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LIBRARY^Fa)^NGRESS. 
 
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 I'MTED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
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ESSAYS 
 
 James Vila Blake 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 
 
 BOSTON: GEO. H. ELLIS 
 
 1887 
 

 COPYRIGHT BY 
 
 JAMES VILA BLAKE 
 
 iSS6 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Of Choice 7 
 
 Of Faculty 10 
 
 Of Public Education 15 
 
 Of Happiness and Time 21 
 
 Of Vainglory 26 
 
 Of Luck 29 
 
 Of Seeing Good Things 38 
 
 Of Side-lights of Intelligence 42 
 
 Of Individuality 47 
 
 Of Questions of Heroism 55 
 
 Of Praising 59 
 
 Of Censure . 64 
 
 Of Flattery 69 
 
 Of Government 76 
 
 Of Hand-writing 99 
 
 Of Knowledge 103 
 
 Of Meditation 107 
 
 Of Common Sense 114 
 
 Of Requital 122 
 
 Of Anger 125 
 
 Of Judgment of Others 134 
 
 Of Patience 137 
 
 Of Enemies 145 
 
 Of Immortal Life 150 
 
 Of Death 160 
 
 Of Emergency 180 
 
 Of Conscience 185 
 
 Of His Letters 193 
 
 Of Character as a Work 205 
 
 Of Superiority 210 
 
 Topical Index 213 
 
DEDICATION 
 
 This book is inscribed to 
 
 LOUISA LEE WARE 
 
 AND 
 
 MART HARRIET WARE, 
 
 in witness of a quarter-century of inspiring friendship. 
 
 '^ F rttctus amicitice manner cibus." 
 
OF CHOICE 
 
 Choice is good old English, with a root in the 
 Saxon; but in the act it involves the Latin Sacrifice^ 
 which means to make something holy by offering it 
 in worship; or, perhaps, to do something sacred — it 
 being thought in primitive religion that nothing more 
 holy can be done than to give or forego something 
 for devotion. Choice and sacrifice go in one, and the 
 philosophy of either is the statement of our circum- 
 scription. The simple principle is " that as we can 
 not have everything, we must give up some things for 
 the sake of having others." Choice, therefore, is the 
 test and measure of us; for whoso can not have 
 everything must needs pitch his choice, and he will 
 pitch it as his nature is, high or low; wherefore choice 
 becomes the vernier of our lives. Or better, perhaps, 
 if I call it a double register, in two parts, the one fol- 
 lowing the other to divide more nicely still what the 
 first already has measured. For our choices take our 
 dimensions in two ways: First, By the kind of them. 
 We may select paltry and showy things, ease, pleas- 
 ures which have no mind in them, cheap influence 
 with our fellows. Whether there be baseness in this, 
 or whether, as the Stoics would have it, it be only 
 such a savage ignorance as would choose a glass bead 
 before a book, the reckoning is the same as to coarse 
 grain in character; and they who publish this measure 
 
 (7) 
 
8 Of Choice 
 
 of themselves do, indeed, like heavy-bearded cowards, 
 assume but " nature's excrement " to make themselves 
 respected. If we set our choice so high that perforce 
 the low must be left, so high as beauty, generosity, 
 strength of mind, stores of knowledge, memories of 
 the hungry fed, the forsaken cheered, the fallen lifted, 
 humane works watched and re-enforced — it is no 
 more than to elect the things which mark us as men. 
 Secondly, Our choices grade us by our energy in 
 them. Small difference, whether we call the good 
 bad, or follow it with so faint heart as gives excel- 
 lence no praise; as a man often shows of a maid that 
 he acknowledges her goodness every way, yet loves 
 her not. This is but a mean and scanty following of 
 a good election — wherein plainly lies one cause of the 
 power of the bad; for the bad follow their selfish 
 objects with great energy of choice, while the com- 
 mon good people move for the higher things but 
 feebly. I have read that the poet Thomson, who 
 was indolent, was found in his garden nibbling a pear 
 that hung to a bough, being too lazy to take his hands 
 from his pockets to pluck the fruit. If he made 
 choice of the pear, it was choice in such a fashion of 
 weakness as gave him neither fruit nor credit — the 
 like of many moral elections in the world. The wise 
 Joseph Allen says of the Albigenses that they were 
 " like those of all time whose pietistic zeal is touched 
 with communistic fervor, capable of the intensest 
 enthusiasm and self-devotion." Is not this because, 
 all wealth being sunk in the common fund, each man 
 may be devoted to the higher ends undistracted ? But 
 
Of Choice 9 
 
 better still if each who owns and handles his own 
 work-fruits, be, as he may be, zealous in like manner 
 to apply himself and his material to the things which 
 his soul chooses when he is clad in his right mind. 
 Nothing so fatal as to think that without a firm elec- 
 tion of the best, we can cozen Nature of good things; 
 for this makes us not only the sport of events, but 
 worse, pursuers of the lower objects of life, because 
 these seem to cost the least. It is momentous and 
 strange (or rather, it would be strange, if we knew 
 not in what disciplines and costs Nature wraps virtue), 
 that overthrows of the higher self, of the thinking 
 part, of the heart's solemnities — choices which at last 
 leave us stranded hulks on life's lea — in the beginning 
 seem not painful sacrifices, more often only postpone- 
 ments while we go after other things — to return never. 
 It is a factor of energetic choice to understand that 
 it is a choice, and that some things are jDut aside for 
 better things; ay, and a noble factor, for many choose 
 with a secret hope and contrivance yet to possess all, 
 not seeing the repugnant elements in the chemistry of 
 moral qualities which no cunning can combine. To 
 choose nobly and strongly is to judge at first and 
 heedfully what is signified, and then having made 
 choice, to go on therewith in equable and forecast 
 quietude — as the poet clung to his song, which, he 
 said, " found him poor at first and kept him so." For 
 want of this reflection, continually and ignobly men 
 grumble because they lack what they have not paid 
 for, and will not; or else they whimper at not keep- 
 ing what they have expended while they possess 
 
lo Of Faculty 
 
 what they bought therewith — as a pig roots at his 
 emptied trough, not with felicitation for his meal, but 
 with rage that he has it not yet to eat. 
 
 Sacrifice carries a peculiar reward which is worthy 
 of reflection. There is a law of reaction by which 
 sacrifice raises the values obtained by it; and this in 
 proportion to the greatness of the sacrifice. First we 
 pay the cost for love of the object, and then the great 
 cost makes love more. A beautiful law of mind, a 
 wonderful requital ! If so much we prize anything 
 that we will suffer for it, bear toiling days, watching 
 nights, waiting, anxiety, hope deferred, men's scorn 
 or pity or anger, one would think such valuation 
 enough and attainment an ample reward. But what 
 recompense so great as the object grown dearer and 
 better in our eyes than from afar we thought, and 
 worth more even than we embraced pain to pay? 
 Yet so it fares with a purchase by costly and noble 
 sacrifice. This is a law of mind on which well we 
 may linger and behold with a certain awe the increase 
 of the strength of the strong, of the joy of the joyful. 
 
 OF FACULTY 
 
 « The first shall be last and the last shall be first," 
 or, as otherwise it is expressed elsewhere, " If any 
 man would be first, he shall be last of all." Spoke 
 Jesus any other so great reflection on human wit as 
 this? For it is a sign of little wit to reverence wit 
 inordinately, or the place and praise of it. La Roche- 
 
Of Faculty 1 1 
 
 foucauld has said, " The height of ability consists in 
 knowing v^rell the real value of things." Now, one 
 of these things to be valued is the ability or wit itself; 
 and if this be valued too much, the over-prizing is 
 underwitted. One of the signs of faculty is that 
 faculty itself be not estimated unduly, but given its 
 own place and no more. 
 
 La Rochefoucauld remarks also that " Everybody 
 speaks well of his heart, but no one dares to speak 
 well of his head." But again he says, " Every one 
 complains of the badness of his memory, but nobody 
 of his judgment." But why are we both unwilling 
 to depreciate our judgment, and yet afraid to praise 
 it? This double fact shows the truth. If we were 
 afraid only to praise our intelligence, it might be be- 
 cause mental power was ranked so low that we 
 wished not to seem to value what, by common con- 
 sent, was disregarded. If, on the other hand, we 
 were unwilling only to depreciate our intelligence, it 
 might be because talent was ranked high by common 
 consent. But if equally we are unwilling to praise it 
 and to depreciate it, this must be because wit is ranked 
 so very high that no one is willing to confess himself 
 deficient in it, and yet no one dares pretend to it. Or 
 express it thus : No one will confess inability because 
 he admits it not even to himself; and no one will 
 claim ability because he is afraid others will not 
 admit it. 
 
 There is great general admiration for smartness, 
 brightness, — parts, as they have been called imme- 
 morially. But I like not parts, but wholeness. Why 
 
12 Of Faculty 
 
 should wit be ranked so high? Why should intel- 
 lectual keenness be such a Caesar? Why, especially, 
 should it keep all the rest "in servile f earf ulness " ? 
 Why, also, should we think it modest and proper to 
 praise our hearts, saying that we are constant, faithful, 
 loving, true; but on the other hand, presumptuous 
 and intolerable to praise our heads, as to say that we 
 are sagacious, capable, talented ? If there be anything 
 in the common opinion which, however brightness 
 may receive social homage, nevertheless is unalterable 
 in human nature, that moral stability is finer than 
 intellectual power, then it is saying a deal more to 
 profess a grand heart than to claim a great mind. Yet 
 we do the one without shame; we are overpowered 
 if charged with the other. Probably one reason of 
 this is very honorable to human nature. For as the 
 greatest things are the most common, so wide, noble 
 and loving hearts are common on every side compared 
 to the mere flashing of wit; wherefore it seems no 
 shame to rank ourselves in a brotherhood of excel- 
 lence which is so wide. 
 
 I weary of smartness and of adulation of it. It 
 is but a flare of gas, which, against the peace and 
 quiet of common sunshine, is crimson and smoke. 
 Think of the things which excite often little attention, 
 and yet are as much nobler than brightness as the 
 heavens are large to contain the earth. Breadth and 
 sympathy, patience, which is appreciation of the value 
 of things, reverence, which is appreciation of the value 
 of other people, humility, which is a broad intelli- 
 gence applied to oneself, and love, whether in the 
 
Of Faculty 1 3 
 
 form of divine serviceableness wliich embraces hu- 
 manity, or in that concentration which from individual 
 devotion draws strength and bhss — these are the 
 glories of character. There is a genius for loving. 
 For aught I see, it is as admirable as a genius for 
 poetry, or music, or sculpture, or science; and men 
 would bow to it even more than to those shining 
 qualities, but that it is as common as the stars, being 
 as heavenly. Emerson has this passage in his Essay 
 of Civilization: 
 
 " When I see how much each virtuous and gifted person, 
 whom all men consider, lives affectionately with scores of 
 excellent people who are not known far from home, and per- 
 haps with great reason reckons these people his superiors in 
 virtue and in the symmetry and force of their qualities, I see 
 what cubic values America has, and in these a better certifi- 
 cate of civilization than great cities or enormous wealth." 
 
 Smartness goes with shallowness. For, first, it 
 shows an eminent trait thereof, namely, " plentiful 
 lack " of perception of superiority and of deference 
 to it, whether of age or attainment; and, secondly, 
 real strength always carries too much to move briskly. 
 This Galton remarks in a curious way, in describing 
 his experiments in Psychometry. He says: 
 
 " I found the purely verbal associations to contrast forcibly 
 in their rapid mechanical precision with the tardy and imper- 
 fect elaboration of highly generalized ideas; the former 
 depending on an elementary action of the brain, the latter on 
 an exceedingly complicated one. It v/as easy to infer from 
 this the near alliance between smartness and shallowness." 
 
 Sometimes wit revels in a cruel scorn of the slow, 
 and many esteem theinselves much who yet find little 
 
14 Of Faculty 
 
 in others. But this is hirking poverty, that is, over- 
 estimation of property. For if we undervalue others 
 because they are not witty, we sliall be likely to over- 
 value ourselves for the wit to see witlessness. But this 
 shows only that we compare not ourselves with the 
 great things which would assign us our true and lowly 
 place, but think to raise ourselves by comparison 
 with small things, which only distort and exaggerate 
 our worth. And by this again we shall be withheld 
 from learning, since we shall think we have already 
 wit enough. Wisely says La Rochefoucauld, " Some- 
 times there is no less faculty in knowing how to 
 profit by good advice than in being able to direct our- 
 selves well." The like has been handed down to us 
 from the ancients: "To adopt the good counsel of 
 another seemed to Zeno a proof of greater virtue than 
 originally to conceive what is just and right." In fine, 
 to put first things first, this is the crown of intelli- 
 gence; but no one will wear the crown to whom wit 
 is the first excellence of creation. 
 
 Be it said continually, until all men learn, that wit 
 is not wisdom or beauty; for there are many things 
 in the human mind besides faculty, and wise comeli- 
 ness is harmony within oneself. Says Aurelius: 
 
 " Short lived are both the praiser and the praised, and the 
 rememberer and the remembered : and all this in a nook of 
 this part of the world ; and not even here do all agree, no not 
 any one with himself: and the whole earth, too, is a point." 
 
 How little matter it is that I be praised for wit, or 
 find another to plume my head-feathers which my 
 own boasts of mouth cannot reach; but how great a 
 
Of Public Education 15 
 
 matter that I be found loving, faithful, benevolent, 
 and that I dress these, my wing-plumes; for these are 
 the qualities by which we are supported in the sky. 
 
 OF PUBLIC EDUCATION 
 
 The question of education at public expense is two- 
 fold: first, a question of justice; secondly, of expedi- 
 ency; which points arise in all public matters. 
 Plainly, expediency hangs on results and is determined 
 thereby; but justice turns on where the burden of 
 the cost may lie rightfully; for cost there must be, and 
 that a heavy one. Now, both on score of expediency 
 and on score of justice have arisen against public 
 education many murmurs, which, though louder, 
 happily as I think, in the past, still, unhappily, not yet 
 have died away nor lost themselves in wisdom. For 
 many assert, and with that boldness which always is 
 the lackey of interest and calculation, that public edu- 
 cation has done many harms in the country, and that, 
 whether doing well or ill, it is an unjust burden on 
 those who must pay for it. A circular of our bureau 
 of education at Washington, for the year 1881, has 
 set forth the complaints of those parts of the popula- 
 tion which like not to have the whole nation educate 
 the children thereof. On score of expediency come 
 reproaches from the aristocracy (so it is called) of 
 caste, which sticks not at saying that the great 
 "majority of mankind are born to serve the few," 
 and that surely the " less intelligent the servant, the 
 more docile the service;" wherefore, they say, " edu- 
 
1 6 Of Public Education 
 
 cation unfits the children of toil for their lot in life," 
 and so is inexpedient on all hands, being unthrifty for 
 the master and uncomfortable for the servant, and 
 thus on both accounts unwholesome for the commu- 
 nity. By this same reason, that it is inexpedient, an 
 aristocracy (so it is called) of culture, averring that 
 men for the most part are born dull, and that pains to 
 till the poor soil reaps little harvest, resolve thereupon 
 that they, " who have good wits," must do the world's 
 thinking, and so must seize the knowledge whereby 
 to think ; and that the right of education is theirs alone 
 who can use it; wherefore, it is but waste to expend 
 the advantage on the common stock. Thus these 
 aristocracies plead on score of exi:)ediency. Now on 
 score of justice there is an aristocracy (so it is called) 
 of wealth which speaks full as loudly for its own part, 
 saying that public education is an unjust tax on 
 capital from two points. For first, if a man be made 
 wiser or more learned, instantly his wants are greater; 
 for he cannot live so near the brute's way as before. 
 Then must his wages be increased, whereas ignorant 
 laborers want as little as their knowledge is little, and 
 so are content with small pay. This is one burden 
 against which amassed wealth cries out as injustice; 
 and the second is this, that it is tyranny for the state 
 to tax one person to educate the children of another. 
 " The brats," says one, " are none of my getting nor 
 of my approving; who may tax me for them, or why 
 may the state adopt them for wards at my expense ? " 
 Now, to these arguments of classes that either 
 enjoy privileges or hold the power of money, there is 
 
Of Public Education 17 
 
 a counter claim which thus may be put: That edu- 
 cation is a debt which capital, or the possessor of the 
 same, owes to the needs of the whole; or that, as I 
 have heard it stated generously by a merchant: " The 
 money of the country must educate the children of the 
 country, whose the money may be soever, or whose 
 the children." 
 
 These opposite claims I will consider from the two 
 points which pertain to all public matters, as I have 
 said, justice and expediency. 
 
 First, as to justice : Of this I can say little in this 
 place, not because there is little to say, but so much. 
 For indeed it is an immense subject, fit for a great 
 volume if one enter on it; and also a hard subject, for 
 the books which have treated of it agree not together, 
 and there is yet much to be learned as to the facts and 
 much to be reasoned from them before we shall know 
 where justice lies, either in the making of wealth or 
 in the distribution of it, or in public claims on it. But 
 one thing is plain on this point — which is all that, for 
 my purpose herein, I need say — namely, that power 
 and justice are not always at one. In the perfect 
 state which Emerson has described: 
 
 " When the state house is the hearth, 
 When the church is private worth, 
 Then the perfect state is come, 
 The republican at home," 
 
 in this perfect state, I say (in which, I am sure, the 
 
 sage means not to set off a man into individualism 
 
 apart from the whole, but only as it were to place him 
 
 . at home in law : that is, obedient to the true law of 
 
1 8 Of Public Education 
 
 nature within him), pL.inly power and justice always 
 would be the same and arise together. But in the 
 savage state evidently force rules, and justice must 
 wait long for the throne. Now, between the civil 
 flower of the state and the savage root thereof there 
 are all degrees of budding and blossoming, in which 
 justice and power will mingle unequally, and often 
 struggle with each other, before they come to holy 
 completion. Wherefore, if any one have power over 
 wealth now, it follows not that it is a just or right 
 power unless this be the perfect state, which j^lainly it 
 is not, being full of abuses and endless in miseries; 
 whence it follows, I say, that he who wields wealth 
 in fact, not always docs so rightfully and in justice; 
 that is, perhaps he owns it not in equity, and surely 
 not for his own uses altogether. 
 
 Secondly, as to expediency: Whether there be 
 claim or not on wealth; that is, whether justice allow 
 (nay indeed, require, I may say) that capital be charged 
 with public education, still it is prudent so to charge 
 it; and this I think can meet with little disagreement, 
 if it be considered wisely, without the clang and 
 clamor of selfishness. Prudently, if M^e can not chain 
 a strong creature, then tame him. What plainer now 
 than that the people can not be chained, or what 
 lesson has history inore enforced, or more times over, 
 than that the people will burst forth, shattering their 
 prisons and breaking their chains, as in France, in 
 England, in Italy and where not where tyranny has 
 lived both harshly and long ? And moreover, if they 
 themselves, the people, rend not their own chains, 
 
Of Public Education 19 
 
 still some of the educated, the prosperous, the privi- 
 leged, think for them, loving them better than their 
 own fortunes, and incite and lead them to struggles 
 for liberty, and fill them with the breath thereof, as 
 was the case with the slaves in our own country. 
 What thrives without law and order? Surely not 
 the riches of the rich. Is anything safe but in peace 
 and quiet? No. But this peace must be either of 
 power, as by chains and despotism; or of law and 
 nature, which is the blessed peace that civilization 
 makes, taming ferocity, and lifting men into the divine 
 semblance. Therefore, public education is prudence 
 — the only prudence, indeed. To this testified an 
 English statesman when the people had enforced their 
 claim to u^^cr themselves at the polls; for he said: 
 " Now we must educate our masters." And in like 
 manner Lowell says: "It may be conjectured that it 
 is cheaper in the long run to lift men up than to hold 
 them down, and that the ballot in their hands is less 
 dangerous to society than a sense of wrong in their 
 heads." 
 
 So far of justice and of prudence touching public 
 education. But I place a third point; for though 
 commonly the just and the prudent ways be thought 
 all for public matters, I dare to hope and indeed to 
 think that besides there is the loving way, and that 
 this belongs in public affairs as in private. For why 
 is selfishness the better for being magnified? And 
 why, if a brother be odious who thinks only of him- 
 self against his brother, is a citizen to be commended 
 who has no love in his heart for the many that make 
 
20 Of Public Education 
 
 the state ? Wherever any privilege grow^s rich, w^ith 
 whatever advantage or pleasure, there gathers a 
 greedy kin of selfishness ; and if this be not matched by 
 the heart, I know not what else has power to help 
 reason cope with it, and bring it to disrepute. For if 
 the heart work not on the reason, it is certain that 
 pride will, and interest too, both of which are great 
 blindfolders. And of all privileges, I have seen none 
 more selfish and more prone to forget what is owed 
 to the world, than the privilege of high culture and of 
 much-instructed intelligence; for such a mind has so 
 inclosed itself very often with the hangings of refine- 
 ment, of delicacy, of beauty, that it will not walk in 
 the rough world, even to do it good. 
 
 Now the secret of the loving way in this matter is 
 this: that as a wide mind and large intelligence shows 
 itself by understanding through imagination what 
 it shares not in experience (this being, indeed, 
 the poet's "faculty divine"), so a wide and large heart 
 proves itself so when it embraces another man's needs 
 which itself feels not, or but little, quickly gathers 
 from the wide world emotions of tenderness which 
 either its own experience supplies not or which go 
 far beyond, and collects the whole into the focus of 
 its heat. And who values not a large heart? Or 
 when was it not called grand? Such is his heart who, 
 having no children, is kindled to educate children. 
 
 Wherefore public education, I must think, will 
 flourish perfectly wherever the wealth-holders have 
 good mind, good conscience, good heart. For, if 
 intelligent, they will discern prudence soon and justice 
 
Of Happiness and Time 2 1 
 
 at last. If moral, they will feel both to be incumbent. 
 If lovmg, they will crown all with generosity. 
 
 OF HAPPINESS AND TIME 
 
 The demand of Time on Happiness is two-fold: 
 first, that we shall take all the present moment holds 
 for us; secondly, that we shall fill the moment as full 
 as we can out of ourselves, and dignify it; for this is 
 a payment without which we can take nothing. 
 
 As to the first point, plainly the present moment is 
 the dwelling of happiness; but this is because it is 
 creator of past and future, and never leaves care of 
 either. We hold the past by the reproduction of mem- 
 ory. We summon the future by the forecast of imagi- 
 natioia : without which powers and their present exer- 
 cise, what joy ? For the present is but a breath, a 
 feeling, an instant, an atom, a mote, here and gone. 
 If it were all we could enjoy, we should be simply 
 like passing bursts of strength or like bubbling sensa- 
 tions each dying in the next, as perhaps we may con- 
 ceive some creatures to be who have no memory. But 
 the forecasting of the future depends on memory, 
 since all that is to be grows out of what has been. 
 Therefore, memory is the storehouse of zest; and 
 happiness, though it draws from the future because 
 hope and imagination are blissful, yet moi-e exercises 
 itself in filling up the present from the past; for this 
 is to live our lives all at once and to combine past 
 pleasures into one whole of delight, which is the very 
 
22 Of Happiness and Time 
 
 nobility and humanity of enjoyment. Hence, the value 
 of a rich past, to be lived over again by communion 
 with happy memories, crowded with thoughts great 
 as heaven, and especially with growth; for this is 
 most absorbing and interesting always. All of these 
 may be compacted into a very brief space, so that 
 some great year, or two or three perhaps, may hold 
 riches for a lifetime, and pour their wealth into 
 the lap of the present perpetually. But, if the enjoy- 
 ment of the present springs so much from the past, 
 so do the riches of the future depend on the wealth of 
 the present; for, if the present be not rich going by, 
 how can the future be rich when it arrives? The 
 future is the riches of the present gathered in a mass 
 of power. To glean all possible worth, therefore, 
 from the things that pass along, whatever they be, to 
 see the divinity in them, to seize on the great side of 
 them, if they be little, — that is, on their relationship 
 to the great, — and to drain the pleasure of little things, 
 — if only, perhaps, a draught of cold water on a dusty 
 day, with a sense of gratitude therewith, — this is wis- 
 dom, if one wish to be blest. 
 
 Aurelius advises " to enjoy life by joining one good 
 thing to another, so as not to leave even the smallest 
 interval between ; " and again, " Thy present opinion 
 founded on understanding, and thy present conduct 
 directed to social good and thy present disposition of 
 contentment with everything that happens — that is 
 enough." 'Tis common remark that health glows 
 with a beautiful flush to him who rises from a sick 
 bed, but soon it grows a common drudge. 
 
Of Happiness and Time 23 
 
 The poet Gray has spoken this beautifully: 
 
 " See the wretch that long has tost 
 
 On the thorny bed of pain, 
 At length repair his vigor lost 
 
 And breathe and walk again ; 
 The meanest floweret of the vale, 
 The simplest note that swells the gale, 
 The conimon Sun, the air, the skies, 
 To him, are opening Paradise." 
 
 Yet these things are there, shining, without the previ- 
 ous " bed of pain; " but Pain is a surgeon who oper- 
 ates famously right and left for blindness. We cannot 
 always have mighty things attending us, but always 
 the small signify much. There is much, moreover, 
 in choice, — to choose tlie best. For one can not master 
 all the things that sweep by him, great and small. 
 But what if the best are poor, cramped, narrow, diffi- 
 cult ? Then to know them where they touch Nature's 
 divine intention is our resource. 
 
 This filling up the present for happiness, both by 
 fine choice and by devout sense, touches the foimtain 
 of love. It is especially the enjoyment of friends; 
 and lovers are to be counseled to do and think great 
 things tog^ether. For what is love worth that draws 
 only a baggage of little things, or that is a passage of 
 sensations? If it shall live, the present must be rich 
 in things fit to live. On these alone the f utui'e of love 
 can feed. If as much as possible is got from our con- 
 ditions, this is a greatness in itself, which will be strong 
 in the future to knit the lives and hearts of the twain 
 that wrestled in company. If both grow, they will 
 grow together. If only one grow, they will be 
 
24 Of Happiness and Time 
 
 wrenched apart. If neither grow, they will fall 
 asunder by decay. 
 
 I come to the second point, which is that not only 
 we must drain the wholesome cup, but that there will 
 be none if we help not to put in the balm: I mean, 
 we must beautify the instant. This is both a secret 
 and a result of patience. We are impatient because 
 intent on leading the present up to something else, 
 leaping over time, to reach a coming thing. There 
 will be hindrances, and we become restive. But if we 
 are intent only on the present function to be performed, 
 which in doing is to be beautified, all things will profit 
 us, all conditions go well with us. Is it good painting 
 if an artist leap over due progress and proper order, 
 to arrive at some great figure or eminent part of the 
 picture? 
 
 Emerson names beautiful behavior the finest of the 
 fine arts; but good conduct is intensely busy with beau- 
 tifying the instant. For manners that ignore the 
 moment for the future are selfish and absent. Every 
 occasion has its absolute rights — the morning, the 
 meal-time, the work-time, the evening, the social-time. 
 If each have its due, life is artist-worh. It has then 
 the poise, order and beauty that mark a good machine, 
 being comely in proportion, appropriate in color and 
 harmonious in action. And if we do the present act 
 well and take care of its special intent, not leaping to 
 coming things, when those things arrive they fall into 
 order; for then they have their proper place and must 
 perforce fall into it, because other things have had their 
 due place before. 
 
Of Hap'piness and Time 25 
 
 But what if the present moment be hard, sad, pain- 
 ful? Then we have opportunity not to complain. 
 There will be some bright thing. Fasten on that. If 
 none, then this, that it might be worse. Fasten on 
 that. If it seem the worst possible from the outside, 
 there is still this, that we may make it worse by our 
 own way of taking it in the soul. 
 
 It is a right reflection that if a man is full of the 
 present moment to glorify it, he is with eternity and 
 infinity; for he has all there is. Schefer has written: 
 
 " Things great and good and beautiful and brave, 
 Are done, each one of them, beyond all time, 
 And he who feels himself apart from time 
 Feels himself quite beyond the reach of power; 
 This only makes man free and glorious." 
 
 And Richter says: — 
 
 " If the minute pointer be no road pointer with an Eden for 
 thy soul, the month pointer still less will be so; for thou livest 
 not from month to month, but from second to second. Enjoy 
 thy existence more than thy manner of existence, and let the 
 dearest object of thy consciousness be this consciousness 
 itself." 
 
 If we have this devotion to beautify the instant, it 
 is a great point that we shall avoid hurry. This is to 
 grow ripe beautifully. Is not one reason why so many 
 greatest works are done late in life, that the authors 
 have been busy gathering power by beautifying the 
 instant? Surely waiting is a great point in living. 
 We shall wait often and long, if we be wise; for we 
 can not force things if they belong not to us by nature, 
 nor can they be withheld if they be ours. But we 
 
26 Of Vainglory 
 
 can not snatch them, however they belong to us. 
 Now it is easy to wait if we take the instant as some- 
 thing to be beautified, that is, used to its full scope of 
 beauty and its full span of power. It is hard to wait 
 if we are scaling the moment to seize the future vio- 
 lently before it comes to hand. The perversity of 
 materials and circumstances is a common remark. But 
 they only seem hostile because we are trying to leap 
 over them to something else, and they stand in the 
 way, or are too high for the leap. But this should 
 mean to us that we are not to leap, but to occupy our- 
 selves with evoking the beautiful from the heap before 
 us, or in stirring our own souls into it that the com- 
 j^ound may he beautiful. 
 
 OF VAINGLORY 
 
 It is difficult to judge of vanity or vainglory, how 
 far it is blameworthy; for perhaps if any one knew he 
 was vain, then he would not be so. A philosopher 
 said that if a man should suddenly believe he was 
 moral, he would be moral. But the strength of 
 morality is in this, that no one can believe he is doing 
 well if his intention be ill. So, perhaps, it is impossi- 
 ble that one should be vainglorious if he knew that he 
 was so. Therefore it is diflicult to judge of one's self 
 as to whether one be puffed up or not. But, contrari- 
 wise, is it not a sign of conscious complacency lurking 
 in ourselves, to suspect or accuse others of being 
 flushed ? If we be not acquainted with vanity, how 
 
Of Vainglory 27 
 
 should we know it so readily, and why annoyed but 
 that it seems to dispute our own self-esteem? We 
 must examine narrowly why conceit is a trait so dis- 
 pleasing to us; for it may be the complacency of 
 another offends because it flaunts a rival and disquiets 
 our self-praise; as La Rochefoucauld avers that "it 
 is our own vanity that makes the vanity of others 
 intolerable." Hence, it has been said well that slander 
 and evil speaking come forth much more from vanity 
 than from malice; for we give credence and currency 
 to an ill trait or bad report, not maliciously to do 
 another harm, but from vainglor}'^, to support our own 
 conceit of ourselves, and shore up our claim of superi- 
 ority. 
 
 Vainglory is ridiculous, for it is then a question with 
 what a man compares himself. With a low standard ? 
 But he is not made a mountain because his measure is 
 a mole-hill. Or with a high standard? Then cer- 
 tainly he will not vaunt himself. Or if he be among 
 the very great and grand spirits who might boast of 
 themselves, if any might, but who always are those 
 who do not, then must he compare himself with the 
 vastness of knowledge and with the greatness of the 
 earth and of the heavens. But to himself then he will 
 seem to sink into these as if lost or dissolved or dis- 
 appearing in their glory; and when he remembers 
 himself, it will be only to be humbled and quelled. 
 
 To be vain of our own faculty is as foolish as to be 
 conceited over another man's work; for as no man 
 made himself, it is not what he is, but only what 
 he does with his material, that can be praise to himj 
 
28 Of Vainglory 
 
 and even over this he must be humble in proportion 
 as God has dealt him a fine tool with which to work. 
 Humility, dignity and gratefulness are three virtues 
 that go close together, and they frequent the cave of 
 silence. Much speaking, and especially eager speak- 
 ing, is like to be proud speaking. For when wisdom 
 forces utterance, there can not be high-flown words 
 nor a swelling manner; but if the object be to display 
 parts and set off wit, speech eagerly will forestall and 
 engross. 
 
 It is a common remark that vanity stands in the way 
 of learning; for no man will seek anything more or 
 better if he is satisfied with what he is. But it is a 
 deeper thought, touching our lives more nearly, that 
 vanity distorts experience; for some emotions it fends 
 off, and others it invites too often or intensifies. It 
 keeps away or weakens fear, of which there is a 
 worthy and useful kind ; and love and hope. For an 
 unabashed and forward man will not be humble 
 enough to fear, nor self-forgetful enough to love, nor 
 devout enough to hope. But vanity opens the way to 
 hatred, to jealousy, to shame, and puts an especial 
 sting in them. For the consequential will make great 
 account of any hurt that is done them; and, says La 
 Rochefoucauld, " the reason why the pangs of shame 
 and jealousy are so sharp is this: vanity gives us no 
 aid in supporting them." Also, he says: " The most 
 violent passions have their intermissions, but vanity 
 gives us no respite." Strong emotions, which are 
 great disturbers of the mind, at least are not perpetual, 
 but leave us breathing space in which the mind girds 
 
Of Luck 29 
 
 itself anew. But vanity is always agitating us, and 
 leaves us no moments free from its distortion of our 
 vision. Though egotism is called sometimes an 
 armor in which one is proof against the pangs of self- 
 distrust and of the sense of short-coming, it has very 
 great mishaps of its own; for it meets continually 
 with great shocks, and there is nothing to mitigate its 
 pain, since by its nature it stands alone and unsup- 
 ported. 
 
 The worst vanity is that which never makes any 
 pretense or tries to display any parts, but angrily or 
 sulkily expects attention or gifts without even the 
 pains to appear to deserve them. This egotism is 
 offended when any one else is honored. There are 
 some who never work, but make huge claim to 
 attention for what they are, and are angry if people 
 do not bow to them because they might do great 
 things if they would. To be always comparing our- 
 selves with others is the most insidious vanity. 
 
 Finally, vainglorious persons always will fail of 
 true honor, because they bestow it on themselves. 
 All decoration must come from others. Humility 
 waits to receive the reward if others give it, and, 
 therefore, if crowned, is securely crowned, both by 
 authority and with concurrent good will. 
 
 OF LUCK 
 
 Luck has three meanings in common usage. All 
 the meanings agree that luck is something which 
 
30 Of Luck 
 
 affects our interests in some manner; for who would 
 speak of the falling of a leaf in one place or another 
 as luck, or call it lucky howsoever a raindrop falls, 
 whether in a pond or on the soil ? But to this agree- 
 ment there are added disagreements, which make the 
 three meanings of the word, namely, that the luck 
 which affects our interests is pure chance without 
 effort of ours, or is pure chance in spite of effort, or is a 
 sujDcr-natural ruling. 
 
 As to the first meaning, it is without question that 
 frequently we observe events which are matters of 
 pure chance. Not that in these there is no law, for 
 there is as much a law of chance as of the spheres; 
 chance means not chaos. But there befall pure 
 chances, without will or purpose apparently, either 
 for them or against them. Fi'om a friend I had an 
 account of his finding one day a bird hung by a 
 horse-hair under the eaves of his house. It was 
 plain the little creature had been using the hair in 
 making its nest, and, disposing it with its bill, in some 
 way had made a running knot in the hair; or per- 
 haps the knot was there ready-made when the bird 
 picked up the hair from the ground. But, however, 
 it had slipped its head in some way into the noose, and 
 then, launching forth into the air, it was caught about 
 the neck, and there it was hanging dead, with the 
 hair drawn tight around its throat. What a strange 
 chance this was, and with what a cruel look ! Per- 
 haps among all the many millions of birds from the 
 foundation of the earth, none other had hung itself 
 thus with a hair. Charles Dickens records with inter- 
 
Of Ltick 31 
 
 est, and, indeed, too much interest if it be examined 
 minutely, an instance of pure chance. He carelessly 
 wrote down three names of horses entered for the 
 three chief races on a St. Leger day, and, " if you can 
 believe it," he wrote to Forster, " without your hair 
 standing on end, those three races were won, 
 one after the other, by those three horses." But 
 Richard Proctor attacks mathematically the astonish- 
 ment of the great novelist over this chance, and shows 
 that if, out of the many persons witnessing the races, 
 10,000 should try the experiment of Dickens, cer- 
 tainly with two or three, and probably with nine or 
 ten, it would fall out as with the surprised story-teller. 
 I know not whether it be beyond numbers to compute 
 the chance that a bird should be hung to the eaves of 
 a house by a hair. But, however the law of chance 
 may explain these strange things, it is certain 
 they afford no matter to the artist who wishes to 
 draw human life; for fact is very often too strange 
 for fiction, which must go in a middle course, with- 
 out presuming too boldly on the flights of nature. 
 " For," says a story-writer about his art, " many of 
 these things are too singular to be accepted as natural 
 invention," and adds that " it would be foolish to put 
 in a book such a character as Napoleon Bonaparte." 
 As to the second meaning of luck, that it is pure 
 chance in spite of our efforts either way, this is the 
 signification which plays the greatest part in the world, 
 and often is injurious. It is said very truly that there 
 are some people who have wonderful faculty for 
 finding things and hitting opportunities, and others 
 
33 Of Luck 
 
 who have an opposite luck in losing things and miss- 
 ing openings. Some persons always succeed without 
 visible effort; with others, nothing goes well however 
 they strain. " For it is certain there be those," says 
 Bacon, " whose fortunes are like Homer's verses that 
 have more slide and easiness than the verses of other 
 poets." Of ship captains it is often noted that one 
 has a fame for luck, and another for being unlucky; 
 as an instance of which I have this story from the 
 mouth of a friend: He was acquainted with two 
 captains, one of whom was very daring and venture- 
 some, and the other extremely cautious. He sailed 
 from Europe to America with the former, who 
 pressed on at full speed, day and night, notwithstand- 
 ing the presence of many dangers at that season from 
 huge ice-floes in the ocean. It was learned by the 
 reports of vessels coming in afterwards that he had 
 sailed his headlong course during the whole journey 
 through a narrow strip of deep water between two 
 ice-fields, so that a very little deviation from the 
 course in the night-time would have carried the 
 vessel on a floe and foundered it. Then my friend 
 sailed with the cautious man a long voyage to 
 Oriental parts, and in the same ship came back. Both 
 going and coming the captain crept slowly along his 
 track, under very small sail. To the murmurs and 
 remonstrances of the weary passengers he answered 
 simply that the barometer was low and that he 
 knew his luck. So they crept at a snail's pace, under 
 cloudless skies, without any misadventure, all the way 
 over and nearly all the way back, the barometer 
 
Of Luck 33 
 
 being still obstinately low. But when within a few 
 days of the port, suddenly, while all as usual were 
 enduring impatiently the lagging pace of the vessel, 
 there came out of a clear sky, without warning, a great 
 squall, as if some vast invisible trumpet of cloud had 
 discharged a blast, so that the ship keeled over on her 
 beams, and if she had been carrying full sail surely 
 would have sunk at once. When all was righted and 
 the dreadful blast had swept by, the captain said 
 quietly to the appalled passengers: " Well, what do 
 you think now ? I told you I knew my luck." 
 
