Book J"P^ 
 
 Gopyriglit}^?_ 
 
 rOPVRlGHT DEPOStr 
 
LITTLE MASTERPIECES 
 
Little Masterpieces 
 
 Edited by Bliss Perry 
 
 RALPH WALD O 
 ' EMERSON 
 
 History Self- Reliance 
 
 Nature Spiritual Laws 
 
 The American Scholar 
 
 NEW YORK 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 1901 
 
The LIBRARY OF 
 
 GONGRESS, 
 Two Corti£8 Heoeived 
 
 DEC. 9 1901 
 
 Copyright entry 
 CLASS ^:^XXa Nu.| 
 
 COPY a 
 
 r^ lu:^. 
 
 ^ 
 
 Cop)n-ight, 1901, by 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PaGE & COMPANY 
 
 Used by permission of^ and by arrangement withy 
 
 Houghton, Mifflin &=> Company, 
 the sole publishers 0/ Emerson's complete writings 
 
 etc t « etc 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Editor's Introduction, . 
 
 . vii 
 
 History, 
 
 . . 1 
 
 Self-Reliance, .... 
 
 . 41 
 
 Nature, 
 
 . 83 
 
 Spiritual Laws, 
 
 . . Ill 
 
 The American Scholar, . 
 
 . . 147 
 
Editor's Introduction 
 
Editor's Introduction. 
 
 Of the five complete productions of Emer- 
 son v^hich appear in this volume, three 
 (^^History/^ ''Self-Rehance," and ^'Spiritual 
 Laws' ') are chosen from the first series of his 
 * ^Essays," published in 1841. The essay on 
 ' 'Nature, '^ reprinted here, was first published 
 in the second series of Essays" in 1844, and 
 is not to be confused w^ith the more enig- 
 matic essay on * 'Nature," in eight brief 
 "books," which appeared in 1836. The later 
 essay is based, after a fashion, upon the first, 
 but it is more inning in its method. These 
 four representative papers are followed by 
 the famous Phi Beta Kappa address of 1837 
 on "The American Scholar"; an oration 
 which Lowell declared to be "an event with- 
 out any parallel in our literary annals," and 
 ^which Holmes characterized as "our intel- 
 lectual Declaration of Independence." 
 
 Emerson ^svas thirty-four T^^hen he delivered 
 this address upon "The American Scholar." 
 His literary productiveness continued un- 
 abated for about thirty years longer. After 
 1867 he produced little, though his calm life 
 was prolonged until 1882, within a few days 
 of his eightieth year. All the selections in 
 this volume, it will be observed, are chosen 
 
Editor's Introduction 
 
 from the period of his earher manhood, when 
 his thought had a morning freshness and his 
 language was that of a ne^w, deHcious poetry. 
 None of his later writings give a more per- 
 fect display of the essential qualities of his 
 genius. 
 
 If Emerson passed logically and systemat- 
 ically from one subject to another, and dur- 
 ing the elucidation of his themes kept strictly 
 to the business in hand, it would be inter- 
 esting to summarize the judgments of this 
 acute and dispassionate mind upon such 
 perennially significant topics as History, 
 Self-Reliance, Nature, Spiritual Laws, and 
 Scholarship. But Emerson smilingly avoided 
 any sequential, formal treatment of his 
 themes. To make an abstract of one of his 
 essays is as difficult as it is unprofitable. 
 He drifts serenely from cape to inlet, from 
 island to promontory, surveying some new 
 or old domain of thought and experience. 
 The reports he brings back to us are ''the 
 words we wish to hear,'' but he is not bent, 
 after all, upon making a topographical chart 
 of sea and shore. Passages from his essay 
 on ''History" read like paragraphs belonging 
 in "Self-Reliance" or "Nature." Indeed, we 
 know that Emerson's essays were pieced to- 
 gether out of random entries in his note- 
 books, and it is idle to seek for a superficial 
 unity for which the author himself never 
 cared. 
 
Editor's Introduction 
 
 It is enough that there is a fundamental 
 unity in the great ideaHst's scheme of the 
 world. Witness these sentences, chosen from 
 each of the essays in this volume : 
 
 ''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."— (''History.") 
 
 "Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. 
 Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph 
 of principles. "— ( ' 'Self-Reliance. ' ' ) 
 
 "Let a man believe in God, and not in 
 names and places and persons." — Spiritual 
 Laws.") 
 
 "The world is mind precipitated. ... So 
 poor is Nature with all her craft, that 
 from the beginning to the end of the universe 
 she has but one stuff, — but one stuff with its 
 two ends, to serve up all her dream-like 
 variety. Compound it how she will, star, 
 sand, fire, w^ater, tree, man, it is still one 
 stuff, and betrays the same properties." — 
 ("Nature.") 
 
 "The ancient precept 'Know thyself,' and 
 the modern precept 'Study nature,' become at 
 last one maxim." — "The American Scholar.") 
 
 Emerson's claim to an enduring place 
 among American men of letters is that he 
 can say things like these, and say them so 
 well. Yet most persons who have once come 
 under the spell of that radiant and vivifying 
 personality see in Emerson something other 
 xi 
 
Editor's Introduction 
 
 and rarer than a mere man of letters. To 
 them he is a ^Triend and helper/' a personal 
 force. Some readers think they outgrow 
 him, as the transcendental days of youth go 
 by ; but the wiser ones keep coming back to 
 him to borrow something of his indefeasible 
 optimism, his serene courage. This little 
 volume ^11 introduce him no doubt, to new- 
 readers. They are to be envied. But to the 
 greater number of those who turn the pages 
 of this book, it w^ill serve as a reminder and 
 pledge of an ennobling intellectual compan- 
 ionship. Not a few of them, re-reading these 
 brave and beautiful essays written more than 
 sixty years ago, will murmur to themselves 
 those words of Emerson's master which 
 sprang to the lips of Faust : 
 
 Bie Geisterwelt ist nicht verschlossen; 
 Dein Sinn ist zu, dein Herz ist todt! 
 Auf! bade J Scbiiler, unverdrossen, 
 Die ird'sche Brust im MorgenrothP' 
 
 Bliss Perry. 
 
 zu 
 
History 
 
HISTORY. 
 
 There is one mind common to all indiYidual 
 men. Every man is an inlet to the same and 
 to all of the same. He that is once admitted 
 to the right of reason is made a freeman of 
 the whole estate. What Plato has thought, 
 he may think; what a saint has felt, he may 
 feel ; what at any time has befallen any man, 
 he can tmderstand. Who hath access to this 
 universal mind is a party to all that is or 
 can be done, for this is the only and sover- 
 eign 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 facult\% 
 ever\' thought, every emotion which belongs 
 to it, in appropriate events. But the 
 thought is alwa\^s prior to the fact; all the 
 facts of history preexist in the mind as laws. 
 Each law in turn is made by circumstances 
 predominant, and the limits of nature give 
 power to but one at a time. A man is the 
 whole enc\^clop^dia of facts. The creation 
 of a thousand forests is in one acorn, and 
 Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, America, 
 
Emerson 
 
 lie folded already in the first man. Epoch 
 after epoch, camp, kingdom, empire, republic, 
 democracy, are merely the application of his 
 manifold spirit to the manifold world. 
 
 This human mind wrote history, and this 
 must read it. The Sphinx must solve her 
 own riddle. If the whole of history is in one 
 man, it is all to be explained from individual 
 experience. There is a relation between the 
 hours of our life and the centuries of time. 
 As the air I breathe is drawn from the great 
 repositories of nature, as the light on my 
 book is yielded by a star a hundred millions 
 of miles distant, as the poise of my body 
 depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and 
 centripetal forces, so the hours should be in- 
 structed by the ages and the ages explained 
 by the hours. Of the universal mind each 
 individual man is one more incarnation. All 
 its properties consist in him. Each new fact 
 in his private experience flashes a Hght on 
 w^hat 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 some- 
 thing in me to be credible or intelligible. We, 
 as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, 
 4 
 
History 
 
 Turks, priest and king, martyr and execu- 
 tioner; must fasten these images to some 
 reality in our secret experience, or we shall 
 learn nothing rightly. What befell Asdrubal 
 or Caesar Borgia is as much an illustration 
 of the mind's powers and depravations as 
 what has befallen us. Each ne^v law and 
 political movement has meaning for you. 
 Stand before each of its tablets and sa\^, 
 *Under this mask did my Proteus nature hide 
 itself This remedies the defect of our too 
 great nearness to ourselves. This throws 
 our actions into perspective; and as crabs, 
 goats, scorpions, the balance and the water- 
 pot lose their meanness Avhen hung as signs 
 in the zodiac, so I can see my own vices 
 without heat in the distant persons of Solo- 
 mon, Alcibiades, and Catiline. 
 
 It is the universal nature which gives 
 worth to particular men and things. liu- 
 man life, as containing this, is mysterious 
 and inviolable, and we hedge it round with 
 penalties and laws. All laws derive hence 
 their ultimate reason; all express more or 
 less distinctly some command of this supreme 
 illimitable essence. Property also holds of 
 the soul, covers great spiritual facts, and 
 instinctively we at first hold to it with 
 swords and laws and wide and complex com- 
 binations. The obscure consciousness of this 
 fact is the light of all our day, the claim of 
 claims ; the plea for education, for justice, for 
 5 
 
Emerson 
 
 charity; the foundation of friendship and 
 love and of the heroism and grandeur which 
 belong to acts of self-reHance. It is remark- 
 able that involuntarily we always read as 
 superior beings. Universal history-, the poets, 
 the romancers, do not in their stateliest 
 pictures,~in the sacerdotal, the imperial 
 palaces, in the triumphs of will or of genius, 
 — anyw^here lose our ear, anywhere make us 
 feel that we intrude, that this is for better 
 men; but rather is it true that in their grand- 
 est strokes we feel most at home. All that 
 Shakspeare says of the king, ^^onder slip of a 
 boy that reads in the corner feels to be true 
 of himself. We sympathize in the great mo- 
 ments of history, in the great discoveries, the 
 great resistances, the great prosperities of 
 men; — because there law was enacted, the 
 sea w^as searched, the land was found, or the 
 blow was struck, for ns, as we ourselves in 
 that place would have done or applauded. 
 
 We have the same interest in condition and 
 character. We honor the rich because they 
 have externally the freedom, power, and 
 grace which w^e feel to be proper to man, 
 proper to us. So all that is said of the wise 
 man b\^ Stoic or Oriental or modern essa^^st, 
 describes to each reader his own idea, de- 
 scribes his unattained but attainable self. 
 All literature writes the character of the wise 
 man. Books, monuments, pictures, conver- 
 sation, are portraits in which he finds the 
 6 
 
History • 
 
 lineaments he is forming. The silent and the 
 eloquent praise him and accost him, and he 
 is stimulated -wherever he moves, as by per- 
 sonal allusions. A true aspirant therefore 
 never needs look for allusions personal and 
 laudatory in discourse. He hears the com- 
 mendation, not of himself, but, more sweet, 
 of that character he seeks, in every word 
 that is said concerning character, yea further 
 in every fact and circumstance, — in the run- 
 nino^ river and the rustlino- 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 
 passiveh-; to esteem his own life the text, 
 and books the commentary. Thus com- 
 pelled, the Muse of history will utter oracles^ 
 as never to those who do not respect them- 
 selves. I have no expectation that any man 
 will read history aright who thinks that 
 what was done in a remote age, by men 
 whose names have resounded far, has any 
 deeper sense than what he is doing to-dav. 
 
 The world exists for the education of each 
 man. There is no age or state of society or 
 mode of action in history to which there is 
 not somewhat corresponding in his life. 
 Every thing tends in a wonderful manner to 
 abbreviate itself and yield its own virtue to 
 7 
 
Emerson 
 
 him. He should see that he can Hve all his- 
 tory in his own person. He must sit solidly 
 at home, and not suffer himself to be bullied 
 by kings or empires, but know that he is 
 greater than all the geography and all the 
 government of the world ; he must transfer 
 the point of view from which histor\^ is com- 
 monly read, from Rome and Athens and Lon- 
 don, to himself, and not deny his conviction 
 that he is the court, and if England or 
 Egypt have any thing to sa\^ to him he Avill 
 try the case; if not, let them forever be 
 silent. He must attain and maintain that 
 lofty sight where facts yield their secret 
 sense, and poetry and annals are alike. The 
 instinct of the mind, the purpose of nature, 
 betrays itself in the use we make of the sig- 
 nal narrations of history. Time dissipates to 
 shining ether the solid angularity of facts. 
 No anchor, no cable, no fences avail to keep 
 a fact a fact. Babylon, Troy, Tyre, Pales- 
 tine, and even early Rome are passing al- 
 read\^ into fiction. The Garden of Eden, the 
 sun standing still in Gideon, is poetry thence- 
 forward to all nations. Who cares what the 
 fact was, when we have made a constella- 
 tion 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, 
 8 
 
History 
 
 Church, Court and Commerce, as with so 
 many flowers and wild ornaments grave and 
 gay. I will not make more account of them. 
 I believe in Eternity. I can find Greece, Asia, 
 Italy, Spain, and the Islands, — the genius 
 and creative principle of each and of all eras, 
 in my own mind. 
 
 We are always coming up with the em- 
 phatic facts of history in our private expe- 
 rience and verifying them here. All history 
 becomes subjective; in other words there is 
 properly no history, only biography. Every 
 mind must know the whole lesson for itself, — 
 must go over the whole ground. What it 
 does not see, what it does not live, it will 
 not know. What the former age has epito- 
 mized into a formula or rule for manipular 
 convenience, it wU lose all the good of verify- 
 ing for itself, by means of the wall of that 
 rule. Somewhere, sometime, it will demand 
 and find compensation for that loss, by doing 
 the work itself. Ferguson discovered man\" 
 things in astronomy which had long been 
 known. The better for him. 
 
 History must be this or it is nothing. 
 Every law v^^hich the state enacts indicates a 
 fact in human nature ; that is all. We must 
 in ourselves see the necessar}^ reason of every 
 fact, — see how it could and must be. So 
 stand before ever^^ public and private work ; 
 before an oration of Burke, before a victory 
 of Napoleon, before a martj^rdom of Sir 
 9 
 
Emerson 
 
 Thomas More, of Sidne^^, of Marmaduke 
 Robinson; before a French Reign of Terror, 
 and a Salem hanging of Avitches ; before a 
 fanatic revival and the Animal Magnetism 
 in Paris, or in Providence. We assume that 
 we tinder like influence should be alike af- 
 fected, and should achieve the like; and we 
 aim to master intellectually the steps and 
 reach the same height or the same degrada- 
 tion that our fellow, our prox}^ has done. 
 
 All inquiry into antiquity, all curiosity re- 
 specting the Pyramids, the excavated cities, 
 Stonehenge, the Ohio Circles, Mexico, Mem- 
 phis, — is the desire to do awa\" this w41d, 
 savage, and preposterous There or Then, and 
 introduce in its place the Here and the No^w. 
 Belzoni digs and measures in the mummy- 
 pits and pyramids of Thebes until he can see 
 the end of the difference betw^een the mon- 
 strous work and himself. When he has satis- 
 fied himself, in general and in detail, that it 
 w^as made by such a person as he, so armed 
 and so motived, and to ends to which he 
 himself should also have worked, the prob- 
 lem is solved; his thought lives along the 
 whole line of temples and sphinxes and cata- 
 combs, passes through them all with satis- 
 faction, and they live again to the mind, or 
 are now. 
 
 A Gothic cathedral affirms that it was done 
 by us and not done by us. Sureh^ it was by 
 man, but we find it not in our man. But 
 10 
 
History 
 
 w^e apph" ourselves to the history of its pro- 
 duction. We put ourselves into the place and 
 state of the builder. We remember the forest- 
 dwellers, the first temples, the adherence to 
 the first t\'pe, and the decoration of it as 
 the v^^ealth of the nation increased ; the value 
 which is given to wood by carving led to the 
 carving over the whole mountain of stone of 
 a cathedral. When we have gone through 
 this process, and added thereto the Catholic 
 Church, its cross, its music, its processions, 
 its Saints' days and image-worship, we have 
 as it were been the man that made the min- 
 ister; we have seen how it could and must 
 be. We have the sufiicient reason. 
 
 The difierence betv^^een men is in their prin- 
 ciple of association. Some mQn classify ob- 
 jects by color and size and other accidents of 
 appearance; others by intrinsic likeness, or 
 by the relation of cause and effect. The 
 progress of the intellect is to the clearer 
 vision of causes, v^^hich neglects surface dif- 
 ferences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to 
 the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, 
 all events profitable, all days holy, all men 
 divine. For the e\^e is fastened on the 
 life, and slights the circumstance. Every 
 chemical substance, every plant, every animal 
 in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the 
 variety of appearance. 
 
 Upborne and surrounded as \Ye are by this 
 all-creating nature, soft and fluid as a cloud 
 11 
 
Emerson 
 
 or the air, why should we be such hard ped- 
 ants, and magnify a few forms? Wh}^ should 
 w^e make account of time, or of magnitude, 
 or of figure? The soul know^s them not, and 
 genius, obeying its law, knows how to play 
 with them as a young child plays with gray- 
 beards and in churches. Genius studies the 
 causal thought, and far back in the womb of 
 things sees the rays parting from one orb, 
 that diverge, ere they fall, by infinite diam- 
 eters. Genius watches the monad through 
 all his masks as he performs the metempsy- 
 chosis of nature. Genius detects through the 
 fly, through the caterpillar, through the 
 grub, through the egg^ the constant indi- 
 vidual; through countless individuals the 
 fixed species ; through many species the 
 genus ; through all genera the steadfast 
 type ; through all the kingdoms of organized 
 life the eternal unity. Nature is a mutable 
 cloud which is always and never the same. 
 She casts the same thought into troops of 
 forms, as a poet makes twenty fables with 
 one moral. Through the bruteness and 
 toughness of matter, a subtle spirit bends all 
 things to its ow^n will. The adamant 
 streams into soft but precise form before it, 
 and \vhilst I look at it its outline and tex- 
 ture are changed again. Nothing is so fleet- 
 ing as form ; yet never does it quite deny 
 itself In man we still trace the remains or 
 hints of all that we esteem badges of servi- 
 12 
 
History 
 
 tnde in tlie lower races ; yet in him thev en- 
 hance his nobleness and grace; as lo, in 
 ^sch\dtis, transformed to a cow, offends the 
 imagination ; but how changed when as Isis 
 in Egypt she meets Osiris- Jove, a beautiful 
 woman with nothing of the metamorphosis 
 left but the lunar horns as the splendid orna- 
 ment of her brows ! 
 
 The identity of histor\^ is equally intrinsic, 
 the diversit}" equally obvious. There is, at 
 the surface, infinite variety of things ; at the 
 centre there is simplicity of cause. How 
 many are the acts of one man in which we 
 recognize the same character! Observe the 
 sources of our information in respect to the 
 Greek Genius. We have the civil history of 
 that people, as Herodotus, Thucydides, Xeno- 
 phon, and Plutarch have given it ; a very 
 sufiicient account of what manner of persons 
 they were and what they did. We have the 
 same national mind expressed for us again in 
 their literature^ in epic and h^ric poems, 
 drama, and philosophy; a ver\' complete 
 form. Then we have it once more in their 
 architecture, a beauty as of temperance itself, 
 limited to the straight line and the square, — 
 a builded geometr^^ Then we have it once 
 again in sculpture ^ the "tongue on the bal- 
 ance of expression, " a multitude of forms in 
 the utmost freedom of action and never 
 transgressing the ideal serenit\^; like votaries 
 performing some religious dance before the 
 13 
 
Emerson 
 
 gods, and, though in convulsive pain or 
 mortal combat, never daring to break the 
 figure and decorum of their dance. Thus of 
 the genius of one remarkable people we have 
 a fourfold representation: and to the senses 
 what more unlike than an ode of Pindar, a 
 marble centaur, the peristyle of the Parthe- 
 non, and the last actions of Phocion? 
 
 Every one must have observed faces and 
 forms v^^hich, v^4thout any resembling feature, 
 m^ \e 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 v^^alk, although the resem- 
 blance is nowise obvious to the senses, but 
 is occult and out of the reach of the under- 
 standing. Nature is an endless combination 
 and repetition of a very few laws. She hums 
 the old well-known air through innumerable 
 variations. 
 
 Nature is full of a sublime famih^ likeness 
 throughout her v^^orks, and delights in star- 
 tling us \Yith resemblances in the most unex- 
 pected quarters. I have seen the head of an 
 old sachem of the forest which at once re- 
 minded the e\^e 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 
 14 
 
History 
 
 earliest Greek art. And there are composi- 
 tions of the same strain to be found in the 
 books of all ages. What is Guido's Rospi- 
 gliosi Aurora but a morning thought, as the 
 horses in it are only a morning cloud? If 
 an\^ one will but take pains to observe the 
 variety of actions to which he is equally in- 
 clined in certain moods of mind, and those 
 to which he is averse, he will see how deep 
 is the chain of affinity. 
 
 A painter told me that nobody could draw 
 a tree without in some sort becoming a tree; 
 or draw^ a child by studying the outlines of 
 its form mereh^, — but, by v^^atching for a 
 time his motions and plays, the painter 
 enters into his nature and can then draw 
 him at Avill in every attitude. So Roos 
 ''entered into the inmost nature of a sheep." 
 I knew a draughtsman employed in a public 
 survey w^ho found that he could not sketch 
 the rocks until their geological structure was 
 first explained to him. In a certain state of 
 thought is the common origin of very diverse 
 works. It is the spirit and not the fact that 
 is identical. B\" a deeper apprehension, and 
 not primarily by a painful acquisition of 
 many manual skills, the artist attains the 
 power of awakening other souls to a given 
 activity. 
 
 It has been said that "common souls pay 
 with v^hat they do, nobler souls with that 
 which they are." And why? Because a pro- 
 15 
 
Emerson 
 
 found nature awakens in us by its actions 
 and words, bj its very looks and manners, 
 the same power and beauty that a gallery of 
 sculpture or of pictures addresses. 
 
 Civil and natural history, the history of 
 art and of literature, must be explained from 
 individual history, or must remain words. 
 There is nothing but is related to us, nothing 
 that does not interest us, — kingdom, college, 
 tree, horse, or iron shoe, — the roots of all 
 things are in man. Santa Croce and the 
 Dome of St. Peter's are lame copies after a 
 divine model. Strasburg Cathedral is a ma- 
 terial counterpart of the soul of Erwin of 
 Steinbach. The true poem is the poet's 
 mind; the true ship is the ship-builder. In 
 the man, could we lay him open, we should 
 see the reason for the last flourish and ten- 
 dril of his work ; as every spine and tint in 
 the sea-shell preexist in the secreting organs 
 of the fish. The v^hole of heraldry and of 
 chivalr}^ is in courtesy. A man of fine man- 
 ners shall pronounce your name with all the 
 ornament that titles of nobility could ever 
 add. 
 
 The trivial experience of every day is al- 
 ways verifying some old prediction to us and 
 converting into things the words and signs 
 which we had heard and seen without heed. 
 A lady w4th Avhom I was riding in the forest 
 said to me that the woods alwa3^s seemed to 
 her to waity as if the genii who inhabit them 
 16 
 
History 
 
 suspended their deeds until the wayfarer had 
 passed onward ; a thought which poetry has 
 celebrated in the dance of the fairies, which 
 breaks off on the approach of human feet. 
 The man who has seen the rising moon 
 break out of the clouds at midnight, has 
 been present like an archangel at the crea- 
 tion of light and of the world. I remember 
 one summer day in the fields my companion 
 pointed out to me a broad cloud, which 
 might extend a quarter of a mile parallel to 
 the horizon, quite accurately in the form of a 
 cherub as painted over churches, — a round 
 block in the centre, which it was easy to 
 animate with eyes and mouth, supported on 
 either side by wide-stretched symmetrical 
 wings. What appears once in the atmos- 
 phere may appear often, and it was un- 
 doubtedly the archet\^pe of that familiar 
 ornament. I have seen in the sky a chain of 
 summer lightning which at once showed to 
 me that the Greeks drew from nature when 
 they painted the thunderbolt in the hand of 
 Jove. I have seen a snow-drift along the 
 sides of the stone wall vrhich obviously gave 
 the idea of the common architectural scroll 
 to abut a tower. 
 
 By surrounding ourselves with the original 
 circumstances \ve invent anew the orders and 
 the ornaments of architecture, as we see how 
 each people mereh^ decorated its primitive 
 abodes. The Doric temple preserves the sem- 
 2 17 
 
Emerson 
 
 blance of the wooden cabin in which the 
 Dorian dwelt. The Chinese pagoda is plainly 
 a Tartar tent. The Indian and Egyptian 
 temples still betray the motinds and subter- 
 ranean 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 natu- 
 rally the principal character of the Nubian 
 Egyptian architecture to the colossal form 
 which it assumed. In these caverns, already 
 prepared by nature, the eye was accustomed 
 to d^vell 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 v^angs have 
 been, associated with those gigantic halls be- 
 fore which only Colossi could sit as watch- 
 men or lean on the pillars of the interior?" 
 
