con- 
 science must feel it as essence, essential evil. This it is 
 not: it has an objective existence, but no subjective. 
 
 Thus inevitably does the universe wear our color, and 
 every object fall successively into the subject itself. The 
 subject exists, the subject enlarges; all things sooner or 
 later fall into place. As I am, so I see; use what language 
 we will, we can never say anything but what we are; 
 Hermes, Cadmus, Columbus, Newton, Bonaparte, are 
 the mind's ministers. Instead of feeling a poverty when 
 we encounter a great man, let us treat the new comer like 
 a travelling geologist, who passes through our estate, and 
 shows us good slate, or limestone, or anthracite, in our 
 brush pasture. The partial action of each strong mind in 
 one direction, is a telescope for the objects on which it is 
 pointed. But every other part of knowledge is to be pushed 
 to the same extravagance, ere the soul attains her due 
 sphericity. Do you see that kitten chasing so prettily her 
 own tail? If you could look with her eyes, you might see 
 her surrounded with hundreds of figures performing com- 
 plex dramas, with tragic and comic issues, long conver- 
 sations, many characters, many ups and downs of fate, — 
 and meantime it is only puss and her tail. How long 
 before our masquerade will end its noise of tambourines, 
 laughter, and shouting, and we shall find it was a solitary 
 performance? — A subject and an object, it takes so much to 
 make the galvanic circuit complete, but magnitude adds 
 nothing. What imports it whether it is Kepler and the 
 sphere; Columbus and America; a reader and his book; 
 or puss with her tail? 
 
 It is true that all the muses, and love, and religion hate 
 these developments, and will find a way to punish the 
 chemist, who publishes in the parlor the secrets of the 
 laboratory. And we cannot say too little of our consti- 
 
EXPERIENCE 107 
 
 tutional necessity of seeing things under private aspects, 
 or saturated with our humors. And yet is the God the 
 native of these bleak rocks. That need makes in morals 
 the capital virtue of self- trust. We must hold hard to this 
 poverty, however scandalous, and by more vigorous self- 
 recoveries, after the sallies of action, possess our axis more 
 firmly. The life of truth is cold, and so far mournful; 
 but it is not the slave of tears, contritions, and pertur- 
 bations. It does not attempt another's work, nor adopt 
 another's facts. It is a main lesson of wisdom to know 
 your own from another's. I have learned that I cannot 
 dispose of other people's facts; but I possess such a key 
 to my own, as persuades me against all their denials, that 
 they also have a key to theirs. A sympathetic person is 
 placed in the dilemma of a swimmer among drowning men, 
 who all catch at him, and if he gives so much as a leg or a 
 finger, they will drown him. They wish to be saved from 
 the mischief of their vices, but not from their vices. 
 Charity would be wasted on this poor waiting on the symp- 
 toms. A wise and hardy physician will say, Come out of 
 that, as the first condition of advice. 
 
 In this our talking America, we are ruined by our good 
 nature and listening on all sides. This compliance takes 
 away the power of being greatly useful. A man should not 
 be able to look other than directly and forthright. A 
 preoccupied attention is the only answer to the importunate 
 frivolity of other people : an attention, and to an aim which 
 makes their wants frivolous. This is a divine answer, and 
 leaves no appeal, and no hard thoughts. In Flaxman's 
 drawing of the Eumenides of iEschylus, Orestes suppHcates 
 Apollo, whilst the Furies sleep on the threshold. The face 
 of the god expresses a shade of regret and compassion, 
 but calm with the conviction of the irreconcilableness of 
 the two spheres. He is born into other poUtics, into the 
 internal and beautiful. The man at his feet asks for his 
 interests in turmoils of the earth, into which his nature 
 cannot enter. And the Eumenides there lying express 
 pictorially this disparity. The god is surcharged with his 
 divine destiny. 
 
108 EXPERIENCE 
 
 Illusion, Temperament, Succession, Surface, Surprise, 
 Reality, Subjectiveness, — these are threads on the loom 
 of time, these are the lords of life. I dare not assume to 
 give their order, but I name them as I iind them in my 
 way. I know better than to claim any completeness for 
 my picture. I am a fragment, and this is a fragment of me. 
 I can very confidently announce one or another law, which 
 throws itself into relief and form, but I am too young yet 
 by some ages to compile a code. I gossip for my hour con- 
 cerning the eternal politics. I have seen many fair pictures 
 not in vain. A wonderful time I have lived in. I am not 
 the novice I was fourteen, nor yet seven years ago. Let 
 who will ask, where is the fruit? I find a private fruit 
 sufficient. This is a fruit, — that I should not ask for a rash 
 effect from meditations, counsels, and the hiving of truths. 
 I should feel it pitiful to demand a result on this town and 
 county, an overt effect on the instant month and year. The 
 effect is deep and secular as the cause. It works on periods 
 in which mortal lifetime is lost. All I know is reception; 
 I am and I have: but I do not get, and when I have fancied 
 I had gotten anything, I found I did not. I worship with 
 wonder the great Fortune. My reception has been so 
 large, that I am not annoyed by receiving this or that super- 
 abundantly. I say to the Genius, if he will pardon the 
 proverb, In for q mill, in for a million. When I receive 
 a new gift, I do not macerate my body to make the account 
 square, for. if I should die, I could not make the account 
 square. The benefit overran the merit the first day, and 
 has overran the merit ever since. The merit itself, so- 
 called, I reckon part of the receiving. 
 
 Also, that hankering after an overt or practical effect, 
 seems to me an apostasy. In good earnest, I am willing 
 to spare this most unnecessary deal of doing. Life wears 
 to me a visionary face Hardest, roughest action is vision- 
 ary also. It is but a choice between soft and turbulent 
 dreams. People disparge knowing and the intellectual 
 life, and urge doing. I am very content with knowing, if 
 only I could know. That is an august entertainment, and 
 would suffice me a great while. To know a little, would be 
 
EXPERIENCE 109 
 
 worth the expense of this world. I hoar ahvays the law of 
 Adrastia, ''that ever}^ soul which had acquired any truth, 
 should be safe from harm until another period." 
 
 I know that the world I converse with in the city and in 
 the farms, is not the world I think. I observe that differ- 
 ence, and shall observe it. One day, I shall know the 
 value and the law of this discrepance. But I have not 
 found that much was gained by manipular attempts to 
 realize the world of thought. Many eager persons success- 
 ively make an experiment in this way, and make themselves 
 ricUculous. They acquire democratic manners, they foam 
 at the mouth, they hate and deny. Worse, I observe, that, 
 in the history of mankind, there is never a solitary example 
 of success, — taking their own tests of success. I say this 
 polemically, or in reply to the inquiry, why not realize 
 your world? But far be from me the despair which pre- 
 judges the law by a paltry empiricism, — since there never 
 was a right endeavor, but it succeeded. Patience and patience, 
 we shall win at the last. We must be very suspicious of 
 the deceptions of the element of time. It takes a good 
 deal of time to eat or to sleep, or to earn a hundred dollars; 
 and a very httle time to entertain a hope and an insight 
 which becomes the light of our life. We dress our garden, 
 cat our dinners, discuss the household with our wives, — 
 and these things make no impression — are forgotten next 
 week; but in the solitude to which every man is always 
 returning, he has a sanity and revelations, which, in his 
 passage into new worlds, he will carry with him. Never 
 mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old 
 heart! — it seems to say, — there is victory yet for all 
 justice; and the true romance which the world exists to 
 realize, will be the transformation of genius into practical 
 power. 
 
USES OF GREAT MEN 
 
 It is natural to believe in great men. If the companions 
 of our childhood should turn out to be heroes, and their 
 condition regal, it would not surprise us. All mythology 
 opens with demigods, and the circumstance is high and 
 poetic; that is, their genius is paramount. In the legends 
 of the Gautama, the first men ate the earth, and found it 
 dehciously sweet. 
 
 Nature seems to exist for the excellent. The world is 
 upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth 
 wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad 
 and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our 
 belief in such society; and actually, or ideally, we manage 
 to live with superiors. We call our children and our lands 
 by their names. Their names are wrought into the verbs 
 of language, their works and effigies are in our houses, and 
 every circumstance of the day recalls an anecdote of them. 
 
 The search after the great is the dream of youth, and the 
 most serious occupation of manhood. We travel into for- 
 eign parts to find his works, — if possible, to get a glimpse of 
 him. But we are put off with fortune instead. You say, 
 the English are practical; the Germans are hospitable; in 
 Valencia, the climate is delicious; and in the hills of Sacra- 
 mento, there is gold for the gathering. Yes, but I do 
 not travel to find comfortable, rich, and hospitable people, 
 or clear sky, or ingots that cost too much. But if there 
 were any magnet that would point to the countries and 
 houses where are the persons who are intrinsically rich 
 and powerful, I would sell all, and buy it, and put myself 
 on the road to-day. 
 
 The race goes with us on their credit. The knowledge: 
 
 110 
 
USES OF GREAT MEN 111 
 
 that in the city is a man who invented the railroad, raises 
 the credit of all the citizens. But enormous populations, 
 if they be beggars, are disgusting, like moving cheese, like 
 hills of ants, or of fleas — the more, the worse. 
 
 Our religion is the love and cherishing of these patrons. 
 The gods of fable are the shining moments of great men. 
 We run all our vessels into one mould. Our colossal theolo- 
 gies of Judaism, Christism, Buddhism, Mahometism, are 
 the necessary and structural action of the human mind. 
 The student of history is like a man going into a warehouse 
 to buy cloths or carpets. He fancies he has a new article. 
 If he go to the factory, he shall find that his new stuff still 
 repeats the scrolls and rosettes which are found on the 
 interior walls of the pyramids of Thebes. Our theism is 
 the purification of the human mind. Man can paint, or 
 make, or think nothing but man. He believes that the great 
 material elements had their origin from his thought. And 
 our philosophy finds one essence collected or distributed. 
 
 If now we proceed to inquire into the kinds of service we 
 derive from others, let us be warned of the danger of modern 
 studies, and begin low enough. We must not contend 
 against love, or deny the substantial existence of other people. 
 I know not what would happen to us. We have social 
 strengths. Our affection towards others creates a sort 
 of vantage or purchase which nothing will supply. I can 
 do that by another which I cannot do alone. I can say to 
 you what I cannot first say to myself. Other men are 
 lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man 
 seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as 
 are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men, and the 
 otherest. The stronger the nature, the more it is reactive. 
 Let us have the quality pure. A little genius let us leave 
 alone. A main difference betwixt men is, whether they 
 attend their own affair or not. Man is that noble en- 
 dogenous plant which grows, like the palm, from within, 
 outward. His own affair, though impossible to others, he 
 can open with celerity and in sport. It is easy to sugar 
 to be sweet, and to nitre to be salt. We take a great deal 
 of pains to waylay and entrap that which of itself will 
 
112 USES OF GREAT MEN 
 
 fall into our hands. I count him a great man who inhabits 
 a higher sphere of thought, into which other men rise with 
 labor and difficulty; he has but to open his eyes to see things 
 in a true light, and in large relations; whilst they must 
 make painful corrections, and keep a vigilant eye on many 
 sources of error. His service to us is of like sort. It costs 
 a beautiful person no exertion to paint her image on our 
 eyes; yet how splendid is that benefit! It costs no more 
 for a wise soul to convey his quality to other men. And 
 every one can do his best thing easiest. "Pen de moyens, 
 beaiicoup (TefjetJ' He is great who is what he is from nature, 
 and who never reminds us of others. 
 
 But he must be related to us, and our life receive from 
 'him some promise of explanation. I cannot tell what I 
 would know; but I have observed there are persons, who, 
 in their character and actions, answer questions which 
 I have not skill to put. One man answers some questions 
 which none of his contemporaries put, and is isolated. The 
 past and passing religions and philosophies answer some 
 other question. Certain men affect us as rich possibilities, 
 but helpless to themselves and to their times, — the sport, 
 perhaps, of some instinct that rules in the air; — they do 
 not speak to our want. But the great are near: we know 
 them at sight. They satisfy expectation, and fall into 
 place. What is good is effective, generative; makes for 
 itself room, food, and allies. A sound apple produces seed, — 
 a hybrid does not. Is a man in his place, he is construc- 
 tive, fertile, magnetic, inundating armies with his purpose, 
 which is thus executed. The river makes its own shores, and 
 each legitimate idea makes its own channels and welcome, — 
 harvests for food, institutions for expression, weapons to 
 fight with, and desciples to explain it. The true artist has 
 the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of 
 strife, has nothing broader than his own shoes. 
 
 Our common discourse respects two kinds of use of ser- 
 vice from superior men. Direct giving is agreeable to the 
 early belief of men; direct giving of material or meta- 
 physical aid, as of health, eternal youth, fine senses, arts 
 of heahng, magical power, and prophecy. The boy believes 
 
USES OF GREAT MEN 113 
 
 there is a teacher who can sell him wisdom. Churches 
 believe in imputed merit. But, in strictness, we are not 
 much cognizant of direct serving. Man is endogenous, 
 and education is his unfolding. The aid we have from others 
 is mechanical, compared with the discoveries of nature in 
 us. What is thus learned is dehghtful in the doing, and the 
 effect remains. Right ethics are central, and go from the soul 
 outward. Gift is contrary to the law of the universe. 
 Serving others is serving us. I must absolve me to myself. 
 "Mind thy affair," says the spirit: — "coxcomb, would you 
 meddle with the skies, or with other people?" Indirect ser- 
 vice is left. Men have a pictorial or representative quality, 
 and serve us in the intellect. Behmen and Swedenborg 
 saw that things were representative. Men are a lso rep- 
 resentative; first, of t hings, and secondly, oi' ide ^H ^ 
 
 As^plalll!) Lunvi?rrthe mmerals into food for animals, so 
 each man converts some raw material in nature to human 
 use. The inventors of fire, electricity, magnetism, iron, 
 lead, glass, linen, silk, cotton; the makers of tools; the in- 
 ventor of decimal notation; the geometer; the engineer; 
 musician, — severally make an easy way for all, through 
 unknown and impossible confusions. Each man is, by 
 secret liking, connected with some district of nature, 
 whose agent and interpreter he is, as Linnaeus, of plants; 
 Huber, of bees; Fries, of lichens; Van Mons, of pears; 
 Dalton, of atomic forms; Euclid, of lines; Newton, of 
 fluxions. 
 
 A man is a center for nature, running out threads of 
 relation through every thing, fluid and solid, material and 
 elemental. The earth rolls; every clod and stone comes to 
 the meridian: so every organ, function, acid, crystal, grain 
 of dust, has its relation to the brain. It waits long, but 
 its turn comes. Each plant has its parasite, and each 
 created thing its lover and poet. Justice has already been 
 done to steam, to iron, to wood, to coal, to load stone, to 
 iodine, to corn, and cotton; but how few materials are yet 
 used by our arts! The mass of creatures and of qualities 
 are still hid and expectant. It would seem as if each waited. 
 like the enchanted princess in fairy tales, for a destined 
 
114 USES OF GREAT MEN 
 
 human deliverer. Each must be disenchanted, and walk 
 forth to the day in human shape. In the history of dis- 
 covery, the ripe and latent truth seems to have fashioned a 
 brain for itself. A magnet must be made man, in some 
 Gilbert, or Swedenborg, or Oersted, before the general mind 
 can come to entertain its powers. 
 
 If we limit ourselves to the first advantages; — a sober 
 grace adheres to the mineral and botanic kingdoms, which, 
 in the highest moments, comes up as the charm of nature,— 
 the glitter of the spar, the sureness of affinity, the veracity 
 of angles. Light and darkness, heat and cold, hunger and 
 food, sweet and sour, solid, liquid, and gas, circle us round 
 in a wreath of pleasures, and, by their agreeable quarrel, 
 beguile the day of life. The eye repeats every day the 
 finest eulogy on things — "He saw that they were good." We 
 know where to find them; and these performers are relished 
 all the more, after a little experience of the pretending races. 
 We are entitled, also, to higher advantages. Something is 
 wanting to science, until it has been humanized. The table 
 of logarithms is one thing, and its vital play, in botany, 
 music, optics, and architecture, another. There are ad- 
 vancements to numbers, anatomy, architecture, astronomy, 
 little suspected at first, when, by union with intellect and 
 will, they ascend into the life, and reappear in conversation, 
 character, and politics. 
 
 But this comes later. We speak now only of our acquaint- 
 ance with them in their own sphere, and the way in which 
 they seem to fascinate and draw to them some genius who 
 occupies himself with one thing, all his life long. The pos- 
 sibihty of interpretation lies in the identity of the observer 
 with the observed. Each material thing has its celestial 
 side; has its translation, through humanity, into the spirit- 
 ual and necessary sphere, where it plays a part as inde- 
 structible as any other. And to these, their ends, all 
 things continually ascend. The gases gather to the solid 
 firmament: the chemic lump arrives at the plant, and grows; 
 arrives at the quadruped, and walks; arrives ac the man, 
 and thinks. But also the constituency determines the vote 
 of the representative. He is not only representative, 
 
USES OF GREAT MEN 115 
 
 but participant. Like can only be known by like. The 
 reason why he knows about them is, that he is of them; 
 he has just come out of nature, or from being a part of that 
 thing. Animated chlorine knows of chlorine, and in- 
 carnate zinc, of zinc. Their quality makes this career; 
 and he can variously publish their virtues, because they 
 compose him. Man, made of the dust of the world, does 
 not forget his origin; and all that is yet inanimate will one 
 day speak and reason. Unpublished nature will have its 
 whole secret told. Shall we say that quartz mountains 
 will pulverize into innumerable Werners, Von Buchs, and 
 Beaumonts; and the laboratory of the atmosphere holds in 
 solution I know not what Berzeliuses and Davys ? 
 
 Thus, we sit by the fire, and take hold on the poles of the 
 earth. This quasi omnipresence supplies the imbecility 
 of our condition. In one of those celestial days, when 
 heaven and earth meet and adorn each other, it seems a 
 poverty that we can only spend it once: we wish for a 
 thousand heads, a thousand bodies, that we might celebrate 
 its immense beauty in many ways and places. Is this 
 fancy? Well, in good faith, we are multiplied by our prox- 
 ies. How easily we adopt their labors! Every ship that 
 comes to America got its chart from Columbus. Every 
 novel is debtor to Homer. Every carpenter who shaves 
 with a foreplane borrows the genius of a forgotten in- 
 ventor. Life is girt all around with a zodiac of sciences, 
 the contributions of men who have perished to add their 
 point of light to our sky. Engineer, broker, jurist, physi- 
 cian, moralist, theologian, and every man, inasmuch as he 
 has any science, is a definer and map-maker of the latitudes 
 and longitudes of our condition. These road-makers on 
 every hand enrich us. We must extend the area of life, 
 and multiply our relations. We are as much gainers by 
 finding a new property in the old earth, as by acquiring a 
 new planet. 
 
 We are too passive in the reception of these material 
 or semi-material aids. We must not be sacks and stomachs. 
 To ascend one step, — we are better served through our 
 sympathy. Activity is contagious. Looking where others 
 
116 USES OF GREAT MEN 
 
 look, and conversing with the same things, we catch the 
 charm which lured them. Napoleon said, "you must not 
 fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all 
 your art of war." Talk much with any man of vigorous 
 mind, and we acquire very fast the habit of looking at 
 things in the same light, and, on each occurrence, we antici- 
 pate his thought. 
 
 Men are helpful through the kitellect a nd the affecti ons. 
 CrrtTer nelpji find a false ajSSiLCIllce. if you affect to give 
 — imr^read an3"frie, I perceive that I pay for it the full price, 
 and at last it leaves me as it found me, neither better nor 
 worse: but all mental and moral force is a positive good. 
 It goes out from you, whether you will or not, and profits 
 me whom you never thought of. I cannot even hear of 
 personal vigor of any kind, great power of performance, 
 without fresh resolution. We are emulous of all that man 
 can do. Cecil's saying of Sir Walter Raleigh, "I know that 
 he can toil terribly," is an electric touch. So are Clarendon's 
 portraits, — of Hami)den; "who was of an industry and 
 vigilance not to be tired out or wearied by the most labo- 
 rious, and of parts not to be imposed on by the most subtle 
 and sharp, and of a personal courage equal to his best 
 parts" — of Falkland; "who was so severe an adorer of truth, 
 that he could as easily have given himself leave to steal, 
 as to dissemble." We cannot read Plutarch, without a 
 tingUng of the blood; and I accept the saying of the Chinese 
 Mencius: "A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages. 
 When the manners of Loo are heard of, the stupid become 
 intelligent, and the wavering, determined." 
 
 This is the moral of biography; yet it is hard for de- 
 parted men to touch the quick like our own companions, 
 whose names may not last as long. What is he whom I never 
 think of? whilst in ever}' solitude are those who succor our 
 genius, and stimulate us in wonderful manners. There is 
 a power in love to divine another's destinj^ better than 
 that other can, and by heroic encouragements, hold him 
 to his task. What has friendship so si9;naled as its sub- 
 lime attraction to whatever virtue is in us? We will 
 never more think cheaply of ourselves, or of life. We are 
 
USES OF GREAT MEN 117 
 
 piqued to some purpose, and the industry of the diggers 
 on the railroad will not again shame us. 
 
 Under this head, too, falls that homage, very pure, as I 
 think, which all ranks pay to the hero of the day, from 
 Coriolanus and Gracchus, down to Pitt, Lafayette, Well- 
 ington, Webster, Lamartine. Hear the shouts in the street ! 
 The people cannot see him enough. They delight in a man. 
 Here is a head and a trunk! What a front! What eyes! 
 Atlantean shoulders, and the whole carriage heroic, with equal 
 inward force to guide the great machine! This pleasure 
 of full expression to that which, in their private experience, 
 is usually cramped and obstructed, runs, also, much higher, 
 and is the secret of the reader's joy in hterary genius. 
 Nothing is kept back. There is fire enough to fuse the 
 mountain of ore. Shakspeare's principal merit may be con- 
 veyed, in saying that he, of all men, best understands the 
 English language, and can say what he will. Yet these 
 unchoked channels and floodgates of expression are only 
 health or fortunate constitution. Shakspeare's name sug- 
 gests other and purely intellectual benefits. 
 
 Senates and sovereigns have no compliment, with their 
 medals, swords, and armorial coats, like the addressing to 
 a human being thoughts out of a certain height, and pre- 
 supposing his intelligence. This honor, which is possible 
 in personal intercourse scarcely twice in a lifetime, genius 
 perpetually pays; contented, if now and then, in a century, 
 the proffer is accepted. The indicators of the values of 
 matter are degraded to a sort of cooks and confectioners, 
 on the appearance of the indicators of ideas. Genius is 
 the naturalist or geographer of the supersensible regions, 
 and drawls on their map; and, by acquainting us with new 
 fields of activity, cools our affection for the old. These are 
 at once accepted as the reahty, of which the world we have 
 conversed with is the show. 
 
 We go to the gymnasium and the swimming-school to see 
 the power and beauty of the body; there is the like pleasure, 
 and a higher benefit, from witnessing intellectual feats of all 
 kinds; as, feats of memory, of mathematical combination, 
 great power of abstraction, the transmutings of the imagin- 
 
118 USES OF GREAT MEN 
 
 ation, even versatility, and concentration, as these acts ex- 
 pose the invisible organs and members of the mind, which re- 
 spond, member for member to the parts of the body. For, 
 we thus enter a new gymnasium, and learn to choose men 
 by their truest marks, taught, with Plato, "to choose those 
 who can, without aid from the eyes, or any other sense, 
 proceed to truth and to being." Foremost among these 
 activities, are the somersaults, spells, and resurrections, 
 wrought by the imagination. When this wakes, a man seems 
 to multiply ten times or a thousand times his force. It 
 opens the delicious sense of intermediate size, and inspires 
 an audacious mental habit. We are as elastic as the gas of 
 gunpowder, and a sentence in a book, or a word dropped 
 in conversation, sets free our fancy, and instantly our heads 
 are bathed with galaxies, and our feet tread the floor of the 
 Pit. And this benefit is real, because we are entitled to 
 these enlargements, and, once having passed the bounds, 
 shall never again be quite the miserable pedants we were. 
 
 The high functions of the intellect are so aUied, that some 
 imaginative power usually appears in all eminent minds, 
 even in arithmeticians of the first class, but especially in 
 meditative men of an intuitive habit of thought. This 
 class serve us, so that they have the perception of identity 
 and the perception of reaction. The eyes of Plato, Shak- 
 speare, Swedenborg, Goethe, never shut on either of these 
 laws. The perception of these laws is a kind of metre of 
 the mind. Little minds are little, through failure to see 
 them. 
 
 Even these feasts have their surfeit. Our delight in 
 reason degenerates into idolatry of the herald. Especially 
 when a mind of powerful method has instructed men, we 
 find the examples of oppression. The dominion of Aristotle, 
 the Ptolemaic astronomy, the credit of Luther, of Bacon, 
 of Locke, — in religion the history of hierarchies, of saints, 
 and the sects which have taken the name of each founder, 
 are in point. Alas! every man is such a victim. The im- 
 becility of men is always inviting the impudence of power. 
 It is the delight of vulgar talent to dazzle and to bind the 
 beholder. But true genius seeks to defend us from itself. 
 
 I 
 
USES OF GREAT MEN 119 
 
 True genius will not impoverish, but will liberate, and add 
 new senses. If a wise man should appear in our village, he 
 would create, in those who conversed with him, a new con- 
 sciousness of wealth, by opening their eyes to unobserved 
 advantages; he would establish a sense of immovable 
 equality, calm us with assurances that we could not be 
 cheated; as every one would discern the checks and guaran- 
 ties of condition. The rich would see their mistakes and 
 poverty, the poor their escapes and their resources. 
 
 But nature brings all this about in due time. Rotation 
 is her remedy. The soul is impatient of masters, and eager 
 for change. Housekeepers say of a domestic who has been 
 valuable, "She had hved with me long enough." We are 
 tendencies, or rather, symptoms, and none of us complete. 
 We touch_and go, and sip the foam of many lives. Rotation 
 is the law of nature. When nature removes a great man, 
 people explore the horizon for a successor; but none comes 
 and none will. His class is extinguished with him. In 
 some other and quite different field, the next man will ap- 
 pear; not Jefferson, not Franklin, but now a great salesman; 
 then a road-contractor; then a student of fishes; then a 
 buffalo-hunting explorer, or semi-savage western general. 
 Thus we make a stand against our rougher masters; but 
 against the best there is a finer remedy. The power 
 which they communicate is not theirs. When we are ex- 
 alted by ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, 
 to which, also, Plato was debtor. 
 
 I must not forget that we have a special debt to a single 
 class. Life is a scale of degrees. Between rank and rank of 
 our great men are wide intervals. Mankind have, in all 
 ages, attached themselves to a few persons, who, either 
 by the quality of that idea they embodied, or by the large- 
 ness of their reception, were entitled to the position of 
 leaders and law-givers. These teach us the qualities of 
 primary nature, — admit us to the constitution of things. 
 We swim, day by day, on a river of delusions, and are 
 effectually amused with houses and towns in the air,^ of 
 which the men about us are dupes. But life is a sincerity. 
 In lucid intervals we say, "Let there be an entrance opened 
 
120 USES OF GREAT MEN 
 
 for me into realities. I have worn the fool's cap too long." 
 We will know the meaning of our economies and politics. 
 Give us the cipher, and, if persons and things are scores of 
 a celestial music, let us read off the strains. We have been 
 cheated of our reason; yet there have been sane men, who 
 enjoyed a rich and related existence. What they know, they 
 know for us. With each new mind, a new secret of nature 
 transpires; i.or can the Bible be closed, until the last great 
 man is born. These men col lect the delirium of tha, animal 
 spirits, make us considerate, "and engage us to new aims and 
 
 Jowersl 'ine veneration ot mankmd selects these foFliEe' 
 highest place. Witness the multitude of statues, pictures, 
 and memorials, which recall their genius in every city, 
 village, house, and ship: — 
 
 "Ever their phantoms arise before us, 
 
 Our loftier brothers, but one in blood; 
 At bed and table they lord it o'er us, 
 
 With looks of beauty, and words of good." 
 
 How to illustrate the distinctive benefit of ideas, the service 
 rendered by those who introduce moral truths into the gen- 
 eral mind?— I am plagued, in all my living, with a perpetual 
 tariff of prices. If I work in my garden, and prune an apple- 
 tree, I am well enough entertciined, and could continue in- 
 definitely in the like occupation. But it comes to mind 
 that a day is gone, and I have got this precious nothing done. 
 I go to Boston or New York, and run up and down on my 
 affairs; they are sped, but so is the day. I am vexed by 
 the recollection of this price I have paid for a trifling advan- 
 tage. I remember the peau d'ane, on which whoso sat 
 should have his desire, but a piece of the skin was gone for 
 every wish. I go to a convention of philanthropists. Do 
 what I can, I cannot keep my eyes off the clock. But if 
 there should appear in the company some gentle soul who 
 knows little of persons or parties, of Carohna or Cuba, but 
 who announces a law that disposes these particulars, and 
 so certifies me of the equity which checkmates every false 
 player, bankrupts every self-seeker, and apprises me of my 
 independence on any conditions of country, or time or human 
 
USES OF GREAT MEN 121 
 
 body, that man liberates me; I forget the clock. I pass 
 out of the sore relation to persons. I am healed of my 
 hurts. I am made immortal by apprehending my posses- 
 sion of incorruptible goods. Here is great competition of 
 rich and poor. We live in a market, where is only so 
 much wheat, or wool, or land; and if I have so much more, 
 every other must have so much less. I seem to have no 
 good, without breach of good manners. Nobody is glad 
 in the gladness of another, and our sj^stem is one of war, of 
 an injurious superiority. Every child of the Saxon race 
 is educated to wish to be first. It is our system; and a man 
 comes to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies, and 
 hatreds of his competitors. But in these new fields there 
 is room: here are no self-esteems, no exclusions. 
 
 I admire great men of all classes, those who stand for facts, 
 and for thoughts; I like rough and smooth, "Scourges of 
 God," and "Darlings of the human race." I like the first 
 Caesar; and Charles V., of Spain; and Charles XII., of 
 Sweden; Richard Plantagenet; and Bonaparte, in France. 
 I applaud a sufficient man, an officer equal to his office; 
 captains, ministers, senators. I like a master standing firm 
 on legs of iron, well-born, rich, handsome, eloquent, loaded 
 with advantages, drawing all men by fascination into trib- 
 utaries and supporters of his power. Sword and staff, 
 or talents sword-like or staff-like, carry on the work 
 of the world. But I find him greater, when he can abolish 
 himself, and all heroes, by letting in this element of reason, 
 irrespective of persons; this subtilizer, and irresistible up- 
 ward force, into our thought, destroying individualism; 
 the power so great, that the potentate is nothing. Then 
 he is a monarch, who gives a constitution to his people; 
 a pontiff, who preaches the equality of souls, and releases 
 his servants from their barbarous homages; an emperor, who 
 can spare his empire. 
 
 But I intended to specify, with a little minuteness, two or 
 three points of service. Nature never spares the opium of 
 nepenthe; but wherever she mars her creature with some 
 deformity or defect, lays her poppies plentifully on the 
 bruise, and the sufferer goes joyfully through fife, ignorant 
 
122 USES OF GREAT MEN 
 
 of the ruin, and incapable of seeing it, though all the world 
 point their finger at it every day. The worthless and 
 offensive members of society, whose existence is a social pest, 
 invariably think themselves the most ill-used people alive, 
 and never get over their astonishment at the ingratitude and 
 selfishness of their contemporaries. Our globe discovers its 
 hidden virtues, not only in heroes and archangels, but in 
 gossips and nurses. Is it not a rare contrivance that lodged 
 the due inertia in every creature, the conserving, resisting 
 energy, the anger at being waked or changed? Altogether 
 independent of the intellectual force in each, is the pride of 
 opinion, the security that we are right. Not the feeblest 
 grandame, not a mowing idiot, but uses what spark of per- 
 ception and faculty is left, to chuckle and triumph in his 
 or her opinion over the absurdities of all the rest. Differ- 
 ence from me is the measure of absurdity. Not one has a 
 misgiving of being wrong. Was it not a bright thought that 
 made things cohere with this bitumen, fastest of cements? 
 But, in the midst of this chuckle of self-gratulation, some 
 figure goes by, which Thersites too can love and admire. 
 This is he that should marshal us the way we were going. 
 There is no end to his aid. Without Plato, we should almost 
 lose our faith in the possibility of a reasonable book. We 
 seem to want but one, but we want one. We love to asso- 
 ciate with heroic persons, since our receptivity is unlimited; 
 and, with the great, our thoughts and manners easily be- 
 come great. We are all wise in capacity, though so few in 
 energy. There needs but one wise man in a company, and 
 all are wise, so rapid is the contagion. 
 
 Great men are thus a collyrium to clear our eyes from 
 egotism, and enable us to see other people and their works. 
 But there are vices and follies incident to whole populations 
 and ages. Men resemble their contemporaries, even more 
 than their progenitors. It is observed in old couples, or 
 in persons who have been housemates for a course of years, 
 that they grow alike; and, if they should live long enough, 
 we should not be able to know them apart. Nature ab- 
 hors these complaisances, which threaten to melt the world 
 into a lump, and hastens to break up such maudlin agglu- 
 
USES OF GREAT MEN 123 
 
 tinations. The like assimilation goes on between men of 
 one town, of one sect, of one political party; and the ideas 
 of the time are in the air, and infect all who breathe it. 
 Viewed from any high point, this city of New York, yonder 
 city of London, the western civiUzation, would seem a bundle 
 of insanities. We keep each other in countenance, and ex- 
 asperate by emulation the frenzy of the time. The shield 
 against the stingings of conscience, is the universal prac- 
 
 I tice, or our contemporaries. Again; it is very easy to 
 be as wise and good as your companions. We learn of our 
 
 I contemporaries what they know, without effort, and almost 
 through the pores of the skin. We catch it by sympathy, 
 
 ' or, as a wife arrives at the intellectual and moral ele- 
 
 i^vations of her husband. But we stop where they stop. 
 Very hardly can we take another step. The great, or such 
 as hold of nature, and transcend fashions, by their fidelity 
 to universal ideas, are saviors from these federal errors, and 
 defend us from our contemporaries. They are the excep- 
 tions which we want, where all grows alike. A foreign great- 
 ness is the antidote for cabalism. 
 
 Thus we feed on genius, and refresh ours elves fr om too 
 much conversation with our mates, and exult m f he depth 
 
 "of nature m that direction in wJiich he leads us. vVhat m- 
 demnification is one great man for populations of pigmies! 
 Every mother wishes one son a genius, though all the rest 
 should be mediocre. But a new danger appears in the excess 
 of influence of the great man. His attractions warp us from 
 our place. We have become underlings and intellectual 
 suicides. Ah! yonder in the horizon is our help: — other 
 great men, new qualities, counterweights and checks on each 
 other. We cloy of the honey of each peculiar greatness. 
 Every hero becomes a bore at last. Perhaps Voltaire was 
 not bad-hearted, yet he said of the good Jesus, even, "I 
 pray you, let me never hear that man's name again." They 
 cry up the virtues of George Washington, — "Damn George 
 Washington!" is the poor Jacobin's whole speech and con- 
 futation. But it is human nature's indispensible defence. 
 The centripetence augments the centrifugence. We balance 
 one man with his opposite, and the health of the state de- 
 
124 USES OF GREAT MEN 
 
 pends on the see-saw. 
 
 There is, however, a speedy hmit to the use of heroes. 
 Every genius is defended from approach by quantities of 
 availableness. Tliey are very attractive, and seem at a 
 cUstance our own: but we are hindered on all sides from ap- 
 proach. The more we are drawn, the more we are repelled. 
 There is something not solid in the good that is done for us. 
 The best discovery the discoverer makes for himself. It 
 has something unreal for his companion, until he too has sub- 
 stantiated it. It seems as if the Deity dressed each soul which 
 he sends into nature in certain virtues and powers not com- 
 municable to other men, and, sending it to perform one more 
 turn through the circle of beings, wrote "Not transferable,'* 
 and "Good for this trip only,'' on these garments of the soul. 
 There is somewhat deceptive about the intercourse of minds. 
 The boundaries are invisible, but they are never crossed. 
 There is such good will to impart, and such good will to 
 receive, that each threatens to become the other; but the law 
 of individuality collects its secret strength : you are you, and 
 I am I, and so we remain. 
 
 For Nature wishes every thing to remain itself; and, 
 3vHl Ist every mdivTdual strives to grow and exclude, and to 
 exclude and grow, "lb the extremities of the universe, and to 
 impose the law of its being on every other creature, Nature 
 steadily aims to protect each against every other. Each 
 is self-defended. Nothing is more marked than the power 
 by which individuals are guarded from individuals, in a 
 world where every benefactor becomes so easily a malefactor, 
 only by continuation of his activity into places where it is 
 not due; where children seem so much at the mercy of their 
 foolish parents, and where almost all men are too social and 
 interfering. We rightly speak of the guardian angels of 
 children. How superior in their security from infusions of 
 evil persons, from vulgarity and second thought! They 
 shed their own abundant beauty on the objects they behold. 
 Therefore, they are not at the mercy of such poor educators 
 as we adults. If we huff and chide them, they soon come not 
 to mind it, and get a self-reliance; and if we indulge them to 
 folly, they learn the limitation elsewhere. 
 
USES OF GREAT MEN 125 
 
 We need not fear excessive influence. A more generous 
 trust is permitted. Serve the great. Stick at no humil- 
 iation. Grudge no ofl^ice thou canst render. Be the hmb of 
 their body, the breath of their mouth. Compromise thy 
 egotism. Who cares for that, so thou gain aught wider and 
 nobler ? Never mind the taunt of Boswellism : the devotion 
 may easily be greater than the wretched pride which is 
 guarding its own skirts. Be another: not thyself, but a 
 Platonist; not a soul, but a Christian; not a naturahst, but 
 a Cartesian; not a poet, but a Shakspearian. In vain, 
 the wheels of tendency will not stop, nor will all the forces 
 of inertia, fear, or of love itself, hold thee there. On, and 
 forever onward! The microscope observes a monad or 
 wheel-insect among the infusories circulating in water. 
 Presently, a dot appears on the animal, which enlarges to a 
 slit, and it becomes two perfect animals. The ever-proceeding 
 detachment appears not less in all thought, and in society. 
 Children think they cannot live without their parents. But, 
 long before they are aware of it, the black dot has appeared, 
 and the detachment taken place. Any accident will now 
 reveal to them their independence. 
 
 But great men: — the word is injurious. Is there caste? 
 is there fate? What becomes of the promise to virtue? 
 The thoughtful youth laments the superfoetation of nature. 
 "Generous and handsome," he saj^s, "is your hero; but look 
 at yonder poor Paddy, whose country is his wheel-barrow; 
 look at his whole nation of Paddies," Why are the masses, 
 from the dawn of history down, food for knives and powder ? 
 The idea dignifies a few leaders, who have sentiment, opin- 
 ion, love, self-devotion; and they make war and death 
 sacred ; — but what for the wretches whom they hire and kill ? 
 The cheapness of man is every day's tragedy. It is as real 
 a loss that others should be low, as that we should be low; 
 for we must have society. 
 
 Is it a reply to these suggestions, to say, society is a 
 Pestalozzian school: all are teachers and pupils in turn. 
 We are equally served by receiving and by imparting. Men 
 who know the same things, are not long the best company 
 for each other. But bring to each an intelligent person of 
 
126 USES OF GREAT MEN 
 
 another experience, and it is as if you let off water from a 
 lake, by cutting a lower basin. It seems a mechanical ad- 
 vantage, and great benefit it is to each speaker, as he can 
 now paint out his thought to himself. We pass very fast, 
 in our personal moods, from dignity to dependence. And 
 if any appear never to assume the chair, but always to stand 
 and serve, it is because we do not see the company in a 
 sufficiently long period for the whole rotation of parts to 
 come about. As to what we call the masses, and common 
 men; — there are no common men. All men are at last 
 of a size ; and true art is only possible, on the conviction that 
 every talent has its apotheosis somewhere. Fair play, 
 and an open field, and freshest laurels to all who have won 
 them! But heaven reserves an equal scope for every crea- 
 ture. Each is imeasy until he has produced his private 
 ray unto the concave sphere, and beheld his talent also 
 in its last nobihty and exaltation. 
 
 The heroes of the hour are relatively great: of a faster 
 growth; or they are such, in whom, at the moment of suc- 
 cess, a quahty is ripe which is then in request. Other days 
 will demand other quahties. Some rays escape the common 
 observer, and want a finely adapted eye. Ask the great 
 man if there be none greater. His companions are; and not 
 the less great, but the more, that society cannot see them. 
 Nature never sends a great man into the planet, without 
 confiding the secret to another soul. 
 
 One gracious fact emerges from these studies, — that there 
 is true ascension in our love. The reputations of the 
 nineteenth century will one day be quoted to prove its bar- 
 barism. The genius of humanity is the real subject whose 
 biography is written in our annals. We must infer much, 
 and supply many chasms in the record. The history of 
 the universe is symptomatic, and hfe is mnemonical. No 
 man, in all the procession of famous men, is reason or illum- 
 ination, or that essence we were looking for; but is an ex- 
 hibition, in some quarter, of new iwssibiHties. Could we 
 one day complete the immense figure which these flagrant 
 points compose ! The study of many individuals leads us to 
 an elemental region wherein the individual is lost, or 
 
USES OF GREAT MEN 127 
 
 wherein all touch by their summits. Thought and feeling, 
 that break out there, cannot be impounded by any fence 
 of personahty. This is the key to the power of the greatest 
 men, — their spirit diffuses itself. A new quality of mind 
 travels by night and by day, m concentric circles from its 
 origin, and publishes itself by unknown methods: the union 
 of all minds appears intimate: what gets admission to one, 
 cannot be kept out of any other: the smallest acquisition 
 of truth or of energy, in any quarter, is so much good to 
 the commonwealth of souls. If the disparities of talent 
 and position vanish, when the individuals are seen in the 
 duration which is necessary to complete the career of each; 
 even more swiftly the seeming injustice disappears, when we 
 ascend to the central identity of all the individuals, and know 
 that they are made of the same substance which ordaineth 
 and doeth. 
 
 The genius of humanity is the right point of view of his- 
 tory. The qualities abide; the men who exhibit them have 
 now more, or less, and pass away; the quahties remain on 
 another brow. No experience is more familiar. Once you 
 saw phoenixes: they are gone; the world is not therefore 
 disenchanted. The vessels on which you read sacred em- 
 blems turn out to be common pottery; but the sense of 
 the pictures is sacred, and you may still read them trans- 
 ferred to the walls of the world. For a time, our teachers 
 serve us personally, as metres or milestones of progress. 
 Once they were angels of knowledge, and their figures touched 
 the sky. Then we drew near, saw their means, culture, 
 and limits; and they yielded their place to other geniuses. 
 Happy, if a few names remain so high, that we have not been 
 able to read them nearer, and age and comparison have 
 not robbed them of a ray. But, at last, we shall cease to 
 look in men for completeness, and shall content ourselves 
 with their social and delegated quahty. All that respects 
 the individual is temporary and prospective, like the in- 
 dividual himself, who is ascending out of his limits, into a 
 catholic existence. We have never come at the true and 
 best benefit of any genius, so long as we believe him an orig- 
 inal force. In the moment when he ceases to help us as a 
 
128 USES OF GREAT MEN 
 
 cause, he begins to help us move as an effect. Then he 
 appears as an exponent of a vaster mind and will. The 
 opaque self becomes transparent with the hght of the First 
 Cause. 
 
 Yet, within the limits of human education and agency, 
 we may say, great men exist that there may be greater men. 
 The destiny of organized nature is amelioration, and who can 
 tell its limits? It is for man to tame the chaos; on every 
 side, whilst he lives, to scatter the seeds of science and of 
 song, that climate, corn, animals, men, may be milder, and 
 the germs of love and benefit may be multiplied. 
 
VI 
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 When the act of reflection takes place in the mind, when 
 we look at ourselves in the light of thought, we discover that 
 our life is embosomed in beauty. Behind us, as we go, all 
 things assume pleasing forms, as clouds do far off. Not only 
 things familiar and stale, but even the tragic and terrible 
 are comely, as they take their place in the pictures of mem- 
 ory. The river-bank, the weed at the water-side, the old 
 house, the foohsh person, — however neglected in the pass- 
 ing, — have a grace in the past. Even the corpse that has 
 lain in the chambers has added a solemn ornament to the 
 house. The soul will not know either deformity or pain. 
 If in the hours of clear reason we should speak the severest 
 truth, we should say, that we had never made a sacrifice. 
 In these hours the mind seems so great, that nothing can 
 be taken from us that seems much. All loss, all pain is 
 particular: the universe remains to the heart unhurt. Dis- 
 tress never, trifles never abate our trust. No man ever 
 stated his griefs as lightly as he might. Allow for ex- 
 aggeration in the most patient and sorely ridden hack that 
 ever was driven. For it is only the finite that has wrought 
 and suffered; the infinite lies stretched in smiling repose. 
 
 The intellectual life may be kept clean and healthful, 
 if man will live the life of nature, and not import into his 
 mind difficulties which are none of his. No man need be 
 perplexed in his speculations. Let him do and say what 
 strictly belongs to him, and, though very ignorant of books, 
 his nature shah not yield him any intellectual obstructions 
 and doubts. Our young people are diseased with the 
 theological problems of original sin, origin of evil, pre- 
 destination, and the like. These never presented a prac- 
 tical difficulty to any man, — never darkened across any 
 
 129 
 
130 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 man's road, who did not go out of his way to seek them. 
 These are the soul's mumps and measles and whooping- 
 coughs; and those who have not caught them cannot describe 
 their health or prescribe the cure. A simple mind will not 
 know these enemies. It is quite another thing that he should 
 be able to give account of his faith, and expound to an- 
 other theory of his self-union and freedom. This requires 
 rare gifts. Yet without this self-knowledge, there may be 
 a sylvan strength and integrity in that which he is. "A 
 few strong instincts and a few plain rules" suffice us. 
 
 My will never gave the images of my mind the rank they 
 now take. The regular course of studies, the years of aca- 
 demical and professional education, have not yielded me 
 better facts than some idle books under the bench at the 
 Latin school. What we do not call education is more pre- 
 cious than that which we call so. We form no guess at 
 the time of receiving a thought, of its comparative value. 
 And education often wastes its effort in attempts to thwart 
 and baulk this natural magnetism, which with sure dis- 
 crimination selects its own. 
 
 In like manner, our moral nature is vitiated by any 
 interference of our will. People represent virtue as a 
 struggle, and take to themselves great airs upon their attain- 
 ments; and the question is everywhere vexed, when a noble 
 nature is commended. Whether the man is not better who 
 strives with temptation? But there is no merit in the matter. 
 Either God is there, or he is not there. We love characters 
 in proportion as they are impulsive and spontaneous. The 
 less a man thinks or knows a]30ut his virtues the better we 
 like him. Timoleon's victories are the best victories; which 
 ran and flowed like Homer's verses, Plutarch said. When 
 we see a soul whose acts are all regal, graceful and pleasant 
 as roses, we must thank God that such things can be and 
 are, and not turn sourly on the angel, and say, "Crump is 
 a better man with his grunting resistance to all his native 
 devils." 
 
 Not less conspicuous is the preponderance of nature over 
 will in all practical life. There is less intention in his- 
 tory than we ascribe to it. We impute deep-laid, far- 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS 131 
 
 sighted plans to Caesar and Napoleon; but the best of their 
 power was HI nature, not in them. Men of an extraordi- 
 nary success, in their honest moments have always sung, "Not 
 unto us, not unto us." According to the faith of their times, 
 they have built altars to Fortune or to Destiny, or to St. 
 Julian. Their success lay in their parallelism to the course 
 of thought, which found in them an unobstructed channel; 
 and the wonders of which they were the visible conductors 
 seemed to the eye their deed. Did the wires generate the gal- 
 vanism ? It is even true that there was less in them on which 
 they could reflect than in another; as the virtue of a pipe is 
 to be smooth and hollow. That which externally seemed 
 will and immovableness, was willingness and self-annihil- 
 ation. Could Shakspeare give a theory of Shakspeare? 
 Could ever a man of prodigious mathematical genius convey 
 to others any insight into his methods? If he could com- 
 municate that secret, instantly it would lose all its exagger- 
 ated value, blending with the daylight and the vital energy, 
 the power to stand and to go. 
 
 The lesson is forcibly taught by the observations, that 
 our life might be much easier and simpler than we make it; 
 that the world might be a happier place than it is; that 
 there is no need of struggles, convulsions, and despairs, 
 of the wringing of the hands and the gnashing of the teeth; 
 that we miscreate our own evils. We interfere with the optim- 
 ism of nature; for, whenever we get this vantage-ground of 
 the past, or of a wiser mind in the present, we are able to dis- 
 cern that we are begirt with spiritual laws which execute 
 themselves. 
 
 The face of external nature teaches the same lesson with 
 calm superiority. Nature will not have us fret and fume. 
 She does not like our benevolence or our learning, much 
 better than she likes our frauds and wars. When we come 
 out of the caucus, or the bank, or the Abolition-convention, 
 or the Temperance-meeting, or the Transcendental club, 
 into the fields and woods, she says to us, "So hot? my httle 
 sir." 
 
 We are full of mechanical actions. We must needs inter- 
 meddle, and have things in our own way, until the sacrifices 
 
132 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 and virtues of society are odious. Love should make joy;^ 
 but our benevolence is unhappy. Our Sunday-schools, and 
 churches, and pauper-societies, are yokes to the neck. We 
 pain ourselves to please nobody. There are natural ways of 
 arriving at the same ends at which these aim, but do not 
 arrive. Why should all virtue work in one and the same 
 way? Why should all give dollars? It is very incon- 
 venient to us country folk, and we do not think any good 
 will come of it. We have not dollars. Merchants have: let 
 them give them. Farmers will give corn. Poets will sing. 
 Women will sew. Laborers will lend a hand. The children 
 will bring flowers. And why drag this dead weight of a 
 Sunday-School over the whole Christendom? It is natural 
 and beautiful that childhood should inquire, and maturity 
 should teach ; but it is time enough to answer questions when 
 they are asked. Do not shut up the young people against 
 their will in a pew, and force the children to ask them ques- 
 tions for an hour against their will. 
 
 If we look wider, things are all alike; laws, and letters, 
 and creeds, and modes of living, seem a travesty of truth. 
 Our society is encumbered by ponderous machinery, which 
 resembles the endless aqueducts which the Romans built 
 over hill and dale, and which are superseded by the discovery 
 of the law that water rises to the level of its source. It 
 is a Chinese wall, which any nimble Tartar can leap over. 
 It is a standing army, not so good as a peace. It is a grad- 
 uated, titled, richly appointed Empire, quite superfluous 
 when Town-meetings are found to answer just as well. 
 
 Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by 
 short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls. When the 
 fruit is despatched, the leaf falls. The circuit of the waters 
 is mere falling. The walking of man and all animals is a 
 faUing forward. All our manual labor and works of strength, 
 as prying, splitting, digging, rowing, and so forth, are done 
 by dint of continual falling; and the globe, earth, moon, 
 comet, sun, star, fall forever and ever. 
 
 The simplicity of the universe is very different from the 
 simplicity of a machine. He who sees moral nature out 
 and out, and thoroughly knows how knowledge is acquired 
 
 i 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS 133 
 
 and character formed, is a pedant. The simpUcity of nature 
 is not that which may easily be read, but is inexhaustible. 
 The last analysis can no wise be made. We judge of a 
 man's wisdom by his hope, knowing that the perception of 
 the inexhaustibleness of nature is an immortal youth. The 
 wild fertility of nature is felt in comparing our rigid names 
 and reputations with our fluid consciousness. We pass in 
 the world for sects and schools, for erudition and piety; and 
 we are all the time jejune babes. One sees very well how 
 Pyrrhonism grew up. Every man sees that he is that 
 middle point whereof every thing may be affirmed and de- 
 nied with equal reason. He is old, he is young, he is very 
 wise, he is altogether ignorant. He hears and feels what 
 you say of the seraphim and of the tin-pedlar. There is 
 no permanent wise man, except in the figment of the stoics. 
 We side with the hero, as we read or paint, against the 
 coward and the robber; but we have been ourselves that 
 coward and robber, and shall be again, not in the low circum- 
 stance, but in comparison with the grandeurs possible to 
 the soul. 
 
 A little consideration of what takes place around us 
 every day would show us that a higher law than that of 
 our will regulates events ; that our painful labors are very un- 
 necessary, and altogether fruitless; that only in our easy, 
 simple, spontaneous action are we strong, and by contenting 
 ourselves with obedience we become divine. Belief and 
 love, — a beheving love will relieve us of a vast load of care. 
 my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the center 
 of nature, and over the will of every man, so that none of 
 us can wrong the universe. It has so infused its strong en- 
 chantment into nature, that we prosper when we accept its 
 advice; and when we struggle to wound its creatures, our 
 hands are glued to our sides, or they beat our own breasts. 
 The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need 
 only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly 
 listening we shall hear the right word. Why need you choose 
 so painfully your place, and occupation, and associates, and 
 modes of action and of entertainment? Certainly there 
 is a possible right for you, that precludes tbf need of bal- 
 
134 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 ance and wilful election. For you there is a reality, a fit 
 place and congenial duties. Place yourself in the middle 
 of the stream of power and wisdom which flows into you as 
 hfe, place yourself in the full center of that flood, then you 
 are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect 
 contentment. Then you put ah gainsay ers in the wrong. 
 Then you are the world, the measure of right, of truth, of 
 beauty. If we will not be marplots with our miserable in- 
 terferences, the work, the society, letters, arts, science, re- 
 ligion of men, would go on far better than now; and the 
 Heaven predicted from the beginning of the world, and still 
 predicted from the bottom of the heart, would organize 
 itself, as do now the rose and the air and the sun. 
 
 I say, do not choose; but that is a figure of speech by 
 which I would distinguish what is commonly called choice 
 among men, and which is a partial act, the choice of the 
 hands, of the eye, of the appetites, and not a whole act of 
 the man. But that which I call right or goodness, is the 
 choice of my constitution; and that which I call heaven, 
 and inwardly aspire after, is the state or circumstance 
 desirable to my constitution; and the action which I in 
 all my years tend to do, is the work for my faculties. We 
 must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his 
 daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for 
 his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. What busi- 
 ness has he with an evil trade? Has he not a calling in his 
 character ? 
 
 Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. 
 There is one direction in which all space is open to him. 
 He has faculties silently inviting him thither to endless ex- 
 ertion. He is like a ship in a river; he runs against ob- 
 structions on every side but one; on that side, ah obstruc- 
 tion is taken away, and he sweeps serenely over God's 
 depths into an infinite sea. This talent and this call depend 
 on his organization, or the mode in which the general soul 
 incarnates itself in him. He inclines to do something which 
 is easy to him, and good when it is done, but which no other 
 man can do. He has no rival. For the more truly he con- 
 sults his own powers, the more difference will his work ex- 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS 135 
 
 hibit from the work of any other. When he is true and 
 faithful, his ambition is exactly proportioned to his powers. 
 The height of the pinnacle is determined by the breadth of 
 the base. Every man has this call of the power to do some- 
 what unique, and no man has any other call. The pre- 
 tence that he has another call, a summons by name and per- 
 sonal election and outward "signs that mark him extraor- 
 dinary, and not in the roll of common men," is fanaticism, 
 and betrays obtuseness to perceive that there is one mind in 
 all the individuals, and no respect of persons therein. 
 
 By doing his work, he makes the need felt which he can 
 supply. He creates the taste by which he is enjoyed. 
 He provokes the wants to which he can minister. By 
 doing his own work, he unfolds himself. It is the vice 
 of our pubHc speaking, that it has not abandonment. 
 Somewhere, not only every orator, but every man, should 
 let out all the length of all the reins; should find or make a 
 frank and hearty expression of what force and meaning is 
 in him. The common experience is, that the man fits him- 
 self as well as he can to the customary details of that work 
 or trade he falls into, and tends it as a dog turns a spit. 
 Then is he a part of the machine he moves; the man is lost. 
 Until he can manage to communicate himself to others in 
 his full stature and proportion as a wise and good man, he 
 does not yet find his vocation. He must find in that an 
 outlet for his character, so that he may justify himself to 
 their eyes for doing what he does. If the labor is trivial, 
 let him by his thinking and character make it hberal. 
 Whatever he knows and thinks, whatever in his apprehen- 
 sion is worth doing, that let him communicate, or men will 
 never know and honor him aright. Foolish, whenever you 
 take the meanness and formality of that thing you do, 
 instead of converting it into the obedient spiracle of your 
 character and aims. 
 
 We hke only such actions as have already long had the 
 praise of men; and do not perceive that any thing man 
 can do may be divinely done. We think greatness entailed 
 or organized in some places or duties, in certnin offices or 
 occasions; and do not see that Paganini can extract rap- 
 
136 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 ture from a catgut, and Eulenstein from a jews-harp, and 
 a nimble-fingered lad out of shreds of paper with his scissors, 
 and Landseer out of swine, and the hero out of the pitiful 
 habitation and company in which he was hidden. What 
 we call obscure condition or vulgar society, is that condition 
 and society whose poetry is not yet written, but which you 
 shall presently make as enviable and renowned as any. 
 Accept your genius, and say what you think. In our esti- 
 mates, let us take a lesson from kings. The parts of hos- 
 l)itality, the connexion of families, the impressiveness of 
 death, and a thousand other things, royalty makes its own 
 estimate of, and a royal mind will. To make habitually a 
 new estimate, — that is elevation. 
 
 What a man does, that he has. What has he to do with 
 hope or fear? In himself is his might. Let him regard no 
 good as sohd but that which is in his nature, and which must 
 grow out of him as long as he exists. The goods of fortune 
 may come and go like summer leaves; let him play with 
 them and scatter them on every wind, as the momentary 
 signs of his infinite productiveness. 
 
 He may have his own. A man's genius, the quality that 
 differences him from every other, the susceptibility to one 
 class of influonccs, the selection of what is fit for him, the 
 rejection of what is unfit, determines for him the character 
 of the universe. As a man thinketh, so is he; and as a man 
 chooseth, so is he and so is nature. A man is a method, 
 a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering 
 his like to him, wherever he goes. He takes only his own, 
 out of the multiplicity that sweeps and circles round him. 
 He is like one of those booms which are set out from the 
 shore on rivers to catch drift-wood, or like the loadstone 
 amongst splinters of steel. 
 
 Those facts, words, persons, which dwell in his memory 
 without his being able to say why, remain, because they 
 have a relation to him not less real for being as yet un- 
 apprehended. They are symbols of value to him, as they 
 can interpret parts of his consciousness which he would 
 vainly seek words for in the conventional images of books 
 and other minds. What attracts my attention shall have 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS 137 
 
 it; as I will go to the man who knocks at my door, whilst a 
 thousand persons, as worthy, go by it, to whom I give no 
 regard. It is enough that these particulars speak to me. 
 A few anecdotes, a few traits of character, manners, face, a 
 few incidents, have an emphasis in your memory out of all 
 proportion to their apparent significance, if you measure 
 them by the ordinary standards. They relate to your 
 gift. Let them have their weight,and do not reject them, 
 and cast about for illustration and facts more usual in liter- 
 ature. Respect them, for they have their origin in deepest 
 nature. What your heart thinks great, is great. The soul's 
 emphasis is always right. 
 
 Over all things that are agreeable to his nature and genius 
 the man has the highest right. Everywhere he may take 
 what belongs to his spiritual estate, nor can he take any- 
 thing else, though all doors were open, nor can all the force 
 of men hinder him from taking so much. It is vain to 
 attempt to keep a secret from one who has a right to know 
 it. It will tell itself. That mood into which a friend can 
 bring us is his dominion over us. To the thoughts of that 
 state of mind he has a right. All the secrets of that state 
 of mind he can compel. This is a law which statesmen use 
 in practice. All the terrors of the French Republic, which 
 held Austria in awe, were unable to command her di- 
 plomacy. But Napoleon sent to Vienna M. de Narbonne, 
 one of the old noblesse, with the morals, manners, and name 
 of that interest, saying that it was indispensible to send 
 to the old aristocracy of Europe men of the same connexion, 
 which, in fact, constitutes a sort of freemasonry. M. 
 Narbonne in less than a fortnight penetrated all the secrets 
 of the Imperial Cabinet. 
 
 A mutual understanding is ever the firmest chain. Noth- 
 ing seems so easy as to speak and to be understood. 
 Yet a man may come to find that the strongest of defences 
 and of ties, — that he has been understood; and he who has 
 received an opinion may come to find it the most incon- 
 venient of bonds. 
 
 If a teacher have any opinion which he wishes to conceal, 
 his pupils will become as fully indoctrinated into that as into 
 
138 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 any which he pubUshes. If you pour water into a vessel 
 twisted into coils and angles, it is vain to say, I will pour 
 it only into this or that; — it will find its own level in all. 
 Men feel and act the consequences of your doctrine, without 
 being able to show how they follow. Show us an arc of 
 the curve, and a good mathematician will find out the whole 
 figure. We are always reasoning from the seen to the un- 
 seeij. Hence the perfect intelligence that subsists between 
 wise men of remote ages. A man cannot bury his meanings 
 so deep in his book, but time and like-minded men will 
 find them. Plato had a secret doctrine, had he? What 
 secret can he conceal from the eyes of Bacon? of Mon- 
 taigne? Kant? Therefore Aristotle said of his works, 
 "they are published and not published." 
 
 No man can learn what he has not preparation for learn- 
 ing, however near to his eyes is the object. A chemist may 
 tell his most precious secrets to a carpenter, and he shall 
 be never the wiser, — the secrets he would not utter to a 
 chemist for an estate. God screens us evermore from pre- 
 mature ideas. Our eyes are holden that we cannot see 
 things that stare us in the face, until the hour arrives when 
 the mind is ripened, — then we behold them, and the time 
 when we saw them not is like a dream. 
 
 Not in nature but in man is all the beauty and worth he 
 sees. The world is very empty, and is indebted to this 
 gilding, exalting soul for all its pride. "Earth fills her 
 lap with splendors" iiot her own. The vale of Tempe, 
 Tivoli, and Rome, are earth and water, rocks and sky. 
 There are as good earth and water in a thousand places, 
 yet how unaffecting! 
 
 People are not the better for the sun and moon, the hor- 
 izon and the trees; as it is not observed that the keepers of 
 Roman galleries, or the valets of painters, have any ele- 
 vation of thought, or that librarians are wiser men than 
 others. There are graces in the demeanor of a polished and 
 noble person, which are lost upon the eye of a churl. These 
 are like the stars whose light has not yet reached us. 
 
 He may see what he maketh. Our dreams are the spquol 
 of our waking knowledge. The visions of the night always 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS 139 
 
 bear some proportion to the visions of the day. Hideous 
 dreams are only exaggerations of the sins of the day. We 
 see our own evil affections embodied in bad physiognomies. 
 On the Alps, the traveller sometimes sees his own shadow 
 magnified to a giant, so that every gesture of his hand is 
 terrific. ''My children," said an old man to his boys scared 
 by a figure in the dark entry, "my children, you will never 
 see anything worse than yourselves." As in dreams, so in 
 the scarcely less fluid events of the world, every man sees 
 himself in colossal, without knowing that it is himself 
 that he sees. The good w^hich he sees, compared to the 
 evil which he sees, is as his own good to his own evil. Every 
 quahty of his mind is magnified in some one acquaintance, 
 and every emotion of his heart in some one. He is like a 
 quincunx of trees, which counts five, east, west, north, or 
 south; or an initial, medial, and terminal acrostic. And 
 why not? He cleaves to one person, and avoids another, 
 according to their likeness or unlikeness to himself, truly 
 seeking himself in his associates, and moreover in his trade, 
 and habits, and gestures, and meats, and drinks; and comes 
 at last to be faithfully represented by every view you take 
 of his circumstances. 
 
 He may read what he writeth. What can we see or ac- 
 quire, but what we are? You have seen a skilful man 
 reading Virgil. Well, that author is a thousand books to a 
 thousand persons. Take the book into your two hands, and 
 read your eyes out, you will never find what I find. If 
 any ingenious reader would have a monopoly of the wisdom 
 or delight he gets, he is as secure now the book is Englished, 
 as if it were imprisoned in the Pelews tongue. It is with a 
 good book as it is with good company. Introduce a base 
 person among gentlemen: it is all to no purpose: he is not 
 their fellow. Every society protects itself. The company 
 is perfectly safe, and he is not one of them, though his body 
 is in the room. 
 
 What avails it to fight with the eternal laws of mind, 
 which adjust the relation of all persons to each other, by 
 the mathematical measure of their havings and beings? 
 Gertrude is enamored of Guy; how high, how aristocratic, 
 
140 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 how Roman his mien and manners! to Uve with him were 
 hfe indeed: and no purchase is too great; and heaven and 
 earth are moved to that end. Well, Gertrude has Guy: but 
 what now avails how high, how aristocratic, how Roman his 
 mien and manners, if his heart and aims are in the senate, 
 in the theatre, and in the billiard-room, and she has no aims, 
 no conversation that can enchant her graceful lord? 
 
 He shall have his own society. We can love nothing but 
 nature. The most wonderful talents, the most meritorious 
 exertions really avail very little with us; but nearness or 
 likeness of nature, — how beautiful is the ease of its victory! 
 Persons approach us famous for their beauty, for their 
 accomplishments, worthy of all wonder for their charms and 
 gifts: they dedicate their whole skill to the hour and the 
 compan}^ with very imperfect result. To be sure, it would 
 I)e very ungrateful in us not to praise them very loudly. 
 Then, when all is done, a person of related mind, a brother 
 or sister by nature, comes to us so softly and easily, so nearly 
 and intimately, as if it were the blood in our proper veins, 
 that we feel as if some one w^as gone, instead of another 
 having come: we are utterly relieved and refreshed: it is a 
 sort of joyful solitude. We foolishly think, in our days of 
 sin, that we must court friends by compliance to the customs 
 of society, to its dress, its breeding and its estimates. But 
 later, if we are so happy, we learn that only that soul can 
 be my friend, which I encounter on the line of my own 
 march, that soul to which I do not decline, and which does 
 not decline to me, but, native of the same celestial lat- 
 itude, repeats in its own all my experience. The scholar and 
 the prophet forget themselves, and ape the customs and 
 costumes of the man of the world, to deserve the smile 
 of beauty. He is a fool, and follows some giddy girl, and 
 not with religious ennobling passion a woman with all that 
 is serene, oracular, and beautiful in her soul Let him be 
 great, and love shall follow him. Nothmg is more deeply 
 punished than the neglect of the affinities by which alone 
 society should be formed, and the insane levity of choosing 
 associate? by other's eyes. 
 
 He may set his own rate. It is an universal maxim, 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS 141 
 
 worthy of all acceptation, that a man may have that allow- 
 ance he takes. Take the place and attitude to which you see 
 your unquestionable right, and all men acquiesce. The world 
 must be just. It always leaves every man with profound 
 unconcern to set his own rate. Hero or driveller, it meddles 
 not in the matter. It will certainly accept your own 
 measure of your doing and being, whether you sneak about 
 and deny your own name, or whether you see your work 
 produced to the concave sphere of the heavens, one with the 
 revolution of the stars. 
 
 The same reality pervades all teaching. The man may 
 teach by doing, and not otherwise. If he can communicate 
 himself, he can teach, but not by words. He teaches who 
 gives, and he learns who receives. There is no teaching 
 until the pupil is brought into the same state or principle 
 in which you are; a transfusion takes place: he is you, and 
 you are he; then is a teaching, and by no unfriendly chance 
 or bad company can he ever quite lose the benefit. But 
 your propositions run out of one ear as they ran in at the 
 other. We see it advertised that Mr. Grand will deliver 
 an oration on the fourth of July, and Mr. Hand before the 
 Mechanics' Association, and we do not go thither, because 
 we know that these gentlemen will not communicate their 
 own character and being to the audience. If we had 
 reason to expect such a communication, we should go 
 through all inconvenience and opposition. The sick would 
 be carried in litters. But a public oration is an escapade, a 
 non-committal, an apology, a gag, and not a communication, 
 not a speech, not a man. 
 
 A like Nemesis presides over all intellectual works. We 
 have yet to learn that the thing uttered in words is not 
 therefore affirmed. It must affirm itself, or no forms of 
 grammar and no plausibility can give it evidence, and 
 no array of arguments. The sentence must also contain 
 its own apology for being spoken. 
 
 The effect of any writing on the public mind is mathemat- 
 ically measurable by its depth of thought. How much water 
 does it draw? If it awaken you to think; if it fift you from 
 your feet with the great voice of eloquence; then the effect 
 is to be wide, slow, permanent, over the minds of men; if 
 
142 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 the pages instruct you not, they will die like flies in the hour. 
 The way to speak and write what shall not go out of fashion, 
 is to speak and write sincerely. The argument which has 
 not power to reach my own practice, I may well doubt will 
 fail to reach yours. But take Sidney's maxim: ''Look in 
 thy heart, and write." He that writes to himself writes to 
 an eternal public. That statement only is fit to be made 
 public which you have come at in attempting to satisfy 
 your own curiosity. The writer who takes his subject from 
 his ear and not from his heart, should know that he has lost 
 as much as he seems to have gained; and when the empty 
 book has gathered all its praise, and half the people say — 
 "What poetry ! what genius ! " it still needs fuel to make fire. 
 That only profits which is profitable. Life alone can im- 
 part hfe; and though we should burst, we can only be valued 
 as we make ourselves valuable. There is no luck in literary 
 reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every 
 book, are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when 
 it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be 
 bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides 
 upon every man's title to fame. Only those books come 
 down which deserve to last. All the gilt edges and vellum 
 and morocco, all the presentation-copies to all the libraries, 
 will not preserve a book in circulation beyond its intrinsic 
 date. It must go with all Walpole's Royal and Noble 
 Authors to its fate. Blackmore, Kotzebue, or Pollok, may 
 endure for a night, but Moses and Homer stand forever. 
 There are not in the world at any one time more than a 
 dozen persons who read and understand Plato: — never 
 enough to pay for an edition of his works; yet to every 
 generation these come duly down, for the sake of those few 
 persons, as if God brought them in his hand. "No book," 
 said BentW, "was ever written down by any but itself." 
 The permanence of all books is fixed by no effort friendly 
 or hostile, but b\'' their own specific gravity, or the intrinsic 
 importance of their contents to the constant mind of man. 
 "Do not trouble yourself too much about the light on 3'our 
 statue," said Michael Angelo to the young sculptor; "the 
 light of the public square will test its value." 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS 143 
 
 In like manner the effect of every action is measured by 
 the depth of the sentiment from which it proceeds. The 
 great man knew not that he was great. It took a century 
 or two for that fact to appear. What he did, he did because 
 he must; he used no election; it was the most natural thing 
 in the world, and grew out of the circumstances of the mo- 
 ment. But now, every thing he did, even to the lifting of 
 his finger, or the eating of bread, looks large, all-related, and 
 is called an institution. 
 
 These are the demonstrations, in a few particulars, of 
 the genius of nature: they show the direction of the stream. 
 But the stream is blood; every drop is alive. Truth has 
 not single victories; all things are its organs, not only dust 
 and stones, but errors and lies. The laws of disease, physi- 
 cians say, are as beautiful as the laws of health. Our phil- 
 osophy is affirmative, and readily accepts the testimony of 
 negative facts, as every shadow points to the sun. By a 
 divine necessity, every fact in nature is constrained to offer 
 its testimony. 
 
 Human character does evermore publish itself. It will 
 not be concealed. It hates darkness, — it rushes into light. 
 The most fugitive deed and word, the mere air of doing a 
 thing, the intimated purpose, expresses character. If you 
 act, you show character; if you sit still, you show it; if 
 you sleep, you show it. You think because you have spoken 
 nothing, when others spoke, and have given no opinion on 
 the times, on the church, on slavery, on college, on parties 
 and persons, that your verdict is still expected with curios- 
 ity as a reserved wisdom. Far otherwise; your silence an- 
 swers very loud You have no oracle to utter, and your 
 fellow men have learned that you cannot help them; for 
 oracles speak. Doth not wisdom cry, and understanding 
 put forth her voice? 
 
 Dreadful limits are set in nature to the powers of dis- 
 simulation. Truth tyrannizes over the unwilling members 
 of the body. Faces never lie, it is said. No man need be 
 deceived, who will study the changes of expression. When 
 a man speaks the truth in the spirit of truth, his eye is as 
 clear as the heavens. When he has base ends, and speaks 
 
144 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 falsely, the eye is muddy and sometimes asquint. 
 
 I have heard an experienced counsellor say, that he feared 
 never the effect upon the jury of a lawyer who does not 
 believe in his heart that his client ought to have a verdict. 
 If he does not beheve it, his unbelief will appear to the jury, 
 despite all his protestations, and will become their un- 
 belief. This is that law whereby a work of art, of what- 
 ever kind, sets us in the same state of mind wherein the 
 artist was when he made it. That which we do not believe, 
 we cannot adequately say, though we may repeat the words 
 pever ^o often. It was this con\'iction which Swedenborg 
 expressed, when he described a group of persons in the spirit- 
 ual world endeavoring in vain to articulate a proposition 
 which they did not believe: but they could not, though they 
 twisted and folded their lips even to indignation. 
 
 A man passes for that he is worth. Very idle is all 
 curiosity concerning other people's estimate of us, and 
 idle is all fear of remaining unknown. If a man know that 
 he can do anything, — that he can do it better than any 
 one else, — he has a pledge of the acknowledgment of that 
 fact by all persons. The world is full of judgment-days, 
 and into every assembly that a man enters, in every action 
 he attempts he is gauged and stamped. In every troop 
 of boys that whoop and run in each yard and square, a new- 
 comer is as well and accurately weighed in the balance, in 
 the course of a few days, and stamped with his right number, 
 as if he had undergone a formal trial of his strength, speed, 
 and temper. A stranger comes from a distant school, with 
 better dress, with trinkets in his pockets, with airs, and pre- 
 tension: an old boy sniffs thereat, and says to himself, 
 "It's of no use: we shall find him out to-morrow." "What 
 hath he done?" is the divine question which searches men, 
 and transpierces every false reputation. A fop may sit in 
 any chair of the world, nor be distinguished for his hour from 
 Homer and Washington; but there can never be any doubt 
 concerning the respective ability of human beings, when 
 we seek the truth. Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. 
 Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. Pre- 
 tension never wrote an Iliad, nor drove back Xerxes, nor 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS 145 
 
 christianized the world, nor abolished slavery. 
 
 Always as much virtue as there is, so ruuch appears; as 
 much goodness as there is, so much reverence it commands. 
 All the devils respect virtue. The high, the generous, the 
 self-devoted sect will always instruct and command man- 
 kind. Never a sincere word was utterly lost. Never a 
 magnanimity fell to the ground. Always the heart of man 
 greets and accepts it unexpectedly. A man passes for that 
 he is worth. What he is, engraves itself on his face, on his 
 form, on his fortunes, in letters of light, which all men may 
 read but himself. Concealment avails him nothing; boast- 
 ing, nothing. There is confession in the glances of our eyes, 
 in our smiles, in salutations, and the grasp of hands. ' His 
 sin bedaubs him, mars all his good impression. Men know 
 not why they do not trust him; but they do not trust him. 
 His vice glasses his eye, demeans his cheek, pinches the nose, 
 sets the mark of the beast on the back of the head, and 
 writes, fool! fool! on the forehead of a king. 
 
 If you would not be known to do anything, never do it. 
 A man may play the fool in the drifts of a desert, but 
 every grain of sand shall seem to see. He may be a solitary 
 eater, but he cannot keep his foolish counsel. A broken 
 complexion, a swinish look, ungenerous acts, and the want 
 of due knowledge, — all blab. Can a cook, a Chiffinch, 
 an lachimo, be mistaken for Zeno or Paul? Confucius ex- 
 claimed, ''How can a man be concealed! How can a man 
 be concealed!" 
 
 On the other hand, the hero fears not, that if he with- 
 hold the avowal of a just and brave act, it will go unwit- 
 nessed and unloved. One knows it, — himself, — and is 
 pledged by it to sweetness of peace, and to nobleness of aim, 
 which will prove in the end a better proclamation of it than 
 the relating of the incident. Virtue is the adherence in 
 action to the nature of things, and the nature of things 
 makes it prevalent. It consists in a perpetual substitu- 
 tion of being for seeming, and with sublime propriety God 
 is described as saying, I AM. 
 
 The lesson which all these observations convey, is, Be, 
 and not seem. Let us acquiesce. Let us take our bloated 
 
146 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 nothingness out of the path of the divine circuits. Let us 
 unlearn our wisdom of the world. Let us He low in the 
 Lord's power, and learn that truth alone makes rich and 
 great. 
 
 If you visit your friend, why need you apologise for not 
 having visited him, and waste his time and deface your own 
 act? Visit him now. Let him feel that the highest love 
 has come to see him, in thee its lowest organ. Or why need 
 you torment yourself and friend by secret self-reproaches 
 that you have not assisted him or complimented him with 
 gifts and salutations heretofore? Be a gift and a bene- 
 diction. Shine with real light, and not with the borrowed 
 reflections of gifts. Common men are apologies for men; 
 they bow the head, they excuse themselves with prolix 
 reasons, they accumulate appearances, because the sub- 
 stance is not. 
 
 We are full of these superstitions of sense, the worship of 
 magnitude. God loveth not size: whale and minnow are of 
 like dimension. But we call the poet inactive, because he 
 is not a president, a merchant, or a porter. We adore an 
 institution, and do not see that it is founded on a thought 
 which we have. But real action is in silent moments. The 
 epochs of our life are not in the visible facts of our choice 
 of a calling, our marriage, our acquisition of an office, and 
 the like; but in a silent thought by the way-side as we walk; 
 in a thought which revises our entire manner of life, and 
 says, "Thus hast thou done, but it were better thus." And 
 all our after years, like menials, do serve and wait on this, 
 and according to their ability do execute its will. This 
 revisal or correction is a constant force, which, as a tendency, 
 reaches through our lifetime. The object of the man, the 
 aim of these moments, is to make daylight shine through 
 him, to suffer the law to traverse his whole being without 
 obstruction, so that, on what point soever of his doing your 
 eye falls, it shall report truly of his character, whether it 
 be his diet, his house, his rehgious forms, his 'society, his 
 mirth, his vote, his opposition. Now he is not homogeneous, 
 but heterogeneous, and the ray does not traverse; there 
 are no thorugh lights; but the eye of the beholder is 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS 147 
 
 puzzled, detecting many unlike tendencies, and a life not 
 yet at one. 
 
 Why should we make it a point with our false modesty 
 to disparage that man we are, and that form of being assigned 
 to us? A good man is contented. I love and honor 
 Epaminondas, but I do not wish to be Epaminondas. I 
 hold it more just to love the world of this hour than the 
 world of his hour. Nor can you, if I am true, excite me to 
 the least uneasiness by saying, "he acted, and thou sittest 
 still." I see action to be good, when the need is, and sitting 
 still to be also good. Epaminondas, if he was the man I 
 take him for, would have sat still with joy and peace, if his 
 lot had been mine. Heaven is large, and affords space for 
 all modes of love and fortitude. Why should we be busy- 
 bodies and superserviceable ? Action and inaction are 
 alike to the true. One piece of the tree is cut for a weather- 
 cock, and one for the sleeper of a bridge; the virtue of the 
 wood is apparent in both. 
 
 I desire not to disgrace the soul. The fact that I am 
 here, certainly shows me that the soul had need of an organ 
 here. Shall I not assume the post? Shall I skulk and 
 dodge and duck with my unseasonable apologies and 
 vain modesty, and imagine my being here impertinent? 
 less pertinent than Epaminondas or Homer being there? 
 and that the soul did not know its own needs? Besides, 
 without any reasoning on the matter, I have no discontent. 
 The good soul nourishes me alway, unlocks new magazines 
 of power and enjoyment to me every day. I will not 
 meanly decline the immensity of good, because I have heard 
 that it has come to others in another shape. 
 
 Besides, why should we be cowed by the name of Action? 
 'Tis a trick of the senses, — no more. We know that the 
 ancestor of every action is a thought. The poor mind does 
 not seem to itself to be any thing, unless it have an outside 
 badge, — some Gentoo diet, or Quaker coat, or Calvinistic 
 prayer-meeting, or philanthropic society, or a great dona- 
 tion, or a high office, or, any how, some wild contrasting 
 action to testify that it is somewhat. The rich mind lies 
 in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature. To think is to act. 
 
148 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. 
 All action is of an indefinite elasticity, and the least admits of 
 being inflated with the celestial air until it eclipses the sun 
 and moon. Let us seek one peace by fidelity. Let me do 
 my duties. Why need I go gadding into the scenes and phi- 
 losophy of Greek and Italian history, before I have washed 
 my own face, or justified myself to my own benefactors? 
 How dare I read W^ashington's campaigns, when I have 
 not answered the letters of my own correspondents? Is 
 not that a just objection to much of our reading? It is 
 a pusillanimous desertion of our work to gaze after our 
 neighbors. It is peeping. Byron says of Jack Bunting, 
 
 "He knew not what to say, and so he swore." 
 