 However such things may seem at first, if they be 
 examined deeply it will be found that what appeared 
 to be mere chance, sporting with our efforts and mak- 
 ing game of human plans or knowledge, is really the 
 result of some deep mental qualities in different per- 
 sons. Luck, good or bad, is the invisible play of 
 mind upon affairs, the effect of mental aptitudes and 
 habits which are not in sight, but which work and 
 bring forth their due issues. It seems, especially, not 
 this or that capacity, but a certain admirable balance 
 and joint action of all, which is the source of power. 
 If we could look into the most surprising and constant 
 examples of luck, we should find it, as has been 
 said well, " an exceptionally effective combination of 
 the mental qualities of vigilance, alertness, insight, 
 forethought, tact, skill, quickness of adaption to cir- 
 cumstances, and the ability to foresee a new emergency 
 of circumstances in time to make an advantageous 
 adaptation to it;" and, it is to be added, just in time, 
 neither too early, for that will waste time, nor too 
 
34 Of Luck 
 
 late, for that will not prevent the catastrophe. Again, 
 says the same writer, " Luck is merely a fine sagacity 
 so wrought into the whole mental temperament and 
 habit of action as to be indistinguishable as a special 
 faculty. It appears in the whole manner and life of 
 the person." Bacon says of luck, " Perhaps the 
 way of fortune is like the milken way in the sky, 
 which is a meeting or knot of a number of small 
 stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together. So 
 are there a number of little and scarce discerned 
 virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make 
 men fortunate." Wherefore concerning luck he 
 concludes " that there should be no doubt it is much 
 in a man's self." Emerson in like manner says, 
 " All successful men have agreed in one thing — they 
 were causationists. They believed that things went 
 not by luck, but by law ; belief in compensation, or 
 that nothing is got for nothing, characterizes all 
 valuable minds." 
 
 However we strain, we can not do what is beyond 
 us; and it is good luck to know this. For, " It is the 
 sluggard who says," as a Turkish proverb has it, " I 
 want strength;" but it is a man of little wisdom, 
 which he calls poor luck, who will not know his 
 strength rightly, and makes himself unlucky because 
 he pushes forward beyond his faculty, and so falls by 
 treading on nothing. " Each is bound by his nature," 
 says an ancient Persian, " stand he in valley or on 
 mountain. Scoop thou with hand poor or rich, from 
 ocean or fountain, thou canst but fill thy pitcher." 
 Look for luck, therefore, in a nice balance of all f acul- 
 
Of Luck 35 
 
 ties and judgments. The slow captain who was so 
 cautious, and the quick one who was so rash, had 
 such a difference in them, it is probable, that many 
 consenting indications enabled the adventurous one to 
 judge so closely that he needed but narrow margin, 
 while the other could be equally safe only by being 
 very slow and keeping very far away, because he 
 could not judge the signs well enough to know how 
 far or how near the danger w^as. 
 
 To be passing aright and moving in the same 
 direction as events, is a great source of fortune and of 
 power. There was meaning and wisdom in the 
 humor of a man who accounted for the many rides 
 which lifted him on his way, by saying that he was 
 always going the way of the wagons. For if one is 
 to be helped and carried along, he must either move 
 with the throng or be carried not his own road. 
 Sometimes the secret of luck is a patience which 
 never wearies. There is a Persian saying, " A poor 
 man watched a thousand years before the gate of 
 paradise; then, when he snatched one little nap, it 
 opened and shut." Sometimes luck lies in a strong 
 purpose, for which, however, there must have gone 
 before sufficient precision and attention of thought; of 
 which there is an apt Hindoo fable related thus in 
 " Conway's Sacred Mythology : " 
 
 " In the Grove of Gotema there lived a Brahmin who 
 bought a slieep in another village, who carried it liome on his 
 shoulder to sacrifice He was seen by three rogues, who 
 resolved to take the animal from him by the following strata, 
 gem: Having separated, they agreed to encounter the 
 Brahmin on his road as if coming from different parts. One 
 
36 Of Luck 
 
 of them cried out, ' Oh, Brahmin, why dost thou carry that 
 dog on thy shoulder?' ' It is not a dog,' replied the Brahmin, 
 •it is a sheep for sacrifice.' As he went on the second knave 
 met him and put the same question, whereupon the Brahmin, 
 throwing the sheep on the ground, looked at it again and 
 again. Having replaced it on his shoulder the good man went 
 with mind waving like a string. But when the third rogue 
 met him and said, 'Father, where art thou taking that 
 dog.'' the Brahmin believed his eyes bewitched, threw down 
 the sheep and hurried home, leaving the thieves to feast on 
 that which he had provided for the gods." 
 
 This ill luck was ignorance and superstition; but 
 without confidence in nature who can be fortunate? 
 The poet Schefer calls misfortune a " sin against 
 intelligence," and says: 
 
 " Nor does it help the good to will good things, — 
 Stand at his door all day with open hands, 
 And make himself a heaven of others' woe — 
 If he, meanwhile, as man, is like the blind, 
 Who gropes about on earth as in the dark; 
 For herbs eats deadly poison ; like the child, 
 For crabs, lays hold on scorpions, who, to save 
 His ass from drowning in the foimtain, drowns 
 Himself therein, unskilled to know the signs 
 Of the storm's coming, goes on board his ship, 
 And miserably founders in the gale ! " 
 
 Now, if we understand what unlucky persons are, 
 we shall see that they are to be shunned, or that we 
 are to consort with them only out of kindness or from 
 sympathy, but without joining our interests with 
 theirs; for they are persons who are not harmonious 
 with the condition of things around them, and are 
 as much at issue with life as a bird who should try to 
 live in the water, or a fish to float in the air. If v/e 
 
Of Luck 37 
 
 join with them, it will be to no purpose, for they will 
 involve us. Aurelius utters a like prudence: — 
 
 " In the gymnastic exercises, suppose that a man has torn 
 thee with his nails and by dashing against thy head has 
 inflicted a wound. Well, we neither show any signs of vex- 
 ation, nor are we offended, nor do we suspect him afterwards 
 as a treacherous fellow ; and yet we are on our guard against 
 him, not however as an enemy, nor yet'with suspicion; but we 
 quietly get out of his way." 
 
 But, on the other hand, it is well to seek the neigh- 
 borhood of the lucky, follow their steps, join their 
 enterprises; for this is merely to pay the right hom- 
 age to a harmonious wisdom and to that adaptive 
 balance of faculties in which strength lies. It is 
 a sad part of luck that its power arises from the 
 multitude of those who are unlucky ; for great sums 
 of fortunate things fall to a few persons because so 
 many are unwise, unsound, wasteful, unfit. The most 
 frequent of external causes is, as Bacon says, that " the 
 folly of one man is the fortune of another." This is 
 a sad thought; but there are two thoughts that 
 lighten it; one is, that human love finds great employ- 
 ment by reason of the fact; the other, that power is 
 gathered where it ought to be — to the wise, the 
 alert, the far- thinking and the far-seeing, which is 
 better for the world as it is now, and by this, besides, 
 the number of the lucky will grow. 
 
 As to the third meaning of luck, that there is in it a 
 fate or mysterious power above the common order of 
 nature, it need concern us little. Yet, indeed, although 
 it is passing and ought now to be gone from the bet- 
 ter informed, this idea still binds the ignorant hand 
 
38 Of Seeing Good Things 
 
 and foot. And a sorry binding it is; for who can walk 
 with freedom or power or judgment who thinks him- 
 self lashed from behind by fate, or by a demon, or by 
 Deity? Neither is there any encouragement or 
 dignity m such a thought; for it is but a mean and 
 servile way of shirking our own errors by loading 
 them on Providence. This baseness lies, though 
 amiably covered, in Dryden's saying that " the lucky 
 are the favorites of heaven." But Plutarch's excla- 
 mation is noble when he has told how the captain, 
 at the bursting of the storm, first shortens sail and 
 makes all snug, and then says his prayers: " For God 
 is the brave man's hope, and not the coward's 
 excuse." 
 
 OF SEEING GOOD THINGS 
 
 Plutarch has a shrewd story of a servant whose 
 master had a cellar of wines, some very good and 
 some poor. Being at supper alone, he commanded 
 his servant to bring him some of the poor wine. 
 When afterwards the servant was asked what his 
 master was doing, he answered that he left him call- 
 ing for bad when the good was by him. Life is a 
 feast for the senses in which abundance is furnished 
 for every kind of taste or perception, and some of the 
 things are very good, some not so good. Though we 
 call not for the bad, because we have no need to 
 call, the abundance being within reach of every sense, 
 yet if we take the bad when the good is by us, we are 
 even more foolish than the master in Plutarch's story, 
 
Of Seeing Good Things 39 
 
 because we are not saving our own good things, but 
 denying ourselves nature's bounty, which is no nearer 
 the end for any one's using. There might be some 
 excuse for the man who hoarded his own against 
 some better time to use it, but what excuse for him 
 who pitches on the bad when the whole of nature's 
 good is close to him, and not to be consumed, how- 
 ever enjoyed ? As there are vast multitudes of beau- 
 tiful and good things on every hand, and as there are 
 also many unsightly and painful things, a secret of 
 happiness is to have an eye only for the good things, 
 and to see so many of these that no room is left to see 
 the bad. But this shows that the eye is not the seeing 
 part; hence that many " having eyes see not." The 
 eye can not gather everything because of the vast 
 multitude of things to be seen. Therefore, whatever 
 directs the eye as to what it shall look at is the true 
 seeing faculty. For the eye is but a glass turned 
 about to this or that object by the true seeing power 
 within. What would an eye be that could discern 
 only shades and not lights, either in landscape or pic- 
 ture, and only dark colors but no bright tints, and 
 only angles but no curves? Yet this same must be 
 thought of that truly seeing faculty within, which, 
 turning the eye here or there as it will, directs it only 
 on blots and blemishes. Thus, however, do very 
 many people, who spend all their lives looking so 
 hard for the ills that they never discover the bright, 
 shining things, like an astronomer who should peer 
 forever into blank space between the scattered stars 
 and maintain there were no lights in the sky. It is a 
 
40 Of Seeing Good Things 
 
 nice question how ignorant such a person will be; he 
 will see much, indeed, but yet he will be j^oor from 
 seeing most the bad, unless the world be more bad 
 than good, which hope and religion forbid. But even 
 this gives not the whole amount of the ignorance; 
 for he who sees the bad when the good is by him 
 may see many things, yet the many put together will 
 not equal for value or for pleasure one good and noble 
 thing which he will pass blindly. And one sight 
 which is very seraphic such a person certainly will 
 miss, namely, growth and improvement, the drift and 
 motion of all things, and the beautiful order in which 
 they move when the eye sweeps over them in great 
 masses. For all things " work together for good," 
 and if we could count everything, we should know 
 that the world is a little better to-day than it was yes- 
 terday; or that if there be a halt in it, proofs are not 
 lacking that it is gathering strength to move again 
 and better. But besides missing much joy, these ill- 
 seers become joyless in themselves, for after no great 
 time they become of the same dark hue which they 
 behold everywhere. Says Plutarch: " As dogs bark 
 at all persons indiffcrentl}', so, if thou pcrsccutest 
 everybody that offends thee, thou wilt bring the mat- 
 ter to this pass by thy imprudence, that all things will 
 flow down into this imbecility of thy mind as a place 
 empty and capable of receiving them, and at last thou 
 wilt be filled with nothing but other men's mis- 
 doings." The mind must grow like what it contem- 
 plates. Therefore, artists fill their rooms with beau- 
 tiful objects, pictures, statues, elegant shapes and har- 
 
Of Seeing Good Things 41 
 
 monious colors, all set to heighten each other and 
 inspire the mind by beauty. Now, if this power of 
 beauty be withdrawn, the mind becomes dry and 
 starved; and if it be given ugliness to feed on, it 
 grows unhealthy. They who fasten on the bad when 
 the good is by, suffer a sickness which grows fast, 
 and become, like a plant in the dark, pale and prone. 
 As many little weights will make a huge mass at last, 
 and as perpetual slight blows at last will tear anything 
 to pieces, so it is impossible to say what misery and 
 injury persons make for themselves who have eyes 
 only for troubles, failures, blemishes. This kind of 
 sight brims also with vanity and presumption; for 
 such a person must view himself as far above others; 
 else how dare he walk abroad and show such a bun- 
 dle of faults and blots as others appear to him withal ? 
 Persons who take the bad things of life when the 
 good is by them are worse in another point than the 
 master in Plutarch ; for he at least was sipping his 
 bad wine at a solitary meal; but the carpers and 
 grumblers and critics at life's board do what they can 
 to shame others with being pleased. One has need 
 of a strong heart and grateful si^irit to be cheerful in 
 such company. Some will have it that this defect is 
 altogether in the temperament; but however it be, 
 will and reason should be called in, for the reason 
 should feel the pain of a sick mind as the nerves the 
 torture of a diseased body. There is a great deal in 
 habit; but habit, by its nature, may be dealt with by 
 reason, since there arc moments aside from the habit 
 when we can reflect on it. " If this turn of mind," 
 
42 Of Side- Lights of IfiteUigence 
 
 says Franklin, " were founded in nature, such unhappy 
 persons would be the more to be pitied. But the dis- 
 position to criticise and to be disgusted is perhaps 
 taken up originally by imitation, and is unawares 
 grown into a habit which, though at present strong, 
 may nevertheless be cured when those who have it 
 are convinced of its bad effect on their felicity." 
 Franklin adds this pleasant story: 
 
 "An old philosophical friend of mine was grown from 
 experience very cautious in this particular, and carefully 
 avoided any intimacy with such people. He had, like other 
 philosophers, a thermometer to show him the heat of the 
 weather, and a barometer to mark when it was likely to prove 
 good or bad, but there being no instrument invented to dis- 
 cover at sight this unpleasant disposition in persons, he for 
 that purpose made use of his legs, one of which was remark- 
 ably handsome and the other, by some accident, crooked and 
 deformed. If a stranger at first interview regarded his ugly 
 leg more than his handsome one, he doubted him ; if he spoke 
 of it and took no notice of his handsome one, that was suffi- 
 cient for my philosopher to have no further acquaintance with 
 him. Everybody has not this two-leg instrument; but every 
 one with a little attention may observe signs of that carping 
 disposition and take every precaution to avoid those affected 
 with it. I, therefore, advise those critical, querulous, discon- 
 tented, unhappy people if they wish to be respected and 
 beloved by others and happy in themselves, they should leave 
 off looking at the ugly leg." 
 
 OF SIDE-LIGHTS OF INTELLIGENCE 
 
 Our eyesight is more delicate by a sidelong glance 
 out of the corners of the eye than by straightforward 
 
Of Side-Lights of Intelligence ^% 
 
 vision. Sometimes an intimation of a faint star or a 
 delicate nebulous light in the sky will come thus 
 aslant; when we look directly, it is gone. The like 
 exists in our mental vision. There is a slant look, 
 which is to say, a use of other faculties than the cog- 
 nitive, by which we have sights of truth, glimpses of 
 the real relations of things, gleams of life, which a 
 direct gaze of the intellectual powers reveals not. 
 Intellectual aptitude makes not the whole of intelli- 
 gence; keenness, wit, logical skill, learning, sum 
 not up our sources of the knowledge of life. Our 
 moral condition is important-meaning by moral a 
 vast deal; all, in fact, not called the cognitive powers, 
 especially the different modes of emotion, feeling, 
 intuition, which bind us to other persons. These are 
 love, generosity and many experiences of joy or sor- 
 row in the inner relationships of life. I call these the 
 side-hghts of intelligence. This is only to say that 
 a man is a unit. In exploring truth it is not a part 
 of man called the reason that acts, all else lying 
 quiescent; but the whole man is busy, and all his 
 powers are operative in the understanding of things. 
 There is no cogency of argument in which feeling has 
 not a part, and no perception, discovery, insight, 
 admiration, in which the whole man, heart, mmd, soul 
 and body, religion, love and reason, the mens sana in 
 corf ore sano, are not combined. Foe makes the pro- 
 found remark about a character in one of his analyti- 
 cal stories (I quote from memory): « The Count is a 
 mathematician; as a mathematician alone he will rea- 
 son ill. But he is also a poet; as a mathematician and 
 
44 Of Side-Lights of Intelligence 
 
 poet he will reason exceedingly well." This but says 
 that true reasoning is in looking at the universe with 
 the sum of ourselves. As, if we looked out of doors 
 only with the form sense of the eye, and not with the 
 color sense, we should see, j'et but in part and often 
 untruly, so if we look into the skies or over the earth 
 with the mathematical eye of the mind, or philosoph- 
 ical, or ethical, the poetical sense being shrouded or 
 absent, we shall see not only poorly but untruly. 
 This is a deep truth in morals. No intellectual power 
 can make clear the eye which selfishness or gross- 
 ness has befogged. Call Goethe Olympian, Carlyle 
 grandly rugged and earnest; but the selfishness of 
 both, the infidelities of one and the rude ungrateful- 
 ness of the other, were vitiations of their intelligence, 
 whereof came as much incomj^etence to see the round 
 inii verse as direst stupidity could be; the which very 
 truth Carlyle has uttered, saying, " Hast thou con- 
 sidered how Thought is stronger than Artillery 
 parks, and (were it fifty years after death and martyr- 
 dom, or were it two thousand years) writes and 
 unwrites Acts of Parliament, removes mountains, 
 models the world like soft clay? Also, how the 
 beginning of all Thought worth the name, is Love, 
 and the wise head never yet was without the gener- 
 ous heart? " Give genius its due, whatever that may 
 be; but it is worth considei-ing whether wholeness of 
 growth and completeness of soul be not the rarest and 
 clearest drops of genius which the skies distill, reflec- 
 tive of themselves. Epictetus says: " You will fail 
 least in judgment when you fail least in life." 
 
Of Slde-Lights of Intelligence 45 
 
 Touching these side-lights of intelligence, this inci- 
 dent befell me. An influential writer said to me that 
 he had no sympathy with pictures. " If I have the 
 reality," he said, " why should I wish a picture of it? 
 There is that tree, a beautiful object; but, having the 
 tree, I care not for a little copy of it on paper." The 
 moi*e I brooded on the remark, both the stranger and 
 the more meaning it seemed to me. I wondered 
 whether there was not therein a clew to a mental 
 deficiency which would help explain why, as I think, 
 that writer lingers satisfied in a little transient taveini 
 or stay-house of theology, half-way up the mountain 
 of liberty, of reality and of naturalness. I have made 
 no analysis, but sure I am there is lacking somewhat 
 in the cognition of facts when that side-light of intel- 
 ligence is shut — the side-light, namely, of the sense 
 of the beauty and value of passing nature through 
 the mind of man, of the co- working of the human 
 and the divine in the transcription of beauty from the 
 earth and from the sky, of the union of the individual 
 and the personal. Mere literary skill and power may 
 be not intelligent in the broad and noble sense, because 
 it may serve a record of only what can be seen 
 straight in front, with all the delicate gleams absent 
 that visit the side-glance of the mental eye; hence 
 barren, unreflective of the truth of things, seeming to 
 gleam, but, like painted fire, unmoving, unreviving. 
 
 If a man be not a conglomerate of faculties which 
 act one after the other, as a machine puts forth first 
 one arm and then another shaft, and then some other 
 part until the action return again to the first, but a 
 
46 Of Side- Lights of Intelligence 
 
 unity, the whole acting in every act — if this be so, I 
 say, it is the balance, the sanity, the scope of the mind 
 which give seeing power. Nor is there anything 
 which the mind can do that belongs not in everything 
 it does. If a man be not woman-loving, or a woman 
 be not man-loving, or both be not child-loving, there 
 is no question whether being thus deficient they are 
 impeded in their intelligence, but only whether there 
 be deficiency, that is, whether these qualities which 
 they lack are natural and belong to the complete 
 human being. For if so they be, it is certain that by 
 lack of them intelligence is barred or turned awry in 
 some way, so that either it can not go so far, or will 
 take a crooked course. No matter in what way the 
 soul be partial, whether one quality or another be 
 lacking, the effect is the same, that intelligence halts. 
 If nature be beneficent and we selfish, cheerful and 
 we morose, beautiful and we have no eye for the 
 color or the shape of beauty and no ear for the har- 
 monies of it, if nature be marvelous and we puffed 
 up, sublime and we never humble, infinite order and 
 we groping for miracles, we are mental Ishmaelites, 
 living in barrens, though mounted by wit on swift 
 steeds. 
 
 Emerson says, " Poetry is the one verity;" and in 
 another place, " Genius is a larger imbibing of the 
 common heart;" and again, "There is in all great 
 poets a wisdom of humanity which is superior to the 
 talents they exercise." This brings the law of experi- 
 ence into this matter. So far as we lack any element 
 belonging to humanity, we miss the experience 
 
Of Individuality 47 
 
 pertaining thereto, and experience is a great teacher. 
 Thus we fail to see things rounded as they are, in the 
 order of their relations together; but see them only 
 in fragments, or with some things dropped from 
 their places; which is as if keys or wires be broken 
 from an insti-ument, so that no effort can draw full 
 harmony from it. Matthew Arnold has it that 
 " poetry is at bottom the criticism of life." If this 
 be mated with Emei'son's sayings that " poetry Is 
 the one verity " and the poet's faculty *' is only a 
 larger imbibing- of the common heart," plainly the 
 poet's intelligence will fail if there be lack of quali- 
 ties to take part in the whole circle of life's experience. 
 Therefore, seek not wits, sharp-minded people, the 
 strong, the brilliant, the expressive, the intellectual; 
 but complete persons, who have a symmetry like 
 architecture. 
 
 In sum, knowingness is wholeness; completeness is 
 power to understand. This is the thing to remem- 
 ber, that no matter on what side of us a limitation be, 
 though it seem as far away from the understanding as 
 the poles are asunder, it is sure to report itself in a 
 divided intelligence. It is one portal of sight dark- 
 ened, one side-light veiled, one comprehension cut off 
 from comprehensiveness. 
 
 OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 I WILL distinguish individuality from individualism, 
 and then treat of individuality in two kinds, in opm- 
 ion and in behavior. 
 
48 Of Individuality 
 
 As to the distinguishing of individuality and indi- 
 vidualism it is important but no less easy, for they are 
 very different — indeed, opposites. Both may mean a 
 fact or a doctrine. Individuality as fact, lies in a char- 
 acter of marked difference from others, a mind not 
 molded to a pattern or hewn to a shape. As a doc- 
 trine, individuality is the principle that diversity of 
 character in unity of co-operation is right and natural. 
 Individualism is the direct opposite of Individuality, 
 as I have said ; as a fact, it is withdrawal from asso- 
 ciation into independent action, and ipso facto it is 
 similarity or level likeness of character; for it is cer- 
 tain that as men drift away from each other by dis- 
 association of functions, they must drift Into a generic 
 level of likeness, like the brutes. As a doctrine, indi- 
 vidualism is the assertion that this sameness of nature 
 with uncooperative separation Is the right and natural 
 way. 
 
 With little argument I will dismiss individualism; 
 for though it boasts much with clamor, it offers little 
 with reason. What need to declare It anti-social, as 
 Marcus Aurelius would say, and therefore lacking in 
 a good half of piety? Paul, Socrates, Saadi, Seneca, 
 have said, and almost in the same words, that men are 
 limbs of one another and members of one great body, 
 and if one part suffer all suffer with it. Socrates 
 speaks thus in Xenophon's Memorabilia: " When 
 brothers are unkind it is as If the two hands which 
 God has formed to aid each other, neglecting these 
 duties, should hinder each other; or as if the feet, 
 formed by God to act together, should forget this 
 
Of Individuality 49 
 
 office, and obstruct each other. Now God hath 
 designed brothers to be of greater service to each 
 other than hands or feet or eyes or other members 
 which he hath given in pairs to men." And though 
 this be addressed to two brothers by blood, who were 
 at variance, yet the sage would say the same to all 
 men in moral brotherhood; and the like did Cicero 
 after him. Against individualism I make four counts: 
 first, that when men are gathered in numbers they 
 make perforce an organism, since they are not merely 
 gregarious, like dumb creatures or those who have at 
 most but few gestures or cries by which to communi- 
 cate; but inventive, co-operative; in which state what 
 hurts the organism harms every part thereof. When 
 is anything useful to a part that is not good for the 
 whole? Marcus Aurelius says: *' Whatever is not 
 good for the swarm is not good for the bee." Sec- 
 ondly, I count it as against individualism, that every 
 one has need of others; for of all creatures man is 
 most incomplete in solitude. When either in mind or 
 body had he parts, qualities or tools to suffice for him- 
 self.'' As Seneca has said, *' No one has strength 
 enough of his own to rise out of folly ; one must give 
 another the hand." But Seneca has a wider saying, 
 which is my third count against individualism, namely, 
 "I owe more to humanity than to the individual"; 
 which Schefer, the German, puts thus: " It takes all 
 mankind to make a man, and each man when he dies 
 takes a whole earth away with him." It is to the 
 honor of human nature, and what can be said of no 
 other creature, that the best fruits of all together sut- 
 
5© Of Individuality 
 
 fice for no more than to make each one what he may 
 be. My fourth count is that it is a noble thing and 
 human-Hke to work for others; and how is that pos- 
 sible but by working with others, standing close with 
 them and not apart? It is a noble saying of Seneca, 
 " I fight not for my own liberty, but for my country's; 
 not to live free, but to live among freemen." There- 
 fore, I dismiss individualism, as I have said, by these 
 reasons, and with the authority of the greatest and 
 best men. 
 
 Now, as to individuality, by virtue of which men 
 cleave close to each other in associative action, and the 
 closer they cleave the more and more do they differ 
 in character — as to this I say (the crowning fact and 
 glory of nature in the unfolding or outcoming of 
 mind), I am to consider individuality in opinion and 
 then in behavior. 
 
 Individuality in opinion, or, what is more, in think- 
 ing, is simply one with thinking at all; for he who 
 thinks thereby looks at the thing or the fact itself and 
 takes its measure by observation directly, not content 
 with the measures of others, and still less tying him- 
 self to the authority of their measures or following 
 their currency or convention in things which he has 
 to examine. This is a lofty attribute, whereof a poet 
 says: 
 
 " Whoever lives is individual, 
 
 Without a copy or a precedent, 
 
 And holy, even to God." 
 
 Now, individuality in thinking, or in the result 
 thereof, which is conviction, should have three quali* 
 
Of Individuality 5 1 
 
 ties, and without these it is not a concrete process of 
 thinking, as hght moves, but a wild leaping, as light- 
 ning jumps from one to another point, dazzling with- 
 out illumining, and if it strike, rending. These three 
 qualities arc: First, that the thinking be slow and 
 careful; secondly, that it move with reverence for the 
 thinking of others either past or at hand; and this 
 includes two points — namely, reverence for the wise 
 and good, either close by now or anywhere, and rev- 
 erence for the common drift of the human mind 
 through all the ages. There is a beauty of counsel- 
 taking, and of deferring, waiting, listening, weighing 
 what others say, and looking at what they do for 
 instruction's sake, which is a very fair sight. Zeno, it 
 is recorded, thought it " a proof of greater virtue to 
 adopt the good advice of another than originally to 
 conceive what is just and right." And Epictetus said 
 likewise, " It is beautiful to yield to the law, to the 
 ruler, or to the wiser man." This beauty is individu- 
 ality of thought holding its right gait, and therefore 
 graceful. " Without the individual," one has written, 
 " society is a mush or a war." Yes, assuredly ; because 
 then, either all are alike, in a level that yields noth- 
 ing, as it is dead, or else there is strife of the many 
 who are similar against the few who are different, or 
 a war among all, as with the brutes. But It Is the 
 individual close leaning toward others by individual- 
 ity, and not withdrawing himself into a den by indi- 
 vidualism, which raises society up from a strife and 
 from vacancy; wherefore the same writer says with- 
 out contradiction, " We are all alike; this equality is 
 
52 Of Individuality 
 
 not of merit nor of greatness — rather of our nothing- 
 ness ; equal we are in God, in being by our individual 
 selves nothing." 
 
 The third quality of Individuality in thinking is 
 courage of conviction when once by the other two 
 qualities conviction be reached ; for then is needed as 
 great vigor of maintenance, of argument, of declara- 
 tion, and perhaps of action, as before of slow and rev- 
 erential motion. Of this Sidney Morse has written 
 wisely : 
 
 "Where the individual can form no conviction he must 
 manage as lie can — drift and take pot-luck, as the saying is. 
 But if he reach a conviction he must abide bj it, let all other 
 individuals take other paths. He need not be willful or rash; 
 he can rest on his judgments until he finds that they abide ; he 
 may or may not ' vote urgency ' for his action : but in the end, 
 he can not be false to his own judgments and remain a man, 
 let the w^orld laugh, weep, or damn." 
 
 Conflict in important practical things when it lifts a 
 dire head, as sometimes it does, driving men to pas- 
 sion and pain, comes not from individuality or any 
 assertion thereof, though never so bold, but indeed, 
 from a lack of the same; that is, not from individual 
 thinking, but from non-thinking. For if all think, 
 agreement comes at last, because of three forces 
 which thought has; first, that the thinking of all will 
 correct every one, and conversely that the thinking of 
 every one adds its sum to the thinking of all ; secondly, 
 that they who think most always respect most the 
 thoughts of others, and thus the thinking of no one 
 is lost, but sinks into all deeply; thirdly, that much 
 
Of Individuality 53 
 
 thinking perforce discovers at last the real fact, which 
 then enforces agreement and brings all minds to itself. 
 Now when I turn from individuality in thinking to 
 the same in behavior, the point needs more exposi- 
 tion; for the question arises, what is individuality of 
 action, and how differs it, if in any way, from mere 
 peculiarity or mannerism pushed to eccentric conduct? 
 And in point of behavior, what are the claims of the 
 whole of society and the claims of each part thereof, 
 and the due balance between them ? If one say that 
 every person is most valuable wherein he is most him- 
 self and not another, as I remember that Emerson 
 somewhere has stated, who will gainsay? But if 
 another declare that every person is most valuable 
 wherein he is most in agreement and in union with 
 the whole, and not only with the whole of this time 
 but of all times, and not only with all times on this 
 earth but with the nature of things everywhere, again 
 who will gainsay? Yet at first seem these not differ- 
 ent and opposed ? Otherwise, what is the unity which 
 puts not out individuality? Or what the diversity 
 which interferes not with unity? But it is only at 
 one glance that any contradiction appears herein; to 
 the long look, the coherence is to be seen easily ; as, 
 if one behold a double star with but a glimpse through 
 the telescope, it will appear like two bodies all parted, 
 but with a long look will be seen the center of grav- 
 ity and their revolution around each other by which 
 they are tied in one. By this similitude, we may be 
 led justly to take a hint from an engine in answering 
 how individuality and unity agree. For each part of 
 
54 Of Individuality 
 
 a good machine is strictly individual in shape and in 
 function, but as it tends to the common aim of all the 
 parts, the unity is unbroken, being the gathering of 
 all the parts into the action of the machine, one in 
 object and result, but multiplied in kinds and motions. 
 So diversities or individualities of mind put not unity 
 out so long as they tend to the natural end which is 
 the purpose of the whole. Therefore let a man's 
 manners be as peculiar as they may, if they tend to 
 good will, to social usefulness and to the good of all 
 the race, then his individuality is no breach of unity, 
 but only, as I may say, a variety of language, or a 
 special dialect in which unity speaks. It matters not 
 in behavior that a man gives no special reason for his 
 acts or manners which are peculiar, for they are sim- 
 ply his idiosyncrasies. Let him say boldly it is a 
 whim, if so he wish; for if there be no reason against 
 his manners except that they are not common, if they 
 disturb not the I'easonable aims and rational character 
 of the whole, and are not against social worth, then 
 they disturb not tuiity, how peculiar soever. And it 
 is to be wished, I think, that there were less of level 
 convention in our manners; for thereby what great 
 variety would be added to life, and of a kind very 
 entertaining as well as charming. What then are the 
 things in which a man may be individual in behavior 
 without reproach ? Plainly, the things which are only 
 modes of expression of the rightful purpose of the 
 whole, or different motions in a work which is the 
 continuity of the whole, as in the engine the same 
 end may be gained by this motion or by that or by 
 
Of Questions of Heroism 55 
 
 another. But in the aim of his work, or in the mean- 
 ing of his expressions, let no man differ recklessly 
 from others without studying whether also he differ 
 from the whole. For he ought to agree with the 
 drift of all times and with the nature of things, which 
 is good and holy. 
 
 Of individuality I conclude, that it inheres as to 
 function not in separation, but in association, and not 
 in independence, but in interdependence; and as to 
 thought, in self-accountableness, but joined with rev- 
 erence for all others ; and as to behavior, in absolute lib- 
 erty, so the social aim be not abused. Thus in all, in 
 function, in thinking, in behavior, individuality is the 
 final finishing and supple shaping of a part which fits 
 by its special figure into the operation of the whole. 
 
 OF QUESTIONS OF HEROISM 
 
 The Roman consul Brutus has had great fame 
 because he condemned his two sons to death for con- 
 spiracy against the State. In this austere judgment 
 some modern judges have followed him. Like to 
 this is a storied scene on an English naval vessel, 
 wherein a man was commanded to flog his son 
 and obeyed. This is a Spartan trait, like that which 
 Plutarch records of the Spartan women, when the 
 messengers came home from the fatal battle of Leuc- 
 tra. The mothers whose sons were slain in the bat- 
 tle openly rejoiced, cheerfully made visits, and met 
 triumphantly in the temples; but they who expected 
 
56 Of Questions of Heroism 
 
 their children home, having heard that they had sur- 
 vived, vv^ere silent and troubled. It is a question 
 whether these deeds be truly heroic. It w^ill honor 
 our nature to say that this Spartan virtue is no virtue, 
 but only a distorted growth wherein as much force is 
 taken ofiE the side of love as is laid on the side of 
 endurance, and as much withdrawn from the private 
 as is added to the public devotion, making the char- 
 acter an unsightly hollow on the one side and excres- 
 cence on the other. The private sphere, where the 
 affections run, has its laws and its claims to loyalty as 
 much as the public sphere where we act as citizens. 
 There will be often a question what the right action 
 is, and whether the private or the public claim shall 
 prevail. But this can not be decided in advance for 
 every case by one rule; and as, if claims conflict, 
 always there will be a question, so sometimes it may 
 be a nice or difficult one. If the stern Roman judge 
 was brought to the point whether as a magistrate to 
 condemn his sons, or to resign because he was their 
 father, that some other might condemn them who 
 could do the State justice and the heart of the father 
 no violence, why should he not abdicate, since he 
 would preserve the honor of the gentleness of the 
 soul and do the State no wrong? In truth, he would 
 bear double testimony, being a witness for love by his 
 refusal to sentence and a witness for justice by his 
 abdication of office. Thus did, though in a small 
 case, a Keeper of the Seals in France; for when the 
 King, with his own hands, affixed the seals to a cor- 
 rupt pardon of a prisoner, the Minister refused to 
 
Of Questions of Heroism 57 
 
 take them again, saying, " The seals have twice put 
 me in a position of great honor: once when I received 
 them, and again when I resigned them. In the one 
 instance, the honor was from the law and the King; 
 in the other, from justice and from the King of 
 Kings." So might the Roman judge have descended 
 from the judgment seat, saying witli dignity, " This 
 office has twice honored me — once when I took it, 
 the honor being from my country, and now when I 
 resign it, the honor being from the humanity within 
 me." 
 
 The question in general is this: How much do we 
 belong to the whole, and how much to each house- 
 hold and to each heart? The household exists not 
 merely for the whole, but for itself also; and the 
 whole not merely for itself, but for the household 
 also; and each has its domain. That there may be a 
 private heroism of endurance above any general 
 obligation will be plain, if we take some cases; for if 
 a man shared in a robbery, and then in stress to screen 
 himself , denounced his comrade to the law, we should 
 call the act treacherous and infamous. For in such a 
 case there would be a private law of devotion which 
 every honest heart would admit exceeded the public 
 claim. John Weiss said well that a wife would be no 
 wife in his eyes who would not defend and secrete 
 and preserve him if he were pursued for a crime, 
 though justly; for herein sacred devotion of one for 
 one must exceed the claim of the whole on the one. 
 So thought the King of France when Mme. Lava- 
 lette helped her husband to escape in her clothes; for 
 
58 Of Questions of Heroism 
 
 when different officers were excusing themselves 
 from blame, the King answered coolly, " I do not 
 see that anybody has done his duty, except Mnie. 
 Lavalette." 
 
 In all matters touching the heart there are two 
 kinds of desert: The desert of fine qualities in gen- 
 eral which have a claim to homage from all behold- 
 ers, and which a friend has pride and joy in seeing; 
 and also especial desert from the friend because of 
 private virtues and fidelity that encompass him faith- 
 fully. The two do not concur necessarily, and per- 
 haps in some cases they will conflict. Then let me 
 give what is deserved from me, and let the social 
 union attend to its own matters; for, for the time, 
 it is not society, with me in it, which is arrayed 
 against my friend, but society which is marshaled 
 against my friend and me on the other side, where I 
 belong with him. This is only to say that the heart 
 has rights as inalienable as understanding or judg- 
 ment or justice or punishment. To say which is not 
 weakness or merely sentiment, but strength and 
 thought. There is a story of one of the Old Bailey 
 Judges who pointed out a jur3-man to another Judge 
 and said: " Look at that man. We shall not have a 
 single conviction to-day for any capital offense." But 
 this was not to call the man a weak fellow. When 
 tears were noticed in Thackeray's eyes, a critic said it 
 was conceivable the great novelist had a cold in his 
 head but it was better to give him credit for force in 
 his heart. So the humane jurj^man might have been, 
 indeed, a bit of a weakling, but also he might have 
 
Of Praising- 59 
 
 been a strong man who was able to give feeling its 
 due part in judgment. There are dark corners where 
 the blind man is better than the man who has eyes, 
 because neither can see, but the one has a finer sense 
 of touch. So there are dark places of human experi- 
 ence where the most shrewd intelligence and cautious 
 reason have no sight, but where a tender sense avails. 
 
 OF PRAISING 
 
 I MUST call praising a liberty. It savors, unless 
 between near friends, of superiority, or the assump- 
 tion thereof, seeming to say that we are proper judges 
 and that our commendation is an honor. Therefore 
 praising is not to be done by inferiors to superiors, 
 except with extreme delicacy and care; and then 
 sparingly and in a modest word or two; as by the 
 ignorant to the learned, by the lowly in position to 
 the high or commanding, especially by the young to 
 the old. Nevertheless, press not this too strongly, 
 for any one's honest approval or admiration is a wor- 
 thy reward for the highest virtue or greatness, if only 
 it be a sincere and modest exaltation; nor will any 
 seeming greatness be great that scorns the admiration 
 of the simple and the true. 
 
 It is a point of good manners to praise, if manners 
 be founded in good feeling; for good praising be- 
 stows much pleasure. A Frenchman defined polite- 
 ness as an art to keep one person from knowing 
 that we prefer another person — surely a gentle and 
 
6o Of Praising' 
 
 reasonable account of good manners, since it would 
 make a unit of all companies and leave our prefer- 
 ences or endearments where they belong, to private 
 moments. So likewise it will be gentle manners if 
 we keep another from thinking that he gives us no 
 pleasure or merits not our approval, or that we hold 
 ourselves above him in any way; and this can be done 
 by good praising, for which we must gather, with 
 both kind intention and sincere judgment, the things 
 m which he has done well. So far good manners 
 carry; but, furthermore, we must praise if we will be 
 either generous or honest. Emerson says, and nobly, 
 " Our very abstaining to repeat and credit a fine remark 
 of our friend is thievish." If it be selfish not to give 
 what we can, and fraudulent to withhold whdt another 
 has earned, then to be unmindful of praising is 
 ungenerous, to be unwilling is dishonest. Some per- 
 sons are so thievish, indeed, and such collectors for 
 themselves, that they deem praise bestowed on others 
 as so much withheld from their own merits; but this 
 IS a base and miserly envy, which can glorify no 
 other's virtue without avaricious pain. 
 