 The Gothic church plainly originated in a 
 rude adaptation of the forest trees, with all 
 their boughs, to a festal or solemn arcade; 
 as the bands about the cleft pillars still indi- 
 cate the green withes that tied them. No 
 one can walk in a road cut through pine 
 woods, without being struck with the archi- 
 tectural appearance of the grove, especially 
 in winter, when the barrenness of all other 
 trees show^s the low arch of the Saxons. In 
 the woods in a \vinter afternoon one will see 
 as readily the origin of the stained glass win- 
 18 
 
History 
 
 dow, with which the Gothic cathedrals are 
 adorned, in the colors of the western skj seen 
 through the bare and crossing branches of 
 the forest. Nor can any lover of nature enter 
 the old piles of Oxford and the English 
 cathedrals, without feeling that the forest 
 overpowered the mind of the builder, and 
 that his chisel, his saw and plane still re- 
 produced its ferns, its spikes of flowers, its 
 locust, elm, oak, pine, fir and spruce. 
 
 The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in 
 stone subdued by the insatiable demand of 
 harmony in man. The mountain of granite 
 blooms , into an eternal flower, with the 
 lightness and delicate finish as well as the 
 aerial proportions and perspective of vegeta- 
 ble 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 bar- 
 barous tribes, but travelled from Ecbatana, 
 where the spring was spent, to Susa in sum- 
 mer and to Babylon for the winter. 
 
 In the early history of Asia and Africa, 
 Nomadism and Agriculture are the two an- 
 tagonist facts. The geography of Asia and 
 19 
 
Emerson 
 
 of Africa necessitated a nomadic life. But 
 the nomads were the terror of all those 
 whom the soil or the advantages of a mar- 
 ket had induced to build towns. Agriculture 
 therefore was a religious injunction, because 
 of the perils of the state from nomadism. 
 And in these late and civil countries of Eng- 
 land and America these propensities still 
 fight out the old battle, in the nation and in 
 the individual. The nomads of Africa were 
 constrained to wander, b}^ the attacks of the 
 gad-fly, which drives the cattle mad, and so 
 compels the tribe to emigrate in the rainy 
 season and to drive off the cattle to the 
 higher sandy regions. The nomads of Asia 
 follow the pasturage from month to month. 
 In America and Europe the nomadism is of 
 trade and curiosity; a progress, certainly, 
 from the gad-fly of Astaboras to the Anglo 
 and Italo-mania of Boston Bay. Sacred 
 cities, to which a periodical religious pil- 
 grimage was enjoined, or stringent laws and 
 customs tending to invigorate the national 
 bond, were the check on the old rovers ; and 
 the cumulative values of long residence are 
 the restraints on the itinerancy of the present 
 day. The antagonism of the two tendencies 
 is not less active in individuals, as the loA^e of 
 adventure or the love of repose happens to 
 predominate. A man of rude health and 
 flowing spirits has the* faculty- of rapid 
 domestication, lives in his wagon and roams 
 20 
 
History 
 
 through all latitudes as easih^ as a Calmuc. 
 At sea, or in the forest, or in the snow, he 
 sleeps as warm, dines with as good appe- 
 tite, and associates as happily as beside his 
 o^vn chimne\^s. Or perhaps his facility is deeper 
 seated, in the increased range of his faculties 
 of observation, which yield him points of 
 interest wherever fresh objects meet his eyes. 
 The pastoral nations were needy and hungrj- 
 to desperation ; and this intellectual nomad- 
 ism, in its excess, bankrupts the mind 
 through the dissipation of povrer on a mis- 
 cellany of objects. The home-keeping wat, on 
 the other hand, is that continence or content 
 v^^hich finds all the elements of life in its own 
 soil; and which has its own perils of monot- 
 ony and deterioration, if not stimulated by 
 foreign infusions. 
 
 Every thing the individual sees without 
 him corresponds to his states of mind, and 
 every thing is in turn intelligible to him, as 
 his onward thinking leads him into the 
 truth to which that fact or series belongs. 
 
 The primeval world, — the Fore-World, as 
 the Germans say, — I can dive to it in myself 
 as well as grope for it with researching 
 fingers in catacombs, libraries, and the 
 broken reliefs and torsos of ruined villas. 
 
 What is the foundation of that interest all 
 
 men feel in Greek history, letters, art and 
 
 poetry, in all its periods from the Heroic or 
 
 Homeric age down to the domestic life of the 
 
 21 
 
Emerson 
 
 Athenians and Spartans, four or five cen- 
 turies later? What but this, that eTer\^ man 
 passes personally through a Grecian period. 
 The Grecian state is the era of the bodily 
 nature, the perfection of the senses, — of the 
 spiritual nature unfolded in strict unit}" with 
 the body. In it existed those human forms 
 which supplied the sculptor with his models 
 of Hercules, Phoebus, and Jove ; not like the 
 forms abounding in the streets of modern 
 cities, wherein the face is a confused blur of 
 features, but comjDosed of incorrupt, sharply 
 defined and symmetrical features, whose eye- 
 sockets are so formed that it would be im- 
 possible for such eyes to squint and take 
 furtive glances on this side and on that, but 
 they must turn the whole head. The man- 
 ners of that period are plain and fierce. The 
 reverence exhibited is for jDcrsonal quali- 
 ties; courage, address, self-command, justice, 
 strength, swiftness, a loud voice, a broad 
 chest. Luxury and elegance are not known. 
 A sparse population and want make every 
 man his own valet, cook, butcher and sol- 
 dier, and the habit of supplying his own 
 needs educates the bod}^ to Avonderful per- 
 formances. Such are the Agamemnon and 
 Diomed of Homer, and not far difiTerent is the 
 picture Xenophon gives of himself and his 
 compatriots in the Retreat of the Ten Thou- 
 sand. ''After the army had crossed the river 
 Teleboas in Armenia, there fell much snow, 
 22 
 
History 
 
 and the troops lav miserably on the ground 
 covered with it. But Xenophon arose naked, 
 and taking an axe, began to split wood; 
 whereupon others rose and did the like." 
 Throughout his army exists a boundless 
 liberty of speech. They quarrel for plunder, 
 they \vrangle w4th the generals on each new 
 order, and Xenophon is as sharp-tongued as 
 an}^ and sharper-tongued than most, and So 
 gives as good as he gets. Who does not see 
 that this is a gang of great boys, with such 
 a code of honor and such lax discipline as 
 great boys have? 
 
 The costly charm of the ancient tragedy, 
 and indeed of all the old literature, is that 
 the persons speak simply, — speak as persons 
 w^ho have great good sense without knowing 
 it, before yet the reflective habit has become 
 the predominant habit of the mind. Our 
 admiration of the antique is not admiration 
 of the old, but of the natural. The Greeks 
 are^ not reflective, but perfect in their senses 
 and in their health, with the finest ph^^sical 
 organization in the world. Adults acted 
 with the simplicity and grace of children. 
 They made vases, tragedies and statues, 
 such as healthy senses should, — that is, in 
 good taste. Such things have continued to 
 be made in all ages, and are now, wherever 
 a healthy physique exists; but, as a class, 
 from their superior organization, they have 
 surpassed all. They combine the energy of 
 23 
 
Emerson 
 
 manhood with the engaging unconsciousness 
 of childhood. The attraction of these man- 
 ners is that they belong to man, and are 
 known to every man in virtue of his being 
 once a child; besides that there are always 
 individuals Avho retain these characteristics. 
 A person of childlike genius and inborn 
 energy is still a Greek, and revives our love 
 of the Muse of Hellas. I admire the love of 
 nature in the Philoctetes. In reading those 
 fine apostrophes to sleep, to the stars, rocks, 
 mountains and waves, I feel time passing 
 away as an ebbing sea. I feel the eternity of 
 man, the identity of his thought. The Greek 
 had it seems the same fellow-beings as I. 
 The sun and moon, water and fire, met his 
 heart precisely as they meet mine. Then the 
 vaunted distinction between Greek and Eng- 
 lish, 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 tw^o meet in a perception, that our two 
 soulf> are tinged v^ith the same hue, and do 
 as it were run into one, why should I m_eas- 
 ure degrees of latitude, why should I count 
 Egyptian years? 
 
 The student interprets the age of chivalry 
 
 by his own age of chivalry, and the da3^s of 
 
 maritime adventure and circumnavigation 
 
 by quite parallel miniature experiences of his 
 
 24 
 
History 
 
 own. To the sacred history of the world he 
 has the same key. When the voice of a 
 prophet out of the deeps of antiquity merely 
 echoes to him a sentiment of his infancy, a 
 prayer of his ^^outh, he then pierces to the 
 truth through all the confusion of tradition 
 and the caricature of institutions. 
 
 Rare, extravagant Sjjirits come by us at 
 intervals, who disclose to us new facts in 
 nature. I see that men of God have from 
 time to time walked among men and made 
 their commission felt in the heart and soul of 
 the commonest hearer. Hence evidently the 
 tripod, the priest, the priestess inspired by 
 the divine afflatus. 
 
 Jesus astonishes and overpowers sensual 
 people. They cannot unite him to history, 
 or reconcile him with themselves. As they 
 come to revere their intuitions and aspire to 
 live holily, their own pietj- explains every 
 fact, every w^ord. 
 
 How^ easily these old worships of Moses, of 
 Zoroaster, of Menu, of Socrates, domesticate 
 themselves in the mind. I cannot find any 
 antiquity in them. They are mine as much 
 as theirs. 
 
 I have seen the first monks and anchorets, 
 without crossing seas or centuries. More 
 than once some individual has appeared to 
 me with such negligence of labor and such 
 commanding contemplation, a haught\^ bene- 
 ficiary begging in the name of God, as made 
 25 
 
Emerson 
 
 good to the nineteenth century Simeon the 
 Stylite, the Thebais, and the first Capuchins. 
 
 The priestcraft of the East and West, of the 
 Magian, Brahmin, Druid, and Inca, is ex- 
 pounded in the individual's private life. The 
 cramping influence of a hard formalist on a 
 joung child, in repressing his spirits and 
 courage, paralyzing the understanding, and 
 that without producing indignation, but 
 only fear and obedience, and even much 
 sympathy with the tyrann^^, — is a familiar 
 fact, explained to the child when he becomes 
 a man, only by seeing that the oppressor of 
 his youth is himself a child tyrannized over 
 by those names and words and forms of 
 whose influence he was merely the organ to 
 the youth. The fact teaches him how Belus 
 was worshipped and how the Pyramids were 
 built, better than the discovery by Cham- 
 pollion of the names of all the workmen and 
 the cost of ever\'' tile. He finds Assyria and 
 the Mounds of Cholula at his door, and him- 
 self has laid the courses. 
 
 Again, in that protest which each con- 
 siderate person makes against the supersti- 
 tion of his times, he repeats step for step the 
 part of old reformers, and in the search after 
 truth finds, like them, new perils to virtue. 
 He learns again what moral vigor is needed 
 to supply the girdle of a superstition. A 
 great licentiousness treads on the heels of a 
 reformation. How many times in the his- 
 26 
 
History 
 
 tory of the world has the Luther of the day 
 had to lament the decay of piet\^ in his own 
 household! * 'Doctor," said his wife to Mar- 
 tin Luther, one day, ''how is it that whilst 
 subject to papacy we prayed so often and 
 with such fervor, whilst now we pray with 
 the utmost coldness and very seldom?" 
 
 The advancing man discovers how deep a 
 property he has in literature, —in all fable as 
 well as in all history. He finds that the poet 
 was no odd fellow^ who described strange 
 and impossible situations, but that universal 
 man \srrote by his pen a confession true for 
 one and true for all. His own secret biogra- 
 phy he finds in lines wonderfully intelligible 
 to him, dotted dovrn before he was born. 
 One after another he comes up in his private 
 adventures with every fable of ^sop, of 
 Homer, of Hafiz, of Ariosto, of Chaucer, of 
 Scott, and verifies them with his OAvn head 
 and hands. 
 
 The beautiful fables of the Greeks, being 
 proper creations of the imagination and not 
 of the fancy, are universal verities. What a 
 range of meanings and what perpetual per- 
 tinence has the story of Prometheus! Be- 
 side its primary value as the first chapter of 
 the history of Europe, (the mythology thinly 
 veiling authentic facts, the invention of the 
 mechanic arts and the migration of colonies,) 
 it gives the history of religion, with some 
 closeness to the faith of later ages. Prome- 
 , 27 
 
Emerson 
 
 theus is the Jesus of the old mythology. He 
 is the friend of man ; stands between the tm- 
 just ''justice" of the Eternal Father and the 
 race of mortals, and readily suffers all things 
 on their account. But where it departs from 
 the Calvinistic Christianity and exhibits him 
 as ±he defier of Jove, it represents a state of 
 mind which readily appears wherever the 
 doctrine of Theism is taught in a crude, 
 objective forni, and which seems the self- 
 defence of man against this untruth, namely 
 a discontent with the believed fact that a 
 God exists, and a feeling that the obligation 
 of reverence is onerous. It would steal if it 
 could the fire of the Creator, and live apart 
 from him and independent of him. The 
 Prometheus Yinctus is the romance of skepti- 
 cism. Not less true to all time are the details 
 of that stately apologue. Apollo kept the 
 flocks of Admetus, said the poets. When the 
 gods come among men, they are not known. 
 Jesus was not; Socrates and Shakspeare 
 were not. Antaeus was suffocated by the 
 gripe of Hercules, but every time he touched 
 his mother earth his strength \vas renewed. 
 Man is the broken giant, and in all his weak- 
 ness both his bod}^ and his mind are invig- 
 orated by habits of conversation with na- 
 ture. The power of music, the power of 
 poetry-, to unfix and as it were clap wings to 
 solid nature, interprets the riddle of Orpheus. 
 The philosophical perception of identity 
 28 
 
History 
 
 throtigh endless mutations of form makes 
 him know the Proteus. What else am I who 
 laughed or wept yesterda}^, 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 sj^m- 
 bolize my thought b}^ using the name of 
 any creature, of any fact, because every 
 creature is man agent, or patient. Tantalus 
 is but a name for you and me. Tantalus 
 means the impossibility- of drinking the 
 waters of thought which are always gleam- 
 ing and waving within sight of the soul. 
 The transmigration of souls is no fable. I 
 w^ould it were ; but men and women are only 
 half human. Every animal of the barn-yard, 
 the field and the forest, of the earth and of 
 the waters that are under the earth, has con- 
 trived to get a footing and to leave the 
 print of its features and form in some one or 
 other of these upright, heaven-facing speak- 
 ers. Ah! brother, stop the ebb of thy soul, — 
 ebbing downward into the forms into whose 
 habits thou hast now for many years slid. 
 As near and proper to us is also that old 
 fable of the Sphinx, who was said to sit in 
 the road-side and put riddles to every pas- 
 senger. If the man could not ansv^er, she 
 swallowed him alive. If he could solve the 
 riddle, the Sphinx was slain. What is our 
 life but an endless flight of winged facts or 
 events? In splendid variety these changes 
 29 
 
Emerson 
 
 come, all putting questions to the human 
 spirit. Those men who cannot answer by a 
 superior ^dsdom these facts or questions of 
 time, serve them. Facts encumber them, 
 tyrannize over them, and make the men of 
 routine, the men of sense, in whom a Hteral 
 obedience to facts has extinguished every 
 spark of that Hght b}^ which man is truly 
 man. But if the man is true to his better 
 instincts or sentiments, and refuses the do- 
 minion of facts, as one that comes of a 
 higher race; remains fast by the soul and 
 sees the principle, then the facts fall aptly 
 and supple into their places ; the\^ know their 
 master, and the meanest of them glorifies 
 him. 
 
 See in Goethe's Helena the same desire that 
 every word should be a thing. These figures, 
 he would say, these Chirons, Griffins, Phor- 
 kyas, Helen and Leda, are somewhat, and do 
 exert a specific influence on the mind. So far 
 then are they eternal entities, as real to-day 
 as in the first Olympiad. Much revolving 
 them he writes out freely his humor, and 
 gives them body to his own imagination. 
 And although that poem be as vague and 
 fantastic as a dream, yet is it much more 
 attractive than the more regular dramatic 
 pieces of the same author, for the reason 
 that it operates a wonderful relief to the 
 mind from the routine of customary images, 
 ' — awakens the reader's invention and fancy 
 30 
 
History 
 
 bv the wild freedom of the design, and bv the 
 unceasing succession of brisk shocks of sur- 
 prise. 
 
 The universal nature, too strong for the 
 pettv nature of the bard, sits on his neck 
 and writes through his hand ; so that when 
 he seems to vent a mere caprice and wild 
 romance, the issue is an exact allegor\^ 
 Hence Plato said that ''poets utter great and 
 wise things which thev do not themselves 
 understand." All the fictions of the Middle 
 Age explain themselves as a masked or froUc 
 expression of that which in grave earnest the 
 mind of that period toiled to achieve. Magic 
 ajid all that is ascribed to it is a deep pre- 
 sentiment 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 understand- 
 ing 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 bend the 
 shows of things to the desires of the mind." 
 
 In Perceforest and Amadis de Gaul a gar- 
 land 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 sur- 
 prised with a glow of virtuous pleasure at 
 the triumph of the gentle Genelas; and in- 
 31 
 
Emerson 
 
 deed 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 Avho seeks a treasure must not speak; 
 and the like, — I find true in Concord, how- 
 ever they might be in Corn\vall 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 industr3\ 
 We may all shoot a wald bull that would 
 toss the good and beautiful, by fighting 
 do^vn the unjust and sensual. Lucy Ashton 
 is another name for fidelity, \vhich is al^srays 
 beautiful and ahvays liable to calamity in 
 this world. 
 
 But along with the civil and metaphysical 
 history of man, another history goes daily 
 forward, — that of the external world, — in 
 which he is not less strictly implicated. He 
 is the compend of time ; he is also the cor- 
 relative of nature. His power consists in the 
 multitude of his afiinities, in the fact that 
 his life is intertwined with the whole chain 
 of organic and inorganic being. In old Rome 
 the public roads beginning at the Forum 
 proceeded north, south, east, Avest, to the 
 centre of every province of the empire, mak- 
 ing each market-town of Persia, Spain and 
 32 
 
History 
 
 Britain pervious to the soldiers of the cap- 
 ital: so out of the human heart go as it 
 were highways to the heart of every object 
 in nature, to reduce it under the dominion of 
 man. A man is a bundle of relations, a 
 knot of roots, \vhose flower and fruitage is 
 the world. His faculties refer to natures out 
 of him and predict the world he is to inhabit, 
 as the fins of the fish foreshoAv that water 
 exists, or the wings of an eagle in the egg 
 presuppose air. He cannot live without a 
 world. Put Napoleon in an island prison, 
 let his faculties find no men to act on, no 
 Alps to climb, no stake to play for, and 
 he would beat the air, and appear stupid. 
 Transport him to large countries, dense pop- 
 ulation, 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 \vhat you see is but the smallest part 
 And least proportion of humanity ; 
 But w^ere the w^hole 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 
 
 m\^riads of age and thick-strewn celestial 
 
 areas. One may say a gravitating solar 
 
 3 33 
 
Emerson 
 
 system is already projDhesied in the nature of 
 Newton's mind. Not less does the brain of 
 Davy or of Gay-Lussac, from childhood ex- 
 ploring the affinities and rejDulsions of joarti- 
 cles, anticipate the laws of organization. 
 Does not the eye of the human embrvo pre- 
 dict the light? the ear of Handel predict the 
 witchcraft of harmonic sound? Do not the 
 constructive fingers of Watt, Fulton, Whitte- 
 more, Arkwright, predict the fusible, hard, 
 and temperable texture of metals, the proper- 
 ties of stone, water, and w^ood? Do not the 
 lovely attributes of the maiden child predict 
 the refinements and decorations of civil 
 society? Here also we are reminded of the 
 action of man on man. A mind might pon- 
 der its thoughts for ages and not gain so 
 much self-knowledge as the passion of love 
 shall teach it in a da^^ Who knows himself 
 before he has been thrilled with indignation 
 at an outrage, or has heard an eloquent 
 tongue, or has shared the throb of thousands 
 in a national exultation or alarm? No man 
 can antedate his experience, or guess Avhat 
 faculty or feeling a new object shall unlock, 
 any more than he can draw to-day the face 
 of a person whom he shall see to-morrow for 
 the first time. 
 
 I will not now go behind the general 
 
 statement to explore the reason of this cor- 
 
 respondenc\^ Let it suffice that in the light 
 
 of these two facts, namely, that the mind is 
 
 34 
 
History 
 
 One, and that nature is its correlative, his- 
 tory is to be read and written. 
 
 Thus in all ways does the soul concentrate 
 and reproduce its treasures for each pupil. 
 He too shall pass through the whole cycle of 
 .experience. He shall collect into a focus the 
 rays of nature. History no longer shall be a 
 dull book. It shall walk incarnate in every 
 just and wise man. You shall not tell me by 
 languages and titles a catalogue of the vol- 
 umes you have read. You shall make me 
 feel what periods you have lived. A man 
 shall be the Temple of Fame. He shall walk, 
 as the poets have described that goddess, in 
 a robe painted all over with wonderful events 
 and experiences ; — his own form and features 
 by their exalted intelligence shall be that 
 variegated vest. I shall find in him the 
 Foreworld; in his childhood the Age of Gold, 
 the Apples of Knowledge, the Argonautic 
 Expedition, the calling of Abraham, the 
 building of the Temple, the Advent of Christ, 
 Dark Ages, the Revival of Letters, the Refor- 
 mation, the discovery of new lands, the open- 
 ing of new sciences and new regions in man. 
 He shall be the priest of Pan, and bring with 
 him into humble cottages the blessing of the 
 morning stars, and all the recorded benefits 
 of heaven and earth. 
 
 Is there somewhat overweening in this 
 claim? Then I reject all I have written, for 
 what is the use of pretending to know what 
 35 
 
Emerson 
 
 \^e know not? But it is the fault of our 
 rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one 
 fact without seeming to belie some other. I 
 hols our actual knowledge very cheap. Hear 
 the rats in the wall, see the lizard on the 
 fence, the fungus under foot, the lichen on the 
 log. What do I know- sympathetically, 
 morally, of either of these worlds of life? As 
 old as the Caucasian man, — perhaps older, — 
 these creatures have kept their counsel be- 
 side him, and there is no record of any Avord 
 or sign that has passed from one to the 
 other. What connection do the books show 
 between the fifty or sixty chemical elements 
 and the historical eras? Nay, what does his- 
 tory yet record of the metaphysical annals of 
 man? What light does it shed on those 
 mysteries which we hide under the names 
 Death and Immortality? Yet every history 
 should be written in a wisdom w^hich divined 
 the range of our affinities and looked at facts 
 as symbols. I am ashamed to see what a 
 shallow village tale our so-called History is. 
 How many times Ave must say Rome, and 
 Paris, and Constantinople! What does 
 Rome know of rat and lizard? What are 
 Olympiads and Consulates to these neighbor- 
 ing systems of beings? Nay, what food or 
 experience or succor have they for the Esqui- 
 maux seal-hunter, for the Kanaka in his 
 canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the 
 porter? 
 
 36 
 
History 
 
 Broader and deeper we must write our 
 annals, — from an ethical reformation, from 
 an influx of the ever new, ever sanative con- 
 science, — if we would trulier express our cen- 
 tral and wide-related nature, instead of this 
 old chronology of selfishness and pride to 
 w^hich we have too long lent our eyes. Al- 
 ready that day exists for us, shines in on us 
 at una\vares, but the path of science and of 
 letters is not the v^ay into nature. The 
 idiot, the Indian, the child and unschooled 
 farmer^ s boy stand nearer to the light by 
 which nature is to be read, than the dissector 
 or the antiquary. 
 
 37 
 
Self-Reliance 
 
 39 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 
 
 I READ the other day some verses written 
 b}^ an eminent painter which were original 
 and not conventional. The soul always 
 hears an admonition in such lines, let the 
 subject be what it may. The sentiment they 
 instil is of more value than any thought 
 they may contain. To believe your own 
 thought, to believe that what is true for you 
 in your private heart is true for all men, — 
 that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, 
 and it shall be the universal sense; for the 
 utmost in due time becomes the outmost, 
 and our first thought is rendered back to us 
 by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. 
 Familiar as the voice of the mind is to 
 each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, 
 Plato and Milton is that they set at naught 
 books and traditions, and spoke not what 
 men, but what they thought. A man should 
 learn to detect and watch that gleam of 
 light which flashes across his mind from 
 within, more than the lustre of the firma- 
 ment of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses 
 without notice his thought, because it is 
 his. In every work of genius we recognize 
 our own rejected thoughts; they come back 
 41 
 
Emerson 
 
 to us with a certain alienated majesty. 
 Great works of art have no more affecting 
 lesson for ns than this. Thev teach us to 
 abide by our spontaneous impression Avith 
 good-humored inflexibility then most when 
 the whole cry of voices is on the other side. 
 Else to-morrow a stranger will say with 
 masterly good sense precisely what we have 
 thought and felt all the time, and Ave shall be 
 forced to take Avith shame our own opinion 
 from another. 
 