 I may say it of our preposterous use of books: "He knew 
 not what to do, and so he read." I can think of nothing 
 to fill my time with, and so, without any constraint, I find 
 the life of Brant. It is a very extravagant compliment to 
 pay to Brant, or to General Schuyler, or to General Wash- ' 
 ington. My time should be as good as their time: my 
 world, my facts, all my net of relations as good as theirs 
 or either of theirs. Rather let me do my work so well that 
 other idlers, if they choose, may compare my texture with i 
 the texture of these, and find it identical with the best. I 
 
 This over-estimate of the possibilities of Paul and Pericles, , 
 this under-estimate of our own, comes from a neglect of the 
 fact of an identical nature. Bonaparte knew but one 
 Merit, and rewarded in one and the same way the good 
 soldier, the good astronomer, the good poet, the good 
 player. Thus he signified his sense of a great fact. The 
 poet uses the names of Csesar, of Tamerlane, of Bonduca, of 
 Belisarius; the painter uses the conventional story of the 
 Virgin Mary, of Paul, of Peter. He does not, therefore, 
 defer to the nature of these accidental men, of these stock 
 heroes. If the poet writes a true drama, then he is Csesar, 
 and not the player of Csesar; then the self-same strain of 
 thought, emotion as pure, wit as subtle, motions as swift, 
 mounting, extravagant, and a heart as great, self-sufficing, I 
 dauntless, which on the waves of its love and hope can up- 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS 149 
 
 lift all that is reckoned solid and precious in the world, 
 palaces, gardens, money, navies, kingdoms, — marking its 
 own incomparable worth by the shght it casts on these gauds 
 of men, — these all are his, and by the power of these he 
 rouses the nations. But the great names cannot stead him, 
 if he have not hfe himself. Let a man believe in God, and 
 not in names and places and persons. Let the great soul 
 incarnated in some woman's form, poor and sad and single, 
 in some Dolly or Joan, go out to service, and sweep chambers 
 and scour floors, and its effulgent day-beams cannot be 
 muffled or hid, but to sweej^ and scour will instantly appear 
 supreme and beautiful actions, the top and radiance of 
 human hfe, and all people will get mops and brooms; 
 until, lo, suddenly the great soul has enshrined itself in 
 some other form, and done some other deed, and that is now 
 the flower and head of all hving nature. 
 
 We are the photometers, we the irritable goldleaf and 
 tinfoil that measure the accumulations of the subtle element. 
 We know the authentic effects of the true fire through every 
 one ©f its milhon disguises. 
 
VII 
 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 Ne te qusesiveris extra. 
 
 "Man is his own star; and the soul that can 
 
 Render an honest and a perfect man, 
 
 Commands all light, all influence, all fate, 
 
 Nothing to him falls early or too late. 
 
 Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, 
 
 Our fatal shadows that walk by us still." 
 Epilogue to Beaumont atid Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune. 
 
 Cast the bantling on the rocks, 
 Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat: 
 Wintered with the hawk and fox, 
 Power and speed be hands and feet. 
 
 I READ the other day some verses written by an eminent 
 painter which were original and not conventional. Always 
 the soul hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject 
 be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value 
 than any thought they may contain. To believe your own 
 thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private 
 heart, is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent 
 conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for always 
 the inmost becomes the outmost, — and our first thought is 
 rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. 
 Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit 
 we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton, is that they set at 
 naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but 
 what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch 
 that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, 
 more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. 
 Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is 
 his. In every work of genius we recognize ou.^ own re- 
 jected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alien- 
 
 150 
 
SELF-RELIANCE 151 
 
 ated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting 
 lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spon- 
 taneous impression with good-humored inflexibihty then 
 most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. 
 Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense 
 precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and 
 we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from 
 another. 
 
 There is a time in every man's education when he arrives 
 at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is 
 suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as 
 his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, 
 no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through 
 his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to 
 him to till. The power which resides in him is new in 
 nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, 
 nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one 
 face, one character, one fact makes much impression on him, 
 and another none. It is not without pre-established har- 
 mony, this sculpture in the memory. The eye was placed 
 where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that par- 
 ticular ray. Bravely let him speak the utmost syllable of 
 his confession. We but half express ourselves, and are 
 ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It 
 may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, 
 so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his 
 work made manifest by cowards. It needs a divine man to 
 exhibit anything divine. 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. 
 
 Jrust thysel f- o¥erv 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 per- 
 ception that the Eternal was stirring at their heart, working 
 
152 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 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 pinched in a corner, not 
 cowards fleeing before a revolution, but redeemers and 
 benefactors, pious aspirants to be noble clay plastic under 
 the Almighty effort, let us advance and advance on Chaos 
 and the Dark. 
 
 What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in the 
 face and behavior of children, babes and even brutes! That 
 divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because 
 our arithmetic has computed the strength and means op- 
 posed to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being 
 whole, their eye is yet unconquered; and when we look 
 in their faces, we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to 
 nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes 
 four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. 
 So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no 
 less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable 
 ;ind 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, who 
 spoke so clear and emphatic? Good Heaven! it is he! it 
 is that very lump of bashfulness and phlegm which for weeks 
 has done nothing but eat when you were by, that now rolls 
 out these words like bell-strokes. It seems he knows how 
 to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold, then, he 
 will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary. 
 
 The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and 
 would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to con- 
 ciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. How 
 is a boy the master of society! Independent, irresponsible, 
 looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass 
 ])y, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift 
 summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, elo- 
 quent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about con- 
 sequences, nbout 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 jnil by his consciousness. 
 As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a 
 
SELF-RELIANCE 153 
 
 committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred 
 of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his 
 account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could 
 pass again into his neutral, godlike independence ! Who can 
 thus lose all pledge, and having observed, observe again 
 from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted 
 innocence, must always be formidable, must always engage 
 the poet's and the man's regards. Of such an immortal youth 
 the force would be felt. 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. "So- 
 ciety everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of 
 every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock com- 
 pany, 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 real- 
 ities and creators, but names and customs. 
 
 Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He 
 who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by 
 the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. 
 Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind. 
 Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage 
 of the world. I remember an answer which, when quite 
 young, I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who 
 was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of 
 the church. On my saying. What have I to do with the 
 sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my 
 friend suggested,— "But these impulses may be from below, 
 not from above." I replied, 'They do not seem to me to be 
 such; but if I am the devil's child, I will live then from the 
 devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. 
 Good and bad are but names, very readily transferable to 
 that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, 
 the only wrong is what is against it. A man is to carry 
 himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing 
 
154 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 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 inchvidual affects and sways me more than is right. 
 I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth 
 in all ways. If mahce and vanity wear the coat of phi- 
 lanthroi)y, shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this 
 bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last 
 news of Barbadoes, why should I not say to him, "Go, love 
 thy infant; love thy wood-chopper: be good-natured and 
 modest; have that grace; and never varnish your hard, 
 uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for 
 l)]ack folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at 
 homo."' 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, 
 Whitn. 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 obli- 
 gation 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 thous- 
 andfold 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 
 
SELF-RELIANCE 155 
 
 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 not an apology, but a life. It 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. My life should be unique; it should 
 be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine. 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 priv- 
 ilege 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 soli- 
 tude. 
 
 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, or vote with a great party either for the Govern- 
 ment or against it, spread your table like base house- 
 keepers, — under all these screens, I have difficulty to de- 
 tect the precise man you are. And, of course, so much force 
 is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your thing, 
 and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall rein- 
 
156 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 force yourself. A man must consider what a blind-man's- 
 buif is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I 
 anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for 
 his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions 
 of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly 
 can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know 
 that with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of 
 the institution, he will do no such thing? Do I not know 
 that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side; 
 the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? 
 He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are 
 the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their 
 eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached them- 
 selves to some one of these communities of opinion. This 
 conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, 
 authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every 
 truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, 
 their four not the real four: so that every word they say 
 chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them 
 right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the 
 prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come 
 to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees 
 the gentlest asinine expression. There is a mortifying ex- 
 perience in particular which does not fail to wreak itself 
 also in the general history; I mean, "the foohsh 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, and make the most disagreeable sen- 
 sation, — a sensation of rebuke and warning which no brave 
 young man will suffer twice. 
 
 For nonconformity the world whips you with its dis- 
 pleasure. 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 
 midit well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour 
 faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep 
 
' SELF-RELIANCE 157 
 
 cause, — disguise no god, but are i^ut on and off as the wind 
 blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the 
 multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the 
 college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the 
 world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their 
 rage is decorous and prudent; for they are timid, as being 
 very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine 
 rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignor- 
 ant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute 
 force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl 
 and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion 
 to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment. 
 
 The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our con- 
 sistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the 
 eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit 
 than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. 
 
 But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? 
 Why drag about this monstrous corpse of your memory, 
 lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or 
 that pubhc place? Suppose you should contradict your- 
 self; 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 bring the past for judgment into the thous- 
 and-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. Trust your 
 emotion. In your metaphysics you have denied person- 
 ality to the Deity: yet when the devout motions of the soul 
 come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe 
 God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph 
 his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee. 
 
 A foohsh consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, 
 adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. 
 With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. 
 He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the 
 wall. Out upon your guarded lips! Sew them up with 
 packthread, do. Else, if you would be a man, speak what 
 you think to-day in words as hard as cannon-balls, and to- 
 morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, 
 though it contradict every thing you said to-day. Ah, then, 
 exclaim the aged ladies, you shall be sure to be misunder- 
 
158 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 stood. Misunderstood! It is a right fool's word. Is it 
 so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was mis- 
 understood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Coper- 
 nicus, and Gahleo, and Newton, and every pure and wise 
 spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunder- 
 stood. 
 
 I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the 
 isalhes of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, 
 as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insigni- 
 ficant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how 
 you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic 
 or Alexandrian stanza; — read it forward, backward, or 
 across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing con- 
 trite 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 inter-weave 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 mo- 
 ment. 
 
 Fear never but you shall be consistent 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 when seen 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. This is only microscopic crit- 
 icism. 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 gen- 
 uine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, 
 and what you have already done singly will justify you 
 now. Greatness always appeals to the future. If I can 
 be great enough now to do right and scorn eyes, I must 
 have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be 
 
SELF-RELIANCE 159 
 
 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 fihs the imagination? The consciousness of 
 a train of great days and victories behind. There they all 
 stand, and shed a united light on the advancing actor. He 
 is attended as by a visible escort of angels to every man's 
 eye. That is it which throws thunder into Chatham's 
 voice, and dignity into Washington's port, and America into 
 Adam's 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 daj^s we have heard the last of conformity 
 and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous 
 henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear 
 a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us bow and apologize 
 never 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 squahd con- 
 tentment 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 moving 
 wherever moves a man; 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. You are constrained to accept his standard. Ordi- 
 narily 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, — put all means into the shade. This all great 
 men are and do. Every true man is a cause, a country, and 
 an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully 
 
160 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 to accomplish his thought;— and posterity seem to follow 
 his steps as a procession. A man Caesar is born, and for 
 ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and 
 millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius, that he 
 is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An 
 institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as, the 
 Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of 
 Wesley; Abohtion, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called "the 
 height of Rome"; and all history resolves itself very easily 
 into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons. 
 
 Let a man, then, know his worth, and keep things under 
 .Jiis feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down 
 'with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper, 
 in the world which exists for him. But the man in the 
 street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the 
 force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels 
 poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, or 
 a costly book have an alien and forbidding air, much like 
 a gay equipage, and seem to say like that, "Who are you, 
 sir?" Yet they are all 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 obsequi- 
 ous ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been 
 insane, — owes its popularity to the fact, that it symbol- 
 izes 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 makes fools of us, plays us false. King- 
 dom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocab- 
 ulary than private John and Edward in a small house and 
 common day's work: but the things of life are the same to 
 both; the sum-total of both is the same. Why all this 
 deference to Alfred, and Scanderbeg, and Gustavus? 
 Suppose they were virtuous: did they wear out virtue? 
 
SELF-RELIANCE 161 
 
 As great a stake depends on your private act to-day, as 
 followed their public and renowned steps. When private 
 men shall act with vast views, the lustre will be transferred 
 from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen. 
 
 The world has indeed been instructed by its kings, who 
 have so magnetised the eyes of nations. It has been taught 
 by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that is due 
 from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which men 
 have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the great 
 proprietor to walk among them by a law of his own; make 
 his own scale of men and things, and reverse theirs; pay 
 for benefits not with money but with honor, and represent 
 the Law in his person, — was the hieroglyphic by which they 
 obscurely signified their consciousness of their own right 
 and comeliness, the right of every man. 
 
 The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained 
 when we inquire the reason of self -trust. Who is the 
 Trustee ? What is the aboriginal Belf on which a universal 
 ^liance may be grounded ? What is the nature and power 
 of that science-bafRing star, without parallax, without cal- 
 culable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into 
 trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independ- 
 ence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once 
 4he essence of genius, the essence of virtue, and the essence 
 of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote 
 this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teach- 
 ings 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 hght, from time, from man, but one with 
 them, and proceedeth obviously from the same source whence 
 their hfe and being also proceedeth. We first share the life 
 by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appear- 
 ances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. 
 Here is the fountain of action and the fountain of thought. 
 Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man 
 wisdom, of that inspiration of man which cannot be denied 
 without impiety and atheism. We he in the lap of im- 
 
162 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 mense intelligence, which makes us organs of its activity 
 and receivers of its truth. 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 metaphysics, 
 all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is 
 all we can afhrm. Every man discerns between the volun- 
 tary acts of his mind, and his involuntary perceptions. 
 And to his involuntary perceptions he knows a perfect 
 respect 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. All my willful actions and acquisitions are 
 but roving; — the most trivial reverie, the faintest emotion 
 are domestic and divine. Thoughtless people contradict 
 as readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, 
 or rather much more readily; for they do not distinguish 
 between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose 
 to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, 
 but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, 
 and in course of time all mankind, — although it may 
 chance that no one has seen it before me. For my per- 
 ception 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 help. 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, then 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 thing as much as another. All things are dissolved 
 to their center by their cause, and in the universal miracle 
 petty and particular miracles disappear. This is and must 
 be. If, therefore, a man claims to know and speak of God, 
 and carries you backward to the phraseology of some old 
 mouldered nation in another country, in another world, 
 believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is 
 
SELF-RELIANCE 163 
 
 its fullness and completion? Is the parent better than 
 the child into whom he has cast his ripened being ? Whence 
 then this worship of the past? The centuries are conspir- 
 ators against the sanity and majesty of the soul. Time and 
 space are but physiological colors which the eye maketh, 
 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 ref- 
 erence to former roses or to better ones; they are for 
 what they are; thej^ 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 ahke. There is no 
 time to it. But man postpones or remembers; he does 
 not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, 
 or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tip- 
 toe 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 in- 
 tellects dare not yet hear God himself, unless he speak the 
 phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or 
 Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few 
 texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by 
 rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they 
 grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance 
 to see, — painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; 
 afterwards, when they come into the point of view which 
 those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them, 
 and are willing to let the words go; for, at any time, they 
 can use w^ords as good, when occasion comes. So was it 
 with us; so will it be, if we proceed. If we live truly, we 
 shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, 
 
164 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new per- 
 ception, 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 re- 
 mains 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 appointed 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 all 
 other being. You take the way from man, not to man. All 
 persons that ever existed are its fugitive ministers. There 
 shall be no fear in it. Fear and hope are ahke beneath it. 
 It asks nothing. There is somewhat low even in hope. We 
 are then in vision. There is nothing that can be called 
 gratitude nor properly joy. The soul is raised over passion. 
 It seeth identity and eternal causation. It is a perceiving 
 that Truth and Right are. Hence it becomes a Tranquillity 
 out of the knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces of 
 nature, the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea; vast intervals 
 of time, years, centuries, are of no account. This which I 
 think and feel, underlay that former state of Hfe and circum- 
 stances, as it does underlie my present, and will always 
 all circumstance, 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 a shame; con- 
 founds the saint with the rogue; shoves Jesus and Judas 
 equally aside. Why then do we prate of self-reliance? 
 Inasmuch as the soul is present, there will be power not con- 
 fident but agent. To talk of reliance, is a poor external 
 
SELF-RELIANCE 165 
 
 way of speaking. Speak rather of that which rehes, be- 
 cause it works and is. Who has more soul than I masters 
 me, though he should not raise his finger. Round him I 
 must revolve by the gravitation of spirits; who has less, I 
 rule with like facility. 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. Virtue is the governor, the creator, the 
 , reality. All things real are so by so much of virtue as they 
 contain. Hardship, husbandry, hunting, whahng, war, elo- 
 i quence, personal weight, are somewhat, and engage my 
 ; respect as examples of the soul's presence and impure ac- 
 tion. I see the same law working in nature for conservation 
 and growth. The poise of a planet, the bended tree re- 
 covering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of 
 every vegetable and animal, are also demonstrations 
 of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul. All 
 history from its highest to its trivial passages, is the vari- 
 ous record of this power. 
 
 _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 dec- 
 laration of the divine fact. Bid them take their shoes from 
 off their feet, for God is here within. Let our simphcity 
 judge them, and our docihty 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 the soul 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 men. We must 
 go alone. Isolation must precede true society. 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 
 
166 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around 
 our hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All men 
 have my blood, and I have all men's. Not for that will 1 
 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." — Do not spill thy soul; do not all descend; 
 keep thy state; stay at home in thine own heaven; come 
 not for a moment into their facts, into their hubbub of con- 
 flicting appearances, but let in the light of thy law on their 
 confusion. The power men possess to annoy me, I give 
 them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me 
 but through my act. "What we love, that we have; but 
 by desire we bereave ourselves of the love." 
 
 If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and 
 faith, let us at least resist our temptations, let us enter into 
 the state of war, and wake Thor and Woden, courage and 
 constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our 
 smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying hos- 
 pitality and lying affection. Live no longer to the expecta- 
 tion of these deceived and deceiving people with whom 
 we converse. Say to them, father, mother, wife, 
 
 brother, friend, I have lived with you after appear- 
 ances hitherto. Henceforward I am the. tTujto*' Be it 
 known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than 
 the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. 
 
 1 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 from you, or you. If you can 
 love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you 
 cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I must 
 be myself. 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 
 
SELF-RELIANCE 167 
 
 the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if 
 you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical 
 attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with 
 me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do 
 this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your 
 interest and mine and all men's, however long we have dwelt 
 in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? 
 You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well 
 as mine; and if we follow the truth, it will bring us out 
 safe at last. — But so you may 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 stand- 
 ards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomian- 
 ism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy 
 to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. 
 There are two confessionals, in one or the other of which we 
 must be shriven. You may fulfil your round of duties by 
 clearing yourself in the direct, or in the reflex way. Con- 
 sider 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 dis- 
 charge 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 dem^ands something godlike in him who 
 has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ven- 
 tured to trust himself for a task-master. 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 wc 
 
168 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 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 in- 
 solvent; cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition 
 out of all proportion to their practical force, and so 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. The rugged battle of fate, where 
 strength is born, we shun. 
 
 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 col- 
 leges, and is not installed in an office within one year after- 
 wards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it 
 seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being 
 disheartened and in complaining the rest of his life. A 
 sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn 
 tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, 
 keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Con- 
 gress, 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 arise who shall reveal 
 the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning 
 willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with the 
 exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is 
 the word made flesh, born to shed healing to the nations; 
 that he should be ashamed of our compassion; and that the 
 moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, 
 idolatries, and customs out of the window, we pity him no 
 more, but thank and revere him; — and that teacher shall 
 restore the life of man to splendor, and make his name 
 dear to all History. 
 
 It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance, — a new re- 
 
SELF-RELIANCE 169 
 
 spect for the divinity in man, — must work a revolution in 
 ail the offices and relations of men; in their rehgion; in their 
 education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their 
 association; in their property; in their speculative views. 
 1. In what prayers do men allow themselves! That which 
 they call a holy office, is not so much as brave and manly. 
 Prayer looks abroad, and asks for some foreign addition to 
 come through some foreign virtue, and loses itself in endless 
 mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and 
 miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular commodity — 
 any thing less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the con- 
 templation of the facts of life from the highest point of 
 view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. 
 It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But 
 prayer as a means to effect a private end, is theft and mean- 
 ness. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and con- 
 sciousness. 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 kneehng with the stroke of his oar, are true 
 prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap ends. 
 Caratach, in Fletcher's Bonduca, when admonished to 
 inquire the mind of the god Andate, rephes, 
 
 "His hidden meaning lies in our endeavours, 
 Our valours are our best gods." 
 
 Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discon- 
 Jent 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 foohshly, and sit down and cry for com- 
 pany, instead of imparting to them truth and health in 
 rough electric shocks, putting them once more in commun- 
 ication with the soul. 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 fluns: wide. Him 
 all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with de- 
 sire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because 
 
170. SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress 
 and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned 
 our disapprobation. The gods love him, because men hated 
 him. "To the persevering mortal," said Zoroaster, "the 
 blessed Immortals are swift." 
 
 As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their 
 creeds a disease of the intellect. They say with those foolish 
 Israelites, "Let not God speak to us, lest we die. Speak 
 thou, speak any man with us, and we will obey." Every- 
 where I am bereaved 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 un- 
 common activity and power, a Locke, a Lavoisier, ?i Hutton, 
 a Bentham, a Spurzheim, it imposes its classification on other 
 men, and lo! a new system. In proportion always to the 
 depth of the thought, and so to the number of the objects 
 it touches and brings within the 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 great elemental thought of Duty, and 
 man's relation to the Highest. Such is Calvinism, Quaker- 
 ism, Swedenborgianism. The pupil takes the same delight 
 in subordinating every thing to the new terminology, that 
 a girl does who has just learned botany, in seeing a new 
 earth and new seasons thereby. It will happen for a time, 
 that the pupil will feel a real debt to the teacher, — will find 
 his intellectual power has grown by the study of his writings. 
 This will continue until he has exhausted 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 lumi- 
 naries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch their master 
 built. They cannot imagine how you aliens have any right 
 to see, — how can you 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 
 
SELF-RELIANCE 171 
 
 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 hght, 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 idol of Travel- 
 ling, the idol of Italy, of England, of Egypt, remains for 
 all educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, 
 or Greece venerable in the imagination, did so not by ram- 
 bling round creation as a moth round a lamp, but by sticking 
 fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. In manly 
 hours we feel that duty is our place, and that the merrymen 
 of circumstance should follow as they may. The soul is no 
 traveler: the wise man stays at home with the soul; and 
 when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him 
 from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, 
 and is not gadding abroad from himself, and shall make 
 men sensible by the exj^ression 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 of benevo- 
 lence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go 
 abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he 
 knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat 
 which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and 
 grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in 
 Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated 
 as they. He carries ruins to ruins. 
 
 Travelhng is a fool's paradise. We owe to our first jour- 
 neys the discovery that place is nothing. 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, iden- 
 tical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces, 
 I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I 
 am not intoxicated. My giant goes, with me wherever I go. 
 
172 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 3. But the rage of travelling is itself only a symptom 
 of a deeper unsoundness, affecting the whole intellectual 
 action. The intellect is vagabond, and the universal 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 whole 
 minds lean, and follow the Past and the Distant, as the eyes 
 of a maid follow her mistress. The soul created the arts 
 wherever they have flourished. It was in his own mind that 
 tha artist sought his model. It was an application of his 
 own thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to 
 be observed. And why need we copy the Doric or the 
 Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought, 
 and quaint expression, are as near to us as to any; and if 
 the American artist will study with hope and love the pre- 
 cise thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the 
 soil, the length of the day, the wants of the people, the 
 habit and form of the government, he will create a house in 
 which all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and 
 sentiment will be satisfied also. 
 
 Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you 
 can present every moment with the cumulative force of a 
 whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another 
 you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That 
 which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. 
 No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has 
 exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught 
 Shakspeare? Where is the master who could have instruc- 
 ted Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every 
 great man is an unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is pre- 
 cisely that part he could not borrow. If anybody will tell 
 me whom the great man imitates in the original crisis when 
 he performs a great act, I will tell him who else than himself 
 can teach him. Shakspeare will never be made by the study 
 of Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned thee, and thou 
 canst not hope too much or dare too much. There is at this 
 moment, there is for me an utterance bare and grand as that 
 
SELF-RELIANCE 173 
 
 of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, 
 or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these. 
 Not possibly will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with thous- 
 and-cloven tongue, deign to rejDeat itself; but if I can hear 
 what these patriarchs say, surely I can reply to them in the 
 same pitch of voice: for the ear and the tongue are two organs 
 of one nature. Dwell up there in the simple and noble 
 regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce 
 the Foreworld again. 
 
 4. As our Rehgion, our Education, our Art look abroad, 
 so does our spirit of society. All men plume themselves on 
 tlie improvement of society, and no man improves. 
 
 Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side 
 as it gains on the other. Its progress is only apparent, 
 like the workers of a treadmill. It undergoes continual 
 changes: it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, 
 it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amel- 
 ioration. For every thing that is given something is 
 taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. 
 What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, 
 thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of ex- 
 change in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose 
 poverty is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twenti- 
 eth of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of 
 the two men, and you shall see that his aboriginal strength 
 the white man has lost. If the traveller tell us truly, strike 
 the savage with a broad axe, and in a day or two the flesh 
 shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, 
 and the same blow shall send the white to his grave. 
 
 The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use 
 of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but loses so much 
 support of muscle. He has got a fine Geneva watch, but he 
 has lost the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich 
 nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information 
 when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star 
 in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox 
 he knows as little ; and the whole bright calendar of the year 
 is without a dial in his mind. His note books impair his 
 memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance-office 
 
174 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question 
 wliether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not 
 lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched 
 in estabhshments and forms some vigor of wild virtue. For 
 every stoic was a stoic; but in Christendom where is the 
 Christian ? 
 
 There is no more deviation in the moral standard than 
 in the standard of height or bulk. No greater men are now 
 than ever were. A singular equality may be observed 
 between the great men of the first and of the last ages; nor 
 can all the science, art, religion, and philosophy of the nine- 
 teenth century avail to educate greater men than Plutarch's 
 heroes, three or four and twenty centuries ago. Not in time 
 is the race progressive. Phocion, Socrates, Anaxagoras, 
 Diogenes, are great men, but they leave no class. He who 
 is really of their class will not be called by their name, but 
 be wholly 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 im- 
 proved machinery may compensate its good. Hudson and 
 Behring accomphshed so much in their fishing-boats, as to 
 astonish Parry and Franklin, whose equipment exhausted 
 the resources of science and art. Galileo, with an opera- 
 glass, discovered a more splendid series of facts than any one 
 since. Columbus found the New World in an undecked 
 boat. It is curious to see the periodical disuse and perish- 
 ing 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 improve- 
 ments of war among the triumphs of science, and yet Napo- 
 leon 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, "without abolishing our arms, mag- 
 azines, commissaries, and carriages; until, in imitation of the 
 Roman custom, the soldier should receive his supply of 
 corn, grind it in his hand-mill, and bake his bread himself." 
 
 Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the 
 water of which it is composed does not. The same particle 
 
SELF-RELIANCE 175 
 
 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 rehance 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 what they call the soul's 
 progress, namely, the religious, learned, and civil institu- 
 tions, 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 liis property, ashamed of what he has, out of 
 new respect for his being. Especially he hates what he has, 
 if he sees 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 permanent and living projDerty, 
 which does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or rev- 
 olutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually 
 renews itself w^herever the man is put. "Thy lot or portion 
 of hfe," said the Caliph Ah, "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 an- 
 nouncement, The delegation from Essex! The Democrats 
 from New Hampshire! The Whigs of Maine! the young 
 patriot feels himself stronger than before by a new thous- 
 and of eyes and arms. In like manner the reformers sum- 
 mon conventions, and vote and resolve in multitude. But 
 not so, 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 from himself all external 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 end- 
 
176 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 less mutation, thou only firm column must appear the up- 
 holder of all that surrounds thee. He who knows that power 
 is in the soul, that he is weak only because he has looked 
 for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws 
 himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights him- 
 self, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works 
 miracles; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger 
 than a man who stands on his head. 
 
 So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with 
 her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do 
 thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause 
 and Effect, the chancellors of God. In the Will work and ac- 
 quire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance, and 
 shall always drag her after thee. A political victory, a 
 rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return of 
 your absent friend, or some other quite external event, raises 
 your spirits, and j^ou think good days are preparing for you. 
 Do not believe it. It can never be so. Nothing can bring 
 you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but 
 the triumph of principles^ 
 
VIII 
 COMPENSATION 
 
 Ever since I was a boy, I have wished to write a dis- 
 course on Compensation: for it seemed to me when very 
 young, that, on this subject. Life was ahead of tlieology, 
 and the people knew more than the preachers taught. The 
 documents, too, from which the doctrine is to be drawn, 
 charn\ed 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, the greetings, the relations, 
 the 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 innundation 
 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 jour- 
 ney, that would not suffer us to lose our way. 
 
 I was lately confirmed in these desires by hearing a ser- 
 mon 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 ex- 
 ecuted m this world; that the wicked are successful; that the 
 good are miserable; and then urged from reason and from 
 Scripture a compensation to be made to both parties in the 
 next hfe. No offence appeared to be taken by the congre- 
 gation at this doctnne. As far as I could observe, when 
 
 177 
 
178 COMPENSATION 
 
 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 hfe? 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, — bankstock and doubloons, 
 venison and champagne? This must be the compensation 
 intended; for what else? Is it that they are to have leave 
 to pray and praise? to love and serve men? Why, that 
 they can do now. The legitimate inference the disciple 
 would draw, was: "We are to have such a good time as the 
 sinners have now"; — or, to push it to its extreme import: 
 "You sin now; we shall sin by and by: we would sin now, if 
 w^e could; not being successful, we expect our revenge to- 
 morrow." 
 
 The fallacy lay in the immense concession that the bad 
 are successful; that justice is not done now. The blind- 
 ness of the preacher consisted in deferring to the base esti- 
 mate 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 omnipo- 
 tence of the Will; and so establishing the standard of good 
 and ill, of success and falsehood, and summoning the dead 
 to its present tribunal. 
 
 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 ingenious 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 con- 
 versation would probably be questioned in silence. If a 
 
COMPENSATION 179 
 
 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 Compensa- 
 tion; happy beyond my expectation, if I shall truly draw 
 the smallest arc of this circle. 
 
 Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every part 
 of nature; in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the 
 ebb and flow of waters; in male and female; in the inspi- 
 ration and expiration of plants and animals; in the systole 
 and diastole of the heart; in the undulations of fluid and of 
 sound; in the centrifugal and centripetal gravity; in elec- 
 tricity, galvanism, and chemical affinity. Superinduce mag- 
 netism at one end of a needle, the opposite magnetism takes 
 place at the other end. If the south attracts, the north re- 
 pels. To empty here, you must condense there. An inevit- 
 able dualism bisects nature, so that each thing is a half, and 
 suggests another thing to make it whole; as spirit, matter; 
 man, woman; 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 par- 
 ticle. 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 an- 
 other instance. The influences of climate and soil in poli- 
 
180 COMPENSATION 
 
 tical history are another. The cold chmate 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 ex- 
 cess. Every sweet hath its sour; every evil its good. 
 Every faculty which is a receiver of j^jleasure, has an equal 
 l)enalty put on its abuse. It is to answer for its moderation 
 with its life. For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly. 
 For every thing you have missed, you have gained some- 
 thing else; and for every thing you gain, you lose something. 
 If riches increase, they are increased that use them. If 
 the gatherer gathers too much, nature takes out of the man 
 what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, but kills tlie 
 owner. Nature hates monopohes and exceptions. The 
 waves of the sea do not more speedily seek a level from t. ■ ir 
 loftiest tossing, than the varieties of condition tend to equal- 
 ize themselves. There is always some levelling circumstance, 
 that puts down the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the for- 
 tunate, substantially on the same ground with all others. 
 Is a man too strong and fierce for society, and by temper 
 and position a bad citizen, — a morose ruffian with a dash of 
 the pirate in him; — nature sends him a troop of pretty sons 
 and daughters, who are getting along in the dame's classes at 
 the village-school, and love and fear for them smooths his 
 grim scowl to courtesy. Thus she contrives to intenerate 
 the granite and feldspar, takes the boar out and puts the 
 lamb in, and keeps her balance true. 
 
 The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But 
 the President has paid dear for his White House. It has 
 commonly cost him all his peace and the best of his manly 
 attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an 
 appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before 
 the real masters, who stand erect behind the throne. Or, 
 do men desire the more substantial and permanent grandeur 
 of genius? Neither has this an immunity. He who by 
 force of will or of thought is great, and overlooks thousands, 
 has the responsibility of overlooking. With every influx 
 of light comes new danger. Has he hght ? he must bear wit- 
 
COMPENSATION 181 
 
 ness to the light, and always outrun that sympathy which 
 gives him such keen satisfaction, by his fidelity to new reve- 
 lations 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 will 
 not be baulked of its end m the smallest iota. It is in 
 vain to build or plot or combine against it. Things refuse 
 to be mismanaged long. Res nolunt diu male admiriistrari. 
 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. Nothing arbitrary, nothing artificial can en- 
 dure. The true hfe and satisfactions of man seem to elude 
 the utmost rigors or fehcities of condition, and to establish 
 themselves with great indifferency under all varieties of 
 circumstance. Under all governments the influence of char- 
 acter 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 cul- 
 ture could make him. 
 
 These appearances indicate the fact that the universe is 
 represented in every one of its particles. Every thing in 
 nature contains all the powers of nature. Every thing is 
 made of one hidden stuff; as the naturalist sees one type 
 under every metamorphosis, and regards a horse as a running 
 man, a fish as a swimming man, a bird as a flying man, a 
 tree as a rooted man. Each new form repeats not only the 
 main character of the type, but part for part all the details, ~- 
 all the aims, furtherances, hinderances, energies, and whole 
 system of every other. Every occupation, trade, art, trans- 
 action, 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. 
 
182 COMPENSATION 
 
 The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The micro- 
 scope cannot find the animalcule which is less perfect for 
 being little. Eyes, ears, taste, smell, motion, resistance, 
 appetite, and organs of reproduction that take hold on eter- 
 nity, — all find room to consist in the small creature. So do 
 we put our hfe into every act. The true doctrine of 
 omnipresence is, that God reappears with all his parts in 
 every moss and cobweb. The value of the universe con- 
 trives 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 inspirations; out there in history we can see its 
 fatal strength. It is almighty. All nature feels its grasp. 
 "It is in the world, and the world was made by it." It is 
 eternal, but it enacts itself in time and space. Justice is 
 not postponed. A perfect equity adjusts its balance in all 
 parts of life. Ot Kvjioi Atos det evTrtTTTovcn. The dice of 
 God are always loaded. The world looks like a multiplica- 
 tion-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 re- 
 warded, 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 a fire. If you see a hand or a hmb, 
 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 nat- 
 ure; 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 under- 
 standing; it is inseparable from the thing, but is often 
 spread over a long time, and so does not become distinct 
 until after many years. The specific stripes may follow 
 late after the offence, but they follow because they accom- 
 
COMPENSATION 183 
 
 pany it. Crime, and punishment grow out of one stem. 
 Punishrnent 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 pre-exists 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 appro- 
 priate; for example, — to gratify the senses, we sever the 
 pleasure of the senses from the needs of the character. The 
 ingenuity of man has been dedicated always to the solu- 
 tion of one problem, — how to detach the sensual sweet, the 
 sensual strong, the sensual bright, &c., 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 bottom- 
 less; to get a one end, without an other end. The soul saj^s. 
 Eat; the body would feast. The soul says, The man and 
 woman shall be one flesh and one soul; the body would join 
 the flesh only. The soul says. Have dominion over all things 
 to the ends of virtue; the body would have the power over 
 things to its own ends. 
 
 The soul strives amain to live and work through all 
 things. It would be the only fact. All things shall be added 
 unto it, — power, pleasure, knowledge, beauty. The par- 
 ticular 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 get only 
 one side of nature— the sweet, without the other side— the 
 bitter. 
 
 Steadily is this dividing and detaching 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, the moment 
 we seek to separate them from the whole. We can no more 
 Iialve things, and get the sensual good by itself, than we can 
 
184 COMPENSATION 
 
 get an inside that shall have no outside, or a light without 
 a shadow. ''Drive out nature with a fork, she comes run- 
 ning back." 
 
 Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which the 
 unwise seek to dodge, which one and another brags that 
 he does not know; brags 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 that 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 bo mad, — but for the circumstance, that 
 when the disease begins in the will, of rebellion and separa- 
 tion, 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 dwell- 
 est in the highest heavens in silence, thou only great God, 
 sprinkling with an unwearied Providence certain penal blind- 
 nesses upon such as have unbridled desires!"^ 
 
 The human soul is true to these facts in the painting of 
 fable, of history, of law, of proverbs, of conversation. It 
 finds a tongue in literature unawares. Thus the Greeks 
 called Jupiter, Supreme Mind; but having traditionally 
 ascribed to him many base actions, they involuntarily made 
 amends to Reason, by tying up the hands of so bad a god. 
 He is made as helpless as a king of England. Prometheus 
 knows one secret, which Jove must bargain for; Minerva, 
 another. He cannot get his own thunders; Minerva keeps 
 the key of them. 
 
 "Of all the gods I only know the keys 
 That ope the solid doors within whose vaults 
 His thunders sleep." 
 
 A plain confession of the in-working of the All, and of its 
 
 ^ St. Augustine: Confessions, book i. 
 
COMPENSATION 185 
 
 moral aim. The Indian mythology ends in the same ethics; 
 and indeed it would seem impossible for any fable to be in- 
 vented and get any currency which was not moral Aurora 
 forgot to ask youth for her lover, and so though Tithonus 
 is immortal, he is old. Achilles is not quite invulnerable; 
 for Thetis held him by the heel when she dipped him in the 
 Styx, and the sacred waters did not wash that part. Sieg- 
 fried, 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 always 
 is. There is a crack in every thing God has made. Alwaj^s, 
 it would seem, there is this vindictive circumstance steal- 
 ing in at unawares, even into the wild poesy in which the 
 human fancy attempted to make bold holyday, and to shake 
 itself free of the old laws, — this backstroke, this kick of the 
 gun, certifying that the law is fatal; that in Nature nothing 
 can be given, all things are sold. 
 
 This is the ancient doctrine of Nemesis, who keeps watch 
 in the Universe, and lets no offence go unchastised. The 
 Furies, they said, are attendants on Justice, and if the sun 
 in heaven should transgress his path, they would punish him. 
 The poets related that stone walls, and iron swords, and 
 leathern thongs, had an occult sympathy with the wrongs of 
 their owners; that the belt which Ajax gave Hector dragged 
 the Trojan hero over the field at the wheels of the car of 
 Achilles; and the sword which Hector gave Ajax was that on 
 whose point Ajax fell. They recorded, that when the 
 Thasians erected a statue to Theogenes, 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 the thought above the will of the writer. That is the 
 best part of each writer which has nothing private in it. 
 That is the best part of each 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 
 
186 COMPENSATION 
 
 would abstract as the spirit of them all. Phidias it is not, 
 but the work of man in that early Hellenic world, that I 
 would know. The name and circumstances of Phidias, how- 
 ever convenient for histor}-, embarrasses when we come to 
 the highest criticism. We are to see that which man was 
 tending to do in a given period, and was hindered, or, if you 
 will, modified in doing, by the interfering volitions of Phidias, 
 of Dante, of Shakspeare, the organ whereby man at the 
 moment wrought. 
 
 Still more striking is the expression of this fact in the 
 proverbs of all nations, which are always the Hterature of 
 Reason, or the statements of an absolute truth without 
 qualification. Proverbs, hke the sacred books of each na- 
 tion, 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 ail markets and all languages by flights of 
 proverbs, whose teaching is as true and as omnipresent as 
 that of birds and flies. 
 
 All things are double, one against another. — Tit for tat; 
 an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth; blood for blood; 
 measure for measure; love for love. — Give, and it shall be 
 given you. — He that watereth shall be watered himself. — 
 What will you have? quoth God; pay for it, and take it. — 
 Nothing venture, nothing have. — Thou shalt be paid exactly 
 for what thou hast done, no more, no less. — Wlio doth not 
 work shall not eat. — Harm watch, harm catch. — Curses 
 alwaj^s 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. ^Ye 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 
 
COMPENSATION 187 
 
 will, or against his will, he draws his portrait to the eye of 
 his companions by every word. Every opinion reacts on 
 him vvdio inters it. It is a threadball thrown at a mark, 
 but the other end remains in the thrower's bag. Or rather, 
 it is a harpoon thrown at the whale, unwinding, as it flies, a 
 coil of cord in the boat; and if the harpoon is not good, or 
 not well thrown, it will go nigh to cut the steersman in twain, 
 or to sink the boat. 
 
 You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. "No man 
 had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him," 
 said Burke. The exclusive in fashionable life does not see 
 that he excludes himself from en^'oj^ment, in the attempt to 
 appropriate it. The excIuGionist in religion does not see 
 that he shuts the door of heaven on himself, in striving to 
 shut out others. Treat men as pawns and ninepins, and you 
 shall suffer as well as the5^ 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, 'T 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 dis- 
 pleasure in meeting him. We meet as water meets water, 
 or a current of air meets another, with perfect diffusion and 
 interpenetration of nature. But as soon as there is any 
 departure from simphcity 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, the great and universal, and 
 the petty and particular, all unjust accumulations of prop- 
 erty and power, are avenged in the same manner. Fear 
 is an instructor of great sagacity, and the herald of all rev- 
 olutions. One thing he always 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, 
 
188 COMPENSATION 
 
 our cultivated clases are timid. Fear for ages has boded and 
 mowed and gibbered over government and property. That 
 obscene bird is not there for notliing. He indicates great 
 wrongs, which must be revised. 
 
 Of the hke nature is that expectation of change which 
 instantly follows the suspension of our voluntary activit3^ 
 The terror of cloudless moon, the emerald of Polycrates, 
 the awe of prosperity, the instinct which leads every gen- 
 erous 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 
 always best to pay scot and lot as they go along, and that 
 a man often pays dear for a small frugality. The borrower 
 runs in his own debt. Has a man gained any thing who has 
 reveived 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 alwaj^s 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 post- 
 ponement. 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 
 
COMPENSATION 189 
 
 those from whom we receive them, or only seldom. But 
 the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for line, 
 deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of too 
 much good staying in your hand. It will fast corrupt and 
 worm' worms. Pay it away quickly in some sort. 
 
 Labor is watched over by the same pitiless laws. Cheap- 
 est, say the prudent, is the dearest labor. What we buy in 
 a broom, a mat, a wagon, a knife, is some application of good 
 sense to a common want. It is best to pay in your land 
 a skilful gardener, or to buy good sense apphed to garden- 
 ing; 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 through- 
 out your estate. But because of the dual constitution of 
 all 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-mone}^, 
 may be counterfeited or stolen, but that which they rep- 
 resent, namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be counter- 
 feited 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 ex- 
 tort the benefit, 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 im- 
 mense illustration of the perfect compensation of the uni- 
 verse. Every where and always this law is sublime. The 
 absolute balance of Give and Take, the doctrine that every 
 thing has its price; and if that price is not paid, not that 
 thing, but something else, is obtained, and that it is im- 
 possible to get any thing without its price, — this doctrine is 
 not less subUme in the columns of a ledger than in the bud- 
 gets of states, in the laws of hght and darkness, in all the 
 
190 COMPENSATION 
 
 action and reaction of nature. I cannot doubt that the high 
 laws which each man sees ever imphcated 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. Pie' 
 finds that things are arranged for truth and benefit, but there 
 is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. There is no 
 such thing as concealment. Commit a crime, and the earth 
 is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat 
 of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods 
 the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel and mole. 
 You cannot recall the spoken word, you cannot wipe out the 
 foot-track, you cannot drav/ up the ladder, so as to leave no 
 inlet or clew. Always some damning circumstance trans- 
 pires. 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 alge- 
 braic equation. The good man has absolute good, which like 
 fire turns every thing to its own nature, so that you cannot 
 do him any harm; but as the royal armies sent against Napo- 
 leon, when he approached, cast down their colors, and from 
 enemies became friends, so do disasters of all kinds, as sick- 
 ness, offence, poverty, prove benefactors. 
 
 "Winds blow and waters roll 
 Strength to the brave, and power and deity, 
 Yet in themselves are nothing." 
 
 The good are befriended even by weakness and defect. As 
 no man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to 
 him, so no man had ever a defect that was not somewhere 
 made useful to him. The stag in the fable admired his 
 
COMPENSATION 191 
 
 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 Ufetime needs to 
 thank his faults. As no man thoroughly understands a 
 truth until first he has contended against it, so no man has a 
 thorough acquaintance with the hinderances 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 de- 
 fect 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. Not until we are 
 pricked and stung and sorely shot at, awakens the indignation 
 which arms itself with secret forces. A great man is always 
 willing to be little. Whilst he sits on the cushion of advan- 
 tages, he goes to sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, de- 
 feated, 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 moder,^ 
 ation and real skill. The wise man always 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 honied 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 suc- 
 cumb 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 
 
192 COMPENSATION 
 
 anyone but himself, as for a thing to be and not to be at the 
 same time. There is a third silent party to all our bargains. 
 The nature and soul of things takes on itself the guaranty of 
 the fulfilment of every contract, so that honest service can- 
 not come to a loss. If you serve an ungrateful master, serve 
 him the more. Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall 
 be repaid. The longer the payment is withholden, the better 
 for you ; for compound interest on compound interest is the 
 rate and usage of this exchequer. 
 
 The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to 
 cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of 
 sand. It makes no difference whether the actors be many or 
 one, a tyrant or a mob. A mob is a society of bodies vol- 
 untarily 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 prin- 
 ciple; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather jus- 
 tice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon 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 wrong-doers. The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every 
 lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more 
 illustrious abode ; every burned book or house enhghtens the 
 world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates 
 through the earth from side to side. The minds of men are 
 at last aroused; reason looks out and justifies her own, and 
 malice finds all her work vain. It is the whipper who is 
 whipped, and the tyrant who is undone. 
 
 Thus do all things preach the indifferency of circumstances. 
 The man is all. Every thing has two sides, a good and am 
 evil. Every advantage has its tax. I learn to be content. 
 But the doctrine of compensation is not the doctrine of in- 
 differency. The thoughtless say, on hearing these repre-- 
 sentations : 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 li 
 lose any good, I gain some other; all actions are indifferent. 
 
COMPENSATION I93 
 
 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 circum- 
 stance, whose waters ebb and flow with perfect balance, hes 
 the aboriginal abyss of real Being. Existence, or God, is not 
 a relation, or a part, but the whole. Being is the vast affirm- 
 ative, 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 hving 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 he 
 with him, he so far deceases from nature. In some manner 
 there will be a demonstration of the wrong to the under- 
 standing also; but should we not see it, this deadly deduc- 
 tion 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 pen- 
 alty to virtue; no penalty to wisdom; they are proper ad- 
 ditions of being. In a virtuous action, I properly am- in a 
 virtuous act, I add to the world; I plant into deserts con- 
 quered from Chaos and Nothing, and see the darkness re- 
 ceding on the limits of the horizon. There can be no ex- 
 iCess to love, none to knowledge, none to beauty, when these 
 attributes are considered in the purest sense. The soul re- 
 fuses all limits. It affirms in man always an Optimism, 
 never a Pessimism. 
 
 His life is a progress, and not a station. His instinct is 
 trust. Our instinct uses "more" and "less" in application to 
 man, always of the presence of the soul, and not of its ab- 
 
194 COMPENSATION 
 
 sence: 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, therefore, no tax on the good 
 of virtue; for that is the incommg of God liimself, or ab- 
 solute existence, without any comparative. All external 
 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 responsibility. 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. Il 
 contract the boundaries of possible mischief. I learn thei 
 wisdom of St. Bernard: "Nothing can work me damage ex-j 
 cept 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 in- 
 equalities 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 to 
 wards More? Look at those who have less faculty, and one 
 feels sad, and knows not well what to make of it. Almost 
 he shuns their eye; almost he fears they will upbraid God. 
 What should they do? It seems a great injustice. But 
 face the facts, and see them nearly, and the mountainous 
 inequalities vanish. Love reduces them all, 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 overshad- 
 owed and outdone by great neighbors, I can yet love; I car 
 still receive ; and he that loveth maketh his own the grandeui 
 he loves. Thereby I make the discovery that my brothei 
 is my guardian, acting for me with the friendhest designs 
 and the estate I so admired and envied is my own. It is th( 
 
COMPENSATION 195 
 
 eternal nature of the soul to appropriate and make all things 
 its own. Jesus and Shakspeare are fragments of the soul 
 and by love I conquer and incorporate them in my own con- 
 scious domain. His virtue,— is not that mine? His wit,— 
 if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit. 
 
 Such, also, is the natural history of calamity. The changes 
 k\liich break up at short intervals the prosperity of men 
 ire advertisements of a nature v^^hose law is growth. Ever- 
 nore it is the order of nature to grow, and every soul is by 
 his intrinsic necessity quitting its whole system of things, 
 ts friends, and home, and laws, and faith, as the shell-fish 
 ;rawls out of its beautiful but stony case, because it no 
 ODger admits of its growth, and slowly forms a new house. 
 11 proportion to the vigor of the individual, these revolu- 
 ioiis are frequent, until in some happier mind they are in- 
 essant, and all worldly relations hang very loosely about 
 lim, becoming, as it were, a transparent fluid membrane 
 hrough which the form is always seen, and not, as in most 
 acn, an indurated heterogenous fabric of many dates, and 
 f no settled character, in which the man is imprisoned, 
 'hen there can be enlargement, and the man of to-day 
 carcely recognizes the man of yesterday. And such should 
 e the outward biography of man in time,— a putting off of 
 ead circumstances day by day, as he renews his raiment 
 ay by day. But to us, in our lapsed estate, resting not 
 dvancing, resisting not co-operating with the divine ex- 
 ansion, this growth comes by shocks. 
 We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our 
 ngels go. We do not see that they only go out that arch- 
 ngels may come in. We are idolaters of the Old. We do 
 ot believe in the riches of the soul, in its proper eternity 
 nd omnipresence. We do not believe there is any force in 
 )-day to rival or re-create that beautiful yesterday. We 
 nger in the ruins of the old tent, where once we had bread 
 id shelter and organs, nor beheve that the spirit can feed, 
 )ver, and nerve us again. But we sit and weep in vain, 
 he voice of the Almighty saith, "Up and onward for ever- 
 ore!" We cannot stay amid the ruins. Neither will we 
 
196 COMPENSATION 
 
 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 appar- 
 ent 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, termi- 
 nates 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- 
 jiext years; and the man or woman who would have re-^ 
 mained a sunny garden-flower, with no room for its roots,] 
 and too much sunshine for its head, by the falhng of the 
 walls and the neglect of the gardener, is made the banian oft" 
 the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods oft 
 men 
 
IX 
 
 HEROISM 
 
 "Paradise is under the shadow of swords." 
 
 Mahomet. 
 
 In the elder English dramatists, and mainly in the plays 
 of Beaumont and Fletcher, there is a constant recognition of 
 gentility, as if a noble behavior were as easily marked in the 
 society of their age, as color is in our American population. 
 When any Rodrigo, Pedro, or Valerio enters, though he be 
 a stranger, the duke or governor exclaims, This is a gentle- 
 man, — and proffers civilities without end; but all the rest 
 are slag and refuse. In harmony with this dehght in per- 
 sonal advantages, there is in their plays a certain heroic cast 
 of character and dialogue,— as in Bonduca, Sophocles, the 
 Mad Lover, the Double Marriage,— wherein the speaker is 
 so earnest and cordial, and on such deep grounds of char- 
 acter, that the dialogue, on the slightest additional incident 
 in the plot, rises naturally into poetry. Among many texts, 
 take the following. The Roman Martins has conquered 
 Athens,— all but the invincible spirits of Sophocles the duke 
 of Athens, and Dorigen his wife. The beauty of the latter 
 inflames Martins, and he seeks to save her husband; but 
 Sophocles will not ask his life, although assured that a word 
 will save him, and the execution of both proceeds. 
 
 " Valerius. Bid thy wife farewell. 
 
 Soph. No, I will take no leave. My Dorigen, 
 Yonder above, 'bout Ariadne's crown. 
 My spirit shall hover for thee. Prithee, haste. 
 
 Dor. Stay, Sophocles, — with this tie up my sight; 
 Let not soft nature so transformed be, 
 And lose her gentler-sexed humanity. 
 To make me see my lord bleed. So, 'tis well; 
 Never one object underneath the sun 
 
 197 
 
198 HEROISM 
 
 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. 
 
 Vol. But art not grieved nor vexed to leave thy life thus? 
 
 Soph. \Vliy 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 wiU leap out at his mouth: 
 Tliis is a man, a wo nan! Kiss thy lord. 
 And live with all the freedon you were wont. 
 O love! thou doubly hast afflicted me 
 With virtue and with beauty. Treacherous heart, 
 My hand shall cast thee quick into my urn. 
 Ere thou transgress this knot of piety. 
 
 Val. What ails my brother? 
 
 Soph. Martius, O Martius, 
 Thou now hast found a way to conquer me. 
 
 Dor. O star of Rome! what gratitude can speak 
 Fit words to follow such a deed as this? 
 
 Mar. This admirable duke, Valerius, 
 With his disdain of fortune and of death, 
 Captived himself, has captivated me. 
 And though my arm hath ta'en his body here, 
 His soul hath subjugate 1 Martius' soul. 
 By Romulus, he is all soul, I think; 
 He hath no flesh, and spirit cannot be gyved. 
 Then we have vanquished nothing; he is free. 
 And Martius walks now in captivity." 
 
 I do not readily remember any poem, pla}^ 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 Words- 
 worth's Laodamia, and the ode of ''Dion," and some sonnets, 
 have a certain noble music ; and Scott wifl sometimes draw a 
 stroke like the portrait of Lord Evandale, given by Balfour 
 
 i 
 
HEROISM 199 
 
 of Burley. Thomas Carlyle, with his natural taste for 
 what is manly and daring in character, has suffered no heroic 
 itrait in his favorites to drop from his biographical and his- 
 Itorical pictures. Earher, Robert Burns has given us a song 
 or two. In the Harleian Miscellanies there is an account 
 of the battle of Lutzen, which deserves to be read. And 
 Simon Ockley's History of the Saracens recounts the prodi- 
 gies of individual valor with admiration, all the more evi- 
 dent on the part of the narrator, that he seems to think that 
 his place in Christian Oxford requires of him some proper 
 protestations of abhorrence. But if we explore the liter- 
 ature of Heroism, we shah quickly come to Plutarch, who is 
 its doctor and historian. To him we owe the Brasidas, the 
 Dion, the Epaminondas, the Scipio of old; and I must think 
 we are more deeply indebted to him than to all the ancient 
 writers. Each of his ''Lives" is a refutation to the des- 
 pondency and cowardice of our rehgious and pohtical the- 
 orists. A wild courage, a stoicism not of the schools, but of 
 the blood, shines in every anecdote, and has given that book 
 its immense fame. 
 
 We need books of this tart cathartic virtue, more than 
 books of political science or of private economy. Life is a 
 festival only to the wise. Seen from the nook and chimney- 
 side of prudence, it wears a ragged and dangerous front. 
 The violations of the laws of nature by our predecessors and 
 our contemporaries are punished in us also. The disease and 
 deformity around us certify the infraction of natural, intel- 
 lectual, and moral laws, and often violation on violation to 
 breed such compound misery. A lock-jaw, that bends a 
 man's head back to his heels; hydrophobia, that makes him 
 bark at his wife and babes; insanity, that makes him eat 
 grass; war, plague, cholera, famine,— indicate a certain fe- 
 rocity in nature, v/hich, as it had its inlet by human crime, 
 must have its outlet by human suffering. Unhappily, al- 
 most no man exists who has not in his own person become, 
 to some amount, a stockholder in the sin, and so made him- 
 self liable to a share in the expiation. 
 
 Our culture, therefore, must not omit the arming of our 
 man. Let him hear in season, that he is born into the state 
 
200 HEROISM 
 
 of war, and that the commonwealth and his own well-being 
 require that he should not go dancing in the weeds of peace; 
 but warned, self-collected, and neither defying nor dreading 
 the thunder, let him take both reputation and life in his 
 hand, and with perfect urbanity dare the gibbet and the mob 
 by the absolute truth of his speech and the rectitude of his 
 behavior. 
 
 Towards all this external evil the man within the breast 
 assumes a warlike attitude, and affirms his ability to cope 
 single-handed with the infinite army of enemies. To this 
 military attitude of the soul we give the name of Heroism. 
 Its rudest form is the contempt for safety and ease, which 
 makes the attractiveness of war. It is a self-trust which 
 slights the restraints of prudence, in the plenitude of its en- 
 ergy 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 philosoph- 
 ical in heroism; there is somewhat not holy in it; it seems 
 not to know that other souls are of one texture with it; it 
 hath pride; it is the extreme of individual nature. Neverthe- 
 less 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 cen- 
 sure of philosophers or divines. It is the avowal of the un- 
 schooled man, that he finds a quality in him that is neg- 
 ligent of expense, of health, of life, of danger, of hatred, of 
 reproach, and that he knows that his will is higher and more 
 excellent than all actual and all possible antagonists. 
 
 Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind, 
 and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and 
 good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an in- 
 dividual's character. Now to no other man can its wisdom 
 appear as it does to him, for every man must be supposed 
 
HEROISM 201 
 
 to see a little farther on his own proper path than any one 
 else. Therefore, just and wise men take umbrage at his 
 act, until after some little time be past; then they see it to 
 be in unison with their acts. All prudent men see that the 
 action is clean contrary to a sensual prosperity; for every 
 heroic act measures itself by its contempt of some external 
 good. But it finds its own success at last, and then the pru- 
 dent also extol. 
 
 Self-trust is the essence of Heroism. It is the state of the 
 soul at war; and its ultimate objects are the last defiance of 
 falsehood and wrong, and the power to bear all that can be 
 inflicted by evil agents. It speaks the truth, and it is just. 
 It is generous, hospitable, temperate, scornful of petty cal- 
 culations, and scornful of being scorned. It persists; it is 
 of an undaunted boldness, and of a fortitude not to be wea- 
 ried out. Its jest is the littleness of common life. That 
 false prudence which dotes on health and wealth is the foil, 
 the butt and merriment of heroism. Heroism, like Plotinus, 
 is almost ashamed of its body. What shall it say, then, to 
 the sugar-plums and cat's-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 gos- 
 sip or a little praise, that the great soul cannot choose but 
 laugh at such earnest nonsense. "Indeed, these humble con- 
 siderations make me out of love with greatness. What a 
 disgrace is it to me to take note how many pairs of silk 
 stockings thou hast, namely, these and those that were the 
 peach-colored ones; or to bear the inventory of thy shirts, as 
 one for superfluity, and one other for use!" 
 
 Citizens, thinking after the laws of arithmetic, consider 
 the inconvenience of receiving strangers at their fireside, 
 reckon narrowly the loss of time and the unusual display: 
 
202 HEROISM 
 
 the soul of a better quality thrusts back the unseasonable 
 economy into the vaults of life, and says, I will obey the God, 
 and the sacrifice and the fire he will provide. Ibn Haukal, 
 the Arabian geographer, describes a heroic extreme in the 
 hospitality of Sogd, in Bukharia. ''When I was in Sogd, 
 I saw a great building, like a palace, the gates of which were 
 open and fixed back to the wall with large nails. I asked 
 the reason, and was told that the house had not been shut 
 night or day, for a hundred years. Strangers may pre- 
 sent 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 compensa- 
 tions 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 hos- 
 pitality 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 w^hat it hath, and all it hath; but its own majesty can 
 lend a better grace to bannocks and fair water than belong 
 to city feasts. 
 
 The temperance of the hero proceeds from the same wish 
 to do no dishonor to the worthiness he has. But he loves 
 it for itg elegancy, not for its austerity. It seems not worth 
 his while to be solemn, and denounce with bitterness flesh- 
 eating or wine-drinking, the use of tobacco, or opium, or 
 tea, or silk, or gold. A great man scarcely knows how he 
 dines, how he dresses; but, without railing or precision, his 
 living is natural and poetic. John Eliot, the Indian Apostle, 
 drank water, and said of wine, 'Tt is a noble, generous liquor, 
 and we should be humbly thankful for it; but, as I remem- 
 ber, water was made before it." Better still is the temper- 
 ance of king David, who poured out on the ground unto the 
 
HEROISM 203 
 
 Lord the water which three of his warriors had brought him 
 to drink at the peril of their Hves. 
 
 It is told of Brutus, that when he fell on his sword, after 
 the battle of Philippi, he quoted a line of Euripides, "0 vir- 
 tue, I have followed thee through life, and I find thee at last 
 but a shade." I doubt not the hero is slandered by this re- 
 port. 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. Pov- 
 erty is its ornament. Plenty it does not need, and can 
 very well abide its loss. 
 
 But that which takes my fancy most, in the heroic class, 
 is the good humor and hilarity they exhibit. It is a height 
 to which common duty can very well attain, to suffer and 
 to dare with solemnity. But these rare souls set opinion, 
 success, and life, at so cheap a rate, that they will not soothe 
 their enemies by petitions, or the show of sorrow, but wear 
 their own habitual greatness. Scipio, charged with pecu- 
 lation, 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' 
 condemnation of himself to be maintained in all honor in 
 the Prytaneum during his life, and Sir Thomas More's play- 
 fulness 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 eradi- 
 cation of old and foohsh 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 of the world; and such would appear, could we see the 
 
204 HEROISM 
 
 human race assembled in vision, like little children frolick- 
 ing together; though, to the eyes of mankind at large, they 
 wear a stately and solemn garb of works and influences. 
 
 The interest these fine stories have for us, the power of a 
 romance over the boy who grasps the forbidden book under 
 his bench at school, our delight in the hero, is the main fact to 
 our purpose. All these great and transcendent properties 
 are ours. If we dilate in beholding the Greek energy, the 
 Roman pride, it is that we are already domesticating the 
 same sentiment. Let us find room for this great guest in our 
 small houses. The first step of worthiness will be to dis- 
 abuse 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? 
 Let us feel that where the heart is, there the muses, there 
 the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massa- 
 chusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think 
 paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic 
 topography. But here we are; — that is a great fact, 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, hojie 
 and dread, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not 
 be absent from the chamber where thou sittest. Epami- 
 nondas, brave and affectionate, does not seem to us to need 
 Olympus to die upon, nor the Syrian sunshine. He lies very 
 well where he is. The Jerseys were handsome ground 
 enough for Washington to tread, and London streets for 
 the feet of Milton. A great man illustrates his place, 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 pict- 
 ures which fill the imagination in reading the actions of Per- 
 icles, Xenophon Columbus, Bayard, Sidney, Hampden, teach 
 us how needlessly mean our life is; that we, by the depth of 
 our living, should deck it with more than regal or national 
 splendor, and act on principles that should interest man and 
 nature in the length of our days. 
 
 We have seen or heard of many extraordinary young men 
 who never ripened or whose performance in actual hfe was 
 
HEROISM 205 
 
 not extraordinary. When we see their air and mien, when 
 we hear them speak of society, of books, of reUgion, we ad- 
 mire their superiority, they seem to throw contempt on the 
 whole state of the world; theirs is the tone of a youthful 
 giant, who is sent to work revolutions. But they enter an 
 active i)rofession, and the forming Colossus shrinks to the 
 common size of man. The magic they used was the ideal ten- 
 dencies, which always make the Actual ridiculous; but the 
 tough world had its revenge the moment they put their horses 
 of the sun to plough in its furrow. They found no example 
 and no companion^ and their heart fainted. What then? 
 The lesson they gave in their first aspirations is yet true; 
 and a better valor and a purer truth shall one day execute 
 their will, and put the world to shame. Or why should a 
 woman liken herself to any historical woman, and think, 
 because Sappho, or Sevigne, or De Staiil, or the cloistered 
 souls who have had genius and cultivation, do not satisfy the 
 imagination and the serene Themis, none can, — certainly not 
 she? Why not? She has a new and unattempted prob- 
 lem 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 ei^ch new experience, try, in 
 turn, all the gifts God offers her, that she may learn the 
 power and the charm that, hke a new dawn radiating out of 
 the deep of space, her new-born being is. The fair girl, who 
 repels interference by a decided and proud choice of in- 
 fluences, so careless of pleasing, so wilful and lofty, in- 
 spires every beholder with somewhat of her own nobleness. 
 The silent heart encourages her; friend, never strike sail 
 to a fear. Come into port greatly, or sail with God the 
 seas. Not in vain you live, for every passing eye is cheered 
 and refined by the vision. 
 
 The characteristic of a genuine heroism is its persistency. 
 All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of gener- 
 osity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by 
 yourself, 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 out- 
 
206 HEROISM 
 
 run 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. Be true to your own act, and con- 
 gratulate yourself if you have done something strange and 
 extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous age. 
 It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young 
 person, "Always do what you are afraid to do." A simple 
 manly character need never make an apology, but should 
 regard its past action with the calmness of Phocion, when he 
 admitted that the event of the battle was happy, yet did 
 not regret his dissuasion from the battle. 
 
 There is no weakness or exposure for which we cannot 
 find consolation in the thought, — this is a part of my con- 
 stitution, part of my relation and office to my fellow-creat- 
 ure. 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 jus- 
 tification. It is a capital blunder; as you discover, when an- 
 other man recites his charities. 
 
 To speak the truth even with some austerity, to live with 
 some rigor of temperance or some extremes of generosity, 
 seems to be an asceticism which common good nature would 
 appoint to those who are at ease and in plenty, in sign that 
 they feel a brotherhood with the great multitude of suffer- 
 ing men. And not only need we breathe and exercise the 
 soul by assuming the penalties of abstinence, of debt, of soli- 
 tude, of unpopularity, but it behoves the wise man to look 
 with a bold eye into those rarer dangers which sometimes in- 
 vade men, and to familiarize himself with disgusting forms 
 of disease, with sounds of execration, and the vision of violent 
 death. 
 
 Times of heroism are generally times of terror; but the 
 day never shines in which this element may not work. 
 The circumstances of man, we say, are historically somewhat 
 better in this country, and at this hour, than perhaps ever 
 
HEROISM 207 
 
 before. More freedom exists for culture. It will not now 
 run against an axe at the first step out of the beaten track 
 of opinion. But whoso is heroic will always find crises to 
 try his edge. Human virtue demands her champions and 
 martyrs, and the trial of persecution always proceeds. It 
 is but the other day that the brave Love joy gave his breast 
 to the bullets of a mob for the rights of free speech and 
 opinion, and died when it was better not to live. 
 
 I see not any road of perfect peace which a man can 
 walk, but to take counsel of his own bosom. Let him quit 
 too much association; let him go home much, and stablish 
 him-self in those courses he approves. The unremitting re- 
 tention 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 incen- 
 diary. 
 
 It may calm the apprehension of calamity in the most 
 susceptible heart, to see how quick a bound nature has set 
 to the utmost infliction of malice. We rapidly approach a 
 brink over which no enemy can follow us. 
 
 "Let them rave: 
 Thou art quiet in thy grave." 
 
 In the gloom of our ignorance of what shall be in the hour 
 when we are deaf to the higher voices, who does not envy 
 them who have seen safely to an end their manful endeavor? 
 Who that sees the meanness of our politics, but inly con- 
 gratulates 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 
 
208 HEROISM 
 
 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. 
 
X 
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. 
 Maugre all the selfishness that chills like east winds the 
 world, the whole human family is bathed with an element of 
 love like a fine ether. How many persons we meet in houses, 
 whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we honor, and who 
 honor us! How many we see in the street, or sit with in 
 church, whom, though silently, we warmly rejoice to be with! 
 Read the language of these wandering eye-beams. The 
 heart knoweth. 
 
 The effect of the indulgence of this human affection is 
 a certain cordial exhilaration. In poetry and in common 
 speech, the emotions of benevolence and complacency which 
 are felt towards others are likened to the material effects of 
 fire; so swift, or much more swift, more active, more cheer- 
 ing, are these fine inward irradiations. From the highest 
 degree of passionate love, to the lowest degree of good will, 
 they make the sweetness of life. 
 
 Our intellectual and active powers increase with our af- 
 fection. 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 uneasmess be- 
 twixt pleasure and pain invades all the hearts of a house- 
 hold. 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 
 
 209 
 
210 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 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 con- 
 versation 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 jiartialities, 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. 
 
 Pleasant are these jets of affection, which relume a young 
 world for me again. Delicious is 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 w^e indulge our affec- 
 tions, the earth is metamorphosed: there is no winter, and no 
 night: all tragedies, all ennuis vanish; all duties even; noth- 
 ing fills the proceeding eternity but the forms all radiant 
 of beloved persons. Let the soul be assured that somewhere 
 in the universe it should rejoin its friend, and it would be 
 content and cheerful alone for a thousand years. 
 
 I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my 
 friends, the old and the new. Shall I not call God, the 
 Beautiful, who daily showeth himself so to me in his gifts? 
 I chide society, I embrace solitude, and yet I am not so un- 
 grateful as not to see the wise, the lovely, and the noble- 
 minded, as from time to time they pass my gate. Who 
 hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, — a posses- 
 sion for all time. Nor is nature so poor, but she gives me this 
 
FRIENDSHIP 211 
 
 joy several times, and thus we weave social threads of our 
 own, a new web of relations; and, as many thoughts in 
 succession substantiate themselves, we shall by and by stand 
 in a new world of our own creation, and no longer strangers 
 and pilgrims in a traditionary globe. My friends have come 
 to me unsought. The great God gave them to me. By 
 oldest right, by the divine affinity of virtue with itself, I find 
 them, or rather, not I, but the Deity in me and in them, 
 both deride and cancel the thick walls of individual char- 
 acter, 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 not stark and stiffened persons, but the new-born 
 poetry of God, — poetry without stop, — hymn, ode, and epic, 
 poetry still flowing, and not yet caked in dead books with 
 annotations and grammar, but Apollo and the Muses chant- 
 ing still. Will these two separate themselves from me again, 
 or some of them? I know not, but I fear it not; for my re- 
 lation to them is so pure, that we hold by simple affinity, 
 and the Genius of my life being thus social, the same affinity 
 will exert its energy on whomsoever is as noble as these men 
 and women, wherever I may be. 
 
 I confess to an extreme tenderness of nature on this point. 
 It is almost dangerous to me to "crush the sweet poison of 
 misused wine" of the affections. A new person is to me 
 always 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 accomplish- 
 ments, as if they were mine, — wild, delicate, throbbing prop- 
 erty 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 temp- 
 tations less. Every thing that is his, his name, his form, 
 his dress, books, and instruments fancy enhances. Our own 
 thought sounds new and larger from his mouth. 
 
212 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not without 
 their analogy in the ebb and flow of love. Friendship, like 
 the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed. The 
 lover, beholding his maiden, half knows that she is not verily 
 that which he worships; and in the golden hour of friend- 
 ship, we are surprised with shades of suspicion and unbelief. 
 We doubt that we bestow on our hero the virtues in which 
 he shines, and afterwards worship the form to which we have 
 ascribed this divine inhabitation. In strictness, the soul does 
 not respect men as it respects itself. In strict science, all 
 persons underlie the same condition of an infinite remote- 
 ness. Shall we fear to cool our love by facing the fact, by 
 mining for the metaphysical foundation of this Elysian 
 temple? Shall I not be as real as the things I see? If I 
 am, I shall not fear to know them for what they are. Their 
 essence is not less beautiful than their appearance, though 
 it needs finer organs for its apprehension. The root 
 of the plant is not unsightl}'- to science, though for 
 chaplets and festoons we cut the stem short. And I must 
 hazard the production of the bald fact amidst these pleasing 
 reveries, though it should prove an Egyptian skull at our 
 banquet. A man who stands united with his thought con- 
 ceives magnificently of himself. He is conscious of a uni- 
 versal success, even though bought bj^ uniform particular 
 failures. No advantages, no powers, no gold or force can be 
 any match for him. I cannot choose but rely on my own 
 poverty more than on your wealth. I cannot make your 
 consciousness tantamount to mine. Only the star dazzles; 
 the planet has a faint, moon-like ray. I hear what you say 
 of the admirable parts and tried temper of the party you 
 praise, but I see well that for all his purple cloaks I shall 
 not like him, unless he is at last a poor Greek like me. I 
 cannot deny it, friend, that the vast shadow of the Phe- 
 nomenal includes thee also in its pied and painted immen- 
 sity, — thee also, compared with whom all else is shadow. 
 Thou art not Being, as Truth is, as Justice is, — thou art 
 not my soul, but a picture and effigy of that. Thou hast 
 come to me lately, and already thou art seizing thy hat and 
 cloak. Is it not that the soul puts forth friends, as the tree 
 
FRIENDSHIP 213 
 
 puts forth leaves, and presently, by the germination of new 
 buds, extrudes the old leaf? The law of nature is alter- 
 nation forevermore. Each electrical state superinduces the 
 opposite. The soul environs itself with friends, that it may 
 enter into a grander self-acquaintance or sohtude; 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. Ever the instinct of affection re- 
 vives the hope of union with our mates, and ever the return- 
 ing sense of insulation recalls us from the chase. Thus 
 every man passes his life in^the search after friendship; and 
 if he should record his true sentiment, he might write a letter 
 like this to each new candidate for his love. 
 
 Dear Friend, 
 
 If I was sure of thee, sure of thy capacity, 
 sure to match my mood with thine, I should never think 
 again of trifles, in relation to thy comings and goings. I 
 am not very wise; my moods are quite attainable: and I 
 respect thy genius: it is to me as yet unfathomed; yet dare 
 I not presume in thee a perfect intelligence of me, and so 
 thou art to me a delicious torment. Thine ever, or never. 
 
 Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are for curiosity, 
 and not for hfe. They are not to be indulged. This is to 
 weave cobweb, and not cloth. Our friendships hurry to 
 short and poor conclusions, because we have made them a 
 texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibre of the 
 human heart. The laws of friendship are 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 an- 
 tagonisms, which, as soon as we meet, begin to play, and 
 translate all poetry into stale prose. Almost all people de- 
 scend 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 
 
214 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 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 tor- 
 mented presently by baffled blows, by sudden unseason- 
 able apathies, by epilepsies of wit and of animal spirits, in 
 the hey-day of friendship and thought. Our faculties do not 
 play us true, and both parties are relieved by sohtude. 
 
 I ought to be equal to every relation. It makes no dif- 
 ference 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 famoused for fight, 
 After a hundred victories, once foiled, 
 Is from the book of honour razed quite, 
 
 And all the rest forgot for which he toiled." 
 
 Our impatience is thus sharply rebuked. Bashfulness and 
 apathy are a tough husk, in which a delicate organization is' 
 protected from premature ripening. It would be lost, if 
 it knew itself before any of the best souls were yet ripe 
 enough to know and own it. Respect the Naturlangsam- 
 keit which hardens the ruby in a million years, and works 
 in duration, in which Alps and Andes come and go as rain- 
 bows. 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 over- 
 turned, of his foundations. 
 
 The attractions of this subject are not to be resisted; and 
 I leave, for the time, all account of subordinate social bene- 
 fit, 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. 
 
FRIENDSHIP 215 
 
 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 where- 
 of 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 knows the solemnity of that re- 
 lation, and honor its laws! It is no idle band, no holyday 
 engagement. He who offers himself a candidate for that 
 covenant comes up, like an Olympian, to the great games, 
 where the first-born of the world are the competitors. He 
 proposes himself for contests where Time, Want, Danger, are 
 in the lists, and he alone is victor who has truth enough in 
 his constitution to preserve the dehcacy 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 under- 
 most 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, Uke 
 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 en- 
 trance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and 
 fend the approach of our fellow man by compliinents, by 
 gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our 
 
216 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a man 
 who, under a certain rehgious frenzy, cast off this drapery, 
 and, omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the 
 conscience of every person he encountered, and that with 
 great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all 
 men agreed he was mad. But persisting, as indeed he could 
 not help doing, for some time in this course, he attained to 
 the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into 
 true relations with him No man would think of speaking 
 falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat of 
 markets or reading-rooms. But every man was constrained 
 by so much sincerity to face him, 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 re- 
 quires 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 so 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 me to stoop, or to lisp, or 
 to mask myself. A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox 
 in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature 
 whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, 
 behold now the semblance of my being in all its height, 
 variety, and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so 
 that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of 
 nature. 
 
 The other element of friendship is Tenderness. We are 
 holden to men by every sort of tie, by blood, by pride, by 
 fear, by hope, by lucre, by lust, by hate, by admiration, by 
 every circumstance and badge and trifle, but we can scarce 
 beheve 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. 
 
FRIENDSHIP 217 
 
 And yet I have one text which I Ccannot choose but remem- 
 ber. My author says, "I offer myself faintly and bluntly 
 to those whose I effectually am, and tender myself least to 
 him to whom I am the most devoted." I wish that friend- 
 ship should have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. It 
 must plant itself on the ground, before it walks over the 
 moon. I wish it to be a little of a citizen, before it is quite 
 a cherub. We chide the citizen because he makes love a 
 commodity. It is an exchange of gifts, of useful loans; it 
 is good neighborhood; it watches with the sick; it holds the 
 pall at the funeral; and quite loses sight of the delicacies 
 and nobility of the relation. But though we cannot find 
 the god under this disguise of a sutler, yet, on the other hand, 
 we cannot forgive the poet, if he spins his thread too fine, 
 and does not substantiate his romance by the municipal 
 virtues of justice, punctuahty, fidelity, and pity. I hate 
 the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify mochsh 
 and worldly alhances. I much prefer the company of 
 plough-boys and tin-pedlars to the silken and perfumed 
 amity which only celebrates its days of encounter by a 
 frivolous display, by rides in a curricle, and dinners at the 
 best taverns. The end of friendship is a commerce the 
 most strict and homely that can be joined; more strict than 
 any of which we have experience. It is for aid and com- 
 fort through all the relations and passages of hfe 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 their wit and the trances of rehgion. We are to dig- 
 nify 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. 
 
 For perfect friendship it may be said to require natures 
 so rare and costly, so well tempered each, and so happily 
 adapted, and withal so circumstanced, (for even in that par- 
 ticular, a poet says, love demands that the parties be alto- 
 gether paired.) that very seldom can its satisfaction be ref^l- 
 
218 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 ized. 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 god- 
 like men and women variously related to each other, and 
 between whom subsists a lofty intelligence. But I find this 
 law of one to one peremptory for conversation, which is the 
 practice and consummation of friendship. Do not mix 
 waters too much. The best mix as ill as good and bad. 
 You shall have very useful and cheering discourse at several 
 times with two several men; but let all three of you come 
 together, and you shall not have one new and hearty 
 word. Two may talk and one may hear, but three 
 cannot take part in a conversation of the most sin- 
 cere 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 coextensive with the several con- 
 sciousnesses 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 hmited to his own. Now this convention, ,^ 
 which good sense demands, destroys the high freedom of 
 great conversation, which requires an absolute running of 1 
 two souls into one. 
 
 No two men but being left alone with each other enter into 
 simpler relations. Yet it is affinity that determines which 
 two shall converse. Unrelated men give little joy to each 
 other; will never suspect the latent powers of each. We 
 talk sometimes of a great talent for conversation, as if it 
 were a permanent property in some individuals. Conver- 
 sation 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 
 
 I 
 
FRIENDSHIP 219 
 
 :he hour. Among those who enjoy his thought, he will re- 
 gain his tongue. 
 
 Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and 
 mhkeness, that piques each with the presence of power and 
 !)f consent in the other party. Let me be alone to the end 
 )f the world, rather than that my friend should overstep by 
 i word or a look in his real sympathy. I am equally baulked 
 )y antagonism and by compliance. Let him not cease 
 Im instant to be himself. The only joy I have in his being 
 nine, is that the not mine is mine. It turns the stomach, 
 t blots the daylight, where I looked for a manly furtherance, 
 )r at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of concession. 
 Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo, 
 rhe condition which high friendship demands is, ability to 
 lo without it. To be capable of that high office requires 
 rreat and sublime parts. There must be very two, before 
 :here can be very one. Let it be an alliance of two large 
 "ormidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, before 
 |ret they recognize the deep identity which beneath these 
 disparities unites them. 
 
 He only is fit for this society who is magnanimous. He 
 must be so, to know its law. He must be one who is sure 
 that greatness and goodness are always economy. He must 
 be one who is not swift to intermeddle with his fortunes. 
 Let him not dare to 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 must not be wilful, we must not provide. We talk of 
 choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected. Rev- 
 erence is a great part of it. Treat your friend as a spec- 
 tacle. Of course, if he be a man, 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. Be not so much his 
 ifriend that you can never know his peculiar energies; like 
 ifond mamas who shut up their boy in the house until he is 
 almost grown a girl. 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 
 
220 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 a friend as property, and to suck a short and all-confound- 
 ing pleasure instead of the pure nectar of God. 
 
 Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long proba- 
 tion. 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 great counterpart; have a princedom to 
 thy friend. Let him be to thee forever a sort of beautiful 
 enemy, untamable, devoutly revered; and not a trivial con- 
 veniency, to be soon outgrown and cast aside. The hues of 
 the opal, the Ught 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. Me it 
 suffices. It is a spiritual gift worthy of him to give and of 
 me to receive. It profanes nobody. In these warm lines 
 the heart will trust itself, as it will not to the tongue, and 
 pour out the prophecy of a godlier existence than all the 
 annals of heroism have yet made good. 
 
 Respect so far the holy laws of this fellowship as not to 
 prejudice its perfect flower by your impatience for its open- 
 ing. We must be our own, before we can be another's. 
 There is at least this satisfaction in crime, according to the 
 Latin proverb, you can speak to your accomplice on even 
 terms. Crimen, quos inquinat, cequat. To those whom we 
 
FRIENDSHIP 221 
 
 admire and love, at first we cannot. Yet the least defect of 
 self-possession vitiates, in my judgment, the entire relation. 
 There can never be deep peace between two spirits, never 
 mutual respect, until, in their dialogue, each stands for the 
 whole world. 
 