 To praise well is a difficult art, an intellectual and 
 moral feat, to which must go delicacy and cultivation 
 of mmd, thought and nice perception, and chivalrous 
 generosity. How fine was the eulogy of Frederick 
 the Great at a state feast, when he withdrew a brave 
 Austrian general from the opposite side of the table 
 and placed him near the royal seat, saying, « I have 
 always wished to see you at my side rather than facing 
 me." But, contrariwise, Nicole's compliments were 
 
Of Praising 6l 
 
 saved from offense only by their comedy. When the 
 bashful scholar was summoned to a company by a 
 Parisian beauty to grace her hospitality, he retired as 
 soon as he could, covering his retreat with clouds of 
 fine speeches, in which he informed his hostess that 
 her "lovely little eyes" were irresistible; but being 
 reproached outside by a friend, who told him he had 
 accused the lady of what all her sex thought a defect, 
 the dismayed scholar returned abruptly to the com- 
 pany, humbly begged pardon for his error, and 
 exclaimed: "Madam, I never beheld such fine large 
 eyes, such fine large lips, such fine large hands, or so 
 fine and large a person altogether in the whole course 
 of my life." When a man who usually was mute 
 spoke wisely and well, but pleaded at the beginning 
 that his habitual silence should excuse his deficiencies, 
 a lady said to him afterward: "Sir, I like the speech 
 of silent men," which was very elegant praise. So 
 said one humble in station to a scholar: "When I 
 talk with you I forget you know more than I do." 
 Whether to bestow this high praise or to earn It was 
 the more admirable may be questioned. Weiss said 
 " the gift of appreciation is as divine as the dignity of 
 being appreciated." Thus may two sit on a level 
 who seem, to outward sight, far parted. But some 
 praise is very repulsive. Such is formal praise, insin- 
 cere praise, conventional matter-of-course compliment, 
 intemperate and coarse commendation which out- 
 reaches truth and covers with confusion, public praise 
 wherein it should be private, and general praise 
 wherein it should be particular and discriminating. 
 
62 Of Praising 
 
 The one simple rule is this: Praise should be first 
 true, that is, temperate and thoughtful; and then gen- 
 erous, that is, living and warm. It is well not to 
 venture on praise at the moment, for it is a matter 
 well worthy of preparation. 
 
 Praise should have regard also to the character of 
 the person to be commended, — as whether he need 
 encouragement or restraint, enlargement or suppres- 
 sion. Some may think praise never should be given 
 to the self-satisfied; but this may be questioned; for 
 if vanity be very great, praise will add little to it, and 
 if the praise be not granted when it is just, there will 
 be no room for censure when it will be salutary. 
 
 It is well sometimes to put praise in writing, which 
 enlarges our liberty and yet spares the face of our 
 friend. Written words are like a tender veil behind 
 which we may speak more warmly ; or like the cast- 
 ing down of the eyes, which is instinctive when very 
 precious things are to be said. Writing may add also 
 elegance and wisdom. When Doctor Balguy (I know 
 not whether the father, John, or the son, Thomas ; 
 but either it might be, for the father had the wisdom 
 to burn his sermons that his son might be left to his 
 own labors, and the son had the wisdom to profit by 
 his father's discretion) once preached from the text, 
 "All wisdom is sorrow," he received these lines from 
 a hearer: 
 
 " If what you advance, dear Doctor, be true, 
 That wisdom is sorrow, how wretched are you ! " 
 
 Praising is a great privilege of friendship, and 
 equally a duty. A privilege, because friends stand 
 
Of Praising 63 
 
 on that equal ground which makes praising the great- 
 est pleasure, and the praise a great boon. And duty, 
 because the helpfulness of praise Is so great that to 
 be unpraiseful when our friend has deserved well is 
 as if we should refuse him our hand in his efforts; 
 for to praise him lovingly for what he has done is to 
 give him a strong hand in what he shall try to do. 
 Sidney Lanier wrote in a letter to a friend, — " I thank 
 you heartily for your encouraging commendations of 
 my little poem. Much reflection convinces me that 
 praise is no ignoble stimulus, and that the artist should 
 not despise it." What can be colder, more unlove- 
 like, more disappointing and uncherishing than to 
 walk beside your comrade, many years perhaps, 
 unmindful to cheer his successes or his noble efforts 
 with your warm praise for the moment and with yet 
 warmer help growing therefrom for the future? A 
 friend should so regard his friend in his heail that, as 
 Brutus says of Caesar, " His glories are not extenu- 
 ated wherein he was worthy, nor his offenses en- 
 forced," but kindly turned into correction. It is one 
 of the joys of love that the vocabulary of praise is 
 Increased by it; for large measures of it may go in a 
 look, a touch, and that, too, with the greatest privacy 
 In large companies. 
 
 In sum, as praising Is a liberty, let It be modest and 
 observant; as it is a justice, let it be rendered; as It 
 is a privilege, let It be welcomed; as It is an art, let It 
 be studied. 
 
OF CENSURE 
 
 Censure is first judgment. So in Latin and so in 
 English primarily, in sense, however it be in time; as 
 in Shakespeare, in Brutus's speech to the Roman 
 populace — " Censure me in your wisdom and awake 
 your senses that you may the better judge;" wherein 
 the meaning is shown in reading if the emphasis be 
 laid properly on better. The same appears in censor^ 
 which means an officer of judgment either to approve 
 or condemn. 
 
 An ancient stoic said wisely, " Men are made better 
 by bearing with them, worse by fault-finding." True; 
 yet not showing censure either useless or hurtful. 
 For petulance, complaining, carping, invective, the 
 clattering of a scold in what shape soever, is not cen- 
 sure; nor more even is criticism censure, unless it have 
 a genius above discontent. For whether it be spite 
 or envy or churlishness or whatsover, that makes one 
 hard to please, they to whom a fault looks big and a 
 virtue little can not censure, even when perchance 
 they judge; for no one attends to them. Moreover, 
 if it be just to censure wrong, it is still a higher jus- 
 tice to be silent unless we can help in finding the 
 right. A stoic said wisely, " If thou be able, teach 
 others what is right; but if thou be not able, remem- 
 ber to be meek on that account." Censure must have 
 two parties, and both noble ; for the reprover must be 
 high above peevishness, and more lured by a merit 
 
 (64) 
 
Of Censure 65 
 
 than sharp for a fault; otherwise he is a pretender 
 who fingers a sore without ointment; and the one re- 
 proved must revere worth and judgment when it is 
 before him ; otherwise in effect he is berated, not cen- 
 sured. Wherefore some never can censure because 
 they enforce no reverence, and some never can be 
 censured because they are too vain or too empty to 
 pay the reverence. 
 
 By its nature, censure must be rare, because it has a 
 greatness which is rare in itself, or comes only on 
 great occasions, which are few. Herein lies the wis- 
 dom of the stoic, that men are made worse by fault- 
 finding, for to notice faults often is to censure never. 
 Likewise, indirect reprimand, starting thought and 
 leaving it, is very powerful censure. This did the 
 English press, after the French refugees had cele- 
 brated the death of King Louis with a great revel. 
 On the next anniversary of the death of Charles, the 
 journals announced, " To-morrow is the anniversary 
 of the martyrdom of Charles the First. The French 
 are acquainted there will be no ball." The like indi- 
 rectness may be given by wit covering the reproach, 
 so it fall not into a Pasquin's diversion, for the wit's 
 sake, to sport a smart sneer. Then the ambushed 
 censure, suddenly bursting forth, can do much. Thus 
 a genial wit admonished "a very middling" poet, 
 whose humor it was to decry and jeer all other poets. 
 When once he cried, vehemently, that he " knew not 
 a worse lyric poet than Guillard," "Ah, Chevalier," 
 said his friend, " you forget yourself " — laying a gentle 
 stress on forget^ as if to reprove the noise of the man- 
 
66 Of Censure 
 
 ner, but leaving to private discovery the mental em- 
 phasis which branded the vanity. Whether it be 
 covered by wit or by indirectness, or howsoever, pri- 
 vacy is a condition of censure, for public correction 
 shames too much to help more. Sometimes many are 
 to be joined in the censure, because they have been 
 joined in the error. But let there be no witnesses on 
 a hill of advantage. 
 
 Censure never can be glad or even willing, for to 
 be pleased to blame is horrible, and either malice or 
 vanity, which the chided person, though blame- 
 worthy, instantly will detect, and which will degrade 
 the censure, though just, to presumption or spite. 
 Whoso sets off his own good with another's ill has 
 an interest in every cause, and can not judge. Says 
 Aurelius: "Thou must censure neither with any 
 double meaning nor in the way of reproach, but 
 affectionately and without any rancor in thy soul, and 
 not as if thou wert lecturing him, nor yet that any 
 bystander may admire, but when he is alone." Good 
 censui-e is a great guide and pathfinder — none better 
 — but as it hangs on a right mind in two persons, so 
 it leads once more by two paths to humility, which 
 seems the soul of all virtues; for if censure be given 
 not humbly, it is no censure, and if not taken humbly, 
 it is no guide. 
 
 Great censures are among the loftiest scenes of his- 
 tory. Such was Nathan's tender parable and stern 
 " Thou art the man" to David; and Socrates' defense, 
 wherein gloriously he judged his judges; and Jesus' 
 censure of the priest's officer: "If I have spoken evil, 
 
Of Censure ^7 
 
 bear witness of the evil, but if well, why smitest thou 
 me?" Such was Huss's censure of the Emperor, 
 burning the royal cheek with shame's embers— a his- 
 toric blush, which remembering Charles refused to 
 seize Luther, saying: " I wish not to blush like Sigis- 
 mund." It was a grand censure and a notable 
 moment when John Knox admonished Mary, the 
 more that, in contrast, the Queen's haughty repri- 
 mand was no better than hard words: "What have 
 you to do with my marriage?" she cried, "or what 
 are you in this commonwealth?" "A subject born 
 within the same," Knox answered, " and albeit I be 
 neither earl, lord nor baron in it, yet has God made 
 me (how abject that ever I be in your eyes) a profit- 
 able member within the same. Yea, madam, to me 
 it appertains no less to forewarn of such things as 
 may hurt it, if I foresee them, than it doth to any of 
 the nobility, for both my vocation and my conscience 
 require plainness of me." 
 
 The censure of a friend is the best, for then the 
 faithfulness and courage are as dear as they are noble, 
 and the manner has two potencies— love's and truth's. 
 Plutarch relates Phocion's saying to Antipater: "You 
 can not have me for both a friend and a flatterer." I 
 saw once a speechless surprise flood a gentle face, 
 fading instantly for love's sake; but the censure was 
 mighty and never passed— a holy force, a breastplate 
 under the cloak. 
 
 Censure and praise are joined powers. He can do 
 neither who can not both; for whoso never praises 
 will have no credit for his censure, since he lacks the 
 
6S Of Censure 
 
 brighter half of justice; and if one never censure, 
 praise is like a heart, which dies when the head is off. 
 Also, whoso is open for praise but not for censure will 
 not be quickened by the honor, but only puffed out by 
 it; for he thinks not of growth, but of pleasure; 
 which he will find in the applause of others, but not 
 in painful demands on himself. A man had a friend 
 whom dearly he loved, the more that she was a 
 woman; for so God has made the two. For a time 
 she was good and gentle, and once when she saW that 
 he did ill she censured him with so sweet wisdom that 
 he rejoiced in her the more. Afterward, because he 
 had praised and honored her, she grew vain, showed 
 him pride, and made merry at him- When he rea- 
 soned with her and besought her, she forsook all 
 deference, quoted him for defense raveled shreds of 
 philosophy, made light of his words, and threatened 
 him. So that no longer he could keep his trust and 
 admiration, and therewith perished the joy of his 
 affection. Now so it happened that aftei'ward the 
 man (for he was a scholar) did something in his work 
 which many people valued, and the woman also 
 wrote him her applause; but sadly he answered: 
 " Your approval is not commendation, nor is your dis- 
 approval censure." Mournful, surely; whether just I 
 can not argue ; but right in this, that if she had for- 
 feited her power to censure, then also her power to 
 praise. 
 
OF FLATTERY 
 
 Flattery, says our lexicographer, is connected 
 with flat, and means, first, to rub or smooth down 
 with the hand : hence to please or cajole. In a like 
 sense the adjective " flat " is used in metaphor, as in 
 the saying, " That is flat," meaning certain, imperative, 
 unchangeable, as on a flat plain where nothing rises to 
 hinder the eye. So in the expression, " a flat denial." 
 The Greeks had a like phrase, " a flat or wide oath," 
 meaning strong and obligatory. Thus, etymologi- 
 cally, when one is flattered successfully, then comes a 
 flat or open state in which one is seen plainly at the 
 shameful point and truth of the weakness, like any- 
 thing on a level plain which cannot be hid. 
 
 Flattery itself is not so plain always as its success. 
 It has a cunning which lackeys it as well as wit 
 squires sarcasm or ridicule serves humor; nay, even it 
 may be put forward in pretense when the purpose is 
 to jeer under shadow of it. It fell to a humble friar 
 to preach before a cardinal (so runs it in Peignot's 
 Predicaioriana^ by my memory, for I have not the 
 book by me), and the great man was astonished at the 
 ease and courage of the humble monk, and questioned 
 him thereon. " It is easily explained," said the friar, 
 " for when I learned that I was to preach before your 
 Eminence I repeated my sermon many times to a bed 
 of cabbages, among which was a red one, and that 
 accustomed me to your presence." Now, this, indeed, 
 (69) 
 
yo Of Flattery 
 
 might be rustic simplicity, doing true homage (though 
 in so foolish a way) which, perhaps, the cardinal 
 might take in such spirit as did Theseus " the intents 
 extremely stretched" of the hard-handed men; 
 
 " Our sport shall be to take what they mistake, 
 And what poor duty can not do, 
 Noble respect takes it in might not merit; 
 
 And in the modesty of fearful duty 
 I read as much as from the rattling tongue 
 Of saucy and audacious eloquence. 
 Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity 
 In least speak most to my capacity. " 
 
 But if the friar's was not such a simplicity, then a flat 
 impudence, craftily cloaked. Not like this, but a plain 
 jeer, was Swift's shrewdness when preaching on 
 pride. He said : " My dear hearers, there are four 
 kinds of pride: pride of birth, pride of fortune, pride 
 of beauty, and pride of intellect. I will speak to you 
 of the first three ; as to the fourth, I shall say nothing 
 of that, there being no one among you who can pos- 
 sibly be accused of this reprehensible fault." But 
 whatever the friar intended by his cabbage-head, the 
 pulpit, though often faithful against power, sometimes 
 has worn skirts not clean of flattery before high 
 persons. It is told of the Third George that he 
 commanded the clergy called to preach before the 
 court to pay him no compliment, saying " that he came 
 to chapel to hear the praises of God and not his own." 
 Pulpit flattery sometimes either has been very ven- 
 turesome or has had the shrewd knowledge to count 
 on a vast appetite and digestion in the audience, A 
 
Of Flattery 71 
 
 Capuchin, preaching before Louis XIV. at Fontaine- 
 bleau, began with: " My brethren, we shall all die," 
 and then flattered the King thus amazingly: "Yes, 
 sire, almost all of us shall die " — broad to the point of 
 clownishness. More ingenious was the gray friar 
 preaching before an archbishop whose family name 
 was Levi^ on the subject of the Trinity : " It would 
 seem to me impossible, my Lord," said the friar, " to 
 succeed in a theme so lofty if I did not avail myself of 
 the intercession of madame, your cousin^ by saying to 
 her Ave Maria^"^ In contrast, thus spoke the Father 
 Seraphin to Louis: "Sire, I am not ignorant of the 
 custom which requires me to salute you with a com- 
 pliment; but I beg your Majesty to excuse me from 
 it; I have looked through the Holy Scriptures for a 
 compliment, and I have been so unhappy as not to 
 find a single one." 
 
 Flattery has the weakness of all lies, the meanness 
 of treacherous ones and the cowardice of small ones. 
 For seldom it can plead great occasion or object, being 
 commonly no more than a complaisance; but if it have 
 an object, then flattery is the taking crafty advantage 
 of weakness, which honor holds odious. Either way, 
 being a lie, it has the seeds of death. But of all lies, 
 flattery is either the weakest or the strongest; for 
 either at once it is detected, and so is weak past stand- 
 ing, or else accepted, and then mighty for injui-y ; for 
 what so great hurt to a man as to be kept in a vain, 
 empty and absurd error about himself? 
 
 Nature is honest with us; nay, the elements have 
 even no rewards for virtue. The sun and rain fall 
 
'J2 Of Flattery 
 
 alike on the just and on the unjust, the rude wind 
 hustles the peer and the plowman the same, and break- 
 ing waters balk beggars and kings. " The icy fang 
 and churlish chiding of the winter's wind" with 
 the same appetite gnaws roughened and pampered 
 flesh, as said the banished duke: 
 
 " When it bites ajid blows upon mj body, 
 Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and saj, 
 'This is no flattery;' these are counselors 
 That feelingly persuade me what I am." 
 
 Therefore says Plutarch, " I like the observation of 
 Carneades, who used to say that young princes and 
 noblemen never arrived at a tolerable perfection in 
 anything they learned except riding. For their pre- 
 ceptors spoiled them at school by extolling all their 
 performances and their wrestling masters by always 
 taking the foil. Whereas the horse, who knows no 
 distinction between a private man and a magistrate, 
 betwixt the rich and the poor, will certainly throw 
 his rider if he knows not how to sit him, let him be 
 of what quality he pleases." 
 
 As nature, so the world is mainly plain with us. 
 Only private persons flatter. Therefore, they who 
 have been bepraised and lulled to satisfaction in small 
 companies or at home, find a cold trial and a fall when 
 then they go out into the wide and truthful world. 
 Sometimes multitudes seem to flatter, but that is only 
 when they beset the very powerful whose might 
 stretches widely, as great emperors, or smaller tyrants 
 among their own retinue. Even then, really it is but 
 a small part of the world that flatters, and for a 
 
Of Flattery 73 
 
 little time; but over the earth and in duration, the 
 plain truth is spoken and character set in its place. 
 
 Flattery has many grades. There are fine kinds 
 and coarse. There is skill at it, and again bungling 
 and clownish performance. An insidious delicacy of 
 flattery is found which, like poison drowned in wine, 
 will overthrow the greatest strength, except one 
 above appetite for any drink — like the working of 
 Decius on Ccesar: 
 
 " I can o'er-sway him, for he loves to hear 
 That unicorns may be betrayed with trees, 
 And bears with glasses, elephants with holes, 
 Lions with toils, and men with flatterers; 
 But when I tell him he hates tiatterers, 
 He says he does, being then most flattered. 
 Let me work." 
 
 Sometimes it is a very subtle flattery to ask advice; 
 and this some monarchs and captains are said to have 
 understood and to have worked therewith. For who 
 can withstand the delight of the honor that his judg- 
 ment is asked and his reason set in repute? When the 
 act is not a deference to wisdom, but a playing on folly, 
 it is wrong, mean, false, though it wear an innocent 
 look. But well, when so much respect for human 
 nature fills us that we can ask the thoughts even of 
 the simple, and weigh them seriously ; well, too, and a 
 great power indeed, when we have such sight into 
 minds and characters as to know and judge the worth of 
 each, and in what way to ask advice or on what points. 
 
 Flattery may be conveyed without speech; but are 
 deferential manners flatteries? No, but graces. But 
 if toward tlie bad, the frivolous, the tyrannous, then 
 
74 Of Flattery 
 
 flatteries? No, but only respect for one's own proper 
 gentlehood and a right recognition of human nature, 
 not bent by the bad specimens thereof before us. But 
 I speak of noble, high, sincere manners; for there is 
 a behavior which none could describe to blame it, nor 
 catch to count its false elements, but which is like a 
 brimming vessel of bad drugs spilling everywhere. 
 
 It is worth thought what kind of mind or condition 
 or disposition is open to flattery ; for poison would not 
 be spread if the rats ate it not. There are two ways 
 to be flattered. First, to be delighted with joraise with- 
 out reference to our quality of work and without 
 thought of what we deserve; or secondly, to be elated 
 or puffed in our own esteem by it, so as to believe our- 
 selves as fine as we are cajoled to believe. The first 
 always will take the second with it; for no one will 
 be charmed by praise unqualified by work unless de- 
 luded as to his value. But perhaps the second may 
 exist without the first; for though very vain and 
 puffed and aiming at self-exaltation, yet one may 
 really work for the credit, to compel it by perform- 
 ance; and that is nobler than the other, because, 
 though a bargain for a mean motive, yet the payment 
 is honest. Now, as there are two ways to be flattered, 
 so there are two elements in work, — the work-mo- 
 tive itself, and also the desire for praise among our fel- 
 lows. Both these are right; for who will not be glad 
 to be commended by human beings if he respects hu. 
 man nature? But one of them is the nobler, which is 
 the simple work-motive, the wish to do some grand 
 thing, or to do anything faithfully, for its own sake. 
 
Of Flattery 75 
 
 Now whoever more feels the less noble of these two, 
 whoever thinks more of striding the labor to ride it 
 unto praise and honor than of bringing the work to its 
 greatest in singleness of spirit, he is open to flattery. 
 This is the mind that may be cajoled, this the char- 
 acter that can be v^orked on by the sly and skilled. 
 The fault falls under the general meanness of taking 
 something for nothing. For whoever thinks more of 
 the praise than of the work, surely will be willing to 
 give as little work as will get the praise, and take all 
 the offered renown without shame, though but little 
 deserving it, or not at all. And as such a person will 
 have no lofty ideal of his w^ork to strive for, dream 
 of, love, it is likely he will take himself indeed to be 
 as fine as he is told; and so he will be flattered in both 
 ways. 
 
 In fine, it is wholesome wisdom to fear flattery and 
 guard oneself warily; for such a lie is not only a foe 
 but ambushed. And as a man truly can have no enemy 
 harder to combat than himself, so there is nothing in 
 himself more difficult to overthrow than the sly whis- 
 per of a soft falsehood. We have need to examine 
 ourselves as to La Rochefoucauld's saying, " Men 
 sometimes think they hate flattery, but they hate only 
 the manner of it." We beware of an enemy who is 
 both very dangerous and very hard to recognize; but 
 this the flatterer is. The having many assured friends 
 and the certainty that those who stand nearest and 
 make the dearest claims, are true, is the royal compen- 
 sation of poor and humble place. One rule may be 
 set: Turn strictly from whoever commends you above 
 
>j6 Of Govcr/tmcfif 
 
 your own secret approval, or for what you condemn. 
 Besides, who that is used to employ one sort of lies, 
 will stop at others? Therefore, the flatterer is also a 
 detractor. Flattery and evil-speaking, says one of the 
 brothers Ilare, " are, as the phrase is, the Scylla and 
 Charybdis of the tongue; only they are set side by 
 side, and few tongues are content with falling into one 
 of them; snch as have once got into the jaws of either 
 keep on rnnning from one to the other. Those who 
 are too fair-spoken before you are likely to be foul- 
 spoken beliind you." Therefore, llattery has a double 
 frightfulness, that it weakens ourselves in virtue and 
 quickens our neighbor in misrcporting us. It 
 makes us bad and to seem still more bad — a very 
 witch's extract which turns into two venoms, vanity in 
 our own souls and slander in our neighbor's. 
 
 OF GOVERNMENT 
 
 I Wii.i. speak first of the best government ideally; 
 secondly, of the best possible, and how to obtain the 
 same. 
 
 The best government ideally is the dictatorship of 
 the best and wisest person; and if that person be not 
 only wisest and best of the people as they are, but 
 truly good and wise, and not in comparison with 
 others as men see, but in true goodness and wisdom as 
 God sees, then goveriunent by his will wouUl be not 
 only the rule of the greatest goodness and wisdom, but 
 of these same in their most unhindered way; and this 
 
Of Government 77 
 
 government would be the strongest, the best and the 
 most free. Such a dictatorship would not be govern- 
 ment by individual will, but by universal nature and 
 by perfect excellence appearing in the purposes of the 
 governor; his will would be mighty because express- 
 ing a law, first over it and then in it. To like effect 
 Samuel Johnson says of the Chinese government: 
 " We must distinguish the imperial sway from the 
 absolutism of a personal will. The Emperor, whose 
 dress in the old time was covered with emblematic 
 figures of sun and moon, dragons and insects, mount- 
 ains and streams, a composite type of all powers, has 
 this universality purely as a symbol of the State, 
 which means, after the ideal of the family, providence 
 and obedience in their simplest and broadest sense." 
 This, to interpret more plainly, means that the Em- 
 peror is not to go his own way willfully, but to will 
 the way of nature loyally. Ilencc, regulations would 
 be needless, and even hindering; for what regulation, 
 or even what numbers of them, can apply to all cases 
 and forecast all questions which must be judged ? But 
 a wise, holy and natural will regulates everything at 
 the instant according to need and nature. Therefore 
 an old poem of the Chinese said: " A noble law is the 
 Emperor Wen's virtue; daily it gives peace to the 
 four regions. If that be so, what need of laws ? I 
 have heard that when kingdoms are about to go down 
 they have many laws." Plainly, if a country be 
 enmeshed in laws, it is because there is no wisdom 
 able to judge things, and no will that can be trusted 
 unharnessed. I confess I love to roam among the 
 
yS Of Government 
 
 stories of the old Caliphs, as the great Haroun ; for 
 though it be all romance, mythical lore, that they used 
 to visit under cover of night or under shield of dis- 
 guises, the haunts and public houses, and the homes 
 of the people, to see with their own eyes what was to 
 be cherished, what restrained, what cured, neverthe- 
 less, to me it is a pleasing romance, and to abundant 
 multitudes a precious lore, having in it, I dare to 
 think, a high and glorious ideal of government. 
 Some great kings in the more sober West, and gov- 
 ernors under them, to a degree have done the like — as 
 I have read, for instance, of the great Frederick of 
 Prussia. Confucius gave maxims of government thus: 
 " Let there be men got by means of the ruler's char- 
 acter, and the government will flourish ; but without 
 the men the government ceases." " If the people 
 have no faith in their ruler, there is no standing for 
 the State." "Precede the people by your example 
 and be laborious in their affairs; do not become weary 
 in these things." Again in a sentence he describes 
 noble power: "That is good government when 
 those who are near are made happy, and those who 
 are afar are attracted." Imagination of such fatherly 
 government widespread over multitudes with a 
 strength which is wisdom and sincerity, always has 
 stirred my mind mightily. I wonder not that Schefer 
 thus sings of it, calling it " the highest paternal joy:" 
 
 "To be a king, O noblest state of man, 
 A father of so many thousand fathers. 
 Of mothers, daughters, sons, and darling babes, 
 Of mountains full of herds, and forests full 
 Of game; of field, valley, meadow, fount and stream; 
 
Of Government 79 
 
 To be a king! To be a king and a good father, too, 
 
 Of the young roe and of the trembHng hare, 
 
 And of the smallest tree beside the road; 
 
 By wisely ordering and protecting power 
 
 A faithful hand, extended graciously 
 
 O'er all the land, that softly leads o'er night 
 
 Lost ones to hospitable homes; awakes 
 
 From slumber; guides the darling little ones 
 
 Early to school ; flings wide the temple doors, 
 
 A grateful refuge to the burdened soul ; 
 
 Lends helpers to the sick; to poor folk bread; 
 
 Even to the dead secures a holy grave. 
 
 And o'er the grave-mound plants the linden tree; 
 
 That gives to all each highest gift, nor needs 
 
 To take from any what it gives to one. 
 
 So that no single child may have to weep. 
 
 To be a king, supreme paternal joy ! " 
 I say, then, that the unhindered will of the wisest 
 and best person would be the ideal government; with- 
 out danger, for I mean one so wise and good that 
 power would be no temptation to selfishness, no 
 maker of fractiousness or mover of wrath or enticer 
 to wealth, but a heavy weight of responsibility. The 
 will of such a magistrate would be the best govern- 
 ment, for even if he were not so wise as the combined 
 wisdom of all the wise and good of the nation, per- 
 force he would be better far, both in purposes and in 
 understanding, than the level of all the good and all the 
 bad together in a multitude. Moreover, such wise and 
 best person would surround himself with the wise and 
 good; for, being good, he would have the motive to 
 seek such help, and, being wise, the insight to discover 
 it. To weigh many minds, to take counsel, and to be 
 
8o Of Government 
 
 able to be instructed — this, indeed, would be but part of 
 his wisdom. Besides, with such informed and pure will 
 to rule and to do, officers being appointed by it, and 
 places wisely filled, without limit of time, all the 
 treacheries of the bad, the jDlots of the selfish, the 
 schemes of the needy for places, power, profit, would 
 be done away, to the great purification and stability of 
 the public service. 
 
 But this ideal best we cannot have, since there is no 
 way to discover the wisest and best person, or even 
 one very good or very wise with certainty. Then, 
 secondly, it is important to devise the best possible 
 government as we are. Now, the traits of this we 
 shall understand if we attend to the things in the 
 ideally best which we have to replace in the best that 
 possibly we can frame. These things are, the will of 
 the wisest and best ruler, and the wisdom and virtue 
 which informed his will. We shall need, therefore, 
 first, instead of his will, some wise method and regu- 
 lated way, and, secondly, to replace his wisdom and 
 virtue, the highest possible average of these qualities 
 among the electors who choose the governor. Of 
 these in order: 
 
 First, as to the method; that is, the definite and 
 regulated way by which the government shall move 
 and its appointments occur. Now, no method is wise 
 that turns not in every point on fitness. For is there 
 any other quality or fact whatever that ought to be 
 considered above fitness? Or any other aim of all 
 the methods, forms, and procedures of government 
 than just to secure fitness in the servants of the peo- 
 
Of^ Government 8i 
 
 pie ? Now, if this be granted, it will be seen as easily 
 that fitness has two parts, namely, fidelity ana ability; 
 which I need not argue, for plainly capacity without 
 faithfulness will be selfish and hence abusive, and 
 faithfulness without ability is ineffectual. If now it 
 be the only right and useful aim of methods and forms 
 to obtain fidelity and ability in service, is there any- 
 thing more ridiculous than time-tenure of office ? For 
 by this folly, if once we have got the faithful and the 
 strong, soon we dismiss them, and for no reason ex- 
 cept (as wittily has been said) astronomical reasons, 
 because the earth has reached a certain place in the 
 heavens; and against all common sense, for if when 
 chosen the officer was faithful and capable, he has 
 only become the wiser and better by experience. 
 Therefore, if even we be sure to replace him with an- 
 other as faithful and able, yet we waste skill and ex- 
 perience by the unreasonable change, and must suffer 
 in so far while the successor plods during a like time 
 to the skill which already once was attained, and 
 which the State should have kept to its advantage. 
 As to methods and procedures, therefore, I would 
 say absolutely, that, as they should aim at nothing but 
 fitness, so it is a sheer folly not to provide to keep the 
 fitness when obtained, to do away with all chronom- 
 eters, whether sidereal or other, in government ma- 
 chinery, and keep the people's servants who with 
 honesty and with strong mind have learned their 
 duties excellently by long practice. 
 
 It is a thorough abuse, and a very fruitful per- 
 version, to give public office as a reward. For office 
 
82 Of Government 
 
 is not a reward of virtue, but a use of it, and to make 
 office a payment or meed of anything of another kind, 
 as, for example, when a successful general or popular 
 idol whatever be raised to magistracy, is a great and 
 corrupting injury. For the only question ought to be 
 of fitness for public usefulness, and office is not given 
 for the benefit of the person, but of the State. 
 
 So much of the wherewithal that should replace the 
 will of the wisest and best person, since he can not be 
 had. 
 
 As to what we must have instead of his wisdom 
 and virtue, this, I have said, is the highest possible 
 average among the electors. Now, as before it was 
 observed that no method touching public service is 
 good that turns on aught but fitness, so excellence 
 among electors means fitness for choosing governors; 
 and to respect this fitness and to found on it the choice 
 of public servants, is the same as to restrict the 
 suffrage to those worthy of exercising it. Of this 
 point I observe first that such restriction is expedient 
 and right. It is expedient: for as, if we wish to get a 
 good engine, we shall choose a good builder, so if the 
 quality of a public officer be important we shall look to 
 the fitness of the electors. The foolish will not choose 
 the wise and the bad will not choose the good, for 
 this will be to restrain themselves and defeat their 
 plots. As to the right to exact qualifications of 
 electors, surely it is plain that we must exact it in the 
 officer; now if we may require fitness, and examina- 
 tions or credentials of fitness, in him who is appointed, 
 may we require no test of fitness for appointing him, 
 
Of Gove7'ninent 83 
 
 or for helping to judge of his fitness? That were 
 ridiculous! 
 
 Secondly, as to fitness of electors, I think this ought 
 not to be stationary, but marked by improvement, 
 progress, higher qualification, and a growing standard 
 of fitness to keep pace with the growth, power, edu- 
 cation and extension of the state. The qualifications 
 of the electors may grow profitably to higher stand- 
 ards as civilization grows, just as the standards of 
 colleges are raised with the growing complexity of 
 social life, the increase of population, discoveries, arts, 
 sciences, learning. It is reasonable that what would 
 qualify an elector in an abased community, because 
 that qualification then would mark the high points 
 in a low state, would not qualify in a better condition, 
 because then it would grade with the low points 
 in a high state. Therefore, there ought to be a 
 steady rise in the fitness required of electors, how- 
 ever slow or gradual; and this might be effected par- 
 tially by having the qualification bear some distinct 
 relation to the standards of schools and colleges, so 
 that as these rise the other must follow. This, too, 
 would tend to the advantage of education by giving a 
 stronger motive for the wider diffusion of it. 
 
 Now, thirdly, as to the kind of qualification that 
 may be exacted of electors, this should be determined 
 by the two elements or parts of fitness as before men- 
 tioned, namely, fidelity and ability. On the moral side, 
 that is of faithfulness, any immorality should debar 
 from suffrage which is of a kind to affect the com- 
 munity, to degrade citizenshio, to endanger the public 
 
84 Of Government 
 
 interests, and hence is known to the laws and banned 
 by the statutes on that account, hke vagrancy, idle- 
 ness, drunkenness, fraud, licentiousness, gambling; for 
 jDlainly no one who breaks the law should help make 
 it, nor is he a true citizen of the State whose conduct 
 is hurtful to it. On the mental side, that is of ability, 
 it will be right that seme age should be named ; and 
 though whenever arbitrary limits be set, some hard- 
 ship will be wrought in some cases, yet no other way 
 is possible; and it is right to set so great an age that 
 fairly we may presume fitness of knowledge and self- 
 control when it is reached. Next, reading and writ- 
 ing should be qualifications, because these are the low- 
 est possible standards of the schools, and after this so 
 much more of education should be required as is 
 plainly within the reach of all who have the moral 
 qualifications aforesaid, by reason of the numbers and 
 standards of the schools, and all the means of educa- 
 tion that flourish in the community. For whoso then 
 would not be willing and ready to take advantage of 
 the means and acquire the standard would prove 
 either a mind unable, or a morality unsound, and so in 
 either case a character unfit for the solemnity of 
 suffrage. 
 
 But, if any be excluded from voting for such rea- 
 sons, will not a State, some will say, be composed 
 then of citizens and non-citizens? And is this right? 
 For ought not all to be citizens of the commonwealth 
 in which certainly they make a part? But this will be 
 answered if we ask carefully what a citizen is. Aris- 
 totle says a citizen is any one who has a right to 
 
Of Government 85 
 
 "share in the judicial and executive parts of govern- 
 ment," And in anotlier place: "We must either 
 affirm that those who share in the community are not 
 citizens, or else let these share in the advantages of 
 government." But here the philosopher has not de- 
 fined w^isely, and elsew^here has corrected himself; 
 for, speaking of boys, he says they " are not citi- 
 zens in the same manner that men are, for men are 
 perfectly so, but boys under some conditions, for they 
 are citizens, though imperfect ones;" and in another 
 place, "We admit that they are in some respects citi- 
 zens, yet not completely so." Now this last is the 
 correct notion, and leads to this principle, that when a 
 State is based on the participation of all those who 
 are fit and worthy to have political function, of such 
 a state all persons are citizens by nature whose disa- 
 bilities, if they have any at one time, may disappear by 
 time itself or by their own efforts, like the young who 
 grow older, the ignorant who may learn, the bad who 
 may reform. Now, of all who are citizens by nature, 
 those are citizens in fact, and do actually exercise the 
 function of citizenship, who have attained the fitness. 
 But not to exercise citizenship in fact is not the same 
 thing as to be no citizen at all, for there still remains 
 the citizenship by nature; that is, persons disabled in 
 fact are still citizens, but imperfect ones, as Aristotle 
 calls boys. This is like the law or nature of a family, 
 where all are members, and all well beloved, and the 
 family exists for all ; but all are not on the same terms 
 of power, the younger with the older, because they 
 are not fit as yet. But the younger are wards of the 
 
86 Of Government 
 
 family, to be trained and admitted to the authority of 
 age in time; that is, when age comes, and authority 
 and the fitness thereto with it. So citizens by nature, 
 imperfect citizens from whatever cause, are wards of 
 the State, to be cherished and guided until they be 
 brought to completeness of citizenship. 
 
 Notwithstanding that this is very simple doctrine, 
 it is wonderful how clamorous are people against it. 
 Wherefore, I will ask, should public power be the 
 only thing for which fitness is not consulted ? Should 
 a function in the State be cast into the air to fall on 
 whom it may, and be the only thing which thus men 
 toss about to take its chance? Rather contrariwise. 
 Political power of all things should be vested most 
 jealously, and with those worthy to exercise it ; that is, 
 capable of judging and acting for the common good. 
 Aristotle saj^s: 
 
 "The political state is founded not for the purpose of men's 
 merely living together, but for their living as men should; 
 for which reason those who contribute most to this end, de- 
 serve to have greater power in the State than others." 
 
 Algernon Sidney teaches the same, much at length, 
 in many places of his " Discourses Concerning Gov- 
 ernment." He says : 
 
 " Magistrates are distinguished from other men by the 
 power with which the law invests them for the public good. 
 He that can not or will not procure that good destroys his own 
 being and becomes like to other men. In matters of the great- 
 est importance detiir diffniori is the voice of nature; all her 
 most sacred laws are perverted if this be not observed in the 
 disposition of governments; and all are neglected or violated if 
 they are not put into the hands of such as excel in all manner 
 
Of Government 87 
 
 of virtues; for they only are worthy of them and they only 
 can have a right who are worthy, because they only can per- 
 form the end for which they are instituted." 
 
 And in another place Sidney says: 
 
 "That equality which is just among equals is just only 
 among equals. But such as are base, ignorant, vicious, sloth- 
 ful, or cowardly, are not equal in natural or acquired virtues 
 to the generous, wise, valiant and industrious, nor equally use- 
 ful to the societies in which they live ; they can not, therefore, 
 have an equal part in the government of them ; they can not 
 equally provide for the common good ; and 'tis not a personal, 
 but a public benefit that is sought in their constitution and con- 
 tinuance." 
 
 And again: 
 
 "Law, which is said to be written reason, can not justly ex- 
 alt those whom nature, which is reason, has depressed, nor de- 
 press those whom nature has exalted. It can not make kings 
 slaves nor slaves kings without introducing that evil which, if 
 we believe Solomon, and the spirit by which he spoke, the 
 earth can not bear." 
 
 In which remark Sidney refers to the saying in the 
 thirtieth chapter of Proverbs, that " a servant vv^hen 
 he reigneth " is something " which the earth can not 
 bear." 
 