 There is a time in every man's education 
 Avhen he arrives at the conviction that envy 
 is ignorance ; that imitation is suicide ; that 
 he must take himself for better for A\^orse 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 knoAvs 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 impres- 
 sion on him, and another none. The sculp- 
 ture in the memory is not without 23reestab- 
 lished harmony. The eye Avas placed where 
 one ray should fall, that it might testif}^ of 
 that particular ray. We but half express our- 
 selves, and are ashamed of that divine idea 
 w^hich each of us represents. It may be 
 safely trusted as proportionate and of good 
 42 
 
Self-Reliance 
 
 issues, so it be faithfullv imparted, but God 
 will not have his work made manifest by 
 cowards. A man is relieved and gay when 
 he has put his heart into his work and done 
 his best; but what he has said or done 
 otherwise shall give him no peace. It is a 
 deliverance which does not deliver. In the 
 attempt his genius deserts him ; no muse be- 
 friends; no invention, no hope. 
 
 Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that 
 iron string. Accept the place the divine 
 providence has found for you, the society 
 of your contemporaries, the connection of 
 events. Great men have always done so, 
 and confided themselves childlike to the 
 genius of their age, betraying their percep- 
 tion that the absolutely trustworthy was 
 seated at their heart, v^orking through their 
 hands, predominating in all their being. 
 And we are now men, and must accept in the 
 highest mind the same transcendent destin}^ ; 
 and not minors and invalids in a protected 
 corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolu- 
 tion, but guides, redeemers and benefactors, 
 obeying the Almighty effort and advancing 
 on Chaos and the Dark. 
 
 What pretty oracles nature yields us on 
 this text in the face and behavior of children, 
 babes, and even brutes! That divided and 
 rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment be- 
 cause our arithmetic has computed the 
 strength and means opposed to our purpose, 
 43 
 
Emerson 
 
 these have not. Their mind being whole, 
 their eye is as yet nnconquered, and when we 
 look in their faces we are disconcerted. In- 
 fancy 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 ow^n piquancy 
 and charm, and made it enviable and gra- 
 cious and its claims not to be put b^^, if it 
 will stand by itself. Do not think the youth 
 has no force, because he cannot speak to you 
 and me. Hark ! in the next room his voice is 
 sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he 
 knows how to speak to his contemporaries. 
 Bashful or bold then, he will know how to 
 make us seniors very unnecessary. 
 
 The nonchalance of boys w^ho are sure of a 
 dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord 
 to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the 
 healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is 
 in the parlor what the pit is in the play- 
 house; independent, irresponsible, looking 
 out from his corner on such people and facts 
 as pass by, he tries and sentences them on 
 their merits, in the swift, summary way of 
 bo^^s, as good, bad, interesting, silh^, elo- 
 quent, troublesome. He cumbers himself 
 never about consequences, about interests; 
 he gives an independent, genuine verdict. 
 You must court him; he does not court you* 
 But the man is as it were clapped into jail 
 44 
 
oeii-r^eiiance 
 
 by his consciousness. As soon as he has once 
 acted or spoken with eclat he is a committed 
 person, watched b\^ the sympathy or the 
 hatred of hundreds, whose aSections must 
 now enter into his account. There is no 
 Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again 
 into his neutraHty! Who can thus avoid all 
 pledges and, having observed, observe again 
 from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbriba- 
 ble, unaffrighted innocence, — must alwa\^s be 
 formidable. He would utter opinions on all 
 passing affairs, which being seen to be not 
 private but necessary, Avould sink like darts 
 into the ear of men and put them in fear. 
 
 These are the voices which we hear in soli- 
 tude, but they grow faint and inaudible as 
 we enter into the Avorld. Society everywhere 
 is in conspiracy against the manhood of 
 every one of its members. Society is a joint- 
 stock company, in which the members agree, 
 for the better securing of his bread to each 
 shareholder, to surrender the liberty and cul- 
 ture of the eater. The virtue in most request 
 is conformity. Seff-reliance is its aversion. 
 It loves not realities and creators, but names 
 and customs. 
 
 Whoso Avould be a man, must be a non- 
 conformist. He who would gather immortal 
 palms must not be hindered by the name of 
 goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. 
 Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of 
 your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, 
 45 
 
Emerson 
 
 and \^ou shall have the suffrage of the world. 
 I remember an answer which \vhen quite 
 3^oiing I was prompted to make to a valued 
 adviser v^^ho was wont to importune me with 
 the dear old doctrines of the church. On my 
 sa\ang, ''What have I to do with the sacred- 
 ness of traditions, if I live Avholh' from 
 wathin?" my friend suggested, — "But these 
 impulses ma\^ 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 la\v can 
 be sacred to me but that of my nature. 
 Good and bad are but names very readily 
 transferable to that or this; the only right 
 is what is after my constitution; the only 
 wrong what is against it. A man is to 
 carry himself in the presence of all opposi- 
 tion as if every thing were titular and ephem- 
 eral but he. I am ashamed to think how 
 easily we capitulate to badges and names, to 
 large societies and dead institutions. Every 
 decent and well-spoken individual affects and 
 swa\"S me more than is right. I ought to go 
 upright and vital, and speak the rude truth 
 in all ways. If malice and vanit\" wear the 
 coat of philanthropy, shall that pass? If an 
 angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of 
 Abolition, and comes to me with his last 
 news from Barbadoes, w^hy should I not say 
 to him, *'Go love thy infant; love thy wood- 
 chopper ; be good-natured and modest ; have 
 46 
 
Self-Reliance 
 
 that grace; and never varnish your hard, 
 uncharitable ambition with this incredible 
 tenderness for black folk a thousand miles 
 off. Thy love afar is spite at home." Rough 
 and graceless would be such greeting, but 
 truth is handsomer than the affectation of 
 love. Your goodness must have some love 
 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 vrhines. 
 I shun father and mother and v^4fe and 
 brother \vhen my genius calls iuq. I would 
 write on the lintels of the door-post. Whim. 
 I hope it is somewhat better than v.^him at 
 last, but v^'e ca.nnot spend the day in expla- 
 nation. Expect me not to show cause wh^^ I 
 seek or why I exclude company. Then again, 
 do not tell mt, as a good man did to-da\^, of 
 my obligation to put all poor men in good 
 situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, 
 thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the 
 dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men 
 as do not belong to me and to whom I do 
 not belong. There is a class of persons to 
 whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought 
 and sold ; for them I will go to prison if need 
 be ; but your miscellaneous popular charities ; 
 the edtication at college of fools; the building 
 of meeting-houses to the vain end to which 
 many now stand; alms to sots, and the 
 thousandfold Relief Societies; — though I con- 
 fess with shame I sometimes succumb and 
 47 
 
Emerson 
 
 give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar, which 
 by and bv I shall have the manhood to with- 
 hold. 
 
 Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather 
 the exception than the rule. There is the 
 man and his virtues. Men do what is called 
 a good action, as some piece of courage or 
 charity, much as they w^ould pay a fine in 
 expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. 
 Their works are done as an apology or ex- 
 tenuation of their living in the world, — as 
 invalids and the insane pay a high board. 
 Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to 
 expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and 
 not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it 
 should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine 
 and equal, than that it should be glittering 
 and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and 
 sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I 
 ask primary evidence that you are a man, 
 and refuse this appeal from the man to his 
 actions. I know that for myself it makes no 
 difference whether I do or forbear those 
 actions Avhich are reckoned excellent. I can- 
 not consent to pay for a privilege where I 
 have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my 
 gifts m_ay 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 ardu- 
 ous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve 
 48 
 
Self-Reliance 
 
 for the whole distinction between greatness 
 and meanness. It is the harder because \^ou 
 will alwa\^s find those who think thej know 
 what is your duty better than you know it, 
 It is easy in the world to live after the 
 world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live 
 after our own ; but the great man is he who 
 in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect 
 sweetness the independence of solitude. 
 
 The objection to conforming to usages 
 that have become dead to you is that it 
 scatters your force. It loses your time and 
 blurs the impression of your character. If 
 you maintain a dead church, contribute to a 
 dead Bible-society, vote with a great party 
 either for the governm^ent or against it, 
 spread \^our table like base housekeepers, — 
 under all these screens I have difficult^^ to 
 detect the precise man you are: and of course 
 so much force is v^athdrawn from your proper 
 life. But do your work, and I shall know 
 you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce 
 yourself. A man must consider what ' a 
 blindman's-buff is this gam.e of conformity. 
 If I know your sect I anticipate your argu- 
 ment. 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 possibh^ 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 
 4 49 
 
Emerson 
 
 such thing? Do I not know that he is 
 j^ledged 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 at- 
 torne}^, and these airs of the bench are the 
 emptiest affectation. Well, most men have 
 bound their eyes with one or another hand- 
 kerchief, and attached themselves to some 
 one of these communities of opinion. This 
 conformitv makes them not false in a fe^w 
 particulars, authors of a fev^^ lies, but false in 
 all particulars. Their ever\^ truth is not 
 quite true. Their two is not the real two, 
 their four not the real four; so that every 
 v\"ord they say chagrins us and w^e kno\v not 
 where to begin to set them right. Meantime 
 nature is not slovv^ to equip us in the prison- 
 uniform of the part\^ to v^^hich Ave adhere. 
 We come to wear one cut of face and figure, 
 and acquire b\" degrees the gentlest asinine 
 expression. There is a mortifying experience 
 in particular, which does not fail to wreak 
 itself also in the general histor\^; I mean *'the 
 foolish face of praise," the forced smile which 
 we put on in company vi'^here we do not feel 
 at ease, in answer to conversation which 
 does not interest us. The muscles, not spon- 
 taneoush^ moved but moved b\^ a low usurp- 
 ing ^alfulness, grow tight about the outline 
 of the face, w^ith the most disagreeable sen- 
 sation. 
 For nonconformity the \vorld whips you 
 50 
 
Self-Reliance 
 
 with its displeasure. And therefore a man 
 ninst know how to estimate a sour face. 
 The bj-standers look askance on him in the 
 public street or in the friend's parlor. If this 
 a.Yersation had its origin in contempt and 
 resistance like his own he might well go 
 home with a sad countenance ; but the sour 
 faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, 
 have no deep cause, but are put on and off 
 as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. 
 Yet is the discontent of the multitude more 
 formidable than that of the senate and the 
 college. It is easy enough for a firm m.an 
 who knows the world to brook the rage of 
 the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous 
 and prudent, for they are timid, as being 
 very vulnerable themselves. But when to 
 their feminine rage the indignation of the 
 people is added, when the ignorant and the 
 poor are aroused, when the unintelligent 
 brute force that lies at the bottom of society 
 is made to growl and mow, it needs the 
 habit of magnanimity and religion to treat 
 it godlike as a trifle of no concernment. 
 
 The other terror that scares us from self- 
 trust is our consistency ; a reverence for our 
 past act or word because the eyes of others 
 have no other data for computing our orbit 
 than our past acts, and we are loath to dis- 
 appoint them. 
 
 But why should you keep your head over 
 your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse 
 51 
 
Emerson 
 
 of your memory, lest ^^ou contradict some- 
 w^hat 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 memor\^, but to 
 bring the past for judgment into the thou- 
 sand-eyed present, and live ever in a nev^ 
 day. In your metaphysics you have denied 
 personality to the Deit}^, j^et vv^hen the de- 
 vout motions of the soul come, jmld to them 
 heart and life, though they should clothe God 
 v^ath shape and color. Leave your theory, 
 as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, 
 and flee. 
 
 A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of 
 little minds, adored by little statesmen and 
 philosophers and divines. With consistency a 
 great soul has simply nothing to do. He 
 may as well concern himself with his shadowr 
 on the wall. Speak w^hat you think now in 
 hard words and to-morrow speak what to- 
 morrow thinks in hard words again, though 
 it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 
 ^^\h, so you shall be sure to be misunder- 
 stood.'^ — Is it so bad then to be misunder- 
 stood? P^^thagoras was misunderstood, and 
 Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Coper- 
 nicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every 
 pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To 
 be great is to be misunderstood. 
 
 I suppose no man can violate his nature. 
 52 
 
Self-Reliance 
 
 All the sallies of his will are rounded in hy 
 the law of his being, as the ineqiialities of 
 Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the 
 curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how 
 you gauge and try him. A character is like 
 an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; — read it 
 forward, backword, or across, it still spells 
 the same thing. In this pleasing contrite 
 wood-life ^vhich God alloAvs me, let me re- 
 cord 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 AvindoAv 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 moment. 
 
 There will be an agreement in whatever 
 variety of actions, so they be each honest 
 and natural in their hour. For of one will, 
 the actions will be harmonious, however un- 
 like they seem. These varieties are lost sight 
 of at a little distance, at a little height of 
 thought. One tendency unites them all. 
 The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line 
 of a hundred tacks. See the line from a 
 sufiicient distance, and it straightens itself to 
 53 
 
Emerson 
 
 the average tendenc3\ Your genuine action 
 will explain itself and w411 explain jour other 
 genuine actions. Your conforniitj explains 
 nothing. Act singly, and what you have 
 already done singly will justify you now. 
 Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be 
 firm enough to-day to do right and scorn 
 eyes, I must have done so much right before 
 as to defend me now. Be it how it will, 
 do right now. Alwa\^s scorn appearances 
 and you always may. The force of char- 
 acter is cumulative. All the foregone days 
 of virtue work their health into this. 
 What makes the majesty of the heroes of the 
 senate and the field, which so fills the im- 
 agination? The consciousness of a train of 
 great days and victories behind. They shed 
 an united light on the advancing actor. He 
 is attended as by a visible escort of angels. 
 That is it which throws thunder into Chat- 
 ham's voice, and dignity into Washington's 
 port, and America into Adams's eye. Honor 
 is venerable to us because it is no ephemera. 
 It is always ancient virtue. We worship it 
 to-day because it is not of to-day. We loA^e 
 it and pay it homage because it is not a 
 trap for our love and homage, but is self- 
 dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an 
 old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a 
 young person. 
 
 I hope in these days we have heard the last 
 of conformity and consistency. Let the 
 54 
 
Self-Reliance 
 
 -words be gazetted and ridiculons hencefor- 
 ward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us 
 hear a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us 
 never bow and apologize more. A great man 
 is coming to eat at mj house. I do not 
 wish to please him; I wish that he should 
 wash to please me. I will stand here for 
 humanity, and though I would make it 
 kind, I would make it true. Let us aifront 
 and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and 
 squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in 
 the face of custom and trade and office, the 
 fact which is the upshot of all history, that 
 there is a great responsible Thinker and 
 Actor working wherever a man works ; that 
 a true man belongs to no other time or 
 place, but is the centre of things. Where he 
 is, there is nature. He measures 3^ou and all 
 men and all events. Ordinarih^, every body 
 in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of 
 some other person. Character, reality, re- 
 minds you of nothing else ; it takes place of 
 the whole creation. The man must be so 
 much that he must make all circumstances 
 indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a 
 country, and an age ; requires infinite spaces 
 and numbers and time fully to accomplish 
 his design ; — and posterity seem to follow^ his 
 steps as a train of clients. A man C^sar 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 
 55 
 
Emerson 
 
 he is confounded with virtue and the possible 
 of man. An institution is the lengthened 
 shadow of one man; as, Monachism, of 
 the Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of 
 Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of 
 Wesley ; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Mil- 
 ton called ''the height of Rome''; and all 
 history resolves itself very easily into the 
 biography of a few stout and earnest per- 
 sons. 
 
 Let a man then know his v^^orth, and keep 
 things under his feet. Let him not peep or 
 steal, or skulk up and down with the air of 
 a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper in 
 the world which exists for him. But the man 
 in the street, finding no worth in himself 
 which corresponds to the force which built a 
 tow^er or sculptured a marble god, feels poor 
 when he looks on these. To him a palace, a 
 statue, or a costly book have an alien and 
 forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and 
 seem to say like that, ''Who are you, Sir?" 
 Yet they all are his, suitors for his notice, 
 petitioners to his faculties that they will 
 come out and take possession. The picture 
 waits for my verdict ; it is not to command 
 me, but I am to settle its claims to praise. 
 That popular fable of the sot who was 
 picked up dead-drunk in the street, carried to 
 the duke's house, washed and dressed and 
 laid in the duke's bed, and, on his \vaking, 
 treated with all obsequious ceremony like 
 56 
 
Seli-Reliance 
 
 the duke, and assured that he had been in- 
 sane, OAves its popularity to the fact that it 
 s\^niboHzes 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 him- 
 self a true prince. 
 
 Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. 
 In history our imagination plays us false. 
 Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, 
 are a gaudier vocabulary than private John 
 and Edward in a small house and common 
 day's work; but the things of life are the 
 same to both ; the sum total of both is the 
 same. Why all this deference to Alfred and 
 Scanderbeg and Gustavus? Suppose they 
 were virtuous ; did the\- wear out virtue? As 
 great a stake depends on \^our private act 
 to-day as folloAved their public and reno^vned 
 steps. When private men shall act with 
 -original vie^v^s, the lustre will be transferred 
 from the actions of kinoes to those of orentle- 
 men. 
 
 The world has been instructed by its kings, 
 who have so magnetized the eyes of nations. 
 It has been taught by this colossal symbol 
 the mutual reverence that is due from man to 
 man. The joyful loyalty Avith which men 
 have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, 
 or the great proprietor to walk among them 
 b\^ £. 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 
 57 
 
Emerson 
 
 represent the law in his person, was the hier- 
 oglyphic by which thev 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 rea- 
 son of self-trnst. Who is the Trustee? What 
 is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal 
 reliance may be grounded? What is the 
 nature and power of that science-bafiling 
 star, without parallax, without calculable 
 elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even 
 into trivial and impure actions, if the least 
 mark of independence appear? The inquiry 
 leads us to that source, at once the essence 
 of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call 
 Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this 
 primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later 
 teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, 
 the last fact behind which analysis cannot- 
 go, all things find their common origin. For 
 the sense of being which in calm hours rises, 
 we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse 
 from things, from space, from light, from 
 time, from man, but one with them and pro- 
 ceeds obviously from the same source whence 
 their life and being also proceed. We first 
 share the life by which things exist and 
 afterwards see them as appearances in nature 
 and forget that w^e have shared their ciuse. 
 Here is the fountain of action and of 
 thought. Here are the lungs of that inspira- 
 58 
 
Self-Reliance 
 
 tion wliich giveth man wisdom and which 
 cannot be denied without impiety and athe- 
 ism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, 
 which makes us receivers of its truth and 
 organs of its activity. WTien we discern jus- 
 tice, when we discern truth, we do nothing 
 of ourselves, but allow a passage to its 
 beams. If we ask v^^hence this com.es, if we 
 seek to pry into the soul that causes, all 
 philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its 
 absence is all we can affirm. Every man 
 discriminates between the voluntary acts of 
 his mind and his involuntary perceptions, 
 and knows that to his involuntary percep- 
 tions a perfect faith is due. He may err in 
 the expression of them, but he knows that 
 these things are so, like day and night, not 
 to be disputed. My wilful actions and acqui- 
 sitions are but roving ; — the idlest reverie, the 
 faintest native emotion, command my curi- 
 osity and respect. Thoughtless people con- 
 tradict as readily the statement of percep- 
 tions as of opinions, or rather much more 
 readily ; for they do not distinguish between 
 perception and motion. They fancy that I 
 choose to see this or that thing. But per- 
 ception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see 
 a trait, my children will see it after me, and 
 in course of time all mankind, — although it 
 may chance that no one has seen it before 
 me. For my perception of it is as much a 
 fact as the sun. 
 
 59 
 
Emerson 
 
 The relations of the soul to the divine 
 spirit are so pure that it is profane to seek 
 to interpose helps. It must be that when 
 God speaketh he should communicate, not 
 one thing, but all things; should fill the 
 w^orld ^th his voice; should scatter forth 
 light, nature, time, souls, from the centre of 
 the present thought ; and new date and new 
 create the v^^hole. Whenever a mind is simple 
 and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass 
 away, — means, teachers, texts, temples fall; 
 it lives now, and absorbs past and future 
 into the present hour. All things are made 
 sacred by relation to it, — one as much as an- 
 other. All things are dissolved to their 
 centre by their cause, and in the universal 
 miracle petty and particular miracles disap- 
 pear. If therefore a man claims to know^ and 
 speak of God and carries you backward to 
 the phraseology of some old mouldered na- 
 tion in another country, in another world, 
 believe him not. Is the acorn better than the 
 oak which is its fulness and completion? Is 
 the parent better than the child into whom 
 he has cast his ripened being? Whence then 
 this worship of the past? The centuries are 
 conspirators against the sanity and author- 
 ity of the soul. Time and space are but 
 physiological colors which the eye makes, 
 but the soul is light: where it is, is day; 
 where it was, is night; and history is an 
 impertinence and an injury if it be any thing 
 60 
 
Self-Reliance 
 
 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 sav ''I think," 
 **I am," but Cjuotes some saint or sage. He 
 is ashamed before the blade of grass or the 
 blo^ving rose. These roses under mj window 
 make no reference to former roses or to bet- 
 ter ones ; they are for what thev are ; thev 
 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 mo- 
 ments alike. But man postpones or remem- 
 bers; he does not live in the present, but 
 w^ith reverted eye laments the past, or, heed- 
 less of the riches that surround him, stands 
 on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot 
 be happy and strong until he too lives with 
 nature in the present, above time. 
 
 This should be plain enough. Yet see 
 what strong intellects dare not yet hear God 
 himself unless he speak the phraseology of I 
 know not what David, or Jeremiah, or 
 Paul. We shall not always set so great a 
 price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are 
 like children who repeat by rote the sentences 
 of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow 
 older, of the men of talents and character 
 61 
 
fe 
 
 Emerson 
 
 they chance to see, — painfully recollecting the 
 exact words they spoke; afterwards, when 
 they come into the point of view which those 
 had \vho uttered these sayings, they under- 
 stand them and are willing to let the words 
 go; for at any time they can use words as 
 good when occasion com.es. If we live truly, 
 we shall see truly. It is as easy for the 
 strong man to be strong, as it is for the 
 weak to be weak, When we have new per- 
 ception, we shall gladly disburden the mem- 
 ory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. 
 When a man lives with God, his voice shall 
 be as s^^eet as the murmur of the brook and 
 the rustle of the corn. 
 
 And now at last the highest truth on this 
 subject remains unsaid; probably cannot be 
 said ; for all that we say is the far-off re- 
 membering of the intuition. That thought 
 by ^what I can now nearest approach to say 
 it, is this. W^hen good is near you, when you 
 have life in yourself, it is not by any known 
 or accustomed way; you shall not discern 
 the footprints of any other; you shall not see 
 the face of man; you shall not hear any 
 name; — the way, the thought, the good, 
 shall be wholly strange and new. It shall 
 exclude example and experience. You take 
 the Avay from man, not to man. All persons 
 that ever existed are itS :^orgotten ministers. 
 Fear and hope are alike beneath it. There is 
 somewhat low even in hope. In the hour of 
 62 
 
Self-Reliance 
 
 vision there is nothing that can be called 
 gratitude, nor jDroperlj joj. The soul raised 
 over passion beholds identity and eternal 
 causation, perceives the self-existence of 
 Truth and Right, and calms itself with know- 
 ing that all things go well. Vast spaces of 
 nature, the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea; 
 long intervals of time, years, centuries, are 
 of no account. This which I think and feel 
 underlay every former state of life and cir- 
 cumstances, as it does underlie my present, 
 and what is called life and what is called 
 death. 
 
 Life only avails, not the having lived. 
 Power ceases in the instant of repose ; it re- 
 sides 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, 
 confounds the saint \vith 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 v^ay of speaking. Speak 
 rather of that which relies because it works 
 and is. Who has more obedience than I mas- 
 ters me, though he should not raise his 
 finger. Round him I must revolve by the 
 gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric 
 63 
 
Emerson 
 
 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, hj the law of nature must 
 overpower and ride all cities, nations, kings, 
 rich men, poets, who are not. 
 