 What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what 
 grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be silent, — so we may hear 
 the whisper of the gods. Let us not interfere. Who set 
 you to cast about what you should say to the select souls, 
 or to say any thing to such? No matter how ingenious, no 
 matter how graceful and bland. There are innumerable 
 degrees of folly and wisdom; and for you to say ought is to 
 be frivolous. Wait, and thy soul shall speak. Wait until 
 the necessary and everlasting overpowers you, until day 
 and night avail themselves of your lips. The only money 
 of God is God. He pays never with any thing less or any 
 thing else. The only reward of virtue is virtue: the only 
 vvay to have a friend is to be one. Vain to hope to 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 per- 
 3eive 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 v/e desire, — but solely the up- 
 rise of nature in us to the same degree it is in them: then 
 5hall 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 ex- 
 changed names with their friends, as if they would signify 
 that in their friend each loved his own soul. 
 
 The higher the style we demand of friendship, of course 
 the less easy to establish it with flesh and blood. We walk 
 alone in the world. Friends such as we desire are dreams 
 and fables. But a sublime hope cheers ever the faithful 
 heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal 
 power, souls are now acting, enduring, and daring, which can 
 love us, and which we can love. We may congratulate our- 
 
222 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 selves that the period of nonage, of follies, of blunders, and 
 of shame, is passed in solitude, and when we are finished 
 men, we shall grasp heroic hands in heroic hands. Only be 
 admonished by what you already see, not to strike leagues 
 of friendship with cheap persons, where no friendship can 
 be. Our impatience betraj^s us into rash and foolish alli- 
 ances, which no God attends. By persisting in your path, 
 though you forfeit the little, you gain the great. You be- 
 come pronounced. You demonstrate yourself, so as to put 
 yourself out of the reach of false relations, and you draw to 
 you the first-born of the world, — those rare pilgrims whereof 
 only one or two wander in nature at once, and before whom 
 the vulgar great show as spectres and shadows merely. 
 
 It is foolish to be afraid of making our ties too spiritual, 
 as if so we could lose any genuine love. Whatever correction of 
 our popular views we make from insight, nature will be sure. 
 to bear us out in, and though it seems to rob us of some joy, 
 will repay us with a greater. Let us feel, if we will, the ab- 
 solute 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, 
 brother, that thus we part only to meet again on a higher 
 platform, and only be more each other's, because we are more 
 our own ? A friend is Janus-faced : he looks to the past and 
 the future. He is the child of all my foregoing hours, the 
 prophet of those to come. He is the harbinger of a greatei 
 friend. It is the property of the divine to be reproductive 
 
 I do, then, with my friends as I do with my books. 1 
 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 speat 
 much with my friend. If he is great, he makes me so great 
 that I cannot descend to converse. In the great days, pre- 
 
FRIENDSHIP 223 
 
 sentiments hover before me, far before me in the firmament. 
 [ ought then to dedicate myself to them. I go in that I 
 [nay seize them, I go out that I may seize them. I fear only 
 ;hat I may lose them receding into the sky in which now they 
 ire 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 spirit- 
 ual astronomy, or search of stars, and come down to warm 
 sympathies with you; but then I know well I shall mourn 
 ilways the vanishing of my mighty gods. It is true, next 
 :iveek 1 shall have languid times, when I can well afford to 
 Dccupy myself with foreign objects; then I shall regret the 
 ,.ost literature of your mind, and wish you were by my side 
 iigain. But if you come, perhaps you will fill my mind only 
 with new visions, not with yourself, but with your lustres, 
 ind I shall not be able any more than now to converse with 
 rou. So I will owe to my friends this evanescent intercourse. 
 ■[ will receive from them not what they have, but what they 
 jire. They shall give me that which properly they cannot 
 l;ive me, but which radiates from them. But they shall not 
 fiold me by any relations less subtle and pure. We will 
 [neet as though we met not, and part as though we parted 
 lot. 
 
 \ It has seemed to me lately more possible than I knew, to 
 parry a friendship greatly, on one side, without due corre- 
 ipondence on the other. Why should I cumber myself with 
 ;he poor fact that the receiver is not capacious? It never 
 roubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into 
 mgrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting 
 blanet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold 
 companion. If he is unequal, he will presently pass away; 
 :)ut thou art enlarged by thy own shining, and, no longer a 
 nate tor frogs and worms, dost soar and burn with the gods 
 ')f the empyrean. It is thought a disgrace to love unre- 
 quited. But the great will see that true love cannot be un- 
 'equited. True love transcends instantly the unworthy 
 Object, and dwells and broods on the eternal; and when the 
 Door, interposed mask crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of 
 
224 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 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 pro- 
 vide for infirmity. It treats its object as a god, that it may 
 deify both. 
 
 I 
 
XI 
 
 MANNERS 
 
 ■'How near to good is what is fair! 
 Which we no sooner see, 
 But with the Hnes and outward air 
 Our senses taken be. 
 
 Again yourselves compose, 
 And now put all the aptness on 
 Of Figure, that Proportion 
 
 Or Colour can disclose; 
 That if those silent arts were lost, 
 Design and Picture, they might boast 
 
 From you a newer ground. 
 Instructed by the heightening sense 
 Of dignity and reverence 
 
 In their true motions found." 
 
 Ben Jonson. 
 
 Half the world, it is said, knows not how the other half 
 
 ives. Our Exploring Expedition saw the Feejee islanders 
 getting their dinner off human bones; and they are said to 
 at their own wives and children. The husbandry of the 
 nodern inhabitants of Gournou (west of old Thebes) is 
 Dhilosophical to a fault. To set up their housekeeping, 
 lothing is requisite but two or three earthern pots, a stone 
 io grind meal, and a mat which is the bed. The house, 
 lamely, a tomb, is ready without rent or taxes. No rain 
 !an pass through the roof, and there is no door, for there is 
 10 want of one, as there is nothing to lose. If the house do 
 lot please them, they walk out and enter another, as there 
 Te several hundreds at their command. "It is somewhat 
 ingular," adds Belzoni, to whom we owe this account, "to 
 -alk of happiness among people who live in sepulchres, 
 -mong the corpses and rags of an ancient nation which they 
 
 225 
 
226 MANNERS 
 
 know nothing of." In the deserts of Borgoo, the rock-Tib- 
 boos still dwell in caves, like cliff swallows, and the language 
 of these negroes is compared by their neighbors to the shriek- 
 ing of bats, and to the whistling of birds. Again, the Bor- 
 noos 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 him- 
 self with architecture; 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 frater- 
 nity 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 ap- 
 pears. 
 
 What fact more conspicuous in modern history than the 
 creation of the gentleman? Chivalry is that, and loyalty 
 is that, and, in English literature, half the drama, and all the 
 novels, from Sir Philip Sidney to Sir Walter Scott, paint 
 this figure. The word gentleman, which, like the word 
 Christian, must hereafter characterize the present and the 
 few preceeding 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 designated. 
 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, cannot be any casual 
 product, but must be an average result of the character and 
 faculties universally found in men. It seems a certain per- 
 manent average; as the atmosphere is a permanent compo- 
 
MANNERS 227 
 
 sition, whilst so many gases are combined only to be decom- 
 pounded. Comme il jaut, is the Frenchman's description 
 of good society, as we must be. It is a spontaneous fruit 
 of talents and feehngs 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. 
 
 There is something equivocal in all the words in use to 
 express the excellence of manners and social cultivation, 
 because the quantities are fluxional, and the last effect is 
 assumed by the senses as the cause. The word gentleman 
 has not any correlative abstract to express the quahty. 
 Gentility is mean, and gentilesse 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 the 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 lord- 
 ship in his behavior, not in any manner dependent and ser- 
 vile, either on persons, or opinions, or possessions. Beyond 
 this fact of truth and real force, the word denotes good- 
 nature or 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 
 
228 MANNERS 
 
 from the mass in the feudal ages, 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 mov- 
 ing 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. 
 
 Power first, or no leading class. In politics and in 
 trade, bruisers and pirates are of better promise than 
 talkers and clerks. God knows 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 orig- 
 inal energy. It describes a man stancUng 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. The ruling class 
 must have more, but they must have these, giving in every 
 company the sense of power, 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 the battle of Lundy's 
 Lane, 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 Caesarian pattern, who have 
 great range of affinity. I am far from believing the timid 
 maxim of Lord Falkland, (''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 com- 
 plement of whatever person it converses with. My gentle- 
 man gives the law where he is; he will out-pray saints in 
 chapel, out-general 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 your- 
 
MANNERS 229 
 
 self 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, Sapor, the Cid, Julius Caesar, Scipio, Alexander, 
 Pericles, and the lordliest personages. They sat very 
 carelessly in their chairs, and were too excellent themselves, 
 to value any condition at a high rate. 
 
 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, Socrates, and Epaminondas, 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. 
 Fortune will not supply to every generation one of these 
 well-appointed knights, but every collection of men fur- 
 nishes some example of the class: and the pohtics 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. 
 
 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 intelhgent of their merits, is 
 mutually agreeable and stimulating. The good forms, the 
 happiest expressions of each, are repeated and adopted. By 
 swift consent, every thing superfluous is dropped, every 
 thing graceful is renewed. Fine manners 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 ijoint of the 
 
230 MANNERS 
 
 sword, — points and fences disappear, and the youth finds 
 himself in a more transparent atmosphere, wherein hfe is a 
 less troublesome game, and not a misunderstanding arises 
 between the players. Manners aim to facilitate life, to get 
 rid of impediments, and to bring the man pure to energize. 
 They aid our dealings and conversation, as a railway aids 
 travelhng, 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 pro- 
 priety is cultivated with the more heed, that it becomes a 
 badge of social and civil distinctions. Thus grows up Fash- 
 ion, an equivocal semblance, the most puissant, the most 
 fantastic and frivolous, the most feared and followed, and 
 which morals and violence assault in vain. 
 
 There exists a strict relation between the class of power, 
 and the exclusive and polished circles. The last are always 
 filled or fining from the first. The strong men usually give 
 some allowance even to the petulances of fashion, for that 
 affinity they find in it. Napoleon, child of the revolution, 
 destroyer of the old noblesse, never ceased to court the 
 Faubourg St. Germain: doubtless with the feeling, that 
 fashion is a homage to men of his stamp. Fashion, though 
 in a strange w^ay, represents all manly virtue. It is 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 triumph- 
 ing. 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 culti- 
 vation and generosity, and, in their physical organization, a 
 certain health and excellence w^hich secures to them, if not 
 the highest power to work, yet high power to enjoy. The 
 class of power, the working heroes, the Cortez, the Nelson, 
 the Napoleon, see that this is the festivity and permanent 
 celebration of such as they; that fashion is funded talent; 
 is Mexico, Marengo, and Trafalgar, beaten out thin; that 
 the brilliant names of fashioH run back to just such busy 
 
MANNERS 231 
 
 names as their own, fifty or sixty years ago. They are the 
 sowers, their sons shall be the reapers, and their sons, in the 
 oidinary course of things, must yield the possession of the har- 
 vest 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. 
 
 Aristocracy and fashion are certain inevitable results. 
 These mutual selections are indestructible. If they pro- 
 voke 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. I am the more struck with this tenacity, when 
 I seek its work. It respects the administration of such un- 
 important matters, that we should not look for any dur- 
 ability 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 
 shght 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 fife of man, where, too, it has 
 not the least 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 polit- 
 ical, a religious convention; — the persons seem to draw in- 
 separably near; yet, that assembly once dispersed, its mem- 
 bers will not in the year meet again. Each returns to 
 
232 MANNERS 
 
 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 acci- 
 dental. Each man's rank in that perfect graduation de- 
 l^ends on some symmetry in his structure, or some agree- 
 ment 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 of every country and 
 l^ersonal superiority readily fraternize with that of every 
 other. The chiefs of savage tribes have distinguished them- 
 selves in London and Paris, by the purity of their tournure. 
 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 "Cov- 
 entry," is its delight. We contemn, in turn, every other 
 gift of men of the world; but the habit even in little and the 
 leastj 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 proi)or- 
 tioned, 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 cotillons. 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 per- 
 formed, or the failing party must be cast out of this pres- 
 ence. Later they learn that good sense and character make 
 their own forms every moment, and speak or abstain, 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 
 
MANNERS 233 
 
 alwaj^s 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 
 l-)crsons, in which ever}^ man's native manners and charae- 
 1or appeared. If the fashionist have not this quality, he is 
 nothing. We are such lovers of self-reliance, that we ex- 
 cuse in a man many sins, if he will show us a complete satis- 
 faction in his position, which asks no leave to be, of mine, 
 or any mean'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 bochly, the whole circle of his friends, but atmos- 
 pherically. 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. "H you 
 could see Vich Ian Vohr with his tail on! — " But Vich 
 Ian Vohr must always carry his belongings in some fashion, 
 if not added as honor, then severed as disgrace. 
 
 There will always be in society certain persons who are 
 Mercuries 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 dis- 
 penser 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 for the sifting of character? 
 
 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 satis- 
 
234 MANNERS 
 
 faction. 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 hospitahties? 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, 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 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, or the Escurial, is good for anything without 
 a master. And yet we are not often gratified by this hos- 
 pitality. Every body we know surrounds himself with a 
 fine house, fine books, conservator}^, gardens, equipage, and 
 all manner of toys, as screens to interpose between himself 
 and his guest. Does it not seem as if man was of a very 
 sly, elusive nature, and dreaded nothing so much as a full 
 rencontre front to front with his fellow? It were unmerci- 
 ful, 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 eye we 
 have no care to stand, then again we run to our curtain, and 
 hide as Adam at the voice of the Lord God in the garden. 
 Cardinal Caprara, the Pope's legate at Paris, defended him- 
 self 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 freeborn eyes, but fenced him- 
 self with etiquette, and within triple barriers of reserve; 
 and, as all the world knows from Madame de Stael, was 
 
 I 
 
MANNERS 235 
 
 wont, when he found himself observed, to discharge his face 
 of all expression. But emperors and rich men are by no 
 means the most skilful masters of good manners. No rent- 
 roll nor army-list can dignify skulking and dissimulation: 
 and the first point of courtesy must always be truth, as 
 really all the forms of good-breeding point that way. 
 
 I have just been reading, in Mr. Hazlitt's translation, 
 Montaigne's 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 him- 
 self and to civihzation. 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. 
 
 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 statehness, 
 to an excess of fellowship. Let the incommunicable ob- 
 jects 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. 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 
 OljTnpus. No degree of afi'ection need invade this religion. 
 rhis 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; but coolness and 
 absence of heat and haste indicate fine qualities. A gentle- 
 man makes no noise: a lady is serene. Proportionate is 
 our disgust at those invaders who fill a studious house with 
 
236 MANNERS 
 
 blast or running, to secure some paltry convenience. Not 
 less I dislike a low sympathy of each with his neighbor'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 dehberation and pri\'acy. Let us leave 
 hurry to slaves. The compliments and ceremonies of our 
 breeding should signify, however remotely, the recollection 
 of the grandeur of our destiny. 
 
 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 dehcacy 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 com- 
 panions. Other virtues are in request in the field and 
 workyard, 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 dis- 
 crimination 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 cer- 
 tain ends. It entertains every natural gift. Social in its na- 
 ture, it respects every thing which tends to unite men. It 
 delights in measure. 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 meas- 
 ure. You must have genius, or a prodigious usefulness, if you 
 will hide the want of measure. This perception comes in to 
 
MANNERS 237 
 
 polish and perfect the parts of the social instrument. So- 
 ciety will pardon much to genius and special gifts, but, being 
 111 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 fellow- 
 ship. 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 quarrel- 
 some, egotistical, solitary, and gloomy people; hates what- 
 ever 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. 
 
 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, 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 inconven- 
 iences that cloud the brow and smother the voice of the 
 sensitive. 
 
 Therefore, besides personal force and so much perception 
 as constitutes unerring taste, society demands, in its patri- 
 cian class, another element already intimated, which it sig- 
 nificantly terms good-nature, expressing all degrees of gener- 
 osity 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 
 
238 MANNERS 
 
 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 uncomfort- 
 able 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, 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 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; 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 Hin- 
 doo, friend of the African slave, he possessed a great per- 
 sonal 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 of the Tuileries." 
 
 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. 
 
MANNERS 239 
 
 Fashion which affects to be honor, is often, in all men's 
 experience, only a ball-room 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 any thing preposterous; and the respect which 
 these mysteries inspire in the most rude and sylvan char- 
 acters, and the curiosity with which details of high hfe 
 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, to her horned company. This gentleman is this 
 afternoon arrived from Denmark; and that is my Lord Ride, 
 who came yesterday from Bagdat; here is Captain Friese, 
 from Cape Turnagain; and Captain Symmes, from the in- 
 terior 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 Signor Torre del Greco, who ex- 
 .tinguished Vesuvius, by pouring into it the Bay of Naples; 
 Spahi, 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 dis- 
 i missed to their holes and dens; for, in these rooms, every 
 chair is waited for. The artist, the scholar, and, in general, 
 the clerisy, wins its way up into these places, and gets rej)- 
 resented here, somewhat on this footing of conquest. 
 Another mode is to pass throuugh all the degrees, spending 
 a year and a day in St. Michael's Square, being steeped in 
 Cologne water, and perfumed, and dined, and introduced, 
 and properly grounded in all the biography, and politics, and 
 
240 MANNERS 
 
 anedotes of the boudoirs. 
 
 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 hom- 
 age 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 per- 
 suaded his enemy: what his mouth ate, his hand paid for: 
 what his servants robbed, he restored : if a woman gave him I 
 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 run-away slaves; some friend of 
 Poland; some Philhellene; 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 be- 
 havior. The beautiful and the generous are, in the theory, 
 the doctors and apostles of this church: Scipio, and the 
 Cid, and Sir Phillip Sidney, and Washington, and every pure 
 and valiant heart, who worshipped Beauty by word and by 
 deed. The persons who constitute the natural aristocracy, 
 
MANNERS 241 
 
 are not found in the actual aristocracy, or, only on its edge; 
 as the chemical energy of the spectrum is found to be great- 
 est, 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 
 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." 
 
 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 parhament of love and chivalry. And this is con- 
 stituted 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 a manner as that we could, at leisure, 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 parti- 
 culars 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 conver- 
 sation of the superior classes. Certainly, kings and queens, 
 
242 MANNERS 
 
 nobles and great ladies, had some right to complain of the 
 absurdity that had been put in their mouths, before the 
 days of Waverley: but neither does Scott's dialogue bear 
 criticism. His lords brave each other in smart epigram- 
 matic speeches, but the dialogue is in costume, and does not 
 please on the second reading: it is not warm with life. 
 In Shakspeare alone, the speakers do not strut and bridle, 
 the dialogue is easily great, and he is the best-bred man in 
 all England, in all Christendom. Once or twice, in real hfe, 
 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 httle thing in the 
 midst of the objects of nature, yet, by the moral quality 
 radiating from his countenance, he may abolish all con- 
 siderations 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; yet with the port of 
 an emperor, — if need be, calm, serious, and fit to stand the 
 gaze of millions. 
 
 The open air and the fields, the streets and pubHc cham- 
 bers, are the places where man executes his will ; let him ' 
 yield or divide the sceptre at the door of the house. Wom- 
 an, 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 a 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 feUcity of this country, that it 
 
MANNERS 243 
 
 excels in women. A certain awkward consciousness of 
 inferiority in the men, may give rise to the new chivalry in 
 behalf of Women'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 in- 
 spiring 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, Juno, or Polym- 
 nia; 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 Sybils, are there not women who fill our 
 vase with wine and roses to the brim, so that the wme runs 
 over and fills the house with perfume; who inspire us with 
 courtesy; who unloose our tongues, and we speak; who 
 annoint 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 or Firdousi 
 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 ? She was a solvent powerful to rec- 
 oncile 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 dig- 
 nity, yet no princess could surpass her clear and direct 
 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 
 
244 MANNERS 
 
 the bias of her nature was not to thought, but to sympathy, 
 yet was she so perfect in her own nature, as to meet intel- 
 lectual 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. 
 
 I know that this Byzantine pile of Chivalry or 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, 
 and whom it has excluded from its coveted honors and priv- 
 ileges. 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 cour- 
 age 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 re- 
 sistance 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 con- 
 fined localities, in a few streets, namely. Out of this pre- 
 cinct, 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 hterary or scientific circle, at sea, in friendship, in the 
 heaven of thought or virtue. 
 
 But we have lingered long enough in these painted courts. 
 The worth of the thing signified must vindicate our taste 
 for the emblem. Every thing that is called fashion and 
 courtesy humbles itself before the cause and fountain of 
 honor, creator of titles and dignities, namely, the great 
 heart of love. This is the royal blood, this the fire, which, 
 in all countries and contingencies, will work after its kind, 
 and conquer and expand all that approaches it. This gives 
 new meanings to every fact. This impoverishes the rich, 
 suffering no grandeur but its own. What '>.s rich? Are you 
 rich enough to help anybody? co succor the unfashionable 
 
MANNERS 245 
 
 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 be- 
 sotted 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 one holiday from the national caution? 
 Without the rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar. The 
 king of Schiraz could not afford to be so bountiful as the 
 poor Osman 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, 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? 
 
 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 soc- 
 iety 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 char- 
 acter. "1 overheard Jove, one day,'' said Silenus, '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, 
 
246 MANNERS 
 
 seen far or seen near : if you called them bad, they would ap- 
 pear 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, much more all Olympus, to know whether 
 it was fundamentally bad or good." 
 
XII 
 
 POLITICS 
 
 Gold and iron are good 
 
 To buy iron and gold; 
 
 All earth's fleece and food 
 
 For their like are sold. 
 
 Boded Merlin wise, 
 
 Proved Napoleon great, — 
 
 Nor kind nor coinage buys 
 
 Aught above its rate. 
 
 Fear, Craft, and Avarice 
 
 Cannot rear a State. 
 
 Out of dust to build 
 
 What is more than dust, — 
 
 Walls Amphion piled 
 
 Phoebus stablish must. 
 
 When the Muses nine 
 
 With the Virtues meet, 
 
 Find to their design 
 
 An Atlantic seat, 
 
 By green orchard boughs 
 
 Fended from the heat. 
 
 Where the statesman ploughs 
 
 Furrow for the wheat; 
 
 When the Church is social worth. 
 
 When the state-house is the hearth 
 
 Then the perfect State is come. 
 
 The republican at home. 
 
 In dealing with the State, we ought to remember that its 
 institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before 
 we were born : that they are not superior to the citizen : that 
 every one of them was once the act of a single man: every 
 law and usage w^as a man's expedient to meet a particular 
 case:' that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make 
 as good : we may make better. Society is an illusion to the 
 young citizen. It lies before him in rigid repose, with cer- 
 
 «47 
 
248 POLITICS 
 
 tain names, men, and institutions, rooted like oak-trees to 
 the center, round which all arrange themselves the best they 
 can. But the old statesman knows that society is fluid; 
 there are no such roots and centers; but any particle may 
 suddenly become the center of the movement, and compel 
 the sj'stem to gyrate round it, as every man of strong will, 
 like Pisistratus, or Cromwell, does for a time, and every 
 man of truth, like Plato, or Paul, does for ever. But pol- 
 itics rest on necessary foundations, and cannot be treated 
 with levity. Republics abound in young civilians, who be- 
 heve that the laws make the city ; that grave modifications of 
 the policy and modes of living, and employments of the 
 population; that commerce, education, and religion, may be 
 voted in or out; and that any measure, though it were 
 absurd, may be imposed on a people, if only you can get 
 sufficient voices to make it a law. But the wise know that 
 foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the 
 twisting; th atthe State must follow, and not lead the char- 
 "riiMiin' Ulig progress of the citizen: the stronp;est usurper^ 
 quickly gotrid of; and they only who build on Ideas, build 
 for eternity: and that the form of government which pre- 
 vails, is the expression of what cultivation exists in the pop- 
 ulation which permits it. The law is only a mem_orandum. 
 We are superstitious, and esteem the statute somewhat: so 
 much hfe as it has in the character of living men, is its 
 force. The statute stands there to say, yesterday we 
 agreed so and so, but how feel ye this article to-day? Our 
 statute is a currency, which we stamp with our own por- 
 trait : it soon becomes unrecognizable, and in process of time 
 will return to the mint. Nature is not democratic, nor 
 limited-monarchical, but despotic, and will not be fooled or 
 abated of any jot of her authority, by the pertest of her sons: 
 and as fast as the public mind is open to more intelligence, 
 the code is seen to be brute and stammering. It speaks 
 not articulately, and must be made to. Meantime the 
 education of the general mind never stops. The reveries 
 of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender 
 poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints to-day, but 
 shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the 
 
POLITICS 249 
 
 resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as griev- 
 ance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then 
 shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred 
 years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pic- 
 tures. The history of the State sketches in coarse outline 
 the progress of thought, and follows at a distance the del- 
 icacy of culture and of aspiration. 
 
 The theory of politics, which has possessed the mind of 
 men, and which they have expressed the best they could in 
 their laws and in their revolutions, considers persons and 
 property as the two objects for whose protection govern- 
 ment exists. Of persons, all have equal rights, in virtue of 
 being identical in nature. This interest, of course, with its 
 whole power demands a democracy. Whilst the rights of 
 all as persons are equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their 
 rights in property are very unequal. One man owns his 
 clothes, and another owns a county. This accident, de- 
 pending, primarily, on the skill and virtue of the parties, of 
 which there is every degree, and, secondarily, on patrimony, 
 falls unequally, and its rights, of course, are unequal. 
 Personal rights, universally the same, demand a government 
 framed on the ratio of the census : property demands a gov- 
 ernment framed on the ratio of owners and of owning. 
 Laban, who has flocks and herds, wishes them looked after by 
 an officer on the frontiers, lest the Midianites shall drive 
 them off, and pays a tax to that end. Jacob has no flocks 
 or herds, and no fear of the Midianites, and pays no tax to 
 the officer. It seemed fit that Laban and Jacob should have 
 equal rights to elect, the officer, -who is to defend their per- 
 sons, but that Laban, and not Jacob, should elect the officer 
 who is to guard the sheep and cattle. And, if the question 
 arise whether additional officers or watch-towers should be 
 provided, must not Laban and Isaac, and those who must 
 sell part of their herds to buy protection for the rest, judge 
 better of this, and with more right, than Jacob, who, because 
 he is a youth and a traveller, eats their bread and not his 
 own. 
 
 In the earliest society the proprietors made their own 
 wealth, and so long as it comes to the owners in the direct 
 
250 POLITICS 
 
 way, no other opinion would arise in any equitable com- 
 munity, than that property should make the law for prop- 
 erty, and persons the law for persons. 
 
 But property passes through donation or inheritance to 
 those who do not create it. Gift, in one case, makes it as 
 really the new owner's, as labor made it the first owner's: 
 in the other case, of patrimony, the law makes an owner- 
 ship, which will be valid in each man's view according to 
 the estimate which he sets on the public tranquilUty. 
 
 It was not, however, found easy to embody the readily- 
 admitted principle, that property should make law for 
 property, and persons for persons: since persons and prop- 
 erty mixed themselves in every transaction. At last it 
 seemed settled, that the rightful distinction was, that the 
 proprietors should have more elective franchise than non- 
 proprietors, on the Spartan principle of "calling that which 
 is just, equal; not that which is equal, just." 
 
 That principle no longer looks so self-evident as it ap- 
 peared in former times, partly, because doubts have arisen 
 whether too much weight had not been allowed in the laws 
 to property, and such a structure given to our usages, as 
 allowed the rich to encroach on the poor, and to keep them 
 poor; but mainly, because there is an instinctive sense, how- 
 ever obscure and yet inarticulate, that the whole constitution 
 of property, on its present tenures, is injurious, and its in- 
 fluence on persons deteriorating and degrading; that truly, 
 the only in fprpgf, for thp consideration of the State, is per- 
 sons: that property will always follow persons; t hat the 
 . highest en rj of ynvp rnmpnt is fViP f-nltii fe of men lan d if men 
 can be educated, the institutions will share their improve- 
 ment, and the moral sentiment will write the law of the land. 
 
 If it be not easy to settle the equity of this question, the 
 peril is less when we take note of our natural defences. We 
 are kept by better guards than the vigilance of such mag- 
 istrates as we commonly elect. Society always consist ^^^ia- 
 greatest part, of young and foolish persons.^ The old, who 
 Lave seen through the hypocrisy of courts and statesmen, 
 die, and leave no wisdom to their sons. They believe their 
 own newspapers, as their fathers did at their age. With 
 
POLITICS 251 
 
 such an ignorant and deceivable majority, States would soon 
 run to ruin, but that there are limitations, beyond which 
 the folly and ambition of governors cannot go. Things have 
 their laws, as well as men; and things refuse to be trifled 
 with. Property will be protected. Corn will not grow, 
 unless it is planted and manured; but the farmer will not 
 plant or hoe it unless the chances are a hundred to one, that 
 he will cut and harvest it. Under any forms, persons and 
 property must and will have their just sway. They exert 
 their power, as steadily as matter its attraction. Cover 
 up a pound of earth never so cunningly, divide and sub- 
 divide it; melt it to liquid, convert it to gas; it will always 
 weigh a pound: it will always attract and resist other 
 matter, by the full virtue of one pound weight; — and the 
 attributes of a person, his wit and his moral energy, will 
 exercise, under any law or extinguishing tyranny, their prop- 
 er force, — if not overtly, then covertly; if not for the law, 
 then against it; with right, or by might. 
 
 The boundaries of personal influence it is impossible to fix, 
 as persons are organs of moral or supernatural force. Under 
 the dominion of an idea, which possesses the minds of multi- 
 tudes, as civil freedom, or the religious sentiment, the powers 
 of persons are no longer subjects of calculation. A nation 
 of men unanimously bent on freedom, or conquest, can 
 easily confound the arithmetic of statists, and achieve ex- 
 travagant actions, out of all proportion to their means; as 
 the Greeks, the Saracens, the Swiss, the Americans, and the 
 French have done. 
 
 In like manner, to every particle of property belongs its 
 own attraction. A cent is the representative of a certain 
 quantity of corn or other commodity. Its value is in the 
 necessities of the animal man. It is so much warmth, so 
 much bread, so much water, so much land. The law may do 
 what it will with the owner of property, its just power will 
 still attach to the cent. The law may in a mad freak say, 
 that all shall have power except the owners of property; they 
 shall have no vote. Nevertheless, by a higher law, the 
 property will, year after year, write every statute that re- 
 spects property. The non-proprietor will be the scribe of 
 
252 POLITICS 
 
 the proprietor. What the owners wish to do, the whole 
 power of property will do, either through the law, or else in 
 defiance of it. Of course, I speak of all the property, not 
 merely of the great estates. When the rich are out-voted, 
 as frequently happens, it is the joint treasury of the poor 
 which exceeds their accumulations. Every man owns some- 
 thing, if it is only a cow or a wheelbarrow, or his arms, and 
 so has that property to disjjose of. 
 
 The same necessity which secures the rights of person and 
 property against the malignity or folly of the magistrate, 
 determines the form and methods of governing, which are 
 proper to each nation, and to its habit of thought, and nowise 
 transferable to other states of society. In this country, we 
 are very vain of our political institutions, which are singular 
 in this, that they sprung, within the memory of living men, 
 from the character and condition of the people, which they 
 still express with sufficient fidelity, — and we ostentatiously 
 prefer them to any other in history. They are not better, 
 but only fitter forus. We may be wise in asserting the advan- 
 tage in modern times of the democratic form, but to other 
 states of society, in which religion consecrated the monarch- 
 ical, that, and not this, was expedient. Democracy is better for 
 us, because the religious sentiment of the present time 
 accords better with it. Born democrats, we are nowise 
 quahfied to judge of monarchy, which, to our fathers living 
 in the monarchical idea, was also relatively right. But our 
 institutions, though in coincidence with the spirit of the age, 
 have not any exemption from the practical defects which 
 have discredited other forms. Every actual State is corrupt. 
 Good men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on 
 government can equal the severity of censure conveyed in 
 the word politic, which now for ages has signified cunning, 
 intimating that the State is a trick? 
 
 The same benign necessity and the same practical abuse 
 appear in the parties into which each State divides itself, of 
 opponents and defenders of the administration of the gov- 
 ernment. Parties are also founded on instincts, and have 
 better guides to their own humble aimg than the sagacity of 
 their leaders. They have nothing perverse in their origin, but 
 
POLITICS 253 
 
 rudely mark some real and lasting relation. We might as 
 wisely reprove the east wind, or the frost, as a political party, 
 whose members, for the most part, could give no account of 
 their position, but stand for the defence of those interests in 
 which they find themselves. Our quarrel with them begins 
 when they quit this deep natural ground at the bidding of 
 some leader, and, obeying personal considerations throw 
 themselves into the maintenance and defence of points no- 
 wise belonging to their svstem . A party is perpetually 
 corrupted by personality. Whilst we absolve the association 
 rom disnonesty, we cannot extend the same charity to their 
 leaders. They reap the rewards of the docility and zeal of 
 the masses, which they direct. Ordinarily, our parties are 
 parties of circumstance, and not of principle; as, the plant- 
 ing interest in conflict with the commercial; the party of 
 capitalists, and that of operatives; parties which are identi- 
 cal in their moral character, and which can easily change 
 ground with each other, in support of many of their 
 measures. Parties of principle, as, religious sects, or the party 
 of free-trade, of universal suffrage, of abolition of slavery, of 
 abolition of capital punishment, degenerate into personalities 
 or would inspire enthusiasm. The vice of our leading parties 
 in this country (which may be cited as a fair specimen of these 
 societies of opinion) is, that they do not plant themselves on 
 the deep and necessary grounds to which they are respec- 
 tively entitled, but lash themselves to fury in the carrying of 
 some local and momentary measure, nowise useful to the 
 commonwealth. Of the two great parties, which, at thii 
 hour, almost share the nation between them, I should say 
 that one hag the best cause, and the other contains the best 
 men. The philosopher, the poet, or the religious man, will, 
 of course, wish to cast his vote with the democrat, for free- 
 trade, for wide suffrage, for the abolition of legal cruelties 
 in the penal code, and for facilitating in every manner the 
 access of the young and the poor to the sources of wealth and 
 power. But he can rarely accept the persons whom the 
 so-called popular party propose to him as representatives of 
 these liberalities. They have not at heart the ends which 
 give to the name of democracy what hope and virtue are in 
 
 t ' 
 
 I 
 
254 POLITICS 
 
 it. The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and 
 aimless; it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends; 
 but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness. On the 
 other side, the conservative party, composed of the most 
 moderate, able, and cultivated part of the population, is 
 timid, and merely defensive of property. It vindicates no 
 right, it aspires to no real good, it brands no crime, it pro- 
 poses no generous policj^, it does not build, nor write, nor 
 cherish the arts, nor foster religion, nor establish schools, nor 
 encourage science, nor emancipate the slave, nor befriend 
 the poor, or the Indian, or the immigrant. From neither ' 
 party, when in power, has the world any benefit to expect in 
 science, art, or humanity, at all commensurate with the re- 
 sources of the nation. 
 
 I do not for these defects despair of our republic. We are ' 
 not at the mercy of anj'' waves of chance. In the strife of ' 
 ferocious parties, human nature always finds itself cher- 
 ished, as the children of the convicts at Botany Bay are i 
 found to have as healthy a moral sentiment as other children. 
 Citizens of feudal states arc alarmed at our democratic in- • 
 stitutions lapsing into anarchy; and the older and more ^ 
 cautious among ourselves are learning from Europeans to 
 look with some terror at our turbulent freedom. It is said, 
 that in our license of construing the Constitution, and in the 
 despotism of public opinion, we have no anchor; and one: 
 foreign observer thinks he has found the safeguard in the- 
 sanctity of Marriage among us; and another thinks he has> 
 found it in our Calvinism. Fisher Ames expressed the pop- 
 ular security more wisely, when he compared a monarchy 
 and a republic, saying, "that a monarchy is a merchantman, 
 which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go j 
 to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft, which would never ' 
 sink, but then your feet are always in water." No forms 
 can have any dangerous importance, whilst we are be- 
 friended by the laws of things. It makes no difference how 
 many tons weight of atmosphere presses on our heads, sO' 
 long as the same pressure resists it within the lungs. Aug-, 
 ment the mass a thousandfold, it cannot begin to crush us,- 
 as long as reaction is equal to action. The fact of two 
 
 I 
 
POLITICS 255 
 
 jpoles, of two forces, centripetal and centrifugal, is universal, 
 'md each force, by its own activity, develops the other. Wild 
 liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by 
 strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience. 
 'Lynch-law" prevails only where there is greater hardihood 
 md self-subsistency in the leaders. A mob cannot be a 
 permanency: everybody's interest requires that it should 
 lot exist, and only justice satisfies all. 
 
 We must trust infinitely to the beneficent necessity which 
 Jiines through all laws. Human nature expresses itself in 
 ;hem as characteristically as in statues, or songs, or rail- 
 roads, and an abstract of the codes of nations would be a 
 transcript of the common conscience. Governments have 
 heir origin in the moral identity of men. Reason for one is 
 ;een to be reason for another, and for every other. There 
 s a middle measure which satisfies all parties, be they never 
 30 many, or so resolute for their own. Every man finds a 
 sanction for his simplest claims and deeds in decisions of his 
 )wn mind, which he calls truth and holiness. In these de- 
 nsions all the citizens find a perfect agreement, and only 
 n these; not in what is good to eat, good to wear, good use 
 Df time, or what amount of land, or of public aid, each is en- 
 it led to claim. This truth and justice men presently 
 mdeavor to make apphcation of, to the measuring of land, 
 he apportionment of service, the protection of life and prop- 
 erty. Their first endeavors, no doubt, are very awkward. 
 Yet absolute right is the first governor; or, every govern- 
 nent is an impure theocracy. The idea, after which each 
 ,3ommunity is aiming to make and mend its law, is the will 
 if the wise man. The wise man, it cannot find in nature, and 
 t makes awkward but earnest efforts to secure his govern- 
 nent by contrivance; as, by causing the entire people to 
 5ive their voices on every measure; or, by a double choice 
 :o get the representation of the whole; or, by a selection of 
 ^he best citizens; or, to secure the advantages of efficiency 
 md internal peace, by confiding the government to one, who 
 nay himself select his agents. All forms of government 
 lymbolize an immortal government, common to all dynasties 
 md independent of numbers, perfect where two men exist, 
 
256 
 
 POLITICS 
 
 perfect where there is only one man. 
 
 Eve ry man's_jiat ure is a sufficient advertise ment to him 
 of thecharact er oTlii^ Ml Ows.^ M ^ight aiiH^ my wrong,'is 
 "^ tlieir ng; t )t^ anfriheir wrong. Whilst I do what is ni, foi' iile. mikI " 
 abstain from wnat is uTlflt, iGy neighbor and I shall often 
 agree in our means, and work together for a time to one end. 
 But whenever I find my dominion over myself not sufficient 
 for me, and undertake the direction of him also, I overstep 
 the truth, and come into false relations to him. I may have 
 so much more skill or strength than he, that he cannot ex- 
 press adequately his sense of wrong, but it is a he, and hurts 
 like a lie both him and me. Love and nature cannot main- 
 tain the assumption: it must be executed by a practical lie, 
 namely, by force. This undertaking for another,- -is the 
 blunder which stands in colossal ugliness in the govern- 
 ments of the world. It is the same thing in numbers, as 
 in a pair, only not quite so intelligible. I can see well 
 enough a great difference between my setting myself down to > 
 a self-control, and my going to make somebody else act 
 after my views; but when a quarter of the human race 
 assume to tell me what I must do, I may be too much dis- 
 turbed by the circumstances to see so clearly the absurdity 
 of their command. Therefore, all public ends look vnguf 
 flnr| qnivntin hosi rlp pfiyptf ^""^ ^ "^ ""Y laws but tll^e 
 w^hich men make for themselves, are laughable. If I put 
 myself in place of my child, and we stand in one thought, 
 and see what things are thus or thus, that perception is law 
 for him and me. We are both there, both act. But if, 
 without carrying him into the thought, I look over into his 
 plot, and, guessing how it is with him, ordain this or that, 
 he will never obey me. This is the history of governments 
 — one man does something which is to bind another. A 
 man who cannot be acquainted with me, taxes me; looking;' 
 from afar at me, ordains that a part of my labor shall go to 
 this or that whimsical end, not as I, but as he happens to " 
 fancy. Behold the consequence. Of all debts, men are(' 
 least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on gov- ^^ 
 ernmen U^ Everywhere they think they get their money's 
 worth, except for these. 
 
POLITICS 257 
 
 government we have, the bette r.— 
 
 the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The anti- 
 dote to this abuse of formal government, is, the influence 
 of private character, the growth of the individual; the ap- 
 pearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the ap- 
 pearance of the wise man, of whom the existing government 
 is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation. That which 
 all things tend to educe, which freedom, cultivation, inter- 
 course, revolutions, go to form and ^dehver, is character:, 
 that is the end of nature, to reach unto this coronation of' 
 her kmg. To educate the wise man, the State exists; and 
 with the appearance of the wise man, the State expires. _ The 
 appearance of character makes the State unnecessary^ ^ The 
 wisnnan is tne state. He needs no army, fort, or navy,— 
 he loves men too well; no bribe, or feast, or palace, to draw 
 jfriends to him: no vantage ground, no favorable circum- 
 istance. He needs no hbrary, for he has not done thinking; 
 jQo church, for he is a prophet; no statute book, for he has 
 !the lawgiver; no money, for he is value; no road, for he is at 
 iiome where he is; no experience, for the life of the creator 
 shoots through him, and looks from his eyes. He has no 
 personal friends, for he who has the spell to draw the prayer 
 md piety of all men unto him, needs not husband and ed- 
 lucate a few, to share with him a select and poetic 
 life. His relation to men is angehc; his memory is myrrh to 
 |:hem; his presence, frankincense and flowers. 
 
 We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet 
 )nly at the cock-crowing and the morning star. In our 
 parbarous society the influence of character is in its in- 
 fancy. As a political power, as the rightful lord who is 
 tumble all rulers from their chairs, its presence is hardly 
 ^et suspected. Malthus and Ricardo quite omit it; the 
 innual Register is silent; in the Conversations' Lexicon, it 
 ,5 not set down; the President's Message, the Queen's Speech, 
 lave not mentioned it; and yet it is never nothing. Every 
 hought which genius and piety throw into the world, alters 
 he world. The gladiators in the lists of power feel, through 
 ,1 their frocks of force and simulation, the presence of worth, 
 think the very strife of trade and ambition are confession 
 
258 POLITICS 
 
 of this divinity; and successes in those fields are the poor 
 amends, the fig-leaf with which the shamed soul attempts 
 to hide its nakedness. I find the like unwilling homage in 
 all quarters. It is because we know how much is due from > 
 us, that we are impatient to show some petty talent as a 
 substitute for worth. We are haunted by a conscience of 
 this right to grandeur of character, and are false to it. 
 But each of us has some talent, can do somewhat useful, or 
 graceful, or formidable, or amusing, or lucrative. That we i 
 do, as an apology to others and to ourselves, for not reaching i 
 the mark of a good and equal life. But it does not satisfy ; 
 us, whilst we thrust it on the notice of our companions. It t 
 may throw dust in their eyes, but does not smooth our own i 
 brow, or give us the tranquillity of the strong wiien we ^ 
 walk abroad. We do penance as we go. Our talent is a \ 
 sort of expiation, and we are constrained to reflect on ouri 
 splendid moment, with a certain humiliation, as somewhat tj 
 too fine, and not as one act of many acts, a fair expression 1 
 of our permanent energy. Most persons of ability meet in 
 society with a kind of tacit appeal. Each seems to say, 
 "I am not all here." Senators and presidents have climbed ; 
 so high with pain enough, not because they think the place ^ 
 specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and toe 
 vindicate their manhod in our eyes. This conspicuous chair ij 
 is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, 1( 
 hard nature. They must do what they can. Like one class i 
 of forest animals, they have nothing but a prehensile tail: i 
 chmb they must, or crawl. If a man found himself so rich-nj 
 natured that he could enter into strict relations with the 
 best persons, and make life serene around him by the dig- n 
 nity and sweetness of his behavior, could he afford to circum-i] 
 vent the favor of the caucus and the press, and covert rela- 
 tions so hollow and pompous, as those of a politician ?,ji 
 Surely nobody would be a charlatan, who could afford to be i 
 sincere. ,ii 
 
 The tendencies of the times favor the idea of self-govern-A 
 ment, and leave the individual, for all code, to the rewardslj 
 and penalties of his own constitution, which work with more i 
 energy than we believe, whilst we depend on artificial re-jii] 
 
 i 
 
POLITICS 259 
 
 ;traints. The movement in this direction has been very 
 narked in modern history. Much has been Wind and dis- 
 Teditable, but the nature of the revolution is not affected by 
 he vices of the revolte rs; for this is a purely moral force. 
 •t was never adopted by any party in history, neither can~ 
 )e. It separates the individual from all party, and unites 
 am, at the same time, to the race. It promises a reco^ni- 
 ion of higher rights than those of personal freedom, or the, 
 ecurity of property. A man has a right to be Rmp ]oj^;ed^_fr>_ 
 ie trusted, to be loved, to be revered The pow erof love 
 s th e basis of a state, has never been tried. We m ust not 
 nagiiie that all things are lapsing into confusion, if every 
 ^nder protestant be not compelled to bear his part in certain 
 t)cial conventions: nor doubt that roads can be built, letters 
 arried, and the fruit of labor secured, when the govern- 
 lent of force is at an end. Are our methods now so excel- 
 jnt that all competition is hopeless? Could not a nation of 
 lends even devise better ways? On the oth^f hand lpt"" 
 ot the most conservative and timid fear anything from a 
 remature surrender of the bayonet, and the system of force, 
 or, according to the order of nature, which is quite superior 
 ) our will, it stands thus : there will always be a government 
 F force, where men are selfish; and when they are pure 
 lough to abjure the code of force, they will be wise enough 
 ) see how these public ends of the post-office, of the high- 
 ay, of commerce, and the exchange of property, of mu- 
 lums and libraries, of institutions of art and science, can be 
 iswered. 
 
 We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwill- 
 :g tribute to governments founded on force. There is not, 
 nong the most religious and instructed men of the most 
 iligious and civil nations, a reliance on the moral sentiment, 
 id a sufficient belief in the unity of things to persuade them 
 lat society can be maintained without artificial restraints, 
 ; well as the solar system; or that the private citizen might 
 ; reasonable, and a good neighbor, without the hint of a jail 
 • a confiscation. What is strange too, there never was in 
 ly man sufficient faith in the power of rectitude, to inspire 
 m with the broad design of renovating the State on the 
 
260 POLITICS 
 
 principle of right and love. All those who have pretended 
 this design, have been partial reformers, and have admitted 
 in some manner the supremacy of the bad State. I do not call 
 to mind a single human being who has steadily denied the 
 ailthority of the laws, on the simple ground of his own moral 
 nature. Such designs, full of genius and full of fate as they 
 are, are not entertained except avowedly as air-pictures. If 
 the individual who exhibits them, dare to think them prac- 
 ticable, he disgusts scholars and churchmen; and men of 
 talent, and women of superior sentiments, cannot hide their 
 contempt. Not the less does nature continue to fill the heart 
 of youth with suggestions of this enthusiasm, and there are 
 now men, — if indeed I can speak in the plural unmber, — 
 more exactly, I will say, I have just been conversing with 
 one man, to whom no weight of adverse experience will 
 make it for a moment appear impossible, that thousands of 
 human beings might exercise towards each other the grand- 
 est and simplest sentiments, as well as a knot of friends, or 
 a pair of lovers. 
 
 i 
 
I 
 
 XIII 
 ART 
 
 Because the soul is progressive, it never quite repeats 
 itself, but in every act attempts the production of a new 
 and fairer whole. This appears in works both of the useful 
 and the fine arts, if we employ the popular distinction of 
 works according to their aim, either at use or beauty. Thus 
 in our fine arts, not imitation, but creation is the aim. In 
 andscapes, the painter should give the suggestion of a fairer 
 creation than we know. The details, the prose of nature, he 
 should omit, and give us only the spirit and splendor. He 
 should know that the landscape has beauty for his eye, 
 because it expresses a thought which is to him good: and 
 this, because the same power which sees through his eyes is 
 seen in that spectacle; and he will come to value the ex- 
 pression of nature, and not nature itself, and so exalt in his 
 copy the features that please him. He will give the gloom 
 of gloom, and the sunshine of sunshiny. In a portrait he 
 must inscribe the character, and not the features, and must 
 esteem the man who sits to him as himself only an imperfect 
 picture or likeness of the aspiring original within. 
 
 What is that abridgment and selection we observe in all 
 spiritual activity, but itself the creative impulse? for it is 
 the inlet of that higher illumination which teaches to convey 
 a larger sense by simpler symbols. What is a man but 
 nature's finer success in self-exphcation ? What is a man but 
 a finer and compacter landscape than the horizon figures, — 
 nature's eclecticism? and what is his speech, his love of 
 painting, love of nature, but a still finer success, — all the 
 weary miles and tons of space and bulk left out, and the 
 spirit or moral of it contracted into a musical word, or 
 the most cunning stroke of the pencil? 
 
 261 
 
262 ART 
 
 But the artist must employ the symbols in use in his day 
 and nation to convey his enlarged sense to his fellow-men. 
 Thus the new in art is always formed out of the old. The 
 Genius of the Hour always sets his ineffaceable seal on the 
 work, and gives it an inexpressible charm for the imagination. 
 As far as the spiritual character of the period overpowers 
 the artist and finds expression in his work, so far it will 
 always retain a certain grandeur, and will represent to future 
 beholders the Unknown, the Inevitable, the Divine. No man 
 can quite exclude this element of Necessity from his labor. 
 No man can quite emancipate himself from his age and 
 country, or produce a model in which the education, the 
 rehgion, the politics, usages, and arts of his times shall have 
 no share. Though he were never so original, never so 
 wilful and fantastic, he cannot wipe out of his work every 
 trace of the thoughts amidst which it grew. The very avoid- 
 ance betrays the usage he avoids. Above his will, and out 
 of his sight, he is necessitated, by the air he breathes, and 
 the idea on which he and his contemporaries live and toil, to 
 share the manner of his times, without knowing what that 
 manner is. Now that which is inevitable in the work has 
 a higher charm than individual talent can ever give, in- 
 asmuch as the artist's pen or chisel seems to have been held 
 and guided by a gigantic hand to inscribe a line in the his- 
 tory of the human race. This circumstance gives a value to 
 the Egyptian hieroglyphics, to the Indian, Chinese, and 
 Mexican idols, however gross and shapeless. They denote 
 the height of the human soul in that hour, and were not 
 fantastic, but sprung from a necessity as deep as the world. 
 Shall I now add, that the whole extant product of the plas- 
 tic arts has herein its highest value as history; as a stroke 
 drawn in the portrait of that fate, perfect and beautiful, 
 according to whose ordinations all beings advance to their 
 beatitude ? 
 
 Thus, historically viewed, it has been the office of art to 
 educate the perception of beauty. We are immersed in 
 beauty, but our eyes have no clear vision. It needs, by the 
 exhibition of single traits, to assist and lead the dormant 
 taste. We carve and paint, or we behold what is carved 
 
ART 263 
 
 and painted, as students of the mystery of Form. The vir- 
 tue of art Hes in detachment, in sequestering one object from 
 the embarrassing variety. Until one thing comes out from 
 the connection of things, there can be enjoyment, con- 
 templation, but no thought. Our happiness and unhappi- 
 ness are unproductive. The infant lies in a pleasing trance; 
 but his individual character and his practical power depend 
 on his daily progress in the separation of things, and dealing 
 with one at a time. Love and all the passions concentrate 
 all existence around a single form. It is the habit of certain 
 minds to give an all-excluding fulness to the object, the 
 thought, the word, they alight upon, and to make that for 
 the time the deputy of the world. These are the artists, the 
 orators, the leaders of society. The power to detach, and 
 to magnify by detaching, is the essence of rhetoric in the 
 hands of the orator and the poet. This rhetoric, or power 
 to fix the momentary eminency of an object, — so remarkable 
 in Burke, in Byron, in Carlyle, — the painter and sculptor 
 exhibit in color and in stone. The power depends on the depth 
 of the artist's insight of that object he contemplates. For 
 every object has its roots in central nature, and may of 
 course be so exhibited to us as to represent the world. 
 Therefore each work of genius is the tyrant of the hour, 
 and concentrates attention on itself. For the time, it is the 
 only thing worth naming, to do that, — be it a sonnet, an 
 opera, a landscape, a statue, an oration, the plan of a temple, 
 of a campaign, or of a voyage of discovery. Presently we 
 pass to some other object, which rounds itself into a whole, 
 as did the first; for example, a well-laid garden, — and noth- 
 ing seems worth doing but the laying out of gardens. I 
 should think fire the best thing in the world, if I were not 
 acquainted with air, and water, and earth. For it is the 
 right and property of all natural objects, of all genuine tal- 
 ents, of all native properties whatsoever, to be for their 
 moment the top of the world. A squirrel leaping from 
 bough to bough, and making the wood but one wide tree 
 for his pleasure, fills the eye not less than a lion, is beautiful, 
 self-sufficing, and stands then and there for nature. A 
 good ballad draws my ear and heart whilst I listen, as much 
 
264 ART 
 
 ag an epic has done before. A dog drawn by a master, or a 
 litter of pigs, satisfies, and is a reality not less than the 
 frescoes of Angelo. From this succession of excellent ob- 
 jects learn we at last the immensity of the world, the opu- 
 lence of human nature, which can run out to infinitude in 
 any direction. But I also learn that what astonished and 
 fascinated me in the first work astonished me in the second 
 work also, — that excellence of all things is one. 
 
 The office of painting and sculpture seems to be merely 
 initial. The best pictures can easily tell us their last secret. 
 The best pictures are rude draughts of a few of the mirac- 
 ulous dots and lines and dyes which make up the ever- 
 changing "landscape with figures" amidst which we dwell. 
 Painting seems to be to the eye what dancing is to the limbs. 
 When that has educated the frame to self-possession, to 
 nimbleness, to grace, the steps of the dancing-master are 
 better forgotten: so painting teaches me the splendor of 
 color and the expression of form, and as I see many pictures 
 and higher genius in the art, I see the boundless opulence of 
 the pencil, the indifferency in which the artist stands free to 
 choose out of the possible forms. If he can draw every 
 thing, why draw anything? and then is my eye opened to 
 the eternal picture which nature paints in the street, with 
 moving men and children, beggars and fine ladies, draped 
 in red, and green, and blue, and grey; long-haired, grizzled, 
 white-faced, black-faced, wrinkled, giant, dwarf, expanded, 
 elfish, — capped and based by heaven, earth, and sea. 
 
 A gallery of sculpture teaches more austerely the same 
 lesson. As picture teaches the coloring, so sculpture the 
 anatomy of form. When I have seen fine statues, and after- 
 wards enter a public assembly, I understand well what he 
 meant who said, "When I have been reading Homer, all men 
 look like giants." I too see that painting and sculpture 
 are gymnastics of the eye, its training to the niceties and 
 curiosities of its function. There is no statue like this 
 living man, with his infinite advantage over all ideal sculp- 
 ture, of perpetual variety. What a gallery of art have I 
 here! No mannerist made these varied groups and diverse 
 original single figures. Here is the artist himself improvising, 
 
ART 265 
 
 grim and glad, at his block. Now one thought strikes him, 
 now another; and with each moment he alters the whole 
 ftir, attitude, and expression of his clay. Away with your 
 nonsense of oil and easels, of marble and chisels: except to 
 open your eyes to the witchcraft of eternal art, they are 
 hypocritical rubbish. 
 
 The reference of all production at last to an Aboriginal 
 Power explains the traits common to all works of the highest 
 art, — that they are universally intelligible, that they restore 
 to us the simplest states of mind, and are religious. Since 
 what skill is therein shown is the reappearance of the orig- 
 inal soul, a jet of pure light, it should produce a similar 
 impression to that made by natural objects. In happy 
 hours nature appears to us one with art; art perfected, — 
 the work of genius. And the individual in whom simple 
 tastes, and susceptibility to all the great human influences, 
 overpower the accidents of a local and special culture, is 
 the best critic of art. Though we travel the world over to 
 find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not. 
 The best of beauty is a finer charm than skill in surfaces, in 
 outlines, or rules of art can ever teach, namely, a radiation, 
 from the work of art, of human character, — a wonderful 
 expression, through stone or canvas or musical sound, of the 
 deepest and simplest attributes of our nature, and therefore 
 most intelligible at last to those souls which have these attri- 
 butes. In the sculptures of the Greeks, in the masonry of 
 the Romans, and in the pictures of the Tuscan and Venetian 
 masters, the highest charm is the universal language they 
 speak. A confession of moral nature, of purity, love, and 
 hope, breathes from them all. That which we carry to them, 
 the same we bring back more fairly illustrated in the mem- 
 ory. The traveller who visits the Vatican, and passes from 
 chamber to chamber through galleries of statues, vases, sar- 
 cophagi, and candelabra, through all forms of beauty, cut 
 in the richest materials, is in danger of forgetting the sim- 
 plicity of the principles out of which they all sprung, and 
 that they had their origin from thoughts and laws in his 
 own breast. He studies the technical rules on these wonder- 
 ful remains, but forgets that these works were not always 
 thus constellated; that they are the contributions of many 
 
266 ART 
 
 ages and many countries; that each came out of the sohtary 
 workshop of one artist, who toiled perhaps in ignorance of 
 the existence of other sculpture, created his work without 
 other model save life, household life, and the sweet and 
 smart of personal relations, of beating hearts, and meeting 
 eyes, of poverty, and necessity, and hope, and fear. These 
 were his inspirations, and these are the effects he carries home 
 to your heart and mind. In proportion to his force, the 
 artist will find in his work an outlet for his proper character. 
 He must not be in any manner pinched or hindered by his 
 material, but through his necessity of imparting himself, the 
 adamant will be wax in his hands, and will allow an adequate 
 communication of himself in his full stature and proportion. 
 Not a conventional nature and culture need he cumber him- 
 self with, nor ask what is the mode in Rome or in Paris; but 
 that house, and weather, and manner of living, which 
 poverty and the fate of birth have made at once so odious 
 and so dear, in the gray unpainted wood cabin on the corner 
 of a New Hampshire farm, or in the log-hut of the back- 
 woods, or in the narrow lodging where he has endured the 
 constraints and seeming of a city poverty, — will serve as 
 well as any other condition as the symbol of a thought which 
 pours itself indifferently through all. 
 
 I remember, when in my younger days I had heard of the 
 wonders of Italian painting, I fancied the great pictures 
 would be great strangers; some surprising combination of 
 color and form; a foreign wonder, barbaric pearl and gold, 
 like the spontoons and standards of the militia, which play 
 such pranks in the eyes and imaginations of school-boys. I 
 was to see and acquire I knew not what. When I came at 
 last to Rome, and saw with eyes the pictures, I found that 
 genius left to novices the gay and fantastic and ostentatious, 
 and itself pierced directly to the simple and true; that it 
 was familiar and sincere; that it was the old, eternal fact I 
 had met already in so many forms; unto which I lived; that 
 it was the plain you and me I knew so well, — had left at 
 home in so many conversations. I had had the same ex- 
 perience already in a church at Naples. There I saw that 
 nothing was changed with me but the place, and said to 
 
ART 267 
 
 myself, — "Thou foolish child, hast thou come out hither, over 
 four thousand miles of salt water, to find that which was 
 perfect to thee there at home?" That fact I saw again in 
 the Accademia at Naples, in the chambers of sculpture; and 
 yet again when I came to Rome, and to the paintings of 
 Raphael, Angelo, Sacchi, Titian, and Leonardo da Vinci. 
 "What, old mole! workest thou in the earth so fast?" It 
 had travelled by my side : that which I fancied I had left in 
 Boston was here in the Vatican, and again at Milan, and at 
 Paris, and made all travelling ridiculous as a treadmill. I 
 now require this of all pictures, that they domesticate me, 
 not that they dazzle me. Pictures must not be too pictur- 
 esque. Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense 
 and plain deahng. All great actions have been simple, and 
 all great pictures are. 
 
 The Transfiguration, by Raphael, is an eminent example 
 of this peculiar merit. A calm, benignant beauty shines over 
 all this picture, and goes directly to the heart. It seems 
 almost to call you by name. The sweet and sublime face 
 of Jesus is beyond praise, yet how it disappoints all florid 
 expectations! This familiar, simple, home-speaking coun- 
 tenance is as if one should meet a friend. The knowledge of 
 picture-dealers has its value ; but hsten not to their criticism 
 when your heart is touched by genius. It was not painted 
 for them, — it was painted for you; for such as had eyes 
 capable of being touched by simphcity and lofty emotions. 
 
 Yet when we have said all our fine things about the arts, 
 we must end with a frank confession, that the arts, as we 
 know them, are but initial. Our best praise is given to what 
 they aimed and promised, not to the actual result. He has 
 conceived meanly of the resources of man who believes that 
 the best age of production is past. The real value of the 
 Iliad or the Transfiguration is as signs of power; billows or 
 ripples they are of the great stream of tendency; tokens of 
 the everlasting effort to produce, which even in its worst 
 estate the soul betrays. Art has not yet come to its matu- 
 rity, if it do not put itself abreast with the most potent in- 
 fluences of the world, if it is not practical and moral, if it 
 do not stand in connection with the conscience, if it do not 
 
^68 ART 
 
 make the poor and uncultivated feel that it addresses them 
 with a voice of lofty cheer. There is higher work for Art 
 than the arts. They are abortive births of an imperfect or 
 vitiated instinct. Art is the need to create; but in its es- 
 sence, immense and universal, it is impatient of working with 
 lame or tied hands, and of making cripples and monsters, 
 such as all pictures and statues are. Nothing less than the 
 creation of man and nature is its end. A man should find 
 in it an outlet for his whole energy. He may paint and 
 carve only as long as he can do that. Art should exhilarate, 
 and throw down the walls of circumstance on every side, 
 awakening in the beholder the same sense of universal re- 
 lation and power which the work evinced in the artist, and 
 its highest effect is to make new artists. 
 
 Already History is old enough to witness the old age and 
 disappearance of particular arts. The art of sculpture is 
 long ago perished to any real effect. It was originaUy an 
 useful art, a mode of writing, a savage's record of gratitude 
 or devotion; and among a people possessed of a wonderful 
 perception or form, this childish carving was refined to the 
 utmost splendor of effect. But it is the game of a rude and 
 youthful people, and not the manly labor of a wise and 
 spiritual nation. Under an oak-tree loaded with leaves and 
 nuts, under a sky full of eternal eyes, I stand in a thorough- 
 fare; but in the works of our plastic arts, and especially of 
 sculpture, creation is driven into a corner. I cannot hide 
 from myself that there is a certain appearance of paltriness, 
 as of toys, and the trumpery of a theatre, in sculpture. 
 Nature transcends all our moods of thought, and its secret 
 we do not yet find. But the gallery stands at the mercy of 
 our moods, and there is a moment when it becomes frivolous. 
 I do not wonder that Newton, with an attention habitually 
 engaged on the earth of i:)lanets and suns, should have won- 
 dered what the Earl of Pembroke found to admire in "stone 
 dolls." Sculpture may serve to teach the pupil how deep is 
 the secret of form, how purely the spirit can translate its 
 meanings into that eloquent dialect. But the statue will 
 look cold and false before that new activity, which needs to 
 roll through all things, and is impatient of counterfeits and 
 
ART 269 
 
 things not alive. Picture and sculpture are the celebrations 
 and festivities of form. But true art is never fixed, but 
 always flowing. The sweetest music is not in the oratorio, 
 but in the human voice when it speaks from its instant life 
 tones of tenderness, truth, or courage. The oratorio has 
 already lost its relation to the morning, to the sun and the 
 earth, but that persuading voice is in tune with these. All 
 works of art should not be detached, but extempore per- 
 formances. A great man is a new statue in every attitude 
 and action. A beautiful woman is a picture which drives all 
 beholders nobly mad. Life may be lyric or epic, as well as 
 a poem or a romance. 
 
 A true announcement of the law of creation, if a man were 
 found worthy to declare it, would carry art up into the king- 
 dom of nature, and destroy its separate and contrasted ex- 
 istence. The fountains of invention and beauty in modern 
 society are all but dried up. A popular novel, a theatre, or 
 a ball-room, makes us feel that we are all paupers in the 
 alms-house of this world, without dignity, without skill or 
 industry. Art is as poor and low. The old tragic Necessity, 
 which lowers on the brows even of the Venuses and the 
 Cupids of the antique, and furnishes the sole apology for the 
 intrusion of such anomalous figures into nature, — namely, that 
 they were inevitable, that the artist was drunk with a passion 
 for form, which he could not resist, and which vented itself 
 in these fine extravagances, — no longer dignifies the chisel or 
 the pencil. But the artist and the connoisseur now seek in 
 art the exhibition of their talent, or an asylum from the evils 
 of life. Men are not well pleased with the figure they make 
 in their own imagination, and they flee to art, and convey 
 their better sense in an oratorio, a statue, or a picture. Art 
 makes the same effort which a sensual prosperity makes, 
 namely, to detach the beautiful from the useful, to do up the 
 work as unavoidable, and hating it, pass on to enjoyment. 
 These solaces and compensations, this division of beauty 
 from use, the laws of nature do not permit. As soon as 
 beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, 
 it degrades the seeker. High beauty is no longer attainable 
 
270 ART 
 
 by him in canvas or in stone, in sound or in lyrical construc- 
 tion; an effeminate, prudent, sickly beauty, which is not 
 beauty, is all that can be formed; for the hand can never ex- 
 ecute any thing higher than the character can inspire. 
 
 The art that thus separates is itself first separated. Art 
 must not be a superficial talent, but must begin farther back 
 in man. Now men do not see nature to be beautiful, and 
 they go to make a statue which shall be. They abhor men 
 as tasteless, dull, and inconvertible, and console themselvee 
 with color-bags and blocks of marble. They reject life as 
 prosaic, and create a death which they call poetic. They 
 despatch the day's weary chores, and fly to voluptuous rev- 
 eries. They eat and drink, that they may afterwards ex- 
 ecute the ideal. Thus is art vilified; the name conveys to 
 the mind its secondary and bad senses; it stands in the im- 
 agination as somewhat contrary to nature, and struck with 
 death from the first. Would it not be better to begin higher 
 up, — to serve the ideal before they eat and drink; to serve 
 the ideal in eating and drinking, in drawing the breath, and 
 in the functions of life? Beauty must come back to the 
 useful arts, and the distinction between the fine and the use- 
 ful arts be forgotten. If history were truly told, if life were 
 nobly spent, it would be no longer easy or possible to dis- 
 tinguish the one from the other. In nature all is useful, 
 all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful because it is aUve, 
 moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful because it is 
 symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of 
 a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its 
 history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, 
 and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men. 
 It is in vain that we look for genius to reiterate its miracles 
 in the old arts; it is its instinct to find beauty and holiness 
 in new and necessary facts, in the field and roadside, in the 
 shop and mill. Proceeding from a religious heart, it will 
 raise to a divine use the railroad, the insurance-office, the 
 joint-stock company, our law, our primary assemblies, our 
 commerce, the galvanic battery, the electric jar, the prism, 
 and the chemist's retort, in which we seek now only an eco- 
 nomical use. Is not the selfish and even cruel aspect which 
 
ART 271 
 
 belongs to our great mechanical works, to mills, railways, 
 and machinery, the effect of the mercenary impulses which 
 these works obey? When its errands are noble and ade- 
 quate, a steam-boat bridging the Atlantic between Old and 
 New England, and arriving at its ports with the punctuality 
 of a planet, — is a step of man into harmony with nature. 
 The boat at St. Petersburgh, which plies along the Lena by 
 magnetism, needs httle to make it sublime. When science 
 is learned in love, and its powers are wielded by love, they 
 will appear the supplements and continuations of the material 
 creation. 
 
XIV 
 BEAUTY 
 
 The spiral tendency of vegetation infects education also. 
 Our books approach very slowly the things we most wish 
 to know. What a parade we make of our science, and how 
 far off, and at arm's length, it is from its objects! Our 
 botany is all names, not powers: poets and romancers talk 
 of herbs of grace and healing; but what does the botanist 
 know of the virtues of his weeds? The geologist lays bare 
 the strata, and can tell them all on his fingers: but does he 
 know what effect passes into the man who builds his house in 
 them? what effect on the race that inhabits a granite shelf? 
 what on the inhabitants of marl and of alluvium? 
 
 We should go to the ornithologist with a new feeling, if 
 he could teach us what the social birds say, when they sit 
 in the autumn council, talking together in the trees. The 
 want of sympathy makes his record a dull dictionary. His 
 result is a dead bird. The bird is no t in its ounces and 
 inches, but in its rela tio ns to^aiure; a na the" skin or skele- 
 ton you show me is no more a heron. Than a heap of ashes 
 or a bottle of gases into which his body has been reduced, 
 is Dante or Washington. The naturalist is led from the 
 road by the whole distance of his fancied advance. The 
 boy had juster views when he gazed at the shells on the 
 beach, or the flowers in the meadow, unable to call them by 
 their names, than the man in the pride of his nomenclature. 
 Astrology interested us, for it tied man to the system. In- 
 stead of an isolated beggar, the farthest star felt him, and 
 he felt the star. However rash and however falsified by 
 pretenders and traders in it, the hint was true and divine, the 
 soul's avowal of its large relations, and that climate, century, 
 remote natures, as well as near, are part of its biography. 
 
 272 
 
BEAUTY 273 
 
 nTPTnisfry fflkfi'^ ^^ pippps, h^]|, jt^ does not construct . Al- 
 cliemy which sought to transmute one element into another, 
 to prolong life, to arm with power, — that was in the right 
 direction. All our science lacks a human side. The ten- 
 ant is more than the house. Bugs and stamens and spores, 
 on which we lavish so many years, are not finalities, and 
 man, when his powers unfold in order, will take Nature 
 along with him, and emit light into all her recesses. The 
 human heart concerns us more than the poring into micro- 
 scopes, and is larger than can be measured by the pompous 
 figures of the astronomer. 
 
 We are just so frivolous and sceptical. Men hold them- 
 selves cheap and vile: and yet a man is a fagot of thunder- 
 bolts. All the elements pour through his system: he is the 
 flood of the flood, and fire of the fire; he feels the antipodes 
 and the pole, as drops of his blood: they are the extension 
 of his personality. His duties are measured by that in- 
 strument he is; and a right and perfect man would be felt to 
 the center of the Copernican system. T is curiou s that we 
 only believe as deep as we liv e. We *do not thiht heroes 
 can exert any more awful power than that surface-play 
 which amuses us. A deep man believes in miracles, waits 
 for them, believes in magic, believes that the orator will 
 decompose his adversary; beheves that the evil eye can 
 wither, that the heart's blessing can heal; that love can ex- 
 alt talent; can overcome all odds. From a great heart 
 secret magnetisms flow incessantly to draw great events. 
 But we prize very humble utilities, a prudent husband, a 
 good son, a voter, a citizen, and deprecate any romance of 
 character; and perhaps reckon only his money value, — his 
 intellect, his affection, as a sort of bill of exchange, easily 
 convertible into fine chambers, pictures, music, and wine. 
 
 The mot ive of science w as t he extension of man, , on all 
 sides, into NatureT^till his hands should touch the stars, 
 his eyes see through the earth; his ears understand the lan- 
 guage of beast and bird, and the sense of the wind; and, 
 through his sympathy, heaven and earth should talk with 
 him. But that is not our science. These geologies, chem- 
 istries, astronomies, seem to make wise, but they leave us 
 where they found us. The invention is of use to the inven- 
 
274 BEAUTY 
 
 tor, of questionable help to any other. The formulas of 
 science are like the papers in your pocket-book, of no value 
 to any but the owner. Science in England, in America, is 
 jealous of theory, hate the name of love and moral purpose. 
 There's a revenge for this inhumanity. What manner of 
 man does science make ? ^ _The boy is not attracted. He 
 says, I do not wish to be such a kind of man as my professor 
 is. The collector has dried all the plants in his herbal, but 
 he has lost weight and humor. He has got all snakes and 
 lizards in his phials, but science has done for him also, and 
 has put the man into a bottle. Our reliance on the phy- 
 sician is a kind of despair of ourselves. The clergy have 
 bronchitis, which does not seem a certificate of spiritual 
 health. Macready thought it came of the jalsetto of their 
 voicing. An Indian prince, Tisso, one day riding in the 
 forest, saw a herd of elk sporting. ''See how happy," he said, 
 "these browsing elks are! Why should not priests, lodged 
 and fed comfortably in the temples, also amuse themselves?" 
 Returning home, he imparted this reflection to the king. 
 The king, on the next day, conferred the sovereignty on him, 
 sajdng, "Prince, adminster this empire for seven days: at 
 the termination of that period, I shall put thee to death." 
 At the end of the seventh day, the king inquired, "From 
 what cause hast thou become so emaciated?" He answered, 
 "From the horror of death." The monarch rejoined: 
 "Live, my child, and be wise. Thou hast ceased to take 
 recreation, saying to thyself. In seven days I shall be put to 
 death. ^ These priests in the t^juijkj nces^ aptily mprli^^^*^ ^"^ 
 ^eath; hnw rg n thf^y "TrvlTr r"' to neaJtl ^fl]] ^^i-^^pT-ninnn?-^ 
 But the men of science or the doctors or the clergy are not 
 victims of their pursuits, more than others. The mi ller, 
 the lawyer, and the merchant dedicate themselves to their 
 own details, and do not come out men of more force^ Have 
 they divination, grand aims, hospitality of soul, and the 
 equality to any event, which we demand in man, or only 
 the reactions of the mill, of the wares, of the chicane? 
 
 No object really interests us but man, and in man only 
 his superiorities; and though we are aware of a perfect law 
 in Nature, it has fascination for us only through its relation 
 
BEAUTY 275 
 
 to him, of, as it is rooted in the mind. At the birth of Winck- 
 elmann, more than a hundred years ago, side by side with 
 this arid, departmenal, -post-mortem science, rose an en- 
 thusiasm in the study of Beauty; and perhaps some sparks 
 from it may yet hght a conflagration in the other. Know - 
 ledge of men, knowledge of manners ^— Llie power of form^ 
 and our sensibihty to personal influence, never go out of 
 fashion. These are facts of a science which we study without 
 book, whose teachers and subjects are always near us. 
 
 So inveterate is our habit of criticism, that much of our 
 knowledge in this direction belongs to the chapter of 
 pathology. The crowd in the street oftener furnishes de- 
 gradations than /ngels or redeemers; but they all prove 
 the transparency. Every spirit makes its house; and we can 
 give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant. But 
 not less does Nature furnish us with every sign of grace and 
 goodness. The delicious faces of children, the beauty of 
 school-girls, "the sweet seriousness of sixteen," the lofty 
 air of well-born, well-bred boys, the passionate histories 
 in the looks and manners of youth and early manhood, and 
 the varied power in all that well-known company that 
 escort us through life, — we know how these forms thrill, 
 paralyze, provoke, inspire, and enlarge us. 
 r Beauty is the form under which t^"*^ ii-^|pnon| p^^ffr° "^ 
 study the world. All privilege is that of beauty; for there 
 are many beauties; as, of general nature, of the human face 
 and form, of manners, of brain, or method, moral beauty, or 
 •^eauty of the soul. 
 
 The ancients believed that a genius or demon took posses- 
 sion at birth of each mortal, to guide him; that these genii 
 were sometimes seen as a flame of fire partly immersed in 
 the bodies which they governed; — on an evil man, resting on 
 his head; in a good man, mixed with his substance. They 
 thought the same genius, at the death of its ward, entered a 
 new-born child, and they pretended to guess the pilot, by 
 the sailing of the ship. We recognize obscurely the same 
 fact, though we give it our own names. We say. th'''t ^^^f^'^y-" 
 ma n is entitled to be valued bv his best moment. ^ We meas- 
 "trr^our iriends so. We know, tney have intervals of folly, 
 
276 BEAUTY 
 
 whereof we take no heed, but wait the reappearings of the 
 genius, which are sure and beautiful. On the other side, 
 everybody knows people who appear bedridden, and who, 
 with all degrees of ability, never impress us with the air of 
 free agency. They know it too, and peep with their eyes 
 to see if you detect their sad phght. We fancy, could we 
 pronounce the solving w^ord, and disenchant them, the cloud 
 would roll up, the little rider would be discovered and un- 
 seated, and they would regain their freedom. The remedy 
 seems to be never far off, since the first step into thought 
 lifts this mountain of necessity. Thought is the pent air- 
 ball which can rive the planet, and the beauty which certain 
 objects have for him is the friendly fire which expands the 
 thought, and acquaints the prisoner that liberty and power 
 await him. 
 
 The question of Beauty takes us out of surfaces, to 
 thinking of the foundations of things. Goethe said: "The 
 beautiful is a manifestation of secret laws of Nature, which, 
 but for this appearance, had been forever concealed from 
 us." And the working of this deep instinct makes all the 
 excitement — much of ft superficial and absurd enough — 
 about works of art, which leads armies of vain travellers 
 every year to Italy, Greece, and Egj^pt. Every man values 
 every acquisition he makes in the science of beauty, above 
 his possessions. The most useful man in the most useful 
 world, so long as only commodity was served, would remain 
 unsatisfied. But, as fast as he sees beauty, life acquires a 
 very high value. / 
 
 I am warned by the ill fate of many philosophers not to' 
 attempt a definition of Beauty. I will rather enumerate a 
 few of its qualities. We ascribe beauty to that which is 
 simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly an- 
 swers its end; which stands related to all things; which is 
 the mean of many extremes. It is the most enduring qual- 
 ity, and the most ascending quality. We say love is Wind, 
 and the figure of Cupid is drawn with a bandage round his 
 eyes. Blir i^^- — yen, ^^pQ use he does not see what he does 
 nf]^ lE Thnt, the sharpest-sighted hunter in the universe is 
 Love, for finding what he seeks, and only that; and the 
 
BEAUTY 277 
 
 mythologists tell us, that Vulcan was painted lame, and Cupid 
 blind, to call attention to the fact, that one was all limbs, 
 and the other, all eyes. In the true mythology. Love is 
 an immortal child, and Beauty leads him as a guide: nor 
 can we express a deeper sense than when we say. Beauty is 
 t ^e pilot of the young: soul. " ""^ 
 
 Beyond their sensuous delight, the forms and colors of 
 Nature have a new charm for us in our perception, that not 
 one ornament was added for ornament, but each is a sign 
 of some better health, or more excellent action. Elegance of 
 form in bird or beast, or in the human figure, marks some 
 excellence of structure : or beauty is only an invitation from 
 what belongs to us. 'T is a law of botany, that in plants, 
 the same virtues follow the same forms. It is a rule of 
 largest application, true in a plant, true in a loaf of bread, 
 that in the construction of any fabric or organism, any real 
 increase of fitness to its end, is an increase of beauty. 
 
 The lesson taught by the study of Greek and of Gothic 
 art, of antique and of Pre-Raphaehte painting, was worth 
 all the research, — namely, that all l^i^^^^T^rjTiilPit W^ nrg'"'^^^; 
 that outside embelhshment is deformity. It is the soundness 
 of the bones that ultimates itself in a peach-bloom com- 
 plexion: health of constitution that makes the sparkle and 
 the power of the eye. 'T is the adjustment of the size and 
 of the joining of the sockets of the skeleton, that gives grace 
 of outline and the finer grace of movement. The cat and 
 the deer cannot move or sit inelegantly. The dancing- 
 master can never teach a badly built man to walk well. The 
 tint. of the flower proceeds from its root, and the lustres of 
 the sea-shell begin with its existence. Hence our taste in 
 building rejects paint, and all shifts, and shows the original 
 grain of the wood : refuses pilasters and-columns that support 
 nothing, and allows the real supporters of the house honestly 
 to show themselves. Every necessary or organic action 
 pleases the beholder. A man leading a horse to water, a 
 farmer sowing seed, the labors of haymakers in the field, 
 the carpenter building a ship, the smith at his forge, or, 
 whatever useful labor, is becoming to the wise eye. But if 
 it is done to be seen, it is mean. How beautiful are ships 
 
278 
 
 BEAUTY 
 
 on the sea! but ships in the theatre,— or ships kept for 
 picturesque effect on Virginia Water, by George IV., and 
 men hired to stand in fitting costumes at a penny an hour ! 
 — What a difference in effect between a battahon of troops 
 marching to action, and one of our independent compa- 
 nies on a hohday! In the midst of a military show, and a 
 festal procession gay with banners, I saw a boy seize an old 
 tin pan that lay resting under a wall, and poising it on the 
 top of a stick, he set it turning, and made it describe the 
 most elegant imaginable curves, and drew away attention 
 from the decorated procession by this startling beauty. 
 