 Thomas Hughes mentions, following Asser, the 
 King's friend, that whenever the great and good 
 Alfred found an unjust judge who said he had judged 
 ill because he knew no better, the King said to him, 
 " I wonder truly at your rashness that whereas by 
 God's favor and mine you have occupied the rank and 
 office of the wise, you have neglected the studies and 
 labors of the wise. Either therefore at once give up 
 the discharge of those duties which you hold, or en-i 
 
88 Of Government 
 
 deavor more zealously to study the lessons of wis- 
 dom." And Asser goes on to relate: 
 
 "At these words, the aldermen, earls, and prefects would 
 tremble, and endeavor to turn all their thoughts to the study 
 of justice; so that, wonderful to say, almost all his earls, pre- 
 fects, and officers, though unlearned from their cradles, were 
 sedulously bent on acquiring learning, choosing rather labori- 
 ously to acquire the knowledge of a new discipline than to re- 
 sign their functions. But if any one of them, from old age or 
 slowness of mind, were unable to make progress in liberal 
 studies, the King commanded his son, if he had one, or one 
 of his kinsmen, or, if there were no other person to be had, 
 one of his own freedmen or servants whom he had before ad- 
 vanced to the office of reading, to recite Saxon books before 
 him day and night, whenever he had any leisure." 
 
 Aristotle urges this doctrine of fitness to the length 
 that if a man, he says, be found very far above others 
 in virtue and w^isdom, " it is fit that such a one should 
 appear like a god amongst men;" and again: 
 
 "It seems not right to turn out such a person and to banish 
 him, nor does it seem right to subject him to trial, for that 
 would be like desiring to share the power with Jupiter and to 
 govern him. Nothing then remains but what indeed seems 
 natural, and that is for all persons quietly to submit to one 
 who is thus eminently virtuous, and to let such men be kings 
 perpetually in the respective States." 
 
 And in another place on the same subject: 
 
 " Whenever a whole family, or anyone person, shall happen 
 so far to excel in virtue as to surpass all other persons in the 
 community, then it is right that the kingly power should be 
 vested in them ; or, if it is an individual who does so, that he 
 should be king and lord of all. * * •* As it would not be right 
 to kill or banish such a one for his superior merit, neither 
 would it be proper to let him have the supreme power only in 
 
Of Government 89 
 
 turn; for it is contrary to nature that what is highest should 
 ever be lowest ; but this is the case should such a one ever be 
 governed by others." 
 
 In this matter we must deal with facts as best we 
 can, and we can not marshal them in their rational 
 order because some of them we can not discover, as 
 they are secrets of human character, in which we 
 grope blindly and make many blunders; but much is 
 gained if we confess our shortcoming and acknowl- 
 edge the ideal of nature, how far soever we be below 
 it. To this purpose David Wasson has these wise 
 words : 
 
 " We must admit the wise and the stupid, the high-minded 
 and the sordid, as political equivalents, since we know not how 
 to draw a fixed line between them ; nevertheless, they are moral 
 equivalents nowhere, nor more at the polls than elsewhere; 
 and those who are not moral equivalents can not have the 
 same right to determine the obligations and direct the conduct 
 of the community. * * * I grant that unequal men must be 
 admitted more or less to equal power. Shear off as we may 
 the excesses of ultra-democracy, this necessity will remain; 
 but when an external and conventional necessity gets into 
 men's heads as an ideal right, it has conquered what should 
 command it." 
 
 For lack of this doctrine, or I may say this natural 
 allegiance of man to man, according to the marks of 
 nature, which is a dignified and honorable allegiance, 
 popular forms of government have degraded their 
 aims and turned toward equality, not excellence. This 
 Aristotle perceived plainly, and said, " An aristocracy 
 (by which the philosopher means the power of the best, 
 albeit a few) seems most likely to confer the honors 
 of the State on the virtuous, for virtue is the object of 
 
90 Of Government 
 
 an aristocracy, riches of an oligarchy, and liberty (by 
 which, I think, the philosopher means equality) of a 
 democracy." And again: " In a democracy equality 
 is measured by numbers and not by worth." And he 
 even lays it down that In a democracy carried to its 
 extreme event, the magistrates must be chosen by lot, 
 since this is the only complete equality. This trait, he 
 avers, led the democracies to establish ostracism, " for, 
 of a truth, equality seems the principal object of their 
 government. * * * And fabulous histories relate 
 that the Argonauts left Hercules behind since they 
 were unwilling he should have command of the Argo 
 and the other ships because he excelled the other sailors 
 in valor." Plutarch has given the same accovuit of the 
 custom, saying that the Athenians banished Themis- 
 tocles, " making use of the ostracism to humble his 
 eminence and authorit}^, as they ordinarily did with all 
 whom they thought too powerful or by their great- 
 ness disproportionable to the equality thought requi- 
 site in a popular government; for the ostracism was 
 instituted not so much to punish the offender as to 
 mitigate and pacify the violence of the envious, who 
 delighted to humble eminent men, and who by fixing 
 this disgrace upon them, might vent some part of their 
 rancor." And, speaking of the banishment of Aris- 
 tides, Plutarch says the people " gave their jealousy of 
 his reputation the name of fear of tyranny." I know 
 not whether there be anything more contrary to good 
 citizenship, more hostile to the honor and prosperity 
 of the State, or more servile in itself for whatever soul 
 feels it, than such a jealousy of excellence, and such a 
 
Of Government 9I 
 
 digging down of mountains till there be naught left 
 but a plain, without refreshment, which then is called 
 equality. To have no instinctive and reverential obe- 
 dience, turning heartily toward superior excellence 
 with veneration and service, is an odious barrenness of 
 spirit, wherein grows nothing but burrs of envy and 
 every slavish meanness. It is a brute trait, whereby 
 men treat themselves as each a tiger in his den, or as 
 wolves in a pack or worms in the ground ; for these, 
 each after his kind, are all alike, one tiger to another, 
 and every wolf to his fellow, and one worm to all 
 worms. Indeed, I would set it forth as a rule of mag- 
 istracy, and a proper test for office, that he who 
 wants power is the one who should not have it. Com- 
 monly, if persons associate much in life, as in partner- 
 ship or in marriage, the one who has the most will to 
 rule is like to be the one of the least wisdom to rule; 
 and I know not why this applies not to collections of 
 men, even unto the total collection, which is the state. 
 For no one will ever itch to rule who first has learned 
 the quiet dignity of obedience. " The moral sense of 
 Jotham's wise parable is eternal," says Sidney; "the 
 bramble coveted the power which the vine, olive and 
 fig tree refused ; the worst and basest of men are am- 
 bitious of the highest places, which the best and wisest 
 reject." 
 
 Have a care to understand what tyranny is and 
 what liberty is; for of a truth I know of no words 
 bandied about more loosely, wildly, and I may say 
 vilely, than these same, albeit we live in a government 
 that can but go sadly astray unless we understand the 
 
gz Of Government 
 
 nature of these things. Tyranny lies not in any form 
 of government, for any form is good and just if it 
 agree with the nature of the people and with their 
 stage of progress. Tyranny dwells only in a personal 
 will broken away from the natural bounds of law. 
 Aristotle says a tyrant is simply a ruler " whose object 
 is his own advantage and not the advantage of those 
 whom he governs." But wherever there is submissive- 
 ness to higher law, which is the law of nature, and to 
 the laws of the State that express the same, there is 
 liberty and not tyranny, be the form what it may. 
 Where tyranny exists, it may be in two kinds. First, 
 there may be tyranny of purpose. Anything is tyr- 
 anny instantly, what form soever the government 
 has, when the ruler, or officer howsoever he be 
 placed in power, seeks his own good or advantage 
 above the common prosperity. Secondly, there may 
 be tyranny of method: this is where the governor 
 seeks the common good, indeed, but by ways that are 
 willful and personal, unmindful of the law which 
 should govern his action, whatsoever his motive, and 
 which is the law of nature. Both sorts of tyranny 
 are bad, but this last kind not so intolerable as the for- 
 mer, for it is defect, but without infamy. The tyranny 
 of purpose is infamous; and it may exist in full and 
 poisonous blossom where the methods apparently are 
 very popular, and in a democratic power as well as 
 in any other; and the tyranny, whatever the kind of 
 State, is the same. 
 
 I much fear that this country has treated liberty 
 with as great indecency as if a horse should trample a 
 
Of Government 93 
 
 rich garden, distinguishing neither beautiful nor fruit- 
 bearing plants, neither wood-making nor medicinal, 
 thinking them all one for fodder. Democracy has 
 become, unless I mistake, a kind of test or shibboleth, 
 by which we try men and measures; and this is the 
 same as to say that it is merely a word which is pow- 
 erful with us, and not the wide and true notion of 
 what the word means. But we must define the true 
 import of words, and not be slaves to syllables; for 
 democracy in form is not necessarily people-povv^er in 
 fact, but power perhaps of a few, who cajole the 
 many and so lead and use the people for their own 
 ends. For it is notorious that times without number and 
 in countless cases this has been the actual democi'acy 
 we have lived in. What is the word that it should be 
 a battle cry, or a test of faith, power, liberty, or any 
 excellence? Democracy is no more than a name 
 of a certain political condition in which all power is 
 delegated by popular election, under the votes of all 
 the people. " It rests," says Wasson, " upon the doc- 
 trine that so far as concerns political matters every 
 man is the moral equivalent of every other, therefore 
 entitled to an equal voice in determining the obliga- 
 tions of the community." The opposite of this is aris- 
 tocracy, which, on the contrary, says Wasson, is a 
 system that " gives to a limited number a position of 
 superiority, determined by birth, not by merit, and so 
 continued in hereditary succession from age to age." 
 Now of these two, neither makes distinctions of fitness 
 for political power, and so, however opposite in form, 
 
94 Of Government 
 
 they are one in the worst way In which they can 
 agree, which Wasson puts thus : 
 
 " These two systems, diametrically opposed as they seem, 
 agree in one fundamental particular. By both all natural, all 
 real, distinctions are ignored ; in both alike knowledge and ig- 
 norance, intelligence and stupidity, nobleness and sordidness, 
 are placed on an artificial level. Aristocracy says that some 
 men are peers by virtue of their birth from a certain lineage ; 
 democracy, that all men are peers by virtue of their birth as 
 human beings. Both, in short, are conventional systems, and 
 to the extent of the agreement here noted, conventional in the 
 same way." 
 
 These words of this calm thinker lead to this con- 
 sequence, that a man preaching the doctrine of fit- 
 ness for political power, equally would be denounced 
 by both parties; for if in a company of aristocrats 
 such a man should say fitness and not fortune should 
 be the foundation of political power, he would be 
 scouted as a democrat; but if among democrats, he 
 should reason that not merely residence or being alive, 
 or going into a place, or being a man, or any other 
 conditions or circumstances, but fitness only, should 
 give power in government and participation in politi- 
 cal action, he would be hustled as an aristocrat; yet 
 his doctrine would be the same. Surely a strange fact, 
 and one to make us think carefully where the truth 
 may lie ! Indeed we need thought, and no people ever 
 more than we now, for truly we are drowned in a 
 word out of all reach of the living air of the idea. Was- 
 son says: " The system we prefer will lose the service 
 of our wits when we suffer the very extremity of our 
 predilection for it to confound them ; " and again : 
 
Of Government 95 
 
 " Institutions, like individuals, have tiieir leanings and limi- 
 tations; and as no man is mankind, so no political system is 
 the perfect embodiment of political truth. Hence every such 
 system, if it is long to endure as a form of productive and pro- 
 gressive life, must receive both nourishment and correction 
 from the truths it does not contain. From whom is it to get 
 those necessary succors.? Only from those of whose heads it 
 has not so taken possession that all their thoughts must needs 
 bear its impress .-* Only from those who have some sufficient 
 power to look about them with fresh, vmbiased eyes, as if in a 
 new-made world.'' But what if there are none such.? It is not 
 of good augury. When democracy, or whatever system, has 
 so far prevailed over the best intelligences that they can speak 
 only in its dialect, think only in its moulds, and judge only by 
 its standards, it has prevailed quite too far for its own health. 
 * * * Hence the need of those who, taking part in our dem- 
 ocracy as good citizens, shall do so as men swim in the sea; 
 that is, with the head out." 
 
 Unless the head be lifted above the system or 
 method, what shall rescue the object of the method 
 from the imperfections of the method ? Let it be un- 
 derstood that the system is of vast effect, and a bad 
 one will overthrow good men because bad men so well 
 can work it. I deny not that the most potent fact is the 
 moral condition of the people; and perhaps Machiavelli 
 went not too far, or but little, in saying, as Sidney 
 quotes him, that "where the body of the people is not 
 corrupted, tumults and disorders do no hui't, and 
 whei-e it is corrupted, good laws do no good." It is 
 the common dictum of reformers that laws make not 
 the people, but the condition of the people makes the 
 laws, and that wise and good law cannot be put into 
 act if it be beyond the wisdom and goodness of the 
 
^6 Of Government 
 
 people. Nevertheless, we must look closely to the 
 system which we set up, for this is a tool, and the best 
 workman will work but ill with a wretched tool. To 
 the system, I say, not merely to this or that man ; for 
 the system is as the whole body which is to be kept 
 in health, but bad men are the sores of the disordered 
 or ill-constituted body politic. In this country many 
 times we have dej^osed and banished bad magistrates 
 and officers; and whenever we have had good ones, so 
 bad is our system that we have deposed these also at 
 a certain time; but immediately we have placed othei's 
 in power in the same system which has produced the 
 bad ones. Now, it is not easy for men to pervert a 
 proper tool, or easy for one good tool well fitted for 
 its work to make some other kind of thing; as, for 
 example, a man may bore ill with an auger or cut but 
 poorly with a saw, and then we need a more skillful 
 man to use the tools according to their purposes; but 
 who can cut with an auger as the saw cuts, or bore 
 with the saw as the gimlet bores? So, when we see 
 a system lead or fall to certain kind of men, contin- 
 ually and after many changes of the men, it is like that 
 the system is such as to make them, especially if they 
 be extreme examples of their kind, for then the sys- 
 tem has had free scope, like a tool well handled. But, 
 as says Sidney, " those nations that are more generous, 
 who set a higher value upon liberty and better under- 
 stand the ways of preserving it, think it a small mat- 
 ter to destroy a tyrant unless they can also destroy the 
 tyranny." Yet in this foolish way we act, setting 
 aside one after another of corrupted magistrates who 
 
Of Government py 
 
 have despoiled us tyrannously, but leaving the tyran- 
 ny itself intact; for our tyranny is a system whose 
 soul is the insensate idea of a democracy, that as to 
 political power all men are equivalents and each 
 counts one, whatever differences of moral or mental 
 state there may be, of knowledge, abilities, experi- 
 ence, worthiness. 
 
 The ethical effects of government form a great sub- 
 ject, for they deserve to be traced in detail and far out 
 to their events. I believe it possible that corruption 
 in the high places of government may set flowing 
 streams of dishonesty throughout the land, till the 
 very lad at school shall turn to thieving, as he may 
 catch a pestilence from the air. I believe that purity, 
 unselfishness and a noble conscience as to political 
 responsibility in the high places equally may irrigate 
 all the domain, however vast, with rills of ethical re- 
 freshment which shall make the whole soil fruitful of 
 virtue, peace and wealth. For who can count the 
 ways, the thousands of streams — for even the main 
 rivers flow by thousands — and then the tens of thou- 
 sands of brooks, and their branches again to tens of 
 thousands of little rills, which at last break forth be- 
 side every door, springs of refreshment of the power 
 politic, or else filthy oozings of base plots. James Mill 
 has set this in the strong light of human ambition: he 
 says : 
 
 " When the political machine is such that the grand objects 
 of desire are seen to be the natural prize of great and virtuous 
 conduct, of high services to mankind, and of the generous and 
 amiable sentiments from which great endeavors in the service 
 
gS Of Government 
 
 of mankind naturally proceed, it is natural to see diffused 
 among mankind a generous ardor in the acquisition of all those 
 admirable qualities which prepare a man for admirable actions; 
 great intelligence, perfect self-command, an over-ruling benev- 
 olence. When the political machine is such that the grand 
 objects of desire are seen to be the reward not of virtue, not of 
 talent, but of subservience to the will and command over the 
 affections of the ruling few [or of the ruling many, I may add, 
 for what matters whether many or few if they be unfit?] ; inter- 
 est with the man above to be the only sure means to the next 
 step in wealth, or power, or consideration, and soon, the means 
 of pleasing the man above become, in that case, the great object 
 of pursuit." 
 
 Aristotle has the hke thought, applying it equally 
 to the tyranny of the many and the tyranny of the 
 few; for he says: 
 
 "A demagogue with an unregulated democracy is like the 
 flatterer among the others, and both these two classes abound 
 with each, flatterers with tyrants and demagogues among such 
 a people." 
 
 From this reasoning I conclude that all procedure 
 in government, as before said at length, should re- 
 quire naught whatever but fitness. And therefore, 
 that, having fit servants, we should keep them while 
 their fitness wanes not, and especially while it grows 
 by experience; and that for the getting of fit servants, 
 we must have fit electors; and that of these the fitness 
 ought not to be fixed, but move in an ascending scale 
 as knowledge grows in the community, and that this 
 fitness should be held disproved by illiteracy according 
 to the standards of the time and place, and by any 
 immorality which is injurious to citizenship. Espe- 
 cially, how difiicult soever it be to apply these quali- 
 
Of Hand - Writing 99 
 
 ficatlons in any degree, and impossible in perfection, 
 yet he whose mind does not glow for them as for an 
 ideal, or who derides them either wantonly or fanat- 
 ically, is but a sorry friend of liberty. 
 
 OF HAND-WRITING 
 
 Shall I write slowly to be shapely? or swiftly to 
 create the more matter? Perhaps the more slowly 
 is better, even though the matter entice. There 
 is much in a sign manual. Manus not only meant 
 hand and hand-writing, among the Romans, but 
 power, as that which often comes from use of the 
 hand — in manu tua est^ it is in your hands. Now the 
 value of the hand goes into the act or work of it; 
 therefore, though matter be really more than manner, 
 yet is the manner of some worth, and a neat page not 
 to be despised. A wise woman said to a slovenly 
 fellow: "Take heed of your looks, for no one will 
 think you sell jewels if you hang out the sign of a 
 junk-shop." 
 
 There must be some reason in us why we do any- 
 thing so and not otherwise; and this reason many, yea 
 all, share with us in our time and place. Wherefore 
 all act both alike and unlike, having a sphere of unity 
 and again an area of difference. It is so with hand- 
 writing. Examine specimens a hundred years old, 
 and they all will have a likeness among themselves, and 
 also a like unlikeness to the present style. For each 
 
1 oo Of Hand - Writing 
 
 man writes a double hand, shared in part with all per- 
 sons about him and in part all his own. 
 
 What doubt that our moral condition or situation has 
 a part in our motions ? Assuredly also in our hand- 
 writing. I have heard that there is a criminal chirogra- 
 phy, which keen observers have learned to know, who 
 thereby may detect the correspondence of criminals in 
 the mails. I know not how much this may be possi- 
 ble, or how little. Yet our visible parts tell of our 
 inward being; and what signs we know not now, by 
 and by we shall learn. Emerson says: "Character 
 teaches over our head ; if a man have not found his 
 home in God, his manners, his form of speech, the 
 turn of his sentences, the build — shall I say ? — of all 
 his opinions, will involuntarily confess it, let him brave 
 it out how he will." I know not if the hand be less 
 morally sensitive than the whole body, which acts in 
 behavior as Emerson says, or than the mouth, which 
 fits the form of speech and the style of pronunciation; 
 though it is wonderful that there should be certain 
 kinds of marks or shapes, curves, angles, which any 
 one must make who has thievery in his heart. Again, 
 there will be vicious or cruel handwriting, and that, 
 again, which marks a soiled imagination. There must 
 be possible, as I have said, a science of this fact, and 
 what is possible will become actual. Then it will be 
 known, and by exact rules laid down, in what way 
 two men, or a hundred men, will write alike if they 
 are thieves, how otherwise differently soever. Nay, 
 such manual disclosure will take account of the heart, 
 and not of the act only. For the thievish heart thus will 
 
Of Hand- Writing tOl 
 
 be compelled to write itself down, though temptation 
 and time to rob be wanting. We shall say not only 
 '■'■Literae sc?'iptae manenl^'' but In Uteris scripiis 
 manct horiio. 
 
 I have heard shoemakers say that each one inevita- 
 bly can recognize his ow^n work, not by sewing or 
 color or material, but by its peculiar minute individu- 
 ality, like to a hand-writing. Also telegraphers, I 
 have been told, learn readily the sound of their fellow's 
 manner. If the soul can be kept out of anything, 
 what would we think could catch less of it than the 
 click of an electro-magnet? Yet operators know the 
 peculiar tick of the styles of their associates in distant 
 cities as readily as we descry the hand-writing of a 
 friend. Surely, thus the soul casts a long shadow, 
 while yet the day of knowledge is but little spent! 
 Like to the action of the body, obedient to the state of 
 the mind, so is the shape of the body, of hand or face 
 or other parts. It is not so difficult to read these 
 marks as to explore the intricate varieties of hand- 
 writing; indeed, much progress has been made therein. 
 But to know the meaning of every little curve, 
 whether in the hand and other parts or in what the 
 hand traces, we shall await millennial knowledge, 
 when mind shall reach its highest observation and 
 men's bosoms have their least to conceal. 
 
 Some moral reflections occur on this matter. 
 Science turns on us an eye which perhaps will enforce 
 a better morality. It is not so easy to do ill when dis- 
 covery is certain by witness of the involuntary turn of 
 our wrist or fingers. This virtue, indeed, will not be 
 
io2 Of Hand- Writing 
 
 a noble goodness j but how large a part of our seertl- 
 ing grace is prudence or fear? Again, if the outward 
 thus must conform to the inward, and what we are 
 really in soul repeat itself in our motions, even in the 
 trembling of our fingei's holding a pen, a beauty in the 
 outward is then a signal or pennant of harmony within. 
 Therefore it is a happiness to see how much beauty 
 the human race already has attained, how pleasant 
 with good faces and agreeable looks a social party is, 
 how shapely are many heads, how fine the dome 
 thereof, how excellent the eye! — for these are but the 
 drapery of good chambers in the soul. 
 
 Often I have observed that when persons look alike 
 in features they move alike also, so that they will have 
 the same poise of hand or gesture, because the soul 
 that shapes the features shapes also the curves of the 
 muscles of motion. Therefore if persons write alike, 
 though little they look alike or otherwise move alike, 
 the likeness of writing will not be without its reason; 
 and if we know the character of one, we may conclude 
 safely therefrom to the character of the other. It will 
 not be easy to say in what traits they resemble each 
 other, since it cannot be in all traits, unless the writing 
 be precisely the same. Notwithstanding, this may 
 serve sometimes as a useful caution, and one may 
 argue safely a wide resemblance in joroportion to the 
 likeness of the writing. 
 
OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 WoLLASTON thus sums up his volume, " The Re- 
 ligion of Nature Delineated ": " For a conclusion of 
 the whole matter, let our conversation in this vv^orld, 
 so far as we are concerned and able, be such as ac- 
 knowledges everything to be what it is." It is com- 
 mon report that things look not always as they are. 
 Knowledge of anything is to have it in the mind as it is 
 in fact. This is so important that Wollaston, as above, 
 has identified it even with religion; and rightly, if we 
 allow the universe to be good and divine; for then 
 Nature's order will appear excellent and worshipful 
 when we see it as it is. 
 
 Knowledge, among divers conditions, has these 
 two — that what we know of anything will depend — 
 first, on our size relatively to it, and, secondly, on our 
 distance fi-om it. For if we are too far away, we 
 shall not see it at all; and if too near, we shall be entan- 
 gled in its pai'ts, not seeing it in unity; while if in 
 mind or body we be not large enough to couple with 
 the object, our best understanding will be but piece- 
 meal knowledge, not seeing the whole as it is. For 
 illustration or instance, take a mite whose feet tickle 
 our finger; to the insect we must appear as to our body 
 very differently from the manner in which we must 
 see the creature. In like manner, we perceive a great 
 mountain, which is unknown to the squirrel sporting 
 on it, and more hid still from the cicada nibbling a 
 
 (103) 
 
104 Of Knowledge 
 
 leaf in the forest on it. A ball hurled from a gun 
 across our vision and close to us, at a thousand miles 
 an hour we cannot see; but we see the moon well, 
 though its s^^eed is more than two thousand miles an 
 hour. By reason of the distance, the moon seems even 
 not to move at all; and if we were not large enough in 
 mind to study the moon, how could we know its mo- 
 tion, or how tliink of it except as done in leaps, since 
 we could not observe the transition? If we were not 
 much larger creatures in Nature's eye — which judges 
 always according to power of thought — than a basin 
 of water, we might be amazed to find it warm to one 
 hand and cold to the other (as Berkeley has set forth), 
 and led, perhaps, to fantastic dreams of two natures in 
 one — as many as ever amused a mediaeval Aristotelian. 
 These instances — and many more, easily multiplied — 
 will show how distance and relative size affect knowl- 
 edge, which I shall take as allowed. 
 
 Now, as to knowledge of our own selves — herein 
 relative size is done away, since the knower and the 
 object are the same; but the requirement of due dis- 
 tance remains, for by effort of thought we can step 
 apart and look at ourselves afar off. Justice and wis- 
 dom regarding ourselves wait on the distance we can 
 go in mind from the small private circle of interests, 
 emotions, prejudices, habits, which are implacable foes 
 of understanding. Sidney Smith says: 
 
 '♦ It is a great thing toward making right judgments, if a 
 man know what allowance to make for himself, and what dis- 
 count should habitually be given to his opinions, according as 
 he is old or young, French or English, clergyman or layman, 
 rich or poor, torpid or fiery, healthy or ill, sorrowful or gay." 
 
Of Knowledge 105 
 
 But it is a rare gift to have the wish, rarer the 
 power, to break from the tumults of experience and 
 climb a far hill of judgment, from which coigne to 
 see the valley of our passions. We have great power 
 to see the truth when the truth is all we wish to see; 
 but what is easier than to credit what we desire? and 
 can a man deceive any one so easily as himself? 
 Whoever will be informed as to himself (the most 
 thrifty of all knowledge for happiness and power) 
 must take post of sight far enough to dissolve the 
 crafty biases which keep us stunted, meager, fractious. 
 As to knowledge of our fellow-creatures — herein 
 both conditions apply. We shall judge our fellows 
 well according as we compare with them in size, that 
 is, in stature of mind, and as we view them from a 
 distance ; but the far view means freedom from preju- 
 dice. As to all animals, higher and lower — our fel- 
 low-beings — a man's soul is gauged by his sympathy. 
 Whoso has only a kick for a dog is a shabby creature of 
 his kind, a reversion to our far precursors which had 
 hoofs, of whom the most famous, according to a 
 strange popular fable, as if to curse the vulgarity of a 
 kick, was the devil. The donkey in the fable — whose 
 huge bulk had no fiber tuned to the nightingale's 
 song — to the mind's eye, in respect of music, was no 
 more than a mite compared to that little feather-breast 
 on the tree-top. Whoever fails of loving what is be- 
 low him will fail of worshiping what is above him. 
 Relish of the sight of any excellence, — what purer 
 satisfaction? What we think of as the supreme bless- 
 edness of the Most High — was it ever better writ than 
 
lo6 Of Knowledge 
 
 in the one sentence: "And God saw all that He had 
 made, and behold, it was very good''''} 
 
 Regarding our fellow-human beings, plainly the 
 conditions apply. Whoso begins to traduce another 
 or gossip glibly will halt awhile if he ask whether he 
 be certainly large enough to understand the object of 
 his dislike. For notably it is the best men of the world 
 who have been most maligned. If a man take no 
 measure of himself in judging others, and no account of 
 jealousy or of many other passions, or of those strange 
 personal attractions and aversions which none can es- 
 cape, he will stumble into dark pits under pretense of 
 seeking his neighbor therein. But after this precau- 
 tion, then remains the second condition, the distant 
 view-point, that is, the sifting out of pre-judgments. 
 But here enters a caution — indifference of mind is not 
 openness of mind; it is not sight from a far coigne of 
 vantage; it is no sight. It is not philosophic poise, 
 but malign prejudice and fatal incapacity. If a man 
 enjoy only shadows and lights, will he be quick as to 
 colors? Are untuncful ears unbiased as to music? 
 Foolish to put a savage, on account of his indifference, 
 to judge of Wagner, for untunableness as to all sounds 
 is the worst prejudice as to Wagner's sounds. Nay, 
 even if a man have a tunable ear and an eye for par- 
 terres and rainbows, indifference to any master in 
 those forms Is not a capacity for criticism. Give me 
 the help of a warm lover of a person or an artist, so 
 he be sensible and frank; for thus, though I may know 
 less of faults, surely I shall sun myself In the stronger 
 ray of virtues, which chiefly I wish to see. 
 
Of Meditation ioy 
 
 As to knowledge of nature — herein both conditions 
 apply; but relative size means nobility of soul. For 
 if the glorious order of the earth and heavens express 
 divinity, who can know it whose bodily fibers thrill 
 only to appetite and whose mind digs in clay? The 
 second condition — distance of view — means knowl- 
 edge, that is, mental vision which takes sight of na- 
 ture at long range and in unity. For as we can not 
 get outside of nature nor find any point more central 
 or better to see from than whcMe we are, so we can 
 take a large sweej:) and gather a multitude into one 
 thought only by the mind's eye. The many things 
 marshal forth one meaning by the army of species, 
 genera, orders, kingdoms, with rhythmical movement. 
 But to the bare sense this is hidden, being the domain 
 of mind. To ignorance, which can not arrive at this 
 far look, this sweep of knowledge-vision, nature must 
 seem to go on piecemeal — from which comes a mean 
 and sordid life and an abased form of religion. 
 
 OF MEDITATION 
 
 By meditation I mean not merely thinking; for 
 that may be a wrestling with problems of philoso- 
 phy, or of physics, or of affairs. Still less I mean 
 abstraction of mind; for one may be drowned in 
 dreams, by day or by night. There is an intent revelry 
 of the mind which yet no more is meditation than rid- 
 dles are studies, or games labor. Meditation is a strong 
 and quiet attention of the mind to high and noble 
 
io8 Of Meditation 
 
 ideas. This definition states two qualities. Medita- 
 tion is first quietness. We live in a great din. It is 
 well to see (for who sees it not will have but narrow 
 sympathies and understand little that occurs around 
 him) that the noise is often a noble uproar, " deep 
 calling unto deep," the clamor of wonderful machin- 
 ery, of great labors, of human struggles, of heroes' 
 voices. But storms, though grand, must sink if the 
 sea is to show the stars. Meditation, secondly, must 
 be power of will and strength of attention, being like 
 a flight to great heights wherein wings must be plied 
 hard though joyfully. 
 
 William Law says: " Meditate on great things, and 
 your soul will soon grow great and noble by so med- 
 itating upon them." 'Tis worth a look by what 
 ways meditation of greatness will create greatness in 
 us. Yet who can number the ways? For what 
 great exercise of mind or of heart is there, which has 
 not ten thousand touches and minglings, and flows 
 not to the sea of life by a delta of innumerable 
 mouths? To follow two or three of these is good 
 exercise; and to go with one to the sea will instruct 
 more than to look at the host of them where they 
 divide. 
 
 One way of meditation to make us grow great and 
 noble is that it brings us into great company. For as 
 a sage wished " that virtue might assume a visible 
 form," so the mind constantly clothes grandeur with 
 shape, looking at it not as a spread of power in the 
 sky, but as a soul and life in some person. Therefore 
 to meditate on high and sacred things is to bring be- 
 
Of Meditation 109 
 
 fore us often great spirits, whether historical from the 
 past or known only to our own eye in the present, who 
 are clothed with those virtues or whose lives are the 
 garments of the greatest thoughts. Thus to meditate 
 IS to look often into faces which appear before us 
 with a fixed grandeur, their features set as if by a 
 chisel or brush into a noble expression without 
 change. Now, to keep great company is to grow in 
 greatness. Lowell has said that the dignity of the 
 elder masters of English writing sprang from the 
 great books they consorted with, there being but few 
 at hand, and those the loftiest: " they lunched with 
 Plutarch and supped with Plato," and grew to the 
 grand manner of that grand company. Can one go to 
 the presence of a brave man full of simplicity and not be 
 glorified? — as Michael Angelo said that when he read 
 Homer, " he looked at himself to see if he were not 
 twenty feet in height." And who ever lives long and 
 often with such spirits, must not he come to see how 
 great the greatness and what a reality the goodness 
 which those souls so shine with? 
 
 Meditation has another way of ennoblement, but 
 parallel, namely, that it lifts the mind up above our- 
 selves. Here returns (for indeed the thoughtful 
 mind will find it rising everywhere) that wisdom of 
 the Stoics which divided all things into two classes, 
 " the things in our power and the things not in our 
 power." Now by meditation we rise to " the things 
 not in our power," but in whose power we are. 
 Action and business are in those things which we rule 
 and turn this way and that, as we will or as our 
 
no Of Meditation 
 
 strength is; but meditation lifts to the things in whose 
 hands we are as wax; to the principles wherein we see 
 
 that 
 
 " Whoso fights and whoso falls, 
 Justice conquers evermore," 
 
 and behold 
 
 " aloft the red right arm 
 Straight redress the eternal scales." 
 
 Then we look on the awful certainty of the moral 
 law, to see which confers both a glory and a standard 
 on us; a glory, because we must come into agreement 
 with it, and what glory is greater than obedience, 
 since, as a German poet has said, " The law of God is 
 thy law, otherwise it could not be thy law!'''' and a 
 standard, because when we weigh our deeds medita- 
 tion will offer a comparison, not with this one or that 
 other one, or with a common level, as if we did well 
 enough if as well as others, but with principles 
 whose light we have risen into. 
 
 Another power of meditation comes close beside 
 these, namely, that by going often thus to the pres- 
 ence of noble and great things we learn to know their 
 look, so as to see them when they come to our 
 presence. It holds firmly that unless we grow fa- 
 miliar with the countenance of greatness by often 
 looking at it, so as then to know it when it comes face to 
 face with us in the world, we shall gather no grandeur 
 at all ; because vv^e can not contrive greatness, but only 
 recognize and take it as it goes by or as nature pours it 
 out. If often we have meditated on heroism, and 
 especially on its countenance in the common affairs of 
 
Of Meditation ill 
 
 life, we shall know a hero when we see him. But 
 otherwise, how know him? — nay, how avoid mistak- 
 ing him for the fustian or the tinsel of his garments? 
 For certainly, selfish villains as well as heroes have 
 been thrown to the lions and died with daring. If 
 vv^e have meditated what love is, and how we shall act 
 if it be good and strong, then we shall know a heart 
 of it when we see it, and shall revere it ; yes, we shall 
 believe it a great genius and glorious faculty equal 
 to high powers of music or of eloquence, so that a 
 mother over her child, or friend whose love is like the 
 horizon, or a prophet whose heart tears him for the 
 oppressed, will seem as great as Homer for his epics. 
 Now, to become acquainted with these sublime 
 things so as to know them by the wayside, is to be 
 made great as to these things; for, he who knows in- 
 stantly the beautiful wherever it issue, has a nature 
 that is ennobled in respect of beauty ; so, in respect of 
 virtue, love, heroism, religion. If the eye be in- 
 structed, then we know charms of color and of form; 
 and their import comes to harbor in us, from where- 
 soever hailing. If the ear be made fine by much 
 listening, straightway the harmonies of sound and the 
 beauties of rhythm are caught as they fly. Now the 
 eye and ear that instantly can perceive beauties and 
 salute them, have become great and noble organs. 
 So is the soul great and noble when it knows 
 immediately the things that belong to the soul, 
 wheresoever they be. 
 
 One other channel by which meditation pours 
 greatness I will follow, namely, that it leads us to a 
 
112 Of Meditation 
 
 knowledge of ourselves; I mean not of what we may 
 have done with ourselves, but of what our true nature 
 is. It is familiar that the Greeks laid great stress on 
 this knowledge, and summed up all wisdom in the 
 command, " Know thyself." How can anything 
 seem to us sublime that is really so unless we know 
 what is truly ourselves and is made to see sublimity 
 and to rejoice in it.? Emerson says: " What the heart 
 declares great is great." Yes, indeed, if the heart 
 have knowledge of itself, that it is human and what it 
 is to be human ; for then it will know the things to 
 be sublime that truly are so. But if the heart have no 
 knowledge of itself above what it shares with dumb 
 creatures, it will think a bone or a crust to be great. 
 William Law says : " When a right knowledge of our- 
 selves enters into our mind, it makes as great a change 
 in all our thoughts and apprehensions as when we 
 awake from the wanderings of a dream. * * * My 
 children, there are things in the world which pass for 
 wisdom, politeness, grandeur, happiness and fine 
 breeding, which show as great ignorance of ourselves, 
 and might as justly pass for thorough madness, as 
 when a man fancies himself to be glass or ice." Now 
 we shall know what our nature is by meditation, often 
 asking ourselves ' What am I ? What ought I to 
 live for? What is the real and true good and the 
 most valuable thing to such a creature as I am?' 
 Nay, we should put a quotidian question, thus: 
 What great or sublime thing have I thought of this 
 day? Is it not reasonable to think a day wasted in 
 which we can recall nothing grand and quiet filling 
 
Of Meditation 113 
 
 us, but only noisy things? Plainly, if so we will 
 question, it is in the power of meditation to make us 
 in fact what by nature's intention we are. 
 
 We mistake if we think meditation requires leisure, 
 for there may be quiet without leisure. But must we 
 not be faithful to the noisy cares? Yes, and that is to 
 give them their place; but not more than their place. 
 What that place is each one must meditate for himself. 
 But the busiest and the hardest worked can find time 
 and quiet. Truly, little time is needful in order to 
 think much. For as but a swift glance is enough to 
 catch the glory of a great landscape, or only a little 
 lingering is necessary to observe many peculiar 
 beauties in it, so but a brief turn of the mind to sub- 
 lime thoughts will give us their light and power. It 
 seems to be not the vast things, but the immense mul- 
 titude of little, like insects in a forest, which eat up 
 the fruit of time. Aurelius says: " To-day I have got 
 out of all trouble, or rather I have cast out all trouble, 
 for it was not outside but within, and in my 
 opinions." But what? say we; are we to feel no sor- 
 rows? Confound not sorrow, which is divine and 
 high, with trouble, which is menial and frivolous. A 
 
 poet says: 
 *" " Sorrow none can feel 
 
 But he who has his heart filled full with love, 
 Beauty, truth, freedom and fidelity. 
 
 Sorrow is next of kin to joy itself, 
 Health, honor, freedom and the sense of right." 
 Trouble is immersion in littlenesses. Aurelius says 
 again : " Do the things external which fall on thee 
 
114 Of Common Sense 
 
 distract thee ? Give thyself time to learn something 
 new and good, and cease to be whirled around." 
 
 OF COMMON SENSE 
 
 I FIND three meanings of common sense, — that it is 
 the sense of the multitude, the common level or reach 
 of opinion; or that it is sound, equitable sense and 
 strong understanding; or that it is the consensus or 
 agreement of the persons who are greatest in the fac- 
 ulty or affairs in question. 
 