 This is the ultimate fact which we so 
 quickly reach on this, as on every topic, the 
 resolution of all into the ever-blessed One. 
 Self-existence is the attribute of the Supreme 
 Cause, and it constitutes the measure of good 
 by the degree in v^^iich it enters into all 
 lo^wer forms. All things real are so by so 
 much virtue as they contain. Commerce, 
 husbandry, hunting, Avhaling, war, elo- 
 quence, personal w^eight, are somewhat, and 
 engage my respect PcS examples of its presence 
 and impure action. I see the same law 
 w^orking in nature for conservation and 
 growth. Pov\^er is, in nature, the essential 
 measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to 
 remain in her kingdoms which cannot help 
 itself. The genesis and maturation of a 
 planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree 
 recovering itself from the strong wind, the 
 vital resources of every animal and vegetable, 
 are demonstrations of the self-sufficing and 
 therefore self-relying soul. 
 
 Thus all concentrates : let us not rove ; let 
 
 us sit at home Avith the cause. Let us stun 
 
 and astonish the intruding rabble of men and 
 
 books and institutions by a simple declara- 
 
 64 
 
Self-Reliance 
 
 tion of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take 
 the shoes from off their feet, for God is here 
 within. Let our simpHcitj judge them, and 
 our docility to our own law demonstrate the 
 poverty of nature and fortune beside our 
 native riches. 
 
 But now we are a mob. Man does not 
 stand in awe of man, nor is his genius ad- 
 monished to stay at home, to put itself in 
 communication with the internal ocean, but 
 it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the 
 urns of other men. We must go alone. I 
 like the silent church before the service be- 
 gins, better than any preaching. How far 
 off, ho^v cool, ho\v chaste the persons look, 
 begirt each one w4th a precinct or sanctuary ! 
 So let us always sit. WTay should we as- 
 sume the faults of our friend, or wffe, or 
 father, or child, because they sit around our 
 hearth, or are said to have the same blood? 
 All men have my blood and I have all men's. 
 Not for that will I adopt their petulance or 
 folly, even to the extent of being ashamed of 
 it. But \'our isolation must not be mechan- 
 ical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. 
 At times the whole world seems to be in 
 conspiracy to importune you with emphatic 
 trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, 
 want, charity, all knock at once at thy 
 closet door and say, — ''Come out unto us.'* 
 But keep thy state, come not into their con- 
 fusion. The poAver men possess to annoy me 
 5 65 
 
Emerson 
 
 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 w^e 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 w^ar and wake Thor and Woden, courage 
 and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This 
 is to be done in our smooth times by speak- 
 ing the truth. Check this lying hospitality 
 and lying afection. Live no longer to the 
 expectation of these deceived and deceiving 
 people with whom Ave converse. Say to 
 them, '^0 father, mother, wife, brother, 
 
 friend, I have lived ^vith ^^ou after ap- 
 pearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the 
 truth's. Be it kno^vn unto you that hence- 
 forward I obey no la\^ less than the eternal 
 law. I Avill have no covenants but proximi- 
 ties. I shall endeavor to nourish my parents, 
 to support my familj^, to be the chaste hus- 
 band of one wife, — but these relations I must 
 fill after a rie^v and unprecedented way. I 
 appeal from your customs. I must be myself. 
 
 1 cannot break myself any longer for you, or 
 you. If you can love me for what I am, we 
 shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will 
 still seek to deserve that you should. I will 
 not hide my tastes or aversions. I wiU so 
 trust that what is deep is hoh^, that I will 
 do strongly before the sun and moon what- 
 
 66 
 
Self-Reliance 
 
 ever inly rejoices me and the heart appoints. 
 If \^ou are noble, I will love you ; if you are 
 not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypo- 
 critical attentions. If 3'ou 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 \"our interest, and mine, and all men's, 
 however long vre have dwelt in lies, to live 
 in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? 
 You \t'ill soon love v^hat is dictated by your 
 nature as well as mine, and if \ve follow the 
 truth it will bring us out safe at last.'' — But 
 so may x^ou give these friends pain. Yes, but 
 I cannot sell my libert\^ and my power, to 
 save their sensibility. Besides, all persons 
 have their moments of reason, when they 
 look out into the region of absolute truth; 
 then will they justify me and do the same 
 thing. 
 
 The populace think that your rejection of 
 popular standards is a rejection of all stand- 
 ard, and mere antinomianism ; and the bold 
 sensualist will use the name of philosophy to 
 gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness 
 abides. There are tAvo confessionals, in one 
 or the other of vt^hich we must be shriven. 
 You may fulfil your round of duties by clear- 
 ing yourself in the direct , or in the re£ex 
 way. Consider vrhether you have satisfied 
 your relations to father, mother, cousin, 
 neighbor, town, cat and dog; whether any 
 67 
 
Emerson 
 
 of these can upbraid you. But I may also 
 neglect this reflex standard and absolve me 
 to myself. I have my own stern claims and 
 perfect circle. It denies the name of duty to 
 many offices that are called duties. But if I 
 can discharge its debts it enables me to dis- 
 pense with the popular code. If any one 
 imagines that this law is lax, let him keep 
 its commandment one day. 
 
 And truly it demands something godlike in 
 him v^ho has cast off the common motives of 
 humanity, and has ventured to trust himself 
 for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful 
 his v^ill, 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 
 w^hat is called by distinction society^ he will 
 see the need of these ethics. The sinew and 
 heart of man seem to be dra^wn out, and we 
 are become timorous, desponding v^^himper- 
 ers. 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 w^ant men and women w^ho shall reno- 
 vate life and our social state, but we see that 
 most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy 
 their own wants, have an ambition out of 
 all proportion to their practical force and do 
 lean and beg day and night continually. 
 Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our 
 68 
 
Self-Reliance 
 
 occupations, our marriages, our religion we 
 have not chosen, but society has chosen for 
 us. We are parlor soldiers. We shun the 
 rugged battle of fate, where strength is born. 
 If our 3"Oung men miscarry in their first 
 enterprises they lose all heart. If the young 
 merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the 
 finest genius studies at one of our colleges 
 and is not installed in an office ^thin one 
 year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of 
 Boston or New York, it seems to his friends 
 and to himself that he is right in being dis- 
 heartened and in complaining the rest of his 
 life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or 
 Vermont, who in turn tries all the profes- 
 sions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps 
 a school, preaches, edits a ne^^spaper, goes 
 to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, 
 in successive years, and always like a cat 
 falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these 
 city dolls. He walks abreast with his days 
 and feels no shame in not ^^studying a pro- 
 fession," for he does not postpone his life, 
 but lives already. He has not one chance, 
 but a hundred chances. Let a Stoic open the 
 resources of man and tell men they are not 
 leaning willows, but can and must detach 
 themselves; that with the exercise of self- 
 trust, new powers shall appear ; that a man 
 is the word made flesh, born to shed healing 
 to the nations ; that he should be ashamed of 
 our compassion, and that the moment he 
 69 
 
Emerson 
 
 acts from himself, tossing the laws, the 
 books, idolatries and customs out of the 
 window, we pitv him no more but thank and 
 revere him; — and that teacher shall restore 
 the life of man to splendor and make his 
 name dear to all history. 
 
 It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance 
 must work a revolution in all the offices and 
 relations of men ; in their religion ; in their 
 education; in their pursuits; their modes of 
 living; their associations; in their property; 
 in their speculative views. 
 
 1. In what prayers do men allow them- 
 selves ! That which they call a holy office is 
 not so much as brave and manly. Prayer 
 looks abroad and asks for some foreign ad- 
 dition to come through some foreign virtue, 
 and loses itself in endless mazes of natural 
 and supernatural, and mediatorial and mi- 
 raculous. Prayer that craves a particular 
 commodity, anything less than all good, is 
 vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the 
 facts of life from the highest point of view. 
 It is the solilocjuy of a beholding and jubi- 
 lant soul. It is the spirit of God pronounc- 
 ing his works good. But prayer as a means 
 to effect a private end is meanness and theft. 
 It supposes dualism and not unity in nature 
 and consciousness. As soon as the man is at 
 one with God, he will not beg. He will then 
 see prayer in all action. The prayer of the 
 farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the 
 70 
 
Self-Reliance 
 
 prayer of the rox\^er kneeling with the stroke 
 of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout 
 nature, though for cheap ends. Caratach, in 
 Fletcher's Bonduca, ^vhen admonished to in- 
 quire the mind of the god Audate, replies, — 
 
 ''His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors; 
 Our valors are our best gods." 
 
 Another sort of false prayers are our re- 
 grets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance : 
 it is infirmit\^ of will. Regret calamities if 
 3^ou can thereby help the sufierer ; if not, at- 
 tend your own work and already the evil be- 
 gins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as 
 base. We come to them who weep foolishly 
 and sit down and cry for compan^^, instead 
 of imparting to them truth and health in 
 rough electric shocks, putting them once 
 more in communication with their ov^m rea- 
 son. The secret of fortune is joy in our 
 hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men 
 is the self-helping man. For him all doors 
 are flung wide; hin* all tongues greet, all 
 honors crov^m, all eyes follow with desire. 
 Our love goes out to him and embraces him 
 because he did not need it. We solicitously 
 and apologetically caress and celebrate him 
 because he held on his v^^ay and scorned our 
 disapprobation. The gods love him because 
 men hated him. ''To the persevering mor- 
 tal," said Zoroaster, ''the blessed Immortals 
 are swift." 
 
 71 
 
Emerson 
 
 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 ns, lest we die. Speak 
 thon, speak any man with ns, and we will 
 obey." Everywhere I am hindered of meet- 
 ing 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. Ever^^ new mind is a new 
 classification. If it prove a mind of uncom- 
 mon activity and power, a Locke, a Lavoi- 
 sier, a Hutton, a Bentham, a Fourier, it im- 
 poses its classification on othef" men, and 
 lo ! a new system. In proportion to the 
 depth of the thought, and so to the number 
 of the objects it touches and brings within 
 reach of the pupil, is his complacenc\\ But 
 chiefly is this a]3parent in creeds and churches 
 which are also classifications of some power- 
 ful mind acting on the elemental thought of 
 duty and man's relation to the Highest. 
 Such is Calvinism, Quakerism, Swedenborg- 
 ism. The pupil takes the -same delight in 
 subordinating every thing to the new ter- 
 minology as a girl who has just learned 
 botan^^ in seeing a new earth and new sea- 
 sons thereby. It will hapjDcn for a time that 
 the pupil wall find his intellectual power has 
 grown by the study of his master's mind. 
 But in all unbalanced minds the classification 
 is idolized, passes for the end and not for a 
 72 
 
Self-Reliance 
 
 speedily exhaustible means, so that the walls 
 of the system blend to their eye in the re- 
 mote horizon with the walls of the universe ; 
 the luminaries of heaven seem to them hung 
 on the arch their master built. They cannot 
 imagine hov^ you aliens have any right to 
 see, — how you can see; ''It must be some- 
 how that you stole the light from us." 
 They do not yet perceive that light, unsys- 
 tematic, indomitable, will break into any 
 cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp 
 a^^hile and call it their own. If they are 
 honest and do well, presently their neat new 
 pinfold ^vill be too strait and low, w411 
 crack, will lean, vi411 rot and vanish, and the 
 immortal light, all young and joyful, million- 
 orbed, million-colored, will beam over the 
 universe as on the first morning. 
 
 2. It is for want of self-culture that the 
 superstition of Travelling, whose idols are 
 Itah^, England, Egypt, retains its fascina- 
 tion for all educated Americans. They who 
 made England, Itah^, or Greece venerable in 
 the imagination, did so by sticking fast 
 where they were, like an axis of the earth. 
 In manly hours we feel that duty is our 
 place. The soul is no traveller ; the vrise man 
 stays at home, and vi^hen his necessities, his 
 duties, on any occasion call him from his 
 house, or into foreign lands, he is at home 
 still and shall make men sensible by the ex- 
 pression of his countenance that he goes, the 
 73 
 
Emerson 
 
 missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits 
 cities and men like a sovereign and not like 
 an interloper or a valet. 
 
 I have no chnrlisli objection to the circum- 
 navigation of the globe for the purposes of 
 art, of study, and benevolence, so that 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 
 groAvs old even in youth among old things. 
 In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind 
 have become old and dilapidated as they. He 
 carries ruins to ruins. 
 
 Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first 
 journeys discover to us the indifference of 
 places. At home I dream that at Naples, at 
 Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and 
 lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace 
 my friends, embark on the sea and at last 
 wake up at Naples, and there beside me 
 is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, 
 identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vati- 
 can and the palaces. I affect to be intoxi- 
 cated with sights and suggestions, but I am 
 not intoxicated. My giant goes with me 
 wherever I go. 
 
 3. But the rage of travelling is a symptom 
 of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole 
 intellectual action. The intellect is vaga- 
 bond, and our' system of education fosters 
 74 
 
Self-Reliance 
 
 restlessness. Our minds travel when our 
 bodies are forced to stay at home. We imi- 
 tate; and what is imitation but the travel- 
 ling of the mind? Our houses are built with 
 foreign taste ; our shelves are garnished with 
 foreign ornaments ; our opinions, our tastes, 
 our faculties, lean, and follow^ the Past and 
 the Distant. The soul created the arts w^her- 
 ever they have flourished. It was in his own 
 mind that the artist sought his model. It 
 was an application of his own thought to 
 the thing to be done and the conditions to 
 be observed. And why need we copy the 
 Doric or the Gothic model? Beaut\^, con- 
 venience, grandeur of thought and quaint 
 expression are as near to us as to any, and 
 if the American artist will study Avith hope 
 and love the precise thing to be done by him, 
 considering the climate, the soil, the length 
 of the day, the vrants of the peojDle, the 
 habit and form of the government, he will 
 create a house in which all these will find 
 themselves fitted, and taste and ^jentiment 
 will be satisfied also. 
 
 Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your 
 o^wn gift you can present every moment 
 with the cumulative force of a whole life's 
 cultivation; but of the adopted talent of an- 
 other you have only an extemporaneous half 
 possession. That which each can do best, 
 none but his Maker can teach him. No man 
 jet knows what it is, nor can, till that per- 
 
Emerson 
 
 son has exhibited it. Where is the master 
 who could have taught Shakspeare? Where 
 is the master ^who could have instructed 
 Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or New- 
 ton? Every great man is a unique. The 
 Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he 
 could not borrow. Shakspeare will never be 
 made by the study of Shakspeare. Do that 
 which is assigned you, and you cannot hope 
 too much or dare too much. There is at 
 this moment for you an utterance brave and 
 grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phid- 
 ias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen 
 of Moses or Dante, but different from all 
 these. Not possibly will the soul, all rich, 
 all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, 
 deign to repeat itself; but if you can hear 
 what these patriarchs say, surely you can 
 reply to them in the same pitch of voice ; for 
 the ear and the tongue are two organs of 
 one nature. Abide in the simple and noble 
 regions of thy life, obey thy heart and thou 
 shalt reproduce the Foreworld again. 
 
 4. As our Religion, our Education, our 
 Art look abroad, so does our spirit of soci- 
 ety. All men plume themselves on the im- 
 provement of society, and no man improves. 
 
 Society never advances. It recedes as fast 
 on one side as it gains on the other. It 
 undergoes continual changes ; it is barbarous, 
 it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it 
 is scientific ; but this change is not ameliora- 
 76 
 
Self-Reliance 
 
 tion. For every thing that is given some- 
 thing is taken. Society acquires new arts 
 and loses old instincts. What a contrast be- 
 tween the well-clad, reading, writing, think- 
 ing American, with a ^^atch, a pencil and a 
 bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked 
 New Zealander, whose property is a club, a 
 spear, a mat, and an undivided tw^entieth of 
 a shed to sleep under! But compare the 
 health of the two men and you shall see that 
 the white man has lost his aboriginal 
 strength. If the traveller tell us truly, strike 
 the savage with a broad axe and in a day 
 or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if 
 you struck the blov^ into soft pitch, and the 
 same blow shall send the white to his grave. 
 The civilized man has built a coach, but 
 has lost the use of his feet. He is supported 
 on crutches, but lacks so much support of 
 muscle. He has a fine Geneva ^^atch, but he 
 fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. 
 A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so 
 being sure of the information when he wants 
 it, the man in the street does not know a 
 star in the sky. The solstice he does not 
 observe; the equinox he knows a 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-ofiice increases the number 
 of accidents; and it may be a question 
 whether machinery does not encumber; 
 77 
 
Emerson 
 
 T^^hether we have not lost b}^ refinement some 
 energ\", by a Christianity entrenched in es- 
 tabHshments and forms some vigor of wild 
 virtue. For everj^ 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 
 w^ere. A singular equality may be observed 
 between the great men of the first and of the 
 last ages ; nor can all the science, art, re- 
 ligion, and philosophy of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury" avail to educate greater men than 
 Plutarch's heroes, three or four and twenty 
 centuries ago. Not in time is the race pro- 
 gressive. Phocion, Socrates, Anaxagoras, 
 Diogenes, are great men, but they leave no 
 class. He who is really of their class will 
 not be called by their name, but will be his 
 own man, and in his turn the founder of a 
 sect. The arts and inventions of each period 
 are only its costume and do not invigorate 
 men. The harm of the improved machinery 
 may compensate its good. Hudson and 
 Behring accomplished so much in their fish- 
 ing-boats as to astonish Parr}^ and Frank- 
 lin, Avhose equipment exhausted the resources 
 of science and art. Galileo, with an opera- 
 glass, discovered a more splendid series of 
 celestial phenomena than any one since. 
 Columbus found the New World in an un- 
 decked boat. It is curious to see the periodi- 
 78 
 
Self-Reiiance 
 
 cal disuse and perishing of means and ma- 
 chinery Avhich were introduced with loud 
 laudation a few \^ears or centuries before. 
 The great genius returns to essential man. 
 We reckoned the improvements of the art of 
 war among the triuinphs of science, and vet 
 Napoleon conquered Europe by the bivouac, 
 which consisted of falling back on naked 
 valor and disencumbering it of all aids. The 
 Emperor held it impossible to make a perfect 
 armv, says Las Casas, ''without abolishing 
 our arms, magazines, commissaries and car- 
 riages, until, in imitation of the Roman cus- 
 tom, the soldier should receive his supply of 
 corn, grind it in his hand-mill and bake his 
 bread himself." 
 
 Society is a wave. The w^ave moves on- 
 ward, but the water of which it is composed 
 does not. The same particle does not rise 
 from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is 
 only phenomenal. The persons who make 
 up a nation to-day, next year die, and their 
 experience dies with them. 
 
 And so the reliance on Propert\^, including 
 the reliance on governments which protect 
 it, is the want of self-reliance. Men have 
 looked away from themselves and at things 
 so long that they have come to esteem the 
 religious, learned and civil institutions as 
 guards of property, and they deprecate as- 
 saults on these, because they feel them to be 
 assaults on property. They measure their 
 79 
 
Emerson 
 
 esteem of each other by what each has, and 
 not by what each is. But a cultivated man 
 becomes ashamed of his property, out of new 
 respect for his nature. Especially he hates 
 what he has if he see that it is accidental, — 
 came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime ; 
 then he feels that it is not having; it does 
 not belong to him, has no root in him and 
 merely lies there because no revolution or no 
 robber takes it aw^ay. But that which a 
 man is, does always by necessity acquire; 
 and v^^hat the man acquires, is living prop- 
 erty, which does not ^svait the beck of rulers, 
 or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or 
 bankruptcies, but perpetually renev^s itself 
 wherever the man breathes. ''Thy lot or 
 portion of life," said the Caliph Ali, ''is seek- 
 ing after thee ; therefore be at rest from seek- 
 ing 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 con- 
 course 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 him- 
 self stronger than before by a new thousand 
 of e^^es and arms. In like manner the re- 
 formers summon conventions and vote and 
 resolve in multitude. Not so, friends ! will 
 the God deign to enter and inhabit you, but 
 by a method precisely the reverse. It is only 
 80 
 
Self-Reliance 
 
 as a man puts off all foreign support and 
 stands alone that I see him to be strong and 
 to prevail. He is ^veaker b\^ every recruit to 
 his banner. Is not a man better than a 
 town? Ask nothing of men, and, in the end- 
 less mutation, thou only firm column must 
 presently appear the upholder of all that sur- 
 rounds thee. He ^^ho kno^svs that pow^er is 
 inborn, that he is weak because he has 
 looked for good out of him and elsewhere, 
 and, so perceiving, throAvs himself unhesi- 
 tatingly on his thought, instantly rights 
 himself, stands in the erect position, com- 
 mands 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 v^4nnings, and deal with 
 Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. In 
 the Will work and acquire, and thou hast 
 chained the w^heel of Chance, and shalt sit 
 hereafter out of fear from her rotations. A 
 political victor}^, a rise of rents, the recovery 
 of your sick or the return of your absent 
 friend, or some other favorable event raises 
 your spirits, and you think good days are 
 preparing for you. Do not believe it. Noth- 
 ing can bring \-ou peace but yourself Noth- 
 ing can bring you peace but the triumph of 
 principles. 
 
 6 81 
 
Nature 
 
 83 
 
NATURE. 
 
 There are da\^s which occur in this climate, 
 at almost any season of the year, wherein 
 the w^orld reaches its perfection; when the 
 air, the heavenh^ bodies and the earth, make 
 a harmony, as if nature would indulge her 
 offspring ; when, in these bleak upper sides of 
 the planet, nothing is to desire that we have 
 heard of the happiest latitudes, and we bask 
 in the shining hours of Florida and Cuba; 
 wrhen everything that has life gives sign of 
 satisfaction, and the cattle that lie on the 
 ground seem to have great and tranquil 
 thoughts. These halcyons may be looked for 
 with a little more assurance in that pure 
 October weather which we distinguish by the 
 name of the Indian summer. The day, im- 
 measurably long, sleeps over the broad 
 hills and warm wide fields. To have lived 
 through all its sunny hours, seems longevity 
 enough. The solitary places do not seem 
 quite lonely. At the gates of the forest, the 
 surprised man of the world is forced to leave 
 his city estimates of great and small, wise 
 and foolish. The knapsack of custom falls 
 ofi' his back with the first step he takes in- 
 to these precincts. Here is sanctity which 
 85 
 
Emerson 
 
 shames our religions, and reality which dis- 
 credits our heroes. Here Ave find Nature to 
 be the circumstance which dwarfs every 
 other circumstance, and judges like a god all 
 men that come to her. We have crept out of 
 our close and crowded houses into the night 
 and morning, and we see what majestic 
 beauties daily wrap us in their bosom. How 
 willingh^ we w^ould escape the barriers which 
 render them comparatively impotent, escape 
 the sophistication and second thought, and 
 suffer nature to intrance us. The tempered 
 light of the woods is like a perpetual morn- 
 ing, and is stimulating and heroic. The 
 anciently-reported spells of these places creep 
 on us. The stems of pines, hemlocks, and 
 oaks almost gleam like iron on the excited 
 e^^e. The incommunicable trees begin to per- 
 suade us to live with them, and quit our life 
 of solemn trifles. Here no histor\^, or church, 
 or state, is interpolated on the divine sky 
 and the immortal year. How easily we 
 miight walk onward into the ojDcning land- 
 scape, absorbed by new pictures and by 
 thoughts fast succeeding each other, until by 
 degrees the recollection of home was crowded 
 out of the mind, all memory obliterated by 
 the tyranny of the present, and Ave were led 
 in triumph by nature. 
 
 These enchantments are medicinal, they 
 sober and heal us. These are plain pleasures, 
 kindh^ and native to us. We come to our 
 86 
 
Nature 
 
 own, and make friends with matter, which 
 the ambitious chatter of the schools would 
 persuade us to despise. We never can part 
 with it; the mind loves its old home: as 
 water to our thirst, so is the rock, the 
 ground, to our e\^es and hands and feet. It 
 is firm water ; it is cold flame ; Avhat health, 
 wrhat affinity I Ever an old friend, ever like 
 a dear friend and brother when we chat 
 affectedly with strangers, comes in this 
 honest face, and takes a grave Hberty with 
 us, and shames us out of our nonsense. 
 Cities give not the human senses room 
 enough. We go out daily and nightly to 
 feed the eyes on the horizon, and require so 
 much scope, just as we need water for our 
 bath. There are all degrees of natural in- 
 fluence, from these quarantine powers of 
 nature, up to her dearest and gravest min- 
 istrations to the imagination and the soul. 
 There is the bucket of cold water from the 
 spring, the wood-fire to which the chilled 
 traveller rushes for safety,— and there is the 
 sublime moral of autumn and of noon. We 
 nestle in nature, and draw our living as 
 parasites from her roots and grains, and we 
 receive glances from the heavenh^ bodies, 
 which call us to sohtude and foretell the 
 remotest future. The blue zenith is the point 
 in which romance and reality meet. I think 
 if we should be rapt awa\^ into all that we 
 dream of heaven, and should converse with 
 87 
 
Emerson 
 
 Gabriel and Uriel, the tipper sky would be all 
 that would remain of our furniture. 
 