 Another text from the mythologists. The Greeks fabled 
 that Venus was born of the foam of the sea. Nothing inter- 
 ests us which is stark or bounded, but only what streams 
 with life, what is in act or endeavor to reach somewhat 
 beyond. The pleasure a palace or a temple gives the eye, 
 is, that an order and method has been communicated to 
 stones, so that they speak and geometrize, become tender or 
 sublime with expression. Beauty is the moment of tran- 
 sition, as if the form were just ready to flow into other 
 forms. Any fixedness, heaping, or concentration on one 
 feature, — a long nose, a sharp chin, a hump-back, — is the 
 reverse of the flowing, and therefore deformed. Beautiful 
 as is the symmetry of any form, if the form can move, we 
 seek a more excellent synametry. The interruption of 
 equilibrium stimulates the eye to desire the restoration of 
 symmetry, and to watch the steps through which it is at- 
 tained. This is the charm of running water, sea-waves, the 
 flight of birds, and the locomotion of animals. This is ths 
 theory of dnncins^, to recover continually in changes th fi- 
 \ost equilibriu m, not by ab rupt nnd anojuiar^ b] " 
 an^ cu rving Imo yements. . I have been told by persons of 
 experienc^ii 111 matters of taste, that the fashions follow a 
 law of gradation, and are never arbitrary. The new mode is 
 always only a step onward in the same direction as the last 
 mode ; and a cultivated eye is prepared for and predicts the 
 new fashion. This fact suggests the reason of all mistakes 
 and offence in our own modes. It is necessary in music, when 
 you strike a discord, to let down the ear by an intermediate 
 
BEAUTY 279 
 
 note or two to the accord again: and many a good experi- 
 ment, born of good sense, and destined to succeed, fails, only 
 because it is offensively sudden. I suppose, the Parisian 
 milliner who dresses the world from her imperious boudoir, 
 will know how to reconcile the Bloomer costume to the eye 
 of mankind, and make it triumphant over Punch himself, 
 by interposing the just gradations. I need not say how wide 
 the same law ranges; and how much it can be hoped to 
 effect. All that is a little harshly claimed by progressive 
 parties may easily come to be conceded without question, 
 if this rule be observed. Thus the circumstances may be 
 easily imagined, in which woman may speak, vote, argue 
 causes, legislate, and drive a coach, and all the most naturally 
 in the world, if only it come by degrees. To this streaming 
 or flowing belongs the beauty that all circular movement 
 has; as, the circulation of waters, the circulation of the 
 blood, the periodical motion of planets, the annual wave of 
 vegetation, the action and reaction of Nature; and, if we 
 follow it out, this dema nd in our thought for ai L-jevef=^ 
 "onward actio n lij tte argument for t he imTnnrtfllitv. 
 
 \)ne niTTreT^ext from the mytboiogists is to the same pur- 
 pose, — Beauty rides on a lion. Beauty rests on necessities. 
 The hne of beauty is the result of perfect economy. The cell 
 of the bee is built at that angle which gives the most strength 
 with the least wax; the bone or the quill of the bird gives 
 the most alar strength with the least weight. "It is the 
 purgation of superfluities," said Michel Angelo. There is 
 not a particle to spare in natural structures. There is a 
 compelling reason in the uses of the plant, for every novelty 
 of color or form: and our art saves material, by more skil- 
 ful arrangement, and reaches beauty by taking every super- 
 fluous ounce that can be spared from a wall, and keeping all 
 its strength in the poetry of columns. In rhetoric, this 
 art of omission is a chief secret of power, and, in general, it 
 is proof of high culture, to say the greatest matters in the 
 simplest way. 
 
 Veracity first of all, an dforev£X*--^^fi^^ de beau que le 
 vral. in all desrgn7art lies~m making your object prominent, 
 but there is a prior part in choosing objects that are prom- 
 
280 BEAUTY 
 
 inent. The fine arts have nothing casual, but spring from 
 the instincts of the nations that created them. 
 
 ^eauty _Jsj he quality which makes tg _£Q^ure. In a house 
 that I kno\v^ i have noticed a block of spermaceti lying 
 about closets and mantel-pieces, for twenty years together, 
 simply because the tallow-man gave it the form of a rabbit; 
 and, I suppose, it may continue to be lugged about un- 
 changed for a century. Let an artist scrawl a few hues or 
 figures on the back of a letter, and that scrap of paper is 
 rescued from danger, is put in portfolio, is framed and 
 glazed, and, in proportion to the beauty of the lines drawn, 
 will be kept for centuries. Burns writes a copy of verses, 
 and sends them to a newspaper, and the human race take 
 charge of them that they shall not perish. 
 
 As the flute is heard farther than the cart, see how surely 
 a beautiful form strikes the fancy of men, and is copied 
 and reproduced without end. How many copies are there 
 of the Belvedere Apollo, the Venus, the Psyche, the War- 
 wick Vase, the Parthenon, and the Temple of Vesta? These 
 are objects of tenderness to all. In our cities, an ugly 
 building is soon removed, and is never repeated, but any 
 beautiful building is copied and improved upon, so that 
 all masons and carpenters work to repeat and preserve the 
 agreeable forms, whilst the ugly ones die out. 
 
 The felicities of design in art, or in works of Nature, ar^ 
 shadows or forerunners of that beauty which reaches its 
 )erfection in the human form . All men are its lovers. 
 VVherever it goes, it creates joy and hilarity, and' every- 
 thing is permitted to it. It reaches its heighlrTti woman. 
 "To Eve," say the Mahometans, "God gave two thirds of 
 all beauty." A beautiful woman is a practical poet, taming 
 her savage mate, planting tenderness, hope, and eloquence 
 in all whom she approaches. Some favors of condition 
 must go with it, since a certain serenity is essential, but we 
 love its reproofs and superiorities. Nature wishes that wo- 
 man should attract man, yet she often cunningly moulds into 
 her face a little sarcasm, which seems to say, "Yes, I am 
 willing to attract, but to attract a little better kind of man 
 than any I yet behold." French memoir es of the fifteenth 
 
BEAUTY 281 
 
 century celebrate the name of Pauline de Viguiere, a vir- 
 tuous and accomplished maiden, who so fired the enthu- 
 siasm of her contemporaries, by her enchanting form, that 
 the citizens of her native city of Toulouse obtained the aid 
 of the civil authorities to compel her to appear pubhcly on 
 the balcony at least twice a week, and, as often as she showed 
 herself, the crowd was dangerous to life. Not less, in Eng- 
 land, in the last century, was the fame of the Gunnings, of 
 whom Ehzabeth married the Duke of Hamilton; and Maria, 
 the Earl of Coventry. Walpole says: "The concourse was 
 so great, when the Duchess of Hamilton was presented at 
 court, on Friday, that even the noble crowd in the drawing- 
 room clambered on chairs and tables to look at her. There 
 are mobs at their doors to see them get into their chairs, and 
 ixople go early to get places at the theatres, when it is 
 known they will be there." "Such crowds," he adds, else- 
 \\here, "flock to see the Duchess of Hamilton, that seven 
 hundred people sat up all night, in and about an inn, in 
 Yorkshire, to see her get into her post-chaise next morning." 
 
 But why need we console ourselves with the fames of 
 Helen of Argos, or Corinna, or Pauline of Toulouse, or the 
 Duchess of Hamilton? We all know this magic very well, 
 or can divine it. It does not hurt weak eyes to look into 
 beautiful eyes never so long. Wqip pti gtnn^^ y-^lntpr] tn 
 be autiful Nature around us. an d the enamored youth mixes 
 their form with moon and stars, with woods and waters, and 
 the pomp of summer. They heal us of awkwardness by 
 their words and looks. We observe their intellectual in- 
 fluence on the most serious student. They refine and clear 
 his mind; teach him to put a pleasing method into what is 
 dry and difficult. We talk to them and wish to be listened 
 to; we fear to fatigue them, and acquire a facihty of ex- 
 pression which passes from conversation into habit of style. 
 
 That Beauty is the normal state, is shown by the perpetual 
 effort of Nature to attain it. Mirabeau had an ugly face 
 on a handsome ground; and we see faces every day which 
 have a good type, but have been marred in the casting: a 
 proof that we are all entitled to beauty, should have been 
 beautiful, if our ancestors had kept the laws, — as every lily 
 
282 BEAUTY 
 
 and every rose is well. But our bodies do not fit us, but 
 caricature and satirize us. Thus, short legs, which constrain 
 to short, mincing steps, are a kind of personal insult and 
 contumely to the owner; and long stilts, again, put him at 
 perpetual disadvantage, and force him to stoop to the gen- 
 eral level of mankind. Martial ridicules a gentleman of his 
 day whose countenance resembled the face of a swimmer 
 seen under water. Saadi describes a schoolmaster "so ugly 
 and crabbed, that a sight of him would derange the ecstasies 
 of the orthodox." Faces are rarely true to any ideal type, 
 but are a record in sculpture of a thousand anecdotes of 
 whim and folly. Portrait painters say that most faces and 
 forms are irregular and unsymmetrical; have one eye blue, 
 and one gray ; the nose not straight ; and one shoulder higher 
 than another; the hair unequally distributed, etc. The 
 man is physically as well as metaphysically a thing of 
 shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good and 
 bad ancestors, and a misfit from the start. 
 
 A beautiful person, among the Greeks, was thought to 
 betray by this sign some secret favor of the immortal gods; 
 and we can pardon pride, when a woman possesses such a 
 figure, that wherever she stands, or moves, or throws a 
 shadow on the wall, or sits for a portrait to the artist, she 
 confers a favor on the world. And yet — it is not beauty 
 that inspires the deepest passion. "Rpanty with""^ prmpp 
 is theJ xQ*^^' without t^''^ ^'"■^^ Beauty, without expression, 
 
 ""tires! Abbe Menage said of the President Le Bailleul, 
 "that he was fit for nothing but to sit for his portrait." A 
 Greek epigram intimates that the force of love is not shown 
 by the courting of beauty, but when the like desire is in- 
 flamed for one who is ill-favored. And petulant old gentle- 
 men, who have chanced to suffer some intolerable weariness 
 from pretty people, or who have seen cut flowers to some 
 profusion, or who see, after a world of pains have been 
 successfully taken for the costume, how the least mistake in 
 sentiment takes all the beauty out of your clothes, — affirm, 
 that the spprpt nf iiHiness consists jiot in irregularity^^buLia 
 
 ' l)eing uninteresting. 
 
 We love any forms, however ugly, from which great qualr 
 
 
BEAUTY 283 
 
 ities shine. If command, eloquence, art, or invention exist 
 in the most deformed person, all the accidents that usually 
 displease, please, and raise esteem and wonder higher. The 
 great orator was an emaciated, insignificant person, but he was 
 all brain. Cardinal De Retz says of De Bouillon, "With the 
 physiognomy of an ox, he had the perspicacity of an eagle." 
 It was said of Hooke, the friend of Newton, ''He is the most,, 
 and promises the least, of any man in England." ''Since I 
 am so ugly," said Du Guesclin, "it behooves that I be bold." 
 Sir Phihp Sidney, the darling of mankind, Ben Jonson tells 
 us, "was no pleasant man in countenance, his face being 
 spoiled with pimples, and of high blood, and long." Those 
 who have ruled human destinies, like planets, for thousands 
 of years, were not handsome men. If a man can raise a 
 small city to be a great kingdom, can make bread cheap, 
 can irrigate deserts, can join oceans by canals, can subdue 
 steam, can organize victory, can lead the opinions of man- 
 kind, can enlarge knowledge, 't is no matter whether his 
 nose is parallel to his spine, as it ought to be, or whether he 
 has a nose at all; whether his legs are straight, or whether 
 his legs are amputated; his deformities will come to be 
 reckoned ornamental and advantageous on the whole. This 
 is the triumph of expression, degrading beauty, charming us 
 with a power so fine and friendly and intoxicating, that it 
 makes admired persons insipid, and the thought of passing 
 our lives with them insupportable. There are faces so 
 fluid with expression, so flushed and rippled by the play of 
 thought, that we can hardly find what the mere features 
 really are. When the del icio us beauty of hneaments- Iosea^ 
 it s power, it is because alnore dehcious beau ty h ps np paa^wl; 
 tMt an mterior and durable form has been disclosed. Still, 
 BeautjMidesjiiLj^er^ Still, "it was for beauty 
 
 thattfeTworld was made." The lives of the Itahan artists, 
 who established a despotism of genius amidst the dukes and 
 kings and mobs of their stormy epoch, prove how loyal men 
 in all times are to a finer brain, a finer method, than their 
 own. If a man can cut such a head on his stone gate-post 
 as shall draw and keep a crowd about it all day, by its grace, 
 good-nature, and inscrutable meaning; — if a man can 
 
f 
 
 284 BEAUTY 
 
 build a plain cottage \vith such symmetry, as to make all the 
 fine palaces look cheap and vulgar; can take such advantage 
 of Nature that all her powers serve him; making use of 
 geometry, instead of expense; tapping a mountain for his 
 water-jet; causing the sun and moon to seem only the dec- 
 orations of his estate; this is still the legitimate dominion 
 of beauty. 
 
 The radiance of the human form, though sometimes 
 astonishing, is only a burst of beauty for a few years or a 
 few months, at the perfection of youth, and in most, rapidly 
 dechnes. But we remain lovers of it, onlj' transferring our 
 interest to interior excellence. And it is not only admirable 
 in singular and salient talents, but also in the world of man- 
 ners. 
 
 But the sovereign attribute remains to be noted. Things 
 are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they 
 speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful. This is the 
 reason wh}^ beauty is still escaping out of all analj'sis. It is 
 not yet possessed, it cannot be handled. Proclus says, 'Tt 
 swims on the light of forms." It is properly not in the form, 
 but in the mind. It instantly deserts possession, and flies 
 to an object in the horizon. If I could put my hand on the 
 north star, would it be as beautiful? The sea is lovely, but 
 when we bathe in it, the beauty forsakes all the near water. 
 For the imagination and senses cannot be gratified at the 
 same time. Wordsworth rightly speaks of "a light that 
 never was on sea or land," meaning, that it was supplied by 
 the observer, and the Welsh bard warns his countrywomen, 
 that 
 
 "Half of their charms with Cadwallon shall die." 
 
 The new virtue which constitutes a thing beautiful is a cer- 
 tain cosmical quality, or, a power to suggest relation to 
 the whole world, and so lift the object out of a pitiful in- 
 dividuality. Every natural feature — sea, sky, rainbow, 
 flowers, musical tone — has in it somewhat which is not 
 private, but universal, speaks of that central benefit which i 
 is the soul of Nature, and thereby is beautiful. And, in \ 
 chosen men and women, I find somewhat in form, speech, and 
 
BEAUTY 285 
 
 manners, which is not of their person and family, but of a 
 humane, cathohc, and spiritual character, and we love them 
 as the sky. They have a largeness of suggestion, and their 
 face and manners carry a certain grandeur, like time and 
 justice. 
 
 The feat of the imagination is in showing the convert- 
 ibihty of everything into every other thing. Facts which 
 had never before left their stark common sense suddenly 
 figure as Eleusinian mysteries. My boots and chair and 
 candlestick are fairies in disguise, meteors and constellations. 
 All the facts in Nature are nouns of the intellect, and make 
 the grammar of the eternal language. Every word has a 
 double, treble, or centuple use and meaning. What! has 
 my stove and pepper-pot a false bottom! I cry you mercy, 
 good shoe-box! I did not know you were a jewel-case. 
 Chaff and dust begin to sparkle, and are clothed about with 
 immortalit}^ And there is a joy in perceiving the represen- 
 tative or symbolic character of a fact, which no bare fact or 
 event can ever give. There are no days in life so memorable 
 as those which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination. 
 
 The poets are quite right in decking their mistresses with 
 the spoils of the landscape, flower-gardens, gems, rainbows, 
 flushes of morning, and stars of night, since all beauty points 
 at identity, and whatsoever thing does not express to me 
 the sea and sky, day and night, is somewhat forbidden and 
 wrong. Into every beautiful object there enters somewhat \ 
 immeasurable and divine, and just as much into form ) 
 bounded by outlines, like mountains on the horizon, as into / 
 tones of music, or depths of space. Polarized light showed 
 the secret architecture of bodies; and when the second- 
 sight of the mind is opened, now one color or form or 
 gesture, and now another, has a pungency, as if a more in- 
 terior ray had been emitted, disclosing its deep holdings in 
 the frame of things. 
 
 The laws of this translation we do not know, or why one 
 feature or gesture enchants, why one word or syllable in- 
 toxicates, but the fact is famihar that the fine touch of 
 the eye, or a grace of manners, or a phrase of poetry, plants 
 wings at our shoulders; as if the Divinity, in his approaches, 
 
286 BEAUTY 
 
 lifts away mountains of obstruction, and deigns to draw a 
 truer line which the mind knows and owns. This is that 
 haughty force of beauty, ^'vis superba jormoo;' which the 
 poets praise, — under calm and precise outline, the immeas- 
 urable and divine Beauty hiding all wisdom and power in 
 its calm s kv. 
 
 ^11 hig[iY'pmitY hns i]. rr|nrnl elemeirtj it, and I find the 
 -Antique sculpture as ethical as Marcus Antoninus: and the 
 beauty ever in proportion to the depth of thou ght. Gross 
 and obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure 
 shambles; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to 
 wrinkled skin and gray hairs. An adorer of truth we can 
 not choose but obe y, and the woman who has shared with 
 us tne moral sentiment, — her locks must appear to us sub- 
 lime. Thus there is a climbing scale of culture^ from the 
 first agreeable sensation which a sparkling gem or a scarlet 
 stain affords the eye, up through fair outlines and details of ' 
 the landscape, features of the human face and form, signs 
 and tokens of thought and character in manners, up to the 
 ineffable mysteries of the intellect. Wherever we begin, 
 thither our steps tend: an ascent from the joy of a horse in 
 his trappings, up to the perception of Newton, that the globe 
 on which we ride is only a larger apple falling from a larger 
 tree; up to the perception of Plato, that globe and universe 
 are rude and early expressions of an all-dissolving Unity, — 
 the first stair on the scale to the temple of the Mind. 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 
 
 An Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, 
 at Cambridge, August 31, 1837 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen, 
 
 I GREET you on the re-commencement of our literary year. 
 Our anniversary is one of hope, and, perhaps, not enough of 
 labor. We do not meet for games of strength or skill, for 
 the recitation of histories, tragedies, and odes, hke the an- 
 cient Greeks; for parliaments of love and poesy, like the 
 Troubadours; nor for the advancement of science, like our 
 contemporaries in the British and European capitals. Thus 
 far, our holiday has been simply a friendly sign of the sur- 
 vival 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. 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 
 for a thousand years? 
 
 In this hope, I accept the topic which not only usage, but 
 the nature of our association, seem to prescribe to this day 
 
 287 
 
288 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 
 
 — the American Scholar. Year by year, we come up 
 hither to read one more chapter of his biography. Let us 
 inquire what hght new days and events have thrown on his 
 character, and his hopes. 
 
 It is one of those fables, which, out of an unknown an- 
 tiquity, 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. 
 
 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 
 [armcr , or professor, or a n en gineer, but he is all. Man is 
 priest7 and scholar, and statesman; rmd pi'UdLKTer, and 
 soldier. In the divided or social state, these functions are 
 parcelled out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his 
 stint 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 amputa- 
 tion from the trunk, and strut about so many walking mon- 
 sters, — 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 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 a ship. 
 
 In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the dele- 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 289 
 
 gated 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 theory of his 
 office is contained. Him nature sohcits with all her placid, 
 all her monitory pictures; 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 the old 
 oracle said, "All things have two handles: beware of the 
 wrong one." In hfe, too often, the scholar errs with man- 
 kind 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 first in importance of the ip s- 
 fluences upon the mind is of that nature^ __ Every day, the 
 "sun; 'and, afLei yiilioeL, nigiit and tier stars. Ever the winds 
 blow; ever the grass grows. Every day, men and women, 
 conversing, beholding and beholden. The scholar is he of 
 all men whom this spectacle most engages. 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 re- 
 turning into itself. 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 par- 
 ticle, nature hastens to render account of herself to the mind. 
 Classification begins. To the young mind, every thing in 
 individuals, 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 
 unifylig instinct, it goes on tying things together, dimin- 
 ishing anomahes, 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 clas- 
 
290 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 
 
 sifying of facts. But what is classification but the per- 
 ceiving 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 through- 
 out 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 for ever to animate the last fibre 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. 
 He shall see, that nature isjthe opposite of the souL answer- 
 
 in£_ to it pArt for xiar^ Oneis ^&<i\, and oTieTs print! Its 
 
 Beatity is the beauty of his own mind. Its laws are the laws 
 of his own mind. Nature then becomes to him the meas- 
 ure of his attainments. So much of nature as he is ig- 
 norant of, so much of his own mind does he not yet possess. 
 And, in fine, the ancient precept, "Know thyself," and the 
 modern precept, "Study nature," become at last the one 
 maxim. 
 
 II.. The next g reat influence jnto the s£ i rit of the schol ai — • 
 is, tEe-mmd ot the Plst^ iiTwhateverTorm, whether of 
 literature, of art, of mstitutions, that mind is inscribed. 
 Books are the best type of the influence of the past, and per- 
 haps we shall get at the truth,— learn the amount of this 
 influence more conveniently,— by considering their value 
 alone. 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 291 
 
 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. 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 im- 
 perishableness of the product be. But none is quite per- 
 fect. As no air-pump can by any means make a perfect 
 vacuum, so neither can any artist entirely exclude the con- 
 ventional, 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 
 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 wor- 
 ship of his statue. Instantly, the book becomes noxious: 
 the guide is a tyrant. The sluggish and perverted mind of 
 the multitude, 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, which Bacon, have given, forgetful 
 
292 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 
 
 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 with the world and the 
 soul. Hence, the restorers of readings, the emendators, 
 the bibliomaniacs of all degrees. 
 
 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. I had better never see a book, thaiTtO' be warped' 
 by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a 
 satellite instead of a system, pi^jmo-tai^in the \\wld^_ofj 
 value, is the active soul. This every man is eiilillecTto; 
 lliis 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. 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. They look backward and not forward. 
 But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his 
 forehead: not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates. 
 Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure 
 efflux of the Deity is not his ; — 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 from another mind its truth, though it were in tor- 
 rents of light, without periods of solitude, inquest, and self- 
 recovery, and a fatal disservice is done. Genius is alwa ys 
 sufficient ly the enemv of genius by over 'mnuen ce. ihe 
 Titei*^ttire of every nation bear m£ witness- TKe Enghsh 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 293 
 
 dramatic poets have Shakspearized now for two hundred 
 years. 
 
 Undoubtedly there is a right way of reading, so it be 
 sternly subordinated. Man Thinking must not be subdued 
 by his instruments. Boo ks are f o r the sch olar 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. 
 But when the intervals of darkness come, as come they must, 
 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. 
 We hear, th^^ 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 with the conviction, 
 that one nature wrote and the same reads. We read the 
 verses of one of the great English poets, of Chaucer, of 
 Marvell, of Dry den, with the most modern joy, — with a 
 pleasure, I mean, which is in great part caused by the ab- 
 straction 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 
 wellnigh thought and said. But for the evidence thence 
 afforded to the philosophical doctrine of the identity of 
 all minds, we should suppose some preestablished harmony, 
 some foresight of souls that were to be, and some prepara- 
 tion 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. Onemust, 
 an inventor to read well. As the proverb says," '^He that 
 
294 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 
 
 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 or Shaks- 
 peare, 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 Shakspeare'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, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, 
 can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. 
 Forget this, and our American colleges will recede in their 
 public importance, whilst they grow rich every year. 
 
 III. There goes in the world a notion, that the scholar 
 should be a recluse, a valetudinarian, — 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 uni- 
 versally than any other class, the scholars of their day, — 
 are addressed as women; that the rough, spontaneous con- 
 versation of men they do not hear, but only a mincing 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 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 295 
 
 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 of thought, the transition thr ough 
 which h passes from the unco nscious to the conscious,^ 
 action. ^Onl y so much do 1 know, as i h avej ivs^ instantly 
 
 Tite/and 
 
 we know wfiose words are ioadea witn nfe, 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 run ea- 
 gerly 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 be vocal 
 with speech. I pierce its order; I dissipate its fear; I dis- 
 pose of it within the circuit of my expanding Ufe. So much 
 only of life as I know by experience, so much of the wilder- 
 ness have I vanquished and planted, or so far have I ex- 
 tended 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 disrmirsp Drnd^pry, calamity, exasperation, want, are in- 
 ^fri^ctors m pjnqnence and wisdom. _ The true scholar grudges 
 every opportunity of action past by, as a loss of power. 
 
 It is the raw material out of which the intellect moulds 
 her splendid products. A strange process too, this, by 
 which experience is converted into thought, as a mulberry 
 leaf is converted into satin. The manufacture goes for- 
 ward 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 
 
296 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR | 
 
 itself from the life like a ripe fruit, to become a thought of 
 the mind. Instantly, it is raised, transfigured; the corrupti- 
 ble has put on incorruption. 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. Cradle and in- 
 fancy, school and playground, the fear of boys, and dogs, 
 and ferules, 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. 
 
 Of course, he who has put fo rth 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, who, getting their hvelihood 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 writ- 
 ten 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 . Years are well 
 spent in country labors ; in town, — in the msight 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 eml^ody 
 our perceptions. I learn immediately from any speaker how 
 much he has already lived, through the poverty or the 
 splendor of his speech. Ljfe lies behind us as the quarry 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 297 
 
 from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of 
 to-day. This is the way to learn grammar. £^olleges an d 
 bo oks only copy the language which the field and tEe''work - 
 "ya rH^ made.^ 
 
 * "But the tinal 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 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. Charaotpr is hi c rj i er than intel- 
 lect. Thinking is the function. Living is the functionan 
 llie 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 truths? He can still fall 
 back on this elemental force of hving 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 
 pubhc 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 in- 
 fluence. What is lost in seemliness is gained in strength. 
 Not out of those, on whom sj^stems of education have ex- 
 hausted their culture, comes the helpful giant to destroy the 
 old or to build the new, but out of unhandselled savage nature, 
 out of terrible Druids and berserkirs, come at last Alfred 
 and Shakspeare. 
 
 I hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning to be said 
 of the dignity and necessity of labor to every citizen. There is 
 
298 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 
 
 virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, 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 some- 
 what of his duties. 
 
 They are such as become Man Thinking. They may all 
 be comprised in self-trust. T he o ffice of th e scholar is to 
 che er, to ra ise, and to guide^men by snownng thenL,fac ts 
 •grgicrst appe'^ r'"'^^^ ^p' plies the slow, unhonored, and un- 
 paid task of observation. Flamsteed and Herschel, 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 ob- 
 scure and nebulous 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 pe- 
 riod 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 hos- 
 tihty 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 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 299 
 
 to barbarism, by preserving and communicating heroic senti- 
 ments, noble biographies, melodious verse, and the con- 
 clusions 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 con- 
 fidence in himself, and to defer never to the popular cry. 
 He and he only knows the world. The world of any moment 
 is the meres t appe arance. Some great decorum, some 
 "lelisli Ul' a. government, yUTiie ephemeral trade, or war, or 
 man, is cried up 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 of the earth 
 affirm it to be the crack of doom. In silence, in steadiness, 
 in severe abstraction, let him hold by himself; add ob- 
 servation to observation, patient of neglect, patient of re- 
 proach; 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 crowded cities find true for them 
 also. The orator distrusts at first the fitness of his frank 
 confessions ,^his want of knowledge of the persons he ad- 
 dresses, — until he finds that he is the complement of his 
 hearers; — that they drink his words because hfe fulfils for 
 them their own nature; the deeper he dives into his privatest 
 
300 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 
 
 secretest presentiment, to his wonder he finds, this is the i 
 most acceptable, most pubhc, and universally true. The 
 people dehght in it; the better part of every man feels, This 
 is my music; tliis 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 liim. 
 Fear always springs from ignorance . It is a shame to him 
 If his tranquillity, amid dangerous times, arise from the 
 presumption, that, like children and women, his is a pro- 
 tected 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 
 wheli)ing 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 i^retensioiL What deaf- 
 ness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you be- 
 hold, 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 mischie- 
 vous 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 firma- 
 ment flows before him and takes his signet and form. ^Nnti> 
 he is great who can nlfpr mntt^r hut hp wVin mn n1tf^ ^Y - 
 state ot mi nd, lliey are the kings of the world who give 
 the color oi their present thought to all nature and all art, 
 and persuade men by the cheerful serenity of their carrying 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 301 
 
 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 sits, there is the head of the 
 table. Linnaeus makes botany the most alluring of studies, 
 and wins it from the farmer and the herd-woman; Davy, 
 chemistry; and Cuvier, 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. 
 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 jorerogatives. 
 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; 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 clans- 
 man, 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. 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 them- 
 selves in the great man's light, and feel it to be their own 
 element. They cast the dignity of man from their down- 
 trod 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. 
 
302 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 
 
 Men such as they 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 as- 
 pire 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 upbuildmg^of a 
 man. Here are the materials strown 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 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 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 coun- 
 try. 
 
 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 Ro- 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 303 
 
 mantic, and now of the Reflective or Philosophical age. 
 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. Must 
 that needs be evil? We, it seems, are critical; we are em- 
 barrassed with second thoughts; 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." 
 
 Is it so bad then? Sight is the last thing to be pitied. 
 Would we be blind? Do we fear lest w^e should outsee 
 nature and God, and drink truth dry? I look upon the dis- 
 content 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 possibihties 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 joy some 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 
 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 
 
304 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 
 
 long journeys into far countries, is suddenly found to be 
 richer than all foreign parts. The Uterature of the poor, 
 the feelings of the child, the philosophy of the street, the 
 meaning of household hfe, 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 Provengal 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; and the shop, the plough, 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, Burns, 
 Cowper, and, in a newer time, of Goethe, Wordsworth, and 
 Carlyle. This idea they have differently followed and with 
 various success. In contrast with their writing, the style of 
 Pope, of Johnson, of Gibbon, looks cold and pedantic. This 
 writing is blood-warm. Man 's surprised to find that things 
 near are not less beautiful and wondrous than things remote. 
 T hp near explains the f ar. 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 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 305 
 
 rightly estimated; — I mean Emanuel Swedenborg. The most 
 imaginative of men, yet writing with the precision of a mathe- 
 matician, 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 connection 
 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 beast, 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 indi- 
 vidual, — 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, ^^tjiat no man in God's wide^ 
 earth is either willing or able'^o^ help'an y other maS T Help 
 must come from the bosom alone. The^cholar is that man 
 who must take up into himself all the abihty 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, which should pierce his ear, it i s, The 
 world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all 
 nature, and you know not vet 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 Gentle- 
 men, 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 
 
306 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 
 
 aim at low objects, eats upon itself. There is no work for 
 any but the decorous and the complaisant. Young men of 
 the fairest promise, who begin hfe 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 niant himself indomitably on his 
 insti nfts nnd there abide, the hut>;e world will come round 
 
 iatience, — patience ; — with the shades ol all tl 
 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.Jf 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 .\ The study of letters shall 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 defence 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. \ 
 
XVI 
 
 MAN THE REFORMER. 
 
 A Lecture read before the Mechanics' Apprentices' Library 
 Association, Boston, January 25, 1841 
 
 Mr. President, and Gentlemen, 
 
 I WISH to offer to your consideration some thoughts on 
 the particular and general relations of man as a reformer. 
 I shall assume that the aim of each young man in this associ- 
 ation is the very highest that belongs to a rational mind. 
 Let it be granted, that our life, as we lead it, is common and 
 mean; that some of those offices and functions for which we 
 were mainly created are grown so rare in society, that the 
 memory of them is only kept alive in old books and in dim 
 traditions; that prophets and poets, that beautiful and 
 perfect men, we are not now, no, nor have even seen such; 
 that some sources of human instruction are almost un- 
 named and unknown among us; that the community in 
 which we live will hardly bear to be told that every man 
 should be open to ecstasy or a divine illumination, and his 
 daily walk elevated by intercourse with the spiritual world. 
 Grant all this, as we must, yet I suppose none of my auditors 
 will deny that we ought to seek to establish ourselves in 
 such disciplines and courses as will deserve that guidance 
 and clearer communication with the spiritual nature. And 
 further, I will not dissemble my hope, that each person whom 
 I address has felt his own call to cast aside all evil customs, 
 timidities, and limitations, and to be in his place a free and 
 helpful man, a reformer, a benefactor, not content to slip 
 along through the world like a footman or a spy, escaping 
 by his nimbleness and apologies as many knocks as he can, 
 but a brave and upright man, who must find or cut a straight 
 road to everything excellent in the earth, and not only go 
 
 307 
 
308 MAN THE REFORMER 
 
 honorably himself, but make it easier for all who follow him, 
 to go in honor and with benefit. 
 
 In the history of the world the doctrine of Reform had 
 never such scope as at the present hour. Lutherans, Hern- 
 hutters, Jesuits, Monks, Quakers, Knox, Wesley, Swedenborg, 
 Bentham, in their accusations of society, all respected some- 
 thing, — church or state, literature or history, domestic 
 usages, the market town, the dinner table, coined money. 
 But now all these and all things else hear the trumpet, and 
 must rush to judgment, — Christianity, the laws, commerce, 
 schools, the farm, the laboratory; and not a kingdom, 
 town, statute, rite, calhng, man, or woman, but is threatened 
 by the new spirit. 
 
 What if some of the objections whereby our institutions 
 are assailed are extreme and speculative, and the reformers 
 tend to idealism; that only shows the extravagance of the 
 abuses which have driven the mind into the opposite ex- 
 treme. It is when your facts and persons grow unreal and 
 fantastic by too much falsehood, that the scholar flies for 
 refuge to the world of ideas, and aims to recruit and re- 
 l)lenish nature from that source. Let ideas establish their 
 legitimate sway again in society, let life be fair and poetic, 
 and the scholars will gladly be lovers, citizens, and phil- 
 anthropists. 
 
 It will afford no security from the new ideas, that the old 
 nations, the laws of centuries, the property and institutions 
 of a hundred cities, are built on other foundations. The 
 demon of reform has a secret door into the heart of every 
 lawmaker, of every inhabitant of every city. The fact, that 
 a new thought and hope have dawned in your breast, should 
 apprise you that in the same hour a new light broke in upon 
 a thousand private hearts. That secret which you would 
 fain keep, — as soon as you go abroad, lo! there is one 
 standing on the doorstep, to tell you the same. There is 
 not the most bronzed and sharpened money-catcher, who 
 does not, to your consternation, almost, quail and shake 
 the moment he hears a question prompted by the new 
 ideas. We thought he had some semblance of ground to 
 stand upon, that such as he at least would die hard; but he 
 
MAN THE REFORMER 309 
 
 trembles and flees. Then the scholar says, "Cities and 
 coaches shall never impose on me again; for, behold, every 
 solitary dream of mine is rushing to fulfilment. That fancy 
 I had, and hesitated to utter because you would laugh, — 
 the broker, the attorney, the market-man are saying the 
 same thing. Had I waited a day longer to speak, I had 
 been too late. Behold, State Street thinks, and Wall Street 
 doubts, and begins to prophesy!" 
 
 It cannot be wondered at, that this general inquest into 
 abuses should arise in the bosom of society, when one^gpn- 
 siders the practical impediments that stand in ,the way of 
 virtuous young men. The young man, on entering., life, ^ 
 finds the way to lucrative employments blocked with abuses. 
 The ways of trade are grown selfish to the borders of theft, 
 and supple to tlie borders (if not beyond -Mie^. borders)- of 
 fraud. The employments of commerce are fiot intrinsically' 
 unfit for a man, or less genial to his faculties,' .but these are 
 now in their general course so vitiated by derelictions and 
 abuses at which all connive, that it requires -more vigor and 
 resources than can be expected of every young man, to right 
 himself in them ; he is lost in them ; he cannot move hand or 
 foot in them. Has he genius and virtue? the "less does lie 
 find them fit for him to grow in, and if he would thrive in 
 them, he must sacrifice all the brilliant dreams of boyhood 
 and youth as dreams; he must forget the prayers df his 
 childhood; and must take on him the harness of routine 
 and obsequiousness. If not so minded, nothing is left him 
 but to begin the world anew, as he does who puts the spade 
 into the ground for food. We are all impHcated, of course, 
 in this charge; it is only necessary to ask a few questions 
 as to the progress of the articles of commerce from the fields 
 where they grew, to our houses, to become aware that we 
 eat and drink and wear perjury and fraud in a hundred 
 commodities. How many articles of daily consumption are 
 furnished us from the West Indies; yet it is said, that, in 
 the Spanish islands, the venality of the officers of the govern- 
 ment has passed into usage, and that no article passes into 
 our ships which has not been fraudulently cheapened. In 
 the Spanish islands, every agent or factor of tiie Americans, 
 
310 MAN THE REFORMER 
 
 unless he be a consul, has taken oath that he is a Catholic, 
 or has caused a priest to make that declaration for him. 
 The abolitionist has shown us our dreadful debt to the 
 Southern negro. In the island of Cuba, in addition to the 
 ordinary abominations of slavery, it appears, only men are 
 bought for the plantations, and one dies in ten every year, 
 of these miserable bachelors, to yield us sugar. I leave for 
 those who have the knowledge the part of sifting the oaths 
 of our custom-houses; I will not inquire into the oppression 
 of the sailors; I will not pry into the usages of our retail 
 trade. I content myself with the fact, that the general 
 system of our trade, (apart from the blacker traits which, 
 I hope, are exceptions denounced and unshared by all repu- 
 table men,) is a system of selfishness; is not dictated by the 
 high sentiments pf hun;^nn n.;it iire; i s not measured by the 
 exact law of reciprocity; muchles^Sy the sentiments oi love 
 and heroism, but is a system of distrust, of concealment, of 
 superior keenness, not of giving but of taking advantage. It 
 is not that which a man delights to unlock to a noble friend; 
 which he meditates on with joy and self-approval in his hour 
 of love and aspiration; but rather what he then puts out of 
 sight, only showing the brilliant result, and atoning for the 
 manner of acquiring, by the manner of expending it. I do 
 not charge the merchant or the manufacturer. The sins 
 of our trade belong to no class, to no individual. One plucks, 
 one distributes, one eats. Every body partakes, every body 
 confesses, — with cap and knee volunteers his confession, yet 
 none feels himself accountable. He did not create the abuse; 
 he cannot alter it. What is he? an obscure private person 
 who must get his bread. That is the vice, — that no one feels 
 himself called to act for man, but only as a fraction of man. 
 It happens therefore that all such ingenuous souls as feel 
 within themselves the irrepressible strivings of a noble aim, 
 who by the law of their nature must act simply, find these 
 ways of trade unfit for them, and they come forth from it. 
 Such cases are becoming more numerous every year. 
 
 But by coming out of trade you have not cleared yourself. 
 The trail of the serpent reaches into all the lucrative pro- 
 fessions and practices of man. Each has its own wrongs. 
 
MAN THE REFORMER 311 
 
 Each finds a tender and very intelligent conscience a dis^ 
 qualification for success. Each requires of the practitioner 
 a certain shutting of the eyes, a certain dapperness and 
 compliance, an acceptance of customs, a sequestration from 
 the sentiments of generosity and love, a compromise of 
 private opinion and lofty integrity. Nay, the evil custom 
 reaches into the whole institution of property, until our laws 
 which establish and protect it, seem not to be the issue of 
 love and reason, but of selfishness. Suj^pose a man is so 
 unhappy as to be born a saint, with keen perceptions, but 
 with the conscience and love of an angel, and he is to get his 
 living in the world; he finds himself excluded from all lu- 
 crative works; he has no farm, and he cannot get one; for, 
 to earn money enough to buy one, requires a sort of con- 
 centration toward money, which is the selling himself for a 
 number of years, and to him the present hour is as sacred 
 and inviolable as any future hour. Of course, whilst another 
 man has no land, my title to mine, your title to yours, is at 
 once vitiated. Inextricable seem to be the twinings and 
 tendrils of this evil, and we all involve ourselves in it the 
 deeper by forming connections, by wives and children, by 
 benefits and debts. 
 
 Considerations of this kind have turned the attention of 
 many philanthropic and intelhgent persons to the claims of 
 manual labor, as a part of the education of every young 
 man. If the accumulated wealth of the past generation is 
 thus tainted, — no matter how much of it is ofi"ered to us, — 
 we must begin to consider if it were not the nobler part to 
 renounce it, and to put ourselves into primary relations with 
 the soil and nature, and abstaining from whatever is dis- 
 honest and unclean, to take each of us bravely his part, with 
 his own hands, in the manual labor of the w^orld. 
 
 But it is said, "What! will you give up the immense ad- 
 vantages reaped from the division of labor, and set every 
 man to make his own shoes, bureau, knife, wagon, sails, and 
 needle? This would be to put men back into barbarism by 
 their own act." I see no instant prospect of a virtuous rev- 
 olution; yet I confess, I should not be pained at a change 
 which threatened a loss of some of the luxuries or conven- 
 
312 MAN THE REFORMER 
 
 iences of society, if it proceeded from a preference of the 
 agricultural life out of the belief, that our primary duties 
 as men could be better discharged in that calling. Who 
 could regret to see a high conscience and a purer taste ex- 
 ercifir^ -i sensible effect on young men in their choice of 
 occupation, and thinning the ranks of competition in the 
 labors of commerce, of law, and of state? It is easy to see 
 that the inconvenience would last but a short time. This 
 would be great action, which always opens the eyes of men. 
 When many persons shall have done this, when the majority 
 shall admit the necessity of reform in all these institutions, 
 their abuses will be redressed, and the way will be open again 
 to the advantages which arise from the division of labor, 
 and a man may select the fittest employment for his 
 peculiar talent, again, without compromise. 
 
 But quite apart from the emphasis which the times give 
 to the doctrine, that the manual labor of society ought to 
 be shared among all the members, there are reasons proper 
 to every individual, why he should not be deprived of it. 
 The use of manual labor is one which never grows obsolete, 
 and which is inapphcable to no person. A man should have 
 a farm or a mechanical craft for his culture. We must have 
 a basis for our higher accomplishments, our delicate enter- 
 tainments of poetry and philosophy, in the work of our 
 hands. We must have an antagonism in the tough world for 
 all the variety of our spiritual faculties, or thoy will not be 
 born. Manual labor is the study of the external world. 
 The advantage of riches remains with him who procured 
 them, not with the heir. AVhen I go into my garden with a 
 spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health, 
 that I discover that I have been defrauding mj^self all this 
 time in letting others do for me what I should have done 
 with my own hands. But not only health, but education is 
 in the work. Is it possible that I who get indefinite quanti- 
 ties of sugar, hominy, cotton, buckets, crockery ware, and 
 letter paper, by simply signing my name once in three 
 months to a cheque in favor of John Smith and Co., traders, 
 get the fair share of exercise to my faculties by that act, 
 which nature intended for me in making all these far- 
 
MAN THE REFORMER 313 
 
 fetched matters important to my comfort? It is Smith 
 himself, and his carriers, and dealers, and manufacturers, 
 it is the sailor, the hidedrogher, the butcher, the negro, the 
 hunter, and the planter, who have intercepted the sugar of 
 the sugar, and the cotton of the cotton. They have got 
 the education, I only the commodity. This were all very 
 well if I were necessarily absent, being detained by work of 
 my own, like theirs, work of the same faculties; then should 
 I be sure of my hands and feet, but now I feel some shame 
 before my wood-chopper, my ploughman, and my cook, for 
 they have some sort of self-sufficiency, they can contrive 
 without my aid to bring the day and year round, but I 
 depend on them, and have not earned by use a right to my 
 arms and feet. 
 
 Consider further the difference between the first and 
 second owner of property. Every species of property is 
 preyed on by its own enemies, as iron by rust; timber by 
 rot; cloth by moths; provisions by mould, putridity, or 
 vermin; money by thieves; an orchard by insects; a planted 
 field by weeds and the inroad of cattle; a stock of cattle by 
 hunger; a road by rain and frost; a bridge by freshets. And 
 whoever takes any of these things into his possession, takes 
 the charge of defending them from this troop of enemies, or 
 of keeping them in repair. A man who supplies his own 
 want, who builds a raf^ or a boat to go a-fishing, finds it easy 
 to caulk it, or put in a thole-pin, or mend the rudder. What 
 he gets only as fast as he wants for his own ends, does not 
 embarrass him, or take away his sleep with looking after. 
 But when he comes to give all the goods he has year after 
 year collected, in one estate to his son, house, orchard, 
 ploughed land, cattle, bridges, hardware, wooden-ware, 
 carpets, cloths, provisions, books, money, and cannot give 
 him the skill and experience which made or collected these, 
 and the method and place they have in his own life, the son 
 finds his hands full, — not to use these things, — but to look 
 after them and defend them from their natural enemies. 
 To him they are not means, but masters. Their enemies 
 will not remit; rust, mould, vermin, rain, sun, freshet, fire, 
 ^U seize their own, fill him with vexation, and he is coH' 
 
314 MAN THE REFORMER 
 
 verted from the owner into a watch-man or a watch-dog to 
 this magazine of old and new chattels. What a change! 
 Instead of the masterly good humor, and sense of power, 
 and fertility of resource in himself; instead of those strong 
 and learned hands, those piercing and learned eyes, that 
 supple body, and that mighty and prevailing heart, which 
 the father had, whom nature loved and feared, whom snow 
 and rain, water and land, beast and fish seemed all to know 
 and to serve, we have now a puny, protected person, guarded 
 by walls and curtains, stoves and down beds, coaches, and 
 men-servants and women-servants from the earth and the 
 sky, and who, bred to depend on all these, is made anxious 
 by all that endangers those possessions, and is forced to 
 spend so much time in guarding them, that he has quite 
 lost sight of their original use, namely, to help him to his 
 ends, — to the prosecution of his love; to the helping'of his 
 friend, to the worship of his God, to the enlargement of his 
 knowledge, to the serving of his country, to the indulgence 
 of his sentiment, and he is now what is called a rich man, — 
 the menial and runner of his riches. 
 
 Hence it happens that tlip wl-^^j^ jnt^r^st. of )iistnry )ip.a 
 in the fortunes o f the pooi> Tvnowledge, Virtue, Power are 
 the victories oi man over his necessities, his march to the 
 dominion of the world. Every man ought to have this 
 opportunity to conquer the world for himself. Only such 
 persons interest us, Spartans, Romans, Saracens, English, 
 Americans, who have stood in the jaws of need, and have 
 by their own wit and might extricated themselves, and made 
 man victorious. 
 
 I do not wish to overstate this doctrine of labor, or in- 
 sist that every man should be a farmer, any more than 
 that every man should be a lexicographer. In general, one 
 may say, that the husbandman's is the oldest, and most 
 universal profession, and that where a man does not yet 
 discover in himself any fitness for one work more than 
 another, this may be preferred. But the doctrine of the Farm 
 is merely this, that every man ought to stand in primary 
 relations with the work of the world, ought to do it himself, 
 and not to suffer the accident of his having a purse in his 
 
MAN THE REFORMER 315 
 
 pocket, or his having been bred to some dishonorable and 
 injurious craft, to sever him from those duties; and for this 
 reason. . that labor is God's educat ion; that he only is a 
 sincere lea rner, he only can become^niaijl^r, who learns the 
 secrets ot laTTorT* and who by real cunning extorts from 
 nature its sceptre. 
 
 Neither would I shut my ears to the plea of the learned 
 professions, of the poet, the priest, the lawgiver, and men 
 of study generally; namely, that in the experience of all 
 men of that class, the amount of manual labor which is 
 necessary to the maintenance of a family, indisposes and 
 disqualifies for intellectual exertion. I know, it often, per- 
 haps usually, happens, that where there is a fine organization 
 apt for poetry and philosophy, that individual finds himself 
 compelled to wait on his thoughts, to waste several days 
 that he may enhance and glorify one; and is better taught 
 by a moderate and dainty exercise, such as rambling in 
 the fields, rowing, skating, hunting, than by the downright 
 drudgery of the farmer and the smith. I would not quite 
 forget the venerable counsel of the Egyptian mysteries, 
 which declared that "there were two pairs of eyes in man, 
 and it is requisite that the pair which are beneath should be 
 closed, when the pair that are above them perceive, and 
 that when the pair above are closed, those which are beneath 
 should be opened." Yet I will suggest that no separation 
 from labor can be without some loss of power and of truth 
 to the seer himself; that, I doubt not, the faults and vices 
 of our literature and philosophy, their too great fineness, 
 effeminacy, and melancholy, are attributable to the ener- 
 vated and sickly habits of the literary class. Better that 
 the book should not be quite so good, and the bookmaker 
 abler and better, and not himself often a ludicrous contrast 
 to all that he has written. 
 
 But granting that for ends so sacred and dear, some 
 relaxation must be Ifad, I think, that if a man find in himself 
 any strong bias to poetry, to art, to the contemplative life, 
 drawing him to these things with a devotion incompatible 
 with good husbandry, that man ought to reckon early with 
 himself, and, respecting the compensations of the Universe, 
 
316 MAN THE REFORMER 
 
 ought to ransom himself from the duties of economy, by a 
 certain rigor and privation in his habit. For privileges so 
 rare and grand, let him not stint to pay a great tax. Let 
 him be a caenobite, a pauper, and if needs be, celibate also. 
 Let him learn to eat his meals standing, and to relish the 
 taste of fair water and black bread. He may leave to others 
 the costly conveniences of housekeeping, and large hospi- 
 tality, and the possession of works of art. Let him feel that 
 genius is a hospitality, and that he who can create works of 
 art needs not collect them. He must live in a chamber, and 
 postpone his self-indulgence, forewarned and forearmed 
 against that frequent misfortune of men of genius, — the taste 
 for luxury. Tl-ii>! is tl ^(^ trnp;pdy nf o-pnins^^ nttemptinp- to 
 drive along the ecli])tic with one horse of th p^''^''*Y^ ns and one x 
 -^lorse ol the earth, there is only discord and ruin and dow^ 
 f all to chariot and charioteer. 
 
 ^The duty that every man should assume his own vows, 
 should call the institutions of society to account, and examine 
 their fitness to him, gains in emphasis, if we look at our modes 
 of living. Is our housekeeping sacred and honorable? Does 
 it raise and inspire us, or does it cripple us instead? I ought 
 to be armed by every part and function of my household, 
 by all my social function, by my economy, by my feastings, 
 by my voting, by my traffic. Yet I am almost no party 
 to any of these things. Custom does it for me, gives me no 
 power therefrom, and runs me in debt to boot. We spend 
 our incomes for paint and paper, for a hundred trifles, I 
 know not what, and not for the things of a man.___Xiiir^ 
 expense is almost all for conformity . It is for cake that we 
 run in debt; t is ijot the intellect, not the heart, not beauty, 
 not worship, that costs so much. Why needs any man 
 be rich? Why must he have horses, fine garments, hand- 
 some apartments, access to public houses, and places of 
 amusement? ^nlv for want of thou ght Give his mind a 
 new image, and he flees into a solitary garden or garret to 
 enjoy it, and is richer with that dream, than the fee of a 
 county could make him. But w^e are first thoughtless, and 
 then find that we are moneyless. We are fij \ st sensual^ and 
 then must be rich. We dare not trust our wit for making 
 
MAN THE REFORMER 317 
 
 our house pleasant to our fripnr] , nnr] sn wf^ hnvjp fi-prpamg 
 He is accustomed to carpets, and we liave noFTufficient 
 character to put floor-cloths out of his mind whilst he stays 
 in the house, and so we pile the floor with carpets. Let 
 the house rather be a temple of the Furies of Lacedaemon, 
 formidable and holy to all, wliich none but a Spartan may 
 enter or so much as behold. As soon as there is faith, as 
 soon as there is society, comfits and cushions will be left 
 to slaves. Expense will be inventive and heroic. We shall 
 eat hard and he hard, we shall dwell like the ancient Romans 
 in narrow tenements, whilst our public edifices, like theirs, 
 will be worthy for their proportion of the landscape in 
 which we set them, for conversation, for art, for music, for 
 worship. We shall be rich to great purposes; poor only 
 for selfish ones. 
 
 Now what help for these evils? How can the man who 
 has learned but one art, procure all the conveniences of life 
 honestly? Shall we say all we think? — Perhaps with his 
 own hands. Suppose he collects or makes them ill; — yet 
 he has learned their lesson. If he cannot do that. — Then 
 perhaps he can go without. Immense wisdom and riches 
 are in that. It is better to go without, thnri to hnvo thpm 
 nf fnrf frrf^nt q p^pf Let US learn the meaning of economy. 
 Economy is a high, humane office, a sacrament, when its 
 aim is grand; when it is the prudence of simple tastes, when 
 it is practised for freedom, or love, or devotion. Much of 
 the economy which we see in houses, is of a base origin, and 
 is best kept out of sight. Parched corn eaten to-day that 
 I may have roast fowl to my dinner on Sunday, is a base- 
 ness; but parched corn and a house with one apartment, 
 that I may be free of all perturbations, that I may be 
 sgreng and docile, to what the mind shall speak, and girt 
 and road-ready for the lowest mission of knowledge or 
 goodwill, is frugality for gods and heroes. 
 
 Can we not lear n the 1ei=j,gjon of self-help? . Society is 
 full of infirm people, who incessantly summon others to 
 serve them. They contrive everywhere to exhaust for their 
 single comfort the entire means and appliances of that luxury 
 to which our inventon has yet attained. Sofas, ottomans, 
 
318 MAN THE REFORMER 
 
 stoves, wine, game-fowl, spices, perfumes, rides, the theatre, 
 entertainments, — all these they want, they need, and what- 
 ever can be suggested more than these, they crave also, as 
 if it was the bread which should keep them from starving; 
 and if they miss any one, they represent themselves as the 
 most wronged and most wretched persons on earth. One 
 must have been born and bred with them to know how to 
 prepare a meal for their learned stomach. Meantime, they 
 never bestir themselves to serve another person; not they! 
 they have a great deal more to do for themselves than they 
 can possibly i)erform, nor do they once perceive the cruel 
 joke of their lives, but the more odious they grow, the 
 sharper is the tone of their complaining and craving. Can 
 anything be so elegant as to have few wants and to serve 
 them one's self, so as to have somewhat left to give, instead 
 of being always prompt to grab? It is morp p]pp;nnt to 
 flnnvvpr f)]-|p's own nppf]g|^ than to be riclily served ^nelegant 
 perhaps it may look to-day, and to a tew, but it is an ele- 
 gance forever and to all. 
 
 I do not wish to be absurd and pedantic in reform. I 
 do not wish to push my criticism on the state of things 
 around me to that extravagant mark, that shall compel 
 me to suicide, or to an absolute isolation from the advantages 
 of civil society. If we suddenly plant our foot, and say, — 
 I will neither eat nor drink nor wear nor touch any food 
 or fabric which I do not know to be innocent, or deal with 
 any person whose whole manner of life is not clear and 
 rational, we shall stand still. Whose is so? Not mine; not 
 thine; not his. But I think we must clear ourselves each 
 one by the interrogation, whether we have earned our bread 
 to-day by the hearty contribution of our energies to the 
 common benefit? aj[ d we must not , pphsp t o tpnri tc^ thp 
 correction of these flagrant wrongs, by laying one stone 
 aright every day. 
 
 But the idea which now begins to agitate society has a 
 
 wider scope tKan our daily employments, our households, 
 
 /and the institutions of property. We are to revise the 
 
 I whole of our social structure, the state, the school, religion, 
 
 \marriage, trade, science, and explore their foundations in 
 
MAN THE REFORMER 319 
 
 ^our own nature ^ we are to see that the world not only J 
 fitted the former men, but fits us, and to clear ourselves of I 
 every usage which has not its roots in our own mind. \ 
 What is a man born for, but to be a Reformer, a Re-maker \ 
 of what man has made; a renouncer of lies; a restorer of 
 truth and good, imitating that great Nature which embosoms 
 us all, and which sleeps no moment on an old past, but 
 every hour repairs herself, yielding us every morning a "^ 
 new day, and with every pulsation a new life? Let him 
 renounce everything which is not true to him, and put all 
 his practices back on their first thoughts, and do nothing 
 for which he has not the whole world for his reason. If 
 there are inconveniences, and what is called ruin in the way, 
 because we have so enervated and maimed ourselves, yet 
 it would be like dying of perfumes to sink in the effort to " 
 reattach the deeds of every day to the holy and mysterious 
 recesses of life. 
 
 The power, which is at once spring and regulator in all 
 efforts of reform, is the conviction that there is an infinite 
 worthiness in man which will appear at the call of worth, 
 and that all particular reforms are the removing of some 
 impediment. Is it not the highest duty that man should 
 be honored in us? I ought not to allow any man, because 
 he has broad lands, to feel that he is rich in my presence. 
 I ought to make him feel that I can do without his riches, 
 that I cannot be bought, — neither by comfort, neither by 
 pride, — and though I be utterly penniless, and receiving 
 bread from him, that he is the poor man beside me. And 
 if, at the same time, a woman or a child discovers a senti- 
 ment of piety, or a juster way of thinking than mine, I 
 ought to confess it by my respect and obedience, though 
 it go to alter my whole way of life. 
 
 The Americans have many virtues ,^ but they have not . 
 
 Faith and Hope. I know no two words whose meaning is 
 more lost sight of. We use these words as if they were as 
 obsolete as Selah and Amen. And yet they have the broad- 
 est meaning, and the most cogent application to Boston in 
 1841. The Americans have no faith. They rely on the 
 power of a dollar; they are deaf to a sentiment. They think 
 
320 MAN THE REFORMER 
 
 you may talk the north wind down as easily as raise society; 
 and no class more faithless than the scholars or intellectual 
 men. Now if I talk with a sincere wise man, and my friend, 
 with a poet, with a conscientious youth who is still under 
 the dominion of his own wild thoughts, and not yet har- 
 nessed in the team of society to drag with us all in the ruts of 
 custom, I see at once how paltry is all this generation of 
 unbelievers, and what a house of cards their institutions are, 
 and I see what one brave man, what one great thought ex- 
 ecuted might effect. I see that the reason of the distrust 
 of the practical man in all theory, is his inability to perceive 
 the means whereby we work. Look, he says, at the tools 
 with which this world of yours is to be built. As we cannot 
 make a planet, with atmosphere, rivers, and forests, by 
 means of ilie best carpenters' or engineers' tools, with 
 chemist's laboratory and smith's forge to boot, — so neither 
 can we ever construct that heavenly society you prate of, 
 out of foolish, sick, selfish men and women, such as we know 
 them to be. But the believer not only beholds his heaven 
 to be possible, but already to begin to exist, — not by the 
 men or materials the statesman uses, b ut by men trans- 
 figured a nd raised above themselves by the power of prin> 
 *cii51^^r"^o principles something else is possible that tran- 
 'SC^l^ds' all the power of expedients. 
 
 Every great and commanding moment in the annals of 
 the world is the tri um]:)h of some enthusias m. The victories 
 of the Arabs after Mahomet, who, in a lew years, from a 
 small and mean beginning, established a larger empire than 
 that of Rome, is an example. They did they knew not what. 
 The naked Derar, horsed on an idea, was found an overmatch 
 for a troop of Roman cavalry. The women fought like men, 
 and conquered the Roman men. They were miserably 
 equipped, miserably fed. They were Temperance troops. 
 There was neither brandy nor flesh needed to feed them. 
 They conquered Asia, and Africa, and Spain, on barley. The 
 Caliph Omar's walking stick struck more terror into those 
 who saw it, than another man's sword. His diet was barley 
 bread: his sauce was salt; and oftentimes by way of absti- 
 nence he ate his bread without salt. His drink was water. 
 
MAN THE REFORMER 321 
 
 His palace was built of mud; and when he left Medina to- 
 go to the conquest of Jersualem, he rode on a red camel, 
 with a wooden platter hanging at his saddle, with a bottle 
 of water and two sacks, one holding barley, and the other 
 dried fruits. 
 
 But there will dawn ere long on our politics, on our modes 
 of living, a nobler morning than that Arabian faith, in the 
 sentiment of love. This is the one remedy for all ills, the 
 " ^liUllBU oi nalufe . We must be lovers, and at once the 
 ' impossible becomes possible. Our age and history, for 
 these thousand years, has not been the history of kindness, 
 but of selfishness. Our distrust is very expensive. The 
 mone y we spend for _cQiixla ^nd prison s V ^tty ill Inid ^Mt 
 We niake, by distrust, the thief, and burglar, and incendiary, 
 and by our court and jail we keep him so. An acceptance 
 of the sentiment of love throughout Christendom for a 
 season, would bring the felon and the outcast to our side in 
 tears, with the devotion of his faculties to our service. See 
 this wide society of laboring men and women. We allow 
 ourselves to be served by them, we live apart from them, and 
 meet them without a salute in the streets. We do not greet 
 their talents, nor rejoice in their good fortune, nor foster 
 their hopes, nor in the assembly of the people vote for what 
 is dear to them. Thus we enact the part of the selfish 
 noble and king from the foundation of the world. See, this 
 tree always bears one fruit. In every household, the peace 
 of a pair is poisoned by the malice, slyness, indolence, and 
 alienation of domestics. Let any two matrons meet, and 
 observe how soon their conversation turns on the troubles 
 from their "help," as our phrase is. In everj^ knot of labor- 
 ers, the rich man does not feel himself among his friends, — 
 and at the polls he finds them arrayed in a mass in distinct \ 
 opposition to him. We complain that the pohtics of masses \ 
 of the people are controlled by designing men, and led in / 
 opposition to manifest justice and the common weal, and to/ 
 their own interest. But the people do not wish to be repre- 
 sented or ruled by the ignorant and base. They only vote 
 for these, because they were asked with the voice and 
 semblance of kindness. They will not vote for them long. 
 
322 MAN THE REFORMER 
 
 ^ey inevi tably prefer witandprol^ii^. To use an Egyptian 
 metaplior, iL its noL'lheir will i'or any long time "to raise 
 the nails of wild beasts, and to depress the heads of the 
 sacred birds." Let our affection flow out to our fellows; 
 it would operate in a day the greatest of all revolutions. 
 It is better to work on institutions by the sun than by the 
 wind. The state must consider the poor man, and all voices 
 must speak for him. Every child that is born must have a 
 just chance for his bread. Let the amelioration in our laws 
 of property proceed from the concession of the rich, not 
 from the grasping of the poor. Let us begin by habitual 
 imparting. Let us understand that the equitable rule is, 
 that no one should take more than his share, let him be ever 
 so rich. Let me feel that I am to be a lover. I am to see 
 to it that the world is the better for me, and to find my 
 reward in the act. Love would put a new face on this 
 weary old world in which we dwell as pagans and enemies 
 too long, and it would warm the heart to see how fast the 
 vain dii)lomacy of statesmen, the impotence of armies, and 
 navies, and lines of defence, would be superseded by this 
 unarmed child. Love will creep where it cannot go, will 
 accomplish that by imperceptible methods, — being its own 
 lever, fulcrum, and power, — which force could never 
 achieve. Have you not seen in the woods, in a late autumn 
 morning, a poor fungus or mushroom, — a plant w^ithout any 
 solidity, nay, that seemed nothing but a soft mush or jelly, — 
 by its constant, total, and inconceivably gentle pushing, 
 manage to break its way up through the frosty ground, 
 and actually to hft a hard crust on its head? It is the 
 symbol of the pow^r of kindness. The virtue of this prin- 
 ciple in human society in application to great interests is 
 obsolete and forgotten. Once or twice in history it has been 
 tried in illustrious instances, with signal success. This 
 great, overgrown, dead Christendom of ours still keeps alive 
 at least the name of a lover of mankind. But one day all 
 men will be lovers; and every calamity will be dissolved in 
 the universal sunshine. 
 
 Will you suffer me to add one trait more to this portrait 
 of man the reformer? The mediator between the spiritual 
 
MAN THE REFORMER 323 
 
 and the actual wni-lrl pilif^nlfl h'^^^^ n n rft^t prospect ive 
 prudence. An Arabian poet describes his hero by saying, 
 
 "Sunshine was he 
 In the winter day; 
 And in the midsummer 
 Coolness and shade." 
 
 He who would help himself and others, should not be a 
 subject of irregular and interrupted impulses of virtue, but 
 a continent, persisting, immovable person, — such as we have 
 seen a few scattered up and down in time for the blessing 
 of the world, men who have in the gravity of their nature a 
 quahty which answers to the fly-wheel in a mill, which dis- 
 tributes the motion equably over all the wheels, and hinders 
 it from falling unequally and suddenly in destructive shocks. 
 It is better that joy should be spread over ']]] tb^ d'^y \ w_ 
 the form of strength, tha n t hat it should br rnnrrQj^; ated_ ^ 
 into ecstasies, tuil o± clanger and followed by reactions. 
 There is a sublime prudence, which is the very highest that 
 we know of man, which, believing in a vast future, — sure of 
 more to come than is yet seen, — postpones always the present 
 hour to the whole life; postpones talent to genius, and 
 special results to character. As the merchant gladly takes 
 money from his income to add to his capital, so is the great 
 man very willing to lose particular powers and talents, so 
 that he gain in the elevation of his hfe. The opening of 
 the spiritual senses disposes men ever to greater sacrifices, 
 to leave their signal talents, their best means and skill of 
 procuring a present success, their power and their fame, — 
 to cast all things behind, in the insatiable thirst for divine 
 communications. A purer fame, a greater power rewards 
 the sacrifice. It is the conversion of our harvest into seed. 
 As the farmer casts into the ground the finest ears of his 
 grain, the time will come when we too shall hold nothing 
 back, but shall eagerly convert more than we now possess 
 into means and powers, when we shall be wiUing to sow the 
 sun and the moon for seeds. 
 
XVII 
 THE CONSERVATIVE 
 
 A Lecture delivered at the Masonic Temple, Boston, 
 December 9, 1841 
 
 The two parties which divide the state, the party of 
 Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and 
 have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was 
 made. This quarrel is the subject of civil history. The 
 conservative party established the reverend hierarchies and 
 monarchies of the most ancient world. The battle of pa- 
 trician and plebeian, of parent state and colony, of old usage 
 and accommodation to new facts, of the rich and the poor 
 reappears in all countries and times. The war rages not 
 onjy in battle-fields, in natural councils, and ecclesiastical 
 synods, but agitates every man's bosom with opposing 
 advantages every hour. On rolls the old world meantime 
 and now one, now the other gets the day, and still the fight 
 renews itself as if for the first time, under new names and 
 hot personalities. 
 
 Such an irreconcilable antagonism, of course, must have 
 a correspondent dejith of seat in the human constitution. It 
 is tho opposition of Past and Future, of Memory and Hope, 
 of the Understanding and the Reason. It is the primal 
 antagonism, the appearance in trifles of the two poles of 
 nature. 
 
 There is a fragment of old fable which seems somehow to 
 have been dropped from the current mythologies, which 
 may deserve attention, as it appears to relate to this 
 subject. 
 
 Saturn grew wTary of sitting alone, or with none but the 
 great Uranus or Heaven beholding him, and he created an 
 oyster. Then he would act again, but he made nothing more 
 but WTnt on creating the race of oysters. Then Uranus 
 cried, "A new work, Saturn! the old is not good again." 
 
 324 
 
THE CONSERVATIVE 325 
 
 Saturn replied. "I fear. There is not onl}^ the alternative 
 of making and not making, but also of unmaking. Seest 
 thou the great sea, how it ebbs and flows? so is it with me; 
 my power ebbs; and if I put forth my hands, I shall not do, 
 but undo. Therefore I do what I have done; I hold what 
 I have got; and so I resist Night and Chaos." 
 
 "0 Saturn," rephed Uranus, ''thou canst not hold thine 
 own, but by making more. Thy oysters are barnacles and 
 cockles, and with the next flowing of the tide, they will be 
 pebbles and rea-foam." 
 
 "I see," rejoins Saturn, "thou art in league with Night, 
 thou art become an evil eye; thou spakest from love; now 
 thy words smite me with hatred. I appeal to Fate, must 
 there not be rest?" — "I appeal to Fate also," said Uranus, 
 "must there not be motion?" — But Saturn was silent, and 
 went on making oysters for a thousand years. 
 
 After that, the word of Uranus came into his mind like a 
 ray of the sun, and he made Jupiter; and then he feared 
 again; and nature froze, the things that were made went 
 backward, and, to save the world, Jupiter slew his father 
 Saturn. 
 
 This may stand for the earliest account of a conversation 
 on politics between a Conservative and a Radical, which 
 has come down to us. It is ever thus. It is the counter- 
 action of the centripetal and the centrifugal forces. In- 
 novation is the salient energy; Conservatism the pause on 
 the last movement. "That which is was made by God," 
 saith Conservatism. "He is leaving that, he is entering this 
 other;" rejoins Innovation. 
 
 There is always a certain meanness in the argument of con- 
 servatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact. It 
 affirms because it holds. Its fingers clutch the fact, and it 
 will not open its eyes to see a better fact. The castle, which 
 conservatism is set to defend, is the actual state of things, 
 good and bad. The project of innovation is the best possible 
 state of things. Of course, conservatism always has the 
 worst of the argument, is always apologizing, pleading a 
 necessity, pleading that to change would be to deteriorate ; it 
 must saddle itself with the mountainous load of violence 
 
326 THE CONSERVATIVE 
 
 and vice of society, must deny the possibility of good, deny 
 ideas, and suspect and stone the prophet; whilst innovation 
 is always in the right, triumphant, attacking, and sure of 
 final success. Conservatism stands on man's confessed 
 limitations; reform on his indisputable infinitude, conserv- 
 atism on circumstance; liberalism on power; one goes to 
 make an adroit member of the social frame; the other to 
 postpone all things to the man himself; conservatism is 
 debonair and social; reform is individual and imperious 
 We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and 
 winter, we stand by the old; reformers in the morning, con- 
 servers at night. Reform is affirmative, conservatism nega- 
 tive; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth. 
 Conservatism is more candid to behold another's worth; 
 reform more disposed to maintain and increase its own. 
 Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no 
 invention; it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no 
 prudence, no husbandry. It makes a great difference to 
 your figure and to your thought, whether your foot is ad- 
 vancing or receding. Conservatism never puts the foot for- 
 ward; in the hour when it does that, it is not estabUshment, 
 but reform. Conservatism tends to universal seeming and 
 treachery, believes in a negative fate; believes that man's 
 temper governs them; that for me, it avails not to trust in 
 principles; they will fail me; I must bend a little; it distrusts 
 nature; it thinks there is a general law without a particular 
 application, — law for all that does not include any one. 
 Reform in its antagonism inclines to asinine resistance, to 
 kick with hoofs; it runs to egotism and bloated self-conceit; 
 it runs to a bodiless pretension, to unnatural refining and 
 elevation, which ends in hypocrisy and sensual reaction. 
 
 And so whilst we do not go beyond general statements, it 
 may be safely affirmed of these two metaphysical antagonists, 
 that each is a good half, but an impossible whole. Each ex- 
 poses the abuses of the other, but in a true society, in a 
 true man, both must combine. Nature does not give the 
 crown of its approbation, namely, beauty, to any action or 
 emblem or actor, but to one which combines both these 
 elements; not to the rock which resists the waves from age 
 
THE CONSERVATIVE 327 
 
 to age, nor to the wave which lashes incessantly the rock, but 
 the superior beauty is with the oak which stands with its 
 hundred arms against the storms of a century, and grows 
 every year like a sapling; or the river which ever flowing, 
 yet is found in the same bed from age to age; or, grandest 
 of all, the man who has subsisted for years amid the changes 
 of nature, yet has distanced himself, so that when you re- 
 member what he was, and see what he is, you say. What 
 strides ! what a disparity is here ! 
 
 Throughout nature the past combines in every creature 
 with the present. Each of the convolutions of the sea-shell, 
 each node and spine marks one year of the fish's life, what 
 was the mouth of the shell for one season, with the addition 
 of new matter by the growth of the animal, becoming an 
 ornamental node. The leaves and a shell of soft wood are 
 all that the vegetation of this summer has made, but the 
 sohd columnar stem, which lifts that bank of foliage into 
 the air to draw the eye and to cool us with its shade, is the 
 gift and legacy of dead and buried years. 
 
 In nature, each of these elements being always present, 
 each theory has a natural support. As we take our stand 
 on Necessity, or on Ethics, shall we go for the conservative, 
 or for the reformer. If w^e read the world historically, we 
 shall say. Of all the ages the present hour and circumstance 
 is the cumulative result; this is the best throw of the dice 
 of nature that has yet been, or that is yet possible. If we 
 see it from the side of Will, or the Moral Sentiment, we shall 
 accuse the Past and the Present, and require the impossible 
 of the Future. 
 
 But although this bifold fact lies thus united in real nature, 
 and so united that no man can continue to exist in whom 
 both these elements do not work, yet men are not philoso- 
 phers, but are rather very foolish children, who, by reason 
 of their partiality, see everything in the most absurd manner, 
 and are the victims at all times of the nearest object. There 
 is even no philosopher who is a philosopher at all times. Our 
 experience, our perception is conditioned by the need to ac- 
 quire in parts and in succession, that is, with every truth 
 a certain falsehood. As this is the invariable method of our 
 
328 THE CONSERVATIVE 
 
 training, we must give it allowance, and suffer men to learn 
 as they have done for sLx millenniums, a word at a time, to 
 pair off into insane parties, and learn the amount of truth 
 each knows, by the denial of an equal amount of truth. For 
 the present, then, to come at what sum is attainable to us, 
 we must even hear the parties plead as parties. 
 
 That which is best about conservatism, that which, though 
 it cannot be expressed in detail, inspires reverence in all, is 
 the Inevitable. There is the question not only, what the con- 
 servative says for himself? but, why must he say it? What 
 insurmountable fact binds him to that side? Here is the 
 fact which men call Fate, and fate in dread degrees, fate 
 behind fate, not to be disposed of by the consideration that 
 the Conscience commands this or that, but necessitating 
 the question, whether the faculties of man will play him 
 true in resisting the facts of universal experience? For 
 although the commands of the Conscience are essentially 
 absolute, they are historically limitary. Wisdom does not 
 seek a hteral rectitude, but an useful, that is, a conditioned 
 one, such a one as the faculties of man and the constitution of 
 things will warrant. The reformer, the partisan loses him- 
 self in driving to the utmost some specialty of right conduct, 
 until his own nature and all nature resists him; but Wisdom 
 attempts nothing enormous and disproportioned to its 
 powers, nothing which it cannot perform or nearly perform. 
 We have all a certain intellection or presentiment of reform 
 existing in the mind, which does not yet descend into the 
 character, and those who throw themselves blindly on this 
 lose themselves. Whatever they attempt in that direction, 
 fails, and reacts suicidally on the actor himself. This is 
 the penalty of having transcended nature. For the ex- 
 isting world is not a dream, and cannot with impunity be 
 treated as a dream; neither is it a disease; but it is the 
 ground on which you stand, it is the mother of whom you 
 were born. Reform converses with possibilities, perchance 
 with impossibilities; but here is sacred fact. This also was 
 true, or it could not be : it had life in it, or it could not have 
 existed; it has life in it, or it could not continue. Your 
 schemes may be feasible, or may not be, but this has the 
 
THE CONSERVATIVE 329 
 
 endorsement of nature and a long friendship and cohabita- 
 tion with the powers of nature. This will stand until a 
 better cast of dice is made. The contest between the 
 Future and the Past is one between Divinity entering, and 
 Divinity departing. You are welcome to try your experi- 
 ments, and, if you can, to displace the actual order by that 
 ideal republic you announce, for nothing but God will expel 
 God. But plainly the burden of the proof must lie with the 
 projector. We hold to this, until you can demonstrate 
 something better. 
 
 The system of property and law goes back for its origin 
 to barbarous and sacred times; it is the fruit of the same 
 mysterious cause as the mineral or animal world. There is 
 a natural sentiment and prei^ossession in favor of age, of 
 ancestors, of barbarous and aboriginal usages, which is a 
 homage to the element of necessity and divinity which is 
 in them. The respect for the old names of places, of moun- 
 tains, and streams, is universal. The Indian and barbarous 
 name can never be supplanted without loss. The ancients 
 tell us that the gods loved the Ethiopians for their stable 
 customs; and the Egyptians and Chaldeans, whose origin 
 could not be explored, passed among the junior tribes of 
 Greece and Italy for sacred nations. 
 
 Moreover, so deep is the foundation of the existing 
 social system, that it leaves no one out of it. We may be 
 partial, but Fate is not. All men have their root in it. 
 You who quarrel with the arrangements of society, and are 
 willing to embroil all, and risk the indisputable good that 
 exists, for the chance of better, live, move and have your 
 being in this, and your deeds contradict your words every 
 day. For as you cannot jump from the ground without 
 using the resistance of the ground, nor put out the boat to 
 sea, without shoving from the shore, nor attain liberty with- 
 out rejecting obligation, so you are under the necessity of 
 using the Actual order of things, in order to disuse it; to 
 live by it, wliilst you wish to take away its life. The past 
 has baked your loaf, and in the strength of its bread you 
 would break up the oven. But you are betrayed by your 
 own nature. You also are conserva-'ves. However men 
 
330 THE CONSERVATIVE 
 
 please to style themselves, I see no other than a conservative 
 party. You are not only identical with us in your needs, 
 but also in your methods and aims. You quarrel with my 
 conservatism, but it is to build up one of your own; it will 
 have a new beginning, but the same course and end, the same 
 trials, the same passions; among the lovers of the new I 
 observe that there is a jealousy of the newest, and that the 
 seceder from the seceder is as damnable as the pope himself. 
 
 On these and the like grounds of general statement, con- 
 servatism plants itself without danger of being displaced. 
 Especially before this personal appeal, the innovator must 
 confess his weakness, must confess that no man is to be 
 found good enough to be entitled to stand champion for 
 the principle. But when this great tendency comes to 
 practical encounters, and is challenged by young men, to 
 whom it is no abstraction, but a fact of hunger, distress, and 
 exclusion from opportunities, it must needs seem injurious. 
 The youth, of course, is an innovator by the fact of his 
 birth. There he stands, newly born on the planet, a uni- 
 versal beggar, with all the reason of things, one would say, 
 on his side. In his first consideration how to feed, clothe, 
 and warm himself, he is met by warnings on every hand, 
 that this thing and that thing have owners, and he must go 
 elsewhere. Then he says; If I am born into the earth, where 
 is my part? have the goodness, gentlemen of this world, to 
 show me my wood-lot, where I may fell my wood, my field 
 where to plant my corn, my pleasant ground where to build 
 my cabin. 
 
 "Touch any wood, or field, or house-lot, on your peril," 
 cry all the gentlemen of this world; ''but you may come and 
 work in ours, for us and we will give you a piece of bread." 
 
 And what is that peril? 
 
 Knives and muskets, if we meet you in the act: imprison- 
 ment, if we find you afterward. 
 
 And by what authority, kind gentlemen? 
 
 By our law. 
 
 And your law, — is it just? 
 
 As just for you as it was for us. We wrought for others 
 under this law, and got our lands so. 
 
THE CONSERVATIVE 331 
 
 I repeat the question, Is your law just? 
 
 Not quite just, but necessary. Moreover, it is juster now 
 than it was when we were born; we have made it milder 
 and more equal. 
 
 I will none of your law, returns the youth; it encumbers 
 me. I cannot understand, or so much as spare time to 
 read that needless library of your laws. Nature has suf- 
 ficiently provided me with rewards and sharp penalties, to 
 bind me not to transgress. Like the Persian noble of old, 
 I ask "that I may neither command nor obey." I do not 
 wish to enter into your complex social system. I shall serve 
 those whom I can, and they who can will serve me. I 
 shall seek those whom I love, and shun those whom I love 
 not, and what more can all your laws render me? 
 
 With equal earnestness and good faith, replies to this 
 plaintiff an upholder of the establishment, a man of many 
 virtues : 
 
 Your opposition is feather-brained and over-fine. Young 
 man, I have no skill to talk with you, but look at me; I have 
 risen early and sat late, and toiled honestly, and painfully 
 for very many years. I never dreamed about methods; 
 I laid my bones to, and drudged for the good I possess; it 
 was not got by fraud, nor by luck, but by work, and you 
 must show me a warrant like these stubborn facts in your 
 own fidelity and labor, before I suffer you, on the faith of 
 a few fine words, to ride into my estate, and claim to scatter 
 it as your own. 
 
 Now you touch the heart of the matter, rephes the former. 
 To that fidelity and labor, I pay homage. I am unworthy 
 to arraign your manner of living, until I too have been tried. 
 But I should be more unworthy, if I did not tell you why I 
 cannot walk in your steps. I find this vast network, which 
 you call property, extended over the whole planet. I can- 
 not occupy the bleakest crag of the White Hills or the 
 Alleghany Range, but some man or corporation steps up 
 to me to show me that it is his. Now, though I am very 
 peaceable, and on my private account could well enough 
 die, since it appears there was some mistake in my creation, 
 and that I have been missent to this earth, where all the 
 
332 THE CONSERVATIVE 
 
 seats were already taken, — yet I feel called upon in behalf 
 of rational nature, which I represent, to declare to you my 
 opinion, that, if the Earth is yours, so also is it mine. All 
 your aggregate existences are less to me a fact than is my 
 own; as I am born to the earthy so the Earth is given to me, 
 what I want of it to till and to plant; nor could I, without 
 pusillanimity, omit to claim so much. I must not only have 
 a name to live, I must li\-e. My genius leads me to build 
 a different manner of hfe from any of yours. I cannot then 
 spare you the whole world. I love you better. I must 
 tell you the truth practically; and take that which you call 
 yours. It is God's world and mine; yours as much as you 
 want, mine as much as I want. Besides, I know your ways; 
 I know the symptoms of the disease. To the end of your 
 power, you will serve this lie which cheats you. Your want 
 is a gulf which the possession of the broad earth would not 
 fill. Yonder sun in heaven you would pluck down from 
 shining on the universe, and make him a property and pri- 
 vacy, if you could; and the moon and the north star you 
 would quickly have occasion for in your closet and bed- 
 chamber. What you do not want for use, you crave for 
 ornament, and what your convenience could spare, your 
 pride cannot. 
 