 As to the first meaning, I have found a writer of 
 fifty years ago who makes " some uncommon remarks 
 on common sense." He considers it to be opinions and 
 feelings in unison with the greater portion of the race 
 or society in which one's lot is cast. To say that one 
 has common sense this author thinks is no great praise; 
 or, in his own words, " it implies more praise than cen- 
 sure to want" common sense; for to ascribe it to a 
 man is simply to say " that he thinks with his age or 
 country," accoixling to the habit or fashion of the hour; 
 which fashion, how correct soever in some matters, in 
 the whole domain of knowledge will be more error 
 than truth. The writer instances; he says: 
 
 "There are many things which were contrary to common 
 sense in former ages, both in philosophy and religion, which 
 are now universally believed, insomuch that to call them in 
 question is to discover a want of judgment or a defective edu- 
 cation." 
 On the other hand : 
 
 " It is agreeable to the common sense of a great part of 
 mankind to revenge public or private injuries by wars and 
 
Of Commojt Sense I15 
 
 duels; and yet no wise or just reason has ever been given to 
 justify the practice of either of them. * * * We find the 
 most acceptable men in practical society have been those who 
 have never shocked their cotemporaries by opposing popular 
 or common opinions. Men of opposite characters, like objects 
 placed too near the eye, are seldom seen distinctly by the age 
 in which they live. They must content themselves with the 
 prospect of being useful to the distant and more enlightened 
 generations which are to follow." 
 
 These remarks give not the whole account of com- 
 mon sense, and yet they have a justice. Their circle 
 is too small, but correct in curve. Plainly, whatever 
 men make common sense to be, their judgment and 
 measure of it is the current opinion of their neighbor- 
 hood, because they are disquieted with anything 
 contrary to the settled condition of things; and the 
 prejudice or habit that gathers about this established 
 state is in truth their common sense. 
 
 No o-reat teacher ever lived and set himself to show 
 others how to live who was not proscribed for lack of 
 common sense; that, too, by reason of deeds or views 
 which afterward were thought his greatest glories. 
 Therefore Emerson says: " It is the uncivil man that 
 makes the world move;" for he is uncivil who stands 
 against ntoi-es civiles^ and will not breathe the " one 
 vogue, one vein, one air of thoughts," which is the 
 wo*nt. Nevertheless, whoso pays no heed whatever 
 to plain paths long beaten will not walk wisely. An- 
 cient agreement and long concurrence of many men 
 have a right of authority in reason. To rise above 
 this is grand action; but not to weigh it, is shallow 
 thinking. Wisdom as to the common sense, there- 
 
ii6 Of Coimnon Sense 
 
 fore, is like the virtue of poetry, " to be bold, but 
 not too bold;" for imagination and reason must use 
 their wings, but not to fly away. 
 
 The second meaning of common sense is a domi- 
 nant, practical understanding. Emerson, with this 
 view of it, states one universal fact therein. He says: 
 
 " The perception of matter is made the common sense, and 
 for cause. This was the cradle, this tlie go-cart of tlie liuman 
 child. * * * The restraining grace of common sense is 
 the mark of all the valid minds — of .^sop, Aristotle, Alfred, 
 Luther, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Franklin, Napoleon. The 
 common sense which does not meddle with the absolute, but 
 takes things at their word — things as they appear — believes in 
 the existence of matter, not because we can touch it or con- 
 ceive of it, but because it agrees with ourselves and the uni- 
 verse does not jest with us but is in earnest — is the house of 
 health and life." 
 
 Hence observation is a form of the highest common 
 sense, and goes with it; for strong vmderstanding ever 
 keeps very close to facts, and leaves not the lead of 
 one except under pilotage of another and to seek for 
 more, that it may put many facts together till their 
 relation one to another makes a circumference of 
 knowledge. This is the principle of scientific dis- 
 covery, as well as of all wide business, and of gov- 
 ernment. Wherefore, men busied in studying matter 
 or affairs have been thought to have great common 
 sense. 
 
 The greatness of common sense, and its title to rev- 
 erence, appear in this, that it deals with vast complex- 
 ity, that is, with the innumerable elements of a situa- 
 tion. Common sense discerns and judges a path 
 
Of Common Sense 117" 
 
 through this knotted and tangled maze. This is truly 
 a great mental power, a round, complete, powerful 
 genius. What question in philosophy, what intricacy 
 of mathematics, which is not like a simple line or in- 
 dexed path compared to questions of action in im- 
 measurable crises, where neither the elements can be 
 counted or marshaled, nor the spread of their influ- 
 ence spanned ? Therefore, common sense is a wis- 
 dom that never hurries. It can wait, having the 
 strength to let decision and judgment hang. Is there 
 a strength greater than this, or rarer? He is a strong 
 man who can press without interfering, and attend in 
 silence while events work; for such a patience calls 
 everything to its service. Hence it is the virtue of 
 common sense to know when the moment comes by 
 a kind of divination, and to act with decision where it 
 can not reason or argue the way, but after the patience 
 of waiting knows the moment of enterprise. But all 
 this efilcacy rests on observation ; for to wait with the 
 eyes shut is not waiting but slumbering. How shall 
 one reason or divine what he should lead affairs to, 
 who has not beheld or gathered them as they are by 
 attention of eye and ear? 
 
 A trait of common sense is not to expect from one 
 thing what belongs to another. This is a very common 
 error. How many men who are selfish for interest, or 
 ignorant from ease, or poor from idleness, or cruel for 
 revenge, or inhospitable from shallow sympathies, 
 groan nevertheless if they be not treated like the gen- 
 erous, the learned, the rich, the loving, the conversible ? 
 Multitudes, truly. The world roars like the sea with 
 
Ii8 Of Common Sense 
 
 the cries of men who, having paid for something, moan 
 or scream for the opposite thereof. From this it appears 
 that shrewdness is not common sense, though often 
 confused with it. For shrewdness pertains to small 
 affairs, or to a small way with large ones ; and he who 
 handles little things with cunning, commonly hopes 
 to make more of them than the material has in it. 
 Common sense is so just an understanding that it 
 rises almost to a virtue; in truth, it involves virtues 
 and their participation in judgment. For sound sense 
 implies all powers uniting; none too prominent, so as 
 to tyrannize; none too small, so as to be overborne. 
 Imagination, sympathy, love, honesty, mix in it, as 
 well as intelligence and knowledge. If this be ob- 
 served well, it will reverse many judgments as to 
 greatness, and create new thoughts about genius. If, 
 to give instance, common sense be wide as well as 
 penetrating faculty, and embrace a knowledge of 
 moral forces and of love. Napoleon, how glaring 
 soever the light which he flashed, like an insane eye, 
 must be held in common sense to be as stupid as a 
 baker who should put unwet flour into his oven, or a 
 chemist, who, from one ingredient, should expect the 
 properties of two or three compounded. 
 
 How good it is that we speak of well-balanced un- 
 derstanding as common sense. On the whole, how 
 common and excellent intelligence is! Whoever will 
 but give his fellows a chance, being willing to set 
 himself in shadow sometimes that he may see others 
 in the light, and will observe them a little closely and 
 without envy, I may defy him not to be surprised 
 
Of Common Sense 119 
 
 daily with the good talents and the fine performance 
 which he will discover. To have common sense is 
 to have the common heart, common imagination, 
 hope, faith; and this is grandeur. For the common 
 heart has done vast tragedies of love; the common 
 imagination has wrought folk-lore and myths of all 
 colors more gracious than jDoets' dreams — nay, the 
 pigments of poets' pictures; the common hope has 
 divined everlastingness, and faith has dreamed per- 
 fection and wrought religion in the image thereof. 
 What can there be very great that is not common ? 
 For it is common to feel — in which all greatness lies. 
 Expression only is exceptional, and is but the garment 
 of greatness. What other reason why poets are 
 treasured? Their power is that of Antony with the 
 people: "I tell you that which you yourselves do 
 know." For if poets uttered things unfelt by others, 
 as well they might verse in Zend, or " babble in 
 tongues," as Paul would say, for none would under- 
 stand them. 
 
 I may call this great and strong common sense a 
 sense of the common, I mean of the beauty of common 
 things. This is the source of poetical discovery, as ob- 
 servation of properties is of the scientific. I have read 
 that Goethe would pause in his walks to gaze with rap- 
 ture in at the open door of a cobbler's stall, wherein the 
 man at his work and all the emblems about him were 
 like a ravishing picture to the poet's eye. I know not 
 whether Browning speaks with a reminiscence of the 
 famous German, or whether it be a simple likeness of 
 mind, but thus he writes, describing a poet: 
 
I20 Of Common Sense 
 
 " He stood and watched the cobbler at his trade, 
 The man who slices lemons into drink, 
 The coffee-roaster's brazier and the bojs 
 That volunteer to help him turn its winch. 
 He glanced o'er books on stalls with half an eye, 
 And fly-leaf ballads on the vender's string. 
 And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall. 
 He took such cognizance of men and things, 
 If any beat a horse, you felt he saw; 
 If any cursed a woman, he took note." 
 
 The like may one see in this poet's " Christmas Eve," 
 wherein the drench, the steam, the vulgarity, " rhe 
 patchwork of chapters and texts in severance," " the 
 crazy hinge," the " wry and flapping umbrella," the 
 " broken clogs " of the " many tattered little old- 
 faced peeking sister-turned-mother," the "sickly 
 babe," the " draggled shawls," " the dingy satins of a 
 female something," the " shoemaker's lad with wiz- 
 ened face in want of soap," crowded in a little con- 
 venticle, are combined like colors in a picture full of 
 pathos. Poetry is the highest of all wisdom; tor it 
 seems the one art and one scholarship which gives its 
 due to every side of life at once. It is a poem''s es- 
 sence that it wraps all things in unity to our thinking 
 as they are in their acting, but from which they slip 
 into manifoldness to our seeing. 
 
 The third meaning of common sense, I have said, 
 is the agreement or consensus of the greatest persons. 
 As all can not be equally great in all things, always 
 it will behoove a multitude to revere the agreement of 
 one group eminent in one matter, and of another group 
 who are great persons in some other faculty. Each 
 
Of Common Sense 121 
 
 great company has its common sense or unity in its 
 kind. Here open humility and reverence as elements 
 of general common sense. And great elements; for 
 whoever can not combine w^ith his own reason a rev- 
 erent following of the greatest persons in whatever he 
 studies, will go but little way because his own strength 
 is too small, or else will go but very slowly because he 
 must discover anew what others before him painfully 
 have explored. As Emerson said (before quoted), 
 " The restraining grace of common sense is the mark 
 of all the valid minds, of y^sop, Aristotle," and the 
 rest, so I will add there is a consensus as great as this 
 one glorifying all holy seers and prophets. What the 
 solidity of matter is to Aristotle, Franklin, Napoleon, 
 that the higher law is to Confucius, Paul, Socrates, 
 Huss. The life in plants, animals and human society 
 is to ^sop, Shakspeare, Cervantes, no more common 
 soil than the spiritual life to Buddha, Isaiah, John, 
 Jesus. All these teachers, and whatever others may 
 be mentioned worthily with them, show a common 
 sense of the perfect, eternal and unseen in morals 
 and in being. 
 
 To gather all — there is a common sense which is 
 the level of the multitude or of the time. This is to 
 be studied thoughtfully. There is a common sense 
 which is a wide and noble harmony of powers. This 
 is to be sought by discipline. There is a common 
 sense or agreement of the highest and greatest per- 
 sons. This is to be revered religiously. 
 
OF REQUITAL 
 
 Is any other thing so black as ingratitude? It 
 seems the worst defilement of the most defiled things. 
 If a man rob another it is held a dark deed ; but, if he 
 rob his benefactor does not every one think the in- 
 gratitude more base than the thieving? But the 
 vileness of ingratitude is simply the baseness of re- 
 ceiving something w^ithout paying; and in proportion 
 to the greatness of the gift will be the ignominy of 
 so receiving it. Hence, not to pay for the great 
 benefit of kind interest, help, friendship, affection, 
 with a like requital of faithful observance deservedly 
 is held degraded. The principle of all life should be 
 to give at least as much as we take. This is very 
 plainly an unalterable rule in nature. It is the law of 
 matter and of force — as in mechanics the coal which 
 is burned never fails of exactly the same return of 
 work. 
 
 Who can be sure what is the greatest evil in the 
 world ? But perhaps there is no vice meaner or more 
 prevailing than the striving to get something for 
 nothing. This is a pestilence with which the whole 
 world seems sick ; the severe contriving of vast hosts 
 of people is wholly how to get something for nothing. 
 For, observe that it is the same thing whether we get 
 anything for less than its value or for nothing; for if 
 anything be fairly valued at four, and we get it for 
 two, then we pay for but half of it, and the other 
 
 (122) 
 
Of Requital 123 
 
 half we seize for nothing. La Rochefoucauld, who 
 observed shrewdly, says: " The love of justice in 
 most men is only the fear of suffeinng by injustice;" 
 which is to say that the rage to take without requital, 
 and obtain something without sacrijficing anything, is 
 so great that men falter at it only from knowing that 
 unless they do it with such discretion as conceals it, 
 assuredly every one will do the same, and then all but 
 the few strongest will be robbed. It is well to have 
 a happy faith that there are better grounds for justice 
 than this; and there are good reasons for that faith; 
 yet the sickness of taking without giving, or at least 
 the " itching palm " for it, is a wide sickness. 
 
 The law of requital is that kind of justice which 
 dips deeply into self-respect. It is manliness to wish 
 always to pay the worth of what we have. This is a 
 fit pride, a right republican loyalty, a good loftiness. 
 Besides, this is the basis of honorable enjoyment, for 
 no one can enjoy another's work or possessions as 
 much as his own, and surely true ownership waits on 
 payment. There is something odious and contempt- 
 ible in enjoyment of whatever we have not made our 
 own in the earning of it by some true requital. The 
 thievishness of pleasure in what we earn not is plain 
 enough when we think of reputation, fame, honor got 
 without merit. By common consent the ermine of 
 glory must be earned. But few seem so to feel about 
 possessions, privileges, powers; however, the law is the 
 same. Many persons, again, who would scorn obliga- 
 tions to individuals and could not sleep if they owed a 
 man anything, nevertheless will rest insensible under 
 
124 ^-f ^^2^^^^^ 
 
 obligations to the world without ever thinking of re- 
 paying them. However, the debt is as real, and the 
 meanness of not requiting it as great. We should be 
 striking continually a balance with the world, thus: 
 We have had so much and so much, this protection 
 of law, that benefit from the State, this use of col- 
 lected books, that delight from gathered pictures, 
 these ravishments of great strains of music possible 
 only where many together come to play, to sing, and 
 to hear. So much for the one side. What on the 
 other? What our contribution? Have we made re- 
 turn for these things taken, or are we servile 
 beneficiaries content to take without requiting? 
 
 This fine justice holds also with the affections, and 
 indeed secures bliss in the home, where that private 
 and secret source of the greatest happiness — love — 
 hides. Besides, if we neglect requital close at hand in 
 the home and to our nearest, what encouragement 
 that we shall do this dignity and justice anywhere? 
 Here, then, cast up and strike the balance. Say to 
 ourselves. We get so much or so much of service, 
 comfort, happiness, care; return we a like amount, or 
 is our requital short and beggarly? Here noblesse 
 oblige to weigh well the finer treasures beyond price. 
 If a wife have much skill in household crafts, what 
 masters in the market would pay what she has daily 
 from a husband — the comforts, the privilege, the lei- 
 sure, the liberty and power. And if a man be a great 
 master in art, or a vast genius in affairs, no riches can 
 buy him what he reaps from the painstaking of the wife 
 who is his house-friend; for interest, tenderness, devo- 
 
Of Anger 125 
 
 tion, thought and love are things never for sale. 
 What manner of person will be so sorry a catch- 
 penny as to receive these with no requital? Are 
 there skeptics about married happiness? Let them 
 inquire first whether there be requital in the daily 
 partnership. For why indeed should there be happi- 
 ness if one comrade be but a trading boor, grossly 
 content to receive great things for little? If every 
 one in married life, from an inward dignity, even if 
 there were little love, would say : I must see to it 
 that I get not something for nothing — not even the 
 least immunity, privilege, joy, for nothing — peace, 
 prosperity and power would stream through the 
 house. But the shame of taking something for 
 nothing leads life downward at last, like mirth 
 falling suddenly to a tragedy. If we cast not up with 
 the world and with our comrades to give as much as 
 we get, it is certain death will do it some day, and 
 leave the balance heavy. We or our friend will die. 
 The opportunity is fled, the lights are gone out, the 
 book is closed, the door is shut; remains only the 
 ghost of a sad face, the stare of a debt. 
 
 OF ANGER 
 
 Anger is more common than any passion but love; 
 perhaps oftener perfect in its kind than any but fear. 
 It will be well to observe it among its mates, the 
 other passions, to see wherein it is like and unlike; 
 and after that to treat of the different kinds of anger. 
 
126 Of Anger 
 
 Like all passions, anger has degrees, ascending from 
 slight vexation through deepening clouds to rage, and 
 finally to fury, which is a black and horrible tempest. 
 In its mid-region, where it is neither too little to be 
 motive nor too furious to be ungovernable, it has its 
 usefulness. For all feeling is as fuel, and where there 
 is none life has no fire, and then no flame of ascent, 
 no glow and no light. Wherefore anger urges as a 
 motive, in this being like all passions. But it agrees 
 with only some, and notably with fear, in that it is a 
 waste of force and speedily flags. Anger uses up a 
 vast force quickly, like a flash of explosion, and then 
 has none left to apply to labor. Herein it is like a 
 stimulant, which sets either effort or pleasure briskly 
 forward, but soon slips back by a bitter and gloomy 
 reaction. Mandeville says of liquors: 
 
 "Their operation imitates that of anger. * * * It is for 
 this reason that most people, when they are in drinlc, are sooner 
 touched and more prone to anger than at other times, and 
 some raving mad without any provocation at all." 
 
 I have read in medical lore of a man, close to death, 
 who, being provoked in some manner, suddenly 
 roused to strength with the flame of his anger, and 
 then when the fit of temper passed, sank as suddenly, 
 and straightway died. In wastefulness anger agrees 
 with all sudden emotions; for these are spent soon, 
 and very wasteful if painful. And is anything more 
 tormenting than bitter anger? The word has the 
 sense of torture in it by derivation, if it come from the 
 Latin angere^ which means to throttle and strangle, 
 and thence to cause great anguish^ which indeed, is 
 
Of Anger 127 
 
 the same word. To this pain Shaftesbury ascribes the 
 desire of revenge, saying : 
 
 " No wonder, indeed, that so much is done in mere revenge 
 and under the weight of a deep resentment, when the relief 
 and satisfaction found in that indulgence is no other than the 
 assuagingof the most torturous pain and the alleviating of the 
 most weighty and pressing sensation of misery. * * * 
 Certainly if among lovers and in the language of gallantry, 
 the success of ardent love is called the assuaging of a pain, this 
 other success may be far more justly termed so. However 
 soft or flattering the former pain may be esteemed, this latter 
 surely can be no pleasing one; nor can it be possibly esteemed 
 any other than sound and thorough wretchedness, a grating 
 and disgustful feeling without the least mixture of anything 
 soft, gentle or agreeable. * * * To be subject to such a 
 passion is in reality to be very unhappy, and the habit of it is 
 a disease of the worst sort, from which misery is inseparable." 
 
 This misery is apparent in distorted features. The 
 passions make outward signs for tliemselves; and 
 especially they work in the face. All suffering con- 
 torts the countenance so wofully that the pain flies to 
 the beholder likewise. Now if the worst pain makes 
 the most repulsive countenance, then there is no mis- 
 ery like great anger; for it distorts the face more 
 frightfully than any other torment. Therefore Sen- 
 eca reasoned, " What must the soul of the angry man 
 be when his face is so hideous?" which ugliness Jere- 
 my Taylor draws in detail, saying of anger: 
 
 " If it proceeds from a great cause it turns to fury, if from 
 a small cause, it is peevishness; and so is always either terri- 
 ble or ridiculous. It makes a man's body monstrous, deformed 
 and contemptible, the voice horrid, the eyes cruel, the face pale 
 or fiery, the gait fierce, the speech clamorous and loud." 
 
 a>taLr-a^t.»r^-^-^:.-*..:T.-..v-.^ -■--.- -f--^i./l^,»^-...,..v»-, ^..■.. .'■^.■:-.,.,.^::,^..,^^ 
 
128 Of Anger 
 
 But as, if the lion be loosened on us he is only fright- 
 ful, but if chained, majestic and beautiful, so this storm 
 of anger confined has a splendor. It is a study in 
 sublimity. The impending doom (the majesty of the 
 lion of the will), the erect carriage, the tumultuous 
 blood like a tide rocked by an earthquake over coast 
 of brow and cheek, and then surging back, leaving 
 paleness stranded, the tense muscles, the iron body — 
 this is magnificence! Then comes beauty, when the 
 storm is fled to the heavens — the softening of the 
 body, new suppleness of the limbs, resumed ease and 
 grace, the brow smoothing, the eyes sheathing their 
 menace, soft moisture breaking on hands and mouth, 
 and victory hanging out a pennant of healthy color in 
 the cheeks! This is the royal purj^jle of a king. By 
 reason of outward beauty alone, if no more, Emerson 
 says justly that " self-command is the main elegance," 
 and Lowell calls Washington's self-control " the per- 
 petual full dress of his well-bred mind." 
 
 The report of the wretchedness of anger in the 
 hideousness of the raging face hints how we may help 
 control the passion; for the face is like a door by 
 which it gets at large ; now, if we compose the features 
 resolutely, and will not look ugly, we close the door 
 and confine the gusts, which soon settle. This has 
 been remarked by the naturalists, Darwin saying in 
 treating of the expression of emotions in men and 
 animals, that when we resist the muscular movements 
 which are the natural expression of a feeling, we go 
 far to quench the feeling. 
 
Of Anger 129 
 
 Anger is a weak passion; for what other will not 
 conquer it if there be a conflict ? As in medicine it is 
 confirmed that two inflammations can not be in the 
 body together, but one will draw to itself the fire of 
 the other and extinguish it, so in the mind very often 
 one passion puts out another, the stronger feeding on 
 the flame of the weaker. Anger is quenched by love, 
 fear, shame, ambition, nay, even by vanity, nay, even 
 by self interest, which is no passion, but a calculation 
 smothering the fire; therefore, whoso is worsted by 
 anger is driven by a weak mastei'. It is a trait of 
 the weakness that not only anger rises for different 
 causes with different persons (for so all other passions 
 do), but for different causes on varying occasions with 
 the same persons; also it is more liable for no cause at 
 some times than at others. In this it differs from all 
 other passions, and therein bares its weakness, as I 
 have said. For who is the more or less given to love, 
 to fear, to shame or ambition, by being hungry, thirsty, 
 weary, perplexed, or too warm or too cold ? Yet all 
 these things will lay open the frailty of thecholeric, 
 and let out angry gusts. 
 
 Of all passions, anger is most under the rule of the 
 will. What man but could govern his wrath if a 
 fortune hung on it, how choleric soever he were? 
 But not so with fear, love, ambition, hatred, and other 
 passions which often tear their way against all will, 
 or are locked only with great struggle. Whether 
 anger be more under the will because it is weaker 
 than other passions, I know not ; but he is the 
 strong man, not only over himself but over others, 
 
130 Of Anger 
 
 and over circumstances, to command, to do, whose 
 anger is a Caliban, whose will a Prospero. Because 
 anger is the servant of will and cowers behind if the 
 will be urged with motive, it is a liberty which a 
 man allows himself; a gross liberty, for men take it 
 with their inferiors, which is ungenerous, or with 
 their lovers, which is cruel. 
 
 In relation to time, anger is like fear, and unlike the 
 other passions; it abides not like love, hatred, ambi- 
 tion, or even envy or shame, but is a brief exercise, 
 which looks very different after a little. Plutarch 
 observed that cruelty often lies at the door of hurry. 
 " Which of us all," he says, " is so cruel as to torment 
 or scourge a servant because five or ten days before 
 he burned the meat, overturned the table or did not 
 soon enough what he was bidden ? And yet it is for 
 just such things as these, while they are fresh and 
 newly done, that we are so disordered and become 
 cruel and imjilacable." As anger is a passing storm, 
 so it comes not gradually and with signs, but like a 
 sudden sweep of wind or black squall. It is an in- 
 stant leap of blood, as if the heart, with a vicious 
 bound, surcharged the body. Sometimes it is with- 
 held for a time, and then bursting restraint, flashes 
 over every nerve, which tingles and burns with it. 
 Thus, though so weak a passion, often it overcomes 
 by suddenness, like the spring of a reptile, which, if 
 it miss the mark, has done its all, and slinks into the 
 grass. 
 
 Like other passions, anger shows itself diversely in 
 different persons; in some noisily, and in others qui- 
 
Of Anger 131 
 
 etly but the more intensely and hence the more dan- 
 gerously, especially as then it leaves the mind clear to 
 act and to purpose ; for noise is not only distracting, 
 but is itself a clamorous part of the act, and is harm- 
 less. And into action anger leaps or flows, according 
 to the nature of the person; in some at once, with a 
 blow ; in others slyly, with precaution and with ef- 
 fort to take unawares, and these are the more to be 
 feared. 
 
 So far of anger among the passions. Now as to 
 kinds of anger. It is a weighty saying of Seneca, 
 " If there were reason for beginning to be angry, 
 there would be none for ever ceasing to be ;" and in 
 another place, " It is madness to think that we can fix 
 an end to passions which we can not control at their 
 beginning." Reasons for the unreasonableness of an- 
 ger he puts thus: " He who knows that men are not 
 born wise, but have to become so, will never be angry 
 with the erring," and again, " Has a good man injured 
 you? Believe not so. A bad one? Wonder not at 
 it." Anger at the bad is foolish, because then we are 
 taken by surprise in that which we ought to have ex- 
 pected from them; and at the good it is needless or 
 impossible; so that in all cases it is unreasonable. To 
 this stoic wisdom I defer as to most kinds of anger; 
 but I count four kinds thereof, and one is not without 
 excellence; nay, indeed, has some glory — the anger 
 which towers against injustice for the sake of others. 
 There is an ear of wrath to which the cry of the op- 
 pressed cleaves, and this ear has fine knowledge of 
 harmony. Such anger answers not to Bacon's say- 
 
132 Of Anger 
 
 ing, that " anger is certainly a kind of baseness as it 
 appears well in the weakness of those subjects in 
 whom it reigns; children, women, old folks, sick 
 folks." For this that I speak of is better named moral 
 wrath, as John Weiss called the impetuous torrent of 
 Parker's indignation, and it is no wail of sickness or 
 age, but the sea-roar of health and youth, when a gale 
 of love jdIows it. This anger is a shield as well as a 
 motive; for though it be a pain, it fends the greater 
 pain of fellow-suffering which would pierce the heart 
 unresisted if behind the target of wrath the mind 
 were not couching a lance to slay the evil. Who — 
 so writes a poet 
 
 " Mourns not, nor quails, but burns with holy wrath, 
 Wrath only — that man feels not grief nor death. 
 
 And so we find in all the great, in all 
 
 Heroes and prophets, all who ever have 
 
 Wrought great things, wrath, the bearer of all woe." 
 
 The second kind of anger is that which is just but 
 inglorious; for while it rises against a wrong, the 
 wrong is done to ourselves. This anger shows its 
 quality by flaming against a person; but the moral 
 wrath of prophet and hero is against the wrong, and 
 merciful to the sinner, according to Seneca's reason- 
 ing. Bacon says again: "Men must beware that 
 they carry their anger rather with scorn than with 
 fear, so that they may seem rather to be above the in- 
 jury than below it." But better than to be above the 
 injury is to be unconscious of it; and this we may 
 be if so we are set in contemplation of high things, 
 and also of others' good affairs or qualities, that we 
 
Of Anger 133 
 
 think of ourselves seldom and little. " I am I, and 
 you are you," said the Chinese sage, meaning not I 
 am above injury, but simply there is no harm unless I 
 take it; and to a like purpose Aurelius, " No man is 
 able to make your ruling faculty w^orse than it was 
 before." 
 
 The third kind of anger is the trivial sort, that 
 flames at some trifling annoyance, little hurt, slight 
 impediment; also at inanimate things, often falling 
 into an insensate violence to them. 
 
 The fourth kind of anger is the vulgar sort, puffy 
 and vain, w^hich has no object at all in truth, but 
 shoots against fancied affronts, invents slights and im- 
 putes evil w^here none is meant. This anger of persons 
 v^^ho are on the lookout for contempts, is like to be a 
 perpetual ire wherewith these people never cease 
 burning; for one can invent as many slights as he 
 will. Such persons are either underlings, conscious 
 of unworthiness and thus suspicious, or they are con- 
 ceited and overweening, or they are envious. 
 
 To conclude, as anger is a passion, it is to be ruled ; 
 as it is a weak passion, he is weak who rules it not ; but 
 as it has a place in nature, he is weaker who feels it 
 not. For a knight must go armed, and carry anger 
 " like a still sword that tarries in its sheath," yet is 
 not rusted therein, nor like a handle falsely fixed on a 
 scabbard, — w^hich a man resembles if he look strong 
 but can not be moved. Again, there is anger which 
 is ignoble in kind, and all kinds are detestable in 
 furious degrees; but also there is anger which has no 
 tincture of shame, so it be subject and not sovereign. 
 
OF JUDGMENT OF OTHERS 
 
 If judgment of others has been condemned by the 
 penetrating intelligence and tender charity of the 
 Nazarene, who said, "Judge not that ye be not 
 judged," it is likely that the act runs some peculiar 
 danger which we shall do well to consider'. Some of 
 the snares and pitfalls are not hard to see. Very fine- 
 looking actions may have very base motives, or 
 conversely, noble intentions may lead to deeds but ill- 
 appearing at first; as Seneca says," Often it is our duty 
 to be just, and be imputed infamous." But if we are 
 not careful we shall judge by what we see while the 
 real quality of the act lies in the hidden part. Some- 
 times appai-ent virtues are only ill-points in disguise, 
 as when the weakness of obstinacy or opinionateness 
 appears to be constancy, or when the boldness of 
 terror or of despair seems courage. Conspicuous 
 position, again, has much effect, for many men appear 
 neither good nor bad only because they never come 
 into a strong light and are as if hai'dly seen at all. 
 So that whoever does not search deeply into the 
 origin of deeds, or dissect carefully the elements of 
 seeming excellence, or estimate the prominence and 
 strong light in which any one appears, will not escape 
 being judged by his judging. But the greatest dan- 
 ger of all is forgetting the peculiar exposures of other 
 persons, or overlooking to inquire about them. Job 
 says of the poor of the land who are forced to hide 
 (134) 
 
Of yudgment of Others 135 
 
 themselves, that " they are drenched with the moun- 
 tain showers, and embrace the rocks for shelter." 
 Now, there are as great differences between the 
 shelters that cover character as between the dwellings 
 that lodge our bodies; and many there are who are 
 morally unsheltered and hide only under a rock for 
 want of covering. It is said we incline most to be 
 severe to faults in others which most easily we keep 
 clear of ourselves; yet this is not always keenness or 
 hypocrisy ; to display, as some say, our own virtues, 
 
 or to 
 
 " Compound for sins we are inclined to, 
 By damning those we have no mind to ;" 
 
 but this severity comes to pass because we can not 
 conceive or weigh duly the temptations and circum- 
 stances from whose force happily we are free. 
 Therefore the evil seems in others what it would be 
 in ourselves — abominable and without excuse. But 
 if we reflect that we have been never shelterless in 
 point of that evil, shall we be disposed to judge 
 another who never has been covered from it? I have 
 met a saying of George MacDonald, which has the 
 truth of kindness and the kindness of truth : 
 
 " He who would soonest die to divide evil and his fellows, 
 will be the readiest to make for them all honest excuse." 
 
 A like morality is in Emerson's lines — 
 
 " Of all wit's uses, the main one 
 Is to live well with who has none." 
 
 But wit in this couplet has wide scope, comprising 
 
 mind, heart, conscience, which combine in knowledge. 
 
 We shall be able to have charity, cautious judgment 
 
136 Of Judg77ient of Others 
 
 and just consideration, only if we have power of feeling 
 and much knowledge of life, and abihty to imagine 
 conditions and their force not our own. This knowl- 
 edge comes from greater experience than any one life 
 packs in itself, and therewith love, — both needed 
 in this wisdom of judgment; for all the things that 
 press, push, strain and crush humanity, the inherited 
 tendencies, the keenness of temptation, the suffering 
 of loved ones, repressed longings blazing out in sight 
 of possible, yet forbidden, satisfaction, long years of 
 ignorance both of life and of ourselves, and of slumber 
 suddenly wakened by a flash of bewildering light too 
 dazzling to see in, dreadful disappointments, wrongs, 
 oppressions — these, and such other like things, will 
 not be judged justly unless we have the knowledge 
 to go all around them as with a surveyor's chain, and 
 the love pitifully to feel, while we are sheltered, the 
 force of those blasts from life's poles on the unshel- 
 tered and exposed. 
 
 Finally, he who passes much censure and has a 
 greedy eye for faults, will suffer more harm than he 
 inflicts; for, at last, he will draw together all the evils 
 that he keeps in sight and make himself a sink for 
 them. Sir Thomas Browne has given a good rule 
 and caution for judgment: 
 
 " Since goodness and exemplariness are not in all, if others 
 have not our virtues, let us not be viranting in theirs, nor scorn- 
 ing them for their vices wherein we are free, be condemned by 
 their virtues wherein we are deficient." 
 
OF PATIENCE 
 
 Lewes has an excellent expression, "passionate 
 patience," speaking* of the patient investigation of 
 scholars and of scientific men. Is aught more worthy 
 to be called a passion than the ardor of the scholar 
 for learning, the philosopher for thinking, the chem- 
 ist for research, the mechanic for invention? For 
 surely one of three things marks passion — that either 
 it is strong feeling, or else great steadfastness, or else 
 keen pursuit — of which very often two, sometimes all, 
 are mingled in one passion. Now, who blend these 
 more than the scholar and thinker, by ardor of 
 interest, by inquiring pursuit, and by constant devo- 
 tion ? Wherefore, well they are said to have a passion 
 of patience; in a like sense wherewith and finely 
 Lowell calls the calm poise of Washington "his 
 energetic passion of repose." 
 
 Patience touches the quick of happiness, because if 
 we endure not well we shall be wretched, and if we 
 fail often (as who not, in greatest things ?) and still push 
 not on, however compelled to go slowly, we shall 
 come to nothing. I will speak first of the nature 
 of patience; secondly, of its objects. 
 
 As to the nature of it, it will be well to say first 
 what it is not, and then what it is; for some things 
 wear a mask like it which many mistake for it; and 
 often the real quality, by its very quietness, is let pass 
 unknown. Some persons are peaceful because they 
 (137) 
 
1 38 Of Patience 
 
 are selfish; so they are laden lightly enougn, others 
 under burdens may go on as they can. They put on, 
 as I may say, the cast-off clothing of philosophy, 
 maxims of non-intervention, and lounge on the deck 
 in apparent calm of reason; but aloft they spread 
 stealthy sails to the breezes of advantage. But this 
 tranquillity is not patience, nor aught indeed but bare 
 selfishness. Others have a bitter endurance when any 
 ill can not be escaped, a sullen and implacable suffer- 
 ing, or even a sort of savage or ferocious acqui- 
 escence; but others, in the opposite way, shed 
 troubles and injuries as the body of a water-fowl keeps 
 dry under feathers which the rain pelts or the waves 
 bury; but neither the sullen suffering of the one, nor 
 the ease of the other, is patience. Phlegmatic tem- 
 perament is not patience. Love calls for much 
 patience, because it can enjoy or suffer much. Now, 
 unlovingness may be mistaken for it, but grossly ; for 
 inaptitude to feel is not strength to endure. These, 
 and other things in many denominations, are very far 
 from patience. 
 
 Now, to say what patience is: It is judgment 
 which has grown to a faith, and the twain grown to 
 a great forbearance, and these enforced with moral 
 earnestness to help or reclaim. In this account, 
 patience appears both composite and mighty; for what 
 greatest power of the mind is there that takes not 
 part in it, since it is made of thought and of feeling, 
 of principle and of force? But if we look closely we 
 shall see that it has this high place without doubt ; for, 
 first it rests on the rational view of the facts of life 
 
Of Patience 139 
 
 whence arises an energetic forbearance of temper for 
 cause. For if not for cause, that is, rationally justified, 
 restraint would be simply painful, and needless pain is 
 folly. Thus, patience is first judgment of facts, from 
 which it takes flight, like the PhcEnix from ashes, to 
 an assertion of faith; for if there be no fair faith in 
 future betterment, why bear with evil and evil-doers? 
 It would be rational then to push out of sight the of- 
 fensive and the offender. But patience knows of no 
 creature wasted or his opportunity foreclosed. Now 
 having this judgment, which taking wings for a 
 great flight we call faith, moral earnestness is added; 
 without which, what were the others but intelligent 
 good nature ? but with which they are life and pur- 
 pose to reform and bless. To these qualities self- 
 control like a groom sets collar and trace; otherwise 
 nothing is connected and no work done. Self-control 
 will harness passion, with a star in his forehead, to the 
 chariot which moral earnestness drives and faith 
 guides. Now, to contract to a sentence, this is the 
 account of patience, that it is judgment, and the judg- 
 ment an assertion of faith in the divine order which 
 casts nothing to waste, and the faith quickened by 
 moral earnestness and the earnestness held by self- 
 control. Here, then, it stands as a principle of devotion 
 and a strength of forbearance. 
 
 Now, as to the objects of patience, these are three- 
 fold. First, plainly, we have to be patient with 
 others. Now, this means not to despair of any one. 
 Will not hope grow from simple observation, if we 
 attend to it with a kindly eye? For it is verily my 
 
140 Of Patience 
 
 experience that some indeed are worse but most better 
 than they seem. Wherefore, if I can not teach or re- 
 strain some one, perhaps another can; for as all 
 elements will not work together in material sub- 
 stances, so neither in spiritual, so that if I can not 
 improve some one it may be my lack of fitness toward 
 him, and not his inaptitude to improve. Aurelius has 
 condensed this precept well : " If thou art able, 
 teach others what is right, but if not able, remember 
 to be meek on that account." It is a practical point 
 in patience to use the morning well as a point of good 
 setting out for the day. There should be a pause to 
 think of this virtue and resolve for it when all the 
 fresh preparation is finished, and the household, newly 
 risen and refreshed with the morning's baptism, 
 gather at the table. Nay, I doubt if there be any bet- 
 ter thought at the first opening of the eyes when the 
 dew of the light has anointed them. And here we 
 may avail ourselves of memory to forewarn us of the 
 occasions we shall encounter; of which wisely Au- 
 relius says: 
 
 " Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with 
 the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, un- 
 sociable; all these things happen to them by reason of their 
 ignorance of what is good and evil; but I have seen the nature 
 of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, 
 and know that he who does wrong is my kinsman by nature, 
 not only that he is of the same blood or state, but that he 
 shares in the same intelligence and in the same portion of 
 divinity ; I can neither be injured by any of them nor hate any, 
 for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I feel anger or 
 hatred toward a kinsman." 
 
Of Patience 141 
 
 The wisdom and the theory of patience are very 
 simple; for patience is a pure quiet; but impatience is 
 a strong emotion, and therefore something that has to 
 be borne or carried. Now, if we have a burden to 
 lift, and add thereto impatience, what do we but add 
 weight to weight ? 
 
 Who takes ill another's ill 
 Beareth two loads up the hill. 
 
 Therefore to learn patience is the same as to learn 
 to shoulder a weight with skill if we must carry it, 
 but to lay it aside if that be possible. 
 