 It seems as if the day was not wholly pro- 
 fane in w^hich we have given heed to some 
 natural object. The fall of snowflakes in a 
 still air, preserving to each crystal its perfect 
 form ; the bloAving of sleet over a wide sheet 
 of v^ater, and over plains; the waving rye- 
 field; the mimic waving of acres of hous- 
 tonia, whose innumerable florets whiten and 
 ripple before the eye ; the reflections of trees 
 and flowers in glassy lakes; the musical 
 steaming odorous south wind, which con- 
 verts all trees to windharps; the crackling 
 and spurting of hemlock in the flames, or of 
 pine logs, which yield glory to the walls and 
 faces in the sitting-room, — these are the music 
 and pictures of the most ancient religion. 
 My house stands in low land, with limited 
 outlook, and on the skirt of the village. But 
 I go with my friend to the shore of our little 
 river, and with one stroke of the paddle I 
 leave the village politics and personalities, 
 yes, and the world of villages and person- 
 alities, behind, and pass into a delicate 
 realm of sunset and moonlight, too bright 
 almost for spotted man to enter without 
 novitiate and probation. We penetrate bod- 
 ily this incredible beauty; \ve dip our 
 hands in this painted element; our eyes are 
 bathed in these lights and forms. A holiday, 
 a villeggiatura, a royal revel, the proudest, 
 88 
 
Nature 
 
 most heart-rejoicing festival that valor and 
 beauty, power and taste, ever decked and 
 enjoyed, establishes itself on the instant. 
 These sunset clouds, these delicately emerg- 
 ing stars, with their private and ineffable 
 glances, signify it and profier it. I am 
 taught the poorness of our invention, the 
 ugliness of towns and palaces. Art and lux- 
 ury have early learned that they must work 
 as enhancement and sequel to this original 
 beauty. I am overinstructed for my return. 
 Henceforth I shall be hard to please. I can- 
 not go back to toys. I am gro^vn exjDcnsive 
 and sophisticated. I can no longer live v^4th- 
 out elegance, but a countryman shall be my 
 master of revels. He w^ho knoAvs the most ; 
 he who knows what sweets and virtues are 
 in the ground, the waters, the plants, the 
 heavens, and how to come at these enchant- 
 ments, — is the rich and royal man. Only as 
 far as the masters of the world have called 
 in nature to their aid, can they reach the 
 height of magnificence. This is the meaning 
 of their hanging-gardens, villas, garden- 
 houses, islands, parks and preserves, to back 
 their faulty personality with these strong 
 accessories. I do not wonder that the 
 landed interest should be invincible in the 
 State with these dangerous auxiliaries. 
 These bribe and invite; not kings, not pal- 
 aces, not men, not women, but these tender 
 and poetic stars, eloquent of secret promises. 
 89 
 
Emerson 
 
 We heard what the rich man said, we knew 
 of his villa, his grove, his wine and his com- 
 pany, but the provocation and point of the 
 invitation came out of these beguiling stars. 
 In their soft glances I see what men strove 
 to realize in some Versailles, or Paphos, or 
 Ctesiphon. Indeed, it is the magical lights of 
 the horizon and the blue skj for the back- 
 ground which save all our works of art, 
 which were otherwise bawbles. When the 
 rich tax the poor v^ith servility and obse- 
 quiousness, they should consider the effect of 
 men reputed to be the possessors of nature, 
 on imaginative minds. Ah ! if the rich \vere 
 rich as the poor fancy riches ! A boy hears a 
 military band play on the field at night, and 
 he has kings and queens and famous chivalry 
 palpably before him. He hears the echoes of 
 a horn in a hill country, in the Notch Moun- 
 tains, for example, w^hich converts the moun- 
 tains into an ^olian harp, — and this super- 
 natural tiralira restores to him the Dorian 
 mythology, Apollo, Diana, and all divine 
 hunters and huntresses. Can a musical note 
 be so lofty, so haughtily beautiful! To the 
 poor young poet, thus fabulous is his picture 
 of society ; he is loyal ; he respects the rich ; 
 they are rich for the sake of his imagination ; 
 how poor his fancy would be, if they were 
 not rich! That they have some high-fenced 
 grove which they call a park ; that they live 
 in larger and better-garnished saloons than 
 90 
 
Nature 
 
 he has visited, and go in coaches, keeping 
 only the society of the elegant, to ^watering- 
 places and to distant cities, — these make the 
 groundwork from which he has dehneated 
 estates of romance, compared with which 
 their actual possessions are shanties and 
 paddocks. The muse herself betrays her son, 
 and enhances the gifts of wealth and well- 
 born beauty by a radiation out of the air, 
 and clouds, and forests that skirt the road, — 
 a certain haughty favor, as if from patrician 
 genii to patricians, a kind of aristocracy in 
 nature, a prince of the power of the air. 
 
 The moral sensibility which makes Edens 
 and Tempes so easily, may not be always 
 found, but the material landscape is never 
 far off. We can find these enchantments 
 v^ithout visiting the Como Lake, or the 
 Madeira Islands. We exaggerate the praises 
 of local scenery. In every landscape the 
 point of astonishment is the meeting of the 
 sky and the earth, and that is seen from 
 the first hillock as \vell as from the top of the 
 Alleghanies. The stars at night stoop down 
 over the brownest, homeliest common with 
 all the spiritual magnificence ^which they shed 
 on the Campagna, or on the marble deserts 
 of Eg3^pt. The uproUed clouds and the colors 
 of morning and evening will transfigure 
 maples and alders. The difference between 
 landscape and landscape is small, but there 
 is great difference in the beholders. There is 
 91 
 
Emerson 
 
 nothing so wonderful in any particular land- 
 scape as the necessity of being beautiful 
 under which every landscape lies. Nature 
 cannot be surprised in undress. Beauty 
 breaks in everywhere. 
 
 But it is very easy to outrun the sympathy 
 of readers on this topic, which schoolmen 
 called natura naturata, or nature passive. 
 One can hardly speak directly of it without 
 excess. It is as easy to broach in mixed 
 companies what is called '^the subject of re- 
 ligion." A susceptible person does not like to 
 indulge his tastes in this kind without the 
 apology of some trivial necessity: he goes to 
 see a wood-lot, or to look at the crops, or 
 to fetch a plant or a mineral from a remote 
 locality, or he carries a fowling-piece or a 
 fishing-rod. I suppose this shame must have 
 a good reason. A dilettantism in nature is 
 barren and unworthy. The fop of fields is no 
 better than his brother of Broadway. Men 
 are naturally hunters and inquisitive of 
 v^ood-craft, and I suppose that such a gazet- 
 teer as wood-cutters and Indians should 
 furnish facts for, would take place in the 
 most sumptuous drawing-rooms of all the 
 ^Wreaths" and ^'Flora's chaplets'^ of the 
 bookshops; yet ordinarily, whether we are 
 too clumsy for so subtle a topic, or from 
 v^hatever cause, as soon as men begin to 
 write on nature, they fall into euphuism. 
 Frivolity is a most unfit tribute to Pan, who 
 92 
 
Nature 
 
 ought to be represented in the mythology as 
 the most continent of gods. I would not be 
 frivolous before the admirable reserve and 
 prudence of time, yet I cannot renounce the 
 right of returning often to this old topic. 
 The multitude of false churches accredits the 
 true religion. Literature, poetry, science are 
 the homage of man to this unfathomed se- 
 cret, concerning w^hich no sane man can affect 
 an indifierence or incuriosity. Nature is loved 
 by what is best in us. It is loved as the 
 city of God, although, or rather because 
 there is no citizen. The sunset is unlike any- 
 thing that is underneath it: it ^^ants men. 
 And the beauty of nature must always seem 
 unreal and mocking, until the landscape has 
 human figures that are as good as itself If 
 there were good men, there would never be 
 this rapture in nature. If the king is in the 
 palace, nobody looks at the walls. It is 
 when he is gone, and the house is filled with 
 grooms and gazers, that we turn from the 
 people to find relief in the majestic men that 
 are suggested by the pictures and the archi- 
 tecture. The critics ^who complain of the 
 sickly separation of the beauty of nature 
 from the thing to be done, must consider 
 that our hunting of the picturesque is insep- 
 arable from our protest against false societ}^. 
 Man is fallen; nature is erect, and serves as 
 a differential thermometer, detecting the 
 presence or absence of the divine sentiment 
 93 
 
Emerson 
 
 in man. By fault of our dulness and selfish- 
 ness we are looking up to nature, but when 
 w^e are convalescent, nature will look up to 
 us. We see the foaming brook with com- 
 punction: if our own life flowed with the 
 right energy, we should shame the brook. 
 The stream of zeal sparkles with real fire, 
 and not with reflex rays of sun and moon. 
 Nature may be as selfishly studied as trade. 
 Astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology ; 
 psychology, mesmerism (with intent to show 
 where our spoons are gone) ; and anatomy 
 and physiology become phrenology and 
 palmistry. 
 
 But taking timely warning, and leaving 
 many things unsaid on this topic, let us no 
 longer omit our homage to the Efiicient 
 Nature, natura naturans, the quick cause be- 
 fore ^vhich all forms flee as the driven snows ; 
 itself secret, its works driven before it in 
 flocks and multitudes, (as the ancients repre- 
 sented nature by Proteus, a shepherd,) and 
 in undescribable varietj^. It publishes itself 
 in creatures, reaching firom particles and 
 spicule through transformation on trans- 
 formation to the highest symmetries, arriv- 
 ing at consummate results without a shock 
 or a leap. A little heat, that is a little mo- 
 tion, is all that differences the bald, dazzling 
 white and deadly cold poles of the earth 
 fi-om the prolific tropical climates. All 
 changes pass without violence, by reason of 
 94 
 
Nature 
 
 the two cardinal conditions of boundless 
 space and boundless time. Geology has ini- 
 tiated us into the secularity of nature, and 
 taught us to disuse our dame-school meas- 
 ures, and exchange our Mosaic and Ptolemaic 
 schemes for her large style. We knew noth- 
 ing rightly, for want of perspective. Now we 
 learn ^what patient periods must round them- 
 selves before the rock is formed ; then before 
 the rock is broken, and the first lichen race 
 has disintegrated the thinnest external plate 
 into soil, and opened the door for the remote 
 Flora, Fauna, Ceres, and Pomona to come 
 in. Ho^^ far off yet is the trilobite ! hov^^ far 
 the quadruped ! how inconceivably remote is 
 man! All duly arrive, and then race after 
 race of men. It is a long way from granite 
 to the oyster; farther yet to Plato and the 
 preaching of the immortality of the soul. 
 Yet all must come, as surely as the first 
 atom has two sides. 
 
 Motion or change and identity or rest are 
 the first and second secrets of nature: — 
 Motion and Rest. The whole code of her 
 laws may be written on the thumbnail, or 
 the signet of a ring. The whirling bubble on 
 the surface of a brook admits us to the 
 secret of the mechanics of the sky. Every 
 shell on the beach is a key to it. A little 
 water made to rotate in a cup explains the 
 formation of the simpler shells ; the addi- 
 tion of matter from year to year arrives at 
 95 
 
Emerson 
 
 last at the most complex forms ; and jet so 
 poor is nature with all her craft, that from 
 the beginning to the end of the universe she 
 has but one stuff, — but one stuff with its two 
 ends, to serve up all her dream-like variety. 
 Compound it how she will, star, sand, fire, 
 water, tree, man, it is still one stuff, and be- 
 trays the same properties. 
 
 Nature is always consistent, though she 
 feigns to contravene her own laws. She 
 keeps her laws, and seems to transcend them. 
 She arms and equips an animal to find its 
 place and living in the earth, and at the 
 same time she arms and equips another ani- 
 mal to destroy it. Space exists to divide 
 creatures ; but by clothing the sides of a bird 
 with a few feathers she gives him a petty 
 omnipresence. The direction is forever on- 
 ward, but the artist still goes back for 
 materials and begins again with the first 
 elements on the most advanced stage : other- 
 wise all goes to ruin. If we look at her 
 v^ork, we seem to catch a glance of a system 
 in transition. Plants are the young of the 
 world, vessels of health and vigor; but they 
 grope ever upward toward consciousness; 
 the trees are imperfect men, and seem to be- 
 moan their imprisonment, rooted in the 
 ground. The animal is the novice and pro- 
 bationer of a more advanced order. The 
 men, though young, having tasted the first 
 drop from the cup of thought, are already 
 96 
 
Nature 
 
 dissipated : the maples and ferns are still un- 
 corrupt; jet no doubt when thej come to 
 consciousness the\^ too will curse and swear. 
 Flowers so strictly belong to youth that we 
 adult men soon come to feel that their beau- 
 tiful generations concern not us : we have had 
 our da\^; now let the children have theirs. 
 The flowers jilt us, and \ve are old bachelors 
 wath our ridiculous tenderness. 
 
 Things are so strictly related, that accord- 
 ing to the skill of the eye, from any one 
 object the parts and properties of any other 
 may be predicted. If we had eyes to see it, 
 a bit of stone from the c^ty wall would 
 certif}^ us of the necessity that man must 
 exist, as readily as the city. That identity 
 makes us all one, and reduces to nothing 
 great intervals on our customary scale. 
 We talk of deviations from natural life, as if 
 artificial life were not also natural. The 
 smoothest curled courtier in the boudoirs of 
 a palace has an animal nature, rude and ab- 
 original as a white bear, omnipotent to its 
 own ends, and is directly related, there amid 
 essences and billetsdoux, to Himmaleh moun- 
 tain-chains and the axis of the globe. If we 
 consider how much we are nature's, we need 
 not be superstitious about towns, as if that 
 terrific or benefic force did not find us there 
 also, and fashion cities. Nature, who made 
 the mason, made the house. We may easily 
 hear too much of rural influences. The cool 
 7 97 
 
Emerson 
 
 disengaged air of natural objects makes them 
 enviable to us, chafed and irritable creatures 
 with red faces, and we think we shall be as 
 grand as they if we camp out and eat roots; 
 but let us be men instead of woodchucks and 
 the oak and the elm shall gladly serve us, 
 though we sit in chairs of ivory on carpets 
 of silk. 
 
 This guiding identity runs through all the 
 surprises and contrasts of the piece, and 
 characterizes every law. Man carries the 
 world in his head, the whole astronomy and 
 chemistry suspended in a thought. Because 
 the history of nature is charactered in his 
 brain, therefore is he the prophet and dis- 
 coverer of her secrets. Every kno^m fact in 
 natural science w^as divined by the presenti- 
 ment of somebody, before it v^^as actually 
 verified. A man does not tie his .shoe v>4th- 
 out recognizing la^vs which bind the farthest 
 regions of nature: moon, j)lant, gas, crystal, 
 are concrete geometry and numbers. Com- 
 mon sense knows its own, and recognizes the 
 fact at first sight in chemical experiment. 
 The common sense of Franklin, Dalton, Davy 
 and Black, is the same common sense which 
 made the arrangements which no^^ it dis- 
 covers. 
 
 If the identity expresses organized rest, the 
 
 counter action runs also into organization. 
 
 The astronomers said, *'Give us matter and a 
 
 little motion and we will construct the uni- 
 
 98 
 
Nature 
 
 verse. It is not enough that we should have 
 matter, we must also have a single impulse, 
 one shove to launch the mass and generate 
 the harmony of the centrifugal and centrip- 
 etal forces. Once heave the ball from the 
 hand, and we can show how all this mighty 
 order grew." — "A very unreasonable postu- 
 late," said the metaphysicians, ''and a plain 
 begging of the question. Could you not 
 prevail to know the genesis of projec- 
 tion, as well as the continuation of it?" 
 Nature, meanwhile, had not waited for the 
 discussion, but, right or wrong, bestowed 
 the impulse,' and the balls rolled. It was no 
 great affair, a mere push, but the astrono- 
 mers were right in making much of it, for 
 there is no end to the consequences of the 
 act. That famous aboriginal push propa- 
 gates itself through all the balls of the sys- 
 tem, and through every atom of ever\^ ball ; 
 through all the races of creatures, and 
 through the history and performances of 
 every individual. Exaggeration is in the 
 course of things. Nature sends no creature, 
 no man into the world without adding a 
 small excess of his proper quality. Given the 
 planet it is still necessary to add the im- 
 pulse; so to every creature nature added a 
 little violence of direction in its proper path, 
 a shove to put it on its wa\^; in every in- 
 stance a slight generosity, a drop too much. 
 Without electricity the air would rot, and 
 99 
 L.ofC. 
 
Emerson 
 
 without this violence of direction which men 
 and Avomen have, without a spice of bigot 
 and fanatic, no excitement, no efficiency. 
 We aim above the mark to hit the mark. 
 Every act hath some falsehood of exaggera- 
 tion in it. And when now and then comes 
 along some sad, sharp-eyed man, who sees 
 how paltry a game is played, and refuses to 
 play but blabs the secret ; — how then? Is the 
 bird flown? no, the ^vary Nature sends a 
 new troop of fairer forms, of lordlier youths, 
 with a little more excess of direction to hold 
 them fast to their several aim ; makes them a 
 little wrong-headed in that direction in Avhich 
 they are rightest, and on goes the game 
 again wdth new whirl, for a generation or 
 two more. The child with his sweet pranks, 
 the fool of his senses, commanded by every 
 sight and sound, without any power to com- 
 pare and rank his sensations, abandoned to 
 a whistle or a painted chip, to a lead dra- 
 goon or a gingerbread-dog, individualizing 
 everything, generalizing nothing, delighted 
 w4th every new thing, lies down at night 
 overpowered by the fatigue which this day 
 of continual pretty madness has incurred. 
 But nature has answered her purpose with 
 the curly, dimpled lunatic. She has tasked 
 every faculty, and has secured the symmetri- 
 cal growth of the bodily frame by all these 
 attitudes and exertions, — an end of the first 
 importance, which could not be trusted to 
 100 
 
Nature 
 
 any care less perfect than her own. This 
 ghtter, this opaline lustre plays round the 
 top of every to\^ to his eye to insure his 
 fidelity, and he is deceived to his good. We 
 are made alive and kept alive by the same 
 arts. Let the stoics say ^vhat they please, 
 we do not eat for the good of living, but 
 because the meat is savory and the appetite 
 is keen. The vegetable hfe does not content 
 itself with casting from the flower or the tree 
 a single seed, but it fills the air and earth 
 v^ith a prodigality" of seeds, that, if thou- 
 sands perish, thousands may plant them- 
 selves; that hundreds maj- come up, that 
 tens may five to maturity ; that at least one 
 may replace the parent. All things betray 
 the same calculated profusion. The excess of 
 fear with which the animal fi-ame is hedged 
 round, shrinking from cold, starting at sight 
 of a snake or at a sudden noise, protects us, 
 through a multitude of groundless alarms, 
 from some one real danger at last. The 
 lover seeks in marriage his private felicity 
 and perfection, \vith no prospective end ; and 
 nature hides in his happiness her owm end, 
 namely progeny, or the perpetuity of the 
 race. 
 
 But the craft wath which the world is 
 made, runs also into the mind and character 
 of men. No man is quite sane; each has a 
 vein of folly in his composition, a slight de- 
 termination of blood to the head, to make 
 101 
 
Emerson 
 
 sure of holding him hard to some one point 
 which nature had taken to heart. Great 
 causes are never tried on their merits; but 
 the cause is reduced to particulars to suit the 
 size of the partisans, and the contention is 
 ever hottest on minor matters. Not less re- 
 markable is the overfaith of each man in the 
 importance of what he has to do or say. 
 The poet, the prophet, has a higher value for 
 what he utters than any hearer, and there- 
 fore it gets spoken. The strong, self-compla- 
 cent Luther declares with an emphasis not to 
 be mistaken, that ^^God himself cannot do 
 without ^ase men." Jacob Behmen and 
 George Fox betra\^ their egotism in the perti- 
 nacity of their controversial tracts, and 
 James Naylor once suffered himself to be 
 vt^orshipped as the Christ. Each prophet 
 comes presently to identify himself with his 
 thought, and to esteem his hat and shoes 
 sacred. However this may discredit such 
 persons v^ith the judicious, it helps them 
 v^dth the people, as it gives heat, pungenc}^, 
 and publicity to their words. A similar ex- 
 perience is not infrequent in private life. 
 Bach young and ardent person writes a 
 diary, in which, when the hours of pra^^er 
 and penitence arrive, he inscribes his soul. 
 The pages thus written are to him burning 
 and fragrant ; he reads them on his knees by 
 midnight and by the morning star ; he wets 
 them with his tears; they are sacred; too 
 102 
 
Nature 
 
 good for the \vorld, and hardh^ jet to be 
 shown to the dearest friend. This is the 
 manchild that is born to the soul, and her 
 life still circulates in the babe. The umbilical 
 cord has not yet been cut. After some time 
 has elapsed, he begins to "wish to admit his 
 friend to this hallowed experience, and with 
 hesitation, vet with firmness, exposes the 
 pages to his eye. Will they not burn his 
 eyes? The friend coldly turns them over, and 
 passes from the writing to conversation, 
 with easy transition, which strikes the other 
 party with astonishment and vexation. He 
 cannot susjDCct the writing itself Days and 
 nights of fervid life, of communion with 
 angels of darkness and of light have engraved 
 their shadowy characters on that tear- 
 stained book. He suspects the intelligence or 
 the heart of his friend. Is there then no 
 friend? He cannot yet credit that one may 
 have impressive experience and yet may not 
 know how to put his private fact into litera- 
 ture : and perhaps the discovery that vrisdom 
 has other tongues and ministers than ^ve, 
 that though ^^e should hold our peace the 
 truth w^ould not the less be spoken, might 
 check injuriously the flames of our zeal. A 
 man can only speak so long as he does not 
 feel his speech to be partial and inadequate. 
 It is partial, but he does not see it to be so 
 whilst he utters it. As soon as he is released 
 from the instinctive and particular and sees 
 103 
 
Emerson 
 
 its partiality, he shuts his mouth in disgust. 
 For no man can write anything who does 
 not think that wdiat he writes is for the time 
 the history of the world ; or do anything well 
 who does not esteem his work to be of im^- 
 portance. My work may be of none, but I 
 must not think it of none, or I shall not do 
 it with impunity. 
 
 In like manner there is throughout nature 
 something mocking, something that leads us 
 on and on, but arrives nowhere; keeps no 
 faith ^th us. All promise outruns the per- 
 formance. We live in a system of approx- 
 imations. Every end is prospective of some 
 other end, which is also temporary ; a round 
 and final success nowhere. We are encamped 
 in nature, not domesticated. Hunger and 
 thirst lead us on to eat and to drink; but 
 bread and wine, mix and cook them how 
 you will, leave us hungry and thirsty, after 
 the stomach is full. It is the same with all 
 our arts and performances. Our music, our 
 poetry, our language itself are not satis- 
 factions, but suggestions. The hunger for 
 wealth, which reduces the planet to a gar- 
 den, fools the eager pursuer. What is the end 
 sought? Plainly to secure the ends of good 
 sense and beauty from the intrusion of de- 
 formity or vulgarity of any kind. But what 
 an operose method ! What a train of means 
 to secure a little conversation ! This palace 
 of brick and stone, these servants, this kitch- 
 104 
 
Nature 
 
 en, these stables, horses and equipage, this 
 bank-stock and file of mortgages ; trade to 
 all the world, country-house and cottage by 
 the waterside, all for a little conversation, 
 high, clear, and spiritual! Could it not be 
 had as well bj beggars on the highway? 
 No, all these things came from successive 
 efforts of these beggars to remove friction 
 from the ^vheels of life, and give opportunity. 
 Conversation, character, were the avowed 
 ends; wealth was good as it appeased the 
 animal cravings, cured the smoky chimne}^, 
 silenced the creaking door, brought friends 
 together in a ^varm and quiet room, and 
 kept the children and the dinner-table in 
 a difierent apartment. Thought, virtue, 
 beauty, were the ends; but it was known 
 that men of thought and virtue sometimes 
 had the headache, or wet feet, or could lose 
 good time whilst the room was getting 
 warm in winter da\^s. Unluckily, in the ex- 
 ertions necessary to remove these inconve- 
 niences, the main attention has been diverted 
 to this object; the old aims have been lost 
 sight of, and to remove friction has come to 
 be the end. That is the ridicule of rich men; 
 and Boston, London, Vienna, and now the 
 governments generally of the vt^orld are cities 
 and governments of the rich; and the masses 
 are not men, hut poor men, that is, men who 
 would be rich ; this is the ridicule of the class, 
 that they arrive with pains and sweat and 
 105 
 
Emerson 
 
 fur J nowhere; when all is done, it is for 
 nothing. Thej are like one who has inter- 
 rupted the conversation of a company to 
 make his speech, and no^w has forgotten 
 what he went to say. The appearance 
 strikes the eye everj^where of an aimless 
 society, of aimless nations. Were the ends of 
 nature so great and cogent as to exact this 
 immense sacrifice of men? 
 