 On the other hand, precisely the defence which was set up 
 for the British Constitution, namely, that with all its acl- 
 mitted defects, rotten boroughs and monopolies, it worked 
 well, and substantial justice was somehow done; the wisdom 
 and the worth did get into parliament, and every interest 
 did by right, or might, or sleight, get represented: — the same 
 defence is set up for the existing institutions. They are not 
 the best; they are not just; and in respect to you, personally, 
 brave young man! they cannot be justified. They have, 
 it is most true, left you no acre for your own, and no law 
 but our law, to the ordaining of which, you were no party. 
 But they do answer the end, they are really friendly to the 
 good; unfriendly to the bad; they second the industrious, 
 and the kind; they foster genius. They really have so 
 much flexibility as to afford your talent and character, on 
 the whole, the same chance of demonstration and success 
 
THE CONSERVATIVE 333 
 
 which they might have, if there was no law and no property. 
 It is trivial and merely superstitious to say that nothing 
 is given you, no outfit, no exhibition; for in this institution 
 of credit, which is as universal as honesty and promise in the 
 human countenance, always some neighbor stands ready to 
 be bread and land and tools and stock to the young adven- 
 turer. And if in any one respect they have come short, 
 see what ample retribution of good they have made. They 
 have lost no time and spared no expense to collect libraries, 
 museums, galleries, colleges, palaces, hospitals, observatories, 
 cities. The ages have not been idle, nor kings slack, nor the 
 rich niggardly. Have we not atoned for this small offence 
 (which we could not help) of leaving you no right in the 
 soil, by this splendid indemnity of ancestral and national 
 wealth ? Would you have been born like a gypsy in a hedge, 
 and preferred your freedom on a heath, and the range of a 
 planet which had no shed or boscage to cover you from 
 sun and wind, — to this towered and citied world? to this 
 world of Rome, and Memphis, and Constantinople, and 
 Vienna, and Paris, and London, and New York? For thee 
 Naples, Florence, and Venice, for thee the fair Mediterra- 
 nean, the sunny Adriatic; for thee both Indies smile ; for thee 
 the hospitable North opens its heated palaces under the polar 
 circle; for thee roads have been cut in every direction across 
 the land, and fleets of floating palaces with every security 
 for strength, and provision for luxury, swim by sail and 
 by steam through all the waters of this world. Every 
 island for thee has a town; every, town a hotel. Though 
 thou wast born landless, yet to thy industry and thrift and 
 small condescension to the established usage, — scores of ser- 
 vants are swarming in every strange place with cap and 
 knee to thy command, scores, nay hundreds and thousands, 
 for thy wardrobe, thy table, thy chamber, thy library, thy 
 leisure; and every whim is anticipated and served by the best 
 ability of the whole population of each country. The king on 
 the throne governs for thee, and the judge judges; the bar- 
 rister pleads, the farmer tills, the joiner hammers, the post- 
 man rides. Is it not exaggerating a trifle to insist on a for- 
 mal acknowledgment of your claims, when these substantial 
 
334 THE CONSERVATIVE 
 
 advantages have been secured to you? Now can your 
 children be educated, your labor turned to their advantage, 
 and its fruit secured to them after your death. It is frivo- 
 lous to say, you have no acre, because you have not a mathe- 
 matically measured piece of land. Providence takes care 
 that you shall have a place, that you are waited for, and 
 come accredited; and, as soon as you put your gift to use, 
 you shall have acre or acre's worth according to your 
 exhibition of desert, — acre, if you need land; — acre's 
 worth, if you prefer to draw, or carve, or make shoes, or 
 wheels, to the tilling of the soil. 
 
 Besides, it might temper your indignation at the sup- 
 posed wrong which society has done you, to keep the ques- 
 tion before you, how society got into this predicament? 
 Who put things on this false basis? No single man, but all 
 men. No man voluntarily and knowingly; but it is the 
 result of that degree of culture there is in the planet. The 
 order of things is as good as the character of the population 
 permits. Consider it as the work of a great and beneficent 
 and progressive necessity, which, from the first pulsation of 
 the first animal life, up to the present high culture of the 
 best nations, has advanced thus far. Thank the rude foster- 
 mother though she has taught you a better wisdom than her 
 own, and has set hopes in your heart which shall be history 
 in the next ages. You are j^ourself the result of this manner 
 of living, this foul compromise, this vituperated Sodom. It 
 nourished you with care and love on its breast, as it had 
 nourished many a lover of the right, and many a poet, and 
 prophet, and teacher of men. Is it so irremediably bad? 
 Then again, if the mitigations are considered, do not all the 
 mischiefs virtually vanish? The form is bad, but see you 
 not how every personal character reacts on the form, and 
 makes it new? A strong person makes the law and custom 
 null before his own will. Then the principle of love and 
 truth reappears in the strictest courts of fashion and prop- 
 erty. Under the richest robes, in the darlings of the select- 
 est circles of European or American aristocracy, the strong 
 heart will beat with love of mankind, with impatience of 
 accidental distinctions, with the desire to achieve its own 
 
THE CONSERVATIVE 335 
 
 fate, and make every ornament it wears authentic and real. 
 
 Moreover, as we have already shown that there is no 
 pure reformer, so it is to be considered that there is no pure 
 conservative, no man who from the beginning to the end of 
 his life maintains the defective institutions; but he who sets 
 his face like a flint against every novelty, when approached 
 in the confidence of conversation, in the presence of friendly 
 and generous persons, has also his gracious and relenting 
 motions, and espouses for the time the cause of man; and 
 even if this be a short-lived emotion, yet the remembrance 
 of it in private hours mitigates his selfishness and com- 
 pliance with custom. 
 
 The Friar Bernard lamented in his cell on Mount Cenis 
 the crimes of mankind, and rising one morning before day 
 from his bed of moss and dry leaves, he gnawed his roots 
 and berries, drank of the spring, and set forth to go to Rome 
 to reform the corruption of mankind. On his way he en- 
 countered many travelers who greeted him courteously; 
 and the cabins of the peasants and the castles of the lords 
 supplied his few wants. When he came at last to Rome, 
 his piety and good will easily introduced him to many 
 families of the rich, and on the first day he saw and talked 
 with gentle mothers with their babes at their breasts, who 
 told him how much love they bore their children, and how 
 they were perplexed in their daily walk lest they should 
 fail in their duty to them. "What!" he said, "and this on 
 rich embroidered carpets, on marble floors, with cunning 
 sculpture, and carved wood, and rich pictures, and piles of 
 books about you?" — "Look at our pictures and books, they 
 said, and we will tell you, good Father, how we spent the 
 last evening. These are stories of godly children and holy 
 families and romantic sacrifices made in old or in recent 
 times by great and not mean persons; and last evening, our 
 family was collected, and our husbands and brothers dis- 
 coursed sadly on what we could save and give in the hard 
 times." Then came in the men and they said, "What cheer, 
 brother? Does thy convent want gifts?" Then the friar 
 Bernard went home swiftly with other thoughts than he 
 brought, saying, "This way of life is wrong, yet these 
 
336 THE CONSERVATIVE 
 
 Romans, whom I prayed God to destroy, are lovers, they 
 are lovers; what can I do?" 
 
 The reformer concedes that these mitigations exist, and 
 that, if he proposed comfort, he should take sides with the 
 establishment. Your words are excellent, but they do not 
 tell the whole. Conservatism is affluent and openhanded, 
 but there is a cunning juggle in riches. I observe that they 
 take somewhat for everything they give. I look bigger, 
 but am less; I have more clothes but am not so warm; more 
 armor, but less courage; more books, but less wit. What 
 you say of your planted, builded, and decorated world, is 
 true enough, and I gladly avail myself of its convenience; 
 yet I have remarked that what holds in particular, holds in 
 general, that the plant Man does not require for his most 
 glorious flowering this pomp of preparation and convenience, 
 but the thoughts of some beggarly Homer who strolled, God 
 knows when, in the infancy and barbarism of the old world; 
 the gravity and sense of some slave Moses who leads away 
 his fellow slaves from their masters; the contemplation of 
 some Scythian Anacharsis; the erect formidable valor of 
 some Dorian townsmen in the town of Sparta; the vigor of 
 Clovis the Frank, and Alfred the Saxon, and Alaric the Goth, 
 and Mahomet, Ali, and Omar the Arabians, Saladin the Curd, 
 and Othman the Turk, sufficed to build what you call society, 
 on the spot and in the instant when the sound mind in a 
 sound body appeared. Rich and fine is your dress, con- 
 servatism! your horses are of the best blood; your roads are 
 well cut and well paved; your pantry is full of meats and 
 your cellar of wines, and a very good state and condition 
 are you for gentlemen and ladies to live under; but every 
 one of these goods steals away a drop of my blood. I want 
 the necessity of supplying my own wants. All this costly cul- 
 ture of pours is not necessary. Greatness does not need it. 
 Yonder peasant, who sits neglected there in a corner, carries 
 a whole revolution of man and nature in his head, which 
 shall be a sacred history to some future ages. For man is 
 the end of nature; nothing so easily organizes itself in every 
 part of the universe as he; no moss, no lichen is so easily 
 born; and he takes along with him and puts out from him- 
 
THE CONSERVATIVE 337 
 
 self the whole apparatus of society and condition extempore, 
 as an army encamps in a desert, and where all was just 
 now blowing sand, creates a white city in an hour, a govern- 
 ment, a market, a place for feasting, for conversation, and 
 for love. 
 
 These considerations, urged by those whose characters and 
 whose fortunes are yet to be formed, must needs command 
 the sympathy of all reasonable persons. But beside that 
 charity which should make all adult persons interested for 
 the youth, and engage them to see that he has a free field 
 and fair play on his entrance into life, w^e are bound to see 
 that the society, of which we compose a part, does not 
 permit the formation or continuance of views and practices 
 injurious to the honor and welfare of mankind. The ob- 
 jection to conservatism, when embodied in a party, is, that 
 in its love of acts, it hates principles; it lives in the senses, 
 not in truth; it sacrifices to despair; it goes for available- 
 ness in its candidate, not for worth; and for expediency in its 
 measures, and not for the right. Under pretence of allow- 
 ing for friction, it makes so many additions and supplements 
 to the machine of society, that it will play smoothly and 
 softly, but will no longer grind any grist. 
 
 The conservative party in the universe concedes that the 
 radical would talk sufficiently to the purpose, if we were still 
 in the garden of Eden; he legislates for man as he ought to 
 be; his theory is right, but he makes no allowance for 
 friction; and this omission makes his whole doctrine false. 
 The ideahst retorts, that the conservative falls into a far 
 more noxious error in the other extreme. The conservative 
 assumes sickness as a necessity, and his social frame is a 
 hospital, his total legislation is for the present distress, a 
 universe in slippers and flannels, with bib and papspoon, 
 swallowing pills and herb-tea. Sickness gets organized as 
 well as health, the vice as well as the virtue. Now that a 
 vicious system of trade has existed so long, it has stereo- 
 typed itself in the human generation, and misers are born. 
 And now that sickness has got such a foothold, leprosy has 
 grown cunning, has got into the ballot-box, the lepers out- 
 vote the clean; society has resolved itself into a Hospital 
 
338 THE CONSERVATIVE 
 
 Committee, and all its laws are quarantine. If any man 
 resist, and set up a foolish hope he has entertained as good 
 against the general despair, society frowns on him, shuts 
 him out of her opportunities, her granaries, her refectories, 
 her water and bread, and will serve him a sexton's turn. 
 Conservatism takes as low a view of every part of human 
 action and passion. Its rehgion is just as bad; a lozenge for 
 the sick; a dolorous tune to beguile the distemper; miti- 
 gations of pain by pillows and anodynes; always mitigations, 
 never remedies; pardons for sins, funeral honors, — never 
 self-help, renovation, and virtue. Its social and political 
 action has no better aim; to keep out wind and weather, to 
 bring the day and year about, and make the world last our 
 day; not to sit on the world and steer it; not to sink the 
 memory of the past in the glory of a new and more excel- 
 lent creation; a timid cobbler and patcher, it degrades what- 
 ever it touches. The cause of education is urged in this 
 country with the utmost earnestness, — on what ground? 
 why on this, that the people have the power, and if they are 
 not instructed to sympathize with the intelligent, reading, 
 trading, and governing class, inspired with a taste for the 
 same competitions and prizes, they will upset the fair 
 pageant of Judicature, and perhaps lay a hand on the sacred 
 muniments of wealth itself, and new distribute the land. 
 Religion is taught in the same spirit. The contractors who 
 were building a road out of Baltimore, some years ago, 
 found the Irish laborers quarrelsome and refractory, to 
 a degree that embarrassed the agents, and seriously inter- 
 rupted the progress of the work. The corporation were 
 advised to call off the police, and build a Catholic chapel; 
 which they did; the priest presently restored order, and the 
 work went on prosperously. Such hints, be sure, are too 
 valuable to be lost. If you do not value the Sabbath, or 
 other religious institutions, give yourself no concern about 
 maintaining them. They have already acquired a market 
 value as conservators of property; and if priest and church- 
 member should fail, the chambers of commerce and the 
 presidents of the Banks, the very innholders and landlords 
 of the country would muster with fury to their support. 
 
THE CONSERVATIVE 339 
 
 Of course, religion in such hands loses its essence. Instead 
 of that reliance, wliich the soul suggests on the eternity of 
 truth and duty, men are misled into a reliance on institutions, 
 which, the moment they cease to be the instantaneous 
 creations of the devout sentiment, are worthless. ReUgion 
 among the low becomes low. As it loses its truth, it loses 
 credit with the sagacious. They detect the falsehood of 
 the preaching, but when they say so, all good citizens cry, 
 Hush; do not weaken the state, do not take off the strait- 
 jacket from dangerous persons. Every honest fellow must 
 keep up the hoax the best he can; must patronize providence 
 and piety, and wherever he sees anything that will keep 
 men amused, school or churches or poetry, or picture- 
 galleries or music, or what not, he must cry "Hist-a-boy," 
 and urge the game on. What a comphment we pay to the 
 good Spirit with our superserviceable zeal! 
 
 But not to balance reasons for and against the establish- 
 ment any longer, and if it still be asked in this necessity of 
 partial organization, which party on the whole has the high- 
 est claims on our sympathy ? I bring it home to the private 
 heart, where all such questions must have their final ar- 
 bitrament. How will every strong and generous mind choose 
 its ground, — with the defenders of the old? or with the 
 seekers of the new? Which is that state which promises to 
 edify a great, brave, and beneficent man; to throw him on his 
 resources, and tax the strength of his character? On which 
 part will each of us find himself in the hour of health and 
 of aspiration? 
 
 I understand well the respect of mankind for war, because 
 that breaks up the Chinese stagnation of Society, and dem- 
 onstrates the personal merits of all men. A state of war 
 or anarchy, in which law has Httle force, so far as valuable 
 that it puts every man on trial. The man of principle is 
 known as such, and even in the fury of faction is respected. 
 In the civil wars of France, Montaigne alone, among all the 
 French gentry, kept his castle gates unbarred, and made his 
 personal integrity as good at least as a regiment. The man 
 of courage and resources is shown, and the effeminate and 
 base person. Those who rise above war, and those who 
 
340 THE CONSERVATIVE 
 
 fall below it, it easily discriminates, as well as those, who, 
 accepting its rude conditions, keep their own head by their 
 own sword. 
 
 But in peace and a commercial state we depend, not as 
 we ought, on our knowledge and all men's knowledge that 
 we are honest men, but we cowardly lean on the virtue of 
 others. For it is always at last the virtue of some men in 
 the society, which keeps the law in any reverence and 
 power. Is there not something shameful that I should owe 
 my peaceful occupancy of my house and field, not to the 
 knowledge of my countrymen that I am useful, but to their 
 respect for sundry other reputable persons, I know not 
 whom, whose joint virtues still keep the law in good order? 
 
 It will never make any difference to a hero what the laws 
 are. His greatness will shine and accomplish itself unto 
 the end, whether they second him or not. If he have earned 
 his bread by drudgery, and in the narrow and crooked ways 
 which were all an evil law had left him, he will make it at 
 least honorable by his expenditure. Of the i)ast he will take 
 no heed ; for its wrongs he will not hold himself responsible : 
 he will say, all the meanness of my progenitors shall not 
 bereave me of the power to make this hour and company 
 fair and fortunate. Whatsoever streams of power and com- 
 modity flow to me, shall of me acquire healing virtue, and be- 
 come fountains of safety. Cannot I too descend a Redeemer 
 into nature? Whosoever hereafter shall name my name, 
 shall not record a malefactor, but a benefactor in the earth. 
 If there be power in good intention, in fidelity, and in 
 toil, the north wind shall be purer, the stars in heaven shall 
 glow with a kindlier beam, that I have lived. I am primarily 
 engaged to myself to be a public servant of all the gods, to 
 demonstrate to all men that there is intelligence and good 
 will at the heart of things, and ever higher and yet higher 
 leadings. These are my engagements; how can your law 
 further or hinder me in what I shall do to men? On the 
 other hand, these dispositions estabhsh their relations to 
 me. Wherever there is worth, I shall be greeted. Wher- 
 ever there are men, are the objects of my study and love. 
 Sooner or later all men will be my friends, and will testify 
 
THE CONSERVATIVE 341 
 
 in all methods the energy of their regard. I cannot thank 
 your law for my protection. I protect it. It is not in its 
 power to protect me. It is my business to make myself 
 revered. I depend on my honor, my labor, and my dis- 
 positions, for my place in the affections of mankind, and not 
 on any conventions or parchments of yours. 
 
 But if I allow myself in derelictions, and become idle and 
 dissolute, I quickly come to love the protection of a strong 
 law, because I feel no title in myself to my advantages. To 
 the intemperate and covetous person no love flows; to him 
 mankind would pay no rent, no dividend, if force were once 
 relaxed; nay, if they could give their verdict, they would 
 say, that his self-indulgence and his oppression deserved 
 punishment from society, and not that rich board and lodging 
 he now enjoys. The law acts as a screen of his unworthiness, 
 and makes him worse the longer it protects him. 
 
 In conclusion, to return from this alternation of partial 
 views, to the high platform of universal and necessary his- 
 tory, it is a happiness for mankind that innovation has got 
 on so far, and has so free a field before it. The boldness of 
 the hope men entertain transcends all former experience. 
 It calms and cheers them with the picture of a simple and 
 equal life of truth and piety. And this hope flowered 
 on what tree? It was not imported from the stock of some 
 celestial plant, but grew here on the wild crab of con- 
 servatism. It is much that this old and vituperated system 
 of things has borne so fair a child. It predicts that amidst 
 a planet peopled with conservatives, one Reformer may yet 
 be born. 
 
xvni 
 
 THE TRANSCENDENTALIST 
 
 A Lecture read at the Masonic Temple, Boston, 
 January, 1842 
 
 The first thing we have to say respecting what are called 
 7iew views here in New England, at the present time, is, 
 that they are not new, but the very oldest of thoughts cast 
 into the mould of these new times. The light is always 
 identical in its composition, but it falls on a great variety 
 of objects, and by so falling is first revealed to us, not in 
 its own form, for it is formless, but in theirs; in like manner, 
 thought only appears in the objects it classifies. What is 
 popularly called Transcendentahsm among us, is Idealism; 
 Idealism as it appears in 1842. As thinkers, mankind have 
 ever divided into two sects. Materialists and Ideahsts; the 
 first class founding on experience, the second on conscious- 
 ness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the 
 senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final, 
 and say, the senses give us representations of things, but 
 what are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The 
 materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of 
 circumstances, and the animal wants of man; the idealist 
 on the power of Thought and of Will, on inspiration, on 
 miracle, on individual culture. These two modes of thinking 
 are both natural, but the idealist contends that his way of 
 thinking is in higher nature. He concedes all that the other 
 afiirms, admits the impressions of sense, admits their co- 
 herency, their use and beauty, and then asks the materiahst 
 for his grounds of assurance, that things are as his senses 
 represent them. But I, he says, affirm facts not affected 
 by the illusions of sense, facts which are of the same nature 
 as the faculty which reports them, and not hable to doubt; 
 
 342 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTALIST 343 
 
 facts which in their first appearance to us assume a native 
 superiority to material facts, degrading these into a 
 language by which the first are to be spoken; facts which 
 it only needs a retirement from the senses to discern. Every 
 materiahst will be an idealist; but an idealist can never go 
 backward and be a materialist. 
 
 The idealist, in speaking of events, sees them as spirits. 
 He does not deny the sensuous fact: by no means; but he 
 will not see that alone. He does not deny the presence of 
 this table, this chair, and the walls of this room, but he 
 looks at these things as the reverse side of the tapestry, 
 as the other end, each being a sequel or completion of a 
 spiritual fact which nearly concerns him. This manner of 
 looking at things, transfers every object in nature from an 
 independent and anomalous position without there, into 
 the consciousness. Even the materialist Condillac, perhaps 
 the most logical expounder of materialism, was constrained 
 to say, "Though we should soar into the heavens, though 
 we should sink into the abyss, we never go out of ourselves; 
 it is always our own thought that we perceive." What 
 more could an idealist say? 
 
 The materialist, secure in the certainty of sensation, 
 mocks at fine-spun theories, at star-gazers and dreamers, 
 and beheves that his life is solid, that he at least takes noth- 
 ing for granted, but knows where he stands, and what he 
 does. Yet how easy it is to show him, that he also is a 
 phantom walking and working amid phantoms, and that he 
 need only ask a question or two beyond his daily questions, 
 to find his solid universe growing dim and impalpable before 
 his sense. The sturdy capitalist, no matter how deep and 
 square on blocks of Quincy granite he lays the founda- 
 tions of his banking-house or Exchange, must set it, at last, 
 not on a cube corresponding to the angles of his structure, 
 but on a mass of unknown materials and solidity, red-hot or 
 white-hot, perhaps, at the core, which rounds off to an 
 almost perfect sphericity, and lies floating in soft air, and 
 goes spinning away, dragging bank and banker with it at a 
 rate of thousands of miles the hour, he knows not whither, — 
 a bit of bullet, now glimmering, now darkling through a 
 
344 THE TRANSCENDENTALIST 
 
 small cubic space on the edge of an unimaginable pit of 
 emptiness. And this wild balloon, in which his whole venture 
 is embarked, is a just symbol of his whole state and faculty. 
 One thing, at least, he says is certain, and does not give me 
 the headache, that figures do not lie ; the multiphcation table 
 has been hitherto found unimpeachable truth; and moreover, 
 if I put a gold eagle in my safe, I find it again to-morrow; — 
 but for these thoughts, I know not whence they are. They 
 change and pass away. But ask him why he believes that 
 an uniform experience will continue uniform, or on what 
 grounds he founds his faith in his figures, and he will perceive 
 that his mental fabric is built up on just as strange and 
 quaking foundations as his proud edifice of stone. 
 
 In the order of thought, the materialist takes his de- 
 parture from the external world, and esteems a man as one 
 product of that. The idealist takes his departure from his 
 consciousness, and reckons the world an appearance. The 
 materialist respects sensible masses, Society, Government, 
 social art, and luxury, every establishment, every mass, 
 whether majority of numbers, or extent of space, or amount 
 of objects, every social action. The idealist has another 
 measure, which is metaphysical, namely, the rank which 
 things themselves take in his consciousness; not at all, the 
 size or appearance. Mind is the only reality, of which man 
 and all other natures are better or worse reflectors. Nature, 
 literature, history, are only subjective phenomena. Al- 
 though in his action overpowered by the laws of action, and 
 so, warmly cooperating with men, even preferring them to 
 himself, yet when he speaks scientifically, or after the order 
 of thought, he is constrained to degrade persons into rep- 
 resentatives of truths. He does not respect labor, or the 
 products of labor, namely, property, otherwise than as a 
 manifold s3^mbol, illustrating with wonderful fidelity of 
 details the laws of being; he does not respect government, 
 except as far as it reiterates the law of his mind; nor the 
 church; nor charities; nor arts, for themselves; but hears, 
 as at a vast distance, what they say, as if his consciousness 
 would speak to him through a pantomimic scene. His 
 thought, — that is the Universe. His experience inohnes him 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTALIST 345 
 
 to behold the procession of facts you call the world, as 
 flowing perpetually outward from an invisible, unsounded 
 center in himself, center alike of him and of them, and 
 necessitating him to regard all things as having a subjective 
 or relative existence, relative to that aforesaid Unknown 
 Center of him. 
 
 From this transfer of the world into the consciousness, 
 this beholding of all things in the mind, follow easily his 
 whole ethics. It is simpler to be self-dependent. The 
 height, the deity of man is, to be self-sustained, to need no 
 gift, no foreign force. Society is good when it does not 
 violate me; but best when it is likest to solitude. Every- 
 thing real is self-existent. Everything divine shares the self- 
 existence of Deity. All that you call the world is the shadow 
 of that substance which you are, the perpetual creation of 
 the powers of thought, of those that are dependent and of 
 those that are independent of your will. Do not cumber 
 yourself with fruitless pains to mend and remedy remote 
 effects; let the soul be erect, and all things will go well. 
 You think me the child of my circumstances; I make my 
 circumstance. Let any thought or motive of mine be dif- 
 ferent from that they are, the difference will transform my 
 condition and economy. I — this thought which is called I, — 
 is the mould into which the world is poured like melted wax. 
 The mould is invisible, but the world betrays the shape of 
 the mould. You call it the power of circumstance, but it 
 is the power of me. Am I in harmony with myself? my po- 
 sition will seem to you just and commanding. Am I vicious 
 and insane? my fortunes will seem to you obscure and de- 
 scending. As I am, so shall I associate, and so shall I act; 
 Csesar's history will paint out C?esar. Jesus acted so, 
 because he thought so. I do not wish to overlook 
 or to gainsay any reality; I say, I make my circumstance: 
 but if you ask me. Whence am I ? I feel like other men my 
 relation to that Fact which cannot be spoken, or defined, 
 nor even thought, but which exists, and will exist. 
 
 The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of 
 spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual 
 openness of the human mind to new influx of light and 
 
546 THE TRANSCENDENTALIST 
 
 power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy. He 
 wishes that the spiritual principle should be suffered to 
 demonstrate itself to the end, in all possible applications to 
 the state of man, without the admission of anything un- 
 spiritual; that is, anything positive, dogmatic, personal. 
 Thus, the spiritual measure of inspiration is the depth of 
 the thought, and never, who said it? And so he resists all 
 attempts to palm other rules and measures on the spirit 
 than its own. 
 
 In action, he easily incurs the charge of antinomianism 
 by his avowal that he, who has the Lawgiver, may with 
 safety not only neglect, but even contravene every written 
 commandment. In the play of Othello, the expiring Des- 
 dcmona absolves her husband of the murder, to her attend- 
 ant Emilia. Afterwards, when Emiha charges him with 
 the crime, Othello exclaims, 
 
 "You heard her say herself it was not I." 
 EmiHa replies, 
 
 "The more angel she, and thou the blacker devil." 
 
 Of this fine incident, Jacobi, the Transcendental moralist, 
 makes use, with other parallel instances, in his reply to 
 Fichte. Jacobi, refusing all measure of right and wrong 
 except the determinations of the private spirit, remarks 
 that there is no crime but has sometimes been a virtue. 
 'T," he says, "am that atheist, that godless person who, in 
 opposition to an imaginary doctrine of calculation, would 
 lie as the dying Desdemona lied; would lie and deceive, 
 as Pylades when he personated Orestes; would assassinate 
 like Timoleon; would perjure myself like Epaminondas, 
 and John de Witt; I would resolve on suicide like Cato; I 
 would commit sacrilege with David; yea, and pluck ears of 
 corn on the Sabbath, for no other reason than that I was 
 fainting for lack of food. For, I have assurance in myself, 
 that, in pardoning these faults according to the letter, man 
 exerts the sovereign right which the majesty of his being 
 confers on him; he sets the seal of his divine nature to the 
 grace he accords."^ 
 
 Coleridge's Translation. 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTALIST 347 
 
 In like manner, if there is anything grand and daring in 
 human thought or virtue, any rehance on the vast, the 
 unknown; any presentiment, any extravagance of faith, 
 the spirituahst adopts it as most in nature. The oriental 
 mind has always tended to this largeness. Buddhism is an 
 expression of it. The Buddhist who thanks no man, who 
 says, "do not flatter your benefactors," but who, in his 
 conviction that every good deed can by no possibility escape 
 its reward, will not deceive the benefactor by pretending that 
 he has done more than he should, is a Transcendentalist. 
 
 You will see by this sketch that there is no such thing as a 
 Transcendental party ; that there is no pure Transcenden- 
 talist; that we know of none but prophets and heralds of 
 such a philosophy; that all who by strong bias of nature 
 have leaned to the spiritual side in doctrine, have stopped 
 short of their goal. We have had many harbingers and 
 forerunners; but of a purely spiritual life, history has af- 
 forded no example. I mean, we have yet no man who has 
 leaned entirely on his character, and eaten angel's food, 
 who, trusting to his sentiments, found life made of miracles; 
 who, working for universal aims, found himself fed, he knew 
 not how: clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, 
 and yet it was done by* his own hands. Only in the instinct 
 of. the lower animals, we find the suggestion of the methods of 
 it, and something higher than our understanding. The 
 squirrel hoards nuts, and the bee gathers honey, without 
 knowing what they do, and they are thus provided for with- 
 out selfishness or disgrace. 
 
 Shall we say, then, that Transcendentalism is the Saturna- 
 lia or excess of Faith; the presentiment of a faith proper to 
 man in his integrity, excessive only when his imperfect obe- 
 dience hinders the satisfaction of his wish. Nature is 
 transcendental, exists primarily, necessarily, ever works and 
 advances, yet takes no thought for the morrow. Man owns 
 the dignity of the hfe which throbs around him in chemistry, 
 and tree, and animal, and in the involuntary functions of 
 his own body; yet he is balked when he tries to fling himself 
 into this enchanted circle, where all is done without deg- 
 radation. Yet genius and virtue predict in man the same 
 
348 THE TRANSCENDENTALIST 
 
 absence of private ends, and of condescension to circum- 
 stances, united with every trait and talent of beauty and 
 power. 
 
 This way of thinking, falhng on Roman times, made 
 Stoic philosophers; falling on despotic times, made patriot 
 Catos and Brutuses; falling on superstitious times, made 
 prophets and apostles; on popish times, made protestants 
 and ascetic monks, preachers of Faith against the preachers 
 of Works; on prelatical times, made Puritans and Quakers; 
 and falling on Unitarian and commercial times, makes 
 the pccuUar shades of Idealism which we know. 
 
 It is well known to most of my audience, that the Idealism 
 of the present day acquired the name of Transcendental, 
 from the use of that term by Immanuel Kant, of Konig- 
 berg, who replied to the sceptical philosophy of Locke, 
 which insisted that there was nothing in the intellect which 
 was not previously in the experience of the senses, by show- 
 ing that there was a very important class of ideas, or im- 
 jierative forms, which did not come by experience, but 
 through which experience was acquired; that these were in- 
 tuitions of the mind itself; and he denominated them Trans- 
 cendental forms. The extraordinary profoundness and pre- 
 cision of that man's thinking have given vogue to his nomen- 
 clature, in Europe and America, to that extent, that what- 
 ever belongs to the class of intuitive thought, is popularly 
 called at the present day Transcendental. 
 
 Although, as we have said, there is no pure Transcen- 
 dentalist, yet the tendency to respect the intuitions, and 
 to give them, at least in our creed, all authority over our 
 experience, has deeply colored the conversation and poetry of 
 the present day; and the history of genius and of religion in 
 these times, though impure, and as yet not incarnated in 
 any powerful individual, will be the history of this ten- 
 dency. 
 
 It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest ob- 
 server, that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw 
 themselves from the common labors and competitions of 
 the market and the caucus, and betake themselves to a 
 certain solitary and critical way of living, from which no 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTALIST 349 
 
 solid fruit has yet appeared to justify their separation. 
 They hold themselves aloof; they feel the disproportion be- 
 tween their faculties and the work offered them, and they 
 prefer to ramble in the country and perish of ennui, to the 
 degradation of such charities and such ambitions as the city 
 can propose to them. They are striking work, and crying 
 out for somewhat worthy to do ! What they do, is done only 
 because they are overpowered by the humanities that speak 
 on all sides; and they consent to such labor as is open to 
 them, though to their lofty dream the writing of Iliads or 
 Hamlets, or the building of cities or empires seems drudgery. 
 
 Now every one must do after his kind, be he asp or angel, 
 and these must. The question, which a wise man and a 
 student of modern history will ask, is, what that kind is? 
 And truly, as in ecclesiastical history we take so much pains 
 to know what the Gnostics, what the Essenes, what the 
 Manichees, and what the Reformers believed, it would not 
 misbecome us to inquire nearer home, what these companions 
 and contemporaries of ours think and do, at least so far as 
 these thoughts and actions appear to be not accidental and 
 personal, but common to many, and the inevitable flower of 
 the Tree of Time. Our American literature and spiritual 
 history are, we confess, in the optative mood; but whoso 
 knows these seething brains, these admirable radicals, these 
 unsocial worshippers, these talkers who talk the sun and moon 
 away, will believe that this heresy cannot pass away without 
 leaving its mark. 
 
 They are lonely; the spirit of their writing and conver- 
 sation is lonely; they repel influences; they shun general 
 society; they incline to shut themselves in their chamber in 
 the house, to live in the country rather than in the town, 
 and to find their tasks and amusements in sohtude. Society, 
 to be sure, does not like this very well; it saith. Whoso goes 
 to walk alone, accuses the whole world; he declareth all to 
 be unfit to be his companions; it is very uncivil, nay, in- 
 sulting; Society will retaliate. Meantime, this retirement 
 does not proceed from any w^him on the part of these separa- 
 tors; but if any one will take pains to talk with them, 
 he will find that this part is chosen both from temperament 
 
350 THE TRANSCENDENTALIST 
 
 and from principle; with some unwillingness, too, and as a 
 choice of the less of two evils; for these persons are not by 
 nature melancholy, sour, and unsocial, — they are not stockish 
 or brute, — but joyous, susceptible, affectionate; they have 
 even more than others a great wish to be loved. Like the 
 young Mozart, they are rather ready to cry ten times a day, 
 ''But are you sure you love me?" Nay, if they tell you their 
 whole thought, they will own that love seems to them the 
 last and highest gift of nature; that there are persons whom 
 in their hearts they daily thank for existing, — persons 
 whose faces are perhaps unknown to them, but whose fame 
 and spirit have penetrated their solitude, — and for whose 
 sake they wish to exist. To behold the beauty of another 
 character, which inspires a new interest in our own; to 
 behold the beauty lodged in a human being, with such 
 vivacity of apprehension that I am instantly forced home to 
 inquire if I am not deformity itself: to behold in another 
 the expression of a love so high that it assures itself, — 
 assures itself also to me against every possible casualty 
 except my unworthiness ; — these are degrees on the scale 
 of human happiness, to which they have ascended; and it 
 is a fidelity to this sentiment which has made common asso- 
 ciation distasteful to them. They wish a just and even 
 fellowship, or none. They cannot gossip with you, and they 
 do not wish, as they are sincere and religious, to gratify 
 any mere curiosity w^hich you may entertain. Like fairies, 
 they do not wish to be spoken of. Love me, they say, but 
 do not ask who is my cousin and my uncle. If you do not 
 need to hear my thought, because you can read it in my face 
 and behavior, then I will tell it you from sunrise to sunset. 
 If you cannot chvine it, you would not understand what I 
 say. I will not molest myself for you. I do not wish to be 
 profaned. 
 
 And yet, it seems as if this loneUness, and not this love, 
 w^ould prevail in their circumstances, because of the extrav- 
 agant demand they make on human nature. That, indeed, 
 constitutes a new feature in their portrait, that they are the 
 most exacting and extortionate critics. Their quarrel with 
 every man they meet, is not with his kind, but with his 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTALIST 351 
 
 degree. There is not enough of him, — that is the only fault. 
 They prolong their privilege of childhood in this wise, of 
 doing nothing, — but making immense demands on all the 
 gladiators in the lists of action and fame. They make us 
 feel the strange disappointment which overcasts every 
 human youth. So many promising youths, and never a 
 finished man ! The profound nature will have a savage rude- 
 ness; the delicate one will be shallow, or the victim of 
 sensibility; the richly accomplished will have some capital 
 absurdity; and so every piece has a crack. 'T is strange, 
 but this masterpiece is a result of such an extreme delicacy, 
 that the most unobserved flaw in the boy will neutralize the 
 most aspiring genius, and spoil the work. Talk with a 
 seaman of the hazards to life in his profession, and he will 
 ask you, "Where are the old sailors? do you not see that 
 all are young men?" And we, on this sea of human thought, 
 in like manner inquire, Where are the old idealists ? where are 
 they who represented to the last generation that extravagant 
 hope, which a few happy aspirants suggest to ours? In 
 looking at the class of counsel, and power, and wealth, and 
 at the matronage of the land, amidst all the prudence and all 
 the triviality, one asks. Where are they who represented 
 genius, virtue, the invisible and heavenly world, to these? 
 Are they dead, — taken in early ripeness to the gods, — as an- 
 cient wisdom foretold their fate. Or did the high idea die 
 out of them, and leave their unperfumed body as its tomb 
 and tablet, announcing to all that the celestial inhabitant, 
 who once gave them beauty, had departed? Will it be 
 better with the new generation? We easily predict a fair 
 future to each new candidate who enters the lists, but we are 
 frivolous and volatile, and by low aims and ill example do 
 what we can to defeat this hope. Then these youths bring 
 us a rough but effectual aid. By their unconcealed dis- 
 satisfaction, they expose our poverty, and the insignificance 
 of man to man. A man is a poor limitary benefactor. 
 He ought to be a shower of benefits — a great influence, which 
 should never let his brother go, but should refresh old 
 merits continually with new ones; so that, though absent, he 
 should never be out of my mind, his name never far 
 
352 THE TRANSCENDENTALIST 
 
 from my lips; but if the earth should open at my side, or 
 my last hour were come, his name should be the prayer I 
 should utter to the Universe. But in our experience, man 
 is cheap, and friendship wants its deep sense. We affect to 
 dw^U with our friends in their absence, but we do not; when 
 deed, word, or letter comes not, they let us go. These ex- 
 acting children advertise us of our wants. There is no 
 compliment, no smooth speech with them; they pay you 
 only this one compliment, of insatiable expectation; they 
 aspire, they severely exact, and if they only stand fast in 
 this watch-tower, and persist in demanding unto the end, 
 and without end, then are they terrible friends, whereof 
 poet and priest cannot choose but stand in awe; and what if 
 they eat clouds, and drink wind, they have not been without 
 service to the race of man. 
 
 With this passion for what is great and extraordinary, it 
 cannot be wondered at, that they are repelled by vulgarity 
 and frivohty in people. They say to themselves. It is better 
 to be alone than in bad company. And it is really a wish 
 to be met, — the wish to find society for their hope and re- 
 ligion, — which prompts them to shun what is called society. 
 They feel that they are never so fit for friendship, as when 
 they have quitted mankind, and taken themselves to friend. 
 A picture, a book, a favorite spot in the hills or the woods, 
 which thf en people with the fair and worthy creation of 
 the fancy, can give them often forms so vivid, that these for 
 the time shall seem real, and society the illusion. 
 
 But their solitary and fastidious manners not only with- 
 draw them from the conversation, but from the labors of 
 the world ; they are not good citizens, not good members of 
 society; unwillingly they bear their part of the pubhc and 
 private burdens; they do not willingly share in the public 
 charities, in the public religious rites, in the enterprises of 
 education, of missions foreign or domestic, in the abolition 
 of the slave-trade, or in the temperance society. They do 
 not even like to vote. The philanthropists inquire whether 
 Transcendentalism does not mean sloth: they had as lief 
 hear that their friend is dead, as that he is a Transcendental- 
 ist; for then is he paralyzed, and can never do anything for 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTALIST 353 
 
 humanity. What right, cries the good world, has the man of 
 genius to retreat from work, and indulge himself? The 
 popular hterary creed seems to be, "I am a sublime genius- 
 I ought not therefore to labor." But genius is the power to 
 labor better and more availably. Deserve thy genius; exalt it 
 The good, the illuminated, sit apart from the rest, censurino-" 
 their dullness and vices, as if they thought that, by sitting 
 very grand m their chairs, the very brokers, attorneys and 
 congressmen would see the error of their ways, and flock 
 to them. But the good and wise must learn to act, and carry 
 salvation to the combatants and demagogues in the dusty 
 arena below. 
 
 On the part of these children, it is replied, that hfe and 
 their faculty seem to them gifts too rich to be squandered 
 on such trifles as you propose to them. What you call your 
 fundamental institutions, your great and holy causes, seem 
 to them great abuses, and, when nearly seen, paltry matters. 
 Each "Cause," as it is called,— say Abohtion, Temperance," 
 say Calvinism, or Unitarianism,— becomes speedily a little 
 shop, where the article, let it have been at first never so 
 subtle and ethereal, is now made up into portable and con- 
 v^enient cakes, and retailed in small quantities to suit pur- 
 chasers. You make very free use of these words, "great" 
 and "holy" but few things appear to them such. Few 
 persons have any magnificence of nature to inspire en- 
 thusiasm, and the philanthropies and charities have a cer- 
 tain air of quackery. As to the general course of living, 
 md the daily employments of men, they cannot see much 
 i^irtue in these, since they are parts of this vicious circle; 
 md as no great ends are answered by the men, there is 
 lothing noble in the arts by which they are maintained. Nay, 
 ;hey have made the experiment, and found that, from the 
 iberal professions to the coarsest manual labor, and from 
 ;he courtesies of the academy and the college to the con- 
 tentions of the cotillon-room and the morning caU, there is 
 L spirit of cowardly compromise and seeming, which in- 
 imates a frightful skepticism, a life without love, and an 
 ictivity without an aim. 
 Unless the action is necessary, unless it is adequate, 
 
354 THE TRANSCENDENTALIST 
 
 I do not wish to perform it. I do not wish to do one thing 
 but once. I do not love routine. Once possessed of the 
 principle," it is equally easy to make four or forty thousand 
 apphcations of it. A great man will be content to have 
 indicated in any the slightest manner his perception of the 
 reigning Tdea of his time, and will leave to those who like it 
 the" multiplication of examples. When he has hit the white, 
 the rest may shatter the target. Everything admonishes 
 us how needlessly long life is. Every moment of a hero so 
 raises and cheers us, that a twelvemonth is an age. All that 
 the brave Xanthus brings home from his wars, is the recol- 
 lection that, at the storming of Samos, ''in the heat of the 
 battle Pericles smiled on me, and passed on to another 
 detachment." It is the quahty of the moment, not the 
 number of days, of events, or of actors, that imports. 
 
 New, we confess, and by no means happy, is our condition: ; 
 if you' want the aid of our labor, we ourselves stand in, 
 greater want of the labor. We are miserable with inaction.: 
 We perish of rest and rust: but we do not like your work. 
 'Then," says the world, ''show me your own." 
 "We have none." 
 
 "What will you do, then?" cries the world. 
 "We will wait." 
 
 "How long?" „ 
 
 "Until the Universe rises up and calls us to work. 
 "But whilst you wait, you grow old and useless." 
 "Be it so: I can sit in a corner and perish, (as you call 
 it,) but I will not move until I have the highest command. 
 If no call should come for years, for centuries, then I know 
 that the want of the Universe is the attestation of faith by 
 my abstinence. Your virtuous projects, so called, do not 
 cheer me. I know that which shall come will cheer me. li 
 I cannot' work, at least I need not lie. All that is clearly 
 due to-day is not to lie. In other places, other men havf 
 encountered sharp trials, and have behaved themselves well 
 The martyrs were sawn asunder, or hung alive on meat- 
 hooks. Cannot we screw our courage to patience and truth 
 and without complaint, or even with good-humor, awai1 
 our turn of action in the Infinite Counsels?" 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTALIST 355 
 
 But, to come a little closer to the secret of these persons, 
 we must say, that to them it seems a very easy matter to 
 answer the objections of the man of the world, but not so 
 easy to dispose of the doubts and objections that occur to 
 themselves. They are exercised in their own spirit with 
 queries, which acquaint them with all adversity, and with 
 the trials of the bravest heroes. When I asked them con- 
 cerning their private experiencey they answered somewhat in 
 this wise: It is not to be denied that there must be some 
 wide difference between my faith and other faith; and mine 
 is a certain brief experience, which surprised me in the 
 highway or in the market, in some place, at some time, — 
 whether in the body or out of the body, God knoweth, — 
 and made me aware that I had played the fool with fools 
 all this time, but that law existed for me and for all; that 
 to me belong trust, a child's trust and obedience, and the 
 worship of ideas, and I should never be fool more. Well 
 in the space of an hour, probably, I was let down from this 
 height ; I was at my old tricks, the selfish member of a selfish 
 society. My life is superficial, takes no root in the deep 
 world; I ask, When shall I die, and be relieved of the re- 
 sponsibility of seeing an Universe which I do not use? I 
 wish to exchange this flash-of-lightning faith for continuous 
 day-light, this fever-glow for a benign climate. 
 
 These two states of thought diverge every moment, and 
 stand in wild contrast. To him who looks at his hfe from 
 these moments of illumination, it will seem that he skulks 
 and plays a mean, shiftless, and subaltern part in the world. 
 That is to be done which he has not skill to do, or to be 
 said which others can say better, and he lies by, or occupies 
 his hands with some plaything, until his hour comes again. 
 Much of our reading, much of our labor, seems mere waiting : 
 it was not that we were born for. Any other could do it as 
 well, or better. So little skill enters into these works, so 
 little do they mix with the divine hfe, that it really signifies 
 little what we do, whether we turn a grindstone, or ride, or 
 run, or make fortunes, or govern the state. The worst 
 feature of this double consciousness is, that the two lives, 
 of the understanding and of the soul, which we lead, really 
 
356 THE TRANSCENDENTALIST 
 
 show very little relation to each other, never meet and 
 measure each other: one prevails now, all buzz and din, and 
 the other prevails then, all infinitude and paradise; and, with 
 the progress of life, the two discover no greater disposition 
 to reconcile themselves. Yet, what is my faith? What am 
 I? What but a thought of serenity and independence, an 
 abode in the deep blue sky ? Presently the clouds shut down 
 again; yet we retain the belief that this petty web we weave 
 will at last be overshot and reticulated with veins of the 
 blue, and that the moments will characterize the days. 
 Patience, then, is for us, is it not? Patience and still 
 patience. When we pass, as presently we shall, into some 
 new infinitude, out of this Iceland of negations, if will 
 please us to reflect that, though we had few virtues or 
 consolations, we bore with our indigence, nor once strove 
 to repair it with hypocrisy or false heat of any kind. 
 
 But this class are not suihciently characterized, if we omit 
 to add that they are lovers and worshipers of Beauty. In 
 the eternal trinity of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, each in 
 its perfecti*on including the three, they prefer to make Beauty 
 the sign and head. Something of the same taste is obser- 
 vable in all the moral movements of the time, in the re- 
 ligious and benevolent enterprises. They have a liberal, even 
 an aesthetic spirit. A reference to Beauty in action sounds, 
 to be sure, a little hollow and ridiculous in the ears of the 
 old church. In politics, it has often sufficed, when they 
 treated of justice, if they kept the bounds of selfish calcula- 
 tion. If they granted restitution, it was prudence which 
 granted it. But the justice which is now claimed for the 
 black, and the pauper, and the drunkard is for Beauty, — 
 is for a necessity to the soul of the agent, not of the bene- 
 ficiary. I say, this is the tendency, not yet the realization. 
 Our virtue totters and trips, does not yet walk firmly. Its 
 representatives are austere; they preach and denounce; their 
 rectitude is not yet a grace. They are still liable to that 
 slight taint of burlesque which, in our strange world, attaches 
 to the zealot. A saint should be as dear as the apple of the 
 eye. Yet we are tempted to smile, and we flee from the 
 working to the speculative reformer, to escape that same 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTALIST 357 
 
 slight ridicule. Alas for these days of derision and criticism! 
 We call the Beautiful the highest, because it appears to 
 us the golden mean, escaping the dowdiness of the good, and 
 the heartlessness of the true. — They are lovers of nature 
 also, and find an indemnity in the inviolable order of the 
 world for the violated order and grace of man. 
 
 There is, no doubt, a great deal of well-founded objection 
 to be spoken or felt against the sayings and doings of this 
 class, some of whose traits we have selected; no doubt, they 
 will lay themselves open to criticism and to lampoons, and 
 as ridiculous stories will be to be told of them as of any. 
 There will be cant and pretension; there will be subtilty and 
 moonshine. These persons are of unequal strength, and do 
 not all prosper. They complain that everything around 
 them must be denied; and if feeble, it takes all their strength 
 to deny, before they can begin to lead their own life. Grave 
 seniors insist on their respect to this institution, and that 
 usage; to an obsolete history; to some vocation, or college, 
 or etiquette, or beneficiary, or charity, or morning or even- 
 ing call, which they resist, as what does not concern them. 
 But it costs such sleepless nights, alienations and misgivings, 
 — they have so many moods about it; — these old guardians 
 never change their minds; they have but one mood on their 
 subject, namely, that Antony is very perverse, — that it is 
 quite as much as Antony can do, to assert his rights, abstain 
 from what he thinks foolish, and keep his temper. He can 
 not help the reaction of this injustice in his own mind. He 
 is braced-up and stilted; all freedom and flowing genius, 
 all sallies of wit and frolic nature are quite out of the ques- 
 tion; it is well if he can keep from lying, injustice, and 
 suicide. This is no time for gayety and grace. His strength 
 and spirits are wasted in rejection. But the strong spirits 
 overpower those around them without effort. Their 
 thought and emotion comes in like a flood, quite withdraws 
 them from all notice of these carping critics; they surrender 
 themselves with glad heart to the heavenly guide, and only 
 by implication reject the clamorous nonsense of the hour. 
 Grave serious talk to the deaf, — church and old book 
 mumble and ritualize to an unheeding, preoccupied and 
 
358 THE TRANSCENDENTALIST 
 
 advancing mind, and thus they by happiness of greater 
 momentum lose no time, but take the right road at first. 
 
 But all these of whom I speak are not proficients; they 
 are novices; they only show the road in which man should 
 travel, when the soul has greater health and prowess. Yet 
 let them feel the dignity of their charge, and deserve a 
 larger power. Their heart is the ark in which the fire is 
 concealed, which shall burn in a broader and universal flame. 
 Let them obey the Genius then most when his impulse is 
 wildest; then most when he seems to lead to uninhabitable 
 deserts of thought and life; for the path which the hero 
 travels alone is the highway of health and benefit to man- 
 kind. What is the privilege and nobiUty of our nature, but 
 its persistency, through its power to attach itself to what 
 is permanent ? 
 
 Society also has its duties in reference to this class, and 
 must behold them with what charity it can. Possibly 
 some benefit may yet accrue from them to the state. In 
 our Mechanics' Fair, there must be not only bridges, ploughs, 
 carpenter's planes, and baking troughs, but also some few 
 finer instruments, — raingauges, thermometers, and tele- 
 scopes; and in society, besides farmers, sailors, and weavers, 
 there must be a few persons of purer fire kept specially as 
 gauges and meters of character; persons of a fine, detecting 
 instinct, who betray the smallest accumulations of wit and 
 feeling in the bystander. Perhaps too there might be room 
 for the exciters and monitors; collectors of the heavenly 
 spark with power to convey the electricity to others. Or, 
 as the storm-tossed vessel at sea speaks the frigate or "line 
 packet" to learn its longitude, so it may not be without its 
 advantage that we should now and then encounter rare and 
 gifted men, to compare the points of our spiritual compass, 
 and verify our bearings from superior chronometers. 
 
 Amidst the downward tendency and proneness of things, 
 when every voice is raised for a new road or another statute, 
 or a subscription of stock, for an improvement in dress, or in 
 dentistry, for a new house or a larger business, for a political 
 party, or the division of an estate, — will you not tolerate one 
 or two solitary voices in the land, speaking for thoughts 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTALIST 359 
 
 and principles not marketable or perishable? Soon these 
 improvements and mechanical inventions will be superseded; 
 these modes of living lost out of memory ; these cities rotted, 
 ruined by war, by new inventions, by new seats of trade, or 
 the geologic changes: — all gone, like the shells which sprinkle 
 the sea-beach with a white colony to-day, forever renewed to 
 be forever destroyed. But the thoughts which these few 
 hermits strove to proclaim by silence, as well as by speech, 
 not only by what they did, but by what they forbore to do, 
 shall abide in beauty and strength to reorganize themselves 
 in nature, to invest themselves anew in other, perhaps 
 higher endowed and happier mixed clay than ours, in fuller 
 union with the surrounding system. 
 
XIX 
 
 MONTAIGNE; OR, THE SKEPTIC. 
 
 Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the 
 other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance 
 of one of these two sides, to find the other; given the upper, , 
 to find the under side. Nothing so thin, but has these two 
 faces; and, when the observer has seen the obverse, he turns 
 it over to see the reverse. 
 
 Life is a pitching of this penny, — heads or tails. We 
 never tire of this game, because there is still a slight shudder 
 of astonishment at the exhibition of the other face, at the 
 contrast of the two faces. A man is flushed with success, 
 and bethinks himself what this good luck signifies. He 
 drives his bargain in the street; but it occurs, that he also 
 is bought and sold. He sees the beauty of a human face, 
 and searches the cause of that beaut j^, which must be more 
 beautiful. He builds his fortunes, maintains the laws, 
 cherishes his children; but he asks himself, why? and where- 
 to? This head and this tail are called, in the language of 
 philosophy. Infinite and Finite; Relative and Absolute; 
 Apparent and Real; and many fine names beside. 
 
 Each man is born with a predisposition to one or the 
 other of these sides of nature; and it will easily happen that 
 men will be found devoted to one or the other. One class 
 has the perception of difference, and is conversant with facts 
 and surfaces; cities and persons; and the bringing certain 
 things to pass; — the men of talent and action. Another 
 class have the perception of identity, and are men of faith 
 and philosophy, men of genius. 
 
 Each of these riders drives too fast. Plotinus believes 
 only in philosophers; Fenelon, in saints; Pindar and Byron, 
 in poets. Read the haughty language in which Plato and the 
 
 360 
 
MONTAIGNE: OR, THE SKEPTIC 361 
 
 Platonists speak of all men who are not devoted to their 
 own shining abstractions: other men are rats and mice. The 
 hterary class is usually proud and exclusive. The corre- 
 spondence of Pope and Swift describes mankind around them 
 as monsters; and that of Goethe and Schiller, in our own 
 time, is scarcely more kind. 
 
 It is easy to see how this arrogance comes. The genius 
 is a genius by the first look he casts on any object. Is his 
 eye creative? Does he not rest in angles and colors, but 
 beholds the design, — he will presently undervalue the actual 
 object. In powerful moments, his thought has dissolved 
 the works of art and nature into their causes, so that the 
 works appear heavy and faulty. He has a conception of 
 beauty which the sculptor cannot embody. Picture, statue, 
 temple, railroad, steam-engine, existed first in an artist's 
 mind, without flaw, mistake, or friction, which impair the 
 executed models. So did the church, the state, college, court, 
 social circle, and all the institutions. It is not strange that 
 these men, remembering what they have seen and hoped of 
 ideas, should affirm disdainfully the superiority of ideas. 
 Having at some time seen that the happy soul will carry all 
 the arts in power, they say. Why cumber ourselves with 
 superfluous realizations? and, like dreaming beggars, they 
 assume to speak and act as if these values were already sub- 
 stantiated. 
 
 On the other part, the men of toil and trade and luxury, — 
 the animal world, including the animal in the philosopher 
 and poet also, — and the practical world, including the pain- 
 ful drudgeries which are never excused to philosopher or 
 poet any more than to the rest, — weigh heavily on the other 
 side. The trade in our streets believes in no metaphysical 
 causes, thinks nothing of the force which necessitated traders 
 and a trading planet to exist: no, but sticks to cotton, 
 sugar, wool, and salt. The ward meetings, on election days, 
 are not softened by any misgiving of the value of these bal- 
 lotings. Hot life is streaming in a single direction. To the 
 men of this world, to the animal strength and spirits, to the 
 men of practical • power, whilst immersed in it, the man of 
 ideas appears out of hjs reason. They alone have reason. 
 
362 MONTAIGNE: OR, THE SKEPTIC 
 
 Things always bring their own philosophy with them, that 
 is, prudence. No man acquires property without acquiring 
 with it a httle arithmetic, also. In England, the richest 
 country that ever existed, property stands for more, com- 
 pared with personal ability, than in any other. After din- 
 ner, a man believes less, denies more : verities have lost some 
 charm. After dinner, arithmetic is the only science: ideas 
 are disturbing, incendiary, follies of young men, repudiated 
 by the solid portion of society: and a man comes to be 
 valued by his athletic and animal qualities. Spence relates, 
 that Mr. Pope was with Sir Godfrey Kneller, one day, when 
 his nephew, a Guinea trader, came in. "Nephew," said Sir 
 Godfrey, "you have the honor of seeing the two greatest 
 men in the world." "I don't know how great men you may 
 be," said the Guinea man, "but I don't like your looks. I 
 have often bought a man much better than both of you, all 
 muscles and bones, for ten guineas." Thus, the men of the 
 senses revenge themselvs on the professors, and repay scorn 
 for scorn. The first had leaped to conclusions not yet ripe, 
 and say more than is true; the others make themselves 
 merry with the philosopher, and weigh man by the pound. — 
 They believe that mustard bites the tongue, that pepper 
 is hot, friction-matches are incendiary, revolvers to be 
 avoided, and suspenders hold up pantaloons; that there is 
 much sentiment in a chest of tea; and a man will be elo- 
 quent, if you give him good wine. Are you tender and 
 scrupulous, — you must eat more mince-pie. They hold that 
 Luther had milk in him when he said, 
 
 "Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weib, und Gesang 
 Der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang;" 
 
 and when he advised a young scholar perplexed with 
 fore-ordination and free-will, to get well drunk. "The 
 nerves," says Cabanis, "they are the man." My neighbor, a 
 jolly farmer, in the tavern bar-room, thinks that the use of 
 money is sure and speedy spending. "For his part," he 
 says, "he puts his down his neck, and gets the good of it." 
 The inconvenience of this way of thinking is, that it runs 
 into indifferentism and then into disgust. Life is eating us 
 
MONTAIGNE: OR, THE SKEPTIC 363 
 
 up. We shall be fables presently. Keep cool: it will be 
 all one a hundred years hence. Life's well enough; but we 
 shall be glad to get out of it, and they will all be glad to have 
 us. Why should we fret and drudge? Our meat will taste 
 to-morrow as it did yesterday, and we may at last have had 
 enough of it. "Ah," said my languid gentleman at Oxford, 
 "there's nothing new or true, — and no matter." 
 
 With a little more bitterness, the cynic moans : our life is 
 like an ass led to market by a bundle of hay being carried 
 before him: he sees nothing but the bundle of hay. "There 
 is so much trouble in coming into the world," said Lord 
 Bolingbroke, "and so much more, as well as meanness, in 
 going out of it, that 'tis hardly worth while to be here at 
 all." I knew a philosopher of this kidney, who was accus- 
 tomed briefly to sum up his experience of human nature in 
 saying, "Mankind is a damned rascal:" and the natural 
 corollary is pretty sure to follow, — "The world lives by 
 humbug, and so will I." 
 
 The abstractionist and the materialist thus mutually 
 exasperating each other, and the scoffer expressing the 
 worst of materialism, there arises a third party to occupy 
 the middle ground between these two, the skeptic, namely. 
 He finds both wrong by being in extremes. He labors to 
 plant his feet, to be the beam of the balance. He will not go 
 beyond his card. He sees the one-sidedness of these men of 
 the street; he will not be a Gibeonite; he stands for the in- 
 tellectual faculties, a cool head, and whatever serves to keep 
 it cool : no unadvised industry, no unrewarded self-devotion, 
 no loss of the brains in toil. Am Ian ox, or a dray? — You are 
 both in extremes, he says. You that will have all solid, and 
 a world of pig-lead, deceive yourselves grossly. You beheve 
 yourselves rooted and grounded on adamant; and yet, if 
 we uncover the last facts of our knowledge, you are spinning 
 like bubbles in a river, you know not whither or whence, 
 and you are bottomed and capped and wrapped in delusions. 
 
 Neither will he be betrayed to a book, and wrapped in a 
 gown. The studious class are their own victims: they are 
 thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the 
 night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption, — 
 
364 MONTAIGNE: OR, THE SKEPTIC 
 
 pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism. If you come neai 
 them, and see what conceits they entertain,— they an 
 abstractionists, and spend their days and nights in dreamin^ 
 some dreams; in expecting the homage of society to some pre''- 
 cious scheme built on a truth, but destitute of proportion 
 m Its presentment, of justness in its application, and of,, 
 all energy of will in the schemer to embody and vitalize it:! 
 But I see plainly, he says, that I cannot see. I knoJ 
 that human strength is not in extremes, but in avoichng 
 extremes. I, at least, will shun the weakness of philoso-J 
 phizmg beyond my depth. What is the use of pretending^ 
 to powers we have not? What is the use of pretending toi 
 assurances we have not, respecting the other life? Why\x- 
 aggerate the power of virtue? Why be an angel before your 
 time? These strings, wound up too high, will snap. If 
 there is a wish for immortality, and no evidence, why not 
 say just that? If there are conflicting evidences, why not 
 state them? If there is not ground for a candid thinker 
 to make up his mind, yea or nay,— why not suspend the 
 judgment? I weary of these dogmatizers. I tire of these 
 hacks of routine, who deny the dogmas. I neither aflirm 
 nor deny. I stand here to try the case. I am here to con- 
 sider, o-KCTTTctv, to consider how it is. I will try to keep the 
 balance true. Of what use to take the chair, and glibly 
 rattle off theories of societies, religion, and nature, when I 
 know that practical objections lie in the way, insurmountable 
 by me and by my mates? Why so talkative in public, when 
 each of my neighbors can pin me to my seat by arguments I 
 cannot refute? Why pretend that life is so simple a game, 
 when we know how subtle and elusive the Proteus is? Why 
 think to shut up all things in your narrow coop, when we 
 know there are not one or two only, but ten, twenty, a 
 thousand things, and unlike? Why fancy that you have 
 all the truth in your keeping? There is much to say on 
 all sides. 
 
 Who shall forbid a wise skepticism, seeing that there is 
 no practical question on which any thing more than an 
 approximate solution can be had? Is not marriage an open 
 question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world. 
 
MONTAIGNE: OR, TPIE SKEPTIC 365 
 
 that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such 
 as are out wish to get in? And the reply of Socrates, to 
 him who asked whether he should choose a wife, still remains 
 reasonable, "that, whether he should choose one or not, he 
 would repent it." Is not the state a question? All so- 
 ciety is divided in opinion on the subject of the state. No- 
 body loves it; great numbers dislike it, and suffer con- 
 scientious scruples to allegiance: and the only defence set 
 up, is, the fear of doing worse in disorganizing. Is it 
 otherwise with the church? Or, to put any of the questions 
 which touch mankind nearest, — shall the young man aim 
 at a leading part in law, in politics, in trade ? It will not be 
 pretended that a success in either of these kinds is quite 
 coincident with what is best and inmost in his mind. Shall 
 he, then, cutting the stays that hold him fast to the social 
 state, put out to sea with no guidance but his genius ? There 
 is much to say on both sides. Remember the open question 
 between the present order of "competition," and the friends 
 of "attractive and associated labor." The generous minds 
 embrace the proposition of labor shared by all ; it is the only 
 honesty; nothing else is safe. It is from the poor man's 
 hut alone, that strength and virtue come: and yet, on the 
 other side, it is alleged that labor impairs the form, and 
 breaks the spirit of man, and the laborers cry unanimously, 
 "We have no thoughts." Culture, how indispensable! I 
 cannot forgive you the want of accomplishment; and yet, 
 culture will instantly destroy that chiefest beauty of spon- 
 taneousness. Excellent is culture for a savage; but once let 
 him read in the book, and he is no longer able not to 
 think of Plutarch's heroes. In short, since true fortitude of 
 understanding consists "in not letting what we know be 
 embarrassed by what we do not know," we ought to secure 
 those advantages which we can command, and not risk them 
 by clutching after the airy and unattainable. Come, no 
 chimeras! Let us go abroad, let us mix in affairs; let us 
 learn, and get, and have, and climb. "Men are a sort of 
 moving plants, and, like trees, receive a great part of their 
 nourishment from the air. If they keep too much at home, 
 they pine." Let us have a robust, manly life, let us know 
 
366 MONTAIGNE: OR, THE SKEPTIC 
 
 what we know, for certain; what we have, let it be sohd, 
 and seasonable, and our own. A world in the hand is worth 
 two in the bush. Let us have to do with real men and 
 women, and not with skipping ghosts. 
 
 This, then, is the right ground of the skeptic,— this oi 
 consideration, of self-containing; not at all of unbelief; not 
 at all of universal denying, nor of universal doubting,— 
 doubting even that he doubts; least of all, of scoffing and 
 profligate jeering at all that is stable and good. These are 
 no more his moods than are those of religion and phil- 
 osophy. He is the considerer, the prudent, taking in sail 
 counting stock, husbanding his means, beheving that a mar 
 has too many enemies, than that he can afford to be his own; 
 that we cannot give ourselves too many advantages, in thif 
 unequal conflict, with powers so vast and unweariable rangec 
 on one side, and this httle, conceited, vulnerable popinjay 
 that a man is, bobbing up and down into every danger, on th( 
 other. It is a position taken up for better defence, as o 
 more safety, and one that can be maintained; and it is one 
 of more opportunity and range : as, when we build a house- 
 the rule is, to set it not too high nor too low, under the wind 
 but out of the dirt. 
 
 The philosophy we want is one of fluxions and mobility 
 The Spartan and Stoic schemes are too stark and stiff fo, 
 our occasion. A theory of Saint John, and of non-resistance 
 seems, on the other hand, too thin and aerial. We wan 
 some coat woven of elastic steel, stout as the first, anc 
 limber as the second. We want a ship in these billows w- 
 inhabit. An angular, dogmatic house would be rent to chip 
 and sphnters, in this storm of many elements. No, it mus 
 be tight, and fit to the form of man, to live at all; as . 
 shell is the architecture of a house founded on the sea. Th 
 soul of man must be the type of our scheme, just as th\ 
 body of man is the type after which a dwelling-house i| 
 built. Adaptiveness is the peculiarity of human nature. W 
 are golden averages, volitant stabihties, compensated o 
 periodic errors, houses founded on the sea. The wise skepti 
 wishes to have a near view of the best game, and the chie 
 players; what is best in the planet; art and nature, place 
 
MONTAIGNE: OR, THE SKEPTIC 367 
 
 and events, but mainly men. Every thing that is excellent 
 in mankind, — a form of grace, an arm of iron, lips of per- 
 suasion, a brain of resources, every one skilful to play and 
 win, — he will see and judge. 
 
 . The terms of admission to this spectacle, are, that he 
 have a certain solid and intelligible way of living of his own ; 
 some method of answering the inevitable needs of human 
 life; proof that he has played with skill and success; that 
 he has evinced the temper, stoutness, and the range of quali- 
 ties which, among his contemporaries and countrymen, en- 
 title him to fellowship and trust. For, the secrets of life 
 are not shown except to sympathy and likeness. Men do 
 not confide themselves to boys, or coxcombs, or pedants, 
 but to their peers. Some wise limitation, as the modern 
 phrase is; some condition between the extremes, and having 
 itself a positive quality; some stark and sufficient man, who 
 is not salt or sugar, but sufficiently related to the world to 
 do justice to Paris or London, and, at the same time, a 
 vigorous and original thinker, whom cities can not overawe, 
 but who uses them, — is the fit person to occupy this ground 
 of speculation. 
 
 These qualities meet in the character of Montaigne. And 
 yet, since the personal regard which I entertain for Mon- 
 taigne may be unduly great, I will, under the shield of this 
 prince of egotists, ofi'er, as an apology for electing him as the 
 representative of skepticism, a word or two to explain how 
 my love began and grew for this admirable gossip. 
 
 A single odd volume of Cotton's translation of the Essays 
 remained to me from my father's hbrary, when a boy. It 
 lay long neglected, until, after many years, when I was 
 newly escaped from college, I read the book, and procured 
 the remaining volumes. I remember the delight and wonder 
 in which I lived with it. It seemed to me as if I had myself 
 written the book, in some former life, so sincerely it spoke 
 to my thought and experience. It happened, when in Paris, 
 in 1833, that, in the cemetery of Pere la Chaise, I came to 
 a tomb of Augustus CoUignon, who died in 1830, aged sixty- 
 eight years, and who, said the monument, "lived to do right, 
 and had formed himself to virtue on the Essays of Mon- 
 
368 MONTAIGNE: OR, THE SKEPTIC 
 
 taigne." Some years later, I became acquainted with an 
 accomplished English poet, John Sterling; and, in prosecut- 
 ing my correspondence, I found that, from a love of Mon- 
 taigne, he had made a pilgrimage to his chateau, still stand- 
 ing near Castellan, in Perigord, and, after two hundred and 
 fifty years, had copied from the walls of his library the in- 
 scriptions which Montaigne had written there. That Jour- 
 nal of Mr. Sterling's, published in the Westminster Review, 
 Mr. Hazhtt has reprinted in the Prolegomena to his edition 
 of the Essays. I heard with pleasure that one of the newly- 
 discovered autographs of William Shakspeare was in a copy 
 of Florio's translation of Montaigne. It is the only book 
 which we certainly know to have been in the poet's library. 
 And, oddly enough, the duplicate copy of Florio, which the 
 British Museum purchased, with a view of protecting the 
 Shakspeare autograph (as I was informed in the Museum), 
 turned out to have the autograph of Ben Jonson in the fly- 
 leaf. Leigh Hunt relates of Lord Byron, that Montaigne 
 was the only great writer of past times whom he read with 
 avowed satisfaction. Other coincidences, not needful to be 
 mentioned here, concurred to make this old Gascon still 
 new and immortal for me. 
 
 In 1571, on the death of his father, IMontaigne, then thirty- 
 eight years old, retired from the practice of law, at Bordeaux, 
 and settled himself on his estate. Though he had been a 
 man of pleasure, and sometimes a courtier, his studious 
 habits now grew on him, and he loved the compass, staid- 
 ness, and independence, of the country gentleman's life. He 
 took up his economy in good earnest, and made his farms 
 yield the most. Downright and plain-dealing, and abhorring 
 to be deceived or to deceive, he was esteemed in the country 
 for his sense and probity. In the civil wars of the League, 
 which converted every house into a fort, Montaigne kept 
 his gates open, and his house without defence. All parties 
 freely came and went, his courage and honor being univer- 
 sally esteemed. The neighboring lords and gentry brought 
 jewels and papers to him for safe-keeping. Gibbon reckons, 
 in these bigoted times, but two men of liberality in France, — 
 Henry IV. and Montaigne. 
 
MONTAIGNE: OR, THE SKEPTIC 369 
 
 Montaigne is the frankest and honestest of all writers. 
 His French freedom runs into grossness; but he has antici- 
 pated all censures by the bounty of his own confessions. In his 
 times, books were written to one sex only, and almost all 
 were written in Latin; so that, in a humorist, a certain 
 nakedness of statement was permitted, which our manners, 
 of a literature addressed equally to both sexes, do not allow. 
 But, though a biblical plainness, coupled with a most un- 
 canonical levity, may shut his pages to many sensitive 
 readers, yet the offence is superficial. He parades it: he 
 makes the most of it; nobody can think or say worse of 
 him than he does. He pretends to most of the vices; and, 
 if there be any virtue in him, he says, it got in by stealth. 
 There is no man, in his opinion, who has not deserved 
 hanging five or six times; and he pretends no exception in 
 his own behalf. "Five or six as ridiculous stories," too, 
 he says, "can be told of me, as of any man living." But, 
 with all this really superfluous frankness, the opinion of an 
 invincible probity grows into every reader's mind. 
 
 "When I the most strictly and religiously confess myself, 
 I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of 
 vice; and I am afraid that Plato, in his purest virtue (I, 
 who am as sincere and perfect a lover of virtue of that stamp 
 as any other whatever), if he had listened, and laid his ear 
 close to himself, would have heard some jarring sound of 
 human mixture; but faint and remote, and only to be per- 
 ceived by himself." 
 
 Here is an impatience and fastidiousness at color or pre- 
 tence of any kind. He has been in courts so long as to have 
 conceived a furious disgust at appearances; he will indulge 
 himself with a little cursing and swearing; he will talk with 
 sailors and gypsies, use flash and street ballads: he has 
 stayed in-doors till he is deadly sick : he will to the open air, 
 though it rain bullets. He has seen too much of gentle- 
 men of the long robe, until he wishes for cannibals; and is 
 so nervous, by factitious life, that he thinks, the more bar- 
 barous man is, the better he is. He likes his saddle. You 
 may read theology, and grammar, and metaphysics else- 
 where. Whatever you get here, shall smack of the earth and 
 
370 MONTAIGNE: OR, THE SKEPTIC 
 
 of real life, sweet, or smart, or stinging. He makes no 
 hesitation to entertain you with the records of his disease; 
 and his journey to Italy is quite full of that matter. He 
 took and kept this position of equilibrium. Over his name, 
 he drew an emblematic pair of scales, and wrote Que scais • 
 je? under it. As I look at his effigy opposite the title-page, , 
 I seem to hear him say, "You may play old Poz, if you will; 
 you may rail and exaggerate, — I stand here for truth, and 
 will not, for all the states, and churches, and revenues, and 
 personal reputations of Europe, overstate the dry fact, as 
 I see it; I will rather mumble and prose about what I cer- 
 tainly know, — my house and barns; my father, my wife, 
 and my tenants; my old lean bald pate; mj^ knives and 
 forks; what meats I eat, and what drinks I prefer; and a 
 hundred straws just as ridiculous, — than I will write, with a 
 fine crow-quill, a fine romance. I like gray days, and 
 autumn and winter weather. I am gray and autumnal my- 
 self, and think an undress, and old shoes that do not pinch 
 my feet, and old friends who do not constrain me, and plain 
 topics where I do not need to strain myself and pump my 
 brains, the most suitable. Our condition as men is risky 
 and ticklish enough." One can not be sure of himself and 
 his fortune an hour, but he may be whisked off into some 
 pitiable or ridiculous plight. Why should I vapor and play 
 the philosopher, instead of ballasting, the best I can, this 
 dancing balloon? So, at least, I live within compass, keep 
 myself ready for action, and can shoot the gulf, at last, 
 with decency. If there be anything farcical in such a life, 
 the blame is not mine: let it lie at fate's and nature's door." 
 
 The Essays, therefore, are an entertaining soliloquy'- on 
 every random topic that comes into his head; treating 
 every thing without ceremony, yet with masculine sense. 
 There have been men with deeper insight; but, one would 
 say, never a man with such abundance of thoughts: he is 
 never dull, never insincere, and has the genius to make the 
 reader care f ^ all that he cares for. 
 
 The sincerity and marrow of the man reaches to his sen- 
 tences. I know not any where the book that seems less 
 written. It is the language of conversation transferred to 
 
MONTAIGNE: OR, THE SKEPTIC 371 
 
 a book. Cut these words, and they would bleed: they are 
 vascular and alive. One has the same pleasure in it that 
 we have in listening to the necessary speech of men about 
 their work, when any unusual circumstance gives momentary 
 importance to the dialogue. For blacksmiths and teamsters 
 do not trip in their speech; it is a shower of bullets. It is 
 Cambridge men who correct themselves, and begin again 
 at every half sentence, and, moreover, will pun, and refine 
 too much, and swerve from the matter to the ex- 
 pression. Montaigne talks with shrewdness, knows the 
 world, and books, and himself, and uses the positive degree: 
 never shrieks, or protests, or praj^s: no weakness, no con- 
 vulsion, no superlative; does not wish to jump out of his 
 skin, or play any antics, or annihilate space or time; but is 
 stout and solid; tastes every moment of the day; likes 
 pain, because it makes him feel himself, and realize things; 
 as we pinch ourselves to know that we are awake. He keeps 
 the plain; he rarely mounts or sinks; likes to feel solid 
 ground, and the stones underneath. His writing has no 
 enthusiasms, no aspiration; contented, self-respecting, and 
 keeping the middle of the road. There is but one exception, 
 — in his love for Socrates. In speaking of him, for once his 
 cheek flushes, and his style rises to passion. 
 
 Montaigne died of a quinsy, at the age of sixty, in 1592. 
 When he came to die, he caused a mass to be celebrated in 
 his chamber. At the age of thirty-three, he had been mar- 
 ried. "But," he says, "might I have had my own will, I 
 would not have married Wisdom herself, if she would ha^^e 
 had me: but 'tis to much purpose to evade it, the common 
 custom and use of life will have it so. Most of my actions 
 are guided by examT:)le, not choice." In the hour of death 
 he gave the same weight to custom. Que scais jef What 
 do I know. 
 
 This book of Montaigne the world has endorsed, by trans- 
 lating it into all tongues, and printing seventy-fi^'c editions 
 of it in Europe: and that, too, a circulation somewhat 
 chosen, namely, among courtiers, soldiers, princes, men of 
 the world, and men of wit and generosity. 
 
 Shall we say that Montaigne has spoken wisely, and given 
 
372 MONTAIGNE: OR, THE SKEPTIC 
 
 the right and permanent expression of the human mind, on 
 the conduct of hfe? 
 
 We are natural behevers. Truth, or the connection be- 
 tween cause and effect, alone interests us. We are persuaded 
 that a thread runs through all things: all worlds are strung 
 on it, as beads: and men, and events, and hfe, come to us, 
 only because of that thread: they pass and repass, only 
 that we may know the direction and continuity of that line. 
 A book or statement which goes to show that there is no line, 
 but random and chaos, a calamity out of nothing, a pros- 
 perity and no account of it, a hero born from a fool, a fool 
 from a hero, — dispirits us. Seen or unseen, we believe the 
 tie exists. Talent makes counterfeit ties; genius finds the real 
 ones. We hearken to the man of science, because we antic- 
 ipate the sequence in natural phenomena which he un- 
 covers. We love whatever affirms, connects, preserves; and 
 dislike what scatters or pulls down. One man appears 
 whose nature is to all men's eyes conserving and construc- 
 tive: his presence supposes a well-ordered society, agri- 
 culture, trade, large institutions, and empire. If these did 
 not exist, they would begin to exist through his endeavors. 
 Therefore, he cheers and comforts men, who feel all this in 
 him very readily. The nonconformist and the rebel say all 
 manner of unanswerable things against the existing repub- 
 lic, but discover to our sense no plan of house or state of their 
 own. Therefore, though the town and state, and way of living, 
 which our counsellor contemplated, might be a very modest 
 or musty prosperity, yet men rightly go for him, and reject 
 tie reformer, so long as he comes only with axe and crowbar. 
 
 But though we are natural conservers and causationists, 
 and reject a sour, dumpish unbelief, the skeptical class, 
 which Montaigne represents, have reason, and every man, 
 at some time, belongs to it. Every superior mind will pass 
 Ihrough this domain of equilibration, — I should rather say, 
 will know how to avail himself of the checks and balances 
 in nature, as a natural weapon against the exaggeration and 
 formalism of bigots and blockheads. 
 
 Skepticism is the attitude assumed by the student in re- 
 
MONTAIGNE: OR, THE SKEPTIC 373 
 
 lation to the particulars which society adores, but which 
 he sees to be reverend only in their tendency and spirit. 
 The ground occupied by the skeptic is the vestibule of the 
 temple. Society does not like to have any breath of ques- 
 tion blown on the existing order. But the interrogation of 
 custom at all points is an inevitable stage in the growth of 
 every superior mind, and is the evidence of its perception of 
 the flowing power which remains itself in all changes. 
 
 The superior mind will find itself equally at odds with 
 the evils of society, and with the projects that are offered 
 to reheve them. The wise skeptic is a bad citizen; no con- 
 servative; he sees the selfishness of property, and the drow- 
 siness of institutions. But neither is he fit to work with any 
 democratic party that ever was constituted; for parties 
 wish every one committed, and he penetrates the popular 
 patriotism. His politics are those of the "Soul's Errand" 
 of Sir Walter Raleigh; or of Krishna, in the Bhagavat, 
 "There is none who is worthy of my love or hatred;" while 
 he sentences law, physic, divinity, commerce, and custom. 
 He is a reformer : yet he is no better member of the philan- 
 thropic association. It turns out that he is not the cham- 
 pion of the operative, the pauper, the prisoner, the slave. 
 It stands in his mind, that our life in this world is not of 
 quite so easy interpretation as churches and school-books 
 say. He does not wish to take ground against these benev- 
 olences, to play the part of devil's attorney, and blazon 
 every doubt and sneer that darkens the sun for him. But 
 he says, There are doubts. 
 
 I mean to use the occasion, and celebrate the calendar-day 
 of our Saint Michel de Montaigne, by counting and de- 
 scribing these doubts or negations. I wish to ferret them 
 out of their holes, and sun them a little. We must do with 
 them as the police do with old rogues, who are shown up 
 to the pubhc at the marshall's office. They will never be 
 so formidable, when once they have been identified and 
 registered. But I mean honestly by them, — that justice shall 
 be done to their terrors. I shall not take Sunday objections, 
 made up on purpose to be put down. I shall take the worst 
 I can find, whether I can dispose of them or thev of me. 
 