 Secondly, we must be patient with ourselves. This 
 is a point of much wisdom. It means that we must 
 not ask too much of ourselves, for our powers go but 
 a little way to their limits; but we must ask all that 
 can be, for duty has no limits but strength. Therefore, 
 it is virtue to set the mark on a summit, and patience 
 to climb toward it, however long or slowly. Ask 
 not indeed of ourselves anything too quickly. Cow- 
 per said : " I confess fearless a mind that does not al- 
 ways think;" and Locke; "The way to become 
 learned is to attempt but little at a time; short flights 
 will gather much if all be saved." So it is in nature, 
 where no haste is ever to be seen but in impatient 
 creatures. Nature and time agree. Each moment is 
 charged with just itself, has no anxieties, proceeds 
 unconscious of any next gone or next coming, being 
 full with itself and then flown. Said Pythagoras, 
 " Cor ne edito^'' eat not the heart — " a dark but true 
 parable," says Bacon, for " certainly if a man would 
 give it a hard phrase, those that want friends to open 
 
142 Of Patience 
 
 themselves unto are cannibals of their own hearts," — 
 thus to friendship applying the words of the old 
 Grecian sage. But I will apply the saying also to 
 impatient haste with ourselves. For if one will not 
 wait for his own feet is it not the same as to cut them 
 off? And whoever will not stay for his own hands, 
 does he not the same as if he cast them by the way- 
 side? And whoever lives in anxieties of self-exaction 
 and speed, staying not for works to grow and ripen, 
 surely he devours his own heart and feeds on himself, 
 having naught else to eat, because he has only green 
 fruits about him, or fruit that has dropped half-grown 
 by meddlesome forcing, and nothing sweet and mel- 
 lowed. But shall we not be in haste to achieve 
 goodness ? Surely not. Enough to see that the move- 
 ment is steady but not strained. If it is failure to be 
 impatient about wisdom, intellect, or any other like 
 success, so even more about the greater achievements 
 of virtue and nobleness. I will say also, forgive our- 
 selves; not too easily, but easily enough; I mean, let 
 the dead bury their dead, and the past be past. If we 
 have got wisdom from it and t^ken a lesson to heart, 
 then let the pain go with it into shadow. Remorse 
 may be a luxury if it fill the time to be up and 
 striving afresh 
 
 I have beer speaking of patience with the things 
 which may be in our power as being common events 
 on the earth ; because this is plain good sense. But now 
 finally, I say we are to have patience with the power 
 which is over us; because this is plain piety. Or, put 
 it thus, as once I heard an aged man say reverently, 
 
Of Patience 143 
 
 " We must be patient with God." Thomas Hughes 
 defines patience as "a resolute waiting on God's 
 mind ; " and Schefer says : 
 
 " Goodness can have no higher sense than this, 
 And no more beautiful significance, — 
 Complete contentment with God's nature." 
 
 Saadi has this saying : " A great river is not made 
 turbid by a stone; a religious man who is hurt by 
 injuries is as yet but shallow water." Religion states 
 difficulties in terms of strength. Epictetus reproached 
 those who, taking a journey to Olympia to see the 
 works of Phidias, being unwilling to die without a 
 sight of them, endured the discomfort, the noise and 
 the crowds by reference to the merits of the spectacle, 
 but compared not the ills or troubles of life with the 
 great spectacle of this earth, with its skies and 
 heavens, to see which required no journey; and he 
 exclaimed beside that we have received faculties 
 whereby to support and interpret suffering — 
 " Have you not received greatness of soul, a manly 
 spirit, patience?" Thus within by faculty and with- 
 out by glory we are furnished with the resources of 
 patience to attend on divinity; as the full-hearted say- 
 ing of Haydn expresses: "The quality of infinite 
 goodness inspires me with such confidence and joy 
 that I could have written even a miserere in tempo 
 allegroP As it is sure nothing will hasten the divine 
 deliberation, which awaits the gestation of a million 
 years for an g%%^ and a million million for a moral 
 thought, so it is sure that we shall be but wretched 
 creatui'es in this infinite patience unless we are patient 
 
144 ^f ^'^i^^^^<^ 
 
 with the patience ; for as it is necessity to take things 
 as they are, so it is wisdom to see this, happiness to do 
 it wilhngly, rehgion to do it devoutly. Be ashamed of 
 small repinings; for always fair things are to be 
 found; hence, to recur to small annoyances, what is 
 this but to wash in soiled water when clean ewers are 
 at hand? How people trumpet their miseries, but 
 for which I am persuaded that half the conversation 
 in the world would cease. But Johnson said : 
 
 " Depend upon it, that if a man talks of his misfortunes 
 there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him ; 
 for when there is nothing but pure misery there is never any 
 recourse to the mention of it." 
 
 Aurelius quotes from Epicurus: 
 
 " In my sickness my conversation was not about my bodily 
 sufferings, nor did I talk on such subjects to those who visited 
 me; but I continued to discourse on the nature of things as be- 
 fore, keeping to this main point, how the mind while partici- 
 pating in such movements as go on in the poor flesh, shall be 
 free from perturbations and maintain its proper good." 
 
 Truly, the punctual glory of nature ought to shame 
 us that we edge into it our little punishments for 
 broken laws, to chatter thereof to each other for 
 entertainment. Better was the satirical peevishness 
 of King James, who seemed to set up his royal honors 
 as a bar, and exclaimed to the fly, " Have I three 
 kingdoms and thou must needs fly into mine eye?" 
 
 In sum, patience is, as to nature, intelligence, being 
 a judgment; and piety, being a faith in the good order 
 of things; and morality, being benefaction and for- 
 bearance. As to objects it is also three-fold, having 
 
Of Enemies 145 
 
 two objects in the finite, ourselves and others, and 
 also the Infinite and One. 
 
 OF ENEMIES 
 
 It has been said that Clio would be undone but for 
 the existence of enmity. Burke states it boldly thus: 
 
 "The first part of the external view of all States, their rela- 
 tions as friends, makes so trifling a figure in history that I am 
 very sorry to say it affords me but little matter on which to 
 expatiate. The good offices done by one nation to its neighbor; 
 the support given in public distress; the relief afforded in gen- 
 eral calamity; the protection granted in emergent danger; the 
 mutual return of kindness and civility, would afford a very 
 ample and very pleasing subject for history. But, alas 1 all 
 the history of all times concerning all nations does not afford 
 matter enough to fill ten pages, though it should be spun out 
 by the wire-drawing amplifications of a Guicciardini himself. 
 The glaring side is that of enmity." 
 
 An old writer, Jortin, to a like purpose, says in his 
 " Remarks on Ecclesiastical History," that " Socrates, 
 in the close of his work, observes that if men were 
 honest and peaceable, historians would be undone for 
 want of materials." If these sayings be true, it was a 
 right symbol that Clio was drawn with the trumpet 
 in one hand and a book in the other, for history 
 records the deeds to which the trumpet calls the 
 heroes. Yet was this muse also crowned with laurel, 
 the reward and wreath of poets; and however busy 
 with the quarrels of men who were great only in 
 power and selfishness, it were a blot on the soul to 
 think the first of the muses would close her book if 
 
146 Of Enemies. 
 
 she dropped her trumpet, and would have no office 
 if only the triumph of arts, knowledge, mechanics, 
 poetry and good will were to be celebrated. In such 
 a happy state there would be more need of writing 
 than ever before; for a few pages will serve for the 
 fighting of an army of a hundred thousand men, 
 going from battle to battle in one mass; but great 
 volumes would not hold the inventions, the thoughts, 
 the songs, the forensic wisdom and the laws of all 
 those men and of all whom they kill, working sepa- 
 rately until they were grown old; and each by his own 
 genius. Therefore it has been said well, and better 
 than Jortin's remark, that when a great war has cut 
 off the young men of a nation it never can be told 
 thereafter what losses of scholars, poets, thinkers and 
 great designers the country and the world have suf- 
 fered. 
 
 Yet enmity will not be rooted out, and especially 
 private enmity will flourish long after men learn a 
 better way than to destroy each other in battles. 
 Wherefore, it is no small question how to use our 
 enemies to our advantage. A Frenchman has said, 
 shrewdly, " If you want to succeed, make enemies; 
 your friends will soon rally around you." This is the 
 old truth that anything which will thrive at all — that 
 is, which has good cause to live — will thrive under 
 persecution; for if it do not gather outward strength 
 at once, it will grow into inward vigor, which soon 
 will gain a triumph. Yet it is not to the credit of 
 friends, either of a person or of a cause, that they act 
 not on their friendship till hurts done by foes excite 
 
Of Enernies 147 
 
 their ardor. Such friendship commonly tires if the 
 persecution be too long or too strong or too little; for 
 if too long their devotion is outwearied ; if too pow- 
 erful they are overcome, and if too little they are still 
 lukewarm. Therefore the true friends who may be 
 trusted are those who are always present by love, not 
 waiting to be roused by rivalry; and the old sage 
 spoke more justly who said, contrary to the French- 
 man, that " He who hath a hundred friends hath not 
 one too many, and he who hath one enemy will meet 
 him everywhere." 
 
 Yet in one way enemies give us hope of good traits 
 in ourselves; for since there will beenmity, those will 
 incur it most who have strong points of character, 
 which as much bring them against some men as close 
 to others. So that we say in general. No enemies, no 
 friends. Plutarch says: "What Chilon, the wise 
 man, remarked to one who said he had no enemies, 
 namely: ' Thou seemst rather to have no friend,' has 
 a great deal of truth; for enemies always keep pace 
 and are interwoven with friendships." 
 
 I know of nothing better said of enemies than Plu- 
 tarch's reflections, from which I gather these follow- 
 ing ways of extracting good from our enemies, this 
 being the part of wisdom and much overlooked; for 
 most persons think they have done all if they escape 
 harm from their foes, whereas there is much profit to 
 be obtained. An adversary may spur us on to great 
 efforts to excel ; for there is pain in surpassing those 
 who love us, however it be our duty to prevail; 
 but to exceed any one who is hostile to us will try the 
 
148 Of Enemies 
 
 heart with but a general compassion, and only a 
 tender and charitable heart — which all, indeed, ought 
 to be. An enemy will train us in watchfulness; for 
 if he be wary to seize on every error and trip us, we 
 shall be the more heedful to expose nothing, and 
 this will drive us to prudence and thoughtfulness. 
 EsjDCcially, what is of much importance, we shall be 
 taught by enemies to avoid the appearance of evil. 
 We ought not to pass by what foes say of us merely 
 because it is not true, but examine whether we have 
 not given some color for it in appearance. For it is 
 a false, unkind and unjust independence to have 
 no regard to a^^pcarance, since whatever misrepre- 
 sents ourselves commits the injustice of misleading 
 others. But, best of all, enemies make us watchful of 
 ourselves and induce self-examination; for we must 
 argue thus: our foe hates us with reason or without 
 reason; if without reason, then he not really hates 
 us, but some other sort of person for whom he mis- 
 takes us; but if with reason, then it is plain we should 
 improve, and remove the reason. Akin to this is a 
 reflection of Aurelius, which he seems (and reason- 
 ably) to draw much comfort from and repeats often, 
 namely: 
 
 " Wherein hast thou been injured? For thou wilt find that 
 no one among those against whom thou art irritated has done 
 anything by which thy mind could be made worse; but that 
 which is evil to thee and harmful has its foundation only in 
 the mind." 
 
 It is easy, moreover, to see the faults of an enemy; 
 but before we point out these we shall be prudent to 
 
Of Enemies 14c) 
 
 consider whether we also have them not; for how 
 often it happens that persons are enemies because 
 both have the same faults. This is put into a com- 
 mon saying-, " They cannot get along together," 
 which means that both are willful and unyielding, or 
 both are proud, or both are selfish, and so fly against 
 each other and then apart, by the clash and repulsion 
 of the same faults. 
 
 Enemies, again, may increase our self-control by 
 exercising it. How this shall be depends on whether 
 we use them, or they use us. They cannot be of no 
 effect; they will increase our patience or our impa- 
 tience. They work us either into a vengeful or into 
 a magnanimous mind. Enemies also train us in jus- 
 tice. We must give even an enemy what credit he 
 deserves. If thus we do, then whether we blame or 
 excuse, it will be clear that we are looking at the 
 wrong, not blinded by hatred of the person. This 
 will gain credit for what we say. To this kind of high 
 and self-contained justice, enemies may help us more 
 directly than friends, perhaps, because it is so easy to 
 commend the friend for love's sake, but a harder and 
 higher virtue to excuse the enemy for justice's sake. 
 La Rochefoucault says: " We are not bold enough to 
 say in general that we have no faults, and that our 
 enemies have no good qualities; but in particular we 
 seem to think so." By the discipline of enemies, 
 finally, we may be kept clean of the mean vice of 
 envy — truly a low and miserable passion, and, as a 
 philosopher has said, " more irreconcilable thim 
 hatred." For if we be so hi^rh as to allow full desert 
 
150 Of Immortal Life 
 
 to enemies, we shall be far too high to envy friends 
 or strangers. 
 
 Kind persons, especially poets, seem to find great 
 pathos in enmity; for bards and story-tellers often 
 represent hated persons as being thereby only a little 
 more burdened than before, being already loaded 
 with many sorrows; and poets delight in showing 
 (from which we may judge that it is true to nature) 
 how great alleviation to an over-weighted heart is 
 a touch of kindness or love. Longfellow has said, 
 " If we could read the secret heart of our enemies, we 
 should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering 
 enough to disarm all hostility." 
 
 OF IMMORTAL LIFE 
 
 I KNOW not whether there be anything more re- 
 markable touching the human mind than the belief in 
 a future life. No belief is older, or spread more 
 widely, or more enduring; yet none has to encounter 
 facts so hard and to battle against such foes. It is 
 surprising that it has not been beaten to death, and 
 still more that ever it arose at all. For though primi- 
 tive imagination be very quick and the faith of 
 primeval races very ardent and vivid, yet it seems 
 strange that these powers sometimes go clean con- 
 trary to observation; and this must be held, I think, 
 no little tribute to the spirituality of our being. De- 
 struction is a fact so obvious that it is hard to see why 
 an untutored man, when he has seen a creature born, 
 
Of Immortal Life 151 
 
 should not as readily think it a dream, an unreality, a 
 phantom, as conceive a creature whom he has seen 
 destroyed to be still living invisibly. Yet, though 
 death happens, and often therewith destruction of the 
 body by violence, it being torn or hewn asunder or 
 burned, and when not so, yet evaporating before the 
 eyes by decay or consumed by insects, there is some- 
 what in human nature which triumphs over these 
 attacks and wins the combat against sense, so as to 
 persist that the dead creature has had only another 
 birth. Now, this mighty triumph of belief, or of 
 hope, or of love, or of somewhat in us indefinable, 
 which takes account of facts that pertain to it, has been 
 a great wrestling-ground since men began to reason 
 about it. The first explanation is that the belief 
 springs from an environment (which now is the sci- 
 entific term in vogue), and exists because the fact is 
 so, just as eyes and objects, ears and sounds, announce 
 each other. Whether this be also the best, as it is the 
 oldest, explanation, I will not argue, but leave the 
 marvel of the belief against sense to stand as the mar- 
 vel surely it is. For there has been no belief more in- 
 tense; yet 'tis against a fact than which none is more 
 confounding. To me it matters not much that this 
 faith sickens in some minds after they have become 
 full of science, when much knowledge has accrued by 
 lapse of centuries; for as everything costs some other 
 thing, I have wondered sometimes whether this same 
 science has not made a charge, but so gradually, since 
 knowledge has grown slowly, that we wot not how 
 much we have paid for our philosophy. It is possi- 
 
153 Of Immortal Life 
 
 ble that, as the civilized stomach could not live on the 
 fare of the wild man, and the head that rests on pil- 
 lows or the body that is clothed daintily would per- 
 ish feverishly, unclad in the forest, and the ear, how- 
 ever trained in fine music or shaken by the city's roar, 
 is a dull organ for the stealth of the savage and but a 
 piece of leather compared with the membranes of 
 some brute creatures — so the mind has not gained its 
 delicacies without loss of some rude force, or even, 
 mayhap, some very fine adaptation. If there be lost 
 arts and lost virtues, as history records, so there may 
 be lost susceptibilities of faith; and I doubt whether 
 yet it has appeared what a whole man may be, since 
 man seems not to have been able ever to gain some- 
 what and yet save therewith all he had already. 
 
 To divide more particularly, I will take immortal 
 life as a thought, as an emotion and as a motive. First 
 as a thought — I have no reasoning to offer for it; for 
 though many arguments suggest it, and conduce to 
 it, I have met none which prove it, and it is common 
 to say that there are none, and could not be. This, 
 indeed, seems likely, because we know not in truth 
 what life is. Whence, then, can we infer or predict 
 anything which lies enfolded in the nature of life 
 whereof we are ignorant? As to analosfies in nature 
 set forth by some, by others derided, I deny not that 
 these contain suggestions; though not arguments, yet 
 they seem to me not so worthless as some have de- 
 clared. For though it be said that butterflies, moths 
 and the like creatures in their transformations really 
 die not, but only change alive, still that is only to our 
 
Of Immortal Life 153 
 
 superior sight which has capacity to keep them in 
 view the while; but to their fellows, if we imagine 
 them to think and observe, these creatures must seem 
 to die and disappear when they enter the chrysalis. 
 The best analogy which I have read of is in the lot 
 of the dragon-fly, which first lives under water, and 
 then has a change of expression or feature when at 
 last it is impelled to climb a rush out of the water and 
 live, which to do before had been destruction. 'Tis 
 in speaking of a like analogy that Browning calls 
 death a " throbbing impulse." After that, when with 
 wings the creature has launched into the air, then it is 
 unable, however it might wish, to dip again under the 
 water. As if with such analogy in mind, and happily, 
 a poet calls the dying 
 
 " The amphibious souls that in a dumb amaze 
 Hover between the earth, the grave and heaven." 
 
 Now this up-climbing from the pool is as strange 
 and mournful to the grubs left behind, if we conceive 
 them to think of it, as death is to us. And it is pos- 
 sible that as we follow the process among these hum- 
 ble creatures, so there are benign beings who have 
 attained sense to follow our change with continuity. 
 As to proofs, seek none, but attend to intimations that 
 come, and sometimes, indeed, seem to rain on us, as we 
 go on. And this must be so in proportion to the 
 depth of the life which we live; for as like minds 
 know each other, so will abundance of life report 
 truthfully the possibilities and expectations of it; 
 therefore to live richly is to expect gloriously. 
 Whence it is notable that those souls whom by com- 
 
154 Of Immortal Life 
 
 mon consent men glorify most, like the sacred seven, 
 to whom we may add Socrates, Plato, and a few such 
 like, have been prone to this belief, or even full of 
 proclamation. Emerson says: 
 
 " All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I 
 have not seen. Whatever it be which the great Providence 
 prepares for us, it must be something large and generous, and 
 in the great style of his works. The future must be up to the 
 style of our faculties — of memory, of hope, of imagination, of 
 reason." 
 
 It is a secret of rich living to live continuously, and 
 not in leaps, as it were, but in a steady on-going. For, 
 if there be gaps in life, that is to say, if we lose one 
 part thereof when we have entered another, then one 
 part will be sure to despise another, and if life be de- 
 spised in any measure, there is small opening for the 
 faith of immortality. Now that this living by seg- 
 ments may come to pass, and that even it may be 
 called piety, we may learn from such a saying as this: 
 "What is every year of a vi^ise man's life but a criti- 
 cism on the past? Those whose life is the shortest 
 live long enough to laugh at one-half of it. The boy 
 despises the infant, the man the boy, the sage both, 
 and the Christian all." I know not whose words 
 these are, but whosesoever, I have small opinion of his 
 wisdom or his piety, unless this be a sorry lapse from 
 a better habit of mind. For mid-age having come, 
 then to have arrived at naught but contempt of youth, 
 is but piecemeal existence, and will lead to no knowl- 
 edge of life. In contrast with this folly, I will quote 
 words of Coleridge: 
 
Of Immortal Life 155 
 
 " Men laugh at the falsehoods imposed on them during their 
 childhood because they are not good and wise enough to con- 
 template the past in the present, and so to produce by a virtu- 
 ous and thoughtful sensibility that continuity in their self-con- 
 sciousness which nature has made a law of their animal life. 
 ***** They exist hi fragmeyits. Annihilated as to the 
 past, they are dead to the future, or seek for the proofs of it 
 everywhere only not where alone it can be found, in them- 
 eelves." 
 
 With this Coleridge quotes Wordsworth's simple 
 lines ending, 
 
 " And I would wish my days to be 
 Bound each to each by natural piety." 
 
 This thouglTt seems deeply grafted in Wordsworth's 
 mind, for in " Yarrow Revisited " he writes: 
 " Brisk youth appeared, the morn of youth, 
 With freaks of graceful folly; 
 Life's temperate noon, her sober eve. 
 
 Her night, not melancholy. 
 Past, present, future, all appeared 
 
 In harmony united. 
 Like guests that meet, and some from far, 
 By cordial love invited ;" 
 
 and he has shown that he knows the insight which 
 comes of a life unsundered and unslackened ; for, de- 
 scribing the Wanderer, he says: 
 
 " Time had compressed the freshness of his cheek 
 Into a narrower circle ol deep red, 
 But had not tamed his eye; that, under brows 
 Shaggy and gray, had meaning which it brought 
 From years of youth; which, like a being made 
 Ot many beings, he had wondrous skill 
 To blend with knowledge of the years to come 
 Human, or such as lie beyond the grave," 
 
1^6 Of Immortal Life 
 
 Coleridge's saying, " They exist in fragments," is 
 the key to much despair; and certainly he can not 
 have any waiTant in himself for a future life who has 
 broken this one to pieces. 
 
 Now, secondly, as emotion, or a source thereof, the 
 thought of the future life is first, health; secondly, 
 splendor; thirdly, germane to love. For I think it is 
 well said that "a healthy mind desires to live;" nor 
 do I hold indifference as courage, but esteem it either 
 ignorance or insensibility. As to splendor, can any- 
 thing be vaster, grander, more glorious than the 
 thought of continuity and of a life which at maturity 
 is stdl at infancy ? And as to love, the heart plainly 
 longs for perpetuity, and love is dead if it admit 
 death. Aurelius has this passage of stoic piety: 
 
 "The universal nature out of the universal substance, as if it 
 were wax, now molds a horse, and when it has broken this up 
 it uses the material for a tree, then for a man, then for some- 
 •thing else, and each of these things subsists for a very short 
 time. But it is no hardship for a vessel to be broken up, just 
 as there was none in its being fastened together." 
 
 I think there is piety herein, but perhaps a lapse m 
 philosophy ; for, mayhap, there is hardship if a think- 
 ing creature, being wrought, be led to an end, where- 
 as it is the nature of thought to be unlimited. And 
 this is the answer to another passage of Aurelius: 
 
 " The healthy eye ought to see all things and not to say, I 
 wish for green things, for this is the condition of a diseased 
 eye; and the healthy heai-ing and smelling ought to be ready 
 to perceive all that can be heard and smelled ; and the healthy 
 stomach ought to be with respect to all food just as the mill 
 with respect to all things which it is formed to grind. And 
 
Of Immortal Life 157 
 
 accordingly the healthy understanding ought to be prepared 
 for anything that happens ; but that which says, Let my dear 
 child live, and let all men praise whatever I may do, is the eye 
 which seeks for green things, or teeth which seek for soft 
 things." 
 
 But though the healthy stomach will not be too 
 delicate to cope with whatever can be digested, yet it 
 is healthy according to its nature, which is to digest. 
 And in like manner it is the nature of love to cling 
 and not to give way, and to demand for itself ever- 
 lastingness ; and love does this to perfection if it be 
 healthy. 
 
 Thirdly, though as a thought I conceive the im- 
 mortal life just, and as an emotion glorious, as a motive 
 it is bad, servile. " If death," says a preacher, " ter- 
 minates man's conscious existence, it will be alike to 
 the most prosperous sinner and the most self-sacrific- 
 ing saint after the termination of this earthly scene." 
 But it is unethical and faithless thus to value moral 
 differences by future events. The preacher illustrates 
 his bad doctrine thus: 
 
 " Of all the sinners of the first French Revolution, perhaps 
 none was more detestable than Fouche ; yet by his adroitness 
 he succeeded in evading every danger which engulfed his com- 
 rades in iniquity, and after a prosperous life he died quietly in 
 his bed. * * * On the other hand, the Apostle Paul, after 
 a life spent in toil and suffering, perished by the ax of the exe- 
 cutioner. Yet if there is no hereafter, and if the only reward 
 of self-sacrifice and the only punishment of crime are those 
 which happen in the present life, it would have been far better 
 to be Fouch6 than Paul." 
 
 He that thinks this servility dignity, this baseness 
 morality, this appraisal virtue, has not learned the com- 
 
158 Of Immortal Life 
 
 plexion of calculation and understands not when men 
 dicker with Providence and would cozen righteous- 
 ness of her robes. If it were better to be a villain for 
 ten years, or even for one moment, then it were bet- 
 ter forever. If a man had a stomach which could 
 digest garbage and carrion without sickness, still, 
 would he be better than swine or vultures if he liked 
 the filthy foods? For though the strength of the 
 stomach might master them, its virtue as a man's 
 stomach should loathe them. So, whoever would be 
 vile for these passing years if they were all, is but a 
 barterer for heaven ; nay, like a man chaffering for 
 fruits which he has not the stomach to retain ; for the 
 unheavenly mind could not receive heaven, but only 
 transport its own pit elsewhere — as Milton's Satan 
 cries out: 
 
 *' Which way I flj is hell ! Myself am hell ! " 
 It is a fine thought of the poet Schefer, that 
 strangely we insist so much on the eternity to come, 
 and yet never care for or bemoan the eternity gone; 
 and a like thought Aurelius puts in these words: 
 " Men set much value on being praised by posterity, 
 by those whom they have never seen nor ever will 
 see; but this is very much the same as if thou shouldst 
 grieve because those who have lived before thee did 
 not praise thee." Why, indeed, say we that we must 
 go on living in order to make this life glorious, and 
 yet never insist on reclaiming the vanished past? If 
 this life be not glorious, lofty and a great privilege 
 and dignity in itself, I know not why it needs comple- 
 tion at one end more than at the other, or must draw 
 
Of Immortal Life 159 
 
 after It the future while yet cut from the past. This 
 shows we ought to find glory here, now, even if there 
 be nothing more; and surely it is greediness to think 
 this life good for nothing if no other be to come. 
 Truly I am ashamed of this bad feeling and evil 
 grasping, and that it should be cloaked with religion. 
 The true piety is like that of Aurelius: 
 
 " How can it be that the gods, after having arranged all 
 things well and beneficially for mankind, have overlooked this 
 alone, that some men, and very good men, and men who, as 
 we may say, have had most communion with the divinity, 
 when once they have died, should never exist again, but be 
 completely extinguished? But if this be so, be assured that if 
 it ought to have been otherwise the gods would have done it, 
 and if it were according to nature, nature would have had it so. 
 For thou seest even of thyself that in this inquiry thou art 
 arguing with the deity, and we would not argue with the gods 
 unless they were most excellent and just; but if this be so, they 
 would not have allowed anything in the ordering of the uni- 
 verse to be neglected unjustly and irrationally." 
 
 In accordance with this he says in another place : 
 
 " Pass, then, through this little space of time conformably to 
 nature and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off 
 when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking 
 the tree on which it grew." 
 
 Whoever rejoices not in this life, with exultation and 
 thanksgiving, will have no better knowledge of an- 
 other, either before it is come or after he is in it. For 
 life is all one, like a web unrolling; and if one yard 
 of it be mean, the whole pattern is condemned. 
 
OF DEATH 
 
 Death Heth still in the way of life, 
 
 Like as a stone in the way of a brook ; 
 
 I will sing against thee, Death, as the brook does, 
 
 I will make thee into music which does not die. 
 
 — Sidney Lanier. 
 Albeit my interest in death is wholly from the 
 spiritual side, having no elemental or physiological 
 knowledge of it, yet I may divide discourse of it into 
 two parts, one of which will have regard to the body. 
 I will treat first of death as a physical fact, and 
 secondly of some moral thoughts clustering around it. 
 In the first part I will speak of the fear of death, the 
 ease, the simplicity of it, and its aspect as a function 
 of life; and in the second part will follow the thoughts 
 of the possible vicinity of the dead, the democracy of 
 death, and the look of dead faces. 
 
 The fear of death has been raised too much and set 
 up on high, especially by preachers, like the brazen 
 serpent in the wilderness over the heads of the Israel- 
 ites; but not with so good excuse as that symbol had, 
 for this fear has not been curative, I think, nor made 
 into pleasant or graceful shape, but rather a horrid 
 spectacle, to affright people. For that men can be 
 frightened into piety has been one of the legacies of 
 religion which barbarous ages have bequeathed us 
 plentifully. I think if the priests spoke not of death 
 in order to make the fear of it the greater, the 
 healthy human heart would take less note of it. Not. 
 (i6o) 
 
Of Death i6i 
 
 withstanding, the fear of it belongs to the nature of 
 the bodily hfe; for the body has an instinctive recoil 
 from danger, injury, destruction ; which is no more 
 than to say, in another way, that it is living. Where- 
 fore this recoil is so much the greater as health and 
 vitality are stronger; and yet health, which is only an 
 exuberant sense of life bounding and abundant, will 
 make death less present or habitual to thought; so 
 that the force of life which recoils from death is that 
 very thing which shuts it out from imagination. 
 
 When death lodges in the mind, the foreboding 
 springs, if I have counted all, from three classes of 
 feeling, which may work separately or all together, 
 according to individual experiences. These are, first, 
 uncertainty or terror as to what may come after the 
 change, which the familiar words of Hamlet set 
 forth: 
 
 " The dread of something after death, 
 The undiscovered country from whose bourn 
 No traveler returns, puzzles the will." 
 
 Secondly, attachment to a happy life, to surround- 
 ing pleasures, and especially to dear and sacred loves; 
 and this sometimes takes the form of intense curiosity 
 as to events forthcoming, especially if one's lot be cast 
 in moving epochs and great exigencies, which incite 
 the ardent soul to a mighty grip and desire of life, 
 imtil the issue of great events shall become clear. 
 Thirdly, the painful conditions which attend death 
 sometimes, and to the mind or the fear of many per- 
 sons always; for even if none be visible, many fear 
 an obscure and unpresented agony in the rending of 
 
i62 Of Death 
 
 life from the body ; which terror springs from unnat- 
 ural, and thence constrained, unsightly, and painful 
 dissolutions, especially by violent diseases; for these 
 once witnessed, or even described, will make strong 
 impress on imagination. Nevertheless, nature has 
 her ways of death, as shortly I shall say, which are 
 sightly and kind ; and it is well if the imagination lay 
 hold of these, as Browning does when he speaks of 
 death as " half a pang, and all a rapture." 
 
 The fear of death is slighter in youth, because 
 youth reflects less and especially of the future, and 
 also, perhaps, as finely has been said, because it is the 
 time of life " before the habit of living has been very 
 firmly established." The fear is greatest in mid-age, 
 because then the mind ponders much, and because 
 life, wherein it is affected by the body, then is at its 
 highest, memory being then most vivid, present en- 
 joyment keenest, and the future most hopeful. The 
 fear is least in old age, because desire and strength 
 have been satisfied; which a poet thus figures: 
 
 "Just as a child, that at its mother's breast 
 Has drunk its fill so eagerly, that now 
 Its eyes stand staring open, and its lips 
 Tremble, like those of a worn out old man ; 
 And both of them sink down in one sweet sleep." 
 
 I find the fear of death rises and falls, being greater 
 at one time and less at others, or falling indeed to 
 nothing. This observation I have made in myself. 
 Whence I conclude that the foreboding varies with 
 health, bodily and mental ; if which be true, it is plain 
 that death causes not wholly and substantially the fear 
 
Of Death 163 
 
 of it, which it would do if truly and in itself it were 
 a fearful thing (as it can not be rationally, since it 
 is natural), but that the fear springs from affections 
 which come between us and death like a distorting 
 vapor. For I have found the fear of death less as the 
 soul is elastic, joyful, healthful, in good morality and 
 at peace; wherefore Bacon's saying falls true in a 
 very noble sense, that " death is no such terrible 
 enemy, when a man hath so many attendants about 
 him that can win the combat of him." 
 
 It is my observation that fear of death is not much 
 present to life's occupations and pleasures; this is 
 right and natural, for wisdom has always its hands 
 full with the moment which is. Therefore, memento 
 mori is a needless maxim, and rather to be ascribed to 
 the priests, as I have said, than to healthy sense ; and, 
 as Bacon says on this point, " in I'eligious meditation 
 there is sometimes a mixture of vanity and supersti- 
 tion." Memento vivere were better, wise and 
 salutary, as Aurelius says thus: "If thou shalt be 
 afraid, not because thou must some time cease to live, 
 but if thou shalt fear never to have begun to live ac- 
 cording to nature, then thou wilt be a man worthy of 
 the universe which has produced thee." 
 
 The ease and simplicity of death has been remarked 
 very often; yet it is not pondered as it should be per- 
 haps, so admirable and beautiful is it. Animals show 
 terror of destruction, but I think never any fear of 
 dying; and this not because of their ignorance, but 
 because death is so soft and gentle a passage. Our 
 dumb fellow creatures recognize in some sense the 
 
164 Of Death 
 
 advent of the change, and go apart from their fellows, 
 even sometimes into very secluded and hidden places; 
 so that I have read that the dead of some of the wiser 
 of the creatures never have been found. This they 
 do, quietly and even in confinement; as, in gardens of 
 natural history, high creatures like intelligent apes 
 have been seen to lie down for death with a very clear 
 look of comprehension in the eye. Man, who can 
 utter his sensations, has witnessed to the ease of death 
 very often. When the physician told Anquetil his 
 end was near, he said: " My friend, you behold a man 
 dying full of life." William Hunter said: " If I had 
 strength to hold a pen I would write how easy and 
 delightful it is to die." Fontenelle, being asked if he 
 suffered, answered, " I only feel a difficulty of exist- 
 ing." Haller kept his expert touch on his own pulse 
 and said calmly at last to a brother physician, "My 
 friend, the artery beats no longer." I have read that 
 an officer wounded in a naval battle said, as life 
 ebbed, " I had no idea it was so pleasant a thing to 
 die; "and that Solander, having nearly perished in 
 the snow with cold, was so pleased with the sensa- 
 tions that he resented his rescue; and that a man who 
 w^as nearly drowned resisted resuscitation with all his 
 power, because the sinking away of his senses he 
 found so delightful. Florence Nightingale has re- 
 ported that indifference is the usual state, but that 
 divers diseases have divers effects; so that in some the 
 dying show a peculiar peace, even joyfulness, which 
 sometimes is rapturous; but in others terror or despair 
 appears. The like observations have been made on 
 
Of Death 165 
 
 death mechanically enforced, the face being distorted 
 when a shot wound has inflicted it, but calm when a 
 sword has cut the life-thread. Whence is it not to be 
 concluded plainly that it is not death that is affrighting 
 or an evil, for this is the same fact in all the condi- 
 tions; but the different states or incidents of the body 
 that take death differently ? And so, too, they might 
 take heat, cold, food, sleep differently, and sometimes 
 painfully, though these be all natural and delightful. 
 Higginson narrates that an eminent physician assured 
 him that in all his medical experience he never met a 
 dying person who was afraid of dying. These trib- 
 utes to the softness and the ease of death, the 
 delightfulness of the approach of the great change, 
 are very plentiful, and will affect the mind deeply if 
 reason dwell on them. It is a truth which seems to 
 have repeated itself in all ages, for mythologies give 
 a domestic and peaceable turn to death, as in a beauti- 
 ful fable of ancient India that the death messenger is 
 the soul of the first man, who thus perpetually comes 
 back to call patriarchally each of his descendants to 
 follow him. 
 
 From this I pass to the aspect of death as a func- 
 tion of life; for certainly it is no other kind of act 
 than a living act, and as much so as sleeping, which 
 always has been called its twin brother. Schefer ex- 
 claims, "Man dies alive; think upon that for once!" 
 Yet it is to be remarked that this idea comes only 
 with knowledge, for savages believe only in violent 
 deaths as natural, but other deaths they think come 
 by magic or sorcery. Did not religion continue the 
 
i66 Of Death 
 
 like when it proclaimed death to be the wages of sin ? 
 and thereby did it not nourish witchcraft, and the 
 evil eye, and many superstitions, by which, even into 
 late time, death has been explained, after the barbar- 
 ous manner, by sorcery ? Schef er has a daring, yet a 
 religious way, of proclaiming death a living function, 
 saying that God did not " invent " it. 
 
 "Love — life — death — God hath not invented them; 
 He tlirough eternity w^as life itself, 
 And will be blissful life in love and death 
 While he abides — that is eternally." 
 
 Nay, Browning calls death even a culmination, age 
 being " The last of life for which the first was made," 
 and then " Let age approve of youth, and death com- 
 plete the same;" which thought Schef er states thus 
 more at length : 
 
 " Each time a task 
 Is done, there is also a taking leave 
 Of it; to drain the beaker is to take 
 Leave of the draught ; to rise from table means 
 A parting from the meal; to rise from bed 
 A parting from the sleep and from the dream, 
 Which man shall sleep no more, shall dream no more. 
 Every completion is at the same time 
 A final parting from it, as the artist 
 Parts from his work. * * * * 
 Only to shake out nut shells from their laps 
 Have the departing." 
 
 But I speak of death at death's time; for whatever 
 is natural has its natural season. Therefore it is well 
 to distinguish between timely and untimely death; and 
 I like not the religion which loads the untimely deaths 
 
Of Death 157 
 
 on Providence, while in truth they belong to our dis- 
 obedience. It is not piety but folly to treat all alike. 
 A wi'iter well calls it strange that we have only one 
 word for the natural end or completion of life, and 
 for its interruption, " for the event," he says, " which 
 closes a long day's toil and for that which crashes like 
 a thunderbolt into the opening blossom of family 
 life." Epictctus has it that death is no evil, as it is 
 not an evil to ripe corn to be reaped: but if the corn 
 be not ripe then the nature of it is thwarted, and this 
 is an evil. The which evil, I say, I will lay on the 
 folly of men, and not on the intention of God. 
 Schefer has a better piety, saying that an untimely 
 death is painful to us in that dire way which the de- 
 parture of reverent age never affects us withal, 
 because the Eternal mind is iniwilling. Thus he 
 says: 
 
 " Untimely death is woe, 
 A breach of life, life breaks in two with pain! 
 Pain seizes on the great Eternal spirit 
 Who forfeits, and for naught, a form of his; 
 And this same pain the sufferer must bear. 
 
 if. -if. -if. -^ ■/(. 
 
 It burns the living ones who gather round," 
 
 While I must call death a living function, as plainly 
 it is, yet it is an act of a high organism, and so has on 
 it the stamp of nature's completion of her ideal; for 
 death is the stopping of the motion of an organism, 
 but not a destruction of the organism, which follows 
 only by slow degrees and by inorganic agents when 
 the mystery of the life-power has ceased. But there 
 
1 68 Of Death 
 
 are creatures whose only possible extinction is destruc- 
 tion. A scientific writer says: 
 
 " Death is not an attribute that belongs to all organisms ; 
 there are many of the lower organisms which, although they 
 can be destroyed, are not compelled to die. In the division of 
 the amoebae we can not call it death, for where is the corpse? 
 Let us suppose an amoeba to possess consciousness ; it would 
 then, on dividing, say to itself : 'I have cut off from myself a 
 daughter.* I do not doubt that each half would think that the 
 other half was the daughter, and would look upon itself as the 
 original individual." 
 
 Whence it appears, as I have said, that death is a high 
 act, belonging to superiority. 
 