 Quite analogous to the deceits in life, there 
 is, as might be expected, a similar effect on 
 the eye from the face of external nature. 
 There is in v^oods and vt^aters a certain en- 
 ticement and flattery, together with a failure 
 to yield a present satisfaction. This disap- 
 pointment is felt in every landscape. I have 
 seen the softness and beauty of the summer 
 clouds floating feathery overhead, enjoying, 
 as it seemed, their height and privilege of 
 motion, whilst yet they appeared not so 
 much the drapery of this place and hour, as 
 forelooking to some pavilions and gardens of 
 festivity beyond. It is an odd jealousy, but 
 the poet finds himself not near enough to his 
 object. The pine-tree, the river, the bank 
 of flowers before him does not seem to be 
 nature. Nature is still else^^here. This or 
 this is but outskirt and far-off' reflection and 
 echo of the triumph that has passed by and 
 is now at its glancing splendor and heyday, 
 perchance in the neighboring fields, or, if you 
 stand in the field, then in the adjacent woods. 
 . 106 
 
Nature 
 
 The present object shall give you this sense 
 of stillness that follows a pageant which has 
 just gone bj. What splendid distance, v^^hat 
 recesses of ineffable pomp and loveliness in 
 the sunset ! But who can go ^vhere they are^ 
 or lay his hand or plant his foot thereon? 
 Off they fall from the round world forever 
 and ever. It is the same among the men and 
 y^^omen as among the silent trees ; always a 
 referred existence, an absence, never a pres- 
 ence and satisfaction. Is it that beauty can 
 never be grasped? in persons and in land- 
 scape is equally inaccessible? The accepted 
 and betrothed lover has lost the wildest 
 charm of his maiden in her acceptance of him. 
 She was heaven whilst he pursued her as a 
 star : she cannot be heaven if she stoops to 
 such a one as he. 
 
 What shall we say of this omnipresent ap- 
 pearance of that first projectile impulse, of 
 this flattery and balking of so man\" well- 
 meaning creatures? Must we not suppose 
 somewhere in the universe a slight treachery 
 and derision? Are we not engaged to a seri- 
 ous resentment of this use that is made of 
 us? Are we tickled trout, and fools of na- 
 ture? One look at the face of heaven and 
 earth lays all petulance at rest, and soothes 
 us to wiser convictions. To the intelligent 
 nature converts itself into a vast promise, 
 and will not be rashly explained. Her secret 
 is untold. Many and many an CEdipus ar- 
 107 
 
Emerson 
 
 rives; he has the whole mystery teeming in 
 his brain. Alas ! the same sorcery has spoiled 
 his skill; no syllable can he shape on his 
 lips. Her mighty orbit vaults like the fresh 
 rainbow into the deep, but no archangel's 
 wing was yet strong enough to follow it and 
 report of the return of the curve. But it also 
 appears that our actions are seconded and 
 disposed to greater conclusions than we de- 
 signed. We are escorted on every hand 
 through life by spiritual agents, and a benefi- 
 cent purpose lies in wait for us. We cannot 
 bandy words writh Nature, or deal with her 
 as we deal wath persons. If we measure our 
 individual forces against hers we may easily 
 feel as if we were the sport of an insuperable 
 destiny. But if, instead of identifying our- 
 selves with the w^ork, we feel that the soul 
 of the w^orkman streams through us ^^e shall 
 find the peace of the morning d^welling first 
 in our hearts, and the fathomless powers of 
 gravity and chemistry, and, over them, of 
 life, preexisting within us in their highest 
 form. 
 
 The uneasiness which the thought of our 
 helplessness in the chain of causes occasions 
 us, results from looking too much at one con- 
 dition of nature, namely, Motion. But the 
 drag is never taken from the wheel. Wher- 
 ever the impulse exceeds, the Rest or Identity 
 insinuates its compensation. All over the 
 wide fields of earth grows the prunella or 
 108 
 
Nature 
 
 self-heal. After every foolish day we sleep 
 off the fumes and furies of its hours; and 
 though we are always engaged with par- 
 ticulars, and often enslaved to them, ^^e 
 bring with us to every experiment the innate 
 universal laws. These, while they exist in 
 the mind as ideas, stand around us in nature 
 forever embodied, a present sanity to expose 
 and cure the insanity of men. Our servitude 
 to particulars betrays us into a hundred 
 foolish expectations. We anticipate a new- 
 era from the invention of a locomotive, or a 
 balloon; the new engine brings with it the 
 old checks. They say that by electro-mag- 
 netism your salad shall be grown from the 
 seed whilst your fowl is roasting for dinner ; 
 it is a symbol of our modern aims and en- 
 deavors, of our condensation and accelera- 
 tion of objects ; — but nothing is gained ; na- 
 ture cannot be cheated; man's life is but 
 seventy salads long, grow they swift or grow 
 they slow. In these checks and impossibili- 
 ties however we find our advantage, not less 
 than in the impulses. Let the victory fall 
 where it will, we are on that side. And the 
 knowledge that we traverse the w^hole scale 
 of being, from the centre to the poles of na- 
 ture, and have some stake in every possi- 
 bility^, lends that sublime lustre to death, 
 which philosophy and religion have too out- 
 wardly and literally striven to express in 
 the popular doctrine of the immortality of the 
 109 
 
Emerson 
 
 soul. The reality is more excellent than the 
 report. Here is no ruin, no discontinuity, no 
 spent ball. The divine circulations never rest 
 nor linger. Nature is the incarnation of a 
 thought, and turns to a thought again, as 
 ice becomes water and gas. The ^^orld is 
 mind precipitated, and the volatile essence is 
 forever escaping again into the state of free 
 thought. Hence the virtue and pungency of 
 the influence on the mind of natural objects, 
 whether inorganic or organized. Man im- 
 prisoned, man crystallized, man vegetative, 
 speaks to man impersonated. That power 
 which does not respect quantity, which 
 makes the whole and the particle its equal 
 channel, delegates its smile to the morning, 
 and distils its essence into every drop of rain. 
 Every moment instructs, and every object; 
 for wisdom is infused into every form. It 
 has been poured into us as blood; it con- 
 vulsed us as pain ; it slid into us as pleasure ; 
 it enveloped us in dull, melancholy days, or 
 in days of cheerful labor ; we did not guess 
 its essence until after a long time. 
 
 110 
 
Spiritual Laws 
 
 111 
 
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 em- 
 bosomed in beaut\^ Behind us, as we go, all 
 things assume pleasing forms, as clouds do 
 far off. Not only things familiar and stale, 
 but even the tragic and terrible are comely 
 as they take their place in the pictures of 
 memory. The river-bank, the weed at the 
 Avater-side, the old house, the foolish person, 
 however neglected in the passing, have a 
 grace in the past. Even the corpse that has 
 lain in the chambers has added a solemn 
 ornament to the house. The soul will not 
 know either deformity or pain. If in the 
 hours of clear reason we should speak the 
 severest truth, we should say that we had 
 never made a sacrifice. In these hours the 
 mind seems so great that nothing can be 
 taken from us that seems much. All loss, 
 all pain, is particular; the universe remains 
 to the heart unhurt. Neither vexations nor 
 calamities abate our trust. No man ever 
 stated his griefs as lightly as he might. Al- 
 low for exaggeration in the most patient and 
 sorely ridden hack that ever v.'as driven. 
 8 113 
 
Emerson 
 
 For it is onh^ the finite that has wrought 
 and suffered; the infinite Hes stretched in 
 smiHng 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 per- 
 plexed in his speculations. Let him do and 
 say what strictly belongs to him, and though 
 very ignorant of books, his nature shall not 
 yield him any intellectual obstructions and 
 doubts. Our young people are diseased with 
 the theological problems of original sin, 
 origin of evil, predestination and the like. 
 These never presented a practical difficulty 
 to any man, — never darkened across any 
 man's road who did not go out of his way 
 to seek them. These are the soul's mumps 
 and measles and \vhooping-coughs, and those 
 who have not caught them cannot describe 
 their health or prescribe the cure. A simple 
 mind will not kno^w these enemies. It is 
 quite another thing that he should be able to 
 give account of his faith and expound to an- 
 other the theory of his self-union and free- 
 dom. This requires rare gifts. Yet without 
 this self-knowledge there may be a sylvan 
 strength and integrity in that which he is. 
 *'A few strong instincts and a few plain 
 rules" suffice us. 
 
 My will never gave the images in my mind 
 the rank they now take. The regular course 
 114 
 
Spiritual Laws 
 
 of studies, the ^^ears of academical and pro- 
 fessional education have not ^delded me bet- 
 ter facts than some idle books under the 
 bench at the Latin School. What we do not 
 call education is more precious than that 
 which we call so. We form no guess, at the 
 time of receiving a thought, of its compara- 
 tive value. And education often wastes its 
 effort in attempts to thwart and balk this 
 natural magnetism, which is sure to select 
 w^hat belongs to it. 
 
 In like manner our moral nature is vitiated 
 by any interference of our will. People rep- 
 resent virtue as a struggle, and take to 
 themselves great airs upon their attainments, 
 and the question is ever^^where vexed when 
 a noble nature is commended, whether the 
 man is not better who strives with tempta- 
 tion. 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 im- 
 pulsive and spontaneous. The less a man 
 thinks or knows about his virtues the better 
 we like him. Timoleon's A4ctories are the 
 best victories, which ran and flowed like 
 Homer's verses, Plutarch said. W'hen 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." 
 
 115 
 
Emerson 
 
 Not less conspicuous is the preponderance 
 of nature over will in all practical life. There 
 is less intention in history than w^e ascribe to 
 it. We impute deep-laid far-sighted plans to 
 Caesar and Napoleon; but the best of their 
 power was in nature, not in them. Men of 
 an extraordinary success, in their honest 
 moments, have ahvays sung ^^Not unto us, 
 not unto us." According to the faith of their 
 times the}^ 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 unob- 
 structed channel; and the wonders of which 
 they were the visible conductors seemed to 
 the eye their deed. Did the w4res generate 
 the galvanism? It is even true that there 
 was less in them on which they could reflect 
 than in another; as the virtue of a pipe is 
 to be smooth and hollow. That which 
 externally seemed will and immovableness 
 was willingness and self-annihilation. Could 
 Shakspeare give a theory of Shakspeare? 
 Could ever a man of prodigious mathemati- 
 cal genius convey to others any insight into 
 his methods? If he could communicate that 
 secret it would instantly lose its exaggerated 
 value, blending with the daylight and the 
 vital energy the power to stand and to go. 
 
 The lesson is forcibly taught by these ob- 
 servations that our life might be much easier 
 and simpler than we make it ; that the Avorld 
 116 
 
Spiritual Laws 
 
 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 mis- 
 create our oAvn evils. We interfere with the 
 optimism of nature; for whenever v.^e get 
 this vantage-ground of the past, or of a 
 wiser mind in the present, we are able to 
 discern that v^^e are begirt with laws which 
 execute themselves. 
 
 The face of external nature teaches the 
 same lesson. Nature will not have us fret 
 and fume. She does not like our benevolence 
 or our learning much better than she likes 
 our frauds and wars. When we come out of 
 the caucus, or the bank, or the Abolition- 
 convention, or the Temperance-meeting, or 
 the Transcendental club into the fields and 
 woods, she savs to us, ''So hot? mv little 
 Sir." 
 
 We are full of mechanical actions. We must 
 needs intermeddle and have things in our 
 own Avay, until the sacrifices and virtues of 
 society are odious. Love should make jov; 
 but our benevolence is unhappv. Our Sun- 
 da\^-schools and churches and pauper-soci- 
 eties are yokes to the neck. We pain our- 
 selves to please nobody. There are natural 
 Avays of arriving at the same ends at \vhich 
 these aim, but do not arrive. Wh\^ should 
 all virtue work in one and the same way? 
 Why should all eive dollars? It is verv in- 
 117 
 
Emerson 
 
 convenient to us country folk, and we do 
 not think any good will come of it. We have 
 not dollars, mercliants have; let them give 
 them. Farmers wall give corn; poets will 
 sing; women will se^w; 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 \vhen they 
 are asked. Do not shut up the young people 
 against their will in a pew and force the 
 children to ask them questions for an hour 
 against their Avill. 
 
 If we look vender, things are all alike; laws 
 and letters and creeds and modes of living 
 seem a travesty of truth. Our societ\^ is en- 
 cumbered b\^ ponderous machiner\^, which 
 resembles the endless aqueducts \vhich the 
 Romans built over hill and dale and w^hich 
 are superseded by the discovery of the law 
 that w^ater rises to the level of its source. 
 It is a Chinese wall which any nimble Tartar 
 can leap over. It is a standing arni}^, not so 
 good as a ^^eace. It is a graduated, titled, 
 richly appointed empire, quite superfluous 
 when town-meetings are found to answer 
 just as well. 
 
 Let us draw a lesson from naiure, Avhich 
 always works b\^ short ways. When the 
 firuit is ripe, it falls. When the fruit is des- 
 118 
 
Spiritual Laws 
 
 patched, the leaf falls. The circuit of the 
 waters is mere falling. The walking of man 
 and all animals is a falling forwardo All our 
 manual labor and works of strength, as pry- 
 ing, 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 simphcity of the universe is very dif- 
 ferent from the sim]3licity of a machine. He 
 who sees m.oral nature out and out and thor- 
 oughly knows how knowledge is acquired 
 and character formed, is a pedant. The sim- 
 plicity of nature is not that w^hich 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 fer- 
 tility of nature is felt in comparing our rigid 
 names and reputations ^th our fluid con- 
 sciousness. We pass in the world for sects 
 and schools, for erudition and piet\^, and we 
 are all the time jejune babes. One sees very 
 w^ell hoAv Pyrrhonism grew up. Every man 
 sees that he is that middle point whereof 
 every thing may be affirmed and denied vrith 
 equal reason. He is old, he is young, he is 
 very wise, he is altogether ignorant. He 
 hears and feels w^hat yoti say of the sera- 
 phim, and of the tin-peddler. There is no 
 permanent wise man except in the figment of 
 119 
 
Emerson 
 
 the Stoics. We side with the hero, as we 
 read or paint, against the coward and the 
 robber; but we have been ourselves that 
 coward and robber, and shall be again, — not 
 in the low circumstance, but in comparison 
 with the grandeurs possible to the soul. 
 
 A little consideration of what takes place 
 around us every day w^ould shov^^ us that a 
 higher law than that of our will regulates 
 events; that our painful labors are unneces- 
 sary and fruitless; that only in our easy, 
 simple, spontaneous action are we strong, 
 and by contenting ourselves with obedience 
 Ave become divine. Belief and love, — a be- 
 lieving love will relieve us of a vast load of 
 care. O my brothers, God exists. There is 
 a soul at the centre of nature and over the 
 will of every man, so that none of us can 
 wrong the universe. It has so infused its 
 strong enchantment into nature that we 
 prosper w-hen we accept its advice, and when 
 we struggle to ^'^ound its creatures our 
 hands are glued to our sides, or they beat 
 our own breasts. The v^^hole 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 pre- 
 cludes the need of balance and walful election. 
 120 
 
Spiritual Laws 
 
 For 3^ou there is a reality, a fit place and 
 congenial duties. Place yourself in the mid- 
 dle of the stream of power and wisdom 
 which animates all whom it floats, and you 
 are without eflbrt impelled to truth, to right 
 and a perfect contentment. Then you put 
 all gainsayers in the wrong. Then you are 
 the world, the measure of right, of truth, of 
 beauty. If we would not be mar-plots with 
 our miserable interferences, the work, the 
 society, letters, arts, science, religion of men 
 \\rould go on far better than now, and the 
 heaven predicted from the beginning of the 
 Avorld, and still predicted from the bottom of 
 the heart, would organize itself, as do now 
 the rose and the air and the sun. 
 
 I say, do not choose; but that is a figure 
 of speech by which I would distinguish what 
 is commonly called choice among men, and 
 which is a partial act, the choice of the 
 hands, of the eyes, of the appetites, and not a 
 whole act of the man. But that which I call 
 right or goodness, is the choice of my con- 
 stitution ; and that which I call heaven, and 
 inwardly aspire after, is the state or circum- 
 stance desirable to my constitution; and the 
 action which I in all my years tend to do, is 
 the v^^ork for m.y faculties. We must hold a 
 man amenable to reason for the choice of his 
 daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse 
 any longer for his deeds that they are the 
 custom of his trade. What business has he 
 121 
 
Emerson 
 
 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 end- 
 less exertion. He is like a ship in a river ; he 
 rtms against obstructions on every side but 
 one, on that side all obstruction is taken 
 awaj and he sweeps serenely over a deepen- 
 ing channel into an infinite sea. This talent 
 and this call depend on his organization, or 
 the mode in ^which the general soul incar- 
 nates itself in him. He inclines to do some- 
 thing v^hich 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 exhibit from the work of any 
 other. His ambition is exactly proportioned 
 to his powers. The height of the pinnacle 
 is determined by the breadth of the base. 
 Every man has this call of the power to do 
 somewhat unique, and no man has any 
 other call. The pretence that he has another 
 call, a summons by name and personal elec- 
 tion and outward ''signs that mark him ex- 
 traordinary 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. 
 
 122 
 
Spiritual Laws 
 
 Bv doing his work he makes the need felt 
 which he can supply, and creates the taste 
 bv which he is enjoyed. By doing his own 
 work he unfolds himself It is the vice of our 
 public speaking that it has not abandon- 
 ment. 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 v.^hat force and 
 meaning is in him. The common experience 
 is that the man fits himself as well as he can 
 to the customary details of that work or 
 trade he falls into, and tends it as a dog 
 turns a spit. Then is he a part of the ma- 
 chine he moves; the man is lost. Until he 
 can manage to communicate himself to 
 others in his full stature and proportion, he 
 does not yet find his vocation. He must find 
 in that an outlet for his character, so that 
 he may justify his work to their eyes. If the 
 labor is mean, let him by his thinking and 
 character make it liberal. Whatever he 
 knows and thinks, whatever in his apprehen- 
 sion is worth doing, that let him communi- 
 cate, or men will never know and honor 
 him aright. Foolish, whenever you take the 
 meanness and formality of that thing you 
 do, instead of converting it into the obedient 
 spiracle of your character and aims. 
 
 We like only such actions as have already 
 long had the praise of men, and do not per- 
 ceive that anything man can do may be 
 123 
 
Emerson 
 
 divinely done. We think greatness entailed 
 or organized in some places or duties, in cer- 
 tain offices or occasions, and do not see that 
 Paganini can extract rapture from a catgut, 
 and Eulenstein from a jews-harp, and a 
 nimble-fingered lad out of shreds of paper 
 with his scissors, and Landseer out of s\vine, 
 and the hero out of the pitiful habitation 
 and company in Avhich he Avas hidden. What 
 wre call obscure condition or vulgar society 
 is that condition and society whose poetry 
 is not yet written, but which you shall pres- 
 ently make as enviable and renowned as any. 
 In our estimates let us take a lesson from 
 kings. The parts of hospitality, the connec- 
 tion 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 ne^v estimate, — that is 
 elevation. 
 
 What a man does, that he has. What has 
 he to do with hope or fear? In himself is his 
 might. Let him regard no good as solid but 
 that which is in his nature and which must 
 grow out of him as long as he exists. The 
 goods of fortune may come and go like sum- 
 mer leaves; let him scatter them on every 
 wind as the momentary signs of his infinite 
 productiveness. 
 
 He may have his own. A man's genius, 
 the quality that differences him from every 
 other, the susceptibility to one class of in- 
 124 
 
Spiritual Laws 
 
 fluences, the selection of what is fit for him, 
 the rejection of what is unfit, determines for 
 him the character of the universe. A man 
 is a method, a progressive arrangement; a 
 selecting principle, gathering his like to him 
 \vherever he goes. He takes only his own 
 out of the multiplicity that sweeps and cir- 
 cles 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 load- 
 stone amongst splinters of steel. Those 
 facts, \vords, persons, w^hich d^vell in his 
 memory v.dthout his being able to say why, 
 remain because they have a relation to him 
 not less real for being as \^et unapprehended. 
 They are symbols of value to him as they 
 can interpret parts of his consciousness 
 which he would vainly seek words for in the 
 conventional images of books and other 
 minds. What attracts my attention shall 
 have it, as I will go to the man v^^ho 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 charac- 
 ter, manners, face, a fe^v incidents, have an 
 emphasis in your memory out of all propor- 
 tion to their apparent significance if you 
 measure them by the ordinary standards. 
 The\^ relate to your gift. Let them have 
 their weight, and do not reject them and 
 cast about for illustration and facts more 
 125 
 
Emerson 
 
 usual in literature. What jour heart thinks 
 great, is great. The soul's emphasis is al- 
 ways right. 
 
 Over all things that are agreeable to his 
 nature and genius the man has the highest 
 right. Everywhere he may take what be- 
 longs to his spiritual estate, nor can he take 
 anything else though all doors w^ere open, 
 nor can all the force o^ men hinder him from 
 taking so much. It is vain to attempt to 
 keep a secret from one who has a right to 
 kno^vv 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, Avhich held 
 Austria in awe, w^ere unable to command her 
 diplomacy. But Napoleon sent to Vienna 
 M. de Narbonne, one of the old noblesse, 
 with the morals, manners and name of that 
 interest, saying that it was indispensable to 
 send to the old aristocracy of Europe men of 
 the same connection, which in fact consti- 
 tutes a sort of free-masonry. M. de Nar- 
 bonne in less than a fortnight penetrated all 
 the secrets of the imperial cabinet. 
 
 Nothing seems so easy as to speak and to 
 
 be understood. Yet a man may come to find 
 
 that the strongest of defences and of ties, — 
 
 that he has been understood; and he who 
 
 126 
 
oiritual Laws 
 
 has received an opinion may come to find it 
 the most inconvenient of bonds. 
 
 If a teacher have any opinion which he 
 -wishes to conceal, his pupils will become as 
 fully indoctrinated into that as into any 
 v^hich he publishes. If you pour water into 
 a vessel twisted into coils and angles, it is 
 vain to say, I will pour it onh^ into this or 
 that; — it will find its level in all. Men feel 
 and act the consequenees of your doctrine 
 without being able to show how they follow. 
 Show us an arc of the curve, and a good 
 mathematician v^dll find out the whole figure. 
 We are always reasoning from the seen to the 
 unseen. Hence the perfect intelligence that 
 subsists between v.4se men of remote ages. 
 A man cannot bury his meanings so deep in 
 his book but time and like-minded men will 
 find them. Plato had a secret doctrine, had 
 he? What secret can he conceal from the eyes 
 of Bacon? of Montaigne? of Kant? Therefore 
 Aristotle said of his vrorks, ''They are pub- 
 lished and not published." 
 
 No man can learn what he has not prepa- 
 ration for learning, however near to his eyes 
 is the object. A chemist m.ay tell his most 
 precious secrets to a carpenter, and he shall 
 be never the wiser, — the secrets he v^^ould not 
 utter to a chemist for an estate. God screens 
 us evermore from premature ideas. Our eyes 
 are holden that we cannot see things that 
 stare us in the face, until the hour arrives 
 127 
 
Emerson 
 
 T^hen the mind Is ripened; then we behold 
 them, and the time when we saw them not 
 is hke a dream. 
 
 Not in nature but in man is all the beauty 
 and worth he sees. The world is very empty, 
 and is indebted to this gilding, exalting soul 
 for all its pride. '^Earth fills her lap with 
 splendors" not her own. The vale of Tempe, 
 Tivoli and Rome are earth and water, rocks 
 and sky. There are as good earth and water 
 in a thousand places, yet how unafiecting ! 
 
 People are not the better for the sun and 
 moon, the horizon and the trees ; as it is not 
 observed that the keepers of Roman galleries 
 or the valets of painters have any elevation 
 of thought, or that librarians are wiser men 
 than others. There are graces in the de- 
 meanor of a polished and noble person ^vhich 
 are lost upon the eye of a churl. These are 
 like the stars vv^hose light has not yet reached 
 us. 
 