374 MONTAIGNE: OR, THE SKEPTIC 
 
 I do not press the skepticism of the materiaUst. I 
 know, the quadruped opinion will not prevail. 'Tis of no 
 importance what bats and oxen think. The first dangerous 
 symptom I report, is, the levity of intellect; as if it were 
 fatal to earnestness to know much. Knowledge is the know- 
 ing that we can not know. The dull pray; the geniuses are 
 light mockers. How respectable is earnestness on every 
 platform! but intellect kills it. Nay, San Carlo, my subtle 
 and admirable friend, one of the most penetrating of men, 
 finds that all direct ascension, even of lofty piety, leads to 
 this ghastly insight, and sends back the votary orphaned. 
 My astonishing San Carlo thought the lawgivers and saints 
 infected. They found the ark empty; saw, and would not 
 tell; and tried to choke off their approaching followers, by 
 saying, "Action, action, my dear fellows, is for you!" Bad 
 as was to me this detection by San Carlo, this frost in July, 
 this blow from a brick, there was still a worse, namely, the 
 cloy or satiety of the saints. In the mount of vision, ere 
 they have yet risen from their knees, they say, "We dis- 
 cover that this our homage and beatitude is partial and 
 deformed; we must fly for relief to the suspected and re- 
 viled Intellect, to the Understanding, the Mephistopheles, 
 to the gymnastics of talent." 
 
 This is hobgoblin the first; and, though it has been the 
 subject of much elegy, in our nineteenth century, from 
 Byron, Goethe, and other poets of less fame, not to mention 
 many distinguished private observers, — I confess it is not 
 very affecting to my imagination; for it seems to concern 
 the shattering of baby-houses and crockery-shops. What 
 flutters the church of Rome, or of England, or of Geneva, 
 or of Boston, may yet be very far from touching any prin- 
 ciple of faith. I think that the intellect and moral senti- 
 ment are unanimous; and that, though philosophy extir- 
 pates bugbears, yet it supphes the natural checks of vice, 
 and polarity to the soul. I think that the wiser a man is, 
 the m.ore stupendous he finds the natural and moral economy, 
 and lifts himself to a more absolute rehance. 
 
 There is the power of moods, each setting at nought all 
 but its own tissue of facts and beUefs. There is the power 
 
MONTAIGNE: OR, THE SKEPTIC 375 
 
 of complexions, obviously modifying the dispositions and 
 sentiments. The beliefs and unbeliefs appear to be struc- 
 tural; and, as soon as each man attains the poise and 
 vivacity which allow the whole machinery to play, he will 
 not need extreme examples, but will rapidly alternate all 
 opinions in his own life. Our life is March weather, savage 
 and serene in one hour. We go forth austere, dedicated, 
 believing in the iron links of Destiny, and will not turn on 
 our heel to save our life: but a book, or a bust, or only the 
 sound of a name, shoots a spark through the nerves, and 
 we suddenly believe in will : my finger-ring shall be the seal 
 of Solomon: fate is for imbeciles: all is possible to the re- 
 solved mind. Presently, a new experience gives a new turn 
 to our thoughts: common sense resumes its tyranny: we 
 say, "Well, the army, after all, is the gate to fame, manners, 
 and poetry: and, look you, — on the whole, selfishness plants 
 best, prunes best, makes the best commerce, and the best 
 citizen." Are the opinions of a man on right and wrong, 
 on fate and causation, at the mercy of a broken sleep or 
 an indigestion? Is his belief in God and Duty no deeper 
 than a stomach evidence? And what guaranty for the 
 permanence of his opinions? I like not the French celerity, 
 — a new church and state once a week. — This is the second 
 negation; and I shall let it pass for what it will. As far as 
 it asserts rotation of states of mind, I suppose it suggests 
 its own remedy, namely, in the record of larger periods. 
 What is the mean of many states; of all the states? Does 
 the general voice of ages affirm any principle, or is no com- 
 munity of sentiment discoverable in chstant times and places. 
 And when it shows the power of self-interest, I accept that 
 as a part of the divine law, and must reconcile it with 
 aspiration the best I can. 
 
 The word Fate, or Destiny, expresses the sense of man- 
 kind, in all ages, — that the laws of the world do not always 
 befriend, but often hurt and crush us. Fate, in the shape 
 of Kinde or nature, grows over us like grass. We paint 
 Time with a scythe; Love and Fortune, blind; and Destiny, 
 deaf. We have too little power of resistance against this 
 ferocity which champs us up. What front can we make against 
 
376 MONTAIGNE: OR, THE SKEPTIC 
 
 these unavoidable, victorious, maleficent forces? What can 
 I do against the influence of Race, in my history? What 
 can I do against hereditary and constitutional habits, against 
 scrofula, lymph, impotence? against climate, against bar- 
 barism, in my country? I can reason down or deny every 
 thing, except this perpetual Belly : feed he must and wiU, and 
 I cannot make him respectable. 
 
 But the main resistance which the affirmative impulse 
 finds, and one including all others, is in the doctrine of the 
 Illusionists. There is a painful rumor in circulation, that 
 we have been practised upon in all the principal perform- 
 ances of hfe, and free agency is the emptiest name. We 
 have been sopped and drugged with the air, with food, with 
 woman, with children, with sciences, with events, which 
 leave us exactly where they found us. The mathematics, 
 'tis complained, leave the mind where they find it: so do all 
 sciences; and so do all events and actions. I find a man 
 who has passed through all the sciences, the churl he was; and, 
 through all the offices, learned, civil, and social, can detect 
 the child. We are not the less necessitated to dedicate life 
 to them. In fact, we may come to accept it as the fixed 
 rule and theory of our state of education, that God is a 
 substance, and his method is illusion. The eastern sages 
 owned the goddess Yoganidra, the great illusory energy 
 of Vishnu, by whom, as utter ignorance, the whole world is 
 beguiled. 
 
 Or, shall I state it thus? — The astonishment of life, is, the 
 absence of any appearance of reconciliation between the 
 theory and practice of life. Reason, the prized reahty, the 
 Law, is apprehended, now and then, for a serene and pro- 
 found moment, amidst the hubbub of cares and works which 
 have no direct bearing on it; — is then lost, for months or 
 years, and again found, for an interval, to be lost again. 
 If we compute it in time, we may, in fifty years, have half 
 a dozen reasonable hours. But what are these cares and 
 works the better? A method in the world we do not see, 
 but this parallelism of great and little, which never react on 
 each other, nor discover the smallest tendency to converge. 
 
MONTAIGNE: OR, THE SKEPTIC 377 
 
 Experiences, fortunes, governings, readings, writings are noth- 
 ing to the purpose; as when a man comes into the room, it 
 does not appear whether he has been fed on yams or buffalo, 
 — he has contrived to get so much bone and fibre as he 
 wants, out of rice or out of snow. So vast is the dispro- 
 portion between the sky of law and the pismire of per- 
 formance under it, that, whether he is a man of worth or a 
 sot, is not so great a matter as we say. Shall I add, as one 
 juggle of this enchantment, the stunning non-intercourse 
 law which makes cooperation impossible? The young spirit 
 pants to enter society. But all the ways of culture and 
 greatness lead to soHtary imprisonment. He has been often 
 baulked. He did not expect a sympathy with his thought 
 from the village, but he went with it to the chosen and in- 
 teUigent, and found no entertainment for it, but mere 
 misapprehension, distaste, and scoffing. Men are strangely 
 mistimed and misapphed; and the excellence of each is aa 
 inflamed individualism which separates him more. 
 
 There are these, and more than these diseases of thought, 
 which our ordinary teachers do not attempt to remove. 
 Now shall we, because a good nature inclines us to virtue's 
 side, say, There are no doubts, — and lie for the right? Is 
 life to be led in a brave or in a cowardly manner? and 
 is not the satisfaction of the doubts essential to all man- 
 liness? Is the name of virtue to be a barrier to that which 
 is virtue? Can you not believe that a man of earnest and 
 burly habit may find small good, in tea, essays, and cate- 
 chism, and want a rougher instruction, want men, labor, 
 trade, farming, war, hunger, plenty, love, hatred, doubt, 
 and terror, to make things plain to him; and has he not a 
 right to insist on being convinced in his own way? When 
 he is convinced, he will be worth the pains. 
 
 Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; 
 unbelief, in denying them. Some minds are incapable of 
 skepticism. The doubts they profess to entertain are 
 rather a civility or accommodation to the common discourse 
 of their company. They may well give themselves leave 
 to speculate, for they are secure of a return. Once admitted 
 to the heaven of thought, they see no relapse into night, but 
 
378 MONTAIGNE: OR, THE SKEPTIC 
 
 infinite invitation on the other side. Heaven is within 
 heaven, and sky over sky, and they are encompassed with 
 divinities. Others there are, to whom the heaven is brass, 
 and it shuts down to the surface of the earth. It is a | 
 question of temperament, or of more or less immersion in 
 nature. The last class must needs have a reflex or parasite 
 faith; not a sight of realities, but an instinctive reliance on 
 the seers and believers of realities. The manners and 
 thoughts of believers astonish them, and convince them that 
 these have seen something which is hid from them- 
 selves. But their sensual habit would fix the believer to 
 his last position, whilst he as inevitably advances; and 
 presently the unbehever, for love of belief, burns the 
 believer. 
 
 Great believers are always reckoned infidels, impracticable, 
 fantastic, atheistic, and really men of no account. The 
 spiritualist finds himself driven to express his faith by 
 a series of skepticisms. Charitable souls come with their 
 projects, and ask his cooperation. How can he hesitate? 
 It is the rule of mere comity and courtesy to agree where 
 you can, and to turn your sentence with something aus- 
 picious, and not freezing and sinister. But he is forced to 
 say, "0, these things will be as they must be: what can you 
 do? These particular griefs and crimes are the foliage and 
 fruit of such trees as we see growing. It is vain to complain 
 of the leaf or the berry: cut it off; it will bear another just 
 as bad. You must begin your cure lower down." The 
 generosities of the day prove an intractable element for 
 him. The people's questions are not his; their methods are 
 not his; and, against all the dictates of good nature, he 
 is driven to say, he has no pleasure in them. 
 
 Even the doctrines dear to the hope of man, of the divine 
 Providence, and of the immortality of the soul, his neighbors 
 cannot put the statement so that he shall affirm it. But 
 he denies out of more faith, and not less. He denies out of 
 honesty. He had rather stand charged with the imbecility 
 of skepticism, than with untruth. I believe, he says, in 
 the moral design of the universe; it exists hospitably for 
 the weal of souls; but your dogmas seem to me caricatures: 
 
MONTAIGNE: OR, THE SKEPTIC 379 
 
 why should I make believe them? Will any say, this is 
 cold and infidel? The wise and magnanimous will not say 
 so. They will exult in his far-sighted good-will, that can 
 abandon to the adversary all the ground of tradition and 
 common belief, without losing a jot of strength. It sees 
 to the end of all transgression. George Fox saw "that there 
 was an ocean of darkness and death; but withal, an in- 
 finite ocean of light and love which flowed over that of 
 darkness." 
 
 The final solution in which skepticism is lost is in the 
 moral sentiment, which never forfeits its supremacy. All 
 moods may be safely tried, and their weight allowed to all 
 objections: the moral sentiment as easily outweighs them 
 all, as any one. This is the drop which balances the sea. 
 I play with the miscellany of facts, and take those super- 
 ficial views which we call skepticism; but I know that they 
 will presently appear to me in that order which makes 
 skepticism impossible. A man of thought must feel the 
 thought that is parent of the universe: that the masses of 
 nature do undulate and flow. 
 
 This faith avails to the wliole emergency of life and ob- 
 jects. The world is saturated with deity and with law. He 
 is content with just and unjust, with sots and fools, with 
 the triumph of folly and fraud. He can behold with 
 serenity the yawning gulf between the ambition of man and 
 his power of performance, between the demand and supply 
 of power, which makes the tragedy of all souls. 
 
 Charles Fourier announced that "the attractions of man 
 are proportioned to his destinies"; in other words, that every 
 desire predicts its own satisfaction. Yet, all experience 
 exhibits the reverse of this; the incompetency of power is 
 the universal grief of young and ardent minds. They accuse 
 the divine providence of a certain parsimony. It has shown 
 the heaven and earth to every child, and filled him with a 
 desire for the whole; a desire raging, infinite; a hunger, as 
 of space to be filled with planets; a cry of famine, as of 
 devils for souls. Then for the satisfaction, — to each man is 
 administered a single drop, a bead of dew of vital power 
 per day, — a cup as large as space, and one drop of the water 
 
380 MONTAIGNE: OR, THE SKEPTIC 
 
 of life in it. Each man woke in the morning, with an appetite 
 that could eat the solar system like a cake; a spirit for 
 action and passion without bounds; he could lay his hand 
 on the morning star: he could try conclusions with gravi- 
 tation or chemistry; but, on the first motion to prove his 
 strength — hands, feet, senses, gave way, and would not 
 serve him. He was an emperor deserted by his states, and 
 left to whistle by himself, or thrust into a mob of emperors, 
 all whistling: and still the sirens sang, "The attractions are 
 proportioned to the destinies." In every house, in the 
 heart of each maiden, and of each boy, in the soul of the 
 soaring saint, this chasm is found, — between the largest prom- 
 ise of ideal power, and the shabby experience. 
 
 The expansive nature of truth comes to our succor, elastic, 
 not to be surrounded. Man helps himself by larger gener- 
 ah2;ations. The lesson of life is practically to generalize; 
 to believe what the years and the centuries say against the 
 hours; to resist the usurpation of particulars; to penetrate 
 to their cathohc sense. Things seem to say one thing, and 
 say the reverse. The appearance is immoral; the result 
 is moral. Things seem to tend downward, to justify de- 
 spondency, to promote rogues, to defeat the just; and, by 
 knaves, as by martyrs, the just cause is carried forward. 
 Although knaves win in every political struggle, although 
 society seems to be delivered over from the hands of one set 
 of criminals into the hands of another set of criminals, as 
 fast as the government is changed, and the march of civili- 
 zation is a train of felonies, yet, general ends are somehow 
 answered. We see, now, events forced on, which seem to 
 retard or retrograde the civility of ages. But the world- 
 spirit is a good swimmer, and storms and waves cannot 
 drown him. He snaps his finger at laws: and so, throughout 
 history, heaven seems to affect low and poor means. 
 Through the years and the centuries, through evil agents, 
 through toys and atoms, a great and beneficent tendency 
 irresistibly streams. 
 
 Let a man learn to look for the permanent in the 
 mutable and fleeting; let him learn to bear the disappearance 
 of things he was wont to reverence, without losing his 
 
MONTAIGNE: OR, THE SKEPTIC 381 
 
 reverence; let him learn that he is here, not to work, but to 
 be worked upon; and that, though abyss open under abyss, 
 and opinion displace opinion, all are at last contained in the 
 Eternal cause. — 
 
 "If my bark sink 'tis to another sea.'' 
 
XX 
 
 NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAN OF THE WORLD 
 
 Among the eminent persons of the nineteenth century, 
 Bonaparte is far the best known, and the most powerful; 
 and owes his predominance to the fidehtv '^vii-li ^vbir^' ^^^ 
 e xijre&^se stho tnnn ^f thmii^li^ p^^f^| IHiff, ^^'^ aims of the 
 masses oi active and cultivated men. It is Swedenborg's 
 theory, that every org an is made up of homogeneous par- 
 ticles: oT. as it is sometnnes expressed, every whole is niade 
 of similars; that is, the lungs are com])osed of infinitely 
 small lungs; the liver, of infinitely small livers; the kidney, 
 of little kidneys, &c. Following this analogy, if any man 
 is found to carry with him the power and affections of vast 
 numbers, if Napoleon is France, if Napoleon is Europe, it 
 is because the people whom he sways are little Napoleons. 
 
 In our society, there is a standing antagonism between 
 the conservative and the democratic classes; between those 
 who have made their fortunes, and the young and the poor 
 who have fortunes to make; between the interests of dead 
 labor, — that is, the labor of hands long ago still in the grave, 
 which labor is now entombed in money stocks, or in land 
 and buildings ow^ned by idle capitalists, — and the interests 
 of living labor, which seeks to possess itself of land, and build- 
 ings, and money stocks. The first class is timid, selfish, 
 illiberal, hating innovation, and continually losing numbers 
 by death. The second class is selfish also, encroaching, bold, 
 self-relying, always outnumbering the other, and recruiting 
 its numbers ,'ery hour by births. It desires to keep open 
 every avenue to the competition of all, and to multiply 
 avenues; — the class of business men in America, in England, 
 in France, and throughout Europe; the class of industry 
 and skill. Napolegn is its representative. ^ The instinct of 
 
 ^ 382 
 
NAPOLEON; OR THE MAN OF THE WORLD 383 
 
 active, brave, able men, throughout the middle class every 
 where, has pointed out Napoleon as the inc arnate Jemn^ 
 craj^ He had their virtues, and their vices; above^ll, he 
 "Had their spirit or aim. That tendency is material, pointing 
 at a sensual success, and employing the richest and most 
 various means to that end; conversant with mechanical 
 powers, highly intellectual, widely and accurately learned 
 and skilful, but subordinating all intellectual and spiritual 
 forces into means to a material success. To be the rich man, 
 is the end. "God has granted," says the Koran, "to every 
 people a prophet in its own tongue." Paris, and London 
 and New York, the spirit of commerce, of money, and mate- 
 rial power, were also to have their prophet; and Bonaparte 
 was qualified and sent. 
 
 Every one of the million readers of anecdotes, or memoirs, 
 or hves of Napoleon, dehghts in the page, because he studies 
 in it his own history. Napoleon is thoroughly modern, and, 
 at the highest point of his fortunes, has the very spirit of the 
 newspapers. He is no saint, — to use his own word, "no 
 capuchin," and he is no hero, in the high sense. The man 
 in the street finds in him the qualities and powers of other 
 men in the street. He finds him, like himself, by birth a 
 citizen, who, by very inteUigible merits, arrived at such a 
 commanding position, that he could indulge all those tastes 
 which the common man possesses, but is obliged to conceal 
 and deny: good society, good books, fast travelling, dress, 
 dinners, servants without number, personal weight, the exe- 
 cution of his ideas, the standing in the attitude of a bene- 
 factor to all persons about him, the refined enjoyments of 
 pictures, statues, music, palaces, and conventional honors, — 
 precisely what is agreeable to the heart of every man in the 
 nineteenth century, — this powerful man possessed. 
 
 It is true that a man of Napoleon's truth of adaptation 
 to the mind of the masses around him, becomes not merely 
 representative, but actually a monopoHzer and usurper of 
 other minds. Thus Mirabeau plagiarized every good 
 thought, ever}^ good word, that was spoken in France. Dumont 
 relates, that he sat in the gallery of the Convention, and 
 heard Mirabeau make a speech. It struck Dumont that he 
 
384 NAPOLEON; OR THE MAN OF THE WORLD 
 
 could fit it with a peroration, which he wrote in pencil im- 
 mediately, and showed to Lord Elgin, who sat by him. 
 Lord Elgin approved it, and Dumont, in the evening, showed 
 it to Mirabeau. Mirabeau read it, pronounced it admirable, 
 and declared he would incorporate it into his harangue, to- 
 morrow, to the Assembly. 'Tt is impossible," said Dumont, 
 "as, unfortunately, I have shown it to Lord Elgin." 'Tf you 
 have shown it to Lord Elgin, and to fifty persons beside, I 
 shall still speak it to-morrow:" and he did speak it, with 
 much effect, at the next day's session. For Mirabeau, with 
 his overpowering personality, felt that these things, which 
 his presence inspired, were as much his own, as if he had said 
 them, and that his adoption of them gave them their weight. 
 Much more absolute and centralizing was the successor to 
 Mirabeau's popularity, and to much more than his pre- 
 dominance in France. Lideed, a man of Napoleon's stamp 
 almost ceases to have a private speech and opinion. He is 
 so largely receptive, and is so placed, that he comes to be 
 a bureau for all the intelligence, wit, and power, of the age 
 and country. He gains the battle: he makes the code: he 
 makes the system of weights and measures; he levels the 
 Alps; he builds the road. All distinguished engineers, 
 savans, statists, report to him : so likewise, do all good heads 
 in every kind : he adopts the best measures, sets his stamp on 
 them, and not these alone, but on every happy and memorable 
 expression. Every sentence spoken by Nnnolenn. and ever y 
 liiieof his writmg, deserves readmg, as it is the s_ense of F rance . 
 Bonaparte was the idol ot common men, because TT&^rild 
 in transcendent degree the qualities and powers of common 
 men. There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the 
 lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypoc- 
 risy. Bonaparte wrought, in common with that great class 
 he represented, for power and wealth, — but Bonaparte, 
 specially, without any scruple as to the means. All the 
 sentiments which embarrass men's pursuits of these objects, 
 he set aside. The sentiments were for women and children. 
 Fontanes, in 1804, expressed Napoleon's own sense, when, in 
 behalf of the Senate, he addressed him, — "Sire, the desire of 
 perfection is the worst disease that ever afflicted the human 
 
NAPOLEON; OR THE MAN OF THE WORLD 385 
 
 mind." The advocates of liberty, and of progress, are 
 "ideologists;" — a word of contempt often in his mouth; — 
 "Necker is an ideologist : " "Lafayette is an ideologist." 
 
 An Italian proverb, too well known, declares that, "if you 
 would succeed, you must not be too good." It is an advan- 
 tage, within certain limits, to have renounced the dominion 
 of the sentiments of piety, gratitude, and generosity; since, 
 what was an impassable bar to us, and still is to others, 
 becomes a convenient weapon for our purposes; just as the 
 river which w^as a formidable barrier, winter transforms into 
 the smoothest of roads. 
 
 Napoleon renounced, once for all, sentiments and affec- 
 tions, and would help himself with his hands and his head. 
 With him is no miracle, and no magic. He is a worker in 
 brass, in iron, in wood, in earth, in roads, in buildings, in 
 money, and in troops, and a very consistent and wise master- 
 workman. He is never weak and literary, but acts with the 
 solidity and the precision of natural agents. He has not 
 lost his native sense and sympathy with things. Men give 
 way before such a man, as before natural events. To be 
 sure, there are men enough who are immersed in things, as 
 farmers, smiths, sailors, and mechanics generally; and we 
 know how real and solid such men appear in the presence of 
 scholars and grammarians: but these men ordinarily lack 
 the power of arrangement, and are like hands without a 
 head. But Bonaparte superadded to this mineral and 
 animal force, insight and generalization, so that men saw in 
 him combined the natural and the intellectual power, as if 
 the sea and land had taken flesh and begun to cipher. 
 Therefore the land and sea seem to presuppose him. He 
 came into hi. own, and they received him. This ciphering 
 operative knows what he is working with, and what is the 
 product. He knew the properties of gold and iron, of wheels 
 and ships, of troops and diplomatists, and required that 
 each should do after its kind. 
 
 The art of war was the game in which he exerted his 
 arithmetic. It consisted, according to him, in having always 
 more forces than the enemy, on the point where the enemy 
 is attacked, or where he attacks: and his whole talent is 
 
386 NAPOLEON; OR THE MAN OF THE WORLD 
 
 strained by endless manoeuvre and evolution, to march 
 always on the enemy at an angle, and destroy his forces in 
 detail. It is obvious that a very small force, skilfully and 
 rapidly manoeuvring, so as always to bring two men against 
 one at the point of engagement, will be an overmatch for 
 a much larger body of men. 
 
 The times , ^hi s^ constitu tion, a nd hi s earl y circumst^j xces. 
 combined to develop this pattern denTncfft He had the 
 virtues of his class, and the conditions for their activity. 
 That^ common sens£, whi c h no _ sooner respects any end, 
 "than It finds the means to effect it; the delight in the use 
 of means; in the choice, simplification, and combining ofi 
 means; the chrectness and thoroughness of his work; the 
 prudence with which all was seen, and the energy with 
 which all was done, make him the natural organ and head ofi 
 what I may almost call, from its extent, the modern party. 
 
 Nature must have far the greatest share in every success, 
 and so in his. Such a man was wanted, and such a man wasi 
 born; a man of stone and iron, capable of sitting on horse- 
 back sixteen or seventeen hours, of going many days to- 
 gether without rest or food, except by snatches, and with) 
 the speed and spring of a tiger in action; a man not em- 
 barrassed by any scruples; compact, instant, selfish, prudent, 
 and of a perception which did not suffer itself to be balked on 
 misled by any pretences of others, or any superstition, on 
 any heat or haste of his own. "My hand of iron," he said, 
 "was not at the extremity of my arm: it was immediately, 
 connected with my head." He respected the power of 
 nature and fortune, and ascribed to it his superiority, 
 instead of valuing himself, like inferior men, on his opinion- 
 ativeness and waging war with nature. His favorite* 
 rhetoric lay in allusion to his star: and he pleased himself, 
 as well i.s the people, when he styled himself the "Child of 
 Destiny." "They charge me," he said, "with the com- 
 mission of great crimes: men of my stamp do not commit 
 crimes. Nothing has been more simple than my elevation: 
 'tis in vain to ascribe it to intrigue or crime: it was owingi 
 to the peculiarity of the times, and to my reputation of| 
 having foi^ght well against the enemies of my country. I 
 
NAPOLEON; OR THE MAN OF THE WORLD 387 
 
 have always marched with the opinion of great masses, and 
 with events. Of what use, then, would crimes be to me?" 
 Again he said, speaking of his son, ''My son can not replace 
 me; I could not replace myself. I am the creature of cir- 
 cumstances." 
 
 He had a directness of action never before combined 
 with so much comprehension. He is a realist, terrific to 
 all talkers, and confused truth-obscuring persons. He sees 
 where the m.itter hinges, throws himself on the precise 
 point of resistance, and slights all other considerations. He 
 is strong in the right mann er, namely, by insi^l^t,. He never 
 blundered into victory, but won his battles in his head, 
 before he won them on the field. His principal means are 
 in himself. He asks counsel of no other. In 1796, he writes 
 to the Directory : "I have conducted the campaign without 
 consulting any one. I should have done no good, if I had 
 been under the necessity of conforming to the notions of 
 another person. I have gained some advantages over su- 
 perior forces, and when totally destitute of every thing, 
 because, in the persuasion that your confidence was re- 
 posed in me, my actions were as prompt as my thoughts." 
 
 History is full, down to this day, of the imbecility of 
 kings and governors. They are a class of persons much to 
 be pitied, for they know not what they should do. The 
 weavers strike for bread; and the king and his ministers, 
 not knowing what to do, meet them with bayonets. But 
 Napoleon understood his business. Here was a man who, 
 in each moment and emergency, knew what to do next. It 
 is an immense comfort and refreshment to the spirits, not 
 only of kings, but of citizens. Few men have any next; 
 they live from hand to mouth, without plan, and are ever 
 at the end of their fine, and, after each action, wait for an 
 impulse from abroad. Napoleon had been the first man of 
 the world, if his ends had been purely public. As he is, he 
 inspires confidence and vigor by the extraordinary unity 
 of his action. He is firm, sure, self-denying, self-postponing, 
 sacrificing every thing to his aim, — money, troops, generals, 
 and his own safety also, to his aim; not misled, like common 
 adventurers, by the splendor of his own means. "Incidents 
 
388 NAPOLEON; OR THE MAN OF THE WORLD 
 
 ought not to govern policy," he said, "but pohcy, incidents." 
 "To be hurried away by every event, is to have no pohtical 
 system at all." His victories were only so many doors, and 
 he never for a moment lost sight of his way onward, in the 
 dazzle and uproar of the present circumstance. He knew 
 what to do, and he flew to his mark. He would shorten 
 a straight line to come at his object. Horrible anecdotes 
 may, no doubt, be collected from his history, of the price 
 at which he bought his successes; but he must not therefore 
 be set down as cruel; but only as one who knew no impedi- 
 ment to his will; not bloodthirsty, not cruel, — but woe to 
 what thing or person stood in his way! Not bloodthirsty, 
 but not sparing of blood, — and pitiless. He saw only the 
 object: the obstacle must give way. "Sire, General Clarke 
 can not combine with General Junot, for the dreadful fire 
 of the Austrian battery." — "Let him carry the battery."— 
 "Sire, every regiment that approaches the heavy artillery 
 is sacrificed: Sire, what orders?" — "Forward, forward!" 
 Seruzicr, a colonel of artillery, gives, inhis Military Memoirs, 
 the following sketch of a scene after the battle of Austerlitz. — 
 "At the moment in which the Russian army was making its 
 retreat, painfully, but in good order, on the ice of the lake, 
 the Emperor Napoleon came riding at full speed toward the 
 artillery. 'You are losing time,' he cried; 'fire upon those 
 masses; they must be engulfed; fire upon the ice!' The 
 order remained unexecuted for ten minutes. In vain sev- 
 eral officers and myself Avere placed on the slope of a hill to! 
 produce the effect: their balls and mine rolled upon the ice, 
 without breaking it up. Seeing that, I tried a simple method 
 of elevating light howitzers. The almost perpendicular 
 fall of the heavy projectiles produced the desired effect. My 
 method was immediately followed by the adjoining batteries, 
 and in less than no time we buried" some^ "thousands of| 
 Russians and Austrians under the waters of the lake." 
 
 In the plenitude of his resources, every obstacle seemed to 
 vanish. "There shall be no Alps," he said; and he built 
 his perfect roads, chmbing by graded galleries their steepest 
 
 * As I quote at second hand, and cannot procure Seruzier, I dare 
 not adopt the high figure I find. 
 
NAPOLEON; OR THE MAN OF THE WORLD 389 
 
 precipices, until Italy was as open to Paris as any town in 
 France. He laid his bones to, and wrought for his crown. 
 Having decided what was to be done, he did that with might 
 and main. He put out all his strength. He risked every 
 thing, and spared nothing, neither ammunition, nor money, 
 nor troops, nor generals, nor himself. 
 
 We hke to see every thing do its office after its kind, 
 whether it be a milch-cow or a rattlesnake; and, if fighting 
 be the best mode of adjusting national differences (as large 
 majorities of men seem to agree), certainly Bonaparte was 
 right in making it thorough. "The grand principle of war," 
 he said, "was, that an army ought always to be ready, by 
 day and by night, and at all hours, to make all the resistance 
 it is capable of making." He never economized his ammuni- 
 tion, but, on a hostile position, rained a torrent of iron, — 
 shells, balls, grape-shot, — to annihilate all defence. On 
 any point of resistance, he concentrated squadron on squad- 
 ron in overwhelming numbers, until it was swept out of 
 existence. To a regiment of horse-chasseurs at Lobenstein, 
 two days before the battle of Jena, Napoleon said, "My lads, 
 you must not fear death; when soldiers brave death, they 
 drive him into the enemy's ranks.". In the fury of assault, 
 he no more spared himself. He went to the edge of his pos- 
 sibihty. It is plain that in Italy he did what he could, and 
 all that he could. He came, several times, within an inch 
 of ruin; and his own person was all but lost. He was flung 
 into the marsh at Areola. The Austrians were between him 
 and his troops in the melee, and he was brought off with 
 desperate efforts. At Lonato, and at other places, he was 
 on the point of being taken prisoner. He fought sixty 
 battles. He had never enough. Each victory was a new 
 weapon. "My power would fall, were I not to support it 
 by new achievements. Conquest has made me what I am, and 
 conquest must maintain me." He felt, with every wise man, 
 that as much life is needed for conservation as for creation. 
 We are always in peril, always in a bad plight, just on the 
 edge of destruction, and only to be saved by invention and 
 courage. 
 
 This vigor was guarded and tempered by the coldest 
 
390 NAPOLEON; OR THE MAN OF THE WORLD 
 
 prudence and punctuality. A thunderbolt in the attack, 
 he was found invulnerable in his intrenchments. His very 
 attack was never the inspiration of courage, but the result 
 of calculation. His idea of the best defence consists in 
 
 ^ei ng st ill the attac king par ty. ''My ambition," he says, 
 "was great, but was^f a cold nature." In one of his con- 
 versations with Las Casas, he remarked, ''As to moral 
 courage, I have rarely met with the two-o'clock-in-the- 
 morning kind: I mean unprepared courage, that which is 
 necessary on an unexpected occasion; and which, in spite of 
 the most unforeseen events, leaves full freedom of judgment 
 and decision:" and he did not hesitate to declare that he 
 was himself eminently endowed with this "two-o'clock-in-the- 
 morning courage, and that he had met with few persons 
 equal to himself in this respect." 
 
 Every thing depended on the nicety of his combinatioiis . 
 and the stars were not more punctual than his arithmetic. 
 His personal attention descended to the smallest particulars. 
 "At Montebello, I ordered Kellermann to attack with eight 
 hundred horse, and with these he separated the six thousand 
 Hungarian grenadiers, before the very eyes of the Austrian 
 cavalry. This cavalry was half a league off, and required a 
 quarter of an hour to arrive on the field of action; and I 
 have observed, that it is always these quarters of an hour 
 that decide the fate of a battle." "Before he fought a 
 battle, Bonaparte thought little about what he should do in 
 case of success, but a great deal about what he should do in 
 case of a reverse of fortune." The same prudence and good 
 sense mark all his behavior. His instructions to his sec- 
 retary at the Tuillcries are worth remembering. "During 
 the night, enter my chamber as seldom as possible. Do not 
 awake me when you have any good news to communicate; 
 with that there is no hurry. But when you bring bad news, 
 rouse me instantly, for then there is not a moment to be 
 lost." It was a whimsical economy of the same kind which 
 dictated his practice, when general in Italy, in regard to 
 his burdensome correspondence. He directed Bourienne 
 to leave all letters unopened for three weeks, and then 
 observed with satisfaction how large a part of the corre- 
 
NAPOLEON; OR THE MAN OF THE WORLD 391 
 
 spondence had thus disposed of itself, and no longer re- 
 quired an answer. His achievement of business was im- 
 mense, and enlarges the known powers of man. There have 
 been many working kings, from Ulysses to William of 
 Orange, but none who accomphshed a tithe of this man's 
 performance. 
 
 To these gifts of nature, Napoleon added the advantage of 
 having been born to a private and humble fortune. In his 
 latter days, he had the weakness of wishing to add to his 
 crowns and badges the prescription of aristocracy: but he 
 knew his debt to his austere education, and made no secret 
 of his contempt for the born kings, and for "the hereditary 
 asses," as he coarsely styled the Bourbons. He said that, 
 "in their exile, they had learned nothing, and forgot noth- 
 ing." Bonaparte had passed through all the degrees of 
 military service, but also was citizen before he was emperor, 
 and so has the key to citizenship. His remarks and esti- 
 mates chscover the information and justness of measurement 
 of the middle class. Those who had to deal with him, 
 found that he was not to be imposed upon, but could cipher 
 as well as another man. This appears in all parts of his 
 Memoirs, dictated at St. Helena. When the expenses of the 
 empress, of his household, of his palaces, had accumulated 
 great debts. Napoleon examined the bills of the creditors 
 himself, detected overcharges and errors, and reduced the 
 claims by considerable sums. 
 
 His grand weapon, namely, the millions whom he directed, 
 he owed to_the re present ative chavfictpr which clothprj him_^ 
 He interests us as he stands for France and for Europe; and 
 he exists as captain and king, only as far as the Revolution, 
 or the interest of the industrious masses, found an organ 
 and a leader in him. In the social interests, he knew the 
 meaning and value of labor, and threw himself naturally on 
 that side. I like an incident mentioned by one of his 
 biographers at St. Helena. "When walking with Mrs. Bal- 
 combe, some servants, carrying heavy boxes, passed by on 
 the road, and Mrs. Balcombe desired them, in rather an 
 angry tone, to keep back. Napoleon interfered, saying, 
 'Respect the burden, Madam.' " In the time of the empire, 
 
392 NAPOLEON; OR THE MAN OF THE WORLD 
 
 he directed attention to the improvement and embelhshment 
 of the markets of the capital. 'The market-place," he said, 
 ''is the Louvre of the common people." The principal works 
 that have survived him are his magnificent roads. He 
 filled the troops with his spirit, and a sort of freedom and 
 companionship grew up between him and them, which the 
 forms of his court never permitted between the officers and 
 himself. They performed, under his eye, that which no 
 others could do. The best document of his relation to his 
 troops is the order of the day on the morning of the battle of 
 Austerhtz, in which Napoleon promises the troops that he 
 will keep his person out of reach of fire. This declaration, 
 which is the reverse of that ordinarily made by generals 
 and sovereigns on the eve of a battle, sufficiently explains 
 the devotion of the army to their leader. 
 
 But though there is in particulars this identity between 
 Napoleon and the mass of the peo]:) le. his real strength la y 
 i n their conviction that he w as their representative in h is 
 genius and aims, not only wlien he courted, but when lie 
 controlled and even when he decimated them by his con- 
 scriptions. He knew, as well as any Jacobin in France, how 
 to philosophize on liberty and equality; and, when allusion 
 was made to the precious blood of centuries, which was 
 spilled by the killing of the Due d'Enghien, he suggested 
 "Neither is .ny blood ditch-water." The people felt that no 
 longer the throne was occupied, and the land sucked of its 
 nourishment, by a small class of legitimates, secluded from 
 all community with the children of the soil, and holding the 
 ideas and superstitions of a long-forgotten state of society. 
 Instead of that vampire, a man of themselves held, in the 
 Tuilleries, knowledge and ideas like their own, opening, of 
 course, to them and their children, all places of power and 
 trust. The day of sleepy, selfish pohcy, ever narrowing the 
 means and opportunities of young men, was ended, and a 
 day of expansion and demand was come. A market for all 
 the powers and productions of man was opened; brilhant 
 prizes glittered in the eyes of youth and talent. The old, 
 iron-bound, feudal France was changed into a young Ohio 
 or New York; and those who smarted under the immediate 
 
NAPOLEON; OR THE MAN OF THE WORLD 393 
 
 rigors of the new monarch, pardoned them, as the necessary 
 severities of the mihtary system which had driven out the 
 oppressor. And even when the majority of the people had 
 begun to ask, whether tliey had really gained any thing 
 under the exhausting levies of men and money of the new 
 master, — the whole talent of the country, in every rank and 
 kindred, took his part, and defended him as its natural 
 patron. In 1814, when advised to rely on the higher classes, 
 Napoleon said to those around him, ''Gentlemen, in the 
 situation in which I stand, my only nobihty is the rabble of 
 the Faubourgs." 
 
 Napoleon met this natural expectation. The necessity of 
 his position required a hospitality to every sort of talent, 
 and its appointment to trusts; and his feeling went along 
 with this policy. Like every superior person, he undoubt- 
 edly felt a desire for men and compeers, and a wish to 
 measure his power with other masters, and an impatience 
 of fools and underlings. In Italy, he sought for men, and 
 found none. "Good God!" he said, ''how rare men are! 
 There are eighteen millions in Italy, and I have with dif- 
 ficulty found two, — Dandola and Melzi." In later years, 
 with larger experience, his respect for mankind was not in- 
 creased. In a moment of bitterness, he said, to one of his 
 oldest friends, "Men deserve the contempt with which they 
 inspire me. I have only to put some gold lace on the coat 
 of my virtuous republicans, and they immediately become 
 just what I wish them." This impatience at levity was, 
 however, an oblique tribute of respect to those able persons 
 who comm.anded his regard, not only when he found them 
 friends and coadjutors, but also when they resisted his will. 
 He could not confound Fox and Pitt, Carnot, Lafayette, 
 and Bernadotte with the danglers of his court; and, in 
 spite of the detraction which his systematic egotism dictated 
 toward the great captains who conquered with and for him, 
 ample acknowledgments are made by him to Lannes, Duroc, 
 Kleber, Dessaix, Massena, Murat, Ney, and Augereau. If 
 he felt himself their patron, and the founder of their for- 
 tunes, as when he said, "I made my generals out of mud," 
 he could not hide his satisfaction in receiving from them a 
 
394 NAPOLEON; OR THE MAN OF THE WORLD 
 
 seconding and support commensurate with the grandeur of 
 his enterprise. In the Russian campaign, lie was so much 
 impressed by the courage and resources of Marshal Ney, 
 that he said, 'T have two hundred millions in my coffers, and 
 I would give them all for Ney.'' The characters which he has 
 drawn of several of his marshals are discriminating, and, 
 though they did not content the insatiable vanity of French 
 officers, are, no doubt, substantially just. And, in fact, 
 every species of merit was sought and advanced under his 
 government. 'T know," he said, "the depth and draught of 
 water of every one of my generals." Natural power was sure to 
 be well received at his court. Seventeen men, in his time, 
 were raised from common soldiers to the rank of king, 
 marshal, duke, or general; and the crosses of his Legion of 
 Honor were given to personal valor, and not to family 
 connection. ''When soldiers have been baptized in the fire of 
 a battle-field, they have all one rank in my eyes." 
 
 When a natural king becomes a titular king, everybody is 
 pleased and satisfied. The Revolution entitled the strong 
 populace of the Faubourg St. Antoine, and every horse-boy 
 and powder-monkey in the army, to look on Napoleon, as 
 flesh of his flesh, and the creature of his party: but there 
 is something in the success of grand talent which enlists an 
 universal sympathy. For, in the prevalence of sense and 
 spirit over stupidity and malversation, all reasonable men 
 have an interest; and, as intellectual beings, we feel the air 
 purified by the electric shock, when material force is over- 
 thrown by intellectual energies. As soon as we are removed 
 out of the reach of local and accidental partialities, man feels 
 that Napoleon fights for him; these are honest victories; 
 this strong steam-engine does our work. Whatever appeals 
 to the imagination, by transcending the ordinary limits of 
 human ability, wonderfully encourages and liberates us. 
 This capacious head, revolving and disposing sovereignly 
 trains of affairs, and animating such multitudes of agents; 
 this eye, which looked through Europe; this prompt in- 
 vention; this inexhaustible resource; — what events! what 
 romantic pictures! what strange situations! — when spying 
 the Alps, by a sunset in the Sicilian sea; drawing up his 
 
NAPOLEON; OR THE MAN OF THE WORLD 395 
 
 army for battle, in sight of the Pyramids, and saying to his 
 troops, "From the tops of those pyramids, forty centuries 
 look down on you;" fording the Red Sea; wading in the 
 gulf of the Isthmus of Suez. On the shore of Ptolemais, 
 gigantic projects agitated him. "Had Acre fallen, I should 
 have changed the face of the world." His army, on the 
 night of the battle of Austerhtz, which was the anniversary 
 of his inauguration as Em.peror, presented him with a bou- 
 quet of forty standards taken in the fight. Perhaps it is a 
 little puerile, the pleasure he took in making these contrasts 
 glaring; as when he pleased himself with making kings wait 
 in his antechambers, at Tilsit, at Paris, and at Erfurt. 
 
 We cannot, in the universal imbecility, indecision, and 
 indolence of men, sufficiently congratulate ourselves on this 
 strong and ready actor, who took occasion by the beard, 
 and showed us how much may be accomplished by the mere 
 force of such virtues as all men possess in less degrees; 
 namelV j^ by punctuality, by per s onal attention, by coura,g ey>^ 
 and thorougnness. '^The Austrians." he s.iirl. ^^do not Icnow 
 the value of time." I should cite him, in his earlier years, as 
 a model of prudence. His power does not consist in any 
 wild or extravagant force; in any enthusiasm, like Ma- 
 homet's; or singular power of persuasion; but in the exercise 
 of common sense on each emergency, instead of abiding by 
 rules and customs. The lesson he teaches is that which 
 vigor always teaches, — that there is always room for it. To 
 what heaps of cowardly doubts is not that man's life an 
 answer. When he appeared, it was the belief of all military 
 men that there could be nothing new in war; as it is the 
 belief of men to-day, that nothing new can be undertaken in 
 politics, or in church, or in letters, or in trade, or in farming, 
 or in our social manners and customs; and as it is, at all 
 times, the belief of society that the world is used up. But 
 Bonaparte knew better than society; and, moreover, knew 
 that he knew better. I think all men know better than they 
 do; know that the institutions we so volubly commend are 
 go-carts and baubles; but they dare not trust their presenti- 
 ments. Bonaparte relied on his own sense, and did not care 
 a bean for other people's. The world treated his novelties 
 
396 NAPOLEON; OR THE MAN OF THE WORLD 
 
 just as it treats everybody's novelties, — made infinite ob- 
 jection; mustered all the impediments; but he snapped his 
 finger at their objections. ''What creates great difficulty," 
 he remarks, ''in the profession of the land-commander, is 
 the necessity of feeding so many men and animals. If he 
 allows himself to be guided by the commissaries, he will 
 never stir, and all his expeditions will fail." An example of 
 his common sense is what he says of the passage of the Alps 
 in winter, which all writers, one repeating after the other, 
 had described as impracticable. "The winter," says Na- 
 poleon, "is not the most unfavorable season for the passage 
 of lofty mountains. The snow is then firm, the weather 
 settled, and there is nothing to fear from avalanches, the 
 real and only danger to be apprehended in the Alps. On 
 those high mountains, there are often very fine days in 
 December, of a dry cold, with extreme calmness in the air." 
 Read his account, too, of the way in which battles are 
 gained. "In all battles, a moment occurs, when the bravest 
 troops, after having made the greatest efforts, feel inclined 
 to run. That terror proceeds from a want of confidence in 
 their own courage; and it only requires a slight opportunity, 
 a pretence, to restore confidence to them. The art is to give 
 rise to the opportunity, and to invent the pretence. At 
 Areola, I won the battle with twenty-five horsemen. I 
 seized that moment of lassitude, gave every man a trumpet, 
 and gained the day with this handful. You see that two 
 armies are two bodies which meet, and endeavor to 
 frighten each other: a moment of panic occurs, and that 
 moment must be turned to advantage. When a man has 
 been present in many actions, he distinguishes that moment 
 without difficulty; it is as easy as casting up an addition." 
 This deputy of the nineteenth century added to his gifts 
 a capacity for speculation on general topics. He delighted 
 in running through the range of practical, of literary, and of 
 abstract questions. His opinion is always original, and to 
 the purpose. On the voyage to Egypt, he liked, after din- 
 ner, to fix on three or four persons to support a proposition, 
 and as many to oppose it. He gave a subject, and the dis- 
 cussions turned on questions of rehgion, the different kinds of 
 
NAPOLEON; OR THE MAN OF THE AVORLD 397 
 
 government, and the art of war. One day, he asked, 
 whether the planets were inhabited ? On another, what was 
 the age of the world? Then he proposed to consider the 
 probability of the destruction of the globe, either by water 
 or by fire; at another time, the truth or fallacy of presenti- 
 ments, and the interpretation of dreams. He was very fond 
 of talking of religion. In 1806, he conversed with Fournier, 
 bishop of Montpellier, on matters of theology. There were 
 two points on which they could not agree, viz., that of hell, 
 and that of salvation out of the pale of the church. The 
 Emperor told Josephine, that he disputed like a devil on 
 these two points, on which the bishop was inexorable. To 
 the philosophers he readily yielded all that was proved 
 against religion as the work of men and time; but he would 
 not hear of materialism. One fine night, on deck, amid a 
 clatter of materialism, Bonaparte pointed to the stars, and 
 said, "You may talk as long as you please, gentlemen, but 
 who made all that?" He delighted in the conversation of 
 men of science, particularly of Monge and Berthollet; but 
 the men of letters he slighted; "they were manufacturers of 
 phrases." Of medicine, too, he was fond of talking, and 
 with those of its practitioners whom he most esteemed, — 
 with Corvisart at Paris, and with Antonomarchi at St. 
 Helena. "Believe me," he said to the last, "we had better 
 leave of! all of these remedies : life is a fortress which neither 
 you nor I know anything about. Why throw obstacles in 
 the way of its defence? Its own means are superior to all 
 the apparatus of your laboratories. Corvisart candidly 
 agreed with me, that all your filthy mixtures are good for 
 nothing. Medicine is a collection of uncertain prescriptions, 
 the results of which, taken collectively, are more fatal than 
 useful to mankind. Water, air, and cleanhness, are the 
 chief articles in my pharmacopeia." 
 
 His Memoirs, dictated to Count Montholon and General 
 Gourgaud, at St. Helena, have great value, after all the de- 
 duction that, it seems, is to be made from them on account of 
 his known disingenuousness. He has the good-nature of 
 strength and conscious superiority. I admire his sii 
 clear narrative of his battles; — good as Usesar^s; his 
 
398 NAPOLEON; OR THE MAN OF THE WORLD 
 
 natured and sufficiently respectful account of Marshal 
 Wurmser and his other antagonists, and his own equahty as 
 a writer to his varying subject. The most agreeable portion 
 is the Campaign in Egypt. 
 
 He had hours of thought and wisdom. In intervals of 
 leisure, either in the camp or the palace, Napoleon appears 
 as a man of genius, directing on abstract questions the native 
 appetite for truth, and the impatience of words, he was wont 
 to show in war. He could enjoy every play of invention, 
 a romance, a hon mot, as well as a stratagem in a campaign. 
 He delighted to fascinate Josephine and her ladies, in a dim- 
 lighted apartment, by the terrors of a fiction, to which his 
 voice and dramatic power lent every addition. 
 
 I call Napoleon the agent or attorney of the middle class 
 of modern society; of the throng who fill the markets, shops, 
 counting-houses, manufactories, ships, of the modern world, 
 aiming to be rich. He was the agitator, the destroyer of 
 prescription, the internal improver, the liberal, the radical, 
 the inventor of means, the opener of doors and markets, the 
 subverter of monopoly and abuse. Of course, the rich and 
 aristocratic did not like him. England, the center of capital, 
 and Rome and Austria, centers of tradition and genealogy, 
 opposed him. The consternation of the dull and conserva- 
 tive classes, the terror of the foolish old men and old women 
 of the Roman conclave, — who in their despair took hold of 
 any thing, and would cling to red-hot iron, — the vain at- 
 tempts of statists to amuse and deceive him, of the erfiperor 
 of Austria to bribe him; and the instinct of the young, 
 ardent, and active men, every where, which pointed him 
 out as the giant of the middle class, make his history bright 
 and commanding. He had the virtues of the masses of his 
 constituents: he had also their vices. I am sorry that the 
 brilliant picture has its reverse. But that is the fatal quahty 
 which we discover in our pursuit of wealth, that it is 
 treacherous, and is bought by the breaking or weakening of 
 the sentiments: and it is inevitable that we should find the 
 same fact in the history of this champion, who proposed to 
 himself simply a brilliant career, without any stipulation or 
 scruple concerning the means. 
 
NAPOLEON; OR THE MAN OF THE WORLD 399 
 
 Bonaparte was singularly destitute of generous sentiments. 
 The highest-placed individual in the most cultivated age and 
 population of the world, — he has not the merit of common 
 truth and honesty. He is unjust to his generals; egotistic, 
 and monopolizing; meanly stealing the credit of their great 
 actions from Kellermann, from Bernadotte; intriguing to in- 
 volve his faithful Junot in hopeless bankruptcy, in order to 
 drive him to a distance from Paris, because the familiarity' of 
 his manners offends the new pride of his throne. He is a bound- 
 less har. The official paper, his "Moniteurs," and all his bul- 
 letins, are proverbs for saying what he wished to be believed; 
 and worse, — he sat, in his premature old age, in his lonely 
 island, coldly falsifying facts, and dates, and characters, 
 and giving to history a theatrical eclat. Like all Frenchmen, 
 he has a passion for stage effect. Every action that breathes 
 of generosity is poisoned by this calculation. His star, his 
 love of glory, his doctrine of the immortality of the soul are 
 all French. "I must dazzle and astonish. If I were to give 
 the hberty of the press, my power could not last three days." 
 To make a great noise is his favorite design. ''A great rep- 
 utation is a great noise: the more there is made, the far- 
 ther off it is heard. Laws, institutions, monuments, nations, 
 all fall; but the noise continues, and resounds in after ages." 
 His doctrine of immortality is simply fame. His theory of 
 influence is not flattering. "There are two levers for moving 
 men, — interest and fear. Love is a silly infatuation, depend 
 upon itr Friendship is but a name. I love nobody. I do 
 not even love my brothers: perhaps Joseph, a little, from 
 habit, and because he is my elder; and Duroc, I love him 
 too; but why? — because his character pleases me: he is 
 stern and resolute, and, I believe, the fellow never shed a 
 tear. For my part, I know very well that I have no true 
 friends. As long as I continue to be what I am, I may have 
 as many pretended friends as I please. Leave sensibility to 
 women: but men should be firm in heart and purpose, or 
 they should have nothing to do with war and government." 
 He was thoroughly unscrupulous. He would steal, slander, 
 assassinate, drown, and poison, as his interest dictated. He 
 had no generosity; but mere vulgar hatred: he was intensely 
 
400 NAPOLEON; OR THE MAN OF THE WORLD 
 
 selfish: he was perfidious: he cheated at cards: he was a 
 prodigious gossip; and opened letters; and dehghted in his 
 infamous police; and rubbed his hands with joy when he 
 had intercepted some morsel of intelligence concerning the 
 men and women about him, boasting that ''he knew every- 
 thing;" and interfered with the cutting the dresses of the 
 women; and hstened after the hurrahs and the compliments 
 of the street, incognito. His manners were coarse. He 
 treated women with low familiarity. He had the habit 
 of pulling their ears and pinching their cheeks, when he was 
 in good humor, and of pulling the ears and whiskers of men, 
 and of striking and horse-play with them, to his last days. 
 It does not appear that he listened at key-holes, or, at least, 
 that he was caught at it. In short, when you have pene- 
 trated through all the circles of power and splendor, you 
 were not dealing with a gentleman, at last; but with an 
 imposter and a rogue: and he fully deserves the epithet of 
 Jupiter Scapin, or a sort of Scamp Jupiter. 
 
 In describing the two parties into which modern society 
 divides itself, — the democrat and the conservative, — I said, 
 Bonaparte represents the democrat, or the party of men of 
 business, against the stationary or conservative party. 
 I omitted then to say, what is material to the statement, 
 namely, that these two parties differ only as young and old. 
 The democrat is p y"i|ng conservative: the conservative J4 , 
 an old democra tT The aristocrat is the democrat ripe, and 
 gone to seed, — because both parties stand on the one ground 
 
 Jjie sup reme value of property, ''^^^ irh "ITIP "^'^^ly';^ t^ - 
 get , _and '"TTTg*''^^J^^r'"to keep ^ Bonaparte may be said to 
 represent the wnole liisiory of this party, its youth and its 
 age; yes, and with poetic justice, its fate, in his own. The 
 counter-revolution, the counter-party, still waits for its 
 organ and representative, in a lover and a man of truly 
 public and universal aims. 
 
 Here was an experiment, under the most favorable con- 
 ditions, of the po wers of intellect without conscience 
 Never was such a leader so endowed, and so weaponea; 
 never leader found such aids and followers. And what was 
 
NAPOLEON; OR THE MAN OF THE WORLD 401 
 
 the result of this vast talent and power, of these immense 
 armies, burned cities, squandered treasures, immolated 
 millions of men, of this demoralized Europe? It came to 
 no result. All passed away, like the smoke of his artillery, 
 and left no trace. He left France smaller, poorer, feebler, 
 than he found it; and the whole contest for freedom was 
 to be begun again. The attempt was, in principle, suicidal. 
 France served him with life, and limb, and estate, as long as 
 it could identify its interest with him; but when men saw 
 that after victory was another war; after the destruction of 
 armies, new conscriptions; and they who had toiled so 
 desperately were never nearer to the reward, — they could 
 not spend hat they had earned, nor repose on their down- 
 beds, nor strut in their chateaux, — they deserted him. Men 
 found that his absorbing egotism was deadly to all other men. 
 It resembled the torpedo, which inflicts a succession of 
 shocks on any one who takes hold of it, producing spasms 
 which contract the muscles of the hand, so that the man 
 cannot open his fingers; and the animal inflicts new and 
 more violent shocks, until he paralyzes and kills his victim. 
 So, this exorbitant egotist narrowed, impoverished, and 
 absorbed the power and existence of those who served 
 him; and the universal cry of France, and of Europe, in 
 1814, was, "enough of him;" "assez de Bonaparte." 
 
 It was not Bonaparte's fault. He did all that in him lay, 
 to live and thrive without moral principle. It was the 
 nature of things, the eternal law of man and of the world, 
 which balked and ruined him; and the result, in a million 
 experiments, will be the same. Every experimeint, by 
 multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish 
 aim, will fail. The pacific Fourier will be as inefficient as the 
 pernicious Napoleon. As long as our civilization is essen- 
 tially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be 
 mocked by delusions.. Our riches will leave us sick; there 
 ■;;rill be bitterness in our laughter, and our wine will burn our 
 mouth. Only that good profits, which we can taste with 
 all doors open, and which serves all men. 
 
XXI 
 
 THE POET 
 
 A moody child and wildly wise 
 
 Pursued the game with joyful eyes, 
 
 Which chose, like meteors, their way, 
 
 And rived the dark with private ray: 
 
 They overleapt the horizon's edge, 
 
 Searched with Apollo's privilege; 
 
 Through man, and woman, and sea, and star, 
 
 Saw the dance of nature forward far; 
 
 Through worlds, and races, and terms, and times^ 
 
 Saw musical order, and pairing rhymes. 
 
 Olympian bards who sung 
 
 Divine ideas below, 
 Which always find us young. 
 
 And always keep us so. 
 
 Those who are esteemed umpires of taste are often i 
 persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pic- 
 tures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever 
 is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful I 
 souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you; 
 learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation 
 is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one 
 spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold. Their 
 knowledge of the fine arts is some study of rules and partic- 
 ulars, or some limited judgment of color or form, which is 
 exercised for amusement or for show. It is a proof of the 
 shallowness of the doctrine of beauty, as it lies in the minds 
 of our amateurs, that men seem to have lost the perception 
 of the instant dependence of form upon soul. There is nol 
 doctrine of forms in our philosophy. We were put into our] 
 bodies, as fire is put into a pan, to be carried about; but 
 there is no accurate adjustment between the spirit and the 
 organ, much less is the latter the germination of the former. 
 
 402 
 
THE POET 403 
 
 So in regard to other forms, the intellectual men do not 
 believe in any essential dependence of the material world on 
 thought and volition. Theologians think it a pretty air- 
 castle to talk of the spiritual meaning of a ship or a cloud, 
 of a city or a contract, but they prefer to come again to 
 the solid ground of historical evidence; and even the poets 
 are contented with a civil and conformed manner of living, 
 and to write poems from the fancy, at a safe distance from 
 their own experience. But the highest minds of the world 
 have never ceased to explore the double meaning, or, shall 
 I say, the quadruple, or the centuple, or much more manifold 
 meaning, of every sensuous fact: Orpheus, Empedocles, 
 Heraclitus, Plato, Plutarch, Dante, Swedenborg, and the 
 masters of sculpture, picture, and poetry. For we are not 
 pans and barrows, nor even porters of the fire and torch- 
 bearers, but children of the fire, made of it, and only the 
 same divinity transmuted, and at two or three removes, 
 when we know least about it. And this hidden truth, that 
 the fountains whence all this river of Time, and its creatures, 
 flows, are intrinsically ideal and beautiful, draws us to the 
 consideration of the nature and functions of the Poet, or 
 the man of Beauty, to the means and materials he uses, and 
 to the general aspect of his art in the present time. 
 
 The breadth of the problem is great, io x, the poet j s. 
 jesen tative. He stands among partial men for the complete 
 man, and apprises us not of his wealth , but of the com nie'n- 
 wealth. The young man reveres men of genius, because, to 
 "Speaklruly, they are more himself than he is. They receive 
 of the soul as he also receives, but they more. Nature en- 
 hances her beauty, to the eye of loving men, from their 
 belief that the poet is beholding her shows at the same time. 
 He is isolated among his contemporaries, by truth and by 
 his art, but with this consolation in his pursuits, that they 
 will draw all men sooner or later. For all men live by 
 truth, and stand in need of expression. In love, in art, in 
 avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our 
 painful secret. The ma n is only half h imself, the other half 
 
 is his ex pression .^ Z- "'^^ — -"^ 
 
 — NtrtWithstanding this necessity to be published, adequate 
 
404 THE POET 
 
 expression is rare. I know not iiow it is that we need an 
 interpreter; but the great majority of men seem to be 
 minors, who have not yet come into possession of their own, 
 or mutes, who cannot report the conversation they have had 
 with nature. There is no man who does not anticipate a 
 supersensual utility in the sun, and stars, earth, and water. 
 These stand and wait to render liim a pecuhar service. 
 But there is some obstruction, or some excess of phlegm in 
 our constitution, which does not suffer them to yield the 
 due effect. The impressions of nature fall on us too feebly 
 to make us artists. Every touch should thrill. Every man 
 should be so much an artist, that he could report in con- 
 versation what had befallen him. Yet, in our experience, 
 the rays or appulses have sufficient force to arrive at the 
 senses, but not enough to reach the quick, and compel the 
 reproduction of themselves in speech. The poet is the 
 person in whom these powers are in balance, the man with- 
 out impediment, who sees and handles that which others 
 dream of, reverses the whole scale of experience, and is 
 representative of man, in virtue of being the largest power 
 to receive and to impart. 
 
 For the Universe has three children, born at one time, 
 which reappear, under different names, in every system of 
 thought, whether they be called cause, operation, and effe ct; 
 or, more poetically, Jove, Pluto, Neptune; or, theologically, 
 the Father, the Spirit, and the Son; but which we will call 
 here, the Knower, the Doer, and the Sayer. These stand 
 respectively for the love of truth, the love of good, 
 and the love of beauty. These three are equal. Each 
 is that which he is essentially, so that he cannot be 
 surmounted or analyzed, and each of these three has the 
 power of the others latent in him, and his own patent. 
 
 The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. 
 He is a sovereign, and stands on the center. For the world 
 is not painted, or adorned, but is from the beginning beauti- 
 ful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty 
 is the creator of the universe. Therefore the poet is not 
 any permissive potentate, but is emperor in his own right. 
 Criticism is infested with a cant of materialism, which as- 
 
THE POET 405 
 
 sumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of 
 all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking 
 the fact, that some men, namely, poets, are natural sayers, 
 sent into the world to the end of expression, and it confounds 
 them with those whose province is action, but who quit 
 it to imitate the sayers. But Homer's words are as costly 
 and admirable to Homer, as Agamemnon's victories are 
 to Agamemnon. The poet does not wait for the hero or 
 the sage, but, as they act and think primarily, so he writes 
 primarily what will and must be spoken, reckoning the 
 others, though primaries also, yet, in respect to him, secon- 
 daries and servants; as sitters or models in the studio of a 
 painter, or as assistants who bring building materials to an 
 architect. 
 
 For poetry was all written before time was, and when- 
 ever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into 
 that region where the air is music, we hear those primal 
 warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose 
 ever and anon a word, or a verse, and substitute some- 
 thing of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The 
 men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more 
 faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become 
 the songs of the nations. For nature is as truly beautiful 
 as it is good, or as it is reasonable, and must as much appear, 
 as it must be done, or be known. Words and deeds are 
 quite indifferent modes' of the divine energy. Words are 
 also actions, and actions are a kind of words. 
 
 The sign and credentials of the poet are, that he announces 
 that which no man foretold. He is the true and only doctor; 
 he knows and tells; he is the onl y tell er of np^vs, iny Vip wns 
 "preSunl dUd "privy to the appearance which he describes. 
 He is a beholder of ideas, and an utterer of the necessary 
 and causal. We do not speak now of men of poetical 
 talents, or of industry and skill in metre, but of the true 
 poet. I took part in a conversation the other day, con- 
 cerning a recent writer of lyrics, a man of subtle mind, 
 whose head appeared to be a music-box of dehcate tunes 
 and rhythms, and whose skill, and command of language, 
 we could not sufficiently praise. But when the question 
 
406 THE POET 
 
 arose, whether he were not only a lyrist, but a poet, we 
 were obliged to confess that he is plainly a contemporary, 
 not an eternal man. He does not stand out of our low 
 limitations, like a Chimborazo under the line, running 
 up from the torrid base through all the climates of the globe, 
 with belts of the herbage of every latitude on its high and 
 mottled sides; but this genius is the landscape garden of a 
 modern house, adorned with fountains and statues, with 
 well-bred men and women standing and sitting in the walks 
 and terraces. We hear, through all the varied music, the 
 ground-ione of conventional life. Our poets are men of 
 talents who sing, and not the children of music. The 
 ar gument is secondary , tli£,£j ^sh of the verses is primar> 
 
 or li is "noi metres, out a metre-making argument, that 
 makes a poem, — a thought so passionate and alive, that, 
 like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture 
 of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing. The 
 thought and the form are equal in the order of time, but 
 in the order of genesis the thought is prior to the form. 
 The poet has a new thought : he has a whole new experience 
 to unfold; he will tell us how it was with him, and all men 
 will be the riche. in his fortune. The experience of each 
 new age requires a new confession, and the w^orld seems 
 always waiting for its poet. I remember, when I was young, 
 how much I was moved one morning by tidings that genius 
 had appeared in a youth who sat near me at table. He 
 had left his work, and gone rambling none knew whither, 
 and had written hundreds of lines, but could not tell whether 
 that which was in him was therein told : he could tell nothing 
 but that all was changed — man, beast, heaven, earth, and 
 sea. How gladly we listened! how credulous! Society 
 seemed to be compromised. We sat in the aurora of a sun- 
 rise which was to put out all the stars. Boston seemed to 
 be at twice the distance it had the night before, or 
 was much farther than that. Rome, — what was Rome? 
 Plutarch and Shakspeare were in the yellow leaf, and Homer 
 no more should be heard of. It is much to know that poetry 
 has been written this very day, under this very roof, by your 
 side. What! that wonderful spirit has not expired! these 
 
THE POET 407 
 
 stony moments are still sparkling and animated! I had 
 fancied that the oracles were all silent, and nature had 
 spent her fires, and behold ! all night, from every pore, these 
 fine auroras have been streaming. Every one has some in- 
 terest in the advent of the poet, and no one knows how 
 much it may concern him. We know that the secret of the 
 world is profound, but who or what shall be our interpreter, 
 we know not. A mountain ramble, a new style of face, a 
 new person, may put the key into our hands. Of course, 
 the value of genius to us is in the veracity of its report. 
 Tal ent may frolic and juggle; gen ius rpalj ^s and adds. 
 
 'Mankind, in good earnest, have gone so far in understand-^ 
 ing themselves and their work, and the foremost watchman 
 on the peak announces his news. It is the truest word 
 ever spoken, and the phrase will be the fittest, most musical, 
 and the unerring voice of the world for the time. 
 
 All that we call sacred history attests that the birth of 
 a poet is the principal event in chronology. Man, never 
 so often deceived, still watches for the. arrival of a brother 
 who can hold him steady to a truth, until he has made it 
 his own. With what joy I begin to read a poem, which I 
 confide in as an inspiration ! And now my chains are to be 
 broken; I shall mount above these clouds and opaque airs 
 
 Jn'-which I live, — opaque, though they seem transparent, — 
 and from the heaven of truth-J- shall see and comprehend 
 my relations. That will reconcile me to life, and renovate 
 nature, to see trifles animated by a tendency, and to know 
 what I am doing. Life will no more be a noise; now I shall 
 see men and women, and know the signs by which they may 
 be discerned from fools and satans. This day shall be 
 better than my birth-day: then I became an animal: now 
 I am invited into pure science. Such is the hope, but the 
 fruition is postponed. Oftener it falls, that this winged 
 man, who will carry me into the heaven, whirls me into the 
 clouds, then leaps and frisks about with me from cloud to 
 cloud, still affirming that he is bound heavenward; and I, 
 being myself a novice, am slow in perceiving that he does 
 not know the way into the heavens, and is merely bent 
 that I should admire his skill to rise, like a fowl or a flying- 
 
408 THE POET 
 
 fish, a little way from the ground or the water; but the all- 
 piercing, all-feeding, and ocular air of heaven, that man 
 shall never inhabit. I tumble down again soon into my old 
 nooks, and lead the life of exaggerations as before, and have \ 
 lost my faith in the possibility of any guide who can lead 
 me thither where I would be. 
 
 But leaving these victims of vanity, let us, with new hope, , 
 observe how nature, by worthier impulses, has insured the 
 poet's fidelity to his office of announcing and affirming, by 
 the beauty of things, which becomes a new and higher beauty 
 when expressed. Nature offers all her creatures to him as 
 a picture-language. Being used as a type, a second w^on- 
 derful value appears in the object, far better than its old 
 value, as the carpenter's stretched cord, if you hold your 
 ear close enough, is musical in the breeze. "Things more 
 excellent than every image," says Jambhchus, "are ex- 
 pressed through images." Things admit of being used as j 
 symbols, because nature is a symbol, in the whole, and in | 
 every part. Every line we can draw in the sand has ex- 
 pression; and there is no body without its spirit or genius. 
 All form is an effort of character; all condition, of the 
 quality of the hfe; all harmony, of health; (and, for this 
 reason, a perception of beauty should be sympathetic, or 
 proper, only to the good). The beautiful rests on the 
 foundntions of the necessary. The soul makes the body, 
 as the wise Spenser teaches:—^ 
 
 "So every spirit, as it is most pure, 
 And hath in it the more of heavenly light, 
 So it the fairer body doth procure 
 To habit in, and it more fairly dight, 
 With cheerful grace and amiable sight. 
 For, of the soul, the body form doth take, 
 For soul is form, and doth the body make." 
 
 Here we find ourselves, suddenly, not in the pleasant walks 
 of critical speculation, but in a holy place, and should go 
 very warily and reverently. We stand before the secret 
 of the world, — there where Being passes into Appearance, 
 and Unity into Variety. 
 
 The Universe is the externization of the soul. Wher- 
 ever the fife is, that bursts into appearance around it. Our 
 
THE POET 409 
 
 s ciencej sensiin], and J ^ip^p^or^ pnpprfjpiQl The earth, 
 and tEeheavenly bodies, physics, and chemistry, we sen- 
 sually treat, as if they were self-existent; but these are the 
 retinue of that Being we have. "The mighty heaven/' 
 says Proclus, "exhibits, in its transfigurations, clear images 
 of the splendor of intellectual perceptions; being moved in 
 conjunction with the unapparent periods of intellectual 
 natures." Therefore, science always goes abreast with the 
 just elevation of the man, keeping step with religion and 
 metaphysics; or, the state of science is an index of our self- 
 knowledge. Since every thing in nature answers to a moral 
 power, if any phenomenon remains brute and dark, it is 
 because the corresponding faculty in the observer is not 
 yet active. No wonder, then, if these waters be so 
 deep, that we hover over them with a religious regard. 
 The beauty of the fable proves the importance of the sense, 
 to the poet, and to all others; or, if you please, every man 
 is so far a poet as to be susceptible of these enchantments 
 of nature: for nil m en have the though tR, of which the uni- 
 verse is the celebration! I find that the fascination resides 
 in the symbol. Who loves nature? Who does not? Is it 
 only poets, and men of leisure and cultivation, who live with 
 her? No; but also hunters, farmers, grooms, and butchers, 
 though they express their affection in their choice of life, 
 and not in their choice of words. The writer wonders 
 what the coachman or the hunter values in riding, in horses, 
 and dogs. It is not superficial qualities. When you talk 
 with him, he holds these at as slight a rate as you. His 
 worship is sympathetic: he has no definitions, but he is 
 commanded in nature, by the living power which he feels to 
 be there present. No imitation, or playing of these things, 
 would content him; he loves the earnest of the north-wind, 
 of rain, of stone, and wood, and iron. A beauty not ex- 
 plicable is dearer than a beauty which we can see to the 
 end of. Tf ig.nr^ |,nrfi ihf. .svmbol. nature certifying the super- 
 natural, body overflowed by life, which he worships with 
 coarse, but sincere rites. 
 
 The inwardness, and mystery, of this attachment, drives 
 men of every class to the use of emblems. The schools 
 
410 THE POET 
 
 of poets, and philosophers, are not more intoxicated with] 
 their symbols, than the populace with theirs. In our poli- 
 tical parties, compute the power of badges and emblems. 
 See the great ball which they roll from Baltimore to Bunker 
 hill! In the pohtical processions, Lowell goes in a loom, 
 and Lynn in a shoe, and Salem in a ship. Witness the 
 cider-barrel, the log-cabin, the hickory-stick, the palmetto, 
 and all the cognizances of party. See the power of national 
 emblems. Some stars, hhes, leopards, a crescent, a lion, 
 an eagle, or other figure, which came into credit God knows 
 how, on an old rag of bunting, blowing in the wind, on a fort, 
 at the ends of the earth, shall make the blood tingle under 
 the rudest, or the most conventional exterior. The people 
 fancy they hate poetry, and they are all poets and mystics! 
 Beyond this universality of the symbolic language, we are 
 apprised of the di^•incness of this superior use of things, 
 (whereby the world is a temple, whose walls are covered 
 with emblems, pictures, and commandments of the Deity,) 
 in this, that there is no fact in nature which does not carry 
 the whole sense of nature; and the distinctions which we 
 make in events, and in affairs, of low and high, honest and 
 base, disappear when nature is used as a symbol. Thought 
 makes every thing fit for use. The vocabulary of an omnis- 
 cient man would embrace words and images excluded from 
 polite conversation. What would be base, or even obscene, 
 to the obscene, becomes illustrious, spoken in a new con- 
 nection of thought. The piety of the Hebrew prophets 
 purges their grossness. The circumcision is an example of 
 the power of poetry to raise the low and offensive. Small 
 and mean things serve as well as great symbols. The 
 meaner the type by which a law is expressed, the more pun- 
 gent it is, and the more lasting in the memories of men: just 
 as we choose the smallest box, or case, in which any need- 
 ful utensil can be carried. Bare lists of words are found 
 suggestive to an imaginative and excited mind; as it is re- 
 lated of Lord Chatham, that he was accustomed to read in 
 Baily's Dictionary when he was preparing to speak in Par- 
 liament. The poorest experience is rich enough for all the 
 purposes of expressing thought. Why covet a knowledge 
 
THE POET 411 
 
 of new facts? Day and night, house and garden, a few 
 books, a few actions, serve us as well as would all trades and 
 all spectacles. We are far from having exhausted the 
 significance of the few symbols we use. We can come to use 
 them yet with a terrible simpUcity. It does not need 
 that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. 
 Every new relation is a new word. Also, we use defects and 
 deformities to a sacred purpose, — so expressing our sense 
 that the evils of the world are such only to the evil eye. 
 In the old mythology, mythologists observe, defects are 
 ascribed to divine natures, as lameness to Vulcan, blindness 
 to Cupid, and the like, to signify exuberances. 
 
 It is dislocation and detachment from the life of God that 
 makes things ugly, and the poet, who re-attaches things to 
 nature and the Whole, — re-attaching even artificial things, 
 and violations of nature, to nature, by a deeper insight, — 
 disposes very easily of the most disagreeable facts. Readers 
 of poetry see the factory-village, and the railway, and fancy 
 that the poetry of the landscape is broken up by these, — 
 for these works of art are not yet consecrated in their read- 
 ing; but the poet sees them fall within the great order not 
 less than the bee-hive, or the spider's geometrical web. Nat- 
 ure adopts them very fast into her vital circles, and the 
 gliding train of cars she loves like her own. Besides, in a 
 centered mind, it signifies nothing how many mechanical 
 inventions you exhibit. Though you add millions, and 
 never so surprising, the fact of mechanics has not gained a 
 grain's weight. The spiritual fact remains unalterable, 
 by many or by few particulars; as no mountain is of any 
 appreciable height to break the curve of the sphere. A 
 shrewd country-boy goes to the city for the first time, and 
 the complacent citizen is not satisfied with his little wonder. 
 It is not that he does not see all the fine houses, and know 
 that he never saw such before, but he disposes of them as 
 easily as the poet finds place for the railway. The chief 
 value of the new fact, is to enhance the great and constant 
 fact of Life, which can dwarf any and every circumstance, 
 and to which the belt of wampum, and the commerce of 
 America, are alike. 
 
412 THE POET 
 
 The world being thus put under the mind for verb anc 
 noun, the poet is he who can articulate it. For, though; 
 hfe is great, and fascinates, and absorbs, — and though alii 
 men are intelhgent of the symbols through which it is 
 named, — yet they cannot originally use them. We are 
 symbols, and inhabit symbols; workmen, work, and tools, 
 words and things, birth and death, all are emblems; 
 but we sympathize with the symbols, and, being infatuated 
 with the economical uses of things, we do not know 
 that they are thoughts. The poet, by an ulterior 
 intellectual perception, gives them a power which! 
 makes their old use forgotten, and puts eyes, and a: 
 tongue, into every dumb and inanimate object. He per-' 
 ceives the independence of the thought on the sym- 
 bol, — the stability of the thought, the accidency and I 
 fugitiveness of the symbol. As the eyes of Lyncseus were; 
 said to see through the earth, so the poet turns the world toi 
 glass, and shows us all things in their right series and pro- 
 cession. For, through that better perception, he stands < 
 one step nearer to things, and sees the flowing or meta- 
 morphosis; perceives that thought is multiform; that within 
 the form of every creature is a force impelling it to ascend 
 into a higher form: and, following with his eyes the life, 
 uses the forms which express that life, and so his speech flows 
 with the flowing of nature. All the facts of the animal 
 economy, sex, nutriment, gestation, birth, growth, are sym- 
 bols of the passage of the world into the soul of man, to 
 suffer there a change, and reappear a new and higher fact. 
 He uses forms according to the life, and not according to the 
 form. This is true science. The poet alone knows astron- 
 omy, chemistry, vegetation, and animation; for he does 
 not stop at these facts, but employs them as signs. He 
 knows why the field of space was strown with these flowers 
 we call suns and moons and stars; why the great deep is 
 adorned with animals, with men, and gods; for, in every 
 word he speaks he rides on them as the horses of thought. 
 
 By virtue of this science the poet is the Namer or Lan- 
 guage-maker, naming things sometimes after their ap- 
 pearance, sometimes after their essence, and giving to 
 
THE POET 413 
 
 every one its own name and not another's there- 
 by rejoicing the intellect, which delights in detachment or 
 boundary. The poets made all the words, and therefore lan- 
 guage is the archives of history, and, if we must say it, a 
 sort of tomb of the muses. For, though the origin of most 
 of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of 
 genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it 
 symbohzed the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. 
 The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a 
 brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the lime- 
 stone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the 
 shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images, or 
 tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased 
 to remind us of their poetic origin. But the poet names the 
 thing because he sees it, or comes one step nearer to it than 
 any other. This expression, or naming, is not art, 'but a 
 second nature, grown out of the first, as a leaf out of a 
 tree. What we call nature, is a certain self -regulated 
 motion or change; and nature does all things by her own 
 hands, and does not leave another to baptize her, but 
 baptizes herself; and this through the metamorphosis 
 again. I remember that a certain poet described it to me 
 thus : 
 
 Genius is the activity which repairs the decays of things, 
 whether wholly or partly of a material and finite kind. 
 Nature, through all her kingdoms, insures herself. Nobody 
 cares for planting the poor fungus : so she shakes down from 
 the gills of one agaric, countless spores any one of which, 
 being preserved, transmits new billions of spores to-morrow, 
 or next day. The new agaric of this hour has a chance 
 which the old one had not. This atom of seed is thrown into 
 a new place, not subject to the accidents which destroyed 
 its parent two rods off. She makes a man: and having 
 brought him to ripe age, she will no longer run the risk of 
 losing this wonder at a blow, but she detaches from him a 
 new self, that the kind may be safe from accidents to which 
 the individual is exposed. So when the soul of the poet has 
 come to ripeness of thought, she detaches and sends away 
 
414 THE POET 
 
 from it its poems or songs, — a fearless, sleepless, deathless 
 progeny, which is not exposed to the accidents of the king 
 dom of time: a fearless, vivacious offspring, clad with wings 
 (such was the virtue of the soul out of which they came), 
 which carry them fast and far, and infix them irrevocably into 
 the hearts of men. These wings are the beauty of the poet's 
 soul. The songs, thus flying immortal from their mortal par- 
 ent, are pursued by clamorous flights of censures, which swarmi 
 in far greater numbers, and threaten to devour them; but 
 these last are not winged. At the end of a very short leap they 
 fall plump down, and rot, having received from the souls 
 out of which they came no beautiful wings. But the melo 
 dies of the poet ascend, and leap, and pierce into the deeps 
 of infinite time. 
 
 So far the bard taught me, using his freer speech. But 
 nature has a higher end, in the production of new individuals 
 than security, namely, ascension, or, the passage of the soulf 
 into higher forms. I knew, in my younger days, the sculp-)! 
 tor who made the statue of the youth which stands in the 
 public garden. He was, as I remember, unable to tell 
 directly, what made him happy, or unhappy, but by wonder- 
 ful indirections he could tell. He rose one day, according 
 to his habit, before the dawn, and saw the morning break^ 
 grand as the eternity out of which it came, and, for many 
 days after, he strove to exjiress this tranquillity, and, lo! 
 his chisel had fashioned out of marble, the form of a beauti-i 
 ful youth. Phosphorus, whose aspect is such, that, it is 
 said, all persons who look on it become silent. The poei 
 also resigns himself to his mood, and that thought whicl 
 agitated him is expressed, but alter idem, in a manner 
 totally new. The expression is organic, or, the new type 
 which things themselves take when liberated. As, in the 
 sun, objects paint their images on the retina of the eye, sc 
 they, sharing the aspiration of the whole universe, tend tc 
 paint a far more delicate copy of their essence in his mind 
 Like the metamorphosis of things into higher organic 
 forms, is their change into melodies. Over everything 
 stands its daemon, or soul, and as the form of the thing i& 
 reflected by the eye, so the soul of the thing is reflected b^ 
 
THE POET 415 
 
 a melody. The sea, the mountain-ridge, Niagara, and every 
 flower-bed, pre-exist, or super-exist in pre-cantations, which 
 sail like odors in the air, and when any man goes by with an 
 ear sufficiently fine, he over-hears them, and endeavors to 
 write down the notes, without diluting or depraving them. And 
 herein is the legitimation of criticism, in the mind's faith, 
 that the poems are a corrupt version of some text in nature, 
 with which they ought to be made tally. A rhyme in one 
 of our sonnets should not be less pleasing than the iterated 
 nodes of a sea-shell, or the resembling difference of a group 
 of flowers. The pairing of the birds is an idyl, not tedious 
 as our idyls are; a tempest is a rough ode without falsehood 
 or rant; a summer, with its harvest sown, reaped, and 
 stored, is an epic song, subordinating how many admirably 
 executed parts. Why should not the symmetry and truth 
 that modulate these, ghde into our spirits, and we partici- 
 pate the invention of nature? 
 