 Death always has been notable as a mystery; and 
 certainly it is a strange thing and altogether inex- 
 plicable that such a quiet suddenly should descend 
 upon intelligence so active but a moment before. 
 For what the activity was, or in what way stopped, 
 or whither the power has gone, we can not follow. 
 It is certainly past all understanding that looking 
 on the eye full of the life of thought and of love, 
 we see a glaze of unmeaninguess come over it; for 
 what has become of the thought, the love, how it 
 could cease, and if not ceasing whither flown, the 
 whole world has tried to say immemorially, yet never 
 said. But, it is worthy of remark and of constant re- 
 flection, that the mystery of death is no greater than 
 the mystery of birth. 
 
 " How one who stood before thee in the flesh 
 Could from such sunshine vanish out of sight 
 That by the grave thou sadly ponderest. 
 
 * * « 4: * 
 
Of Death 169 
 
 But take now wonder for wonder, joy for grief; 
 How one who was so long invisible 
 In such a sunshine can at length appear, 
 That by the infant's cradle ponder thou." 
 
 The two mysteries are exact opposites, birth being 
 a mystery of advent, and death of departure; for at 
 birth we wonder whence the soul comes, at death 
 whither it goes. Now, as to receive is joyful, and to 
 give up is painful, and therefore the advent a happy 
 mystery and death a sad one, the greater awe which 
 most persons have of death seems to speak the greater 
 intensity of grievous than of joyful feeling; but I 
 question whether this be a fact creditable to our piety, 
 and whether, if duly we were grateful, the wrench of 
 our affections at a death would be any more poignant 
 than the exaltation of them by a birth. And if this 
 were so, would not the mystery of the one so balance 
 and illumine the secret of the other as to cast the light 
 and glow of faith all about it ? If we follow Plutarch, 
 and that manner of looking at life which the poets 
 have, and which it is safe to follow, we shall see life 
 so thronged with mysteries, and every step and change 
 in it such a secret, that death will seem but one of a 
 large fellowship, into which other secrets run, as 
 rivers into a sea, all of one substance. Plutarch quotes 
 from Heraclitus, that " it is the same thing to be dead 
 and alive, asleep and awake, a young man and 
 decrepit; for these alternately are changed one into 
 another." This is like the science of physicists, who 
 show us that all forces — as light, heat, electricity — are 
 interchangeable, so that one is continually waking 
 
lyo Of Death 
 
 from another, and then sleeping in another, and thence 
 reawaking, so that all the forces are but one in different 
 forms. In like manner, whatever death be, it can not 
 be a gap, as when something is cut off or broken; 
 for this is contrary to the interchangeableness of 
 nature's elements. What natural thing is there that 
 comes not by degrees and gradations? Neither can 
 death be thought of as an amazement; either it must 
 be extinction or no surprise, and so in either case no 
 surprise. 
 
 To know death we must know life. Goethe says: 
 "Thou wouldst be pleased with death? Then why 
 always at variance with life?" And Seneca to like 
 effect: *' If we are anxious about the future, it is be- 
 cause we use not the present." They then will be 
 pleased with death who are pleased with life, and 
 they will enter on dying with vigor who have lived 
 with industry. This is a brave thought. Once I met 
 a man who averred that he could not think of a life 
 hereafter because he found this life so magnificent. 
 The trees, he said, the hillsides, the waters, the sun- 
 beams, so laughed and joyed and disported in his 
 eyes that life had its full for him ; and how could any- 
 thing, he asked, be more than full, or how could he 
 dream reasonably of something more when once he 
 was satisfied. I would not commend his judgment, 
 though the joyful thankfulness was beautiful; better 
 the soaring imagination of the apostle, that eye hath 
 not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man con- 
 ceived, what yet may be in store; and our hymnist 
 Hosmer's sounding of infinity: 
 
Of Death 171 
 
 " Thy good is prophecy 
 Of better still to be, 
 In the future thou shalt find 
 How far the fact hath left behind 
 Thy fondest dreams." 
 
 If SO we live as to take in a common way, without 
 wonder or imagination, but as commonplace things, 
 all our life's happenings, then nothing is left to be 
 uncommon but death, which therefore will appall and 
 trouble us, and loom up strangely, and the experience 
 of the strange will be fearful to us. The secret, 
 therefore, is that if life be rich in religious awe as to 
 all things, death will excite no other emotion than 
 well we are used to; thus the rich life makes the nat- 
 ural death, or death natural. But distinguish well 
 in this matter, and consider where this thought is 
 brave and true, and at what point it becomes over- 
 ripened, as it were, and decays to a fall; for to court 
 death and profess ardor for it, as if it were the busi- 
 ness of life to set about dying, often has been a foolish 
 vein of piety. I know not what has had more deceits 
 about it and more vain imaginings than piety; and 
 this naturally enough, for always the best things are 
 most prone to perversion. To desire death is not to 
 be pleased with it, but to be displeased with life; and 
 Seneca says wisely, " Nothing is baser than to wish to 
 die." Things that dispose to this wish are weariness, 
 weakness, pain, love, disappointment and even, some- 
 times, curiosity. For I have read of Plato's disciples 
 that so they were ravished by their master's descrip- 
 tions of the hereafter that they killed themselves to 
 
1 72 Of Death 
 
 enter those glories. But this was no better than 
 pleasure seeking. And of Hke baseness are most mo- 
 tives that urge to die. Yet not all ; for if one be in 
 great and incurable straits of bodily pain, it seems not 
 thankless, neither cowardly, nor in any way base, to 
 wish a bodily end to them. And some wise men 
 have thought, indeed, that in such case human life 
 might be taken mercifully, and with wise precautions, 
 just as we deal mercifully with dumb creatures in 
 like condition. On this opinion I determine not; for 
 whether yet we have the wisdom, the knowledge and 
 the goodness for such responsibilities, is not plain. 
 But the morality of the wish and will to live is to be 
 enforced, for this is simple duty and manly courage. 
 Wish and will to recover have much to do with hold- 
 ing death at a distance. Under strong feeling persons 
 have turned back from the very gates of death — 
 yea, recrossed the threshold of it and leased anew 
 chambers of time for a season; on the other hand, 
 persons have died because they would. A physician 
 once assured me he had seen a man will himself out 
 of the world in whom was no physical ill whatever. 
 I come now to the second part of my discourse of 
 death, and shall speak of some thoughts that gather 
 around it; of vv^hich the first is, the possible nearness 
 of the dead about us. We have only to inspect our 
 ignorance to know how easily such a fact may be; so 
 that, though there may be no sensible evidence, yet it 
 offends not reason or knowledge. If a man but goes 
 from one room to another, why we see him not 
 through a wooden partition yet behold him again if 
 
Of Death 173 
 
 he walk past a glass door, we can not tell ; for why 
 through wood we see not and yet look through glass, 
 is beyond all our philosophy. Yet what more know 
 we of the barriers between us and the living dead, 
 and of the limits or cause whereby our sight and hear- 
 ing of them cease? Wherefore it is no foolish 
 thought that they may be as near as one of us to an- 
 other in different rooms of the same house, or in 
 different houses of the same city, or in different coun- 
 tries of the same world ; for in all these cases we are 
 beyond interview and audience, yet know not by 
 what laws or means vibrations touch not our eyes 
 and ears. Also we know that betwixt the greatest 
 number of pulsations that will twinge the ear, and the 
 smallest number thereof which impinging on the 
 nerve affect it as heat, there is a great gap, the pulsa- 
 tions in which rouse no sense in us; and again, 
 another vast multitude of vibrations betwixt the 
 boundary of heat and the beginning of light; and 
 another illimitable space thereof beyond violet lumi- 
 nosity; to all of which we have no sensibility. Yet 
 why we know not, nor whether other creatures may 
 not have perceptions of these intervening areas of 
 motions which we perceive not; nor whether all the 
 senses were not long a-growing, and became five in 
 number only after countless ages, and whether others 
 be not now a-growing, or some waiting perhaps to 
 burst at the change which we call death, as light might 
 burst on a man born blind. Wherefore there is 
 beauty and not folly in the suggestion which some 
 have offered that to die may be like growing a new 
 
174 Of Death 
 
 sense; and since the gaps are so many and vast 
 wherein we have no perception of motions, and at last 
 we reach an infinitude of them into which we can not 
 pass, I must suspect a great company of things and 
 beings all about us not now perceivable by any sense; 
 and whether hereafter to be perceivable, who can 
 tell? — a wonderful unimaginable order of life wherein 
 are all beauties (since what order of life is not full ?) 
 and warm with love, since so is the highest order 
 which we wot of. There must be heavens which 
 contain ours. 
 
 Another thought which charms me is the democ- 
 racy of death, because it comes to all, and in the same 
 quiet lays great and little, opening the portal to a 
 troop of chemical dissectors which know no difference 
 of flesh. As to powers and possessions, the democ- 
 racy of death has full sway ; for as darkness makes all 
 things of one hue, so death brings to one color all 
 things except good and evil. The Arabians have a 
 story which pictures how death handles the tinsel of 
 fortune. Haroon Er-Rasheed, at a grand f6te which 
 he was giving, ordered a poet to depict in verse the 
 sensuous enjoyments of his sovereign. The poet 
 began thus: 
 
 "Live long in the safe enjoyment of thy desires, in the 
 shadow of thy lofty palaces." 
 
 "Well said," exclaimed Er-Rasheed, " and what next?" 
 " May thy wishes be abundantly fulfilled, whether at even- 
 tide or in the morning." 
 
 "Well again," said the Khaleefeh^ "then what next.'' " 
 
 " And when the rattling breath struggles in the dark cavities 
 
Of Death 175 
 
 of the chest, then shalt thou know surelj that thou hast been 
 only in the midst of illusions." 
 
 Er-Rasheed wept, and Fadl, the son of Gahya, said: "The 
 Prince of the Faithful sent for thee to divert him, and thou 
 hast filled him with much grief." 
 
 "Suffer him," said the Prince, " for he hath beheld us in 
 blindness, and it displeased him to increase it." 
 
 Like to this is Maundeville's account of Prester 
 John, that, besides gold, silver, and jewels in token of 
 the Emperor's greatness, "they carry before him also 
 a platter of gold full of earth, in token that his noble- 
 ness and his might and his flesh shall turn to earth." 
 
 Of the democracy of death touching the mind, that 
 we know not so surely. Some have thought that 
 hereafter all would be equal, genius and all differ- 
 ences lying wholly in the brain, which is but an im- 
 plement. By this reasoning a dull man is simply like 
 a workman with a poor tool. 'Tis said that he is no 
 carpenter who can not bore with a hand-saw and saw 
 with a gimlet. Nevertheless, good tools avail, and 
 the rarest spirit with a twisted instrument will make 
 but ill work. Bacon has this thought thus: "The 
 soul having shaken off her flesh doth then set up for 
 herself, and contemning things that are under, shows 
 what finger hath enforced her, for the souls of idiots 
 are of the same piece with those of statesmen, but 
 now and then nature is at a fault, and this good guest of 
 ours takes soil in an imperfect body, and so is slack- 
 ened from showing her wonders, like an excellent 
 musician which can not utter himself upon a defective 
 instrument." This is a humane hope for pitiful and 
 unsound brains, that here seem like thick meshes 
 
176 Of Death 
 
 around a Hon, hiding his shape and showing only his 
 struggles. But that this measures the whole, who can 
 tell? For we are of many elements, and very won- 
 derfully made in the parts that we can see; so where- 
 fore not perhaps more wonderfully and with more 
 delicate complexity in the parts under those parts? 
 Hence, souls may exceed one another in fineness or in 
 power even more than bodies do. 
 
 As to bodies, the democracy of death is certain and 
 comjolete; for all " thaw, melt and resolve themselves 
 into dew " at touch of that shining ebon mace, and all 
 mingle, like waters of many colors running to one 
 hue. If " all that tread the earth are but a handful to 
 the tribes that slumber in its bosom," as our poet says, 
 'tis like there is no particle of matter on the surface of 
 the earth that some time has not done vital service in 
 a living creature, beat in some heart, or in some brain 
 vibrated with sense or thought. In a gentle mouth 
 or savage jaw, in a hand or a claw, or many times in 
 each, it has lived. Who knows when he walks on 
 the matter and with his feet spurns the atoms which 
 yet may beam at him from beloved eyes ? It is no im- 
 agination, but soberness of fact, that in a tropic jungle 
 the beast of prey discharges from his lungs an atom 
 which then caught up by a plant and lodged in a 
 fruit is in the fine juice that we relish ; and forthwith 
 the matter that rent the tiger's prey, or uttered his 
 roar, now croons a mother's lullaby over the cradle. 
 'Tis a great wonder how the same atoms obey such 
 different spirits, and one substance that once reeked 
 with the rank sweat or stretched to the vulgar leer of 
 
Of Death 1 77 
 
 a clown now is serviceable in the fiber and smile of 
 gentle breeding. But this is the democracy of death, 
 which lets no substance be entailed, and makes all 
 bodies common, yet wonderfully leaves the spiritual 
 being intact, as in and out the atoms go, molded by 
 the shape and nature of the mind. 
 
 This thought has the reach to point to a seat above 
 mortality. For the drift of matter through our bodies 
 affects not our identity; and if not one atom or two, or 
 a hundred at once, why then should all together rob us 
 of ourselves? Veiy likely the same atom will serve 
 many times in us; or we use in our way particles 
 which some ancestor employed, whereby the same 
 matter is burned many times over in smiles, gestures, 
 tones, which have a family likeness. Meantime, the 
 spiritual features are untouched, neither is the mind 
 changed either by loss or by addition, while it dis- 
 tributes the atoms into forms and again cuts them 
 loose. Here then is a spirit of unimpeachable identity 
 in a frame which is as fluent as water. 
 
 The look of death in the features of the face is a 
 noteworthy bodily fact. For often it has been re- 
 marked that an unwonted nobility and even grandeur 
 awakes in a countenance when its motions have ceased. 
 Lavater has written: 
 
 " Of the many dead persons that I have seen I have ob- 
 served uniformly that sixteen, eighteen or twenty-four hours 
 after death, according to the disease, they have had a' more 
 beautiful form, better defined, more proportionate, harmonious, 
 homogeneous, more noble, more exalted than they ever had 
 during life. Among the dying I have observed some who 
 
178 Of Death 
 
 •were the reverse of noble or great during their life who some 
 hours after their death, or perhaps some moments — one was in 
 a delirium — have shown an inexpressible ennobling of the 
 countenance. Everybody saw the new man — coloring, draw, 
 ing, grace, all was new, all bright as the morning, heavenly ; 
 beyond expression noble and exalted; the most inattentive 
 must see, the most insensible feel, the image of God. I saw it 
 break forth and shine through the ruin of corruption; was 
 obliged to turn aside in silence and adore." 
 
 If there be in all (as who can doubt and live?) a 
 natural incorruptible ideal, it is according to this that 
 the features should be expressive; but this expression 
 is overlaid by our evil will, our passions, our perver- 
 sions, which pull the earthly image of the flesh awry. 
 Now, when these cease, the form seems to settle back 
 nearer to its intended shape, according to the ideal 
 around which first it was builded. Hence a gain in 
 nobleness of expression, and sometimes a startling 
 change, and even an exaltation, as Lavater has said. 
 
 Thus having spoken of death as to the body, and 
 again as to some thoughts that attend it, it is worthy 
 of reflection before we part with it, that it has a mean- 
 ing for us touching the living, namely, that we should 
 behave well to them ; for soon they must end and we 
 end, and at the farthest not late, and mayhap at any 
 instant. Then, when any die, and we, being left and 
 standing beside what they have left, look backward, 
 since we can not see forward — 
 
 " The days, to suffering and to loving ones, 
 
 Seein now for the first time true holy times ; 
 
 Now glowing memory sees that all the days 
 
 Of life were just so holy, just so rare, 
 
 So matchless; yet, who thinks of this?" 
 
Of Death 179 
 
 The poet means, Who thinks of this while the flying 
 days pass ? Yet we might see them beautiful, sacred, 
 tender, or at least more see them so than we do at the 
 time of them. Whence comes loss, as precious days 
 go by ungathered, and sorrow afterward, when we 
 look down from the death-height on their vacancies. 
 The poet says again, the German Schefer: 
 "Revere the living, stand in awe of them, 
 
 They may one day, and soon, before thine eyes 
 Become dead men ; and whatsoe'er of harm 
 Thou day by day hast ever done to them 
 That thou hast done to poor, poor, poor dead men, 
 
 ****** 
 And on thyself the deed comes rushing back ; 
 The earth now with her open eye — the grave — 
 Stares at thee for it. 
 
 The blow thou gavest the poor sick dog 
 Will awake remorse in thee when he is dead." 
 The sanctity of the last time is worthy of reflection, 
 for it sets up as on a shrine even the most common 
 things. However of little moment the act, it would 
 be a hard nature that would not pause at the instant 
 with a cei'tain awe if knowing that now for the last 
 time the act was to be done. But this lifts everything 
 into a tenderness and sanctity, if one weigh it rightly, 
 since it is certain that the last time will happen, yet, 
 when happening shows not. This morality Schefer 
 has clothed tenderly in his verse: 
 
 " For the last time all things begin henceforth 
 So softly to occur ; for the last time 
 The almond blooms, how sweetly, wondrously ; 
 ****** 
 
I So Of Emergency 
 
 For the last time now comes the father home 
 With such a friendly joy in all his kin; 
 For the last time the sun goes down ; the stars 
 For the last time climb up the darkling sky ; 
 For the last time on yonder moonlit hill 
 The children sing their songs of Easter night. 
 For the last time around the table all 
 The gathered loved ones sit. For the last time 
 The children tell the mother a good-night, 
 The mother on each forehead prints a kiss 
 And clasps them long in silence to her breast. 
 For the last time comes sleep, the friend of man; 
 For the last time a holy stillness reigns — 
 Till suddenly the parting startles all." 
 
 This has a tone of joy in it, for deep joys are as 
 serious as sorrows. And I would not counsel gloom 
 at all, nor soberness in excess; yet we might treat 
 passing moments more sacredly than we do, to the 
 effect of more joy in the act and more peace in the 
 remembrance. 
 
 OF EMERGENCY 
 
 I HAVE noticed that short-necked people think 
 quickly, the long-necked slowly. Whether this be 
 because the head is then the nearer to the centre of 
 vital effluence in the heart or the farther from it I 
 know not, but the fact I have observed. Indeed, I 
 have it plainly set forth in myself. For I have much 
 mental inertia. It takes me long to get in motion. I 
 have to gaze at an assemblage of facts a long time be- 
 foi-e a path appears in the tangle, either for speech or 
 for action. And my neck is more a crane's than an 
 
Of Emergency i8i 
 
 owl's. But howsoever this difference may report in 
 bodily shape, certainly it is an important difference, 
 and makes one man a leader and another a baggage 
 in an emergency. Yet, in another kind of balance, 
 the baggage may weigh more than the man who 
 drags it along in a stress. Emergency is a sud- 
 den coming forth of a strait or difficulty which 
 demands a quick accession of power to meet it, be- 
 cause it grows worse if tardily encountered. In such 
 a stress, when the right word or act must be in- 
 stant, one man will leap to it while another is casting 
 about; and with others, emergency quenches all 
 thinking in a kind of amazement. Whether the quick- 
 thinking mind or the slow-thinking be the higher 
 may be questioned; but certainly the two are differ- 
 ent, and each is the better in his own place. I have 
 heard of a Hebrew scholar who was wont to part 
 men into two classes: " Those who know more than 
 they know, and those who know less than they 
 know;" by which sententious remark he meant that 
 some know more than appears, or indeed than thev 
 can manage, because they can never get their forces 
 out at call, either for parade or to battle; but others 
 know less than they pi'omise, because they parade 
 their detachments so quickly and so imposingly. The 
 one can do at command; the other needs warning, 
 and asks waiting if anything is to be had from him. 
 The one can give a quick buffet, and like enough a 
 strong one, in exigency; the other can pierce irresist- 
 ibly but slowly in search of fact or law, like a screw 
 of very fine thread. That which obtains in all 
 
iS^ Of Emergency 
 
 emergency is that if the moment be lost it never 
 comes back; wherefoi"e it is well to store knowledge 
 richly, but to give time also to j^ractice the mind in 
 arts of access to the store; for a man is poor who has 
 treasures locked in a high tower but flings the key 
 into every surge of emotion. 
 
 So far of mental and practical emergencies. But 
 there are moral ; and these are of temptation and of 
 endurance. Exigencies of temptation give the poet 
 his ti'agcdies; for is there anything really tragical but 
 moral failure? Sometimes one yields to a sudden 
 great allurement who has won the combat of many 
 weaker assaults. But this is rare, and usually when 
 the temptation has to help it either some other evil 
 disposition not combated, as hatred, ambition, greed, 
 or some strong good emotion, as when a man steals 
 food for his hungry infant, wherein the poignancy of 
 holy love is the onset against moral observance. But 
 this, I say, is rare, and he who wins in the many 
 common temptations will have a rush of jDower, as if 
 guardian forces attend him, to meet a precipitate 
 exigency of enticement. Emergency of temptation is 
 like a sudden fiery assay that analyzes rich virtue 
 from a meager ore which has had an untried repute. 
 
 " How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false 
 As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins 
 The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars," 
 
 only because the fashion of their neighborhood goes 
 not to the barber, but who, when plucked by the 
 beard by abrupt danger are shown weaklings. A 
 vast deal of uprightness there is which itself stands 
 
Of Emergency 183 
 
 not, but is held up by custom, by sheltered place, by 
 respectable precincts, and falls when emergent weight 
 of temptation is too much for these props — as the 
 flying angels of a play-house drop if the invisible 
 wires break. Hence great crimes shoot, astonishing 
 us, done by long trusted persons. But the criminal's 
 correctness was not honesty, but a polite code well 
 fenced in fine houses — which two a crucible of temp- 
 tation distinguishes. It is a happy point for human 
 nature that we take for granted the virtue and cour- 
 age of the well-chambered, the untried, and look for 
 it. For this is no amiable weakness. There must be 
 much truth in the general faith that the common 
 goodness is more than an erect posture shored up; 
 and doubtless the greater number are good stuff when 
 put to proof. Many also are proved secretly by pains 
 and combats we know not of. 
 
 If the emergency of temptation give the poet his 
 tragedy, the emergency of endurance is the entrance 
 of the hero thereof. For a great temptation overcome 
 is itself a stress of emotion or of pain well borne. To 
 bear is harder than to do; therefore to be equal to an 
 emergency of endurance has always been rated very 
 high in virtue — the martyr's crown, the halo of the 
 obscure hero, of the domestic saint. But the kind of 
 bearing is to be examined. There is a stolid and sour 
 endurance, the which is no more than a rage which, 
 being impotent to invade or resist, burns sullenly on 
 itself. But the beauty of a sweet and patient endur- 
 ance is, perhaps, the greatest of all beauty; for there 
 is not a thought of self in it — only pure piety and hu- 
 
184 Of Emergency 
 
 millty. But often it has a double grace — when pain 
 is met to shield others from it; for then to the dignity 
 of patience is joined the loveliness of devotion. 
 
 I have observed that some persons who endure 
 little ills only badly and peevishly meet great dis- 
 tresses with nobility. Strange fact, seeming contrary 
 to moral analogies! I know not how to account for 
 the power thus to be noble in the great when ignoble 
 in the small, nor to class the fact, unless with sheer 
 selfishness of reason and of will ; for, surely one who 
 discerns cause and summons power to meet bravely 
 great stress of pain in body or mind, may see reason 
 and raise strength to mount over little ills, if mind and 
 will be applied. I must call it the nobler and stronger 
 thing to bear graciously the daily privations and 
 pathway pains, however little conspicuous or histori- 
 cal ; for, first, this un vaunting heroism will be found 
 equal to great occasion if called to it; secondly, what 
 more divine than to meet all the daily bombs and 
 rockets of a much-besieged life, intrenched in quietude 
 and with victorious sallies of common patience. 
 
 In fine, it seems that the emergency of volition or 
 of action not so much tests quality of mind as distin- 
 guishes species thereof; but exigent temptation and 
 emergency of endurance are assays of soul. 
 
OF CONSCIENCE 
 
 Perhaps it is strange to speak of using the con- 
 science; so of the will; as if there were a conscience 
 and a will back of them. Yet this is common speech. 
 It is often said, " bring your conscience to bear," or 
 " put forth your will." But what is to urge conscience 
 but conscience, or what drive the will but will. This 
 is like a poet's thought concerning a dream, 
 
 "In which you, dreaming, image your own heads;" 
 which perhaps a man never does awake, for it has 
 been remarked how hard it is to call up an image of 
 ourselves. Though Luther called the epistle of 
 James a straminea epistola^ yet the apostle has the 
 wisdom to compare a man's f orgetf ulness of his visage 
 with his moral ignorance of himself; for he says, "If 
 any one be a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is 
 like a man beholding his natural face in the mirror, 
 for he beholdeth himself and goeth away and straight- 
 way forgetteth what manner of man he was." I 
 know not whether it be so as to dreams, as the poet 
 says. Novalis suggests a different conclusion; "We 
 are near waking when we dream that we dream." 
 For surely it must be very like dreaming of dreaming 
 to dream that we, the dreamers, behold ourselves 
 apart. But however this, it seems something like it 
 to speak of using conscience, or of using the will; for 
 these are, if so I may speak, the users of all the other 
 powers, as the eye is the organ of seeing all things; 
 (185) 
 
1 86 Of Conscience 
 
 :iiul since the " eye sees not itself but hy reflection hy 
 some other thing," so how can conscience and will, 
 which lie under all using, lie also under the use of 
 Ihc-mselves? Yet though this he a strange thought 
 would it not be stranger still if men spoke so, yet 
 willioul any meaning, and uttered something that had 
 no import whalcver? I must think, therefore, that so 
 long as we can get so much image of anytliing as to 
 ilollic il with vesliluic of language, there is yet a 
 greater depth; and however elemental what we speak 
 of, as conscience seems, and will seems, still, if we can 
 bring lliem inlo sjieech at all, there must be "in the 
 lowest deei) a lower deep," as Milton has it, of which 
 we can not even think or speak; yet, perhaps, it is 
 out of this dial men speak of a conscience of con- 
 science, or a will over will. 
 
 Now here, though we swim in dee]) waters, :md 
 know not what is inider us, yet in someway we must 
 trust to the whole depth and integrity of the sea, as 
 he that swims dives fearlessly, knowing that he will 
 not be dashed against anything. How little soever 
 we can explain or express it, it seems a fact that there 
 is a kind of conscience of conscience; for conscience 
 nuiy be turned awry, or fall sick in a moral pestilence, 
 like any other faculty, antl then it reports its illness 
 to somewhat in us as the body does to the mind. 
 ICveiything has just its own place, and conscience no 
 more than its own; wherefore it may tyrannize or 
 usurp like any other power, and encroach. There- 
 fore, however strange il may seem, I think any one 
 may observe some delicate persons whose conscience 
 
Of Conscience 187 
 
 Is tyrannous, that Is, so races into view at all moments 
 as to take no account of any harmony, but thrusts 
 Itself forward at all times like a much-speaking per- 
 son wlio talks so much that perforce he can not 
 utter wisdom always. I knov/ not wliether one may 
 not he hridled and ridden by conscience as by any 
 other jud;^ment or feeling or faculty. And if con- 
 science may sicken by induration as often is seen, until 
 there be no sensitiveness, why may It not sicken also 
 the other way l)y being nursed indoors, as it were, till It 
 grows soft and takes a shock from the natural air? 
 Perhaps conscience is in this state when persons object 
 to aught in its own place, or conceive too readily that it 
 has no place, as for examjile dancing and other pleas- 
 ures. For there are many to whom pleasure itself 
 savors of evil and every gayely is a ])eril, a brute 
 ignorance in the lamb that fri.sks, but a corruption of 
 heart in the man who sports. I think I have seen 
 such like diseases, as I have said; I have seen (unless 
 I be color-blind in this matter, and unwittingly, 
 as all blindness Is, for the only perfect blind- 
 ness is blindness to the blindness) a conscience so 
 exacting for truth that it will over-ride every claim of 
 mercy, and trample on a jjersonal feeling as if, so I 
 have thought sometimes, a keen eye and obedient 
 speech for truth must set a devil's hoof on the heart. 
 Now the truth has its claims; and while I argue not 
 here what claims, yet I deem awry tliat conscience 
 which so combines the truth with all claims as to 
 think the sum of all duties, or even at all times the 
 chief, is to set forth the truth. There is a virtue which 
 
i88 Of Conscience 
 
 is as unyielding as adamant, and as proof against all 
 temptations as a granite cliff against the wave which 
 it breaks to sjjray ; but this virtue may be as grim as 
 it is strong, and nourish no green thing and no beauty 
 on it. I have heard the saying, " I like this man's 
 faults better than that other man's virtues," which, 
 though it be an imperfect and partial saying, if exam- 
 ined logically, like many such that condense much in 
 a little, has simply this meaning in it, that conscience 
 may be tyrannous; and this is the same as to say in- 
 flated, vain, complacent, for no one can be a tyrant 
 who has not a vast opinion of himself. This leads to 
 think how great and splendid a thing good motive is; 
 and, indeed, I will admit that perhaps conscience lies 
 wholly therein ; for though I have spoken of a sick 
 conscience, perhaps when the motive be sound it is the 
 judgment only that is ill ; and then perhaps judgment 
 can not sicken unless the heart ail also; and so some- 
 times it appears that all is out of health together except 
 only the soundness of the motive, which is the last 
 citadel of health. 
 
 Notwithstanding, pestilence may surprise even the 
 castle of motive; and it is a strange power (rising up 
 out of the depth which speech can not explore, nor 
 thought even think of, as the eye can not see vision) 
 that by conscience we can lay down rules for con- 
 science and train it by good exercise, which is, for 
 aught we know, as if a member of the body, feeling 
 its own weakness, should set itself at exercise to gain 
 strength. To mention some of this discipline, I 
 would say conscience should not be displayed much 
 
Of Conscience 189 
 
 in speech, still less by profession and of purpose; 
 for is there not a certain modesty of mind as well 
 as of body ? Not to wear the heart on the sleeve 
 is a good precejot, and not a mere prudence but a deli- 
 cacy; and so ought the conscience to be felt and 
 known sacredly and not worn outside or proclaimed 
 wantonly. There are privacies in the soul which 
 willfully to strip naked is no more virtuous than in 
 the body; but it is so much more a delicate vicious- 
 ness that often mental modesty yet has to be grown 
 to after the bodily long has been attained, so that 
 many who would be confounded to be even a little 
 undraped below the head walk stark nude in soul. I 
 would have the conscience reserved chastely like our 
 more uncomely parts, which, as the apostle says, 
 "have more abundant honor," and, though draped in 
 seclusion, are the media of life. Wherefore boast not 
 of moral niceties, and set not out fine fidelities to the 
 eye, but rather observe them faithfully, yet in some 
 way cloaked by an easy manner, or at least not an- 
 nounced and argued — a rightness of soul which 
 Emerson advises thus: 
 
 " Mask thy wisdom with delight ; 
 Toy with the bow, yet hit the white." 
 
 It goes with this that conscience on slight occasions 
 is to be avoided ; I mean not, of course, that we may 
 do slight wrongs, or even be little diligent in our own 
 mind to decide on moral quality; but beware lest 
 we make a kind of shame or wrong of a little point, 
 which, though a duty, yet has its proportion and is 
 not to be treated with grandeur and circumstance, as 
 
190 Of Conscience 
 
 if, like Huss, one were going to the tiames for refus- 
 ing an equivocation. For though every duty has a 
 great value, and every faithfuhiess which costs judg- 
 ment and will has a grandeur beyond compass of 
 speech, yet this is a value and a greatness like that of 
 the earth-worm in his place, but not at the head of an 
 army or clothed with pomp. Especially points of 
 conscience are to be distinguished from matters 
 of taste or judgment, for not everything which we 
 disapprove must be lifted into a matter of conscience. 
 Yet I have observed this to be a great fault, and per- 
 haps I may say a common fault, wherever conscience 
 is common; for many so befog themselves with little 
 considerations, multiplying with every year, like the 
 Rabbinical exactions growing for centuries, that at last 
 every concession seems an iniquity, and any difference 
 from themselves a difference from the right in how 
 small a point soever. These persons are very uncom- 
 fortable in company; for, as Plutarch says the 
 Athenians called their enviousness love of liberty, so 
 these persons make the having their own way a 
 point of morality. When once this ethical obstinacy 
 has set in, there is no manner of treatment for it but 
 to leave the victim alone; and I know of no disease 
 more fit for a pest-house or an asylum than this; for 
 even though others catch not the sickness (yet some- 
 times unsoundness spreads by imitation, which is a 
 kind of mental contagion), still they will be plunged 
 into struggles and contentions, as in dealing with the 
 maniacal. 
 
 Now, as to cases of conscience, how they are to be 
 
Of Conscience 191 
 
 argued when questions arise, there are two sources of 
 difficulty; one is complexity of conditions and ele- 
 ments, and the other is gradation. As to complexity, 
 it is plain that no one can bring to one point the 
 thousand elements and relations which any social act 
 has; for it hangs by innumerable threads on what has 
 gone before, and things to come are attached to it by 
 still more countless webs. Now, as one can not know 
 all the past and much less can foresee consequences 
 the problem of what is right and wise is often too 
 vast for the mind to decide on the grounds which are 
 in view. For such occasions there are two touch- 
 stones. The first is patience and waiting; for, though 
 we can not gather all the threads to argue and 
 set forth reasons, yet it is a pregnant mystery that 
 if we but wait long enough in any difficulty, and 
 steadily look, at last we shall see the way, though we 
 be as little able to argue it as before. The second 
 touch-stone is moral sincerity; for always it is notable 
 that those who unselfishly, purely, truly wish to find 
 the right, differ not much nor go far wrong together. 
 By difficulty of gradation in cases of conscience, I 
 mean that right and wrong will sometimes pass one 
 mto the other by shades, as colors do, so that to draw 
 a line any wiiere and say, " On this side is the right, on 
 that the wrong," will not bring all minds to agree- 
 ment, nor can any one say surely where the line is, or 
 whether there be one. For as one may start with 
 white and by adding drops of blue finally arrive at in- 
 tense indigo, yet be not able at any point to perceive 
 that with one drop the color was white and with the 
 
1^2 Of Conscience 
 
 next blue, nor yet be able to deny that after space 
 enough it is blue at one end and white at the other, so 
 with moral quality; though the extremes be plain 
 enough, it is not easy always to argue quality or duty 
 between. Now, for this difficulty the cure, as before, 
 is sincerity. For however hard to argue a division 
 line, the mind which, with simplicity, wishes to know 
 the true nature of the case, will not grope long, nor 
 will many who thus are sincere be found far from 
 each other. 
 
 From all this it will be judged rightly that to carry 
 conscience well and nobly is a moral beauty, as 
 carrying the head well is a physical grace. What 
 arrests us in fine creatures notable for power and 
 grace, like horses and antelopes, is the proud, fiery, 
 splendid carriage of the head, wherein are expressed 
 dignity, freedom and health. Now such a creature 
 is a man; for if his head be poised by intelligence, 
 devotion and dignity, it wags not widely for gesture 
 or for assertion, but sits serenely, and the mag- 
 nificence of its carriage seizes the eye. The like 
 grace and power the character sets forth if conscience 
 be carried nobly and in stillness — high without as- 
 sumption, open but chaste, strict but with largeness, 
 severe but with charity. 
 
OF HIS LETTERS 
 
 There are delights of friends together; but the 
 charm of letters, the delica'cy of the written word, 
 the sight of the handwriting, and the character in 
 these characters, is for the parted. Great joy it is; 
 and no matter what bliss of union any two have had 
 together, if never they have been parted, writing 
 many and continuous letters, there is a chapter of 
 bliss yet new for them. Not poems, not songs, are 
 the love-lore of the world; but letters. Sometimes I 
 bethink me that if the millions of letters in the mails 
 of all the nations could be examined together on a 
 day, they would honor the human heart; for would 
 all the other contents of them together, whatever of 
 selfishness, wickedness, cruelty, ambition, equal their 
 freight of solicitude, of affection? A friend wrote 
 me (excusing his slack correspondence) that the quill 
 was the implement of his work, he being a scholar, 
 and that when he had used it all da}'^ for duty, it was 
 not easy to take it again for pleasure. Yes; reason- 
 able. Yet happier he who has a stream of corre- 
 spondence flowing with a gentle slope, like a mild 
 but wide river, which moves without demonstration, 
 but never stops. Literary labor falls easily to selfish- 
 ness, isolation, petty sentiments, but epistles may en- 
 rich the work with a real and deep power. For 
 (193) 
 
194 Of ^^^ Letters 
 
 however either genius or labor wield the pen, 
 thoughts will not strike fire unless the heart bestow 
 love; and only thoughtful service is bestowal, emo- 
 tion being but the herald thereof. 
 
 The bliss of correspondence comes with letters not 
 written at a sitting, but continually, at many moments, 
 with fresh greetings at morning or farewells at night, 
 with the impulse of an event just happened, or a 
 great idea met. At such times a page may rush 
 forth; or, again, a sentence, and less, a word, will be 
 enough. I had a friend, a noble soul (I have him 
 still wherever he be, though his bodily hand writes 
 no more), whose habit was to carry in his pocket 
 scraps of paper, labeled with the names of his 
 friends; when came a thought or an event good to be 
 written to one of these, he entered it on the appro- 
 priate paper. Thus his letters preserved for each the 
 special substance of life to each belonging, and were 
 a deep, beautiful stream. 
 
 It is a charm and benefit of letters that they are 
 fresh and free with the wisdom that comes of life. 
 Who studies for a letter? Who will plan researches, 
 examine books, plunder lexicons, for a letter? Not 
 from books, but from the morning outlook, the even- 
 ing's reminiscence, the day's labor, the success or the 
 overthrow, comes the letter, leaping from these like a 
 familiar voice from a roar of sound, or even from a 
 babel of noise, to the ear that knows it. If the letters 
 have in them moral earnestness, religious reflection, 
 they are the better, for these never are so natural 
 as in the half privacy, half confidence, which a 
 
Of JFft's Letters 195 
 
 letter is, being talk to a friend under the shelter of the 
 twilight of distance. This is communion as if with a 
 low voice at dark, when the face can not be searched. 
 Then i^eligion is an outpouring natural, simple, free, 
 and from the very midst of affairs, like a spring in a 
 marsh, and without the plague of doctrines. 
 
 I have this bliss, all of it, and more than I could 
 tell with apparent soberness; for I have a friend who 
 writes me as I have described. He is dear to me, 
 surely; more, he deserves to be dear to a better; but 
 the best is that he pours his excellence around me as 
 I am. To describe him, not his mind nor his heart, for 
 I will let these speak in his own words, but that he 
 may be a figure to the mind's eye, imagine him thus: 
 a swart brown man, with a deep-set gray eye and a 
 jutting brow; with hair that once was rich all over a 
 fine head, but now, thinned by labor and sorrow, 
 sweeps and clusters low in the neck; an agile frame, 
 rapid without hurrying; a strong nose, a kind mouth; 
 firmness in the plant of his feet; honesty in the 
 erection of his head. He directs a business reaching 
 wide and far, nourishing many industries and filling 
 his life with vast, absorbing labors. Out of these 
 labors he writes me, and through his words I look 
 at courage and faith. Thus he says : 
 
 " I cannot see the end of much that I must do, I cannot pre- 
 dict, but 1 have learned that the greatest test any one can 
 be put to is to go fearlessly on in the right; and have faith 
 enough to rest therein, looking neither backward nor forward, 
 up nor down — rest I say in the sense of stability as a rock in 
 the hillside, as though there were no yesterday. The hill bore 
 
196 Of His Letters 
 
 the storm then; it is gone; it has the sunshine of to-day; it is 
 ready for to-morrow. I have several experiences of the won- 
 derful discipline there is in faith, and the definition thereof is 
 now realized to my mind. Faith is a misapplied word when 
 set to the theological scheme as the way of salvation ; faith to 
 me now is something which follows truthful, disinterested, 
 sincere action, and stands waiting to see whether you will 
 accept whatever comes of such conduct, though it lead 
 where you know not, see not, away entirely from your own 
 plan. The point is whether I shall wish I had not done this 
 or that, whether I shall wish another way had been chosen, 
 whether I will seek to retrace steps, or whether I can say, I 
 saw not, and yet I acted to do right. Gloom and anxieties 
 followed and beset me everywhere, light has not come, night 
 has set in ; still the right existed all the same, and it follows 
 not that it was wrong because building thereon all was not to 
 be illuminated immediately. When thus I have thought, then 
 the rest I have spoken of comes in, a something which does 
 not permit of carrying yesterday into to-day's work, or of 
 shadowing to-morrow before it comes. Then faith stands 
 waiting to see whether you are willing to leave results to the 
 right of yesterday to work its own way, though not your way. 
 I have learned a little of it, feebly indeed yet, but I have seen 
 enough light to gladden my heart on the way. I hope to have 
 greater knowledge." 
 