 He may see what he maketh. Our dreams 
 are the sequel of our waking knowledge. The 
 visions of the night bear some proportion to 
 the visions of the day. Hideous dreams are 
 exaggerations of the sins of the day. We see 
 our evil affections embodied in bad ph\^siog- 
 nomies. On the Alps the traveller sometimes 
 beholds his o^wn 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, 
 128 
 
Spiritual Laws 
 
 *'Mj children, jou will never see anything 
 worse than ^-^ourselves." As in dreams, so 
 in the scarcely less fluid events of the world 
 every man sees himself in colossal, without 
 knowing that it is himself. The good, com- 
 pared to the evil w^hich he sees, is as his own 
 good to his own evil. Every quality of his 
 mind is magnified in some one acquaintance, 
 and every emotion of his heart in some one. 
 He is like a quincunx of trees, which counts 
 five, — east, west, north, or south; or an 
 initial, medial, and terminal acrostic. And 
 v^^hy 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 vie^v you take of his circumstances. 
 He may read what he writes. What can 
 we see or acquire but ^vhat ^ve are? You 
 have observed a skilful man reading Virgil. 
 Well, that author is a thousand books to a 
 thousand persons. Take the book into your 
 two hands and read \^our eyes out, you Avill 
 never find what I find. If any ingenious 
 reader vrould have a monopoly of the wis- 
 dom or delight he gets, he is as secure now 
 the book is Englished, as if it were impris- 
 oned in the Pelews' tongue. It is with a 
 good book as it is with good company. In- 
 troduce a base person among gentlemen, it 
 9 129 
 
Emerson 
 
 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? Ger- 
 trude is enamored of Guy; how high, how 
 aristocratic, hoAv Roman his mien and man- 
 ners! to live with him were life indeed, and 
 no purchase is too great; and heaven and 
 earth are moved to that end. Well, Gertrude 
 has Guy; but what now avails how high, 
 how aristocratic, how Roman his mien and 
 manners, if his heart and aims are in the 
 senate, in the theatre and in the billiard- 
 room, and she has no aims, no conversation 
 that can enchant her graceful lord? 
 
 He shall have his own society. We can 
 love nothing but nature. The most wonder- 
 ful alents, the most meritorious exertions 
 real, avail very little with us ; but nearness 
 or like, ess of nature, — how beautiful is the 
 ease of its victorj^! Persons approach us, 
 far- 3US for their beauty, for their accomplish- 
 ments, worthy of all wonder for their charms 
 and gifts; they dedicate their whole skill to 
 the hour and the company, — with very im- 
 perfect result. To be sure it would be un- 
 grateful in us not to praise them loudly. 
 Then, when all is done, a person of related 
 130 
 
Spiritual Laws 
 
 mind, a brother or sister by nature, comes 
 to us so softly and easily, so nearly and inti- 
 mately, as if it were the blood in our proper 
 veins, that we feel as if some one was gone, 
 instead of another having come ; we are ut- 
 terly relieved and refreshed; it is a sort of 
 joyful solitude. We foolishly think in our 
 days of sin that \\re must court friends by 
 compliance to the customs of society, to its 
 dress, its breeding, and its estimates. But 
 only that soul can be my friend which I en- 
 counter on the line of my own march, that 
 soul to which I do not decline and which 
 does not decline to me, but, native of the 
 same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all 
 my experience. The scholar forgets himself 
 and apes the customs and costumes of the 
 man of the world to deserve the smile of 
 beauty, and follows some giddy girl, not yet 
 taught by religious passion to know the 
 noble ^voman with all that is serene, oracu- 
 lar and beautiful in her soul. Let hv be 
 great, and love shall follow him. N <ylnng 
 is rnore deeply punished than the n^gi^ct of 
 the affinities by which alone society should 
 be formed, and the insane levity of choc ^ing 
 associates by others' eyes. 
 
 He may set his own rate. It is a maxim 
 worthy of all acceptation that a man may 
 have that allowance he takes. Take the 
 place and attitude which belong to you, and 
 all men acquiesce. The world must be just. 
 131 
 
Emerson 
 
 It leaves every man, with profound uncon- 
 cern, to set his own rate. Hero or driveller, 
 it meddles not in the matter. It will cer- 
 tainly accept 3''our own measure of your do- 
 ing and being, whether you sneak about and 
 deny your owm 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 other- 
 ^se. 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 1?'^ un- 
 friendly 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 
 wall deliver an oration on the Fourth' of July, 
 and Mr. Hand before the Mechanics' Associa- 
 tion, and we do not go thither, because we 
 know^ that these gentlemen will not com- 
 municate their own character and experience 
 to the company. If we had reason to ex- 
 pect such a confidence \ve 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 
 132 
 
Spiritual Laws 
 
 apology, a gag, and not a communication, 
 not a speech, not a man. 
 
 A like Nemesis presides over all intellectual 
 works. We have 3^et to learn that the thing 
 uttered in words is not therefore affirmed. 
 It must affirm itself, or no forms of logic or 
 of oath can give it evidence. The sentence 
 must also contain its own apology for being 
 spoken. 
 
 The effect of any writing on the public 
 mind is mathematically measurable by its 
 depth of thought. How much water does it 
 draw? If it awaken you to think, if it lift 
 you from your feet with the great voice of 
 eloquence, then the effect is to be ^de, slow, 
 permanent, over the minds of men; if the 
 pages instruct you not, they will die like flies 
 in th t hour. The wa\^ 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 Az^^ell doubt w^ill fail to reach yours. 
 But take Sidney's maxim: — ''Look in thy 
 heart, and write." He that writes to him- 
 self ^writes to an eternal public. That state- 
 ment 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 
 133 
 
Emerson 
 
 people say, 'What poetry! what genius!" it 
 still needs fuel to make fire. That only prof- 
 its ^^hich is profitable. Life alone can im- 
 part life; and though we should burst ^we 
 can only be valued as we make ourselves 
 valuable. There is no luck in literary repu- 
 tation. 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 
 overa^ved, decides upon every man's title to 
 fame. Only those books come down v^hich 
 deserve to last. Gilt edges, vellum and mo- 
 rocco, and presentation-copies to all the 
 libraries will not preserve a book in circula- 
 tion beyond its intrinsic date. It must go 
 with all Walpole's Noble and Royal Authors 
 to its fate. Blackmore, Kotzebue, or Pollok 
 may endure for a night, but Moses and 
 Homer stand 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 fe^v persons, 
 as if God brought them in his hand. *'No 
 book," said Bentley, ''was ever written doAvn 
 by any but itself." The permanence of all 
 books is fixed b}^ no effort, friendly or hostile, 
 but by their own specific gravity, or the in- 
 trinsic importance of their contents to the 
 134 
 
Spiritual Laws 
 
 constant mind of man. ''Do not trouble 
 yourself too much about the Hght on your 
 statue," said Michael Angelo to the young 
 sculptor; ''the light of the public square will 
 test its value." 
 
 In like manner the effect of every action is 
 measured by the depth of the sentiment from 
 which it proceeds. The great man knew not 
 that he was great. It took a century or t^wo 
 for that fact to appear. What he did, he did 
 because he must; it was the most natural 
 thing in the world, and grew out of the cir- 
 cumstances of the moment. But now% every- 
 thing he did, even to the lifting of his finger 
 or the eating of bread, looks large, all-re- 
 lated, and is called an institution. 
 
 These are the demonstrations in a few par- 
 ticulars of the genius of nature ; they show 
 the direction of the stream. But the stream 
 is blood ; every drop is alive. Truth has not 
 single victories; all things are its organs, — 
 not only dust and stones, but errors and lies. 
 The laws of disease, physicians say, are as 
 beautiful as the laws of health. Our philoso- 
 phy is afiirmative and readily accepts the 
 testimony of negative facts, as every shadow 
 points to the sun. By a divine necessity 
 every fact in nature is constrained to offer 
 its testimony. 
 
 Human character evermore publishes itself 
 The most fugitive deed and word, the mere 
 air of doing a thing, the intimated purpose, 
 135 
 
Emerson 
 
 expresses character. If jou act yon show 
 character ; if you sit still, if jou sleep, you 
 show it. You think because jou have spoken 
 nothing when others spoke, and have given 
 no opinion on the times, on the church, on 
 slavery, on marriage, on socialism, on secret 
 societies, on the college, on parties and per- 
 sons, that your verdict is still expected with 
 curiosity as a reserved wisdom. Far other- 
 T^ise; your silence answers very loud. You 
 have no oracle to utter, and your fellow-men 
 have learned that you cannot help them ; for 
 oracles speak. Doth not Wisdom cry and 
 Understanding put forth her voice? 
 
 Dreadful limits are set in nature to the 
 po^wers of dissimilation. 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 ex- 
 pression. When a man speaks the truth in 
 the spirit of truth, his eye is as clear as the 
 heavens. W^hen he has base ends and speaks 
 falsely, the eye is muddy and sometimes 
 asquint. 
 
 I have heard an experienced counsellor say 
 that he never feared the effect upon a jury of 
 a lawyer who does not believe in his heart 
 that his client ought to have a verdict. If he 
 does not believe it his unbelief will appear to 
 the jur}^, despite all his protestations, and 
 will become their unbelief This is that law 
 whereby a work of art, of whatever kind, 
 136 
 
Spiritual Laws 
 
 sets us in the same state of mind wherein the 
 artist was when he made it. That which we 
 do not beheve we cannot adeqnately say, 
 though we may repeat the words never so 
 often. It was this conviction which Sweden- 
 borg expressed when he described a group of 
 persons in the spiritual world endeavoring in 
 vain to articulate a proposition which they 
 did not believe; but they could not, though 
 they twisted and folded their lips even to 
 indignation. 
 
 A man passes for that he is worth. Very 
 idle is all curiosity concerning other people's 
 estimate of us, and all fear of remaining un- 
 known is not less so. 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 .course of a few days and stamped with 
 his right number, as if he had undergone a 
 formal trial of his strength, speed and tem- 
 per. A stranger comes from a distant school 
 with better dress, with trinkets in his pock- 
 ets, Avith airs and pretensions ; an older boy 
 says to himself, "It's of no use; we shall find 
 him out to-morrow." ''What has he done?" 
 137 
 
Emerson 
 
 is the divine question which searches men and 
 transpierces every false reputation. A fop 
 may sit in any chair of the world nor be 
 distinguished for his hour from Homer and 
 Washington; but there need never be any 
 doubt colicerning the respective ability of 
 human beings. Pretension may sit still, but 
 cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act 
 of real greatness. Pretension never w^rote an 
 Iliad, nor drove back Xerxes, nor christian- 
 ized the world, nor abolished slavery. 
 
 As much virtue as there is, so much ap- 
 pears ; as much goodness as there is, so much 
 reverence it commands. x411 the devils re- 
 spect virtue. The high, the generous, the 
 self-devoted sect will always instruct and 
 command mankind. Never was a sincere 
 Avord utterly lost. Never a magnanimity fell 
 to the ground, but there is some heart to 
 greet and accept it unexpectedly. A man 
 passes for that he is worth. What he is en- 
 graves itself on his face, on his form, on his 
 fortunes, in letters of light. Concealment 
 avails him nothing, boasting nothing. There 
 is confession in the glances of our eyes, in 
 our smiles, in salutations, and the grasp of 
 hands. His sin bedaubs him, mars all his 
 good impression. Men know not why they 
 do not trust him, but they do not trust him. 
 His vice glasses his eye, cuts lines of mean 
 expression in his cheek, pinches the nose, sets 
 the mark of the beast on the back of the 
 138 
 
Spiritual Laws 
 
 head, and writes fool! fool! on the fore- 
 head of a king. 
 
 If you would not be kno\\^^n to do any 
 thing, never do it. A man may play the fool 
 in the drifts of a desert, but every grain of 
 sand shall seem to see. He may be a soli- 
 tary 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 Chif- 
 finch, an lachimo be mistaken for Zeno or 
 Paul? Confucius exclaimed, — ''How can a 
 man be concealed? Hovr can a man be con- 
 cealed?" 
 
 On the other hand, the hero fears not that 
 if he withhold the avowal of a just and 
 brave act it will go unwitnessed and unloved. 
 One knows it, — himself, — and is pledged by it 
 to sweetness of peace and to nobleness of 
 aim w^hich will prove in the end a better 
 proclamation of it than the relating of the 
 incident. Virtue is the adherence in action 
 to the nature of things, and the nature of 
 things makes it prevalent. It consists in a 
 perpetual substitution of being for seeming, 
 and with sublime propriety God is described 
 as saying, I AM. 
 
 The lessons which these observations con- 
 vey is. Be, and not seem. Let us acquiesce. 
 Let us take our bloated nothingness out of 
 the path of the divine circuits. Let us un- 
 learn our wisdom of the world. Let us lie 
 139 
 
Emerson 
 
 low in the Lord's power and learn that 
 truth alone makes rich and great. 
 
 If you visit your friend, why need you 
 apologize for not having visited him, and 
 waste his time and deface your own act? 
 Visit him now. Let him feel that the highest 
 love has come to see him, in thee its lowest 
 organ. Or why need you torment yourself 
 and friend by secret self-reproaches that you 
 have not assisted him or complimented him 
 with gifts and salutations heretofore? Be a 
 gift and a benediction. Shine with real light 
 and not with the borrowed reflection of 
 gifts. Common men are apologies for men; 
 they bow the head, excuse themselves with 
 prolix reasons, and accumulate appearances 
 because the substance is not. 
 
 We are full of these superstitions of sense, 
 the Avorship of magnitude. We call the poet 
 inactive, because he is not a president, a 
 merchant or a porter. We adore an institu- 
 tion, 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 
 oflice, and the like, but in a silent thought 
 by the wayside as we \valk; in a thought 
 which revises our entire manner of life and 
 says, — 'Thus hast thou done, but it were 
 better thus." And all our after years, like 
 menials, serve and wait on this, and accord- 
 140 
 
Spiritual Laws 
 
 ing to their ability execute its will. This 
 revisal or correction is a constant force, 
 which, as a tendenc\^, reaches through our 
 Hfetime. The object of the man, the aim of 
 these moments, is to make daylight shine 
 through him, to suffer the law to traverse 
 his whole being without obstruction, so that 
 on what point soever of his doing your eye 
 falls it shall report truly of his character, 
 whether it be his diet, his house, his religious 
 forms, his society, his mirth, his vote, his 
 opposition. Now he is not homogeneous, 
 but heterogeneous, and the ray does not 
 traverse ; there are no thorough lights, but 
 the eye of the beholder is puzzled, detecting 
 many unlike tendencies and a life not yet at 
 one. 
 
 Why should we make it a point with our 
 false modesty to disparage that man we are 
 and that form of being assigned to us? A 
 good man is contented. I love and honor 
 Epaminondas, but I do not wish to be 
 Epaminondas. I hold it more just to love 
 the world of this hour than the world of his 
 hour. Nor can you, if I am true, excite me 
 to the least uneasiness by saying, ^'He acted 
 and thou sittest still." I see action to be 
 good, when the need is, and sitting still to 
 be also good. Epaminondas, if he was the 
 man I take him for, would have sat still 
 ^th joy and peace, if his lot had been mine. 
 Heaven is large, and affords space for all 
 141 
 
* Emerson 
 
 modes of love and fortitude. Why should we 
 be busjbodies and superserviceable? Action 
 and inaction are alike to the true. One piece 
 of the tree is cut for a weathercock and one 
 for the sleeper of a bridge ; the virtue of the 
 wood is apparent in both. 
 
 I desire not to disgrace the soul. The fact 
 that I am here certainly shows me that the 
 soul had need of an organ here. Shall I not 
 assume the post? Shall I skulk and dodge 
 and duck with my unseasonable apologies 
 and vain modesty and imagine my being 
 here impertinent? less pertinent than Epa- 
 minondas or Homer being there? and that the 
 soul did not knov^ its own needs? Besides, 
 v^ithout any reasoning on the matter, I have 
 no discontent. The good soul nourishes me 
 and unlocks new magazines of power and en- 
 joyment 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 cowled 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 anything unless 
 it have an outside badge, — some Gentoo diet, 
 of Quaker coat, or Calvinistic prayer-meet- 
 ing, or philanthropic society, or a great do- 
 nation or a high office, or, any how, some 
 wild contrasting action to testify that it is 
 142 
 
Spiritual Laws 
 
 somewhat. The rich mind Hes in the sun and 
 sleeps, and is Nature. To think is to act. 
 
 Let us, if we must have great actions, 
 make our own so. All action is of an in- 
 finite elasticity, and the least admits of being 
 inflated with the celestial air until it eclipses 
 the sun and moon. Let us seek one peace by 
 fidelity. Let me heed my duties. Why need 
 I go gadding into the scenes and philosophy 
 of Greek and Italian history before I have 
 justified myself to my benefactors? How 
 dare I read Washington's campaigns vv^hen I 
 have not answered the letters of my own 
 correspondents? Is not that a just objection 
 to much of our reading? It is a pusillani- 
 mous desertion of our work to gaze after 
 our neighbors. It is peeping. Byron says 
 of Jack Bunting, — 
 
 **He knew not what to say, and so he swore." 
 
 I may say it of our preposterous use of 
 books, — He knew not what to do, and so he 
 read. I can think of nothing to fill my time 
 with, and I find the Life of Brant. It is a 
 very extravagant compliment to pay to 
 Brant, or to General Schuyler, or to General 
 Washington. My time should be as good as 
 their time, — my facts, my net of relations, as 
 good as theirs, or either of theirs. Rather 
 let me do my ^^ork so well that other idlers 
 if they choose may compare my texture with 
 143 
 
Emerson 
 
 the texture of these and find it identical with 
 the best. 
 
 This over-estimate of the possibiHties of 
 Paul and Pericles, this under-estimate of our 
 own, comes from a neglect of the fact of an 
 identical nature. Bonaparte knew but one 
 merit, and rewarded in one and the same 
 way the good soldier, the good astronomer, 
 the good poet, the good player. The poet 
 uses the names of C^sar, of Tamerlane, of 
 Bonduca, of Belisarius ; the painter uses the 
 conventional story of the Virgin Mary, of 
 Paul, of Peter. He does not therefore defer 
 to the nature of these accidental men, of 
 these stock heroes. If the poet write a true 
 drama, then he is Caesar, and not the player 
 of Caesar; then the selfsame strain of 
 thought, emotion as pure, wit as subtle, 
 motions as swift, mounting, extravagant, 
 and a heart as great, self-sufficing, dauntless, 
 which on the waves of its love and hope can 
 uplift all that is reckoned solid and precious 
 in the world, — palaces, gardens, money, na- 
 vies, kingdoms, — marking its own incompar- 
 able worth by the slight it casts on these 
 gauds of men; — these all are his, and by the 
 power of these he rouses the nations. Let a 
 man believe in God, and not in names and 
 places and persons. Let the great soul in- 
 carnated in some woman's form, poor and 
 sad and single, in some Dolly or Joan, go 
 out to service and sweep chambers and scour 
 144 
 
Spiritual Laws 
 
 floors, and its eflulgent daybeams cannot be 
 mufiled or hid, but to sw^eep and scour will 
 instantly appear supreme and beautiful ac- 
 tions, the top and radiance of human life, 
 and all people will get mops and brooms; 
 until, lo ! suddenly the great soul has en- 
 shrined itself in some other form and done 
 some other deed, and that is now the flower 
 and head of all living nature. 
 
 We are the photometers, we the irritable 
 gold-leaf and tinfoil that measure the accu- 
 mulations of the subtle element. We know 
 the authentic effects of the true fire through 
 ever\^ one of its million disguises. 
 
 10 
 
 145 
 
The American Scholar 
 
 147 
 
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 recommencement of our literary 
 year. Our anniversary is one of hope, and, 
 perhaps, not enough of labor. We do not meet 
 for games of strength or skill, for the recita- 
 tion of histories, tragedies, and odes, like the 
 ancient Greeks ; for parliaments of love and 
 poesy, like the Troubadours ; nor for the ad- 
 vancement of science, like our contempora- 
 ries in the British and European capitals. 
 Thus far, our holiday has been simply a 
 friendly sign of the survival of the love of 
 letters amongst a people too busy to give to 
 letters any more. As such it is precious as 
 the sign of an indestructible instinct. Per- 
 haps the time is already come w^hen it ought 
 to be, and wall be, something else ; when the 
 sluggard intellect of this continent Avill look 
 from under its iron lids and fill the postponed 
 expectation of the v^orld with something bet- 
 ter than the exertions of mechanical skill. 
 Our day of dependence, our long apprentice- 
 ship to the learning of other lands, draws to 
 149 
 
Emerson 
 
 a close. The millions that around ns 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, — the American 
 Scholar. Year by year we come up hither to 
 read one more chapter of his biography. Let 
 us inquire what light new days and events 
 have thrown on his character and his hopes. 
 
 It is one of those fables w^hich out of an 
 unknown antiquity convey an unlooked-for 
 wisdom, that the gods, in the beginning, 
 divided Man into men, that he might be more 
 helpful to himself; just as the hand was di- 
 vided 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 farmer, or a professor, or an 
 engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and 
 scholar, and statesman, and producer, and 
 150 
 
The American Scholar 
 
 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, \vhilst 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 dis- 
 tributed to multitudes, has been so minutely 
 subdivided and peddled out, that it is spilled 
 into drops, and cannot be gathered. The 
 state of society is one in which the members 
 have suffered amputation from the trunk, 
 and strut about so many walking monsters, 
 — a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, 
 but never a man. 
 
 Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, 
 into many things. The planter, who is Man 
 sent out into the field to gather food, is sel- 
 dom 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 the ship. 
 
 In this distribution of functions the scholar 
 is the delegated intellect. In the right state 
 151 
 
Emerson 
 
 he is Man Thinking, In the degenerate state, 
 when the victim of society, he tends to be- 
 come a mere thinker, or still worse, the par- 
 rot of other men's thinking. 
 
 In this view of him, as Man Thinking, the 
 theory of hi^ office is contained. Him Nature 
 solicits 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 stu- 
 dent'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 life, too 
 often, the scholar errs with mankind and 
 forfeits his privilege. Let us see him in his 
 school, and consider him in reference to the 
 main influences he receives. 
 
 I. The first in time and the first in im- 
 portance of the influences upon the mind is 
 that of nature. Every day, the sun; and, 
 after sunset. Night and her 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 returning into itself Therein it re- 
 152 
 
The American Scholar 
 
 sembles his own spirit, \vhose 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 centre, with- 
 out circumference, — in the mass and in the 
 particle. Nature hastens to render account of 
 herself to the mind. Classification begins. 
 To the young mind everything is individual, 
 stands by itself. B\^ 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 o^wn unifying instinct, 
 it goes on tying things together, diminishing 
 anomalies, discovering roots running under 
 ground whereby contrary and remote things 
 cohere and flower out from one stem. It 
 presently learns that since the dawn of his- 
 tory there has been a constant accumulation 
 and classifying of facts. But what is classi- 
 fication but the perceiving that these objects 
 are not chaotic, and are not foreign, but 
 have a law which is also a law of the hu- 
 man mind? The astronomer discovers that 
 geometry, a pure abstraction of the human 
 mind, is the measure of planetary motion. 
 The chemist finds proportions and intelligi- 
 ble method throughout matter; and science 
 is nothing but the finding of analogy, iden- 
 tity, in the most remote parts. The ambi- 
 tious soul sits down before each refractory 
 fact; one after another reduces all strange 
 153 
 
Emerson 
 
 constitutions, all new jDowers, to their class 
 and their law, and goes on forever to ani- 
 mate the last fibre of organization, the out- 
 skirts of nature, bj insight. 
 
 Thus to him, to this school-bo j under the 
 bending dome of da\^, is suggested that he 
 and it proceed from one root ; one is leaf and 
 one is flow^er ; 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 wald. Yet when this 
 spiritual light shall have revealed the law of 
 more earthly natures, — when he has learned 
 to w^orship 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 knoAvl- 
 edge as to a becoming creator. He shall see 
 that nature is the opposite of the soul, an- 
 sw^ering to it part for part. One is seal and 
 one is print. Its beauty is the beauty of his 
 own mind. Its laws are the laws of his own 
 mind. Nature then becomes to him the 
 measure of his attainments. So much of 
 nature as he is ignorant of, so much of his 
 own mind does he not yet possess. And, in 
 fine, the ancient precejot, ^'Know thyself," 
 and the modern precept, * 'Study nature," be- 
 come at last one maxim. 
 
 II. The next great influence into the spirit 
 of the scholar is the mind of the past, — in 
 whatever form, whether of literature, of 
 154 
 
The American Scholar 
 
 art, of institutions, that mind is inscribed. 
 Books are the best type of the influence of the 
 past, and perhaps we shall get at the truth, 
 — learn the amount of this influence more 
 conveniently, — by considering their value 
 alone. 
 
 The theory of books is noble. The scholar 
 of the first age received into him the world 
 around; brooded thereon; gave it the new 
 arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it 
 again. It came into him life; it went out 
 from him truth. It came to him short-lived 
 actions; it went out from him immortal 
 thoughts. It came to him business ; it went 
 from him poetry. It was dead fact ; now, it 
 is quick thought. It can stand, and it can 
 go. It now endures, it now flies, it now in- 
 spires. 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 v^all the purity and im- 
 perishableness of the product be. But none 
 is quite perfect. As no air-pump can by any 
 means make a perfect vacuum, so neither can 
 any artist entirely exclude the conventional, 
 the local, the perishable from his book, or 
 write a book of pure thought, that shall be 
 as efficient, in all respects, to a remote pos- 
 terity, as to contemporaries, or rather to the 
 155 
 
Emerson 
 
 second age. Each age, it is found, must 
 write its own books ; or rather, each genera- 
 tion 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 crea- 
 tion, the act of thought, is transferred to the 
 record. The poet chanting w^as felt to be a 
 divine man: henceforth the chant is divine 
 also. The writer was a just and wise spirit ; 
 henceforvv^ard it is settled the book is perfect ; 
 as love of the hero corrupts into worship 
 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 v^^rong, who set out from accepted 
 dogmas, not from their own sight of princi- 
 ples. Meek young men grow up in libraries, 
 believing it their duty to accept the views 
 w^hich Cicero, which Locke, \vhich Bacon, 
 haA^e given ; forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and 
 Bacon w^ere only young men in libraries 
 v^^hen they w^rote these books. 
 
 Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have 
 the bookworm. Hence the book -learned 
 class, Avho value books, as such; not as re- 
 156 
 
The American Scholar 
 
 lated to nature and the human constitution, 
 but as making a sort of Third Estate with 
 the w^orld and the soul. Hence the restorers 
 of readings, the emendators, the bibhoma- 
 niacs of all degrees. 
 
 Books are the best of things, well used; 
 abused, amongst 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 
 than to be Avarped by its attraction clean 
 out of my own orbit, and made a satellite 
 instead of a system. The one thing in the 
 world, of value, is the active soul. This 
 every man is entitled to ; this every man con- 
 tains v^dthin 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. The\^ 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 
 157 
 
Emerson 
 
 flame. There are creative manners, there are 
 creative actions, and creative words; man- 
 ners, actions, words, that is, indicative of no 
 custom or atithorit\% but springing spon- 
 taneous from the mind's own sense of good 
 and fair. 
 
 On the other part, instead of being its OAvn 
 seer, let it receive from another mind its 
 truth, though it were in torrents of light, 
 without periods of solitude, inquest, and self- 
 recoverv, and a fatal disservice is done. 
 Genius is alwa^^s sufiicientlv the enemy of 
 genius by over-influence. The literature of 
 every nation bears me witness. The English 
 dramatic poets have Shakspearized nov^ for 
 two hundred ^^ears. 
 
 Undoubtedly there is a right way of read- 
 ing, so it be sternly subordinated. Man 
 Thinking must not be subdued by his instru- 
 ments. Books are for the scholar's idle 
 times. When he can read God directh^, the 
 hour is too precious to be ^vasted in other 
 men's transcripts of their readings. But 
 w^hen 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 raj^, 
 to guide our steps to the East again, where 
 the dawm is. We hear, that we ma}^ speak. 
 The Arabian proverb saA'-s, ''A fig tree, look- 
 ing on a fig tree, becometh fruitful." 
 
 It is remarkable, the character of the 
 158 
 
The American Scholar 
 
 pleasure w^e derive from the best books. 
 rhe\^ 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 Dryden, 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 sur- 
 prise, when this poet, who lived in some 
 past \vorld, two or three hundred years ago, 
 says that which lies close to my OAvn soul, 
 that Avhich I also had Avellnigh thought and 
 said. But for the evidence thence afforded to 
 the philosophical doctrine of the identity of 
 all minds, we should suppose some preestab- 
 lished harmony, some foresight of souls that 
 were to be, and some preparation of stores 
 for their future wants, like the fact observed 
 in insects, who lay up food before death for 
 the young grub they shall never see. 
 
 I would not be hurried by any love of 
 system, by any exaggeration of instincts, to 
 underrate the Book. We all kno^v, that as 
 the human body can be nourished on any 
 food, though it were boiled grass and the 
 broth of shoes, so the human mind can be 
 fed by any knowledge. And great and heroic 
 men have existed who had almost no other 
 information than by the printed page. I 
 only would say that it needs a strong head 
 to bear that diet. One must be an inventor 
 159 
 
Emerson 
 
 to read \vell. As the proverb sa^^s, ''He that 
 would bring home the w'-ealth 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 Ave read becomes luminous with mani- 
 fold allusion. Every sentence is doubly sig- 
 nificant, and the sense of our author is as 
 broad as the world. We then see, what is 
 alw^ays true, that as the seer's hour of vision 
 is short and rare among heavy da^^s and 
 months, so is its record, perchance, the least 
 part of his volume. The discerning will read, 
 in his Plato or Shakspeare, 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 Avise man. History and 
 exact science he must learn by laborious read- 
 ing. Colleges, in like manner, have their in- 
 dispensable ofiice, — 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 
 160 
 
The American Scholar 
 
 least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget 
 this, and our American colleges will recede in 
 their public importance, whilst they grow 
 richer every year. 
 
 III. There goes in the world a notion that 
 the scholar should be a recluse, a valetudi- 
 narian, — as unfit for any handiwork or public 
 labor as a penknife for an axe. The so-called 
 "practical men" sneer at speculative men, as 
 if, because they speculate or see, they could 
 do nothing. I have heard it said that the 
 clergy, — who are always, more universally 
 than any other class, the scholars of their 
 da}^, — are addressed as women; that the 
 rough, spontaneous conversation of men they 
 do not hear, but onl\^ a mincing and diluted 
 speech. The^^ are often virtually disfran- 
 chised; and indeed there are advocates for 
 their celibac\^ As far as this is true of the 
 studious classes, it is not just and \vise. 
 Action is with the scholar subordinate, but 
 it is essential. Without it he is not yet man. 
 Without it thought can never ripen into 
 truth. W^hilst the w^orld 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 through 
 which it passes from the unconscious to the 
 conscious, is action. Onh^ so much do I 
 know, as I have lived. Instantly we know 
 11 161 
 
Emerson 
 
 whose words are loaded with Hfe, and whose 
 not. 
 
 The world, — this shadow of the soul, or 
 other me, lies Avide around. Its attractions 
 are the kej^s ^^hich unlock mj thoughts and 
 make me acquainted with myself. I run 
 eagerly into this resounding tumult. I grasp 
 the hands of those next me, and take my 
 place in the ring to suffer and to w^ork, 
 taught by an instinct that so shall the dumb 
 abyss be vocal AT^nth speech. I pierce its 
 order; I dissipate its fear; I dispose of it 
 wathin the circuit of my expanding life. So 
 much only of life as I know by experience, so 
 much of the ^alderness have I vanquished 
 and planted, or so far have I extended my 
 being, my dominion. I do not see how^ any 
 man can afford, for the sake of his nerves 
 and his nap, to spare any action in w^hich he 
 can partake. It is pearls and rubies to his 
 discourse. Drudgery, calamxity, exasperation, 
 want, are instructors in eloquence and wis- 
 dom. The true scholar grudges every oppor- 
 tunity 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 mulberrj^ leaf 
 is converted into satin. The manufacture 
 goes forward at all hours. 
 
 The actions and events of our childhood 
 and youth are now matters of calmest ob- 
 162 
 
The American Scholar 
 
 servation. Thev lie like fair pictures in the 
 air. Not so with our recent actions, — with 
 the business which we nowr 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 ne^^ deed is yet a part of life, — remains 
 for a time immersed in our unconscious life. 
 In some contemplative hour it detaches itself 
 from the life like a ripe fruit, to become a 
 thought of the mind. Instantly it is raised, 
 transfigured; the corruptible has put on in- 
 corruption. Henceforth it is an object of 
 beauty, however base its origin and neigh- 
 borhood. Observe too the impossibility of 
 antedating this act. In its grub state, it 
 cannot fl\'', it cannot shine, it is a dull grub. 
 But suddenly, without observation, the self- 
 same 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 bv soaring- from our bodv 
 into the empyrean. Cradle and infancy, 
 school and playground, the fear of boys, and 
 dogs, and ferules, the love of little maids and 
 berries, and man\^ another fact that once 
 filled the whole sk}-, are gone already ; friend 
 and relative, profession and party, town and 
 country, nation and world, must also soar 
 and sing. 
 
 163 
 
Emerson 
 
 Of course, he ayHo has put forth his total 
 strength in fit actions has the richest return 
 of Avisdom. I wdll 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, ^^ho, getting their liveli- 
 hood by carving shepherds, shepherdesses, and 
 smoking Dutchmen, for all Europe, went out 
 one day to the mountain to find stock, and 
 discovered that they had whittled up the last 
 of their pine-trees. Authors we have, in 
 numbers, who have written out their vein, 
 and who, moved by a commendable pru- 
 dence, 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 
 w^ould be covetous of action. Life is our 
 dictionary. Years are w^ell spent in country 
 labors; in toAA^n; in the insight into trades 
 and manufactures ; in frank intercourse with 
 many men and women; in science; in art; 
 to the one end of mastering in all their facts 
 a language by which to illustrate and em- 
 body our perceptions. I learn immediately 
 from any speaker how^ much he has already 
 lived, through the poverty or the splendor of 
 his speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry 
 from whence we get tiles and copestones for 
 164 
 
The American Scholar 
 
 the masonry" of to-day. This is the ^A^ay to 
 learn grammar. Colleges and books only 
 copy the language which the field and the 
 work-yard made. 
 
 But the final value of action, like that of 
 books, and better than books, is that it is a 
 resource. That great principle of Undulation 
 in nature, that shows itself in the inspiring 
 and expiring of the breath; in desire and 
 satiety; in the ebb and flow of the sea; in 
 day and night ; in heat and cold ; and, as yet 
 more deeply ingrained in every atom and 
 every fluid, is kno^vn 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 m.ind now thinks, no^v acts, and each 
 fit reproduces the other. When the artist has 
 exhausted his materials, when the fancy no 
 longer paints, when thoughts are no longer 
 apprehended and books are a weariness, — he 
 has always the resource to live. Character 
 is higher than intellect. Thinking is the func- 
 tion. Living is the functionary. The stream 
 retreats to its source. A great soul will be 
 strong to live, as well as strong to think. 
 Does he lack organ or medium to impart his 
 truth? He can still fall back on this elemen- 
 tal force of living them. This is a total act. 
 Thinking is a partial act. Let the grandeur 
 of justice shine in his aflfairs. Let the beauty 
 165 
 
Emerson 
 
 of affection cheer his lowly roof. Those 'Tar 
 from fame," who dwell and act with him, 
 will feel the force of his constitution in the 
 doings a.nd passages of the day better than 
 it can be measured by any public and de- 
 signed display. Time shall teach him that 
 the scholar loses no hour which the man 
 lives. Herein he unfolds the sacred germ of 
 his instinct, screened from influence. What is 
 lost in seemliness is gained in strength. Not 
 out of those on \vhom s^-^stems of education 
 have exhausted their culture, comes the help- 
 ful giant to destroy the old or to build the 
 new, but out of unhandselled savage nature; 
 out of terrible Druids and Berserkers come at 
 last Alfred and Shakspeare. 
 
 I hear therefore \vith joy whatever is be- 
 ginning to be said of the dignit\^ and neces- 
 sity of labor to every citizen. There is virtue 
 yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as 
 \A^ell as for unlearned hands. And labor is 
 every^^here w^elcome ; 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 haA^e now spoken of the education of the 
 scholar by nature, b}- books, and by action. 
 It remains to say somewhat of his duties. 
 
 They are such as become Man Thinking. 
 They may all be comprised in self-trust. The 
 166 
 
The American Scholar 
 
 office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and 
 to guide men by showing them facts amidst 
 appearances. He plies the slow, nnhonored, 
 and unpaid 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 obscure and nebu- 
 lous stars of the human mind, which as yet 
 no man has thought of as such, — watching 
 days and months som^etimes for a few facts ; 
 correcting still his old records; — must relin- 
 quish display and immediate fame. In the 
 long period of his preparation he must betray 
 often an ignorance and shiftlessness in popu- 
 lar 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 \^et, he must accept, — 
 how often! poverty and solitude. For the 
 ease and pleasure of treading the old road, 
 accepting the fashions, the education, the re- 
 ligion of societ}^, 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 tan- 
 gling vines in the way of the self-reh4ng and 
 self-directed; and the state of virtual hos- 
 tility in which he seems to stand to society, 
 and especially to educated society. For all 
 this loss and scorn, what offset? He is to 
 167 
 
Emerson 
 
 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 illustri- 
 ous thoughts. He is the world's e\^e. He is 
 the w^orld's heart. He is to resist the vulgar 
 prosperity that retrogrades ever to barbar- 
 ism, hy preserving and communicating heroic 
 sentiments, noble biographies, melodious 
 verse, and the conclusions of history. What- 
 soever oracles the human heart, in all emer- 
 gencies, in all solemn hours, has uttered as 
 its commentary on the w^orld of actions, — 
 these he shall receive and impart. And what- 
 soever new verdict Reason from her inviola- 
 ble seat pronounces on the passing men and 
 events of to-day, — this he shall hear and pro- 
 mulgate. 
 
 These being his functions, it becomes him 
 to feel all confidence in himself, and to defer 
 never to the popular cr\^ He and he only 
 knows the w^orld. The world of any moment 
 is the merest appearance. Some great de- 
 corum, some fetish of a government, some 
 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 ques- 
 tion is not worth the poorest thought which 
 the scholar has lost in listening to the con- 
 troversy. Let him not quit his belief that a 
 popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and 
 168 
 
The American Scholar 
 
 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 observation to observation, patient of 
 neglect, patient of reproach, and bide his own 
 time, — happy enough if he can satisfy him- 
 self alone that this day he has seen some- 
 thing 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 
 v^^hose 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 addresses, until he finds that 
 he is the complement of his hearers; — that 
 they drink his w^ords because he fulfils for 
 them their oAvn nature ; the deeper he dives 
 into his privatest, secretest presentiment, to 
 his wonder he finds this is the most accepta- 
 ble, most public, and universally true. The 
 people delight in it ; the better part of every 
 man feels, This is my music ; this is myself. 
 169 
 
Emerson 
 
 In self-trust all the virtues are compre- 
 hended. Free should the scholar be, — free 
 and brave. Free even to the definition of 
 freedom, ''without any hindrance that does 
 not arise out of his own constitution. '^ 
 Brave ; for fear is a thing which a scholar by 
 his very function puts behind him. Fear al- 
 wa^^s 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 protected class ; 
 or if he seek a temporary peace by the diver- 
 sion of his thoughts from politics or vexed 
 questions, hiding his head like an ostrich in 
 the floAvering bushes, peeping into micro- 
 scopes, and turning rhj^mes, 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, in- 
 spect its origin, — see the whelping of this 
 lion, — which lies no great way back ; he will 
 then find in himself a perfect comprehension 
 of its nature and extent ; he will have made 
 his hands meet on the other side, and can 
 henceforth defy it and pass on superior. The 
 world is his \vho can see through its preten- 
 sion. What deafiiess, w^hat stone-blind cus- 
 tom, what overgrow^n error you behold is 
 there only by sufierance, — b}^ your suflTerance. 
 See it to be a lie, and you have already 
 dealt it its mortal blow. 
 170 
 
The American Scholar 
 
 Yes, we are the cowed, — we the trustless. 
 It is a mischievous notion that we are come 
 late into nature ; that the world was finished 
 a long time ago. As the world was plastic 
 and fluid in the hands of God, so it is ever to 
 so much of his attributes as we bring to it. 
 To ignorance and sin, it is flint. They adapt 
 themselves to it as they may; but in propor- 
 tion as a man has any thing in him divine, 
 the firmament flows before him and takes his 
 signet and form. Not he is great who can 
 alter m.atter, but he who can alter my state 
 of mind. The\" are the kings of the world 
 who give the color of their present thought 
 to all nature a,nd all art, and persuade men 
 by the cheerful serenity of their carrying the 
 matter, that this thing Vv^hich they do is the 
 apple which the ages have desired to pluck, 
 noAv 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. Linnaus makes botany 
 the most alluring of studies, and wins it from 
 the farmer and the herb-woman; Davy, 
 chemistry; and Cuvier, fossils. The day is 
 alw^ays his who works in it w4th serenity 
 and great aims. The unstable estimates of 
 men crowd to him Avhose mind is filled with 
 a truth, as the heaped waves of the Atlantic 
 follo^v the moon. 
 
 For this self-trust, the reason is deeper than 
 can be fathomed, — darker than can be en- 
 171 
 
Emerson 
 
 lightened. I might not carry wath me the 
 feehng of my audience in stating my own 
 behef. But I have alread}^ shown the ground 
 of my hope, in adverting to the doctrine that 
 man is one. I beheve man has been wronged ; 
 he has wronged himself. He has almost lost 
 the light that can lead him back to his pre- 
 rogatives. Men are become of no account. 
 Men in history, men in the w^orld 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 tw^o approximations to the right 
 state of every man. All the rest behold in 
 the hero or the poet their OAvn green and 
 crude being, — ripened; yes, and are content 
 to be less, so that may attain to its fiill 
 stature. What a testimom^, full of grandeur, 
 full of pity, is borne to the demands of his 
 own nature, by the poor clansinan, 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 ac- 
 quiescence 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. Thc}^ 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 downtrod selves upon the 
 172 
 
The American Scholar 
 
 shoulders of a hero, and will perish to add 
 one drop of blood to make that great heart 
 beat, those giant sinews combat and con- 
 quer. He lives for us, and we live in him. 
 
 Men such as they are, very naturally seek 
 money or power ; and powder because it is as 
 good as money, — the "spoils,'^ so called, "of 
 office." And y^^hy not? for they aspire to the 
 highest, and this, in their sleep-walking, they 
 dream is highest. Wake them and the\^ shall 
 quit the false good and leap to the true, and 
 leaye goyernments to clerks and desks. This 
 revolution is to be wrought by the gradual 
 domestication of the idea of Culture. The 
 main enterj^rise of the world for S23lendor, for 
 extent, is the upbuilding of a man. Here are 
 the materials strewn along the ground. The 
 private life of one man shall be a more il- 
 lustrious 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 ^^hich once 
 we valued more than the apple of the eye, we 
 have quite exhausted. What is that but sa\^- 
 ing that v^^e have come tip 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 
 173 
 
Emerson 
 
 another, we drain all cisterns, and waxing 
 greater by all these supplies, we crave a bet- 
 ter and more abundant food. The man has 
 never lived that can feed ns 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 Sicih^, and 
 now out of the throat of Vesuvius, illumi- 
 nates the tov^^ers and vineyards of Naples. 
 It is one light \vhich beams out of a thou- 
 sand stars. It is one soul w^hich animates 
 all men. 
 
 But I have dv^elt perhaps tediously upon 
 this abstraction of the Scholar. I ought not 
 to delay longer to add what I have to say 
 of nearer reference to the time and to this 
 country. 
 
 Historically, there is thought to be a dif- 
 ference in the ideas v^^hich predominate over 
 successive epochs, and there are data for 
 marking the genius of the Classic, of the Ro- 
 mantic, and now of the Reflective or Philo- 
 sophical age. With the views I have inti- 
 mated of the oneness or the identitj- of the 
 mind through all individuals, I do not much 
 dwell on these diflerences. In fact, I believe 
 each individual passes through all three. 
 The boy is a Greek ; the youth, romantic ; the 
 adult, reflective. I deny not hoAvever that a 
 174 
 
The American Scholar 
 
 revolution in the leading idea may be dis- 
 tinctly enough traced. 
 
 Our age is be^wailed as the age of Introver- . 
 sion. Must that needs be evil? We, it seems, 
 are critical ; we are embarrassed v^ith second 
 thoughts; we cannot enjoy anything for 
 hankering to know v^hereof the pleasure con- 
 sists; ^we are lined ^th eyes; \v€: see v.ath 
 our feet; the time is infected v^ith Hamlet's 
 unhappiness, — 
 
 ''Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." 
 
 It is so bad then? Sight is the last thing to 
 be pitied. Would ^^e be blind? Do v^^e fear 
 lest we should outsee nature and God, and 
 drink truth dry? I look upon the discontent 
 of the literary class as a mere announcement 
 of the fact that they find themselves not in 
 the state of mind of their fathers, and regret 
 the coming state as untried ; as a boy dreads 
 the Avater before he has learned that he can 
 swim. If there is any period one ^^ould de- 
 sire to be born in, is it not the age of Revo- 
 lution ; when the old and the new is t and side 
 by side and admit of being compared ; when 
 the energies of all men are searched b\^ fear 
 and by hope; when the historic glories of the 
 old can be compensated by the rich possi- 
 bilities of the nev^^ era? This time, like all 
 times, is a very good one, if \yc but know 
 what to do with it. 
 I read with some joy of the auspicious 
 175 
 
Emerson 
 
 signs of the coining days, as they glimmer al- 
 ready through poetr^^ and art, through phi- 
 losophy 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 com- 
 mon, was explored and poetized. That 
 which had been negligently trodden under 
 foot by those who were harnessing and pro- 
 visioning themselves for long journeys into 
 far countries, is suddenly found to be richer 
 than all foreign parts. The literature of the 
 poor, the feelings of the child, the philosophy 
 of the street, the meaning of household life, 
 are the topics of the time. It is a great 
 stride. It is a sign, — is it not? of newr vigor 
 Avhen the extremities are made active, v^^hen 
 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 Ara- 
 bia; Avhat is Greek art, or Provencal min- 
 strelsy ; 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 
 176 
 
The American Scholar 
 
 the bodj;--show me the ultimate reason of 
 these matters ; show me the sublime presence 
 of the highest spiritual cause lurking, as al- 
 ways it does lurk, in these suburbs and ex- 
 tremities of nature; let me see every trifle 
 bristling with the polarity that ranges it in- 
 stantly on an eternal law ; and the shop, the 
 plough, and the ledger referred to the like 
 cause by w^hich 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 puz- 
 zle, but one design unites and animates the 
 farthest pinnacle and the low^est trench. 
 
 This idea has inspired the genius of Gold- 
 smith, Burns, Cow^per, and, in a ne^^er 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 Gib- 
 bon, looks cold and pedantic. This writing 
 is blood-warm. Man is surprised to find that 
 things near are not less beautiful and -won- 
 drous than things remote. The near explains 
 the far. The drop is a small ocean. A man 
 is related to all nature. This perception of 
 the worth of the vulgar is fruitful in dis- 
 coveries. 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 liter- 
 12 177 
 
Emerson 
 
 arj value has never jet been rightly^ esti- 
 mated; — I mean Emanuel S\vedenborg. The 
 most imaginative of men, jet writing with 
 the precision of a mathematician, he endeav- 
 ored to engraft a purelj philosophical Ethics 
 on the popular Christianitj of his time. 
 Such an attempt of course must have diffi- 
 cultj 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. Espe- 
 ciallj did his shade-loving muse hover over 
 and interpret the lower parts of nature ; he 
 showed the m jsterious bond that allies moral 
 evil to the foul material forms, and has given 
 in epical parables a theorj of insanitj, 
 of beasts, of unclean and fearful things. 
 
 Another sign of our times, also marked bj 
 an analogous political movement, is the new 
 importance given to the single person. 
 Everj thing that tends to insulate the in- 
 dividual, — to surround him with barriers of 
 natural respect, so that each man shall feel 
 the w^orld is his, and man shall treat with 
 man as a sovereign state with a sovereign 
 state, — tends to true union as well as great- 
 ness. **I learned,'' said the melancholj Pes- 
 talozzi, ^*that no man in God's wide earth is 
 either willing or able to help anj other 
 mxan." Help must come from the bosom 
 alone. The scholar is that man who must 
 178 
 
The American Scholar 
 
 take up into himself all the ability of the 
 time, all the contributions of the past, all the 
 hopes of the future. He must be an univer- 
 sity of knowledges. If there be one lesson 
 more than another which should pierce his 
 ear, it is. The world is nothing, the man is 
 all ; in yourself is the law of all nature, and 
 you know not yet ho^w 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 proph- 
 ecy, 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, com- 
 plaisant. See already the tragic consequence. 
 The mind of this country, taught to aim at 
 low objects, eats upon itself. There is no 
 work for any but the decorous and the com- 
 plaisant. Young men of the fairest promise, 
 who begin life upon our shores, inflated by 
 the mountain winds, shined upon by all the 
 stars of God, find the earth below not in 
 unison with these, but are hindered from 
 action by the disgust which the principles on 
 which business is managed inspire, and turn 
 drudges, or die of disgust, some of them 
 179 
 
ifie 
 
 Emerson 
 
 suicides. What is the remedy? They did not 
 yet see, and thousands- of young men as 
 hopeful now crowding to the barriers for the 
 career do not yet see, that if the single man 
 plant himself indomitably on his instincts, 
 and there abide, the huge world will come 
 round to him. Patience — patience; with the 
 shades of all the good and great for com- 
 pany; and for solace the perspective of your 
 OAvn infinite life ; and for work the study and 
 the communication of principles, the making 
 those instincts prevalent, the conversion of 
 the Tvorld. Is it not the chief disgrace in the 
 world, not to be an unit; — not to be reck- 
 oned one character ; — not to yield that pecul- 
 iar 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 opin- 
 ion predicted geographically, as the north, 
 or the south? Not so, brothers and friends, 
 — please God, ours shall not be so. We will 
 \\ralk on our own feet; ^we will ^^ork with 
 our o^wn hands; we will speak our o"wn 
 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. 
 180