 This insight, which expresses itself by what is called 
 Imagination, is a very high sort of seeing, which does not 
 come by study, but by the intellect being where and what 
 it sees, by sharing the path, or circuit of things through 
 forms, and so making them translucid to others. The path 
 of things is silent. Will they suffer a speaker to go with 
 them? A spy they will not suffer; a lover, a poet, is the 
 transcendency of their own nature, — him they will suffer. 
 The condition of true naming, on the poet's part, is his 
 resigning himself to the divine aura which breathes through 
 forms, and accompanying that. 
 
 It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, 
 that, beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious in- 
 tellect, he is capable of a new energy (as of an intellect 
 doubled on itself), by abandonment to the nature of things; 
 that, beside his privacy of power as an individual man, 
 there is a great public power, on which he can draw, by 
 unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the 
 ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him: then he is 
 caught up into the life of the Universe, his speech is thunder, 
 his thought is law, and his words are universally intelligible 
 as the plants and animals. The poet knows that he speaks 
 
416 THE POET 
 
 adequately, then only when he speaks somewhat wildly, or, 
 "with the flower of the mind;" not with the intellect, usedi 
 as an organ, but with the intellect released from all service, I 
 and suffered to take its direction from its celestial life; or, 
 as the ancients were wont to express themselves, not withi 
 intellect alone, but with the intellect inebriated by nectar.. 
 As the traveller who has lost his way, throws his reins on his ; 
 horse's neck, and trusts to the instinct of the animal to find 
 his road, so must we do with the divine animal who carries 
 us through the world. For if in any manner we can stimu- 
 late this instinct, new passages are opened for us into nature, 
 the mind flows into and through things hardest and highest, 
 and the metamorphosis is possible. 
 
 This is the reason why bards love wine, mead, narcotics, 
 coffee, tea, opium, the fumes of sandal-wood and tobacco, 
 or whatever other species of animal exhilaration. All men 
 avail themselves of such means as they can, to add this 
 extraordinary power to their normal powers; and to this 
 end they prize conversation, music, pictures, sculpture, 
 dancing, theatres, travelling, war, mobs, fires, gaming, poli- 
 tics, or love, or science, or animal intoxication, which are 
 several coarser or finer rywasz-mechanical substitutes for 
 the true nectar, which is the ravishment of the intellect by 
 coming nearer to the fact. These are auxiliaries to the 
 centrifugal tendency of a man, to his passage out into free 
 space, and they help him to escape the custody of that body 
 in which he is pent up, and of that jail-yard of individual 
 relations in which he is enclosed. Hence, a great number of 
 such as were professionally expressers of Beauty, as paint- 
 ers, poets, musicians, and actors, have been more than 
 others wont to lead a life of pleasure and indulgence; all 
 but the few who received the true nectar; and, as it was 
 a spurious mode of attaining freedom, as it was an eman- 
 cipation not into the heavens, but into the freedom of 
 baser places, they were punished for that advantage they 
 won, by a dissipation and deterioration. But never can 
 any advantage be taken of nature by a trick. The spirit 
 of the world, the great calm presence of the creator, comes 
 not forth to the sorceries of opium or of wine. The sub- 
 
THE POET 417 
 
 lime vision comes to the pure and simple soul in a clean 
 and chaste body. That which we owe to narcotics is not 
 an inspiration, but some counterfeit excitement and fury. 
 Milton says, that the lyric poet may drink wine and live 
 generously, but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods, 
 and their descent unto men, must drink water out of a wood- 
 en bowl. For poetry is not "Devil's wine," but God's wine. 
 It is with this as it is with toys. We fill the hands and nurs- 
 eries of our children with all manner of dolls, drums, and 
 horses, withdrawing their eyes from the plain face and suf- 
 ficing objects of nature, the sun, the moon, the animals, 
 the water, and stones, which should be their toys. So the 
 poet's habit of living should be set on a key so low and 
 plain, that the common influences should dehght him. His 
 cheerfulness should be the gift of the sunlight; the air 
 should suffice for his inspiration, and he should be tipsy with 
 water. That spirit which suffices quiet hearts, which seems 
 to come forth to such from every dry knoll of sere grass, 
 from every pine-stump, and half-imbedded stone, on which 
 the dull March sun shines, comes forth to the poor and 
 hungry, and such as are of simple taste. If thou fill thy 
 brain with Boston and New York, with fashion and covet- 
 ousness, and wilt stimulate thy jaded senses with wine and 
 French coffee, thou shalt find no radiance of wisdom in 
 the lonely waste of the pine-woods. 
 
 If the imagination intoxicates the poet, it is not inactive 
 in other men. The metamorphosis excites in the beholder 
 an emotion of joy. The use of symbols has a certain power 
 of emancipation and exhilaration for all men. We seem 
 to be touched by a wand, which makes us dance and run 
 about happily, like children. We are like persons who come 
 out of a cave or cellar into the open air. This is the effect 
 on us of tropes, fables, oracles, and all poetic forms. Poets 
 are thus liberating gods. Men have really got a new sense, 
 and found within their world another world, or nest of 
 worlds; for, the metamorphosis once seen, we divine that 
 it does not stop. I will not now consider how much this 
 makes the charm of algebra and the mathematics, which also 
 have their tropes, but it is felt in every definition; as, when 
 
418 THE POET 
 
 Aristotle defines space to be an immovable vessel, in which 
 things are contained; or, when Plato defines a line to be a! 
 flowing point; or, figure to be bound of a solid; and 
 many the hke. What a joyful sense of freedom we have,' 
 when Vitruvius announces the old opinion of artists,^ 
 that no architect can build any house well who does not 
 know something of anatomy. When Socrates, in Charmides, 
 tells us that the soul is cured of its maladies by certain in- 
 cantations, and that these incantations are beautiful reasons; 
 from which temperance is generated in souls; when Plato( 
 calls the world an animal; and Timaeus affirms that plantsi 
 also are animals; or affirms a man to be a heavenly tree; 
 growing with his root, which is his head, upward; andji 
 as George Chapman, foUowing him, writes, — 
 
 "So in our tree of man, whose nervie root 
 Springs in his top"; 
 
 when Orpheus speaks of hoariness as "that white flower 
 which marks extreme old age;" when Proclus calls the uni 
 verse the statue of the intellect; when Chaucer, in his 
 praise of "Gentilesse," compares good blood in mean con-i 
 dition to fire, which, though carried to the darkest house be 
 twixt this and the mount of Caucasus, will yet hold its nat 
 ural office, and burn as bright as if twenty thousand men did| 
 it behold ; when John saw, in the apocalypse, the ruin of the 
 world through evil, and the stars fall from heaven, as the 
 fig-tree casteth her untimely fruit; when JEsop reports the 
 whole catalogue of common daily relations through the mas- 
 cjuerade of birds and beasts; — we take the cheerful hint oi 
 the immortality of our essence, and its versatile habits and 
 escapes, as when the gypsies say, "it is in vain to hang them 
 they cannot die." 
 
 The poets are thus liberating gods. The ancient British 
 bards had for the title of their order, "Those who are free 
 throughout the world." They are free, and they make free 
 An imaginative book renders us much more service at first, b> 
 stimulating us through its tropes, than afterward, when we 
 arrive at the precise sense of the author. I think nothing isi 
 of any value in books, excepting the transcendental anci 
 
THE POET 419 
 
 extraordinary. If a man is inflamed and carried away by 
 his thought, to that degree that he forgets the authors and 
 the pubhc, and heeds only this one dream, which holds him 
 like an insanity, let me read his paper, and you may have all 
 the arguments, and histories, and criticism. All the value 
 which attaches to Pythagoras, Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, 
 Cardan, Kepler, Swedenborg, Schelling, Oken, or any other 
 who introduces questionable facts into his cosmogony, as 
 angels, devils, magic, astrology, palmistry, mesmerism, and 
 so on, is the certificate we have of departure from routine, 
 and that here is a new witness. That also is the best success 
 in conversation, the magic of liberty, which puts the world, 
 like a ball, in our hands. How cheap even the liberty then 
 seems; how mean to study, when an emotion communicates 
 to the intellect the power to sap and upheave nature: how 
 great the perspective ! nations, times, systems, enter and dis- 
 appear, like threads in tapestry of large figure and many 
 colors; dream delivers us to dream, and, while the drunken- 
 ness lasts, we will sell our bed, our philosophy, our religion, 
 in our opulence. 
 
 There is good reason why we should prize this liberation. 
 The fate of the poor shepherd; who, blinded and lost in the 
 snow-storm, perishes in a drift within a few feet of his 
 cottage door, is an emblem of the state of man. On the 
 brink of the waters of life and truth, we are miserably 
 dying. The inaccessibleness of every thought but that we 
 are in, is wonderful. What if you come near to it, — you 
 are as remote when you are nearest as when you are farthest. 
 Every thought is also a prison; every heaven is also a prison. 
 Therefore we love the poet, the inventor, who in any form, 
 whether in an ode, or in an action, or in looks and be- 
 havior, has yielded us a new thought. He unlocks our 
 chains, and admits us to a new scene. 
 
 This emancipation is dear to all men; and the power to 
 impart it, as it must come from greater depth and scope of 
 thought, is a measure of intellect. Therefore all books of 
 the imagination endure, all which ascend to that truth, 
 that the writer sees nature beneath him, and uses it as 
 his exponent. Every verse or sentence, possessing this 
 
420 THE POET 
 
 virtue, will take care of its own immortality. The reli- 
 gions of the world are the ejaculations of a few imaginative 
 men. 
 
 But the quality of the imagination is to flow, and not to 
 freeze. The poet did not stop at the color, or the form, 
 but read their meaning; neither may he rest in this meaning, 
 but he makes the same objects exponents of his new thought. 
 Here is the difference betwixt the poet and the mystic, that 
 the last nails a symbol to one sense, which was a true sense 
 for a moment, but soon becomes old and false. For all 
 symbols are fluxional; all language is vehicular and tran- 
 sitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, 
 not as farms and houses are, for homestead. Mysticism 
 consists in the mistake of an acccidental and individual sym- 
 bol for a universal one. The morning-redness happens to 
 be the favorite meteor to the eyes of Jacob Behmen, and 
 comes to stand to him for truth and faith; and, he believes, 
 it should stand for the same realities to every reader. But 
 the first reader prefers as naturally the symbol of a mother 
 and child, or a gardener and his bulb, or a jeweller polishing 
 a gem. Either of these, or of a myriad more, are equally 
 good to the person to whom they are significant. Only they 
 must be held lightly, and be very willingly translated into 
 the equivalent terms which others use. And the mystic must 
 be steadily told, — All that you say is just as true without the 
 tedious use of that symbol as with it. Let us have a little 
 algebra, instead of this trite rhetoric, — universal signs, in- 
 stead of these village symbols, — and we shall both be gain- 
 ers. The history of hierarchies seems to show, that all 
 religious error consisted in making the symbol too stark and 
 solid, and, at last, nothing but an excess of the organ of 
 language. 
 
 Swedenborg, of all men in the recent ages, stands 
 eminently for the translator of nature into thought. I do 
 not know the man in history to whom things stood so uni- 
 formly for words. Before him the metamorphosis contin- 
 ually plays. Every thing on which his eye rests, obeys the 
 impulses of moral nature. The figs become grapes whilst 
 he eats them. When some of his angels affirmed a truth, the 
 
THE POET 421 
 
 laurel twig which they held blossomed in their hands. The 
 noise which at a distance, appeared like gnashing and thump- 
 ing, on coming nearer was found to be the voice of disputants. 
 The men, in one of his visions, seen in heavenly light, ap- 
 peared like dragons, and seemed in darkness; but to each 
 other they appeared as men, and, when the light from heaven 
 shone into their cabin, they complained of the darkness, 
 and were compelled to shut the window that they might 
 see. 
 
 There was this perception in him, which makes the poet 
 or seer, an object of awe and terror, namely, that the same 
 man, or society of men, may wear one aspect to themselves 
 and their companions, and a different aspect to higher in- 
 telligences. Certain priests, whom he describes as convers- 
 ing very learnedly together, .appeared to the children, who 
 were at some distance, like dead horses; and many the like 
 misappearances. And instantly the mind inquires, whether 
 these fishes under the bridge, yonder oxen in the pasture, 
 those dogs in the yard, are immutably fishes, oxen, and dogs, 
 or only so appear to me, and perchance to themselves appear 
 upright men; and whether I appear as a man to all eyes. 
 The Brahmins and Pythagoras propounded the same question, 
 and if any poet has witnessed the transformation, he doubt- 
 less found it in harmony with various experiences. We 
 have all seen changes as considerable in wheat and cater- 
 pillars. He is the poet, and shall draw us with love and 
 terror, who sees, through the flowing vest, the firm nature, 
 and can declare it. 
 
 I look in vain for the poet whom I describe. We do not, 
 with sufficient plainness, or sufficient profoundness, address 
 ourselves to life, nor dare we chaunt our own times and 
 social circumstance. If we filled the day with bravery, we 
 should not shrink from celebrating it. Time and nature 
 yield us many gifts, but not yet the timely man, the new 
 religion, the reconciler, whom all things await. Dante's 
 praise is, that he dared to write his autobiography in 
 colossal cipher, or into universality. We have yet had no 
 genius in America, with tyrannous eye, which knew the 
 value of our incomparable materials, and saw, in the bar- 
 
422 THE POET 
 
 barism and materialism of the times, another carnival of the 
 same gods whose picture it so much admires in Homer; 
 then in the middle age; then in Calvinism. Banks and 
 tariffs, the newspaper and caucus, methodism and unitarian- 
 ism, are flat and dull to dull people, but rest on the same 
 foundations of wonder as the town of Troy and the temple 
 of Delphi and are as swiftly passing away. Our logrolhng, 
 our stumps and their politics, our fisheries, our Negroes, 
 and Indians, our boats, and our repudiations, the wrath of 
 rogues, and the pusillanimity of honest men, the northern 
 trade, the southern planting, the western clearing, Oregon 
 and Texas, are yet unsung. Yet America is a poem in our 
 eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it 
 will not wait long for metres. If I have not found that ex- 
 cellent combination of gifts in my countrymen which I 
 seek, neither could I aid myself to fix the idea of the poet 
 by reading now and then in Chalmers's collection of five 
 centuries of English poets. These are wits, more than poets, 
 though there have been poets among them. But when we 
 adhere to the ideal of the poet, we have our difficulties even 
 with Milton and Homer. Milton is too literary, and 
 Homer too literal and historical. 
 
 But I am not wise enough for a national criticism, and 
 must use the old largeness a little longer, to discharge my 
 errand from the muse to the poet concerning his art. 
 
 Art is the path of the creator to his work. The paths, 
 or methods, are ideal and eternal, though few men ever see 
 them, — not the artist himself, for years, or for a lifetime, 
 unless he come into the conditions. The painter, the sculp- 
 tor, the composer, the epic rhapsodist, the orator, all par- 
 take one desire, namely, to express themselves symmetrically, 
 and abundantly, not dwarfishly and fragmentarily. They 
 found or put themselves in certain conditions, as, the painter 
 and sculptor before some impressive human figures; the 
 orator, into the assembly of the people; and the others, in 
 such scenes as each has found exciting to his intellect; and 
 each presently feels the new desire. He hears a voice, he 
 sees a beckoning. Then he is apprised, with wonder, what 
 herds of daemons hem him in. He can no more rest; he 
 
THE POET 423 
 
 says, with the old painter, "By God, it is in me, and must 
 go forth of me." He pursues a beauty, half seen, which flies 
 before him. The poet pours out verses in every solitude. 
 Most of the things he says are conventional, no doubt; but 
 by and by he says something which is original and beautiful. 
 That charms him. He would say nothing else but such 
 things. In our way of talking, we say, "That is yours, this 
 is mine;" but the poet knows well that it is not his; that it 
 is as strange and beautiful to him as to you; he would fain 
 hear the like eloquence at length. Once having tasted this im- 
 mortal ichor, he cannot have enough of it, and, as an ad- 
 mirable creative power exists in these intellections, it is of 
 the last importance that these things get spoken. What a 
 little of all we know is said! What drops of all the sea of 
 our science are baled up! and by what accident it is that 
 these are exposed, when so many secrets sleep in nature! 
 Hence the necessity of speech and song; hence these throbs 
 and heart-beatings in the orator, at the door of the assembly, 
 to the end, namely, that thought may be ejaculated as Logos, 
 or Word. 
 
 Doubt not, poet, but persist. Say, "It is in me, and 
 shall out." Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and 
 stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until, at 
 last, rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every 
 night shows thee is thine own; — a power transcending all 
 hmit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the 
 conductor of the whole river of electricity. Nothing walks, 
 or creeps, or grows, or exists, which must not in turn arise 
 and walk before him as exponent of his meaning. Comes 
 he to that power, his genius is no longer exhaustible. All 
 the creatures, by pairs and by tribes, pour into his mind as 
 into a Noah's ark, to come forth again to people a 
 new world. This is like the stock of air for our respiration, 
 or for the combustion of our fire-place, not a measure of 
 gallons, but the entire atmosphere if wanted. And therefore 
 the rich poets, as Homer, Chaucer, Shakspeare, and Raphael, 
 have obviously no limits to their works, except the limits of 
 their lifetime, and resemble a mirror carried through the 
 street, ready to render an image of every created thing. 
 
424 THE POET 
 
 poet ! a new nobility is conferred in groves and pastures, 
 and not in castles, or by the sword-blade, any longer. The 
 conditions are hard, but equal. Thou shalt leave the world, 
 and know the muse only. Thou shalt not know any longer i| 
 the time, customs, graces, politics, or opinions of men, butl 
 shalt take all from the muse. For the time of towns is: 
 tolled from the world by funeral chimes, but in nature the; 
 universal hours are counted by succeeding tribes of animals^ 
 and plants, and by growth of joy on joy. God wills also 
 that thou abdicate a manifold and duplex life, and that thou 
 be content that others speak for thee. Others shall be thy 
 gentlemen, and shall represent all courtesy and worldly life 
 for thee; others shall do the great and resounding actions 
 also. Thou shalt lie close hid with nature, and canst nott 
 be afforded to the Capitol or the Exchange. The world is 
 full of renunciations and apprenticeships, and this is thine;; 
 thou must pass for a fool and a churl for a long season 
 This is the screen and sheath in which Pan has protected his^ 
 well-beloved flower, and thou shalt be known only to thine ^ 
 own, and they shall console thee with tenderest love. And 
 thou shalt not be able to rehearse the names of thy friends i 
 in thy verse, for an old shame before the holy ideal. And 
 this is the reward: that the ideal shall be real to thee, and 
 the impressions of the actual world shall fall like summeri^; 
 rain, copious, but not troublesome, to thy invulnerable; 
 essence. Thou shalt have the whole land for thy park andl 
 manor, the sea for thy bath and navigation, without tax and 
 without envy ; the woods and the rivers thou shalt own ; and 
 thou shalt possess that wherein others are only tenants and! 
 boarders. Thou true land-lord! sea-lord! air-lord! Wher- 
 ever snow falls, or water flows, or birds fly, wherever day 
 and night meet in twiUght, wherever the blue heaven is : 
 hung by clouds, or sown with stars, w^herever are forms 
 with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into 
 celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe and love, there 
 is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee, and though thou 
 shouldst walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to 
 find a condition inopportune or ignoble. 
 
XXII 
 THE YOUNG AMERICAN 
 
 A Lecture read before the Mercantile Library Association, 
 Boston, February 7, 1844. 
 
 Gentlemen, 
 
 It is remarkable, that our people have their intellectual 
 culture from one country, and their duties from another. 
 This false state of things is newly in a way to be corrected. 
 America is beginning to assert itself to the senses and to the 
 imagination of her children, and Europe is receding in the 
 same degree. This their reaction on education gives a new 
 importance to the internal improvements and to the politics 
 of the country. Who has not been stimulated to reflection 
 by the facilities now in progress of construction for travel 
 and the transportation of goods in the United States? 
 
 This rage for road building is beneficent for America, 
 where vast distance is so main a consideration in our do- 
 mestic politics and trade, inasmuch as the great political 
 promise of the invention is to hold the Union staunch, whose 
 days seemed already numbered by the mere inconvenience 
 of transporting representatives, judges, and officers across 
 such tedious distances of land and water. Not only is dis- 
 tance annihilated, but when, as now, the locomotive and the 
 steamboat, like enormous shuttles, shoot every day across 
 the thousand various threads of national descent and 
 employment, and bind them fast in one web, an hourly as- 
 similation goes forward, and there is no danger that local 
 peculiarities and hostilities should be preserved. 
 
 1. But I hasten to speak of the utility of these im- 
 provements in creating an American sentiment. An un- 
 looked-for consequence of the railroad, is the increased ac- 
 quaintance it has given the American people with the 
 
 425 
 
426 THE YOUNG AMERICAN 
 
 boundless resources of their own soil. If this invention has 
 reduced England to a third of its size, by bringing people 
 so much nearer, in this country it has given a new celerity 
 to time, or anticipated by fifty years the planting of tracts 
 of land, the choice of water privileges, the working of mines, 
 and other natural advantages. Railroad iron is a magician's 
 rod, in its power to evoke the sleeping energies of land and 
 water. 
 
 The railroad is but one arrow in our quiver, though it 
 has great value as a sort of yard-stick, and surveyor's line. 
 The bountiful continent is ours, state on state, and territory 
 on territory, to the waves of the Pacific sea; 
 
 "Our garden is the immeasurable earth, 
 The heaven's blue pillars are Medea's house." 
 
 The task of surveying, planting, and building upon this 
 immense tract, requires an education and a sentiment com- 
 mensurate thereto. A consciousness of this fact is beginning 
 to take the place of the purely trading spirit and education 
 which sprang up whilst all the population lived on the 
 fringe of sea-coast. And even on the coast, prudent 
 men have begun to see that every American should be 
 educated with a view to the values of land. The arts of 
 engineering and of architecture are studied; scientific agri- 
 culture is an object of growing attention; the mineral riches 
 are explored; hmestone, coal, slate, and iron; and the value 
 of timber-lands is enhanced. 
 
 Columbus alleged as a reason for seeking a continent in 
 the West, that the harmony of nature required a great tract 
 of land in the western hemisphere, to balance the known 
 extent of land in the eastern; and it now appears that we 
 must estimate the native values of this broad region to re- 
 dress the balance of our own judgments, and appreciate the 
 advantages opened to the human race in this country, which 
 is our fortunate home. The land is the appointed remedy 
 for whatever is false and fantastic in our culture. The con- 
 tinent we inhabit is to be physic and food for our mind, as 
 well as our body. The land, with its tranquillizing, sanative 
 influences, is to repair the errors of a scholastic and tra- 
 
THE YOUNG AMERICAN 427 
 
 ditional education, and bring us into just relations with men 
 and things. 
 
 The habit of hving in the presence of these invitations of 
 natural wealth is not inoperative; and this habit, combined 
 with the moral sentiment which, in the recent years, has in- 
 terrogated every institution, usage, and law, has, naturally, 
 given a strong direction to the wishes and aims of active 
 young men to withdraw from cities, and cultivate the soil. 
 This inclination has appeared in the most unlooked for 
 quarters, in men supposed to be absorbed in business, and 
 in those connected with the liberal professions. And, since 
 the walks of trade were crowded, whilst that of agriculture 
 cannot easily be, inasmuch as the farmer who is not wanted 
 by others can yet grow his own bread, whilst the manu- 
 facturer or the trader, who is not wanted, cannot, — this 
 seemed a happy tendency. For, beside all the moral benefit 
 which we may expect from the farmer's profession, when a 
 man enters it considerately, this promised the conquering 
 of the soil, plenty, and beyond this, the adorning of the 
 country with every advantage and ornament which labor, 
 ingenuity, and affection for a man's home, could suggest. 
 
 Meantime, with cheap land, and the pacific disposition of 
 the people, every thing invites to the arts of agriculture, of 
 gardening, and domestic architecture. Public gardens, on 
 the scale of such plantations in Europe and Asia, are now un- 
 known to us. There is no feature of the old countries that 
 strikes an American with more agreeable surprise than the 
 beautiful gardens of Europe; such as the BoboH in Florence, 
 the Villa Borghese in Rome, the Villa d'Este in Tivoli, the 
 gardens at Munich, and at Frankfort on the Main: works 
 easily imitated here, and which might well make the land 
 dear to the citizen, and inflame patriotism. It is the fine 
 art which is left for us, now that sculpture, painting, and 
 rehgious and civil architecture have become effete, and have 
 passed into second childhood. We have twenty degrees of 
 latitude wherein to choose a seat, and the new modes of 
 traveUing enlarge the opportunity of selection, by making 
 it easy to cultivate very distant tracts, and yet remain in 
 strict intercourse with the centers of trade and population. 
 
428 THE YOUNG AMERICAN 
 
 And the whole force of all the arts goes to facilitate the 
 decoration of lands and dwellings. A garden has this advan- 
 tage, that it makes it indifferent w^here you live. A well- 
 laid garden makes the face of the country of no account; 
 let that be low or high, grand or mean, you have made a 
 beautiful abode worthy of man. If the landscape is pleasing, 
 the garden shows it, — if tame, it excludes it. A little grove, 
 which any farmer can find, or cause to grow near his house, 
 will, in a few years, make cataracts and chains of moun- 
 tains quite unnecessary to his scenery; and he is so contented 
 with his alleys, woodlands, orchards, and river, that Niagara, 
 and the Notch of the White Hills, and Nantasket Beach, 
 are superfluities. And yet the selection of a fit house-lot 
 has the same advantage over an indifferent one, as the 
 selection to a given employment of a man who has a genius 
 for that work. In the last case, the culture of years will 
 never make the most painstaking apprentice his equal; no 
 more will gardening give the advantage of a happy site to 
 a house in a hole or on a pinnacle. In America, we have 
 hitherto little to boast in this kind. The cities drain the 
 country of the best part of its population : the flower of the 
 youth, of both sexes, goes into the towns, and the country 
 is cultivated by a so much inferior class. The land, — travel 
 a whole day together, — looks poverty-stricken, and the 
 buildings plain and poor. In Europe, where society has an 
 aristocratic structure, the land is full of men of the best 
 stock, and the best culture, whose interest and pride it is to 
 remain half the year on their estates, and to fill them with 
 every convenience and ornament. Of course, these make 
 model farms, and model architecture, and are a constant 
 education to the eye of the surrounding population. What- 
 ever events in progress shall go to disgust men with cities, 
 and infuse into them the passion for country life and country 
 pleasures, will render a service to the whole face of this 
 continent, and will further the most poetic of all the oc- 
 cupations of real hfe, the bringing out by art the native 
 but hidden graces of the landscape. 
 
 I look on such improvements, also, as directly tending to 
 endear the land to the inhabitant. Any relation to the 
 
THE YOUNG AMERICAN 429 
 
 land, the habit of tilUng it, or mining it, or even hunting 
 on it, generates the feeUng of patriotism. He who keeps 
 shop on it, or he who merely uses it as a support to his 
 desk and ledger, or to his manufactory, values it less. The 
 vast majority of the people of this country live by the land, 
 and carry its quality in their manners and opinions. We 
 in the Atlantic states, by position, have been commercial, 
 and have, as I said, imbibed easily an European cul- 
 ture. Luckily for us, now that steam has narrowed the 
 Atlantic to a strait, the nervous, rocky West is intruding a 
 new and continental element into the national mind, and we 
 shall yet have an American genius. How much better when 
 the whole land is a garden, and the people have grown up 
 in the bowers of a paradise. Without looking, then, to those 
 extraordinary social influences which are now acting in pre- 
 cisely this direction, but only at what is inevitably doing 
 around us, I think we must regard the laiid as a command- 
 ing and increasing power on the citizen, the sanative and 
 Americanizing influence, which promises to disclose new vir- 
 tues for ages to come. 
 
 2. In the second place, the uprise and culmination of the 
 new and anti-feudal power of Commerce, is the political 
 fact of most significance to the American at this hour. 
 
 We cannot look on the freedom of this country, in con- 
 nection with its youth, without a presentiment that here 
 shall laws and institutions exist on some scale of proportion 
 to the majesty of nature. To men legislating for the area 
 betwixt the two oceans, betwixt the snows and the tropics, 
 somewhat of the gravity of nature will infuse itself into 
 the code. A heterogeneous population crowding on all ships 
 from all corners of the world to the great gates of North 
 America, namely, Boston, New York, and New Orleans, 
 and thence proceeding inward to the prairie and the moun- 
 tains, and quickly contributing their private thought to 
 the public opinion, their toll to the treasury, and their vote 
 to the election, it cannot be doubted that the legislation of 
 this country should become more cathohc and cosmopolitan 
 than that of any other. It seems so easy for America to 
 inspire and express the most expansive and humane spirit; 
 
430 THE YOUNG AMERICAN 
 
 new-born, free, healthful, strong, the land of the laborer, 
 of the democrat, of the philanthropist, of the behever, of 
 the saint, she should speak for the human race. It is the 
 country of the Future. From Washington, proverbially 
 ''the city of magnificent distances," through all its cities, 
 states, and territories, it is a country of beginnings, of proj- 
 ects, of designs, and expectations. 
 
 Gentlemen, there is a sublime and friendly Destiny by 
 which the human race is guided, — the race never dying, the 
 individual never spared, — to results affecting masses and 
 ages. Men are narrow and selfish, but the Genius or Des- 
 tiny is not narrow, but beneficent. It is not discovered in 
 their calculated and voluntary activity, but in what be- 
 falls, with or without their design. Onl^;_wlia1^is iuevitabLe 
 interests us, and it turns out that love and good are inevit- 
 able, a nd inj hc^r^^^^'^p of th^nr^ - That Genius has infused 
 it sell into nature. It indicates itsblf by a small excess of 
 good, a small balance i ff bru te facts alw^ays favorable to the 
 side of reason. All the facts in any part of nature shall be 
 tabulated, and the results shall indicate the same security 
 and benefit ; so slight as to be hardly observable, and yet it 
 is there. The sphere is flattened at the poles, and swelled 
 at the equator; a form flowing necessarily from the fluid 
 state, yet the form, the mathematician assures us, required 
 to prevent the protuberances of the continent, or even of 
 lesser mountains cast up at any time by earthquakes, from 
 continually deranging the axis of the earth. The census 
 of the population is found to keep an invariable equality 
 in the sexes, with a trifling predominance in favor of the 
 male, as if to counterbalance the necessarily increased ex- 
 posure of male hfe in war, navigation, and other accidents. 
 Remark the unceasing effort throughout nature at somewhat 
 better than the actual creatures: amelioration in nature, 
 which alone permits and authorizes amelioration in mankind. 
 The population of the world is a conditional population; 
 these are not the best, but the best that could live in the 
 existing state of soils, gases, animals, and morals: the best 
 that could yet live; there shall be a better, please God. This 
 Genius, or Destiny, is of the sternest administration, though 
 
THE YOUNG AMERICAN 431 
 
 rumors exist of its secret tenderness. It may be styled a 
 cruel kindness, serving the whole even to the ruin of the 
 member; a terrible communist, reserving all profits to the 
 community, without dividend to individuals. Its law 
 is, you shall have everything as a member, nothing to your- 
 self. For Nature is the noblest engineer, yet uses a grinding 
 economy, working up all that is wasted to-day into to- 
 morrow's creation; — not a superfluous grain of sand, for all 
 the ostentation she makes of expense and public works. It 
 is because Nature thus saves and uses, laboring for the 
 general, that we poor particulars are so crushed and strait- 
 ened, and find it so hard to live. She flung us out in her 
 jplenty, but we cannot shed a hair, or a paring of a nail, but 
 instantly she snatches at the shred, and appropriates it to 
 the general stock. Our condition is like that of the poor 
 wolves: if one of the flock wound himself, or so much as 
 hmp, the rest eat him up incontinently. 
 
 That serene Power interposes the check upon the 
 caprices and officiousness of our wills. Its charity is not our 
 charity. One of its agents is our will, but that which ex- 
 presses itself in our will, is stronger than our will. We are 
 very forward to help it, but it will not be accelerated. It 
 resists our meddhng, eleemosynary contrivances. We de- 
 vise sumptuary and relief laws, but the principle of popu- 
 lation is always reducing wages to the lowest pittance on 
 which human life can be sustained. We legislate against 
 forestalling and monopoly; we would have a common 
 granary for the poor; but the selfishness which hoards the 
 corn for high prices, is the preventive of famine ; and the law 
 of self-preservation is surer policy than any legislation can 
 be. We concoct eleemosynary systems, and it turns out that 
 our charity increases pauperism. We inflate our paper 
 currency, we repair commerce with unlimited credit, and are 
 presently visited with unlimited bankruptcy. 
 
 It is easy to see that the existing generation are con- 
 spiring with a beneficence, which, in its working for coming 
 generations, sacrifices the passing one, which infatuates the 
 most selfish men to act against their private interest for 
 the public welfare. We build railroads, we know not for 
 
432 THE YOUNG AMERICAN 
 
 what or for whom: but one thing is certain, that we who 
 build will receive the very smallest share of benefit. Bene- 
 fits will accrue; they are essential to the country, but that 
 will be felt not until we are no longer countrymen. We 
 do the like in all matters: — 
 
 "Man's heart the Almighty to the Future set 
 By secret and inviolable springs." 
 
 We plant trees, we build stone houses, we redeem the waste, 
 we make prospective laws, we found colleges and hos- 
 pitals for remote generations. We should be mortified to 
 learn that the little benefit we chanced in our own persons 
 to receive was the utmost they would yield. 
 
 The history of commerce, is the record of this beneficent 
 tendency. The patriarchal form of government readily 
 becomes despotic, as each person may see in his own family. 
 Fathers wish to be the fathers of the minds of their children, 
 and behold with impatience a new character and way of 
 thinking, presuming to show itself in their own son or 
 daughter. This feehng, which all their love and pride in 
 the powers of their children cannot subdue, becomes petu- 
 lance and tyranny when the head of the clan, the emperor 
 of an empire, deals with the same difference of opinion in 
 his subjects. Difference of opinion is the one crime which 
 kings never forgive. An empire is an immense egotism. 
 "I am the State," said the French Louis. When a French 
 ambassador mentioned to Paul of Russia, that a man of 
 consequence in St. Petersburg was interesting himself in some 
 matter, the Czar interrupted him — "There is no man of 
 consequence in this empire, but he with whom I am actually 
 speaking; and so long only as I am speaking to him, is he 
 of any consequence." And Nicholas, the present emperor, 
 is reported to have said to his council, "The age is em- 
 barrassed with new opinions; rely on me, gentlemen, I shall 
 oppose an iron will to the progress of liberal opinions." 
 
 It is easy to see that this patriarchal or family manage- 
 ment gets to be rather troublesome to all but the papa ; the 
 sceptre comes to be a crowbar. And this unpleasant ego- 
 tism^ Feudahsm opposes, and finally destroys. The king is 
 
THE YOUNG AMERICAN 433 
 
 compelled to call in the aid of his brothers and cousins, and 
 remote relations, to help him keep his overgrown house in 
 order; and this club of noblemen always comes at last to have 
 a will of their own; they combine to brave the sovereign, 
 and call in the aid of the people. Each chief attaches as 
 many followers as he can, by kindness, maintenance, and 
 gifts; and as long as war lasts, the nobles, who must be 
 soldiers, rule very well. But when peace comes, the nobles 
 prove very whimsical and uncomfortable masters; their 
 frolics turn out to be insulting and degrading to the com- 
 moner. Feudalism grew to be a bandit and brigand. 
 
 Meantime Trade had begun to appear: Trade, a plant 
 which grows wherever there is peace, as soon as there is 
 peace, and as long as there is peace. The luxury and neces- 
 sity of the noble fostered it. And as quickly as men go to 
 foreign parts, in ships or caravans, a new order of things 
 springs up; new command takes place, new servants and 
 new masters. Their information, their wealth, the corre- 
 spondence, have made them quite other men than left their 
 native shore. Theij are nobles now, and by another patent 
 than the king's. Feudahsm had been good, had broken the 
 power of the kings, and had some good t/aits of its own; but 
 it had grown mischievous, it was time for it to die, and, as 
 they saj^ of dying people, all its faui-^o came out. Trade 
 was the strong man that broke it down, and raised a new^ and 
 unknown power in its place. It is a new agent in the world, 
 and one of great function; it is a very intellectual force. This 
 displaces physical strength, and instals computation, com- 
 bination, information, science, in its room. It calls out all 
 force of a certain kind that slumbered in the former dy- 
 nasties. It is now in the midst of its career. Feudalism is 
 not ended yet. Our governments still partake largely of 
 that element. Trade goes to make the governments in- 
 significant, and to bring every kind of faculty of every in- 
 dividual that can in any manner serve any person, on sale. 
 Instead of a huge Army and Navy, and Executive Depart- 
 ments, it converts Government into an Intelligence-office, 
 where every man may find what he wishs to buy, and ex- 
 pose what he has to sell, not only produce and manufactures, 
 
434 THE YOUNG AMERICAN 
 
 but art, skill, and intellectual and moral values. , This is 
 t he good and this the evil of trade. -that it would put everv^ 
 Tlnng^into marke t J: i.^ l ent . bea u tv, virtue, and mnn hifngplf . 
 ^ By" this means, however, it has done its work. It has its 
 faults, and will come to an end, as the others do. The 
 philosopher and lover of man have much harm to say of 
 trade; but the historian will see that trade was the prin- 
 ciple of Liberty; that trade planted America and destroyed 
 Feudalism; that it makes peace and keeps peace, and it 
 will abolish slavery. We complain of its oppression of the 
 poor, and of its building up a new aristocracy on the ruins 
 of the aristocracy it destroyed. But the aristocracy of 
 trade has no permanence, is not entailed, was the result of 
 toil and talent, the result of merit of some kind, and is 
 continually falling, like the waves of the sea, before new 
 claims of the same sort. Trade is an instrument in the 
 hands of that friendly Power which works for us in our own 
 despite. We design it thus and thus; it turns out otherwise 
 and far better. This beneficent tendency, omnipotent with- 
 out violence, exists and works. Every line of history in- 
 spires a confidence that we shall not go far wrong; that 
 things mend. That is the moral of all we learn, that it 
 warrants Hope, the prohfic mother of reforms. Our part 
 is plainly not to throw ourselves across the track, to block 
 improvement, and sit till we are stone, but to watch 
 the uprise of successive mornings, and to conspire with the 
 new works of new days. Government has been a fossil; it 
 should be a plant. I conceive that the office of statute law 
 should be to express, and not to impede the mind of man- 
 kind. New thoughts, new things. Trade w^-^ one instru- 
 ment, but Trade is also but for a time, and must give way 
 to somewhat broader and better, whose signs are already 
 dawning in the sky. 
 
 3. I pass to speak of the signs of that which is the sequel 
 of trade. 
 
 In consequence of the revolution in the state of society 
 wrought by trade, Government in our times is beginning to 
 wear a clumsy and cumbrous appearance. We have already 
 seen our way to shorter methods. The time is full of good 
 
THE YOUNG AMERICAN 435 
 
 signs. Some of them shall ripen to fruit. All this bene- 
 ficent socialism is a friendly omen, and the swelling cry of 
 voices for the education of the people, indicates that Govern- 
 ment has other offices than those of banker and executioner. 
 Witness the new movements in the civilized world, the Com- 
 munism of France, Germany, and Switzerland; the Trades' 
 Unions; the English League against the Corn Laws; and the 
 whole Industrial Statistics, so called. In Paris, the blouse, 
 the badge of the operative, has begun to make its appearance 
 in the saloons. Witness, too, the spectacle of three Com- 
 munities which have within a very short time sprung up 
 within this Commonwealth, besides several others un- 
 dertaken by citizens of Massachusetts within the territory 
 of other States. These proceeded from a variety of motives, 
 from an impatience of many usages in common life, from a 
 wish for greater freedom than the manners and opinions of 
 society permitted, but in great part from a feehng that the 
 true offices of the State, the State had let fall to the ground; 
 that in the scramble of parties for the public purse, the main 
 duties of government were omitted, — the duty to instruct the 
 ignorant, to supply the poor with work and with good 
 guidance. These communists preferred the agricultural 
 life as the most favorable condition for human culture; but 
 they thought that the farm, as w^e manage it, did not satisfy 
 the right ambition of man. The farmer, after sacrificing 
 pleasure, taste, freedom, thought, love, to his work, turns 
 out often a bankrupt, like the merchant. This result might 
 well seem astounding. All this drudgery, from cockcrowing 
 to starlight, for all these years, to end in mortgages and the 
 auctioneer's lUg, and removing from bad to worse. It is 
 time to have the thing looked into, and with a sifting criti- 
 cism ascertain who is the fool. It seemed a great deal worse, 
 because the farmer is living in the same town with men who 
 pretend to know exactly what he wants. On one side, is 
 agricultural chemistry, coolly exposing the nonsense of our 
 spendthrift agriculture and ruinous expense of manures, 
 and offering, by means of a teaspoonful of artificial guano, 
 to turn a sandbank into corn; and, on the other, the farm- 
 er, not only eager for the information, but with bad crops 
 
436 THE YOUNG AMERICAN 
 
 and in debt and bankruptcy, for want of it. Here are Et- 
 zlers and mechanical projectors, who, with the Fourierists, 
 undoubtingly affirm that the smallest union would make 
 every man rich; — and, on the other side, a multitude of 
 poor men and women seeking work, and who cannot findi 
 enough to pay their board. The science is confident, andl 
 surely the poverty is real. If any means could be found to \ 
 bring these two together! 
 
 This was one design of the projectors of the Associations] 
 which are now making their first feeble experiments. They 
 were founded in love, and in labor. They proposed, as youi 
 know, that all men should take a part in the manual toil, and 
 proposed to amend the condition of men, by substi- 
 tuting harmonious for hostile industry. It was a noblest 
 thought of Fourier, which gives a favorable idea of his^i 
 system, to distinguish in his Phalanx a class as the Sacred 1 
 Band, by whom, whatever duties were disagreeable, andl' 
 likely to be omitted, were to be assumed. 
 
 At least, an economical success seemed certain for the> 
 enterp rise, and that agricultural association m ust, sooner o rj 
 later, tix the pric 'e^ol Dread, and dl'lVfe ijlllgle farmers mio) 
 association, m seii-deience; as tne great commercial andl 
 manufacturing companies had already done. The Commu-- 
 nity is only the continuation of the same movement which i 
 made the joint-stock companies for manufactures, mining, 
 insurance, banking, and so forth. It has turned out cheaper- 
 to make calico by companies; and it is proposed to plant 
 corn, and to bake bread by companies. 
 
 Undoubtedly, abundant mistakes will be made by these 
 first adventurers, which will draw ridicule on their schemes. 
 I think, for example, that they exaggerate the importance 
 of a favorite project of theirs, that of paying talent andl 
 labor at one rate, paying all sorts of service at one rate, say 
 ten cents the hour. They have paid it so; but not an in- 
 stant would a dime remain a dime. In one hand it became 
 an eagle as it fell, and in another hand a copper cent. For 
 the whole value of the dime is in knowing what to do with i 
 it. One man buys with it a land-title of an Indian, and! 
 makes his posterity princes; or buys corn enough to feed! 
 
/ 
 
 E YOUNG AMERICAN 437 
 
 the world; of pen, ink, and paper, or a painter's brush, by 
 which he can communicate himself to the human race as if 
 he were fire; and the other buys barley candy. Money is 
 of no value; it cannot spend itself. All depends on the skill 
 of the spender. Whether, too, the objection almost uni- 
 versally felt by such women in the community as were 
 mothers, to an associate hfe, to a common table, and a com- 
 mon nursery, &c., setting a higher value on the private 
 family with poverty, than on an association with wealth, will 
 not prove insuperable, remains to be determined. 
 
 But the Communities aimed at a higher success in se- 
 cur ing to all their members an equal and tho rough education. 
 And on the whole, one may say, that aims so generous, ancT 
 so forced on them by the times, will not be relinquished, 
 even if these attempts fail, but will be prosecuted until they 
 succeed. 
 
 This is the value of the Communities; not what they have 
 done, but the revolution which they indicate as on the way. 
 Yes, Government must educate the poor man. Look across 
 the country from any hillside around us, and the landscape 
 seems to crave Government. The actual differences of men 
 must be acknowledged, and met with love and wisdom. 
 These rising grounds which command the champaign below, 
 seem to ask for lords, true lords, ^anc?-lords, who understand 
 the land and its uses, and the applicabilities of men, and 
 whose government would be what it should, namely, medi- 
 ation between want and supply. How gladly would each 
 citizen pay a commission for the support and continuation 
 of good guidance. None should be a governor who has not 
 a talent for governing. Now many people have a native 
 skill for carving out business for many hands; a genius for 
 the disposition of affairs; and are never happier than when 
 difficult practical questions, which embarrass other men, are 
 to be solved. All lies in fight before them; they are in their 
 element. Could any means be contrived to appoint only 
 these! There really seems a progress towards such a state 
 of things, in which this work shall be done by these natural 
 workmen; and this, not certainly through any increased dis- 
 cretion shown by the citizens at elections, but by the gradual 
 
438 THE YOUNG AMERICAN 
 
 contempt into which official government falls, and the in- 
 creasing disposition of jprivate adventurers to assume its 
 fallen functions. Thus the costly Post Office is likely to go 
 into disuse before the private transportation-shop of Harn- 
 den and his competitors. The currency threatens to fall 
 entirely into private hands. Justice is continuaUy ad- 
 ministered more and more by private reference, and not by 
 litigation. We have feudal governments in a commercial 
 age. It would be but an easy extension of our commercial 
 system, to pay a private emperor a fee for services, as we 
 pay an architect, an engineer, or a lawyer. If any man has a 
 talent for righting wrong, for administering difficult affairs, 
 for counselling poor farmers how to turn their estates to 
 good husbandry, for combining a hundred enterprises to a 
 general benefit, let him in the country-town, or in Court- 
 street, put up his sign-board, Mr. Smith, Governor, Mr. 
 Johnson, Working king. 
 
 How can our young men complain of the poverty of 
 things in New England, and not feel that poverty as a 
 demand on their charity to make New England rich? 
 Where is he who, seeing a thousand men useless and un- 
 happy, and making the whole region forlorn by their in- 
 action, and conscious himself of possessing the faculty they 
 want, does not hear his call to go and be their king? 
 
 We must have kings, and we must have nobles. Nature 
 provides such in every society, — only let us have the real 
 instead of the titular. Let us have our leading and our in- 
 spiration from the best. In every society some men are 
 born to rule, and some to advise. Let the powers be well 
 directed, directed by love, and they would everywhere be 
 greeted with joy and honor. The chief is the chief all the 
 world over, not only his cap and his plume. It is only their 
 dislike of the pretender, which makes men sometimes un- 
 just to the accomplished man. If society were transparent, 
 the noble would everywhere be gladly received and ac- 
 credited and would not be asked for his day's work, but 
 would be felt as benefit, inasmuch as he was noble. That 
 were his duty and stint, — to keep himself pure and purify- 
 ing, the leaven of his nation. I think I see place and duties 
 
THE YOUNG AMERICAN 439 
 
 for a nobleman in every society; but it is not to drink wine 
 and ride in a fine coach, but to guide and adorn life for the 
 multitude by forethought, by elegant studies, by perse- 
 verance, self-devotion, and the remembrance of the humble 
 old friend, by making his life secretly beautiful. 
 
 I call upon you, young m en, to obey your heart, and be 
 the nobility of this land. Tn every age of the world, there 
 has been a leading nation, one of a more generous sentiment, 
 whose emineuo citizens were wiUing to stand for the interests 
 of general justice and humanity, at the risk of being called, 
 by the men of the moment, chimerical and fantastic. Which 
 should be that nation but these States? Which should lead 
 that movement, if not New England? Who should lead the 
 leaders, but the Young American? The people, and the 
 world, is now suffering from the want of religion and honor 
 in its public mind. In America, out of doors all seems a 
 market; in doors, an air-tight stove of conventionalism. 
 Every body who comes into our houses savors of these hab- 
 its; the men, of the market; the women, of the custom. 
 I find no expression in our state papers or legislative de- 
 bate, in our lyceums or churches, specially in our news- 
 papers, of a high national feeling, no lofty counsels that 
 rightfully stir the blood. I speak of those organs which can 
 be presumed to speak a popular sense. They recommend 
 conventional virtues, whatever will earn and preserve prop- 
 erty; always the capitalist; the college, the church, the 
 hospital, the theatre, the hotel, the road, the ship, of the 
 capitalist, — whatever goes to secure, adorn, enlarge these, 
 is good; what jeopardizes any of these, is damnable. The 
 "opposition" papers, so called, are on the same side. They 
 attack the great capitalist, but with the aim to make a 
 capitalist of the poor man. The opposition is against those 
 who have money, from those who wish to have money. But 
 who announces to us in journal, or in pulpit, or in the street, 
 the secret of heroism, 
 
 "Man alone 
 Can perform the impossible"? 
 
 I shall not need to go into an enumeration of our national 
 
440 THE YOUNG AMERICAN 
 
 defects and vices which require this Order of Censors in the 
 state. I might not set down our most proclaimed offenses 
 as the worst. It is not often the worst trait that occasions 
 the loudest outcry. Men complain of their suffering, and 
 not of the crime. I fear httle from the bad effect of Re- 
 pudiation; I do not fear that it will spread. Steahng is a 
 suicidal business; you cannot repudiate but once. But the 
 bold face and tardy repentance permitted to this local mis- 
 chief, reveal a pubhc mind so preoccupied with the love of 
 gain, that the common sentiment of indignation at fraud 
 does not act with its natural force. The more need of a 
 withdrawal from the crowd, and a resort to the fountain of 
 right, by the brave. The timidity of our public opinion, 
 is our disease, or, shall I say, the publicness of opinion, the 
 absence of private opinion. Good-nature is plentiful, but 
 we want justice, with heart of steel, to fight down the proud. 
 The private mind has the access to the totahty of goodness 
 and truth, that it may be a balance to a corrupt society; 
 and to stand for the private verdict against popular clamor, 
 is the office of the noble. If a humane measure is pro- 
 pounded in behalf of the slave, or of the Irishman, or the 
 Catholic, or for the succor of the poor, that sentiment, that 
 project, will have the homage of the hero. That is his no- 
 bility, his oath of knighthood, to succor the helpless and 
 oppressed; always to throw himself on the side of weakness, 
 of youth, of hope, on the liberal, on the expansive side, never 
 on the defensive, the conserving, the timorous, the lock and 
 bolt system. More than our good-will we may not be able to 
 give. We have our own affairs, our own genius, which chains 
 us to our proper work. We cannot give our life to the cause 
 of the debtor, of the slave, or the pauper, as another is 
 doing; but to one thing we are bound, not to blaspheme the 
 sentiment and the work of that man, not to throw stumbling- 
 blocks in the way of the abolitionist, the philanthropist, as 
 the organs of influence and opinion are swift to do. It is 
 for us to confide in the beneficent Supreme Power, and not 
 to rely on our money, and on the state because it is the 
 guard of money. At this moment, the terror of old people 
 and of vicious people, is lest the Union of these States be 
 
THE YOUNG AMERICAN 441 
 
 destroyed : as if the Union had any other real basis than the 
 good pleasure of a majority of the citizens to be united. 
 But the wise and just man will always feel that he stands on 
 his own feet; that he imparts strength to the state, not re- 
 ceives security from it; and that if all went down, he and 
 such as he would quite easily combine in a new and better 
 constitution. Every great and memorable community has 
 consisted of formidable individuals, who, like the Roman or 
 the Spartan, lent his own spirit to the state and made it 
 great. Yet only by the supernatural is a man strong; 
 nothing is so weak as an egotist. Nothing is mightier than 
 we, when we are vehicles of a truth before which the state 
 and the individual are alike ephemeral. 
 
 Gentlemen, the development of our American internal 
 resources, the extension to the utmost of the commercial 
 system, and the appearance of new moral causes which are 
 to modify the state, are giving an aspect of greatness to the 
 Future, which the imagination fears to open. One thing is 
 plain for all men of common sense and common conscience, 
 that here, here in America, is the home of man. After all 
 the deductions which are to be made for our pitiful pohtics, 
 which stake every gravest national question on the silly die, 
 whether James or whether Jonathan shall sit in the chair 
 and hold the purse; after all the deduction is made for our 
 frivohties and insanities, there still remains an organic sim- 
 plicity and liberty, which, when it loses its balance, re- 
 dresses itself presently, which offers opportunity to the 
 human mind not known in any other region. 
 
 It is true, the public mind wants self-respect. We are full 
 of vanity, of which the most signal proof is our sensitive- 
 ness to foreign and especially Enghsh censure. One cause 
 of this is our immense reading, and that reading chiefly con- 
 fined to the productions of the Enghsh press. It is also true, 
 that, to imaginative persons in this country, there is some- 
 what bare and bald in our short history, and unsettled 
 wilderness. They ask, who would live in a new country, that 
 can live in an old ? and it is not strange that our youths and 
 maidens should burn to see the picturesque extremes of an 
 antiquated country. But it is one thing to visit the pyr- 
 
442 THE YOUNG AMERICAN 
 
 amids, and another to wish to Uve there. Would they like 
 tithes to the clergy, and sevenths to the government, and 
 horse-guards, and licensed press, and grief when a child is 
 born, and threatening, starved weavers, and a pauperism 
 now constituting one-thirteenth of the population? In- 
 stead of the open future expanding here before the eye of 
 every boy to vastness, would they like the closing in of the 
 future to a narrow slit of sky, and that fast contracting to 
 be no future? One thing, for instance, the beauties of 
 aristocracy, we commend to the study of the travelling ; 
 American. The English, the most conservative people this i 
 side of India, are not sensible of the restraint, but an Ameri- 
 can would seriously resent it. The aristocracy, incorporated 
 by law and education, degrades life for the unprivileged 
 classes. It is a questionable compensation to the em- 
 bittered feeling of a proud commoner, the reflection that a 
 fop, who, by the magic of title, paralyzes his arm, and plucks : 
 from him half the graces and rights of a man, is himself also 
 an aspirant excluded with the same ruthlessness from higher | 
 circles, since there is no end to the wheels within wheels of j 
 this spiral heaven. Something may be pardoned to the | 
 spirit of loyalty when it becomes fantastic; and something | 
 to the imagination, for the baldest life is symbolic. Philip , 
 II. of Spain rated his ambassador for neglecting serious af- 
 fairs in Italy, whilst he debated some point of honor with the 
 French ambassador; "You have left a business of importance 
 for a ceremony." The ambassador replied, "Your majesty's 
 self is but a ceremony." In the East, where the religious 
 sentiment comes in to the support of the aristocracy, and in 
 the Romish church also, there is a grain of sweetness in the 
 tyranny; but in England, the fact seems to me intolerable, 
 what is commonly affirmed, that such is the transcendent 
 honor accorded to wealth and birth, that no man of letters, 
 be his eminence what it may, is received into the best so- 
 ciety, except as a lion and a show. The English have many 
 virtues, many advantages, and the proudest history of the 
 world; but they need all, and more than all the resources of 
 the past to indemnify a heroic gentleman in that country for 
 the mortifications prepared for him by the system of society. 
 
THE YOUNG AMERICAN 
 
 and which seem to impose the alternative to resist or 
 avoid it. That there are mitigations and practical allevia- 
 tions to this rigor, is not an excuse for the rule. Command- 
 ing worth, and personal power, must sit crowned in all com- 
 panies, nor will extraordinary persons be slighted or affron- 
 ted in any company of civilized men. But the system is an 
 invasion of the sentiment of justice and the native rights of 
 men, which, however decorated, must lessen the value of 
 English citizenship. It is for Englishmen to consider, not 
 for us; we only say, let us live in America, too thankful for 
 our want of feudal institutions. Our houses and towns are 
 hke mosses and lichens, so slight and new; but youth is a 
 fault of which we shall daily mend. This land, too, is as 
 old as the Flood, and wants no ornament or privilege which 
 nature could bestow. Here stars, here woods, here hills, 
 here animals, here men abound, and the vast tendencies con- 
 cur of a new order. If only the men are employed in con- 
 spiring with the designs of the Spirit who led us hither, and 
 is leading us still, we shall quickly enough advance out of all 
 hearing of other's censures, out of all regrets of our own, 
 into a new and more excellent social state than history has 
 recorded. 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 DAYS 
 
 Damsels of Time, the hypocritic Days', 
 
 Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, 
 
 And marching single in an endless file, 
 
 Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. 
 
 To each they offer gifts after his will, 
 
 Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all. 
 
 I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, 
 
 Forgot my morning wishes, hastily 
 
 Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day 
 
 Turned and departed silent. I, too late. 
 
 Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn. 
 
 GOOD-BYE 
 
 Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home: 
 Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine. 
 Long through thy weary crowds I roam; 
 A river-ark on the ocean brine, 
 Long I've been tossed like the driven foam; 
 But now, proud world! I'm going home. 
 
 Good-bye to flattery's fawning face; 
 
 To Grandeur with his wise grimace; 
 
 To upstart wealth's averted eye; 
 
 To supple Office, low and high; 
 
 To crowded halls, to court and street; 
 
 To frozen hearts and hasting feet; 
 
 To those who go, and those who come; 
 
 Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home. 
 
 445 
 
MQ POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 1 am going to my own hearth stone, 
 Bosomed in yon green hills alone, — 
 A secret nook in a pleasant land. 
 Whose groves the frohc fairies planned; 
 Where arches green, the hvelong day, 
 Echo the blackbird's roundelay, 
 And vulgar feet have never trod 
 A spot that is sacred to thought and God. 
 
 O, when I am safe in my sylvan home, 
 I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome; 
 And when I am stretched beneath the pines, 
 Where the evening star so holy shines, 
 I laugh at the lore and the pride of man. 
 At the sophist schools, and the learned clan; 
 For what are they all, in their high conceit, 
 When man in the bush with God may meet? 
 
 THE RHODORA: 
 
 ON BEING ASKED WHENCE IS THE FLOWERf 
 
 In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, 
 
 I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, 
 
 Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, 
 
 To please the desert and the sluggish brook. 
 
 The purple petals, fallen in the pool, 
 
 Made the black water with their beauty gay; 
 
 Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, 
 
 And court the flower that cheapens his array. 
 
 Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why 
 
 This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, 
 
 Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, 
 
 Then Beauty is its own excuse for being: 
 
 Why thou wert there, rival of the rose! 
 
 I never thought to ask, I never knew; 
 
 But, in my simple ignorance, suppose 
 
 The self-same Power that brought me there brought you. 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 447 
 
 THE HUMBLE-BEE 
 
 BuRLY^ dozing humble-bee, 
 Where thou art is cHme for me. 
 Let them sail for Porto Rique, 
 Far-off heats through seas to seek; 
 I will follow thee alone, 
 Thou animated torrid-zone! 
 Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer, 
 Let me chase thy waving lines; 
 Keep me nearer, me thy hearer, 
 Singing over shrubs and vines. 
 
 Insect lover of the sun, 
 Joy of thy dominion! 
 Sailor of the atmosphere; 
 Swimmer through the waves of air; 
 Voyager of light and noon; 
 Epicurean of June; 
 Wait, I prithee, till I come 
 Within earshot of thy hum, — 
 All without is martyrdom. 
 
 When the south wind, in May days, 
 
 With a net of shining haze 
 
 Silvers the horizon wall, 
 
 And, with softness touching all, 
 
 Tints the human countenance 
 
 With a color of romance, 
 
 And, infusing subtle heats. 
 
 Turns the sod to violets, 
 
 Thou, in sunny sohtudes, 
 
 Rover of the underwoods, 
 
 The green silence dost displace 
 
 With thy mellow, breezy bass. 
 
 Hot midsummer's petted crone, 
 Sweet to me thy drowsy tone 
 
448 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 Tells of countless sunny hours, 
 
 Long days, and solid banks of flowers; 
 
 Of gulfs of sweetness without bound 
 
 In Indian wildernesses found; 
 
 Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure, 
 
 Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure. 
 
 Aught unsavory or unclean 
 Hath my insect never seen; 
 But violets and bilberry bells, 
 Maple-sap, and daffodels. 
 Grass with green flag half-mast high, 
 Succory to match the sky. 
 Columbine with horn of honey, 
 Scented fern, and agrimony, 
 Clover, catchfly, adder's-tongue, 
 And brier-roses, dwelt among; 
 All beside was unknown waste, 
 All was picture as he passed. 
 
 Wiser far than human seer. 
 Yellow-breeched philosopher ! 
 Seeing only what is fair. 
 Sipping only what is sweet. 
 Thou dost mock at fate and care, 
 Leave the chaff, and take the wheat. 
 When the fierce northwestern blast 
 Cools sea and land so far and fast. 
 Thou already slumberest deep; 
 Woe and want thou canst outsleep; 
 Want and woe, which torture us. 
 Thy sleep makes ridiculous. 
 
 EACH AND ALL 
 
 Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown, 
 Of thee from the hill-top looking down; 
 The heifer that lows in the upland farm, 
 Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm; 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 449 
 
 The sexton, tolling his bell at noon, 
 
 Deems not that great Napoleon 
 
 Stops his horse, and lists with delight, 
 
 Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height; 
 
 Nor knowest thou what argument 
 
 Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. 
 
 All are needed by each one; 
 
 Nothing is fair or good alone. 
 
 I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, 
 
 Singing at dawn on the alder bough; 
 
 I brought him home, in his nest, at even; 
 
 He sings the song, but it pleases not now. 
 
 For I did not bring home the river and sky; — 
 
 He sang to my ear, — they sang to my eye. 
 
 The delicate shells lay on the shore; 
 
 The bubbles of the latest wave 
 
 Fresh pearls to their enamel gave; 
 
 And the bellowing of the savage sea 
 
 Greeted their safe escape to me. 
 
 I wiped away the weeds and foam, 
 
 I fetched my sea-born treasures home; 
 
 But the poor, unsightly, noisome things 
 
 Had left their beauty on the shore, 
 
 With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar. 
 
 The lover watched his graceful maid, 
 
 As 'mid the virgin train she strayed. 
 
 Nor knew her beauty's best attire 
 
 Was woven still by the snow-white choir. 
 
 At last she came to his hermitage. 
 
 Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage; — 
 
 The gay enchantment was undone, 
 
 A gentle wife, but fairy none. 
 
 Then I said, "I covet truth; 
 
 Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; 
 
 I leave it behind with the gamee of youth." — 
 
 As I spoke, beneath my feet 
 
 The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath, 
 
 Running over the club-moss burrs; 
 
 I inhaled the violet's breath; 
 
450 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 Around me stood the oaks and firs; 
 
 Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground; 
 
 Over me soared the eternal sky, 
 
 Full of light and of deity; 
 
 Again I saw, again I heard, 
 
 The rolling river, the morning bird; — 
 
 Beauty through my senses stole; 
 
 I yielded myself to the perfect whole. 
 
 THE PROBLEM 
 
 I LIKE a church; I like a cowl; 
 
 I love a prophet of the soul; 
 
 And on my heart monastic aisles 
 
 Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles; 
 
 Yet not for all his faith can see 
 
 Would I that cowled churchman be. 
 
 Why should the vest on him allure, 
 
 Which I could not on me endure ? 
 
 Not from vain or shallow thought 
 
 His awful Jove young Phidias brought; - 
 
 Never from lips of cunning fell 
 
 The thrilling Delphic oracle; 
 
 Out from the heart of nature rolled 
 
 The burdens of the Bible old; 
 
 The litanies of nations came. 
 
 Like the volcano's tongue of flame. 
 
 Up from the burning core below, — 
 
 The canticles of love and woe; 
 
 The hand that rounded Peter's dome. 
 
 And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, 
 
 Wrought in a sad sincerity; 
 
 Himself from God he could not free; 
 
 He builded better than he knew; — 
 
 The conscious stone to beauty grew. 
 
 Know'st thou what wove yon wood-bird's nest 
 
 Of leaves, and feathers from her breast? 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 451 
 
 Or how the fish outbuilt her shell, 
 Painting with morn each annual cell? . 
 Or how the sacred pine-tree adds 
 To her old leaves new myriads? 
 Such and so grew these holy piles, 
 Whilst love and terror laid the tiles. 
 Earth proudly wears the Parthenon, 
 As the best gem upon her zone; 
 And Morning opes with haste her hds, 
 To gaze upon the Pyramids; 
 O'er England's abbeys bends the sky, 
 As on its friends, with kindred eye; 
 For, out of Thought's interior sphere 
 These wonders rose to upper air; 
 And Nature gladly gave them place, 
 Adopted them into her race. 
 And granted them an equal date 
 With Andes and with Ararat. 
 
 These temples grew as grows the grass; 
 --''.Art might obey, but not surpass. 
 The passive Master lent his hand 
 To the vast soul that o'er him planned; 
 And the same power that reared the shrine. 
 Bestrode the tribes that knelt within. 
 Ever the fiery Pentecost 
 Girds with one flame the countless host. 
 Trances the heart through chanting choirs. 
 And through the priest the mind inspires. 
 
 The word unto the prophet spoken 
 Was writ on tables yet unbroken; 
 The words by seers or sibyls told, 
 In groves of oak, or fanes of gold, 
 Still floats upon the morning wind. 
 Still whispers to the willing mind. 
 One accent of the Holy Ghost 
 The heedless world hath never lost. 
 I know what say the fathers wise, — 
 
452 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 The Book itself before me lies, 
 Old Chrysostom, best Augustine, 
 And he who blent both in his line. 
 The younger Golden Lips or mines, 
 Taylor, the Shakspeare of divines. 
 His words are music to my ear, 
 I see his cowled portrait dear; 
 And yet, for all his faith could see, 
 I would not the good bishop be. 
 
 FORBEARANCE 
 
 Hast thou named all the birds without a gun? 
 
 Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk? 
 
 At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse? 
 
 Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust? 
 
 And loved so well a high behavior. 
 
 In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained. 
 
 Nobility more nobly to repay? 
 
 0, be my friend, and teach me to be thine! 
 
 From: WOODNOTES 
 
 1 
 
 For this present, hard 
 
 Is the fortune of the bard, 
 
 Born out of time; 
 All his accomphshment, v 
 
 From Nature's utmost treasure spent, 
 
 Booteth not him. 
 When the pine tosses its cones 
 To the song of its waterfall tones. 
 He speeds to the woodland walks, 
 To birds and trees he talks: 
 Caesar of his leafy Rome, 
 There the poet is at home. 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 453 
 
 He goes to the river-side — 
 
 Not hook nor hne hath he; 
 
 He stands in the meadows wide, — 
 
 Nor gun nor scythe to see; 
 
 With none has he to do, 
 
 And none seek him, 
 
 Nor men below. 
 
 Nor spirits dim. 
 
 Sure some god his eye enchants: 
 
 What he knows nobody wants. 
 
 In the wood he travels glad, 
 
 Without better fortune had, 
 
 Melancholy without bad. 
 
 Planter of celestial pl ants^ 
 
 What he knows nobody wants; 
 
 What he knows he hides, noE vaunts. 
 
 Knowledge this man prizes best * * 
 
 Seems fantastic to the rest: 
 
 Pondering shadows, colors, clouds. 
 
 Grass-buds, and cateriDillar-shrouds, 
 
 Boughs on which the wild bees settle. 
 
 Tints that spot the violet's petal, 
 
 Why Nature loves the number five. 
 
 And why the star-form she repeats: 
 
 Lover of all things alive, 
 
 Wonderer at all he meets, 
 
 Wonderer chiefly at himself — 
 
 Who can tell him what he is? 
 
 Or how meet in human elf 
 
 Coming and past eternities? 
 
 And such I knew, a forest seer, 
 A minstrel of the natural year. 
 Foreteller of the vernal ides, 
 Wise harbinger of spheres and tides, 
 A lover true, who knew by heart 
 Each joy the mountain dales impart; 
 It seemed that Nature could not raise 
 
454 POEMS OF EMERSON' 
 
 A plant in any secret place, 
 In quaking bog, on snowy hill. 
 Beneath the grass that shades the rill, 
 Under the snow, between the rocks, 
 In damp fields known to bird and fox, 
 But he would come in the very hour 
 It opened in its virgin bower, 
 As if a sunbeam showed the place, 
 And tell its long-descended race. 
 It seemed as if the breezes brought him; 
 It seemed as if the sparrows taught him; 
 As if by secret sight he knew 
 Where, in far fields, the orchis grew. 
 Many haps fall in the field 
 Seldom seen by wishful eyes. 
 But all her shows did Nature yield. 
 To please and win this pilgrim wise. 
 He saw the partridge drum in the woods; 
 He heard the woodcock's evening hymn; 
 He found the tawny thrush's broods; 
 And the shy hawk did wait for him; 
 What others did at distance hear. 
 And guessed within the thicket's gloom, 
 Was showed to this philosopher, 
 And at his bidding seemed to come. 
 
 In unploughed Maine he sought the lumberer's gang, 
 
 Where from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang; 
 
 He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon 
 
 The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone; 
 
 Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear. 
 
 And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker. 
 
 He saw beneath cUm aisles, in odorous beds. 
 
 The slight Linnaea hang its twin-born heads, 
 
 And blessed the monument of the man of flowers. 
 
 Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers. 
 
 He heard, w^hen in the grove, at intervals. 
 
 With sudden roar the aged pine-tree falls, — 
 
[ 
 
 POEMS OF EMERSON 455 
 
 One crash, the death-hymn of the perfect tree, 
 
 Declares the close of its green century. 
 
 Low lies the plant to whose creation went 
 
 Sweet influence from every element; 
 
 Whose living towers the years cons^Dired to build, 
 
 Whose giddy top the morning loved to gild. 
 
 Through these green tents, by eldest Nature dressed, 
 
 He roamed, content alike with man and beast. 
 
 Where darkness found him he lay glad at night; 
 
 There the red morning touched him with its light. 
 
 Three moons his great heart him a hermit made, 
 
 So long he roved at will the boundless shade. 
 
 The timid it concerns to ask their way; 
 
 And fear what foe in caves and swamps can stray, 
 
 To make no step until the event is known. 
 
 And ills to come as evils past bemoan. 
 
 Not so the wise; no coward watch he keeps 
 
 To spy what danger on his pathway creeps; 
 
 Go where he will, the wise man is at home, 
 
 His hearth the earth, — his hall the azure dome; 
 
 Where his clear spirit leads him, there's his road, 
 
 By God's own light illumined and foreshowed. 
 
 w vP W *«■ vT "Tr w W vv 
 
 [The Pine Tree Sings'] 
 
 "Hearken once more! 
 
 I will tell thee the mundane lore. 
 
 Older am I than thy numbers wot; 
 
 Change I may, but I pass not. 
 
 Hitherto all things fast abide, 
 
 And anchored in the tempest ride. 
 
 Trenchant time behooves to hurry 
 
 All to* yean and all to bury: 
 
 All the forms are fugitive, 
 
 But the substances survive. 
 
 Ever fresh the broad creation, 
 
 A divine improvisation, 
 
 From the heart of God proceeds, 
 
 A single will, a miUion deeds. 
 
456 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 Once slept the world an egg of stone, 
 And pulse, and sound, and light was none; 
 And God said, 'Throb!' and there was motion, 
 And the vast mass became vast ocean. 
 Onward and on, the eternal Pan, 
 Who layeth the world's incessant plan, 
 Halteth never in one shape. 
 But forever doth escape. 
 Like wave or flame, into new forms 
 Of gem, and air, of plants, and worms. 
 /I, that to-day am a pine, 
 I Yesterday was a bundle of grass. 
 ^He is free and libertine, 
 Pouring of his power the wine 
 To every age, to every race; 
 Unto every race and age 
 He emptieth the beverage; ^ 
 Unto each and unto all,'\ I a>(K 
 Maker and original. J A/ 
 The world is the ring or his spells. 
 And the play of his miracles. 
 As he giveth to all to drink, 
 Thus or thus they are and think. 
 He giveth little or giveth much. 
 To make them several or such. 
 With one drop sheds form and feature; 
 With the next a special nature; 
 The third adds heat's indulgent spark; 
 The fourth gives light which eats the dark; 
 Into the fifth himself he flings. 
 And conscious Law is King of kings. 
 Pleaseth him, the Eternal Child, 
 To play his sweet will, glad and wild; 
 As the bee through the garden ranges, 
 From world to world the godhead changes; 
 As the sheep go feeding in the waste. 
 From form to form he maketh haste; 
 This vault which glov/s immense with light 
 Is the inn where he lodges for a night. 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 457 
 
 What recks such Traveller if the bowers 
 
 Which bloom and fade like meadow flowers 
 
 A bunch of fragrant hlies be, 
 
 Or the stars of eternity? 
 
 Ahke to him the better, the worse, — 
 
 The glowing angel, the outcast corse. 
 
 Thou metest him by centuries. 
 
 And lo! he passes like the breeze; 
 
 Thou seek'st in globe and galaxy, 
 
 He hides in pure transparency; 
 
 Thou askest in fountains and in fires 
 
 He is the essence that inquires. 
 
 He is the axis of the star; 
 
 He is the sparkle of the spar; 
 
 He is the heart of every creature; 
 
 He is the meaning of each feature; 
 
 And his mind is the sky. 
 
 Than all it holds more deep, more high." 
 
 MONADNOC 
 
 Thousand minstrels woke within me, 
 
 "Our music's in the hills;" — 
 Gayest pictures rose to win me. 
 
 Leopard-colored rills. 
 "Up! — If thou knew'st who calls 
 To twilight parks of beech and pine, 
 High over the river intervals. 
 Above the ploughman's highest line, 
 Over the owner's farthest walls! 
 Up! where the airy citadel 
 O'erlooks the surging landscape's swell! 
 Let not unto the stones the Day 
 Her lily and rose, her sea and land display. 
 Read the celestial sign! 
 Lo! the south answers to the north; 
 Bookworm, break this sloth urbane; 
 A greater spirit bids thee forth 
 
458 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 Than the gray dreams which thee detain. 
 
 Mark how the chmbing Oreads 
 
 Beckon thee to their arcades! 
 
 Youth, for a moment free as they, 
 
 Teach thy feet to feel the ground, 
 
 Ere yet arrives the wintry day 
 
 When Time thy feet has bound. 
 
 Take the bounty of thy birth, 
 
 Taste the lordship of the earth." 
 
 I heard, and I obeyed, — 
 Assured that he who made the claim, 
 Well known, but loving not a name, 
 
 Was not to be gainsaid. 
 
 Ere yet the summoning voice was still, 
 
 I turned to Cheshire's haughty hill. 
 
 From the fixed cone the cloud-rack flowed, 
 
 Like ample banner flung abroad 
 
 To all the dwellers in the plains 
 
 Round about, a hundred miles. 
 
 With salutation to the sea, and to the bordering isles. 
 
 In his own loom's garment dressed, 
 By his proper bounty blessed. 
 Fast abides this constant giver. 
 Pouring many a cheerful river; 
 To far eyes, an aerial isle 
 Unploughed, which finer spirits pile. 
 Which morn and crimson evening paint 
 For bard, for lover, and for saint; 
 The people's pride, and country's core, 
 Inspirer, prophet evermore; 
 Pillar which God aloft had set 
 So that men might it not forget; 
 It should be their life's ornament. 
 And mix itself with each event; 
 Gauge and calendar and dial, 
 Weatherglass and chemic phial. 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 459 
 
 Garden of berries, perch of birds, 
 Pasture of pool-haunting herds, 
 Graced by each change of sum untold, 
 Earth-baking heat, stone-cleaving cold. 
 
 The Titan heeds his sky-affairs. 
 Rich rents and wide alliance shares; 
 Mysteries of color daily laid 
 By the sun in light and shade; 
 And sweet varieties of chance. 
 And the mystic seasons' dance; 
 And thief-like step of liberal hours 
 Thawing snow-drift into flowers. 
 wondrous craft of plant and stone 
 By eldest science done and shown! 
 
 "Happy," I said, "whose home is here! 
 Fair fortunes to the mountaineer! 
 Boon Nature to his poorest shed 
 Has royal pleasure-grounds outspread." 
 Intent, I searched the region round. 
 And in low hut my monarch found: — 
 Woe is me for my hope's downfall! 
 Is yonder squahd peasant all 
 That this proud nursery could breed 
 For God's vicegerency and stead? 
 Time out of mind, this forge of ores; 
 Quarry of spars in mountain pores; 
 Old cradle, hunting-ground, and bier 
 Of wolf and otter, bear and deer; 
 Well-built abode of many a race; 
 Tower of observance searching space; 
 Factory of river and of rain; 
 Link in the alps' globe-girding chain; 
 By million changes skilled to tell 
 What in the Eternal standeth well, 
 And what obedient Nature can; — 
 Is this colossal talisman 
 
460 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 Kindly to creature, blood, and king, 
 Yet speechless to the master's mind? 
 I thought to find the patriots 
 In whom the stock of freedom roots: 
 To myself I oft recount 
 Tales of many a famous mount, — 
 Wales, Scotland, Uri, Hungary's dells; 
 Bards, Roys, Scanderbegs, and Tells. 
 Here Nature shall condense her powers, 
 Her music, and her meteors, 
 And lifting man to the blue deep 
 Where stars their perfect courses keep, 
 Like wise preceptor, lure his eye 
 To sound the science of the sky, 
 And carry learning to its height 
 Of untried power and sane delight: 
 The Indian cheer, the frosty skies, 
 Rear purer wits, inventive eyes, — 
 Eyes that frame cities where none be 
 And hands that stablish what these see; 
 And by the moral of his place 
 Hint summits of heroic grace; 
 Man in these crags a fastness find 
 To fight pollution of the mind; 
 In the wide thaw and ooze of wrong, 
 Adhere like this foundation strong. 
 The insanity of towns to stem 
 With simpleness of stratagem. 
 But if the brave old mould is broke, 
 And end in churls the mountain folk, 
 In tavern cheer and tavern joke. 
 Sink, mountain, in the swamp! 
 Hide in thy skies, O sovereign lamp! 
 Perish like leaves, the highland breed! 
 No sire survive, no son succeed! 
 Soft ! let not the offended muse 
 Toil's hard hap with scorn accuse. 
 Many hamlets sought I then, 
 Many farms of mountain men; 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 461 
 
 Found I not a minstrel seed, 
 
 But men of bone, and good at need. 
 
 Rallying round a parish steeple 
 
 Nestle warm the highland people. 
 
 Coarse and boisterous, yet mild, 
 
 Strong as giant, slow as child, 
 
 Smoking in a squalid room 
 
 Where yet the westland breezes come. 
 
 Close hid in those rough guises lurk 
 
 Western magians, — here they work. 
 
 Sweat and season are their arts. 
 
 Their talismans are ploughs and carts; 
 
 And well the youngest can command 
 
 Honey from the frozen land; 
 
 With sweet hay the wild swamp adorn, 
 
 Change the running^sand to corn; 
 
 For wolves and foxes, lowing herds, 
 
 And for cold mosses, cream and curds; 
 
 Weave wood to canisters and mats; 
 
 Drain sweet maple juice in vats; 
 
 No bird is safe that cuts the air 
 
 From their rifle or their snare; 
 
 No fish, in river or in lake. 
 
 But their long hands it thence will take; 
 
 And the country's flinty face, 
 
 Like wax, their fashioning skill betraj^s. 
 
 To fill the hollows, sink the hills, 
 
 Bridge gulfs, drain swamps, build dams and mills. 
 
 And fit the bleak and howling place 
 
 For gardens of a finer race. 
 
 The World-soul knows his own affair, 
 Forelooking, when he would prepare 
 For the next ages, men of mould 
 Well embodied, well ensouled, 
 He cools the present's fiery glow. 
 Sets the life-pulse strong but slow: 
 Bitter winds and fasts austere 
 His quarantines and grottos, where 
 
462 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 He slowly cures decrepit flesh, 
 
 And brings it infantile and fresh. 
 
 Toil and tempest are the toys 
 
 And games to breathe his stalwart boys: 
 
 They bide their time, and well can prove, 
 
 If need were, their line from Jove; 
 
 Of the same stuff, and so allayed, 
 
 As that whereof the sun is made. 
 
 And of the fibre, quick and strong, 
 
 Whose throbs are love, whose thrills are song. 
 
 Now in sordid weeds they sleep, 
 
 In dullness now their secret keep; 
 
 Yet, will you learn our ancient speech, 
 
 These the masters who can teach. 
 
 Fourscore or a hundred words 
 
 All their vocal muse affords; 
 
 But they turn them in a fashion 
 
 Past clerks' or statesmen's art or passion. 
 
 I can spare the college bell. 
 
 And the learned lecture, well; 
 
 Spare the clergy and libraries. 
 
 Institutes and dictionaries. 
 
 For that hardy English root 
 
 Thrives here, unvalued, underfoot. 
 
 Rude poets of the tavern hearth, 
 
 Squandering your unquoted mirth. 
 
 Which keeps the ground, and never soars, 
 
 While Jake retorts, and Reuben roars; 
 
 Scoff of yeoman strong and stark. 
 
 Goes like bullet to its mark; 
 
 While the solid curse and jeer 
 
 Never balk the waiting ear. 
 
 To student ears keen relished jokes 
 
 On truck, and stock, and farming folks, — 
 
 Naught the mountain yields thereof, 
 
 But savage health and sinews tough. 
 