 Thus my friend writes, in the spirit of the poet, 
 
 " Look straight at all things from the soul, 
 But boast not much to understand; 
 Make each new action sound and whole, 
 Then leave it in its place unscanned." 
 
 A man so minded is like to be a great lover of the 
 country, because he will feel the adorable sweep of 
 life and law, and will touch re verently whatever is ; 
 wherefore my friend writes: 
 
Of His Letters 197 
 
 " There is no life equal to that in a country home. Nothing 
 would tempt me to live ever again in the city. Everything 
 seems more honest here. The very air we breathe seems per- 
 vaded with a quality morally as well as physically bracing. 
 It opens wonder-working to the mind, the power of silent 
 forces in which man has no hand except as servant," 
 
 It is blissful to me to receive such-like words, not 
 from studious hours, nor from sermons, or moralists' 
 arguments, but from amid noisy affairs, as I have 
 said. In the tumult he feels guarded, as if surround- 
 ed by a strong help; for thus he writes again: 
 
 " I feel sometimes that there is some spirit of good over- 
 hanging me, indefinable, yet so real as to lead me to wonder 
 and wonder, and murmur thanks as though addressing some 
 one ; for you little know what difficulties I have had these two 
 years, outside of injustice and death; and I have seen them 
 approaching mountains high and rolling with the force of 
 thundering seas, and have had to stand and face them, and in- 
 stead of inundation and destruction, they would appear to 
 strike and then to scatter as spray from a rock, and I would 
 cry in my utmost soul a thanksgiving, and turn to see who 
 and what the power was that had broken them. I felt humbled. 
 What is the power, what the irresistible call that bade it come 
 forth.?" 
 
 Always a large soul has learned to wait, or has 
 waked to life from the lap of a blessed patience 
 which nurtures it forever. So with my friend. He 
 has the wisdom which tries to force nothing, and he 
 knows that the human mind works more than ap- 
 pears. He says : 
 
 " How often the door opens better than we can plan for 
 ourselves ! How often do I realize that a matter seems diffi- 
 cult to solve for weeks and weeks, and lies on the table, as it 
 
198 Of His Letters 
 
 were, before my mind, taken up off and on, laid down again, 
 then finally is solved as by magic at an unexpected moment 
 when apparently I had not thought of it." 
 
 He ascribes this power of mind to the justness and 
 wholeness which a distant view gives, for he writes 
 again: 
 
 "In 3'our letter you mention how different matters look at a 
 distance. Is it not because at a distance, or in retrospect, the 
 former specially, intuition has its fair play and either becomes 
 part of judgment or acts as a guide to it.' It almost seems to 
 me that intuition comes near to a supernatural power, and has 
 in it a sure, analytical force, different in sort from that com- 
 monly used daily; to me it only comes with waiting." 
 
 Oh, the wisdom of that word, waitingX Whoso has 
 learned the secret of life, of power, of thought, of 
 command, can wait. Buffon (others too) calls genius 
 only patience. De Maistre said, perhaps more truly: 
 " To know how to wait is the great secret of success." 
 But one must wait working; also work waiting. 
 The waiting is the harder; many who can toil vastly 
 when results speed closely, are disheartened if after 
 labor they must wait. To wait with serene poise, 
 which, having spared no effort, will then fear nothing 
 nor agitate itself, but knows it is childish to assume 
 the responsibilities of Providence — this Is peace and 
 strength. Light is sure at last, says my friend, thus: 
 
 •' I am waiting for more light than I have yet, that I may 
 know the best way. At such times I feel the need of a 
 sympathetic heart to confer with. Well, I have always had 
 daylight peeping through the cloud if I wait long enough ; so 
 I shall now." 
 
 But must there be lis-ht? Must the morning- dawn 
 
Of His Letters 199 
 
 at last to these very eyes of flesh ? Must we come 
 out always victorious, and reap, bind, store away 
 sheaves of reward? No; sometimes hope casts a 
 long shadow, even over and beyond the horizon. 
 Then enters with the courage to work and with the 
 faith to work in darkness, and with the piety to wait, 
 also a submission which has its own heroism. And 
 this has my friend. He writes: 
 
 " Sometimes I feel as if breaking under a load. I have 
 found myself murmuring to myself almost audibly, that if I 
 can have five years more of vigor I would not ask for more. 
 This comes of course from a desire to finish my appointed 
 task and a fear sometimes lest I may go before it is done. 
 Still, I do not brood over the fear; I do each day's work, and if 
 at any time it be the last, why, I have done all time granted, that's 
 all. More and more I grow to feel that the numbers of those 
 whose lives entitle them to be judges of others is too small 
 even to be counted one. The revealed part of action is so 
 small a part of the whole, and yet the only part which the 
 ninety and nine ever knowi!of from which to judge. So when 
 a life goes out and the judgment of our fellows is passed on it, 
 how little they know, after all, and how well it is so often that 
 it is hidden ! So, whether I do or do not ever complete my 
 work it will not matter much, for living I feel it important, 
 but dead of no account." 
 
 This echoes to my heart with pathos the wise saying 
 of Emerson, and each has the complete doctrine of 
 Providence in it: "Every man is needed, and no 
 man is needed much." 'Tis like also the thoughts of 
 the Emperor Aurelius which are the last in his book: 
 
 " The man to whom that only is good which comes in due 
 season, and to whom it is the same thing whether he has 
 done "more or fewer acts conformable to right reason, and 
 
200 Of His Letters 
 
 to whom it makes no difference whether he contemplates the 
 world for a longer or shorter time — for this man neither is 
 death a terrible thing. ***** But I have not finished 
 the five acts, but only three of them.' — Thou sayest well, but 
 in life the three acts are the whole drama; for what shall be a 
 complete drama is determined by Him who was once the 
 cause of its composition, and now of its dissolution ; but thou 
 art the cause of neither. Depart, then, satisfied, for he also 
 who releases thee is satisfied." 
 
 Browning says the like, by the similitude of a tune of 
 which each note is 
 
 " Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest," 
 without which there were no melody; and no note 
 knows the tune which by entering and departing it 
 helps. 
 
 Who is submissive and brave in one who trusts not 
 in the moral law and knows not the majesty and 
 power of moral force? For nothing is worthy of sub- 
 mission but the sovereignty of the good and the true. 
 Therefore has my friend a fine sense of invisible 
 moral forces. It covers with wise reflection his use of 
 time, for he says: 
 
 "To-day ends the first month of this year. One-twelfth 
 gone ! How serious things seem if we stop to ponder how 
 fast the time speeds away ! Things not done at thci appointed 
 moment of opportunity granted cannot be exactly the same if 
 done afterward, because then they are robbing some other 
 thing of its time; and thieving does not prosper." 
 
 Here is the philosophy of the parable of the ninety 
 and nine sheep; for all together they could not make 
 up for the one that strayed ; yet more valuable by 
 ninety-nine times. But each person and exigency has 
 
Of His Letters 301 
 
 its end and place, so that there is not time nor power 
 to make up for any other, and creation is at a stand 
 by so much till the strayed creature return. But how, 
 indeed, shall a strayed hour be caught? My friend 
 writes again of the present moment thus : 
 
 " There are many things that I would have had different 
 and could have made different if acting in the present light; 
 but one cannot act over again for the past out of present 
 knowledge. The truth simply is, that we must act right for 
 the moment we are in, and not for some other time yet to 
 arrive. I fear the thought of the future must often embarrass 
 an honest simple conduct." 
 
 Whoso knows that the moral forces hold the 
 universe (which Emerson has written thus, "Gravita- 
 tion is identical with purity of heart"), never plumes 
 himself on smartness or bows to mental brilliancy. 
 My friend says: 
 
 " I feel so entrenched by the truth of facts, and so sure of my 
 desire to correct any error of judgment, that I feel a biding 
 sense that all light will be ready for each emergency. A great 
 hidden power exists in daily considering each proposed act 
 from the highest, purest, motive, and leaving it to its own re- 
 sult. Some people call it ability; but it is only obedience to a 
 law far above human analysis." 
 
 And again, 
 
 " I feel a self-confidence ; but never apart from me is the 
 sense of fallibility, and my greatest fear is lest my friends have 
 more confidence in me than I deserve or is good for me. I 
 court all the while a criticism of myself and of my motive, 
 and with simplicity of belief that there is no special smartness 
 or endowment in what I do, but simply obedience to law such 
 as this, that success comes to the toiler having a good motive 
 
202 Of His Letters 
 
 to prompt and faith to act. The interpretation of the word 
 success is to be measured by the conditions peculiar to each 
 person, not by the social law which means great accumulations 
 or power." 
 
 " If this is to be as hard as the things past, I am ready to face 
 it. I am almost learning to rejoice in defeat as well as in vic- 
 tory, as just as much a means of good. * * * j feel 
 like welcoming some such balk as a discipline. I may have 
 one to-morrow. I am bound away on matters of much con- 
 cern ; the issue may be favorable or unfavorable. Still, I go 
 prepared to take either as the outcome of but one line of action 
 — the right line." 
 
 This is like Emerson's vigorous "Adversity is the 
 prosperity of the great:" of which speaking, William 
 Salter says, " If this seems strained, yet we do not 
 feel it so when we see some heroic man or woman 
 bearing up under great ills with godlike equanimity 
 and patience. O, friend, think not thyself off the 
 track of destiny, because things are awry and fortune 
 does not smile upon thee, and thou hast not, perhaps, 
 a thing that thou era vest; think not that the World- 
 Spirit has not any path marked out for thee to follow. 
 The path of duty is still the predestined path ; and, 
 though it be no longer to do, but to bear, bear as 
 bravely as thou wouldst do, and never was there better 
 soldier of duty than thou." 
 
 Marcus Aurelius continually urges a two-fold con- 
 dition of man, that his nature is rational and social ; 
 hence, impiety is a disregard of either part. So my 
 friend, in his wisdom, neglects not to join the social 
 part with the reign of the moral force; of which he 
 writes thus: 
 
Of Hh Letters 203 
 
 " Have jou heard how our friend A. is teaching and study- 
 ing with iiis boj? The best part will be what the lad acquires 
 from the companionship. He will realize it by and by; years 
 hence it will be a sort of sudden revelation at some time, 
 how much then at these intimate times went out from his 
 father to him, silently, and became a part of him ; nothing to 
 talk about, describe or define, but vi'hich shows itself in action. 
 I myself feel the influence of mind on mind, as a great silent 
 power going on steadily when we are heedless and careless of it. 
 And these careless moments being the inost frequent, I fear the 
 influence is often very bad. Not what has happened to myself 
 to-day, but what has happened to others through me — that 
 should be my thought." 
 
 To do good and know it not has been the theme of 
 preacher and of poet. There is a deep philosophy of 
 habit, that it is the supreme reward of virtue. This 
 also, by confidence in moral force, has my friend the 
 wisdom to see, writing thereof thus: 
 
 " I have discovered that wisdom of action generally is in 
 proportion to the purity of motive, and if we stop first to con- 
 sider the motive and whether it is all good or has evil parts, 
 and purge it of the latter, judgment then is multiplied just so 
 much in clearness. This is not a new idea, perhaps, but it has 
 becoine more personal to me, and froin a weak beginning now 
 I want first to form the habit so to question motive, and then 
 to lose the sense of will in invariable unconscious action." 
 
 It were strange if courage, faith, piety of waiting, 
 humility of submission and trust in moral forces, led 
 not my friend to a wise questioning of his under- 
 standing as well as of his conduct; and so indeed it is. 
 He is not a scholar, nor would be called a thinker, 
 that is, one who wrestles with reasonings of set pur- 
 pose and from scientific interest. My friend is a man 
 
204 Of His Letters 
 
 plunged deep in exacting business, and wringing day 
 by day from hard affaii"s gracious drops of reflection 
 and of duty. But well it were if all scholars and 
 philosophers knew, as does he, the worth of the 
 mind's unharnessed motion joined with loving con- 
 ference. Of this he writes : 
 
 " I have a habit when I leave my store homeward bound of 
 bringing before me a summary of the day's doings, and I de- 
 rive much from it, and not infrequently correct next morning 
 any step which in the calmer moment seems incompletely or 
 poorly taken. The panorama passes before my mind's eye, 
 and one or two of the most important things linger without 
 suggestion or attempt on my part to dwell on them specially ; 
 and there they will lie, neither disturbing nor harassing, but 
 announcing themselves as present for examination. So in the 
 silence of the journey I am still working out my questions, — 
 very enjoyably, too. Then often next morning I go over my 
 thoughts with a chosen friend, either to call out his or to pro- 
 voke a criticism on my way, or to notice concurrent feelings." 
 
 Such is my friend, and such his letters that feed me. 
 A rich possession! What vein of wealth is the like 
 thereof, or what food of mind gives such strength? 
 But am I alone with such blessedness? No ; then I 
 were ashamed to show it. I would flaunt no joy in 
 eyes that lack it. I am persuaded, as in the begin- 
 ning I have said, that the Post Office, which is the 
 clearing-house of love, is effluent to all points with 
 the like thoughts and feelings, as a sun sheds light 
 spherically. But who is my friend? What, thou 
 wouldst leave me no mystery? Read Browning's 
 " House," and "At the Mermaid," which, though I 
 like them not, surely string a truthful harp with 
 
Of Character as a Work 205 
 
 strong sinews. Love has its rights, life its privacies. 
 Keep thine in thine own heart; but see that thou 
 drinkest w^hen a glass in thy closet stands full of bliss 
 and of good for thee. 
 
 OF CHARACTER AS A WORK 
 
 What part of the value of anything is the material 
 of it, and w^hat part the vv^ork wrought on the mate- 
 rial, is a proof question always — proof sometimes of 
 the article, sometimes of the asker or of the answerer. 
 Some things are useful without labor, like air, water 
 and natural foods, as berries, roots, esculent stems; but 
 other edible things are useless unwrought, as quinces 
 and the like in fruits; also, wheat, corn and other 
 grains, unless they be made into bread. For although 
 digestion perhaps may be trained to the raw wheat 
 and other grain, yet these, unsifted and uncooked, 
 give but coarse food, which supports but coarse mind 
 and rude intelligence; so that it is the labor in food 
 on which we thrive, which is the fine part of the 
 food, and nourishes fine flesh in the body and fine 
 quality in the soul. Some things which are needful 
 are yet so useless In themselves that nearly all the 
 value is the work in them. Such things are the 
 metals, which in their ores lie gross and worthless, 
 but which, evoked and wrought, flourish in value. It 
 is said " a chain was manufactured at Woodstock 
 
/ 
 
 2o6 Of Character as a Work 
 
 which weighed only two ounces and cost £70, being 
 163,600 times the value of the original iron from 
 which it was made." 
 
 Now, this is to be seen, that the higher towards 
 beauty grows the value, the more it is in the work 
 and not in the material. For as in food for the body 
 it is only satisfaction of hunger that is thought of, 
 with cleanliness, so one loaf is like another, and, save 
 for the natural bits of color, the pretty minglings of 
 brown and white, no beauty is looked for. But in 
 the bit of iron-work which was so rare, the beauty 
 and delicacy were the worth. When the great pro- 
 ducts of beauty come forward, like glorious statues 
 and glowing paintings, the value is all in the work, 
 part of the work being the greatest of labors, — the 
 efforts of thought and imagination. For the material 
 is but a little stone which carts might trundle on, or a 
 little cloth and color priced at a few pennies. But 
 yet another step — wherewith we come to values which 
 have no material at all, like dancing, singing, har- 
 mony of instruments, powers of language; herein all 
 the value is the work. 
 
 Now, it is to be seen that character is such a value, 
 which has no material at all, and the greatest of all 
 such values; therefore, all the worth of it is the power 
 of the work gone into it. It is as invisible as voice 
 or harmony, as inaudible as dancing or gesture. Now 
 is there any truth so great which is so much forgotten 
 by men as that such a thing must have a work- 
 worth or no worth ? For what else do not men think, 
 lay large plans, and toil to bring their devices to issue; 
 
Of Character as a Work 307 
 
 But, albeit character is the first of interests and good 
 character the most shining of graces, who think, as 
 with hammer and chisel or with pencil, to work at it 
 that it may be wrought like ivory or fine metals? 
 Take we not rather ourselves as we are, thinking that 
 only if we keep clear of bad things and live in good 
 neighborhoods, we may give attention, time and toil 
 to other things, and good character will grow amain ? 
 But in truth It is to be wrought, being of that order 
 in which the work is all the value. When character 
 towers, somewhere there has been work; if not by us, 
 then behind us; for when beauty is once wrought it 
 goes by descent, like a strong body. But inheritance 
 improves not on itself, and nature, which transmits, 
 will not do everything for us in the transmitting, any 
 more than in the first conquest. If we let go, it 
 is certain the character will not refine; and soon it 
 will grow wild, for all things have a gravity toward 
 the unwrought state, from which they must be held 
 up by the work which first lifted them, as the chain, 
 whose work-worth was many times the substance- 
 worth, would speedily be rusted to fragments or even 
 to powder if left to the elements, as fine-fingered to 
 destroy as the workman to compact. Truly, no doubt 
 if one have a good spirit from ancestors and be steady 
 in some industry and keep from bad company, he will 
 grow respectably. But I speak now of higher aims; 
 also, besides, of the many (nay, who not?) who have 
 besetting temptations and weak spots to look after^ 
 The grand sculptures in character, the mighty works 
 jn that marble, the strong figures of patience, gentle- 
 
i 
 
 208 Of Character as a Work 
 
 ness, long-suffering, will, the beauty of disciplined 
 passion, the majesty of truthfulness — these things are 
 works. 
 
 As if we were placed to lack no advantage, we take 
 a new set-out every quarter century of hours. If one 
 freshly would ask himself in the morning, What is 
 the first aim for to-day ? what could he answer but to 
 make himself what he ought to be ? If, answering 
 so, he then would ask himself how the many things 
 which he must do that day might be brought to help 
 make him what he ought to be, and if then he would 
 f orelook to put aside all hindrances of the aim, and if 
 he would plan and invent how he might quicken some 
 virtue wherein he fails, and set his will to apply his 
 device, and all this with the attention with which he 
 contrives for his gains — then would he be at work on 
 his character. It would be wrought to excellence, 
 which is beauty; this is certain. Says an ancient 
 scholar: '•'• Ora et iterum oraj veniet hora qua tibi 
 dabltur; " whereof the noble and fruitful interpreta- 
 tion is a common proverb: " ^ui laborat^ oraV — he 
 prays who works. When Plutarch wished to learn 
 patience, he set himself to go one day without showing 
 displeasure; for surely, if he would, he could go one 
 day without anger. Then when he could be always 
 patient on any day when he would, he set himself two 
 days; and so at length he overcame violence 
 
 The holy William Law enforces that even religion 
 is no foreign sphere to labor; for even religious expe- 
 rience, not much to be exposed, spoken but in corners 
 and in whispers, is to increase, as moral beauty does, 
 
Of Character as a Work 209 
 
 by diligent care and effort. For it is not only the 
 hand or mind which habit and exercise made quick, 
 but also feeling, and sense of beauty, with enjoyment 
 thereof, by bringing the senses frequently into the 
 presence of lovely things, and turning the mind to 
 dwell on them to learn the source of their charm. 
 Likewise devotion, wonder, worship, are wrought by 
 thither turning our feet where hallowed associations 
 gather, and our eyes toward the glories and mysteries 
 in which we move, and our thoughts to thinking upon 
 them. Says William Law: 
 
 " That is a strange infatuated state of negligence wliich keeps 
 people from considering what devotion is. For if they did 
 but once proceed so far as to reflect about it, or ask themselves 
 any questions concerning it, they would soon see that the spirit 
 of devotion was like any other sense or understanding that is 
 only to be improved by study, care, application, and the use of 
 such means and helps as are necessary to make man a profi- 
 cient in any art or science." 
 
 If character-working be a greater art than any 
 other modeling, and make more glorious forms than 
 the brush, it has also this special dignity, that all may 
 be busy in it. Matters it much with what diversities 
 of genius, strength or grace the struggle begins? 
 No; the beauty and power wrought at last crown the 
 toiler. Nay, even we shall see the ill-furnished and 
 the ill-placed, with loads on their backs of ancestral 
 weakness or misery, or chained to some bar or fenced 
 in a little space, outstrip far the fortunate, free and 
 prosperous, because they have wrought the better, 
 though on stock which was poorer. 
 
OF SUPERIORITY 
 
 Superiority commonly is thought a privilege. 
 Privilege means private law, — that is, enactment for 
 the special benefit of an individual, — which is odious. 
 Now though superiority be privilege, yet also it is a 
 necessity in nature's order; for, if no one ever rose 
 above another, there could be no progress. But the 
 harmlessness of superiority comes of union with sense 
 of responsibility. That is to say, a superiority should 
 seem to its possessor, not a boon to himself, but a bond 
 of obligation to. the world. The responsibilities are 
 chiefly three: 
 
 First, to keep the good of the world in view, and 
 to make our superiority tell for the whole. To do 
 this very thing is a high privilege, as joy-giving as 
 any; but It is a privilege which makes our eminence 
 a boon to all as well as to ourselves; and this is the 
 very obligation of superiority. Beautiful it is, in 
 truth, that this duty done becomes the chief privilege 
 of our advantage ! 
 
 Secondly, we ought to act so much better than 
 others, in all relations, as our superiorities are greater. 
 In exigencies of life, in emergencies of sacrifice or 
 peril or labor, in inequalities, enmities, jealousies, 
 slights, in provocations of any kind, never can be set- 
 tled the question who, by sheer justice, ought to step 
 (210) 
 
Of Superiority 211 
 
 forward in the emergency, meet the exigency, make 
 reparation. It is, then, for the superior person to feel 
 his superiority as a bond to lead in doing the right 
 wise, patient, elevated act. This rule not always 
 easily is applied in great exigencies; but beautiful the 
 peace and serene the virtue if always it were applied 
 between friend and friend or the one or two comrades 
 of the moment! If then, in any abuse or trouble or 
 need, the superior would say to himself, I am the 
 older, the richer, the wiser, the better educated, the 
 stronger, the higher in position, — these advantages 
 are marks of God that I am the one to dare, to bear, 
 or to forbear, — what peace, what excellence would 
 grow! 
 
 Thirdly, it is a responsibility of superiority not to 
 show itself too much, and sometimes €ven to hide. 
 This law has two parts: First, never ought we to 
 flaunt our superiorities before the less endowed. La 
 Rochefoucauld says, " It is a high degree of intelli- 
 gence to know when not to display intelligence." So 
 IS it with any superiority. How high or grand soever 
 the super-excellence, to manifest it for display is un- 
 comely, and odious if before the less fortunate. 
 But, secondly, we should keep our superiorities out 
 of sight in proportion to the lowness of the plane of 
 them. Of course, this means not that superiorities 
 should be hidden altogether, A beautiful face need 
 not be covered, and beautiful behavior cannot be; 
 but, as no superior endowment should be flaunted, so 
 none should be suffered carelessly to appear in too 
 great or painful contrast. And this care must be 
 
212 Of Supper lor ity 
 
 taken specially as to superiorities less excellent in 
 kind, because it is in these that the pain of deficiency 
 or the greater pang of envy most is caused. We 
 may make three chief groups of superiorities. The 
 highest is moral or spiritual. This will, and ought to, 
 appear simply. But none envy it. All may emulate 
 it, all may rise to it, all w^ill adore it. Next is mental 
 superiority. Herein, by so much as there is descent 
 from the moral plane, care is needed. It is ruthless 
 to show off wit or knowledge in some companies. It 
 is nobler and very often kinder to let persons search 
 in us for our accomplishment before it be found. Fin- 
 ally, the lowest superiority is material, — attractions of 
 appearance, face, figure, wealth, position. Now, in 
 these we should study to avoid comparison. It is 
 brutal selfishness willingly to force a contrast between 
 our comforts, affluence, pleasures, beauty, and our 
 neighbors' privations, penury, deformity. Many 
 modes of living are blameworthy offenses against this 
 simple law, how fine, delicate and gentle soever they 
 seem. 
 
TOPICAL INDEX 
 
 Advice. 14 — S' 
 
 Albigenses . ...8 
 
 Alfred the Great, story of 87 
 
 Allen, Joseph H., quoted... 8 
 
 Angelo, Michael, quoted. 109 
 
 Anger 125— '33 
 
 and other passions . 126 
 
 Wastefulness of .,..126 
 
 Pain of .126 
 
 Appearance of 127 — 128 
 
 Control of 128 
 
 Weakness of 129 
 
 and the will 129 
 
 and Time 130 
 
 Kinds of 131— '33 
 
 Anquetil, death of 164 
 
 Argonauts 90 
 
 Aristocracy 93 
 
 Aristotle, quoted, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 
 90, 92, 9S. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, quoted.. 47 
 
 AssER, quoted 87 
 
 AuRELius, quoted, 14, 22, 37, 49, 66, 
 113. '33. 140, 144, 148. 156, iS9i 
 163, 199, 202. 
 
 Bacon, quoted, 32, 34, 37, 132, 141, 
 
 163. I7S- 
 
 Balguy, Doctor, story of 62 
 
 Beauty 206 
 
 Berkeley, quoted 104 
 
 Bird, story of a 30 
 
 Browne, Sir Thomas, quoted 136 
 
 Browning, Robert, quoted, 120, 153, 
 162, 166, 200. 
 
 Brutus and his sons S^ 
 
 Buffon, quoted 19S 
 
 Bureau of Education 15 
 
 Burke, quoted 145 
 
 Captain of a ship, story of. 32 
 
 (2 
 
 Carlyle, quoted 44 
 
 Censure 64—68 
 
 Meanini^ of 64 
 
 Conditions of . 64 
 
 must be rare 65 
 
 indirect 65 
 
 must be unwilling 66 
 
 in friendship.. ..67 
 
 and praise 67 
 
 Dangers of.. 136 
 
 Chance 30 
 
 Character a Work 205 — 209 
 
 The work is the value 206 
 
 and the morning 208 
 
 Equality in 209 
 
 Chinese Government 77 
 
 Choice :. 7 — 10 
 
 and sacrifice 7 
 
 as a moral test 7 — 9 
 
 as energy 9 
 
 of the best 23 
 
 Coleridge, quoted 155 
 
 Common Sense 114 — 121 
 
 Three meanings of 114 
 
 as the common level 114 
 
 and observation. .116 
 
 Greatness of 116 
 
 Reasonableness of . -"7 
 
 Prevalence of 118 
 
 as perception of common 
 
 beauties 119 
 
 as co?!set!sus of the great 120 
 
 Conference 204 
 
 Confucius, quoted 78 
 
 Conscience iSj — 192 
 
 Conscience of conscience, 
 
 185—188 
 
 Ill-health of 187 
 
 and motive 18S 
 
 Modesty in 1S9 
 
 on slight occasions 189 
 
 As to cases of. 191 
 
 13) 
 
214 
 
 Topical Index 
 
 Conway's "Sacred Anthology," 
 
 quoted 35 
 
 Correspondence 193 
 
 Courage of conviction 52 
 
 CovvpER, quoted 141 
 
 Criticism 106 
 
 Culture, selfishness of 20 
 
 Darwin, quoted.. 128 
 
 Death 160 — iSo 
 
 Fear of . 160 — 163 
 
 Ease of 163—165 
 
 as a vital act 165 
 
 Seasonable death 166 
 
 Organisms without death i63 
 
 Mystery of i63 
 
 compared with birth i63 
 
 and life 170 
 
 The wish for 171 
 
 and the will.. 172 
 
 Possible nearness of the dead 172 
 
 Democracy of 174 
 
 and the brain 175 
 
 and bodies 176 
 
 and personal identity. 177 
 
 The look of 177 
 
 A lesson from 178 
 
 De Maistre, quoted 198 
 
 Democracy 89, 93, 94 
 
 Dickens, Charles, quoted 31 
 
 Dreaming 185 
 
 Education, bureau of 15 
 
 Education, public 15—21 
 
 Emergency iSo— 184 
 
 defined 181 
 
 Different minds in iSi 
 
 Moral emergencies 1S2 
 
 Endurance in 183 
 
 small and great 184 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, quoted, 13, 
 '7' 24, 34, 46, 60, 112, 115, 116, 
 128, 135, 153, 1,59, 195, 201, 202. 
 
 Enemies 145 — 150 
 
 and History 145 
 
 and PViendship 146 
 
 Uses of 147—149 
 
 Griefs of ii^o 
 
 English Press, anecdote of II'" .65 
 Epictetus, quoted, 44, 51, 143, 167 
 
 Epicurus, quoted 144 
 
 Er-Rasheed, Haroon, story of,. 174 
 
 Fable, Hindoo ....... -je 
 
 Faculty II.'io— ij 
 
 Conceit of n 
 
 is wholeness n — \x. 47 
 
 Faith T.v^t^ 
 
 Flattery 69—76 
 
 Meaning of 69 
 
 sometimes a pretence 6g 
 
 and the pulpit 70 
 
 Weakness and strength of 71 
 
 Kinds of.. 73 
 
 Disposition open to 74 
 
 and detraction 76 
 
 Fontenelle, death of 164 
 
 Fortune 33 
 
 Franklin, quoted 42 
 
 Frederick the Gkbat, story of. .60 
 Friendship 23 
 
 Galton, Francis, quoted ........13 
 
 Gray, Thomas, quoted 23 
 
 Genius 46 
 
 George III., story of 70 
 
 Goethe, story of .119 
 
 Government 76 — 99 
 
 The best ideally 76 
 
 Noble kingship 78 
 
 The best possible So 
 
 Fitness for 80,86—89 
 
 Tenure of office 8l 
 
 Fitness of electors 82 — 84 
 
 Citizenship 84 
 
 Dangers of democracies, 89, 93, 
 
 94 
 
 Obedience 91 
 
 Liberty and tyranny 91 
 
 Democracy defined .. 93 
 
 Aristocracy defined 93 
 
 Power of a system 95 
 
 Ethical effects 97 
 
 Guillard, Nicholas Francois, story 
 of 6s 
 
 Habit 203 
 
 Haller, death of 164 
 
 Handwriting 99 102 
 
 Twof ol d character of. 99 
 
 Morality in 100 
 
 Happiness and Time ..I.IIIIzi— 26 
 
 Past, present and future 21 
 
 as to friendship and love 23 
 
 The passing moment 24 
 
 Hare Brothers, quoted 76 
 
 Haroon Er-Rasheed, story of 174 
 
 Haydn, quoted 143 
 
 Heroism, questions of SS— .S9 
 
 Private and public claims 56 
 
 Rights of love 58 
 
 Hindoo Fable 35 
 
 HiGGiNSON, Thomas W., quoted' 165 
 
 His Letters 193—205 
 
 Correspondence 193 — 195 
 
 Description of him ---195 
 
 of faith 195 
 
Toxical Index 
 
 215 
 
 His Letters 
 
 of love of the country 197 
 
 of trust 197 
 
 of waiting 197 — 193 
 
 of submission 199 
 
 of time 200 — 20 1 
 
 of mental power 201 
 
 of social influence 203 
 
 of habit ---203 
 
 of conference, 204 
 
 HOSMER, Frederick L., quoted. .171 
 
 Hughes, Thomas, quoted 87, 143 
 
 Hunter, William, death of 164 
 
 Huss and the Emperor 67 
 
 Immortal Lifk 150 — 159 
 
 Primitive belief in 150 
 
 Explanation of belief.. igi 
 
 Belief ag-ainst sense 151 
 
 Arguments for 152 
 
 Analogy 152 
 
 Intimations of 153 
 
 Wholeness of life 154 
 
 Health of the belief 156 
 
 Splendor oi 156 
 
 and love i0 
 
 as a motive 157 
 
 Impatience 24 
 
 Individuality 47 — ji 
 
 and Individualism 48 
 
 in opinion 50 
 
 in behavior 53 
 
 James, Epistle of, quoted 185 
 
 James, King, story of 144 
 
 Jesus, quoted 10, 134 
 
 Job, quoted 13S 
 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, quoted ...144 
 
 Johnson, Samuel, quoted 77 
 
 JORTIN, quoted... 145; 
 
 Judge of Old Bailey, story of 58 
 
 Judgment of Others 134 — 136 
 
 Deceptions of 134, 
 
 Knowledge and feeling in 135 
 
 Dangers of 135 
 
 Keeper of the Seals in France, 
 story of ---S^ 
 
 Kingship 78 
 
 Knowledge 103 — 107 
 
 Two conditions of . ..-103 
 
 of ourselves 104 
 
 of others 105 — 106 
 
 of nature 107 
 
 Knox, John, story of 67 
 
 Lanier, Sidney, quoted 63, 160 
 
 La Rochefoucauld, quoted, 11, 14, 
 
 27. 2S, 7S, 133, 149, 211. 
 Lav alette, Madame, story of... 57 
 
 Lavater, quoted .177 
 
 Law, William, quoted. .108, 112, 209 
 
 Letter-wriumg 193 
 
 Lkwes, George Henry, quoted.. 137 
 
 Liberty 91 
 
 Locke, John, quoted 141 
 
 Longfellow, Henry W., quoted, 
 
 ISO 
 Love 23, 124 
 
 Lowell, James Russell, quoted, 19. 
 109, 12S, 137. 
 
 Luck 29-38 
 
 Three meanings of 30 
 
 and mental qualities 33 
 
 and self-knowledge 34 
 
 and patience 3S| 
 
 and strong purpose 31; 
 
 and ignorance 36 
 
 Treatment of the lucky and un- 
 lucky 36 
 
 and fate 37 
 
 Luther, quoted 185 
 
 MacDonald, George, quoted... 135 
 
 Macchiavelli, quoted 95 
 
 Mandeville, Bernard de, quoted, 
 126 
 Marcus Aurelius v. Aurelius. 
 Maundeville, Sir John, quoted, 175 
 
 Meditation 107 — 114 
 
 Meaning of -"-'7 
 
 Great company bj' means of. 108 
 
 lifts above ourselves X09 
 
 Knowledge by means of 110-112 
 
 and Time 113 
 
 Memory 21 
 
 Mill, James, quoted 97 
 
 Milton, quoted 158, 1S6 
 
 Morse, Sidney H., quoted. 52 
 
 Necks, short and long 180 
 
 Nicole, story of 60 
 
 Nightingale, Florence, quoted 164 
 NoVALis, quoted 185 
 
 Obedience 9. 
 
 Old Bailey, story of 58 
 
 Ostracism 90 
 
 Patience 24,35, 137— HS 
 
 "Passionate patience" 137 
 
 Nature of. 137 — '39 
 
 with others I39 
 
 and the morning .- 140 
 
 with ourselves 141 
 
 with Providence 143 
 
 Peignot, story from, 69 
 
 Persian, ancient, quoted... 34 — 35; 
 
 PhoCION's saying 67 
 
2l6 
 
 Toxical Index 
 
 Plutarch, quoted, 38, 40, 67, 72,90, 
 130, 147, 169, 190, 20S. 
 
 a story from.. ......3S 
 
 of the Spartan women 55 
 
 PoE, Edgar Allen, quoted 43 
 
 Poetry 46 
 
 Politeness, French definition of, 59 
 
 Praising 59—^3 
 
 a liberty 59 
 
 is good manners .,59 
 
 is gfenerosity 60 
 
 is honesty 60 
 
 a difficult art 60 
 
 discriminating 62 
 
 in writing 62 
 
 in friendship 62 
 
 and censuring' 67 
 
 Preachers, stories of 69, 71 
 
 Predicatoriana, story from 69 
 
 Prester John, story of 175 
 
 Proctor, Richard, answer to Dick- 
 ens 31 
 
 Proverb, Turkish 34 
 
 Public Education 15—21 
 
 Regarding justice and expe- 
 diency 15 — 1*^ 
 
 as a debt of capital 17 
 
 Justice of i^ 
 
 Expediency of iS 
 
 and Benevolence 19 
 
 Psychometry 13 
 
 Py-thagoras, quoted 141 
 
 Questions of Heroism v. Heroism 
 
 Requital 122—125 
 
 Principle of 122 
 
 as self-respect 123 
 
 regarding love 124 
 
 RiCHTER, Jean Paul, quoted 25 
 
 Saadi, quoted I43 
 
 Sacrifice 7, 10 
 
 Salter, William M., quoted 202 
 
 SCHEFER, Leopold, quoted, 25, 2,(>, 
 
 49, 78, no, 113, 143, 153, 162, 165, 
 
 166, 167, 168, 178, 179. 
 Seein'g Good Things 38~42 
 
 Happiness of 39 
 
 Neglect of — ..-4*' 
 
 Seneca, quoted, 49, 127, 130, 134, 
 
 170, 171. 
 
 Shaftesbury', quoted 12J 
 
 Shakespeare, quoted 161, 182 
 
 Shallowness ..13 
 
 Side-lights of Intelligence, 
 
 42—47 
 Unity of understanding... 43, 46 
 
 Moral aspect 44 
 
 and experience 46 
 
 Sidney', Algernon, quoted, 86, 87, 
 91,96. 
 
 Sight 39, 42 
 
 Smith, Sidney, quoted 104 
 
 Socrates, quoted 4S 
 
 Solandek, story of 164 
 
 Spartan Women 55 
 
 Stoics, quoted 64, 109 
 
 Stoics, the 7 
 
 Submission 199 
 
 Superiority 210 — 213 
 
 as privilege 210 
 
 ought to serve 2!0 
 
 ought to lead in right-doing. 2 10 
 
 ought to be reserved 2U 
 
 Swift, quoted 70 
 
 Taylor, Jeremy, quoted 127 
 
 Thackeray, story of S^ 
 
 Themistocles, banishment of 90 
 
 Thomson, James, story of 8 
 
 Thought, three qualities of 51 
 
 three forces of •--S'^ 
 
 Time and Happiness 21—26 
 
 Trust 197 
 
 Turkish Proverb 34 
 
 Ty'ranny 9' 
 
 Vainglory ...ji.26 — 29 
 
 and consciousness... 26 
 
 Folly of 27 
 
 Hindrance by 28 
 
 Pain of 28 
 
 The worst vanity.. 29 
 
 Failure of. 29 
 
 Vibrations, orders of 173 
 
 Waiting 26, 197, 198 
 
 Wasson, David A., quoted, 89, 93, 
 94.95 
 
 Weiss, John, quoted S7i6i, 132 
 
 W0LLA8TON, William, quoted.. 103 
 
 Wordsworth, quoted. 155 
 
 Zeno, quoted 5' 
 
016 115 729 6 
 
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