 On the summit as I stood, 
 
 O'er the floor of plain and flood 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 463 
 
 Seemed to me, the towering hill 
 Was not altogether still, 
 But a quiet sense conveyed; 
 If I err not, thus i^ said: — 
 
 "Many feet in summer seek, 
 
 Betimes, my far-appearing peak; 
 
 In the dreaded winter time, 
 
 None save dappling shadows dimb, 
 
 Under clouds, my lonely head, 
 
 Old as the sun, old almost as the shade. 
 
 And comest thou 
 
 To see strange forests and new snow, 
 
 And tread uplifted land? 
 
 And leavest thou thy lowland race, 
 
 Here amid clouds to stand? 
 
 And wouldst be my companion. 
 
 Where I gaze, and still shall gaze. 
 
 Through tempering nights and flashing days, 
 
 When forests fall and man is gone, 
 
 Over tribes and over times. 
 
 At the burning Lyre, 
 
 Nearing me. 
 
 With its stars of northern fire. 
 
 In many a thousand years? 
 
 "Ah! welcome, if thou bring 
 My secret in thy brain; 
 To mountain-top may Muse's wing 
 With good allowance strain. 
 Gentle pilgrim, if thou know 
 The gamut old of Pan, 
 And how the hills began, 
 The frank blessings of the hill 
 Fall on thee, as fall they will. 
 'Tis the law of bush and stone. 
 Each can only take his own. 
 
 "Let him heed who can and will; 
 Enchantment fixed me here 
 
464 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 To stand the hurts of time, until 
 In mightier chant I disappear. 
 
 "If thou trowest 
 How the chemic eddies play, 
 Pole to pole, and what they say; 
 And that these gray crags 
 Not on crags are hung. 
 But beads are of a rosary 
 On prayer and music strung; 
 And, credulous, through the granite seeming, 
 Seest the smile of Reason beaming; — 
 Can thy style-discerning eye 
 The hidden-working Builder spy, 
 Who builds, yet makes no chips, no din, 
 With hammer soft as snow-flake's flight; — 
 Knowest thou this? 
 pilgrim, wandering not amiss! 
 Already my rocks lie light. 
 And soon my cone will spin. 
 
 "For the world was built in order. 
 And the atoms march in tune; 
 Rhyme the pipe, and Time the warder, 
 Cannot forget the sun, the moon. 
 Orb and atom forth they prance, 
 When they hear from far the rune; 
 None so backward in the troop, 
 When the music and the dance 
 Reach his place and circumstance. 
 But knows the sun-creating sound. 
 And, though a pyramid, will bound. 
 
 "Monadnoc is a mountain strong. 
 Tall and good my kind among; 
 But well I know, no mountain can 
 Measure with a perfect man. 
 For it is on zodiacs writ, 
 Adamant is soft to wit: 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 465 
 
 And when the greater comes again 
 With my secret in his brain, 
 I shall pass, as glides my shadow 
 Daily over hill and meadow. 
 
 "Through all time, in light, in gloom, 
 
 Well I hear the approaching feet 
 
 On the flinty pathway beat 
 
 Of him that cometh, and shall come: 
 
 Of him who shall as lightly bear 
 
 My daily load of woods and streams. 
 
 As doth this round sky-cleaving boat 
 
 Which never strains its rocky beams: 
 
 Whose timbers, as they silent float, 
 
 Alps and Caucasus uprear, 
 
 And the long Alleghanies here. 
 
 And all town-sprinkled lands that be, 
 
 Sailing through stars with all their history. 
 
 "Every morn I lift my head. 
 
 Gaze o'er New England underspread. 
 
 South from Saint Lawrence to the Sound, 
 
 From Katskill east to the sea-bound. 
 
 Anchored fast for many an age, 
 
 I await the bard and sage, 
 
 Who, in large thoughts, like fair pearl-seed, 
 
 Shall string Monadnoc like a bead. 
 
 Comes that cheerful troubadour, 
 
 This mound shall throb his face before, 
 
 As when, with inward fires and pain, 
 
 It rose a bubble from the plain. 
 
 When he cometh, I shall shed, 
 
 From this wellspring in my head, 
 
 Fountain-drop of spicier worth 
 
 Than all vintage of the earth. 
 
 There's fruit upon my barren soil 
 
 Costher far than wine or oil. 
 
 There's a berry- blue and gold, — 
 
 Autumn-ripe, its juices hold 
 
466 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 Sparta's stoutness, Bethlehem's heart, 
 
 Asia's rancor, Athens' art, 
 
 Slowsure Britain's secular might, 
 
 And the German's inward sight. 
 
 I will give my son to eat 
 
 Best of Pan's immortal meat, 
 
 Bread to eat, and juice to drink; 
 
 So the thoughts that he shall think 
 
 Shall not be forms of stars, but stars, 
 
 Nor pictures pale, but Jove and Mars 
 
 He comes, but not of that race bred 
 
 Who daily climb my specular head. 
 
 Oft as morning WTeathes my scarf, 
 
 Fled the last plumule of the Dark, 
 
 Pants up hither the spruce clerk 
 
 From South Cove and City Wharf. 
 
 I take him up my rugged sides. 
 
 Half-repentant, scant of breath, — 
 
 Bead-eyes my granite chaos show. 
 
 And my midsummer snow; 
 
 Open the daunting map beneath, — 
 
 All his county, sea and land, 
 
 Dwarfed to measure of his hand; 
 
 His day's ride is a furlong space, 
 
 His city-tops a glimmering haze. 
 
 I plant his eyes on the sky-hoop bounding; 
 
 ' See there the grim gray rounding 
 
 Of the bullet of the earth 
 
 Whereon ye sail. 
 
 Tumbling steep 
 
 In the uncontinented deep.' 
 
 He looks on that, and he turns pale. 
 
 'Tis even so; this treacherous kite, 
 
 Farm-furrowed, town-incrusted sphere 
 
 Thoughtless of its anxious freight, 
 
 Plunges eyeless on forever; 
 
 And he, poor parasite. 
 
 Cooped in a ship he cannot steer, — 
 
 Who is the captain he knows not, 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 467 
 
 Port or pilot trows not, — 
 Risk or ruin he must share. 
 I scowl on him with my cloud, 
 With my north wind chill his blood; 
 I lame him, clattering down the rocks; 
 And to live he is in fear. 
 Then, at last, I let him down 
 Once more into his dapper town, 
 To chatter, frightened, to his clan, 
 And forget me if he can." 
 
 As in the old poetic fame 
 
 The gods are blind and lame. 
 
 And the simular despite 
 
 Betrays the more abounding might, 
 
 So call not waste that barren cone 
 
 Above the floral zone, 
 
 Where forests starve: 
 
 It is pure use; — 
 
 What sheaves like those which here we glean and bind 
 
 Of a Celestial Ceres and the Muse? 
 
 Ages are thy days, 
 
 Thou grand expresser of the present tense, 
 
 And type of permanence! 
 
 Firm ensign of the fatal Being, 
 
 Amid these coward shapes of joy and grief. 
 
 That will not bide the seeing! 
 
 Hither we bring 
 
 Our insect miseries to thy rocks; 
 
 And the whole flight, with pestering wing, 
 
 Vanish, and end their murmuring, — 
 
 Vanish beside these dedicated blocks, 
 
 Which who can tell what mason laid? 
 
 Spoils of a front none need restore. 
 
 Replacing frieze and architrave; — 
 
 Yet flowers each stone rosette and metrope brave; 
 
 Still is the haughty pile erect 
 
 Of the old building Intellect. 
 
468 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 Complement of human kind, 
 Having us at vantage still, 
 Our sumptuous indigence, 
 barren mound, thy plenties fill ! 
 We fool and prate; 
 Thou art silent and sedate. 
 To myriad kinds and times one sense 
 The constant mountain doth dispense; 
 Shedding on all its snows and leaves, 
 One joy it joys, one grief it grieves. 
 Thou seest, watchman tall. 
 Our towns and races grow and fall, 
 And imagest the stable good 
 For which we all our hfetime grope. 
 In shifting form the formless mind. 
 And though the substance us elude, 
 We in thee the shadow find. 
 Thou, in our astronomy 
 An opaquer star, 
 Seen haply from afar, 
 Above the horizon's hoop, 
 A moment, by the railwaj^ trooji. 
 As o'er some bolder height they speed, — - 
 By circumspect ambition. 
 By errant gain, 
 
 By feasters and the frivolous, — 
 Recallest us. 
 And makest sane. 
 Mute orator! well skilled to plead. 
 And send conviction without phrase, 
 Thou dost supply 
 The shortness of our days, 
 And promise, on thy Founder's truth, 
 Long morrow to this mortal youth. 
 
 FABLE 
 
 The mountain and the squirrel 
 Had a quarrel; 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 469 
 
 And the former called the latter "Little Prig." 
 
 Bun replied, 
 
 "You are doubtless very big; 
 
 But all sorts of things and weather 
 
 Must be taken in together, 
 
 To make up a year 
 
 And a sphere. 
 
 And I think it no disgrace 
 
 To occupy my place. 
 
 If I'm not so large as you, 
 
 You are not so small as I, 
 
 And not half so spry, 
 
 I'll not deny you make 
 
 A very pretty squirrel track; 
 
 Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; 
 
 If I cannot carry forests on my back, 
 
 Neither can you crack a nut." 
 
 THE SNOW-STORM 
 
 Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, 
 Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, 
 Seems nowhere to ahght; the w^hited air 
 Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven. 
 And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. 
 The sled and traveller stojDped, the courier's feet 
 Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit 
 Around the radiant fire-place, enclosed 
 In a tumultuous privacy of storm. 
 
 Come see the north wind's masonry. 
 Out of an unseen quarry evermore 
 Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer 
 Curves his white bastions with projected roof 
 Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. 
 Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work 
 So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he 
 For number or proportion. Mockingly, 
 Qn coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths; 
 
470 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn; 
 Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, 
 Maugre the farmer's sighs; and, at the gate, 
 A tapering turret overtops the work. 
 And when his hours are numbered, and the world 
 Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, 
 Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art 
 To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, 
 Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work. 
 The frolic architecture of the snow. 
 
 BRAHMA 
 
 If the red slayer think he slays. 
 Or if the slain think he is slain. 
 
 They know not well the subtle ways 
 I keep, and pass, and turn again. 
 
 Far or forgot to me is near; 
 
 Shadow and sunlight are the same; 
 The vanquished gods to me appear; 
 
 And one to me are shame and fame. 
 
 They reckon ill who leave me out; 
 
 When me they fly, I am the wings; 
 I am the doubter and the doubt. 
 
 And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. 
 
 The strong gods pine for my abode. 
 And pine in vain the sacred Seven; 
 
 But thou, meek lover of the good ! ^ ^ 
 
 Find me, and turn thy back on heaven. 
 
 THE SPHINX 
 
 The Sphinx is drowsy. 
 Her wings are furled; 
 
 Her ear is heavy. 
 She broods on the world. 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 471 
 
 "Who'll tell me my secret, 
 
 The ages have kept ? — 
 I waited the seer, 
 
 While they slumbered and slept;— 
 
 "The fate of the man-child; 
 
 The meaning of man; 
 Known fruit of the unknown; 
 
 Daedalian plan; 
 Out of sleeping a waking. 
 
 Out of waking a sleep; 
 Life death overtaking; 
 
 Deep underneath deep? 
 
 "Erect as a sunbeam, 
 
 Upspringeth the palm; 
 The elephant browses, 
 
 Undaunted and calm; 
 In beautiful motion 
 
 The thrush plies his wings: 
 Kind leaves of his covert, 
 
 Your silence he sings. 
 
 "The waves, unashamed. 
 
 In difference sweet, 
 Play glad with the breezes, 
 
 Old playfellows meet; 
 The journeying atoms, 
 
 Primordial wholes. 
 Firmly draw, firmly drive, 
 
 By their animate poles. 
 
 "Sea, earth, air, sound, silence, 
 
 Plant, quadruped, bird. 
 By one music enchanted. 
 
 One deity stirred, — 
 Each the other adorning. 
 
 Accompany still; 
 Night veileth the morning, 
 
 The vapor the hill. 
 
472 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 "The babe by its mother 
 
 Lies bathed in joy; 
 GHde its hours uncounted, — 
 
 The sun is its toy; 
 Shines the peace of all being, 
 
 Without cloud in its eyes; 
 And the sun of the world 
 
 In soft miniature lies. 
 
 "But man crouches and blushes, 
 
 Absconds and conceals; 
 He creepeth and peepeth, 
 
 He palters and steals; 
 Infirm, melancholy, 
 
 Jealous glancing around. 
 An oaf, an accomplice, '' 
 
 He poisons the ground. 
 
 "Out spoke the great mother. 
 
 Beholding his fear; — 
 At the sound of her accents 
 
 Cold shuddered the sphere: — 
 *Who has drugged my boy's cup? 
 
 Who has mixed my boy's bread? 
 Who, with sadness and madness, 
 
 Has turned the man-child's head?'" 
 
 I heard a poet answer 
 
 Aloud and cheerfully, 
 "Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges 
 
 Are pleasant songs to me; 
 Deep love lieth under 
 
 These pictures of time; 
 They fade in the light of 
 
 Their meaning sublime. 
 
 "The fiend that man harries 
 
 Is love of the Best; 
 Yawns the pit of the Dragon, 
 
 Lit by rays from the Blest. 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 473 
 
 The Lethe of nature 
 
 Can't trance him again, 
 Whose soul sees the perfect, 
 
 Which his eyes seek in vain. 
 
 "Profounder, profounder, 
 
 Man's spirit must dive; 
 To his aye-roUing orbit 
 
 No goal will arrive; 
 The heavens that now draw him 
 
 With sweetness untold. 
 Once found,— for new heavens 
 
 He spurneth the old. 
 
 "Pride ruined the angels. 
 
 Their shame them restores; 
 And the joy that is sweetest 
 
 Lurks in stings of remorse. 
 Have I a lover 
 
 Who is noble and free? — 
 I would he were nobler 
 
 Than to love me. 
 
 "Eterne alternation 
 
 Now follows, now flies; 
 And under pain, pleasure, — 
 
 Under pleasure, pain lies. 
 Love works at the center. 
 
 Heart-heaving alway; 
 Forth speed the strong pulses 
 
 To the borders of day. 
 
 "Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits: 
 
 Thy sight is growing blear; 
 Rue, myrrh, and cummin for the Sphinx — 
 
 Her muddy eyes to clear!" — 
 The old Sphinx bit her thick lip,— 
 
 Said, "Who taught thee me to name? 
 I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow, 
 
 Of thine eye I am eyebeam. 
 
47i; POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 "Thou art the unanswered question; 
 
 Could'st see thy proper eye, 
 Always it asketh, asketh; 
 
 And each answer is a he. 
 So take thy quest through nature, 
 
 It through thousand natures ply; 
 Ask on, thou clothed eternity; 
 
 Time is the false reply." 
 
 Uprose the merry Sphinx, 
 
 And crouched no more in stone; 
 She melted into purple cloud. 
 
 She silvered in the morn; 
 She spired into a yellow flame; 
 
 She flowered in blossoms red; 
 She flowed into a foaming wave: 
 
 She stood Monadoc's head. 
 
 Through a thousand voices 
 Spoke the universal dame: 
 
 "Who telleth one of my meanings 
 Is master of all I am." 
 
 THE VISIT 
 
 AsKEST, "How long thou shalt stay?" 
 
 Devastator of the day! 
 
 Know, each substance, and relation, 
 
 Thorough nature's operation. 
 
 Hath its unit, bound, and metre; 
 
 And every new compound 
 
 Is some product and repeater. — 
 
 Product of the earher found. 
 
 But the unit of the visit, 
 
 The encounter of the wise, — 
 
 Say, what other metre is it 
 
 Than the meeting of the eyes? 
 
POEMS OF EMEKSON 475 
 
 Nature poureth into nature 
 
 Through the channels of that feature. 
 
 Riding on the ray of sight, 
 
 Fleeter far than whirlwinds go, 
 
 Or for service, or dehght, 
 
 Hearts to hearts their meaning show, 
 
 Sum their long experience, 
 
 And import inteUigence. 
 
 Single look has drained the breast; 
 
 Single moment years confessed. 
 
 The duration of a glance 
 
 Is the term of convenance, 
 
 And, though thy rede be church or state, 
 
 Frugal multiples of that. 
 
 Speeding Saturn cannot halt; 
 
 Linger — thou shalt rue the fault; 
 
 If Love his moment overstay, 
 
 Hatred's swift repulsions play. 
 
 THE WORLD-SOUL 
 
 Thanks to the morning light. 
 
 Thanks to the foaming sea. 
 To the uplands of New Hampshire, 
 
 To the green-haired forest free; 
 Thanks to each man of courage, 
 
 To the maids of holy mind; 
 To the boy with his games undaunted. 
 
 Who never looks behind. 
 
 Cities of proud hotels, 
 
 Houses of rich and great. 
 Vice nestles in your chambers, 
 
 Beneath your roofs of slate. 
 It cannot conquer folly, 
 
 Time-and-space-conquering steam, 
 And the light-outspeeding telegraph 
 
 Bears nothing on its beam. 
 
476 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 The politics are base; 
 
 The letters do not cheer; 
 And 'tis far in the deeps of history, 
 
 The voice that speaketh clear. 
 Trade and the streets ensnare us, 
 
 Our bodies are weak and worn; 
 We plot and corrupt each other, 
 
 And we despoil the unborn. 
 
 Yet there in the parlor sits 
 
 Some figure of noble guise, — 
 Our angel, in a stranger's form, 
 
 Or woman's pleading eyes; 
 Or only a flashing sunbeam 
 
 In at the window-pane; 
 Or music pours on mortals 
 
 Its beautiful disdain. 
 
 The inevitable morning 
 
 Finds them who in cellars be; 
 And be sure the all-loving Nature 
 
 Will smile in a factory. 
 Yon ridge of purple landscape. 
 
 Yon sky between the walls, 
 Hold all the hidden wonders, 
 
 In scanty intervals. 
 
 Alas! the Sprite that haunts us 
 
 Deceives our rash desire; 
 It whispers of the glorious gods. 
 
 And leaves us in the mire. 
 We cannot learn the cipher 
 
 That's writ upon our cell; 
 Stars help us by a mystery 
 
 Which we could never spell. 
 
 If but one hero knew it, 
 The world would blush in flame; 
 
 The sage, till he hit the secret, 
 Would hang his head for shame. 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 477 
 
 But our brothers have not read it, 
 
 Not one has found the key; 
 And henceforth we are comforted, — 
 
 We are but such as they. 
 
 Still, still the secret presses; 
 
 The nearing clouds draw down; 
 The crimson morning flames into 
 
 The fopperies of the town. 
 Within, without the idle earth, 
 
 Stars weave eternal rings; 
 The sun himself sliines heartily, 
 
 And shares the joy he brings. 
 
 And what if Trade sow cities 
 
 Like shells along the shore, 
 And thatch with towns the prairie broad, 
 
 With railways ironed o'er? — 
 They are but sailing foam-bells 
 
 Along Thought's causing stream, 
 And take their shape and sun-color 
 
 From him that sends the dream. 
 
 For Destiny does not like 
 
 To yield to men the helm; 
 And shoots his thought, by hidden nerves. 
 
 Throughout the solid realm. 
 The patient Daemon sits, 
 
 With roses and a shroud; 
 He has his way, and deals his gifts, — 
 
 But ours is not allowed. 
 
 He is no churl nor trifler, 
 
 And his viceroy is none, — 
 Love-without-weakness, — 
 
 Of Genius sire and son. 
 And his will is not thwarted; 
 
 The seeds of land and sea 
 Are the atoms of his body bright. 
 
 And his behest obey. 
 
478 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 He serveth the servant, 
 
 The brave he loves amain; 
 He kills the cripple and the sick, 
 
 And straight begins again. 
 For gods dehght in gods, 
 
 And thrust the weak aside; 
 To him who scorns their charities, 
 
 Their arms fly open wide. 
 
 When the old world is sterile, 
 
 And the ages are effete, 
 He will from wrecks and sediment 
 
 The fairer world complete. 
 He forbids to despair; 
 
 His cheeks mantle with mirth; 
 And the unimagined good of men 
 
 Is yeaning at the birth. 
 
 Spring still makes spring in the mind. 
 
 When sixty years are told; 
 Love wakes anew this throbbing heart. 
 
 And we are never old. 
 Over the winter glaciers, 
 
 I see the summer glow. 
 And, through the wild-piled snowdrift. 
 
 The warm rosebuds below. 
 
 TO J. W. 
 
 Set not thy foot on graves; 
 
 Hear what wine and roses say; 
 
 The mountain chase, the summer waves. 
 
 The crowded town, thy feet may well delay. 
 
 Set not thy foot on graves; 
 
 Nor seek to unwind the shroud 
 
 Which charitable Time 
 
 And Nature have allowed 
 
 To wrap the errors of a sage sublime. 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 479 
 
 Set not thy foot on graves; 
 Care not to strip the dead 
 Of his sad ornament, 
 His myrrh, and wine, and rings, 
 
 His sheet of lead, 
 
 And trophies buried: 
 
 Go, get them where he earned them when aUve; 
 
 As resolutely dig or dive. 
 
 Life is too short to waste 
 In critic peep or cynic bark, 
 Quarrel or reprimand: 
 'Twill soon be dark; 
 Up! mind thine own aim, and 
 God speed the mark ! 
 
 HAMATREYA 
 
 MiNOTT, Lee, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, FHnt, 
 Possessed the land which rendered to their toil 
 Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool, and wood. 
 Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm. 
 Saying, " 'Tis mine, my children's, and my name's: 
 How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees! 
 How graceful climb those shadows on my hill! 
 I fancy these pure waters and the flags 
 Know me, as does my dog: we sympathize; 
 And, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil." 
 
 Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds; 
 And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough. 
 Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys 
 Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs; 
 Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet 
 Clear of the grave. 
 
 They added ridge to valley, brook to pond. 
 And sighed for all that bounded their domain. 
 "This suits me for a pasture; that's my park; 
 We must have clay, lime, gravel, granite-ledge. 
 And misty lowland, where to go for peat. 
 
480 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 The land is well, — lies fairly to the south. 
 'Tis good, when you have crossed the sea and back, 
 To find the sitfast acres where you left them." 
 Ah! the hot owner sees not Death, who adds 
 Him to his land, a lump of mould the more. 
 Hear what the Earth says: — 
 
 EARTH-SONG 
 
 "Mine and yours; 
 
 Mine, not yours. 
 
 Earth endures; 
 
 Stars abide — 
 
 Shine down on the old sea; 
 
 Old are the shores; 
 
 But where are the old men? 
 
 I who have seen much. 
 
 Such have I never seen. 
 
 "The lawyer's deed 
 
 Ran sure. 
 
 In tail. 
 
 To them, and to their heirs 
 
 Who shall succeed, 
 
 Without fail, 
 
 Forevermore. 
 
 "Here is the land. 
 Shaggy with wood. 
 With its old valley, 
 Mound, and flood. 
 But the heritors ? 
 Fled like the flood's foam, — 
 The lawyer, and the laws, 
 And the kingdom. 
 Clean swept herefrom. 
 
 "They called me theirs, 
 Who so controlled me; 
 Yet every one 
 Wished to stay, and is gone. 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 481 
 
 How am I theirs, 
 
 If they cannot hold me, 
 
 But I hold them?" 
 
 When I heard the Earth-song, 
 
 I was no longer brave; 
 
 My avarice cooled 
 
 Like lust in the chill of the grave. 
 
 THRENODY — (J^^ 
 
 The South-wind brings 
 
 Life, sunshine, and desire, 
 
 And on every mount and meadow 
 
 Breathes aromaiic fire; 
 
 But over the dead he has no power, 
 
 The lost, the lost, he cannot restore; 
 
 And, looking over the hills, I mourn 
 
 The darling who shall not return. 
 
 I see my empty house, 
 
 I see my trees repair their boughs; 
 
 And he, the wondrous child. 
 
 Whose silver warble wild 
 
 Outvalued every pulsing sound 
 
 Within the air's cerulean round, — 
 
 The hyacinthine boy, for whom 
 
 Morn well might break the April bloom, — 
 
 The gracious boy, who did adorn 
 
 The world whereinto he was born, 
 
 And by his countenance repay 
 
 The favor of the loving Day, — 
 
 Has disappeared from the Day's eye; 
 
 Far and wide she cannot find him; 
 
 My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him. 
 
 Returned this day, the south-wind searches. 
 
 And finds young pines and budding birches; 
 
 But finds not the budding man; 
 
 Nature, who lost, cannot remake him; 
 
 Fate let him fall, Fate can't retake him; 
 
 Nature, Fate, men, him seek in vain. 
 
482 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 And whither now, my truant wise and sweet, 
 
 O, whither tend thy feet? 
 
 I had the right, few days ago, 
 
 Thy steps to watch, thy place to know; 
 
 How have I forfeited the right? 
 
 Hast thou forgot me in a new deUght? 
 
 I hearken for thy household cheer, 
 
 O eloquent child! 
 
 Whose voice, an equal messenger, 
 
 Conveyed thy meaning mild. 
 
 What though the pains and joys 
 
 Whereof it spoke were toys 
 
 Fitting his age and ken, 
 
 Yet fairest dames and bearded men, 
 
 Who heard the sweet request. 
 
 So gentle, wise, and grave, 
 
 Bended with joy to his behest. 
 
 And let the world's affairs go by, 
 
 Awhile to share his cordial game, 
 
 Or mend his wicker wagon-frame, 
 
 Still plotting how their hungry ear 
 
 That winsome voice again might hear; 
 
 For his lips could well pronounce 
 
 Words that were persuasions. 
 
 Gentlest guardians marked serene 
 His early hope, his liberal mien; 
 Took counsel from his guiding eyes 
 To make this wisdom earthly wise. 
 Ah, vainly do these eyes recall 
 The school-march, each day's festival. 
 When every morn my bosom glowed 
 To watch the convoy on the road; 
 The babe in willow wagon closed, 
 With rolling eyes and face composed; 
 With children forward and behind. 
 Like Cupids studiously inclined; 
 And he the chieftain paced beside, 
 The center of the troop allied, 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 483 
 
 With sunny face of sweet repose, 
 
 To guard the babe from fancied foes. 
 
 The httle captain innocent 
 
 Took the eye with him as he went; 
 
 Each village senior paused to scan 
 
 And speak the lovely caravan. 
 
 From the window I look out 
 
 To mark thy beautiful parade, 
 
 Stately marching in cap and coat 
 
 To some tune by fairies played; — 
 
 A music heard by thee alone 
 
 To works as noble led thee on. 
 
 Now Love and Pride, alas! in vain, 
 
 Up and down their glances strain. 
 
 The painted sled stands where it stood; 
 
 The kennel by the corded wood; 
 
 The gathered sticks to stanch the wall 
 
 Of the snow-tower, when snow should fall; 
 
 The ominous hole he dug in the sand, 
 
 And childhood's castles built or planned; 
 
 His daily haunts I well discern, — 
 
 The poultry-yard, the shed, the barn, — 
 
 And every inch of garden ground 
 
 Paced by the blessed feet around, 
 
 From the roadside to the brook 
 
 Whereinto he loved to look. 
 
 Step the meek birds where erst they ranged; 
 
 The wintry garden Ues unchanged; 
 
 The brook into the stream runs on; 
 
 But the deep-eyed boy is gone. 
 
 On that shaded day. 
 
 Dark with more clouds than tempests are, 
 
 When thou didst yield thy innocent breath 
 
 In birdlike heavings unto death. 
 
 Night came, and Nature had not thee; 
 
 I said, "We are mates in misery." 
 
 The morrow dawned with needless glow; 
 
 Each snowbird chirped, each fowl must crow; 
 
484 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 Each tramper started; but the feet 
 
 Of the most beautiful and sweet 
 
 Of human youth had left the hill 
 
 And garden, — they were bound and still. 
 
 There's not a sparrow or a wren, 
 
 There's not a blade of autumn grain, 
 
 Which the four seasons do not tend, 
 
 And tides of life and increase lend; 
 
 And every chick of every bird, 
 
 And weed and rock-moSs is preferred. 
 
 O ostrich-like forgetfulness ! 
 
 O loss of larger in the less! 
 
 Was there no star that could be sent, 
 
 No watcher in the firmament, 
 
 No angel from the countless host 
 
 That loiters round the crystal coast, 
 
 Could stoop to heal that only child, 
 
 Nature's sweet marvel undefiled. 
 
 And keep the blossom of the earth, 
 
 Which all her harvests were not worth? 
 
 Not mine, — I never called thee mine, 
 
 But Nature's heir, — if I repine. 
 
 And seeing rashly torn and moved 
 
 Not what I made, but what I loved, 
 
 Grow early old with grief that thou 
 
 Must to the wastes of Nature go, — 
 
 'Tis because a general hope 
 
 Was quenched, and all must doubt and grope. 
 
 For flattering planets seemed to say 
 
 This child should ills of ages stay. 
 
 By wondrous tongue, and guided pen, 
 
 Bring the flown Muses back to men. 
 
 Perchance not he but Nature ailed, 
 
 The world and not the infant failed. 
 
 It was not ripe yet to sustain 
 
 A genius of so fine a strain, 
 
 Who gazed upon the sun and moon 
 
 As if he came unto his own, 
 
 And, pregnant with his grander thought, 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 485 
 
 Brought the old order into doubt. 
 His beauty once their beauty tried; 
 They could not feed him, and he died, 
 And wandered backward as in scorn, 
 To wait an aeon to be born. 
 
 Ill day which made this beauty waste, 
 Plight broken, this high face defaced! 
 Some went and came about the dead; 
 And some in books of solace read; 
 Some to their friends the tidings say; 
 Some went to write, some went to pray; 
 One tarried here, there hurried one; 
 But their heart abode with none. 
 Covetous death bereaved us all. 
 To aggrandize one funeral. 
 The eager fate which carried thee 
 Took the largest part of me: 
 For this losing is true dying; 
 This is lordly man's down-lying, 
 This his slow but sure reclining. 
 Star by star his world resigning. 
 
 child of paradise. 
 
 Boy who made dear his father's home, 
 
 In whose deep eyes 
 
 Men read the welfare of the times to come, 
 
 1 am too much bereft. 
 
 The world dishonored thou hast left. 
 O truth's and nature's costly lie! 
 O trusted broken prophecy! 
 O richest fortune sourly crossed ! 
 Born for the future, to the future lost! 
 
 The deep Heart answered, "Weepest thou? 
 
 Worthier cause for passion wild 
 
 If I had not taken the child. 
 
 And deemest thou as those who pore. 
 
 With aged eyes, short way before, — 
 
486 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 Think'st Beauty vanished from the coast, 
 
 Of matter, and thy darling lost? 
 
 Taught he not thee — the man of eld, 
 
 Whose eyes within his eyes beheld 
 
 Heaven's numerous hierarchy span 
 
 The mystic gulf from God to man? 
 
 To be alone wilt thou begin 
 
 When worlds of lovers hem thee in? 
 
 To-morrow when the masks shall fall 
 
 That dizen Nature's carnival, 
 
 The pure shall see by their own will, 
 
 Which overflowing Love shall fill, 
 
 'Tis not within the force of fate 
 
 The fate-conjoined to separate. 
 
 But thou, my votary, weepest thou? 
 
 I gave thee sight — where is it now? 
 
 I taught thy heart beyond the reach 
 
 Of ritual, bible, or of speech; 
 
 Wrote in thy mind's transparent table. 
 
 As far as the incommunicable; 
 
 Taught thee each private sign to raise, 
 
 Lit by the supersolar blaze. 
 
 Past utterance, and past belief. 
 
 And past the blasphemy of grief. 
 
 The mysteries of Nature's heart; 
 
 And though no Muse can these impart, 
 
 Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast, 
 
 And all is clear from east to west. 
 
 'T came to thee as to a friend; 
 Dearest, to thee I did not send 
 Tutors, but a joyful eye. 
 Innocence that matched the sky, 
 Lovely locks, a form of wonder. 
 Laughter rich as woodland thunder, 
 That thou might 'st entertain apart 
 The richest flowering of all art: 
 And, as the great all-loving Day 
 Through smallest chambers takes its way, 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 487 
 
 That thou might 'st break thy daily bread 
 With prophet, savior, and head; 
 That thou might 'st cherish for thine own 
 The riches of sweet Mary's Son, 
 Boy-Rabbi, Israel's paragon. 
 
 And thoughtest thou such guest 
 
 Would in thy hall take up his rest? 
 
 Would rushing life forget her laws. 
 
 Fate's glowing revolution pause? 
 
 High omens ask diviner guess; 
 
 Not to be conned to tediousness. 
 
 And know my higher gifts unbind 
 
 The zone that girds the incarnate mind. 
 
 When the scanty shores are full 
 
 With Thought's perilous, whirling pool; 
 /When frail Nature can no more, 
 I Then the Spirit strikes the hour: 
 I My servant Death, with solving rite, 
 (Pours finite into infinite. 
 
 "Wilt thou freeze love's tidal flow, 
 
 Whose streams through nature circling go? 
 
 Nail the wild star to its track 
 
 On the half;-climbed zodiac? 
 
 Light is light which radiates, 
 
 Blood is blood which circulates, 
 
 Life is life which generates. 
 
 And many-seeming life is one, — 
 
 Wilt thou transfix and make it none? 
 
 Its onward force too starkly pent 
 
 In figure, bone, and lineament ? 
 
 Wilt thou, uncalled, interrogate, 
 
 Talker! the unreplying Fate? 
 
 Nor see the genius of the whole 
 
 Ascendant in the private soul. 
 
 Beckon it when to go and come. 
 
 Self-announced its hour of doom? 
 
 Fair the soul's recess and shrine, 
 
488 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 Magic-built to last a season; 
 
 Masterpiece of love benign, 
 
 Fairer that expansive reason 
 
 Whose omen 'tis, and sign. 
 
 Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know 
 
 What rainbows teach, and sunsets show? 
 
 Verdict which accumulates 
 
 From lengthening scroll of human fates, 
 
 Voice of earth to earth returned. 
 
 Prayers of saints that inly burned, — 
 
 Saying, What is excellent, 
 
 As God lives, is permanent; 
 
 Hearts are dust, heart's loves remain; 
 
 Heart's love will meet thee again. 
 
 Revere the Maker; fetch thine eye 
 
 Up to his style, and manners of the sky. 
 
 Not of adamant and gold 
 
 Built he heaven stark and cold; 
 
 No, but a nest of bending reeds, 
 
 Flowering grass, and scented weeds; 
 
 Or like a traveller's fleeing tent. 
 
 Or bow above the tempest bent; 
 
 Built of tears and sacred flames. 
 
 And virtue reaching to its aims; 
 
 Built of furtherance and pursuing, , 
 
 Not of spent deeds, but of doing. 
 
 Silent rushes the swift Lord 
 
 Through ruined systems still restored, 
 
 Broadsowing, bleak, and void to bless. 
 
 Plants with worlds the wilderness; 
 
 Waters with tears of ancient sorrow 
 
 Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow. 
 
 House and tenant go to ground, 
 
 Lost in God, in Godhead found. 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 489 
 
 ODE TO BEAUTY 
 
 Who gave thee, Beauty, 
 The keys of this breast, — 
 Too credulous lover 
 Of blest and unblest? 
 Say, when in lapsed ages 
 Thee knew I of old? 
 Or what was the service 
 For which I was sold? 
 When first my eyes saw thee, 
 I found me thy thrall, 
 By magical drawings. 
 Sweet tyrant of all! 
 I dr^ k at thy fountain 
 False waters of thirst; 
 Thou intimate stranger, 
 Thou latest and first! 
 Thy dangerous glances 
 Make women of men; 
 New-borr we are melting 
 Into nature again. 
 
 Lavish, lavish promiser. 
 Nigh persuading gods to err! 
 Guest of million painted forms, 
 Which in turn thy glory warms! 
 The frailest leaf, the mossy bark. 
 The acorn's cup, the raindrop's arc, 
 The swinging spider's silver line. 
 The ruby of the drop of wine, 
 The shining pebble of the pond. 
 Thou inscribest with a bond. 
 In thy momentary play. 
 Would bankrupt nature to repay. 
 Ah, what avails it 
 To hide or to shun 
 Whom the Infinite One 
 
490 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 Hath granted his throne? 
 
 The heaven high over 
 
 Is the deep's lover; 
 
 The sun and sea, 
 
 Informed by thee, 
 
 Before me run, 
 
 And draw me on. 
 
 Yet fly me still, 
 
 As Fate refuses 
 
 To me the heart Fate for me chooses. 
 
 Is it that my opulent soul 
 
 Was mingled from the generous whole; 
 
 Sea-valleys and the deep of skies 
 
 Furnish several supphes; 
 
 And the sands whereof I'm made 
 
 Draw me to them, self-betrayed? 
 
 I turn the proud portfolios 
 
 Which hold the grand designs 
 
 Of Salvator, of Guercino, 
 
 And Piranesi's lines. 
 
 I hear the lofty paeans 
 
 Of the masters of the shell, 
 
 Who heard the starry music 
 
 And recount the numbers well; 
 
 Olympian bards who sung 
 
 Divine Ideas below. 
 
 Which always find us young, 
 
 And always keep us so. 
 
 Oft, in streets or humblest places, 
 
 I detect far-wandered graces. 
 
 Which, from Eden wide astray. 
 
 In lowly homes have lost their way. 
 
 Thee ghding through the sea of form, 
 
 Like the hghtning through the storm, 
 
 Somewhat not to be possessed, 
 
 Somewhat not to be caressed, 
 
 No feet so fleet could ever find. 
 
 No perfect form could ever bind. 
 
 Thou eternal fugitive, 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 491 
 
 Hovering over all that live, 
 Quick and skilful to inspire 
 Sweet, extravagant desire, 
 Starry space and lily-bell 
 Filling with thy roseate smell, 
 Wilt not give the lips to taste 
 Of the nectar which thou hast. 
 
 All that's good and great with thee 
 
 Works in close conspiracy; 
 
 Thou hast bribed the dark and lonely 
 
 To report thy features only, 
 
 And the cold and purple morning 
 
 Itself with thoughts of thee adorning; 
 
 The leafy dell, the city mart. 
 
 Equal trophies of thine art; 
 
 E'en the flowing azure air 
 
 Thou hast touched for my despair; 
 
 And if I languish into dreams. 
 
 Again I meet the ardent beams. 
 
 Queen of things! I dare not die 
 
 In Being's deeps past ear and eye; 
 
 Lest there I find the same deceiver, 
 
 And be the sport of Fate forever. 
 
 Dread Power, but dear! if God thou be. 
 
 Unmake me quite, or give thyself to me! 
 
 GIVE ALL TO LOVE 
 
 Give all to love; 
 
 Obey thy heart; 
 
 Friends, kindred, days. 
 
 Estate, good-fame. 
 
 Plans, credit, and the Muse, — 
 
 Nothing refuse. 
 
 Tis a brave master; 
 Let it have scope: 
 Follow it utterly, 
 Hope beyond hope: 
 
492 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 High and more high 
 It dives into noon, 
 With wing unspent, 
 Untold intent; 
 But it is a god, 
 Knows its own path, 
 And the outlets of the sky. 
 It was not for the mean; 
 It requireth courage stout, 
 Souls above doubt, 
 Valor unbending; 
 Such 'twill reward, — 
 They shall return 
 More than they were, 
 And ever ascending 
 
 Leave all for love; 
 
 Yet, hear me, yet, 
 
 One word more thy heart behoved, 
 
 One pulse more of firm endeavor, — 
 
 Keep thee to-day. 
 
 To-morrow, forever. 
 
 Free as an Arab 
 
 Of thy beloved. 
 
 Cling with life to the maid; 
 
 But when the surprise, 
 
 First vague shadow of surmise 
 
 Flits across her bosom young 
 
 Of a joy apart from thee. 
 
 Free be she, fancy-free; 
 
 Nor thou detain her vesture's hem, 
 
 Nor the palest rose she flung 
 
 From her summer diadem. 
 
 Though thou loved her as thyself. 
 
 As a self of purer clay, 
 
 Though her parting dims the day, 
 
 Stealing grace from all ahve; 
 
 Heartily know. 
 
 When half-gods go. 
 
 The gods arrive. 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 493 
 
 INITIAL, DAEMONIC, AND CELESTIAL LOVE 
 
 I 
 
 THE INITIAL LOVE 
 
 Venus, when her son was lost. 
 
 Cried him up and down the coast. 
 
 In hamlets, palaces, and parks, 
 
 And told the truant by his marks, — 
 
 Golden curls, and quiver, and bow. 
 
 This befell long ago. 
 
 Time and tide are strangely changed, 
 
 Men and manners much deranged: 
 
 None will now find Cupid latent 
 
 By this foolish antique patent. 
 
 He came late along the waste. 
 
 Shod like a traveller for haste; 
 
 With malice dared me to proclaim him, 
 
 That the maids and boys might name him. 
 
 Boy no more, he wears all coats. 
 
 Frocks, and blouses, capes, capotes; 
 
 He bears no bow, or quiver, or wand. 
 
 Nor chaplet on his head or hand. 
 
 Leave his weeds and heed his eyes, — 
 
 All the rest he can disguise. 
 
 In the pit of his eye's a spark I 
 
 Would bring back day if it were dark; I 
 
 And, if I tell you all my thought, 
 
 Though I comprehend it not. 
 
 In those unfathomable orbs 
 
 Every function he absorbs. 
 
 He doth eat, and drink, and fish, and shoot, 
 
 And write, and reason, and compute, 
 
 And ride, and run, and have, and hold, 
 
 And whine, and flatter, and regret, 
 
 And kiss, and couple, and beget, 
 
494 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 By those roving eyeballs bold. 
 
 Undaunted are their courages, 
 
 Right Cossacks in their forages; 
 
 Fleeter they than any creature, — 
 
 They are his steeds, and not his feature; 
 
 Inquisitive, and fierce, and fasting. 
 
 Restless, predatory, hasting; 
 
 And they pounce on other eyes 
 
 As lions on their prey; 
 
 And round their circles is writ, 
 
 Plainer than the day. 
 
 Underneath, within, above, — 
 
 Love — love — love — love. 
 
 He lives in his eyes; 
 
 There doth digest, and work, and spin, 
 
 And buy, and sell, and lose, and win; 
 
 He rolls them with delighted motion, 
 
 Joy-tides swell their mimic ocean. 
 
 Yet holds he them with tautest rein. 
 
 That they may seize and entertain 
 
 The glance that to their glance opposes, 
 
 Like fiery honey sucked from roses. 
 
 He palmistry can understand. 
 
 Imbibing virtue by his hand 
 
 As if it were a living root; 
 
 The pulse of hands will make him mute; 
 
 With all his force he gathers balms 
 
 Into those wise, thrilling palms. 
 
 Cupid is a casuist, 
 
 A mystic, and a cabalist, — 
 
 Can your lurking thought surprise, 
 
 And interpret your device. 
 
 He is versed in occult science. 
 
 In magic, and in clairvoyance; 
 
 Oft he keeps his fine ear strained. 
 
 And Reason on her tiptoe pained 
 
 For aery intelligence, 
 
 And for strange coincidence. 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 495 
 
 But it touches his quick heart 
 
 When Fate by omens takes his part, 
 
 And chance-dropped hints from Nature's sphere 
 
 Deeply soothe his anxious ear. 
 
 Heralds high before him run; 
 
 He has ushers many a one; 
 
 He spreads his welcome where he goes, 
 
 And touches all things with his rose. 
 
 All things wait for and divine him, — 
 
 How shall I dare to mahgn him, 
 
 Or accuse the god of sport? 
 
 I must end my true report, { 
 
 Painting him from head to foot, . ' 
 
 In as far as I took note, 
 
 Trusting well the matchless power 
 
 Of this young-eyed emperor 
 
 Will clear his fame from every cloud, 
 
 With the bards and with the crowd. 
 
 He is wilful, mutable, 
 
 Shy, untamed, inscrutable, 
 
 Swifter-fashioned than the fairies. 
 
 Substance mixed of pure contraries; 
 
 His vice some elder virtue's token, 
 
 And his good is evil-spoken. 
 
 Failing sometimes of his own. 
 
 He is headstrong and alone; 
 
 He affects the wood and wild. 
 
 Like a flower-hunting child; 
 
 Buries himself in summer waves. 
 
 In trees, with beasts, in mines, and caves; 
 
 Loves nature like a horned cow. 
 
 Bird, or deer, or caribou. 
 
 Shun him, nymphs, on the fleet horses! 
 
 He has a total world of wit; •• 
 
 O how wise are his discourses! 
 
 But he is the arch-hypocrite, 
 
496 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 And, through all science and all art, 
 
 Seeks alone his counterpart. 
 
 He is a Pundit of the East, 
 
 He is an augur and a priest. 
 
 And his soul will melt in prayer. 
 
 But word and wisdom is a snare; 
 
 Corrupted by the present toy 
 
 He follows joy, and only joy. 
 
 There is no mask but he will wear; 
 
 He invented oaths to swear; 
 
 He paints, he carves, he chants, he prays, 
 
 And holds all stars in his embrace. 
 
 Godlike, — but 'tis for his fine pelf. 
 
 The social quintessence of self. 
 
 Well said I he is hypocrite. 
 
 And folly the end of his subtle wit! 
 
 He takes a sovran privilege 
 
 Not allowed to any liege; 
 
 For he does go behind all law, 
 
 And right into himself does draw; 
 
 For he is sovereignly allied, — 
 
 Heaven's oldest blood flows in his side, — 
 
 And interchangeably at one 
 
 With every king on every throne. 
 
 That no god dare say him nay, 
 
 Or see the fault, or seen betray: 
 
 He has the Muses by the heart. 
 
 And the Parcae all are of his part. 
 
 His many signs cannot be told; 
 
 He has not one mode, but manifold, 
 
 Many fashions and addresses, 
 
 Piques, reproaches, hurts, caresses, 
 
 Arguments, lore, poetry. 
 
 Action, service, badinage; 
 
 He will preach like a friar, 
 
 And jump like Harlequin; 
 
 He will read like a crier. 
 
 And fight like a Paladin. 
 
 Boundless is his memory; 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 497 
 
 Plans immense his term prolong; 
 
 He is not of counted age, 
 
 Meaning always, to be young. 
 
 And his wish is intimacy, 
 
 Intimater intimacy, 
 
 And a stricter privacy; 
 
 The impossible shall yet be done, 
 
 And, being two, shall still be one. 
 
 As the wave breaks to foam on shelves, 
 
 Then runs into a wave again, 
 
 So lovers melt their sundered selves, 
 
 Yet melted would be twain. 
 
 II 
 
 THE DAEMONIC AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE 
 
 Man was made of social earth, 
 
 Child and brother from his birth, 
 
 Tethered by a liquid cord 
 
 Of blood through veins of kindred poured. 
 
 Next his heart the fireside band 
 
 Of mother, father, sister, stand: 
 
 Names from awful childhood heard 
 
 Throbs of a wild religion stirred; — 
 
 Virtue, to love, to hate them, vice; 
 
 Till dangerous Beauty came, at last, 
 
 Till Beauty came to snap all ties; 
 
 The maid, abolishing the past, 
 
 With lotus wine obliterates 
 
 Dear memory's stone-incarved traits, 
 
 And, by herself, supplants alone 
 
 Friends year by year more inly known. 
 
 When her calm eyes opened bright, 
 
 All were foreign in their light. 
 
 It was ever the self-same tale, 
 
 The first experience will not fail; 
 
 Only two in the garden walked, 
 
 And with snake and seraph talked 
 
498 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 But God said, 
 
 "I will have a purer gift; 
 
 There is smoke in the flame; 
 
 New flowerets bring, new prayers uplift, 
 
 And love without a name. 
 
 Fond children, ye desire 
 
 To please each other well; 
 
 Another round, a higher, 
 
 Ye shall climb on the heavenlj^ stair, 
 
 And selfish preference forbear; 
 
 And in right deserving, 
 
 And without a swerving 
 
 Each from your proper state. 
 
 Weave roses for your mate. 
 
 "Deep, deep are loving eyes. 
 
 Flowed with naphtha fiery sweet; 
 
 And the point is paradise. 
 
 Where their glances meet: 
 
 Their reach shall yet be more profound, 
 
 And a vision without bound: 
 
 The axis of those eyes sun-clear 
 
 Be the axis of the sphere: 
 
 So shall the lights ye pour amain 
 
 Go, without check or intervals. 
 
 Through from the empyrean walls 
 
 Unto the same again." 
 
 Close, close to men. 
 
 Like undulating layer of air. 
 
 Right above their heads. 
 
 The potent plain of Daemons spreads. 
 
 Stands to each human soul its own, 
 
 For watch and ward, and furtherance. 
 
 In the snares of Nature's dance; 
 
 And the lustre and the grace 
 
 To fascinate each youthful heart, 
 
 Beaming from its counterpart, 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 499 
 
 Translucent through the mortal covers, 
 
 Is the Daemon's form and face. 
 
 To and fro the Genius hies, — 
 
 A gleam which plays and hovers 
 
 Over the maiden's head, 
 
 And dips sometimes as low as to her eyes. 
 
 Unknown, albeit lying near. 
 
 To men, the path of the Daemon sphere; 
 
 And they that swiftly come and go 
 
 Leave no track on the heavenly snow. 
 
 Sometimes the airy synod bends, 
 
 And the mighty choir descends. 
 
 And the brains of men thenceforth, 
 
 In crowded and in still resorts, 
 
 Teem with unwonted thoughts: 
 
 As, when a shower of meteors 
 
 Cross the orbit of the earth. 
 
 And, lit by fringent air, 
 
 Blaze near and far, 
 
 Mortals deem the planets bright 
 
 Have slipped their sacred bars. 
 
 And the lone seaman all the night 
 
 Sails, astonished, amid stars. 
 
 Beauty of a richer vein, 
 
 Graces of a subtler strain. 
 
 Unto men these moonmen lend. 
 
 And our shrinking sky extend, 
 
 So is man's narrow path 
 
 By strength and terror skirted; 
 
 Also (from the song the wrath 
 
 Of the Genii be averted! 
 
 The Muse the truth uncolored speaking) 
 
 The Daemons are self-seeking: 
 
 Their fierce and limitary will 
 
 Draws men to their likeness still. 
 
 The erring painter made Love blind, — 
 
 Highest Love who shines on all; 
 
 Him, radiant, sharpest-sighted god, 
 
600 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 None can bewilder; 
 
 Whose eyes pierce 
 
 The universe, 
 
 Path-finder, road-builder, 
 
 Mediator, royal giver; 
 
 Rightly seeing, rightly seen, 
 
 Of joyful and transparent mien. 
 
 Tis a sparkle passing 
 
 From each to each, from thee to me, 
 
 To and fro perpetually; 
 
 Sharing all, daring all. 
 
 Levelling, displacing 
 
 Each obstruction, it unites 
 
 Equals remote, and seeming opposites. 
 
 And ever and for ever Love 
 
 Delights to build a road: 
 
 Unheeded Danger near him strides, 
 
 Love laughs, and on a lion rides. 
 
 But Cupid wears another face, 
 
 Born into Daemons less divine: 
 
 His roses bleach apace, 
 
 His nectar smacks of wine. 
 
 The Daemon ever builds a wall, 
 
 Himself encloses and includes. 
 
 Solitude in solitudes: 
 
 In like sort his love doth fall. 
 
 He is an oligarch; 
 
 He prizes wonder, fame, and mark; 
 
 He loveth crowns; 
 
 He scorneth drones; 
 
 He doth elect 
 
 The beautiful and fortunate, 
 
 And the sons of intellect, 
 
 And the souls of ample fate, 
 
 Who the Future's gates unbar, — 
 
 Minions of the Morning Star. 
 
 In his prowess he exults, 
 
 And the multitude insults. 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 501 
 
 His impatient looks devour 
 
 Oft the humble and the poor; 
 
 And, seeing his eye glare, 
 
 They drop their few pale flowers, 
 
 Gathered with hope to please, 
 
 Along the mountain towers, — 
 
 Lose courage, and despair. 
 
 He will never be gainsaid, — 
 
 Pitiless, will not be stayed; 
 
 His hot tyranny 
 
 Burns up every other tie. 
 
 Therefore comes an hour from Jove 
 
 Which his ruthless will defies. 
 
 And the dogs of Fate unties. 
 
 Shiver the palaces of glass; 
 
 Shrivel the rainbow-colored walls, 
 
 Where in bright Art each god and sibyl dwelt, 
 
 Secure as in the zodiac's belt; 
 
 And the galleries and halls. 
 
 Wherein every siren sung. 
 
 Like a meteor pass. 
 
 For this fortune wanted root 
 
 In the core of God's abysm, — 
 
 Was a weed of self and schism; 
 
 And ever the Daemonic Love 
 
 Is the ancestor of wars, 
 
 And the parent of remorse. 
 
 Ill 
 
 THE CELESTIAL LOVE 
 
 Higher far. 
 
 Upward into the pure realm. 
 
 Over sun and star. 
 
 Over the flickering Daemon film, 
 
 Thou must mount for love; 
 
 Into vision where all form 
 
502 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 In one only form dissolves; 
 
 In a region where the wheel, 
 
 On w^hich all beings ride, 
 
 Visibly revolves; 
 
 Where the starred, eternal worm 
 
 Girds the world with bound and term; 
 
 Where unlike things are like; 
 
 Where good and ill, 
 
 And joy and moan. 
 
 Melt into one. 
 
 There Past, Present, Future, shoot 
 
 Triple blossoms from one root; 
 
 Substances at base divided 
 
 In their summits are united; 
 
 There the holy essence rolls, 
 
 One through separated souls; 
 
 And the sunny Aeon sleeps 
 
 Folding Nature in its deeps; 
 
 And every fair and every good. 
 
 Known in part, or known impure, 
 
 To men below, 
 
 In their archetypes endure. 
 
 The race of gods, 
 
 Or those we erring own, 
 
 Are shadows flitting up and down 
 
 In the still abodes. 
 
 The circles of that sea are laws 
 
 Which publish and which hide the cause. 
 
 Pray for a beam 
 
 Out of that sphere. 
 
 Thee to guide and to redeem. 
 
 O, what a load 
 
 Of care and toil. 
 
 By lying use bestowed, 
 
 From his shoulders falls who sees 
 
 The true astronomy. 
 
 The period of peace. 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 603 
 
 Counsel which the ages kept 
 
 Shall the well-born soul accept. 
 
 As the overhanging trees 
 
 Fill the lake with images, — 
 
 As garment draws the garment's hem, 
 
 Men their fortunes bring with them. 
 
 By right or wrong, 
 
 Lands and goods go to the strong. 
 
 Property will brutely draw 
 
 Still to the proprietor; 
 
 Silver to silver creep and wind, 
 
 And kind to kind. 
 
 Nor less the eternal poles 
 
 Of tendency distribute souls. 
 
 There need no vows to bind 
 
 Whom not each other seek, but find. 
 
 They give and take no pledge or oath, — 
 
 Nature is the bond of both: 
 
 No prayer persuades, no flattery fawns, — 
 
 Their noble meanings are their pawns. 
 
 Plain and cold is their address. 
 
 Power have they for tenderness; 
 
 And, so thoroughly is known 
 
 Each other's counsel by his own, 
 
 They can parley without meeting; 
 
 Need is none of forms of greeting; 
 
 They can well communicate 
 
 In their innermost estate; 
 
 When each the other shall avoid. 
 
 Shall each by each be most enjoyed. 
 
 Not with scarfs or perfumed gloves 
 Do these celebrate their loves; 
 Not by jewels, feasts, and savors. 
 Not by ribbons or by favors. 
 But by the sun-spark on the sea, 
 And the cloud-shadow on the lea, 
 
504 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 The soothing lapse of morn to mirk, 
 And the cheerful round of work. 
 Their cords of love so public are, 
 They intertwine the farthest star: 
 The throbbing sea, the quaking earth, 
 Yield sympathy and signs of mirth; 
 Is none so high, so mean is none, 
 But feels and seals this union; 
 Even the fell Furies are appeased. 
 The good applaud, the lost are eased. 
 
 Love's hearts are faithful, but not fond. 
 Bound for the just, but not beyond; 
 Not glad, as the low-loving herd. 
 Of self in other still preferred, 
 But they have heartily designed 
 The benefit of broad mankind. 
 And they serve men austerely. 
 After their own genius, clearly, 
 Without a false humility; 
 For this is Love's nobility, — 
 Not to scatter bread and gold, 
 Goods and raiment bought and sold; 
 But to hold fast his simple sense. 
 And speak the speech of innocence, 
 And with hand and body and blood. 
 To make his bosom-counsel good. 
 For he that feeds men serveth few; 
 He serves all who dares be true. 
 
 THE APOLOGY 
 
 Think me not unkind and rude 
 That I walk alone in grove and glen; 
 
 I go to the god of the wood 
 To fetch his word to men. 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 605 
 
 Tax not my sloth that I 
 
 Fold my arms beside the brook; 
 Each cloud that floated in the sky 
 
 Writes a letter in my book. 
 
 Chide me not, laborious band, 
 
 For idle flowers I brought; 
 Every aster in my hand 
 
 Goes home loaded with a thought. 
 
 There was never mystery 
 
 But 'tis figured in the flowers; 
 Was never secret history 
 
 But birds tell it in the bowers. 
 
 One harvest from thy field 
 
 Homeward brought the oxen strong; 
 A second crop thine acres yield, 
 
 Which I gather in a song. 
 
 MERLIN 
 I 
 
 Thy trivial harp will never please 
 
 Or fill my craving ear; 
 
 Its chords should ring as blows the breeze, 
 
 Free, peremptory, clear. 
 
 No jingling serenader's art. 
 
 Nor tinkle of piano strings, 
 
 Can make the wild blood start 
 
 In its mystic springs. 
 
 The kingly bard 
 
 Must smite the chords rudely and hard, 
 
 As with hammer or with mace; 
 
 That they may render back 
 
 Artful thunder, which conveys 
 
 Secrets of the solar track. 
 
506 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 Sparks of the supersolar blaze. 
 
 Merlin's blows are strokes of fatej 
 
 Chiming with the forest tone, 
 
 When boughs buffet boughs in the wood; 
 
 Chiming with the gasp and moan 
 
 Of the ice-imprisoned flood; 
 
 With the pulse of manly hearts; 
 
 With the voice of orators; 
 
 With the din of city arts; 
 
 With the cannonade of wars; 
 
 With the marches of the brave; 
 
 And prayers of might from martyr's cave. 
 
 Great is the art, 
 
 Great be the manners, of the bard. 
 
 He shall not his brain encumber 
 
 With the coil of rhythm and number; 
 
 But, leaving rule and pale forethought, 
 
 He shall aye climb 
 
 For his rhjTne. 
 
 "Pass in, pass in," the angels say, 
 
 "In to the upper doors, 
 
 Nor count compartments of the floors. 
 
 But mount to paradise 
 
 By the stairway of surprise." 
 
 Blameless master of the games. 
 King of sport that never shames, 
 He shall daily joy dispense 
 Hid in song's sweet influence. 
 Things more cheeriy live and go. 
 What time the subtle mind 
 Sings aloud the tune whereto 
 Their pulses beat. 
 And march their feet. 
 And their members are combined. 
 
 By Sybarites beguiled. 
 He shall no task decline; 
 Merlin's mighty Une 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 507 
 
 Extremes of nature reconciled, — 
 Bereaved a tyrant of his \\ill, 
 And made the hon mild. 
 Songs can the tempest still, 
 Scattered on the stormy air, 
 Mould the year to fair increase 
 And bring in poetic peace. 
 
 He shall not seek to weave, 
 
 In weak, unhappy times, 
 
 Efficacious rhjTiies; 
 
 Wait his returning strength. 
 
 Bird, that from the nadir's floor 
 
 To the zenith's top can soar, 
 
 The soaring orbit of the muse exceeds that journey's 
 
 length. 
 Nor profane affect to hit 
 Or compass that, by meddling vat, 
 Which only the propitious mind 
 Pubhshes when 'tis inclined. 
 There are open hours 
 When the God's will saUies free. 
 And the dull idiot might see 
 The flowing fortunes of a thousand years; — 
 Sudden, at unawares, 
 Self-moved, fly-to the doors, 
 Nor sword of angels could reveal 
 What they conceal. 
 
 MERLIN 
 II 
 
 The rh\Tne of the poet 
 Modulates the king's affairs; 
 Balance-lo\ing Nature 
 Made all things in pairs. 
 
'608 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 To every foot its antipode; 
 
 Each color with its counter glowed; 
 
 To every tone beat answering tones, 
 
 Higher or graver; 
 
 Flavor gladly blends with flavor; 
 
 Leaf answers leaf upon the bough; 
 
 And match the paired cotyledons. 
 
 Hands to hands, and feet to feet, 
 
 In one body grooms and brides; 
 
 Eldest rite, two married sides 
 
 In every mortal meet. 
 
 Light's far furnace shines. 
 
 Smelting balls and bars, 
 
 Forging double stars, 
 
 Glittering twins and trines. 
 
 The animals are sick with love, 
 
 Lovesick with rhyme; 
 
 Each with all propitious time 
 
 Into chorus wove. 
 
 Like the dancer's ordered band. 
 
 Thoughts come also hand in hand; 
 
 In equal couples mated. 
 
 Or else alternated; 
 
 Adding by their mutual gage, 
 
 One to other, health and age. 
 
 Solitary fancies go 
 
 Short-lived wandering to and fro. 
 
 Most like to bachelors, 
 
 Or an ungiven maid. 
 
 Not ancestors. 
 
 With no posterity to make the lie afraid, 
 
 Or keep truth undecayed. 
 
 Perfect-paired as eagle's wings. 
 
 Justice is the rhyme of things; 
 
 Trade and counting use 
 
 The self-same tuneful muse; 
 
 And Nemesis, 
 
 Who with even matches odd, 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 509 
 
 Who athwart space redresses 
 
 The partial wrong, ^ 
 
 Fills the just period, 
 
 And finishes the song. 
 
 Subtle rhymes, with ruin rife, 
 Murmur in the house of life, 
 Sung by the Sisters as they spin; 
 In perfect time and measure they 
 Build and unbuild our echoing clay, 
 As the two twilights of the day 
 Fold us music-drunken in. 
 
 BACCHUS 
 
 Bring me wine, but wine which never grew 
 
 In the belly of the grape, 
 
 Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching through 
 
 Under the Andes to the Cape, 
 
 Suffered no savor of the earth to scape. 
 
 Let its grapes the morn salute 
 
 From a nocturnal root. 
 
 Which feels the acrid juice 
 
 Of Styx and Erebus; 
 
 And turns the woe of Night, 
 
 By its own craft, to a more rich delight. 
 
 We buy ashes for bread; 
 
 We buy diluted wine; 
 
 Give me of the true, — 
 
 Whose ample leaves and tendrils curled 
 
 Among the silver hills of heaven, 
 
 Draw everlasting dew; 
 
 Wine of wine, 
 
 Blood of the world, 
 
 Form of forms, and mould of statures, 
 
610 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 That I intoxicated, 
 
 And by the draught assimilated, 
 
 May float at pleasure through all natures; 
 
 The bird-language rightly spell, 
 
 And that which roses say so well. 
 
 Wine that is shed 
 
 Like the torrents of the sun 
 
 Up the horizon walls. 
 
 Or like the Atlantic streams, which run 
 
 When the South Sea calls. 
 
 Water and bread. 
 
 Food which needs no transmuting, 
 
 Rainbow-flowering, wisdom-fruiting 
 
 Wine which is already man, 
 
 Food which teach and reason can. 
 
 Wine which Music is, — 
 
 Music and wine are one, — 
 
 That I, drinking this. 
 
 Shall hear far Chaos talk with me; 
 
 Kings unborn shall walk with me; ' 
 
 And the poor grass shall plot and plan 
 
 What it will do when it is man. 
 
 Quickened so, will I unlock 
 
 Every crypt of every rock. 
 
 I thank the joyful juice 
 For all I know; — 
 Winds of remembering 
 Of the ancient being blow, 
 And seeming-solid walls of use 
 Open and flow. 
 
 Pour, Bacchus! the remembering wine; 
 Retrieve the loss of me and mine! 
 Vine for vine be antidote, 
 And the grape requite the lote! 
 Haste to cure the old despair, — 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 511 
 
 Reason in Nature's lotus drenched, 
 
 The memory of ages quenched; 
 
 Give them again to shine; 
 
 Let wine repair what this undid; 
 
 And where the infection shd, 
 
 A dazzhng memory revive; 
 
 Refresh the faded tints, 
 
 Recut the aged prints, 
 
 And write my old adventures with the pen 
 
 Which on the first day drew, 
 
 Upon the tablets blue, 
 
 The dancing Pleiads and eternal men. 
 
 GRACE 
 
 How much. Preventing God! how much I owe 
 To the defences thou hast round me set: 
 Example, custom, fear, occasion slow, — 
 These scorned bondmen were my parapet. 
 I dare not peep over this parapet. 
 To gauge with glance the roaring gulf below, 
 The depths of sin to which I had descended, 
 Had not these me against myself defended. 
 
 MEROPS 
 
 What care I, so they stand the same,- 
 Things of the heavenly mind, — 
 
 How long the power to give them name 
 Tarries yet behind? 
 
 Thus far to-day your favors reach, 
 
 fair, appeasing presences! 
 Ye taught my lips a smgle speech 
 
 And a thousand silences. 
 
512 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 Space grants beyond his fated road 
 No inch to the god of day; 
 
 And copious language still bestowed 
 One word, no more, to say. 
 
 HYMN 
 
 SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE CONCORD MONUMENT 
 
 April 19, 1836 
 
 By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
 
 Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 
 Here once the embattled farmers stood, 
 
 And fired the shot heard round the world. 
 
 The foe long since in silence slept; 
 
 Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; 
 And Time the ruined bridge has swept 
 
 Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. 
 
 On this green bank, by this soft stream, 
 
 We set to-day a votive stone; 
 That memory may their deed redeem. 
 
 When, like our sires, our sons are gone. 
 
 Spirit, that made those heroes dare 
 
 To die, or leave their children free, 
 Bid Time and Nature gently spare 
 
 The shaft we raise to them and thee. 
 
 ODE 
 
 INSCRIBED TO W. H. CHANNING 
 
 Though loath to grieve 
 The evil time's sole patriot, 
 I cannot leave 
 My honeyed thought 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 513 
 
 For the priest's cant 
 Or statesman's rant. 
 
 If I refuse 
 
 My study for their poUtique, 
 
 Which at the best is trick, 
 
 The angry Muse 
 
 Puts confusion in my brain. 
 
 But who is he that prates 
 Of the culture of mankind, 
 Of better arts and hfe? 
 Go, bhndworm, go, 
 Behold the famous States 
 Harrying Mexico 
 With rifle and with knife! 
 
 Or who, with accent bolder, 
 
 Dare praise the freedom-loving mountaineer? 
 
 I found by thee, rushing Contoocook! 
 
 And in thy valleys, Agiochook! 
 
 The jackals of the negro-holder. 
 
 The God who made New Hampshire 
 
 Taunted the lofty land 
 
 With little men; — 
 
 Small bat and wren 
 
 House in the oak: — 
 
 If earth-fire cleave 
 
 The upheaved land, and bury the folk, 
 
 The Southern crocodile would grieve. 
 
 Virtue palters; Right is hence; 
 Freedom praised, but hid; 
 Funeral eloquence 
 Rattles the coffin-Ud. 
 
 What boots thy zeal, 
 
 glowing friend, 
 
 That would indignant rend 
 
514 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 The Northland from the South? 
 Wherefore? to what good end? 
 Boston Bay and Bunker Hill 
 Would serve things still; — 
 Things are of the snake. 
 
 The horseman serves the horse, 
 The neatherd serves the neat, 
 The merchant serves the purse, 
 The eater serves his meat; 
 'Tis the day of the chattel, 
 Web to weave, and corn to grind; 
 Things are in the saddle. 
 And ride mankind. 
 
 There are two laws discrete. 
 
 Not reconciled, — 
 
 Law for man, and law for thing: 
 
 The last builds town and fleet, 
 
 But it runs wild. 
 
 And doth the man unking. 
 
 Tis fit the forest fall, 
 The steep be graded, 
 The mountain tunnelled. 
 The sand shaded, 
 The orchard planted. 
 The glebe tilled. 
 The prairie granted. 
 The steamer built. 
 
 Let man serve law for man; 
 Live for friendship, live for love. 
 For truth's and harmony's behoof; 
 The state may follow how it can. 
 As Olympus follows Jove. 
 
 Yet do not I implore 
 The wrinkled shopman to my sounding woods, 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 515 
 
 Nor bid the unwilling senator 
 
 Ask votes of thrushes in the solitudes. 
 
 Every one to his chosen work; — 
 
 Foolish hands may mix and mar; 
 
 Wise and sure the issues are. 
 
 Round they roll till dark is light, 
 
 Sex to sex, and even to odd; — 
 
 The over-god 
 
 Who marries Right to Might. 
 
 Who peoples, unpeoples, — 
 
 He who exterminates 
 
 Races by stronger races, 
 
 Black by white faces, — 
 
 Knows to bring honey 
 
 Out of the lion; 
 
 Grafts gentlest scion 
 
 On pirate and Turk. 
 
 The Cossack eats Poland, 
 
 Like stolen fruit; 
 
 Her last noble is ruined. 
 
 Her last poet mute: 
 
 Straight, into double band 
 
 The victors divide; 
 
 Half for freedom strike and stand; — 
 
 The astonished Muse finds thousands at her side. 
 
 FREEDOM 
 
 Once I wished I might rehearse 
 
 Freedom's paean in my verse. 
 
 That the slave who caught the strain 
 
 Should throb until he snapped his chain. 
 
 But the Spirit said, "Not so; 
 
 Speak it not, or speak it low; 
 
 Name not hghtly to be said. 
 
 Gift too precious to be prayed, 
 
516 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 Passion not to be expressed 
 But by heaving of the breast: 
 Yet, — wouldst thou the mountain find 
 Where this deity is shrined, 
 Who gives to seas and sunset skies 
 Their unspent beauty of surprise, 
 And, when it hsts him, waken can 
 Brute or savage into man; 
 Or, if in thy heart he shine, 
 Blends the starry fates with thine, 
 Draws angels nigh to dwell with thee, 
 And makes thy thoughts archangels be; 
 Freedom's secret wilt thou know? — 
 Counsel not with flesh and blood; 
 Loiter not for cloak or food; 
 Right thou feelest, rush to do." 
 
 ODE SUNG IN THE TOWN HALL 
 
 CONCORD, JULY 4, 1857 
 
 O TENDERLY the haughty day 
 
 Fills his blue urn with fire; 
 One morn is in the mighty heaven, 
 
 And one in our desire. 
 
 The cannon booms from town to town, 
 
 Our pulses are not less. 
 The joy-bells chime their tidings down, 
 
 Which children's voices bless. 
 
 For He that flung the broad blue fold 
 
 O'er-mantling land and sea. 
 One third part of the sky unrolled 
 
 For the banner of the free. 
 
 The men are ripe of Saxon kind 
 To build an equal state, — 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 517 
 
 To take the statute from the mind, 
 And make of duty fate. 
 
 United States! the ages plead, — 
 
 Present and Past in under-song, — 
 Go put your creed into your deed, 
 
 Nor speak with double tongue. 
 
 For sea and land don't understand. 
 
 Nor skies without a frown 
 See rights for which the one hand fights 
 
 By the other cloven down. 
 
 Be just at home; then write your scroll 
 
 Of honor o'er the sea, 
 And bid the broad Atlantic roll, 
 
 A ferry of the free. 
 
 And, henceforth, there shall be no chain. 
 
 Save underneath the sea 
 The wires shall murmur through the main 
 
 Sweet songs of Liberty. 
 
 The conscious stars accord above. 
 
 The waters wild below. 
 And under, through the cable wove, 
 
 Her fiery errands go. 
 
 For He that worketh high and wise. 
 
 Nor pauses in his plan. 
 Will take the sun out of the skies 
 
 Ere freedom out of man. 
 
 BOSTON HYMN 
 
 READ IN MUSIC HALL, JANUARY 1, 1863 
 
 The word of the Lord by night 
 To the watching Pilgrims came. 
 
518 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 As they sat by the seaside, 
 
 And filled their hearts with flame. 
 
 God said, I am tired of kings, 
 I suffer them no more; 
 Up to my ear the morning brings 
 The outrage of the poor. 
 
 Think ye I made this ball 
 
 A field for havoc and war, 
 
 Where tyrants great and tyrants small 
 
 Might harry the weak and poor? 
 
 My angel, his name is Freedom, — 
 Choose him to be your king; 
 He shall cut pathways east and west, 
 And fend you with his wing. 
 
 Lo! I uncover the land 
 Which I hid of old time in the West, 
 As the sculptor uncovers the statue 
 When he has wrought his best; 
 
 I show Columbia, of the rocks 
 Which dip their foot in the seas, 
 And soar to the air-borne flocks 
 Of clouds, and the boreal fleece. 
 
 I will divide my goods; 
 Call in the wretch and slave: 
 None shall rule but the humble, 
 And none but Toil shall have. 
 
 I will have never a noble, 
 No lineage counted great; 
 Fishers and choppers and ploughmen 
 Shall constitute a state. 
 
 Go, cut down trees in the forest, 
 And trim the straightest boughs: 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 619 
 
 Cut down the trees in the forest, 
 And build me a wooden house. 
 
 Call the people together, 
 The young men and the sires, 
 The digger in the harvest field, 
 Hireling, and him that hires; 
 
 And here in a pine state-house 
 They shall choose men to rule 
 In every needful faculty, 
 In church, and state, and school. 
 
 Lo, now! if these poor men 
 Can govern the land and sea. 
 And make just laws below the sun, 
 As planets faithful be. 
 
 And ye shall succor men; 
 
 'Tis nobleness to serve; 
 
 Help them who cannot help again: 
 
 Beware from right to swerve. 
 
 I break your bonds and masterships. 
 And I unchain the slave: 
 Free be his heart and hand henceforth 
 As wind and wandering wave. 
 
 I cause from every creature 
 His proper good to flow: 
 As much as he is and doeth. 
 So much he shall bestow. 
 
 But laying hands on another 
 To coin his labor and sweat, 
 He goes in pawn to his victim 
 For eternal years in debt. 
 
 To-day unbind the captive 
 So only are ye unbound; 
 
520 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 Lift up a people from the dust, 
 Trump of their rescue, sound! 
 
 Pay ransom to the owner, 
 
 And fill the bag to the brim. 
 
 Who is the owner? The slave is owner, 
 
 And ever was. Pay him. 
 
 North! give him beauty for rags. 
 And honor, South! for his shame; 
 Nevada! coin thy golden crags 
 With Freedom's image and name. 
 
 Up! and the dusky race 
 That sat in darkness long, — 
 Be swift their feet as antelopes. 
 And as behemoth strong. 
 
 Come, East and West and North, 
 By races, as snow-flakes, 
 And carry my purpose forth. 
 Which neither halts nor shakes. 
 
 My will fulfilled shall be, 
 For, in daylight or in dark. 
 My thunderbolt has eyes to see 
 His way home to the mark. 
 
 From: VOLUNTARIES 
 
 In an age of fops and toys, 
 
 Wanting wisdom, void of right, 
 
 Who shall nerve heroic boys 
 
 To hazard all in Freedom's fight, — 
 
 Break sharply off their jolly games, 
 
 Forsake their comrades gay, 
 
 And quit proud homes and youthful dames, 
 
 For famine, toil, and fray? 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 521 
 
 Yet on the nimble air benign 
 
 Speed nimbler messages, 
 
 That waft the breath of grace devine 
 
 To hearts in sloth and ease. 
 
 So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
 
 So near is God to man, 
 
 When Duty whispers low, Thou must 
 
 The youth replies, / can. 
 
 MUSKETAQUID 
 
 Because I was content with these poor fields, 
 Low, open meads, slender and sluggish streams, 
 And found a home in haunts which others scorned, 
 The partial wood-gods overpaid my love, 
 And granted me the freedom of their state, 
 And in their secret senate have prevailed 
 With the dear, dangerous lords that rule our life. 
 Made moon and planets parties to their bond. 
 And through my rock-like, solitary wont 
 Shot million rays of thought and tenderness. 
 For me, in showers, in sweeping showers, the spring 
 Visits the valley; — break away the clouds, — 
 I bathe in the morn's soft and silvered air. 
 And loiter willing by yon loitering stream. 
 Sparrows far off, and nearer, April's bird. 
 Blue-coated, — flying before from tree to tree, 
 Courageous, sing a delicate overture 
 To lead the tardy concert of the year. 
 Onward and nearer rides the sun of May; 
 And wide around, the marriage of the plants 
 Is sweetly solemnized. Then flows amain 
 The surge of summer's beauty; dell and crag, 
 Hollow and lake, hill-side, and pine arcade. 
 Are touched with genius. Yonder ragged cliff 
 Has thousand faces in a thousand hours. 
 
 Beneath low hills, in the broad interval 
 Through which at will our Indian rivulet 
 Winds mindful still of sannup and of squaw, 
 
522 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 Whose pipe and arrow oft the plough unburies, 
 Here in pine houses built of new fallen trees, 
 Supplanters of the tribe, the farmers dwell. 
 Traveller, to thee, perchance, a tedious road, 
 Or, it may be, a picture; to these men. 
 The landscape is an armory of powers. 
 Which, one by one, they know to draw and use. 
 They harness beast, bird, insect, to their work; 
 They prove the virtues of each bed of rock, 
 And, like the chemist 'mid his loaded jars, 
 Draw from each stratum its adapted use 
 To drug their crops or weapon their arts withal. 
 They turn the frost upon their chemic heap, 
 They set the wind to winnow pulse and grain. 
 They thank the spring-flood for its fertile slime, 
 And, on cheap summit-levels of the snow, 
 Slide with the sledge to inaccessible woods 
 O'er meadows bottomless. So, year by year, 
 They fight the elements with elements, 
 (That one would say, meadow and forest walked. 
 Transmuted in these men to rule their like,) 
 And by the order in the field disclose 
 The order regnant in the yeoman's brain. 
 
 What these strong masters wrote at large in miles, 
 
 I followed in small copy in my acre; 
 
 For there's no rood has not a star above it; 
 
 The cordial quality of pear or plum 
 
 Ascends as gladly in a single tree 
 
 As in broad orchards resonant with bees; 
 
 And every atom poises for itself. 
 
 And for the whole. The gentle deities 
 
 Showed me the lore of colors and of sounds, 
 
 The innumerable tenements of beauty, 
 
 The miracle of generative force, 
 
 Far-reaching concords of astronomy 
 
 Felt in the plants, and in the punctual birds; 
 
 Better, the linked purpose of the whole. 
 
 And, chief est prize, found I true liberty 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 523 
 
 In the glad home plain-dealing nature gave. 
 
 The polite found me impolite; the great 
 
 Would mortify me, but in vain; for still 
 
 I am a willow of the wilderness, 
 
 Loving the wind that bent me. AH my hurts 
 
 My garden spade can heal. A woodland walk, 
 
 A quest of river-grapes, a mocking thrush, 
 
 A wild-rose, or rock-loving columbine, 
 
 Salve my worst wounds. 
 
 For thus the wood-gods murmured in my ear: 
 
 "Dost love our manners? Canst thou silent lie? 
 
 Canst thou, thy pride forgot, like nature pass 
 
 Into the winter night's extinguished mood? 
 
 Canst thou shine now, then darkle, 
 
 And being latent feel thyself no less? 
 
 As, when the all-worshipped moon attracts the eye 
 
 The river, hill, stems, foliage, are obscure, 
 
 Yet envies none, none are unenviable." 
 
 THE TEST 
 
 (Musa loquitur) 
 
 I hung my verses in the wind. 
 
 Time and tide their faults may find. 
 
 All were winnowed through and through. 
 
 Five hues lasted sound and true; 
 
 Five were smelted in a pot 
 
 Than the South more fierce and hot; 
 
 These the siroc could not melt. 
 
 Fire their fiercer flaming felt. 
 
 And the meaning was more white 
 
 Than July's meridian light. 
 
 Sunshine cannot bleach the snow. 
 
 Nor time unmake what poets know. 
 
 Have you eyes to find the five 
 
 Which five hundred did survive? 
 
524 POEMS OF EMERSON 
 
 FORERUNNERS 
 
 Long I followed happy guides, 
 
 I could never reach their sides; 
 
 Their step is forth, and, ere the day 
 
 Breaks up their leaguer, and away. 
 
 Keen my sense, my heart was young, 
 
 Right good-will my sinews strung. 
 
 But no speed of mine avails 
 
 To hunt upon their shining trails. 
 
 On and away, their hasting feet 
 
 Make the morning proud and sweet; 
 
 Flowers they strew,— I catch the scent; 
 
 Or tone of silver instrument 
 
 Leaves on the wind melodious trace; 
 
 Yet I could never see their face. 
 
 On eastern hills I see their smokes. 
 
 Mixed with mist by distant lochs. 
 
 I met many travellers 
 
 Who the road had surely kept; 
 
 They saw not my fine revellers, — 
 
 These had crossed them while they slept, 
 
 Some had heard their fair report, 
 
 In the country or the court. 
 
 Fleetest couriers alive 
 
 Never yet could once arrive, 
 
 As they went or they returned. 
 
 At the house where these sojourned. 
 
 Sometimes their strong speed they slacken, 
 
 Though they are not overtaken; 
 
 In sleep their jubilant troop is near, — 
 
 I tuneful voices overhear; 
 
 It may be in wood or waste, — 
 
 At unawares 'tis come and past. 
 
 Their near camp my spirit knows 
 
 By signs gracious as rainbows. 
 
POEMS OF EMERSON 625 
 
 I thenceforward, and long after, 
 Listen for their harp-Uke laughter, 
 And carry in my heart, for days, 
 Peace that hallows rudest ways. 
 
OCT 1?' ^5^^ 
 
 Cm.